CentreRight

My first Labour Party Conference

I'm heading to Brighton tomorrow (staying in Graeme Archer's new flat - thank you Dr Archer) for my first Labour Conference.

A lot of other people don't appear to be bothering, according to today's FT:

"Labour has sold a mere 330 tickets for its conference dinner in Brighton next week, in spite of booking a venue with the capacity for 800 paying guests.  The low attendance – which compares with 400 last year and 680 in 2002 – comes amid sinking morale within the party.  The annual conference dinner serves as a significant fundraiser, with tickets for the event on Tuesday night selling at £500 each. But one lobbyist told the Financial Times. “Our clients certainly don’t want to pay £500 a head for Labour’s last supper.”  According to several Labour MPs there is likely to be widespread “absenteeism” at the five-day conference, with many colleagues not bothering to attend the event at all."

My Conference programme is below. I think all the events are outside the secure zone.

Demos: Fair Enough? Has Labour delivered on its equalities agenda?
Monday 28 September 2009, 12.45-14.00
Glyndbourne 2, Holiday Inn, 137 Kings Road, Brighton, BN1 2JF

Speakers:

• Kitty Ussher MP for Burnley
• David Lammy MP, Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (first half hour only)
• Trevor Phillips, Chair, Equalities and Human Rights Commission
• Phil Bloomer, Director of Campaigns and Policy, Oxfam
• Tim Montgomerie, Editor, ConservativeHome
• Richard Reeves, Director, Demos (Chair)

Fabian Society: Who are the new Conservatives?
Monday 28th September 2009, 18.00 – 19.30
Regency Lounge, Royal Albion Hotel, 35 Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NT

Currently confirmed speakers:

• Phillip Blond, ResPublica
• Tim Montgomerie, ConservativeHome
• Fraser Nelson, The Spectator
• Tim Horton, Fabian Society
• Chair: Polly Toynbee, the Guardian 

Fabian Society: After the crunch - How do we beat poverty?
Tuesday 29th September 2009, 13.00 – 14.30
Regency Lounge, Royal Albion Hotel, 35 Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NT

Currently confirmed speakers:

• Julian Astle, CentreForum
• Tim Montgomerie, ConservativeHome
• Rt. Hon Yvette Cooper MP
• Kate Green
• Chair: Mike Parker.

I'll be blogging from Brighton from tomorrow.

Has America Made Poland the New France?

Which country in Europe announced yesterday that the EU should expedite the development an independent defense identity, build its own military transport aircrafts rather than buy American, bolster the EU’s procurement agency and have an EU Foreign Minister attend NATO meetings?

Although this reads like the French national security strategy, it is in fact Poland who announced these priorities for its 2011 Presidency of the European Union. One of the most EU-realist, pro-American, NATO-supporting countries announced yesterday that even energy security – previously its most pressing priority in Brussels – would take second place to the development of a European defense identity.

This announcement comes just days after President Obama unceremoniously abandoned Poland and the Czech Republic by reneging on the Bush-era agreement to place elements of the U.S. missile defense shield there. For Poland, this decision was a bridge too far; already disappointed by America’s failure to grant them visa-free travel, and President Obama’s lack of appreciation for its significant Afghanistan deployment, Warsaw has seemingly chosen a European route rather than the Atlantic one.

In December 2008, The Heritage Foundation stated:

“When President-elect Barack Obama finally makes his decision about whether to proceed with deployment of U.S. missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, he should know that the implications of that decision will reach far beyond Warsaw and Prague: It is a decision on which the future of the transatlantic security alliance itself rests. If the United States chooses to abandon its Central and Eastern European allies as well as its obligations to NATO, it will hand the European Union a blank check to pursue an autonomous defense identity, independent of NATO, and will reduce America’s influence within the transatlantic alliance significantly.”

President Obama should be in no doubt that America will lose out in this equation. The militarization of the EU embodies the worst elements of European animosity toward the United States and will fundamentally undermine the NATO alliance. And replacing individual European allies with a single EU foreign minister is a monumentally bad idea, as Dr. Henry Kissinger noted in 2001:

“When the United States deals with the nations of Europe individually, it has the possibility of consulting at many levels and to have its view heard well before a decision is taken. In dealing with the European Union, by contrast, the United States is excluded from the decision-making process and interacts only after the event, with spokesmen for decisions taken by ministers at meetings in which the United States has not participated at any level.... Growing estrangement between America and Europe is thus being institutionally fostered.”

