Strike One?

Well, I'm not going to do an Ed Miliband this week and shy away from the biggest public sector strikes for 5 years that took to the streets of London today.

It seemed a half-hearted affair to me. I was in Whitehall this morning, and I couldn't work out why more union members weren't on the picket lines putting their case across and making more of an impact. At the Ministry of Justice and DWP, there were probably no more than six or seven people. By 2.30pm, with the march over, pubs in Westminster were spilling over with union members who appeared to be done with the marching, thank you very much, and were tucking into the pints.

There's no doubt that the pensions deal for public sector workers represents a serious step back from the status quo. It's a worse deal.

Treasury Minister Justine Greening got into a bit of hot water on the Today programme yesterday as to whether the current public sector pensions bill was "unaffordable" or "untenable". She conceded that it wasn't unaffordable, but that the Government had decided they were untenable.

It's an important distinction, because it confirms the Government is doing this on the basis of fairness (or, more crudely: cuts) than because public sector pensions are inherently unsustainable. It represents a change in tack from the Government who previously ran the "we're all getting older, state is having to pay more" line. Hutton's report does actually show the cost of public sector pensions falling, not rising, as a proportion of GDP.

But I still believe this reform is, in a time where savings must be found to reduce the deficit, a necessary course correction. To close the gap between public and private sector pensions, given that the gap between average public and private sector earnings has also closed in recent years.

Successive governments have failed to grasp the nettle of public sector pension reform. Even if the status quo is affordable, the Government's proposals I think represent a balanced and fair way of delivering fairer and more balanced public sector pensions. They still give public sector workers a better deal than they would find in the private sector. In doing so, they still offer reward and recognition for public service - but in a less evangelical way than previously. Whilst public sector workers deliver so much for our communities, it's never been as simple as public sector (good), private sector (bad) - even with the banking crisis. The previous public sector pension deals frankly got the balance of fairness wrong as compared with the private sector.

So, the government will prevail. Mainly because public opinion will be with them on this one and not with the unions. Whilst everyone else is tightening their belts, and whilst the pension deal remains a better one than is available in the private sector - there's almost no argument beyond "this is a worse deal than we had before".

Credit to the coalition government for this brave course correction. Just don't lose your nerve again.

Broken prisons: who's guilty?

Another week, another U-turn from the Government - this week on sentencing reform. Ken Clarke's plans to cut prison sentences by 50% in return for early guilty pleas. Ken was chasing cuts. Cameron - late in the day - saw the dangers in being seen to be soft on crime.

You have to feel some sympathy for Ken Clarke. He has to find massive, 23% savings in his Department's budget. The prison population was allowed to get out of control under Labour - soaring to 85,000 from 40,000 when Clarke was Home Secretary in the 1990s.

And the cost? A whopping £45,000 per year per prison place. More than a year's fees at Eton.

The prison population has to be brought down somehow. Yes, because there's no money left to keep locking people up at the current rate. But, more importantly, because the prison system in England and Wales is - frankly - broken.

Consider this. 50% of all prisoners reoffend within a year of leaving prison. No wonder the numbers are unsustainable.

The real story today - more than U-turns - is how our prisons have got so out of control. Yes, Labour created a pack of new offences that meant more people ended up in jail. But once offenders get to prison, they're enrolling into a college of crime where up to half of them will commit more crime once they're out.

I can't see how the Prison Service is not to blame for this. Politicians rightly get it in the neck when things go wrong and it's right that Ministers should be ultimately accountable to Parliament. They formulate the policy and ask the public servants - the prison officers, the experts - to implement those policies and to get on and design and deliver the public service in the most efficient and effective way they can.

And yet prisoners are re-offending in shocking numbers - to say nothing of the 50% of prisoners who are on drugs in prison. There has been a systemic mismanagement of the prison system in England and Wales for a very long time for things to have got this bad. More crime. More victims. More expensive prison places. More crime. The cycle of crime goes on...

