Political Reboot

Scrapping the Human Rights Act

2011-10-03T23:10:00.001+01:00

Yesterday Home Secretary Theresa May told the Sunday Telegraph that "personally" she would like to see the Human Rights Act 1998 scrapped. Tomorrow at the Conservative Party Conference she is expected to announce that Britain's immigration rules are to be amended to curb the right of foreign criminals to resist deportation by invoking rights under the Act.

Both positions are likely to win her support from a broad tranche of Tory voters and MP who see the nation suffering under the "avalanche of political correctness, costly litigation, feeble justice, and the culture of compensation running riot in Britain today, ushered in by Labour's enthusiastic adoption of human rights legislation." These are the words of former party leader, Michael Howard in 2005. There is something terribly un-British, socialist and unfair about this creation it would seem. Let's pause for a moment and separate the rhetoric from the reality.

Lord Howard

Bringing Rights Home

The first point is of course that the central purpose of the Human Rights Act is to give us a right of remedy in our courts, rather than going to a foreign one. Until 1998, Britain was in a somewhat odd position amongst countries that had signed up to the European Convention of Human Rights. In most countries aggrieved citizens could go before their own courts if their rights had been infringed by the State; we were by contrast forced to go to court in Strassbourg to achieve redress. The average cost and time of such an action to a British citizen? £30,000 (back then) and 5 years. The Human Rights Act, which is of course an entirely British creation, simply brought "rights home". The right to bring actions had existed for decades; what had changed was the place, speed and cost of enforcing them.

This Foreign Convention

The next point is the "foreign" nature of the ECHR itself. The Convention stepped straight out of the horrors of the Second World War and was also in part an Allied response to the rise of authoritarian Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. It drew heavily on the UN Universal Declaration of Rights (which was drafted by a Canadian).

As chair of legal matters of the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly, the central person who guided its drafting was British MP (Conservative) and lawyer Sir David Maxwell Fyfe. He had been an Allied prosecutor at Nuremburg. The ECHR is drafted broadly in a similar manner to the 1689 English Bill of Rights or the US Bill of Rights.

Which Rights are Objectionable?

When presented with a summary of the rights enshrined in the ECHR, critics seem oddly unable to point out *which* rights exactly they would remove or object to. Is it the Right to Life; the Right not to be subjected to Torture or Degrading Treatment; the Prohibition on Slavery; the Right to a Fair Trial; the Right to Freedom of Expression or the Right of Assembly?

These are, for heaven's sake, the most basic rights of any person in a civilised modern society - or not, Ms May? There is not one item in the list that is outrageous, offensive or in essence that should even be contentious to anyone who is not an extremist authoritarian.

Foreign Judges

If this is actually a really rather reasonable and very British document, shouldn't we therefore be rather proud of it? Well, perhaps the problem is not the Convention, but the way in which those foreign judges have misinterpreted it.

When British judges are faced with Human Rights questions, it is indeed true that they must take the jurisprudence of Strassbourg into account when deciding the question. Whether British judges are innately"superior" to non-British ones raises some obvious questions of superiority and xenophobia. However it is must be noted that there have been British judges as well as other nationalities sitting at that Court since its inception over 50 years ago. The new President of the Court is none other than a British lawyer, Sir Nicholas Bratza.

The New British President of the ECtHR

Additionally, the best argument for not handing decision making power over to "foreign" judges would surely be to allow *our* courts and *our* judges to decide cases wherever possible and build up our own jurisprudence? Yes - in which case surely we have an immensely solid argument in favour of direct enforcement of rights.... which would be just what the Human Rights Act 1998 does.

Feeble Justice Running Riot

Let's consider for a second Mr Howard's "feeble justice running riot in Britain today". In true Daily Mail fashion he gave a number of deeply troubling nonsensical examples of cases (by British judges) of the misapplication of "Human Rights". They have each been systematically criticised by commentators who looked at the actual facts.

Just taking one he claimed that a "schoolboy arsonist was allowed back into the classroom because enforcing discipline apparently denied his right to an education". YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP! Erm, except that Mr Howard had in fact done just that. The school boy, Abdul Ali, was not actually an arsonist: he was of previously excellent character, the CPS dropped the case for lack of evidence, and he was never convicted. Nor was he seeking access back to the classroom, as by this time he was studying accountancy at university. He was instead seeking compensation. He failed in his action to prove an infringement of Art 2, ECHR in the High Court, the House of Lords and, for the record, last summer in the European Court of Human Rights in Strassbourg as well. So much for accuracy then.

Theresa May's Suggestions

It's also important to realise that the Home Secretary's twin suggestions are very different indeed. One involves the revocation of the Human Rights Act which would simply make it more expensive to bring court cases and hand decision making back over to a "foreign court". The Liberal Democrats have clearly suggested, to their infinite credit, that such a move would probably end the Coalition.

She is also not suggesting leaving the ECHR - to do so would make Britain a pariah nation amongst the 47 other national signatories and put us on the same level as Belarus and Kazhakstan. It would also force our ejection from the Council of Europe.

The second suggestion of amending Britain's immigration rules is however quite possible. It is far from widely reported in the right-wing press that judges (neither British, nor those Strassbourg ones) cannot in fact override an Act of Parliament . Under the Human Rights Act, British judges are in fact under an express statutory duty to interpret legislation wherever possible as being compatible with the ECHR. The most extreme thing they may do where there is a blatant infringement is to issue a "declaration of incompatibility". If a case goes as far as Strassbourg the judges there cannot ever overturn our Acts of Parliament - they may award compensation to an individual, but all that happens in effect is Britain is seen to be in breach of its international obligations.

This second suggestion is not outlandish, it is does not involve revoking the Human Rights Act, and is far less dramatic than it might first seem. If drafted carefully the rues may well not infringe that Convention at all; in fact Strassbourg explicitly takes into account whether a State has expressed its democratic will and legislated on matters that come before it.

Theresa May: Cynical Operator?

Summary

The "Ooman Rights Gone Mad" culture are easy targets in the tabloid way of looking at the world. The rights enshrined in the ECHR are basic, simple pillars of a decent non-tyrannical State that respects its citizens. They are not earned: they are rights which every human should have, and which anyone, Labour, Green, LibDem or Tory might be expected to support wholeheartedly.

The influences on the ECHR are very Anglo-Saxon in origin. We as British should celebrate this fact, not decry this "foreign document". This is our bringing the wisdom of centuries of non-tyrannical government and the evolution of citizens' rights to our neighbours in Europe. How about for once we be proud of that?

If you accept the validity of the ECHR and its aims, it is an odd position indeed to take to object to the Human Rights Act. Mr Howard spoke of feeble justice and costly litigation; it is bad justice and expensive to force the British to go to Strassbourg when our courts are fully capable of giving effect to these rights in our own courts here in the United Kingdom.

There is crude rhetoric behind the Home Secretary's actions. In her role as head of internal affairs of the UK, she *should* be defending human rights. Instead she has placed a story in the Sunday Telegraph which panders crudely to the right wing of the Tory party. Revoking the Human Rights Act would be a desperately retrograde authoritarian measure; it is almost certainly no where close to the political agenda. Instead she has set the scene tomorrow for some very limited and specific tightening of immigration rules which will make her be seen as the trailblazer of the "anti-human rights culture" movement.

It is sad that anyone can considers *that* a good thing to be.

Broken Britain . . . is great?

2011-09-22T18:59:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, when it comes to the audacity of political U-turns, words fail me.

15 August 2011: Britain is ‘Broken’

September 2011: Britain is ‘Great’

Read more over at the Department for Media, Culture, and Sport.

Debt, deﬁcits, and the Eurozone crisis

2011-09-19T22:40:00.000+01:00

Economics affects all of us but it has to be said: at times, it’s pretty complicated. Over the last few weeks, the Eurozone crisis has been looking increasingly serious; Europe’s leaders are desperately trying to decide how to avert a second ﬁnancial disaster when there’s very little time to take action. So: what’s going on?

Essentially, the problem is debt. Lots of debt? Well, not exactly. All governments have to borrow money to a greater or lesser extent and that’s normal for a 21st-century economy. Some European countries—Germany, for example—have borrowed quite sensibly; if they were left to their own devices, they could possibly be ‘back in black’ by 2013. The problem, however, lies in the fact that some countries—Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy—have borrowed far, far more than they were realistically able to repay. Indeed, it has now been assumed that Greece will inevitably be unable to pay back the sum of its debts, and in some form or another, what they owe will have to be written off by the banks who loaned it.

Where are these banks, exactly? Well, some are in America, and some in the UK, but the biggest lenders are the European banks, and particularly the European Central Bank (ECB): the beating heart of the Eurozone, if you like. So if Greece’s debts end up being written off—which, as I said, they almost certainly will—the ECB will be the bank taking the biggest hit. And by a ‘hit’, we’re talking about 75-percent of the original loans’ value.

Because of the predicament that countries like Greece and Spain have found themselves in, markets are now extremely wary about lending them any money. As an example: while a country like Germany would still be able to secure a loan at a rate of about two-per-cent interest, for Greece the interest rate is more likely to be about nineteen per cent. That’s pretty steep, so, unsurprisingly, the Greek economy has ground to a halt.

The ECB Headquarters in Frankfurt

So far, the only way Greece has been able to survive is with intervention from its European partners: the so-called ‘stimulus packages’, which have been doled out by the European Commission, the ECB, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The thing is, even after a series of extremely harsh austerity measures were put in place (see here), the Greek government is still running at a deﬁcit—and unless they can reduce their deﬁcit still further, they are not going to receive their next instalment of funds. And if they don’t receive their next instalment of funds—by mid-October—they will run out of cash, ‘defaulting’ on their debts.