By abandoning the Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama not only made America less safe, he threw away important bilateral allies in Europe, and endangered the transatlantic relationship. It may take decades for America’s leadership in Europe to recover.

John Bercow, the backbenchers' champion?

By Paul Goodman MP.

John Bercow’s name doesn’t usually top the Christmas card list of Conservative MPs.  At best, it’s acknowledged that his working relations with colleagues have sometimes run less than smoothly.  At worst, his popularity ratings in the tea room hover marginally lower than the Pope’s at Ibrox Park (a location he seems to have visited at least once – the Speaker, that is, not the Pope).

He’s seen to have been elected by Labour MPs.  His progress to the Chair, like his expense claims, won few plaudits.  He seems to have alienated a number of hacks, a lot of bloggers and, for whatever reason, one or two sketchwriters.  He faces a tricky election campaign in Buckingham.  Triumph at the polls may not end his troubles.  Speculation persists that a revolt from the green benches will oust him in the next Parliament (though, for what it’s worth, I think that such an event is, on the whole, unlikely.)

Against this less than promising background, it’s worth studying closely his speech yesterday to the Hansard Society, of which Jonathan Isaby’s reported the main proposals.  Three points emerge.

First, almost everything suggested is worth considering.  The proposal to allow the Commons to elect its Deputy Speakers, however attractive at first glance, is an exception: the risk of Labour MPs repeating their behaviour during the Speakership election should surely have crossed the mind of the present incumbent.  But most of the rest of the speech is sensible, and focused on one aim: “We need the backbencher to move from the Parliamentary version of the stalls to the centre stage”.

Control Orders

Yesterday brought the news that another person subject to a Control Order has been released after the Government declined to make known to him the reasons that he has been detained.

It is a standing affront to the rule of law that anyone’s liberty is curtailed without knowing the details of the charges against them.

It is good that the Government has once again been made to give way by the courts but Control Orders should be abandoned immediately, rather than defeated on an ad hoc basis as the Government loses case after case.

After all, it is unjust enough to limit the liberty of a person in this way - but to continue to do so, knowing that the case will be decided against the Government when it wends its way to court, but keeping them so "controlled" until then, is morally bankrupt.  It entails further months of unjustifiable action in each case, simply on the basis of which gets to see the inside of a courtroom first.

Big Brother Watch will continue to press on this issue until the Government finally deals adequately with the consequences of the comprehensive defeat that it has suffered.

Never have truer words been spoken...

Never have truer words been spoken at the United Nations General Assembly:

"Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this podium spewing anti-Semitic rants [and] just a few days earlier he claimed the Holocaust was a lie.

"Yesterday, the man who called the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. For those who refused to come and for those who left in protest, I commend you; you stood up for moral clarity.

"But for those who stayed - I say on behalf of the Jewish people, my people and decent people everywhere; have you no shame? No decency? What a disgrace, what a mockery of the charter of the UN"

Part two of the speech can be found here.

Congratulations Prime Minister Netanyahu for illustrating so beautifully the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations - and the absolute neccessity of its immediate reform to stop deranged despots sharing an equal platform with leaders of democratically-elected countries.

CentreRight readers: how would you reform the UN?

Roger Helmer MEP: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air

By Roger Helmer MEP.

David MacKay is a Professor at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.  He is an expert on renewable energy, and has just published a book with the above title (find it at www.withouthotair.com).  His opinions on renewables in general, and wind power in particular, are doubly interesting, as he has just been appointed as Chief Scientific Adviser to the Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband.

Professor MacKay struggles very hard to be balanced and even-handed, but it is impossible to read his chapters on wind power without concluding that he has very serious doubts about the technology -- and therefore, presumably, about this government's "Dash for Wind".  Forgive me, by the way, for returning obsessively to the subject of wind energy, but I believe it poses a huge threat to the British economy, firstly because British wind power will be hopelessly uncompetitive --two to three times as expensive as French nuclear power -- and secondly because the government's plans are simply undeliverable, and we are threatened with a capacity short-fall in a few years' time which will leave us liable to power cuts, rolling blackouts and the three-day-week.

The good Professor debunks a lot of the glib claims of campaigners.  "Offshore wind could power all UK homes", they cry.  Yes, replies MacKay, but homes represent only 4% of British energy demand.

