Saturday, May 02, 2009 

Weekend links.

No overall theme this week and not too much to cover either, so let's just get straight into it. Craig Murray comments on the prospect of Labour MPs defecting to the Liberal Democrats, which seems likely to be utter nonsense to me. The Tories seem a better bet considering the political views of the disenchanted. Paul Linford posts his usual weekly column, predicting that after the local and European elections on June 6th all hell will break loose. Both Sunny and BenSix comment on the wingnuttery of Geert Wilders at an anti-jihadist conference in America, which was so extreme that even the likes of Little Green Footballs has started wondering some of their compadres. Shiraz Socialist reports on the Stop the War Coalition again refusing to allow Hands off the People of Iran to affilate with it, Bleeding Heart Show looks at yesterday's speech by David Blunkett, Hopi Sen says there should be a televised debate between Gordon Brown and David Cameron, while the Heresiarch examines the equality bill and the Quail discusses Paul Dacre's priapism.

Over in the press, Jeanette Winterson celebrates the new poet laureate being both a woman and gay, and she's also pretty good at verse as well which helps, Matthew Parris, bored of kicking Gordon Brown personally puts the blame equally on the cabinet, Janice Turner asks who to vote for now (answer: either the Lib Dems or any of the groupings further left), there's another call for an inquiry into 7/7 on CiF, Polly Toynbee oscillates as she regularly does from one extreme to another, declaring once again that Labour is finished, Deborah Orr thinks we have to educate parents as well as children if they're going to get the education they deserve, and Robert Hardman watches the Tamil man starving himself to death in parliament square.

As for worst tabloid comment piece, we have the usual execrable contenders from both Lorraine Kelly and Amanda Platell, but the winner by a country mile is the usually rather good Peter Oborne, with his paean to Margaret Thatcher. Quite how he can write such ahistorical paragraphs as this, for instance, is beyond me:

AS A consequence, Britain has enjoyed an unparalleled period of prosperity and influence on the world stage for three decades. For that, we have Maggie Thatcher to thank.

And then there is just complete delusion:

Of course, the BBC, the Left-wing intelligentsia, the dispossessed Tory grandees and the professional defeatists among the political elites have never forgiven her.

They opposed what she tried to achieve at the time, and have bitterly resented her success ever since. They hate her beyond rational computation, and even today they continue to use their massive influence to denigrate her memory.

But they will never succeed because the people who count - the ordinary people of Britain - know exactly what Maggie Thatcher achieved and will cherish her memory for ever.


Perhaps Oborne ought to try asking the ordinary people of Britain north of Birmingham what Margaret Thatcher means to them and about what she achieved. One suspects he might get an answer he doesn't like very much.

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5/02/2009 09:53:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, May 01, 2009 

Another week in the slow death of Gordon Brown.

It has been, by general consent, a terrible week for the government, and an even more terrible one for Gordon Brown. Towards the end of Tony Blair's tenure, the pattern seemed to be much the same: a week of terrible news followed by a weekend of claims in the papers that Blair was finished once and for all, that something had to be done, that there was plotting against him, that the parliamentary party or cabinet was about to revolt, etc, etc. All of it came to naught. He left the Commons at a time more or less of his own choosing, with his head held high, to a standing ovation. In years to come, it might be felt that he got out in time. Largely loathed by the country yes, and forever overshadowed by Iraq, but a politician who will be regarded as a key figure.

I write this not as a contrast to Brown's current position, but because it would be utter lunacy, only a year away from an election and during a recession for Brown to be overthrown, as there are again mutterings of, mostly from the Blairite-sympathisers who have been secretly praying for Brown to epically fail since he took over. At the same time however, Blair never looked as weak as Brown currently does. Blair would never have lost on an opposition motion as the government did on the Gurkhas this week, because he was both too ruthless and too in control. Despite all the claims of Brown's tactics following the McBride affair, the man accused on a number of occasions as being a control freak seems to have lost his party, or rather, the party has lost him. The blame must ultimately lie at the top, but surely all those involved could see just how unpopular the Gurkha policy was? David Blunkett, wrong on many things repeatedly, including today, is surely right when he says the party has lost its political antennae. It's almost as if the entire policy was left in the incapable hands of the likes of Phil Woolas, who only has one thought in his head, and that's to say no to everyone with brown skin, regardless of the circumstances involved.

