The UK has often fawned too much to keep something called “the special relationship”.  In practice what we have experienced with the US over the last century is a close relationship based on a mutually important trade with fair balance between imports and exports, a close military alliance formalised through NATO but also developed by close working on defence and intelligence matters on a global basis, and a common view of many of the world’s great political divides. The UK and the US are usually combined as champions of the democracies, and defenders of small states under threat from thuggish autocratic regimes. The US came late to both European wars as they morphed into world wars and was not as helpful as they could have been over the Falklands. The UK sat out Viet Nam, seeing the difficulties in achieving victory. The UK has assisted the US in its other major Middle Eastern wars.

The Prime Minister thought this relationship was crucial and put a lot of effort in the early days into playing down the unpleasant things leading Labour figures has said about  Mr Trump before he was re elected. The outgoing Ambassador did a great job to smooth the UK and then the US transition of governments. No sooner was this done, and an early win was pocketed by getting the UK a better deal on US tariffs than the EU. The  PM decided to put Mandelson in as Ambassador. This was as some of us warned a bad idea. He placed a man known to be close to Epstein into the Oval Office when the last thing the President wanted was such associations  at his meetings. The PM stupidly plunged on with trying to give away the crucial joint US/UK naval base at Diego Garcia, threatening to break the US/UK Treaty about the base and annoying US defence opinion to give the freehold to an ally of China.

More recently the dreadful handling of the sacking of Mandelson has annoyed US opinion. The refusal of permission to the US to use their own bases on our territories was a big mistake. We did not have to say we would join them in bombing action, but it was wrong to temporarily deny them use of their own facilities and then for the PM to change his mind late in the day.  The decision to withdraw our last minesweeper from the Gulf just before the outbreak of hostilities was a bad one, as the UK had been important in offering mine clearing services in the region. It was also pathetic that the UK had just decommissioned its one frigate in Bahrain and could not find a single naval ship to go the Gulf, and only one that was late and in need of repair to assist Cyprus.

No wonder President Trump is now angry with the UK, giving the King a very difficult job when he goes on a state visit. The PM  has to respond to or ignore  bad comments from the President which make things more difficult. He  at times decides to play to the left wing gallery at home who would welcome a more decisive break with Trump’s America. The truth is we need a better relationship in trade, defence and investment which has been made more difficult by bad decisions of the PM and now by the very public criticisms of the PM  by the  President. The government has to counter  the Falklands threat from Washington  and Argentina. The government should show it has the air and naval power and resolve to defend the islands.

 

Unemployment fell last month. Good news says the Chancellor. Yet the figures show there were fewer people in employment than a month ago, down 6000, or a year ago down 74000. Vacancies were down too. What has happened is more people have decided not to look for a job and more have been put on benefits for life. Bad news.

Growth improved last month. It still left it crawling along like the EU at under  half the US rate at 0.8% for the last  year. Why does the UK establishment always settle for European third best? No surprises there, as most of the measures Reeves and Starmer have introduced have slowed growth and damaged business. There’s  been the jobs tax, the oil and gas bans, the high energy prices, the business rates, the farms tax, the subsidies to stop growing food, the sky high Council taxes, the give aways to foreign governments, the crippling influence of the EU.

The complacency oozes out from the government. No published plans to deal with looming shortages of jet fuel, other oil products, and chemicals. No plan to sort out HS 2 or the Post Office, nationalised industries. No plan to save the steel industry, now on high subsidy life support from taxpayers. No plan to boost housebuilding in line with their ambitious targets. No plan to speed up grid construction to keep the lights on.

The dithering also goes on. I was told the other day by the Lords rail Minister that 20 months on the government still does not have a new budget or new timetable to deliver Birmingham to London HS2. It took a Conservative Lords amendment to force the pace on controlling smart phones in schools, as the government was lost in consultations and options. 20 months  on and the defence plan still awaits the money to pay for it.  We await a social care new policy whilst local government is put through an expensive and unpopular reorganisation.

 

 

Markets are very sanguine about the US/Israel/Iran/Hezbollah wars. They seem to assume that both the US and Iran need to come to a deal, that Israel will accept US pressure to do so, and Hezbollah/Houthi forces will come to heel. This is despite Iran an the US remaining a long way apart on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme and enhanced uranium, on the policing and charges for passage through the Straits, the extent of Iran’s drone and missile capacity, and the US bases and military action in the region.

Both sides stress their strengths and their ability to carry on with a resumed war. The US can bomb  more things in Iran, can blockade Iranian ports and could threaten to use specialist forces for raids or for seizing small areas of land. Iran can get re supplied with drones and missiles to threaten the US and her allies, and can use her mobile small forces to stop shipping in the Straits. Iran has proved her point that despite the US destroying much of Iran’s conventional force and killing her old leaders, the country can still continue and can remain a threat with her asymmetric warfare whilst the US has shown her capacity to dominate conventional warfare.

