Left Liberal

Osborne's spending cuts are seriously hurting the Lib Dems

2010-12-31T17:46:00.000Z

Not long ago the Lib Dems triumphed in their successful campaign for fair treatment for the Gurkas. Then at the last general election we witnessed "Cleggmania" - which lasted briefly but was sufficient to bring in many new members to the party.
It all went wrong on May 6th. The general election result saw a net loss of seats for the Lib Dems, and then of course coalition with the Tories. A coalition with Labour was not an option once Labour decided to exclude the SNP. The Lib Dems need some good news stories, but with the possible exception of winning the AV referendum, it is hard to see where any will come from.
Some claim that this Coalition was a triumph, despite a dramatic drop in the opinion polls. After all, government is about making difficult decisions, you cannot continue to be all things to all people. In any case they argue, the Liberal Democrats are now delivering on many of their manifesto commitments.
However the problem was not so much what was in the manifesto, it was what was not included. Premature and radical cuts at a time of fragile growth threaten to throw the economy into reverse. Radical reforms of the NHS that have never before been debated with the Lib Dems and have not been tested by pilot projects may go horribly wrong. Radical changes to higher education finance - not just student fees but the marketisation of course funding will also have unpredictable results. The cuts in local government are devastating and the impact will not only be regressive, but runs counter to what the Lib Dems stand for in local government. The policy in supporting academies and free schools is against the policy of the Liberal Democrats and this was reconfirmed at the last conference by a 10 - 1 majority.
Of course in a Coalition you will not always get your way, but these are big hits. The concern is that Nick Clegg is not fighting our corner. This is important not only in relation to Lib Dem members and activists, but also to voters.
On the issue of Equality Nick Clegg has played down our commitment to reduce poverty and focussed instead on social mobility. His advisor Richard Reeves dismisses the research in The Spirit Level which shows that only countries with low levels of poverty also have high level of social mobility.
On localism Nick Clegg tells us that the Big Society also equals liberalism. It does not. The Big Society is a welcome advance by the Tory party compared to the centralising days on the 1980s, but the suspicion of local government is still there and without democratically elected bodies with the ability to raise funds locally, this is not good enough. Indeed policies like Free Schools and Academies are likely to benefit the middle classes more and work against any gains the pupil premium may bring to social mobility.
So the question is this; is the current state of affairs sustainable?
We hope the vote on AV will be won, but if not Nick Clegg could go in 2011.
If he remains he still has the reputation issue to resolve. His agenda setting speeches on Equality have not yet won him any popularity and it is hard to see how he can improve things for the Liberal Democrats. Many new party members are scheduled to renew from next March, and if they don't we could start to see a weakening of the party, combined with big losses in the forthcoming local elections.
Even if we win the AV referendum it remains the case that Nick Clegg has to find a way of recovering his reputation. The party cannot go into the next general election at less than 15%. Labour is facing up to a dreadful general election in 2010, but the problems for the Lib Dems look substantially worse than that.

Has Vince Cable been sidelined? Will there be a double dip recession?

2010-05-23T12:29:00.000+01:00

There is no doubt that Vince Cable has a very important job to do. He needs to propose how to split up the banks, make sure they are not too big to fail, that they are properly regulated and the retail and casino functions are split up. People's savings should not be put at risk by irresponsible banking behaviour of the kind we have seen recently. Ideally he should resist Tory urgings that the banks should be privatised straight away. Yes they should be privatised eventually when economic conditions are favourable, but not on the behest of his ideological counterparts in the Tory party. It is said that he is frustrated that he does not have the power to do what he wants and that George Osborne wields some power in all this. This is alarming if true. However even if it is true, Vince should fight his corner and go public if the Tories are being obstructive. He will surely have public opinion on his side. He may have more power than it appears on paper.
But why would the Tories do such a thing anyway? Well the Tories are the party of hedge fund managers and the money markets. Not only that, city institutions will lobby hard and they have the financial clout to do so. Making these changes will be very hard, and the Tories are not our natural allies in wanting to do this.
So there is a battle to be fought on the banking front, but we should not overlook the broader economic picture. This is a government that will make cuts right away. That in itself is a problem, as Vince Cable argued only a couple of weeks ago not to do this; "Slashing spending now could push the economy back into recession and inflict further structural damage on the UK that will make it harder to sustain our credit rating. He (George Osborne) ... fails to appreciate what the markets are looking for is a credible plan to reduce the deficit, not a willingness to slash regardless of economic conditions. In the current climate it is essential that decisions about the speed and timing of tackling the deficit are based on the state of the economy, not political dogma". See http://www.nickclegg.org.uk/press_releases_detail.aspx?title=Osborne_is_out_of_his_depth_says_Cable&pPK=7755ff1f-5e2c-41d5-a82b-7573ca25dab1. Vince Cable will be busy with his own priorities and will not get much of say in all this now.
I have asked about this on-line and got various responses. Some Lib Dems never believed what Vince Cable said at the time and thought he was just playing politics. These are often the same people who thought a the same a couple of years ago when Vince Cable was criticising the government over the high levels of debt. Look how wrong there were!
Others argue that £6billion is not very much, although I doubt it will seem that way once implemented. Some have pointed out that it depends on where the cuts are being made, and this is a more important point. Clearly cutting on national Id cards will not result in big job losses (albeit no comfort for those who do lose their jobs). Maybe it is possible to make cuts without detracting from the economic stimulus? Up to a point this is true, but can we cover all £6billion this way? Probably not. The official party response is that somewhat miraculously we do now have the growth we need to make this cuts less painful. If true this is an astonishing turn of events, coinciding very conveniently with the date of the general election. The latest growth figures do look better, but surely it is too early to say now that the time is now right? particularly given the prospects of contagion from the parlous state of the Greek economy?
The problem once again is Tory ideology. They will advocate we should cut regardless of economic conditions, as Vince Cable warned. Dangerous times.

2010-05-15T16:10:00.004+01:00

"Cleggmania" succeeded first of all in galvanising the electorate. But by the time they got to the polling booth their attention had switched to defeating the party they were afraid of most. Under our voting system, that meant they reverted back to "Labservative".
In addition the leadership debates brought up the issue of immigration. Whenever Cameron spoke on this, his vote went up.
And so on election day the Tories got the most votes.
A progressive coalition looked mathematically possible. But Labour tribalist MPs made that impossible.
This left 2 options; go it alone, or align with the Tories.
Go it alone was not really an option. Only the Tory party can afford to fight another election this year.
But aligning with the Tories has risks too. For many on the left, including many Lib Dems, there is the symbolism. The MPs we least want to see running the country; Osborne, Hague and Fox now have their hands on the levers of power. It becomes much harder for the Lib Dems to win votes in Labour areas from now on.
Then there is the question of what the government will now do. 2 weeks ago, the Liberal Democrats claimed that they would not support radical cuts in public spending right away, as this would induce a double dip recession. Now they are doing just that. How can this be in the national interest? There may be a good answer to this question, but I have not come across it yet.
On the other hand there is a lot that is positive about this proposed coalition. Good to see Chris Huhne tackling the issue of global warming for example. Good to see the pupil premium being implemented (although it remains to be seen if the investment will be there to make it work). Good to see civil liberties being supported. The question is whether the benefits on policy outweigh the risks from a possible recession?
The electorate gave the Lib Dems a poor hand for their negotiating position in the coalition talks. They have made the best of a bad hand, but there remains a high risk that our unforgiving voting system; whether FPTP or AV, will come down hard on them next time.
Under our voting system, you do not get many choices in politics. Left Liberals should stay in the Lib Dems and make the best of the situation as they can. It is not clear there is any other choice for the time being.

Change the system, vote Lib Dem

2010-05-06T07:05:00.002+01:00

I have not had the time to write about this election. However I did find the time on Facebook to suggest why not to vote Labour;
"A catastrophic war in Iraq, the never ending war in Afghanistan, failure to stand up to Israel when they invaded Gaza, collusion with torture with the Bush regime, "light touch" regulation of the City, believing that market forces were self-correcting with disastrous economic consequences, failure to reform the finance of political parties - which ... See morenow gives the Tories a massive advantage for decades to come, failure to change the electoral system after they said they would, wasted lots of money on national ID cards and their commitment to replace Trident, locking up petty criminals for short term prisons which are in effect academies of crime with a reoffending rate of 90%, a widening gap between the rich and poor, making the UK the worst in Europe, the consequences of which you can read in The Spirit Level, the Decent Homes initiative that has saddled unsuspecting leaseholders on salaries of £15K with bills from £10K to £70K, failure to introduce the traffic lights system of food health after lobbying from ex-Labour ministers, the UK massively behind Denmark in alternative energy sources, support for a new runway at Heathrow despite commitments to global warming targets ..."

In short, Labour dances to the tune of Rupert Murdoch.
Before "New Labour", the politics of the left was in many ways more liberal than it is today. There is still a hinterland on the left that supports the Liberal agenda, and although many of them would prefer to vote Labour, this time they are either voting Lib Dem or are voting tactically to keep out the Tories.
It was over 50 years ago when Liberal leader Jo Grimond talked about Liberals "realligning the left". Today we must rescue the left, but only the liberal part of it. Otherwise the onslaught from Murdoch will soon begin.

