Max Atkinson's Blog

Cameron's prime-ministerial debut at PMQ and his choice of a worrying adverb

For collectors of historical political speaking occasions, here's David Cameron's first effort on the receiving end at Prime Minister's Questions for you to inspect.

The worrying adverb

Regular readers will know from previous posts (see selection below) that I've long been critical of the way the Labour government spent thirteen years tinkering with the House of Lords - but systematically avoided doing anything at all to democratise the way its members are selected.

I was therefore very concerned by what Mr Cameron had to say in response to the first question about 'the other place' - for which scroll in 1.26 minutes - where you'll hear the PM referring twice to his support for a "predominantly elected" House of Lords.

Where did 'predominantly' come from and what on earth is it supposed to mean?

Or is he just giving us advance notice that, for all its talk of a major constitutional reform package, the new government is going to be as pussy-footed as the last one was when it comes to removing the undemocratically selected miscellany of former MPs and party cronies from their cosy retirement home in the other place?

P.S. 'Wholly or mainly elected'

Since posting this, I'm grateful to @DuncanStott for informing me via Twitter as follows:

Tories favour "predominantly" elected Lords (80% I think), LDs favour fully elected. Agreement says "wholly or mainly elected".

This may explain Cameron's choice of adverb, but I can't for the life of me see how anyone with a democratic bone in his/her body can justify 'mainly elected', let alone the arbitrary invention of figures like 80%.

Previous posts on the House of Lords:

Michael Gove: calling all teachers, governors and parents

If you're a teacher, governor or parent who hasn't yet seen seen Michael Gove's letter about his highly controversial, unproven and rather expensive scheme to turn schools into 'academies', here he is inviting you all on to jump on to his barmy bandwagon:

If you wonder why I think that he and/or the plan is barmy, see my previous post on the subject.

Nor am I alone in having serious doubts about it, as you can see in Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre by Simon Jenkins of The Guardian.

And, over the last few days, interesting discussions of the issue have been developing HERE and HERE.

A model resignation speech by David Laws

Whoever the next minister to resign from the government may be, he or she could do worse than taking a lesson or two from the short statement made by David Laws earlier this evening:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's statement a few minutes later wasn't too bad either:

P.S. Two things that concern me about all this are first that the Daily Telegraph's timing of its 'exposure' of Mr Laws was motivated by their ongoing campaign against increasing capital gains tax and second that Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell might have tipped them off about the story - for more on which, see HERE.

Academies, academies, academies: Michael Gove's 3 Rs?

Education is, of course, something on which everyone is far more expert than the professionals who dedicate their lives to it.

And they don't get much more expert than former journalist Michael Gove, the new Secretary of State for Education.

Parents are keen to run schools?

Somewhere or other (Sweden, perhaps) he came up with the bizarre idea that parents not only can't wait to run their local schools, but would also make a far better job of it than those who are doing it at the moment.

Somehow or other, he managed to sell the idea first to the Conservative party and now to the new coalition government - and has apparently already started writing to primary schools to tell them the good news.

But there are two rather serious flaws in his argument:

Most parents only take a passionate interest in the running of schools for the very few years during which their own children are at school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent over a certain age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.
Only a tiny minority of parents are willing or able to spend the huge amounts of time involved in running a school - as almost any chairman of school governors (or parent any age) could have told him had he bothered to ask.

'Rigour'?

But, as you'll see from this video clip (originally posted on webcameronuk last August), Gove's attitude towards evidence is a bit lacking in the kind of rigour that he claims is lacking in our exam system, especially when it comes to examining 'rigorous' subjects like mathematics and science. And, with an Oxford B.A. in English, Mr Gove knows a thing or two about which subjects are 'rigorous' and which ones are not.

As a former president of the Oxford Union and debating adjudicator, he also knows enough about rhetoric to know that you don't need much in the way of evidence to make an argument sound plausible. All you have to do is pick three examples that support your case, wrap them up as three questions, each of which juxtaposes two contrasting categories, and the conclusion will be obvious for all to see:

Now for some research to prove I'm right
Having 'established' that maths and science exams obviously aren't rigorous enough, Mr Gove goes on to tell us about a rather ambitious project to prove that his assertion holds true on a much wider front.

