NOW LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY: I WILL REPEAT THIS OVER AND OVER

Oh Lord, it’s like spending half an hour in the remedial class.

The first 10 minutes were given over to Elmer’s weekly drubbing at the hands of the First Minister. Mr Fudd had decided that last week’s embarrassment over schools was not enough for him. No. More education embarrassment for our favourite cartoon character. When, he wondered, would Alex Salmond come up with a solution to the university funding issue. Of course he knows perfectly well what the timetable is. He knows that, when the consequential of England reducing its tertiary education funding comes about in 2012, the Scottish system will be ready. Once again, instead of seeing when he was beaten and moving on, he did his party piece of repeating the same question (laboriously) and getting beaten by the same stick over again. Listen carefully Elmer: The SNP has spent far more on education than Labour did; Labour in England, thanks to Lord Voldermort, was cutting the budget months before the Tories got in; And Labour’s great answer was? To have a review. Excellent!

Just one wee jarring note Elmer. If you are going to ask questions about further and higher education, a little more attention to correct grammar might be in order.

What a relief it was when the wee man sat down and we moved on.

But not for long. Usually Annabel Goldie asks sensible questions to which she gets sensible answers. Not so today. She chose to ask in a very very longwinded way about the ECHR ruling that some categories of prisoners should be able to vote whilst in the pokey. As this is matter of electoral law, and as such a reserved matter to England, it seemed a bit of a waste of time. Alex answered sensibly that it was a Tory government which had agreed to bring this into UK electoral law. Annabel went for him again, at least this time much more amusingly, attacking him for the policy of getting prisoners to serve sentences for less serious crimes in the community. This was odd, pointed out the First Minister, since it was exactly this SNP policy that had been adopted by the Lord Chancellor Ken Clarke, supported by his coalition partners, and recently commended by Ed Miliband. Ms Goldie it seemed was out of the loop.

It was a bit of a relief when she sat down too.

And so to Tavish. Always a joy.

This time it was ferry services to Dunoon, and the apparent lack of action from the government. Alex pointed out that there had been a large increase in the budget for ferries under the SNP, but suggested that the liberal Leader’s habit of asking for more money for everything might be a little less apposite now that his party was heavily involved in reducing the amount of money to be spent.

Well, unionists, if you insist on giving us pocket money to run the government of Scotland, dependent always on a consequential from London, you really can’t complain when we use it to beat you about the head.

In Supplementary Questions I was particularly stunned by David McLetchie’s question. Did the First Minister not understand that the reason that there was such a reduction in crime was that all the bad guys were locked up? I listened to this on radio, but I can just see the look on Mr Salmond’s face as he realized that he was going to have to explain the Ken Clarke, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband connection one more time for the slow boy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00vkppz/First_Ministers_Question_Time_04_11_2010


Pics: Super Eck, explaining it once again; Elmer, posing for Niko as the look of the future; the slow boy Mcletchie; Auntie Bella biting her lip and turning purple and Tavish, bless him, learning to fly.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ED MILIBAND

Winner Ed Milband..... and, pictured below, the other contenders

So it’s Ed.

If I’m honest, I don’t really care much for him, but he was the best of a mediocre bunch.

Diane Abbot and Andy Burnham were frankly ridiculous outsiders. The more Abbot said the more I realized why she was and always had been a back bench MP. And the more that Burnham said the more I was glad that his Cabinet remit was England only. (Compare him with Nicola Sturgeon and rejoice that you are Scottish, regardless of politics.)

Ed Balls was, if you strip away some of the probably undeserved reputation (and the daft wife), a man with some decent and sensible policies.

But of course, from the beginning, as Tony Benn had predicted many years ago, it was clear that it would be a Miliband who led the party once the Blair/Brown ‘partnership’ was truly over.

So, as they were all applauding and cheering the man who lost them the election yesterday we all wondered which one it would be. Should we be glad that the choice was Milly junior, rather than Milly senior?