Countries like Greece and Portugal haven’t just built up these debts overnight: they’ve been borrowing recklessly ever since the Euro came into being. That said, we can’t lay the blame for this crisis at the doors of Greece et al. alone. Everyone in the Eurozone had agreed to follow strict budget regulation rules in order to stay in the Euro, but these rules were ﬂouted almost from day one—even in Germany. Also, with conservative parties in governments across Europe, big economies like France, Germany, and the UK are making spending cuts across the board, partly at Germany’s insistence. The result: unemployment is up, proﬁts are down, and growth is practically non-existent. If Keynes were alive today, he’d have a thing or two say, I reckon.

What is going to happen next, then? It’s hard to say; what can be said, however, is that there aren’t many more ways out. That another credit crunch is imminent is pretty much accepted, now—the big worry is over just how bad it is going to be. If Greece ends up leaving the Euro (which is very likely), it will be a huge legal and ﬁnancial headache for the Eurozone; if the Euro starts losing value rapidly, countries like France and Germany might get out while they still can; if a major European bank fails, à la Lehman Brothers in 2008, the crisis could go global. Whatever happens—and I’m sorry to be gloomy about it—it’s probably going to unfold a lot sooner than you think.

Good and bad dictators

2011-09-15T22:38:00.001+01:00

A hero’s welcome

David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have today become the ﬁrst western leaders to visit Libya since Col. Gaddaﬁ’s fall at the end of last month. On stepping foot in the country, the British Prime Minister said: ‘it is great to be in free Libya [. . .] Col. Gaddaﬁ said he would hunt you down like rats but you showed the courage of lions’.

Since we’re on the subject of ‘courage’, then, let’s look at just how courageous our government has been in facing down dictators across the globe. Here’s my own hastily researched little almanac:

Bahrain
Location: small island state near the western shores of the Arabian Gulf.
Head of state: King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
Description: growing unrest. Those who criticize the monarchy may be imprisoned for ‘inciting hatred of the regime’ but that hasn’t deterred protesters in 2011—and neither have the shotguns ﬁred by Baharini police forces. There have been consistent allegations of torture, unfair trials, and other human rights abuses.
UK relationship: GOOD! King Hamad got an invite to the Royal Wedding. In 2005, Tony Blair described the UK and Bahrain as having ‘a strong, warm and longstanding relationship’.

Belarus
Location: Eastern Europe
Head of state: President Alexander Lukashenko
Description: the president has described himself as having an ‘authoritarian ruling style’. It’s a republic in name only: brutal, undemocratic, and the last true dictatorship in the heart of Europe.
UK relationship: BAD. In June 2008, the Foreign and Commonwealth Ofﬁce described Belarus’s human rights record as ‘poor’; no further action appears to have been taken.

The House of Government in
Minsk, Belarus (note the statue
of Lenin in the foreground).

Burma/Myanmar
Location: Southeast Asia
Head of state: President Thein Sein
Description: child labour, human trafﬁcking, and the suppression of free speech, Burma has it all. The military regime here is regarded as one of the most repressive and abusive in the world.
UK relationship: BAD. As a member of the EU, Britain has implemented sanctions and embargoes on Burma since the late 1980s.

People’s Republic of China
Location: East Asia
Head of state: President Hu Jintao
Description: practically non-existent labour rights, legal rights, or religious freedom, huge numbers of state executions, and a total intolerance of dissent towards the government. The last mass movement for political freedom ended with the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. China has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world.
UK relationship: GOOD! Friendly, close, and cooperative. We didn’t even complain about their having the Olympics.

Cuba
Location: an island nation in the Caribbean
Head of state: President Castro (Raúl, not Fidel)
Description: arbitrary imprisonment, torture, unfair trials, even extrajudicial executions (aka El Paredón, ‘the wall’).
UK relationship: BAD. With the EU, Britain works toward ‘a pluralist democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’.

Equatorial Guinea
Location: Middle Africa
Head of state: President (or ‘living god’) Teodoro Obiang
Description: Freedom House ranks Equatorial Guinea’s human rights as ‘the worst of the worst’. For the sake of brevity, I suggest you read more here.
UK relationship: LIMITED. Britain doesn’t seem to have much to say about the country’s atrocious human rights record, which might have something to do with its above-average oil reserves . . .

Teodoro Obian,
President (or God) of
Equatorial Guinea

Ethiopia
Location: Horn of Africa
Head of state: President Girma Wolde-Giorgis
Description: political oppression, armed forces abuses, and harassment of human rights defenders. The usual.
UK relationship: GOOD! The Foreign and Commonwealth Ofﬁce describes the UK’s relationship with the country as ‘close’. It’s worth noting that Ethiopia was a proud partner of the US in Bush’s War on Terror.

Haiti
Location: Caribbean
Head of state: President Michael Martelly
Description: human rights abuses (especially concerning violence towards women) are on the rise. The 2010 earthquake has led to an already weak state becoming increasingly unstable. Most of the people in Haiti’s over-crowded prisons have not been sentenced and the legitimacy of the most recent general elections was highly dubious.
UK relationship: LIMITED. Historically there has not been a close relationship between the two countries.

Honduras
Location: Central America
Head of state: President Porﬁrio Lobo Sosa
Description: since an army-backed coup d’état in June 2009, Amnesty International has observed increased political repression, arbitrary detentions, unlawful killings, and violence against women. Several journalists have been physically attacked and live ammunition has been used on public protests.
UK relationship: LIMITED (there has not been a British Embassy in Honduras since 2003), although Foreign and Commonwealth Ofﬁce says that ‘there have been several positive visits in both directions in recent years’.

Iran
Location: Middle East
Head of state: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Description: Iran’s human rights abuses have been widely criticized around the world. Journalists are imprisoned, press freedom is a joke, women are stoned to death, gays are executed . . .
UK relationship: BAD. Very bad, in fact. It would be deeply cynical of me at this point to draw your attention to the country’s huge oil reserves—so I won’t.

President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad

Jordan
Location: Middle East
Head of state: King Abdullah II
Description: limited press freedom, restricted labour rights, societal discrimination of the LGBT community, torture, arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention . . .
UK relationship: GOOD! The two countries enjoy a close and cooperative relationship and the FCO has nothing to say about Jordan’s extremely well documented human rights abuses.

Morocco
Location: North Africa
Head of state: King Mohammed VI
Description: Guantánamo Bay in North Africa! Morocco has been a friend in need to the US in its War on Terror and several detainees from the notorious Cuban base have been transferred here. Morocco also has a poor record on women’s rights and the treatment of Sahrwaris.
UK relationship: GOOD! The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall visited Morocco earlier this year.

North Korea
Location: East Asia
Head of state: Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il
Description: do I need to spell it out?
UK relationship: BAD.

Oman
Location: Arabian Peninsula
Head of state: Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id
Description: dreadful human rights, although this is not particularly well publicized. Women face discrimination in law and society and journalists are oppressed
UK relationship: GOOD! Actually, since we ought to quote the FCO on this, EXCELLENT!

Dira Square in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, known locally as ‘chop-chop square’.

Rwanda
Location: Central Africa
Head of state: President Paul Kagame
Description: although not as bad as some other sub-Saharan countries, opposition groups continue to be suppressed and arbitrary detentions have been reported recently.
UK relationship: GOOD! Close relations.

Saudi Arabia
Location: Arabian Peninsula
Head of state: King Abdullah
Description: the land where they cut off your feet/hand for robbery, ﬂog you for drunkenness, stone you for inﬁdelity (especially if you’re a woman), behead you if you’re gay, censor you if you’re a journalist . . .
UK relationship: GOOD! Close relationship. In fact, Saudia Arabia is the UK’s primary trading partner in the Middle East.

Syria
Location: Western Asia
Head of state: Bashar al-Assad
Description: torture, execution, arbitrary detention, repression of women/ethnic minorities/LGBT people, no freedom of expression . . .
UK relationship: BAD, although mainly because they provide weapons to Hizballah and because Syrian ofﬁcials were involved in a plot to blow up Heathrow Airport in the 1980s.

United Arab Emirates
Location: Arabian Peninsula
Head of state: Sheikh Khalifa
Description: torture, freedom of press restrictions, abysmal women’s rights . . .
UK relationship: GOOD! Economically, the UAE is the UK’s largest export market for non-military goods in the Middle East.

Robert Mugabe

Uganda
Location: East Africa
Head of state: President Yoweri Museveni
Description: child labour, torture, persecution of homosexuals, press censorship, and abuses by Ugandan security forces.
UK relationship: GOOD! Strong bilateral relationships. Members of the Royal Family, including the Queen, visited in 2007, along with the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Zimbabwe
Location: Southern Africa
Head of state: President Robert Mugabe
Description: there are systematic violations of human rights in Zimbabwe and the situation is getting worse. Torture, discrimination, child soldiers, and police repression are all rife.
UK relationship: BAD. Robert Mugabe is one of only a few recipients of honorary knighthoods to have had the honour revoked by the Queen.

Any patterns? Conclusions welcomed!

Ed Miliband: bad timing

2011-09-11T14:44:00.001+01:00

United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the south tower

Today being the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, people in America are turning to their politicians to lead them through what, for many of them, is a highly emotional time. Ed Miliband, on the other hand, has used today as an opportunity to attack bankers. Writing in The Sunday Times, he said:

There is a sense they just don't get it. This is nothing to do with the politics of envy. It is to do with the sense of real destruction caused by bankers, for which other people paid the price.

