CentreRight

Why I want Obama to win

Who would you rather won the US Presidential elections?  As a Conservative, I naturally felt I ought to want McCain to win.  And yet, I can't really find much reason why.

Conservatives like me who favour small government, the free market and decentralised power have often found ourselves willing on the likes of a Bush snr or a John Major.  We do so hoping that they'll be radical and break with the Big Government-knows-best consensus of the political establishment.  In the end, they only seem to gain office by accomodating themselves to the same old State centralism.

No. Until the US Republicans re-discover States Rights, the spirit of 1776 and much else besides, this UK Conservative is going to be cheering on Obama.

Does Obama believe in small government?  As with McCain, I really don't know.  But I do know that last week he became the first Presidential candidate since Nixon to refuse public money to fund his campaign.   

Instead of relying on State handouts, Obama's campaign will be funded by millions of people each giving small on-line donations.  In the primaries alone, the $133 million spent came via 1.5 million web donors. That's less than $100 each. 

Sounds pretty Edmund Burke.com to me.   

But, perhaps you disagree?  Maybe its heresy to not support a Big Government, high tax and spend, Establishment Republican, just because he's... um... a Republican?

The wisdom of crowds

ConservativeHome has already commented on The Observer's shock at a poll yesterday which showed that most people are sceptical about the real reasons for climate change.

What's heartening about this is the way in which public attitudes and instincts can still withstand the most determined onslaught from the political class and the liberal elites (others have called it 'the wisdom of crowds').

Another example: during the wall-to-wall media promotion of the Live Aid guiltfest a few years ago, amid all the pictures of pop celebrities and the nodding talking heads, the Sunday Times carried a report on a poll which found that around two-thirds of those asked saw 'bad governance' as the premier reason for Africa's continued poverty.

Social apartheid and social housing

Social housing has become a ghetto tenure which is helping perpetuate a growing social apartheid. That was the stark assessment of Iain Duncan Smith in his speech to the Chartered Institute of Housing's annual conference in Harrogate last week.

70% of new social rented households have no-one in work, and the rate of full-time employment among social tenants has fallen from two-thirds to one-third in just 25 years. IDS argued that increasing employment rates among tenants must be the top priority in tackling the poverty and dependency blighting social housing. However this could only be achieved with co-ordinated action to provide intensive welfare-to work programmes (with stronger obligations to access them), benefit reforms to make work pay (HB creates a huge disincentive to work) and reforms to social housing itself. As well as measures to break-up mono-tenure estates, IDS said that needs-based allocations and universal life-long security of tenure should be re-assessed.

Inside Housing, the weekly trade journal for social housing, gave the speech a cautious welcome, acknowledging that is likely to be the Conservatives who 'grasp the nettle' of tackling worklessness and dependency in the sector. The Centre for Social Justice's housing policy group, chaired by Kate Davies of Notting Hill Housing, will put forward its proposals in this area later this year.

The BNP is the current excuse for left wing extremism

Saturday's anti-BNP march wasn't a rally against right wing extremists by reasonable people.  It was a march by left wing extremists promoting their agenda, to which some reasonable people may unwittingly have tagged along.

That's why there were "REVOLUTION" banners being flown; that's why the Communist Party flags were out; that's why the chant "kill the cops" was so popular amongst marchers (which must have been pleasant for the officers obligingly closing off streets for them) and that's why, as one walks down the Embankment today, many memorials and historic monuments are covered with spray-painted slogans such as "solidarity is our weapon", "burn the banks" and "elitist shit".

Important reading

I have just finished reading the Centre for Social Cohesion's report Virtual Caliphate. I think this is vital reading for anyone who cares about liberal democracy and security. It gives valuable insights into the language used by extremists, and into the way they use the internet.

Equally important reading is a piece in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph - which claims that extremists are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of young British Muslims.

More prisoners, less crime

George Will offers some amusing headlines from the New York Times, whose logic (or lack of it) will be all too familiar to anyone who reads the liberal press in Britain:

1997
Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling

1998
Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops

2000
Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction

2003
More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime

How maddeningly perverse and inexplicable that putting more criminals behind bars would coincide with a fall in crime!

How many CCTV cameras is government responsible for?

David Davis' campaign since his resignation has prompted more discussion of a number of issues, one of them the number of CCTV cameras in Britain. One figure often given as evidence of the degree of surveillance is that there are 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the UK, or one for every fourteen people. This figure is confirmed in reports easily found via a Google search - at least in the form of "up to 4.2 million" or "could be as many as 4.2 million".

