Saturday, May 09, 2009 

Weekend links.

There is only one story this weekend, and I don't think I really need to tell you what it is. On the blogs, Sunny says we should welcome the expenses scandal, Craig Murray says the Telegraph has only occasionally managed to hit a cow's arse with a banjo, and it's hard to disagree when the likes of Margaret Moran claimed for a house in Southampton when her constituency is in Luton, and Barbara Follett claimed an astonishing £25,000 for security after she was mugged, when the paper has instead highlighted Brown's perfectly legitimate paying of his brother to pay a cleaner who worked for both of them, and Woolas's explanations for his buying of women's clothing and comics. Murray also criticises Harriet Harman for bigging up the BNP, as does Mr Eugenides, Paul Linford examines them as well as the earlier hilarious comparison of Thatcher with Hazel Blears, Paulie has two posts which most will likely disagree with, as does Hopi Sen, while just to be different for the last link jihadica looks at the response on the jihadist forums to the purported arrest of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

The theme is the same in the papers. Matthew Parris says increase salaries by £30,000 and abolish all expenses, The Times' leader makes a point made repeatedly that this threatens the political process in its entirety, Steve Richards argues much the same, Andrew Grice calls it both farce and tragedy, while Michael Brown also advocates a proper salary for MPs, although considering they are already paid around £64,000, £40,000 more than the average wage, that's not likely to go down well either. Peter Oborne calls for the money to be paid back, the spivs to be sacked and for the thieves to be prosecuted, Alistair Graham also notes the plummet of faith in politics, while Polly Toynbee connects Labour's failure to deal with poverty with the lack of fairness shown by the expenses. Finally, Martin Bell asks where the shame is. On different topics, Deborah Orr talks a personal connection with swine flu, Howard Jacobson writes on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and Marina Hyde covers the week's Home Office travails.

As for worst tabloid article, Lorraine Kelly easily wins for yet another pointless piece on the McCanns, doing all the things it criticises others for doing.

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5/09/2009 09:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, May 08, 2009 

More unequal than ever.

It's been completely overshadowed by other events, but what really should be the final nail in Labour's coffin was quietly slipped out yesterday: the income gap is now the widest it has been since records began. This should be the very knife in the heart of New Labour: the entire political deal which shaped the party was that even if the rich would be allowed to become filthily so, through subtle and stealthy redistribution the poorest would be lifted out of poverty, with child poverty to be abolished altogether.

Arguably, for a while it worked: the poor were not getting poorer, it was just the rich getting richer more quickly which prevented Labour's record from being noteworthy and successful. The latest figures however show that even before the banking meltdown, the poorest were having to make do on less, while the richest continued to benefit. As alluded to above, this should be the final straw: the whole reason that Labour supporters were meant to put up with the triangulation, the constant appeasing of the tabloids, the wars, the constant reactionary rhetoric on everything that the Home Office deals with and dealt with was because that below the surface, things were slowly but surely getting better for the most vulnerable in society. Now even Polly Toynbee at her most desperate cannot pretend that her nosepegs can keep out the smell that emanates from New Labour's corpse.

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5/08/2009 11:05:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 07, 2009 

A profile of an contempible government.

For a decision made by the European Court of Human Rights, which the tabloids habitually love to portray as a foreign entity imposing liberal madness on this unspoilt land despite our leading role in its establishment, there was surprisingly little apoplexy at the judgement concerning the retention of genetic profiles on the DNA database, especially considering the Sun had scaremongered about the case on a couple of occasions. Partly this was due to being distracted at the time, as Karen Matthews had just been convicted, but also partially down to a gradual changing of views on the general question of civil liberties. After more than a decade where the belief that if you had nothing to hide you had nothing to fear became so entrenched that almost anything, with the exception of the death penalty, was considered as a potential policy to deal with the hysteria over crime, even as crime itself fell off a cliff, sanity has finally begun to make something of a return.

Sanity however is not something that comes naturally to the Home Office under Labour. Despite the hilarious complaints from the Sun, and indeed from Jack Straw that "the criminal justice lobby" have the ear of ministers more than newspaper editors do, the facts, not least a prison population which requires an early release system which actively undermines justice but without which they could not even begin to function, speak for themselves. Admittedly, the DNA database makes for an easy populist cause: while few will still openly call for a "complete" database, the idea that everyone convicted of a crime should be on it indefinitely is still a difficult position to argue against, even if it is as illogical a position as arguing for a full one. At least on one point the government does seem to be willing to be reasonable, or something approaching it: those over 10 and under 18 will have their profiles removed, regardless of whether they are convicted of a crime or not, unless for a violent or sexual offence, when they turn 18, as long as they are not arrested again during their teenage years. Youthful indiscretions it seems will not matter for life as they currently do.

