Saturday, March 27, 2010 

Alternative pledge card.

Now that we've seen Labour's 5 election pledges, a collection of the vacuous, the obvious, the reactionary and the piss-poor, all about as inspiring, innovative and and forward-thinking as the large amounts of vomit which will duly be deposited on the pavements of the nation's towns and cities tonight, I can't help thinking that the party would be better off going with this alternative, featured in the latest Viz:

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3/27/2010 08:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 

Tomorrow never comes until it's too late (or, the Budget).

Amidst the knockabout and the political dividing lines, there was a budget attempting to break out from Alistair Darling's speech. The one thing you can always depend upon is that those on both sides will respond with plenty of vitriol and very little on what they would do instead, as David Cameron did, in almost certainly one of his very weakest performances at the dispatch box. He, or almost certainly rather his writers probably thought that their football metaphor was clever while being easy to understand for all the plebs out there, describing the country as having gone from the top of the Premier League in 1997 to the Conference in 2010 after 13 wasted years. Supposedly meant to refer to Brown wanting to appear on Match of the Day, it instead just struck you as a politician resorting to hyperbole when he has absolutely nothing else to add, and which falls apart on first examination: was the country really in such fantastic shape in 97? Is it really so desperate now? What exactly would the Conservatives have done to make such a dramatic difference when in 2005 the spending pledges from the Conservatives were only £4 billion short of Labour's?

On the opposite side, you have the supposedly "non-partisan" Left Foot Forward doing the equivalent of trying to thrust their collective tongue down Darling's throat, celebrating almost every separate investment decision taken while downplaying the taking away with the other hand. Sally Hunt rather undermines the "welcome news" that the government will fund 200,00 "extra" university places when she notes that the £270m in extra funding doesn't even begin to make up for the cuts which have already been announced. She also doesn't mention that the government is to sell off the student loan book to the highest bidder, something you think might be of concern to the general secretary of the University and College Union.

Budgets tend to begin falling apart the following day or even the day after that once all the details have sunk in, the sums have been done by the likes of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Treasury red book has been thoroughly examined. It didn't even last that long when it came to the headline raising of the stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first time buyers. The cost of doing so, heavily cheered by the Labour benches, is meant to be covered by raising the stamp duty on properties over a million from 4% to 5%, except it doesn't. It's estimated that will bring in £90m, while raising the threshold to £250k will cost £230m. Why bother to raise it by such a measly amount when it doesn't even begin to cover it? We're not talking about the so-called "squeezed middle" here, but the very well off who can comfortably afford to pay more. It is essentially a trick, used throughout the budget and especially by Brown since his ascension to prime minister: giving the appearance of soaking the rich while doing nothing of the sort. How much further Labour could have gone has been aptly illustrated by the one-off banker bonus tax: despite all the screams from the City, it raised more than double the predicted amount, helping to fund the "giveaways" which we had been told weren't going to happen.

Even if the real cuts are being postponed to after the election or until the next fiscal year, which is incidentally the right thing to do, we still have the cuts masquerading as "efficiency savings" which were announced afterwards. A staggering £4.3bn is apparently to be saved from the Department of Health budget, of which £555m is due to come by reducing "sickness absence", which translated means forcing nurses and doctors to go into work when they themselves are unwell, an idea with absolutely no drawbacks whatsoever. Another £100m will be saved from the disastrous IT programme, which even by this government's standards of waste has broken new records in terms of misuse of public money. Speaking of which, another £4bn is to be thrown into the spending chasm known as Afghanistan, a war without end and which only gets crazier as the years inexorably pass.

If the budget and the responses to it were designed to further cement the votes if not the themes on which the election campaign is going to be fought, then both could be classed as relative successes. Toby Helm describes it as anything but a boring budget, but I beg to differ, as I presume Darling himself would. The surprises were so few as to be non-existent, and away from the Ashcroft-bashing, this was hardly the budget on which any governing party would like to be going into an election. The deficit and borrowing figures prevented it being any sort of giveaway, but it also focused on the short-term at the expense of anything approaching a vision. We had a stamp duty cut for those who can already afford to buy, but nothing for those who can't or who can't even find anywhere to live. From both sides we were offered a continuation of the same old politics even when they supposedly thirst to offer everyone change, and a tomorrow which they deeply seem to hope will never come.

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3/24/2010 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 22, 2010 

Intensely relaxed about getting filthy rich comes full circle.

As scandals go, Stephen Byers declaring to an undercover reporter that he was the equivalent of a "cab for hire", albeit for a sum which even most taxi drivers would blanch at demanding, isn't even close to the worst that Labour have suffered over the past 13 years. It's also hardly a repeat of "Cash for Questions", let alone the far more dramatic downfall of Jonathan Aitken. The closest comparison is in fact an almost identical operation by the Sunday Times last year, which successfully ensnared four Labour MPs with mouths equally as large as Byers'. In that instance they too also later said that they had played fast and loose with the truth of their fantastic ability to influence, although they didn't go so far in their attempt to don the sackcloth and ashes as Byers undoubtedly has.

The denials of Tesco and National Express also has echoes of that infamous scandal, or what would these days quite rightly be a non-scandal, the Profumo affair. As Mandy Rice-Davies didn't quite tell the court, they would [say that], wouldn't they? It's impossible to know without an investigation whether Byers was in fact telling the truth to begin with and then, either in an attack of conscience or fear that he'd been nobbled decided to retract what he'd said, but the attempt by Labour to shut the whole thing down, even after Byers referred himself to the parliamentary standards committee was never likely to put an end to things. The response tonight, to suspend Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon from the party while understandable, is only likely to infer guilt on all three. Equally Downing Street must be enjoying the schadenfreude, despite the damage to the party, of being able to cut down to size the two architects of the attempted coup earlier in the year.

This has though been a scandal waiting to happen; the only real surprise is that it's happened now, and that all three of those to most cover themselves in ordure have been or were Blairites. That might seem counter-intuitive: after all, while you can say plenty about the Brownites and their own use of the tactics of spin and smear, it's always been those on the Blair wing of the party that have found themselves at the centre of scandals. Why though, when parliament is so close to the end of term, were all three so willing to advertise themselves as available to lobbyists? There might be an element of all three being demob happy, as all are standing down at the election, hence their last chance to get some lucre before descending back into absolute obscurity, but it's not as if either Byers or Hewitt are broke: Byers is the non-executive chairman of two companies while Hewitt earns almost as much if not more than she does as an MP through her directorship at BT, having formerly been a trade minister, and slightly less through her role as a special consultant to Alliance Boots, having formerly been health secretary. Only Hoon has no such interests to declare, and he suggested that his quest for cash was down to having two children at university, and seeing as he was in cabinet when tuition fees were pushed through the Commons, he only has himself to blame.

