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I guess I should have wrote about the cash for peerages scandal before now, but I didn’t want to rant about it until the details of the story had emerged. After all, the fact that politicians are corruptible and unscrupulous is hardly a radical concept.
For the record I would like to say that I have been, in the not-too-distant past, a member of the Labour Party. I foolishly believed that the state could be used to improve our society, and that wealth distribution was a route to social justice. I have seen my utopian hopes and dreams dashed by this Labour Party. I am now a fully-fledged, unreconstructed, political and economic libertarian. And you can thank New Labour for that.
As a registered Labour supporter I received emails during the last election, requesting a donation to help fight the election. I replied to the emails, rather indignantly, saying that they had little chance of receiving any funds from me. Another email, towards the end of the campaign, thanked all the supporters, claiming: that the party had raised record sums and that we had helped keep the election fight going. I was under the impression that this direct solicitation had funded the election – a victory, almost, for micro-finance over the big donor culture of the Tories.
Imagine the chagrin of well-meaning Labour campaigners, of which I am not one, to the news that the Party has, in return for loans, prostituted the honours system. Labour accepted loans to the tune of almost £14m (the election cost Labour £17.94m). To grass-roots Labour supporters, that is a lot of money – it may as well be £14-squillain, and for a party which is supposed to represent working families, accepting such large donations from successful capitalists, does whiff a bit.
The reality is that modern election campaigns are very expensive operations and parties are desperate for cash. Having unseated the Tories, and migrated its natural home on the left, voters are unable to find a reason to send a cheque to the Labour Party. Having dropped from around 400,000 members in 1997, to less than half that, Labour faces serious cash-flow problems and these loans were necessary to ensure they were not bankrupted by the costly election.
But why were they secret, surreptitious to the point, that the party treasurer and Deputy PM were not informed? The public, justifiably suspicious of politicians, naturally smell a rat.
The key factor in this case is the current solvency of the Labour Party, which is very suspect. Reports on cash-flow problems were rife in 2004 and 2005, and Labour needed an injection of capital prior to the election, and fund-raiser Lord Levy arranged loans to the value of £13,950,00. But how could a party with a dwindling membership afford the £900,000-a-year interest payments? The accusations, regarding any wrongdoings, are based of the fact that lenders were told not to declare the loans, and subsequently, a number of them were nominated in the honours list. Were these businessmen, as the media now suggests, promised a seat in the House of Lords?
A criminal factor must also be addressed. If indeed, as lender Sir Gulam Noon reports, that a “senior party man” told him, “there was no reason why I should declare this loan as it was refundable,” and the same official told him, “that because there was interest on the loan it was a commercial matter and would not come under the same party funding rules as a donation,” then this is surely a financial transaction that should be declared. The transaction is either a donation, which must be declared, or will represent – in the form of interest – taxable earnings for Mr. Noon. The loans must be declared to someone, is this why the Chancellor, was also kept in the dark?
The implicit understanding is clear. The Labour Party intended to reward many of the lenders with peerages, and when all had quietened down and the new peers were safely in the Lords, the loans would be turned into donations, and declared to the Electoral Commission. So the rules were, it is alleged, ‘bent’ to hoodwink the House of Lords Appointments Commission. This would explain the Prime Ministers prompt willingness to relinquish his right to nominate peers directly, if he had nothing to hide why would he so readily give up power? It is not in character for Mr. Blair to give ups such control.
***
Scandals such as this have occurred throughout the history of our parliament, but today we are supposed to have developed legal mechanisms to prevent abuse of the system. It was a Labour law that was circumvented by this loophole, which raises even more concerns, that this was deliberate deception.
With the political parties fighting over the centre ground, their messages are becoming blurred. The modern body politic does not encourage ideological differences, meaning the parties are inseparable to the average voter – there is, therefore, little reason to be a member of a political party or contribute to its funds.
Starved of funds, parties are now – in unison – advocating centrally allocated finances. This would mean the taxpayer picks up the tab. Why the hell is this, the taxpayer’s problem? People are giving money to interest and activist groups at record levels, suggesting the populace is politically active, just not interested, in the main political parties; and why should they be?