2010 - A difficult year in prospect for the Lib Dems

2010-01-01T19:01:00.004Z

When Charles Kennedy stood down as leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2006, many saw this as a great opportunity to shift the party into a more "economically liberal" position. The agenda was to be to advocate a smaller state and tax cuts. Whilst proclaiming that they saw the labels of left or right as irrelevant when defining where they stood politically, they were also keen to point out that the party should not be identified as being left of Labour as it had been in previous general elections.
Early proposals for the party to drop it's support for the Local Income Tax and to support a "Flat Tax" did not make it to party conference. The "Flat Tax" proposal was quickly dropped when the German Christian Democrats who also supported this policy almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the German general election.
Even so, economic liberals were victorious in the leadership election when Ming Campbell supported their cause. When his leadership fell flat, economic liberals won again when Nick Clegg replaced him, albeit by a much smaller margin than anyone predicted.
All this seemed very radical, and in terms of how previous Lib Dem positions had been in favour of increasing taxes to fund greater public spending it was. However when the nirvana of the economic liberals was finally reached; the "Make it Happen" policy document which proposed tax cuts funded by public spending cuts - which was about the only thing anyone remembers from this document - the policy quickly became out of date for reasons that were perfectly forseeable at the time.
Even if the global economic downturn had not taken place, the charge by Danny Finkelstein of "punk" tax cuts seemed a valid one. The Liberal Democrats had not identified a more efficient way to run public services that would acheive the same or better with less funding. The proposal was simply to spend less. The rhetoric was to spend less on waste, as though the current government had set aside a budget specifically for waste that simply needed to be cut. In truth every government wants to acheive more with less when it comes to public spending. The idea that the Liberal Democrats had found a way of doing so that no one else had spotted was hard to believe. Nor did they back it up with any substance. If they had of done, both Labour and the Tories would have copied the policies. Ideologically there was nothing stopping them.
In any case the Make it Happen policy document with the tax and public spending cuts was proposed at conference despite the fact we were on the verge of a global economic recession. And it was passed by a massive 2 -1 majority. Personally I thought the party had gone insane.
Even more absurd was that many delegates who supported the policy went on to oppose the attempt by the party leadership to drop the committment to scrapped student tuition fees. How on earth did they think they could find the savings in public spending whilst keeping this policy? Equally the party leadership at the time wanted to find the funds to replace Trident, again a policy that did not make sense.
In the end sense prevailed. The Make it Happen tax proposals were shelved. A commitment to replacing Trident "like for like" was dropped. The commitment to scrap student tuition fees has been watered down.
All sections of the party favour the rebalancing of the tax system so that the poor pay less and the rich pay more. Even so, the prospects for any future government are ones of increasing taxes overall and reducing public spending - the worst of both worlds. Maintaining our highly valued committments on early learning and family benefits, and tax cuts for those on low incomes will be hard to maintain, no matter how much we want them.
It is worth reminding ourselves that "economic liberalism" was widely understood as the anglo-US model of capitalism that for years delivered on economic growth, but then collapsed. The growth was financed by debt. It was a bubble that was bound to burst. "Light touch" regulation was previously considered a good thing, keeping the state out of the running of business. Now we know that much of that business was "socially useless" to quote Adair Turner. Only heavy touch regulation can control it. If that was true of banking, then where else in the Anglo-US model of capitalism does this apply?
Of course "Liberal" is a good word. So "Economic Liberal" ought also be good. But it all depends on what you mean by the word Liberal. Freedom for financial institutions to ruthlessly persue short term profit regardless of the long term consequences does not seem very Liberal to me. Either we should redefine "Economic Liberalism" to mean something else or we should drop the term.
Where this has left the Liberal Democrats going into 2010 is a lack of distinctive policies. No doubt our policies are better, but it would be an interesting exercise to ask the electorate what policies the Lib Dems have that might persuade them to vote for us.
It could have been different. We could have opposed replacing Trident in a much more forthright manner than we are currently doing. At present it is not an issue that is on the agenda. In which case even more of a reason to do that and take the credit for doing so. If the Tories say they believe the same things we do, throw that back at them. Tell them we will not do a deal with them unless they commit not to replace Trident.
So why should we vote Lib Dem in 2010?
Well one person who did not follow the Economic Liberal script, despite previously doing so, was Vince Cable. His intervention that we should nationalise Northern Rock even before Labour realised that was the best policy demonstrated from the outset that this was the politician who should be running the economy at this time of crises. He is also right to support the economic stimulus and not slash and burn in public spending the moment you win office. If the Lib Dems hold the balance of power, we have to insist that he becomes the next chancellor.
The commitments on Green Taxes and the Pupil Premium, although copied have not been bettered by the other parties. And unlike the Tory party, there is no sign that the Lib Dems will change their mind over global warming. The commitments on supporting the EU and the rights for immigrants and asylum seekers may not be popular, and may weigh against the Lib Dems in a coalition, but someone needs to stand up on these matters. The commitment not to replace Trident "like for like" may be half hearted, but it is better than what is offered by the other political parties.
The commitment to support proportional representation is a fundamental one upon which the party should not budge. The Alternative Vote that Gordan Brown favours is NOT propotional representation, and in some cases is even less proportional.
Finally we need a better foreign policy. Whether the Liberal Democrats deliver on this would appear to depend on how influential Paddy Ashdown is. From my previous blogs I have to say that I do not think his influence has resulted in a good policy in Afghanistan. However there is still scope for the party to give a leaad on foreign policy, and Nick Clegg is to be commended for his interventions on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The difficulty for the party in 2010 is that the party has not been distinctive enough to be a first choice party. Often we are second - not many people really object to the Lib Dems in the same way as they do the other parties - we are rarely hated by the electorate. But to get that first preference, the only one that counts under our voting system, well it looks as though we will have to depend on the popularity of Vince Cable to get that.
So for the elections on 2010, its a case of fingers crossed.

Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown fire blanks in Afghanistan

2009-09-18T08:31:00.003+01:00

We are at a moment in time, according to the article by Nick Clegg and Paddy Ashdown in today's Guardian, where we have reached the last chance saloon in Afghanistan. I disagree. That moment in time passed by long ago.
Even so, having recognised this is the case, it may well be that the course of action they suggest is not implemented, and the consequence of that will be that the Liberal Democrats will then support a policy of withdrawing our troops sometime soon, maybe before the next general election.
As a policy change, that will be a big improvement, and another reason to vote Lib Dem.
Dealing with the situation as it is today, we need to consider the main drivers of Lib Dem policy.
Paddy Ashdown is held in very high regard by the party, and fully deserves to be. Not just for being leader of the party, taking over at a very difficult time just after the merger fiasco between the Liberals and the SDP. Much more significant was his remarkable success in Bosnia. What he acheived there was simply astonishing.
On the other hand, he also supported the British participation in the war in Iraq, probably the biggest foreign policy blunder in living memory. At a fringe meeting Ashdown did have the humility to admit that "we were right" and "he was wrong" on this issue. I have tremendous respect for the courage it took him to say that.
But did he learn the right lessons? It is true that at previous fringe meetings on Afghanistan Ashdown was very clear about the need to limit expectations about what can realistically be acheived in Afghanistan.
Yet the hubris is still there. By no means some grand neo-Conservative design, but the ability of Westerners to occupy a country that is culturally as different from us as can be, and yet "win the hearts and minds" of the people who live there is not only highly unlikely, it is not happening either.
The person who is speaking the most sense on Afghanistan is oddly enough a Tory. I would love to see a debate between Rory Stewart and Paddy Ashdown on Afghanistan. Rory makes his case very well in this video; http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1240285.
Paddy Ashdown has always been passionate about foreign policy, and that is entirely how it should be for a Liberal Democrat leader.
Nick Clegg has also been passionate on foreign policy, and made it a major part of his leader's speeches in the past. It is clear he agrees with Paddy Ashdown and it is fair enough that he draws on his advice given that is so. I for one would like to see a much higher profile from the Liberal Democrats on foreign policy than it does at present, although it would help if I agree with them first of course...
The question I would like to ask of course is why is it that Nick and Paddy are so determined that the British should continue to participate in this doomed policy?
Partly it is because with some reservations, the Lib Dems supported the war in Afghanistan in order to destroy Al-Qaeda. "Doing nothing" did not seem an option at the time, just after 911, and there is little to commend being a "fair weather friend". There is also a sense that we have a moral obligation to the Afghani people to marginalise Al-Qaeda, and most importantly of all there is huge concern about the knock on effects in the region, and Pakistan in particular. Finally it is the message that will be sent out to the region, the loss of power of the west to influence the region, a signal that being anti-West no longer has a price attached.
The problem with the first part; our support of the US to invade Afghanistan in the first place, is that we failed then to have our own foreign policy. The foreign policy of the UK was whatever the foreign policy of the US was. In fact this failure continues to this very day, regardless of whether the president of the US is Republican or Democrat. We simply agree with them.
The US does not expect to have to negotiate with it's allies what it's foreign policy should be, in which case we do not have to agree with them. We ought to insist that we have a clear set of objectives, a timeline for acheiving them and a plan B if the policy is doing more harm than good. Plan B might be simply to abandon the policy. There is no point in us being loyal to the US if it means being lumbered with a policy that is not working.
Ashdown and Clegg seem to think that the US/UK occupation is what is holding back the Taliban in Afganistan. Yet at the same time the momentum behind the Taliban is unstoppable. In fact a better explanation is that it is our occupation that is causing the support for the Taliban to increase. As Rory Stewart says, whatever moral obligations we have to the Afghani people, we are not morally obliged to deliver what we cannot acheive.
Likewise Ashdown has claimed that a victory for the Taliban in Afghanistan will mean that the government of Pakistan will inevitably fall. This of course is a nightmarish scenario given Pakistan is a nuclear power. There is a real danger that this could happen, but the question here is what would cause it? Again it is the occupation of Afghanistan that is driving the Taliban into Pakistan making it a more unstable country as a result. In other words the proposed solution is causing the problem to get worse.
Finally the message to the region cannot be avoided. The west is losing it's power in the world, especially after the collapse of the Washington Concensus (WC) economic order. It will be humiliating for the west to send that message, but we have no choice.
The new world order will be multipolar. The anglo-US model of economic development will diminish. Expectations behind foreign policy objectives will have to be reset.
To some extent that has already happened. Prior to the war in Iraq, the US/UK were fighting many wars. Since then, no new wars have been started by the west and noone expects us to get involved in any soon.
As far as Afghanistan is concerned, what should we do? Rory Stewart points out that there are some parts that do not want to run by the Taliban. The Shias in the west and the Tajiks in the north are examples of that. Maybe a limited presence can help them, especially when you consider the Taliban never run the whole of the country before when they were in power. Even so, there is a danger of a civil war if we do that.
So we should withdraw from most of the country at least, and adjust of foreign policy objectives accordingly. It may well be the case that democracy in Pakistan will continue for the forseeable future, and it is important that will help them acheive that. At this moment in time it is not clear why a radical take over in that country would be inevitable if the Taliban take over in Afghanistan. There are other factors that might drive this eventuality as well, and we have to mitigate those. A just peace in Israel and a just settlement in Kashmir would be helpful for example, albeit hard to acheive.
It is disappointing the Lib Dems do not have a better policy on Afghanistan, and I would rather wait until after the next general election before I would want to press on this issue. The policy may improve of it's own accord anyway.
Lets hope so.

Nick Clegg makes tough choices.

2009-06-20T18:39:00.005+01:00

At the one day conference at the London School Of Economics earlier this year, Nick Clegg was proposing that we make radical cuts in public spending. He informed us that we will have to make "tough choices". Soon afterwards Steve Richards told us that politicians often talk about tough choices, without themselves making the tough choice of telling us what they are.
Since then those choices have been made. The first is that the party is no longer committed to a policy of "We-will-cut-current-public-spending-by-£20billion-and-reassign-some-of-it-to-our-existing-priorities-and-anything-left-will-be-tax-cuts", and now the party is no longer committed to replacing Trident. In other words there is not much scope for cuts, but we can cut Trident.
Both are good moves, and what I have argued for on this blog.
I can now look forward to the next general election with the same enthusiasm as I had at the last general election. Last time it was opposition to the Iraq war that made it worthwhile. This time it is opposition to Trident. If only we had not wasted all those years up until now on the wrong track. Now we have just 9 months to get our new message across.

Nick Clegg to give a townhall meeting in Hackney on Tuesday about Turkey and the EU.

2009-05-17T21:15:00.004+01:00

In the UK the Turkish/Kurdish/Cypriot communities are the most politically intense I have met. Many are very good liberals and I am hoping they will get more involved in the British political scene. Historically most have supported Labour, but Labour's appalling foreign policy has disillusioned many, notably in relation to Iraq and Israel, and given that many also support Turkey's entry into the EU, with the intention of making the EU work (this latter point distinguishes the Lib Dems from the other parties), then there could not be a better time for the liberal wing of these communities to join the Lib Dems.
The Liberal Democrats Friends of Turkey (LDFoT) provide an excellent hinterland for liberal Turks. A chance to find out more about the party before deciding whether to join.
I have made some very good friends in LDFoT and so far every one I have met so far would make an excellent member of the party. Some already are.
On Tuesday Hackney Liberal Democrats and LDFoT have jointly organised a public meeting with Nick Clegg as the main speaker about "Turkey - our future in Europe". Also every bit as important our current MEP Sara Ludford, plus Jonathan Fryer who according to opinion polls will also get elected on 4th June will also be speaking at this event.
See http://www.flocktogether.org.uk/event/5157
and http://www.hackneylibdems.org.uk/clegg.php where you can reserve your seat.
Maybe the tectonic plates are shifting, Labour in decline and the Lib Dems in the ascendency?
Well anything can happen in a public meeting. One thing I will predict, you will not have seen anything like it before in Hackney (and we have seen many things here!).

PS I removed my previous posting whilst I recheck my facts on what is going on in Turkey. It looks very complicated, more than I appreciated before. Thanks to Barry Stocker for pointing that out.

First the bankers, next the tax evaders

2009-04-18T10:13:00.002+01:00

I joined "The other taxpayers alliance" on Facebook recently - a useful opposition force to that motley collection of very rich people in the Taxpayers Alliance who dont want to pay any tax.
They directed me to a meeting at the TUC congress house which I went to on Thursday. It was organised by Compass, the left of centre pressure group within the Labour party who are supporting John Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and their main hope for rescuing the party from it's dead end neoliberal trajectory.
This was a significant meeting as Angela Eagle - a cabinet minister was there, mostly to listen although she did give a brief speech at the beginning.
The message of the meeting was clear, it is time to close in on the tax evaders and the tax avoiders. Although the number of rich people is small as a proportion of the population, they withhold far more of their capital than do those at the other end, the so-called "benefit scroungers".
The opinion poll evidence was clear, public opinion is now wanting the loopholes to be closed. The next budget is on Tuesday. Compass may well be pushing on an opening door.
I hope the Liberal Democrats take the opportunity to pre-empt them on this, this weekend. Vince Cable and Nick Clegg often refer to this injustice in their speeches - it is perfectly consistent with what they have said all along, unlike Labour who only now are thinking about it, and the Tories who have long been financed by tax evaders and dodgers for services rendered. At the meeting our attention was drawn to the activities of Micheal Ashcroft, one of the major Tory donors and still involved with banks in Belize and the Tory party.
I was impressed with the meeting for it's caution. The right wing position (supported by "New Labour" under the influence of Rupert Murdoch) of attacking benefits scroungers still wins votes for Labour/Tory and that was recognised - although not agreed with. A crude "attack the rich" position was not supported by the meeting, with the possible exception of a certain Richard Murphy, who urged us not to be timid.
Richard Murphy is the man who set up the Tax Justice Network (TJN). He is a passionate, colourful individual who knows a lot about his subject, but also has his foibles. The main one being his supersized ego. It is no surprise that he started this group - it is hard to imagine he would be able to join someone else's. It is hard to imagine the TJN can represent anything other than what Richard Murphy thinks at any particular time. Most of what he said fitted in well with what the audience wanted to hear, but he did acheive the remarkable feat of actually being heckled at a meeting organised and attended by people who expected to agree with him.
Well that is an aside for now.
The left have some grounds to be optimistic that public opinion will now support greater redistribution of wealth. Our main challenge is that that in itself will not prevent the rise of the far right, who may also seek to cash in on this, and who are likely to benefit most from the failures of neoliberal economic policy and for other reasons such as the threat of terrorism.

Maybe we will have nuclear disarmanent after all

2009-04-13T19:57:00.003+01:00

The Liberal Democrats made a big mistake when they decided a while back not to take advantage of the new world order and adopt a policy of decomissioning our nuclear weapons. It was Ming Campbell, still fighting the internal battles of the 1980s (when the disarmers in the Liberal party had the upper hand) who insisted on the policy that we now have.
The SNP took full advantage in Scotland and showed beyond doubt that nuclear disarmanent is actually a vote winner, especially since we don't need the weapons.
But we can hope that although the opportunity was missed, maybe it does not matter so much anymore. The economic pressure on Russia, the US and the UK to disarm is so great, they might as well agree to "multilaterally disarm" at the earliest opportunity. With Obama now talking about disarmanent, we should bring forward the talks and agree as soon as possible.
Another military adventure we cannot afford is the war in Afghanistan. Obama said all along that he was going to intervene further in this conflict. He continues to propose this policy whilst wracking up even more debt in order to finance it, debt that neither the US or UK can afford.
Whilst wishing Obama well, the EU still has a responsibility to be a candid friend and tell the US to settle with the Taliban and get out of Afghanistan before it becomes another Iraq.
The US/UK cannot come to terms with their loss of power in the world, the harder they try to find it the more they diminish it even more. And the expense is great human tradegy.

Vince Cable lays into Libertarians

2009-04-11T17:31:00.002+01:00

Early on in this Parliament I viewed the utterings of Vince cable with some alarm. He was then proposing that the Lib Dems support a "flat tax", which appeared to be very regressive, and he proposed ridding the party of it's very popular policy of taxing the rich at 50%.
The party very quickly dropped the flat tax idea (as did the Tories) when the German Christian Democrats nearly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in their general election, having proposed such a policy. However Vince succeeded in changing the 50% policy. At the time he argued that the new replacement policy was even more progressive - more revenue would be generated from Green taxes and these really would be progressive. On the other hand, Ming Campbell suggested another reason; he wanted the policy to "reward ambition" - the same logic you would expect from a Thatcherite.
So Vince Cable was identified with the right of the party, but listening to his speeches I was not so sure. He was coming up with many progessive ideas on taxation, and in my mind I repositioned him as "hard to categorise".
This of course was confirmed when he supported the nationalisation of Northern Rock as an emergency measure. I wonder if other LD MPs like David Laws and Jeremy Browne would have proposed such a policy? Yet the party was united on this, apart from a few fringe bloggers.
Recently Vince has somehow found time to write a book, and this of course gives an excellent opportunity to find out what he thinks, albeit in less than 160 pages.
I have read the book and would heartedly recommend it. I agree with most of it. Because it is short there are obvious gaps - the chapter on Malthus is rather short and inconclusive which is a shame as I for one think it ought to be the most important part.
However there is no doubt what he thinks about extreme Libertarians;
"(quote from Herbert Spencer) 'The ultimate result of shielding man from the efects of his folly is to people the world with fools' . This approach was influencial in the years of the Great Crash, and it helped inform the advice given to president Hoover by his treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon: to do nothing. '[Panic] will purge the rottenness out of the system ... People will work harder and live a more moral life ... enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.' Since Hoover and Mellon emerged as the fools who precipitated the Great Depression, their abstemiousness become seriously unfashionable", page 46, The Storm.

The economic crises we face today has resulted from the policy mistakes of those who believed in the philosophy of "setting business free". The business lobby is a formidably powerful lobby and has persuaded even nominally socialist politicians to buy into this philosophy. We are where we are today because of the failure of "light touch" regulation. However even if you persuade the politicians the policy still has to work, and instead it has failed, big time. The backlash is now well under way, and libertarians will be one of the foremost causalities.

Nick Clegg still in a tangle over tax

2009-01-18T00:11:00.002Z

I went to the one day Lib Dem conference today at the LSE. It was an excellent forum, but once again the issue of taxation was raised and the answers were not forthcoming.
Nick Clegg spoke about "tough choices" - a favourite phrase of Tony Blair from years gone by.
Steve Richards, who chaired the next event has heard it all before. He reckoned that it was a complete myth that the Liberal Democrats will find £20Billion public expenditure cuts (albeit cuts that will be reallocated to expenditure elsewhere, plus tax cuts if anything is left over), and he warned about politicians who talk about tough choices and then not say what they are.
Of course student tuition fees - which the LDs plan to scrap but the leadership intend otherwise - is an example of the kind of cuts we will have to make.
Danny Alexander had to respond to that, but instead of talking about hard choices, he downplayed the prospects, saying that a lot of the cuts had already been accounted for (scrapping ID cards for example), and that 3% of overall spending is not very much.
Well come on then, are there tough choices or aren't there?
The question I wanted to ask was a) how much of the £20Billion cuts has already been accounted for and what are they, and where of the remaining £xBillion are the rest of the cuts going to come from? Students tuition? NHS? Scrapping and not replacing Trident? Afghanistan troop withdrawal?
Will we get a say in these cuts, or will they appear rabbit from a hat just before the next general election?
These tax cuts are the remnents of the ideas proposed by parts of the Orange book, an emblem of free-market economics of the kind that we do not need just right now.
However the marketisation of public services has fallen short. Private companies cannot be trusted anymore than the public sector. I am sure that the original idea of tax cuts was related to streamlining public services, but how it has turned out the Liberal Democrats are simply resorting to cutting budgets. This is what Danny Finkelstein calls "Punk Tax Cuts". Cuts not made possible by public services being run more "efficiently", but by simply being cut.
Of course I have my own suggestions; scrap Trident and don't replace it, and withdraw from Afghanistan (as well as Iraq), but I am sure I will not be taken up.
The issue of student tuition fees has not gone away. Despite a change in policy having been rejected on the Federal Policy Committee (FPC) by a massive 14-5, it looks like the matter will be discussed in our Harrogate conference coming up soon. The FPC vote indicates that the party is not ready to make these tough choices, although I would submit that without seeking to change our policy on Trident and Afghanistan, then the same is true of the leadership as well.
All the more absurd that we passed this policy on taxation in Bournemouth in the first place.

Nick Clegg calls for an end to supplying arms to Israel

2009-01-09T19:24:00.002Z

The fastest ever Facebook group I ever set up can be found here;
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3950994014#/group.php?gid=54403996833
I am delighted at the overwhelming response from fellow Liberal Democrats to joining this group. Even more impressive when you consider that both the Labour and Tory parties would not dare suggest we stop selling arms to Israel.
Yet this is a matter of regret rather than triumph. The USA has made Israel the most powerful country militarily in the Middle East. In comparison to the Palestinians, most Israelis live comfortably. They have no reason to seriously negotiate with the Palestinians, they have the power to impose their own preferred solution on the conflict and they have the miliary force to do it.
Barack Obama is unlikely to change that. Even if he were so inclined - and there is no evidence that he is - his Democrat party will not allow it.
So what are we to do? There are some things we can do. As Nick points out, stop selling arms to them. Maybe stop trading with them altogether.
On the other hand if we are too confrontational, would we be able to play a diplomatic role as the Norweigans did some time ago?
It is a devil of a problem, and the US has made it almost impossible.

Problems pile up for Obama

2008-12-29T22:48:00.003Z

It is worth pointing out that Barack Obama won the presidential election by only 5%. As far as US elections are concerned, that is supposed to be a big margin, but lets bear in mind that despite the monumental failure of US foreign policy in the Middle East, and notably Iraq, the Republicans were actually inching ahead until the US economy took a sharp downturn. It is hard to imagine a more incompetent president than GW Bush, yet the Democrats won by just 5%.
In terms of the demographics it was women, and a late swing from Latinos that built up the Democrat vote. And best of all, it was young voters, indicating a shift similar to that which supported New Labour in 1997 and forced the Tories to painfully reinvent itself as a nice "liberal" party.
However there is not a harder time to imagine taking power than now. The economic problems have been long debated. Obama is less likely to be constrained by the free market dogma that got us into this mess. He may not pull it off in terms of resetting the economy - it may not be possible for one thing, but he is more likely to get it right.
Foreign policy is just as troublesome. His gung ho utterances on Pakistan and Palestine during the campaign did not read well, and continue not to do so.
The best we can hope is that that was just a ploy. Maybe the rhetoric in public is meant to impress the right people, but behind the scenes real progress is being made. I suspect this will be wishful thinking.
But why the rhetoric in the first place? Until recently we were living in a unipolar world, with the US far and away the most powerful nation on earth. And now? The case can still be made that this is the case. Militarily it is still the case, the US spends an extraordinary amount and no one can keep up with them. How was this possible? The narrative of the Republican party about the need for US power in the world, conflating the interests of the world with that of the US, and reinforced by the "Shock Jocks" radio talk show hosts who loved attacking "weak" liberals all contrived to win public support for this.
Failure in Iraq has presented the Democrats an opportunity to attack this illusion. Unfortunately many of them bought into this illusion in the first place and it does not look impressive to "flip-flop" in public. And it is not an easy shift to make. To admit that the US is a declining power is not a positive message, and does not fit in well with the need to be patriotic.
Yet it is clear now that it is not enough to be strong militarily and weak politically, which is what the US is now. It remains easier to pretend that the US can still throw its weight; by siding with Isreal whatever it does, by threatening Pakistan and by "surging" in Afghanistan. The problem Obama faces is that the US does not have the power by force to control these countries, and yet the need to find political solutions remains paramount.

The problem with New Labour is that they do not regulate enough

2008-10-06T08:40:00.002+01:00

Schardenfraud is a nasty trait, and yet it was hard to avoid enjoying the experience when Sarah Palin got caught out in a high profile interview recently.
The question she was asked was about specific actions that John McCain took to tighten regulations to prevent irresponsibility in the financial markets. The only way she could have answered the question is to not answer and quickly move on to another point and make the interviewer ask questions on that instead. No doubt some politicians can do it, and it is one thing to have the skill to do it, but the fact remains that the question is unanswered.
The reality is that the economic orthodoxy built up since the 1980s is one based on free market ideology, of which deregulation was a fundamental component.
First it was the political right that believed in it, then powerful forces on what was previously the left, and in the UK it is Liberals who have joined the concensus. Indeed many now argue that Liberalism is now defined by this free market ideology.
Now of course this ideology faces a major challenge. It seems so obvious now. Economic growth has been strong because of the bubble in the housing market. Housing in itself does not generate wealth, so it was bound to be unsustainable.
So now we are in a downturn, which we are assured by free market ideologues will not last long.
However if we have learnt the lessons from the housing bubble and we decide to regulate the market to stop this from happening again, then where is growth going to come from in the future?
Vince Cable is absolutely right to point out that he had been warning about debt for years. Some of his colleagues appeared not to take heed however. At a fringe meeting at Lib Dem conference Jeremy Browne argued, incredibly, that as he believes in markets then he was sceptical about nationalising any banks, even in the emergencies that we have today. He also said that although he bought a house with a very expensive mortgage, he was not worried about a slump in the housing market.
However it is not just debt, it is lack of regulation that causes debt. What has Vince said about that prior to 2008? If someone interviewed me and asked me this question, I for one would have a Sarah Palin moment.
What I do recall is a fringe meeting a couple of years ago at a Lib Dem conference where Ed Davey told us how he was going to deregulate further in the financial markets. He seemed very proud of this policy at the time. Personally I was horrified.
Of course I am sure it is possible to look back at the archives and find in the small print suggestions that might imply greater regulation. Given that Vince correctly identified the level of debt as a major flaw of New labour's economic record, I am sure Vince had a good set of policies to deal with it.
However greater regulation was never the headline solution as it has suddenly become, and the free market ideology had been encouraged within the Liberal Democrats, gaining a momentum where there is now a significant fundamentalist fringe within the party.
That fringe simply has no answers to the economic problems we are facing today. No one knows what the solution is to the economic downturn we are now heading into, but even George Bush is being forced to accept that "more of the same" free market ideology is the last thing we need to turn things round.
However Keynes once warned;
<<
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
>>
That is the problem the Liberal Democrats now face. Can they adjust their thinking quickly enough to account for the new realities?
These 2 links are the best articles I have read so far on the crises we now face;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/28/usforeignpolicy.useconomicgrowth

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/30/marketturmoil.wallstreet

Should we make a deal with the Taliban and pull out of Afghanistan?

2008-10-05T22:27:00.002+01:00

Some parts of the Middle East, notably parts of Iraq and Afghanistan are too dangerous for reporters to venture, so we do not really know what is going on.
So from time to time, we are told that things are going well in Afghanstan. Prince Harry loves it out there. He would far rather be there than at home, he said on a TV interview.
But consider this. Our troops have been there for nearly 7 years, and although by now they should have started leaving, in fact we are putting more in. This is a sign of it NOT working.
And now Brig Mark Carleton-Smith has confirmed what we suspected. We are wasting money, lives and resource out there. We are causing more ham than good. We should settle with the Taliban and leave.
If we could do better, then why have we not already done better?
I went to a fringe meeting at Lib Dem conference last month where Paddy Ashdown presented his solution to the problem. It was good to see that he has taken on the lesson learnt from Iraq, he gave a very realistic analysis of the country I thought.
As for his solutions, I would say that most of the pieces fitted, but some did not.
I asked him how he expected local people to "defeat" the Taliban. He clarified that his view of them was more nuanced, and only some parts of the Taliban should be defeated. He then said that we had been in Northern Ireland for 35 years, implying that is how long it might take in Afghanistan. If that really is a timescale you are considering, I would suggest you do not have a viable plan. Northern Ireland, and within it the IRA was a much smaller scale problem in a culturelly similar country.
If it took 35 years there, I dread to think about Afghanistan. 35 years really means no idea how long it will take.
So I was not persuaded by that. Many of the peices in the plan fitted. But for the plan to work, the most important pieces must fit, and I do not think they do.
There is a price to pay either way. There are 3 main objections to the Taliban;
1/ They raise money by selling drugs
2/ They might habour Al Qaeda again.
3/ From a Liberal point of view, we loathe them because of their human rights abuses.
My solution does not fix these problems. But then neither does anyone elses. Having to make this choice is indicative of how the power of the West has seeped away...

There is no perfect solution. Withdrawing our troops is the least worst solution.

March against child poverty

2008-10-05T22:00:00.002+01:00

I congregated with a group of Lib Dems recently to go on a march against child poverty organised by the Child Poverty Action Group.
Nick Clegg is determined that the Liberal Democrats have a high profile on this issue. It was a dominant theme at our last conference with lots of fringe meetings. Martin Narey of CPAG had a high profile at conference and is helping the party develop our policies on this theme.
So I was delighted to see Nick Clegg join the march. I may not be his favourite activist given my opposition to some of his policies, but I was happy to help out holding a banner as background to his photos.
Demonstrations have changed over the years. These days the London School of Samba come along with there drums, and you can put on a special costume and have a dance! I remember the times when it was more serious and if you did anything like that then you were a wierdo and you had to go to the back of the demo. Well it is better the way it is now.
The title was "Keep the Promise". Will Labour stick to it's pledge to eliminate child poverty by 2020? We will probably never know of course. The hardest thing is keeping on track with child poverty when we have serious fuel and food inflation, an economy about to go into recession, and ever worsening public finances.
Despite the gloomy prognosis, we will remain one of the richest countries in the world, so there isn't really any excuse. It is a matter of priorities.
Combatting child poverty should be priority over replacing Trident and ighting an unwinable war in Iraq. But there is a lot more to those arguments of course...

Tax cuts? You must be joking!

2008-07-19T11:43:00.004+01:00

We have known for some time that the Liberal Democrats have advocated tax cuts for those on low incomes. The idea was that there would be a shift in the burden of taxation towards those on higher incomes and those who pollute (ie green taxes).
As a progressive I am OK with that, although I am not sure that tax cuts are the most efficient way to help the poor. Many pay little or no tax to begin with.
The holding position of the party on the overall tax take was to keep it at the current level, until we are closer to the next general election and we can then make a judgement on what level we can set.
As the big day gets closer we see that the state of the public finances is dire, and the economy is tipping into a recession.
It is surely clear by now that this is a particularly bad time to advocate a reduction in the overall tax burden? How can this be possibly be acheived without painful cuts?
As I understand it, this is what the Liberal Democrats are now proposing.
Of course there is the familier list of pet projects that can be stopped. National ID cards for a start. Nuclear energy is suggested by some, although I suspect the economic argument might not be so clear cut after the rise in commodity prices. Our troops will leave Iraq (although not Afghanistan). I would like to helpfully suggest not replacing Trident, but the party decided differently.
On the other hand, the flagship "pupil premium" policy that incentivises children from poor backgrounds to go to good schools will cost money, and there is some concern that to be effective we need to pay more than we are currently committed to do so.
On balance we are not looking at huge sums compared to the national budget.
At the last general election, the party came up with an odd looking list of public spending cuts, simply to stand still. Economic conditions were far better then. Some of those suggestons have been implemented. Now we have to find another £20Billion!
If it is obvious that we can cut £20Billion now, why did we not suggest it before? And why have the Conservative party not done so? If anything, they are concerned that they might have to increase taxes according to some reports.
I get a horrible feeling of deja vue. I remember the Tories in the 1980s telling us that public spending cuts would not make public services worse, even though they did. It prompted Roy Jenkins to remark that they wanted European level public services with American level public spending.
The "solution" to this conumdrum is to say it can be done by "restructuring" and getting the private sector more involved in public services. We are told we should look to Holland and Sweden to find out how.
Yet in the case of Sweden, whatever you think of their public sector model in terms of how it is organised, it is also the case that Sweden is a country of very high taxation, and the the higher level of finance that goes into the public sector is an important part of the equation as to how their model works. Do we really believe that their model would work well with less finance? If it could, then they would spend less on their own volition.
Another mistake in my opinion is how the party is going about this. We appear to be looking at the existing figures and then making reductions from that. However a lot of the existing figures are inadequate. Our public services are worse than those of comparable countries such as France, Holland or Germany.
Health service costs are likely to go up because we have an aging population.
What about the effects of global warming? James Lovelock predicted we will have a greater frequency of Extreme Weather Events (EWEs), and that is what has happened. There are still some people homeless today after the floodings of last year. In the 5th richest economy in the world.
Surely we can do better than that? Well not if we are not anticipating these EWEs in the future. I think the party should do a proper audit of the likely costs of global warming, and the tax implications of that. I suspect it will be huge.
We need to consider the political implications. Historically the party has built up a level of support that wanted an anti-establishment political party that actually proposed tax increases as a way of being honest about improving public services (and education in particular).
As the party reaches out to new supporters on the Right, might it not also lose it's existing supporters on the way? Those same people who supoprted tax increase before are surely the least likely to support public spending cuts today. Personally I look around and I do not see anywhere else to go with my politics. However out of our supporters, a massive 30% give the Green party as their second choice party. I would strongly urge Lib Dem supporters not to go down that route, because our first priority is to change the electoral system. A resurgent Green party at Lib Dem expense will scupper that prospect to the detriment of both parties. Under the existing system, like it or not, only the Lib Dems can deliver on this.
Since the 911 bombings one of the remarkable chracteristics of the global economy is the level of growth, and that it is relatively evenly spread around the world. Neoliberalism has continued to be fashionable, probably for that reason, and that applies to all 3 UK political parties. Supporters of Neoliberalism have always been reluctant environmentalists, or even anti-environmentalist. Ideas that we should conserve resources and limit economic growth are routinely derided by such people. The Liberal Democrats generally have good policies on the environment thanks largely to a section within the party that predated this modern trend. The long term costs of what Schumaker called the economics of the "Forward Stampede" are now being seen as food and commodity prices spiral out of control. The social cost of this could be very high.
The propects are that Neoliberalism may not be fashionable for much longer, and the Liberal Democrats will hopefully soon decide to shift away from this deadend. However I suspect not before the next general election, which is a shame.

Is "narrative" the new spin?

2008-05-31T22:06:00.003+01:00

We know that the general public have a low opinion of politics and politicians. Paddy Ashdown used to say it was antipathy not apathy, and he had a point, although I would say it is both.
I would argue that everyone is a politician. Those who argue that they are not interested, or that they hate politics are in fact making a political statement, whether they like it or not. Not only that, in everyday life we have an attitude towards people depending on age, gender or ethnicity, and whether is varies between these groups or not is a political decision we all make. We cannot not be politicians.
However what we have to do is distinguish between politics and Politics. Politics in this case is the formal process of putting ideas into action through government.
So most people are detached from Politics. Many don't vote in elections, and those who do often have a vague impression about what they are voting for.
And so the argument goes we cannot simply present a list of policies and expect people to vote for us. Something else is needed.
I remember in the 1980s that David Marquand used to make the point, and no doubt many others as well, that we have to present what the party "stands for". To many people at the time the Liberal Democrats were a "nothing party", and in contrast Mrs Thatcher was very clever in encapsulating her politics at the time with some simple rhetoric from which people could understand what she intended to do. We had to do likewise.
"New Labour" got hold of this thinking in a very high profile way in a process called "spin". Spin had been around for a long time of course, but with the emergence of New Labour it quickly become the story in itself. This was actually a sign that the spin was counter productive. New Labour's "spin doctors" became household names, and stories about them were routinely negative.
The lessons have been learnt from that and hardly anyone knows who David Cameron's spin doctors are.
Spin is not necessarily a bad thing. Spin can have integrity, it really depends on the values of those who are responsible for it. Spin can be misleading, or it can correct common misconceptions. The definition of spin is "A distinctive point of view, emphasis, or interpretation". There is nothing in the definition that says that the interpretation is unfair. It can be of course, it depends on how it is being used.
However the word spin doesn't spin very well, and the new word on the block is "narrative".
Narrative does not equal spin. Narrative is more about stories. I would say that narrative is a subset of spin. I think that Liberal Democrats should consider spin in it's entirity, and that will include narrative.
I went to an Islington Lib Dem discussion on this recently with their invited speaker Neil Stockley (see http://neilstockley.blogspot.com/). He pointed out that Barak Obama has a good narrative, a tough upbringing, made good from humble beginnings. However you need to be careful. Every detail will be checked, and if anything is inaccurate, or at least can be spun as "a pack of lies", it will be.
That is where John Kerry lost out of course.
Ming Campbell potentially had a very good narrative, just as compelling as that of Barak Obama. The Lib Dems did try to project it, but somehow it didn't work. The message did not get out very well, and there was an incongruence between the exciting narrative, and Ming's unfortunate lack of charisma.
To date Nick Clegg's current situation is the opposite. He has charisma, but not much of a narrative. There is some scope for an interesting personal narrative, but I think we also need a narrative for the party as a whole. I liked Chris Huhne's narrative of the Lib Dem's being in opposition to the "conservative parties". Nick Clegg referred to them more apolitcally as "Tweedledum and Tweedledee".
The problem for the Lib Dems is that we need to make a compelling case to vote for a party that is currently third. We failed to do that in the recent London Mayoral elections. We had a good candidate, but not one who was going to beat Ken or Boris. And since beating Ken or Boris was the most important consideration, the Lib Dems got squeezed.
The last election was different because of our opposition to the war in Iraq. We had an opportunity to be distinctive again by opposing replacing Trident, but the party establishment was stuck in the politics of the 1980s and could not countenance such a policy position. It didn't do the SNP any harm however.
The mood of the electorate today is that they want to defeat Labour. The Lib Dems need to urgently find a good reason why they should vote for us instead of voting for the party who is more likely to defeat them.

Time is running out on the LIb Dem narrative

2008-05-04T21:30:00.002+01:00

Although it is good to see once again the Lib Dems building on the number of councillors they have after the recent local elections, it is painful to see the Tories being the main beneficeries of Labour's nadir. Particulary on the issue of the 10% tax issue that affects the poor.
Labour is losing the image of the party of equality, but the Lib Dems do not have that association fixed in the voters mind either.
This was not so much the case when the party advocated a 50% tax rate on high income earners. We were reassured when this policy was dropped that the new Green taxes would in fact tax the rich even more. However we knew this would be a hard sell for the next general election.
The problem is that currently the electorate do not associate the Liberal Democrats with very much in the first place. The issue of Iraq has not really gone away, but in the minds of the electorate it has.
I believe the Liberal Democrats can be stronger on issues such as equality. We should have clear policies that tax the rich more in order to improve public services. The new narrative that replaced the old one is not working.

My book of the year

2007-12-27T23:01:00.000Z

Is Black Mass by John Gray.
For a long time I wondered whether John Gray is a Liberal or not. At the last general election he voted Liberal Democrat, but his views do not fit in easily into the political spectrum and I am not clear at all about how he will vote next time.
His independence from party political allegience gives him the interlectual freedom to go where he likes. For a long time I thought he may be a Conservative, in the past he really was one. Yet his critique of neo-liberalism - which he puts in the same camp of Naziism and Communism is a devestating one and it is hard to imagine he will be conservative again. However what I had in mind was a pre-Thatcherite Conservative attachment to sceptisim, which is something you can still ascribe to him.
Well there is a lot of ifs and buts, but in the end, I will judge from his own admiration of Isiah Berlin and JM Keynes, and my own political bias and call him a Liberal.
Black Mass reveals so much what is missing from contemporary political debate. On foreign policy no one is debating the decline of US and EU power, and the increase in power of China and Russia. It is assumed that the Liberal agenda can still be realised by the Eu and US working together, but even the US is rejecting Liberal values, notably over the use of detention without trial and torture. China and Russia do not believe in Liberal values to begin with of course.
That in itself is only a very small part of the arguments that spring to mind when reading this book.

Girlpower; The pseudo-feminism that ends at 30...

2007-12-22T10:33:00.000Z

... and only then if you are good looking.

It was a welcome change listening to Today this morning to Germaine Greer being interviewed. The problem with Germaine Greer is that she often becomes the story herself, but in this case it was her opinions that I want to consider.
There are plenty of women who are enthusiatic about the "girlpower" of the Spice girls which surfaced many years ago. The way in which this "power" works is that if you dress in a sexy way, you can get men to do what you like. Well maybe if you are good looking anyway. And maybe you have to spend lots of money on clothes and make up, generating nice big profits for the companies that make these things. Girlpower comes at a cost. And if you are not sure you are good looking, then you may instead become anorexic and die. A rather different kind of girl power I would suggest.
Then of course what do you do as you get older? Girlpower, if it ever helped you before is no longer on your side. The senior jobs are occupied more by men, and at the top almost entirely by men.
Germaine Greer lamented the passing of socialism. In the past, feminists hoped that socialism would put the exploitation and inequality of women to an end.
The question now is how to acheive greater equality in a capatalist system. The problem is that capitalism has a dynamic of it's own that is hard to tame. Even Mrs Thatcher was on the receiving end of her own policies that supported capitalism. She wanted a return to "Victorian Values" - and she admired the Conservative Christain pro-censorship lobby personified by Mary Whitehouse. In fact Mary Whitehouse was mounted a rearguard campaign not only against the BBC but also against the forces of capitalism. In this endeavor she totally failed, the corporate world was more interested in profits than "morals" and has largely got it's way.
Liberals will no doubt raise a cheer for this, we never liked "Victorian Values". However the porn industry is not on balance a feature of a Liberal society to get proud about.
From my point of view, pornography that shows men and women enjoying having sex with each other is fine. More often it shows a more mechanical kind of sex, people who do not care about each other, often being exploited and coerced, and depicting rape scenes. A lot of porn today comes from the Third World, where women can be exploited.
Just as there is an anxiety about men who fantasise about having sex with children, then likewise the same applies to rape. If pornography makes these fantasies more vivid, then the concern should be greater still.
Yet pornography is so popular it is entering the mainstream of our culture. More comodification, plastic surgery and unrealistic depictions of women.
What can be done about it is hard to specifiy. In my opinion the values of untamed capitalism do not match the values of a liberal society, and sometimes they are very illiberal. Many liberals today are reluctant to agree to this, but a clear cut example would be that Liberals cannot support the racism of the fashion industry where Noami Campbell notwithstanding, very few models are black.
As Germaine Greer pointed out, she is getting on a bit now. She is still the feminist of choice as far as the media is concerned, I wonder who will be next?

Nick Clegg and the Liberal Left

2007-12-17T09:29:00.001Z

One of the hard lessons of leadership contests is that you get nothing for coming second, even a very close second in the case of Chris Huhne, the candidate I voted for. I remember the same feeling when Charles Kennedy beat Simon Hughes in a previous contest, but at least I knew Simon would stand again (unfortunately I did not know he would cock it up, but that is another story).
Even so, Chris Huhne has won some notable victories. Nick Clegg has clarified that he does not support US education vouchers for school allocations. By coming a close second, Nick knows that Chris will have to be an integral part of the Liberal Democrats for many years to come.
Of course it may well be the case that the course Nick intended has not changed anyway. As in the previous leadership elections, the Liberal Left vote was split. Those closely associated with Simon Hughes in his last leadership election bid are the ones I would identify as Left Liberals, although many, including Simon, would not use that description. Some of these MPs are so studied in collective responsibility it may well be that they are no longer on the Left anyway.
It was with mixed feelings that I noted that most of Simon's MP supporters backed Nick Clegg. On the one hand, they may have handed him victory, given the closeness of the contest. On the other hand, Nick may have made committments to them on issues to do with public services that reassured them that "Top down privatisation" is not on the agenda.
I think there will at least be a change in the rhetoric which will not be welcome. Ming Campbell and Chris Huhne accused Labour and Conservative parties of being "The conservative parties". Nick Clegg accused them in a more apolitical sense of being "Tweedledum and Tweedledee".
Comments like these say a lot about the politcal instincts of the leadership candidates. Clegg's position betrays a fear of the Lib Dems being perceived as on the left of Labour, but if on the other hand we are position ourselves as a centre party, how does such a party put across what it stands for in the middle of "Tweedledum and Tweedledee"?
So the concern is will the party make enough sense to the electorate that we can persuade people to vote for it?
Nick Clegg will hopefully come up with some answers to that over the next few months.

New Labour can't face the truth; UK defeated in Basra.

2007-12-17T09:29:00.000Z

It is right that British troops are leaving Basra. Indeed they should leave Iraq altogther.
But New Labour will not admit to the real reason as to why they have to leave; that the UK has been defeated.
It is because they dare not loose face, the defence minister got what he deserved on the Today program this morning. John Humphries has been to Iraq himself and seen how terrible it is out there; no one is going to pull the wool over his eyes. Unfortunately for defence minister Bob Ainsworth, the Today program allocated a full length timeslot for this interview, so there was nowhere to hide. John Humphries put it to Bob Ainsworth that terrible though Saddam Hussein was, life for the average woman in Basra was better than it is now. This is patently the case, but if the minister were to simply admit to something that is common sense, his position would become untenable as a minister. So he uncomfortably alternated between proclaiming how wonderful it is that Saddam Hussain is gone, but things are not perfect, how the army and police are ready to take over, although their police chief claims the direct opposite (a circle he could not square, no matter how hard he tried). It was a long painful interview, most unconvincing.
Only when Bob Ainsworth admitted that the British presence was becoming a problem did he hint at the truth. If I was interviewing him, I would have said "Oh yes? And how long has the British troop presence been more of a problem than a solution?". No doubt he would have waffled on, but the answer would be obvious; long before today. Another question could have been "So if you admit that the British troop presence has become more of a problem than a solution, then that must prove that we have been defeated in Iraq, and then the comments from the police chief about how desperate the situation is for him makes sense; you left because you had no choice, whether the Iraqis were ready or not".
No doubt when Basra descends further into chaos, there will be those who would say our troops should have stayed longer.
I claim the opposite. I would claim it shows that our troops were wasting their time. They gave the insurgents the opportunity to practice their craft. What better training could they possibly have?
Our troops should have left years ago. In fact they shouldn't have gone in in the first place.

I am not anti-American but...

2007-12-07T09:39:00.005Z

... but I do not like the term anti-American.
To be "anti-American" sounds like a form of racism. To those who use the term, it suits their agenda very well. How wonderful it is to have a term that conflates criticism of the US government with an insinuation that to do so is racist.
The irony is that the US government uses the term as a justification for them to be anti-everyone else. No one seemed to make a fuss about the US being "anti-French" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Yet with the benefit of hindsight we can now see that the US would have benefitted greatly if they had listened to the French in the first place and not invaded Iraq.
This morning on the Today program I heard it reported that a US government scientist predicted that the US will not reduce emisions of greenhouse gasses for the forseeable future. The US is currently scuppering international agreement on reducing greenhouse gasses. We know that the US president, George W Bush is a fundamentalist Christian who believes in the apocalypse and from his point of view in this context the matter of global warming is irrelevant.
With no leadership from the world's biggest polluter, the consequences of US policy are likely to be disasterous. On top of that, his foreign policy has also been a monumental disaster, bringing us closer to World War 3. Failure in Iraq was predictable, and his plans for Iran - possibly now on hold for an election year - are also very alarming. In addition, the sweeping away of civil liberties so that prisoners can be held for the duration of the "war on terror", ie forever, in Guantano, and where "terrorist" suspects are sent to other countries to be tortured, we see that the US is moving in the direction of a totalitarian state. I choose my words carefully, I am not saying it is a totalitarian state, it has a long way to go before it gets there, and may change direction in the meantime. But the signs are onimous all the same.
Anti-American?
Well I still admire Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Al Gore, Joseph Stiglitz and many others. And my distaste for Mrs Thatcher does not make me anti-British.
"Anti American" is a propaganda term, and we should stop using it, and dispute the term when others do use it.

The public sector is getting desperate...

2007-12-07T09:39:00.004Z

I am truly amazed that the government is giving the police effectively a pay cut, taking inflation into account. A profession that currently cannot go on strike.
I have a lot of sympathy for public sector workers. Particularly those who are employed to save people's lives, sometimes by putting their own lives at risk. The police, the armed services, the fire fighters, ambulance men, social workers, probation officers, nurses immediately spring to mind. Another profession I admire include the teachers, how they can put up with the abuse they get from children I will never be able to work out.
If any of these people get a pay cut, the message being sent out is that the work you are doing is not being valued; you are doing a bad job.
The problem is of course the concern that increasing public spending increases inflation. Everyone seems to be agreed on that, and if true public sector employees will never be properly rewarded for what they do.
Yet as far as the police is concerned, the saving in not backdating is only £40million. In terms of the overall national budget, a tiny amount. How can the government be so mean?
I guess the argument is that it all adds up. The squeeze on public sector pay will be across the board. If you make exceptions, like the police for example, then it won't work.
Personally I still think it is not persuasive. I listened to many silly interviews recently. On the issue of pay for the police, the government minister kept referring to what the police originally asked for, rather than what they agreed from the pay review board. I do not like interviewers interrupting, but there was certainly one needed here.
This morning I listened to a minister justifying a cut in the physics research budget of £80million by ignoring that it was happening altogether. I have some sympathy if it is true that over the years the funding had increased a lot - Today will not report on that when it happens - but all the same, how are research institutions supposed to plan ahead when the funding is so erratic?
Then I heard a senior member of the armed forces lamenting the underfunding of the military. Apparently inflation in the armed services is a whopping 7 - 8%, and of course we are overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As far as the military is concerned - for God's sake lets scrap Trident and not replace it. How on earth are we going to fund the military properly if inflation is 7%?
I dread to think about the future of the public sector. In the past when there was a funding crises, the Lib Dems said they would increase taxes. My instincts are to suggest the same again, but that would be a difficult sell at a time when so many people are in debt. We could tax the rich more - and the Lib Dem Green Tax Switch is designed to do that, but Lib Dem policy is also to tax the poor less so that the overall budget is tax neutral.
So we are looking at public sector cuts. Some cuts are worth it, such as abolishing compulsary ID cards, but I am not persuaded there are enough savings to reallocate resources to where we want them. Once the soft targets are gone, the prospects are of the kind of painful cuts in public sector pay we are now seeing.

Nativity plays - the strangest debate of all?

2007-12-07T09:39:00.003Z

I have a shocking revelation to make; when I was at school I did not do a nativity play.
Where is this evil school you may ask. Well perhaps I better not reveal too much, but I went to a dubious primary school in rural Essex, followed by a former grammer school not too far from sinful Southend. About 30 years ago.
Thats right 30 years ago. And no one was making a fuss about it then.
Why not? Well I guess as far as the general public was concerned, we did not have the paranoa that many have to today about the rise of militant Islam. And as far as the teachers were concerned, I would guess that they simply weren't that bothered.
If I am right about teachers not being that bothered back then, then it makes sense that they are even less bothered today. As our society has become more secular, that makes sense.
But why consider a reasonable explanation when you have a political/religious agenda to satisfy?
So we have a bazarre debate on this matter today. This morning on the Today program, Trevor Phillips spoke perfect common sense to reassure everyone that the vast majority of ethnic minority people are perfectly happy for Christians to celebrate Christmas and hold nativity plays and have no desire to stop this from happening - indeed many are Christians themselves and are fully involved in it.
What is bazarre is that no one is speaking against him and putting the other side of the argument. Maybe because there is no one?
I cannot think of anyone. So how on earth did this debate ever get started when there is only one side of the argument being put?
I once heard on the radio some extracts of the nativity plays, and they were very entertaining. There are moments when 8 year olds begin there acting endeavors where the results are lets say extraordinary. It left me thinking that nativity plays are harmless fun. I would be surprised if they have much bearing on whether those children will grow into Christians. And it is not exactly one of the 10 commandments that we should have to do this.
I know Christians like to hype up Christmas, although the momentum in do so has been taken over by commercial intersts. Personally I do not find the Christmas story particularly significant. For some Christians it is important because being a Christian is an exercise in believing the literal truth of the Bible. It matters to them that there were 3 wise men, and the rest of the assembled cast. For me I ask the question; how does believing this make you any more of a moral being than you would be otherwise? The answer would appear to be that it makes no difference at all.
On the other hand, the sermon on the Mount really is one of the main highlights in the Bible. The compassion is striking, and the poetry of the words are beautiful. Whether you are a literal Christian, a metaphorical Christian, or like me not a Christian at all, this is one part of the Bible that does deserve attention. Maybe there are extracts from the other holy books that also deserve more attention?

Capitalism's anti-democratic credentials

2007-12-07T09:39:00.002Z

The famous book by Francis Fukuyama; "The end of history" argued that liberal democracy had "won", communism was defeated, political conflict will die down and everywhere will eventually turn to the US model of government, with relatively minor differences.
Since then many have assumed that a globalised capitalist economy will bring democracy everywhere.
Yet we saw the shambles of the Russian elections recently, and now we see in the African - European summit in Portugal, that African nations are pronouncing that Europe is losing it's influence. African nations prefer to trade with China who do not make demands on human rights.
Russia and China provide an alternative model of economic development. Historically we saw how Pinochet combined an authoritarian state with capitalism, and after many years that succumbed to democracy. Mrs Thatcher also combined capitalism with an authoritarian state. She did not do away with democracy altogther, but she did undemine it.
Today Russia and China prove that you can have an authoritarian state and capitalism. Instead of capitalism bringing democracy, the signs from Africa are that that they are also being influenced by the Chinese way of thinking.
To be fair, the Chinese economy is due for a crash, having grown unsustainably for so long. However the same is true in Europe and the US too, for different reasons and where there has been less growth.
It is not in my nature as a liberal to want to see economic turmoil. But there is much to fear of the consequences if the Chinese model continues to succeed. If Africa is thinking of turning away from democracy and human rights, what about the rest of the world?

Politcal Parties must be state funded

2007-12-07T09:39:00.001Z

It is the policy of the Liberal Democrats to support the state funding of political parties. Although the party hierarchy is rather coy in saying so. Within the Liberal Democrats there is a lot of opposition to this policy.
But lets look at the options.
Even after passing some rather draconian and much welcome laws, there is still a culture of corruption in Labour. Whoever the new general secretary of the Labour party is will have to put that right. But this puts Labour in a spot; can they really compete with the Tories in their financing, and how would they feel about being more dependent on the unions than ever?
There is less pressure on the Tories. They are even more dependent on wealthy individuals and company donations, but as long as they keep to the law, they are sitting pretty. However they are still vulnerable to charges that doners can but influence.
For the Liberal Democrats the situation is clear. The bias in the system is so bad, particularly against us, we MUST change it.
The status quo is a shambles, and needs reform.
The popular solution as far as the electorate is concerned is to limit large donations, make parties reliant on membership funding.
I see this as a partial solution. It is good that parties are funded by members. But there are 2 problems.
First is that this puts in a bias in favour of the Tories. Their members are richer and will pay more. The beauty about democracy is that everyone's vote is equal, whether you are a millionaire or a cleaner. But when it comes to funding - and possible influence on the political parties, then the millionaire has the greater say.
Second is that the money coming in will not be enough. The Liberal Democrats are currently locked in a vicious circle. If you phone membership, you cannot get through. You can leave a message, but when you get a reply your phone is switched off because you are at work ... it is all very inefficient and the outcome is fewer members. Fewer members means less income. Less income means underfunded membership services.
On a related issue Operation Black Vote (OBV) claims that the Lib Dems are doing the least of all the political parties on attracting black members. When they say it, the implication is that the Lib Dems don't care. Absurd when you consider that our policies have been consistantly the best of all on race relations. The reality is that we cannot match what the Tories are doing as we do not have the resources that they do.
Funding political parties is not about funding gimmicky electioneering - although some money gets spent in that direction. For political parties to connect to the electorate they need the resources to do it.
Those who want membership funding only will see the demise of the political parties as serious organisations.
Many people would appear to want that, but they do not appear to be thinking about the alternatives to democracy; dictatorship or anarchy. You can have that now if you vote for it, but no one does, so is the demise of political parties really such a good idea?
I am aware of the objections;
1/ Why reward parties after they have behaved so disgracefully?
Well if you think they have behaved disgracefully, don't vote for them. That will hurt them. Funding political parties properly in relation to their popularity will still leave them in competition with the other parties. The reward in politics comes from being elected into office, and state funding makes that process fairer.
2/ I do not want my taxes being spent on the BNP.
From a Liberal perspective we would prefer the BNP not to exist. The reason they do exist is because people vote for them. In a democracy you have to be fair. If the BNP go too far and break the law by inciting hatred, then they will be banned. The essence of democracy is that parties give you a choice, some of which you would veehmently disagree with.
On current levels of support, most of the funding will go to parties opposed to the BNP, so the BNP will not benefit from this.
3/ In fact I do not want my taxes spent on anyone.
Well do you want a democracy? If not, why not vote for anarchy or dictatorship? It is true that independents do not get funded, but they could start a political party as well. The problem with independents is that they can believe in anything regardless of the contradictions, and in an election campaign it is hard to scrutenise them properly.

Anyway, what do you think?

Bush off the hook over Iran

2007-12-04T09:42:00.000Z

It is true that George Bush looks rather silly at the moment over Iran. Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president had calculated that he could go ahead with his nuclear power program, and the US would not dare to stop him. For the next 12 months at least, his gamble has paid off.
Originally when the US invaded Iraq, they imagined that Iraq would become a prosperous liberal democracy, and then they could march on to Syria and Iran. Iran was the more important target, since it produces more oil.
Since the US bit off more than it could chew in Iraq, an invasion of either country looks absurd. The next best option as far as the hawks were concerned appeared to be to bomb Iran into submission.
But how would that work? Ahmedinejad does not seem to be persuaded that it can acheive anything, and by doing what the US does not want, his prestige in the region has grown.
Well next year is election year in the US, and it is hard to believe that Bush would really want to do anything silly in Iran, undermining the Republican candidates for president in doing so.
Historically when the intelligence services did not deliver what Bush wanted to hear about Iraq, he specifically undermined the intelligence services by creating his own intelligence service, the Office for Speical Plans (OSP) that reported what he wanted to hear, unlike the CIA. The OSP became the cheif source for claims about Iraq's WMD.
Now all of a sudden, the CIA is "trusted" again, and even Dick Cheney is falling into line.
Logically you would have thought everyone would be delighted, Iran is not on the verge of becoming a nulcear power. But there are still some hawks who are screaming, and do not trust the CIA. They still want to attack Iran, regardless of whether they intend to obtain nuclear weapons are not.
I think they will have to wait until they get a new president, 2008 is not going to be their year. 2009 could be a different matter entirely.
So does Iran want nuclear weapons? I suspect every country in the region wants them. Partly for their own security concerns, and partly for the prestige of having them. In the case of the UK, with no security threat, we have nuclear weapons purely for the prestige of having them. Already Isreal, Pakistan, India and China have nuclear weapons, and are potential threats to Iran. And the US is a clear and obvious threat as well. The US would not have behaved in the way it has done had Iran had nuclear weapons, as we see in North Korea.
So we do need to consider how to stop more states in the region from getting nuclear weapons, in case they fall into the wrong hands.
How do we do that? Answers on a postcard please!

Charles Kennedy speaks at our AGM

2007-11-26T09:47:00.000Z

As secretary of Hackney Lib Dems, I have to organise the AGM. In fact I organise a lot of what we do in Hackney.
Last year I started too late, so this year I am determined not to repeat the error.
I wanted a speaker who would get a lot of our members to come along. I wanted a venue that could hold a lot of people. And it all came together. Charles Kennedy agreed to come. And thanks to Meral, we secured the Alevi Centre, a superb venue for our event.
As organiser I did feel anxious, but it was a great success. Charles was delayed by a vote in the commons, but Brian got things started, and when Charles did arrive he gave an excellent speech.
I asked him to speak on civil liberties, and he particularly emphasised the shocking statistics on Stop and Search, and how ethnic and religious minorities are unfairly targetted by the police.
This is the second big event I organised this year. Earlier I invited Chris Huhne over for our garden party, and now I have to think about next year ...
I have some ideas, I hope they come off.

US power is in decline - but where does that leave liberalism?

2007-11-12T20:22:00.002Z

Prior to the war in Iraq, there were many happy outcomes expected by the US administration from the war.
A democratic Iraq would be grateful to the US and would elect a friendly government. Isreal would be safer. Iraq's prosperity from it's considerable oil reserves would refund the US for the war, and would help bring prosperity to the country. In fact oil would be cheaper, and the world less dependent on Saudi Arabia, an unreliable ally after the 911 bombings by Saudi terrorists. Surronding countries would start to notice that liberal democracy brings stability and prosperity. Public opinion in the Middle East would shift. Most of those who previously admired Osama Bin Ladan would give up on that, and idolise George Bush instead.
Liberals who opposed the war, and who banged on about international law would look pathetic. Who cares about the lies about WMD? The people of Iraq would be free.
Instead the nature of the defeat has even taken liberals by surprise. At various times there appear to be moments of victory. The initial invasion was swift. Saddam's henchmen get caught or killed, including his sons. People voted in democratic elections. Saddam Hussein gets caught. Then he is executed. And now the surge is "working".
Yet these are all false dawns.
The national government can barely hold together. It doesn't have much power anyway. The police and the army are infiltrated. The Kurdish region is a de facto independent state, and may draw Turkey into a bloody conflict. Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia are exploiting the opportunities to spread their influence (Iran being the big winner of course). Even if the fortunes of Al Qaeda are up and down, the religious extremists and criminal gangs are terrorising the population, many of whom are leaving as refugees.
Iraq today must be one of the worst countries in the world to live.
All this has little to do with international law. It was striking at the Lib Dem conference that even Paddy Ashdown was arguing that in Liberal interventions, the first thing you do not do is introduce democracy. In a democracy in a divided country, the people vote for the extremes in order to get the best deal in any settlement.
In the case of Iraq, it was the Sunnis who previously had control under Saddam Hussein. As a minority, they stood to lose everything within a democracy. Majority rule is unacceptable to them, and they will fight the Shia to the bitter end.
The battle is not as unequal as it may seem. Under Saddam Hussein, the army was run by the Sunnis, and they know about military tactics. This makes them superior as a fighting force, despite the bravery of the Mehdi army.
Democracy more often divides rather than unites.
This has been noticed of course.
The EU is not such a wonderful club to join anymore. Previously it looked like an opportunity to become prosperous. Instead the anxiety is that the new countries will level down the prosperity of the EU, and introduce ethnic and religious minorities that do not "fit in". East Europe and the Islamic world are starting to take offence. Maybe they are not so keen to join.
The new emerging powers in the world sho no sign of adopting liberal values, notably Russia and China.
Some of us may want to rely on the US for upholding Liberal values. But as John Gray has pointed out, the paradox of their Liberal Imperialism in Iraq has acheived the opposite.
--
The (US) administration continues to insist that the president must be free to determine what counts as torture. Vice president Dick Cheney, asked on a radio program whether he was in favour of a "dunk in the water" for terrorist detainees replied that he was, declaring that the question was a "no brainer for me". Techniques of "water-boarding" - a form of torture used by the Kymer Rouge in Cambodia, and whose use against Americans in the second world war resulted in a Japanese officer being sentenced to fifteen years hard labour - are not prohibited and can be practised routinely by the US. The same is true for sleep deprivation, a method of torture used in Guantanamo that was employed by the NKVD in Stalinist Soviet Union to generate "confessions" in the show trials of the 1930s. Torture techniques involving sensory deprivation which were used by the Chinese on American POWs in the Korean war have also been used on Jose Padilla, an American citizen arrested as an enermy combatant and arrested without charge on a naval brig in South Carolina from mid 2002 until January 2006. By any internationally accepted standard of what constitutes torture, the world's pre-eminant liberal regime has committed itself to the practice as a matter of national policy. Along with this there has been a shift away from the consitutional traditions that curbed American government in the past. The vote by the Senate on 28th September 2006 that allowed the president the authority to determine what counts as torture also suspended habeas corpus for people detained as terrorist suspects, denying them their right to know the offense with which they have been charged and to challenge their detention in court. Henceforth anyone charged with involvement in terrorism - not only foreign nationals but US citizens - can be detained without charge and held indefinitely. In effect this put the executive above the law while placing citizenry outside it. Taken together with the Patriot Acts, which permit surveillence of the entire American population, the US has suffered a loss of freedom that has no parallel in any mature democracy.
--
Democracy is far from defeated of course. The US, western Europe, Australia remain prosperous, and India is marching ahead. Even in Africa, democratic regimes appear to be more prosperous for now.
The US budget deficit is funded largely by the Chinese, who is a strong ally of Iran who feels they can resist the US come what may. US oil comes largely from Venezuala, the profits of which undermine US foreign policy in South America.
Some will see the decline of US power as a good thing. That the US had so much power pre-Iraq war, much of it illusionary as we now know was not a good thing in itself, but neither is the emergence of China and Russia, who do not even pretend to believe in the same values. And their is little sign that the EU is growing in influence.
One major flashpoint for the future is Taiwain. China is in all liklelihood calculating when to invade. No need to rush, events are taking their course. The US is still very powerful in having a very powerful military with no equal in the world. No much use was it in Iraq, but still a concern for China no doubt.
So we simply do not know when the confrontation will take place, or what the consequences will be. I suspect this will be a defining moment in world history, when it arrives.

US power is in decline - but where does that leave liberalism?

2007-11-12T20:22:00.001Z

Why no debate about the leadership candidates cars?

2007-11-12T20:22:00.000Z

Funny isn't it how during the last leadership election, the media made a big thing about the candidates cars.
But this time ... nothing!
No doubt Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg have appropriate cars this time, so nothing to write about.
Last time it was Ming who was caught out. The Liberal Democrats consider global warming the most important issue of all, so how can Ming drive a Jag?
Well the logic took over, and he got rid of it ... carefully.
But it is worth considering how this impacts on another Lib Dem theme, one pushed by the very powerful Centre Forum. What about aspiration?
If you are amitious and successful, then of course you want a Jag - assuming you fit the stereotype.
So where does selling your Jag fit in to aspiration?
All this talk of aspiration leaves behind others who also contribute to society.
Carers of the disabled can do a valuble job, and maybe do it for the love of it. But when politicians talk of aspiration, where to they fit in?
I believe that those who are public spirited, and often working in the public services are natural liberals. They may not want a flash car or the latest designer clothes. But ofthen they contribute more to society than those who do.
Now that the scope for enrichez-vous is diminishing as we have to learn to live within the environmental limits of the planet, and as the global balance of power shifts from west to east, we need to think carefully about how liberalism is going to appeal in our changing society.

A question of terrorism

2007-11-03T21:42:00.003Z

It is not a pleasent experience, but it is useful to find out what the other side think. So sometimes I read the Sun. And sometimes I visit the Fox News website and listen to Bill O'Reilly.
For a while Bill O'Reilly has been (sadly) getting the better of Liberals by asking them; "Do you want us to win in Iraq?"
It seems like a yes or no answer. Say yes, and you support George Bush. Say no, and you want US troops to get killed and defeated.
The correct answer of course, is whether you like it or not, the US is already defeated in Iraq, and should pull out and stop wasting the lives of their troops.
And now there is a film with Meryl Streep, and the question "Do you want us to win the war against terrorism?" is described as "quintessential" and "unanswerable". I am sure Bill O'Reilly is loving this, as it is his question.
But predictably in his latest broadcast he decides to sound angry - he is good at that. What he argues is common sense as far as it goes. "If you do not want us to win the war against terrorism, you are a Moron".
In one sense he is right. If we can do away with terrorism, life would be so much better. The point however is that the question misses the point. The "war against terrorism", like the "war against drugs" cannot be won. There is no endpoint to this war, whether we like it or not.
We can do things to lessen it. We can invest more in police work, we can improve relations with those communities that mights otherwise habour terrorists, support the moderates to marginalise the extremists. Or we can aggravate it, clamp down on civil liberties, persue an aggressive foreign policy.
The myth that "evil can be destroyed" is an attempt to create Utopia. Evil has always existed, it is Utopian to imagine that it can ever be destroyed. An attempt to "Destroy Evil" was made in Iraq, and all it did was create even more evil than existed before, remarkably.
So why the difficulty in answering the question? Partly it is the penchant for Bill O'Reilly to target the weakest Liberals, often celebrities, or the tiny number of people who make up the far left, like Rosie O'Donnell.
And partly I think because the US has a culture of optimism. You cannot say that something cannot be done, that something is insoluble.
Such optimism is disasterous. The US invaded Iraq, and no siginificant US politician would dare say that regardless of international law, you simply cannot get away with doing this, it cannot be done.
Optimism or pessimism in themselves are neither good or bad. They are appropriate when connected to realism, to be realistic is more important than anything else.
And currently the US political establishment could do with some more pessimism before they bomb Iran.

Will the US attack Iran?

2007-11-03T21:42:00.002Z

Well the economic sanctions are now in place.
But what next?
It amazes me that the US Republicans are a party that knows what it wants, but not in Iran. The US administration is now caught. I suspect the dithering about whether to attack Iran is because they are having difficulty in working out how they can get a good outcome from doing this.
And yet if they sensibly calculate that nothing good can come from this, then how can they justify the way they encouraged public opinion to expect an attack in the first place?
Surely "chickening out" is what the Democrats do?
So in making a choice, they are dammed either way. But for how long can they go on without making a choice?
We still have a year of Bush rule, is he going to dither for that long? And what will they say about it on the campaign trail?
And what is Labour going to say? They supported the Isreali invasion of Lebonan, but things have changed since then. Will they support bombing Iran, or do they agree with Jack Straw that bombing Iran is "Nuts"?
Jack Staw lost his job soon after he said that of course.

The Liberal Democrats and the Greens

2007-11-03T21:42:00.001Z

The Lib Dems say that the Greens are Marxists. The Greens say that the Lib Dems are neo-Liberals.
Both are mostly wrong, but have an element of truth all the same. The Lib Dems need to sharpen up their critique of capitalism, even though fundamentally we are a capitalist party and rightly so. As Chris Huhne points out, the private sector is often seriously deficient in running the public services. We need to be clear about that, and we also object to the absurd distortions in wealth allocation and the damaging impact of the “externalities” of businesses that damage the environment and exploit the consumer and the workforce.
Even Green Marxists have a point that the advertising industry encourages us to consume more than we otherwise would, but from a Green point of view we should (generally speaking) consume less.
That said, John Stuart Mill made a similar point when he wrote in favour of the “stationary state”.
There are some Marxists in the Green party. However they did NOT go into coalition with Respect, and culturally they do not fit in with that kind of Old Left politics. The truth is that many Greens are Liberals, and it is because of our electoral system that we have to be competitive with them. And we better watch out. Becuase no doubt it is tempting to dismiss them as Marxists (and imply they are the same kind of Marxists as Stalin and Lenin). But of Lib Dem supporters, 30% say their second preference is the Green party. If we attack the Green party vociferously along these lines, it may imply that we are ourselves not just anti-Green, but also anti-green.
Historically the Greens did take our vote away in the 1990 (I think) Euro-Elections, finishing with 15% to our 6%. This was at the time of the merger between the Liberals and the SDP.
Personally I was worried that with our opinion poll ratings drifting down to 11% history could repeat.
Now that we are about to replace our leader with someone more popular, and with our ratings already drifting up to 18%, I think there is less danger of that now.
However the Greens threaten us more than anyone else, and we need to handle them with care. Not just in national opinion polls, but we also need highly motivated activists to help in our community politics. We need their Liberals to join us.
It is a shame we are in competition with them, but until we have a fair voting system, then the Greens should really join with us.

Rememberance Day

2007-11-03T21:42:00.000Z

The political and religious establishment gather together for Rememberance day. It is tempting as a radical, seeing such dignatories to switch off, but it would be wrong to do so.
It is not really about them. I am personally lucky to live at a time and in a place where I have not had to even contemplate going to war.
Yet in WW2, there was no choice. And as history shows, Naziism had to be defeated, it was the most poisoness ideology ever witnessed.
So when I forget about the rather conservative nature of the event, I find myself in awe of what my previous generation managed to do.
And lets be clear, it is right that the political and religious establish take part in this. It would be intolerable if they did not. And it is right the event is conservative in nature. Conservative means reluctant to change. And this is an event that honour people who died many years ago, it should not change.
Also we remember those who died in other wars, and some more recent ones. I was opposed to the war in Iraq. But I do not blame our armed forces for that. I sympathise for the intolerable circumstances they were put in, brought about by the real villians; the politicians who sent them there.
And then of course there are wars that do not involve the British. We do not have a day to remember them. No doubt it is not practical to do this, but minimising the amount of war in the world does not seem to be a high enough priority for the kind of establishment politicians we will be seeing on Rememberance day.

Turkey, Iraq and the Kurds

2007-11-02T10:23:00.001Z

Historically Liberals have been sympathetic to the Kurds. They are a people without a nation, and how been oppressed by the governments of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have fought back, but the power of these states has always kept them at bay.
If you are denied constitutional protection as minority, and denied democratic rights, it seems reasonable that you have a right to fight back.
Recently there has been a breakthrough for the Kurds. Turkey wants to join the EU. Democracy and human rights have improved for the Kurds living in Turkey. Progress has been made.
Then the setback. Turkey is an ally of the US, but when the US invaded Iraq, Turkey was put in an impossible position. They do not want an independent Kurdish state in the region, because that may mean the Kurds in Turkey will want one too.
So relations with the US took a turn for the worse, and Turkish politicians once again stepped up the anti-Kurdish rhetoric.
Now of course Turkey is attacking the Kurdish part of Iraq and the PKK.
The PKK are a resistance organisation of the Kurdish people. In many parts of the world, including the UK, they are considered terrorists.
The PKK did not do well in the recent elections in Turkey, which could be taken as a good sign; that Kurds are moderating their views after the recent improvements they have experienced.
But the signs in Hackney (and maybe Turkey as well?) is that Kurds are rallying round the PKK again.
So how should Liberals propose intervening? Should we take sides as we have done in the past, or should we be impartial and try to aim for a political solution?
Tough call. I suspect there is a lot more to this than meets the eye, unfortunately...

Liberal Democrats at the crossroads

2007-10-21T14:57:00.000+01:00

The reputation of the Liberal Democrats has taking a battering recently. The demise of Charles Kennedy was painful to watch. However given that his colleagues were having to "cover up" for him over his alcohol addiction, I do not see that they had any alternative.
Then more recently we have seen the demise of Ming Campbell. There is no doubt that it is primarily the media who are to blame for his downfall, they are the ones that went on about his age. But the media want to shift responsibility, and are more interested in suggesting that it was the Parliamentary party who were to blame. As though every MP has to fall into line like a one party state. In fact the indiscretions of the Parliamentary Liberal Democrats were trivial affairs by comparison.
Oddly enough, I suspect Ming Campbell is probably more popular now than ever.
But we move on. I am optimistic that either candidate will be better at getting the message out to the electorate and will improve the fortunes of the party.
But there is still a choice to be made.
My ideal candidate is not standing.
She would be a good communicator (which was the real problem for Ming, the general public did not notice what he was saying).
She would be against replacing Trident.
In favour of a foreign policy that is more independent of the US.
She would be fully committed to improving pubic services.
She would appreciate that freedom is defined by more than the individual's relationship to the state, and that the externalities of markets can also be pernicious in how they effect the individual (global warming for example).
She would have a good understanding of non-economic values, such as education for education's sake, or for arts that can give people expression in life. A BBC that can take risks that private television companies will not take on.
She will encourage the many talented ethnic minority candidates to come through the party.
She will be very clear that global warming is the most important issue facing the world today.
She would want to demonstrate that she would improve the social fabric of society, the alienation of the poor and dispossesed is far worse in the UK as in many other European countries. Not only that, she will cooperate with the various communities to isolate the terrorist fringe, making sure good police work in intelligence locates the potential terrorists that threaten the way we live.
And of course, the leader doesn't have to be a woman, but it would be nice if she was.
Now none of the candidates believes in all of these things, but for now I think that Chris Huhne is the closest, he is smarter, a good communicator, and ideologically closer to the values I have outlined here.