Local elections are hard to predict

Predicting the outcome of a general election is considerably easier than that of various local ones, particularly as different local elections take place in different years. I was very proud of telling everyone very firmly that the Conservatives would win in the last general and UKIP will have one seat. So it came to pass. But I am a little wary today.

Will the Labour row about the anti-Semitism in that party (something that many of us have known about for some time but has now become front page news) affect votes? Maybe. Then again, turn-out in local elections tends to be so low and rock solid Labour supporters tend to be so impervious to any facts or arguments that one cannot be absolutely certain. As the numbers of suspended councillors multiplied in the wake of Naz Shah's outrageous tweet (no, it was not a criticism of Israeli government policy of which, I suspect, she is completely ignorant) and our Ken's bizarre performance, I was astonished to see the number of people who talked about "dirty politics" and "smear politics", pointing out that many of those statements and tweets are several years old (though there is no evidence that there had been any change of mind or heart) and darkly blaming the Tory media (always a good bogey) and Lynton Crosby. These people, one assumes will vote Labour, no matter what and no matter who. But there are others who might have done so. Will they still do so? Will they turn out at all?

I doubt if the coming referendum and the whole argument about Brexit will have any effect. UKIP are, as ever, prancing around, telling all and sundry that they will do extremely well in the locals. Every now and then one reminds them that they said the same about the general election but water off a duck's back is the best way of describing their reaction. This time, they maintain, it will happen; this time we have captured the public mood with our emphasis on immigration rather than the EU.

UKIP in London (the place where I have followed events reasonably closely to the point of catatonic boredom) the EU makes barely any appearance in UKIP electoral literature and if it does, only in connection with borders. In fact, the Mayor of London has zero power over borders and that will remain true even if Brexit triumphs on June 23.

The UKIP mayoral candidate, Peter Whittle, is a considerably more attractive personality than his predecessors or most of his colleagues. [Declaration of interest: Peter is a friend of mine and has been for some years.] He has managed to garner a good deal of publicity and has been level-headed in his predictions. No, he is not going to be Mayor, he tells journalists but if he does well (and he has been doing well in opinion polls) that may well bring in UKIP members into the Assembly from the party list. He is top of the list so the chances are he will get in with possibly the next on in line. Peter is talking about three members but that sounds unlikely to me. Apart from publicity value, it will make no odds. I know enough about the Assembly, having worked there for four years as researcher to UKIP/Veritas/One London to be absolutely certain that it is a completely pointless and highly expensive institution.

The last time UKIP had Assembly members they very swiftly fell out with the leadership and there was a split and a fairly bloody civil war. At present, it looks unlikely that Peter Whittle will follow that line, seeing that he has allowed the Dear Leader, a.k.a. our Nigel to muscle in on the campaign in a very big way. When the collection of election manifestos arrived on  my doorstep I was amused to see that one party produced a picture of its mayoral candidate together with its Leader. I am sure my readers even if not Londoners will have guessed which one. Furthermore, the candidate's manifesto was not allowed to stand as his statement. About half of it was by the Leader who endorsed the candidate and, incidentally, actually referred to the EU in the last sentence, in connection with border control. (See above.) Will this emphasis on immigration actually be of any use in London? And will Farage's muscling in have the usual effect of putting people off? We shall know late this evening.

Meanwhile, what of the two main candidates? The accepted wisdom from opinion polls is that Sadiq Khan will win. Of course, polls have been wrong before and Khan himself seems less certain: on Tuesday he was calling rather loudly on Jeremy Corbyn to get a grip on the anti-Semitism scandal in the Labour party, though why Corbyn should be able to do so between Tuesday and Thursday having done nothing about it before, seemed a mystery. Nevertheless, one has to admit that so far Khan has been a teflon man and all stories of him making comments about moderate Muslims being Uncle Toms (has he read that book?) and him sharing a platform with some very unsavoury characters have done him no harm with a good many people yapping about Tory tricks, smear politics etc, etc.

Personally, I am not sure everything is over bar the shouting as much depends on the turn-out (usually fairly low) and what is known as the Bradley effect:

The theory proposes that some voters who intend to vote for the white candidate would nonetheless tell pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for the non-white candidate.