As Justin astutely notes, corruption, lobbying and Mandelson's oft-quoted riff on how they were "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" have all been hallmarks of New Labour, or most certainly the Blair side of the party since 1997. In the first term alone there was the Ecclestone affair, when very mysteriously it was decided the Formula 1 would be exempt from the rules banning tobacco sponsorship after little Bernie had donated a million to the party, then Lobbygate, when Derek Draper (yes, him) informed Greg Palast that he was "intimate" with the 17 people who "count". As alluded to above, it's odd that this has only just come up again now: after all, party conferences these days are just one long lobbying session, when charities and companies buy up fringe events and meetings, and as ex-ministers openly flog themselves to those that formerly were lobbying them, as most egregiously Hewitt and Lord Warner have done. Labour are hardly the only offenders though, as was illustrated when Cameron attempted earlier in the year to associate Gordon Brown with those charged with offences over their expenses, commenting at the time on lobbying. Back then we still didn't know about Lord Ashcroft's tax status, while we did know that Cameron has a "leader's group", where if you donate £50,000 to the party you get behind the scenes access to all the party's luminaries. At least you know what Labour's union backers want, and equally know that they very, very rarely get it, despite the millions donated.

Whether this will have any great effect on either support for Labour, or further disillusion those still to decide whether to vote or not is unclear. Labour most be hoping that the relatively quick suspension of three MPs already due to stand down will have next to no effect on those already likely to vote for them, but far more important is that the integrity of our politics has been once again brought into question. While the lowest point has probably been reached, thanks to the expenses scandal, where it was everyone's money involved rather than that of politicians personally profiting thanks to their influence, it's those that are politically engaged who this time are most likely to be disgusted. Even then, it's not the money involved, or that any of three would besmirch their entirely spotless reputations (snigger), but the downright stupidity and way in which they walked into such a trap. Politicians are human, something we sometimes fail to make allowances for, but hopefully not completely ignorant and lacking in inquisitiveness. The Sunday Times/Dispatches scoop suggests otherwise.

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3/22/2010 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 

The electoral war over crime.

Up until now there's been something of a phony war instead of anything approaching all-out combat between Labour and the Conservatives in the fledgling election campaign. Sure, there have been skirmishes over Ashcroft which have involved plenty of claim and counter-claim, as well as more than a little obfuscation, and individual launches on policy from both parties, especially from the Tories, which for the most part seem to have failed miserably but we've thankfully yet to see anything on the scale of say, Jennifer's ear, although there's still more than enough time for such low skulduggery masquerading as a serious issue to come to the fore yet.

The closest we've probably come has been the Tory insistence on using statistics on violent crime which are strictly non-comparable. This started when Tory candidates were sent information from Conservative Central Office which compared the number of recorded violence against the person stats of a decade ago with those of 2008-09. These packs failed to make clear that the way the police recorded violent crime changed in 2002 - whereas then the police decided what was and what wasn't a violent crime, which led to accusations that they were fiddling the figures, this was changed to the victim deciding whether or not the incident they were subject to was a violent offence. This, predictably, has led to a huge inflation in the number of recorded violent offences, as any such subjective change is likely to. According to the stats given to the local media by Tory MP Mark Lancaster, there had been a 236% rise in violence against the person in Milton Keynes, going from 1,790 offences in 1999-2000 to a staggering 6,015 in 2008-2009, or as Mark Easton noted, a violent attack every 90 minutes. Thames Valley police themselves objected to this crude comparison, pointing out that the figures were now incomparable, as well as illustrating how the change in recording has ludicrously boosted the figures: they judged that there had been just 81 victims of serious violence in MK, with around 2,000 victims of low-level assaults where a minor injury had occurred, while the violence against the person stats quoted by Lancaster included a dog being out of control in a public area.

Despite a reprimand from the UK Statistics Authority that using incomparable statistics in such a way was "likely to mislead the public", the Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was unrepentant and has come up with a novel way to get around such minor quibbling: he asked the Commons library to take the violent crime stats from 1998-99 and apply the new counting methods, which he then compared with those from 2008-09. Quite how they performed such a trick when, as noted above, it's the public themselves that now decide what is and what isn't a violent offence is unclear, and it seems destined to remain opaque as the Tories have failed to publish their research in full, instead giving it only to sympathetic newspapers. The library's conclusion was that the new figure for 1998-99 would be 618,417, as compared to 2008-09's 887,942, or a rise of 44%. Certainly not as startling a rise as the 236% in Milton Keynes or the previously claimed 77%, which was also based on statistics which expressly said they were not to be compared and which were also misleading, but still a very serious one.

Naturally, these figures have been ridiculed by Alan Johnson during Labour's own press conference today on crime policy, but it's hard not to conclude that both parties are, as usual, equally guilty. This is after all the same Labour party which produced the knife crime figures just over a year ago which were heavily criticised by the same UK Statistics Authority which has lambasted Chris Grayling. While the British Crime Survey is by far the most authoratitive source on crime statistics with its huge 40,000+ sample, and which the Tories almost never quote from because it suggests that crime and especially violent crime has dropped off a cliff since a peak in the early 90s, both sides only cherry-pick the figures which suit their needs best. There are flaws in the BCS, such as only recently specifically recording incidents with knives, and how again it has only just started interviewing 10 to 15-year-olds, but it remains superior to the police recorded stats both because it records offences which were never reported to the police or which they missed, while also remaining almost completely free of potential bias. It may rely on the honesty of the respondents, but with a sample the size of 40,000 any attempts to deliberately interfere with it are hardly likely to be significant. After exchanging more letters with Grayling over his newly obtained figures, the UKSA pointed out that while his new research is from a body which provides "professional statistical advice", he'd still be advised to make reference to the BCS, something which Grayling has not done when sharing his new findings.

If however Tory crime policy is indicative of Grayling's approach to statistics, being dishonest, crude and punitive, then as we've suffered over the past close to 13 years, Labour's reign of authoritarian solutions to far more subtle and complicated problems seems forever destined to continue. Johnson was today defending the government's indefensible position on the keeping of the genetic profiles of those arrested but not charged or found innocent of any offence for 6 years on the DNA database, the government's attempt at reaching a compromise following the European Court of Human Rights' ruling on the case of S and Marper. They claim that if the Tory policy of only 3 years was in place that 23 murderers and rapists "would have gone" free, a ludicrous and risible position to take which ignores that old fashioned police work would have had to have been used rather than just relying immediately on DNA records, and which does nothing to prove the efficacy of a database which is now the largest in the world. Alongside the ridiculous proposals to chip all dogs and make all owners insure their animals to tackle what is a tiny problem of dangerous breeds, a statist overreaction which only a Labour government which has been in power too long could possibly think was appropriate, the unworkable fantasy that there could be some sort of "alarm" when a known paedophile goes online, and the cynical ending of the early release scheme just before the election, the choice between one group of authoritarians and another, one of which will sadly gain power, is just one of the low points in what is shaping up to be a truly dismal couple of months.

