A real horror show
11:02 am - November 13th 2008
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Who with any sense whatsoever would be a social worker? Lambasted for taking children away unnecessarily, demonised when inevitable if horrifying mistakes are made, it must surely rank up there with opting to become a traffic warden and refereeing in the least appealing professions available.
It doesn’t help of course when politicians, as well as the media and now message board ranters are in effect baying for blood. David Cameron and Gordon Brown may not have been actively calling or in effect justifying violence against those convicted of the shocking abuse of Baby P as some have today, but their use of a dead child not as a political football, but as a political corpse, as others have already justifiably defined it, was not just unedifying, it was a shaming spectacle.
Cameron opened up reasonably enough at PMQ’s with asking the prime minister why the head of Haringey social services had been the one that had conducted the internal inquiry into what had gone wrong. This was perfectly fine, and more than valid a question to bring up.
He should have known however that Brown was hardly likely to give a straight answer; he never does. Apart from that though decisions were obviously going to be made today on what further measures were to be taken: the inquiry in full had only just landed on the minister’s desk this morning, after the trial itself had finished, as Brown explained.
Ed Balls, schools and families minister, has since announced that an inquiry to be conducted by Ofsted, the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection and chief inspector of the constabulary will be undertaken into the safeguarding of children in Haringey. This decision presumably had not been finalised at 12pm this afternoon, otherwise Brown would have mentioned it. In the circumstances, although Brown can be accused of not showing the empathy that perhaps his predecessor might have done, it was hardly a snub.
It was then that all hell broke lose and that both sides failed to realise just what the petty back and forth would look like to the wider country. Cameron’s anger, first with the lack of an answer after the second question, coupled with barracking from the Labour MPs, led him to repeatedly slamming his finger down, getting the age of the mother involved wrong (she is 27, not 17 as he said) and finally swiping his notes completely off the dispatch box.
For someone trying to claim that he’s similar to Barack Obama, who throughout his campaign never appeared to lose his cool, it was a poor performance. His anger might well have been righteous, but it was never going to achieve anything.
Brown for his part was not angry, just detached and by comparison apparently uncaring. This actually probably isn’t fair; undoubtedly he does care, he just was never going to win in a battle with a far more accomplished empathetic speaker. His cheap jibe though that Cameron was making a party political point was equally unfair; Cameron may be many things, but he was not at that moment doing that. It was only afterwards, with the two men facing off in an interminable battle of who would back down first, with Cameron asking for an apology and failing to get one, that the whole affair became wholly shabby and distasteful.
Parliament at prime minister’s questions is of course always a bear-pit, and it always will be. For all Cameron’s original claims that he wanted to end Punch and Judy politics, he’s never really attempted anything of the kind. Realising that he was not going to get an answer, or at least not one then, Cameron ought to have moved on. Brown for his part should not, despite being prodded by Cameron over his tactics, have suggested that it was party political. Cameron likewise, although perfectly entitled to ask for an apology, should have again let it go. All while this was going on the barracking by MPs on both sides continued; only the speaker, almost pleading, having to intervene 3 times to silence the cat-calling, emerged with any dignity whatsoever.
As Simon Hoggart writes, no one intended for it to turn out the way. Once it had however, both sides should have recognised the damage that was done not just to their respective parties and personal images, but to the further image of Westminster itself and apologised for how it had got out of hand.
Instead, as Justin notes, MPs scored points and bloggers likewise did, further deciding who had came out the better. The reality was that no one did. We can and must improve upon this.
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'Septicisle' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He mostly blogs, poorly, over at Septicisle.info on politics and general media mendacity.
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Story Filed Under: Blog ,Conservative Party ,Labour party ,Our democracy ,Westminster
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Reader comments
Both were as bad as each other but several factors combined to make Brown’s charge that Cameron was politicising the issue look valid and besides as you note the Tory blogsphere made it such for the entire day. Tory bloggers were lining up from here to the ends of the earth to essentially validate Brown’s charge that they were making this a party political issue.
As The Guardian editorial notes this morning it is hard to avoid the impression at times that Cameron was making a return to his ‘broken Britain’ narrative which would be unsurprising given how flat-footed the Conservatives have been on the economy.
In the end the real loser will be the political process though because the whole thing was shabby and tawdry.
This is the best written piece I have ever read on Liberal Conspiracy. The merit of it is that it tells things as they were, without bias.
Cameron’s opening questions were reasonable, the sort of questions anyone of any political shade would want answers to.
Brown has unfortunately developed a fatal habit of reaming off ‘facts’ instead of answering questions at PMQs. Like his predecessor, he debases the session, which is one of the most watched moments in the commons.
It was Brown who introduced the spectre of party politics. Just because the case of that poor child is taken up more by bloggers on one side of the line does not make it any less deserving of proper political scrutiny.
Cameron was entitled to ask for a witdrawal, and Brown, by ignoring the request, came away comprehensively worse off to the eyes of any observer.
The exchange demonstrated that behind the slick new spin operation which has prevailed since Mandelson’s return, the PM is still a liability.
Ac256,
It wasn’t that the issue was ‘taken up’ it was the way it was taken up ie, in an explicitly partisan way. Guido Fawkes branded Brown ‘emotionally retarded’ and Iain Dale said that it should put ‘steel in the backbone of Conservatives to show Brown the door’. Two examples of the fact that Tory bloggers were clearly looking to score political points off the issue…
Those bloggers are looking to score points off the RESPONSE to the killing, not the killing itself.
