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From today's Observer:

Senior Blairites could be offered jobs under a David Cameron government in the 'national interest', a leading Tory shadow cabinet minister reveals today, in a bid to poach some of Labour's brightest talents and split the party.
Michael Gove (pictured above), the shadow children's secretary, singled out Schools Minister Lord Adonis, but also warmly praised current cabinet ministers James Purnell and the 'outstanding' Hazel Blears.

'I have yet to find a speech of Andrew's outlining policies that I disagree with,' Gove said, adding that, even when Adonis issues press releases attacking him, 'I have the grim feeling I am reading something that has been written for him'.
He also identified common ground with Purnell: 'He, like me, is a strong believer in an interventionist foreign policy: not even everyone within New Labour and certainly not everyone in the Conservative camp [is].' Blears, he said, was unfairly underrated by her own side - 'the fact that she came bottom [for deputy leadership] tells you all you need to know about the Labour party'.

So there we have it- vote Conservative at the next general election, because you're sick to death of Hazel Blears, James Purnell and the other Blairites- and you could still get them anyway. Isn't our democracy wonderful!

As I wrote in the American Conservative back in November:

Britain's two main parties- the only two who, thanks to our first past the post electoral system, have a realistic chance of winning a general election, have converged to such an extent that their policies on the major issues of the day are virtually indistinguishable.

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with consensus politics, if the consensus genuinely represents the view of the majority. But as the Guardian's Seumas Milne has observed, what is described as the 'centre ground' today in fact reflects not the dominant views not of the people, but of the political, media and corporate establishment. What percentage of the public support a neo-conservative foreign policy? How many people believe that allowing 'market forces' to govern every aspect of our lives, represents the best way to order our society?

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"There is a French revolutionary air in America these days, with bankers playing the part of the aristocracy. Turn on the radio or open a newspaper and the bile comes out. Michael Daly, a columnist for the New York Daily News, yesterday wrote about 'Wall Street subslime'. Congressmen say calls to their offices are opposed to any bail-out of bankers by a factor of 100-1. Even Warren Buffett, the wise old man of American capitalism, is coming under suspicion from ordinary American voters. They point out that he seized on the chaos to make investments, notably $5bn in Goldman Sachs, which now depend for their very success on a massive bail-out". writes Philip Delves Broughton, in the Daily Mail.

America certainly is at a turning point in its history. It is an obscenity that a $700bn bail out of the greedy bankers is even being proposed- and it will be even more of an obscenity to ordinary, hard-working American taxpayers if the Bush plan does go through.

It's time for American to heed the words of one of their greatest Presidents- Thomas Jefferson:

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Do we put the interests of greedy, amoral capitalists, before the interests of ordinary hard-working American taxpayers? Its 1% of the population against 99% and if the 1% do prevail, we can't call it democracy.

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Here's my article on the political crisis in Belgium- and why it could have wider repercussions-from The Mail on Sunday.


Crisis, what crisis? As I sip coffee in a Brussels cafe, it's difficult to imagine that I am in the capital of a country facing the worst political crisis in its 169-year history.

For eight weeks, Belgium has been without a government after Prime Minister Yves Leterme resigned.

The latest impasse comes just four months after Belgium ended a nine-month period without a government, following an inconclusive general election result in June 2007.

Despite many negotiations, and the intervention of King Albert himself, Belgium's political parties have found it impossible to agree on the formation of a new administration.

Now it seems the future of Belgium is at stake. An increasingly vociferous Flemish nationalist movement is calling for the country to separate.

Opinion polls show an increasing number of Belgians believe separation is the only way the political stalemate will end.

If Belgium does separate, it is a move that will have repercussions not only for the country's 10.5million people, but for the rest of Europe, including Britain.

Belgium is a country divided by language: the Flemish, which make up 58 per cent of the population, have Dutch (or Flemish) as their native tongue, while the Walloons speak French. There is also a small minority of German speakers in the far east of the country.

Historically, the French-speakers in Wallonia, in the south of the country, have held the upper hand. For the first 60 years of the country's existence, French was the official language and Wallonia, the centre of Belgium's mining industry, was by far the most prosperous part of the country.

