The Game of Politics

Want to know how the Politic Game works? Listen in.

At 09:20 today, Nicky Campbell's phone-in on savage dogs was interrupted to go live outside 10 Downing Street from which a beaming Joanna Lumley had just emerged. Of course, she had been having talks with the PM himself and others regarding the plight of retired Gurkhas who wished to spend their retirement in the country they had proudly fought for. However, Ms. Lumley had nothing to say because there was to be an official announcement by Jacqui Smith at 12:30 and Gordon Brown had only allowed her 'to smile'.

Clearly, the outcome of the meeting had been very positive in favour of the Gurkhas and Lumley's allowed descriptions of the meeting as 'affectionate' and 'generous' were favourable to the munificent Government.

Cast our minds back to less than a month ago, when the same Government had tabled a motion in the Commons to stop any retired Gurkha from settling in the UK after retiring from the Regiment due to excessive cost. In a country that has pretty much open doors to anyone and especially those who sponge on our Welfare State, we were blocking people of a foreign nation who had actually served and fought for us - whose tradition of serving the British nation goes back nearly two centuries and earned the regiment no less than 26 VCs (I am not sure if that is a record for a single regiment).

Back to today, as the Government reels from body blow after blow of bad news mainly wrought upon itself, it chose to embargo the result of the meeting so that a disgraced Home Secretary and beleaguered PM could salvage some of their credibility by appearing as if this was a Government initiative and nothing to do with the campaign fought by Joanna Lumley on behalf of the Gurkhas and the backlash of the defeat of the Government's motion in the Commons, when several of its own MPs decided to forgo their cushy life and vote with their conscience.

The moment of victory, to be savoured, was to be Jacqui Smith's, not some well-educated sounding comedian whose father had served in the regiment with a people he had learned to love and respect.

The Way it Works

You see, this is the way it works. It's all about grandstanding, soundbites and being seen to be doing something. It's why words are far better than deeds as they are cheap and easy. The Gurkhas had to fight, be wounded or die on the battlefield to earn the right for the survivors to live in this country in retirement; it just took a hastily u-turned policy by the Government to salvage a few rating points from an increasingly disgruntled electorate. But, we are a stupid bunch, because many will actually believe that the Government should get credit for this - that this was on their mind all the while. And that's how Politics work - they use the principle of Pavlov's dogs.

They ring the gong at 12:30 and we get fed what we are told to believe.

To put it into context, we spent anywhere from £300bn to £1.3 trillion depending on whose baffling figures you read, so that bankers could be saved and could earn their vast profits and bonuses again, so that Hedge Fund managers can earn £billions and pay no tax, yet the total cost if all 36,000 retired Gurkhas had decided to live in Britain en masse was estimated to be £1.3bn. There was a time when we thought such a sum was huge, but we are now desensitised to such numbers in the context of the credit crunch and bank bail outs. £1.3bn seems like chicken feed.

It certainly is in the context of what the Gurkhas have done for us. Roll on 12:30 and let's get Jacqui 'Does Dallas' Smith out of the way - it's all for show. This moment is for the Gurkhas and Joanna Lumley.