I’m all for having a debate about banks—their role in the ﬁnancial crisis and how they ought to be reformed—but this is not the time to be having that conversation. Of the 3,000 people killed on 9/11, many of them would have been bankers. To talk about them causing ‘real destruction’—today, of all days—is pretty poor taste.

Five questions for Andy Coulson

2011-08-24T15:15:00.002+01:00

Andy Coulson

The Conservatives have had to face fresh allegations about their former Director of Communications Andy Coulson after revelations that he was still receiving payments from News International while working for David Cameron.

Until now, Cameron and his party have consistently maintained that Coulson’s only income was the salary paid to him by the Conservatives (reportedly £275,000). This was corroborated by Coulson himself. However, according to Robert Peston at the BBC, Coulson continued to receive his News International work beneﬁts three years after he had resigned as editor of News of the World, including healthcare, a company car, and thousands of pounds in severance pay.

The Conservatives have stressed that this is not the same as receiving a salary. Technically, of course, they are right. But this is is still distinctly ﬁshy. When Andy Coulson left the News of the World, he resigned; here he is, though, three years later, still receiving staggered severance payments. According to David Yelland and Andrew Neil, both former editors News International, this was deﬁnitely not common practice—and, as Alastair Campbell point out on Twitter, there would have been uproar if Labour ministers had been receiving such payments while in ofﬁce.

Journalists and politicians like to use the phrase ‘questions need to be answered’. What, then, are the questions we ought to ask Andy Coulson?

1. What do you know about the Murdochs? This isn’t severance pay: it looks more like hush money. Why are you keeping quiet?

2. What do you know about David Cameron? Despite the huge embarrassment of the phone-hacking scandal, the Prime Minister refuses to apologize for employing you and continues to support you in public. There must be a reason.

3. Did you know about phone-hacking during your time at News of the World? It has been denied that you did, but there is mounting, substantial evidence to the contrary: see Clive Goodman, evidence handed to Harbottle & Lewis, an unnamed source in Channel 4’s Dispatches, Sean Hoare (whose sudden death, incidentally, is yet to be explained . . .)

4. Are your legal costs still being paid by News International? This was the arrangement as of December last year and, according to Robert Peston, News International is reluctant to discuss the matter further.

5. What do you plan to do in prison? By failing to declare your continued income from News International, you have now lied in front a Commons select committee. If you are found to have misled MPs, you will be in contempt of Parliament, for which the maximum punishment is ‘to be committed to prison during the life of the Parliament’.

So how might Mr Coulson amuse himself at her Majesty’s pleasure? We at Political Reboot suggests he reads the paper; at least, while incarcerated, he probably wouldn’t have to read about himself.

Update (24 Aug, 5.32 p.m.): looks like question four has just been answered for us! According to The Guardian, News International has been paying Coulson’s legal fees ever since he left the company in 2007. This arrangement looks likely to end, however, following this week’s revelations about the money he was receiving from News International while working for Cameron and the Conservatives—which, contrary to parliamentary regulations, was not registered when he applied for his House of Commons pass (which was sponsored personally by the Prime Minister). Ho hum.

Riots, responsibility, and the Rivers of Blood

2011-08-14T21:48:00.001+01:00

A shop and ﬂats destroyed by arson in Tottenham

Rioting, looting, arson, and murder: ﬁve nights of crime, perhaps as many as 4,000 arrests, and damage running into the hundreds of millions. A week on, politicians and the media are still debating the causes and consequences of the so-called ‘England Riots’.

According to a YouGov poll in The Sun last Tuesday, the British public lays the blame at the door of virtually everyone: the police, the Government, the immigrant community, the underclass, even black gangster culture (more on this later). In general, though, it seems those interviewed saw the widespread disorder simply as the result of criminal behaviour: lawlessness, opportunism, but nothing more profound than that.

Broadsheet commentators, however, have tended to be far more condemning. The editorial in this morning’s Observer, for example, argued for ‘a new ethic of responsibility’:

The answer—or a big part of it—surely lies in a growing sense that, whatever George Osborne claims about us ‘all being in it together’, most people in Britain are, too much of the time, only ‘in it’ for themselves. The ideas of fairness and equal opportunity are buzzwords on the lips of politicians of every stripe. But the hard evidence of the self-interested behaviour and blatant inequality of life-chances mounts up.

Similarly, The Independent on Sunday says ‘the disorder of recent days was undoubtedly a symptom of a long-standing malaise’, drawing parallels between the rioting last week and the recent abuses of power both within Westminster and Fleet Street.

We ought to feel a degree of liberal guilt about this. It’s too simplistic to dismiss the rioting as ‘criminality, pure and simple’ (and when was criminality ever simple, anyway?). As Gary Younge argued today on Comment is free, ‘when a group of people join forces to ﬂout both law and social convention, they are acting politically’—even if the purpose is unclear. The knee-jerk reaction we’ve seen this week from the Right has been as ineffectual as it was juvenile. We deserve MPs who can suggest more serious policing strategies than locking up offenders in Wembley Stadium.

The Telegraph View believes ‘that the country does not want thugs and thieves to have the upper hand’. So whose example should they heed? With a parliament ready to steal from the public purse, a press unscrupulous enough to hack the phones of murder victims, and a police in the pay of both, where does social responsibility begin? Where there should be checks and balances we have an unholy trinity of corruption; where we should have accountability and scrutiny we see greed and self-interest. Instead of tapping on the shoulder we have back-scratching, laughing off, and looking the other way. Our society isn’t big or small—it’s just sick. And it’s a sickness spreading down, not up.

Which brings me on to David Starkey. In an extraordinary display of bombast which a US news anchor would have cut-off in seconds, Starkey summoned up the ghost of Enoch Powell and his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech:

Starkey is not necessarily wrong in his observation that violence, criminality, and the acquisition of wealth are often gloriﬁed in popular culture, and particularly in hip hop. He would not be wrong, either, in observing that hip hop originated in the black community in New York in the 1970s: so much is more or less fact.

To suggest that all hip hop is ‘violent, destructive, nihilistic’ and ‘gangster’ is ignorant. To claim the same for black culture in its entirety is ignorant, despicable, and offensive. It’s a shame James Delingpole over on the Telegraph blogs can’t see it the same way.

Justice, the death penalty, and Paul Staines: a rebuttal

2011-08-04T17:46:00.000+01:00

Since the end of last month, right-wing blogger Paul Staines has been campaigning for the reinstatement of the death penalty. This morning, Staines, who blogs under the pseudonym Guido Fawkes, launched the following call to arms on the newly launched ofﬁcial e-petitions website:

We petition the Government to review all treaties and international commitments which may inhibit the ability of Parliament to restore capital punishment. Following this review, the Ministry of Justice should map out the necessary legislative steps which will be required to restore the death penalty for the murder of children and police ofﬁcers when killed in the line of duty. The ﬁndings of the review and the necessary substantive legislation [are] to be presented to House of Commons for debate no later than twelve months after this petition passes the acceptance threshold.

‘Guido Fawkes’
(aka Paul Staines)

With more than 1,000 hits a minute, the e-petitions website has been crashing repeatedly throughout the day: such is the level of interest in this issue. 40 of the 169 petitions published so far are calling for the return of the death penalty, although the current e-petition with the most signatures is calling to retain the ban on capital punishment.

Staines has outlined his arguments for the petition in several recent posts on his blog at order-order.com. ‘All polls show that there is majority support for capital punishment,’ he says, ‘yet there is no majority for it in Parliament. It is not even an issue for parliamentarians, even though the incidence of homicide is higher now than it was before the abolition of hanging.’ He draws attention to cases like that of Baby P, Milly Dowler, and the Soham murders, arguing that in each instance the murderers should have faced more than just a jail sentence and, as such, have escaped true justice. He appears to have the backing of The Sun, The Mirror, and the Daily Mail, as well as a handful of Tory MPs (my own included).

Any e-petition with more than 100,000 ‘signatures’ will go to the Commons Backbench Business Committee, which will then decide whether the issue is worthy of debate in Parliament. This is a change that was ﬁrst investigated by the coalition government around June last year, as discussed on Political Reboot at the time.

The central thrust of Staines’s argument is that retribution is missing from the criminal justice system. ‘Some crimes are so abhorrent that society demands more than protection’, he argues. ‘Hindley and Brady tortured and killed ﬁve children for sexual kicks . . . . In cases like theirs, where there is no doubt of guilt and after due process of the law, justice should not prevent retribution.’ His e-petition calls speciﬁcally for the execution of child killers and cop killers. ‘When the public are asked about the death penalty’, he writes, ‘the results have consistently shown a majority in favour; when they are asked speciﬁcally about child killers, the numbers change dramatically, with a range of polls showing two-thirds to three-quarters in in favour. It is a similar picture for cop killers . . . [having the death penalty] will make criminals fear the consequences and give extra legislative protection to the police—beyond a stab vest.’

What Staines is proposing is essentially a re-hash of the old familiar arguments: retribution, deterrence, and public opinion. There are ﬂaws to all three.

Take the issue of public opinion; what’s desperately ironic here is that Staines and his chums are appealing to democracy in order to reinstate a punishment which is fundamentally undemocratic. Amnesty International refer to the death penalty as ‘the ultimate denial of human rights [. . .] the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state’ and oppose it unconditionally. ‘History is littered with human rights violations that were supported by the majority’, they point out; ‘slavery, racial segregation, and lynching all had widespread support in the societies where they occurred but constituted gross violations of the victims’ human rights’.