But that all changed when recession hit Wallonia in the Eighties. While the region is stagnating, Flemish-speaking Flanders is booming - tourists flock to its wonderfully preserved cities such as Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, and the area is home to many multinationals.

Greater economic prosperity has fuelled Flemish demands for greater autonomy - and even separation. In 1980, the Belgian constitution was redrawn, giving more autonomy to the Flemish north, the Walloon south and the bilingual capital, Brussels.
But the devolution of power, far from assuaging separatist demands, has only increased them - a lesson clearly not learnt by New Labour which pushed ahead with devolution for Scotland and Wales, believing it would strengthen Britain.

The Right-wing, anti-immigration and pro-separatist Flemish Party Vlaams Belang, denounced as fascist by opponents, has increased its share of the vote in every election since 1987. In 2007 it won 17 out of the 150 seats in the Belgian parliament.

Although Vlaams Belang's hardline stance is not shared by a majority of the population in Flanders, there is nevertheless widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo.

'If there are 1,050 speed cameras in Belgium, then there are 1,000 in Flanders and 50in Walloon. And the money from the penalties is split up 50/50. OK, that's a bit exaggerated, but not far from the truth,' says Ben Thys, a Flemish businessman.
Flemish subsidies to the south are more than 3.3 billion euros a year. 'We are paying for the Walloons not to work,' says cafe owner Guy Wauters. 'Taxes are high because of this. The situation is simply not fair.'

More than 60 per cent of people in Flanders say they would like to see Belgium stay together - but only if the Walloons make concessions. And as the disagreements intensify, a growing number of Walloons think Belgium's days are numbered.

Rivalry between Flemish and French-speaking communities have always existed.
Only one per cent of marriages cross the linguistic divide. Two years ago a scandal erupted when Sophie Pecriaux, an MP from Wallonia, was found to be having an affair with Hendrik Daems, a Flemish politician.

If Belgium does separate, the consequences will be felt across Europe. If Flanders and Wallonia can be independent countries, why not Scotland and Wales? The SNP, the ruling party in the Scottish Assembly, has pledged that Scots will have the chance to vote in a 2010 referendum on whether to break away from the UK.

The disappearance of Belgium would also be a body blow to the EU and its dream of closer integration.

Brussels is the headquarters of the EU, and Belgium has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of monetary and political union. Yet many would say the EU has also contributed to the political crisis in Belgium.

The fact that newly independent countries can find a ready-made home in the EU makes independence much more attractive than might otherwise be the case.

Many people sneer about Belgium (usually along the line of 'name a famous Belgian'), but the country has much to be proud of - its ultra-reliable public transport system puts Britain's to shame, and the health service is highly regarded.

In the event of a divorce, what to do with these excellent services? And how would Brussels be carved up between the rival groups?

This issue could be why Belgium may yet pull through. 'I think we will stay together but in a new confederation, with Flanders and Wallonia having more control over their own economies,' says Ben Thys.

The question is: can people from different linguistic and cultural groups live together in one country? If not, then will Europe, including the UK, break up into succession of ethnically-based micro-states?

'I never could see the point of Belgium,' the wit Clement Freud once said. But the 'point of Belgium' will be most apparent if it goes.

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Not a line I thought I'd ever write.

And I'm sure Jonathan Steele didn't think he'd ever write it either.

But in these circumstances, I think its justified.

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Somalia is 180th out of 180. Iraq is second from bottom. Haiti fourth from bottom. And Afghanistan lies in 176th place.

No, it’s not the FIFA world rankings- but the 2008 Corruption Perception Index, published by the Berlin-based Transparency International.All the countries above have one thing in common: they’ve all experienced ‘interventions’ in one way or another, in recent years by the US. Surely something for supporters of US interventions in the affairs of other sovereign states to ponder.

The other revealing thing about the survey is the countries at the top. Among the top fifteen least corrupt nations in the world are Norway, Austria, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden- and- at number one- Denmark. All are countries with a relatively small gap between rich and poor- in fact Denmark and Norway are among the most egalitarian societies on this planet. The message is clear: if you operate a mixed economy with progressive taxation and a welfare state you are much less likely to have a corrupt society.

