CentreRight

Focus on the issues not the dogma Harriet!

At a time of the deepest recession since the Second world war, when thousands of families are experiencing real uncertainty about their jobs, their mortgages and their futures it is unbelievable that the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman can find nothing better to do than spend time arguing for an "international architecture" to enable politicians from different countries to work collectively to ensure women play an equal role in rebuilding economies after the credit crunch.

What is required is strong leadership to galvanize world leaders, whoever they are, to find the right solutions to the crisis. Yet our Labour Government, when in difficulty resorts to the usual tactics of applying dogma and distracting gimmicks to avoid serious debate about the core issues and avoid honest scrutiny of policy failures.

To most hard working families in this country whether the leader of the country or business is a man or a woman is neither here nor there. Like most people in modern Britain I have had male and female bosses throughout my business career , the gender of the person in charge is irrelevant.  What is important is that the right decisions are made and that the individual has credibility and respect amongst the workforce or those who report to her or him.

Sadly, Harriet Harman lacks this basic understanding of human nature.  As one CEO once said to me – special interest groups don’t work in business....at the end of the day what matters most is being successful.  For Harriet, this inconvenient truth is obscured by a muddle-headed vision of equality at all costs.... I doubt the electorate will reward her for it

In Denial

I have a very poor ability to adjust to the time-shifts caused by crossing the Atlantic, so on Friday night (about 2am here) as I was shuffling onto the hideous piece of metal that would carry my terrified body back home to London (my fear of flying is the only concession I will make to irrationalism in this article), after a week spent waking up, ravenous, at 3am, I wasn't paying much attention to the CNN broadcast being played full-blast at our heads by the 'helpful' airport authorities (do Americans have a terror of silence in public spaces?). But my colleague in the queue behind me was (paying attention, that is). More bloody denialism, he muttered. Which made me look up at the screen.

What was on the broadcast was an interview with a family who had refused to have their child treated for cancer, because they distrusted the medical opinion of their doctor, and because of 'religious objections'. The broadcaster had found another MD to praise their approach. Just before I got on the plane, I heard their preferred doctor shouting - I've seen patients cured of incurable cancers! Cured!

I checked just now (google really is an amazing engine) and my memory of the snippet I overheard isn't wrong. You can read the full transcript of that edition of (what I now see was) the Larry King show here, if you wish, but I'm not writing this to slag off American television or that poor family (who I see now, having read the full transcript, did in the end (but only after a court order) permit their child's cancer to be treated with conventional medicine).

What really stuck in my mind was the resigned nature of my colleague's muttering. More bloody denialism. It's everywhere, these days, this denialism. It's an offshoot of the pseudo-religions we invent to pass the time. First environmentalism became somewhat cultish, accusing those not willing to sign-up to the theory that The End Of Everything Is Nigh of being, in some sense, heretical. ('The science is settled' - that would be a first, then, in the history of the Universe). Then, I'm afraid, the people who oppose the hypothesis of man-made climate change started their own branch of fundamentalism: it was quite cold this summer, 'therefore' everything the climate-change activists say is wrong.

Something for all patriots...

Today is St Crispin’s Day.

Added at 12.30pm for Archbishop Cranmer:

I prefer Branagh actually!

A tale of two Bury St Edmundses

A trip this weekend to Bury St Edmunds, where I grew up, yielded two very different anecdotes in one evening.

First; a prophet is not without honour, save in his home town.  I've been running Big Brother Watch for six weeks now, an organisation that does what it says on the tin, but the first time I had a genuine "why on earth do you need to know this information about me?" moment personally came last night, when I was refused a pair of tickets to a play unless I yielded up my name and address.  If one were to pay the £12 in cash then there would be no need at all, one would think, and if one paid with a card, then the PIN system offers all the protection any retailer would need, so - pourqoi?  My mother and brother were both in the show, and She Who Must Be Obeyed was tapping her foot impatiently as I made my fuss with the no doubt personally blameless chap on the desk, so of course I paid up.  But as I have documented elsewhere, this "it's not worth the hassle" factor is a vital part of our constant little defeats in the fight against the accrual and use of information about us.  Yet the question still remains - for what possible reason might such information be required to permit one to attend a regional theatre?

