Stephen Henderson delves into the story of how Glasgow Rangers FC went bust

Just the facts

On last Tuesday Rangers Football Club (RFC), under the control of owner Craig Whyte, entered administration and were docked 10 league points by the SPL. The proximate cause was £9 million of unpaid PAYE and NI remittances subtracted as normal from players and other employee’s wages but withheld from HMRC.

They leave behind a trail of unpaid creditors, including millions in player fees to other clubs, ticket money owed to several SPL clubs, fees to police and stewards for match day security, and a potential liability of £49 million for a controversial tax avoidance vehicle (the EBT, or “the big tax bill”) to be decided by a tribunal very soon.

All this follows an earlier court ordered seizure of around £3 million (the “wee tax bill”) earlier in the season. Then there is the controversial £25 million or so they have taken from a finance company called Ticketus to purchase a share of 3 or possibly 4 years future season tickets, and secured upon… well, who knows? This is a key question hanging over RFC future.

And what exactly was this Ticketus money used for if all these taxes and bills have gone unpaid? The administrators have confirmed that this money did not pass through RFC accounts. When Craig Whyte bought the club for a symbolic £1 last season he also had to pay off the bank debt to HBOS of £20 million.

Craig Whyte

He denies that he used the Ticketus money – effectively RFC own revenues to pay off their existing bank debt – but as of last night this looks increasingly likely to be exactly what happened.

Craig Whyte has previously been disqualified from being a director for 7 years after cheating the HMRC and other creditors when his company Vital UK was liquidated. He has been a director of many other companies but few still exist.

All in all the minutiae of RFC finances are very opaque, as Craig Whyte has avoided publishing audited accounts since he took charge and the administrators Duff and Phelps are not very forthcoming (yet).

The wider picture is crystal clear though. Even if RFC somehow win their ‘big tax case’ and can engineer a quite incredible deal with HMRC and other creditors they (or rather their parent company) have still signed away most of their season ticket sales for the next few years, effectively they have spent tomorrows revenues already. That is the highly optimistic outcome.

How did it come to this?

In truth though, whilst the reputation of Craig Whyte has been sullied, he is not the real cause of Rangers’ problems.

They have been brought low by the hubris of their previous owner Sir David Murray in pursuing a vainglorious Champions League dream, his banker friends that let them run up unsustainable debts, a supine board that approved a suicidal tax dodge, and a docile Scottish media that denied, ignored, or perhaps just didn’t understand RFC financial and legal problems.

Yesterday a number of irate RFC fans gathered outside Ibrox to protest their plight to the gathered media, but when one was heard to bewail to a reporter, “No-one warned us!,” there was an audible crash of jaws dropping all over Glasgow. For years Celtic fans with a business background had been poring over RFC accounts and predicting certain doom. Wishful thinking?

Close to a hundred million of debts run-up during RFCs earlier futile 90s assault on the Champions League were absorbed into Sir David Murrays parent company (MIH), but a persistent deficit of tens of millions was being run and the club was only deemed sustainable by auditors due to the remarkable valuation of club assets – and in particular their stadium Ibrox.

Then came the credit crunch and Rangers previous lenders Bank of Scotland were replaced by the new merged Lloyds-HBOS (or rather Uberior Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary) – and they didn’t like what they saw. HBOS were owed close to £1 billion by MIH (including the absorbed £100 million or so RFC losses) and around a further £20 million by RFC itself.

Then RFC had some monumentally bad luck. During an investigation over player transfer payments, Ibrox was raided by investigators and documents seized.

Nothing is believed to have come of this particular investigation. Coincidentally or not, shortly after this rumours started circulating of a potentially very large liability to the HMRC (the £49m “big tax case”).

RFC at this time actually went through a successful period on the field winning SPL titles, but when the board continued to spend lavishly on players, the bank appointed a controlling director and effectively demanded the club be sold. The RFC debts were small change compared to the parent company MIH but pressurizing or even downsizing RFC was deemed politically toxic.

The media

All of this was little reported by the Scottish Press.

The best that can be said of them is that they did not understand what was happening, but some would say that the sports reporters in particular were fans with keyboards, or that their readers and listeners didn’t want stories like that.

Alternatively you might say that most sports reporting was inside gossip from RFC or other the clubs, lobby briefing, churnalism — not investigation. On the debts and “big tax case” their RFC sources were understandably silent.

However Celtic fans knew all about it. They were long disenchanted with the Scottish Press and had developed a thriving online community of podcasts, fan forums, blogs, and websites.