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3/10/2010 12:07:00 AM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 26, 2010 

Paragraph 168 and all that.

It's been a week of non-denial denials, as well as some especially flagrant lies in the shape of Gordon Brown's curious failure to remember unleashing "the forces of hell" against his chancellor after he made the mistake of being too honest with an interviewer. Kindly, they've saved the best until last, with the trifecta of prime minister, home secretary and foreign secretary all uniting in defending those poor, unable to answer back protectors of the realm in the security services:

"We totally reject any suggestion that the security services have a systemic problem in respecting human rights. We wholly reject too that they have any interest in suppressing or withholding information from ministers or the courts."


"It is the nature of the work of the intelligence services that they cannot defend themselves against many of the allegations that have been made. But I can - and I have every confidence that their work does not undermine the principles and values that are the best guarantee of our future security."


It's instructive that all three of these statements, in response to the full disclosure of paragraph 168 of the "seven paragraphs" ruling, only talk in the present tense. Is anyone actually suggesting that the security services now have a systemic problem in respecting human rights? It's been clear that both MI5 and 6 have somewhat changed their ways as a result of the allegations made against them involving both complicity in torture and rendition, helped along by the fact that to a certain extent the CIA has also moderated its behaviour. Alan Johnson's second sentence is worded equally carefully - while Lord Neuberger suggests that David Miliband was misled by MI5 when he issued the public interest immunity certificates put before the court, the main allegation made by Neuberger is that MI5 lied to the Intelligence and Security Committee when they told it in March 2005 that "they operated a culture that respected human rights and that coercive interrogation techniques were alien to the Services' general ethics, methodology and training" while they also "denied that [they] knew of any ill-treatment of detainees interviewed by them whilst detained by or on behalf of the [US] Government". The ISC contains no serving ministers, and no one has claimed that the security services have suppressed or withheld evidence from the courts.

Likewise, as asinine as Brown's claim is that the security services cannot defend themselves, somewhat contradicted by Jonathan Evans' moon-lighting as a Telegraph columnist, why shouldn't he have "every confidence" that their work doesn't undermine "the principles and values" that keep us safe? After all, the new guidelines under which MI5 and 6 are meant to work, which explicitly forbid any complicity in mistreatment have been in place now for some time, and there's been no indication as yet that they aren't being followed. We aren't talking about the here and now however, we're talking about what the security services did, which Brown, Miliband and Johnson strangely don't seem to want to discuss. It would be nice, for instance, for Miliband to comment on whether he was misled by MI5 as Neuberger suggests he was, something which he inexplicably declined to mention in an otherwise lengthy tête-a-tête with a BBC journalist.

The other defence of the security services, and with it the ISC, is that they weren't lying in 2005 when they told the committee the lines stated above as they didn't then apparently know about all the additional documents and information which were only found at a later date once the courts were involved. This is errant nonsense of the most obfuscatory kind. Two years later the ISC was told by Eliza Manningham-Buller (or Bullshitter, as only I call her), then head of MI5, that it was "regrettable that assurances regarding proper treatment of detainees were not sought from the Americans" in Binyam Mohamed's case, despite knowing full well, as the seven paragraphs show, that he was already being tortured before "Witness B" went to interview him. These documents were withheld for the very reason that they directly contradicted what MI5 had told and continued to tell the committee, right up until it was no longer legally possible to pretend otherwise. Miliband, Brown and Johnson are defending the indefensible, and they know it. The only question remains is whether ministers themselves were kept in the dark by the security services in a similar fashion until plausible deniability was no longer an option. The only way we'll find that out is through a judicial inquiry, something that both ministers and the security services will resist with every fibre of their being.

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2/26/2010 10:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 22, 2010 

The end of the bullying party?

Probably the most fascinating side detail, at least to me, about the extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's book serialised in yesterday's Observer, is that this is the work of a man who can be described as more than sympathetic towards the Labour party, including Gordon Brown himself. It is testament to his journalistic nous that he doesn't appeared to have let this colour his chronicling of Labour in power since 2001 in the slightest; his portrait of Gordon Brown and his faintly terrifying moments of fury, both towards himself and to his staff is absolutely unflinching in its lucidity, and brilliantly written. Without wanting to come over all order of the brown nose, I'd suggest, based just on this one extract, that it's likely to be the best insider's account of government in years and one as a devoted politics nerd that I can't wait to read in full.

All that is rather by the by though, considering the damage that Rawnsley's account of Brown's behaviour is likely to do, even if few voters actually read it first-hand. Much as we already knew that Brown had a volcanic temper, and was prone to bouts of introspection and that awful word, dithering, reading just how he's reacted to certain news and treated those around him in such detail feels almost voyeuristic, such is the quality of the sources and the fly-on-the-wall nature of the extracts. The one allegation which led the news bulletins and supposed "spoilers" is the one which hasn't actually appeared, at least so far: Rawnsley doesn't make any claim that Brown has actually hit someone, as the prime minister himself denied on Channel 4 News on Saturday, although that might be one of the stories which Rawnsley was unable to satisfy himself was wholly accurate, as he details in his "justification" of releasing the account now. If anything though, some of the stuff which does feature is just as damaging: there have been claims in the past that he threw mobile phones and destroyed photocopiers, but turfing a secretary who wasn't typing fast enough out of her chair and doing it himself most certainly rivals any of that. Most, if not all prime ministers have at some stage become paranoid and hunkered down, convinced that there are individuals out to get them, but few are likely to have grabbed the lapels of the person informing them of the latest bad news and scream it in their faces.

Amid all this, there was also a prime minister portrayed who still appears admirable: a passionate, deeply committed individual who has despite the depths to which he has sunk during the last three years still gotten crucial decisions right, such as the bailing out of the banks, the bringing back of Peter Mandelson despite years of something close to all out war between the two, and who is by no means an irredeemable, let alone terrible holder of the ultimate office of state. This makes the response from Downing Street to the revelations all the more risible, if not actively counter-productive: to deny almost everything and also to rubbish Rawnsley himself. These are, after all, most likely the very same people that contributed to the book; Harriet Harman certainly has, and she was one of the very first to come out and ridicule Rawnsley and question his sources. Brown's peremptory efforts at admitting that he gets angry and shouts and Mandelson's attempt at putting Brown's occasional fury into context were what the whole operation should have been based upon: instead the briefers and spinners have been out in force, and Sir Gus O'Donnell has completely denied, although after a few abortive attempts, that he talked to Brown about his behaviour to the junior staff.