He asks how much power we could plausibly generate from on-shore wind, and bases his calculation on 10% of the UK land area.  This figure, when you think about it, is enormous, and many might think it not plausible at all.  At that rate, wind might provide 20 KWh per person per day.  That's about half the energy used to drive an average fossil-fuel car thirty miles a day.  And to do this, we should require 50 times the entire wind turbine fleet of Denmark -- one of the most wind-intensive countries in Europe.

A New EU-Backed Berlin Wall

Almost as predictable as President Obama’s groveling apology for America’s greatness before the UN is the EU’s ‘independent’ report that Georgia is to blame for Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion of its sovereign territory in August 2008.

Even by the EU’s sky-high standards of shamelessness, this “blame the victim” mentality is shocking. With a budget of over $2 million and initiated by the EU’s chief Russian apologist Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini came to the most politically-convenient conclusion Brussels could have hoped for: Tbilisi – and specifically its President Bush-backed leader Mikheil Saakashvili – started the whole thing. Sure, Russia made things worse but blame must be laid at Tbilisi’s door.

Following President Obama’s shameful surrender to Moscow in abandoning the Third Site missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, Moscow must think Christmas has come early. Among other things, since President Obama’s election in November Moscow has:

1. Threatened NATO members with offensive missile deployments;
2. Cut off energy supplies to Ukraine;
3. Had its spies caught operating at NATO headquarters; and
4. Taken military control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia’s borders which it unilaterally recognized in violation of an EU negotiated ceasefire.

However, Brussels and Washington have reacted with a big, warm embrace for Moscow and a chilly brush-off for Tbilisi; while Russia enjoys the seemingly unending fruits of Obama’s ‘reset’ tree, Tbilisi continues to languish in the cold.

In an open letter this week, former Czech President Vaclav Havel and other European leaders petitioned the West to remember the appeasement culture of 1938-9 that led to one of the darkest periods in modern history. It states: “a big power will always find or engineer a pretext to invade a neighbour whose independence it resents.” The letter went on to state bluntly: “Twenty years after the emancipation of half of the continent, a new wall is being built in Europe – this time across the sovereign territory of Georgia.”

When things couldn't get worse for the Lib Dems: a study suggests they would lose out under PR

The Lib Dems have not had a great week - and Graeme Archer posted a great piece about the party here earlier which is well worth reading.

But now my attention has been drawn to a piece of analysis by Tony Travers of the LSE for the IPPR which suggests that under elections held under more proportional systems, the Liberal Democrats actually come off worst of all the three main parties (and they are, of course, the only one of the three parties committed to PR as a party policy).

It doesn't actually come as the greatest surprise. In countries with PR systems, you often see a larger number of mainstream parties, which in turn each represent a less broad church of opinion. So if a PR system were ever introduced for Westminster elections, I could see the Lib Dems, with their different - and often competing - traditions of social democracy and liberalism ending their marriage of electoral convenience and completely fragmenting.

China and climate change

It's worth trying to read between the lines in Hu Jintao's speech at the UN climate change conference in New York yesterday.  Leaving aside the waffle that you always get in any politician's speech on the subject, the BBC cuts to the important bit about what China might be prepared to do:

1. Cut carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) from the 2005 level by 2020.  This probably doesn't require any policy interventions at all.  As technology continues to increase efficiency, giving us better cars and better power plants among other things, most countries produce more with less.  Across the OECD, between 1993 and 2005, emissions intensity fell (PDF) by around 1.64% each year.  The difference between unspecified cuts in emissions intensity and specific cuts in emissions, of the kind we have signed up to, is huge and this pledge doesn't really mean anything in terms of reaching the kind of global targets people are throwing around.

2. Increase the amount of renewable and nuclear energy, rising to around 15% by 2020.  Currently, about 6% of China's power comes from hydroelectric plants and 1% from nuclear.  Other renewables produce 0.06%.  This pledge will mean more dams and more nuclear plants, not more windmills.  Again, that's a very good idea but it's very different to the direction of policy in the West.  Environmentalists tend to be sceptical of some dams and nuclear power.

