One year on

Acres of newsprint and hours of broadcast time have already been spent today reviewing the first year of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. I tried to resist the temptation to add my penny's worth but couldn’t, so here is my take on the coalition’s communications operation. In a word it has been shambolic.

I think that stung by the persistent accusations during the election campaign that he was insubstantial, Cameron took office desperate to demonstrate that he was a radical politician with a packed agenda for change. And so the call went out across Whitehall – bring out your white papers, your interventions, your consultations, even your blue sky thinking, prove to the public and more importantly to the commentariat that we aren’t light on policy. But Cameron also wanted to have a more relaxed centre so the command and control model of Number 10 established under Blair was dismantled and Departments were pretty much allowed to do what they wanted. No longer would they have to get every piece of policy signed off by Number 10, neither were they required to run all their communications plans by the Number 10 coms team. The result has been that week after week, departments have announced half-baked policies which more often that not have had to be “clarified”. Tuition fees, forests, health reforms, foundation schools, internships to name but a few. Even yesterday David Willets had to clarify himself on the issue of whether dumb people could get into university if their rich parents coughed up the full cost of tuition. Oh dear.

I can’t recall a single big announcement that has been “clean”. This has had the cumulative effect of making the coalition look incompetent. Of all his problems, this is one that is relatively easy to fix – re-establish a strong centre, check and double check the policy and the handling. This way you can avoid putting your name to the forward of a white paper which if you or one of your staff had read you would have realised was contrary to your views and breached the coalition agreement. Get a grip.

Greetings from Banjul

Very unexpectedly I find myself in The Gambia for at least the next 24 hours after the plane I was taking from Monrovia developed a communications problem (not one I could resolve) and the flight was abandoned last night just an hour and a half into the journey. The upside is that we were put up in a pretty good hotel and I spent the day by the pool. The Gambia lived up to all expectations. I can completely see why birdwatchers flock here – there were vultures and eagles roosting in trees in the hotel grounds, egrets wandering around the pool area. Alas, there were a few old English birds there as well. Yes, the other expectation The Gambia lived up to was the preponderance of British women sex tourists. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable and yet very curious, I put a couple of women and their “dates” under surveillance (I would have so loved to have been a spy). I managed to do a good 15 minutes of quality eavesdropping while they were changing money. It was all pretty tawdry – bottle blonde grandmothers with chipped nail polish and too tight clothes, handing over wads of cash to young Gambian men who were laughing and joking about the good time they were all going to have. The most jarring thing was that the grannies had west country accents – it was as if Jolene and Clarrie from The Archers had stolen the takings from The Bull and ran off for a bit of the other in Africa. Very unsettling.

All that said, I would still like to come back to The Gambia – dry heat, beautiful beaches and amazing wildlife. But I shall probably not come solo.

Rainy season

It is raining here in Monrovia. As those of you who have travelled with me know, I tend to be a bit of a talisman when it comes to rain. I have brought torrential downpours to the deserts of New Mexico and Dubai, to the South African high veldt I the dry season and to Provence in July. On one trip to Hong Kong it rained from the moment my plane touched down until I left six days later, only to resume for the 90 minutes I was in transit from The Philippines on the way back from a rain-soaked island break.

But in all my years, in all my travels, I have never experienced rain like the rain that is falling here. Not that I am claiming responsibility for this precipitation. On the contrary, this rain is on schedule. The rainy season officially started here on 15 April and will continue for the next six months, although there is normally a lull in the second half of August (hence my relatively dry visit last time around). This isn’t the kind of rainy season you get in some parts of the world when it rains for a couple of hours at around the same time every day and that’s that. Oh no. Here the skies empty at any time and the sheets of water pelt down for hours, sometimes days at a time. Very little can be heard above the it, it muffles all sound. To put it in perspective Liberia gets more rain in a single month than we do in an entire year in the UK. That they manage to get any kind of infrastructure work done in these conditions is simply amazing. But somehow they do. What has struck me since I was last here is how much better the roads are. There are also many more businesses open, more restaurants and supermarkets and more airlines flying here – Air France started flights from Paris last week. The country is poor, very poor but it is slowly but surely rebuilding itself after years of brutal civil war. And people are cheery in spite of the rain.

If ever you are in West Africa during the rains, it is worth knowing:

1. it is still hot - locals will tell you otherwise and shiver in jackets and sweaters but for those of us more used to northern Europe it is hot, hot, hot

2. there is no point wearing any make up as it melts off your face

3. don’t wear suede or fabric shoes

4. on the plus side you can go easy on the moisturiser

5. no matter how much you think you have dried your hair, you haven’t and don’t even get me started on managing the frizz

Monrovia bound

So, here I am again, I am sitting in Brussels airport en route to Liberia. And once again I have just left another job. I realise the “I am going to do a stint in Liberia” fast risks becoming a euphemism for “unemployed” but rest assured it isn’t.

Anyway it is Easter Sunday, the airport is deserted and I have yet to break my Lenten fast – that is to say I haven’t eaten any chocolate yet. Despite the very early hour, I do want to but it turns out even though I am in the home of chocolate, the only product on offer in the transfer lounge is a giant Toberlone. I just don’t think even after 40 days of abstention I am ready for “triangular chocolate from triangular trees and triangular honey from triangular bees”.

