Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Delighted to be selected for Stratford upon Avon
Last Thursday was the day the snow began to fall. Local Authorities in the West Midlands were busy congratulating themselves on their success at gritting the roads properly, which was all very well until it fell again the next day, and the region came to a stand still.
But last Thursday was significant for me in a very different sense. It was the evening on which Stratford-upon-Avon Liberal Democrats voted to adopt me as their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate -- fourteen months after Menzies Campbell first leaned across to me at a dinner and said "I hope you stand for Stratford."
For the unselected parliamentary candidate, life is on something of a go-slow. You can't move house, look for a new job, undertake major new projects, even take a long vacation. Suddenly, in the space of just a few days since selection, life has dramatically speeded up. Literature, photographs, press releases, consultations, fund-raisers -- the list goes on. Full-time waiting for something to happen has now given way to (almost) full-time rushing around.
The first dust will, quite naturally, begin to settle in a short while.
But when it does, Stratford Lib-Dems and myself will be locked onto a course that runs all the way to the next General Election. And beyond. We need something like a ten-percent swing to win the seat, and we need to do it by winning votes straight from the Tories. Ludicrous? Perhaps. Almost as ludicrous as the suggestion that Liberal-Democrats could win Solihull from the Tories in 2005. Which, of course, we did.
Notice of our intentions in Stratford is hereby given.
Monday, January 29, 2007
A shoddy compromise that does nobody any credit
Link
Tony Blair has announced that there will be no opt-out for Catholic adoption agencies, but that there will be a 21 month delay in the introduction of the law to give them time to adjust.
In an ideal world, clashes of the kind we have witnessed between the government and the Catholic church could be resolved without violence to the law or to conscience. Let us accept that we do not live in an ideal world.
But even in this non-ideal world, the furore and its conclusion have been a shoddy episode that did nobody any credit.
There can, of course, be no question of an 'opt-out' from a law. Laws apply equally to everyone, or they contravene the most fundamental principles of a liberal democracy. The Catholic church was foolish to ask for one, and media commentators were foolish to entertain the notion. Equally, however, laws should not generally be introduced which are more onerous to one segment of society than another. In fact, this is the very heart of equalities legislation.
To my mind -- though I am not a lawyer -- the new legislation seems very carefully framed to avoid creating a crisis of conscience for religious groups. There will be requirements to provide an equal service to lesbian, gay and bi-sexual people, but not a requirement to agree with their views, or to help to propagate them. So, the examples which were emailed to me of Christian printers being forced to print advertisements for gay pride events, or church halls being forced to rent out their premises for a gay burlesque are fatuous. A Christian printer may (if they wish) continue to only print material they agree with, and a Christian venue may continue to rent itself out for events which fit their ethos provided that they do so on the basis of the item or event, not on the basis of the sexual orientation of the person trying to make the booking. On the other hand, a Christian printer who refused to print an advertisement for a fishmonger because the proprietor was gay would quite rightly come under the censure of the law.
Somebody obviously looked long and hard to find the single example -- Catholic adoption agencies -- of where the law was in fact more onerous on people of a particular religion than on the population at large.
It seems to me that Blair, et al, had two choices. They could have made a case for the fairness of the legislation, and demonstrated that, despite initial appearances, it was not more onerous on Catholics than on the rest of us, or they could have amended the legislation. An opt out was never a legal possibility, and they should have dismissed this the moment it was raised, purely on the basis of its incompatibility with common law.
However, the creation of a 21 month adjustment period is a direct admission that, in fact, the new legislation discriminates on religious grounds against Roman Catholics, and against Christians in general. If it was not more onerous to obey the law, no adjustment period would be required.
At the same time, this debacle has done nothing for the reputation of Roman Catholicism, or for the Anglican archbishops. By placing themselves in public opposition to equal rights legislation, and by doing so in this way, calling for exceptions, rather than for better law making, they have confirmed the view already held by many sceptics: that Christianity is in reality nothing more than a collection of prejudices, and that the established churches exist to preserve their own power and rights. This is deeply unfortunate, since neither the Roman Catholic cardinal nor either of the Anglican archbishops are anything like this at all.
And finally, this has done nothing but confirm the view of all 'right thinking people' (ie, those who are in alignment with the Daily Mail) that the world has gone mad, and that political correctness has taken the place of common sense. This is a deeply regrettable viewpoint because, aside from this particular area, the legislation has been very carefully drafted to allow the preservation of conscience on the one hand and personal choice and dignity on the other.