That is America but, given growing British reluctance to tell the truth to opinion pollsters, it is not to be excluded here either. After all, we definitely have the Shy Tory Factor, which may also work in Zac Goldsmith's favour.

As we look across the Pond and watches the political antics there we can be thankful that however unpleasant and harmful some of the people we elect today will be (and some, including the socialist control freak Sadiq Khan, will be harmful) their power and control is very limited.

Clearing the ground - 1

All things being equal and my computer behaving reasonably well, not, at present, a given, I intend to stay up tonight and keep the blog going as the Euro-results come in. Unlike many people who ought to know better and like the majority of this country's population I do not think who sits in the Toy Parliament is of any great importance. But we did have this election and we might as well look at the results. This is, after all, the last time for five years that anyone is going to care about the whole charade, unless there is some kind of a scandal that will be a nine days' wonder.

But first, here are the final local results, in case you missed them. No analysis, as I am not sure what conclusions can be drawn though I shall try to find out what the turn-out was in various places and how the popular vote panned out.

In England, as expected, Labour came top though not by as much as they would have liked, this being a local election a year away from the General. 82 councils of the ones who had elections are now controlled by Labour (including my own, Hammersmith and Fulham, which is very depressing) and of the seats up for grabs, they grabbed 2,101. The Conservatives retained control of 41 councils and have managed to win 1,359 seats. So you see what I mean when I say this was not the sort of overwhelming victory Labour would have liked. The Lib-Dims did not collapse (nor will they, I suspect, in the Euros) and they still control 6 councils, having lost control of 2 and have 427 seats. They lost quite a few but are a long way from the complete implosion predicted for them. It gives me no pleasure to have to say this but it is true.

UKIP, as we have been told by all and sundry, have done well though (and this we have not been told) not quite as well as they had hoped, staying well behind the Lib-Dims. No councils passed into their control, unlike last time with Lincoln, but they do have 163 councillors as well as those elected last time round who are still  in UKIP.

There 68 independent councillors, 53 Residents Association ones and only 36 Green. I have seen one prediction that places the Greens ahead of the Lib-Dims in every region of the Euros but I find that hard to credit. The real Liberal party retained 2 seats and the BNP 1, as did Independent Community Health Concern and Respect, I am delighted to say, lost the one seat they had, all of which reminds us that local elections are often decided on local issues and have little relevance to national politics, which is as it should be. 31 councils, 7 more than last time, now have no overall control, which is also a good thing, in my opinion.

Let us not forget that there were local elections in Northern Ireland as well and the results are helpfully published on the BBC website, though I must admit to a complete lack of understanding of the system. The DUP came top with Sinn Fein second, which is more or less what one expected but someone else has to analyse the results in any detail.

That campaign so far

Eight days to go to the European and local elections and I imagine that all readers of this blog have been overwhelmed by the glossy and meaningless literature that seems to be what election campaigns consist of these days. There is something to be said for abolishing that right to free postage so that parties start considering a little more carefully what they send out to stupefy the electorate. Of course, they can always hire cheap immigrant labour to deliver leaflets but they will not have that free post.

This year's crop has been outstandingly dire in both content and design. The first Labour leaflet I received had a big picture of Ed Miliband looking solemn and the message: "Only Labour will tackle the cost-of-living crisis". Reading this and glancing through the other items: NHS, "free" childcare, housing crisis and soaring energy bills, I could not help wondering whether the party in question had the first idea of which particular elections were coming up. For Mr Miliband's information, none of that can be solved in the European Parliament and very little at the local level.

Actually, tucked away in a corner there was a reference to MEPs who are fighting for jobs and growth (mostly their own jobs and the growth of their waistlines) because, forsooth, we would lose 3.5 million jobs if we left the EU. It seems quite extraordinary that anyone should come up with that particular chestnut still or to think that Britain's membership of the EU somehow depends on the MEPs.

Since then I have also received the Labour leaflet for the local election in which they promise to cut taxes (having clearly forgotten that when they controlled the council, our local tax rate was among the highest in London) and to protect the NHS or the local hospitals or something like that. Nobody, I may add, has been able to explain precisely what the plans are about local hospitals and what alternatives there might be to the projected rearrangements, known by some campaigners and the Labour party as cuts. Nevertheless, it is a bad sign for the Labour party that all they can campaign on is the NHS.