3. Increase forest coverage.  If you look at this measure, then we may seriously need to reappraise the performance of the United States.  In his book Hard Green, Peter Huber argues that America releases about 1.6 Petagrams of carbon into the air each year by burning fossil fuels but then takes about 1.7 Petagrams in through terrestrial uptake.  That is thought to be driven by a number of factors including regrowth of forest cover on abandoned farmland and previously logged forests.

4. Spend on technology.  This is going to happen, most of the spending will come from the private sector but it would be reasonable to complement the existing incentives produced by the patent system with a rigorous system of prizes.

The background to all this is that China is playing climate change poker ahead of the negotiations at Copenhagen.  They want to make a deal that involves little or no action that might imperil economic growth while making plenty of pledges that sound serious, and allow them to demand payment from the West for their trouble.  This is all about a hard headed assessment of what is in China's national interest.

Merkel für Kanzler!

Here's Angela Merkel's closing ad for Sunday's federal election:

A CDU friend from the key-marginal North Rhine-Westphalia Länder made the following assessment of the ad:

"Brilliantly done. It's exactly her style and she talks about things people say of her, putting them into a constructive framework. CDU core values, down to earthness, excellent. Humbleness but stating achievements"

There's no doubt that this election is going down to the wire: a Forsa poll published this morning has the CDU/CSU and liberal FDP just one point (48%) ahead the SPD, Grüne/Bundnis 90 and Linke (47%).

Charles Clarke sets the scene for Labour conference by calling on Brown to go (again)

The Liberal Democrat conference isn't even over yet and Labour Party activists are still several days away from boarding the train to Brighton, but the "Will Brown survive?" narrative has just started.

The ball has been set rolling by Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, in an interview with tonight's Evening Standard.

Here are some of the highlights:

“Some people are now just fighting a battle about what happens after we lose the election. There's a fatalism there... They say prepare to battle for 2015, make sure the policies and leader are in place. I understand that but there will not be a 2015 if we get hammered in 2010. And on current show, we will be.”

"A lot of people in our party aren't facing up to how serious a defeat would be. I think we would be out for 10 to 15 years and forget what it was like for progressives during the Tory years under Margaret Thatcher."

"We are not showing the vision and strong leadership at the moment. We need to.”

“The Downing Street operation is the weakest I've seen ever in my life.”

“I don't think Gordon will lead Labour into the next election. I think his own dignity ought to look to that kind of solution.” [resigning on grounds of ill health]

“Are we just going to stand by and watch the whole Labour ship crash on to the rocks of May 2010 and sink for a very long time. Or are we going to try and do what we can to stop that happening?”

Ouch.

Not love-bombing. Just bombing.

By yesterday, even those paid to take an interest in proceedings had given up. C4 news uttered not one word about the Liberal Democrat conference last night. This morning, Today in its first hour devoted maybe 15 seconds (in one of those dreary scripted two-way 'conversations') to say that not much good had happened. I suppose the Lib Dems should count themselves lucky that the mischievous Evan Davis didn't jump in to mention the beached whale as a fitting metaphor for the week's activities.

Even that would have been too kind. A whale, beached or otherwise, is a magnificent fact of creation: graceful and terrible and mighty; hardly a fitting metaphor for the Liberal Democrats who, in a week they must wish is quickly forgotten, offered at least a trinity of disasters:

(1) Nick 'Savage Cuts' Clegg put on his ill-fitting guise of the Angry Young Man of British Politics, in a determined effort to sound stentorian. I imagine him lying in bed, in the early hours, gazing at the ceiling, and dreaming, in that between-sleep-and-wakefulness moment, of the conversations to be overheard at the Dog and Duck: That Nick Clegg! 'E tells it 'ow it is! I'm gonna vote for 'im! Perhaps he sees himself as Elizabeth I? Manning-up in order to deliver the message that his party - let alone the electorate - doesn't want to hear? We will savagely scrap our free tuition policy! he - well, not announced, more sort of tangentially 'let it be known' - only to retract the (non)commitment when the massed ranks of something called the Federal Policy Committee responded with that most lethal of Lib Dem weapons, a letter to the Guardian.

Baroness Scotland damned by her own words

We all know that a fundamental principle of British law is that ignorance of the law is no defence. Or rather, we should all know - Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, seems to be trying to hang on to her job as one of the most senior lawyers in the land explicitly on the basis that her offence of employing an illegal immigrant was "inadvertent".