Retribution—‘let the punishment ﬁt the crime’—is slightly more complicated as it partly involves satisfying the aggrieved party, which will always be subjective. Milly Dowler’s family, for example, called for ‘a life for a life’; Sara Payne, on the other hand, mother of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne, said ‘I don’t think anyone should be able to take another’s life’. Either way, there is a difference between proportional justice and equivalent justice; ethically, it’s hard to see how having murderers murdered by the state is any more justiﬁable than having rapists raped by the state. The death penalty can actually prolong suffering for victims’ families.

As for the matter of deterrence: does the death penalty act as a kind of ‘crime control’? No, simply. Evidence from around the world suggests that the death penalty has no deterrent effect on crime—quite the contrary. In Canada, for example, in 2003, it was found that the murder rate had fallen 44 percent since capital punishment was abolished in 1975. In 2004 in the USA, the average murder rate for states that used the death penalty was 5.71 per 100,000 compared to 4.02 per 100,000 in states that did not use it. The death penalty is not an answer to crime.

Staines’s e-petition represents a cavalier attitude to the criminal justice system and the realities of capital punishment. He happily ignores the irrevocability of the sentence, its ineffectiveness, its inhumanity, the fact that it is used disproportionately against the poor and ethnic minorities—even its cost. It is a regressive, counter-productive, and frankly stupid approach to keeping Britain safe. We don’t need it.

Multiculturalism: is Cameron ‘playing with ﬁre’?

2011-07-31T13:17:00.000+01:00

Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee, has today warned European leaders to take a more ‘cautious’ approach when discussing multiculturalism, according to an article in The Observer today. Following Anders Breivik’s recent attacks in Norway, he said leaders such as David Cameron and Angela Merkel would be ‘playing with ﬁre’ if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists:

We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used.

Political leaders have got to defend the fact that society has become more diverse. We have to defend the reality, otherwise we are going to get into a mess. I think political leaders have to send a clear message to embrace it and beneﬁt from it.

We should be very cautious now, we should not play with ﬁre. Therefore I think the words we are using are very important because it can lead to much more.

Thorbjørn Jagland

The Observer reminds its readers of a speech given by Cameron in Munich back in February, in which, according to the paper, the Prime Minister declared that multiculturalism ‘had failed’ in Britain—a view applauded by the likes of Nick Grifﬁn, leader of the British National Party, and Marine Le Pen, ‘vice-president’ of the far-right Front National in France.

Unfortunately, there is some fairly shoddy (and opportunistic journalism) going on here. For starters, The Observer failed to point out that back in February, when Mr Jagland commented on the issue in the Financial Times, he was actually in favour of the ﬁrm stance taken by Cameron, Merkel, Sarkozy, et al.:

As we understand it now, multiculturalism allows parallel societies to develop within states [. . .] This must be stopped. It is also clear that some parallel societies have developed radical ideas that are dangerous. Terrorism cannot be accepted.

Incidentally, what was it exactly that Cameron said? At the time, papers like The Guardian and The Independent seized upon the idea that ‘multiculturalism has failed’ but a more thorough reading of the speech would have revealed a more reasonable, and more nuanced, agenda:

In the UK, some young men ﬁnd it hard to identify with the traditional Islam practised at home by their parents whose customs can seem staid when transplanted to modern Western countries. But they also ﬁnd it hard to identify with Britain, too, because we have allowed the weakening of our collective identity. Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.

We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values. So when a white person holds objectionable views—racism, for example—we rightly condemn them. But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them.

Do mosques have a place
in the United Kingdom?

The full text of the speech is available here. Rather than opposing multiculturalism, Cameron appears to be actively embracing it. ‘Frankly,’ he says, ‘we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.’ A country that is ‘genuinely liberal’, he argues, does more than just ‘tolerate’: ‘it believes in certain values and actively promotes them’; it says to its citizens, ‘this is what deﬁnes us as a society’. Each of us, he says, must be ‘unambiguous and hard-nosed about this defence of our liberty’.

How is this rhetoric ‘extremist’? In what way is it ‘playing with ﬁre’? This speech is hardly, as Labour MP Sadiq Khan labelled it, ‘propaganda for the far right’. Broadly speaking, Cameron’s approach—active inclusion as opposed to passive toleration—is dead right. What’s dangerous is when papers like The Guardian misrepresent the situation through sensationalist headlines and selective sound bites in order to further their own political agenda. It’s the difference between being liberal (free and fair) and plain anti-Tory (petty).

In a month where press accountability has been under assault in the pages of The Guardian and The Observer, one might expect a little more introspection regarding their own journalistic practices. Our broadsheet writers might not hack phones systematically but they are certainly systematic when it comes to churnalism.

Oh, and one more thing: Marine Le Pen is the president of the Front National and has been since January of this year. Come on, hacks: get your facts right!

Amy Winehouse: the final phone calls

2011-07-29T22:01:00.003+01:00

SINGER spoke with FIVE former lovers the night before she died

Winehouse at the Eurockéennes, 2007

Revealed: today’s headline is utter, utter rubbish. In fact it feels pretty low just to have written it, let alone put it online. But it serves (I hope) an important point.

Here’s the question: if these phone calls had been ‘intercepted’ and taped by a bunch of tabloid editors, do you think they would have had the decency not to publish their contents? The answer, probably, is no—even if we take into account the increased media scrutiny that journalistic practices are currently being subjected to.

Another question: do you think the general public would ﬁnd such phone calls interesting? (Bear in mind, if you would, the extent to which your own interest may have been piqued by the headline.) If an article about if it were to appear on the front page, do you think people would take a peek? Or even, for 35p, pick up a paper and read the whole thing later?

Given that the scandal surrounding News International shows no sign of abating, questions such as these still have their place. Today’s latest news is that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, communicating through his lawyers, has said that he ‘acted on the instructions of others’ while employed by News of the World and that ‘any suggestion that he acted in such matters unilaterally is untrue’. Yesterday it was revealed that Sara Payne, the mother of schoolgirl Sarah Payne who was murdered in 2000, had also had her voice mail intercepted by Mulcaire, on a phone which had been given to her by the paper’s editor at the time, Rebekah Brooks. Soon, it seems, the spotlight is likely to turn on the Mirror, its former editor Piers Morgan, and maybe even—we can but hope?—the Daily Mail.

Rupert Murdoch

The issues that led to phone-hacking becoming so endemic, however, have been given scant attention. Why were the methods used by hacks (and hackers) at the News of the World not considered too risky? Because there was (and still is) an endless and widespread interest in the kind of tittle-tattle it is used to obtain. For some writers today, here is no such thing as a ‘school’ of journalism, only a marketplace: and with a marketplace comes supply and demand. Readers will, it seems, read anything, provided they don’t know where it might have come from. Equally, though, it could be contended that it was the tabloids who incubated this culture in the ﬁrst place; such is the line taken by next month’s New Yorker:

The seeds of the current crisis were planted long ago. If your attitude toward the lives of others is that of a house burglar confronted by an open window; if you consider it part of your business to fabricate conversations where none exist; and if your boss treats his employees with a derision that they, following suit, extend to the subjects of their inquiries—if those elements are already in place, then the decision to, say, hack into someone's cell phone is almost no decision at all. It is merely the next step . . . What ensues may be against the law, but it goes no more against the grain of common decency than any other tool of your trade.

There are many questions following the last few weeks’ revelations but perhaps the most pressing (and difﬁcult) is where do we go from here? Rather than getting embroiled in a chicken-and-egg complex, we should maybe take our inspiration from another famous paradox: quis custodiet ipsos custodies (‘who will guard the guards themselves?’). If the British press is going to be more accountable—and, accordingly, more able to hold others to account—it is not going to do so in a vacuum; the UK needs to wean itself off its empty diet of gossip, celebs, TV, and trash. And fast.

Political Cucumbers

2011-06-01T17:04:00.000+01:00

The recent E. coli outbreak is the largest in Germany’s history. With over 1,000 suspected cases, and at least 16 deaths, German authorities are instructing consumers to stay clear of tomatoes, cucumbers, and salad leaves. The outbreak is causing severe infections, affecting the blood, kidneys, and central nervous system, and may lead to hemolytic-uremic syndrome: a medical emergency which is fatal in 5–10% of cases. Cases have now been reported in Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.

So what has this got to do with politics? Last week, Hamburg scientists suggested that Spanish cucumbers were likely to blame for the outbreak; yesterday, an EU spokesman said that producers in Andalusia had been shut down as possible sources. But, as the BBC reports, Spanish cucumbers are not to blame.

Too late. Spain’s agriculture minister is furious. Thousands of tons of produce have had to be destroyed and the loss is said to be costing the Spainish economy, which is already fragile, around €200m (£175m) a week. Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, is threatened legal action against the Hamburg authorities.

The Guardian suggests that ‘the cucumber wars’ may be the shape of things to come. Perhaps this is a bit contrived – almost as if the author wants nothing more than an excuse to elicit pageviews with an image of a man and his cucumbers (cough). Still, it’s remarkable how quickly this outbreak has turned from a crisis of public health into an economic blame game. Is united Europe fraying at the edges?

Rape, abstinence, and rape: A bad week for women

2011-05-18T19:44:00.002+01:00

We're only half-way through yet what a week it's been:

On Saturday, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of IMF, was arrested in New York City after—it is alleged—sexually assaulting a hotel maid earlier that day. He was subsequently charged with sexual assault, forcible confinement, and attempted rape. A defence request for $1m bail was turn down by the judge and Mr Strauss-Khan has been remanded in custody (New York's notorious Rikers Jail) until his next court appearance on Friday. His accuser is reported to be ‘scared, but will testify’. The Managing Director has been accused of sexual misconduct twice previously.

