Jamie K’s noticed something interesting…

Yesterday we noted that Clive Betts was the author of an EDM in support of McDonald’s campaign to McCleanse the OED of the word McJob. From the register of member’s interests:

BETTS, Clive

8-11 June 2006, to Germany as a member of the UK Parliamentary Football Club, to attend the World Cup and play football matches for charity. I received match ticket, hospitality and coach transport from McDonald’s.

Ronald can McFuckOff.

John Reid, speaking yesterday in the House of Commons on the subject of the three control order abscondees:

Let me put it simply. The European convention on human rights was intended to defend the individual from the unparalleled destructive capacity of the fascist state. That is what gave rise to it. People did not envisage at that time that the state and the community might now be under threat from the unparalleled destructive capacity of fascist individuals working in networks. That is what we face today. The arbitrary imposition of one’s will on another by destructive power is fascism, whether it emanates from Europe or any other area.

To say that Dr Demento is a fucking moron is to do an extreme disservice to adults with a genetically determined mental age of between 8 and 12 on the Binet scale - that’s the clinical definition of ‘moron’, by the way.

Before being cut off in full flow by the Speaker, Reid went to say:

We now face a historical development that requires all of us to build on the European convention on human rights, strengthen it and ensure that the most fundamental of all rights—the right to life and to protection of that life-without which no other right-

Never has an intervention from the Speaker’s Chair been more welcome, as it spared us yet more of the madman’s ahistorical nonsense.

In ‘Reason in Common Sense’ (vol. 1 1905-6) the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, made an oft-paraphrased - and misquoted - observation, the full text of which bears careful consideration:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

It’s a point entirely lost on Reid, and other members of the Blairite faction in the Labour Party who’ve gone anywhere near the Home Office is recent years, for whom novelty is everything and progress means a directionless hike from ‘who cares where we’ve been’ to ‘who the fuck knows where we’re going’, in the context if which which Reid’s statement to the House, yesterday, recalls another of Santayana’s observations from the same work:

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

Only such a fanatic could possibly think that a derogation from Article 5 of ECHR, which serves as a guarantor of most basic rights in criminal law - the presumption of innocence, right to trial by jury and habeas corpus - is necessary for the preservation of our basic rights and freedoms.

There were many different factors that came together to send Germany spiralling into fascism in the 1930s, not least of which were the combined effects of the brutally inequitable terms of the Treaty of Versaille and the Great Depression, which conspired to destroy the German economy and drive its citizens into penury.

But in political terms, the factor (and practice) that most captures the attention and carries with it the greatest portents of the horror that was, at that time, yet to come, was the deliberate and relentless scapegoating of Jews as the ‘enemy within’ - this passage from a 1936 manual for Nazi propangandist is typical of the anti-Semitic rhetoric of the era:

There are still Jewish lackeys today who attempt to disrupt our storm attack on the Jewish world rulers, trying to stop us or even cause us to fall. The following hints show how one can reply to these arguments by our opponents, or even turn their arguments against them.

Argument 1: “You say that religion is a private matter. But you fight against the Jewish religion!”

Counterargument: “Actually, the Jewish religion is nothing other than a doctrine to preserve the Jewish race.” (Adolf Hitler).

“In resisting all government attempts to nationalize them, the Jews build a state within the state (Count Helmuth von Moltke).

“To call this state a ‘religion’ was one of the cleverest tricks ever invented.” (Adolf Hitler).

“From this first lie that Jewry is a religion, not a race, further lies inevitably follow.” (Adolf Hitler).

If the history of the twentieth century should teach us anything at all, it is that the scapegoating of migrants and individuals of foreign descent as the enemy within, coupled with demands for arbitrary state authority to preserve the safety of the citizenry is one of the clearest and most obvious steps on the road to totalitarianism.

History, therefore, is clearly not Dr Demento’s strong suit.

Reid’s suggestion that those who drafted the European Convention on Human Rights did not anticipate ‘the unparalleled destructive capacity of fascist individuals working in networks’ is absurd - what were the Nazis prior to Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany if not ‘fascist individuals working in networks’.

ECHR provides no protection for individuals from the destructive capacity of the fascist state.

Why?

Well, simply (and obviously) because one of the first actions of a fascist party on attaining power in any European state currently signed up to ECHR would be to derogate from its terms and proscriptions - which is precisely what Reid is suggesting he may attempt to do in an effort to bully the judiciary into accepting his illiberal demands for arbitrary authority.

