CentreRight

"The transformation in Iraq is remarkable"

That's what the BBC's Paul Adams (surrounded by election posters) has just said in his report on today's Iraqi elections - the first in which Sunni Iraqis are playing a full part.  James Forsyth quotes this from the New York Times (another media entity often critical of Iraq):

“Iraqis voted on Saturday for local representatives, on an almost violence-free election day aimed at creating provincial councils that more closely represent Iraq’s ethnic, sectarian and tribal balance. By nightfall, there were no confirmed deaths, and children played soccer on closed-off streets in a generally joyous atmosphere."

And just to prove it the BBC had footage of footy being played...

All of this would have been impossible without the Bush-Petraeus surge.

A protest we should support

The growing protests by groups of workers over the use of foreign labour is evidence perhaps that working people, battered into submission for years by a contemptuous governmental, cultural and media establishment, are finally turning. Enough, they are saying, is enough.

Against a surreal - and indeed, obscene - background which has workers imported from Europe keeping their heads down in massive floating hotels, British workers are tentatively and, indeed, in a very orderly way, questioning quite how such a situation has been allowed to arise and indeed accepted as the norm.

In today's Times, Janice Turner is spot on:

"Many will dismiss the protests at the Lindsey oil refinery as evidence of the meat-headed ignorance and default racism of our white working class... In 2007, when Gordon Brown announced that he would be “drawing on the talents of all to create British jobs for British workers”, I was lambasted by friends and colleagues, even called a BNP stooge, for agreeing. Because I interpreted his words to mean that it is amoral to leave an idle British underclass to rot on sink estates just because the CBI finds it cheaper to employ young, willing Eastern European graduates than give Britain's poor training and hope...Some who would call me racist have themselves the most hateful, almost eugenic disgust for the white working class: the chavs, the pikeys, the Tennants-swilling pram-faces and hoodies whom they mock and fear."

Cameron's State Capitalism

This afternoon - at the World Economic forum, mind, not some whacky think-tank where we might have thought he was pandering to his audience - Cameron gave this speech.  It is pure Red Tory.  Now, I know I said we shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the Red Tory position.  And I know I said that Private Capitalism is finished and that we have a new era of State Capitalism before us.  But it's still a shock to read it all set out so explicitly.

Cameron says that Capitalism is "broken".  He says we must abandon the "old free market orthodoxy".  He says that competition should be "local".  He objects to the distribution of wealth that Capitalism results in.  He buys the Red Tory view that globalisation promotes monopoly.  He objects to multinational companies, calling them "global corporate juggernauts".

Why all the sniping at Steve Hilton, and about his salary too?

I thought it was only socialists who indulge in the politics of envy.

We should be thankful that the party can attract the best.

As Tim Montgomerie blogs, the role he has played in stopping the left caricature us as the 'nasty party' has been crucial to our recovery. 

Hilton's recent creation, the baby poster ad about Gordon Brown's debt is hitting home with voters. How better to have creative brains devising strategy  - in contrast to Labour.

Hilton's worth is shown by our poll ratings, which are not too bad at present! 

The credit crunch explained

How overregulation could threaten economic recovery by Nicholas Boys Smith

A year and a half after its inception, the credit crunch is still the major issue facing the UK economy.  What caused it, how to alleviate the immediate pain and how to prevent a recurrence of this type of crisis in the future are critical questions around which there remains much confusion.  In a paper released today by the independent think tank Reform, I argue that the causes of the crisis mean that a measured response is required, and warn that an overreaction could prevent a long-term economic recovery.

It is now eighteen months since the collapse of one of Bear Stearns’s credit hedge funds lit the credit crunch bonfire. Banks (including Bear Stearns) have been going up in smoke ever since and the fire has now spread to the real economy. Perhaps hardly surprisingly, with every day that has passed the voices prophesising the need for a fundamental reconstruction of every pillar of the market economy grow ever louder and more confident. From bank regulation, via market liberalisation and free capital flows through to classical economics itself, none of the foundations of the Friedman-Reagan-Thatcher consensus are now unquestioned. To mis-cite Francis Fukuyama, history has started again.