Taking stock

So, where is British politics at the moment.  Here's how it seems to me:

1. Labour faces electoral catastrophe.  Barring some bizarre moment of political self-immolation,  the Conservatives are going to win by a huge landslide.  There seems to be some odd idea around that Labour isn't going to get as small a percentage of the vote as indicated by the opinion polls.  There are those who contribute on this site that follow these things much more closely than I do, but my understanding is that a consistent feature of opinion polls over the past twenty years has been their (quite significant) over-stating of Labour support.  I simply don't get this thought that Labour will do better than the opinion polls suggest.
2. There is little, if any, enthusiasm for the Conservative offering amongst voters.  Voters have a fairly settled opinion that Cameron doesn't believe in anything much or that if he does, it's indistinguishable from Blairism.  This is a shame, since, in fact, that Conservatives have developed interesting and radical policy approaches across a wide range of policy areas (excluding the disaster zone that is our health policy).
3. The incoming Conservative government will face the worst inheritance almost anyone can remember.  The only serious competition seems to be the Wilson government of 1974 and the Thatcher government of 1979.  But each of those, in their different ways, had big advantages over the Cameron government of 2010.  The combination of the worst recession since the 1920s; unemployment that will rise above four million unless something dramatic happens; public finances of the order of a banana republic; public spending on the scale of a soviet republic; the major industry of the economy (finance) crippled to the point of nationalisation; households burdened by ruinous debt; a war we absolutely must win but show little signs of doing so amidst widespread voter disillusionment with its value; a society ravaged by nihilism, sloth, adultery, divorce, irresponsibility, selfishness, promise-breaking and faithlessness on a truly epic scale; a political establishment that has no faith in itself or in the value of its ideals; an incoherent patchwork of overlapping legislatures in a constitution savaged beyond recognition; tension with our friends and partners in the European Union on the point of breaking out into open hostility - these and many other problems represent the backdrop to the 2010 General Election.
4. Voters don't want what we have, but they have no idea what they want instead.  It's no use at all asking them.  You have to tell them what you want and see whether they'll vote for it.
5. The Cameron administration will probably see very major power struggles and splits within the Conservative Party.  We should not aspire all to agree upon what is the best way to deal with the appalling problems I listed above - debate and disagreement over a variety of approaches will be very valuable.  In contrast, with a large majority and the opposition parties in utter chaos, the value of unity will seem small.  We may well see two or even three Conservative Party leaders during the 2010s.
6. As unemployment rises above three million next year, and (barring something extraordinary) above four million over the following winter, the Conservative Party will be blamed.  People will say that it's the spending cuts and the public sector redundancies that are the cause.  There will be unprecedented social tensions associated with there being so, so many unemployed.  Given the very low trust there is in politicians and the general scale of nihilism and social decay, the situation could become volatile - in an extreme case, in specific regions, even quasi-revolutionary (of the order of quasi-revolutionary union activities in the early 1970s, but probably not, on this occasion, at the instigation of unions).  I have no idea how the Conservatives intend to deal with that - and, I think, neither does anyone in the Party.
7. The implications of unemployment on this scale and related tension could well, in the end, be regarded by history as the defining feature of the Cameron government.

YouTubers hit back against the climate change scare-mongers

Remember the government's 'scare-the-kids' video about climate change?

There are two YouTube responses:

I guess the lesson from this is that some people are just crazy

Last night a man hardly anyone has heard of, who leads a party hardly anyone votes for, spoke views hardly anyone believes or agrees with, whilst appearing on a programme that hardly anyone normally watches. This may be blunt, but it’s true.