If the legislature is under the control of a totalitarian political party, what possible protection can citizens be afforded by laws that may be readily and swiftly repealed or overridden, especially in circumstances in which the ruling party has granted itself sweeping and arbitrary powers by means of a wide-ranging enabling act, which comes into effect should the government of the day declare a state of emergency. This was the means by which the Nazis took complete control of Germany in the 1930s and tore up its constitution, the same means that Reid has at his disposal by virtue of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 - see this briefing from ‘Statewatch’ on CCA 2004.

ECHR can do nothing to protect the individual from a totalitarian state once it holds the reins of power. Rather it seeks to protect the citizenry from just such a scenario after the fashion of a prophylactic.

In settings out the basic rights of the citizen, ECHR provides a measure of protection from the use (and abuse) of arbitrary power by government in two ways. First, by giving an independent judiciary the legal means to rein in government should it seek to abuse its authority and second by providing a set of benchmarks for the civilised conduct of government against which citizens can assess and evaluate the actions of their leaders. In a wholly literal sense, ECHR protects the individual from the threat of a fascist state by limiting the power and arbitrary authority of fascist individuals and by making them (in theory) relatively easy to identify and remove from office before they have the opportunity to do any real damage.

Reid’s arguments are infantile and ahistorical, and more than than deeply dangerous.

It is the duty of the state to preserve both the life and liberty of its citizens as Miguel De Cevantes Saavedra (yes, that Cervantes, the author of ‘Don Quixote’) observed:

Liberty, as well as honor, man ought to preserve at the hazard of his life, for without it life is insupportable.

Equally the British conservative Statesman and Philosopher, Edmund Burke, noted that:

“Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”

Burke is far from being a favourite author of mine, but in this he is entirely correct.

If either of the above is not warning enough, consider for moment the extent to which Blairite rhetoric on the subject of human rights, in recent times, has focussed heavily on promoting the idea that such rights may be considered in relative terms, i.e. both the suggestion that individuals might be accorded a differential level of rights according to their status as being either deserving or undeserving (the ‘rights’ of victims as opposed to those of offenders) and the equally pernicious suggestion that there exists, within the concept of human rights, a hierarchy under which certain rights are perceived to be ‘trump’ others by virtue of being of greater importance. This is evident, of course, in Reid’s attempt, yesterday, to launch into yet another exposition of the pre-eminence of the right to life.

Now consider how such rhetoric might relate to this quotation:

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

That statement was first published in 1932 in the Enciclopedia Italiana, and was officially attributed to Benito Mussolini (although its though likely that the actual author was the fascist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile).

Is it just me, or can others see the convergence between Reid’s rhetoric - and the government’s increasing (and voracious) appetite for greater arbitrary powers in the area of criminal justice and security - and the Mussolini/Gentile conception of the fascist state?

As to the last word on this article, let me crave your indulgence for a moment and turn to the document from which the rights that Reid is talking of curbing, should the courts not make their required set of ritual obesciences and formal kow-tows should Reid find himself before them in the (thankfully) limited time he remains in office, truly spring and bring this  quotation to your attention:

(39) No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.

(40) To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

That, dear friends, is Magna Carta -and to be a little precise, that is the section of Magna Carta upon which the right of habeas corpus - which is what Reid is seeking to curb - is founded.

And that, for those of you too stupid to think it through properly (i.e. the Daily HateMail and Richard ‘Littlecock’) or blinded by unnecessary fear and ignorance to consider fully the import of Reid’s comments, yesterday, is what we stand to lose should Dr Demento get his way.  Not an alien piece of legislation written on foreign shores - neither of which is true anyway, as ECHR was drafted, in the main, by British lawyers and championed by Sir Winston Churchill - by one of oldest, most cherished and most precious rights.

Mmm… how to choose the right emotion for the occasion?

Joy? No, too soon to say, the fight may not yet be over.

Satisfaction? Yes. The right thing has been done.

Shame? Always.

What am I talking about? This -

Islanders evicted for US base finally win right to return home 

Thousands of British citizens who were evicted from their paradise island home to make way for a giant US air base have won the right to return.

In a landmark legal judgment, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Chagos islanders could rebuild a life that they lost in the late 1960s.

Yesterday the islanders packed the court to witness their victory, and then called on the Government to pay for about 5,000 of them to return and rebuild the life that they lost 40 years ago.

The court overturned an order made by the Government in 2004 banning islanders from returning. Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian community in exile, said: “I feel very happy not just for myself but all the people who have been separated from their motherland.

