CentreRight

The extremists behind London's anti-Israel demonstrations

From Douglas Murray of the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Of all the press distortions surrounding Israel’s ongoing fight with the terrorist group Hamas, the most galling to me has been the depiction of the assault on the Israeli Ambassador’s residence in London as some kind of popular insurgency.

Despite the best efforts of the BBC to portray otherwise, these protests were not the result of anti-Israeli sentiment by impartial, sympathetic observers but rather the result of a co-ordinated campaign by a variety of Islamist groups with perfectly open, long-standing views on their objection to Israel’s right to exist.

The London embassy of one of Britain’s foremost allies has been under siege thanks largely to the British Muslim Initiative, who detailed on their website the time and location of the demonstration.  The Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK- whose spokesman Asghar Bukhari was recently revealed by the Centre for Social Cohesion to believe that “any Muslim who fights against Israel and dies is a martyr and will be granted paradise”- also sought to give greater exposure to the planned demonstration.

Victims of Intimidation

I have just finished reading the Centre for Social Cohesion's latest report, Victims of Intimidation: Freedom of Speech Within Europe's Muslim Communities. For anyone who cares about our basic freedoms and human rights, regardless of religion, the report's findings are deeply alarming. The report details the experiences of 27 European writers, activists, politicians, artists and journalists, all of Muslim background, who have suffered threats, intimidation, harassment and actual physical attack as a result of extremist reaction to opinions they have expressed. The cases come from throughout the continent - countries as diverse as Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Some have been in such danger that they have had to have police protection - and many others ought to have had similar protection but have been denied it. A few cases, such as that of Samira Munir, a Pakistan-born women's rights activist and politician in Norway, have resulted in death - although often unsolved or shrouded in mystery. What is especially powerful about the report is that it documents cases of Muslim background critics of aspects of Islam and Islamism. Some of these critics remain Muslims, but seek reform, while others have chosen to leave Islam and face the consequences. Either way, none of them are Western non-Muslims - all are Muslim-background activists with first hand experience of some of the more oppressive aspects of parts of Islam.

The report brings out not only the threats faced by Muslim and ex-Muslim critics of radical Islam and Islamism, but the complicity of parts of the uber-politically correct liberal elite in Europe. For example, in the case of Kadra Noor, a Somali-born Norwegian activist and investigative reporter, left-wing Norwegian anthropologists opposed her campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), arguing that to criticise FGM is 'cultural imperialism'. They went on to compare FGM to ear-piercing! She was later beaten unconscious outside a pub in Oslo.

"Government opts not to regulate" and other headlines you haven't seen recently

During my very enjoyable first two months as co-editor of ConservativeHome, I've read a huge number of news stories from the papers as part of the ritual preparation of the morning newslinks for the front page.

And it has struck me more than ever before the extent to which this Government is on a mission to make the state ever bigger and all the more nannying and interventionist.

This morning brought three prime examples:

• "The 'nanny state' guide to giving children of five alcohol": A Daily Mail story about how the Government is going to issue parents with guidance about how much alcohol children can safely drink.
• "Private firm may track all email and calls": A story in the Guardian suggesting that a company will be asked to run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use.
• "Labour considers car speed-limiters": An Independent story about a proposal to fit speed-limiting devices in cars.

What is the likelihood of seeing any of the following headlines on stories in 2009:

• "People must be free to make their own mistakes, says Harman"
• "Minister rules out a ban"
• "Britain is over-regulated, admits Brown"
• "Jacqui Smith: A new law is unnecessary"
• "The state has too much power, says Blunkett"

Pretty unlikely, I fear.

Whenever the Government does set about increasing the excesses of the state, Conservative spokesmen are usually quick to question the need for more regulation and intervention - and rightly so.

I just hope that when they are in a position of power that they will indeed roll back the frontiers of the state and resist the temptation to deliver what is demanded by the "something must be done" brigade.

What is conservatism?