I am very excited to be returning to Monrovia. I fell in love with the place last summer and am looking forward to catching up with all the remarkable people in the administration of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that I met last time. It is an amazing country which is making rapid strides after years of the most brutal civil war and I am proud to be playing a part, albeit a tiny one, in helping it recover and thrive.

A quick look at the BBC website weather page tells me that it is hot and wet there so the Joseph barnet will be in full ’fro mode. There will be no photos.

Happy Easter

(Once again Brussels airport's promise of free wifi was not fulfilled, so this is coming to you direct from Monrovia where there is wifi and it is hot and sticky - more soon)

AV - no thanks

I have just completed my postal ballot for the referendum. I voted no. No hesitation, no um-ing or ah-ing. It isn't that I haven't thought about it. On the contrary I have been reflecting on increasing equity in democratic systems for years now. I just don't think AV delivers better democracy for a number of reasons:

1. It rewards mediocrity - it is perfectly possible for a candidate who was no one's first choice to win on second preferences. That can't be right.

2. It will encourage vanilla candidates standing on vanilla tickets - rather than seeking to differentiate themselves from their opponents, candidates will want to highlight (at least to voters who aren't going to give them their first preference vote) the things they have in common with them. There will be no incentive for serious candidates to have strong views or platforms.

3. It ends the notion of one person, one vote and even worse some people's votes will count more than others. People whose first preferences are for the least popular candidates get a "do over". Their vote for their favoured candidate is wasted but their second vote counts.

4. It will not see an end to tactical voting, just make it even more complicated.

5. I am afraid AV will not by stop political corruption or misdeeds. For a start it is worth remembering that most politicians are decent and do we really think the dodgy ones are going to modify their behaviour because of the means by which they are elected. Corruption is dealt with by eliminating the incentive (e.g. getting to grips with MP remuneration) and punishing transgressors effectively (while the banging up of David Chaytor and Eric Illsley sends out a message one does wonder why the others appear to have escape punishment).

5. AV will lead to more coalitions. I don't really need to say more but for those of you with any doubts just remember that coalitions are the ultimate get out of jail free cards - "we would love to stick to our election promise but for the good of the country (stability and confidence I think they called it) we are now in a coalition which won't allow us to." So all that careful calculation of who you want to win and how you use your preferences flies out the window because the parties in the governing coalition abandon their principles for the sweet taste of power. Tuition fees anyone?

6. Even "yes" campaigners don't like AV. They know it is a fudge but see it as a staging post to proportional representation.

7. It is too complicated. We have trouble enough getting people to vote in our current first past the post system I am just not convinced that AV will encourage more people to engage with the democratic process.

I could go on. The fact of the matter is that while I accept that there are weaknesses in the first past the post and if we were starting from scratch we probably won't start here but it works for us. We know where we stand - winner takes all - and we like that. I realise that what with my views on the reform of the House of Lords I am now appearing to be at least constitutionally conservative. Actually I am not ideologically opposed to constitutional reform indeed I would welcome changes which increase fairness in the democratic settlement. But in my view AV will increase the democratic deficit rather than decrease it. Vote No.

Who are you calling Great?

At his Q&A session at the University of Qatar yesterday, David Cameron was asked how he was going to make Britain "Great" again. Cameron starting banging on about Britain's universities, its inventions, its language. It wasn't his best response of the day but since he no doubt had spent the morning preparing for questions on Libya, the Middle East and football, I am not going to criticise. I am more interested in the question rather than his answer since it rather supposes that Britain is no longer "Great" and that it is obvious that we should be working to make it Great again. Well Britain is great in many respects but I am pretty sure not in the way the questioner meant. I am certain she was talking about Britain's status in the world, our place on the international stage. Now I am not saying we are now insignificant but we are kidding ourselves if we think we are still Great. Britain likes to think of itself as Great and use our permanent seat on the UN Security Committee, our membership of the G8, our "special relationship" with the US (how many acres of newsprint will be spent on as a result of the Obama state visit) this as evidence of its greatness. But just a look at our shambolic efforts to evacuate British nationals from Libya will tell you otherwise. While the Polish president was sending his official jet to Tripoli, the Montenegrins a liner and the Turks trucks to get their citizens home, we were was still scrambling about trying to find a spare plane. FCO officials have reportedly been negotiating with a supplier for the lease of a plane - I am a bit confused why we weren't able to use RAF aircraft that we actually own. The truth is Britain is no more powerful politically than France or Germany but this is only bad if we don't accept it. Equally, Britain has immense cultural power globally beating France, Germany and so many others. Perhaps Cameron wasn't too much off the beat after all.

Creating a drama

Last night I went to the theatre. Not that unusual, I probably go one or twice a month. But last night I saw the best thing I have ever seen on the stage (so far): Frankenstein at the National. It was directed by Danny Boyle whose film work I greatly admire but how, I and the rest of the audience wondered, would he manage in this very different medium? In a word: tremendously. Of course it helped that he had a great cast but he delivered a play which emphasised the humanity of the creature - a monster because we made him so. The opening sequence in which we see the Creature emerge from its artifical womb, bloody, naked, vulnerable, was won of the most mesmorising I have ever seen. Last night the Creature was played by Benedict Cumberbatch while Jonny Lee Miller was the misguided egotistical scientist (the schtick of the play if they need one is that Cumberbatch and Miller will switch roles every night). Both were extraordinary. I would also give a special mention to lighting and design teams on the production which were simple yet exceptionally powerful. Get a ticket if you can.