I think so. David is Blair’s creature. Blair and Mandelson! The south-east of England is all that matters, the north has nowhere else to go, and half the country lives in the prosperous belt around London. I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t have been able to get a cigarette paper between the policies of Miliband Snr. and Camerclegg.

Does that mean that Ed is left wing? Well, not by historic standards, no. He’s not a Tony Benn or a Michael Foot. He’s not even a Denis Healy. He may be to the left of his brother and Tony Blair; he was against the Iraq war and for the 50p tax band, but so was most of the country. He’s no firebrand.

Is he a creature of the unions? To an extent, yes, but it has to be remembered that despite the fact that it was union members’ votes that swung it, gone are the days of the block vote. Individual members sent in individual votes. And union members are no longer the wild radicals that struck because they had carbolic soap and hard toilet paper; whist the management had Lux and soft tissue.

So will he be a slave of the unions who put him where he is? No, I don’t think so, mainly for the already stated reason that the block vote is history. It wasn’t the unions who put him there, it was the union members. Smart Tories are avoiding the union argument, as it can be so easily blown apart the first time that he condemns unnecessary strike action.

When the cuts come, and the unions take action (as they undoubtedly will), of course there will be times when Labour will support them; there will be times when we all support them, I suspect. But the new leader has been swift to point out that he will support reasonable cuts, and the government will have his backing where it is in the interests of the country.

In the days, weeks and months to come of hardships like people of my age, indeed people under 70, have never endured, it will be necessary for the country to have an opposition which is ideologically capable of opposing where it is appropriate. The alternative would be unthinkable. The Liberals have been lost (at least for the present) to the opposition and the nationalist parties in Westminster are too small to have any major impact.

Camerclegg unopposed would be frighteningly dangerous.

So I wish Ed Miliband success in the difficult task ahead of him.

MANDY SAYS NO TO DOCUMENTARY SCREENING AT HAY FESTIVAL

Yesterday, just hours before it was to be previewed at the Hay Festival, the Noble and Right Honourable (LOL) The Baron Mandelson of Blah Blah Blah in the Blah, etc, withdrew permission for Hannah Rothschild to show a documentary she has made of him.

Hannah, who is the daughter of Lord Rothschild, followed Mandelson from October 2009 up to last month's general election to make this film which was supposed to tell the story of the man who was the power behind Brown’s throne.

The film was even called ‘’The Real PM’’ but whether that was short for Peter Mandelson or Prime Minister was not clear. It was set to show intimate details of his personal life and his work. But with only a day to go before clips of the documentary were to preview at the literary festival, Mandelson decided that she couldn’t use the footage.

The festival organizers apparently sent an email to journalists yesterday saying: "Hannah Rothschild's film The Real PM: A Portrait of the Real Peter Mandelson has been withdrawn on the insistence of the subject."

We ordinary people were supposed to be able to see the show within a couple of months as BBC had arranged to screen it. Now no one knows if that will go ahead.

Mandelson has (of course) written his memoirs which are to be published during the summer. So perhaps Peter has decided that if people watched the film they might not spend their money on his book. He has arranged too, for it to come out before Tony Blair's autobiography ‘The Journey’ which is due in September. (Is there nothing that bloke won’t do for money?)

Mandelson's book is supposed to be "frank, honest and revealing... a dramatic first-hand narrative", and that it will "lay bare Peter Mandelson's intimate, complex relationship with Britain's two New Labour prime ministers".

Actually, I hate to say it, but I reckon it will make fascinating reading.... Let’s be honest he was the real brains behind a whole chapter in our lives, like him or loathe him.

But it does leave poor old Hannah with a film she has spent 10 months making, and no way that she can show it.... Not that that will be a financial worry to her despite the fact that it must have cost tens of thousands and more to make. Being a Rothschild means that the loss will doubtless be able to be swallowed. (Oh and it leaves Tony with a book that he may not be able to sell quite so readily... As Spook would say...wee shame.)