Here are some facts:

Only 64% of people have ever heard of Nick Clegg, so how many have ever heard of Nick Griffin – and how many will remember him next month? In the recent European Elections the BNP polled sixth, despite the expenses scandal, despite the proportional representation, despite the issue of Europe, and despite the recession, to win two seats – count them; one, two – out of a possible 69.. That’s BNP 2, everyone else 67. Even as a protest vote that’s pathetic, especially in a PR election for a largely powerless body (i.e. voters have nothing to lose). I’ve heard of a long march but that’s ridiculous. They were even beaten by the Greens, who’s vote also increased at nearly twice the BNP's rate. Neither are likely to be walking into Downing Street any time soon (they don’t even contest enough seats!).

I cannot find a statistic or poll about how many people in the UK deny the Holocaust, or semi-deny it as Griffin seems to confusingly claim, but I doubt it is many. I imagine the UK Holocaust denial rate is similar to the rate of people who believe Elvis lives on Mars drinking soup with the Clangers or think their children are being brainwashed by mobile phones/microwaves/vaccines and the only answer is to wear tin foil hats. Basically, not many.

Rob Wilson MP: It was right to put Nick Griffin on last night's Question Time as it damaged the BNP's credibility

Last night Rob Wilson MP previewed Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time, saying he believed it was right to expose the BNP to public scrutiny. Here he gives his reaction to the programme.

Question Time last night did nothing to alter my views expressed in the earlier posting for ConservativeHome.  However, it certainly was compelling television and I think overall the BBC was justified in putting BNP leader Nick Griffin on the programme.

I don’t think there are many people who watched who will be thinking "I must go out and join the BNP".  Nick Griffin came across as a lightweight, intellectually, politically and personally.  In fact a constituent said to me this morning: “I don’t know what the fuss was all about, he came across as a twerp”.  It was abundantly clear that he was desperately trying to hide his past and the many stupid, even dangerous, things he had once said.

Griffin was always going to be on a sticky wicket with an inquisitive chairman, four well briefed panellists and a hostile audience, but it was fairly brutal at times. I can’t have been the only person who winced with a combination of embarrassment and revulsion at the way Griffin handled some of his answers.  I understand Griffin is going to lodge a complaint saying the programme was “political bullying”.  I’m sure the irony of this will not be lost on those who have suffered at the hands of the BNP in the past.

Question Time will have damaged the credibility of the BNP, so people like Peter Hain, in my view, did get it wrong.   But is it the end of the BNP as some are saying?  No, because the fundamental underlying issues remain the same; mass immigration, poor housing, poverty, recession and a desperately desire on mainly the left of politics not to debate the difficult issues.  The disconnect between many people in poorer communities and the political elite is still there and whilst a whole swathe of the country remains adrift from politics there will continue to be fertile ground for the BNP. 

One final point, I saw some of the scenes from outside the BBC on the News.  It did nothing but discredit to those individuals and organisations involved.

Recovery across the UK: only a low tax economy will work

By Professor Nick Bosanquet

Today’s data, which show that the UK has now been in recession for the longest period since records began, highlight the importance of finding ways to return the economy to growth. A shift from public to private spending is essential for economic growth and a sustained recovery. A high level of public spending can slow contraction for a while, but then stability turns into stagnation. A 45 per cent public sector will lower the long term UK growth rate from 2.5 to 1.5 per cent.

Encouraging growth requires a greater focus on improving the competitiveness of the UK economy. Most large UK corporations already operate offshore.  For many of the FTSE 100 (such as Glaxo, BP and Astra Zeneca) the UK market is under 10 per cent of their worldwide sales and for the mining companies under 1 per cent. Much of their employment for support and service staff of large corporations is also abroad. Only a minority of highly qualified staff are employed in the UK, mainly in the South East. With close links to Asia (where China is already resuming its pre crisis growth) many of these companies are recovering fast.