Sometimes, of course, people are punished due to breaching overly complex laws that they couldn't reasonably be expected to understand - particularly given the huge increase in legal complexity Baroness Scotland has overseen. They are normally ordinary invdividuals unversed in the law, though, rather than one of the most senior lawyers in the land who actually helped to enact the very law they have broken.

But as well as being aware of this particular law, shouldn't the Attorney General should be aware of a such a fundamental principle as ignorance being no defence?

She certainly should be - thanks to a quick search of the ever useful www.theyworkforyou.com I can confirm that she herself has said it to justify the Government's proposals at least twice in Parliamentary debates:

1. On 27th October 2003, in a debate on the Extradition Bill she rejected civil liberties concerns by telling Lord Clinton-Davis that "as he is well aware, is that ignorance of the law has never been a defence, and to recognise it as a reason for not extraditing people to another EU country is a dangerous precedent."

2. On the 21st of October 2004, in a debate on the higly dubious Civil Contingencies Bill, she told Lord Archer of Sandwell that "The noble and learned Lord knows far better than me that ignorance of the law has never been a defence in our country."

Surely the Attorney General cannot have forgotten that principle in the last five years? And if she has, surely she should be sacked from such an important legal position anyway?

Baroness Scotland and Loloahi Tapui are victims as well as villains

The decision of the UK Border Agency to fine Baroness Scotland £5,000 for employing a housekeeper who was not legally allowed to take up employment in the United Kingdom shares broad parallels with the circumstances surrounding the abrupt withdrawal of the nomination of George W. Bush's first choice of Labour Secretary Linda Chavez back in January 2001.

At a press conference to announce her withdrawal, Chavez said:

"I didn't have an easy life growing up. I faced a lot of adversity, particularly in my young childhood. I had--often one or another of my parents was in the hospital. My father got into a number of car accidents and spent a great deal of time in the hospital; so did my mother. And in every one of those incidents there was always someone there to help me. Family members took me in. Friends helped. There was financial and other kinds of support for me when I was growing up and I needed it.  And I vowed to myself that, no matter what happened to me in my life, that I would be there for other people. And I've tried to do that. I have tried to live my life that way, throughout my life.

"...because of the way in which the stories have played over the last few days, the fact that all of you have made, I think, a great deal more of this story than need be, and have, in my view, not told the story of some of the people around me, I have decided that I am becoming a distraction... I have asked President Bush to withdraw my name for secretary of labor..."

How long until Baroness Scotland makes a similar statement?  I would guess that it won't be long.

Partisan politics aside, I can't help but think this is anything other than a terribly sad and frustrating situation for both Baroness Scotland and the seemingly hard-working Loloahi Tapui to find themselves in.

As much as it pains me to say it, they're both victims here. 

We need to look again at this country's immigration laws; making it easier for those who want to work here legally and pay taxes (something Tapui clearly wished to do) and much harder for visa-overstayers and unscrupulous employers (which Baroness Scotland was clearly not) to make a mockery of the law. 

As this saga has so clearly proved, our immigration system isn't fit for purpose. 

That, however, is Baroness Scotland's fault.  She must resign.

Debating the EU in the Tory party

I don't believe that there's a lack of debate in the Conservative Party about the European Union in general, and in particular about whether or not Britain should be in the EU. I therefore couldn't resist responding to a letter last week in the Daily Telegraph that called for the party to engage in a more vigorous discussion about our place in the EU. My response was printed last Friday.

Regrettably the Telegraph published my letter under the sub-headline 'Conservatives in favour of withdrawal from the EU have lost the debate'. If you read my letter, you'll see I never made such an accusation. True, I said that the debate was not going the way the withdrawalists want it to. But I would never pull down the curtain on any debate about any subject in our party. I am also fully respectful of the rule that ultimately the party leader in consultation with the shadow cabinet has the final say on key policy issues. In fact, too often I think we're afraid of debating the EU internally because we're worried about being portrayed in the media as obsessives of various colours.

However, I also made the point in my letter that on ConHome, the EU as a subject for discussion and blogging is perhaps the most popular of all. Certainly if you look at the 'category cloud' on the Tory Diary page, 'Europe' comes a close second to 'MPs' duties and remuneration'. Whenever I post on ConHome the discussion usually veers off into a battle between proponents and opponents of Britain's EU membership (BOOs and BINs), even if I am writing about something that has only a peripheral relevance to the subject.

