CentreRight

Do you trust the police?

Over on the Big Brother Watch site yesterday I wrote about plans to introduce tasers to our police force.  I explained that it was my view that this was a bad thing - that for many years, the police have kept order in this country by dint of their authority, not superior firepower.

In any case, an interesting off-topic discussion began about police... well, to use an emotive phrase from the USA, police brutality.

Support for the police, as our guardians and the keepers of law and order, is a traditional conservative quality.  Certainly, we ought to be able to support them.  But it is difficult to do so when looking at the examples linked to on YouTube over on the BBW thread, or indeed easily found with a quick search on YouTube yourself.  Tasering prone and unresisting people.  Multiple punches to the head of a man lying restrained on the ground.  And so on.  That's without even touching on stop and search (as per JP Floru), or the G20 assaults, or the Kingsnorth protests.

Do you think that the police have changed in recent years? Or do you think that the police have always been like this, and the new set of doubts about the police amongst normally law-abiding people (if it exists) arises simply because we have an army of citizen-photographers with mobile camera phones?  Or do you think that the examples are of bad apples amongst a generally good force?  Or do you think that this sort of behaviour is warranted given the challenges and dangers the police face?

Just tell us the truth Alistair

As the details of today's Pre-Budget report emerge, amid the leaks and pre-briefings, one thing is already clear: Alistair Darling will be more concerned with scoring political points than telling us the truth about the dire state of public finances. With less than 6 months to go before a general election, this is not surprising. But as John Kay points out in a thoughtful FT column today, this Government has a long record of turning Treasury forecasts into political constructs. Instead of "objective, technical affairs" which used to provide important, if complex, information, background papers to Budget statements are now "written in the style of the corporate PR executive." I have blogged here before about the importance of truth-telling to restore trust in politics and, in my CPS report The Reality Gap, identified the technique which Kay describes - Labour's relentless manipulation of data to present the best case scenario. A too-credulous, or plain lazy, media (most notably the BBC) too often presents government material as fact. The result? Opposition parties need to work harder than ever to extract the truth, and should at all costs avoid conducting the argument on the Government's terms. This afternoon, the Conservatives need to be ready to pull apart the Chancellor's claims and make the case for an entirely different approach to handling - and communicating - the state of our public finances. And if anyone thinks that taxing bankers' bonuses will get the British economy growing again, let's hear some economic forecasts to support that contention.

Have you been stopped under the Anti-Terrorism Act?

Today I was stopped in my Smart car on the Charing Cross Road, Central London, by the Metropolitan Police.  The officer told me this was under Anti Terrorism legislation.

I may have terrorised the blogosphere at times, but I would never have guessed it was that evident from my appearance or car.  My name and date of birth were taken down in triplicate.  Then he wanted to know my height - “for intelligence”.  I refused to give my height (it’s a bit of a sore point as I am smallish).

Fortunately I wasn’t arrested on the spot.  Next I had to open the boot of my car.  I breathed a sigh of relief as it wasn’t filled with five tons of semtex this time around – but my box with out-of-date In Touches drew a lot of attention.  “Suspect was in possession of inflammatory political material” must now be in my file at the Anti-Terrorism Branch of Scotland Yard.  I lost ten minutes of precious time.  They didn’t take a DNA sample though, so I’m not in that database yet.

I see random police searches inCentral London all the time.  They are an invasion of our civil liberties.  They are a waste of police time.  Thousands are inconvenienced without any explanation given.  Does anybody know why?  Is it indeed, as Lord Carlisle (LibDem), the independent reviewer of anti-terrorism law suggested back in June, to have a racial balance in police statistics?  Is it done in the hope of catching terrorists by accident?  Why not search every house, office and chicken coop in the land while they are at it?  Any other guesses?

Boris, can’t you stop this lunacy?