As to Britain- well - turbo-capitalism is taking its toll. We’ve fallen four places in the ratings, to 16th, with Transparency International reporting “The weakening performance of some wealthy countries… casts a further critical light on government commitment to rein in the questionable methods of their companies in acquiring and managing overseas business”. The more openly capitalistic Britain has become, the more corrupt we have become too. If we do want to climb in the top ten, and reduce corruption, then have to return to the sort of progressive economic policies we followed back in the 1960s and 70s.

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This article of mine on the late British actor Dirk Bogarde (pictured above) appears in the Daily Express.

With his good looks, easy charm and clean-cut image, he was the archetypal leading man of Fifties British cinema but off-screen Dirk Bogarde was a very different man from the characters he invariably portrayed.

While in films, the actor known as ‘The Matinee Idol of the Odeon’ played the romantic lead, in real life Bogarde was a homosexual, who concealed his true sexuality from his adoring female public, even after homosexuality ceased to be a criminal offence.

When his acting career declining in the 1970s, Bogarde re-invented himself as a successful writer- penning award winning autobiographical volumes, novels and book reviews. But again, all was not what it first appeared. His books helped foster the image of a well-mannered, cultivated and likeable man. The real Bogarde however was waspish, foul-mouthed and incredibly snobbish.

Bogarde resented the rise of working class actors such as Michael Caine and Albert Finney in the 1960s. He said of Caine: “he has to have the ugliest voice in the business… and pop eyes.” He railed against the “lower orders” and what he saw as their increasing influence. “I watch that filthy Telly to get into the feel of things. And the only feel I get is one of frustration and futility; and hatred against the lower orders who demand mediocraty (sic) and get it.” Fellow actor John Fraser recalls Bogarde telling him how, when he was a lonely young actor in London, he would invite studios assistants round to his flat for a meal. “One day I looked round at all these insignificant people with whom I was sharing my precious, precious leisure- and I thought’ If you’re going to be a Film Star, ducky, you better start behaving like one .Get yourself some proper friends”.

As his private correspondence, published in a new book, testifies, the misanthropic Bogarde rarely had a good word to say about anybody, or anything. The Cannes Film Festival was “a sort of nightmare as usual. A record crowd of foul people”. Holland, where he filmed ‘A Bridge too Far’, was “hell”. “Apart from the van Gogh’s, Rembrandts and the Vermeers, it is all a lot of crappy horror”. In a letter to the writer Penelope Mortimer he boasted how he had ditched his old friends. “I have dropped them all, Deliberately and without giving them any real reason. Don’t want ‘em. Useless. They drain me“.

But there was one person whom Bogarde did have a lot of time for: himself. “I am very fond of me” he wrote. “I get on with me. I make me laugh”.

This extremely complex and difficult man was born in 1921 in London of mixed Flemish, Dutch and Scottish descent. His father, Ulric van den Bogaerde, was the art editor of the Times, and his mother was a former actress. In 1941 Bogarde cut short his fledging acting career and joined the Army, and rose to the rank of Major in World War Two. In April 1945, he claimed he was one of the first Allied officers to reach the notorious Belsen concentration camp, an experience he found it difficult to speak about for many years afterwards.

Bogarde’s wartime experiences also made him a strong supporter of euthanasia. "My views were formulated as a 24-year-old officer in Normandy“ he wrote. During the war I saw more wounded men being 'taken care of' than I saw being rescued. they were pumping blood or whatever; they were in such a wreck, the only thing to do was to shoot them”.

After the war, Bogarde soon found success as a film actor, contracted to the powerful ‘Rank Organisation’. In 1947, Sketch magazine named him as one of Britain’s four ‘young men of mark’- and it wasn’t long before Bogarde was playing leading roles in films such as The Blue Lamp, So Long at the Fair and Appointment in London. In the 1950s Bogarde was firmly established as Britain’s most popular film star. His runaway hit ‘Doctor in the House’ was the top moneymaker of 1954. The influential Picturegoer magazine presented him with its Annual Award for ‘best actor’ three years in a row, while more than 4000 cinema managers chose him as ‘the World’s Greatest Money-Drawing Star’.

