Quality not quantity

What will get our 'mother of Parliaments' back in a position of respect? Why did I read Cameron's rumoured plans to run Parliament through August next year - if his party is in power - with a sinking heart?

I just don't know that having our legislators sitting throughout next summer is quite what the doctor ordered if they are just going to continue to spout the kind of tedious politico-speak which has become the norm. It's quality not quantity that counts.

What we need is a return of the Awkward Squad, people who are proud to serve as constituency MPs and actually don't give a stuff, to use the technical term, about being promoted. They can be an absolute pest, they cause the Whips to foam at the mouth, but they're just the people who stand for something because they think it's right. The House needs a lot more of them - people who have lived other lives and aren't in awe of party leaderships.

And while we're at it, more of the late-night rows which I used to enjoy in the Palace bars when I was working there as a jouranlist would help to ge tthe place back to where it should be, full of life and argument and - occasionally - the kind of brilliance which commands national respect. Not the shrivelled husk I hate to think it (almost) now is.

Gordon Brown

I have quite a number of criticisms I could make of Gordon Brown, but lack of courage in dealing with the fact that he is blind in one eye is not one of them. I have long admired Mr Brown's stoical determination to do his job and make no public fuss about it. With a member of my own family affected by partial sight, I have some appreciation of the true cost of that determination.

Most people have little idea how much of a problem loss of vision can create - from the obvious issues around personal safety through to failing to recognise someone or being assumed to be lacking in alertness because they have not spotted signs or information at a distance. It can be upsetting and painful to be with someone who has such a problem when you realise what they do suffer, and so often uncomplainingly.

This week's row over the letter Mr Brown wrote to a mother who has lost her solider son is a case in point. Her suffering is of course unimaginable, and she is entitled to remonstrate personally with her Prime Minister about what she sees as his inappropriate letter and the more fundamental issues over equipment for the armed forces. But, in truth, I have been glad to see the tide turn around the letter. It was sincerely written to try to bring her some comfort. If his writing is poor and some letters not properly formed (all faults I have, without the excuse of poor vision) I think that is secondary to the effort he made in writing to her. No-one other than the lady he wrote to needed to say anything about his handwriting. I dislike our national tendency to jump on people for imagined failings. Mr Brown may not be popular, and indeed we may think he is very unlikely to be Prime Minister for longer than another few months, but attacking him for his handwriting and failing to acknowledge the extraordinary way he deals with his own disability struck me this week as shallow.

Bombing of The Grand

Twenty-five years ago I was a young political correspondent reporting on the Tory Party Conference. With a one year old son at home, I couldn't bear the separation and my husband arrived in Brighton for the last night with our gorgeous curly headed son in his arms. At the end of the evening we headed for The Grand Hotel - that's what you always do on the last night, and, Sam - ever cheerful in his pushchair - was no barrier. My husband was happy Sam was there as he attracted a crowd of BA stewardesses. We dropped any pretence of early bedtimes and stayed there enjoying ourselves till the early hours.

I think of that scene when I play back the events of that conference. Our cheerful departure to a nearby hotel. No we didn't hear the explosion. No mobiles then, I first got the news from early morning tv and ran back to The Grand to see the scene of utter devastation.

In the conference centre, we journalists milled around each other trying to piece together our thoughts before filing copy (I was an evening paper journalist). Someone said: "you know this was an attempt to assassinate the entire Cabinet". It was the first time any of us appreciated quite the scale of what had been attempted. I walked into the hall, and there on the platform was a dignified figure, sitting quietly and calmly. Mrs Thatcher. She had declined security advice to leave, and felt she must show by her presence that the IRA weren't going to defeat our democracy by bombs. On that awful morning I was so glad to see her there, expressing by her quiet dignity an overwhelming moral rejection of IRA violence.

Party conferences never have been quite the same since. Security fell like a heavy curtain. A certain innocence was lost. I remember sitting with Sam afterwards and trying to connect that happy evening to the picture of carnage I had seen myself but hours later and the shocking human consequences. They could have been even worse - the bar had closed earlier than usual (many journalists would otherwise have been there when the bomb went off). But above all it is Mrs Thatcher I remember.

On trains

What is it exactly that makes train operators determined that every rail journey is punctuated by constant announcements? I am sitting on a train writing this, and there have have just been three announcements in succession, reminding me which carriage I am in, not to leave my bag unsupervised, and that I am about to arrive at Oxted. No! I have in fact arrived and must now listen to yet another 'welcome' announcement.

My husband has become so fed up with this non-stop assault on our ears that he plugs in his Ipod to cut the world out, only pausing grimly to point out that if ever there is a real health and safety problem ("train on fire") he'll be the last to know. I am glad to hear a campaign is building. Already I have heard the defences, the health and safety/EU regulation blah blah. But I am hopeful that passenger revolt will make the operators see sense.