The saddest thing of all is that, in fact, all that would be necessary would be for the legislation to assert the primacy of the rights of the child, and to require adoption agencies to place children in situations which, in the expert opinion of the agencies' professionals, gave them the best future. It goes without saying that an agency whose ethos began with the notion that Christian marriage was the only basis for a family would not place children in other contexts, but this would not be discriminatory against any particular group in society. And it also goes without saying that where another agency found an evidence-base to suggest otherwise, they would follow this in framing their own policy. This would also open the door for a secularist agency to not place children with firm advocates of Roman Catholicism. Such a clause within the law would be non-discriminatory, because it would apply equally to everyone.
This might sound like special pleading, but it is in fact ridiculous to ask a health or social care professional to distinguish between their ethical foundations and 'what is best'. Conscience is not simply an add-on. Rather, it informs the entire decision making process.
Ultimately, the question of adoption is not one of satisfying the rights of the adopters, but of serving the needs of the child. This sad controversy has rather given the impression that adoption is about the conflict of will between legislators on the one hand, and agencies on the other.
Labels: Faith
Saturday, January 27, 2007
How Reid gets away with it
Link
Drug traffickers passport blunder - BBC news.
There's something very un-New Labour about John Reid. Not just something, everything, in fact. It's not that he lacks the smooth sophistication of Blair, Mandelson and Campbell (remember them?). After all, we've put up with John Prescott. It's that he makes a positive virtue out of telling it like it is, with no thought for collective cabinet responsibility, protecting his predecessors, preparing a position for the future. "The home office is not fit for purpose" he tells us. Well, yes. It should be split into two departments, he says. Sounds reasonable. Heads will roll, he indicates.
All this has the sound of a man walking into a new department at the start of a new government, ready to expose mercilessly every fault, failing and foible of his predecessors. Except, of course, as everyone knows, he came in nine years after Labour swept to power. Private Eye, in a naturally scurillous fashion, has suggested that this is because nobody has yet told him he is the Home Secretary. Indeed, his antics do more resemble an opposition Shadow Home-Secretary homing in on an incompetent cabinet minister.
There is a certain Basil Fawlty quality to all this, except with Fawlty the tension of Basil simply denying the utterly obvious would at last end with something on the lines of "Oh, THAT dead body!" With Reid, it does not seem to stop. He shreds the record of New Labour in power, but not a word is murmured from Downing Street. He restates his acerbic views on the Today programme, or on PM, icily brushing off any suggestion that there is something inconsistent in his behaviour.
Some may conclude that it really is possible to bluff ones way through politics, keeping an absolutely straight poker face in a way which has eluded Blair and has shades of Comical Ali, the now long forgotten Iraqi information minister who told us "There are no American troops in Iraq".
The truth, I suspect, is more prosaic. When Brown comes to power (Brown will not 'sweep' to power: there is nothing about Brown which could ever be described as 'sweeping') it will not be just John Reid, but an entire front bench which is busy identifying why New Labour was not tough enough to succeed. Brown, of course, is too prudent to call his new, new party "Old Labour", and even the most spin-obsessed will recognise that calling it "Labour Classic" is not really going to do the trick. But we may very well see the rise of a phrase such as "Real Labour" or "True Labour". It won't be as a title or official name (I once introduced Estelle Morris at a hustings debate as 'the Labour candidate, and she instantly corrected me to 'New Labour'). But it will begin to appear in Brownian phrases such as "in this way we shall see the triumph of a true Labour principle". We'll all be inured to the phrase long before anyone starts writing it with a capital letter as "A True Labour principle".
John Reid is in truth the advance guard of Real Labour. New Labour was an elegantly constructed balance of very smooth, very serious people (Blair, Cook, Mandelson), knockabout comedy figures (Prescott), and the three 'honest people', Estelle Morris, Clare Short, and Jack Straw. It had something for everyone, while it lasted. But Mandelson fell from grace one time too many, Cook moved off message and was shipped out of the Foreign Office, Prescott proved to be too much of a liability, Morris turned out to be too honest for politics after all, Short wobbled, and then decided that she was at least too honest for New Labour, and Jack Straw was likewise shipped off to be Leader of the House, to be replaced by the entirely unmemorable Margaret Beckett. Which left Brown and Blunkett, until Blunkett's own fall from grace.
If Brown were foolish enough to try to reconstruct the complex symettry of New Labour, he would discover he did not have the personnel. Blair's solar system, with Alistair Campbell constantly buzzing around like a demented spaceman to make sure that all the planets stayed in their correct orbits, was an alignment of celestial beings never likely to be repeated - certainly not until a bright, burning energy like Blair is there to be its centre. Regrettably, for the nation, this Nostradamic arrangement of stupendous import proved to be exactly like any other astrological prediction: it failed to live up to its promise.