So will Pakistan be able to keep them talking to broker a peace? What is the acceptable answer for the US on re opening the Straits, reining in Iran’s terrorist allies and curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions? What does Iran intend to get over the relaxation of sanctions, the imposition of tolls on the Straits and guarantees of no further US military intervention?

A resumption of hostilities and or a failure to re open the Straits to western ships means big issues over shortages of oil, gas, and various important chemicals. That way lies more inflation , less activity and some rationing.

 

I and the group of Conservative MPs who wanted a proper Brexit did not approve of Mrs May letting Sir Olly Robbins have so much influence  over Brexit, negotiating a hopelessly one sided deal that suited the EU. We did not however personally attack this senior official or demand his sacking from the civil service. We argued strongly with the PM and then sought to  remove her , holding  the PM responsible for the feeble deal.

So I now find myself needing to make the case against Starmer sacking Robbins. Today the Committee needs to clarify whether he has been properly sacked. All we know is the PM says he sacked him but we have not seen the dismissal letter. The Committee needs to ask

1. Was he sacked in a short phone call?

2, What were the stated grounds of dismissal? Was it simply the PM had lost confidence in him, or was it an allegation of misconduct for failing to report details of the vetting of Mandelson?

3. Was Sir Olly given the chance to present his case against the sacking? Does he now have the option of an enquiry into conduct and the right to present his case? Misconduct is presumably  the alleged grounds of dismissal as the post is not being discontinued to allow redundancy. The boss not liking you is not a legitimate ground for dismissal.

4. As the PM decided on a political appointment can we now  see the letter or memo instructing the FCDO to change US Ambassadors and to announce the appointment of Mandelson? The PM has the power to make a political appointment but when he does so he needs to issue an instruction to pre empt the normal official process and competition.

5, As it was a political process with the successful candidate chosen by the PM he became responsible for satisfying himself that the candidate had the right skills and experience and would not damage national security or reputation.  Why did the PM ‘s due diligence on Mandelson not uncover at least  some of the worries the formal vetting  process uncovered?

6. How could the  PM ignore or not know the Epstein, China, Russia, business links of Mandelson and the risks they posed?

7. If he is properly sacked how much compensation will be paid to him?

It is not just the Mandelson disaster which has angered the country and makes the majority hungry for him to go.

It is his whole style and approach to government. He said something true when he said he prefers Davos to Westminster. This is the never home Keir, international law Kier, two tier justice Kier, tax the hard working Kier, clobber UK business Kier, put self defeating  net zero policies before our living standards, our jobs, our incomes Kier.

He burns too much jet fuel and spends too much taxpayer money travelling the world in a vain search for famous friends and photo opportunities. Instead of building UK defences he pretends we can rely on a non existent EU security. Instead of stopping UK de industrialisation brought on by ludicrously dear energy prices and taxes, he seeks to make it worse  by making us submit to higher EU carbon  taxes and tariffs. Instead of helping people into work he slaps on jobs taxes, business taxes and farm taxes.

Labour policies effectively tell people not to strive to do better, not to work hard, do not try to grow a business, do not buy a better home or send your children to a private school. If you do the state will criticise you and send you a bigger tax bill. When so many things go wrong because of bad policies it is time for the Labour party to demand a change.

 

Why did the PM need to fly to Paris to co host an on line meeting?  Another big bill for UK taxpayers. A  needless use of scarce jet fuel when he should be at home planning how to deal with shortages.

What is this coalition able and willing to do? We are told it is not involved in the Middle East war, despite the threats to our shipping and bases, and the attack on Cyprus. I thought the PM sent extra Airforce jets to Cyprus to help defend UK and allies interests in the region.

The PM says they are working to re open the Straits of Hormuz to shipping. Yet we are also told they are not in  talks with the countries and terrorist groups fighting the war and threatening shipping, so how does that work? We are also told the coalition will not be sending naval forces to the Gulf to seek to impose a peace and freedom of the seas.

We are given a contradiction. The UK and others will consider sending a naval force once there is a peace agreement negotiated by others under the chairmanship of Pakistan. Why would there be a need for a naval protection force once there is a settled ceasefire or peace?

This all looks like play acting whilst others fight and negotiate over the disputed waters. Far from making the PM a more respected international statesman and adding to his popularity at home, voters will ask why is he away from the UK when he needs to make decisions here? Instead of pretending he can magic the international problem away without engaging the combatants, he needs to do something useful like get more of our own oil and gas out of the ground.He needs to deal with the jet fuel shortage, not make it worse by using more himself.

The Prime Minister suffers another self self delusion. He thinks that he is a great international statesman, and wrongly assumes that will make him more popular and help his party in the May elections. Instead it looks as if his over involvement in foreign affairs and the matters of the Foreign Office will do more to bring him down than anything else.