But what I haven't been able to find is the number of cameras operated by government or public authorities. Obviously a sizeable proportion of CCTV cameras are nothing to do with government - paid for and operated by pubs, shops and shopping centres and the like. So unless it is being suggested that private businesses be forbidden from installing CCTV on their own premises, the relevant figure in this debate is the number of non-private CCTV cameras, rather than the total number of cameras. Does anyone know what that figure is? 

Tsvangirai pulls out - good for him

Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC's decision today to pull out of the presidential election is incredibly sensible.  The election was clearly going to be rigged to high heaven and he could not possibly have won.  All he could have done was allow the evil, bloodsoaked Mugabe to claim an illegitimate victory - sufficient to be accepted by the rest of Africa.  This way, Mugabe will have no recognisable mandate.  This is a first - previously Mugabe has always been able to claim some form of legitimacy or snuggle up to his opponents in order to strangle them (like Nkomo).

Yet where now?  It's clear that South Africa is still supine under the failing leadership of Mbeki.  They suggest a powersharing.  After Nkomo's fate, that is obviously a joke.  In the next year it is likely South Africa will get stronger leadership (on this issue at least) from Zuma, assuming Mbeki does not manage to put Zuma away later this Summer.  Mugabe will certainly be weakened in Africa and be an embarrassment to them all.  Yet he will probably remain in power until South Africa has a leader able to lead.

RE: Britain will only be safe when a Conservative government rewrites Labour's Human Rights Act

Martin Parsons has argued that a Conservative government should re-write the Human Rights Act (HRA) to permit the deportation of Islamist terrorists to countries in which they would be tortured or treated in other inhumane ways.  He suggests that this would be more in line with a "historic British" approach to human rights.

I disagree with Martin profoundly in this matter.  I do not believe that we should extradite people to countries where they would be tortured, any more than that we should render them there so that they can be tortured on our behalf.  Furthermore, I do not believe that the Human Rights Act restricts us in this any more than would the application of previous British concepts of liberty.

Britain will only be safe when a Conservative government rewrites Labour's Human Rights Act

Douglas Murray is almost certainly right in suggesting that the British government should seek to prosecute Abu Qatada. However, more fundamentally the government's problems in deporting Abu Qatada and other Islamist terrorists to their countries of origin stem from this government's own adoption of the European concept of human rights, in preference to our historic British one.

The European concept of human rights is exemplified in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and was incorporated into the 1997 Human Rights Act, which formed a centre piece of Labour's 1997 election manifesto. This gives innate rights such as 'liberty' to all individuals. In contrast to this, the Anglo American concept of human rights which originated with the Magna Carta limits the power of government to interfere unreasonably in the lives of its citizens (e.g. the government may not imprison anyone without a trial before a jury etc.).

Islamists like Abu Qatada - who has been named by four countries as al-Qaeda's spiritual ambassador in Europe - exploit the individualistic European concept of human rights to claim that their own human rights would be violated if they were extradited to their countries of origin, as they would face inhumane treatment there.

Put Mugabe on trial

I begin this post by paying tribute to the brave people of Zimbabwe, who are trying to take a stand for freedom and democracy and against Mugabe's tyranny. In that context, I applaud Conservativehome's decision to devote today's blog to Zimbabwe.

Today's Times perhaps had the best coverage, and the best angle on Zimbabwe. The headline, War crimes warning to Mugabe as terror grows, caught my attention, as did the editorial. The Times and others are now arguing that evidence should be collected of Mugabe's crimes against humanity, and that if the situation does not change soon he should face prosecution in the International Criminal Court. A Western diplomat summed it up well by saying that Mugabe needs to understand he is only "minutes away" from an indictment in the ICC.

We allow South Africa to allow Mugabe to stay in power

When talking to Conservative friends who (unlike me) think it was wrong to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq I usually ask if they believe military action to remove Mugabe would be justified. I am interested by how often they agree that such action would be both moral and practical.

But would it be necessary? Peter Oborne was correctly identified earlier today by Cameron Watt as a hero, presented a Channel 4 documentary from Zimbabwe in 2003. It was filmed, of course, undercover showing Oborne to be a man of some courage and the subsequent interviews he undertook with Government Ministers in Whitehall showed really anger. Hitherto I had just thought of him as one of those genial but cynical drunken hacks you come across at the lobby of the Imperial Hotel during Party Conferences in Blackpool.