If the main parties choose to disown their values, alienating their membership, to fight over the thinning oxygen in the centre, why should we – the taxpayer – subsidize them? They will become extinct, and rightly so. The political system will then be more representative of the will of the people and coalitions of new ideologically charged parties will rise to the power.
Why should we try and save shallow unrepresentative political parties?
I suspect that Tony Blair will want to complete ten years in Number 10, so Brown´s tenth budget may well be his penultimate, not his ultimate as currently suggested. If Blair can hang on and ward off the lame duck tag, he will surely try for summer 07 for his much-expected retirement from Downing Street.
Brown knows more than I do, and his budget seemed like the budget of someone preparing his stall, but not of someone campaigning for the top job. He has time yet to do that. This budget was a bit of shuffling things around and some more money for education.
Firstly, I welcome the increase in education funding as of fundamental importance – the ambition to spend as much per pupil in state schools as in private schools is laudible, but I didn´t see the specifics of exactly how and when this ambition will be achieved – also, spending the same is not the same as getting the same results, school reform is absolutely vital and I think Blair´s package was in a generally positive direction, but had many drawbacks. It is essential to make schools as independent as possible, give teachers the resources, training and assistance to do the job, get parents as involved as possible, and treat each child as an individual and treat their education as a voyage of discovery in unearthing their individual talents and giving them the knowledge and skills to best exploit those natural talents. It is not about barking national curriculum one-size-fits-all syllabuses at a large classes of bored and alienated children. So, a good move, but only a single step in a long, long journey.
Apart from that, I don´t think there was much to get excited about. The environmental packages were good in the sense that they existed at all, but they were woefully inadequate and noteworthy chiefly for their timidity. The car tax thing could have been far more radical, and whilst vague assistance for solar panels sounds good, it is, like education above, a million miles from actually making a worthwhile difference.
Cameron did okay in response, he had some good gags but it was really all just practice for the election, painting Brown as in the past and wedded to old-fashioned tax and spend. Seeing as the Tories are largely matching his tax and spend plans, I don´t see an interesting alternative on offer, so why bother voting for anyone else? As usual, the Lib Dems made the best points but, also as usual, in the worst way. A nervous and bungling Ming Campbell was batted aside, not because Blair thought he was wrong, but because Campbell himself seemed to think he was wrong, so lacklustre is his performance.
So, a steady as she goes budget with a couple of headlines in education and sport (I like the schools olympics idea), a warm up for the real final budget next March – I wonder who´ll be delivering the 2008 budget? Jack Straw? Alistair Darling?
So the US debt balloons to a whopping great $9 trillion in order to pay for Iraq without tax rises or further cuts in public spending. I guess Bush, like a spendthrift ever extending his mortgage, must be relieved that he´s been handed more free money to spend as he wishes. One can understand how Bush, who won´t be in professional politics in another couple of years, can afford to postpone fiscal responsibility till he´s jiffing about in a boat off Kenebunkport, but the American people cannot simply squeeze out of the debt they are being saddled with. At this stage in the game, it looks like there´ll be another Republican in the White House in 2009, so the chickens are likely to come home to roost on the GOP watch. It is extraordinarily sad that politics has come to this – whereby a nation´s very financial security and viability is sold to avoid short-term tough decisions on tax and spend. It used to be that each Chief Executive would put country before themselves, at least to an extent, and would not commit the nation to spending what it simply could not afford. Now such sentiments appear quaint among the merciless hardball politics of Bush and Rove – public money is syphoned off to private corporations who in turn finance the Republican Party and their high office hopefuls; tax is cut on the wealthy to assist them in becoming wealthier still while haphazard cuts are made to welfare and other public programmes; now the national debt is being extended still further to pay for the ill-conceived and badly-planned overseas debacles. I guess the patriot act forbids criticism of the White House and its top secret machinations, but as I sit beyond the borders of the country I so much admire, I am legally allowed to make my thoughts known.
