CentreRight

Confronting Islamic extremism

I revisited Peter Mullen's excellent essay Apocalypse Soon? today, over at the Salisbury Review.  I was struck once again by its force and thought - it's strongly recommended.

Re: taking old friends for granted

With friends like these...

If we keep talking about the elephant in the room maybe people will see it

I've only just seen Dan Hannan's excellent article in yesterday's Telegraph.  Dan powerfully makes the case that people have stopped voting because they think that politicians no longer exercise the important powers.  Restoration of the clear link between politicians and state action is the route to engagement with the public.  He gets it spot on in this extract,

"It all comes down to taking responsibility. These days, almost the first instinct of our politicians, faced with a tricky problem, is to bung it at someone else. Did Peter Hain misbehave? That's in the hands of the Electoral Commission. When do embryos become human? Let's ask the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. What drugs should be available on the NHS? Over to you, Nice. Are A-levels easier? One for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. What should we be paid? Let's set up yet another wretched quango, further devaluing the democratic process. In consequence, elections stop mattering and people stop voting."

This is the real 'elephant in the room'.  Maybe if we keep talking about it people will see it.  Well said Dan! The full article can be seen here.

The Invisible Man

I agree entirely with the sentiment of David Lidington MP's article regarding the necessity of engaging with the rapidly-expanding economies of the Gulf States.  Whilst I have immense reservations about the human rights situation in this region - particularly the abject lack of personal and political freedom in Saudi Arabia, the jailing of government opponents in Oman and Kuwait’s lack of affirmative action on the issue of human trafficking - the British government would indeed be foolhardy to ignore the enormous opportunities offered to the UK by our "old friends" in the Persian Gulf. 

I have to give it to Tony Blair; despite his tardiness in advocating abolition of reform of the EU's damaging trade barriers, he at least appeared to understand the importance of engaging with developing markets and promoting the future of the United Kingdom as an international trading power.

Speaking to friends around the world over the past few weeks, what our American friends pithily descibe as "the buzz" has been entirely focused on "that new French President", Nicolas Sarkozy.  Few have even heard of "that new Brit", Gordon Brown.

Taking old friends for granted

A few days ago, President Sarkozy completed a high profile tour of the Gulf. He came back with plaudits from his hosts and contracts for French companies in a region where, historically, British interests have been strong.

This is part of a pattern. The Blair and Brown governments have not given enough priority to our traditional friends in the Gulf. Too often, they have left the running to our competitors. And the Gulf leaders have noticed.

The Gulf is a region enjoying rapid economic growth (some reports say half the cranes in the world are in Dubai) where countries are making huge efforts to diversify away from dependence on oil and gas. It is a region of moderate arab regimes - the very countries which we hope will work to build a stable set of security arrangements in the Middle East. We should stop taking old friends for granted.

The NHS does something badly, you say..? Sacrilege!

As if you didn't know, the news has arrived from a reputable source that, by and large, the "crumbling maternity wards" of the NHS do a very shoddy job for mothers.

Given this country's habitual worship at the altar of our monolithic, money-guzzling health system, you know that something's got to be preeeetty bad before complaints get a real airing.  I'd say that an authoritative report demonstrating incompetence in a core responsibility would get over that test - and even our NHS-adoring MSM seems to agree.

There's a memorable passage in Mark Steyn's great book America Alone which points out the fact that there are more scanners in the city of Philadelphia, with its privatised medical system, than there are in the whole of Canada, with its nationalised system.  D'you reckon he might be on to something..?

Oh, and as if this post weren't controversial enough... I've been watching the goggle box at the parental abode this evening (he said, careful to point out that he's not violating his TV ownership abstinence) and I see that the BBC - the BeeBeeCee, no less! - stated in their report on this subject that a significant cause of the problems of maternity wards in the south of England is the booming birth rate driven by immigration!  I reckon those right-wing, flag-waving, fear-mongering rabble-rousers might be on to something, too...

Grassroots

There was one passage in the recent Senior Salaries Review Body report on MPs' pay that really did annoy me. No, it wasn't anything about pay, pensions or allowances. Rather, it was a reference to constituency casework that concluded rather loftily that most of this was routine stuff, handled by staff, with only the occasional complex case needing the personal involvement of the Member.  Now I don't know who the Commission had been talking to (whoever it was, I'd like to wring their neck) but I don't believe that their description corresponds to reality for MPs of any party.

Yes, we do all rely heavily on the hard work of our staff. But every colleague I know takes their constituents very seriously indeed and woe betide a Member who lets a letter drafted by a staffer go through without checking very carefully what he is signing. It's not the researcher who gets egg on his face all over the local media if clumsy words lead to trouble.