If however being convicted of any offence that carries a potential prison sentence means that your profile should remain on the database indefinitely is indefensible, as the government proposes despite the ECHR's damning verdict, then the idea that those found completely innocent should remain on the database for either 6 or 12 years, depending on the gravity of the offence, is bordering on a complete mockery of justice. While everyone has become acquainted with the example of Mark Dixie, who was convicted of the murder of the photogenic Sally Anne Bowman (who we most likely would never had heard of had she looked more like Susan Boyle), after he was arrested for being involved in a minor scuffle outside a pub, it isn't really an apposite example in this instance because no one is arguing that profiles should not be created from all those arrested and checked against unsolved cases as a matter of course; he would have been caught red-handed regardless. The "consultation" document (PDF)does however contain a more troubling one for those of us who believe those found innocent of what they are accused of should instantly have their profiles removed from the database: Kensley Larrier was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and had his profile taken and loaded onto the database, but no charges were brought. Three years later Larrier was successfully convicted of rape after his DNA was matched with that left at the crime scene.

It doesn't necessarily mean of course that Larrier would not have been convicted through good old fashioned police work, and the suspicions of the police confirmed once they had arrested him, but it does leave those of us advocating a complete wiping of the profiles of the innocent from the database with the uncomfortable position of knowing that undoubtedly some will get away with subsequent crimes, including the most serious, which they would otherwise have been brought to book for, or at least brought to justice for far sooner than otherwise. The key argument to make in response is that a few "bad eggs" should not mean that all those unfortunate to come under suspicion should be considered potentially guilty until proven innocent, but even that is far from being wholly convincing. Even if we then point out that no system is infallible, and that unless we are prepared to go down the previously mentioned path of everyone being on the database, some would still always escape justice, it still leaves us open to the accusation that we're prepared to put principles, however noble, before the rights of those to have justice seen to be done.

More indicative though of how the government seems determined to still eventually build such a complete database by stealth, is that all those given just a caution, a warning, or a reprimand will also have their profiles kept indefinitely. The number of cautions given in recent years has sky-rocketed, although it's not clear whether this is due to the huge rise in new offences created by this government, the fact that any offence, however minor, is now also an arrestable offence, or an increasing tendency for "summary justice" rather than court proceedings to deal with those minor offences, but it effectively means that only those officially found to be guilty of no offence whatsoever, which is also increasingly rare, will have their profiles removed.

The government claims that its proposals will not just mean that it will comply with the ruling in the S and Marper case, but that they will go substantially further than the requirements. Whether the court will agree may well depend on a further case being brought, but considering the time it will take for it wind its way first through our court system, where S and Marper failed in their attempts, and to the ECHR to consider again, it will doubtless be years before we find out. Certainly there needs to be a challenge, not just to the 6 and 12 years retention for those found completely innocent, but to the blanket retention of those given just a caution, let alone those convicted and given either a fine or a suspended sentence. Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats talk a good game on doing the right thing, but whether the former can be trusted to keep their word, the LDs hardly likely to be in a position to put theirs into action, remains to be seen. In any event, the government has as usual done as little as it feasibly could to not be held in further contempt. It ought to be another thing for which it should be held to account, but even if the mood is slowly changing, there are few votes in giving in to those barmy Europeans.

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5/07/2009 10:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, May 06, 2009 

Another edifying session.

It's a good thing that only politics nerds bother to watch prime minister's questions, because if anyone else had bothered to tune in today, they would have had their reasons for being completely cynical and apathetic about what goes on at Westminster fully confirmed.

Understandably, the Conservatives sense blood after Gordon Brown's last dire week. They realise that turning him into the issue is also the main way to rile him up, and few opposition leaders would have failed to mention the weekend's events with Hazel Blears' newspaper article. Even so, that Cameron used up all six of his questions personally attacking the prime minister, without mentioning either the Gurkhas again, the other tensions within Labour over the proposed part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, or the economy was low politics from those who only a couple of weeks back were calling for a complete change to the way Downing Street operated after "Smeargate".