But Brown will not compass the stars, as Blair did. I see Brown more as Mr Badger from the Wind in the Willows. His snuffling, grunting, cantankerous personality is perfectly suited for leading the party that rescues Toad Hall from the New Weasels. He may feel that Toady Blair does not deserve rescuing, but, true as steel, he will lead his band of mucky, war-weary Ratties and Molies up through the tunnels to save his old friend, no matter what he thinks of him.
Which is all very well, and is a role that Badger Brown, with Reid as Ratty, is well equipped to play. But what happens after the rescue? There is a limit (we are astonished at how far Ratty Reid has managed to push it) to how much rescuing can go on, before Badger returns to the forest, Ratty to the River-Bank, and Moley to his hole. Could 'Permanent Rescue' be the modern equivalent of 'Permanent Revolution'? Possibly, but with no more success. There will come a time, either before the next election or, as Brown hopes, at some point after it, when the public realises that the NHS, the judiciary, child support, immigration, and foreign policy either are fine and do not need rescuing, or are unlikely to be saved by the chums of the people who put them in crisis in the first place.
We never find out what happened to Toad Hall after the end of Wind in the Willows. But my belief is that Toady died a bachelor and the hall was bought by Yuppies from the City. Heaven help us, then, from David Cameron and the New Tories (or Classic Tories, as they will want to call themselves).
But that's another story.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Are Tories headed for a three-way split?
Link
Conservative peer defects to UKIP, 20 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6281423.stm
Tory donors 'may vote for UKIP', 15 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6262325.stm
Conservative peers defect to UKIP, 09 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6243807.stm
Things are looking up for the Conservative party. They reached their strongest poll position for 14 years on December 20, according to the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/polls/story/0,,1975783,00.html What's more, David Cameron seems to have that which John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard all missed: appeal with the voters. But there are rather darker clouds on the horizon. At the back end of 2006 Cameron felt forced to put out a strong 'back me or sack me' message. At the time nobody felt like taking him up, but it was eerily reminiscent of John Major's final months.
There are really three Tory parties in Britain, and they have been in a state of more or less alignment for more than a hundred years. An admirable history can be found in Julian Critchley's "Collapse of Stout Party: Decline and Fall of the Tories". The parliamentary party has always pursued the low politics of electioneering in order to pursue the high politics of international diplomacy. The local Tory parties have doggedly pursued the goal of faithfully selecting and electing 'sound' people, and supporting the party at dinners, teas, coffee mornings, and the endless round of other social functions which maintained the strong network of 'the right sort of people'. Meanwhile, Tory grandees have bankrolled and underwritten the party with whatever it needed to acquire and maintain power.
But things have been changing awfully fast for the three Tory parties which are united (in as much as they are united) by their utter dislike of change. Five leaders in a row lost, or never gained, the confidence of the electorate, and the Tory enthusiasm for international affairs has become muted in their desperation to somehow gain power at Westminster. This is underlined by their complete failure to make any inroads whatsoever in the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. The Tory parliamentary party is now desperate for electoral success at any price. And this is why they are — for now — willing to stand behind David Cameron.
The local Tory parties, at the same time, are facing an aging crisis. It was not so long ago that the Young Conservatives and the student wing of the party were combined, because of insufficient membership. The average age of Tory members was already 62 in 1996. Eleven years later, it has not got any younger. The local Tory parties hanker for the glory days of Margaret Thatcher, when policies were clear, definite, and pursued consistently. Yesterday (21 January), David Cameron suggested he was relaxed about legalising cannabis http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6284223.stm This is more than a step too far for the grass-roots Tory, and Cameron is definitely treading on dangerous ground.
But, most serious of all, the Tory grandees are defecting, with their money, to the only place available for Tories who feel their party has gone too far to the left. UKIP has traded on the easy target of 'blame Europe for everything', but its real strength is that it is somewhere for Tories to go: something that Old Labour does not have on its side of the political spectrum. As Tory local parties have declined, both in manpower and energy, the Conservative election machine as relied more and more on proven marketing approaches, chief of which is purchasing advertising. But all this costs money. Nobody knows how much the Tories will spend at the next general election, but based on 2001 and 2005 spending, it is likely to be between £10 million and £20 million. As of July 2006, the Tories already had £18.1 million of debt, compared to just £3.1 milion at the end of 2004, according to the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1823355,00.html Their annual income was £24.2 million, but only £843,000 came from membership fees. A massive £13.6 million was donations. The Tory party is already in financial crisis. The departure of a growing number of its large donors can do it no good.