3/4 of London Labour MPs not backing Livingstone

I have only just noticed this letter in today's Guardian. Orchestrated, round-robin letters of support for a politician are, in my experience, normally a sign of someone in desperate trouble, especially when the letter is to go in a sympathetic publication like the Guardian is for Labour. I remember in Autumn 2003 being asked to co-sign a letter from parliamentary candidates to go to the Telegraph in support of IDS. Today's Guardian letter - signed by 10 London Labour MPs, including at least a couple of PPSs and a Whip - begs this question: why won't the other 34 sign?

The real impact of the Lisbon Treaty

This week’s letter in response to Bill Cash et al.’s 'referendum' letter from four of Labour’s Europhile MEPs (with backing from Bob Crowe today) provides a good example of the delusional and naïve vision of Europe currently pervading the Labour members of both the UK Parliament and the European Parliament.

The letter signed by Bill Cash et al. accurately stated the real impact of this Treaty while the shoddily-conceived rebuttal letter in defence of the red lines, stating that the Charter of Fundamental Rights, new powers of the EU Foreign Minister, and loss of control over the criminal justice system will not apply to the UK, has been proven wrong by the UK Parliament’s own scrutiny body – the European Scrutiny Committee. To simply recite the case for defending the red lines on the Lisbon Treaty is a futile game.

Labour MEPs and MPs alike must realise that the whole denial over this referendum — since this Treaty is “substantially equivalent” to the rejected Constitutional Treaty which was worthy of a referendum — really is "to treat the people of this country like fools."

Cameron runs red light shocker

The Evening Standard reported yesterday (now picked up by the Mirror) that a pedestrian was angered by David Cameron edging through the red lights on his bike. Yes Cameron was breaking the law and he more than anyone should be careful about that, but I'm with him on this one.

I don't quite accept that bikes should be treated exactly the same way as cars. They are small, light and agile. I once hit a schoolgirl at 25mph when she jumped out in front of me. She merely suffered an embarrassed blush in front of her friends and a bruise probably emerged on her calf later. I on the other hand did a full flip in the air and hit the ground hard in front of moving cars.

In fact, not only was Cameron's behaviour unlikely to endanger the angry pedestrian but it was likely to be in the interests of his own safety. A TfL report on cycling has shown that women are twice as likely as men to be killed by large vehicles... because they are more likely to stick rigidly to the white lines and red lights. Men tend to edge forwards so that they can get away quicker, and therefore avoid being creamed by a lorry or bendy bus turning left.

Let's champion high-speed rail

The Times today reports a call from Network Rail Chief Executive Iain Coucher for Britain to build a £50bn high-speed rail network by 2020. Capacity on most intercity routes is due to run out by 2015.

After the Rugby debacle, passenger groups understandably want Network Rail to concentrate on maintaining the current network rather than lobbying for the building of new lines.

However Coucher's call should be heeded. Britain's competitiveness cannot be safeguarded by expansion of road and air travel alone. Labour have kicked the issue into touch, refusing to decide on new lines until 2012. As I argued last year, that leaves the Conservatives with a great opportunity to champion the new transport infrastructure Britain so badly needs. Using new high-speed lines to help bridge the growing north-south divide is right on environmental and economic grounds, and could yield siginficant electoral dividends for our party.

Whichever way the wind blows

Dan Hamilton posted earlier on Mitt Romney's flip-flopping.  John McCain's latest web ad makes the same points...

Artificial life and premature hype

The thought of scientists creating artificial life is the meat of classics from Brave New World to Battlestar Galactica [a more raunchy West Wing in space]. The latest coverage from the labs as reported here without the hype and here with the hype is that we are on the brink of Artificial life.

I hate to disappoint you but it's going to be a long while yet, and those naughty headline writers should know better than to start stirring up the 'anti' crowds. If we're going to be able to build on the healing opportunities that science is bringing to us then let's inform the public with real hope and not repelling hype.

Consistency, thy name is Mitt Romney

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to spend as much as $40 million of his $250 million fortune on his campaign.  Is this the same Mitt Romney who once ruled out the possibility of self-financing his campaign as "akin to a nightmare"?

Is this the same Mitt Romney who once said that abortion should be "safe and legal" and now describes himself as "consistently pro-life"? 

Is this the same Mitt Romney who once angrily distanced himself from Ronald Reagan, stating he was an "independent during the time of Reagan/Bush and did not want to return to Reagan/Bush" and now praises the Gipper as "a president of strength"? 