Bogarde was romantically linked to a succession of beautiful young actresses. But unbeknown to his adoring public, Bogarde’s sexual attentions were elsewhere. Bogarde had first met fellow actor Anthony Forwood in 1940. In the 1950s, Forwood divorced his wife, the actress Glynis Johns, with whom he had a son, to move in with Bogarde and become his ‘manager’. The pair were to be inseparable until Forwood’s death from cancer in 1988. In seven volumes of autobiography, Bogarde never once acknowledged that his relationship with the man he always referred to as ’Forwood’ was other than a business arrangement. But others knew differently. “They were closer than most married couples” recalls John Fraser. “It was abundantly clear that their relationship was deep and strong, but there never the slightest inappropriate gesture between them- no brush of a hand, no touch of a shoulder. Even their conversation was guarded”. In the 1950s, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence, Bogarde and Forwood had good reason to be reticent about their relationship. Many homosexuals of the time were blackmailed, and Bogarde’s ‘outing’ would undoubtedly have meant the end of his career.

Ironically in the ground-breaking film ‘Victim’ in 1961 Bogarde played a prominent London barrister who is blackmailed for being gay. The film was influential in helping change attitudes towards homosexuality- and eventually led to the reform of the homosexality laws in in 1967. But even after the threat of imprisonment was gone, Bogarde still refused to admit his the nature of his relationship with Forwood. Instead he claimed in interviews to be a heterosexual and to have had affairs with the French actress Capucine, and the American singer Judy Garland- claims denounced as ‘ludicrous’ by John Fraser.

By the Seventies Bogarde and Forwood had left Britain and settled in the South of France. In 1977 his first volume of autobiography ‘A Postillion Struck by Lightning’ was published and received excellent reviews. Further books followed, but in 1987, Bogarde had to leave his idyllic house and gardens in Provence to what he called the ‘filthy UK’ on account of Forwood’s grave illness.

There was no mellowing of Bogarde with age. “The girl beside me in the cinema offered me her Malteaser“ he wrote in a 1988 letter “ Wasn’t that pleasing? I scowled at her of course. I always do. Terror lurks not very far beneath this apparently cool façade”.
Bogarde also ridiculed the requests of British autograph hunters. “Could you sign this? Not for me, for my neice (sic), grandmother, wife, son, sister, baby-sitter, cousin Agnes, Eileen, with two ‘es’ please, Anne with an ‘e’. No one, ever, in France behaved like this. Not even in Paris, unless they were British”.

How can we account for his extraordinary bitterness?

John Fraser believes it was down to two factors: his failure to achieve the international success enjoyed by the likes of Michael Caine, Richard Burton and Sean Connery- and also the result of a lifetime spent revealing his true sexuality.

Others believe that it was his experiences of war- and witnessing at first hand man’s inhumanity to man- which made Bogarde into such a misanthrope. Perhaps the clues lie in his unhappy childhood. He once told the film writer Alexander Walker of an incident that shaped his way of life. “He was aged about seven” Walker recalled “when a pet tortoise that had gone missing one summer turned up trapped inside a hole in the meadow: at least, its shell turned up. Ants had eaten out the soft meat of its unprotected belly. The lesson it taught the impressionable child was: don't ever expose yourself. Don't stick you head out of your carapace. Don't let the world see your innards: if you do, it will eat you alive.”

Bogarde, who was knighted in 1992, was a man who above all, valued his privacy. “You haven’t cracked me yet” he once snapped at probing television interviewer Russell Harty. If the price of this prickliness was being left alone, then that was a price well worth paying. “If the tide runs out for me and I am left bereft in chair, then that’ll be fine”.

He died in 1999 at the age of 78.

With his memorable performances in classic films such as ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and ‘Death in Venice’ Bogarde was undoubtedly one of Britain’s greatest film stars but perhaps the greatest act he played was the one he played off-screen.

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A very happy 80th birthday to Batman- or rather to actor Adam West, who played the Caped Crusader in the wonderful 1960s television series. There’s been plenty of dark, ultra pretentious and very violent remakes since then- but none are in the same league as the 1960s version. Quite simply, Batman, with its great comic villains, its deadpan humour and its inspired and intelligent direction was one of the funniest, most stylish and most enjoyable television series ever made. (And the theme tune wasn’t bad either).

Hand me the shark-repellent bat spray, Robin!

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