On Monday, the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries returned to the subject of her proposed bill (currently on its second reading) which would require all sex educators to promote abstinence to girls in secondary school. Talking to Vanessa Feltz on the Channel 5 show Vanessa, Dorries said:

‘If a stronger “just say no” message was given to children in school then there might be an impact on sex abuse … if we imbued this message in school we'd probably have less sex abuse.’

Because saying ‘no’ works.

Nadine Dorries

Dorries, currently being investigated by the CPS for her expense claims, is of course no stranger to controversy: she provoked an outcry last year after admitting that her blog was ‘70% fiction’.

And lastly, today, in an interview with BBC Radio Five live, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Kenneth Clarke, got himself terribly mixed up over the distinction between ‘serious’, and, er—non-serious?—rape (full transcript):

Interviewer: Rape is rape, with respect.

Clarke: No it's not.

Ken Clarke

The Fawcett Society has already produced a response to the interview, saying that ‘to suggest that some of those rapes are not “serious”, that there are shades of sexual consent, is offensive and legally incorrect … the way in which today's policy proposals have been presented by the Minister suggests [that] common misconceptions about sexual violence exist at the heart of government.’ Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, has already called on the Justice Secretary to resign. As of this blogpost, he hasn't.

Had enough? You may be interested in Slutwalk UK, a protest movement taking off on Facebook which started in Canada and has spread to the US and now here. Perhaps they won't succeed in reclaiming part of the language, but they sure as hell won't bump into Nadine Dorries …

Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?

2011-05-17T08:27:00.000+01:00

Our China expert, Sam Evans, takes a look behind the PRC.

‘Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?’ taunts the stencilled graffiti which continues to appear on the pavements and buildings of Hong Kong, where two activists were last week arrested for such spray-painting. Government officials are quick to remove this vandalism which protests against the ‘disappearance’ of controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese government over one month ago. On Sunday Weiwei’s wife was allowed to visit the detained artist for the first time, reporting that he is healthy but appears mentally conflicted and tense.

Provocative: Weiwei infamously shatters a Han dynasty urn

The Economist has recently suggested that cumulatively—considering tightened Internet censorship, harassment of foreign journalists, and now Ai Weiwei's arrest and rumoured torture—the crackdown on political dissent in China ‘constitutes the worst since Tiananmen Square in 1989 and its aftermath’. On Easter Sunday we saw members of an underground church were detained as they congregated for a service. China is clearly flexing its muscles; its perceived ‘worsening’ human rights record by the West far from improving. Last week a senior Chinese diplomat defended the detention of Weiwei, adding that criticism by Europe and the United States has been ‘condescending’.

Can Ai Weiwei's arrest be aligned with a intensification of repression following a ‘Beijing Spring’, aided by the 2008 Olympics and 2010 Expo? Many consider Weiwei's call for a ‘jasmine revolution’ on the Internet to be a final straw against the government in the artist's long line of provocative creations and preachings, climaxing in his arrest at Beijing airport on 3rd April.

What Weiwei thinks of the Forbidden City

Let's take a closer look at Ai Weiwei and the works and events which have positioned him as an internationally celebrated artist and activist—and which led to his current detainment . . .

Bird's Nest. Co-designing the memorable Olympic stadium brought Ai Weiwei international acclaim. In 2007, Weiwei famously commented on the Olympics as a ‘pretend smile’, an ‘empty event’ not shared by ordinary citizens, and of the opening ceremony as a ‘product of government bureaucracy’. Scathing remarks.

‘Is it possible . . . to win international
recognition and approval when
liberty and freedom of expression
are lacking?’—Weiwei

Sichuan Earthquake, May 2008. Weiwei spoke out against the government for ‘trying to hide the true problems of the collapse of the school buildings’ which he claimed were the result of government negligence. Following this investigation Weiwei accused the police of beating him. In May 2009 his blog was shut down.

2010: Tate Modern Unilever Series Sunflower Seeds. Weiwei's installation in London's Tate Modern turbine hall questioned the role of the individual in society, alluding also to Maoist propaganda which featured scenes of sunflowers bowing to the mighty sun. (Check out my writing on the publicity surrounding this exhibit.) The iconic Gallery currently calls for Ai Weiwei's release from its windows, visible across the Thames. New Weiwei exhibitions are about to open in the UK.

Escalation. Government opposition against Weiwei has steadily escalated. In January, his Shanghai studio was demolished, with state media describing him as a ‘deviant and a plagiarist’. When Weiwei sought to attend the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony for jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, he was prevented from leaving the country. Unceasing in his outspokenness, it was only a matter of time before officials were to take drastic measures to silence Weiwei.

This is one way to catch the attention of the authorities, and it may have been a step too far. The caption for this semi-nude photograph (right) reads ‘『草泥马挡中央』’: ‘Fuck your mother, the party central committee’. Consequently seen as a detrimental force against the country's image, Ai Weiwei's daring has caught up with him.

Not one for subtlety . . .

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, has described the arrest of Ai Weiwei and sealing off of his studio as a reflection of ‘a new escalation in the current and already severe crackdown’. A crackdown which could be seen as a planned, yet nervous, precursor to imminent shifts in power as the Chinese Party Congress in 2012 will usher in a new generation of leaders. What is certain is that the government is sending out strong signals to dissidents, spreading shockwaves by ‘disappearing’ such an internationally prominent figure.

It's the environment, stupid

2011-05-16T08:00:00.003+01:00

From our resident environmentalist Dan Evans.

In the early days of the Coalition, in an attempt to claim that his would be the ‘greenest government ever’, David Cameron made a bold statement—that he would, effectively, be the ‘fourth minister’ in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and champion the environment in Parliament. A year on from this, and with ‘hug a husky’ only a distant memory, how are Cameron's green credentials faring?

Hug a husky

Well, the dismantling of the Sustainable Development Commission, the attempted sell-off of national forests to private companies and George Osborne's watered-down Green Bank might suggest that the Coalition is reneging on its informal environmental pledge. But while his government might be suffering, Cameron has so far remained outside of these often controversial policy decisions. By publicly distancing himself from proposals with low public support and letting his cabinet ministers take the rap—DEFRA's Caroline Spelman and the forests being a prime example—Cameron has managed to keep his hands, well, green.

Vince Cable

Green politics has been back in the limelight recently with Chris Huhne's ‘green deal’ package, which aims to commit the UK to two decades of emissions reduction across domestic, transport, and business spheres. However, rather than the proposals themselves, the media focus has been on the so-called ‘yellow on yellow’ split between Huhne and Vince Cable. Cable, along with Osborne and Transport Minister Phillip Hammond, argues that by setting strong commitments we risk ‘burdening the UK economy, which would be detrimental to the UK, undermining the UK's competitiveness and our attractiveness as a place to do business’.

Because of this spotlight on his fractured cabinet—as well as an open letter from fifteen leading green campaign groups—Cameron this time has been forced into the carbon row to back Huhne's department, his intervention meaning the proposals will almost certainly become legally binding. In many ways this whole row may have been advantageous to Cameron, allowing him to act as a saviour to a green deal threatened by Lib Dem in-fighting. But while this commitment to reduce emissions is important, it will not be the end of the matter in terms of public and political debate. Rather than retreat back to the sidelines, Cameron will have to actively defend his decision to support strong environmental targets over the coming weeks and months.

One way he might choose to do it is by challenging the binary opposition between Environment and Economy that threatened to derail the proposals. Leading wind turbine manufacturer Vestas has expressed interest in a huge new production facility in Kent and creating 2000 new jobs—but only if the UK adopts the right type of environmental policy. Reaching a firm agreement in the next few weeks would help convince sceptics like Cable that green policies do not have to be detrimental to economic recovery. According to a recent UN report, renewable energy could provide nearly 80% of the world’s energy needs after 2050; if that's true true, then this is exactly the sort of manufacturing the UK should be trying to encourage.

Chris Huhne

The second path Cameron could choose is to regurgitate William Hague's arguments that strong carbon policy is needed in order to be a world leader in climate change mitigation. After all, we will now be the only country in the world with legally binding commitments past 2020; rather than a problem, Cameron and Huhne need to convince the Coalition that this is a distinct strength. Negotiations at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Durban at the end of the year will be an opportunity to flex our newly acquired environmental muscles, and make up for the, frankly, embarrassing outcomes of the recent Copenhagen and Cancun talks.

Despite some early setbacks, Cameron's ambition to lead the ‘greenest government ever’ will be bolstered by these historic new carbon commitments. However, by whichever methods he chooses, he will undoubtedly have to justify his decision to throw his weight behind aggressive emissions policies and to continue to identify their economic and political benefits. Rather than retreat back from the environmental frontline, it is likely the Prime Minister may find himself the ‘fourth minister’ of the Department of Energy and Climate Change after all.

The hardest hit

2011-05-15T11:10:00.000+01:00

We talk about ‘Cuts’—capital C, abstract, ambiguous—but what exactly do we mean?

When George Osborne announced the Spending Review last year, his tone was triumphant. Speaking on 20th October, he said: ‘Today's the day when Britain steps back from the brink: when we confront the bills from a decade of debt.’

He declared Britain's priorities to be: ‘the health care of our people, the education of our young, our nation’s security and the infrastructure that supports our economic growth.’

Not, then, the disabled.

Have a read of this article from yesterday's Guardian:

Disabled face increasing hostility from strangers, survey finds

The Coalition Government has announced it will cut Disability Living Allowance by up to 20% (.pdf, p. 36). It will also cut services such as day care, transport, and respite services. It will replace Incapacity Benefit with a new Employment and Support Allowance, whereby disabled people will be subjected to ‘fitness to work’ tests. There are fears, following a newly commissioned green paper, that disabled children are to be moved away from mainstream schooling—and that, to save money, fewer children will be classified as having special educational needs.