Right now, the Tories seem to be headed toward a three-way split. But this would not be a classic political split along ideological lines. Rather, it is a fragmentation and a collapse of confidence.
The three Tory parties are headed out of alignment. What will 2007 bring for them? We shall see.
Are Tories headed for a three-way split?
Link
Conservative peer defects to UKIP, 20 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6281423.stm
Tory donors 'may vote for UKIP', 15 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6262325.stm
Conservative peers defect to UKIP, 09 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6243807.stm
Things are looking up for the Conservative party. They reached their strongest poll position for 14 years on December 20, according to the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/polls/story/0,,1975783,00.html What's more, David Cameron seems to have that which John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard all missed: appeal with the voters. But there are rather darker clouds on the horizon. At the back end of 2006 Cameron felt forced to put out a strong 'back me or sack me' message. At the time nobody felt like taking him up, but it was eerily reminiscent of John Major's final months.
There are really three Tory parties in Britain, and they have been in a state of more or less alignment for more than a hundred years. An admirable history can be found in Julian Critchley's "Collapse of Stout Party: Decline and Fall of the Tories". The parliamentary party has always pursued the low politics of electioneering in order to pursue the high politics of international diplomacy. The local Tory parties have doggedly pursued the goal of faithfully selecting and electing 'sound' people, and supporting the party at dinners, teas, coffee mornings, and the endless round of other social functions which maintained the strong network of 'the right sort of people'. Meanwhile, Tory grandees have bankrolled and underwritten the party with whatever it needed to acquire and maintain power.
But things have been changing awfully fast for the three Tory parties which are united (in as much as they are united) by their utter dislike of change. Five leaders in a row lost, or never gained, the confidence of the electorate, and the Tory enthusiasm for international affairs has become muted in their desperation to somehow gain power at Westminster. This is underlined by their complete failure to make any inroads whatsoever in the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. The Tory parliamentary party is now desperate for electoral success at any price. And this is why they are — for now — willing to stand behind David Cameron.
The local Tory parties, at the same time, are facing an aging crisis. It was not so long ago that the Young Conservatives and the student wing of the party were combined, because of insufficient membership. The average age of Tory members was already 62 in 1996. Eleven years later, it has not got any younger. The local Tory parties hanker for the glory days of Margaret Thatcher, when policies were clear, definite, and pursued consistently. Yesterday (21 January), David Cameron suggested he was relaxed about legalising cannabis http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6284223.stm This is more than a step too far for the grass-roots Tory, and Cameron is definitely treading on dangerous ground.
But, most serious of all, the Tory grandees are defecting, with their money, to the only place available for Tories who feel their party has gone too far to the left. UKIP has traded on the easy target of 'blame Europe for everything', but its real strength is that it is somewhere for Tories to go: something that Old Labour does not have on its side of the political spectrum. As Tory local parties have declined, both in manpower and energy, the Conservative election machine as relied more and more on proven marketing approaches, chief of which is purchasing advertising. But all this costs money. Nobody knows how much the Tories will spend at the next general election, but based on 2001 and 2005 spending, it is likely to be between £10 million and £20 million. As of July 2006, the Tories already had £18.1 million of debt, compared to just £3.1 milion at the end of 2004, according to the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1823355,00.html Their annual income was £24.2 million, but only £843,000 came from membership fees. A massive £13.6 million was donations. The Tory party is already in financial crisis. The departure of a growing number of its large donors can do it no good.
Right now, the Tories seem to be headed toward a three-way split. But this would not be a classic political split along ideological lines. Rather, it is a fragmentation and a collapse of confidence.
The three Tory parties are headed out of alignment. What will 2007 bring for them? We shall see.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Squirm and Squirm about for Mr Cameron
Link
Gordon Brown lacks a "full-throated mandate" to become prime minister and there should be an election soon after Tony Blair resigns, David Cameron says.
Should Gordon Brown be prime minister after Tony Blair? Will he? Is anyone even still interested in the question? With every potential contender ducking for cover and touting for the position of deputy-leader (ie, leader after Gordon Brown loses a General Election), this particular hot potato is now as cold as last year's summer salad.
Except for David Cameron. Mr Cameron seems to think there's still lots of mileage in this one.