An Irish freelance reporter Phil McGiollabhain was the first to find a reliable source that confirmed the £49 million tax bill, and thereafter he and others in this online community dissected every new development in RFC plight with glee and unrivalled accuracy. In particular the Rangers Tax Case blog and their various contributors have become the experts on all RFC travails over the last couple of years.

Indeed in the past few weeks, as the Scottish press have finally been forced into covering this story properly, they have taken to regurgitating months old information from Rangers Tax Case as “exclusives”.

Nevertheless when Craig Whyte finally took RFC off David Murray and HBOS hands near the end of last season the Scottish Press ignored the incredulous derision of the Celtic blogosphere and hailed him as a “billionaire” savior who would invest millions into the club.

Celtic fans were momentarily taken aback having initially christened Craig Whytes bid as a #fakeover on Twitter, just more moonbeams from the Ibrox club.

Why after all would someone buy a club with an impending £49 million debt hanging over it? So when Craig Whyte paid off the bank and bough RFC from Murray for a pound their fans were jubilant. And yet despite this the question still remained unanswered – Why would someone buy a club with an impending £49m debt hanging over it?

What now?

In many ways the RFC story is Scotland’s answer to the phone-hacking scandal as it involves a nexus of powerful intertwined themes: A complicit media, financial cronyism, the credit crunch, tax evasion, politics, and of course celebrity of the best kind: Footballers.

To me however, it shines a light on a wider theme. Many are for the first time looking at RFC and particularly Craig Whyte’s recent maneuverings and asking: How do they get away with that? Shouldn’t someone go to jail? If that is not illegal, shouldn’t it be?

Craig Whyte is somewhat a figure of fun in Scotland; few believe him a billionaire these days and fewer still a ‘savior’. And yet is he really so different to the previous owner David Murray, whose MIH ran up close to £1 billion in bad debts now saddled upon the taxpayer owned HBOS?

The politics of the situation are now toxic. Politicians from the SNP and Scottish Labour initially made positive noises about a favorable settlement for RFC although it’s not clear that they can influence HMRC in any way.

In recent days most have gone quiet though. They have been taken aback by the negative response from the Scottish public, on phone-ins, on letters pages, and on Twitter. There is a very sizeable part of the Scottish public, far larger than just the Celtic fans that do not want to see an easy deal for RFC.

Some point to Donaghy of Govan the nearby construction company with 175 employees, almost the same as RFC, who always paid their taxes, went bust last week – but attracted no calls for clemency, or indeed any support from politicians.

Other Scottish football fans remember well the words of Sir David Murray himself in 2002 when one of his own companies pushed Airdrieonians FC into liquidation for a debt of around £30,000:

“I feel very sorry for Airdrie and their supporters but we’re running a business. We have given them repeated warnings and felt they were playing on our good nature.”

See also:

• Scotland unites in wanting to save Rangers - Ed Jacobs, February 15th 2012

• SNP’s anti-sectarianism bill unites the opposition - Ed Jacobs, December 15th 2011

• Labour: Anti-sectarian legislation is right in spirit, but flawed in execution - James Kelly MSP, November 7th 2011

• Sectarian Law will address “ugly element” within Scottish society - John Finnie MSP, November 3rd 2011

• Has racism returned to football? - Shamik Das, October 25th 2011

Ken Livingstone’s ‘fare deal’ campaign has been criticised by his old foe Andrew Gilligan today, in what is, depending who you listen to, a devastating attack, a desperate smear, or a fair demonstration of a communication problem in Livingstone’s campaign.

At the risk of spoiling the surprise, we believe it’s the latter.

Gilligan column in the Telegraph relies on some back-of-the-envelope calculations to show that Ken’s claim that his 7 per cent fare cut will save “the average London £1000 pounds over four years” cannot be true.

Gilligan writes:

TfL says Livingstone’s proposed fares cut will cost it £1.12 billion in revenue over the four years of a mayoral term…

There are, conservatively, seven and a half million Londoners. If Ken is telling the truth about our average saving, that is a loss of revenue to TfL of 7.5 million times £1000. In other words, TfL would lose £7.5 billion, not £1.12 billion.

Dividing £1.12 billion by 7.5 million people produces an average saving per Londoner over the four years of £149.30 – little more than a tenth of what Ken claims. The average saving per year will be £37.32 – 72p a week.

A rather large discrepancy. But at least some of it seems to come from a confusion over what is being compared to what.

TfL’s costings – the £1.12 billion figure – are comparing a plan with a seven per cent fare cut to one with no fare cut, as Channel Four explain:

TfL argues that if Mr Livingstone was to cut fares by seven per cent, the move would reduce the income from fares by £1.12 billion over this parliament. This money is already factored into the budget and if it disappeared it would have to be taken from somewhere else.