So what went wrong in the acronym-packed world of high finance? At its heart the credit crunch is a narrow term describing an unprecedented loss of mutual confidence between banks and a consequent failure to lend to each other and into the wider economy – hence the economic knock on effect on us all.

Leaving aside the debate on the right macro-economic response to the consequent recession, what emerges from a detailed examination of the causes “on the ground” is that it was not just greed and misplaced ideas about risk, but an inappropriate and short-sighted regulatory regime which incentivised complexity and regulatory arbitrage.  Seven key drivers explain the credit crunch.

1. The Asian “savings glut” made credit cheaper and easier than ever before – leading to downward pressure on investment “yields” and investors’ subsequent’ “search for yield”.
2. Pushed beyond a certain point, securitisation ceased effectively to pool risk with a wider range of investors better able to bear it, but simply increased the degree of risk, ignorance and opacity in the market system. Banks’ directors, credit agencies and regulators all failed to understand this.
3. Banks in the US were encouraged to advance loans to the least well off.
4. Bank directors misincentivised their staff with too great a focus on the short term.
5. Bank directors systemically took too much risk – and regulators allowed them to do so even though much risk “hedging” was more apparent than real.
6. The regulatory framework placed insufficient focus on liquidity and failed to take adequate account of off balance sheet vehicles.
7. Central banks failed to react clearly or quickly enough to the early danger signs, causing banks to loses confidence in each other.

The credit crunch therefore does not diminish the fundamental case for free trade, competition and transparency in financial services together with appropriate government regulation.  Rather, it enhances it.  Policymakers must take a measured response to strengthen the long-term stability of the UK economy.  Improvements to international financial services regulation are required, but it is precisely the rigid, rules-based regulatory approach of the last twenty years that has enabled banks to get away with excessive risk-taking in ways which effectively by-passed the intent of the detailed legal requirements.

Why would I have any interest in the Chief Medical Officer's opinions on good parenting?

Amongst the main news today has been advice from England's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, that parents should not give any alcohol at all to their under-15s and only to 15-17 year olds under supervision.  Broadcasts noted that many parents think it responsible to introduce their children quite young to small amounts of alcohol so as to get them into the habit of responsible drinking and to reduce the mystique of alcohol.  We are told that the government now thinks that is wrong.

Aid agencies need to work harder at avoiding political bias

Now that the dust has begun to settle on the BBC's refusal to air the Disaster's Emergency Committee (DEC)'s Gaza appeal, it is time in the cool light of day to take a good hard look at the issue of political bias.

The spat between the BBC and the DEC should never have happened. The modern Aid agency movement was set up in the aftermath of war, Save The Children was set up in 1919 to relieve the suffering at the end of the first world war, OXFAM in 1942 and CARE in 1945. Moreover, aid agencies always work within a political context. Aid workers have to make local contacts and get local permission to work. Sometimes this is with groups that it would be wholly inappropriate for western governments to negotiate with. As an aid worker in Afghanistan I had to negotiate with radical Islamist groups such as the Taliban and the notorious Hezb-i-Islami party of Gulbadin Hekmatyer, in order to be allowed to travel to areas that they controlled access to. However, anyone who has worked in such areas is acutely aware that whoever is seen by the local people as introducing or facilitating the entry of aid workers to an area will get an enormous amount of political kudos when the aid work starts. In fact, it is often a very difficult task for aid agencies to avoid increasing the political influence of some rather unpleasant political groups. For example, in going to an area in Afghanistan where no other aid agencies were then working, I had to negotiate hard for my agency to be allowed to travel there without being accompanied by Hezb-i-Islami soldiers.

The situation in Gaza is particularly difficult for aid agencies as Hamas very deliberately and successfully used aid projects as a means of gaining power in the 2005 elections. Whilst Hamas' share of the vote for the nationally decided seats remained at almost exactly the same level as it had been in previous elections, it won by winning an unexpectedly large number of locally decided seats. This was achieved by local Hamas candidates deliberately pursuing a long term strategy of starting local humanitarian projects, often funded by western sources, as a means of increasing their personal vote. Many Palestinians who had voted for local Hamas candidates were then shocked when a succession of local seat wins led to Hamas winning the overall election.