I was not altogether surprised to read that they are now behind the Conservatives in opinion polls, a most unusual situation at this stage of the electoral cycle. It made me recall the 1992 General Election, the first in which UKIP's predecessor, the Anti-Federalist League campaigned. (Yes, it has been around that long.) The day I realized that Labour would lose was when I was accosted by some supporter of theirs who solemnly argued that the real power in the land was the Monday Club. I put my money where my mouth was and eventually won £10 from a friend. Still, Labour can comfort themselves with the thought that opinion polls matter less than the actual election. At least, they might be able to comfort themselves with that thought until next Thursday.

Let's get the unimportant ones out of the way. I have not had any Lib-Dim literature but I gather that they are calling on all of us to re-elect the egregious Sarah Ludford, as ghastly a euro-weenie as I have ever come across and much given to hyperventilation. At one debate she became quite hysterical about people she described as climate deniers. I asked her whether these people actually denied that there was such a thing as a climate. She just gobbled.

The Greens are calling on me to re-elect Jean Lambert but for some reason all the policies are out and out socialist ones, thus proving that saying about watermelons.

Then there is something called the Communities United Party who desperately need a proof-reader to get rid of the inappropriate capitals in their leaflet though I hope they keep the fierce eagle. I am not altogether sure what they are campaigning about as they seem to think all sorts of issues can be solved in the European Parliament and I am not certain that their slogan, Strength in Unity, is entirely appropriate. Reminds me of all those fly-by-night parties that used to appear just before European elections with much fanfare, putting forward "real people" as candidates who invariably demonstrated their reality by knowing nothing about the European Parliament for which they were standing. Mind you, I think that the Communities United Party is against Britain's withdrawal from the European Union though I am not sure I can quite work out their argument.

So we come to the Conservatives, whose local election leaflet does not mention Charing Cross Hospital, possibly because that has more to do with the near-bankrupt Imperial College Healthcare than the local council or possibly because they have some guilty secrets there. They have a certain advantage over the Labour candidates in that they can actually point to a reduction in Council Tax and in debt plus a few achievements that are almost impossible to check. What does 25% reduction in crime mean? Are there really 44 extra police officers in the borough and what do they do? Still, I am reasonably pleased with the 6 new free schools, assuming they have actually opened and the 1,000 affordable homes to buy, assuming they do actually exist.

The more general communication that is aimed at the European Election proves without any doubt that the Conservatives are also using the campaign to fight next year's General Election. On the cover, a picture of their leader, our Prime Minister, the Boy-King himself, speaking rather than looking solemn. Well, looking solemn as he is speaking. What is he offering? A stronger economy at home, renewed respect abroad, real change in Europe. Two out of three are so vague as to be incomprehensible. How do you define renewed respect or real change. Experience with "Europe" tells us that the only real change we ever see is movement towards greater integration.

Moving on into the leaflet, I find out that these are the most important European Elections in a generation as for the "first time since the Eurozone crisis you get to have your say on Britain's relationship with Europe". I am not sure where to start in analyzing that particular piece of nonsense. We get our say on our relationship with Europe by voting for a certain party to send its members to the European Parliament, an institution of the European Union, of which we are a member? Just writing that sentence makes my head spin. Later on we are told that they are fighting to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU which makes about as much sense as people fighting to renegotiate Herefordshire's relationship with the United Kingdom.

Apparently, if we send in the Conservatives, fundamental changes will take place in the EU. Just to prove that we have a pretty picture of the London team with the Leader. Well, to be fair, the Conservatives are the only ones who have a picture of the whole team, regardless of whether they are likely to get in or not. (I doubt if numbers 6, Sheila Lawlor, or 7, Glyn Chambers, will.)

I left UKIP to last, partly because from the point of the view of this blog that could be said to be the most important party and the biggest missed opportunity and partly because it is still possible that they will come top. The great thing about the European Elections is that, because of the list system, nobody really wins but almost everybody does. So, UKIP coming top in the Euros will not produce a political revolution in this country any more than them coming second last time did. In fact, it will do very little unless they can parlay that into some seats in the General Election next year or one or two by-elections before that, of which there is no chance.