But Ken’s costings are comparing his proposed fare cuts to Boris Johnson’s proposed above inflation increases:

Ken’s fare deal will save Londoners £1000… The additional annual cost of Boris Johnson’s inflation-busting fares varies from £260 to nearly £460.

Over 4 years the difference between Ken Livingstone’s fares cuts and Boris Johnson’s above-inflation increases will easily accumulate to over £1,000 on average.

Ken’s fare cuts will save Londoners £1000 over four years compared to the increases of his rival, but that will not equal £250 more in your pocket next year than this year.

Whether this lack of clarity is intentional or not, it does leave Livingstone open to accusations of misleading the public. As Gilligan’s call-out shows, what he seems to be saying is not possible; but what he is actually offering is still worth boasting about.

See also:

• London mayoral race now too close to call (but Boris is leading on paper) – Alex Hern, February 13th 2012

• Ken stays ahead as Boris doubles-down on blaming young people for youth unemployment – Alex Hern, January 23rd 2012

• Boris Johnson’s words show he doesn’t care about young people – Val Shawcross AM, January 20th 2012

• Ken pulls ahead of “increasingly out of touch” Boris – Shamik Das, January 19th 2012

• Boris’s retreat from accountability over the Met should worry us all – January 16th 2012, Joanne McCartney AM

By Izzy Koksal

Over the weekend, employment minister Chris Grayling attempted to defend his government’s workfare program; but he did so with smears, falsehoods and distractions. Nearly every point he makes can, and should, be rebutted.

He attempts to hide the widespread public outrage that there is about workfare by suggesting that it is ‘misguided left-wing commentators, newspapers, broadcasters, trade unions and lawyers’ who are the ones who are driving the campaign against workfare.

In fact, last week it was concerned citizens who used their Twitter and Facebook accounts to bombard Tesco with calls to end their involvement in government workfare schemes. Actions against workfare are being organised up and down the country for a national day of action on March 3rd.

Yet he is clearly too afraid to acknowledge that the campaign is supported and being driven by the public.

He goes on to claim that the groups he identifies as behind the outcry against workfare are harming the job prospects of the young unemployed.

I am one of the one million young unemployed people, and I have been involved in the campaign group Boycott Workfare – the idea that by challenging workfare I am harming my own and others job prospects is ludicrous.

By challenging workfare, we are saying that forcing people to work for no pay is simply wrong.

Not only is it wrong, but it may actually reduce young people’s job prospects – workfare placements reduce the amount of time that job seekers can search for a real paid job and forced labour is hardly a positive addition to one’s CV.

Workfare threatens those who are already in paid jobs as companies take on free labour from the Job Centre reducing the need for them to employ people or give overtime.

Grayling claims the work experience scheme is:

“An entirely voluntary scheme; no one is obliged to take part.”

However, the young person finds themselves quickly obliged/ forced to take part.

Once a young person has ‘expressed an interest’ in a work experience placement, they must complete the 8 week placement, with a one week grace period during which they can leave. After this first week, the job seeker’s attendance is then compulsory or else they face the threat of sanctions.

Furthermore, if a young job seeker refuses a work experience placement they may be considered for another of the government’s workfare schemes, ‘mandatory work activity’ in which the job seeker must work for up to 30 hours a week over a four week period or else face sanctions.

The coercion in this scheme is quite blatant - the DWP’s own documents make this quite clear, stating:

“Attendance will become mandatory.”

He goes on to emphasise:

“We won’t and don’t force anyone to take a work experience placement.”

However, under another government scheme, the work programme, private providers have the power to force young people to do workfare, this time for up to six months, or else face sanctions. In this instance then, the mandating of workfare to the job seeker is being outsourced to private companies at great cost to the tax payer.

Grayling then goes on to attack the Guardian and BBC as ‘work snobs’, highlighting the unpaid work experience that they offer. But here he confuses the issues at hand.

Yes, unpaid work experience placements or internships are an important issue that must be addressed as they prevent working class young people from entering the professions which now require you to have done an internship, but this is different from workfare, in which people are forced to work for their benefits.

The Guardian and the BBC have not signed up to the government’s workfare programmes and therefore are not complicit with taking on workers whom they know could face losing their benefits if they decided to withdraw from the placement. The Guardian and the BBC therefore do not employ forced unpaid labour, although their use of unpaid labour is still morally and ethically dubious.

Finally, Grayling is notably silent on another workfare issue highlighted last week; forcing disabled people onto workfare for an unlimited time period. Clearly, he cannot even come up with a botched argument to put to this indefensible act.