It's clear to me, therefore, that debate about this seminal issue is thriving at grass-roots level. I am sure that at the forthcoming Conservative conference in Manchester there will be many fringe events either pushing for greater engagement with the EU or calling for withdrawal - and perhaps even a few events endorsing a position somewhere in between.

Nigel Evans MP: The Lib Dems’ answer to any question is to tax it

By Nigel Evans MP

What to do when you are faced by a Government that doesn’t understand simple rules of economics and borrows to fund grandiose and expensive public and ideological expenditure... well the Lib Dems’ answer is to introduce new taxes to fund even more spending.

Their new idea to take 4 million people out of taxation is to introduce a new tax on the value of homes over £1 million. Genius! (Irony).

So let’s have a look at the intended and unintended consequences of this little bombshell.

The intended consequence is to introduce a new stealth tax on big homes. It is intended to serve as an indicator that the lovely Lib Dems (irony again) want to help the poor and fleece the so called wealthy.

The unintended consequence is that the value of people’s homes is to be taxed when no capital value has been realised. All sorts of homes in the South East and elsewhere find themselves falling into this bracket because that is the way property prices have soared.

Many elderly widows or widowers find themselves already being squeezed by council tax and have to find thousands to fund huge local government spending. Now they would have the home upfront revenue tax (or hurt for short) to find.

There would be more regular valuations and more bureaucracy to meet. People would be penalised for improving their homes or putting on extensions or conservatories and the view from your home would be put at a premium.

The value of the house is only worth something when the house is sold or rented. Those with inherited properties often find themselves asset rich but income poor and many would be forced to sell the family home.

The real solution is to properly grapple and attack the spend, spend, spend mentality that has got us into this problem in the first place. David Cameron is going to tackle the problem from the right end. No politics of envy, just the politics of equilibrium.

Think of the fun the Lib Dems could have in taxing all sorts of other things with any value in it …like the value of your car, the value of your holidays, the value of the contents of the home… oh, the list is endless, and so is the capacity of the Lib Dems to spend our money.

Environmentalists have a democracy problem

Most politicians, of all parties, are certainly signed up to the idea we should do radical things to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  The Climate Change Act - which could easily require (PDF) cutting the size of our economy by over 75% in 2050 to meet the 80% target - was passed with overwhelming support despite unseasonable October snows that evening.  The environmentalists aren't doing quite as well at convincing ordinary people.

Recently the IPPR did some focus group research (PDF) into how to design "climate-change communications" and encourage people to make choices that will cut emissions.  Their very first point?  "Don't focus on climate change".  Apparently, the best way to convince people is to tell them they'll save money.  Even if you can do that though, they'll just spend the money on a foreign holiday or - according to one quote - an Audi TT.

Public opinion on policy is also far from encouraging for the environmentalists.  YouGov found (PDF) that the public were against increased taxes on petrol, increased airline fares and increased taxes to subsidise wind and solar energy.  Only greater use of nuclear power was supported on balance.

The democratic response to this would be to try and convince ordinary people.  Green groups pay lip service to attempting to convince ordinary people, and churn out plenty of press releases of varying quality, but their real focus is still on the richest and most powerful.  A government press release tells me that the ridiculously named global 'tck tck tck' campaign is trying to sign up Britain's top 100 business leaders and top 100 media personalities.

Obama attacks blogs

Barack Obama is apparently open to a bailout for the newspaper industry. Frightening stuff. We really don't want large sections of the media dependent upon the state (a danger Jeremy Hunt MP is very much alive to).

In the course of discussing a newspaper bailout, the American president said this of blogs:

"I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding."

I've defended political blogging before and won't repeat all of my arguments but the key thing President Obama does not appear to understand is that the internet has democratised "fact-checking". All of the professional fact-checkers at CBS missed the fake documents that that "august" media giant broadcast which purported to show that George W Bush had dodged military service.  The fact that they were forged was exposed by the general public on blogs.

I know that any error I publish on ConHome will be exposed very quickly by the site's own readers or by any number of other blogs. Newspapers rarely give readers a fair right-of-reply to misrepresentations and if they do it can take days. The internet is a hugely accountable media and accountability happens fast.

The true motivation for a newspaper bailout by a left-wing White House and Congress is a concern to prop up a largely left-wing newspaper industry.

Hat tip to Samuel Coates' Twitter feed.