A little while ago Iain Murray emailed me this 1960 statement from some American young conservatives.

It got me to thinking that it would be an interesting project to draw up my own statement of conservatism.  I plan to do that during January/ February.  It doesn't pretend to be The statement, just A statement.  I've drafted a few components (below) - they sometimes use others' language/ they are in no particular order at this stage - and I plan to enlarge upon them most days for the next few weeks and then put them together - all online...

1. No insignificant person has ever been born.
2. Economic liberalism needs social conservatism (and, 5pm addition, Iain Murray emails me to say and vice versa)
3. The presumption should always be in favour of life
4. Government should be as small as possible but as large as necessary
5. Multilateral organisations transfer power from people to politicians
6. Private choices have public consequences/ Policymakers have an interest in 'private choices', at least so long as they have consequences for taxpayers
7. Conservatism is a creative coalition between security, economic and cultural conservatives
8. A welfare state that feeds-and-forgets isn't compassionate
9. Politics is less important than ideas, culture and religion
10. Free enterprise and big business are not the same
11. Taxation has dynamic effects
12. Pre-emption is the best response to many of today's security threats
13. There is such thing as society, it's just not the state
14. Man is a fallen creature
15. Decision-making powers should be as close as possible to those affected by those decisions
16. Private ownership is nearly always preferable to common ownership
17. A strong society is built upon the vigorous virtues of courage, ambition, creativity, self-sufficiency and enterprise.
18. Love of country is fundamental to all conservatism.
19. Social liberalism can be destructive of social justice.
20. Conservative reform is usually preferable to radical revolution. Conservatism must deal with its own enemies within.

They are far from finished at this stage. They need to be much better expressed but grateful for any initial thoughts.

PS Matthew Taylor is also having a stab at redefining progressivism.

"2008 was the best year for socialism since 1917"

That was the working title that the funsters at The Guardian gave me to write to.  I drew up three key things that conservatives need to do in 2009 to defend capitalism:

"1) We need to restore faith in the justice of market systems by punishing the bankers who broke the rules with at least as much vigour as we would pursue a benefit fraudster. As David Cameron has said: There cannot be one rule for the rich and another for everybody else. Friends of capitalism need to take the lead in destroying the enemies within the system."

2) We must demolish the idea that the state is a superior economic guardian. While the state can play an important lender-of-last-resort function it must never be the actor of first call. Conservatives and defenders of capitalism must remind voters that state regulation and state ownership is even more problematic than free enterprise. Labour's working tax credits, the NHS supercomputer fiasco and the Home Information Pack scheme have all cost billions of pounds in the last year. We also need to ensure that history records the government subsidy of mortgages that should never have been granted as the root of America's housing bust.

3) We need to make it clear that capitalism and big business are not the same. Too many big businesses have become so bureaucratic and top-heavy that they have lost the dynamism of true entrepreneurs. Conservatives should not feel obligated to defend the big banks and big corporates who have become lazy and greedy over the years. Our instinct, as Michael Howard once put it, should always be to protect the little guy against every over mighty institution – whether it be big government, a big labour union or big business."

The full article is here.

Driving Licence laws

I recently blogged about Australia's flexible driving laws, with the tentative conclusion that they are harsher than ours.

Well, the news that drivers here in the UK will be subject to health checks every decade rather trumps that, doesn't it?

You know, you know, you know

Poor Caroline Kennedy. Her constant use of 'you know' during a recent radio interview is being ridiculed across the US blogosphere. She is bidding to succeed Hillary Clinton as New York's junior Senator, you know.

On the merits of an official state religion

My guess is that many people think the point of state religion is something like the following.  If we have a society in which the majority of the population has strong religious commitments and places great trust in religious leaders, then if the secular authorities act in some way that the religious authorities oppose, the priests and monks may denounce the secular authorities and the wider population may be forced to choose between their souls and obedience to the law.  This could be a recipe for unrest.  In such circumstances, it may be a reflection of pragmatic reality that one includes the religious authorities in secular decision-making.