So, first things first, the news that Gerard Batten's home was attacked in the early hours of this morning is completely outrageous, regardless of what one thinks of the party. If, indeed, this is part of an organized campaign to intimidate UKIP (just as there was an organized campaign to intimidate the BNP) then it is also incredibly stupid. Do these people really not understand that this sort of violence merely gives their target group extra support? No, I don't suppose they do. At present, the police are investigating the attack so any other comments from me would be superfluous and quite probably factually wrong. (Here is another article that concentrates on Farage and his fears.)

Back to UKIP election literature of which there is more than from any other party. Either they have had another influx of money or what we are seeing is the well-known Farage strategy of throwing everything at one aim and to hell with the future.

To date, I have had two glossy and one newspaper-type leaflets. Mostly they say the same thing over and over again: there are people coming into this country to take away jobs, accommodation and the country in general. That is the main message with all other issues, including actual membership of the EU, becoming subordinate. That is something of a risky strategy: what if, despite being worried about mass immigration, the electorate of this country reacts badly to this kind of naked fear-mongering and hatred of the outsider?

One glossy leaflet had a big picture of the Great Leader on one side and a much smaller picture of Gerard Batten, the London MEP, on the other. It is, of course, important not to have a bigger picture of yourself than that of the Leader, not to have one above that of the Leader and not to look as if you were taller than the Leader.

On the Batten side (small photograph) we have a good deal about "4,000 people a week" coming to live in Britain from the EU and the cost in British jobs, pushed down wages and pressure on schools, health, welfare. I presume that means that people coming from outside the EU do not have that effect. What, I wonder, about the large number of French people who tend to get jobs in the higher ranks of the economy? Not all. Plenty of French work in catering as do plenty of Poles, Spanish (highly incompetent) and others. Also many Brits and Antipodeans. But, undoubtedly, there are pressures on school, health and welfare, all of which need root and branch reform, strongly opposed .... by .... yes, you guessed it, UKIP.

On the Farage side (big picture) we get a paragraph about immigration and then one that makes me think that UKIP could do with some editors:

We have no control over our borders, but we also have no control over who we trade with, how much we pay to heat our homes and feed our families or how we just get on with our lives. 

To think that Mr Farage attended Dulwich College, the alma mater of two of the best twentieth century stylists: P. G. Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler.

The other glossy leaflet concentrated on UKIP's image as the radical, non-political party (just as their Leader is a non-political politician who is really rather a good bloke). Another picture of Nigel Farage inviting us all to join his team and informing us that "we are all going UKIP this year" because of Labour failure on immigration, Tory failure on planning (not strict enough), Liberal (ahem!) sell out to the EU and Green energy price hikes. Note, please, that the EU as a whole comes in third and is attributed only to the Lib-Dims. At least, I assume they do not mean the Liberal Party that is still in existence and is furiously opposed to the European project.

Examples of the "all" are shown by 18 small photos on either side of the Leader, implying that these are people who have seen the light. A quick look through and I recognized about a third as members, activists, candidates and employees of UKIP of long standing, including Sanya-Jeet Thandi who has since left the party. Ah well. Can't win them all.

So, UKIP is not entirely honest in its election literature. So what? Is any party? No, of course not and I think I have made that reasonably clear above. The point is not that UKIP is no worse than anyone else, despite the prevalence of troglodytes among the members, but that their USP, apart from the fear of incomers, is that they are different: not political, not corrupt, not dishonest. Not like the other parties, in other words. That is why it is so damaging when they behave exactly like the other parties and politicians.

Similarly, it would not be a newsworthy item that UKIP employed Latvians at what one assumes were rock bottom wages to deliver their leaflets if their campaign had not concentrated on the subject of immigrant workers taking British jobs and depressing British wages.

Finally, there is the UKIP News, the newspaper-style leaflet, that covers a few issues, the biggest one of which, the one that has the huge main headline: Britain Faces Fresh Wave of Immigrants. Everything else, effect on the City, the European Arrest Warrant, scandalous waste of EU aid projects (as if foreign aid that we give directly was not scandalously wasted and misused), all pale into insignificance.