Success in encouraging economic growth also depends on small and medium firms, which generate most of the private sector employment outside the South East. For these firms the main market is private consumption and other local business. The public sector deals in big projects and big tenders. Even in services where local suppliers were active, such as home care and school catering, there has been a move to very large contracts. Government and European regulations have raised tendering costs for small companies. The government has sought to make public sector contracts more accessible to small companies but with little success.

It is also small and medium sized firms which can make most use of the expanding opportunities from the internet. This has made it possible for smaller firms to trade internationally; the next decade will provide massive opportunities for smaller firms to expand their presence in global markets.

The prime variable for growth is business confidence. There is a chronic tendency in Whitehall to focus on the number of new jobs that seem to come from public spending projects rather than on the diffused, less measurable effects of a rise in business confidence: public spending projects tend to be highly concentrated and politically popular, while the location of investment from a rise in business confidence is not predictable in advance.

The key to business confidence is the belief that demand will rise in the future. An economy in which the main future is ever increasing tax burdens and public spending will be one in which small and medium sized firms are likely to feel that the enterprise culture is fading away. They will either follow the larger firms offshore or forget about investment.

A low tax economy is also needed to help families rebalance their own finances. It is essential that families save more to prepare themselves for sudden drops in income and retirement, as it is already clear that the state pension will only provide a minimum and people will be expected to provide for themselves above that. For saving to seem worthwhile families need confidence in their future income which can only come from confidence in their job prospects.

The Government argues that we should not start cutting public spending now: because this would destabilize the economy. But it also argues that there are some signs of recovery and that the economy has stabilized. It is time to start the move towards a lower tax economy. The confidence effects will be stronger than any reduction in demand from cutting public spending. Delay will simply make the transition more difficult—and delay the return to real growth across the UK.

Nick Bosanquet is Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College London and Consultant Director of the independent think tank Reform.

Licence-fee payers should have had a say in deciding whether Nick Griffin should have been on Question Time

Have we all the missed the point about the debate on the BNP appearance on Question Time?

The issue is not whether the BBC should have invited Mr Griffin. The issue is that the licence-fee payer had no right to make a decision either way.  In fact the licence-fee payer was disenfranchised from this decision.

I have argued before on CentreRight that licence-fee payers must be given the chance to vote on major decisions made by the BBC (including programming quality, executive and celebrity pay and the level of the licence fee).

Each licence fee payer would be given a vote via a Pin number, in which they could register their voting intentions on various issues.

Recent major controversies that the BBC has been involved in (Jonathan Ross, the Gaza charity appeal and now the BNP), have been all the more controversial, because the decisions made have been decided by senior management alone.

Griffin on Question Time

How did he do?  My view is that

• It was a significant error on the part of the BBC to devote so much of the programme to the BNP. Just because the BNP had to be on didn't mean there had to be a whole show devoted to questions about the BNP.  He was entitled to be on, and the rest of us were entitled to hear his views on bankers bonuses, on MP expenses, on Gordon Brown's biscuit problems, on whether the banks should be broken up, and so on.  He was either on there as part of the normal process or he wasn't.  If he was only there as part of the normal process, as the BBC insisted, then it should have been a normal show.

The BNP can't be beaten in sixty minutes

Some quick fire observations:

Nick Griffin did badly. He was evasive on the holocaust in particular but there was no killer blow.

Sayeeda Warsi did well. Bonnie Greer did very well.

I don't however think the BNP will be unhappy at the end of it all. They raised their issues - immigration, in particular.  At times Nick Griffin looked bullied. That'll play into his 'we are victims' tactic.

Forgeting the theatre of tonight the BNP will persist so long as the mainstream parties aren't strong enough on immigration, patriotism and social justice.

The BNP can't be defeated in sixty minutes but tonight showed that Griffin can be beaten in the end.

Question & Answer

Question: Why has Nick Griffin been all over our screens for the past few days, and why is he tonight appearing on Question Time, when earlier incarnations if the BNP's mix of nationalism, socialism, and racism did not receive anything like the same publicity?