Failing our youngsters - a very English disease now threatens the national game

Mark Field MP is a member of the All-Party Group on Football and represented the Conservatives on its reports into the game’s governance (2003-04) and finances (2008-09).

 

In the warm glow of England’s convincing qualification for next year’s World Cup Finals and promising prospects of a successful bid to host the competition in 2018, there is one sphere of the national game, club-run youth academies, where the garden is rather less rosy.

 

The 18 month transfer embargo imposed on Chelsea by FIFA earlier this month has overshadowed the start of the new Premiership season and confirmed a trend that many of us football fans have long feared. Namely, that some of our top clubs have been involved in signing young foreign teenagers in a manner that is, if not always technically illegal, at least unethical. Indeed, since the news broke several other leading clubs have also been accused of similar breaches highlighting just how widespread the problem appears to be in the highest echelons of the professional game.

Edward McMillan Scott: A delicate flower

By Roger Helmer MEP.

EMS, the (former) Conservative MEP, has just been expelled from the Party, for failing to fulfil the solemn commitment he gave in writing before the June 2009 election regarding the formation of a new group in the European parliament.  Urbane and occasionally charming, EMS has always been a committed Europhile, and determined to keep British Conservative MEPs within the uber-federalist EPP group, so as to render the Party's opposition to EU integration ineffective, at least in Brussels.

I well remember our initial delegation meeting after I was first elected in 1999.  EMS was the Leader of our delegation at that time.  William Hague had just announced a new deal with the EPP, under which we should remain members, but at arm's length -- the new arrangement was described as "merely an administrative umbrella" -- and we should be free to pursue our own agenda in opposition to the Brussels establishment.  Or so I thought.  At that first meeting, EMS said with evident relief that we had seen off the threat to our relationship with the EPP, and we could continue as before.  I was deeply shocked, and angry, and said so in no uncertain terms, calling down on my head the displeasure of some other members, including notably Bill Newton Dunn, who chose to defect to the Lib-Dems a year later, but was also of the EMS/Europhile persuasion.

The altercation that followed set the tone for delegation meetings for a decade, and I sometimes despaired of ever getting out from under the EPP, and of ever working with like-minded Conservatives from other countries to oppose the federalist agenda.  But then came David Cameron, elected to the leadership of the Party on a promise to take us out of the EPP and to form a new group.  It took longer to deliver that promise than some of us hoped or expected, but none-the-less we finally succeeded in forming the group of the European Conservatives, after the 2009 election, and all our 25 Conservative MEPs were committed to joining it.

Nick Clegg: Change you can't believe in

Desperately weak stuff from Nick Clegg this weekend:

"So the choice before people is the choice between fake, phoney change from David Cameron's Conservatives, and real change the Liberal Democrats offer."

Well, there's certainly been some change on offer from the Lib Dems: They've changed their line on spending to what the Conservatives were saying when it wasn't easy to do so. So, in making a comparison between a cheap copy and the original item, Nick Clegg might want to consider who's the "fake" here.

Of course, there's not much that Lib Dems can do to change anything. But one option that is open to them is to shift the balance of forces across the political spectrum. For instance, when, under Paddy Ashdown, they abandoned their policy of 'equidistance' to side with New Labour against the Conservatives, they did bring about a small but significant realignment of British politics. Their reward was to advance deep into Conservative territory, with at least twenty Westminster seats moving from the blue to the yellow column.

Rather than grab a historic opportunity to challenge Labour's dominant position on the centre-left, Clegg's strategy is almost entirely defensive, a desperate attempt to hold on to the Ashdown inheritance. It is a cowardly, unimaginative and hypocritical approach; an indictment of a party unwilling to stand up for its centre-left convictions. 

I genuinely believe that the reform-minded Lib Dems would make for a more constructive set of opponents than the socialist-reactionary Labour Party. Having had bad experiences with the Lib Dems at a local level, I can understand why many Conservatives would disagree with me. What I don't understand, however, is why the Lib Dems should demonstrate so faith in themselves.

Have they no self-respect?

The rise of radical, parallel Shariah in Britain

Every now and then, you read something which strikes you as incredibly important. The Centre for Islamic Pluralism's publication, A Guide to Shariah Law and Islamist Ideology in Western Europe 2007-2009, is one such example, and is essential reading for anyone concerned about our freedoms, values and community relations.