In this Guardian article, the ex-Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley, argues in favour of an English parliament to restore equilibrium to an unbalanced constitution following devolution to Scotland and Wales. This curious circumstance is currently being highlighted by the struggle to get the government´s education bill through parliament, which will only happen with Scottish (and Tory) support – it´s also rather obvious when Scot John Reid makes health policy that only applies to England. The problem could, at least in part, have been solved by Prescott´s regional assemblies – but the only referendum that got off the ground was quite unequivocal in its dismissal of what was seen as an expensive talking shop. This suggests that this is an issue which concerns politicians and political hangers-on (like me) far more than it concerns normal people. Personally I cannot see a single problem with an English parliament, and a consequential beefing up of the Welsh assembly. This could sit in the old Royal Exchange with the First Minister occupying the Mansion House – the Lord Mayor can be resigned to history for all I care. This would put the English capital firmly in London, away from the UK in Westminster. If this were to go ahead, I´d like to see three other things happen as part of the same process. Firstly, maximum powers being devolved from Westminster to Edinburgh, Cardiff, London and Belfast – the default place for all power would then be at this level except where Westminster can prove otherwise. This is basically a federal system as operates in Germany. Secondly, and this overrides the first one above, maximum powers should be devolved to local councils and elected mayors. This totally negates the need for regional assemblies – regional councils can come together to represent their regions, and if necessary be aided by the national (not Westminster) government. Thirdly, massive Westminster reform to see a much smaller House of Commons, a totally reformed House of Lords (based on a combination of council appointees and other appointees from selected organisations that can prove significant public support), and consequently a much slimmed central government civil service machine.
You have to give it to Dubya; the guy’s got some front.
It seems that the American people are going to have to be patient, while US and Iraqi forces fight “the enemies of a free Iraq.” The obvious question is: haven’t the American people been patient enough?
Almost daily, reports are emerging as to how the administration bungled its post-invasion ‘strategy,’ and how requests for more troops – always denied by the Whitehouse – were ignored. The post-invasion handling of the fractious state has been an unmitigated disaster, which has utterly destabilised any chance of peace in the Middle East. And yet still we have the same myopic nonsense being spouted by the President.
One has to wonder, if the presence of Coalition troops is actually the root cause of the insurgency, and that their removal would usher in some semblance of peace? Either way this ongoing war of attrition will only have one winner, as the US people will not continue to watch their troops being ground down. Yes, yes, I know Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s real goal is bringing the Shia into a civil war with Sunni fighters, but it may take the wind out of the Sunni insurgency (which is not, and has never been, Al Qaeda) and turn genuine Iraqis against the foreign terrorists.
After all, what have we got to lose? Iraq already appears to be sliding into a civil war, and this is the worst possible outcome. We need to harness whatever goodwill is left among the Shia and Sunni communities, who have proven their commitment to progress in the fledgling parliament, and trust the Iraqi people to decide their own destiny.
Iraq needs our help, our support, and our investment. What it doesn’t need are troops on the ground, many of whom have shown nothing but contempt for Iraqis and their country.
Few people, beyond his wife and gangster son Marko, will rue the passing of Slobodan Milosevic, found dead in his cell in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The former Yugoslav president, and architect of the civil wars that tore the fragile Balkan union apart, was on trial for his alleged crimes against humanity. The Balkan War led to the deaths of 200,000 people in Bosnia, the displacement of 2m, and the fracture of his nation into several failing-states.
Even now, half a decade after his overthrow, countries such as Croatia are still to fully-purify their body politic of those responsible for the atrocities, which included the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Albanians. In the sullied history of Europe, the Balkan region remains an open wound, testament to the deep ethnic and religious divisions that poison the European character.
As we ushered in the new millennium, we Europeans ignored the pressing threat of Milosevic, our colonial guilt and political cowardice, stymied our will to intervene, as forces loyal to Milosevic, slaughtered 7,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica. Yet again Europe was humiliated by the need for American intervention in their regional affairs.
Milosevic was a spineless opportunist, described by Milos Vasic as “ideologically empty.” All he wanted and demanded was Hobbesian power – absolute political and cultural dominance. He manipulated the Soviet-era corridors of power, to install himself as president, and was soon to drop communism in favour of blind nationalism when the Eastern Bloc began to collapse. He seized and controlled the media, influenced the political elite, and directed the army. Milosevic was a pure dictator, even dismantling Tito’s constitutional checks, which held together the loose association of Slovenia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Croatia (Kosovo and Vojvodina are autonomous provinces within Serbia).