A far better response would have to been to admit that while under extreme pressure, Brown had sometimes acted in a fashion that was both beneath him and that he deeply regretted, and that he had since modified his behaviour. That might, just might, have helped somewhat to close it down. David Cameron would have likely made hay with it on Wednesday, and compared Brown's character with his own, despite his acting as the bag man of an apparently far worse bully while working in PR for Carlton, but the story would have soon lost its lustre. Instead we've had Labour plumbing its usual depths, with claims of Tory plotting, as if Rawnsley was somehow part of a conspiracy dedicated to further damaging Gordon Brown, as well as hysterical claims from the likes of John Prescott that it's all lies. Admittedly, the ludicrous and unfortunately named Christine Pratt, by claiming that staff in Number 10 had phoned her "National Bullying Helpline" may have helped to somewhat substantiate the former claim, but it seems far more likely that it's Pratt trying and succeeding admirably in advertising her business, even if it is ostensibly a charity, rather than some sort of Tory black operation. In any event, her breaching of the standard definition of client confidentiality and the resignation of all three of the charity's patrons as a result has undermined her intervention immensely.

Equally daft were the calls from both Cameron and Nick Clegg for some sort of investigation into Brown's behaviour, as if one was either needed or would ever be authorised. You sometimes get the impression that politicians will call for an inquiry into everything other than the few incidents which genuinely require one, and in doing so reduce the chances of one being set-up in the future. Cameron is again equally hypocritical on this front in any event: his own spin doctor Andy Coulson has not just been accused of bullying, but found by an employment tribunal to have been primarily responsible for the treatment meted out to Matt Driscoll, who was sacked while off work with stress-related depression, a depression brought on by the behaviour of Coulson.

Key as always will be whether this will actually change the way someone will vote, and it naturally comes just as the polls are narrowing, although again that's usual this close to an election. Much as you'd like to think that this won't change a thing, it probably will influence the votes of a few, just as Brown's saccharine, false "opening up" to Piers Morgan likely did. These are after all the two sides there are to Brown: the deeply private, introverted man who blames himself more than anyone else for the problems which befall him, even as he attacks others, and the warm, approachable and pleasant person which some have seen him and which he tries to increasingly bring out for the cameras. It was right for Rawnsley to confirm the rumours, but equally allowances should be made for Brown's behaviour, unacceptable as it was. The thing the Tories should remember before focusing on this is that the last time Brown's character was brought into question, during the Jacqui Janes debacle, it exploded in the Sun's face. History could well repeat itself.

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2/22/2010 09:26:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 15, 2010 

The hung parliament hypotheticals.

There seems to be a distinctly strange air to politics at the moment. Despite parliament likely rising in around two months for the dreaded general election campaign, it's still as though it's an incredibly long time away, even though business itself is hardly bustling. Only the Tories seem to be keeping themselves visibly busy, and in doing so keep making more and more gaffes. If the David Cameron personal poster campaign was disastrous, or at least it was with the Twitterati (ugh) and the chattering classes, while the policy flip-flops on marriage tax and public spending cuts were more expected but no less damaging, then the almost radio silence from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the former only seemingly making any noise when the Tories make such execrable (if not deliberate) mistakes as miscalculating 54% for 5.4%, is not doing much to capitalise on it.

On the Lib Dem front, part of this reticence might be due to the strategising going on behind the scenes in the event of a hung parliament. With the polls either predicting one or a slight Tory majority, even if one suspects that come the day the Tories will get a large enough share of the vote to be able to comfortably govern, it is nonetheless the closest the party is likely to come to grabbing some semblance of nationwide power since David Steel infamously told the party to return to their constituencies and prepare for government. Even if similar plans were made prior to 1997, the polls leading up to the election, although narrowing at one point, never suggested anything other than a significant Labour victory.

The apparent insight into the party's thinking that we're given in today's Graun is suitably significant. Rather than seeking a coalition, Nick Clegg is instead mulling over propping up a minority government through supporting a party's program of legislation, as long as certain Liberal Democrat policies are incorporated in it. Just how many will be needed to be implemented is seemingly elastic, with four policies up for immediate discussion, although just two might also be considered. While you could imagine that Labour would be open to debate on any of the four mentioned, the "pupil premium", tax reform, a greener economy and constitutional reform, it's difficult to imagine that the Tories would be malleable on the proposal for capital gains and income tax to be levied at the same rate, or on electoral reform, which they have consistently opposed.

You can see why they're thinking in this way: propping up a defeated Labour party through a coalition is likely to breed only resentment and disdain, even if say, Vince Cable or Clegg became chancellor and the deal involved Gordon Brown stepping down, although another "unelected" prime minister would hardly help matters either. At the same time however it's difficult to see just how much difference there would be in not getting fully into bed with Labour; is the public really going to live with a minority Labour government passing its legislation with Lib Dem support if it's the same old party rejected at the ballot box with a very slight yellow tinge? At the same time you can't see a minority Tory administration being prepared to give way on proportional representation in exchange only for short-term support; why not simply force a second election or, if Labour and the Lib Dems then attempt to from some sort of alliance, simply stand completely against and preach about its illegitimacy and wait for the inevitable breakdown in relations to take full advantage?

The disheartening thing about the likely manoeuvring in the event of an inconclusive election is that this is probably the only way in which the four stated policies on which the Lib Dems would negotiate, all of which are worthy of support, would ever be implemented. Those voting for the third party are always aware that while their vote is all important on a constituency level, it's not going to change much on a national level, even if they would like to see a Lib Dem government. The irony here is that were the hung parliament to become reality, with a Labour-Lib Dem deal, the party itself would almost certainly lose support as a result. While it would be worth it were some form of PR to be introduced as a result, it could also end the possibility of the party holding any rein of power for another generation. While all of this is based upon multiple hypotheticals, there is just as much to be lost from a hung parliament as there is to be gained. We may want a weaker government after 13 years of the opposite, but our system as it stands with the politics we are currently blessed with seems determined to destroy any possibility of it.

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2/15/2010 11:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 12, 2010 

The seven paragraphs fallout continues.