Is this the same Mitt Romney who, when running for the US Senate in 1994, spoke of his desire to make "equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern" and whose website now features a commitment to pass a constitutional amendment "defining marriage as between one man and one woman"?

"Consistency", Oscar Wilde once said, "is the last refuge of the unimaginative".

Mitt Romney is clearly a man with a vivid imagination.

Hares, tortoises and respectful debate

*Tim posting this for Stephan*

Tim’s piece on ConservativeHome about ‘the hare and the tortoise’ is absolutely essential to the future debate among conservatives. It provides some structure of mutual respect for our discussions. Without this, we can too easily degenerate into casting each other as enemies. I treated Danny Finkelstein this way in my post on Saturday, he did the same to me on Monday, and then Stephen Pollard trumped everything by calling me “remarkably stupid”, “too dense” and a purveyor (unwitting, because uneducated) of Goebbels-style anti-semitic insult.

Even when we don’t descend this far, we all show a preference for creating straw men of each other who we then triumphantly knock down. So those of us who want a lower-tax economy are assumed to think the mere mention of cuts will bring the voters flocking: most of us don’t think that. And anyone who starts talking about brand-modernising strategies is assumed by the other side to be unprincipled and superficial, which is also unfair.

Hares and tortoises are both successful beasts; the tortoise happens to win in the Aesop fable, so there’s an important concession there for the discussions ahead.

This is compassionate conservatism

Compassionate conservatism of the Giuliani kind.  David Frum has the definition.

The 'Celtic Trinity' - time for 3 to become 1?

As I sit at my desk with the PM programme on in the background I'm enjoying listening to news on the reshuffle.  I enjoy reshuffles - although I prefer our ones more.  (Tempting as it is I will refrain from any advice to DC if he plans to reshape his pack after this).  No news thus far on the new Secretary of State for Wales.  I'm on tender hooks waiting for that one! We Conservatives always (or at least used to always) talk about 'smaller Government'.  What about taking this opportunity to do the blindingly obvious - abolish the positions of Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland? What are they for? What do they do?  There are now First Ministers in all parts of the 'Celtic Trinity' and they are, in theory, running devolved issues on the ground.  I suppose we would get the usual fuss about Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland's voice not being heard on defence or foreign policy.  Thats easy to solve - create a full-time cabinet post of Secretary of State for devolved areas. Liberates a lot of civil servants, reduces the size of the cabinet, allows us to have a full time Secretary of State for Defence, makes Shaun Woodward unemployed and saves a few quid. So of course it won't happen.

I don't want my children to go into medicine

*Posted by Tim on behalf of Dr Crippen*

As an experienced father of four teenagers I no longer enter into the “will you tidy your bedroom” conversation. I never win.  Experienced parents know that the key to managing teenagers is not about winning the battles. It is about choosing which battles to fight. I look with amazement at the current battles that the government is fighting. It is a rare day now not to hear Jacqui Smith, our increasingly beleaguered home secretary, defending the extraordinary decision to cut the police pay rise from 2.5% to 1.9%.  And, if you are half asleep listening to the Today programme, doesn’t she sound like Harriet Harman? One of those is quite enough.

Alan Johnson meanwhile is on a collision course with the BMA about three hours extra work a week for GPs. Whatever the problems may be with “modern General Practice” (I feel an oxymoron coming on) an additional three hours will solve none of them. In any case, the BMA is not complaining about the extra time, it is complaining about the centralised micromanaging approach that tells doctors how the time is to be worked.

The strings are being pulled from Number 10. Tony Blair had outstanding “people skills” and would not have been fighting either of these battles. The police are marching. GPs are threatening to strike. Morale throughout the NHS continues to slip-slide away. I am relieved that none of my four children is going into medicine. I should not feel like that.

UPDATE: Britain and the Index of Economic Freedom

Gordon Brown would no doubt like to dismiss the UK's fall from "free" economy to the status of "mostly free" in this year's Index of Economic Freedom. Unfortunately for him he has quoted the Index again and again in House of Commons debates. He hasn't a leg to stand on if he wishes to ignore it now.

"If things are going so badly on regulation, why did the Heritage Foundation, which is beloved of the right wing of the Conservative party, report that we are a more liberal and deregulated economy now than in 1997, when we took office?" - Gordon Brown on 15 June 2006

"I thought that this morning the hon. Gentleman would quote the report of the Heritage Foundation of the United States of America, which says that we are a less regulated and more liberal economy than when his Government were in power in 1997." - Gordon Brown on 11 May 2006

High-tax Britain booted from club of 'free' economies

The above headline, from the Daily Telegraph, sums up well last week's disappointing review of the UK economy:

"Britain has slipped out of the ranks of fully "free" countries in this year's Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, reflecting the sharp rise in the tax burden and ballooning state sector.