Such was the total destruction of the unity, even Montenegro and Serbia, whose loose alliance survived Milosevic, are to separate this year (Montenegro is to hold a referendum in May). Only Slovenia has been accepted into the European Union, the other states have either not applied, or as in the case of Croatia, not deemed politically compatible.
Milosevic should remind Europe of the dangers of inaction, and the futility of acquiescing to dictators. This is why Iraq remains a conundrum; should we have suffered Saddam Hussein indefinitely? The man whose genocidal practices saw the gassing of his own people, the use of chemical and biological weapons on Iranian villages, and two large-scale wars. Was it right to allow Saddam, even in his nullified and politically emasculated state, to remain in power?
How Iraq could have been different had Europe been unified in its approach? Even a unified political opposition may have discouraged America, but a collective will to rebuild the collapsing state may have led to greater progress in reconstructing a working democracy. This is not to blame Europe for America’s folly, but to highlight the reality that Franco-German Schadenfreude is not a political solution.
The pending civil war in Iraq is evident of a pluralistic approach to dealing with oppression and totalitarianism. Containment and interventionism are both useful tools in dealing with dangerous states, but they should not be mixed when dealing with one country. Through a reformed and emboldened NATO, we must ensure that political and economic expediency does not deny us a unified opposition to tyranny. The UN may be important, but it remains crippled by powerful undemocratic regimes such as China and Russia, unable to deal adequately with an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
As regular readers will be aware, I didn’t support the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but my opposition was not ideological. I could see through the manipulation of the public consciousness by the Whitehouse and Number 10, which is why I am suspicious of the rancour about Iran now. The international community had more pressing issues to deal with, namely the rise of international terrorism and globalisation, neither of which have been addressed by toppling Saddam. It is also clear that the coalition has made fundamental errors, including the destruction and dissolution of Iraq’s institutions and public infrastructure.
However the premise to remove Saddam was just. The war may not have been well timed, or well executed, but it was justified. My greatest opposition to the war was that I don’t think that moral justice was ever the motive for the invasion, merely an idle excuse. The prostitution of rebuilding contracts to Halliburton, the oil siphoning, the lack of troops and adequate equipment, and the billions of dollars unaccounted for suggest a war for profit and oil. The war was not the problem, the Bush administration was.
The mock trial of Saddam in Iraq is also an example of the Whitehouse’s utter contempt for the international community, if he, like Milosevic, had been tried in The Haige, they may have deserved some credibility for the removal of a tyrant, as it stands, they deserve none. Also the desperate imperialist desire to hold the fractious Iraqi state together may cause as much bloodshed as Saddam himself was guilty of; again the lesson of history lies in the Balkans with the subsequent breaking up of Yugoslavia.
Only international institutions should instigate war. Only the UN, or more likely NATO, has the resource, both politically and militarily, to adequately deal with international issues. NATO countries should not have allowed Iraq to fragment their unity; America and Britain should not have acted unilaterally, and equally Germany and France et al should not have been quite so vulpine in their self-serving geo-politicking. The eventual management of the Balkan War should have been a blueprint for future engagement: American led, but in harmony with its NATO allies, and with a no desire for long-term hegemony.
Rory Bremner once called David Cameron a Tory iPod, not because he is posh and white, with a slightly glazed look, but because one could “download the policy they want.” Cameron does indeed seem to be all things to all men (and it seems; breast-feeding pregnant women too), a modern centrist politician not tied down by ideological baggage.
Some have argued that our electoral apathy is a symptom of the current Westminster body politic. The three major parties migrate to the centre as they fight over ever-thinning political oxygen, none of them offer real choice, just the same staid product in new packaging.
Sceptical labour-leaning commentators have argued that Cameron is employing the classic feign-left lunge-right trick, which has served right-wingers, both on the football field and in Westminster, down the ages. I would tend to agree with this. Cameron and his entourage of Ed Vaisy, Michael Gove, and George Osborne are among the sharpest young politicians, and they are shaping the party into a broad church with liberals equally welcome in among the traditional blue-rinse brigade. Yet these young Tories are, at heart, economic liberals keen to see a strengthening of the capitalist mechanisms that protect property and wealth, both at home, and globally.