It's not very often that you see the British state act in such apparent unison as it has over the last couple of days. It's reminiscent of the behaviour of a dog or a child that knows it's done something wrong but carries on acting belligerently regardless, hoping that by doing so you'll concentrate on the reaction rather than the initial offence. In what was almost certainly a carefully choreographed move, we've had the home and foreign secretaries both writing to newspapers to complain bitterly that they dared to report what their chief legal Rottweiler almost ordered a judge not to write in his ruling, while over in the Telegraph Jonathan Evans himself makes a rare appearance in customary obfuscatory spook fashion, suggesting that not only this could all be part of a propaganda war but that also we seem to be indulging in "conspiracy theories and caricature".

You could be forgiven for thinking that the government and intelligence agencies were worried by such unpleasant but also undeniable insights into how they have in the recent past operated against their own citizens and residents. Surely though, it must all be part of an over active imagination. Clearly, slurs and "ludicrous lies" are being told about the organisations that are working as we speak to keep us safe from those who would do every single one of us harm. When Jonathan Evans says, "[W]e did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf", then who are we to disagree?

It doesn't seem to matter that at every single step of the way, from the first investigations into what has become known as "extraordinary rendition", which were the work of newspapers and investigative journalists, not as Evans seems to claim, "taken from our own records", all the way now up to the allegations made in parliament by David Davis concerning the almost outsourcing of torture in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, that both the government and the security services have denied being involved either in torture or being complicit in its use. Try to spot the difference between what Jack Straw told the Foreign Affairs committee back in 2005 and the denials of everything that have poured forth today:
Q 23. Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea.

I do not think it would be justified. While we are on this point, Chairman, can I say this? Some of the reports which are given credibility, including one this morning on the Today programme, are in the realms of the fantastic.

Since then we've learned of the use of Diego Garcia for rendition, the cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, who were rendered to Guantanamo after MI6 told the CIA that they were carrying bomb parts when they weren't, of the over 100 different flights which passed through this country which were involved in the rendition programme and of the handing over to the Americans of Iraqi prisoners, who were swiftly taken to Bagram airbase, home of an especially notorious "black site" prison.

At the very heart of this is the continued refusal to accept that the security services knew almost from the very beginning that the US was mistreating prisoners held under the auspices of the "war on terror". In one of the few revealing documents given to the Intelligence and Security Committee in their otherwise worthless investigations into rendition and prisoner mistreatment was a memo from the 11th of January 2001, issued to both MI5 and MI6 officers telling them that they "could not engage in inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners" but they also had no obligation to stop it from happening. This was after one officer had reported back that the detainee he had interviewed had been tortured by US personnel. Despite this, the ISC completely believed the story it was told by both government and the intelligence agencies that they didn't realise properly what the US was doing until the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, a point repeated by Jonathan Evans today, that it was "slow to detect the emerging pattern". It had detected it all right, it just did nothing about it until it blew up in the Americans' faces, hoping like they did that they could get away with. Likewise, the ISC considered the fact that MI5 had provided questions to the Americans which were subsequently used while Binyam Mohamed was tortured in Morocco as "regrettable", as was the fact that it hadn't sought assurances that he wouldn't be mistreated. As the seven paragraphs have now made clear, MI5 knew full well that Mohamed was already being tortured, yet it still did nothing to help him and sent on the questions for him to be asked regardless. What is that if not active complicity in torture?

Nick Clegg is close to getting somewhere when he suggests that ministers themselves must have known about this policy of non-involvement but also non-condemnation of ill-treatment. This though is where things start getting truly murky: the Guardian has previously reported that Tony Blair knew, but not until after the Abu Ghraib scandal. This would tie in with the claims of the security services that they couldn't possibly have known about the US policy of mistreatment until then. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the ministers didn't know, or at least only had an inkling and that the security services had kept it a secret from them up until it was no longer possible to. It's plausible and would also explain just why the security services keep up the ridiculous pretence that they didn't know until then, hence also why both were so outraged when Lord Neuberger claimed that MI5 was unaccountable even to the politicians supposedly in charged, having got far too close to the actuality.

Is that letting them off the hook somewhat, if it turns out to be the case? Certainly. We've known for years about the antics of the intelligence agencies, and especially how in the past they reacted to Labour governments, as well as their infiltration of completely harmless leftist organisations throughout the 70s and 80s, and for the current generation to forget about those scandals is unforgivable. Did even they though imagine that they would become complicit in torture in such a way? They're responsible and accountable, but it could well be that the security services remained even more out of control than us "conspiracy theorists and caricaturists" imagined.

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2/12/2010 10:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 11, 2010 

Scum-watch: Whose side are you on?

BenSix has already had a go at the esteemed Con Coughlin for his response to yesterday's ruling by the Court of Appeal concerning the seven paragraphs, but there's another contender for the prize title of "worst journalist in Britain" in the form of whoever wrote today's Sun leader column:

IN Afghanistan, our troops fight al-Qaeda. Here, the battle against the terrorists is undermined by judges.

Except they're not fighting al-Qaida, they're fighting the Taliban and various other insurgents, but who's being picky?

How, pray tell, is the battle against terrorists being undermined by judges? Yesterday's ruling should in practice affect absolutely nothing, as MI5 and MI6 are meant to have already changed their rules when it comes to handling British detainees held by other authorities. Or have they?

That is the ludicrous position we are in after yesterday's ruling over ex-Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

Mohamed claims America's CIA tortured him.

America shared information about Mohamed's interrogation with Britain on terms of strict secrecy.

As a refugee here, he used our courts to force details to be released.


The Sun has belittled Mohamed's account of his torture in the past, as well as said that it didn't want him back, along with other various degrees of heartlessness about his treatment. Unfortunately, considering that the American judge Gladys Kessler backed his account of how he was tortured and rendered (PDF), it now seems to be fact rather than anything approaching fiction. It's true that Mohamed is only a resident here rather than a citizen, but that should have no bearing on his access to the courts, especially when it was our security services that were actively involved in his detention. As for this idea of strict secrecy, or the "control principle", as David Miliband described it, when such information contains details which make clear that even residents of this country are being mistreated and that we are complicit in that mistreatment, it stops being need to know and starts becoming an issue of legality, of our international and indeed national obligations.

The liberal judges who backed him have damaged relations with our greatest ally.

If America now decides we cannot be trusted with security secrets, we will be at greater risk from al-Qaeda.



Yes, the statement from the White House that they were "deeply disappointed" with the ruling is bound to set our relations with "our greatest ally" back years. The Americans don't care a fig about this for the simple reason that they've already willingly released far worse information about what they did at the time; they're just for once prepared to go along with Miliband's attempts to block publication most likely as some obscure favour. Even if the Americans suddenly decided to stop sharing intelligence, which they won't, as we give them just as much as they give us, it's still pooled with other intelligence agencies which would. The idea that this will make us less safe, because we've finally found that our security services are liars and blackguards is absurd. If anything, it's likely to make us safer, not less.