I have recently written about how his alleged great strength as a lawyer determined to govern under the strictures of international law has turned to dust and unpopularity. He was slowly being destroyed by his  failings to understand the limited powers of the ICJ, his wrong view on Chagos, by  the way the ECHR stopped his Smash the gangs policy and the boomerang that was his holier than  thou approach to government in opposition followed by the sleazy realities of some of his now ex Ministers and government deeds.

This has all been surpassed by jetting around the world giving cash and overseas territories away and above all by his gross mishandling of the US relationship. I was one of the few that advised not to sack the talented professional Ambassador he inherited in Washington who did a great job for him in the early months. I thought Lord Mandelson was a risky appointment because he had been forced out twice before from senior government roles over conduct issues. The links with Epstein were well known and the last thing the President wanted was a UK Ambassador that revived memories of that man every time he entered the Oval Office for talks. It has proved to be even more spectacularly stupid than I imagined.

There was the need for Mandelson to back pedal on his past unfortunate comments about Trump. There was the sacking when they discovered he had been closer to Epstein for longer than they thought. There was the need to accuse Mandelson of lying to explain how it was he got through the appointment process. There was the need to fire Starmer’s Chief of Staff, blaming him for recommending the appointment. There was the need to respond to Parliament’s demand to see the papers surrounding the appointment and Mandelson’s work as Ambassador, still not properly complied with. Now there is the latest biggest disaster that it emerges Mandelson failed the original security vetting by the Cabinet Office.

The PM has sacked the top official at the Foreign Office and claims the Foreign Office overrode the security warnings without telling any Minister or any senior staff at No 10. This is difficult to believe as the Foreign Office Head made clear to Parliament the appointment of Mandelson was a personal political appointment made by the PM. The PM failed to tell the Commons of this new news on Wednesday when he could have done so. By Monday afternoon when the PM gets round to making a statement there will be days of adverse press and media speculation. The PM has once again left his MPs and party workers to explain the mess whilst he flies to Paris to pretend to have influence over a war he is trying to  sit out despite the bombs and threats against our shipping and our bases.

This is my speech on the government’s bill to increase the number of Ministers who can be paid a salary. I have taken the Hansard record of my remarks and  have added to the speech, as I was kept to a short time limit.

 

This Bill is an opportunity for the Government to think more widely about how the tasks of Ministers can be made a bit easier, how the chances of success can be enhanced and how the public can feel that they are getting more out of their Ministers who are  being paid for the jobs that they are doing. There is plenty of scope to improve the clarity about what the Ministers are meant to be doing, how well they are doing it and how they are mentored and supported in their jobs.

When I was the executive chairman of a large quoted company, it would never have occurred to me that it would be good practice to go into the office one day, without having alerted any of my senior colleagues, and tell them that I had decided to swap them all around just for the sake of it. I did propose  that I was going to make the sales director the finance director and the engineering director the sales director, and that I was going to sack somebody else, all on the same day. I would not think that that would have a happy result. Even more obviously  I would not  have sent out the newly appointed senior executives to talk to the press and customers about what they were going to do in their new jobs before I had talked to them at length  about the changes that were needed, and before they had talked to their new staff and got on top of the issues.

 

Successive Prime Ministers have been quite wrong to have these big clear-out days as some assertion of power, Those whom they sack will never like them again and quite a lot of those whom they appoint are given jobs that they do not want or understand, so they also harbour a grudge about the experience of the reshuffle. We need something better than that. The newly appointed are expected by Parliament and the media to be instant experts in their new roles.,

We need senior Ministers mentoring and looking, in private, at the performance of more junior Ministers. Leading Cabinet members should be mentored and their performance reviewed by the Prime Minister and other Cabinet members perhaps by the Deputy Prime Minister. All other Ministers should be mentored by their departmental ministerial heads.

Aims should be few in n umber, challenging to achieve, and linked to the main goals of the government. The Home Secretary for example should be expected to smash the gangs, and have as one of her targets big reductions in numbers of illegals entering the country. The Health Secretary should have targets to boost NHS numbers of  treatments and consultations and get waiting lists down.

I wonder if it is not time to be a little bolder and change the language. Why do we call most of our Ministers junior Ministers? People think it a privilege, necessity or requirement to see a Minister, so we do not need negative language  to undermine the Minister’s authority before the meeting begins. Surely each is either a Minister or a Cabinet Minister. A Cabinet Minister is a super-Minister with strategic obligations and ultimate responsibility for the departments in which the other Ministers are working. That could be extremely helpful from the point of view of working out the structure.