The result? According to yesterday's survey, commissioned by Scope, a backdrop of hostility towards disabled people which is only getting worse. Half of those surveyed reported daily or weekly discrimination. 58% thought others did not believe they were disabled and half of disabled people feel others presume they are not working. Scope's chief executive, Richard Hawkes, remarked that this backdrop of negativity will, ironically, only make it harder for the million disabled people who will be migrated off benefits:

‘Much of the welfare reform debate has focused on disabled people as benefit scroungers and many disabled people feel this has led to the public being more sceptical about disability issues and more hostile and those who receive welfare support.’

Our society, and our government, sees disability support as ‘wasted spending’. This is a worrying trend. It has often been said that the mark of a good society is how it looks after its most vulnerable: in the UK, our most vulnerable are the hardest hit. Meanwhile, at HBOS—83% of which is owned by the British taxpayer—the CEO raked in a cool £9m for his work last year.

Welcome to the Cuts. Welcome to the Big Society.

Website for the Disability Benefits Consortium

Super Thursday: Cameron, not Clegg, should be watching his back

2011-05-07T16:30:00.000+01:00

The Lib Dems' losses in the elections this Thursday could not have been more painful, or more public. In one sweep, the party lost control of twelve seats in the Scottish Parliament (forcing Lib Dem leader, Tavish Scott, to resign) one seat in the Welsh Assembly, and nine of their twenty councils in England—Sheffield, Clegg's constituency, among them. In the AV referendum, arguably the biggest coup gained by the Lib Dems in the Coalition agreement, the No campaign won resoundingly, polling more than double the number of Yes votes.

Nick Clegg's face is plastered over the front pages this morning but who else fared badly?

Despite taking control of 26 councils in England, Labour's gains were actually rather modest; they failed to dent the Conservatives, who remarkably gained a further four councils. Plaid Cymru lost four seats in the Welsh Assembly while in Northern Ireland the results are still coming through. Undoubtedly the biggest winners of the night were the Scottish National Party, who reaped in an impressive 23 seats, taking control of Holyrood for the first time in the history of devolution.

Results day was a wake-up call for the Lib Dems. The time for bonhomie is over: Cameron has fed them to the wolves. Not only did the prime minister renege on a promise to keep a low profile during the AV referendum but he refused to condemn the vitriolic attacks on his deputy. The spirit of cooperation which brought the two parties to government has dissipated: now, it's not a partnership, but a ‘transactional business relationship’.

Cameron's tactics may have brought him short-term gains but he is headed for rough waters. With the SNP now in control of Holyrood, their long-held ambition to call a referendum on Scottish independence might finally be realized. Opinion polls suggest Mr Salmond's dream is one not shared by the majority of Scottish voters, yet, even so, the prospect of a constitutional battle over the issue will not be to Mr Cameron's liking.

Plus, if a referendum on independence does take place, where are Cameron's allies? Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems could really afford to campaign on the issue, and the Scots won't take well to Cameron, the voice of Middle England, giving a lecture on the virtues of the Union. Without the support of his Coalition partners,

Mr Cameron might find himself embroiled in a battle he really would rather avoid. His decision to let Nick Clegg fight his own battles might one day come back to bite him . . .

AV: It's our politics, not just our electoral system, that needs overhauling

2011-05-03T08:52:00.000+01:00

Politics graduate Jess Bowring returns to Political Reboot with her opinion on AV.

The AV debate has never really set the nation alight with excitement. In the week of not only a Royal Wedding, but also the death of Bin Laden, it has slipped right down our list of priorities. Nonetheless, it’s an important issue. It will fundamentally change the quality of our democracy . . . right?

Well, no. I can't dispute that AV is, technically, a better way of translating people's political preferences into seats in the House of Commons than First Past the Post. I will be voting Yes in this weeks' referendum. But let's be clear—AV will do very little to solve one of the greatest flaws in British democracy today: namely, that our politics has become a game of ‘the lesser of three evils’.

We only need to look back to the last General Election for a reminder of how little the electorate cared for any of the three main parties. Indifference reigned. Since then, Labour's politics has mainly played on people's disillusionment with the Lib Dems and disgust for the Conservatives. The Coalition, in fairness, tried to sell us the idea of a ‘Big Society’. Unfortunately that's been met with almost universal derision and accusations of ministers ‘washing their hands of responsibility for the impact of spending cuts’. Far more effective has been their tactic of ensuring that the word ‘inherited’ is constantly tagged on to any reference to the deficit. Surely a healthy democracy isn't built on a foundation of ‘I'm not as bad as the other guy’?

Perhaps AV will cause our parties to drift back away from the centre. Hazy undergraduate memories bring back Sartori's thesis that systems like First Past the Post drag parties to the centre to win votes. On this basis, under AV there might be less selling out of parties' traditional ideologies, more positive values to stand for. But even if that’s the case, we have reached such a heightened state of cynicism in this country that it’s hard to believe anyone would buy into it all.

In short, British politics has gone stale and is in dire need of rejuvenation. AV isn't enough. Putting a number 1 next to a certain candidate is still going to mean nothing more than numbers 2, 3, etc. were a worse option. We need candidates that stand for something genuine and most importantly, we need to be able to believe them. That requires a revolution in political culture—and revolutions are led by people, not electoral systems. Step forward someone who can inspire us, please.

Why I'm a Lefty Monarchist

2011-04-23T08:00:00.035+01:00

By Peter Ede

You might just have noticed: there's a Royal Wedding on. Oddly, I couldn't care too much about it. I watched the Charles and Diana wedding, but I was still at Primary School. For young Peter it was simply marvellous: the magic, the pomp, the once in a generation type feel of it. I loved history; I loved Kings and Queens; and this was a fairy tale coming true.

Well, more Grimm than Andersen in the end,
but that's another story . . .

However, why not this time? Well I'm no longer a little kid. Not that I know them, but on a personal level I would love the couple to be happy. I am not directly interested though; but that doesn’t mean there aren’t millions of people for whom the next few days will be amazing. It actually makes me enormously happy to think of them. I received a tweet from a friend from Tokyo expressing exactly that (wow, do the people of Japan need some distraction right now) saying how much she was looking forward to it and how happy she was for the people of Britain. Put simply, that gave me joy.

Monarchy, Formula 1 and Eurovision

Joy is at the heart of my argument. Many irrational things in life give us pleasure: who am I to condemn people who spend hours on a Saturday watching smelly, noisy cars racing round and round a track, or those for whom Eurovision is a reason to bring their friends together and have a massive once a year celebration listening to boys in tight trousers singing utter trash?

I may be a lefty, but I'm fundamentally a liberal (no, not a Liberal Democrat), and I believe that unless there is a very solid reason, on the balance of all factors, we should allow things to be, and live and let live.

‘Argh!’ scream the ranks of dour, humourless republicans (ever met one with a decent sense of humour, by the way?): the Monarchy isn't harmless. It's illogical. It's patriarchal. It's about privilege. It derives from the Divine Right. It has no place in a modern democracy.

I would have to agree on some of these points. The primogeniture and anti-Catholic succession rules need reforming, no question. There is little defending it from a modern, rational, purely democratic viewpoint. No one would sit down and think up this system. It is a product of evolution, accident and history—as most things in our world. We have it, however, and frankly, it works surprisingly well in practice.

President Blair?

What are the alternatives: an elected president with political power—a President Sarkozy or a President Blair? Or a grey figurehead president that no one has heard of—a Christian Wulff or Micheline Calmy-Rey? Who? Exactly. I would need a very solid proof of actual harm to exchange a 1500-year old institution for this.

A Dignified Figurehead

For me, the monarchy provides a dignified figurehead who is above party politics. It provides stability, continuum, a focus. HM Queen Elizabeth II (and indeed the HRH Prince of Wales) are respected around the world and represent our country phenomenally well. Ask people whom they associate with the United Kingdom and the Queen will be pretty high up the list. (By the way, if they answer Victoria Beckham, slap them.)

Even when the President of the US greets the Queen, you know he is a passing figure: she will remain. I am proud that she represents us powerfully and with such dignity: no president of a country of 60 million could pack the punch that she does.

Last month I visited Vienna and the Habsburg Imperial apartments. A ghastly official shop selling ‘Empress Sisi’ umbrellas, €9.00 watches, other junk, and a museum devoid of any soul greeted me. This is the seat of perhaps the greatest monarchy in Europe: an extraordinary dynasty that ruled vast areas of land for 650 years, home of the former Holy Roman Emperors: hollow, empty, tacky.

Bling, bling

Yes, I'm sure technically Heinz Fischer (again, who?) fulfils a more justifiable role in purely political terms in modern Austria, but life is not just about the purely rational. We have a stable, largely functioning and unbroken democracy in this country. What actual benefit would it give to our lives to abolish the Windsors—really?

Black Rod is Bonkers

As a lefty who believes in democracy really quite strongly, I have no question that unelected peers should not have a say in determining our laws. I feel strongly we need electoral voting reform: AV is a great first step. But I do not feel that the functioning of our government is—for one second—compromised by the existence of the Queen as the Head of State. Yes, Black Rod knocking on the door of the Commons at the opening of Parliament is (delightfully and completely) bonkers: but it's not he (nor his boss, the Queen) who is savaging our public services: it's the head of our Coalition government, Dave, the Prime Minister. If the monarchy played a role in determining the decisions that affect my life I might have a different stance—but it just does not.

Just in passing, when I visit Copenhagen I don't do so in expectation incidentally of popping in for Danish butter cookies with Queen Margrethe. I'm glad to see her postcards on sale and am an enormous admirer (she is an accomplished archaeologist who studied at Copenhagen, Sorbonne and Cambridge. Plus she is so glam). I'm just as likely to visit Paris, despite the fact they have quite the track record in regicide and revolution.