Written primarily by Muslim scholars Stephen Suleyman Schwartz and Irfan al-Alawi, the publication provides clear definitions of Shariah Law - and an irrefutable case against radical Shariah. It draws a  distinction between traditional Islam's Shariah provisions for personal conduct in the areas of prayer, diet, fasting and charity, and the development of a parallel legal structure which is at odds with our own. As the authors argue:

"Shariah encompasses strictly personal religious-ritual aspects, such as rules for prayer, ablutions, diet, fasting, charity, male circumcision and burial, which we exempt from the analysis in that they almost never involve contradiction with or other intrusion into relations between Muslims and non-Muslims ... [However] radical Shariah advocates teach that Muslims can disregard Western law ... Extremist Islamist ideology is neither traditional nor conservative, but radical and even revolutionary ... The new conception of 'parallel Shariah' in even its apparently least intrusive elements may become disruptive of Western society."

The publication begins with a history and analysis of Shariah, and then examines its implementation - and the growth of radical Islamist ideology - in Europe through five case studies: Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, France and Spain. It concludes with an invaluable assessment of Islamic finance and banking, and some conclusions. It also touches on issues such as 'honour killings', female genital mutilation, forced marriages and divorce. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the paper, written by Muslim scholars, is its critique of Western non-Muslim acquiescence with radical Shariah:

"The real problem facing both Muslims and non-Muslims is not that of Shariah established against the will of non-Muslims, but of a separate and discriminatory system to which Muslims in the West would be submitted regardless of their needs and desires, either because of misguided attempts to accommodate perceived (but often inaccurate) Muslim sentiments, or because of agitation by radicals."

The madness of Alan Greenspan

Events of the past two years have shaken many of the political and economic assumptions commonly held by journalists, politicians and policy-makers up to then.  Probably the most famous change of mind has been that of Alan Greenspan, as discussed in the BBC2 show "The love of money", last week.  At the height of the crisis last year, Greenspan went before Congress and said that he'd been wrong to believe that self-interest would be sufficient to make financial markets broadly self-regulating.  In an interview for this BBC2 show, Greenspan expands upon his view.  You can see him here, at 56.35.  Here's what he said:

Be careful what you wish for

The Sunday Times reports today that new guidance will be issued this week decriminalising the assisting of suicides, with an attempt being made to distinguish between assisting and encouraging suicide.

I shan't repeat most of my arguments against this, which you can find here, here and here.  But I will re-iterate the following:

An act of betrayal

There is a scene in the BBC series “Cambridge Spies” in which during their defection to the Soviet Union one of the Cambridge spy ring – I forget which now – states that if he had to choose between betraying his friends or betraying his country, he would hope to always choose the latter. The scene came to mind when I heard that President Obama had decided to abandon the missile defence shield planned for construction in Poland and the Czech Republic; here was a man who had managed to betray both his friends and his country, again to the delight of Russia.

The decision is one that has been expected for a long time. In February it was known that the missile interceptors were on the table for abandonment, and during the US Presidential election this had been mentioned. By entering into appeasement politics and no doubt negotiations Obama has once again used the Czech Republic and particularly Poland as sacrifices in his game of Russian appeasement; pawns to their rooks. A cruel betrayal – for both the Czech Republic and Poland certainly acted courageously in agreeing to host the defences – made all the crueller and more inept by Obama’s timing: 70 years to the day that the Soviet Union invaded the latter as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany and begun its half century of hell.

But to characterise this as a betrayal of the Czech Republic and Poland would be to tell less than half the story. Obama’s actions have betrayed all of Europe – East and West – as well as the United States. Though ostensibly the missile shield was to protect against Iran – hence the ‘new evidence’ of Iranian focus on short/medium range missiles only* – it patently wasn’t. I know it was to protect against Russia, you know it was to protect against Russia, Obama knows it was to protect against Russia, the Russians know it was to protect against Russia, everyone knows it was to protect against Russia – that’s why it was to be located where it was and why Russia disliked it so much!

As Michael Boyle wrote in The Guardian, “The missile shield plan of the Bush administration held out the hope of absolute protection from attack against the US and its allies…which, if realised, would have called into question the strategic defence balance in Europe.” He strangely however seems to think tilting the balance in our favour, of free liberal democracy, and offering protection from destruction would be a bad thing. I certainly don’t!