The ruling is also a purely political gesture. Mohamed's claims have already been aired in the US.

A purely political gesture? If the Sun really believes that uncovering the true nature of what our security services have been involving themselves is just a "political gesture", then it's even more jaded and dismissive of any abuses of power than ever before. Mohamed's claims were aired in the US which is exactly why there was no "secrecy" and therefore they could be released, and why the arguments made the paper and the government are so bogus.

Our security services deserve support. The war on terror is not a game of lawn tennis.

Yes, they do, don't they? Because being complicit in torture isn't counter-productive at all, and doesn't undermine our values in the slightest. If only we could truly let rip against these jihadists, then maybe the war on terror really would become a game of lawn tennis. It's the liberals and the mad judges that are holding us back!

Whose side are you on, your Lordships?

You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists.

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2/11/2010 10:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 

The seven paragraphs.

Reading the seven paragraphs that have finally been released detailing the CIA's treatment of Binyam Mohamed after today's ruling by the Court of Appeal, it's initially difficult to know quite why the government was so determined that they should remain secret. They tell us absolutely nothing that we didn't already know: that the US was systematically mistreating almost anyone that came into their custody in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; that this was just the start of the torture regime which Binyam Mohamed found himself under; that the CIA, despite the claims of our security services, had been letting them know just what they were doing to individuals connected to this country; and that despite knowing full well that what the CIA was doing to Mohamed at this early stage would breach our obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights, as found during the 1970s when the "five techniques" were outlawed in Northern Ireland, they did absolutely nothing to intervene to stop his mistreatment.

Why then did they appeal, time and again until finally giving up at some point last week to stop these already widely known facts from entering into the public domain? The claims, repeated ad nauseam today that this was all about the "control" principle, that one country does not publish intelligence provided by another without its express permission is wholly unconvincing. Even if it does annoy the CIA and the US that more of their dirty secrets are being thoroughly examined and released by the courts of another country, it's nothing as to what they themselves have already admitted that they did and authorised, such as the Bybee memos and the waterboarding of the few top al-Qaida members whom they managed to capture. Indeed, the only reason why the Court of Appeal decided that seven paragraphs could today be published was that far more gruesome evidence of the torture which Mohamed underwent was released by a US court in a judgement in November of last year. Lord Neuberger quotes from it in his section of today's ruling (paragraph 126):

[Mr Mohamed's] trauma lasted for two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans.

...

At page 58, she said that "[t]he [US] Government does not challenge or deny the accuracy of [Mr Mohamed's] story of brutal treatment" and repeated that point at pages 62 and 64. On pages 61-2, she said that his "persistence in telling his story" and "very vigorous… and very public ... pursu[ance of] his claims in the British courts" indicated that his evidence was true and "demonstrates his willingness to test the truth of his version of events in both the courts of law and the court of public opinion". In the passage just quoted from page 70 of her Opinion, she referred to Mr Mohamed's "lengthy prior torture" as an established fact.


Compared to the seven paragraphs we have today, it doesn't really get much more damning.

Fortunately, the government, through its staggeringly inept attempts to stop even the slightest criticism of the security services from being made by those mad, unelected, unaccountable judges, has completely given the game away. Having seen the draft judgement, as is usual, the government's QC Jonathan Sumption was presumably ordered to complain about the withering remarks by Lord Neuberger in paragraph 168, which is distinctly unusual. Even more unusual is that Neuberger acquiesced, and withdrew his comments. Worth quoting in full is Sumption's objections:

The Master of the Rolls's observations, to whichever service they relate, are likely to receive more public attention than any other part of the judgments. They will be read as statements by the Court (i) that the Security Service does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques; (ii) that this was in particular true of Witness B whose conduct was in this respect characteristic of the service as a whole ('it appears likely that there were others'); (iii) that officials of the Service deliberately misled the Intelligence and Security Committee on this point; (iv) that this reflects a culture of suppression in its dealings with the Committee, the Foreign Secretary and indirectly the Court, which penetrates the service to such a degree as to undermine any UK government assurances based on the Service's information and advice; and (v) that the Service has an interest in suppressing information which is shared, not by the Foreign Secretary himself (whose good faith is accepted), but by the Foreign Office for which he is responsible.

Neuberger, whether through acute analysis or just searing condemnation, got far too close to the reality of how the security services were acting post-9/11. From repeated accounts of MI5 and 6 officers visiting those held in by either the CIA or the Pakistanis, we already knew that despite being told of how they were being mistreated nothing was done, and that even on some occasions there was total complicity, with questions from the UK authorities being asked while the detainees were undergoing stress techniques and worse. They clearly, as Neuberger identified, had no problem with operating within a culture where human rights were not respected. Most pointedly, he also noted that the security services had deliberately misled the Intelligence and Security Committee. "Deliberately misled" is mild; they lied and lied and lied, all the way up to the very top.

That is though what the security services do for a living - they lie to people, they mislead and they abuse. For a judge to say that the Intelligence and Security Committee is useless, which is what he was more than implying, is far too damaging. For one to imply that the assurances given by MI5 to politicians are worthless, because of their "culture of suppression", is even worse. As Ian Cobain notes in his annotations on the letter sent by Sumption, the courts are in danger of dismissing the reassurances of politicians based on information from MI5 because of its continued pattern of deception. If they'll lie to the politicians that represent them, then it therefore follows that they'll lie to everyone. They therefore then have to be made accountable to someone, and that someone would likely have to be a fully independent, judicial committee, not a parliamentary select committee packed with ex-ministers.

Despite then already being fully aware that the information in the seven paragraphs was already well known, the real reason for wanting them to remain secret was because they show just how out of control our supposedly fully accountable and enlightened defenders of British security actually were and indeed remain. They show that they'll lie not just to the public, but to politicians as well. And despite knowing this, those self-same politicians are far more interested in protecting their own hides than in shining a light on the agencies that colluded in the torture of both British citizens and residents. The sad thing is that they succeeded on the principle, but not on this particularly case, thanks to the same United States which supported the government's attempt to stop the paragraphs being published. That must hurt, but not as much as a fully damning judgement with an unexpurgated paragraph 168 would have done.

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2/10/2010 09:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 05, 2010 

BAE and Saudis finally brought to book.

Away from the country's obsession with what's happening in other people's bedrooms, BAE Systems was today finally forced into admitting what we all already knew: that its deals involving both Tanzania and Saudi Arabia were sweetened by massive bribery and corruption. Not that it was our dogged and determined investigators at the Serious Farce Office that managed to get the company, which may as well be nationalised considering just how closely it works with the government, to own up to operating a massive slush fund which enriched the already filthily wealthy Saudi royal family, but instead the far more tenacious US Department of Justice.

Blair of course forced the SFO into dropping its own investigation to the Al-Yamanah deal, on the grounds of national security, based on spurious but outrageous threats from the Saudis, and also on deeply questionable claims that there was no guarantee of a successful prosecution resulting from the inquiries. The opposite was the case: the SFO had just succeeded in persuading the Swiss to give them access to bank accounts which would have provided prima facie evidence of the payments from BAE to the intermediaries of the Saudi royal family. As the statement from the Department of Justice makes clear:

"BAE agreed to transfer sums totalling more than £10m and more than $9m to a bank account in Switzerland controlled by an intermediary. BAE was aware that there was a high probability that the intermediary would transfer part of these payments to the [Saudi] official."

To call that an understatement would be superfluous. It is though a withering indictment of both of our legal system when it comes to combating corruption and also our willingness to interfere with what ought to be untouchable: the rule of law itself. The Americans, whom we often sneer at, are both more prepared to stand up to threats from bullies and also to prosecute their own than our craven and opportunist equivalents are. New Labour has been responsible for many disgraces, but this really does rank up there, along with Iraq, as one of their very worst abuses of power.

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2/05/2010 11:17:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 

The VIP treatment.

Here's one of those especially crass Sun articles written with the type of feigned ignorance so prevalent in the tabloids:

ILLEGAL immigrants are getting the VIP treatment when booted out of Britain - with personal security escorts costing almost £500 each.

Yes, you read that right - the VIP treatment. I don't know what VIP means to you, but I somehow doubt that those who considered themselves such would put up for long with what the average failed asylum seeker or illegal immigrant faces prior to their deportation, often provided by the same private security firms. The last report into Colnbrook (PDF) immigration removal centre, ran by Serco (glossy corporate, touchy-feely everything is wonderful page), where many are held prior to their deportation due to its location near to Heathrow, found that it was struggling to cope and that safety was a significant concern.

That though is nothing when compared to the true VIP treatment when those lucky enough to be leaving are taken to the flights to return them to their home country. The reason why "personal security escorts" are used is twofold - firstly because there are few officials and staff within the UK Border Agency who are authorised to use force and as result many first attempts to deport individuals are abandoned because those whose time has come dare to resist - and secondly as many within the UKBA are not prepared to actually see the policies which they implement put into effect.

In a way, you can't blame them - the horror stories from some of the chartered flights are visceral in their intensity. On one of the first chartered flights back to Iraq a detainee smuggled a blade on board and slashed his stomach, while another concussed himself after banging his head repeatedly against a window. Those were probably the ones which weren't restrained, with others either handcuffed or even wearing leg irons. Charter planes aren't always used though - there was the notable case of a British Airways flight to Lagos where the passengers in economy class mutinied after seeing the plight of a shackled detainee who wouldn't stop screaming, with the supposed "ringleader" arrested and charged only to be cleared over a year later of "behaving in a threatening, abusive, insulting or disorderly manner" towards the crew.

Then again, you wonder what the Sun expects. After all, according to them we roll out the red carpet in welcoming immigrants and asylum seekers in the first place, and the commenters on the piece certainly agree. Might as well extend the gesture when we forcibly throw them out as well then, surely? It does though also prove that simply the government can't do anything right - let too many come here in the first place and spends too much when it gets rid of them, regardless of the much higher cost of keeping them detained here before their deportation - why it bothers when there is simply no political benefit in keeping up such brutal but also ineffective policies remains a mystery. Perhaps, just for the Sun, we could think up something that would negate the need to deport them at all; there are after all many lessons which we can learn from history...

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1/26/2010 09:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 

Season's greetings from the UK Border Agency redux.

Martin Edge provides his version of the UK Border Agency's highly compassionate Christmas card:

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12/22/2009 10:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, December 11, 2009 

Season's greetings from the UK Border Agency.

Sort of following on from yesterday's post, via OurKingdom and Jamie, this is the UK Border Agency's quite delightful Christmas card:


Nothing about locking up innocent children until their hair falls out, but perhaps that's on the back.

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12/11/2009 09:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, December 10, 2009 

The continuing scandal of child detention.

When Labour's best political boast is now more or less that they won't be as brutal as the Conservatives will, it's well worth remembering how the government treats some of the most vulnerable in society. Not content with having expanded the prison population to such an extent that as soon as a new wing or establishment is built it is almost immediately filled, it also seems hell-bent on continuing with the detention of those whose only crime is to be the children of asylum seekers who have had their application for refugee status rejected.

Not that the government itself has the guts to be personally responsible for their detention. Probably the most notorious detention centre in the country, Yarl's Wood in Bedfordshire, is run by SERCO. We used to have this strange notion that establishments like prisons shouldn't be run with a view to a profit being made, and that surely applies all the more to those where the "guests" have not committed any offence, but going by yesterday's pre-budget report, with the funding for prisons due to be slashed, it's one we're going to have get even more used to. In the last report on Yarl's Wood, the chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers noted (PDF) while Yarl's Wood should seek to improve the "plight of children" who were being held in the centre, they were "ultimately issues" for the UK Border Agency. That would be the same UK Border Agency where bonuses are being paid out, something defended by Phil Woolas, who claimed they were "risking their lives" in what they did.

It's doubtful though that the most recent initiative at Yarl's Wood took place on the orders of the UK Border Agency. The latest Private Eye (1251) reports on the opening of new classrooms for the detained children, which "local bigwigs" had been invited to attended. They were treated to the kind of welcome that royalty might have been, with one happy child detainee prompted to sing "Happy Birthday" to his mother, older prisoners dressed in blue gowns who sang "My Sweet Lord" and were given a complimentary mug and coaster set which was emblazoned with a logo featuring two smiling parents, two happy children and the legend "compassion, commitment and respect for all". While few dispute that the centre has improved significantly since SERCO took over the contract from Group 4, the prisons inspectorate's last report still criticised the healthcare available, the lack of activities provided and most of all the insufficient provision for children, one wonders if SERCO would do better to focus on the motif inscribed on the cups rather than just presenting it when the influential come to visit.