To be a little generous to him, Grayling does get one point right: He claims that if the government did happen to mandate people to work for a big company, they would not take the mandated labour. And this is increasingly the case: Waterstones, Sainsburys, TK Maxx, Maplin, and the 99p stores have all withdrawn from the government’s workfare schemes.

Grayling’s response to those concerned about workfare was not just a sickening read because of its patronising and smug tone, but because of the clear falsehoods that it contained. The real hypocrisy is a government who claims to be acting in the interests of young people, when in fact it is forcing them into unpaid work with the threat of destitution if they do not comply.

See also:

• Tesco’s unpaid labour shows the flaw at the heart of workfare – Alex Hern, February 16th 2012

• Five reasons Clegg can’t stand on his social mobility record – Alex Hern, January 12th 2012

• 2012: The year ahead for young people – Alex Hern, January 7th 2012

• Why workfare won’t work – Stephen Evans, November 8th 2010

• Alexander: Welfare reform is meaningless amidst jobless recovery – Liam R Thompson, November 5th 2010

John Biggs is a Labour member of the London Assembly for City and East

The London Assembly’s Economy, Culture and Sport Committee published a report this week entitled, “Sold Out? Update on ticketing for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games”

We raised a number of issues with the way LOCOG are dealing with the selling of tickets to the London 2012 Olympics. The main one being that they are refusing to explain the status of the 7 million tickets they have already sold (out of a total of 11 million).

We would like to know who will be attending the Games and how they got their tickets. The general breakdown for all the tickets is as follows:

• 75 per cent for purchase through UK Application process

• 12 per cent for purchase through National Olympic Committees, primarily International Public

• 8 per cent for purchase by sponsors and stakeholders

• 5 per cent remaining for purchase by the International Olympic Committee, international federations, other global sports bodies represented at the Games, international broadcast rights holders & prestige ticketing partners.

When the ticketing process was launched Seb Coe confirmed that for the prestige events the 75 per cent figure would drop. LOCOG have confirmed that only 50 per cent of tickets for the 100m final will be available to the British public.

So why are LOCOG refusing to come clean? They have told us that “data protection rules” and “the need to maintain commercial confidentiality” are reasons why they cannot provide such information until after the Games.

After the publication of the report they said:

“We have always said we will publish information on ticketing when we have a complete and accurate set of data and information.”

However that misses the point. We are not asking for a complete picture of the situation. We are asking for a snapshot of the ticket sales process as it stands today.

This same problem happened during the Sydney Olympics, when SOCOG was forced to provide the information after public pressure. A parliamentary report after the games stated that:

“SOCOG should have recognised [earlier] the importance Australians place on transparent and fair processes and released details of the number of tickets available to the public for each session prior to the public ballot”.

I asked, “Why the secrets if LOCOG have nothing to hide?” Let me tell you what I think they are hiding and why this is.

They have already said that 50 per cent of tickets to the men’s 100m final are available to the general British public, but how many other sports also have this 50 per cent availability? Track Cycling, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Triathlon, Modern Pentathlon, Equestrian (cross country) were the most popular sports during the original ticket ballot.

What happens if LOCOG have given lots of tickets to sponsors for these popular events, leaving the British public to fight over just 50 per cent of the seats?

Conversely, the sports that are yet to sell out, such as 1.5m football tickets, may have 95 per cent of tickets available to the British public, as the sponsors will know they are not that popular. Cadbury will make more money running a competition for a 100m final ticket in the Olympic Stadium than they will for a football ticket for Uzbekistan v Papua New Guinea in Coventry.

I think that they are worried about the reaction if the British public knew the real figure of how many tickets they are actually eligible for and in what sports. That is what they have to hide and why they are keeping secrets.

See also:

• London 2012: 200 days to drop Dow – Barry Gardiner MP, January 9th 2012

• How the Olympics privatised your mouth – Alex Hern, January 3rd 2012

• A toxic cloud over London 2012 – Barry Gardiner MP, November 4th 2011

• How we sold off the right to protest to the one per cent – Alex Hern, November 3rd 2011

• Boris fiddles as London prepares for transport chaos – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

By Cllr Sanchia Alasia (Labour, Albion ward, Barking and Dagenham)

There is a real possibility that in this year’s French presidential elections the far right Front National could increase their support. Marine Le Pen, daughter of 2002 runner-up Jean-Marie Le Pen, is currently set to come in third out of the potential 15 candidates.

Le Pen Snr. was last night convicted of contesting crimes against humanity by a Paris court, having described the Nazi occupation as “not particularly inhumane”.