The Black Hole

Tomorrow is the pre-budget report (PBR) in which the Chancellor will attempt to spin success from the grips of failure, boom from the unmitigated bust, stability from the tremors of recession, victory from the jaws of defeat. He may as well abandon all pretence - even the great conjurer Brown cannot magic up any more fictional fixes, mystery millions or surprise spending sprees. The country is on the verge of going bust. If the structural deficit of nearly 8% of GDP is not addressed we will almost certainly lose our current credit rating, increasing the cost of public and private borrowing, sending more businesses and homeowners into bankruptcy, sending yet more people into long term unemployment – the nation forced into even deeper cuts and tax hikes across the board to control the cost of borrowing.

Some are suggesting tax increases will plug the deficit – they are wrong. At nearly £200 billion per year, taxes alone cannot plug the gap. Indeed as every true conservative knows, higher taxes will only worsen the crisis. Now more than ever we need to maximise the productive private sector, boost business, and encourage the World’s wealth to our shores through lower taxes. Now more than ever we must confront something which has been on the cards for so long but, to the political leadership of this country, has been something they have long preferred to ignore.

Walk along Whitehall and it is as if nothing is wrong – traffic snarls up in the ever longer rush hour, the Westminster village mingles, tourists snap photographs – but just yards away is a different scene. Like the Bermuda Triangle, the thin triangle between Downing Street, Parliament and the Treasury has a lot of mystery to it. Disappearing here are not boats and planes but boat loads of taxpayers’ money, as the failing Labour government tries desperately to cling on to power. Fears of a man made black hole being created by the CERN research lab proved wrong – the black hole isn’t under the Swiss border but at the heart of our government, sucking up not the World but our nation’s future, and at the controls – where he has been since 1997 in one title or another– stands Gordon Brown.

Less a Hoover, more of a Dyson, Labour’s financial vacuum’s suction never wanes and its bag is never full. They say that money talks; under Labour it screams for help! Unless the United Kingdom wishes to decay into obscurity, the next government has no option but to cut spending – and the battle for a mandate to do so begins with the Conservative response to the PBR tomorrow.

Do top earners pay their fair share of tax?

In City AM, Allister Heath thinks they do: "The top 10 per cent of earners are already set to pay 53.6 per cent of income tax in 2008-09; the top five per cent will pay 43 per cent and the top one per cent 23.9 per cent. Yes, that’s right, just one per cent of the population will pay close to a quarter of the total income tax take, funding a massive chunk of the welfare state – who ever said the rich don’t pay their “fair share”, whatever that means?"

Radical Islamism's spread: a review of two major new reports

Two significant reports that I have just read in the past few days have made me realise that still people do not get it about the threat of radical Islamism.

The Centre for Social Cohesion's new report Hizb ut-Tahrir: Ideology and Strategy, by Houriya Ahmed and Hannah Stuart, and the Quilliam Foundation's report by James Brandon, Unlocking Al-Qaeda: Islamist Extremism in British Prisons, both made jaw-dropping reading. Jaw-dropping not because of what they revealed about the presence of radical Islamists in our midst, but because of what they revealed about the ignorance and incompetence, indeed unwitting complicity, of our authorities.

Take Quilliam's report first. With a foreword by the Conservatives' Shadow Security Minister Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, the report details a terrifying phenomenon: that in Britain's jails radical Islamists imprisoned for preaching hate and plotting terror are actively using the prisons as a recruiting ground for fresh converts to extremism: and with success. Twelve per cent of the prison population, or 10,000 inmates, are Muslim - vulnerable to radicalisation.

Quilliam's report documents, shockingly, the availability of jihadist literature in prison libraries. Well HELLO, isn't that a bit dumb? During the trial of Mohammad al-Figari, a convert to Islam jailed for attending terrorist training camps organised by Abu Hamza, the prosecution produced a book found in al-Figari's possession, entitled How Can I Train Myself for Jihad?  The book had a stamp from Wandsworth prison's library. Furthermore, al-Figari received extremist literature sent by followers of Abu Hamza, while in jail. What is the Prison Service doing stocking jihadi literature in its libraries, and allowing jihadi literature to be received by mail by inmates?

A Keynesian consensus?

By Neil O'Brien

Britain’s budget deficit is soaring to record levels.  The Government is spending four pounds for every three that it raises in tax.  The national debt is set to double.  Britain is running up twice as much debt as the G20 average.  The CBI, the IMF, the OECD and the credit ratings agencies have all raised concerns about the spiralling debt.  And as you can see from the chart below, the public finances are now in a worse state than when Britain was forced to go “cap in hand” to the IMF in 1976.  The red line is the projection from Budget 2009.

Public sector net borrowing (%GDP)

Nonetheless, some people want to run an even bigger deficit. 

Today the Guardian carries a piece attacking "debt hysteria" and arguing that "we can spend our way out of recession."

Over at Left Foot Forward, a group of left-leaning luminaries are calling on Gordon Brown to spend even more and to “make the Keynesian case for budget deficits.”  They argue that reducing public spending will lead to a double dip recession. 

Brown details sell off plans

Today the Government published details of its sell off plans. Gordon Brown's "car boot" sale includes: the Tote, the Dartford Crossing, URENCO (Uranium Enrichment), High Speed 1, British Waterways and much more.

And further assets are now earmarked - including the Port of Dover and BBC Worldwide. Selling off the Port of Dover will come as a great surprise to the people of Dover, as a solemn pledge was given by Labour at the last election that they would not do this. Indeed, it became the touchstone pledge of their campaign in the Dover & Deal constituency. BBC Worldwide is an interesting case - especially as the way the Government are looking at it, a multiple of £102m (£2 Billion on a PE of 15) could be achieved, whereas it could potentially be worth closer to a multiple of £500m with appropriate reorganisation (£7.5 Billion on a PE of 15). Either way, it's noteworthy that the BBC doesn't now seem to be a sacred cow for the Government.

In principle there's nothing wrong with selling off excess assets. Yet it's unwise to sell assets too hastily in weak market conditions. So it is to be hoped that we won't see a firesale at the bottom of the market, as we did with Brown's Gold sale. The student loan book, which is less sensitive to current market conditions, could be a better more immediate candidate. And special caution must be taken with the security of our nation and her borders. For this reason, the sale of Urenco and the Port of Dover should be viewed with grave concern.

Coordination for mental health - will it work?

A coordinated announcement is expected today that brings together the Departments of Health, Work and Pensions, Justice, Home and Local Government on the subject of tackling mental health. As I write the details aren't yet clear but the emphasis will be on offering 'cognitive behaviour therapy' (CBT) to help try and treat and prevent mental illness, for those in school to those out of work. Our understanding is that there will be no new money, but funding will be diverted from Departments which expect to see savings as a result of upstream investment in treatment.

The impact will be in the detail. As 2020health are currently running a project on 'work as a health outcome' we are particularly interested in this announcement. What we want to see is a much greater awareness of how important work is for health, as well as health for work. Enabling people to have control over their 'working lives' through rapid support given to them in times of ill health is a worthy investment for the economy, quite apart from being the right thing to do. So far reports of CBT support for the 'medium term' unemployed don't sound promising - it needs to be offered as soon as someone becomes unfit for work.

But in principle this strategy is to be welcomed. In March 2009, Theresa May made a speech along similar lines, describing the DEL (departmental expenditure limits) - AME (annually managed expenditure) 'switch' whereby the resources to get people back to work can be found from savings in the welfare budget. Where health professionals fit in to the plans to be launched today, but the currently the challenge remains: how to reconnect the outcome of being able to work with healthcare practice.

Higher VAT is an unacceptable tax on the poor

This morning, the TPA will be releasing a new research paper (PDF) looking at how the different parties have responded to the fiscal crisis.  The scale on which Britain is currently borrowing means that action is essential.  If the structural deficit - at nearly 8% of GDP according to the IMF - is not addressed seriously soon after the next election then we risk losing our current credit rating.  There is then a real risk of getting forced into much more brutal measures than would initially have been necessary as we are forced to take more and more drastic action to control the cost of borrowing.

The situation is worse because it follows a decade of tax rises.  Families and businesses are already living under the burden of perhaps the most complex tax code in the world, the cost of everything from flying to selling a home has been steadily pushed up by tax hikes and we have fallen behind in the race to attract capital with low tax rates.  What that means is that tax rises invariably fit into two categories:

• Increasing taxes on capital or 'the rich'.  These tax hikes might be politically satisfying but they are likely to raise little revenue, no revenue or even lose money and hurt the long term health of the economy.
• Increase taxes on those on low and middle incomes.  This is the only way of reliably increasing revenue, but ordinary families are already facing huge pressure on their finances.

The Government have mostly proposed tax rises that fit in the first category.  The 50p rate won't raise any money, it is an exercise in counterproductive distraction from the actual task of reducing borrowing.

On the other hand, many analysts think that the Conservatives are going to increase VAT to 20 per cent, after it has gone back up to 17.5 per cent.  That would be very regressive, this graph from our report shows just how regressive:

The elephant in the room

Earlier today, Tim posted on David Cameron's fourth anniversary as leader of the Opposition. ConHome has always been a "critical friend" of our party. Indeed, one reason why the centre-right owns the blogosphere is that loyal Tories, who would die in a ditch to see a Conservative government returned, are nonetheless willing to be critical and to debate, and that the central party accepts that without rancour, indeed encourages it.

This is not the Labour Party. We don't ask that you check your brain at the door.

That said, Tim's article asks if he's missed anything. And my answer has to be.. erm... yeah. While the article brings in, at number 10, the idea that we are now "on course" to win the next election, the party's breathtaking success in the last few years is hardly referred to at all.

Now, I know what (critical) supporters of the Cameron project ConHome have been. They campaigned hard for this party in every set of elections. I do not infer any deliberate minimising of what's happened in politics since 2005 at all. Rather, it may just be that all of us are now so used to being favoured to win by the bookies, that we have forgotten quite what a turnaround this is.

Against scientific cases for action

The BBC reports that "Gordon Brown is "unequivocal" about the scientific case for action against climate change, No 10 has said, ahead of the forthcoming Copenhagen summit."  But there isn't a scientific case for policy action against climate change.  There is never a scientific case for policy action against anything.

There can be scientific cases against action.  For example, if scientific research suggests (as it does) that there is no basis whatever for health concerns regarding mobile 'phone booster stations, that's a pretty good reason not to enact policy action restricting the placement of such booster stations on health grounds.  (It may not be a decisive reason, of course, and there may be other reasons that health grounds for enacting such restrictions, but it is a case.)  Scientific research or theory might also tell us that an intervention wouldn't work.  For example, if we tried to stop swine 'flu from spreading by slaughtering all the pigs in the country but scientific research suggested that this would have no impact on the spread of swine 'flu, that would be a good reason not to enact the policy.

But science can't tell us that we should act.  Because acting always involves costs and opportunity costs.  And it is not a matter for science whether it is worth bearing those costs; neither is it a matter for science how we evaluate whatever benefits of action science might suggest there are.

Promoting diversity, protecting tradition

There are two aspects of our country and its values which I believe we should defend vigorously, because both are under threat. They may at first appear contradictory, but they are not. One reinforces the other. The first is diversity, the second is tradition.

I thrive on diversity. I would find life much less fulfilling if every day was the same, if I saw the same people, the same places, and did the same things. I love meeting people of different backgrounds, cultures, countries and religions; I love visited places which each have their own rich, but different, history; and I have a wide range of tastes in food, music, film and literature.

Our country is enriched by the broad and diverse range of people who are its citizens. Indeed, the very essence of the United Kingdom is diverse: the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish. Add to them the people who have become part of the United Kingdom over the past century or two, from varying cultures and religions, and it makes for an even more beautiful nation. We have a proud tradition of welcoming the visitor and providing a place of sanctuary for the refugee, and we must unflinchingly maintain that tradition.

When honesty is the best policy

David Cameron said two important things this week; both relate to Afghanistan.

First, yesterday in Afghanistan he said:

"We must never do or say anything that gives the impression to the Taliban that we will not see this through.”

Second, during this week’s Parliamentary debate Cameron warned against troop reductions in the near future.

"I don't want us to raise false hopes. It's pretty unlikely you're going to see a reduction in British troop numbers next year. As soon as you can hand over lead responsibility to the Afghans in a district you should do so... but do it based on success.”

Cameron, thank God, is now aware, or has been made aware, that the more we talk of exit strategies, the more the Taleban will believe victory is in sight, and that to put artificial timetables on troop withdrawal is to invite future defeats.

In Iraq, we pulled out of districts and handed them over to ill-prepared Iraqi police and security forces, often riddled with enemy militia or openly corrupt. We pulled out before the job was done so that the Government, which had committed UK forces to a war it no longer had the stomach to fight, could pretend things were on track according to its timetable, perhaps the most wretched example of this administration’s ‘target’ culture.

For Quentin Letts, the Speaker and his wife can do nothing right

In his Saturday column in the Mail, Quentin Letts pens another attack on John Bercow, repeating the ridiculous assertion that he could lose the Speakership in a division held at the first sitting of the new Parliament after the next election.

As I have stated before, I believe it would be absurd in the extreme if that were the first act of what will likely be a newly Tory-dominated Commons - not least because as Speaker he has been doing a fine job, hauling many more ministers to the Despatch Box to answer questions than his predecessor and supporting more rights for backbench MPs, amongst other things.

Letts does of course mention the Evening Standard interview given by Sally Bercow this week - which Tim has already highlighted in this CentreRight post - and appears to suggest that the Speaker's "spin doctor" should have sat in on the interview.

It strikes me that this is a bizarre line for him to take. Mrs Bercow gave an interview entirely in a private capacity as a Labour council candidate (which she has every right to be, by the way - there is no restriction on what MPs' spouses can do in their professional and/or political lives and nor should there be) .

As far as I'm concerned, the outrageous thing would have been if the taxpayer-funded official had sat in and effectively given guidance to Mrs Bercow as she participated in a party political interview. And I dare say that Quentin Letts would have been at the front of the queue of those expressing outrage if that had been the case.

Concerning Usury

"Usury", as I shall employ the term, refers simply to the lending of money at interest such that the amount received by the lender exceeds the amount lent and the return is guaranteed by the borrower.  I thus depart from both modern Western usage - whereby "usury" refers to the charging of "excessively high" rates of interest - and ancient usage - whereby "usury" included, also, the concept of "lending" money with either the amount or fact of repayment depending on the borrower's circumstances (this latter concept is much more akin to the taking of an equity stake in a project than lending as it is understood by moderns).  My usage is pretty much precisely the way that modern Muslims understand the term.

Usury - lending money at interest - has been a controversial and circumscribed practice throughout most of recorded history.  Indeed, as recently as 1981 most US states had explicit anti-usury laws restricting the rates of interest that could be charged on loans and even today many (including large) Continental states have such laws.  The Breakthrough Britain report of Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice considered whether anti-usury laws such as interest caps should be introduced in the UK.  With the prominent role of debt in the Great Recession, not least the debt of governments but in particular the debt of households, many commentators - particularly in the US but also in Continental Europe - have come to wonder whether the liberalisation of anti-usury laws went too far and whether it was really a concidence that the removal of such laws was followed so quickly by a debt-fuelled binge and hangover.  Meanwhile non-usury-based Islamic finance expands apace, and related products such as shared equity mortgages are growing in popularity even amongst non-Muslims.

I shall explain a little of the history of debate about usury, illustrating that the broad thrust of history has been that of practical secular and philosophical objections to usury being gradually displaced by the (in this instance) more liberal moral outlook of Christian moralists (especially those deriving their moral instruction from the Bible) and this, in its turn, driving and facilitating advances in financing technology that made the previous secular prohibitions on usury more and more nuanced and difficult to sustain, eventually overwhelming even the limited restrictions Christians wanted to keep.  An interesting question is whether a lesson of the 21st century is that the original secular prohibitions were correct; or whether the preferred Christian restrictions should not have been abandonned - at least in terms of social custom if not in terms of law; or whether complete libertarianism in this area is either inevitable or perhaps even desirable.

The battle of the bonuses

I appreciate the bewilderment of the general public at the rapid return to huge bonuses in those parts of the City (including the 70% state-owned RBS) which seemed so close to collapse only a year ago.

However, amidst the anger and dismay we need to realise that this in a highly mobile, global business. The only way to introduce an effective cap on banking bonuses would be by a binding, international agreement to cover London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo et al. This is NOT going to happen.

Conservatives rightly support calls for restraint throughout the financial sector and in order to open up lines of credit to small businesses it was our suggestion last month that this year’s bonuses should ideally be paid in shares, which would only vest in future years.

The Public Sector Rich List

By TPA Policy Analyst John O'Connell.

In our recent report with the Institute of Directors – How to Save £50bn (PDF) – we advocated a public sector pay freeze as one of key measures to tackle the fiscal crisis. Politicians from all parties followed suit during the Conference season. But in particular we were told that executive pay in the public sector had to be reined in. The squeeze had to start at the top.

George Osborne promised that under a Conservative Government anyone who is to earn more than the Prime Minister will have to have their pay signed off by the Treasury. More recently, Harriet Harman blocked the proposed remuneration package for the new boss of the now infamous Equality and Human Rights Commission. Vince Cable, rarely without an opinion, has also been vocal on the subject.

The TPA’s annual Public Sector Rich List 2009 (PDF) will help to inform this debate.  As we limp out of recession, our comprehensive audit reveals that last year over 806 public sector executives earned over £150,000. Our recent groundbreaking work on the semi-autonomous state (PDF) has helped to facilitate a bigger survey than ever, but nonetheless the estimate is still a conservative one.

Those executives in this year’s list managed a 5.4% pay rise last year, which is particularly pertinent when frontline workers across the public services face having their wages frozen to help ease the public debt. Reigning in this culture of guaranteed pay rises and bonuses among public sector executives is an enormous task but one that must be tackled head-on now. Our Public Sector Rich List is the only document that collates high earners in the public sector, and one gets the distinct impression that no politician has a grasp on the true extent of top brass pay. The list is awash with ‘managers’, including those at NHS and Primary Care Trusts. Quango bosses and BBC executives feature heavily too, as do Transport for London (who frustratingly do not disclose the names or positions of any of their 50 staff on over £150,000).

Under Labour, poverty has grown

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just published its 2009 report on poverty and social exclusion and it’s a bleak indictment of the Labour years. Whilst you would expect jobs and incomes to shrink  in a recession, the most shocking fact highlighted in this report is that unemployment (especially youth unemployment) and child poverty were rising well before the onset of the downturn. A few key facts:

• The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds is now higher than at any point since the series began in 1993.
• Unemployment has been rising since 2005, and the young adult unemployment rate stopped falling as long ago as 2001.
• The number of children in low-income households where at least one adult works is, at 2.1m, the highest it has ever been.

So in all those years of plenty, when Labour claimed it was closing the gap between rich and poor, as well as pouring money into public services, the underlying rate of poverty and its causes were actually growing. The Foundation says that the report is not all bad news, citing a recent decrease in the number of children attaining fewer than 5 GCSEs. Leaving aside the question of whether this is simply due to easier exams, it’s clear that this increased ‘attainment’ is not resulting in greater employability – so the reported 65% increase in education funding since Labour came to power cannot be judged a good investment, by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyone still believe the Government’s pledge – now enshrined in law – to “end child poverty”? Does Gordon Brown think that a record number of NEETs represents a good outcome for twelve years of Labour rule?

What Sally Bercow thinks of David Cameron and the Conservatives...

"He's just a merchant of spin. I think he's really an archetypal Tory. He favours the interests of the few over the mainstream majority."

"Deep down, I do think the Tory party is for the privileged few and what it stands for isn't in the interests of most ordinary people."

"They're not really interested in opportunity for all. He has his children at state school now but let's see what happens at secondary level. There's not a real commitment to the state sector among the Tories. The vast majority of the shadow cabinet send their children privately."