If this were indeed the reason for including religion in state business, then in a society in which most people did not have strong religious commitments and/or in which respect for religious leaders were low, this rationale for state religion would be gone.  Maintaining an official state religion would be pointless - better to consult with the Bob Geldofs and other respected public figures that would actually carry some weight with the masses.

But this is not why I believe in having a state religion.

Progress in Iraq

This table appears in today's New York Times (a newspaper that cannot be dismissed as a cheerleader for the Iraq war).  Click on the image to enlarge.

How would you reform the House of Lords?

Iain Dale’s timely blog post about the need for Bishops sitting in the House of Lords to avoid party politics has got me thinking.  Am I alone in noticing that the issue of House of Lords reform has almost completely disappeared from the political agenda?   

Firstly, I can understand, even if I disagree with their ability to do so, the value of allowing Bishops to contribute to Lords debates about moral issues such as the right to life.  I'm constantly reminded, however, of an outrageous speech delivered in the Lords by Archbishop John Sentamu this summer in which he ridiculed Eurosceptics and passionately endorsed the European Constitution. 

As a private citizen, I have no problem with the Archibishop Sentamu voicing his support for the European Constitution, however misguided I may believe his views to be.  As a representative of the national faith, however, who sits in the Lords by virtue of being the Archbishop of York rather than Mr John Sentamu, he has no right to involve himself in such matters. 

Secondly, I have never heard a convincing argument as to why Britain should remain the only country in the world other than Swaziland to still allow tribal chieftains - yes, herediary peers - to sit in our national legislature.  Aside from this unacceptable anomoly, one only need look at the 357 life peers created by Tony Blair (as compared to 341 created during the Thatcher and Major years) to conclude that the chamber is broadly reliant on party-political patronage as opposed to genuine ability.

The Right was right Dave. You were wrong.

David Cameron in the Sunday Telegraph: "We said that the already worrying state of public finances under Labour made it irresponsible for the Conservative Party to go into the next election promising up-front, unfunded tax cuts. Many, especially on the Right, disagreed. But George Osborne and I were determined to stand by our belief in fiscal responsibility; and I believe that events, in particular the appalling deterioration of the public finances, have endorsed the wisdom of that judgment."

Why does our leader think it useful to claim victory over the Right? Is Steve Hilton still seeking a Clause IV factional battle? More to the point it was the Right that was right on the big economic debates, not the party leadership.

This conservativehome blog did not launch a campaign for tax cuts one year ago but for lower public spending. Dave ignored the advice and continued to offer up-front, unfunded increases in state spending (for that is what they were).

It was not the Right that said that economics was yesterday's news. From his desk at Rothschilds Oliver Letwin told us that we all had to be sociocentric not econocentric. It was David Cameron who danced with the butterflies and bunnies in his talk of General Well-Being being more important than G.D.P..

We Right-wingers are happy to forgive your errors Dave but stop the "pointless" attacks on us. We were not the "delusional" ones.

Political Book of the Year - Reviewers wanted

Channel Four's 2009 Political Awards include a section for the Political Book of the Year, and this year it's a truly fascinating crop. The programme makers want your ratings, good or bad - up to 300 words - and may use the best of them. I can't help thinking that ConHome readers would make excellent reviewers; not just those who comment on the site but the far larger crowd of lurkers (yes, I'm looking at you).

Here's the shortlist:

A Political Suicide: the Conservatives' Journey into the Wilderness, by Norman Fowler

A short, fascinating book about the party's descent from Thatcherite dominance into the wipeout of 97 and back by a man who had a front row seat. Lord Fowler sees paralells between the breakdown of the later Major years and Brown's government today. Should be required reading for every Tory candidate, even if you disagree with some of the author's politics.