SERCO can't however be blamed for children being detained in the first place. Report after report and expert after expert has now condemned the continuing snatching of families at dawn and months of waiting in what are very slightly more friendly prisons. The children's commissioner Sir Al Aynsley-Green called for the "inhumane practice to end" a few months back; the home affairs select committee found that no one was able to give an exact figure on the number of children held in a year, while an overview of their welfare was also not available; and most damningly, the journal Child Abuse and Neglect, in a study which featured 24 children from Yarl's Wood itself (PDF), found, unsurprisingly, that some were so stressed they had regressed to bedwetting and soiling during the day. Anxiety and depression had developed or re-developed in others, as had post-traumatic stress disorder, while most worryingly sexualised behaviour had come to the fore in others. The Royal Colleges of General Practitioners, Paediatrics and Child Health, and Psychiatrists, and the UK Faculty of Public Health are now all calling for the practice to end.

The case of Child M is an extreme one, but illustrates the system at its very worst. An 9-year-old from Iran, he was first imprisoned along with the rest of his family in the summer of 2008, being held for 52 days before being released. During his incarceration he had recurring nightmares, suffered from ringworm and his hair started to fall out. His family was detained again on the 17th of November, spending another three weeks in Yarl's Wood under the threat of imminent deportation, with Child M again suffering from a deterioration in his mental health, before finally being released again on Tuesday. It's impossible to know whether this again is just a temporary reprieve, but for Child M to undergo such a traumatic experience at the hands of the state twice, when such detention is hardly ever truly necessary (asylum seekers generally don't abscond, especially those with families) is unforgivable. No one it seems however is prepared to stand up for children who have committed no crime; as Mike Power suggested on Chicken Yogurt's post on Child M back in March, it seems to take a place where "socialism is entrenched" like Haringey for anyone other than the usual suspects to care.

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12/10/2009 11:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 09, 2009 

The real "we are all in this together".

At one point during the pre-budget report, you had to wonder whether Alistair Darling, tired of the deliberately tedious nature of what he was delivering, had inserted a concealed joke just to see if anyone would notice. To be vulgar for a second, you suspect that there are plenty of people out there, politicians included, whom have paid money for old boilers in their time, although £400 seems a bit steep.

It was the one moment of levity in what was otherwise a tour de force in the completely expected, the responses also seemingly written weeks in advance and not updated to take account of any late changes. George Osborne, who courtesy of Steve Bell I now can't look at without seeing buttocks on his nose, did the now standard New Tory act of claiming this meant Labour had completely abandoned the aspirational, while the Daily Mail has somehow construed a pre-budget which hits more or less everyone in some way or another as class war.

If the Mail's right, then this is class war on all of the classes rather just the middle or the upper. While the additional increase in national insurance will affect anyone earning above £20,000 (the average wage before the recession being somewhere around the £24,000 mark) the freeze in public sector pay across the board, which will in effect be a cut in real terms, spreads the pain across the board. George Osborne ought to be pleased: Darling, with the tax on bank bonuses and freeze on the inheritance tax threshold is ensuring that we truly "are all in this together", something you doubt his own plans will accurately reflect.

Like when some papers and the Tories cried that the Queen's speech was nothing but pure politics, as if this was something new and terrible, Darling's effort today could be condemned in similar terms. Depending on your view, it could be cowardly, as it puts off almost all the big decisions until after the election; political, in that as it's more than likely that the Tories will then be the ones to pick up the pieces; and also the right thing to do, as cutting now in the way that the Tories propose, when the recession is not over and everyone is just assuming that growth will return in this fourth quarter, will just damage the recovery even further. It can also be all three of these things, which is the view I take.

In short, what was billed as being significant was nothing of the sort, or wasn't presented by almost anyone in those terms. The real significance was in the back of the documents which accompanied the speech as always (PDF), showing that the deep cuts are coming in the years to come, just unannounced, although everyone already assumes the worst. The battle is now over who can be the most optimistic in the public whilst being a pessimist behind closed doors, and the government has to hope that the gap in the polls can still be made up by portraying the Tories as the ruthless cutters of old. One suspects however that even with the Tory lead being reduced of late, the victory is still the Tories' to lose rather win.

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12/09/2009 10:29:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 02, 2009 

Mandelson vs News International.

If we needed any more evidence that New Labour has decided that they have nothing to lose, Peter Mandelson's astonishingly personal attack on News International in the Lords today during the reading of the Digital Britain bill most certainly fits the bill. According to the Graun:

"There are some in the commercial sector who believe that the future of British media would be served by cutting back the role of the media regulator. They take this view because they want to commandeer more space and income for themselves and because they want to maintain their iron grip on pay-TV, a market in which many viewers feel they are paying more than they should for their music and sport. They also want to erode the commitment to impartiality. In other words, to fill British airwaves with more Fox-style news."

...

"They believe that profit alone should drive the gathering and circulation of news rather than allowing a role for what they call 'state-sponsored journalism'. The government and this bill reject this worldview, and I hope that the whole house, including the Conservatives, will make clear today that they think likewise, and that they will support Ofcom – including its efforts to ensure consumers are getting a fair deal in the pay-tv market."

Whether Murdoch senior and/or junior will directly return fire or not remains to be seen, and if there is one person who might just manage to win in a full-scale war between the two, Mandelson might just be that man, but it is a staggering act of cynicism which causes trouble for all sides. After all, if the Sun had delayed its changing of support to the Tories until next year, there wouldn't be a snowball's chance in hell of Mandelson making any such statement, regardless of its accuracy and regardless also of how NI would still be attacking Ofcom for daring to suggest that it shouldn't have a monopoly on how much it charges for its exclusive content.

The problem this poses though for those of us think Mandelson is exactly right, just for exactly the wrong reasons, is obvious. The Murdochs have, as they usually do, played it perfectly: they identify when something or someone is weak, then move in for the kill, on this occasion on both the BBC and Ofcom at the same time. The power which NI wields was ably illustrated by just how quickly Google decided to roll over and play dead once attacked by Rupert. For Mandelson to now be making the exact same arguments which we should be against increased NI media market dominance runs the risk that we end up looking like New Labour stooges, or that we ourselves have an interest in keeping the status quo. Mandelson's attack also potentially puts the BBC in a difficult position, as it could perpetuate the view that NL has an interest in ensuring it can keep churning out its "state-sponsored journalism", when the nation as a whole has an interest in impartial, free at the point of use news, which is what the BBC provides both online and off to a generally excellent standard, and which the public themselves overwhelmingly choose over the online offerings of a certain News International.

Mandelson does have a point though, when it comes to the Conservatives actually putting forward an intellectual argument for why they have decided to so favour NI over the opposition. So far all they've done is stated what their intentions are without explaining why - which doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they're doing it for any reason other than currying favour with the Murdochs. We certainly haven't heard the last of this, that's for sure.

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12/02/2009 09:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

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