Clarke's plans this week propose sensible steps for dealing with this. Payment by results - paying private sector prison providers for the number of offenders they put back on the straight and narrow makes sense. Prisons must become places of work, rehabilitation and reform - too many prisoners sit around bored out of their skulls. These are long-term fixes that the Government is right to implement.

The U-turn on halving sentences for guilty pleas has grabbed the headlines. But the guilty party - the Prison Service public service managers who have so consistently mismanaged our prisons for years - have got away with it.

They need to be held accountable.

Snapshot: NHS reforms... behind the curve

Much of the press coverage of the revisions to the Health and Social Care Bill this week will focus on Tory U-turns and Lib Dems crowing at securing concessions. The draft Bill was Andrew Lansley's, crafted after years in Opposition. He should have done better - why he needed a 10-week consultation period with health professionals a year after announcing his policy and some years after he first thought of it really should prompt serious questions about Tory policy formulation and Cameron's hand's off leadership style. Cameron, it seems, only gets hands once the proverbial's hitting the fan.

And, though Nick Clegg claims victory - let's not forget that the Lib Dems went along with this policy lock stock and barrel when it was first announced, only applying the brakes once the Spring Conference asked Lib Dem Ministers to go away and have a re-think.

So, whilst Nick Clegg claims victory - it was a re-think forced on him rather than one of conviction.

If we're looking at the politics of all of this - forget the U-turns... why are Ministers so behind the curve?

No... but a new start please

Unless voter turn out has a very unexpected effect on today's voting reform referendum, we should hear at some point tomorrow that the "No" campaign has prevailed and that voting reform in the UK has been put on hold for a long time indeed.

There's a small, slim chance that low turnout could help the "Yes" campaign. Whilst it's easier to persuade people against AV and stick with status quo, it's also harder to mobilise voters to come out and vote against something than it is to mobilise keen voting reform enthusiasts to take their once in a generation opportunity. But, ultimately, not enough people care about the intricacies of their voting system to make such a mobilisation of popular support likely.

So, it will be a "No". If it is, the "Yes" campaigners should listen to the voters, not sulk away to lick their wounds. You cannot fight a campaign to improve our democracy and then not listen to the democratic will of the people.

Nick Clegg's words tomorrow will be important. He may try and blame the coalition's unpopularity, that it was a "referendum on difficult decisions taken in the national interest". I expect him to say a lot about respecting a democratic result. Being not a fan of AV himself, having called it a "nasty little compromise" he may well blame it on the wrong form of proportional representation being put to the test.

Whatever he says, he must say it carefully. I don't believe those who will say that this is voting reform put to bed for a generation. With a strong likelihood of another hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party, I think there is a good chance of there being another voting reform referendum - held in happier times, when talking about voting reform doesn't seem irrelevant to people's daily lives - within the next decade.

What will begin tomorrow is a new kind of coalition. Chris Huhne has used the AV campaign to mark himself out as a Cabinet rebel and a potential future leader. Both him and Vince Cable could trigger a coalition crisis if they judge that the coalition is all pain and no gain for the Lib Dems.

But Nick Clegg should stay the course. Lib Dems quitting the coalition would seem petulant and self-obsessed. We didn't get our voting reform, so we leave? Or we want a significant portion of our manifesto implemented (not all of it, coalition compromises don't allow that), and we need to be grown up members of government, taking the tough decisions to do that.

Five years is a long time. The Lib Dems - and I mean the likes of Cable and Huhne - need to remember that they should strive to demonstrate that coalitions work... that the Lib Dems have made a valuable Lib Dem contribution in government.

That demands patience and maturity from the would-be rebels. And the start of a new phase for Clegg in which he stamps out an unmistakably Lib Dem identity at the heart of government. Not propping up the Tories. But Lib Dems, in government, getting things done, getting things that Lib Dem voters at the last election wanted to see done.

Breaking up the coalition, not losing the AV vote, is what will really end the voting reform debate for a generation.