Cameron on Cameron by Dylan Jones

One of the most important political publishing events of the year, as it is an exhaustive conversation with the Leader of the Opposition and likely future PM. Derided by some reviewers as not pushing Cameron hard enough on difficult issues, the book nevertheless has the unique selling point of offering Cameron's own responses, unvarnished, rather than commentary on him. Vital if you want to understand Cameron's mindset without the filter of the media. People keep giving me copies!

If we want an enduring peace in the Middle East, then Israel must be allowed to defeat Hamas in Gaza

Up to 300 hundred dead.   BBC Television pictures showing Israeli bombardments of Gaza.  The Islamist lobby out in full force.  President Ahmanidejad (Hamas’s financier), hosted by Channel 4.  It’s not really too difficult to get worked up about Israel’s actions. So easy to point the blame.  Much harder to separate truth from fiction – especially when the truth is often under reported  - if reported at all.

Let’s go back to 2005, when Israel withdrew – unilaterally – from Gaza. This action was designed to herald future withdrawals by Israel from much of the rest of the administered territories around the West Bank.

At the time, Israel was praised by many governments in the West for a bold and decisive action.  To jump start the economy in Gaza, millions of dollars were spent on agriculture and the building of green-houses by the World Bank – all of which were smashed up by Palestinian Terrorists - as Israel departed.  Other financial aid – again in the millions of dollars - designed for schools and children, were used by the extremists to promote hate education, and virulently anti-Semitic literature.

Instead of building a peaceful and viable Gaza, Hamas mounted an armed coup d’état against President Abbas’s Fatah movement (which included throwing leading ‘Fatah’ Palestinians off the rooftops).  Aided and abetted by Iran, Hamas gradually began the ‘Talibanisation’ of Gaza (in marked contrast to the more secular West Bank, still run by Mahmoud Abbas).  Not for nothing has Gaza become known as ‘Hamastan’.

What would the British government do if Dover was bombarded with missiles from Calais?

The question answers itself.

Israel

I am a proud supporter of the State of Israel.  Surrounded by enemies who wish her ill, this sliver of democracy and decency has always held my sympathy and a visit to Israel a few years ago, and the inspiration I drew from the people I met there, changed my life.

So, as I say, I am an instinctive and constant supporter of Israel.

As I sat jetlagged and awake last night and watched the death toll creep inexorably towards 300, the maintenance of that position felt less than straightforward.

At church today (28 December - Feast of the Holy Innocents) the Collect was drawn from Corinthians and a particular part struck me:

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

I found that rather striking today.

What's your New Year message to Gordon Brown?

Gordon Brown's New Year message to you is that the recession is a "test of character". Just the thing you want to hear when you are worried about how you are going to pay for Christmas, about losing your job and your home . . . that it's all a great character building experience.

And all this from the man whose extreme borrowing has all but bankrupted the country, allowed banks to lend to excess, permitted a runaway housing bubble, raised the tax burden on the average household by £10,000 a year, presided over ever deeper social division and whose economic policies have come together to plunge us into the worst downturn in living memory - possibly since the 1880s. Test of patience would be more like it.

My New Year message to Gordon Brown is simple. Get lost. Yes, the British people should work together to build a better tomorrow . . . one that does not include you.

What would your message to Gordon Brown be?

Heathrow

Further to my post earlier today describing our premiere airport as an armpit, to which some have taken umbrage, and further to my post earlier this year on our appalling record on grand projets, I point out the following:

• Terminal 2 is going to be demolished this coming year, 2009
• Terminal 1 is to be demolished soon thereafter (along with the Queen's Building, an administrative building)
• At a cost of £1.5 billion, they shall be replaced by "Heathrow East" - with a projected completion date in 2012.  Even if it's completed on schedule and operates on time - which would be unprecedented in British projects - what will happen with passenger flow in the duration is... unclear. (Do remember that, unlike every other airport, Heathrow already operates at 98% flight capacity - no slack to be taken up elsewhere).
• When it's gloriously completed, Heathrow East will have a passenger capacity a full five million, erm, fewer than the terminals it's replacing.

