Sergei Lavov has a big challenge ahead of him, when he visits Damascus on Tuesday. The Russians may have been surprised by the scale of the dismay at their veto of the UN resolution. Some of this opprobrium is misplaced. UN resolutions do not  end conflicts and never have. To suggest that continued fighting is all down to the veto is unrealistic. It is probably true that the Assad regime felt emboldened enough to try and end the insurrection in Homs, before the arrival of Mr Lavrov. That too will prove unrealistic because even if halted, trouble will again erupt.

Essentially the Russian and Chinese position is that regime change is not the answer. Where this has happened elsewhere as a consequence of outside pressure, especially Afghanistan and Iraq, things did not work out well. In Libya it looks better, but the difficult part of nation building lies ahead and it is not yet clear whether that will live up to expectations.

In Syria, President Assad enjoys the substantial support of his own minority tribe and appears to be opposed by a sizeable chunk of the majority Shias. Nevertheless there is no obvious successor, nor government in waiting, nor leader in the wings. The Russian challenge is to see if order can be restored and the suffering brought to an end, not by regime change but real and substantial changes to the regime and the way it governs. Assad has promised reforms repeatedly and repeatedly failed to deliver them.

Mr Lavrov will doubtless tell him that time is running out. There will now be a price for continued Russian and Chinese support. If Assad is willing to pay and actually does, Russia will have achieved a diplomatic coup. If not Syria will sink into civil war, notwithstanding resolutions, vetoes, protestations and pleas. Those who want to end the suffering of innocents will wish Mr Lavrov well; nevertheless a solution may be beyond his reach.

The West is now busy blaming Russia and China for the violence in Syria, because they vetoed a not very good UN resolution. That is ridiculous.

Russia is a faded superpower, but it is no longer fading. It has not yet made the transition from military strength to economic strength, but it will get there. China is now an economic superpower, maybe the economic superpower. Neither considers the open pluralist democracy, favoured by the West, the best way to govern and they could point to the political polarisation in the US and the inability of the Eurozone to put decisions into effect, as evidence to support their conclusion. Neither is remotely equivalent to their structure in the cold war era; both populations culturally prefer constant, strong and predictable leadership to the vociferous debate of the most open democracies.

Russia and China look at Syria and see bloodshed and mayhem, but they do not see the vestige of a coherent alternative government (unlike Libya, where their opposition to western intervention was much more muted) and, post Iraq, will be sensitive of anything which looks like a policy of regime change. They might go along with regime change if there were a coherent regime in waiting, to change to. Both follow a much more nuanced approach to foreign policy than the West led by the US. Putin has described the US as a hyper-power constantly over-reaching itself. This is harsh, but their is a vestige of truth in it.

Afghanistan is a disaster to anyone willing to be realistic, Pakistan is seriously destabilised, Iraq is one of the most dangerous places for innocent civilians in the world. Moreover Iraq’s  Shia majority is allied to Iran, the direct opposite of US aims at the start of the invasion.  The Israel/Palestinian problem is no nearer resolution than it was fifty years ago. This is not a good foreign policy inventory.

Maybe it would be a good plan to see what Russia and China can do in Syria, if anything. Meanwhile before we get too critical it might be good to remember that without China’s money the US is bust and without Russia’s energy most of Europe would freeze to death.

The Liberal Democrats have a lot on their plate. It is an odd mix. There is the personal tragedy of Chris Huhne and Vicki Pryce, leading to both being charged with a serious criminal offence and Huhne’s exit from the Cabinet. Huhne protests innocence. If he is right, he will return to front line politics. If he is wrong, his political career is over.

This would be a blow to his Party, just under half of whom wanted him as leader. He has challenged the Tories in Cabinet, when they violated principles the Lib Dems held dear and thus became the champion of the grass roots members, mostly uncomfortable about their party’s closeness to the Tories. He was a good minister. The interesting thing is that all the Lib Dems in government impress at every level, yet the party has lost so much popularity since joining government that current polling averages would give it only fifteen MPs after a snap general election. We shall see after the local government elections in May how bad things actually are.

Unfortunately most voters now regard the choice as between Conservative and Labour. The attraction of a third party has diminished. Moreover joining the Tories in government appalled most of its supporters on the left, who now that New labour is history, are returning to the party of their roots. It was the ability to penetrate the Labour heartland which gave the Lib Dems their surge in numbers during the Blair years.

By far the biggest disaster was tuition fees. This u-turn was seen as a betrayal by all its young supporters and it will take a generation and fading memories to neutralise the corrosive effect of such a spectacular breach of trust. When all is said and done, the Lib Dems are in a very difficult place. There are many aspects beyond their control. In the whole context it is unlikely that the outcome of the Huhne/Pryce trial will have much impact outside the Party. The voters, they count first above everything after all, are unlikely to care either one way or the other.

The leaked NATO report acquired by the BBC shows what so many who stop to think have believed for a long while. The Taliban is the strongest indigenous force both politically and militarily in Afghanistan. It also confirms that Pakistan plays a key part facing both ways, but no settlement can be achieved without its inclusion in the settlement. In the end it will be Pakistan which guarantees the outcome, not NATO.

The fact that talks are now taking place between the Taliban and the Karzai government on neutral ground is good news. Karzai knows the West has had enough. He knows too that his own security forces, with their uncertain loyalties, cannot possibly assure freedom from a Taliban takeover, once NATO leaves. The only option now open to his corrupt regime is to do a deal.

It would have saved countless lives, both militarily and civilian, if all this had been understood years ago. There was enough evidence.

This has been a complete and utter disaster for the Government and shows, once again, questions about Cameron’s judgement, especially in the area of what is acceptable and what is not. It has been good for Ed Milliband who has scored points off Cameron by accusing him of a lack of leadership.

The issue is stark and simple. Senior employees of banks are thought by almost everybody except themselves to be supremely overpaid, not least because they almost single handed blew up the western economy and because barely a bank in Europe is capable of standing solvent on its feet without help, direct or indirect, from taxpayers.

This is the most toxic component of executive pay generally, which is now wildly out of line with what is right, reasonable and economically sustainable. The government, at the beginning of the week, announced the need for shareholders to act to curb excessive pay and bonuses. At the end of the week the Government as a shareholder, not as the government, but as an 80% plus shareholder, was faced with the challenge to show example. It simply walked away. Boris Johnson, who is probably the greatest potential threat to Cameron, described the drivel  put out by the Treasury to excuse the fiasco of the Hester bonus as unacceptable and bewildering.

It is indeed that and more. It flies in the face of the government’s own policy newly announced days earlier. The excuse offered is that if it had not rolled over and let the bonus through, the whole board would have resigned. If this is true it is preposterous because ministers caved in and  also because it amounts to blackmail. The proper response to such a threat if issued, would be to nationalise the whole of RBS by Order in Council. This would wipe out the remaining non government shareholders and set them upon the directors with a legal vengeance which would have been fun to watch.

This is a very sorry tale indeed. The Government’s performance borders on the imbecile. It  kills stone dead any pretence that it understands the pain of the ordinary people. Moreover it undermines its authority at a time when Unions and other campaigners are on the warpath. What a mess.

This blog was very critical of Michael Gove at the outset of his appointment as Education Secretary. My experience of educating an extended family over a span of forty odd years and two terms as a secondary school governor, convinced me that the current problems lay with an unsuitable curriculum, a squeamish approach to discipline, slavish adherence to policy and practice regardless of outcome and, above all, too many instances of poor quality teachers.

This latter point was critical. Not only were there bad teachers, but too many were fundamentally uneducated with poor degrees. They were easy to identify, but near impossible to get rid of. Moreover the process required so much delay that even if at last the failure left, a whole cohort of students had been let down.

On the other hand an allegation, however wild, of sexual harassment, meant the immediate suspension of a teacher pending an investigation. Yet an allegation of poor teaching, backed by complaints from parents, evident contempt of students and anxiety of leadership, allowed the suspect teacher to remain in post throughout the period of enquiry, which could last a year. It is important to consider that while sexual abuse of children is repugnant, imposing upon them an inept teacher is a life inhibiting abuse of those students’ trust in their school’s ability to provide them with the education they need, the effects of which will be not only negative but also lifelong.

Initially Michael Gove appeared driven by ideology about the style of a school rather than what it did. His overhauls of the exam system, the previously timid approach to discipline and the poor curriculum built confidence.  Now the ability to rid schools of duff teachers in a term is a real boost. In combination this all reverses our earlier negative view of his efforts.

There is a huge task ahead of him. Some of our students are so ill equipped on leaving school, that in a competitive market they are unemployable. Others are less well qualified than their peers in other countries which are our competitors. Some of the university degrees on offer are futile as a qualification. Unless all this is put right, decline of our living standards is certain. To arrest this trend is indeed a challenge. Mr. Gove deserves warm praise.

This proposition has moved from the fringe of British politics to centre stage. That is good. Scotland is now and always has been, a separate country. Its tribal origin is different to England. It was never conquered by the Romans, nor the Normans. It has its own legal and educational systems. It issues its own banknotes. All of this was the case before devolution.

It is therefore reasonable that its people should be given the opportunity of the return of their independence as a sovereign country. A referendum is the right course. The date is a detail. There must be a clear outcome to a straight question. The vote must settle the matter. At present it looks, from opinion polls, as if the Scots will vote to stay in the United Kingdom. What if they don’t?

Fractious though some of the talks may be, negotiations can organise a clean separation in areas where presently we share. What is more to the point is the strategic outcome and here we need to look at the Eurosceptics. An independent Scotland would join the EU. If the euro is still functional and out of crisis, it will join that too. If England whipped itself up to leave the EU, as most Eurosceptics want and most of them are in the Tory party, the economic position of Scotland would be hugely strengthened and that of England much weakened.

No wonder Cameron wants to keep the United Kingdom intact. As for Ed, he knows that without his party’s Scottish seats and with its Welsh seats severely reduced by boundary changes to create larger constituencies, the chances of a Labour government without a coalition partner, become a much less likely prospect. It could mean that even a handful of surviving Lib Dem MPs would find they were still close to the levers of power after all.

Food for thought, Nick.

This blog tries to remain impartial in its criticism or praise of party leaders, but it also has a record of giving comfort to those in trouble. We have been recently dismissive of Ed. The time has come to think a little deeper.

There is no doubt that Ed’s performance as a barnstorming leader, harrying the government at every twist and turn, leader of a party bursting with new ideas and an obvious prime minister in waiting, is disappointing. If one stands back to consider carefully, it is perhaps the expectation which is flawed, rather than the performance itself.

It is important to remember that labour suffered a severe electoral defeat. Nevertheless it remains marginally ahead in most of the polls and level pegging in the others. Projections on an immediate general election (which is not going to happen) based on the averages of recent polls give Labour a majority of twenty. Sometimes this slips to leave Labour the largest party. No polling average offers the prospect of the Tories being even the largest party. Labour have done well in by-elections and won a lot of seats in the local elections of 2011, just a year after their electoral disaster. Its membership, alone among the main parties, is on a rising curve. This is not a bad report.

What is much more important is that intellectually Ed realises that Labour’s election defeat in 2010 was merely the symptom of a much bigger crisis. He knows that the entire philosophy of New Labour was too shallow and too opportunist to endure and, worse, that its naive and simplistic economics were the root of an unsustainable boom fuelled by borrowed money, which has led to the biggest bust in modern times. Its employment policy was to create non-jobs out of taxpayers’ money or state borrowing and its addiction to regulations and regulators rather than outcomes contributed to a level of bloated inefficiency and underachievement worse than any previous record.

Before Ed can shine as the barnstorming leader craved by commentators, he first has to re-unite Labour with its roots on the left. Then and only then, will he be able to come forward with a modern interpretation of social capitalism, which will offer both social justice and entrepreneurial opportunity. His latest speeches show that these ideas are formulating in his mind. This is good. Now he needs to be bolder in putting musings to real political music. His first task is to find himself a credible Shadow Chancellor. There can be no real progress until he does that.

Of the three main party leaders, Cameron has ended 2011 on an unexpected high. He has had a difficult year dogged by judgment questions, made HD by his misplaced loyalty to Coulson and his slow reaction when phone hacking went viral. Libya could have been a disaster, but for the time being appears a success. Nevertheless there lingered the feeling that the Prime Minister had over Gaddafi been lucky rather than smart. On came the Euro crisis. This played into his euro-sceptic hands. Even an eye-catching backbench rebellion over the demand for a futile referendum did not have anything like the impact commentators expected and Labour devoutly wished.

Then came that veto in the middle of the night. This was Cameron’s Falklands moment. The French fumed and said nasty things. The intelligentsia tut tutted. Clegg first said yes and then no. But the crowds were wowed. Anti EU feeling among voters is at an all time high. They are fed up with petty regulations of the kind continentals love and ignore, while we dutifully write them in to every bit of health and safety, employment and human rights legislation. Especially now they are fed up with the fact that the UK recovery is about to be derailed by political ineptitude in the eurozone. Cameron has at last established himself as the national leader significantly preferred by voters. The polls are moving to the Tories.