Do I think this is racist? No. Furthermore, the cries of racism help UKIP in that they can preen themselves as people who are unjustly attacked by demented lefties. As a consequence, they never really have to explain their policies or their statements or how has a party that is supposedly a free-market, vaguely libertarian entity become protectionist, big statist (just read what they say about planning) and backward looking to a rose-coloured view of that tiresome decade, the fifties.

At noon today

I finally switched on my computer (largely because I had an e-mail from a French friend that asked why there were no results) and found the HuffPo summary immediately. No surprises. Labour making gains at the government's expense - it was expected and is not unusual for local elections around half-way through a government's life. Under the Thatcher government this used to happen quite often yet the lady went on to lead her party to victory several times.

Low turn-out? Expected and predicted even by this blog. Labour wins Liverpool's first Mayoral election? well, who thought it would turn out otherwise?

Elsewhere Nottingham, Manchester and Coventry all voted No to the PM's plan to have elected Mayors. A referendum on in Birmingham is likely to produce the same result.

That, I must admit, is excellent news. We do not need any more layers of politicians directly elected by a small proportion of the population who have no real power but lots of money for waste and corruption.

Later on, I shall look up UKIP results so far.

UPDATE: It seems that the turn-out across the country was 32 per cent, a little low even for local elections, which proves my tentative prediction. Most people are disenchanted with the main parties and see no point in voting for a sham local government. However, that disenchantment, for the most part is not turning to votes for smaller parties or independents, which is a pity.

Another unexciting predictions looks likely to come true: UKIP is doing well enough for them to be pleased. Seats taken and in Tunbridge Wells the leader of the council has been defeated by UKIP. Other candidates came second and third. A good enough result but not startling; there will be celebrations in UKIP and no thought to the morrow as usual. It also looks like across the country they will still be behind the Lib-Dims.

ADDENDUM: The Guardian's live blog seems pretty good. Among other things we are told that Doncaster has voted to keep a directly elected Mayor and Peter Davies of the English Democrats remains it. Also, there is speculation that Boris Johnson might actually increase his majority. For 3.05 the blog says:

Ken Livingstone's team are privately conceding defeat in the London mayoral contest. My colleague Hélène Mulholland has been talking to them, and she says they are resigned to Boris Johnson winning. They even think that Johnson will increase his majority. In 2008 Johnson had 53% of the vote when second preferences were included, and Livingstone was on 47%.

I shall refrain from rejoicing until I know for sure but, as I said before, in 2008 LIvingstone's team knew well ahead of the official announcements. As did the bookies who started paying out in the afternoon.

Those elections

For readers who wish to keep up with the news as they come in I recommend PoliticsHome News Liveblog. It seems to be keeping on top of the results as they come in or even as they are rumoured. I might have a look at it from time to time.

It would appear that the predictions about the Lib-Dim vote disappearing were accurate across the country. Conservatives will not do well though it is not clear just how badly. In fact, this live blog on Sky shows that Conservatives are holding on to seats. These are, of course, early results. The idea that you can extrapolate from local elections in 2012 about possible general election results in 2015 can exist only in the overheated imagination of the average hack.

Pretty pictures in the Daily Mail of leaders and spouses.

Some unpleasantness in Bradford towards the end of campaigning. I am sure the Boss will write more about it. The trouble seems to have stemmed from Galloway's thugs. No surprises there. They say they are the victims. No surprises there, either.

There are rumours that Birmingham has voted against a directly elected mayor. Liverpool and Salford are voting for the first time for a Mayor but, according to the Guardian, the voters do not seem to be terribly excited by it all. Can't imagine why not.

And that's enough elections. Ed.

Really, it is not hard to work out

Once upon a time we had general elections and we had local elections and people knew more or less how they worked and who was responsible for which part of our lives. Either way, one could be absolutely certain that the government in whatever form took on far too many responsibilities, which it could not carry out but which involved appointing lots of people in unnecessary jobs, raising taxes, regulating whatever they could and making it clear that we could not make proper decisions for ourselves. But, at least, the system was more or less comprehensible.

How times have changed. Governments, in whatever form, still claim too many responsibilities and we are trusted ever less with the making of decisions but there are several more layers around and many more elections, run on very different lines. In fact, the situation resembles that in certain Balkan countries where there seem to be some kind of elections every few months and nobody quite knows who is being elected to what and according to which method.