Digital disappointment

Today's "Digital Britain" announcement was a huge disappointment. Britain has some of the strongest creative industries in the world (film, TV and music etc) and also some of the slowest broadband speeds. But if we are to capitalise on our ability to make digital content, our companies also need a home market capable of distributing it. Today's announcement was supposed to address that problem - instead, after 9 reviews today's one simply announced a futher 8 consultations. Even by New Labour standards this really takes the biscuit for dithering and indecision.

The tragedy is that many in the industry hoped the new broadcasting minister Stephen Carter would get a grip and show leadership. Instead, as France, Germany and the US lay fibre optic cable to people's homes, we are stuck in the information slow lane - or will be until there is a Conservative government. David Cameron has pledged that a future Conservative government will aim to get superfast broadband to the majority of the population within 5 years. After delivering the satellite and cable revolution last time, it looks like it will once again be a Conservative government that takes Britain's digital industries forward.

How can an MP of 12 years' standing accidentally vote the wrong way?

Last night's vote on the Opposition motion on Heathrow was closer than many people thought, with more than two dozen Labour MPs voting with the Conservatives in the lobby to oppose a third runway.

But one loyalist Labour MP is claiming today that he meant to vote with the Tories but accidentally ended up supporting the Government in the crunch vote.

Step forward Martin Linton, the Labour MP for Battersea since 1997, who currently enjoys a majority of, er, 163.

He has posted an incredible account on his website explaining how he managed to walk through the lobby with all his Labour coleagues, instead of the one full of Tories, Lib Derms and the Labour rebels.

It's on his website, but I reproduce it here for your persual:

"This is a mix-up for which I am entirely responsible. I was expecting two votes and instead of voting for an Opposition motion on the first vote I was going to vote against a Government motion for a third runway on the second vote. But the Opposition decided not to call the second vote.

"I now wish I had taken my opportunity of voting against the runway on the first vote and I feel not a little embarrassed at the confusion this has caused, but I can only say that I remain against a third runway and I shall not miss an opportunity to vote against if one comes up.

"I lobbied the Aviation Minister and the Transport Minister and went with a group of London MPs to see the Prime Minister twice to try to persuade them against any increase in flights into Heathrow and we were successful in persuading them to drop the idea of all-day flights. This would have meant an increase in flights over Battersea and an end to the system of runway alternation, which gives people under each flightpath a break of eight hours each day without aircraft landing overhead.

"I think there is still a chance of persuading the Government to drop the third runway and I shall certainly keep trying. It is not due to be started until 2015 and it has to go through a long planning inquiry first, and then it has to meet noise and pollution targets that are so high that some people think they may never be met.

"The first vote was on a Conservative motion to ask the Government to ‘think again’ and the second vote would have been on a Government amendment supporting the third runway, which I would have opposed.  Only the first was put to the vote and was defeated by 19 votes."

Mr Linton has been an MP for nearly twelve years, yet claims he managed to get confused when it came to the vote. Do we believe it was a mix-up or were the Government that worried about losing the vote that he sacrificed his principles for them?

The Muslim Council of Britain finds a new excuse to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day

Yet again the Muslim Council of Britain has boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day.  After their governing committee met a spokesman explained...

"There was no one in that [committee] meeting who was prepared to attend [Holocaust Memorial Day] this year without making a visible protest about the genocide in Gaza.  It was agreed that the MCB does not wish to minimize the tragedy of the Holocaust or demean or disturb its annual memorial by attending and protesting about the genocide in Gaza, and it was therefore decided to abstain from the Holocaust Memorial Day this year."

Labour MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik deserves plaudits for taking the MCB to task in a letter to The Guardian:

"I'm sad to be writing critically about the Muslim Council of Britain on the issue of the Holocaust Memorial Day once more (Report, 26 January). This week many thousands around the country did not commemorate the Holocaust in order to "silence criticism of Israel", as suggested by the MCB - nor did their commemoration in any way equate to support for the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

During the Nazi era more than 12 million were exterminated - 6 million because they were Jewish. Had Hitler been able to get his hands on a few Muslims, I'm sure they would have met a similar fate. This year's HMD theme was "standing up to hatred" - something that should be embraced by all Britons. Tragically the MCB have missed the point of HMD - it's a day when we unite in our humanity against the evil potential of man by reminding ourselves of past depravity.