This not knowing when to say hang on, we're doing something terribly wrong here does however extend right to the top. Who knows quite what was going through the heads of all who were involved in the making of Brown's YouTube video, but the thinking behind it was positively neanderthal. One part was attempting to change the story from the McBride emails onto the other hot button topic of MPs expenses, but the other was simple and crude political calculation, trying to outwit both the Conservatives and Lib Dems, which deserved to backfire spectacularly. More pertinently, there should have been an adviser either at the filming or who watched it afterwards who had the nerve to tell the prime minister not to act like someone he's not: yes, we know that the stuff about you being a dour old Stalinist is tiresome and that you'd like to prove everybody wrong, but curling your face up randomly, looking as though you're about to burst out laughing and then turning immediately back to a position of the utmost seriousness as though someone's shoving a cattle prod up your rectum every few seconds while you're broaching such a topic is not going to do that, it's just going to make people laugh at you even more. It's not quite up there with "LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE" in the meltdown stakes, but it's not far off.

You could perhaps accept a taking of the eye off the ball if Brown genuinely was focusing on the economic situation, but that's evidently not the case. There is more than a hint of drift, of there being no apparent sense of direction, almost as if they are already resigned to their fate of losing the next election. This is not in the slightest bit helped by Charles Clarke, who like Frank Field increasingly seems to just be taking his anger out for past slights on the government at large. He professes to be "ashamed" to be a Labour MP, although he doesn't go into specifically why he suddenly feels this way, although presumably he's referring to either the Gurkha policy or "Smeargate". This of course is a man who was in the cabinet at the time of the Iraq war, and said nothing against it, which you might think is now something much more worthy of being ashamed about. This is a man who was home secretary while Blair was attempting to smash 90 days detention without charge for "terrorist suspects" through the Commons. This was a man who was there when Dr David Kelly was smeared and attacked, a far more shameful episode than the recent emails which were never sent and never used but which has been forgotten by those who can't remember what happened more than two weeks ago, all of which he said nothing about or actively supported.

Even if Charles Clarke is one-trick pony, much like the other Blairites who either suffer in silence or who brief the media with how desperately unhappy they are about the way things are going, the truth is that the Labour party has been reduced to its current state because of the way it has been controlled from the top, and because of the way in which the Blairites themselves operated for so long. Any dissent or deviance was considered to be heresy, and only those who had long been regarded as loose cannons, such as the Campaign and Tribune groups, were left to plow their own increasingly lonely furrows. The end result could have been predicted: a party reduced to a husk, where there is no apparent successor to the TB-GB years, and where there are either no policies or policies which cannot possibly be allowed to happen because they're too Old Labour. When the most likely leadership candidates are Harriet Harman, admirable on some counts but deeply unattractive on others, David Miliband, who is simply too inexperienced and a soft Blairite, and Alan Johnson, whose main attribute appears to be that he's solidly working class and has good relations with the unions, it's not difficult to imagine that Labour will easily be out of power and in flux for around the same amount of time as the Tories have been.

Critically, this has left the Conservatives with next to no challenge, even when they still haven't properly sealed the deal with the electorate. Things are going to be grim whoever wins the next election, but the talk of an age of austerity, which has come so naturally to the lips of David Cameron, chills rather than raises hopes. It leaves the impression that if Labour wants to turn the clock back to the 70s, as we are led to believe, the Conservatives wish to return to the 50s. Of the two decades, it's not difficult to make a choice as to which would be preferable. Labour doesn't deserve to win the election, and it shouldn't, but neither do the Conservatives. That we are effectively disenfranchised if we want a pox on both their houses is just as damaging to our democracy as parliamentary expenses have turned out to be.

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5/01/2009 11:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 30, 2009 

Scum-watch: It's all thanks to us!