“It is a special day for justice because even though we are a small people we have shown big people that we have rights.”

I’ve covered this story before - see How many people does it take before it becomes wrong?, Misleading the House and If you can tear yourself away -and my earlier comments stand as written.

The treatment meeted out to the Chagos Islanders by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under successive governments since the late 1960s is a matter of national shame and, as the Court of Appeal has rightly decided, should be rectified immediately and without any further delay.

Although the majority of the chatter surrounding the question of how Britain’s approach to its ’special relationship’ with the US may alter under Gordon Brown has centred, naturally, on questions of Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘War Against Terror’ there is much simpler, and honest, way in which Gordon can signal the necessary shift in emphasis in British foreign policy from slavishly adoring poodle to honest, supportive, but sometimes critical, friend.

He can do the right thing, instruct the Foreign Office to drop any plans to appeal this decision to the House of Lords and allow the Chagos Islanders to go home.

Via Bob Piper and The Stirrer comes news that the annual Mayor-making ceremony in Sandwell was rather more ‘entertaining’ than usual this year.

Two BNP councillors staged an impromptu walkout from Sandwell Council last night in protest at Sikh becoming mayor.  They claim his appointment breaches the Magna Carta  - but now face an enquiry by the local government standards board.

Simon Smith (who represents Great Bridge) and Carl Butler (Tividale) insist that they didn’t leave the chamber during the vote to appoint Gurcharan “Sid” Sidhu as first citizen – but Butler admits they did retire to an area close to the public gallery for a “coffee break”.

He claims that under the Magna Carta – which was written in 1215 and forms the basis of England’s constitution - “foreigners” are banned from holding public office.

Quite how this applies to “Sid”, who’s been a British citizen for 44 years – isn’t clear, but as Butler is happy to explain, he believes that even people who are born in this country should be disqualified from public life if they are of African or Asian heritage.

“That’s not racist it’s realist”, he told us.

“The Magna Carta states that no foreigner should take public office and that’s our view.  There’s no personal animosity, he just shouldn’t be mayor”.

Thus proving, as if such were needed, that if you vote BNP, you get a complete moron - or two for the price of one in this case.

You see, even if we ignore the fact that a mere three of the rights granted by Magna Carta* remain in force today and allow the full text, nowhere in it does it state the ‘foreigners’ cannot hold public office.

*If you’re wondering, the three rights in question provide for the freedom of the English Church, the freedoms and liberties of the City of London and, most important of all, the right of habeas corpus.

The closest Magna Carta comes to such a proscription is in clause 45:

We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or other officials, only men that know the law of the realm and are minded to keep it well.

Got that?

To hold public office one must know the law of the realm and be minded to keep it well - “Sid” has been a councillor for twenty years and the British Citizen for forty-four, so I we satisfy the first part, and as Bob notes, he’s basically a stand-up kind of guy, so that covers the latter.

There is no bar on foreigners holding public office under Magna Carta because such a proscription would have made absolutely no sense at the time.

King John was an Angevin (or Plantagenet if you prefer), a scion of the House of Anjou - in modern terms a Frenchman - although he was born in England (at Beaumont Palace, Oxford) and did spend considerably more time in this country that his more illustrious older brother, Richard I.

Of the Barons who held him to account at Runnymede, only one - William Hardell, the Mayor of London, has a surname of Anglo-Saxon origin. The rest were uniformly of Norman descent, with many holding estates on the continent.

England, at the time, was effectively still under Norman occupation and didn’t really settle down until the reign of Edward I - even John’s successor Henry II ran the country pretty much as a sub-fief of his continental holdings although unlike some of his predecessors, who weren’t much concerned with the messy business of ruling England properly, Henry did have good sense and foresight to lay the foundations of what is, today, the Civil Service, and ensure that the country was at least administered effectively.

It would have made no sense at all for either John, or the Barons, to disbar foreigners from holding office because, well, most their trusted retainers - the people who were being appointed as officials - were foreign… just like them.

One might therefore observe that if your are going to call yourself the British National Party, you might at least take the time and trouble to acquaint yourself properly with British history.

Whoa…

There I am casually mooching around a few RSS feeds over lunch (well, a cup of coffee) only to find that I appear to have been nominated for a blogging award - and not for gratuitous swearing either.

WTF?

It’s the Third Annual Satin Pajama Awards (yes, I know… its pyjama on this side of the pond and it should be pluralised) hosted by A Fistful of Euros and I would recommend you pop over and take a look.