They have actually provided we long-suffering commuters the best trains ever - modern, comfortable - and even more amazingly they are more punctual than I ever recall in a lifetime of commuting. Now it's time to back off and leave our ears in peace. I was going to say more, but we're about to arrive in Lingfield and while gathering my bag, and listening to the extra announcement about being careful if I am crossing the line I lost my flow...

Bob Ainsworth

Ok, Bob Ainsworth may not be everyone’s cup of tea as Defence Secretary. If I were him I probably wouldn’t want to read my morning papers. Phrases like “not up to the job” have followed him everywhere since his surprise promotion from Armed Forces Minister to Cabinet rank as Defence Secretary in June.

One of the few MPs in the Commons to have a background in manual work – he was a sheet metal worker and fitter with Jaguar cars – you wonder what Bob “Bollocks” Ainsworth (a nickname he is said to regard as undeserved, denying that he uttered the words in the Commons) makes of the condescension that seems to flavour a good deal of the coverage he receives. I have a notion that many who actually listen to him think he comes across as sincere and down to earth.

He is under huge pressure at present regarding the court action to limit compensation payments to British servicemen, and, yes, I recognise it’s an incredibly sensitive and serious issue where many of us are offended by what the Government are doing. But when I read that he was, disgracefully, on holiday and should be forced to return – as indeed he did – I began to feel uneasy. Am I the only one to find this perennial campaign every summer to bring a minister back from his or her holiday to “face the music” deeply unsettling? And I say it because, unpopular though the sentiment is at the moment after a year of ugly revelations about MPs and their expenses, many of them work incredibly hard. And I do mean hard, long days that last late into the night, the pressures of many competing demands, and decisions that all of us would find extraordinarily difficult and challenging should we be making them. Yes, politicians are accountable to us and we have every right to demand explanations from them. But it’s one thing to be critical, it’s quite another to treat them all as idle buffoons spending most of their time on holiday sun loungers. It simply isn’t true, and by tyrannising them back home from their family holidays all we do is make it harder for any of them to get a proper rest or to make good decisions when they get back..

Never waste a good crisis

At a breakfast last week Sky’s Adam Boulton reminded us that Obama had made the phrase “never waste a good crisis” a guiding concept for his administration.

I was initially puzzled, until of course I realised what it means is that a crisis gives you an opportunity to say and do things you never could at any other time. You may be facing huge challenges, but if you’re a strong leader you can also appeal to people in such a situation to accept the inevitability of major change. Think of a family crisis, when all the old rules go out of the window, and you know what I mean.

And it is a tribute I have to say to the failure of most of our politicians that a “good crisis” – in truth one of the worst economic crises we have ever faced – is being squandered. An angry and very senior Tory aide spluttered to me last week “Talking to Gordon Brown is like standing on a weighing machine. You just get robotic comments, no dialogue.” And, taking the analogy a bit further, the wrong weight presumably. Because across Whitehall it is an open secret – blown open I see by the Sunday newspapers – that the mandarins are quietly working out all the true implications of our national budget deficit and drawing up plans to address them as soon as the politicians have stopped pretending that a lot of budgets can easily be protected. Our transformed economic situation and our huge national debt will be a part of all our lives until 2030 at least. Walking up to the problem, and deciding what we should be doing about it, is a NOW problem, not tomorrow. The Tories have launched an open challenge to Gordon Brown on this, and they are right – but they need to add their own reality too and explain what all of them know, which is that after 2011 virtually every government budget will be frozen or cut. The British people are very good at adapting to crises – heaven only knows we have had enough practice over the years - but they need to be told the truth.

Our new Speaker

My colleague Tanya Joseph quite rightly blogs about the task confronting our new Speaker. She also reminds us that, many years ago (and before he became an MP of course) John Bercow did some work for Westminster Strategy, the first public affairs arm of Grayling. It was at a time when Mr Bercow used to get written up in some satirical magazines as a very right wing sort of chap.

When I met him at WS, it was quite clear to me he was no such thing. I cannot now recall what it was we debated one day when I suspect we were both supposed to be doing something else, but I remember the realisation that he wasn't ultra-right wing at all, and indeed that we appeared to share some markedly similar middle of the road views. And he could laugh at himself, which made a change from quite a few politicos I have met over the years.

For those reasons, I have followed his career at a distance with interest. Of course I never expected him to become Speaker, but then who would you expect to take on a role like that? Decent as she is, I am jolly glad it wasn't Margaret Beckett. I just don't see how you step out of Government and turn into the Commons Champion.

But the sight on TV last night of John Bercow in a robe made me realise not only that a few years have passed - I am not prepared to say how many! - but also that be seemed to me to become it. He's an interesting chap, someone who has thought a lot about his views and not been afraid to express them. It's going to be very tough, but the Commons needs a Speaker who can rise above the entire appalling spectacle of the last few months, and let's hope Mr Bercow will prove he is the one.