There's a quite extraordinary leader in today's Sun (url will change). Extraordinary in that it is utterly shameless in claiming credit for two campaigns, one that it did indeed lead, and which has had negative consequences which will almost certainly affect social services for years to come, and another which it only jumped on on Monday. The paper of course doesn't personally claim credit; it instead claims that its readers are responsible, as it has in the past. This might be the case in the Baby P campaign, but is certainly not in the case of the Gurkhas. In any case:

WHO said people power was dead?

In one amazing day, TWO Sun campaigns result in triumphs for our readers.

GURKHAS win a crucial Commons victory against Government plans to deport them.

And BABY P social workers finally pay the price for their incompetence and arrogance.

Incredibly, the Sun can't even get the campaign concerning the Gurkhas right. The government has no plans to deport them; retired Gurkhas instead want the right to settle here. One would have thought that if the Sun had been covering the Gurkhas campaign since the beginning, it might have been able to get the key facts straight.

First, the Gurkhas...

Labour’s humiliation at Westminster over its shabby treatment of these brave men is a triumph for decency and democracy.

The Sun is proud to have led the crusade to let the Gurkhas settle here.

Gordon Brown has only himself to blame for his bloody nose.


Led the crusade? Prior to last Saturday, only Jon Gaunt had so much as mentioned the Gurkhas' campaign in the paper this year. Last year the paper made 38 mentions of Gurkhas: just once did it make the Sun's leader column, and then it was regarded as the least important issue of the day, below some completely inaccurate nonsense about the European Union and yet more woe from Helen Newlove. To be fair to the paper, Gaunt has at least repeatedly wrote about the Gurkhas, but one columnist does not make a paper leading the "crusade". Notable by their absence from this leader are the far more important individuals who genuinely did lead the campaign, namely Joanna Lumley and Nick Clegg, who obviously come second to the paper's noble leadership and the readers who did much to put down the motion which led to the government being defeated.

And why did it take Haringey Council so long to appreciate anger over their failure to sack those who betrayed Baby P?
I don't know; maybe they were following proper procedure rather than just deciding to instantly sack people based on what was written in Sun leader columns?
Four went yesterday without compensation, including social worker Maria Ward, her superior Gillie Christou and two bosses.

That would be the same Maria Ward who was driven to the edge of suicide by the Sun's targeting of her. Before the Sun shut down comments on its Baby P reports, readers had commented on the Sun's article daring her to do it. The paper had also demanded that another social worker, Sylvia Henry, be sacked. The council found that she had no case to answer. Doubtless she too suffered similar treatment to that which Sharon Shoesmith and Ward were subjected; if she was hoping for an apology, she'll be waiting a long time.
It’s good to see that public opinion can still count in national life.

As long as that public opinion corresponds with the Sun's views, naturally.

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4/30/2009 11:51:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 

How to tackle the BNP effectively.

Every few years, without fail, there is a scare regarding the possibility of the British National Party making a major breakthrough. By major breakthrough, this generally means winning the odd council seat, putting in an above average performance in an area where racial tension has been running at a high after some particular incident, or not losing their deposit when it comes to contesting seats during a general election. Compared to far right parties in other countries in Europe, some of which either share power, hold substantial seats in their respective parliaments or in the notorious case of 2002 in France, when Jean Marie Le Pen contested the French presidency against Jacques Chirac, come as close to seizing complete control as can be feasibly imagined, our rank of out and proud racists and fascists are a mostly feeble bunch.

This time round, the scare is probably as close to being justified as it has ever been. The BNP, despite having its membership list published online at the end of last year, is finally getting its shit together. Helped along by the economic situation, a backlash against "uncontrolled" immigration which has never been properly explained to the public, let alone the economic and political case argued for, the feeling of victimhood which followed the glee with which the leaked members list was greeted in some quarters, and the old grievances which the party preys upon, namely the immigrants/ethnics are talking all the jobs/houses/women then twists and fabricates further, support for the party seems to be growing exponentially. 800,000 apparently voted for them at the last European elections, while 238,000 crossed their box in the 2006 local elections. According to the email missives which regularly land in my inbox, after I signed up on the BNP website to argue with a knuckledragger who was linking here, BNP supporters have raised £300,000 for the European campaign, enabling them to send a flyer to every home in the country, as well as preparing a backroom staff more associated with the "major" parties. That's still £100,000 less than the Fuhrer himself, Nick Griffin, called for, but is hardly a figure to be sniffed at.