I’m not shilling for votes (honestly) I’m just bloody gratified (and surprised to be honest) to find MoT nominated in such impressive company - the UK category alone includes Blood & Treasure, Chicken Yoghurt, Stumbling and Mumbling (Chris Dillow), Rachel North, Unspeak and others and amongst the nominees in other categories you’ll find Slugger O’Toole (and Mick Fealty), Not Saussure, Harry Hutton and loads more.

Seriously, its a hell of line up of nominees, so head over and pick the one’s you like best because there’s not a ‘duff ‘un’ among them.

UPDATE:

Must correct a sin of omission from earlier and namecheck Tom Reynolds and Tom Griffin and Jonny Billericay - a new one for me but a taste I’m rapidly acquiring - as the other ‘best of British’ nominees - all first class bloggers.

And in a break from my usual habits of not expressing preferences on suhc things, if you’re at all undecided as to your favorities then you won’t be going too far wrong by sliding a vote the way of the always thoughtful and thought-provoking Not Saussure in the best newcomer category.

NS is also up for best political blog against the stiffest of competition, including Slugger O’Toole, which is a big ask for any relative newcomer because there is such a thing as a blogger’s blog then its the ever reliable Slugger.

One of the more curious and largely unnoticed effects of the colonisation of British ‘popular’ culture by US-style glossy celebrity magazines - think ‘Hello’ and ‘OK’ - has been the almost complete demise of a one-time staple of celebrity reporting, the ’soap actor attacked by idiot who thinks Corrie/Eastenders/Emmerdale is real’ story.

Not so long ago, no meaty soap storyline would be complete without the villain of the piece giving an interview to the tabloids detailing the amusing story of how they were accosted by a mad pensioner the week before in Tesco’s and publicly castigated for their character’s misdeeds.

Sadly the ‘mad pensioner assaults soap actor’ stories has almost disappeared appeared from our news stands, although its basic premise - a complete inability to distinguish between fiction and reality - does appear to be making a comeback in the guise of ‘Mad Frankie’ Field’s latest missive (in the Torygraph) in which he seems to be experiencing this very problem, albeit on the strength of having recently read Dickens.

Here is a real test for Gordon Brown in his intent to pass power back to the people.

Okay…(???)

The Blair Government has resolutely refused to back the simple reform I have been advocating which will give communities the power once again to police their own neighbourhood.

Whoo - a ’simple’ reform that Blair didn’t back? Christ how dumb could it be for the Home Office not to at least try and float it to see how much laughter it generated?

A local community has a right to go into court and ask the magistrates to bring before them an offending yob. The magistrates can issue a warrant, but, even if the whole community is in court demanding action, the magistrate has no power to enforce the warrant in what is deemed a private action.

And the little matter of evidence, Frank?

More to the point who exactly is them in this case - the magistrates or the local community?

This sounds a hell of a lot like mob justice, so much so that one half expects Frank to continue by demanding that the ‘offending yob’ be dragged on a hurdle to the town square and placed in the stocks, where the local peasants, sorry, community can throw rotting vegetable at them to their hearts content…

…except that they couldn’t - throw rotting vegetables I mean - not these days. Not without getting a fixed penalty notice for littering (and one for not recycling as well, the way things are going).

The law needs to be changed so that magistrates can rule that the request for immediate action is a public matter. The police would then be required to enforce the warrant. The aim would be to bring the perpetrators of the disorder before the court that day.

Sorry?

So the drill is that a mob of angry peasants, sorry, the local community can ship up at the local magistrates court - would they be allowed torches and pitchforks for the full effect, do you think? - and on the strength of… of what exactly?

What evidence are they expected to present, if any, to justify the issuing of a warrant?

So far as I can tell, the evidential requirement here is at best hearsay and at worst just the assertion that ‘well he’s a yob M’lud’.

Are cries of ‘Burn her! Burn the witch!’ an optional extra? And would communities need to appoint their own ‘Yobfinder General’ or would these be provided by the local council?

Acting swiftly will often nip in the bud actions that, if allowed to fester, will only get worse. Such a reform would also devolve power back to what often are the grandmothers of a district.

Norman Stanley Fletcher. You stand accused of the heinous crime of not giving up your seat on the bus to a pensioner. How do you plead? Guilty or Guilty as hell?

If we’re going to devolve power back to the ‘grandmothers of a district’ why stop with the summary power of arrest - we can always save a few quid by abolishing professional midwifery at the same time.