Answer: Proportional representation. 

Both predictable and predicted.

Labour failure has led to the rise of the BNP

Conservative MP Rob Wilson believes that the BBC are correct to put the BNP on Question Time and expose Nick Griffin to public scrutiny.

I’ve been asked to do a before and after piece for ConservativeHome, comparing my thoughts before the BNP leader Nick Griffin appears on BBC Question Time with those afterwards.  It’s an interesting idea, because we are all moving into uncertain territory – I certainly can’t remember a time when the BNP or National Front has ever had a platform like this on a mainstream political programme.  

However, I have never believed that banning views you don’t like is a good way to run a democracy, so before tonight’s programme I have little sympathy for the argument put forward by the likes of Ken Livingstone and Peter Hain.  It has verged on the hysterical at times and repeats the mistakes the left has made time after time in recent years of trying to close uncomfortable debates down.
 

End the money-go-round and let families keep more of their income

Dr Patrick Nolan is Chief Economist of Reform.

In his recent Conservative Party conference speech George Osborne suggested that a Conservative Government would make some steps towards ending middle class welfare. But then, in the next breath, ruled out making changes to three of the benefits that are most poorly targeted.

George Osborne proposed to means-test child trust funds and to abolish tax credits for people on an annual income of over £50,000. These changes would only save £0.7 billion per year. He then went on to pledge to keep winter fuel payments, free TV licenses and child benefit for middle class families. This pledge would cost £10 billion per year. It is simply not credible for politicians to argue that they are tackling the public finance deficit while they protect most of the benefits for the better off.

Other leading politicians have gone further. Vince Cable discussed ideas such as means testing the child benefit, reducing the child tax credit for higher income earners and scrapping the child trust fund in a pamphlet written for Reform. David Blunkett discussed taxing the child benefit at the recent Labour Party Conference.

Why I stopped reading the Economist and the attitude that led to the financial crisis

At one point I was an avid reader but, as the Economist descended into nothing more than a witty distillation of the conventional wisdom of the moment, it stopped being interesting.  This piece really exposes their thinking:

"Here's the thing: as history progresses, things change. And societies try to adapt to those changes. Experts come up with solutions to the problems the societies face. Those solutions often entail discomfiting established interest groups. And the solutions the experts come up with almost always entail some degree of perverse counterreaction, some kinds of problems or inefficiencies or whatever. It can be very interesting to focus on those counterreactions; it can generate fascinating, eye-grabbing journalism. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the counterreactions aren't as big as the first-order effects of the solutions. The minimum wage may price a few people out of the labour market, but it mostly raises low-income people's wages. Raising marginal income taxes does slightly lower rich people's incentives to generate income, but it mostly raises government revenue. In other words, the little contrarian thing is almost never anywhere near as important as the big first-order thing it rides on. And as journalism has come increasingly to focus on contrarianism, it has become less and less adept at actually describing the world."

We can argue about the specific things claims they've made.  For example, the effect of tax cuts and hikes on revenue clearly depends on which tax and over which time period.  There is plenty of evidence (PDF) that corporate tax cuts increase revenue quite quickly, for example.  And, abolishing the 50p rate would increase revenue as well.  I haven't read the Superfreakonomics book that is the main subject of their article.  But what really struck me was their overall argument that journalists should pay less attention to second-order, unintended consequences of proposed policies. 

The BNP's best friends

Don't groups like Unite Against Fascism get it?

The BNP thrive on being painted as the victims of protestors who throw eggs, hurl abuse and confront the police.

UAF are a huge gift to the BNP.  There's more on this on the NothingBritish website.

I've come to believe that putting the BNP on Question Time was a mistake.  An elected party like the BNP cannot be ignored by the mainstream media but hard-hitting one-to-one interviews would be better places to have started the examination of this party's extremist agenda.  Tonight's Question Time is going to be a circus and the BNP will be delighted if the hate hurled at them - outside Television Centre and inside the studio - suggests that they are the reasonable ones and the protestors are the extremists.

The UAF is a small part of the weakness of the wider Left-wing response to the BNP.  They are less interested in beating the BNP and more interested in posing as anti-extremists.

5.15pm: Photographs of the protestors taken by NothingBritish's James Bethell:

Keir Starmer, the Conservatives and the Human Rights Act

As the front page of today's Daily Telegraph sets out, the Conservative Party's plan to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities has been attacked by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.

There is an important debate to be had on the topic.  Indeed, Liberty are amongst the most well known of the many opponents of the Conservative plan.

But regardless of the merits, Big Brother Watch thinks it wholly wrong for the Director to make political commentary, particularly about the qualities of the policies of a Party with which he might soon properly be expected to work to the best of his abilities.  In this country we do not have a culture of public discussion from civil servants.  Indeed, the apolitical quality of that service, much undermined in recent times, is to be prized.

Hillary Clinton Gets It Wrong

There was widespread media speculation that during her meeting today with Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would raise objections to the Conservative Party’s pledge to repatriate key powers from the European Union to the United Kingdom. Labour, trailing the Conservatives in the polls by double digits, are no doubt rubbing their hands together in glee that their left-wing media allies have dealt a blow to the Tories electoral hopes by labeling them as politically extreme.

This is precisely why Hillary should not get involved; she is an experienced enough political operator to smell a political rat when it’s in her kitchen. The ‘furor’ at Foggy Bottom over Lisbon is undoubtedly driven by the Labour Government, in conjunction with EU elites, determined to kill any future referendum on Lisbon. Having bullied Ireland into a Yes vote, Brown et al. are on nothing less than a holy crusade to close the wound of Lisbon which has scarred Europe for the past few years.

More importantly, the United States should not be concerning itself with Britain’s constitutional arrangements. As America’s closest international partner and a fully-functioning democracy, Britain has the political maturity to determine its own destiny. Secretary Clinton has no reason to break faith with the British people who are quite capable of making their own decisions on matters of sovereignty and self-determination. And she should read the polls: three quarters of British people want a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, fulfilling the broken manifesto pledge by Labour.

Lastly, Secretary Clinton is making a rod for her own back. In less than a year, it is almost certain that she will be dealing with a Conservative Government which is committed to renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU. She should not want to start off on the wrong foot.

Besides which it remains entirely unclear why she thinks it will be easier dealing with Brussels than dealing with London. It isn’t José Manuel Barroso who will send troops to send to Afghanistan. It isn’t Javier Solana who will join America in sanctioning Iran. And it certainly isn’t Benita Ferrero-Waldner who will take in prisoners from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. With the Lisbon Treaty in force, the EU will undoubtedly interject itself into the national decision-making of EU members on issues of defense and security, but Washington should be ready to see its life get a whole lot worse in that instance.

Robert Halfon: It's time to support our atomic test veterans

By Robert Halfon

After the Gurkhas, there is another group of veterans that strongly need our support.

During the 1950s, members of the armed forces were told to watch atomic test blasts in the South Pacific. As a result, many of these veterans subsequently suffered varying degrees of sickness, most probably linked to radiation and three veterans a month are now dying.

Although for many years they were denied the right to compensation, in a landmark ruling in June this year, these veterans were given the right to take legal action to claim compensation from the Government - and a chance to get an acknowledgment of both their suffering and regret for having had to endure the atomic tests.

Astonishingly, the Government has opposed the veterans' actions, arguing that they had waited too long to claim compensation - despite the fact that their efforts of some years had been rebuffed. This is despite the fact that other countries - most notably the USA and Canada, which undertook similar tests - have accepted that it was a mistake to conduct such tests.

The Government is now appealing against this decision, trying to kick this into the long grass.

Time and time again, this Government has demonstrated cavalier treatment of our armed forces. They only acted on the Gurkhas after tremendous public pressure.

They should now recognise that the atomic test veterans deserve justice.

Instead of penny pinching and legal sophistry, they should act without  delay and give these former members of our armed forces the compensation they deserve. Let us hope the Government will act before being pushed once again by public opinion.

Labour’s unsavoury allies (part two)

Many thanks to the ever-prescient, always-eloquent ToryBear for drawing the attention of bloggers to this piece I posted on CentreRight back at the end of July. Since then, Labour and their Liberal Democrat chums have intensified their attacks on the Conservative Party's new allies in the European Parliament.

Allow me then, purely in the interests of fairness, to introduce you to several more of Labour's rather, well, "risqué" international allies inside the pan-national Party of European Socialists.

The first is the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, a party which enthusiastically endorsed the Presidential campaign of Stjepan "Stipe" Mesic - a man who in many former eastern-blok EU member states would be constitutionally banned from holding office as a result of the positions he held during Yugoslavia's communist dictatorship. A former Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement of the United Nations, Mesic's predecessors in this role include Fidel Castro, Josip Broz Tito, Robert Mugabe and General Suharto.

Secondly, the Labour Party enjoys formal links with the Social Democratic Parties of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both parties were formed in 1991 from the remnants of the two country's Communist Leagues which ruled with an iron-fist under the centralised leadership of Yugoslav "President for life" Josip Broz Tito from 1936 to 1980. At one point, Tito's favourite method of suppressing political enemies (there were, at one point, some 7,000 of them) was to exile them to the island of Goli Otok. Nobody will ever know how many thousands of malnutritioned and exhausted political prisoners died on Goli Otok, battered by the island's chilling winter winds and summer temperatures of more than forty degrees.

Inside the Party of the European Socialists, Labour is also tied to the Socialist Party of Albania. The party was formed in 1991 following the establishment of democracy in the country, yet is viewed as the successor party to Enver Halil Hoxha's Party of Labour. As First Secretary of the party, Hoxha presided over one of the bloodiest regimes in modern history and enforced the closure of each of Albania's 2,000 places of worship. On a lighter note, Hoxha also appeared to share eccentric former Turkmen dictator Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov's irrational hatred of beards, banning them outright.

Last but not least, we come to the Viktor Yanukovych's Party of the Regions (yes, he of vote-rigging, pro-Krelmin, anti-Orange Revolution fame). I do not need to remind ConHome readers that the tactics of Yanukovych's party during the disputed Presidential election were widely criticised by the British government with then Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw heaping criticism on their attempts to subvert the "democratic will of the Ukrainian people". 

It appears Labour has form in cooperating with parties with questionable stances on democracy, also being linked through the PES with the Turkish Democratic Society Party which is operates as the political wing of Abdullah Öcalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (KPP) - a proscribed terrorist organisation by the Home Office and US State Department.

Let's be serious now.

Does the Labour Party possess a hidden admiration for the governing style of Enver Hoxha? No. Does Labour have a sinister agenda to support Viktor Yanukovych's efforts to derail Ukraine's transition to democracy? To claim that would be nonsense. Do Labour ministers raise a glass of Rakija and tuck into a spicy Serbian Goulash each 25th of May to celebrate Tito's birthday? Of course not.

When it comes to attacks on a party's international allies, however, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

These ridiculous - and unfounded - attacks on the European Conservatives and Reformists Group have to stop.

All-Women Shortlists & Equality before the Law

Unlike the Editors, I don't believe it is fundamentally unConservative to have all-women shortlists.  But there would be profound implications of doing so, flowing from something I do consider to be a fundamental Conservative principle: equality before the law.

Here are three implications of all-women shortlists, in the context of equality before the law.  (The first two flow straightforwardly and directly from the principle of equality before the law.  The third flows from equality before the law and the principle of liberalism.)