I think that we need only two main types of Minister: heads of department or Cabinet Ministers paid a higher salary; and other Ministers paid the Minister of State salary. I think the Parliamentary Secretary salary is still quite low given the magnitude of many of these jobs and the responsibilities that they entail. Some Parliamentary Secretary jobs do not amount to much and can be absorbed b y the Minister of State  supervising or working with them.  Each Ministerial job needs to  be a defined area of powers, duties and expertise, with clear targets to assess achievement. The way to decide how many Ministers are needed is to map the powers and duties  the government wishes to exercise first, to see what is the right number of Ministerial commands.

I would strongly recommend that we consider some kind of performance review system. One of the things that made reshuffles so particularly difficult for many of my ministerial colleagues when we were undergoing them was that they had absolutely no idea whether the Prime Minister and the Whips thought they were doing well or badly and whether they were going to be promoted, demoted or shuffled sideways. Sometimes, they were sitting there with their phone for a day or so while the reshuffle agonisingly went on and were not even rung up and told that they were just going to stay put—which might have been good news, a relief or a disappointment. On performance, therefore, we need a system where they are mentored, assessed and allowed to say that they need better resources or more support.

As a general rule, it would be much better if we did not change Ministers so often. Looking at the Governments of the last 25 years—Labour, Coalition or Conservative—there has been an in-and-out far too frequently. I would have thought the norm should be that you appoint somebody for a four to five-year Parliament as a Minister. If they then do very well and you want to promote them, that is a bonus; if you have to manage them out because they are so dreadful, you do so only after giving them  chances to improve and trying to help them do a better job, and then you do it in an orderly and sensible way. There would be a bit of movement but you would not have these blow-up days when everybody is put at risk. Knowing a Minister’s past, wishes and expertise would enable more suitable appointments to be made, to reduce the unacceptably high loss rate most governments have experienced through loss of  Ministers for past or recent conduct.

This might start to work rather better. It takes four years for a Minister to read their way in, get used to working with their officials, and put in place the laws and the budget programmes they want to and then see the results of their labour—whereas most of us were never allowed to see the results of our labour because we were moved on to some other crisis point or difficulty before we had seen the whole thing through. You would not normally do that in a business.

I make these modest suggestions to the Leader. I hope she will pass them on to the Prime Minister, because I think government would be much better if Ministers were looked after and mentored but also expected to perform, and if we had a more orderly process for appointing and removing. It does seem that, with the current system, in all too many government cases, too many people are still selected who have bad histories that come to revisit  them in an unfortunate way as soon as they become Ministers. It would be much better if more time were given to the selection, once you had set up an initial Government, and there were more conversations with people to find out what they were good at and wanted to do, and a bit about their background, to avoid embarrassment.

I have always found it crucial to success in a organisation to appoint people to posts they want to do, where they already have the expertise or where they will give freely of their energy and time to acquire the skills they need. The parties in my experience have often not done a good job at getting to know the people they have as MPs so they have failed to put  more round pegs into round slots. Being a Minister is demanding and not a regular job. You are on call 7 x 24 every week, you work weekends and evenings as needed, you have to go the extra distance to get things done and to ensure the public’s wishes  and interests are upheld. In response  Ministers should not be prey to instant dismissal for no good reason, should  not be left in the dark about what they  is meant to achieve, and  not be ignorant of how well or badly they are doing or are thought to be doing.

The government proved to be so bad at international law when it came to the Chagos give away. They seemed unaware that the ICJ could not make a binding judgement to make us give the islands to Mauritius  given the Treaty limitations we imposed on their power when we joined. They seemed unaware of the binding Treaty with the US to set up the joint Diego Garcia base which prevents us from giving the islands away.

Worse still, they got into a complete pickle over human rights and colonial matters. Normally keen to hound the UK for past alleged misdemeanours as a colonial power, they have ridden roughshod over the rights of the people  who were living in our colony of the British Indian Ocean Territory before a Labour government in 1966 forced them out. They treated them badly then, had to grant UK citizenship to many and now are treating them atrociously despite their UK citizenship.

6 Chagossians decided they wanted to go back to live in the islands they were forced out of. Choosing one many miles away from the sensitive base at Diego Garcia, they have been told to leave by an angry and aggressive UK government. The government lost a court case over the issue of whether they could return to their homelands but still harries them and the people and boats that wish to keep them supplied whilst they establish new homes.

A government which is unable or unwilling to interdict any illegal migrant  boat or shadow fleet tanker in UK home  waters has boarded a small supply boat seeking to help the Chagossians, and has sought to prevent them receiving some of the supplies they need for their settlement. Why are they so hostile and so unhelpful? Why do they  not accept the judgement that people thrown out of their homeland by a colonial power have rights to resettle when the islands apart from the military base are empty and have been allowed to return to nature? Why are they blocking the delivery of a fast small boat to them so the people there could get to medical facilities in a hurry if needed? The NHS pays big bills to provide boats for our small home islands where people might need to be rushed to a hospital. The government has a duty of care towards the Chagossians which it is not fulfilling.