Admittedly, prime minister's questions has long transformed from the prime minister answering questions into the prime minister not answering questions and attacking the opposition whenever the chance takes him. Gordon Brown didn't start this trend, but has done nothing whatsoever to alter it. Brown also once again resorted to the caricaturing of Conservative policy, describing them as the only politicos in the world advocating doing nothing as a strategy in the face of global recession, which is wrong both counts, but which is not as disconnected from the truth as the Tories would like.

This clearly wasn't just Cameron's strategy however, but the entire Conservative strategy. Brown himself noted that not a single Tory question concerned policy until Iain Duncan Smith stood up and asked about the Gurkhas, 28 minutes into the session. While Brown for the most part floundered, he did score a hit on Cameron regarding u-turns, especially on the "show a lot of love to children" crime policy, which has since turned into the "modern clip round the ear" law and order strategy. "That must have sounded great in the bunker!", smarmed Cameron in response. It was left to Nick Clegg to again raise substantive points, and although his calling Brown stupid was cheap, he seems to have finally settled into PMQs, making the best use of having just 2 questions as he possibly can.

The Tories who continued to pop up increasingly resembled those delightful school children who pile into a fight and aim kicks at the person sprawled on the floor. They caused much hilarity amongst themselves when Stephen Crabb stood up and made reference again to the reports of Brown throwing things around, Cameron already having done so. The only way Brown could possibly have responded to it was to either laugh it off or keep to his complaining about the personal attacks; instead he said "complaints were dealt with in the usual manner", which left the Tories falling about laughing at Brown's latest Stalinist faux pas, also resembling an admission that the stories are true. It was grim stuff, and even if the backbenchers had cheered Brown loudly in his final response to Cameron, the rest of the frontbench were clearly not enjoying it.

Only those that love to descend politics to personalities rather than policy and to insults rather than considered argument will have done. Clearly, Brown cannot complain on either front by his record, but for Cameron, who once said that he wanted to remove the Punch and Judy from politics, it was weak stuff and beneath him. The Conservatives clearly do have some sort of policy on dealing with the recession, and on most other things; they just seem to not want to expose them to any actual scrutiny. Again, that's understandable when they have clearly not finalised them and when we're still a year away from an election, but it is also beginning to suggest that they themselves have no real faith in them, and that they don't wish to scare the electorate with what their "age of austerity" will really mean. Again, the emphasis on Brown's travails has completely deflected any attention away from what the Conservatives are really offering, something that simply cannot continue.

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5/06/2009 09:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 05, 2009 

Hazel Blears? She's just like Thatcher...

Apropos of yesterday's post, I was fairly confident that the Graun's leader which featured Hazel Blears had been written by Martin Kettle, who used to be one of the main leader writers, and who now fills in occasionally, but because I wasn't completely certain didn't directly attribute it to him. Today Mr Kettle devotes an even more stupendous column to comparing and contrasting Blears and... Margaret Thatcher, which rather does confirm it. His main argument is that Thatcher, having first been patronised, proved everyone wrong. His penultimate paragraph:

Yet if you look at the Labour party today and try to imagine a current minister of either sex with unchallengeably authentic political roots, an aspirational life story that image makers dream of, a clear sense of where she's coming from, an irresistible confidence in her own instincts, a clear set of convictions, and the potential to turn herself into an iconic political figurehead, you don't find many better candidates than Blears.

In one sense, you have to admire both Kettle and Blears: few are so deluded about either their greatness or someone else's potential to be great; that's impressive in its own right.

The problem with this view of Blears is obvious upon watching George Monbiot's eye-opening interview with her. This came about after Blears responded to a Monbiot column, which wasn't one of his best, which attacked politicians as a whole. Blears, for her part, put in an even more poorly argued reply, which brazenly claimed that those who have never stood for political office shouldn't criticise the great work which politicians are doing. After Monbiot ripped Blears to shreds in his riposte, she rather pathetically asked him to visit her constituency to see the great things that she and Labour have achieved, presumably thinking that he wouldn't take her up on the offer. He did.