This may horrify traditional economic lefties, but I’m sure the middle classes et al would welcome a reduction in the overall tax-burden, allowing people to spend more of their own money as they please. If Cameron can convince the poorest families that he does not intend to slash public spending, and with a nod and a wink, convince the middle classes that really he intends to cut taxes, he may end up winning power without a clear promise to do either – claiming the centre through ambiguity.
In an interview this morning on BBC Radio Four, the inexorable John Humphreys tried to tie down Cameron to one particular fiscal policy. Cameron, as he did a few months ago, became quite irate with the obstinate Welsh newsman, and claimed that he would never be able to explain his policies while he was persistently interrupted. Finally with Humphreys chastised and somewhat irked, the conservative leader explained – what we have heard ad nauseam from his team – that as the economy grows, the proceeds of growth will be shared between increased public spending and a reduction in the tax burden. Sounds like a plan.
The problem, as ever, is in the foundation of the argument. As a fiscal policy, it has a fundamental flaw; it relies on the assumption that economy will grow. Many economists would argue that with our bloated public sector, the chances for continued sustained economic growth are unlikely. By the time Brown has finished racking up billions of pounds of debt, the economy will be due a serious overhaul. So Cameron’s recipe of freezing public spending at Brownian levels sounds rather unhelpful.
What Britain desperately needs is a progressive, reform-minded party, that embraces the challenges of globalisation and will work to create a competitive incentive-driven economy. Maybe Cameron’s by-line trickery masks a brave politician who will rise to this challenge, my problem is, he’s just too convincing as an iPod.
With Mormon Harry Reid leading the Democrats in the Senate, and fellow Mormon and Republican Massachussetts Governor Mitt Romney making all the right noises for a 2008 bid, the US may need to face up to the idea of a President who believes that the chosen pure (white) people in America were wiped out by the wicked (black) people and that the Garden of Eden is in Jackson County, Missourri.
Certainly Romney has excellent credentials as a successful businessman, administrator and Governor of a staunchly Democratic state – also Reid, being anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-gun control has crossover appeal for Republicans, especially if the GOP back pro-choice Giuliani – but whether or not the American people will want to be represented by a backwater faith, still arguably a sect, which tolerates polygamy and is responsible for The Osmonds, is another matter.
So if either Reid or Romney make their respective tickets, the Church of Latter Day Saints is going to come under a pretty unforgiving spotlight and some of its more crackpot beliefs are likely to be paraded around as reasons not to elect the Mormon is question. I am not against religion being criticised, but the Mormons are not significantly more crackpot than regular Christianity, it´s just that we´re used to the standard stuff of virgin births, walking on water and global floods with enormous arks, so much so that it doesn´t seem so barmy – when someone invents a new tale of receiving the Book of Mormon on gold tablets (which they had to give back after translating them) we snigger behind our hands, safe in the knowledge that actually the Holy Book was given via a burning bush on stone tablets.
So I think the Mormon question should not be so much of an issue – we are all products of our upbringing, and being born and raised Mormon is not so different from being born and raised Baptists or Catholic or whatever other strand of Christianity, or any other religion, you care to name.
See this link for full story in The Guardian
The quiet realisation of the American people, that they may indeed not have the best possible man in the White House, has been slow coming. While for some time Bush has been seen as week on domestic issues, now even in the war on terror he is viewed as a doofus: –
A poll published by CBS News yesterday, found only 36% of Americans said the war is going well, and 30% thought Mr Bush was doing a good job of handling the conflict. Even fewer believed the results of the war were worth the cost. Those concerns have dragged Mr Bush’s overall approval ratings down to levels comparable with Richard Nixon’s at a similar point in his second term. Now, only 34% of the country approves of the way Mr Bush is handling his job and only 29% has a favourable view of him as a person.
Mr Bush shrugged off his low poll ratings during yesterday’s interview. “If I worried about polls, I wouldn’t be doing my job,” he said. Recalling his 2004 re-election, Mr Bush said: “I’ve got ample capital and I’m using it to spread freedom and to protect the American people, plus we’ve got a strong agenda to keep this economy growing.”