Oborne's key point, repeated in a Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet is that we allow South Africa to allow Mugabe to stay in power.

"There is an almost exact parallel between Mbeki's situation today and President Vorster's in the 1970s," he wrote. "For more than a decade Ian Smith's illegitimate Rhodesian Government was able to survive thanks to South African collusion. But the moment Henry Kissinger persuaded Vorster to pull the plug Rhodesia fell. Zimbabwe is a land-locked state, and dependent on South Africa for trading links, and above all, for oil."

I hope that by the time William Hague becomes our Foreign Secretary after the next election that Mugabe will already have gone. If not I hope Hague reads Oborne's CPS pamphlet.

Catholic Charities rebuke the UN in Zimbabwe

Caritas, the major Catholic Charity, has been forced to suspend its work in Zimbabwe following the brutality meted out to opponents of the government. Caritas has worked with the victims of Mugabe's forced "slum clearances" and concentrates on children, women and the most vulnerable. They have been feeding one million Zimbabweans direct, and their projects in the country have assisted a further two million. Now Mugabe's thuggery has driven out those who want to help.

The moral vacuum displayed by the UN and the so-called "international community" over Zimbabwe has come under strong criticism from the archbishops. Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference stated ""Quiet Diplomacy" is not feeding the people, but allowing the current structures to threaten the very survival of the extremely vulnerable." The bishops urged the Zimbabwean government to work with relief agencies from all religions, amongst others.

And indeed, as a Catholic myself I wonder if the tragedy in Zimbabwe does not belie the phrase "international community". Is there, in fact, an international community? Because nobody, including Zimbabwe's nearest neighbours or the U.N., appears to care. Kane's shrug from Genesis hangs heavy in the air. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

As three million Zimbabweans are deprived, at gunpoint, of church-led aid, the UN's answer appears to be "No".

How to follow Zimbabwe on the internet

This is a guest post kindly submitted by Matt Wardman.

I've been watching the situation in Zimbabwe develop using the websites of organisations working inside and outside the country. Over recent weeks the situation has moved from the need for thorough scrutineering of an election to a situation where there have been more than 1000 incidents and 70 deaths, and a civil war seems possible. This article aims to highlight a few of the many sources of information available.

The most comprehensive information is provided by the Sokwanele organisation, including a Google map of incidents of Political Violence - currently there are more than 1300 recorded, a regularly updated blog, a feed of photos via Flick-r and even messages via Twitter when there are particular crises.

There are a number of other Zimbabwe organisations which provide news online. Zimbabwe Democracy Now have a comprehensive list, including news sources and voluntary groups based outside the country. There is even an ex-Zimbabwe policeman who publishes a podcast from Derby.

Stay the course

It's heart wrenching to see all those horrific accounts of atrocities being committed by the Tyrant of Harare, and to hear first hand from exiles of the horrors at work.

Mugabe has of course long been giving African despots a bad name. Why be surprised if he continues to employ Ceaucescu tactics on his own people?

From far off London it's impossible to truly grapple with the evil at play and the terrors being confronted. Any words from this safe and distant desk are ephemeral. But if they catch on a breeze and someone might take note, I whisper this; take heart. Don't give up. An election that is unfought, howsoever justified by the price in blood, is always taken by apologists as an endorsement to the incumbent. A stolen election never can be.

A forward strategy for Zimbabwe: what next if Mugabe cheats again?

So far - and quite understandably - the debate on the Zimbabwe elections here is focusing on the run-up to the poll itself and attempts to ensure that some form of free and fair poll occurs. But what if, as seems likely, the election is indeed rigged in Robert Mugabe's favour? What should the response of the international community be?

Shame on British banks

Few British journalists have done more than Peter Oborne to highlight the plight of Zimbabwe. I commend his excellent article calling us to action in this week's Spectator.

Oborne describes how a German company, Giesecke & Devrient, is helping Mugabe through its printing of trillions of Zimbabwe dollars which is helping prop up the collapsing economy. If the EU were serious in opposing Mugabe it obviously would not tolerate this.

Giesecke & Devrient has 'key accounts' with British companies including RBS, Group4Securicor, the Post Office, HBOS and my bank, HSBC. Each of us should be using our power as consumers to apply pressure to corporations helping keep Mugabe in power. I'm calling HSBC to ask why they are doing business with Giesecke & Devrient.