That'll help our most important airport, massively significant to our national economy, in the competition with airports internationally, won't it..?

Only in Great Britain...

Re: Channel 4 should be utterly ashamed

The reputation of public service broadcasting in the UK has taken a knock in the past few months; be it the BBC's Ross/Brand fiasco or Channel 4's  recent willingness to provide a platform for a man who believes Israel "must be wiped off the map" and sanctions the execution of gay teenagers.

As their broadcasts become more and more removed from the fundamental principle of 'public service broadcasting', the future of the BBC and Channel 4 must be seriously reconsidered. 

Proponents of the continuation of the BBC's present charter arrangements frequently argue that specialist local and cultural broadcasting would suffer at the hands of a part-privatised BBC.  This needn't be so.  Indeed, the reverse could well be true.

Surely it is now time, with channels such as Sky News, Fox News, CNN and even more peripheral players like Al Jazeera providing the type of national and international news coverage which could once only be provided by Auntie Beeb, for the organisation to withdraw from the crowded field of 24 hour national and international news provision?  Existing - and in parts outstanding - elements of the BBC's national and international news services such as the corporation's website could be legitimately privatised.

The British Climate - and not a "climate change" rant this time

I am very proud to be British.  As you're reading this on ConservativeHome, I rather suspect that that's something I share with you.  My frequent criticisms of what's happening here have sometimes drawn sharp rebuke from friends and acquaintances who think that I'm running down our country.  Not so.  Pointing out what one believes to be governmental and societal mistakes isn't the same as bashing the country that brought one up.

And yet.  And yet.  A more basic point and problem occupies me now - something that government and culture just can't fix.  When I returned from Australia just in time for Christmas with my family, I cannot pretend that my heart filled with joy at the sight of the skies above Heathrow.  My point is simply this.  Our long, long, miserable grey winter is so massively depressing, isn't it?  Heathrow - an airport designed to see 45 million passengers a year pass through, but instead creaking under the strain of 70 million - could be the best airport in the world, rather than an armpit, and it would still suffer from the psychological blow inflicted by this burdensome gloom.

What effect do you think that our weather has had - and has now - on our national life?  Do you think that the sky-high levels of emigration we're seeing might simply be significantly to do with the ease with which one can relocate to a place that doesn't have these unbelievably depressing grey months?

[And of course, London had a pretty good Indian Summer this year, too - in many years, it's even worse...]

Keeping an eye on BBC bloggers

Stephen Glover wrote a great piece in yesterday's Daily Mail about the increasingly opinionated output of BBC bloggers:

"The point about these blogs is that they are not simply opinionated. The opinions they offer are often Leftist or bien pensant. In recent years BBC reporters have been giving us the news on screen or on the radio, and then regularly providing their own 'take'. When they come to writing their own blogs, which generally are subjected to the most cursory editing, if any at all, they become freer still in disclosing what they believe."

I know this to be true.  One BBC corresponent with a blog told me that blogging was now their favourite part of their journalism.  "I get the best of both worlds," they told me, "I get the huge BBC audience and the pleasure of being a newspaper-style columnist."

It's true that these blogs are not used for party political biases - treatment of Tory-Labour coverage is too closely monitored.  But the other more ingrained BBC biases are likely to pop up:

• Favouritism towards multilateral bodies like the UN and EU rather than the nation state.
• Anti-Americanism and hostility towards Israel.
• Disdain for traditional Christianity as part of a multiculturalist worldview.
• Support for popular views on climate change.
• An instinct to favour state intervention over laissez-faire solutions.
• A constant tendency to see issues through urban rather than rural eyes.

PS I really shouldn't be bashing the BBC today.  The Public Affairs team at the Corporation sent me (and, I suspect, many, many others) a DVD set of Little Dorrit just before Christmas.  It was terrific.

Channel 4 should be utterly ashamed

In a free country like ours, broadcasters are rightly free to air more or less what they like.  But one can still take huge offence to the vile President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, being given the opportunity by Channel 4 to give an “Alternative Christmas Message” to the British people on Christmas Day.