Having campaigned against the London regional organiser of the BNP, Robert William Bailey – a sitting councillor at the time in the May 2010 local council elections – and taking back his council seat for Labour, I know only too well the dangers of the far right gaining political ground and the nasty vicious campaigns they run.

Nick Griffin was a real threat to Margaret Hodge MP and campaigning against the BNP and speaking to some of their supporters on the door step was not always a pleasant experience.

Although the BNP have lost political power in Barking and Dagenham, they still have a lot of support from residents there. An increase in the share of the vote for Marine Le Pen may serve to strengthen their political position, giving them credence to maintain their seat in the upcoming London Assembly elections.

Le Pen has so far not made race and ethnicity an overt part of her campaign although the anti-European stance is clearer. This clever tactic demonstrates the sophistication with which this far right party is operating, seeking to appeal to the ordinary working class citizen, who may be discontent with the status quo, where most of her ground is currently being gained.

Anti-fascists in Britain ought to keep a close eye on the share of the vote Marine Le Pen gets and hope it goes down.

Year on year the BNP share of the vote has reduced from 14.5% in 2007 to 8.3% last year, a downtrend we should all wish to sustain.

See also:

• Is François Hollande the next president of France? – Jack Storry, February 9th 2012

• Getting to the roots of far right xenophobia – Dr Matthew Goodwin, April 9th 2011

• EDL leader is ex-BNP thug – Shamik Das, June 28th 2010

• BNP booted out of Barking – Shamik Das, May 7th 2010

• BNP high-flier suspended from London Assembly for lying about murders – Shamik Das, September 25th 2009

Less than a year after the government pledged a “quantum leap” in transparency, the Ministry of Justice is now calling for a massive rethink on the freedom of information act (FOIA), even suggesting that higher fees should be charged for an answer.

The Guardian reports:

The survey of civil servants undertaken by the Ministry of Justice for the parliamentary inquiry discloses they do not believe the act has improved government, one of its key benchmarks. The report says: “Most officials agreed that the same issues would have been discussed and the same decisions reached had the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] not been in place.”

The survey also revealed a frustration at the way in which “serial or vexatious requesters waste time and money by pushing their request through the internal review process and up to the information commissioner”. Some believed that such cases should incur a higher fee at a lower threshold of civil service time.’

Labour’s shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter condemned the news, saying:

A charge payable for each freedom of information request is nothing less than a tax on transparency.

Freedom of Information is a step towards healthy governance. It permits scrutiny of those in power in central and local government and devolved administrations. Introducing a charge is a potential backward step, and will unravel Labour’s drive to open up the public sector to wider scrutiny.

Currently, the FOIA allows for charges related to packaging the information and sending it to the requester – physical costs like photocopying and postage – but charging explicitly to discourage requests would be a large step away from transparency in government.

This news comes just a month after Lisa Nandy MP revealed on Left Foot Forward that the information commissioner was investigating education secretary Michael Gove over his department’s deletion of emails in an effort to avoid FoI requests.

Nandy wrote:

Since taking office Gove has proven evasive on a succession of key questions.

He refuses to reveal the cost of his free schools programme.

He wouldn’t answer my parliamentary questions about the grant he awarded, without tender, to the New Schools Network until he was ordered to by the House of Commons’ procedure committee.

He had to be ordered to answer a freedom of information request about the same subject by the Information Commissioner.

He refuses to release details of consultation by academies, and won’t publish the minutes of discussions at the DfE board (the department releases only basic headings).

It makes you wonder what it is that Gove has to hide. Perhaps when the Information Commissioner concludes his complaints, we might discover the answer.

All this after Francis Maude boasted last June that:

The new commitments represent a quantum leap in government transparency and will radically help to drive better public services.

Of course, given that a quantum leap actually takes place on a subatomic level and is one of the smallest movements it is possible to conceive of, this may be a masterful piece of physics-related trolling from the cabinet secretary. Or not.

See also:

• What was hiding behind the boat: Information commissioner is investigating Gove – Lisa Nandy MP, January 17th 2012

• Over 10,000 children under 13 in cells every year must be stopped – Sophie Willett, December 13th 2011

• Warnings that Scotland lagging behind England on FoI – Ed Jacobs, August 5th 2011

• Government rhetoric on transparency doesn’t match the reality – Claire French, April 7th 2011

• Coalition’s “transparency trailblazer” Pickles refuses FoI request – Liam R Thompson, November 1st 2010

The latest YouGov opinion poll, released today, shows Boris Johnson scraping back into the lead in the race for the London mayoralty.

When pitted head to head, the incumbent mayor emerges with 51 per cent support, to 49 per cent for Ken Livingstone. With a margin of error of two per cent, however, the race is literally too close to call.

However, just as with last time we ran a report about opinion polls for the London mayoralty, the most interesting findings are the secondary ones.

Assessing Livingstone’s recent bounce, the Evening Standard report:

Mr Livingstone’s promise to cut fares was the secret of his comeback. The promise was approved by 68 per cent of Londoners with more than a third naming it the one election pledge so far that most appealed to them.

However, the survey of 1,106 Londoners found that fewer than half the voters, 46 per cent, think Mr Livingstone would fulfil the promise.

The 22 per cent of Londoners who approve of the promise but don’t believe it will be kept do not seem to be a surprise to Ken’s campaign, however; two weeks ago, he was already making overtures to them, telling LabourList:

Fares will be cut and today I’m setting the date for London’s liberation from the high fares of the current mayor.

My commitment to carrying out this cut is such that I give my word that if I do not cut the fares on or by October 7th I will resign the office of Mayor immediately and cause a by-election.

In other mayoral race news, BBC London’s politics show revealed yesterday that miscounting by the mayor’s office had led to over £2 billion being wrongly added to the overall GLA budget.

A statement blamed:

A clerical error arising from issues of presentation of Crossrail spending and double counting of capital spending for TFL.

Responding to the news, a spokesman for Ken Livingstone told Left Foot Forward:

Now we have seen Boris Johnson’s failure to get a grip of the most basic details of the GLA’s finances and it’s Londoners who are paying the price for his incompetence.

See also:

• Ken stays ahead as Boris doubles-down on blaming young people for youth unemployment – Alex Hern, January 23rd 2012

• Boris Johnson’s words show he doesn’t care about young people – Val Shawcross AM, January 20th 2012

• Ken pulls ahead of “increasingly out of touch” Boris – Shamik Das, January 19th 2012

• Boris’s retreat from accountability over the Met should worry us all – January 16th 2012, Joanne McCartney AM

• It’s official: the 50p tax rate raises revenue – Alex Hern, January 9th 2012

The leadership of Sinn Féin will meet today to take stock of the party’s historic mission to unify the island of Ireland.

90 years after the partition of the country, following Ireland’s War of Independence and the subsequent treaty with Britain, 100 key party figures will gather at a hotel in Drogheda Co Louth in the Irish Republic to plot their next moves in turning a long-cherished dream into reality.

This gathering of the republican elite follows a series of mass meetings across Ireland – both North and South – in a bid to begin the process of building a consensus around unifying the country. There have also been events in London, the US and Canada involving the Irish Diaspora.

Last month Derry’s Millennium Fort was host to 1000 people at a Uniting Ireland conference which included protestant ministers and even Ulster Unionist Party MLA, Basil McRae.

This kind of involvement – even when restating established political differences – would have been utterly unthinkable just a handful of years ago. Now, Northern Ireland’s fast-evolving political dispensation is making dialogue – if not always agreement – possible.

Such is the change in atmosphere that a joint call was made earlier this week from Northern Ireland’s first minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson and deputy first minister, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, for prayers to be offered-up for the recovery of one-time unionist hardliner, the Rev Ian Paisley – who remains in intensive care following heart problems.

Speaking ahead of today’s meeting, Sinn Féin’s president, Gerry Adams TD, said that Irish unity remained his movement’s “key political objective”.

He added:

“Making progress on this involves building political strength, developing strategies, challenging partitionism, engaging with other political parties and society, reaching out to the diaspora and taking part in a dialogue with our unionist neighbours.”

“The Good Friday Agreement and the all-Ireland political institutions are an important step in this direction, but more effort is needed.”

He argued that the party needed to focus on popularising Irish re-unification while building “structures and policies which transcend the border and engage with unionist opinion” saying that “their identity, self-interest and quality of life will be best served in a new Ireland, a new republic for the 21st century.”

Today’s event follows a call last week from Martin McGuinness for a referendum on Irish unity sometime after 2016.

See also:

• The Week Outside Westminster – UUP down, Leanne Wood up, and Miliband in Scotland – Ed Jacobs, February 4th 2012

• McGuinness in Irish unity poll call – Kevin Meagher, January 31st 2012

• UUP infighting as McNarry says he feels “abused” and has been “kicked in the teeth” – Ed Jacobs, January 31st 2012

• The Week Outside Westminster – Leading questions and questioning leaders – Ed Jacobs, January 28th 2012

• What’s the point of the UUP? – Ed Jacobs, January 19th 2012

Ahead of the return of the health and social care bill to the House of Lords today, the papers are full of stories David Cameron is seeking to distance himself from the coalition’s heavily-criticised reforms and hang them round the neck of Andrew Lansley.