5pm update: Ivor Godfrey-Davies, HSBC's Head of Group Corporate Relations, has just called. He promised to clarify what, if any, links his company has with G&D and get back to me next week. Having contacted all the firms listed above, I will post the responses I get next week.

Even Mugabe's Zimbabwe can't survive long without electricity...

Many seasoned diplomats will tell you that the answer to Zimbabwe lies in South Africa. They are certainly right. Sadly, South African diplomacy - the softly, softly approach - has been an abject failure. Arguably, this was because many of the ANC old school could not stomach the idea that a party of African national liberation would one day be turfed out of office by popular acclaim. Despite his worst excesses, they never really wanted to see Mugabe gone. Perhaps now that the Zimbabwean crisis has been exported to them in vast numbers of refugees, they may have a change of heart and choose a policy that can actually deliver results; cutting off electricity supplies.

The figures may be old, but a full 25% of Zimbabwe's electricity in 2005 came from outside the country which is chronically undersupplied anyway. Most of these imports stem from their much bigger southern neighbour as well as from Mozambique.  And as the Zimbabwean dollar reaches new lows and the existing power infrastructure rots away thanks to vandalism and copper theft, I suspect that percentage is even higher today.

This idea of freezing electricity exports into Zimbabwe has been muted for some time, most recently again by our own Foreign Office. It will still be South Africa though that has to make this decision and it shouldn't be that hard - I doubt the Zimbabwean regime even pays the market rate for it, if at all.

That's why all international diplomatic pressure should now come to bear on South Africa to enact this policy and bring an end to this long-running tragedy.

The trivialisation of evil

In 1963, Hannah Arendt, watching the trial of leading Nazi, Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, described Eichmann’s actions as ‘the banality of evil’. Underlying her phrase was her belief that it was quite simple for normal people (and not just psychopaths) to commit evil acts as they convinced themselves that they were doing the legitimate bidding of the state.

I thought of this phrase as I read in my local newspaper ‘The Harlow Star’, that the former leader of the Labour Council in Harlow, Cllr Tony Durcan, compared the Conservative Leader of the Council Andrew Johnson, to Robert Mugabe, over a disagreement about the allocation of the six Labour Councillors on Committees. The Labour Councillor stated “It feels a bit like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe."

Imagine how you would feel if it happened here

It's Spring 2010, the eve of Britain's general election.  Gordon Brown, a socialist tyrant, was expected to lose power. Except there's a problem. David Cameron is living in Paris with his family. Boris Johnson's family has just been kidnapped. Caroline Spelman is on trial over her expenses - except the charge is treason and she's expected to be found guilty under laws originally passed to combat terrorism. A week ago every house in Weybridge's St George's Hill was burned down by hoards of angry former miners who have somehow got hold of weapons. Commentators said most seemed a bit young ever to have worked down the pits. In Germany, hundreds of British exiles were killed in last month's Hamburg riots. Yet Angela Merkel still defends her efforts to engage Brown on a softly softly basis, while France is starting to demand firmer action against the tyrant. Daily violence continues to be reported against Conservative Party activists, many of whom have been beaten to death.  Today a Chinese arms ship docked at Tilbury... No one now expects Brown to lose.

It couldn't happen here, could it? Publishers would laugh at the manuscript and chuck it in the bin. The whole idea is so obviously ludicrous. Yet this is exactly what has been happening in Zimbabwe. Every day. The equivalent of all the events above has been happening in Zimbabwe. The World stands by and expresses concern. The greatest penalty seems to be two tuts and a sigh. It's not acceptable. Most at fault are the African states that indulge the tyrant - particularly South Africa. Other countries are invaded or peacekeepers are sent in by the UN. Why not here? Why is South Africa allowed to get away with pandering to the evil that struts openly next door? It may not be our country, but it is the responsibility of us all. Doing nothing is no longer an option.

Zimbabwe: In defence of a British backed coup

We’re not meant to say it these days but however you look at it, Zimbabwe’s ours. Not literally, but in the interests of a post-independence peaceful settlement. So we have an existing obligation to look after its interests.