Game changer: for Pakistan and Osama Bin Laden

The death of Osama Bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, is a game changer. Not in the fight against Al-Qaeda, as such - but in the United States and the West's relationship with one of its most troublesome and important allies: Pakistan.

Bin Laden's death is an important step in weakening the loose, vague network that we like to put in a box called "Al-Qaeda", but in truth was moulded by Osama Bin Laden's propaganda and charisma into a complex global Islamist extremist network, active from Luton to Lahore and far beyond. His death is a significant but not decisive blow to a network that only exists as a convenient shorthand to help us understand some of the threats that the West faces from global Islamist extremism.

In many ways, the real story and the real history being made today is for Pakistan's relationship with the West. For decades, Pakistan has played a double game. Conniving with the CIA in secretly funding the mujahideen's anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and continuing to fund Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan long after the Soviets had been overthrown and the CIA had withdrawn its own support, it's never quite been clear where Pakistan's loyalities and commitment to rooting out terror have lain.

In 2001, President Musharraf responded to George Bush's "with us or against us" call, and decided to side with the US. In reality, even then, elements in the Pakistani intelligence agencies continued to support attacks on NATO forces inside Afghanistan. This alongside nurturing the Kashmiri terrorists, Lashkar-e-Taiba who went on to murder hundreds in Mumbai as late as 2008.

And now, nearly ten years after 9/11, President Obama has the election winning gift of announcing that US forces have finally killed Osama Bin Laden. In Pakistan. Not in a freezing cold cave in the tribal regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But in a walled, luxury compound just 40 miles from the capital Islamabad. A compound eight times larger than any other in the city, with two high perimeter walls and within that walls up to four metres thick. A compound less than a kilometre from Pakistan's equivalent of Sandhurst. A garrison town, a hillside resort - a far cry from the desolate caves of Tora Bora where Bin Laden first fled in 2001.

This is a desperate embarrassment for Pakistan. The CIA's relations with Pakistan's intelligence agencies are at an all time low, following the major diplomatic row caused by CIA contractor Raymond Davis and his subsequent release after shooting dead two Pakistani's in Lahore.

That Bin Laden should be found in apparent luxury, close to the Pakistani capital - and for the operation to be carried out by the United States unilaterally without informing Pakistani intelligence, raises serious questions about exactly what Pakistan has been doing with Osama bin Laden these last few years. It seems beyond comprehension that an intelligence outfit as sophisticated as Pakistan's ISI would not have been able to wise up to the fact that Bin Laden was so close, so comfortable, so safe.

Today's real history lies in the fact that Pakistan's bluff has been called. That the CIA's most significant triumph in the war on terror has come when its relations with Pakistan's intelligence agencies are at such a low confirms that the US is more effective when it operates without Pakistani co-operation that it does with it. It confirms that the Pakistanis have been a hindrance rather than a help in the hunt for Bin Laden. It does not yet confirm that the Pakistanis have actively sheltered Bin Laden. But the cirumstances of his death hardly suggest a wholehearted effort on behalf of Pakistan in finding him.

David Cameron got into real trouble last summer, when he suggested that Pakistan "looks both ways on terrorism". But today's events, as both Afghanistan and India have been quick to claim vindication of their scepticism, suggest this might be true.

Cameron's remarks prompted outrage in Pakistan from both government and its people. The outrage was worse for appearing as though the UK was now parroting Indian and American suspicion of Pakistan. But - in the end - Cameron's comments (echoed by many US diplomats) were always as shadowy as the rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence agencies that they denounced.

No longer. The United States has pulled off a significant coup in its relations with the intelligence agency - in reality a state within a state - it worked with to create today's problems in Afghanistan and that it needs to be reformed to solve Afghanistan. Elements within Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency have never quite given up their sponsorship for terrorism - whether it's insurgents in Afghanistan, Kashmiri terrorists or sheltering Osama Bin Laden.

But today, they have been caught red-handed - in the most blatant way possible - of at best inefficiency and at worst outright connivance with the world's most wanted terrorist.