The country has continued to slide down the league under Gordon Brown's economic management, falling from fifth to tenth place over the last two years. It has been overtaken by Canada, Chile, Switzerland, Australia, and the United States."

As a full disclosure, I spent much of my year at the Heritage Foundation working on the same floor as the Index of Economic Freedom team. But that only meant I saw for myself the scholarship and painstaking effort that goes into the report, published each year by Heritage and the Wall Street Journal. When such a publication shows how Britain's economy has fallen behind under Gordon Brown, it is time to listen and act.

Closing the gap in movement funding

In the Telegraph today, Toby Helm and Christopher Hope list profiles of what they reckon are the top twelve UK thinktanks.

It's clear that funding-wise the 'progressive' movement is still at least twice the size of the conservative one:

Right of centre

• Policy Exchange - £1.7m
• Civitas - £704,000
• Reform - £550,000
• Centre for Policy Studies - £500,000 approx
• TaxPayers’ Alliance - £300,000
• Open Europe - undisclosed (but less than the above)

Left of centre

• IPPR - £4m approx (surely more than that!)
• Demos - £2m
• Fabian Institute - £800,000 approx
• Social Market Foundation - £711,000
• Compass - £200,000
• Smith Institute - £483,000

Gordon Brown can't bring himself to name Ken Livingstone

The enmity between Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone is longstanding. In Tom Bower's biography of the PM, there are almost as many references in the index to Livingstone as there are to Neil Kinnock. Major disagreements have included independence of the Bank of England, PPP for the tube, public spending levels in the late 1990s and so on. In 2000, Brown even penned a full-page article in the Evening Standard (19/1/2000 - not available online) urging London Labour members to back Frank Dobson, predicting "disaster" if Livingstone were elected. I recall that at that time Blair set himself a priority that Livingstone should not be a "Labour Mayor" - but Brown went one stage further, urging Livingstone not to be elected at all.

Livingstone is now mired in sleaze allegations, and Brown's first big election as Labour Leader is only 3 months away. At the weekend, Brown had little choice when asked by the press to back Livingstone, but could only bring himself to talk about Livingstone as "he".

Yesterday, at PMQs, I asked Brown about corruption at the LDA and whether the PM would support calls for an independent inquiry into the role of Livingstone. Again, Brown couldn't bring himself to name him, concluding weakly that "we need a Labour Mayor."

A strange world when a Party Leader can't bring himself to name his leading candidate. I think the last time this happened was in the Bermondsey by-election in 1983, when Michael Foot avoided endorsing Peter Tatchell. The omens aren't good for Labour here.

Paid supporters of the Euro treaty

Last week, Foreign Office mouthpiece David Miliband told us that lots and lots of NGOs supported the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty.  According to Dan Hannan, it now turns out that every single one of the organisations Miliband mentioned is actually in receipt of Brussels money. 

My must-read books

If you have not read:

• Michael Gerson's Heroic Conservatism
• Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy
• Mark Palmer's Breaking the Real Axis of Evil
• Nick Cohen's What's Left?
• Douglas Murray's Neoconservatism: why we need it
• Oliver Kamm's Anti-totalitarianism
• Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell
• William Schultz's In Our Own Interest
• Timothy Garton Ash's Free World
• Craig Murray's Murder in Samarkand
• Melanie Phillips' Londonistan
• Michael Gove's Celsius 7/7
• Ed Husain's The Islamist ....

WHY ON EARTH NOT? Get a move on ... these are the key books!!!!

Government in waiting

In his interview in today's Times, David Cameron makes several important points. The one which struck me most is the contrast between the Shadow Cabinet and the Cabinet. William Hague versus David Miliband (a slight improvement on predecessors Margaret Beckett and Jack Straw); David Davis versus Jacqui Smith (who admits she won't go out at night on foot in Kensington, let alone Hackney); George Osborne versus Alistair Darling (Mr Invisible) ... and we could go on.

The Shadow Cabinet is one which represents what Britain can and should be: first-rate, intellectually sharp, energised, dynamic, creative, imaginative, principled, bold. The Cabinet represents what Britain under this Government has become: lacklustre, mediocre, second-rate, grimy, sleezey, grey, dull, incompetent, delayed, absurd and plain stupid. And if ministers are like that, it's no surprise civil servants and bureaucrats follow. Ministers set the tone, pace, style and substance. We have third-rate ministers and fifth-rate bureaucrats. Let's have the A-team in soon, to sort out the mess the C-team has left us in.