The truth, of course, is vastly different to the lines briefed out by Downing Street – the bill is as much the prime minister’s as it is his embattled health secretary’s. As the excerpts below show, he says he helped design it, he has repeatedly backed it in public and he is responsible for it – this is David Cameron’s disastrous NHS reorganisation.

• In July 2010, David Cameron, alongside Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley, personally signed the foreword to the white paper – “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS” (pdf) – which set out the government’s NHS reorganisation plans:

“The NHS is a great national institution. The principles it was founded on are as important now as they were then: free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not ability to pay. But we believe that it can be so much better – for both patients and professionals.

“That’s why we’ve set out a bold vision for the future of the NHS – rooted in the coalition’s core beliefs of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

“We will make the NHS more accountable to patients. We will free staff from excessive bureaucracy and top-down control. We will increase real terms spending on the health service in every year of this Parliament.

“Our ambition is to once again make the NHS the envy of the world. Liberating the NHS – a blend of Conservative and Liberal Democrat ideas – sets out our plans to do this.”

• In April 2011, Mr Cameron told Sky News’s Dermot Murnaghan he had “been involved in designing these changes way back into opposition” with Mr Lansley, and takes “absolute responsibility with him for all the changes we are making”:

DM: “Well you were ploughing on until you ran into so much political trouble. Mr Lansley for a long time seemed to be in charge of the process himself, it was only when Number Ten took on board the enormity of the proposed changes, isn’t it?”

DC: “No, not at all. I mean I have been involved in designing these changes way back into opposition with Andrew Lansley, I take absolute responsibility with him for all of the changes we are making but I do think it is right when you have an asset as precious as the National Health Service, if you have the time to just stop and make sure you are getting everything right and at the same time what I’m finding is when you go particularly to hospitals, a lot of this is about reassuring clinicians in hospitals, hospital doctors, that they will have a really big part in this future NHS.”

• The prime minister has regularly defended the reorganisation inside and outside Parliament:

“First of all, let us be clear about the fact that the reforms are about cutting bureaucracy and improving patient care. They were drawn up by us as a coalition to improve the NHS.” – PMQs, March 2011

“It’s because I love the NHS so much that I want to change it… Because the fact is the NHS needs to change. It needs to change to make it work better today and it needs to change to avoid a crisis tomorrow.” – Speech at Ealing Hospital, May 2011

“Three weeks ago, I made the case for change in our NHS. I said we would be kidding ourselves if we thought we could simply stick with the status quo. We need to change the NHS to make it work better today.” – Follow-up speech on the NHS, June 2011

“Of course there are doctors in the health service who don’t like the idea of greater choice and competition and other organisations being able to provide free healthcare services to patients. But I believe patients want that sort of choice and rapid, quality treatment and that’s why it’s right to make these reforms.” – Interview with the BBC, October 2011, in response to a Telegraph letter from doctors and academics warning “the proposed reforms will disrupt, fragment and weaken the country’s public health capabilities”

• Cameron’s former No. 10 adviser James O’Shaughnessy recently revealed that during the “pause” last year “it did take the energy of Steve [Hilton] and the prime minister and Oliver Letwin and others to keep pushing it through”:

“We came in with what we thought were fairly well thought through proposals that then did seem to be running into opposition at a variety of levels, whether it’s the House of Lords or staff or other groups.

“I think there was a lesson in there for all of us which is actually, if you look where we’ve got to with the health bill, the fundaments of what we were trying to do are still there but it did take the energy of Steve and the prime minister and Oliver Letwin and others to keep pushing it through, to weigh in behind that and adopt different tactics in order to get the same principles across.” – “David Cameron’s Big Idea” (listen), BBC Radio 4, January 2012

• And just last week, at PMQs, David Cameron made it clear he would not back down – even citing Tony Blair in his support:

“Let me tell the Right Honourable Gentleman something that Tony Blair once wrote about the process of reform. Now there is a man who knows a thing about bonuses and pay.

“He said this – listen, listen:

‘It is an object lesson in the progress of reform: the change is proposed; it is denounced as a disaster; it proceeds with vast… opposition; it is unpopular; it comes about; within a short space of time, it is as if it has always been so. The lesson is instructive: if you think a change is right, go with it. The opposition is inevitable, but rarely is it unbeatable.’

“That was someone who knew a thing or two about reform.”

Mr Cameron may run, but he can’t hide from the reality that these are his reforms, that he has resolutely stuck by them, and that he is ignoring pretty much everyone who cares about the NHS and is refusing to kill the bill.