Al Qaeda may be weakened following Osama Bin Laden's death. But the real game changer may well be in shocking Pakistan's intelligence agencies to stop their double dealing for good. And that may have as much impact on the so-called "war on terror" as any weakening of Al-Qaeda.

Worth a street party

My first blog was published this week at the Lib Dem Voice blog. You can read it here: http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-well-have-our-street-parties-when-whitehall-lets-go-23796.html Welcome to anyone visiting my blog for the first time. I've been blogging since just before the General Election (which I predicted to within one seat) - and I try to blog regularly on anything that I think liberals should care about.

New Europe, old debates

This week, Portugal finally gave in. After nearly a year of speculation, Prime Minister José Socrates followed Greece and Ireland and requested a whopping EU bailout of £60bn.

Nick Clegg’s election campaign warned of “Greek style unrest” if the UK cut public services too hard. George Osborne this week turned that argument around. Britain will avoid the fate of Greece, Ireland and Portugal because “difficult decisions” have been taken to build “credibility and stability” in the UK economy.

But Portugal’s plight sparks more worry about the coalition’s European policy than it does its economic policy. The Treasury confirmed that Britain may have to contribute £4bn – of, incidentally, borrowed money – to bail out Portugal.

Conservatives are up in arms, claiming that Alistair Darling made Britain liable for eurozone debt at a summit held in the post-election stalemate, as Cameron and Clegg were thrashing out their coalition deal.

That Darling was to blame is, however, in dispute. Darling claims that he consulted Osborne who supported the decision to make Britain liable. Tory Freedom of Information requests for accounts of the discussions between the Chancellors have been stalled.

The information need to be released. This Tory-led government is holier than thou on transparency when it suits them, the former FOI bashers claiming this to be one of the most open administrations ever. Well, trasparency can't be selective: release the information when it's uncomfortable too.

At talks with Angela Merkel in May, the new Prime Minister decided to withdraw the UK from eurozone discussions on crucial issues like bailouts. The result? The UK remains liable to stump up cash for a bail out, but is shut out from the talks that decide the conditions and shape of any bail out.

Sounds familiar? The story of the UK’s involvement in Europe has always been one of sticking our head in the sand and muddling “influence” and “sovereignty”. Once again, a Conservative led government has squandered our influence in order to protect the more illusory goal of “sovereignty” – imagining sovereignty simply something to be “won” or “lost”, not something that can be more effective or less effective depending on how you use it.

Tory MPs cheered David Cameron on his return from the European Council last week, as he repeated the mantra that the UK “is not in the euro, and never will join the euro”.

When will we learn that safeguarding our sovereignty with Europe is not just about saying “no” or shutting ourselves out of debates, as we have done on countless occasions? On the eurozone bailout, we once again find ourselves picking up the bill but not sitting at the same table as the other diners.

George Osborne made it to the EU bailout summit in the end, and returned claiming that the UK will not bail out Portugal.

All rather disingenuous. Of course we won't bailout Portugal bilaterally as we did with Ireland, our nearest neighbour and key trading partner. Osborne knows that the UK most certainly will contribute money to the bail out multilaterally through the European Union.

Of course we need to be careful about liability. The UK did not join the euro and it is right that eurozone countries should shoulder a heavier responsibility in coming to Portugal's rescue. But let's not pretend that we can also let Portugal, and the eurozone, to its fate - almost as some kind of "we told you so" badge of honour to vindicate a policy of non-entry to the euro.

It is entirely right that we help out countries who matter to us economically. And it is in the UK's national interest to see the eurozone succeed. 70% of our trade is with the eurozone. Just as we bailed out Ireland because we were inextricably linked with Ireland through trade, so it is in our interests to make a contribution to seeing the eurozone stabilise.

So let's not let our European policy get stuck in the dogma of the past. Too often, debate on Europe drifts into being "for" or "against". It's not that simple. On matters like the eurozone bailout, let's talk more about our shared interests than about our bottom lines.

With the eurozone, in the Prime Minister's words, we're all in this together. Like it or not.