The latest to sound the alarm, as it always seems to be, is a Labour politician, even if Peter Hain has a well-established pedigree when it comes to battling against the far right. He worries that the BNP could win up to six seats at the European elections, which while hardly transforming British politics overnight, would mean that the party could claim up to £2 million in funding from the EU. That sort of money definitely would transform the party. At the moment, the BNP is restricted to running a mainly internet based insurgency: like organisations which, ironically, defend Israel, such as GIYUS, threads and comment pieces dealing with racism or mentioning the party are swiftly set upon, further giving the impression that there is a groundswell of opinion heading the party's way. Emails are sent out asking supporters and members to complain to newspapers which run articles the party decides are either inaccurate or which it simply decides cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged; one recent such campaign against the Independent resulted in the Press Complaints Commission receiving the most ever complaints about a single press article. The latest send out concerned the fear that the News Shopper was about to blame what even the BNP described as "major carnage" in Old Bexley on St George's Day on the party, which naturally, the party assures its subscribers "is utterly ridiculous and completely unfounded". According to this forum thread, the "carnage" occurred outside a known BNP pub, but was between football fans. In the event, the newspaper's article did not place the blame on the BNP.

While Hain is right to be concerned, he ought to know by now that members of the ruling party can only make things worse by writing such articles. Admittedly, the whole tackling the BNP policy is fraught with conundrums: does "no platform" mean that you don't just refuse to argue with them, but also completely deny that they even exist? However, this doesn't apply when it comes to the Labour party, and especially either ministers or former ministers. The example of what not to do was set by Margaret Hodge a couple of years back: don't predict the BNP is about to make a breakthrough, not only because such prophecies can become self-fulfilling, but because they alert the media to the idea, who descend upon said area, and even further potentially alienate the local population, especially if cack-handed idiots start asking whether they think they're racist as they're contemplating voting for the party. All it does is result in further publicity for the party.

The challenge in fighting the BNP has, instead, to be left to the grassroots and those who cannot be linked back directly to the Labour government. While the BNP seems likely to pick up some votes at the European elections from UKIP, whose vote seems likely to collapse, or at least plummet, Labour has to face up to the fact that the most defections will come from their supporters. This is not because, as some right-wingers love to argue, that the BNP is left-wing, and QED that means that fascists are also lefties, but because the BNP more than any of the other parties are prepared to get down and dirty with the actual voters themselves, reassure them that their concerns are not prejudices and that they will fight for them personally rather than the "outsiders". This is politics of the old school, in all senses, and it's what the other parties have increasingly abandoned. The white working class, for various reasons, feels this abandonment most acutely. In fact, the working class as a whole, regardless of colour distinctions, feels much the same. Labour promised them much and has not delivered sufficiently, and now they're the ones suffering the most while the others who benefited have far more resilience. The argument against the BNP then has to be made not just on policy grounds and on exposing their true, still disgustingly racist views, as shown by last week's party leaflet, but on the other facts: that the BNP make for the most part dreadful councillors and politicians, as the record conclusively shows. They also have to be personally argued against: the no platform policy has completely failed, and is now not principled, it's simply cowardly.

All this said, the BNP probably won't get those six seats, and if they do they'll only get them because of the European parliament's PR system, the same reason why the Greens will also win seats, and why many who would normally vote for the main three parties will switch their support. The BNP is not about to win parliamentary seats, which really would be a breakthrough. The party will remain one of the least successful relative far-right forces in Europe, and this country will also remain one of the most tolerant, least racist and least prejudiced in Europe. All of that should be remembered before we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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4/29/2009 08:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 

Now for something completely different...

In lieu of an actual post, here are some completely random facts:

According to today's Graun, the Japanese Communist Party has over 400,000 members. The Labour party only had a similar number back in 2007, and now has less than 200,000.