London is particularly difficult because we now have a Mayor, who has very few powers though a great deal of money at his disposal and, therefore, a great deal of patronage. There is also an Assembly that has no powers at all, not even to control the Mayor in any real sense; it is, in fact, a very expensive talking shop whose procedures are less well known than those of the European Parliament (another layer that needs to be elected in a completely different way from any other layer).

The GLA elections, which are coming in about three weeks see the largest number of spoilt ballot papers even though the turn-out is never more than about 35 per cent, because of the sheer incomprehensibility of the process. Thus, the Mayor is elected by a single transferable vote with every voter getting two votes to share out between the various candidates. That's quite difficult enough for an electorate that is used to first past the post but there is the extra complication of the Assembly that is voted in partly by FPTP and partly by a top-up system. So, one votes (if one bothers, which one may not as it is such a pointless organization) for an individual in the particular constituency (not to be confused with the boroughs) and also for a party.

After all that and with all the hype that is going on around the KenandBoris show, one must repeat that the Mayor of London has very few powers and those that he does have come from legislation that was passed by Parliament in 1998 and amended in 2007. In other words, those powers are strictly defined and limited by Parliament and cannot be changed neither by the Mayor nor by the Assembly nor by the people of London, should they be asked. (They were asked in the first place whether they wanted a Mayor and an Assembly and the usual thing happened: more than 60 per cent did not bother to turn out and those who did voted overwhelmingly in favour.)

This needs to be remembered and, despite the various difficulties I enumerated above, it is not hard to do so. Why, then, do we get hacks producing articles such as the one in today's Torygraph by the hackette Sue Cameron, entitled The Cities Are Taking Over?

According to this rather ignorant analysis, Labour MPs are set to abandon their seats in droves because they will want to be elected to be Mayors or new Police Commissioners. The Labour High Command is unhappy because that would mean unwelcome by-elections that they might lose.

Why do these people allegedly want to abandon their cosy little nests in Westminster? Because, if you please, power is about to seep to those elected Mayors and Police Commissioners and we shall end up with a quasi-American situation (or the French situation) where local authorities, elected mayors and police commissioners and other suchlike individuals will have far more power than Whitehall.

Really? Let's think about it a little. The powers of all these elected officials, as I said above but it is worth repeating, are very strictly defined and limited by Westminster with the legislation written by Whitehall. Elected mayors or police commissioners will not be in charge of the budget as a good deal of the money will still be decided on by the government and will not be raised locally. Most of the little that will be in their remit, as we can see in London, they have no real control over as there are numerous statutory obligations laid on them by Westminster, Whitehall and Brussels, in whatever order and which they have to fulfil. In what way is power seeping away to the cities? If any of the referendums produce directly elected mayor, the only thing that will achieve is another layer of highly expensive and largely impotent government plus some more elections.

Not that the candidates know the facts any better. I have already written about the independent candidate, Siobhan Benita, whose policies were concerned entirely with matters that were outside the Mayor's remit. Out of some misguided sense of loyalty to the eurosceptic cause I have kept quiet about the UKIP manifesto, which also consists of policies that had nothing to do with the Mayor's remit. But this has now been noted by the Metro newspaper, which has stated quite frankly that UKIP cannot deliver on any of its policies because none of them are matters over which the Mayor has any say. The candidate has agreed with that judgement. It might be a good idea for hacks on supposedly grander newspapers to learn a few of those facts. Surely, it cannot be that hard.

Where does the money go?

Taking time out of the two big stories: Russia where they do not believe politicians and Britain's obsessive need to do so, I have returned to a question I have often asked myself and anyone who did not manage to move out of my vicinity fast enough: just where does the money go? Britain is a fairly rich country and the people in it are, on the whole, well off. Yet there is never any money for what matters.

Businesses are not expanding, not hiring, not investing; charities are short of funds; arts and think-tanks cannot raise enough and don't even ask about research institutions. When asked, we all blame the amount we hand over in taxes here and there yet our public services, whether it be education, transport, police or anything else you care to name, are among the worst in the Western world. So where does the money go?

Here are two stories to be pondered over.

One comes from the Daily Wail but is backed by others, such as the Independent and the Telegraph; even the Grauniad who was responsible for the story in the first place is getting a little tetchy. It seems that Glenn Mulcaire, who was actually arrested in connection with the phone hacking enquiry, could not have been party to the biggest scandal of all, the deletion of Milly Dowler's messages, action that had given the family false hope.

Surrey police is, according to the story in the Indy, desperately looking for yet another NoW journalist who might have been responsible. Or, perhaps not. As the Daily Wail says:

Scotland Yard yesterday said it has absolutely ‘no evidence’ that News of the World journalists deleted Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages.

The police force’s barrister made a dramatic intervention at the Leveson inquiry into press standards.

Neil Garnham QC said the ‘most likely explanation’ for the disappearance of the messages is that they automatically ‘dropped off’ the network after 72 hours.

It seems that the police may have wanted to tell the family this but were not allowed to do so by the family lawyer. Perhaps.

What does seem to be the case is that this huge enquiry, investigation and scandal may have been started on largely false pretences (most of the rest of the "evidence" remains unsupported tales by celebs looking for publicity) and has resulted in the closing down of a newspaper (no, I never read it but that is not the point), the loss of 400 or so jobs and a threat of strict control over the media. Not to mention what looks like a wrongful arrest. Behind it all looms the question that one cannot help asking: given the loud complaints about the police not paying enough attention to crime, not solving more than a tiny proportion, not being able to control looters in the street, why exactly do they spend so much time, money and energy on cases that involve celebrities? (Or travelling to Barcelona to enquire into vague rumours to do with the McCann story?)

Story number two, in the Evening Standard, comes from my neck of the woods, the Borough of Hammersmith of Fulham, whose council, as it happens, is one of the more efficient ones in the country, the White City estate and the Westfield shopping centre, which has been a huge commercial and social success.

Stephen Greenhalgh, who has led Hammersmith and Fulham council for five years and is close to Boris Johnson, wants to help channel Whitehall and local authority funds to the White City Estate in Shepherd's Bush.

He said: "White City has been a huge disappointment over a long period of time in terms of money that has been spent. For example, Westfield opened in the area with 8,000 new jobs and very few of them went locally.

"Nearly £70 million of taxpayers' funds - or £17,000 per household - is spent in this area every year. Despite this, unemployment is twice the borough average, the area has high levels of overcrowding, relatively low educational attainment and relatively high levels of crime." Commentators said the move could lead to similar projects being set up around London.

I recall that when Westfield opened they announced their commitment to local jobs. I also recall that when the snow came most of the shops had to close because the staff could not get in, which would indicate that by then the jobs were not local or that the local talent could not be bothered to walk down the road to the place.

Nevertheless, this is a pertinent question. Just exactly why have only a few of the Westfield jobs gone locally in a high unemployment area? And, even more to the point: what on earth does the £70 million a year go? If Stephen Greenhalgh can find that out he is a better man than most. I await his report with interest. He will report, will he not?

Meanwhile, in West Dunbartonshire ....

Archbishop Cranmer has a better than usual (and that is high praise, indeed) posting on a piece of idiocy by the West Dunbartonshire Council that has decided to ban all goods from Israel, including, of course, as His Grace points out, all books published and printed there. As he rightly asks, why not just burn them all. Nobody thought of that before.

His Grace does not know why these anti-Semites don't just go the whole hog and start burning all books written by Israeli authors. It beggars belief that any democratically-elected municipal council in Britain can get away with such blatant racial prejudice and discrimination. The Council has no concern for the crimes and inhumanities of China, Iran, Sudan, North Korea or Zimbabwe, all of which have appalling records on human rights. Their focus is Israel, and Israel alone.

By this act, West Dunbarton has made anti-Semitism respectable and acceptable in a country whose leader is intent on eradicating all expressions of Protestant-Catholic sectariansm. In the Council, the SNP form the largest group. It is rank hypocrisy with more than a hint of Goebbels.

It would seem that the Council has banned the idea of buying anything new that may have been produced in Israel. That, as His Grace points out, quoting Ray Cookewill present the odd difficulty in that the list of things they will now have to do without is a very long one and includes some important computer equipment and medication.

Read the whole list through one link or the other. No point in my copying it out. What exactly will the people of West Dunbarton think of this?