This one simple reform would also end the intolerable position whereby working-class people on the end of yobbish behaviour have to plead their case for action through middle-class intermediaries, such as youth justice teams.

Frank, its’ got fuck all to do with youth justice teams and everything to do with stuff like due process, the presumption of innocence, evidential requirements, Magna Carta and habeas corpus - trivial things like that!

The rise of yobbish behaviour is the flip-side of the breakdown of families. Who in the community can play the role of the surrogate parent? The only people who can do this are the police.

You what?

They ought to have the power, like a football referee, to issue warnings and then, if the warnings are ignored, to impose the restriction on the behaviour there and then. The offender would have the freedom to go to court, but, hopefully, bad behaviour would again be nipped in the bud. This way, most young offenders will be kept out of the criminal justice system.

Oh suppose the upside is that he’s not suggesting that we skip the whole court thing and go back to old style summary justice… a clip round the ear from the local Sergeant.

But again there is this curious little tradition we have in this country - the one which doesn’t permit the police to serve as judge, jury and executioner.

Scratch what I said about Frank losing the plot in Dickens - pretty much most of what he’s suggesting went out of fashion not long after Shakespeare.

The man’s mad, I tell you. Absolutely fucking Dagenham*

*That’s three - or was it four - stops past Barking on the tube, in case you didn’t know.

Still, look ont he bright side. At this rate it won’t be too long before we can celebrate a political first…

…as Frank crosses the floor to become the first Monster Raving Loony Party MP.

If they’ll have him.

…

Oops, almost forgot. Frank’s tops his piece off with this gem…

We need to move to a leaving certificate that would allow young people to move into work as soon as they have basic skills. These young people should then be able to draw down later the value of the education that currently fails them.

Basic skills for what exactly?

Speaking personally I had as good, if not better literacy and numeracy skills than a fair number of people entering the workforce, today, at 16, pretty much by the time I was seven or eight years old, so would that mean, under Frank’s plan, that I’d have been stuffed up a fucking chimney at the age of eight to earn my keep on a vague promise I could get a bit more education later on?

Curiously enough, there was this thing we had in Britain right through from feudals time right up until the 1960s/70s that used to do a fair old job of getting the young and non-too-academically inclined out of school into gainful employment, something that employer (mainly) used to provide.

As I recall is used to be called ‘learning a trade’ and was something that people - including my dad - did by becoming an ‘apprentice’ - for younger reader’s I should point out that it’s got fuck all to with appearing on the telly with Alan Sugar.

If Frank’s so keen on bringing back a few old ideas, why not take a look at that one - it would pretty well for, oh, several centuries at least.

Unlike some  - and that’s not a set for a dig, Neil - I have to confess that I’m entirely sanguine when it comes to the manner of Gordon Brown’s ascension to the leadership of the party.

Yes, a contested leadership election would have been much more consistent with the party’s democratic traditions, but in the absence of credible challengers from any other wing of the party I really can’t see that John McDonnell’s failure to make the ballot actually makes that much of difference in the grand scheme of things.

Sorry, but in terms of party democracy, there are much more important things to tackle.

We need to rebuild and reinvigorate the grass roots membership of the party, and more importantly, do so in a manner that enables us to construct a meaningful relationship between party members/activists and our elected representatives.

What has done most to damage party democracy during the Blair years is the all too obvious mistrust that the Blairite wing of the party has harboured towards the constituency section and the grassroots membership, which has been perceived throughout as a repository of dangerously off message left-wing ideas.

One only has to look at the position paper put out by Hazel Blears in support of her challenge for the Deputy Leadership to see this in action. She devotes three pages of the document to outlining her views on ‘Building the Labour Party’, which is, itself, rather an odd turn of phrase to use when referring to an 100+ year old organisation, and much of what she has to say concerns itself with the suggestion that CLPs should mutate into community development NGOs and the value she perceives in semi-detached networks such as the Labour Supporter’s Network - one has to wonder quite what the membership figure for LSN are at the moment, I’ve never seen any published.

One of the more telling comments in her paper is this:

Our activities will be transparent – local communities will be encouraged to take part in selecting candidates, in helping with elections, in discussing policy, and in debating with local representatives and ministers.

Okay, so a bit of help on the doorsteps come election time is always welcome and one cannot quibble with consultations on policy and between local communities and elected representatives at any level, but taking part in selecting candidates? Is Hazel suggesting that prospective councillors, MPs and MEPs should take part in US style local primaries as part of our internal selection procedures?