Congratulations to the Centre for Social Justice on winning another accolade

I was unable to make Prospect magazine's Think Tank of the Year awards last night, but am delighted to hear this morning that the Centre for Social Justice won the top gong of Think Tank of the Year 2009.

Since its founding in 2004, Iain Duncan Smith, Philippa Stroud and their team have conducted huge amounts of detailed research and set an agenda in fighting poverty which David Cameron has embraced and put at the heart of Conservative policy - and they are to be congratulated on doing so.

> Got to the Prospect blog for further details of all the winners

Keeping Britain moving: the roads are the key

At the TaxPayers' Alliance we're working with the Drivers' Alliance to produce new research on transport and environmental policy.  The first product of that new partnership is a new research note (PDF) out today setting out how much is spent on different forms of transport per passenger kilometre.

The transport budget is likely to face cuts as part of the response to the fiscal crisis.  Leaked reports have suggested that transport as a whole might lose as much as £29 billion in over ten years.  That means politicians will need to set priorities.

The key priority should be easing congestion and overcrowding.  We need to keep Britain moving despite the fiscal crisis and the roads are gridlocked and commuter trains packed out.  That means the key criteria should be how many passenger kilometres each mode of transport can provide for a given amount of public spending.  Our report shows that more than ten times as much is spent on the trains for every passenger kilometre travelled on them as is spent on the roads.  The roads move a lot more people a lot further for every pound spent.  The same goes for freight, the roads move more goods further for every pound spent.

People might argue that we need to prioritise railways in order to make up for the environmental costs of motoring.  But, motorists more than pay in taxes for both the roads and the social cost of their emissions - with £18.4 billion to spare.

Politicians in Westminster need to understand that for most of the country driving is by far the most important mode of transport.  The road network has to take priority over flashy new rail projects if we are going to make the best use of whatever resources are available.

Will Klaus sign the Lisbon Treaty?

The mainstream media has finally caught up with the internet on the issue of the Lisbon Treaty, with The Times leading ‘Dismay for David Cameron as Vaclav Klaus relents on Lisbon treaty’. I must admit disappointment when I saw the headline, despite my article yesterday exploring options for Plan B as we must face facts that the Czech President holding out until after our election is increasingly unlikely. But is it?

President Klaus is a man who has a track record of keeping people guessing, and his recent statements from the latest “unstoppable train” analogy to the earlier “don’t worry, I won’t [sign the Lisbon Treaty]” have certainly kept us hanging on his every word. Quite frankly, he’s loving it. And knowing that he is personally opposed to the Treaty, and knows by holding out he can stop it, why on Earth would he sign?

People talk of pressure and threats from other European leaders, President Sarkozy is particularly belligerent, but what can they do? As far as I can see the most they can do is demean themselves by being rude in public, or ring him up every day to nag only for his secretary to say that he’s out meeting his fans. The idea of sanctions on the Czech Republic would hardly do the EU’s image any favours in the Czech Republic or elsewhere, would only stiffen resolve, and is probably illegal.

The only reason I can see is fear of damaging the Czech Republic’s image and standing; Klaus is a good patriot and is not likely to do anything he feels would damage his country. But equally he knows that the Lisbon Treaty is wrong, and far more permanent than his national PR. Indeed in many eyes he has raised his and his country’s standing – everyone is watching a country of just 10 million and he has the chance to be an international icon.

The Czech public too back him. According to the recent survey about 65% of Czech Citizens support their President in his resistance against the Lisbon Treaty and 74% of the Czech population do not want Mr Klaus to resign from his office if he does not sign the treaty. A public rally opposing the Treaty is scheduled in Prague for 27th and 28th October. Pressure is building from the public to hold out (people anywhere can join the Facebook group, sign the petition, email President Klaus' office or write a letter - which I urge you to do).

So will he sign? Yesterday I thought so, today I think not. Vaclav Klaus has too much principle and too much to gain by not signing – let us hope anyway…