For the record, as a former humanitarian affairs minister, I was angry at the Israeli military action in Gaza and at the BBC's decision not to air Gaza appeal, but I am also a proud member of the HMD Trust - there is no contradiction."

RE: What is the Conservative position on flights?

If we are not going to have the third runway at Heathrow or Boris Island, then the expansion of regional airports makes a lot of sense.  So in answer to Matthew Sinclair, it all seems clear to me and Theresa Villiers and the Conservative Transport team have basically got it right.

R3 has understandably caused much of London and areas West serious horror at yet more aircraft.  This is despite the best efforts of BAA and airlines like BA. And despite the best efforts of the Airport Operators Association (AOA) who have lots of regional members yet only seem interested in even more Heathrow - regional airports take note! So despite all this, people are not buying it. They have had enough and clearly don't want the third runway.

Meanwhile, Boris Island is now said to be costing £40Bn.  So the costs of that scheme seem to be climbing even faster than the Olympics and knock the costs of the Dome into a cocked hat. Boris Island has another key difficulty. People may not favour more Heathrow, but many don't want to see it closed either as many businesses and jobs located near to Heathrow would suffer. So inertia is likely to favour keeping Heathrow as it is.

What???????

Listen to the following, from the Today programme this morning, about how schools fail to deliver adequate literacy to students.  The early part is an interview with Vernon Brown, who left school aged 16 with what they described as "a literacy level below that of an 11 year old".

What is the Conservative position on flights?

Just over a fortnight ago, I wrote that "we will need to have a reckoning over whether the Conservative Party is in favour of letting ordinary Britons enjoy a holiday abroad, or not."  Is the Conservative Party only against expansion at Heathrow, as Boris appeared to be, or against airport expansion in general, as Theresa Villiers appeared to be?

The water is even muddier today.  We've had Theresa Villiers writing, on this website, that:

"And what about the Government’s promise to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050? Despite rushing out yet another empty promise to reduce emissions from planes by 2050, the Government have come up with no concrete plan to explain how a 46 per cent increase in flights will be reconciled with the international fight against catastrophic climate change."

Then, the Times reports - from yesterday's debate:

"The Tory attempt to embarrass Labour during the debate backfired when Ms Villiers said during the opening exchanges: “We don’t rule out South East expansion.” Later, she added: “Nor are we against flying.”

This is Ms Villiers’s most explicit statement so far that the Conservatives would be prepared to see expansion in some parts of the South East."

Apparently the favoured airports for expansion are Luton, London City and Southend.  Emissions from a plane flying from Luton will have much the same impact on the climate as emissions from a flight from Heathrow.  It isn't just that the Conservative Party is more divided than its opposition to Heathrow suggests but that Theresa Villiers herself appears to be unsure whether an increase in international flights is acceptable.

If the Conservatives' opposition is to expansion at Gatwick, Stansted or Heathrow then it appears almost calculated to prevent the UK having a hub airport.  We'll have lots of airport capacity from small airports that will fly to hubs at Frankfurt or Paris, then we'll rely on them to access the rest of the world.  That wouldn't be good for London's competitiveness or for ordinary Britons wanting to fly abroad conveniently and affordably.  However, at the same time it won't prevent emissions rising.

Gordon's hubris to nemesis

Those who do not learn from (economic) history are condemned to repeat it. One of the conclusions offered by IFS Director Robert Chote at this morning's Green Budget was that the path of the public finances over the last twelve years and predicted over the next five is 'uncannily similar to that trodden by the Conservatives from 1979 to 1997.' In other words, from deficit to surplus in the first three years in office, then eight years of 'fiscal drift masked by economic overconfidence.' In year 12 'hubris gave way to nemesis' as the country plunged into recession. Despite the attempts at even-handed comparisons, however, Chote's presentation went on to show significantly higher levels of public sector net debt under this Government than in the Conservative years (higher, in fact, than at any time since the inter-war years) - and that's without Northern Rock and all the other 'off-balance sheet liabilities' such as PFI and public sector pensions. The overall message was clear enough: Brown's hubristic claims to have re-invented the economic cycle and abolished 'boom and bust' has led this country to the biggest bust of all.