In my view it's a rubbish argument to say that the Queen brings people to London: they would come anyway. London is so more alive, though, for the fact that Buckingham Palace is lived in. I think of Vienna where 2.5 million tourists tramp in line through Schönbrunn each year, viewing the empty rooms. Its would be resident, HIRH Karl, Archduke of Austria, head of the Habsburg family, now lives in a suburb of Salzburg and worked in the 90s as a TV Quiz Show Host. Is that something for a country to be proud of?

69 pence a year

What is the cost to you of this monarchy business? An absurdly low 69p (that's €0.79 in proper money), per person, per year in 2009. If there is one enchanted schoolchild, one happy parent, one delighted TV viewer in Tokyo, one nostalgic pensioner for my 69p, I am more than happy to contribute this out of my taxes. Don’t pretend presidents do not cost money too: perhaps not as much if they are symbolic figureheads with a lesser public profile, but they are still far from free to the taxpayer.

On my test of ‘allow it, unless it causes harm’, I utterly fail to see the argument for instituting massive, fundamental constitutional change and abolishing the monarchy. Miserable republicans might not like it, but the monarchy is not actually harming their lives. Arguably F1 racing should be banned long before the Queen, with the costs it involves to the environment. (By the way, we'll leave Eurovision alone because I actually quite like that too.)

No, personally I won't be watching Kate & Will tie the knot, but my goodness I am happy that hundreds of millions around the world will be. What harm exists in their forgetting the troubles of ordinary day life and savouring the magic and simple joy that this event and that monarchy brings to them?

I wish you all a very happy day on 29 April: if you don't like it, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is out on DVD, apparently. Watch that instead, get caught up in that fantasy, and enjoy your day off—but think what this once-in-a-generation event means to other people, and have the generosity to allow them to enjoy the moment. I'll actually be in Germany and I know the enthusiasm will be much greater there than here. It's sometimes only when you’ve lost something that you truly appreciate its worth.

Who Cares?

2011-04-22T08:00:00.000+01:00

To kick off a special week of Royal Wedding coverage here at Political Reboot, Hope Hadfield explores the public opinion behind the Royal Wedding media frenzy.

‘Middleton to be “third most beautiful royal in history”’

These are hard times for Britain’s republicans. They can hardly switch on the TV, pick up a newspaper or walk down the street without being bombarded by signs that the monarchy is alive and well. With royal wedding fever gripping the nation, Britain once again demonstrates that it is truly a country of loyal royal subjects.

Or so the media tells us. The BBC is taking its position as Britain’s global mouthpiece very seriously indeed, with a special page for the Royal Wedding—a luxury normally only reserved for serious political developments or catastrophes. As violence broke in Nigeria and Standard & Poor downgraded the USA's credit rating, the Daily Telegraph website continued its fine posh totty tradition and plastered its homepage with the rather fragrant Miss Middleton.

Even in that bastion of republicanism, the United States of America, women’s magazine Glamour has recently installed a whole wedding section on its website. Of course, weddings are an important element in many young women’s lives, particularly as the summer approaches, and the section covers crucial issues including ‘why he hasn't proposed (yet)’ and a $30,000 dog wedding. But a full quarter of the site's wedding stories relate to the royal nuptials: a high percentage for a country where the biggest annual party celebrates deposing William's ancestor.

Although the wedding was only announced five months ago, several books and films have certainly captured the zeitgeist (or, as cynics might see it, cashed in) with The King's Speech cleaning up the Oscars and the publication of Booker-shortlisted author Monica Ali's Diana fantasy, Untold Story.

But is life imitating art? The Economist's Schumpter blog offers anecdotal evidence that ‘nobody seems to be interested’ and predicts a revolution through apathy. Even the BBC has had to admit that there's been a surprisingly low appetite for street parties in comparison to the Golden Jubilee or Charles and Diana's wedding. The Beeb blames poor weather, lack of time and red tape, quickly brushing aside any hint of public disinterest—but, given that they just spent a sizable chunk of licence payers' money creating this graphically-advanced interactive Middleton family tree, they probably wouldn't want to admit to any suggestion of public apathy.

Measuring public interest before the big day itself is difficult, as viewing figures and turnout in central London will show how many people are genuinely interested, and how many really don't care about a wedding of people that they don't know.

Furthermore, interest in a wedding is not a particularly accurate indicator of support for the institution of monarchy as a whole. As a glitzy party involving glamorous rich people, it will naturally interest readers of Heat magazine more than those who peruse New Scientist: but celebrity-watchers may not be avid monarchists any more than scientists are rabid republicans.

Surely the press can also be forgiven for publishing reams on the wedding, whether or not the general public is desperate for news of Carole Middleton's pre-wedding diet. With parliament out of session, swathes of bank holidays have rendered this April a mini silly-season, and pretty Kate on the cover will surely sell more papers than a diagram detailing the potential consequences of adopting the Alternative Vote system.

Although not everyone is as keen on the Royal Wedding as certain over-excited Political Reboot contributors who may have downloaded the Hello! Magazine Royal Wedding app, even grumpy Schumpter felt compelled to post a particularly joyful Royal Wedding-inspired advertisement. And—since the Schumpter column aims to ‘provide commentary and analysis on the topics of business, finance and management’—The Economist's swerve off-topic suggests that the royal wedding is more news-worthy than the commentator would like to claim.

Welcome back to Political Reboot!

2011-04-21T14:51:00.000+01:00

The observant among you may have noticed that Political Reboot was rather, erm, ‘quiet’ over the last few weeks. This wasn't due to lack of news. In fact—with continued protests in the Arab world, civil war in Libya, an escalating nuclear disaster in Japan, and fighting in the Ivory Coast—quite the opposite. But without the cooperation of my Internet service provider (the uncontactable and pedantic Vodaphone.de) blogging on any of these subjects has been practically impossible. Hence the hiatus.

So we're relaunching Political Reboot this week and we've got some really great pieces in the pipeline:

Tomorrow, our resident humorist Hope Hadfield kicks off our Royal Wedding Week with her perusal of media coverage (the gamut from The Economist to Glamour, Heat, and Hello!);

Get ready for a flurry of royal politics!

On Sunday, celebrated lefty Peter Ede (blog) explains why he's still a monarchist;

Our new contributor Sam Evans (who blogs here) will be lifting the lid on China and the disappearance of Ai Weiwei;

Oxford PPE graduate Jess Bowring weighs up the pros and cons of AV (as part of a special series of articles on the referendum);

And, back on the subject of kings and queens, I will be looking at alternative street parties and the future of Britain's republican movement

If you want to write for Political Reboot (and we welcome contributions from across the political spectrum), you can get in touch with me by email or on Twitter. You can also sign up for email updates: just type in your email address in the box on the right-hand side and the rest is sorted out automatically.

It's good to be back!

Eddy Anderson
April 2011

‘Budge up’ in the House

2011-04-20T14:11:00.000+01:00

Following today's report by the independent Constitution Unit (pdf), it seems that the House of Lords is set to become an increasingly pressing issue over the next few months.

The chamber

David Cameron, according to the report, has created peers more quickly than any of his post-war predecessors, having appointed more than a hundred in less than a year. The Lords now has 792 members entitled to attend and vote and a further 39 in temporary exclusion; in 1999, there were just 666 members. The scale of the prime minister's appointments ‘has had negative effects on the functioning of the chamber’, argues the report, and ‘any further increase in size risks rendering the House of Lords completely unable to do its job’. The report is backed by 18 senior parliamentarians including Baroness Boothroyd, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Adonis, the former cabinet minister, and the prominent Liberal Democrat Shirley Williams.

In fairness to Mr Cameron, Gordon Brown's resignation honours list was ‘unusually large’: 23 such appointments were made, of which 13 were Labour. Edward Heath left nine, James Callaghan left ten, and Margaret Thatcher left only seven. Even so, the current prime minister's rate of appointments is unprecedented, and, according to the report, has made the Lords ‘more fractious’, compromising the chamber's ‘non-partisan ethos and [...] courteous atmosphere’. (The report notes that, internationally, the House of Lords is ‘the only second chamber to be larger than its respective first chamber’ and that overall it is one of the largest parliamentary chambers in the world.)

The Coalition Agreement outlined the government's plans for a wholly or mainly elected second chamber, and a draft bill on the subject is expected before the end of this month. The issue was fiercely debated in the Lords soon after the last election. In the interim, the Coalition aims to make Lords appointments in such a way that reflects ‘the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election’—which, based on the current composition of the Commons, would require a House of Lords in excess of 1,000 members (since members are conferred life membership), and which, according to the Constitution Unit, ‘would be a foolish and unsustainable course to pursue’.

With opposing groups in the UK currently battling over the issue of AV, it may be that Lords reform is actually much more urgent. For the prime minister to ignore this report—which he appears to have done, judging by today's statement from Downing Street—could be disastrous, and not just in the long term.

Whatever happened to ‘Big Society, not Big Government’?

Kicking a man when he's down

2011-04-19T16:04:00.000+01:00

Some extraordinary comments today from David Cameron in an interview on Radio 4's Today programme:

Evan Davies: Gordon Brown is emerging as the favourite to become the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Many people think he would be an ideal candidate: it's normally a politician, a former politician from one of the member states of the IMF [. . .] If Britain says we don't want him: what's your government's permission on [that]? Would you block or obstruct Gordon Brown from becoming managing director of the IMF?

David Cameron: Well, I haven't spent a huge amount of time thinking about this, but it does seem to me that if you have someone who didn't think we had a debt problem in the UK, when we self-evidently do have a debt problem, then it might not be the most appropriate person to work out whether other countries around the world have debt and deficit problems.

Mr Cameron went on to say that the IMF required someone ‘extraordinarily competent’, and that perhaps it is time for a managing director from ‘another part of the world’.

Already the remarks have drawn criticism. David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, suggested Mr Cameron's stance was ‘vindictive’ and ‘small-minded’. Ed Miliband hailed Mr Brown as ‘eminently qualified’, adding that the former Labour prime minister's role in dealing with the global economic crisis of 2007/8 had been ‘outstanding’.

It's worth remembering that the vacancy for managing director has not yet arisen. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is widely expected to seek nomination for the President of France in 2012, remains the incumbent. If Brown were to run—which, after a speech in New York last week, seems likely—he would require the Government's backing.

Criticizing your predecessor in public is a dangerous business, even for a prime minister. Since World War II, it has been something of an unwritten rule among outgoing PMs to bow out gracefully and leave their successor to it. The successor is expected to return the courtesy. Have a dig at another party by all means, but don't, don't make it personal. Speaking about Brown disparagingly like this is a bad idea for the prime minister: Mr Cameron runs the risk of appearing petty, thin-skinned, and, worst of all, unstatesmanlike.

M. Strauss-Kahn's five-year term is due to expire next year, by which point we will know for sure whether Mr Brown will be seeking nomination. One has to wonder whether, in another five years. the current Chancellor will be deemed as suitable for the post.

Will AV punish Nick Clegg?

2011-04-18T11:39:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the extended absence!

Not a happy bunny

In this morning's Independent, Ed Miliband returns to the subject of AV, concerned once again that the referendum will be used to punish Nick Clegg.

We need to persuade people to look beyond party lines. Some Labour supporters will vote No for principled reasons. Others may be tempted to do so because they think it is a way to punish the Liberal Democrats—and Nick Clegg in particular—for the decision to join a Conservative-led government.

The Independent's Andrew Grice believes that Miliband is using this argument as an ‘insurance policy’, part of a difficult balancing act in which the Labour leader must stand up for what he believes in without dividing his party down the middle: ‘if the public votes No’, he writes, ‘the Labour leader could argue that he tried his best but was handicapped by Mr Clegg's deep unpopularity.’ More so than Cameron or Clegg, Miliband has found himself in a very tricky position.

It's not an unreasonable fear that the AV referendum will be treated like The General Election Mk II. Journalists like to tell stories, and the idea that this is ‘Nick Clegg's last stand’ sounds a good deal more exciting than the suggestion that this is just about electoral reform. Clegg himself called AV ‘a very British reform’: an evolution, not a revolution. With both the Yes camp and the No camp forecasting doomsday scenarios for what could happen after 5th May—an image of Britain where weak government, corruption, and right-wing extremism run rife—it's hard to believe that this is anything less than the future of our democracy in the balance. UK politics will be changed forever by the outcome.

The question which few seem to be asking is: will it? Will AV make a significant impact on our next election, or will the change go largely unnoticed? Would a No vote mark the end of the Coalition or would Cameron and Clegg simply patch things up and move on? Journalists (and indeed, cough, some bloggers) want us to believe that the AV referendum will be a pivotal moment in the lifetime of this government; could the reality be somewhat less dramatic?

People may well look back on AV in six months time as a great big fuss about nothing. We bloggers do have a tendency to hype things up a bit, and the level of public interest in this referendum may have been significantly overvalued. Maybe the outcome will mark the end of Nick Clegg, the Coalition, Ed Miliband, or UK politics as we know it; maybe, just maybe, things will go on as normal. Time will tell.

Barnsley was a win for who?

2011-03-06T18:36:00.004Z

Last night, Barnsley, a seat where you could stand a turnip in a red rosette and it would win, was a scene of rejoicing as Labour crowed about increasing their majority. I struggle to understand how a by-election with a 36% turnout, where almost 21% of the vote was captured by far right parties is a cause for celebration. The win by a media friendly 'star' with no links to that community, something to be proud of? A drop in Labour votes from 17,487 to 14,724, in the year politics landed on everyone's doorstep, irrelevant because the Liberal Democrats were decimated?

Dan Hodges wrote this piece for the New Statesman today about the recent research by Searchlight on the rise in identity politics and the challenge this brings to the UK. The effect of which Barnsley's election result brought home loud and clear. I agree with parts of Dan's analysis, but to understand the results of Searchlight's research, and Barnsley's election result you need to look at the politics and economics which brought us here.

Dan talked about Gillian Duffy, I pointed out you can't look at Rochdale without looking at the effect of successive government's neo-liberal economic policies. Ripping away industry, in favour of credit based growth didn't benefit Rochdale and Barnsleyl. There are parts of Rochdale where up to 84% of people need benefits, yet there isn't problem filling the ever scarcer, lower paid, and insecure vacancies that come up.

Barnsley was a mining town. It now has a greater proportion of the population(working or not) who need state support than almost any other town in Yorkshire. The inequality Labour were so comfortable with is felt in few places so keenly.

Labour have spent 13 years using deserving and undeserving rhetoric for benefit claimants. Demonising people suffering the effects of the economic decline they contributed to, while ensuring that even those who work need welfare to survive.

'Chav' is the word no-one likes to hear applied to them, and the word 'chav' appears to have broadened not just to mean those horrible 'undeserving' types, but the 'decent' ones if they haven't had the aspiration to leave the community they were born into, or at least shed all traces of it. Alarm clock britain are supposed to despise the scroungers they live alongside- not identify with them-and god forbid anyone mention the level of state support needed on top of wages to afford rent.

Islamophobic rhetoric was used to justify the war on terror and erosion of civil liberties, and fear of immigration used to win votes. Even when immigration and muslim communities were part of the economic solution for towns like Rochdale and Barnsley, our mainstream political parties use the politics of fear and demonise entire communities living alongside each other, because it suits their political needs. Anyone articulating what politicians encouraged, is a bigot.

When your government actively encourage people to fear you, and encourage you to blame those you live alongside for your economic insecurity, what is the effect? It's the benefit claimants fault, it's the Islamic extremists, it's the asbo kids... When those groups live side by side, generally at the bottom; how is it supposed to play out? A lost working class identity-with everyone looking at the 'other' to blame them for what is a clear result of the chosen economic path of all our main parties.

Parties like UKIP and organisations like the EDL have a considerable cache of ways to avoid being seen as overtly racist, as they employ the tropes offered by Labour during their time in office.

Who pays the price?

To say Barnsley will be hard hit by the cuts, is an understatement of gross proportions. And the cuts which will hit hardest, the welfare cuts, the cuts to Local Authorities- are the cuts that Labour have been very clear they will not be opposing. Perhaps Ed Miliband will oppose a library closure or two. Still any visible effects of poverty can be blamed on those experiencing it.

When 'the left' stopped fighting economic inequality and became dominated by middle class liberal values which they insist you share to qualify for representation - they also stopped representing the working class. When the party of the left actively widen inequality, blame those affected- then shout words like 'socialist' and progressive as evidence of their left wing credentials- its asking for trouble.

We now have a Labour supporting 'left' who are fighting for the version of the working class it is expedient to pretend exist, and the towns I am talking about have no political party who will serve them. Certainly no political party who wants a real discussion about how this has happened.

Identity politics is about to explode in a dangerous political vacuum. A gender divide, generational divide, geographical divides, race divides and class divides are opening up. Labour are busy shouting about being progressive, while continuing with same economic approach which caused this. The prejudices that are endemic throughout our culture, will have the most serious effects in the communities which are already disenfranchised, as economic insecurity and deprivation deepen to become something else entirely. The progressive majority who are supposed to win out don't exist, and certainly not in Barnsley.

Searchlight's research was massively important- and it is vital that Labour actually look at what it means- without trying to ignore their own role in creating this situation. Only by looking at how they have contributed to this situation, will debate which comes to a solution happen. TO be honest though, am not sure Ed Miliband was looking for solutions when he hitched his wagon to Barnsley. That, like his visit to Oldham, was more about securing a seat. Labour's result in Barnsley has a lot to teach them, and it isn't a lesson about how much support they have in that town.

Why AV is Clegg's lifeline

2011-02-18T12:55:00.002Z

The campaigning for May's referendum on AV is now under way, following Royal Assent of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on Wednesday. This morning, David Cameron and Nick Clegg took part in press conferences in which they each laid out why they would be campaigning: Cameron for a No vote, and Clegg for a Yes.

For Nick Clegg, this is a political lifeline—for several reasons.

First and foremost, it is a chance to distance himself from the Coalition. Clegg soared during the election on the back of idealism and optimism; defending an extensive programme of cuts is hardly his natural territory. This is his moment to be Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat, not some kind of Pinocchio to Cameron's Geppetto.

It may also be the first time since the election that Mr Clegg has aligned himself to any kind of popular movement. For months now, sites like UK Polling Report have shown a consistent lead for the Yes vote of at least 10 points, and according to pollsters like ComRes and YouGov, that lead is growing. With nigh non-existent political capital, Clegg has nothing to lose by going all out in supporting a Yes vote.

Clegg first caught the country's attention in the 2009 Ghurka campaign. Later that year, he made modern political history as a party leader by calling for the Speaker to resign over his handling of the expenses scandal—describing him as a defender of the status quo and an obstacle to parliamentary reform. In the past, Mr Clegg has demonstrated a natural talent to inspire and lead, but he has failed to present himself as pragmatic and strategic in government. Unless he can win the public's trust once more in this battle for electoral reform, it is hard to see how he can survive as leader of his party.