He doesn't mention what objective (or rigorous?) measurement procedures will be used to assess the quality of exams over the past hundred years - yes, 100 years. But why bother with trivial details like that when you already know in advance that the answers to your two main research questions will be "No"?

Gove's 3 Rs?

For me, the thought of anyone with such a cavalier attitude towards evidence being being allowed to meddle with something as important as education is, to say the least, extremely worrying.

It's reminded me of some lines I wrote for the first speech I ever worked on with Paddy Ashdown - for the launch of the SDP-Liberal Alliance general election campaign in 1987, when he took the platform as their education spokesman.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, the most depressing thing is that the same words apply so aptly to Mr Gove:

"When it comes to education, the Tories have come up with their own 3 R's: rigid, ruthless and reactionary. [APPLAUSE]

"Putting a Conservative minister in charge of education is like putting Herod the King in charge of the Save the Children Fund." [APPLAUSE]

Almost as depressing is the failure of the LibDem coalition negotiators to veto the elevation of Mr Gove to such a crucial job, not to mention the inclusion of his 'fast-track' Academies Bill in the Queen's speech.

See also Simon Jenkins in The Guardian: Gove's claim to be 'freeing' schools is a cloak for more control from the centre.

An interesting discussion of the schools issue is also developing HERE.

Why Black Rod knocks 3 times & why pointless rituals are not always as pointless as they seem

Watching the State opening of parliament today, I noticed that Black Rod (or, in this case, his substitute) knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons, after it's been slammed in his face, to summon them to the House of Lords to listen to the Queen's speech:

In a previous post - Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason? - I discussed why so many lists come in three parts. But that related to speaking, whether in conversation or in speeches, not to door-knocking behaviour.

So this video clip got me wondering whether there was any particular reason for knocking three times, which was quickly resolved by resorting to Google - and the discovery that it's 'once for the executive, once for the legislature and once for the speaker' (for more on which, see HERE).

It reminded me of something I'd written long ago about how reforms designed to make behaviour less formal and/or ritualistic need to take into account why such forms of behaviour originally came to be there in the first place.* Otherwise, reformers can easily end up throwing out a baby - that they didn't realise was there - with the bath water.

The case of the informal smiling Pope

My favorite example was the case of Pope John Paul I, who died after only 33 days in office. Amazingly, after so short a time, he was described in some obituaries as one of the greatest popes of the twentieth century.

Before him, popes had apparently never been seen smiling in public, which was one of the reasons why he was hailed for having brought a new level of informality to the papacy. Others were that he'd refused to have a coronation and preferred walkabouts in St Peter's Square to being carried aloft on the traditional gestatorial chair.

The sight of a pedestrian Pope, smiling and mingling with his fellow men and women, presented a much less formal and more favourable image to millions of television viewers around the world. But for those who'd taken the time, trouble and expense of going to St Peter's Square, it was a complete disaster - apart from the tiny minority who happened to be standing a few rows away.

In fact, the Vatican had so many complaints from frustrated pilgrims that, before he died, John Paul I had already done a U turn and returned to the gestatorial chair.

At the time, I remember saying that, if only the Vatican PR department had understood the chair's importance in enabling the pope to be seen by a crowd, they could have simultaneously minimised papal formality and maximisied papal visibility by the simple device of installing a chair on the roof of a bog-standard Fiat - which is why, a few months later, I was delighted to see my sugestion come true with the invention of the popemobile for his successor, John Paul II.

Black Rod's 3 knocks on the door

So I was also delighted to learn today that there's a historical reason why Black Rod knocks three times on the door of the House of Commons and that it hasn't been forgotten - not, you understand, because I thought it was another example of the rule of three or had some other theory up my sleeve, but because it confirms, yet again, that there is often a logic behind apparently pointless rituals that isn't obviously or instantly apparent to contemporary observers.

(* 'Understanding Formality', British Journal of Sociology, XXXII, 1982, pp. 86-117).