But there's the thing. When challenged on the question of why this is different from John Major, Mr Cameron says: "I think there's a difference this time in that Tony Blair uniquely said before the last election that 'I'm not going to fight another election but I'm going to do a full term'. People elected him for a full term, so we are in a different situation."
That would be because people didn't elect Margaret Thatcher for a full time, would it, David?
I suppose these are legitimate questions which Liberal-Democrats could pose. Although, a more pertinent question would be 'how can you have an overall majority on not much more than 30 percent of the vote?'
But they exactly aren't questions the Tories can pose. And here's why. First, there's the John Major precedent (oh, and dozens of others, if we go back far enough), but, more importantly, the Tories themselves were telling us at the last election 'Vote Blair and Get Brown'. Ironically, a poster saying 'Imagine another five years of him' (meaning Blair) put out by the Tories was only removed from a billboard in Birmingham quite recently. The point is that, when the Tories ran this campaign, and Blair admitted he was going to stand down, Labour's performance in the polls went up. Mr Cameron, if only your ad-meisters hadn't run that campaign! The fact is, that by running it, and standing on the claim that a Blair victory would mean a Brown government, you have handed him a much greater mandate than John Major ever had (because, heaven knows, his mandate after he won an election was weaker than it was before). Who knows, maybe Labour would not have been returned with a majority at all?
However, this is exactly the quandary which Cameron is going to face increasingly as he squirms and wriggles his way to the next election. Because Cameron does not represent in any respect the manifesto which allowed the Tories to make modest gains at the last election. Virtually everything that Messrs Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard (yes, they actually had three leaders during the course of the last parliament) stood for is what young Mr C is trying to distance himself from.
Politics is often a game of estimates. It's frequently about hoping that your surge in popularity will coincide with other factors that put you ahead, and both will coincide with polling day. At Tory Central Office, they must now be earnestly and nervously watching the trend lines. Because the question is: will the election be early enough for Cameron to ride his evident popularity with the punters, before the party faithful ditch him in favour of someone who is less electable, but more representative of their opinions? We shall see much more squirming from Cameron before that day, as he desperately tries to milk every last drop of charisma-driven public appeal, while concealing as much as possible his embarrassment at everything his party really stands for.
Indeed, we shall see.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Catalogue of debacle comes to an unseemly end
Link
Nobody can now claim that any part of the war in Iraq has been anything but a disaster. The invasion based on faulty intelligence, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the inability of Western powers to extricate themselves militarily. The one bright star — for war apologists — was the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein. Echoing Nuremberg, the trial was to demonstrate the absolute justice in Hussein's removal from power, and, by extension, the rightness of the American cause.
The jury may well still be (paradoxically) out on the quality of justice during the trial. We should not forget the lawyers who were murdered for defending him. Saddam Hussein was certainly an utterly despicable man. This does not justify flawed justice.
However, the manner of his execution, and the subsequent attack by Mr Maliki on Westerners who have dared to question it, has demonstrated that, in the removal of Saddam, we have not advanced Iraq. Rather, we have handed over power from one ethnic group to another. True, Mr Maliki is no Saddam Hussain. But, equally, he has now publicly stated that he does not want to continue in his job, and that he would stop early if he could.
Even in Mr Malki, though, there is a chilling tone of totalitarianism: "The decision was implemented after a just trial which the dictator did not deserve as the crimes he committed against the people, the country and its institutions were disgraceful," he said. As soon as we deem one class of criminal to 'not deserve a fair trial', we have abandoned the most fundamental principle of modern jurisprudence: that all are equal under the law.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Finally, the results are in: Iraq was a false prospectus
Link
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | 'No Saddam link to Iraq al-Qaeda'
Finally, three years after the events, the US has admitted that there was in fact no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Bush's axis of evil is now proved to be what we have said all along: nothing more than an axis of Bush family unfinished business.
Nobody would deny that Saddam Hussein was a bad man.
Nobody is denying that the Iraqi people would probably have been better off without him.
But, equally, no-one can seriously claim that our and the American's adventure in Mesopotamia has done anyone any good.
Saddam Hussein is now standing trial for the deaths of 100,000 Kurds in 1988. By 31 August this year, the campaign group Iraq Body Count put the total number of reported civilan deaths in Iraq at between 39,171 and 43,846 (Iraq Body Count). But even by October 2004, a study in the Lancet suggested that there were 100,000 extra deaths in Iraq. Both the UK and US governments have admitted that the chaotic situation in Iraq makes it impossible to gather information accurately.
39,000. Or 44,000. Or 100,000. Or more.
What price freedom?
Previous news
 Â