A bail-out with no guarantee of success

State bail-outs used to be so black-and-white. In the past, the government of the day would hear pleas from a manufacturer for some “last resort” money that it needed to avoid bankruptcy. Ministers would then work out how many jobs would be lost if the company were to go bust, calculate the political fall-out, and hand over the cash in return for promises to use the support to “come out the other side as a world-beater” and not to cut any jobs. Things are now much more complicated.

In part, they are greener. When he announced his package of loan guarantees for the automotive industry yesterday, Lord Mandelson argued that he was “laying the foundations for a reinvention of its future.”  This claim was odd in several ways. First, the CO2 emissions of new cars produced in the UK have been falling for years. In 1997, new models produced an average of nearly 190g of CO2 per kilometre, now they produce only 165. Second, because the top four producers in the UK are foreign companies, any revolution in car manufacturing will not be driven by British firms. The profits and intellectual property rights generated by the much-vaunted new era of motoring will be collected by other countries.

The BBC was wrong on the DEC Gaza Appeal

I think that Hamas, not Israel, was responsible for the destruction in Gaza. It was Hamas, not Israel, that demonstrated a callous disregard for innocent life.

But, despite this, I still think that the BBC SHOULD have broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal. Whatever you view on causes of the conflict, there is no question that hundreds on innocent Palestinians need immediate humanitarian help. The thought of children in need is especially painful.

If the tables were turned and, god forbid, Hamas had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, do you not think that the BBC should have broadcast an appeal on their behalf? I do.

What happened to compassionate conservatism?

The charming Cherie Blair

I will be presenting a short piece during Channel Four's annual Political Awards on the Political Book of the Year. Over the last couple of weeks I've been in and out of London doing brief Q&A's with most of the nominees. It was a fascinating experience, and I very much enjoyed talking to Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor who wrote the foreword for the peerless Hugo Young Diaries, John Prescott and Dylan Jones.

Finally I had the honour, and yes I do mean honour, of interviewing Cherie Blair. As a tribal Tory, like the rest of us, I've read the caricatures published about this woman over the years. She was the PM's wife our press loved to loathe. Grasping, bolshie, chippy, you name it. There was none of that anywhere in the person I met.

Chaos theory denies grandparents adoption rights

We may not have all the facts, but if the headlines in the Daily Mail are true, the grandparents aged 46 and 59 who have been told they are too old to adopt their grandchildren are victims of the most ludicrous and detrimental application of social services regulations [please tell me it's not the law!]. The list of common sense objections to this decision should be too obvious to state.... many natural mothers have babies in their 40's [Cherie Blair at 45]....the grandmother's diabetes is chronic condition handled by thousands of mothers alongside child-rearing....housing children with extended family should be the priority....the children need security and the vast majority of gay couples split within 6 years [a fact not a prejudice] ....grandparents across the UK are routinely involved in grandchild care.... etc etc etc

Having had a heroin-addict mother [according to the 6am BBC news but not yet on website] these children will already have had a hugely traumatic start to their lives. All the evidence points to the grandparents wanting the best for their grandchildren, their being the best source of love and continuity yet having been persuaded by the authorities that they weren't good enough. Chaos theory seems to have taken over Edinburgh Social Services.

Google goes Pollock

Turned on my browser this morning to find a bunch of scribble instead of the Google logo on my home page. Obviously someone at the search engine likes Jackson Pollock who was born this day in 1912 - but after logo changes for the Queen and Chinese New Year, is this now going to be a daily feature and if so, can we nominate changes? If so mine are WC Fields [a bat for the L?] for tomorrow and FDR for the 30th [head and shoulders for the G?]!

RE: It would be risky for the BBC to broadcast the Gaza appeal

I got a remarkable amount of normative disagreement in this post, given that my comment was entirely positive in nature.  Few of you that claimed to disagree with me actually engaged with my point.  So I'll ask:

Is it acceptable for Parliament to be intimidated by threats of mass mobilisation?

Assuming it's accurate (and others would know better than I), I want to know what our Front Bench team thinks about this from Cranmer.

I'm rather reminded of this story about Douglas Murray and the LSE.  Apparently, these days, if you can credibly threaten to make enough fuss you create a "security issue" and get your own way.  Of course, in the long term, people will (alas!) discover that more than one side can play at that game, and tolerant debate will become impossible.