What is to be done with Zimbabwe via the existing EU channels? Whatever is to be done, the arguments must no longer be whether we should or should not act, but what kind of international action by Europe should be taken. Certainly, the EU, in terms of the collective nation states of Europe, needs to act on Zimbabwe but they need to act now. We can’t wait for the slothful Foreign Secretaries of France or Germany to begin or indeed Javier Solana to wake up in Brussels and recognise the world realities. Indeed, recent gestures by the EU or the Member States show that most would not be willing to stick their neck out on Zimbabwe. The fact that either Europe works as one united voice or some follow later shouldn’t be a question; and shame on those who doubt that now is the time for action. The UK and more to the point, the Conservative Party must take some kind of leadership here.

A day for Zimbabwe

Today on CentreRight.com we are focusing on just one topic: Zimbabwe.

Every hour different CentreRight contributors will be examining different angles of the reign of terror that now prevails in the run up to next week's election.

At 10am Jim McConalogue will look at the EU's role, at 11am Charlie Elphicke will note the scale of violence, at noon Dan Lewis will call on South Africa to act and at 1pm Robert Halfon will blog about how our tendency to trivialise evil confuses our response to it.  Other contributors will be blogging later in the day.

My own opening contribution is a simple one.  Our failure to act earlier has made it so much harder to act now.  We are no longer dealing with one bad man, Mugabe, and a few henchmen but with an evil system where far too many military men have a stake in the continuation of the status quo.  Because we and Zimbabwe's African neighbours turned a blind eye to earlier human rights abuses the regime thought that it could get away with bigger abuses.  They saw us do nothing when intimidation of voters was obvious but limited in scale and now the regime murders and brutalises its opponents on a massive scale. 

As with nearly every global problem we cannot wait on the UN.  The UN Human Rights Council has shown itself to be wholly unfit. It recently elected Jean Ziegler as an expert advisor to its ranks.  Among other things Mr Ziegler has said that "[Robert] Mugabe has history and morality with him."

Until the world's democracies operate a policy of zero tolerance of human rights abuses we will see more nations conclude that they can get away with murder.  Literally.  William Hague has promised to put human rights at the heart of Conservative foreign policy.  Part of that commitment should include a system for highlighting nations that are beginning to erode basic standards of civilised behaviour.  We need to build a new alliance of democracies who will be willing to act on early signs of abuses.  Without a policy of zero tolerance we will only see more Zimbabwes in the years ahead.

Happy Birthday ASSK

Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is celebrating yet another birthday from within the confines of house arrest. 

The Conservatives have had a very strong record on Burma in recent years, much credit for which is due to our own Benedict Rogers. William Hague released this statement today:

"Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered over a decade of unjust imprisonment because of her extraordinary personal courage in standing up for the people of Burma. We utterly condemn her continued detention and that of the 2,000 other political prisoners in Burma.

As she marks her 63rd birthday under house arrest and isolated from her friends, family and the outside world, we call on the British Government today to redouble its efforts to raise Burma at the UN Security Council. Those countries which callously continue to oppose Security Council action on Burma, and to shield the junta, should be named and shamed."

My favourite quote of hers is:

"We do not accept the notion that democracy is a Western value. To the contrary; democracy simply means good government rooted in responsibility, transparency, and accountability."

Maybe, just maybe, she will live to be a part of democracy becoming a reality in Burma.

Abuse in the blogosphere

A good, substance-heavy debate has followed my piece over at the Platform against legalising drugs.  The majority of responses - perhaps like the majority of active right-of-centre bloggers - are libertarian in tone and disagree with me.  Fair enough.

But - at the risk of being pilloried - I think that there's rather a lot of playing the man and not the ball.  I don't just mean that anonymous posting allows people to chuck abuse - in fact, in this example, there's really none of that.  But I do suggest that it's an example of the fact that it seems fashionable in the blogosphere to be abusive about a person who's written something with which you disagree, rather than simply setting out the fact that one does disagree.

I suppose all I mean is that people are comfortable with an online persona through which they say things they wouldn't (one imagines / hopes) say in conversation.  The restraining influence of a person on the other end of the comment seems absent, and the fashion for aggro, boisterous scorn rather pronounced.

Thoughts?

Cancel the Cuban Festival

Ken Livingstone was planning a "massive festival" across London next year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

It was to involve street parties, sports venues and some of London's leading museums as well as the closure of Trafalgar Square. Livingstone, as usual, refused to provide budget estimates as to the cost of this celebration of dictatorship.

There has been great news from City Hall this week, with the departure of Livingstone's Trotskyite 'cultural adviser' Jude Woodward, a member of the secretive Socialist Action group.

Can the mayor confirm that this planned festival honouring Castro will not now go ahead?