Nick Clegg has had a baptism of continuous fire which is still going on. He struggles hard to hold his party on the right side of panic and works doggedly to spin the idea that the Lib Dems stop the Tories being nasty. He has indeed held a much retreated line and his Lib Dem colleagues mostly have good reputations as competent ministers. He has three big problems nevertheless. His party is pro Europe when the majority of the country is anti. The two main parties now dominate political debate, with the addition of the Nationalists in Scotland. Fewer and fewer see the need for the Lib Dems. This was born out by the wholesale rejection of AV, which was in a sense a rejection of third party meddling. But worst of all there is the memory of the most spectacularly broken promise in post WWII political history. Tuition fees. That wiped out a whole generation a Lib Dem voters. At present it is impossible not to see more losses in council elections and an eventual return to a couple of taxi loads of MPs. Nick will retain his place in history and go on to become one of the political wise men called in by the Today programme or BBC News 24. But after the next election a lot of unexpected events will have to move his way if his party is to have any sort of chance of remaining in government.

As for Ed Milliband, there is little to say. He is not up to the job and this is a great disappointment. The trouble for Labour is that for too long it was dominated by the scrapping Brown and Blair and then became obsessed with not one Milliband but two. There is now little talent on the Labour front bench, a bit like the post Thatcher Tories. Only one has the ability and she is the one who would not step forward; Harriet Harman. She may yet be called. There is something Merkel about her.

The dynamic of politics, as the New Year approaches, is in some ways unexpected. The Coalition remains focused with a clear agenda and policies to give it effect. These policies may not be popular, but there is an aura of firm government and pursuing the national interest, even if there is argument as to what that best interest might be. The Tories are advancing in the polls; The Lib Dems, though battered by having to shoulder political responsibility after decades of saying whatever came to mind,  are no longer sinking and their leaders have been able to articulate the restraining roll they play in government.

Labour is flat lining in the doldrums and, save for a brief moment during phone hacking, looks pretty lacklustre. It has a major problem. The current politics of the U.K. and the world are driven by economic issues. The top team in Labour, Milliband, Balls and Cooper were all with Gordon Brown in the treasury for  their earlier political careers. During that period, the Treasury made the greatest miscalculations in all its history. The growth proclaimed as everlasting, was an illusion driven by unsustainable borrowing at every level, the gap between rich and poor grew to a chasm and the end of boom and bust turned into the biggest bust ever. Furthermore such was the dominance of the then Chancellor and and so long his feud with his Prime Minister, whose job he coveted, that only one credible figure emerged to take the economic reins as the crisis burst upon the world. He, Alastair Darling, has now retired from front bench politics.

This leaves Labour without a credible shadow chancellor and Balls talking unconvincing nonsense. The inability of this leadership team to capitalise on the extraordinary political opportunities available to the opposition, is directly related to their common apprenticeship and common responsibility for the crisis in the economy. The impact of Labour’s economic mismanagement was global, but every fool knows the epicentre of the crisis was London, even if the initial rupture occurred in New York. It is true that the Tories in power would have done no better and that many of the structural flaws and misguided political verities can be trace back to Thatcher. Nevertheless the Tories and their reluctant partners, the Lib Dems, have learned to do the sums, whilst the Treasury has come to its senses. Only Labour clings to the wild and hallucinatory notion that more government spending would make things come right.

Yet the opportunities for Labour remain. It is a simple menu. It must show it has a convincing plan for economic recovery which adds up and convinces markets from which, in government, it would have to borrow. It must show how it is going to close the gap between rich and poor. It must have a plan to re-balance the economy away from consumption and into production. It must show a route to full employment through wealth creating jobs which contribute to the coffers of the state and not one through employment  in quangos which sap those coffers dry. It must bring order and fairness to energy costs, banking, health and education. It must show it has developed a foreign policy which declines to go to some costly and counter productive war every time the Pentagon gets trigger happy.

There is more, but success with that list would be enough. All of it is challenging but possible, some of it is not even difficult. The voters are hungry for evidence that Labour knows what to do. The most extraordinary thing about 2011 was the failure of the Milliband leadership to demonstrate that it did indeed know what to do or to make pronouncements which were credible. This has proved a dreadful disappointment to millions. 2012 has to be the year when Labour got a grip of itself. Only then can it lay claim to getting a grip of the country.