Surely people of all political persuasions wonder when there will be an apology and resignations?
Don’t you?
Ac256,
I still rather feel that The Guardian this morning was right to point out that Cameron did seem to be returning to his ‘broken Britain’ narrative and that he was not blameless in how it handled it and that as the BBC said in it’s anylysis of PMQ’s it will be hard for him to avoid the charge he was politicising the issue.
Nobody is saying Cameron didnt have a right to raise it but the manner in which he did leaves me with the distinct impression that he was looking to take an advantage for himself and his party out of it.
In response to your substantive points then yes there should be resignations and people should be held accountable. However, I find Camerons entire manner of handling this irresponsible, partisan and as distasteful and Brown’s ‘tin ear’ and clunky response….
Those bloggers are looking to score points off the RESPONSE to the killing, not the killing itself.
Score points? Are bloggers running for political office?
If so, you can get your Aaron4Pres buttons and bumper stickers from the usual vendors.
Sunny/Aaron 2012!
Leon, heh.
Re. Yesterday
I just said over at Justin’s that this is a case of shame on both their houses. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder…
Cameron must be getting pissed off with Brown’s constant and blunt refusal to answer a straight question. And it is the duty of the LOHMLO to hold the government to account. I can understand if Cameron becomes annoyed if the PM continues to belittle his questioning by his avoidance techniques, but Cameron should have risen above the fray once it was clear Brown wasn’t going to retract the accusation of playing party politics.
Had he made his feelings clear and moved on, he would have been the Statesman to Brown’s partisan beast.
In fairness Cameron probably did see capital in this line of question. It’s in his nature. Anyone who watches Cameron closely could say he is anything more than a political animal. He’s never convinced me of any hidden intellectual or ideological vigour. He’s a careerist and a prominently placed spin-doctor.
Had he any real class, he would have called Brown on his slur, and moved on. We don’t pay Cameron to be overly sensitive.
Part of me agrees with Charlotte Ritchie (from Oxford Brookes Univeristy, writing in to-day’s “Guardian”):
Every child death is a tragedy, but it is time that the media and the government stops demanding inquiries and wanting answers… The brutal fact is that there are no answers.
To-day’s tragic news from Manchester only re-inforces that.
It does, on the other hand, occur to me that if company directors can be open to prosecution for corporate manslaughter in the case of gross H&S breaches leading to fatalities, there may be a case for making elected councillors similarly liable in the case of gross failures of child protection.
Or, alternatively – is this an appropriate local government function? Presumably we don’t think that local electorates really want the opportunity to choose between philosophies of child protection at the ballot box. I suspect that this is an area, like the administration of justice, where we want the same high standard applied irrespective of locality. That would suggest that local councils aren’t the right employers for child protection workers – move them into the Probation Service, maybe?
The Conservatives are in no position to complain about social services. The Right wing has put huge pressure on politically over the last 30years to keep children with their natural parents. Any time a child is taken from their ‘real parents’ the right wing press howls their anger of political correctness gone mad.
When a pretty white child goes missing the tabloids go to town, and they just love a paedophile story. It gives them the chance to drum up fear of the stranger. Yet about one child a week is killed in this country every week by their natural parents. Alas, See todays news.
The very fack those two tory pillocks Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale are frothing at the mouth tells you all you need to know about this issue.
I’m sure that bloggers were reacting to the cold, offhand, unfeeling, uncaring attitude displayed by the Prime Minister, who appeared to have been woefully briefed on the affair.
Ed Balls’ later actions appear to vindicate Cameron’s stance but the bigger questions will be how long we have to wait for answers in Haringey, and who, if anyone, will be held accountable and responsible?
I doubt that these scenes would have occurred with Tony Blair at the Despatch Box.
ac256: that’s quite a compliment, thank you.
Curly: See, I don’t think that Brown was being uncaring at all. He did exactly what most would have expected of him on the first two answers; it was only when Cameron was angered by the shouting of the Labour backbenchers that he responded in kind. The rush to judgement by all sides now is what I find far more troubling.
Mike K: You put your finger on the real dilemma: local v national. But I’m against national, as it leads (already has) to statism, i.e. attempts to control detail from afar, by people who do not have any connection with the local situation. Local is best, but linked through to the national standards. Trouble is, at the centre we have forgotten how to do it. An old man, now passed on, used to drive for the CEGB. In those early days of the National Grid, they had to keep all the power station managers up to scratch (there were many more managers and no internet), and so there was a whole hierarchy of meetings, with senior managers being driven all over the country from regional HQs, and more senior managers being driven around (and also to some power stations) from national HQ – the old man was one of the drivers. The answer is that we are social beings, and we have to interact meaningfully right up and down a structure that stretches from the front line to the very top. Yes, we can use the internet (and recently I was in a very productive meeting where some of the group were in London and others in Scotland, but it was like we were in adjacent rooms with a big open window in the party wall: a large video screen on the wall of our room brought us together, and the link was via the internet). The failure now is that we make policy in secret in London, and then issue it like tablets from the oracle – the policymakers hide their incompetence by staying in the bunker. Why so? Because some public policy was made like that, at a time when local was really local, cut off from the centre – and the centre did not want to know about detail of local implementation. The lesson from the CEGB is that needing to meet national standards right across a network needs a different management method and structure, but too many of our public administration departments in central govt have failed to adapt to that – they do things like creating Agencies, but then lose touch with them as well.
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