Ahmadinejad is a senior leader of a regime that denies its own people the most basic freedoms and has vowed to wipe out Israel in his hate filled speeches.

Channel 4 should be utterly ashamed of itself.

Remembering Mandelson's first resignation ten years ago today

Peter Hoskin at Coffee House has noted that today is the tenth anniversary of Peter Mandelson's first resignation from the Cabinet.

It is a political event that I remember well, since I was on Christmas vacation from my final year at the University of York and was spending the break doing work experience at the BBC's political research unit (where I eventually worked for four years after graduating).

It was a Wednesday afternoon and as is normal in any office at this time of year, many people had taken leave either side of Christmas to give themselves a decent chunk of time off.

So when the news broke halfway through that afternoon that both Mandelson and Geoffrey Robinson were resigning from the Government over the secret £373,000 the latter had loaned the former, all hell broke loose - not least because there was only me and one full-time member of staff left in the office.

It was a real "in at the deep end moment" where the two of us had to very quickly get on top of all the background to the story and produce a briefing which within minutes was more or less being read word for word by the presenters live on BBC News 24.

Here's how the BBC website reported the story that day.

Who'd have thought then that he'd be back in the Cabinet now - in the same job - albeit having gone in and out of the Cabinet again in the meantime, not to mention a four-year stint in Brussels as European Commissioner...

The sacred and profane love machine

The Pope has said that saving people from homosexuality is as important as saving the rainforests ... something like that was the first thing I heard this morning, weaving my way back to consciousness, to the headlines on Today. I look at Keith. He looks at me. Is the tea ready?

Yes, this is going to be personal, but I don't think that matters, in fact it might be important. Some Christian leaders say these things, I think,  because - unlike the wholly wonderful Archbishop of Canterbury - they think that a focus on the bigger picture is more important than consideration of individuals. When the leading Vatican official in October described homosexuality as a deviation, an irregularity, a wound I imagine he was thinking of the bigger picture, and not about all the individuals he must know who are physical manifestations of this deviation, this irregularity, this wound.   

The bigger picture goes something like this: God determined that we would have two genders, and that only single couples formed from one of each of those genders would sexually couple, and then only for the reason of reproduction. Therefore, any deviation from this pattern is a sin, is sinful, and ... this is where it breaks down a bit ... homosexuality is particularly wrong, almost uniquely so in the universe of pathology, probably because it mimics a bit too closely for comfort the ideal model. I've written elsewhere that we make too big a fetish of our biological variability, and that such a fetish leads to the growth of Identity Politics (one thing the Pope and I can agree upon).

OK but let's give the Pope's ideas a go. Let's do a thought experiment. Turn left. Rewind the clock. Let's start the day again, but without the homosexuality:

The Pope has said that saving people from homosexuality is as important as saving the rainforests ... something like that was the first thing I heard this morning, weaving my way back to consciousness, to the headlines on Today. I look at Keith. He looks at me. What are you doing in my bed?

The troubled BBC World Service

Three years ago, the BBC World Service embarked on radical change. Radio services to Eastern Europe were closed down and the Russian service pared back, all to fund new TV stations in Arabic and Persian.

I cannot disagree in principle with some of this. It seemed to make sense that countries like Poland and the Czech Republic now being fully-fledged democracies, in NATO and in the EU, and with lively independent media of their own, that they were no longer in need of a UK taxpayer-funded BBC World Service. I did suggest at the time that a memorial be created to those like Georgi Markov who gave their lives broadcasting for freedom. Meanwhile, there were strong foreign policy reasons to bring alternative voices into the Arab world and into Iran.

Re: Some observations on a bailout for Jaguar Land Rover

I have written a brief article for this morning's edition of the Scotsman on the prospect of a bailout for Jaguar Land Rover.  Unfortunately, it is only available to subscribers but these two sections seem relevant to Ridley Grove's post: