Is this diversity? 

“Diversity” seems to be the new clarion-call for public services.  The Government claims to be making the running, in reforming the public services to provide greater “diversity” – for hospitals, for universities, for schools. 

I think that his perception is, at one level, correct.  I also desire to see public services provided locally in diverse ways which involve our citizens in new forms of participation, sharing in the governance of their own communities.  I am delighted that there are plans to legislate for community interest companies, which would bring that goal a little closer. 

But there’s the rub.  Because New Labour is not planning to permit any real public  participation in the governance of our major public services.  

• The constitution of  Network Rail does not cede any power to “the public”: I have just been through the whole process of being rejected as a public member.  My report on that shady process stands open for your scrutiny.  

• When reforming the NHS in Wales, Labour failed to vest responsibility for the NHS in elected local authorities - instead, for every LA area they created a new, parallel NHS local quango, effectively dominated by the NHS management, by the health professionals.

• The much-vaunted Blair/Milburn “Foundation Hospitals” will have no openly elected representatives, although it is said that “the patients” will be represented.  The health professionals will clearly rule the roost, with their entrenched seats on the Board. 

• School governors continue to be sidelined by education professionals, teachers and administrators: the imaginative Local Management of Schools (one of Thatcher’s good ideas, if you remember..) has not in practice led to any significant public participation in the governance of our schools.  The schools have increasingly become the property of the professionals, decorated by a few ineffective “democratic” fig-leaves... 

• And under Labour, I am sad to say, democratic local government continues to be downgraded, now subjected to ridiculous league tables more suited to cameras and electric kettles, video-recorders and package holidays. 

• Our great cities continue to languish, with no effective forms of local government – and none in prospect.

In short, the present Labour Government has a blind spot.  Ministers (Milburn, Raynsford, Prescott, Blair) talk the democratic talk, but nothing of new democratic substance is delivered.  They merely seek, wherever they turn, to consolidate their own centralised political authority.  

• So while I applaud Tony Blair’s sentiments – greater local diversity and greater public participation are fine ideals, which I share – I cannot find any examples in practice.

565   16 December 2002   

My own Conman

My heart bleeds for Cherie. Her personal reputation is in tatters.  Her self-confidence, and that of her husband, will certainly have been undermined.  Her reputation as a lawyer is grievously damaged. 

I suspect that Cherie Blair and I have something in common.  I suspect we both feel very lucky to have been dealt good hands in life, and worry about the injustice of the poor hands dealt to others.  Like Cherie, I still give legal advice widely to those who seek it (including many shady characters, in my time…).  I consider myself lucky to have an understanding of “how things work”, and I remain appalled by the travails of those who lack such understanding.  That is all reflected in a cock-eyed optimism about others, about their goodwill and their potential.  We all know from experience that belief in the capacity of others does in practice unlock great resources, in all human relationships.  Such cock-eyed optimism may be a flaw of character, but its consequences are for the most part benign.  

But it also contains the seeds of naivety, even of gullibility about others.  That is what I now detect in myself, and which Cherie will come to recognise, however painfully.  But I have always recognised that I would not make a good High Court Judge – indeed, that was one of my reasons for quitting the Bar altogether, in my early-thirties.  The journey was one I did not fancy, because of its probable destination.   

It was much later, though, that I was conned.  “My” conman sought social recognition and status, not money or judicial favour.  Over a period of eighteen months, he proved adept at weaving networks of half-truths, half-connections, elisions, parallels, ambiguities, all tending to the same end. The whole web of deceit was so skilfully woven that it took weeks for me to uncover its full extent, and the scale of others’ involvement.  I still remember the precise time and place when the awful truth of the “confidence trick” dawned: it was 6.25 pm on a December Thursday evening, in a Swansea winebar. I remember precisely where we were both sitting.  But the full story took three weeks to unfold, well into the first week of January.  And my odyssey of inquiry (which also led to Australia, where he had previously operated) could be conducted in private. 

For Cherie, that dismal voyage of disillusionment has been in the public spotlight.  She has suffered serially, as the ramifications of the Foster relationship have gradually unwound.  That is why my heart bleeds for her.  And I wish her well, for her recovery. 

• The wounds, sadly, will be a long time a-healing.