See also:

• Miliband goes on attack as fight to save the NHS stepped up – Shamik Das, February 6th 2012

• Sign my petition to drop Lansley’s monster – Dr Kailash Chand OBE, November 24th 2011

• Cameron’s fantasy list of NHS reform backers – Shamik Das, September 7th 2011

• Doctors still fear coalition health reforms – Daniel Elton, June 27th 2011

• So who backs Lansley’s health reforms then? – Dominic Browne, June 1st 2011

• Doctors tell Lansley: “Stop this bill” – Dominic Browne, March 15th 2011

• So, Mr Cameron, who backs your NHS reforms? Erm… – Shamik Das, February 2nd 2011

If Scotland opts for independence, Britain’s nuclear weapons will be evicted. You might think the government would be alarmed at this prospect, especially as a new report shows that there actually isn’t anywhere else suitable for them to go, writes Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

But not a bit of it. Instead, it’s going for that old favourite - the ‘head in the sand’ approach.

Yesterday junior defence minister Peter Luff responded to a volley of questions from concerned MPs about the MoD’s contingency plans in the event of Scottish independence.

Quite unbelievably, this is what Mr Luff had to say:

“The Ministry of Defence is not making plans to change the base ports of those classes of submarines currently base-ported at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde. The Department does not therefore hold cost estimates or other information that would relate to such changes.

“The government are clear that Scotland benefits from being part of the UK and the UK benefits from having Scotland within it. The government are not making plans for independence as we are confident that people in Scotland will continue to support the Union in any referendum.“

And that was the whole statement. It’s not often you hear a minister say that his department hasn’t made plans for circumstances which are quite possible. But Mr Luff seems to be letting wishful thinking get out of hand.

The reality looks like this:

• Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system, is located at HMNB Clyde at Faslane and Coulport.

• The Scottish National Party (SNP) has a strong record of opposition to accommodating Trident in Scotland, and has vowed to eject it in the event of an independent Scotland under an SNP government.

• While some have suggested that the SNP could strike a deal with Westminster, Alex Salmond responded that:

‘It is inconceivable that an independent nation of 5.25m people would tolerate the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction on its soil.’

• A referendum on Scottish independence is on the cards for 2014.

So, what about those contingency plans?

In fact, alternatives have already been investigated in years gone by when a location was sought for Trident’s predecessor, Polaris. These are outlined in CND’s recent report Trident: Nowhere to Go.

The upshot is that the MoD has nowhere to relocate Trident to. Not without, variously, evacuating villages; buying up and destroying National Trust land; endangering a city with a population of a quarter of a million people, or closing down local industries.

The MoD has acknowledged this, stating:

‘there simply isn’t anywhere else where we can do what we do at Coulport, and without that, there is no deterrent.’

It would be nice to think that the MoD had finally accepted the overwhelming economic, strategic, and now geographic arguments against replacing Trident and wasn’t looking elsewhere because it had come to the logical conclusion to finally scrap Britain’s weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, such a decision would not be totally out of kilter with other aspects of government defence strategy.

The government’s own national security strategy (2010) confirmed that Trident does not have the relevance it had during the Cold War. Senior military figures have described it as ‘completely useless’ and ‘irrelevant except in the context of domestic politics’, and, if the released Cabinet papers of 1981 are any indicator, there are most likely divisions within the Cabinet on whether or not to replace Trident.

Economically, when placed in the context of the largest public sector cuts in British history, the dwarfing expense of Trident is unjustifiable: a £100 billion price tag over its lifecycle.

The MoD itself is suffering – already 58,000 personnel have been cut and, if replaced, Trident will consume 30 per cent of the MoD’s new equipment budget in the 2020s. That’s before we start mentioning the schools, hospitals, libraries and social services which are being dismantled.

The cost of relocating Trident would be another unknown quantity of billions – the figures start to become meaningless – to add to the already snowballing cost.

So let’s hope Peter Luff’s response is actually a simple reflection of the facts, even if he is not yet ready to admit them: Trident is at a dead end, so what’s the point in making contingency plans?

If this is not the case, his response is bizarre and presumptuous. And with his head so far down in the sand, we can scarcely hear him…

See also:

• Tories plan to suppress Trident debate - Kate Hudson, November 24th 2011

• We can still fight Trident: Here’s how - Daniel Blaney, November 10th 2011

• Scrapping Trident for the savings is a losing argument; CND need realistic opposition - Andrew Gibson, November 4th 2011

• Fact check: How much will Trident replacement cost? - Joss Garman, April 21st 2010

• Clegg: Replace Trident with Astute - Marcus Roberts, April 7th 2010