This took place before Blears' weekend article in the Observer, which set the slavering Kettle off on his Thatcher riff, but after watching it you couldn't possibly mistake Blears for even the most shallow Thatcher follower. Whatever you think about Thatcher, she was undoubtedly a leader. Blears, despite her pretensions to become deputy leader, where she was humiliated by coming dead last, is not a leader. She's a follower. Monbiot dismisses the distinctions between Blairites and Brownites and just describes Blears as a career politician, which certainly also is accurate, but the Blairite description still holds, because she undoubtedly shares Blair's terrifying sense of self-assurance, his ability to believe two contradictory things at once, which Orwell famously called double-think, and also to argue regardless that of any changes in policy, everything they have ever done has been the right thing, even if the right thing at the time turned out to be the wrong thing and the opposite had to be done to make it the right thing. Brownites, for their sins, have never been so self-assured, and have recognised they have made mistakes. Blairites, however, only believe they made one mistake, and that was acquiescing to Gordon Brown's unopposed ascent to the leadership.

There really is no other way to describe Blears's view that despite hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying, which, she insultingly says, is a tragedy, that it was the right thing to do and that it was made in good faith, as bordering on madness. It has to be asked: what possibly could have made it the "wrong thing" to do if the deaths of hundreds of thousands didn't? The answer is that there is no answer; regardless of whether the entire population had died, nothing could alter the fact that Blears would still defend it. She knows no other way than absolute and utter loyalty, and as Monbiot repeatedly prods her, you can start to see the desperation and even the loneliness of her position in her eyes: secretly, and deep within the recesses of her mind, she knows that she's wrong, but that she can't find it within herself to admit that either she or the party she quite clearly dearly loves, even if it doesn't love her, can be wrong.

Once you understand this, then her Observer article isn't in fact an act of disloyalty, or an attack on Gordon Brown, but rather concern that the party, which is more important than the leader, even if she thinks the party stands for things which the members themselves don't believe in, is in peril. Although Kettle mentions that Blears prior to 97 was a lawyer, that she's been ostensibly a minister or working for one since 1998 suggests that she can no longer imagine not being in government. Blears clearly has no interest in being a politician who has no power, despite her protestations that she's doing everything she can for her constituents, although her belief in that is doubtless sincere and motivates her. Such a situation can lead to what would normally be drastic action.

The only other thing Monbiot gets wrong is that he admires Blears' engagement and the way she answers questions when others wouldn't. This isn't always the case, as an encounter with Jeremy Paxman a few years back showed. The very problem is that the way Blears responds is what turns people off: if you're not prepared to admit that you've ever got anything wrong, that everything you've done even if it subsequently turns out to be wrong was right at the time, and that the party is always right, you're better off not engaging because it just frustrates and and angers. At least with Thatcher you could channel your hatred against her, because she didn't try to be liked; Blears, on the other hand, desperately wants to be loved while being just as obdurate. Thatcher inspired a generation of those who believed there was another politics possible despite there being no alternative; Blears is inspiring a generation who genuinely do believe there is no alternative. In this sense, New Labour is turning out to be far more destructive than the Tories were.

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5/05/2009 09:28:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, May 04, 2009 

Just one fucking thing after another.

Back Brown or boost BNP, says Kinnock. You really would have thought that a former Labour leader would know that the one thing you do not do is tell people that you have to back someone otherwise someone worse will triumph, not only because it's the politics of desperation and an intellectually bankrupt scare tactic, but because most people when told what to do, especially by those in authority, will be even more likely to do the opposite.

Almost equally ludicrous is today's Guardian leader on the government's connected woes, which calls Hazel Blears an "authentic Labour voice". She's about as authentic a Labour voice as Nick Griffin is. It doesn't read like a typical Graun leader, giving the impression that someone's filling in over the bank holiday weekend, and filling in exceptionally badly. It says that Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett and Hazel Blears are not part of an "undifferentiated Blairite plot", and they probably aren't. They are however, with the possible exception of Clarke, who cooled on Blair after he sacked, either ardent or moderate Blairites, and Blears is quite possibly the summation of everything wrong with New Labour. That she now also seems to consider herself as the voice of New Labour's conscience and feels the need to stick the knife in, as that is clearly what her Observer article yesterday did, also seems to suggest that she is becoming even more certain of herself and her eminent greatness.

Blears, sadly, has a majority of almost 8,000, meaning her seat is likely to remain safe, although the way things are going who knows what sort of carnage might occur this time next year. Then again, even if she was culled, she'd doubtless be replaced with an equally loathsome Tory. Sometimes politics feels a bit like history as described by Alan Bennett: it's just one fucking thing after another.

I was also intending to post on the Daily Mail's latest HUMAN RIGHTS OUTRAGE, namely that lawyers are daring to appeal against someone's conviction, but Mr Vowl has beaten me to it, so I shall direct you there instead.

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5/04/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

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