The 1975 referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Economic Community had a turnout of 64.5%, despite the fact that the previous year had seen two general elections. In contrast, the turnouts at the 2001 and 2005 general elections were 59% and 61% respectively. Interestingly, the only major newspaper to call for a "no" vote in the referendum was the Morning Star. How times change. As for whether the general election of 2010 will have a turnout higher than 65% remains to be seen.

Oh, and if you want something else to read, Rachel on the acquittal of the 7/7 "accomplices", Chris on the "Evil Poor" problem and Dave on the atrophy of the left are all worth a gander.

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Monday, April 27, 2009 

Immigration and the Gurkhas.

Causes don't come much more righteous than the campaign for retired Gurkhas to be allowed to settle in this country. Following Friday's derisory if not downright insulting decision from the Home Office that would at most allow only 100 to emigrate here, the Sun and doubtless other papers are preparing campaigns, or in the Sun's case, a rather inaptly named "crusade" for their right to live here. Even the British National Party, which only last week talked of how other immigrants could never be considered British because they are of "foreign stock", supports their cause.

As could have been expected, the Gurkhas and their rights are being compared unfavourably with those who have also settled here in recent years who have not been welcomed with such open arms. The Sun lists, variously, those who slip in here to sponge off the taxpayer (mostly a myth), students granted visas to bogus colleges, the Afghan hijackers, and those who smuggle themselves in from France. The Sun, it should be noted, seems to have been rather kinder to the eastern Europeans who have entered the country to work since 2004 than the other tabloids, mainly perhaps due to it directly appealing to them in specially published papers. Nonetheless, no one could confuse the Sun with a paper that supports fully open borders, like say, the Guardian or the Independent.

The problem with the emphasis on the Gurkhas is that it means even less attention for those already here that are suffering under the vagaries of our asylum and immigration system. Almost everyone agrees that not allowing those who are awaiting the decision over their status, as well as those who are designated to be "failed" asylum seekers to work is a ridiculous situation which impoverishes all involved while contributing to the "black" economy and so robs the exchequer of tax revenue. Then there's today's little short of horrifying, if not in the least bit surprising report from the children's commissioner regarding the detention of children at Yarl's Wood (PDF). Mark Easton provides a summary:

What sort of country sends a dozen uniformed officers to haul innocent sleeping children out of their beds; gives them just a few minutes to pack what belongings they can grab; pushes them into stinking caged vans; drives them for hours while refusing them the chance to go to the lavatory so that they wet themselves and locks them up sometimes for weeks or months without the prospect of release and without adequate health services?

It highlights how we have completely different attitudes when it comes to outsiders. Even though we have one of the highest child incarceration rates in Europe, we would still regard the locking up of those charged with or convicted of no crime as being abhorrent. Yet this does not stop us from doing it to those whom, in the vast majority of cases, were genuinely fleeing oppression and then find their families experiencing much the same in a so-called civilised country. Undoubtedly, some are out to take advantage of our hospitality, and some are simply economic migrants claiming asylum, but even then their children are not complicit in or responsible for their actions. There has to be an alternative.

To get some sense of perspective, the number of Gurkhas that might take advantage of the full right to settle here is estimated at around 36,000. The Sun uses the word "just" before that number. The number that sought asylum here in 2007, by comparison, was 23,430. You can't imagine for a moment any tabloid newspaper using "just" before reporting that figure. Indeed, the hysteria at the beginning of the decade, when asylum applications hit a high of over 100,000 a year was such that the clampdowns which are now in effect were introduced, with targets for how many "failed" asylum seekers would be deported each year the main innovation. Such targets make no allowance for the personal situations of those who are abitrarily decided to be the next to go, including the likes of Ama Sumani, who was sent back to Ghana regardless of the fact she could not receive treatment for her cancer there. She was dead within two months. The Lancet called it "atrocious barbarism", and it's hard to disagree. Not treating with respect those who fought for this country might be described similarly, but surely we also owe a debt to those who come here seeking sanctuary to at least treat them with more than an ounce of humanity.

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4/27/2009 10:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

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