A couple of Lords being corrupt is a really bad reason for reforming the Upper Chamber

The title says it all, really.  Of course, I am all in favour of significant reform of the Upper Chamber, as set out here - though totally opposed to having an elected chamber as set out here.

Should the CSA be scrapped?

Today's news that the Government will take away the passports and driving licences of non resident parents without going to Court leads me to pose this question. The whole organisation seems to cost as much to run as it collects. So I struggle to see any sense in its existence at all.

While it seems one of those ideas that's good in principle, in practice no-one seems happy with the CSA, everyone involved with it seems to hate it with bitter emotion and the whole thing offers no value whatsoever. Is it just me or is the CSA is complete disaster from start to finish? Would we be better off simply scrapping the thing? I'd be genuinely interested to know what people think.

Let me explain a bit more. In Dover & Deal it's a big issue people ask me to help with. I see lots of fathers who tell me the CSA applies for earnings deduction orders equal to the maximum of 40% net pay as a matter of course, without any apparent view to affordability or outgoings.  There is no Court oversight here - they can just take the deductions from employers by administrative order. I have lost count of the number of people who tell me the CSA routinely loses correspondence (they rarely reply to any letter I send to them), changes it's position on arrears payment agreements without any consideration to circumstances and generally acts in a high handed manner. And unlike Court process, these deduction orders stand pending appeal and can cause real hardship. Giving the CSA the ability to take passports and driving licences without Court sanction is likely to increase the bitterness.

Then I see mothers who tell me that rogue fathers duck and dive, hide up their NI numbers so they cannnot easily be traced, pay nothing at all and the CSA are ineffectual at getting hold of them or the person dealing with the case has gone on sick leave / holiday and nothing happens etc etc. So no-one is happy and with the whole thing costing as much as it collects, I wonder whether we should look at the old system we had, improve this system or adopt a new and different system?

How to be a Happy Homosexual

Labour's introduction of legislation, with the aim of protecting gay people from incitement to hatred, has already achieved its expected aim. It is one of the few successes of this dying administration. It has delivered everything which ministers and their advisers wanted of it. Yet the act will never attain the statute book. A contradiction? No.

I am not a cynical being, but I'll overcome my proclivity for optimism, with which I was born, and against which counselling has proven ineffective, to study the heart of this wretched proposal, to peer into the manipulative hearts of those who propose it. It's sole purpose is to shore up Labour's vote in the liberal, educated middle-class, to act as a reminder to them of everything they disliked about the last Tory government.

Indulge me for a moment, and don't argue with the proposition that a large proportion of educated people really did dislike the Tory party a few years ago. David Cameron has been markedly successful at making the Tory party their natural home again. The law is for the Margaret Drabbles of this world, who think it's usually best to be on the side of good things, and see kindness as one of life's immutable good things. They tend to know and like lots of gay people, and so are supposed to draw the inference 'This act will protect my good friend X. So I am in favour of the Act. Moreover, I'm in favour of the people who propose it, and against those who vote against it'. The legislation is designed for nothing more than to give editorial writers at the Guardian the reason they need to decide not to write leaders of cautious favour about David Cameron. Insidious, isn't it?

Carla Jones, Facebook "Friends" and politicians

Earlier this week Iain Dale blogged on "Carla Jones", the fake Facebook profile of a Daily Mirror journalist. Every Tory MP and PPC on Facebook was advising each other to remove her. I certainly did, if only because it's deceitful. If a Daily Mirror journalist, or Labour party member, asked to friend me I'd have no roblem with it.

The incident did demonstrate a couple of things to me. One, that no public figure should have anything on their public profiles they wouldn't want to see in, say, the Daily Mirror; but that's just common sense. More to the point, it underlined that many people still don't understand social networking sites.

One commenter on Iain Dale mentioned me and chuckled at the fact that I had "friended" someone I knew nothing about. Erm, clue: Facebook "friends" are not real friends, just because the site uses that term. On Facebook I have more than eight hundred "friends" and I can assure you I'm not that popular! Facebook and Twitter allow me to offer information to anyone who might be interested in me, as an author or PPC, and to get it from others.