This seems little more than a variation on the same old frustrating theme we’ve heard from the Blairite camp over the last 10 years - the one in which CLPs and activists cannot be trusted to select their own candidates without being watched over by the party machine for fear that we might put forward prospective councillors, and especially MPs who, heaven forbid, might show a disturbing and unwelcome propensity for doing things like ‘thinking for themselves’.

Such concerns might have has some foundations in fact back in 1995/6 but are things still still the same today, but for the odd isolated pockets of what, for want of a better word, one might call the ‘Old Left’ tucked away in a small number of Labour heartland constituencies?

I don’t think it is.

If one looks at the evolution of the Bloggers4Labour network over the last couple of years - and its worth noting that on its own this network is far more extensive that anything the Tories can put up - one has to say that there’s little evidence to gleaned from it to suggest that the grassroots of the party are firmly in the grip of the old-style left wing. Centre-left, certainly, and to some degree to the left of the Blairite wing of the party but by no means to a degree that would advocate or support dragging the party out of the centre-ground towards where a significant part of the labour movement stood during the early 1980s.

Bloggers may not be entirely representative of the grassroots as a whole, but if one looks at the B4L network one finds pretty much all strands of Labour opinion represented amongst its members and, more to the point, one finds finds a clear will to engage seriously in politics and policy to a far more extensive degree that one tends to find in the loose blogging ‘collectives’ associated with other parties.

The shift in emphasis from presentation to policy that’s expects to come with Brown’s ascendancy to the leadership is one that I suspect will suit most Labour bloggers down to the ground - not because we’re all ‘Brownites’ but simply because there is a genuine appetite within the Labour Blogosphere to discuss and debate real politics and the nitty-gritty of policy-making.

Yes, in all probability- well, certainty - the course that the parliamentary party will be charting towards the next general election will already have been set by Brown and his aides/supporters and will start to unfold over the talismanic ‘first hundred days’ as Prime Minister - so, in that sense, the lack of a contest has deprived us of chance to debate policy.

But so what?

Many Labour bloggers have done little else but talk about policy over the last couple of years and what matters in the long run is whether or not any of the debates, discussions and ideas that have been spawned, developed and thoroughly worked over come to work they way into and influence the ongoing development of Labour policy beyond the first raft of Brown-led initiatives.

There may have been little or no scope for party members to try an influence policy at this stage, but that’s not that much of an issue. The transition from Blair to Brown was always going to be a evolutionary rather than revolutionary move with no real prospect of  the party moving significantly to the left - for all the Blairite-wing seem content to hold this up as their favourite bogeyman. What we’ll see from Brown is a continuation of many of the policies that have been developed over the last 10 year - and rather more emphasis on some of the successful economic work that been rather downplayed under Blair. Some of the more idiotic and ill-thought out Blairite ‘initiatives’ - one can barely consider the policies - will fall by the wayside. If nothing else Brown should move quickly to rein in the Home Office and put an end to dumb-ass press release Friday’s by placing a much steadier and more diplomatic hand on the policing and security tiller.

But most importantly of all, irrespective of the detail of policy, what I’m looking for from Brown is something that I think he can deliver that Blair never could due to his lack of real roots in the party, a sense that Labour’s policies in government belong to a distinctively Labour narrative understanding of the world of the kind of progressive society that the party wishes to create and support in future. Blair, whose approach to political theory and philosophy amounted to little more than treating the massed canon of progressive (and sometimes not so progressive) thought as a political pick n’ mix counter to shore up ideas rooted in little else but shiftless tabloid populism, could never deliver such a coherent narrative thread.

Brown, who has real roots in the party and comes from a solid Presbytarian background as influential, in its own way, as Welsh Methodism has been in the development of the Labour movement, should be capable of providing just such a narrative thread and I think it vital that he quickly establishes such a narrative, which will go on to inform and shape future policy development and, to a considerable extent, the kind of input into the policy-making process that might stem from activists.

With that firmly in mind, the absence of a wide-ranging policy debate tied to a Leadership contest is not something I see as a drawback - it may well be beneficial in the long run for the party to have avoided such a debate, which could easily have proved divisive had it taken place without the benefit of understanding the kind of Labour narrative under which that Brown intends to take the party forward.

Getting back to Blears and questions of engagement with the grassroots - and to give her a little credit as well - she does suggest a need to beef up the role National Policy Forum - with the usual unedifying caveats about measuring ‘representation’ in terms of population demographics - which would be a welcome innovation. But again, the emphasis rests firmly on engagement through defined hierarchical structures and in closed and carefully managed environments what to suit, overwhelmingly, the interests of the PLP, rather on direct engagement in the kind of freeform discussions and debates that routinely take place amongst bloggers. Its all very well talking about trying engage the ‘facebook generation’ but to do that effectively politicians have to take a leap of faith and talk to us inhabitants of the electronic frontier on out terms and within our established social mores - which inevitably means facing off with the MSM and fighting back against the established media culture which, for too long, has done little else but prevent politicians engaging in open and constructive debate and promote a dumbed-down political culture obsessed with trivia, personalities and scandal to the exclusion of meaningful public and political discourse.

Blears tops off her position paper with this:

Tomorrow’s Labour Party will be a focussed election-winning machine. But it will also be a sociable, enjoyable, fulfilling place to be for its members. It will reflect the full diversity of our communities. Voluntary activity will be rewarded by personal development as well as communal benefit and social progress. The Labour Party will be a modern party at ease and at home in modern society, and ready for whatever the future may hold.

Enough with the bloody managerialist misson statements already, lets just stick to something along the lines of…

The Labour Party is a progressive, democratic socialist, political party that exists to promote social justice and equality for all.

Simple. To the point. And does what it says on the tin.

For reasons lost in the mists of alcohol, I get the occasional e-mail from the Lib Dems telling about the all wonderful things they’ve been doing (yawn!), the latest is which comes - apparently - from the Emperor Ming himself…

I am shocked that the Labour and Conservative front benches in the Commons have joined forces to vote for a special exemption for MPs from the Freedom of Information Act. This brings Parliament into disrepute.

Liberal Democrats have led the opposition on the floor of the House of Commons and I have decided to launch a national petition so voters can show to the House of Lords (who debate the bill next), Gordon Brown and David Cameron how they feel.

Please visit www.ourcampaign.org.uk/foi to sign our petition and lobby a member of the House of Lords. Please also forward this email to your friends and colleagues.

Thank you for your support.

With best wishes

Ming Campbell
Liberal Democrats

Shocked, eh?

Follow the link, and you’ll find that Ming has a few suggestions as to how we can help defeat the bill.

1. Lobby a Lord

2. Link to their campaign website - they even have a nice animated gif for this purpose.

3. Help the LD’s to advertise - by donating money to the them…

4. Sign the petition on their website…

Sadly suggestion no. 5 doesn’t make the LD’s list…

5. Turn up in the House of Commons and vote against the fucking thing…

Far be from me to dig Tom Watson out of the hole he’s created for himself by falling into the trap of defending the indefensible, i.e. David MacLean’s Freedom from Accountability Bill, but if anyone should be leading the charge in criticising those MPs whose votes saw the abominable thing through its third reading (at the second time of asking) it sure as hell ain’t Iain Dale.

What’s the beef with Dale this time? More or less the same one as usual - hypocrisy and bandwagon-jumping.

It’s all very well coming over all Mr ‘More Accountable Than Thou’ when there’s an opportunity to put Labour MPs in the frame for supporting a bad piece of Private Member’s legislation introduced by an Ex Tory Whip, but if you’re going to run with that kind of line you might at least make some effort to establish a bit of credibility first. Other bloggers have been on top of this bill since January, while Dale has said precisely fuck all up until last Friday despite being asked twice in comments on his own blog to comment on the proposed legislation:

IanP said…

and why would a Tory MP want to put the FOI gag on MP’s correspondence.

Freedom of Information Bill - 2nd reading

The following private members bill will have its 2nd reading in the HoC on the 19th January.
Freedom of Information (amendment)

David Maclean presented a Bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to exempt from its provisions the House of Commons and House of Lords and correspondence between Members of Parliament and public authorities: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 19 January, and to be printed. [Bill 39]

January 15, 2007 2:05 PM

To which Iain replied…

…

…

And then about three weeks later…

Tone made me do it - he’s a bad influence said…

A similar exemption for MPs for another Act is going through Parliament right now.

The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill is going through the house very very quickly.

The Bill was brought by David Maclean (Con) with the SOLE purpose of exempting MPs’ Correspondence and other Commons matters from public access rights to official documents given under the original Freedom of Information Act.

The 2nd reading went through the Commons 3 weeks ago totally on the nod. When the speaker proposed it and said “all those agreeing say aye” and “all those agree say “no” - NOBODY said “no” - a unique occurrence in the history of the Commons. No debate therefore had to occur (there was no time allocated if ANY MP had objected and the Bill would have been killed by timing it out.

On Wednesday, the Bill spent only 55 minutes being discussed at the Committee stage. Again an unprecedented short time.

MPs have therefore played fast and loose in pushing through a Bill that exempts them from a law that they have imposed on the rest of the government sector.

I’m not sure why MPs feel they have earned this exemption, and why they feel entitled to it without proper debate in the house.

February 10, 2007 12:14 AM

And Iain’s response was…

…

…

Yep, fuck all again.

Dale thinks that You Either Believe in Freedom of Information Or You Don’t - well if you do then, like plenty of other bloggers, you speak up about shitty pieces on legislation like MacLean’s Bill right from the point you become aware of them, you don’t sit back and say fuck all until you can find the ‘right’ kind of political mileage to run with - that’s not believing in FOIA, that’s just opportunism.

I’ve written before about the pernicious and unjust nature of the UK’s libel laws - let’s face it, when the UK becomes the jurisdiction of choice for wealthy litigious American s’lebs intending to sue their native supermarket tabloids, then you know damn well how biased and unfair our own libel laws are.

As if to drive home the point, Heather Brooke of Your Right To Know seems to have found herself on the wrong end of the MSM’s paranoia about litigation for doing nothing more than expressing an opinion about a recent, and well-documented libel action:

Well no sooner do I write about England’s draconian libel laws and the chilling effect they have on freedom of expression then I hear word that the solicitor for self-proclaimed childcare ‘expert’ Gina Ford has complained to the Times about my piece and they have now removed my article from their website while they deal with the complaint.

Huh? No seriously, Ford, who sued and obtained a settlement from Mumsnet over comments posted in their forum that were removed within 24 hours of posting, has now complained, and had taken down, an article on the pernicious state of the UK’s libel laws for no other reason than the fact that Heather refers to her lawsuit against Mumsnet as an example or precisely how the current construction of libel/defamation, in which the defendent has to ‘prove their innocence’ - it a tad more complex than that but that’s the general gist - is unfair and biased in favour of the rich and shameless.

I think you can guess what’s coming next… notwithstanding the matter of copyright, I think it’s time for another ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment, so here’s Heather’s article from the Times, in full.

—

England, home of the mother of all injustices
The Times, May 14, 2007
By Heather Brooke

The libel laws are an abomination. They favour rich, litigious bullies at the expense of free expression. Even a website for mothers to chatter on is fair game to this draconian law.

Last week mumsnet.com was forced to pay a five-figure sum for comments posted on its chat site. It stood by the comments but this law is such an ass that the burden of proof rests solely with the defendant.

Meanwhile, claimants can make their allegations free from evidential proof. Their opinion is all that counts. They do not have to prove the comments are false. They don’t even have to show any harm to their reputation. I can think of no other area in law in which an individual’s spurious opinion outweighs the greater public good of truth and justice.

The Mumsnet case makes clear how libel affects everyone, not just journalists or those working in the traditional media. More and more of us, thanks to the growing ubiquity of blogs, chat groups and web forums, are vulnerable to this nefarious law. And while big media groups have deep pockets, the individual hasn’t.

If the damages don’t get the writer, then legal costs certainly will. Most writers are not rich people and so they must settle. Result: vibrant debate is quashed, truth inevitably suffers. The law is so heavily weighted against freedom of expression that all writers (even those hosting blogs) are being urged to buy libel insurance; the freelance chapter of the National Union of Journalists is inundated with inquiries about its new policy.

No matter that the publishers of Mumsnet didn’t even write the comments that the author Gina Ford claimed defamed her. Under the Defamation Act 1996 nonauthors can be held liable if they fail to expeditiously remove comments someone thinks are defamatory. But how quick is quick? The Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts said that the comments were taken down after little more than 24 hours. Yet the vagueness of the law means she would have to go to court to prove this was a reasonable time period.

As a result we now have a culture where the default position is not free speech but censorship. After the 2001 case Godfrey v. Demon Internet Ltd, all internet service providers became vulnerable to libel lawsuits if they failed to immediately censor comments that a person claimed were defamatory. Whether or not the words are true is irrelevant.

England’s libel laws have never been about protecting individuals – at least not poor or helpless individuals. They are about protecting the rich and the powerful.

A fair law would be one in which the claimant has to prove falsity, harm and malicious intention, while providing a defence for truth, reasonable care and the public interest. Then both reputations and freedom of expression could be protected. Until then, mum’s the word.

—