More in the London Evening Standard.

Labour inaction threatens British interests in Brussels (again)

With the Lisbon Treaty having passed into law on December 1st, eighteen new Members of the European Parliament are now entitled to take their seats in the European Parliament.

Using complex population calculations, the Treaty has allocated new seats to Spain (4), Austria (2), France (2), Sweden (2), Bulgaria (1), Italy (1), Latvia (1), Malta (1), the Netherlands (1), Poland (1), Slovenia (1) and the United Kingdom (1).  

The new MEPs will be “elected” on the basis of the first-placed unsuccessful candidate at the 2009 European elections and will officially sit as "observers" in the Parliament without the right to vote (but with the ability to speak and attend committee meetings) until a complex legal protocol is ratified by national governments - expected to coincide with Croatia’s accession to the European Union in 2011.

The majority of countries have already confirmed the names of their new MEPs or released the timetable for their appointment.  The Government of the United Kingdom is not amongst them.

A press spokesman for the Electoral Commission confirmed to me a few minutes ago that the Ministry of Justice has not yet, as legislation demands, directed the body to calculate a new seat allocation for United Kingdom European Parliament constituencies so as to determine which region will receive the new seat.

According to calculations made in June, the United Kingdom's 73rd seat would be allocated to the West Midlands region, a move which would see the “election” of Conservative Anthea McIntyre.  The London and Scotland areas are also rumoured to be pushing hard to have the extra seat allocated to their regions.  An extra MEP in the capital city would see Labour's Anne Fairweather “elected” while a seventh seat in Scotland would go to Conservative Belinda Don.

Whatever any of us might think about the European Parliament and its endless tide of damaging legislation, only a fool would deny the importance of ensuring the United Kingdom’s interests are defended vigorously in Brussels.  

It's time for Labour to stop dragging its feet and send our new Member of European Parliament to Brussels.

Climate Change and the Tory Sceptics - The Independent and others miss the point

The Independent, never afraid to give a climate change spin to any story (unless a better peace-nik spin is available), reports that "Cameron's team turn on Davis for attack on green agenda".  "Battle rages in Tory party after Independent reveals revolt on climate change", or so we are told.  I suspect it's mainly Indy hype ahead of Copenhagen, but let's be victims for a moment.

They quote Tim Yeo as saying "A significant number of core Conservative voters – mostly among older people – are reluctant to accept the [climate change] evidence. I don’t think they [doubting Tory MPs] will be a significant influence in the next parliament and will gradually diminish in the population...The dying gasps of the deniers will be put to bed. In five years time, no one will argue about [there being] a man-made contribution to climate change...David Davis is not an authority on this subject. If he says something about immigration or policing, we might need to pay some attention to that."

Localism in planning

The Builders Merchants Federation has expressed concerns about the Conservative Party's proposals for planning.  They characterise the key elements of the Party's position, from their point of view, as the desire to

• scrap national targets and hand control of building projects over directly to local communities
• shake up the planning system to allow local authority planning committees to be circumvented - if a proposed scheme attracted sufficient democratic approval by local residents - development could proceed in a given are

• encourage new local housing trusts to deal directly with developers 

But the BMF does not believe that the culture of NIMBY-ism will end.  Here's how I see matters.

The City: President Sarkozy’s blood-curdling rhetoric should worry us all

Whilst I’m aware that President Sarkozy’s triumphalist words were mainly for his domestic audience and, therefore, should be taken with a slight pinch of salt, the general tenor of his words are discomforting to anyone who believes that the City of London is a vital part of the British economy.

On clinching the post of the Commissioner for the Internal Market, including financial services, for his man Michel Barnier, Mr Sarkozy is quoted as saying “Do you know what it means for me to see for the first time in 50 years a French European commissioner in charge of the internal market, including the City?” “I want the world to see the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism”. In other words, Anglo-Saxon markets beware - we’re going to regulate financial institutions heavily irrespective of what non-EU financial centres may or may not do. In the wake of the financial crisis it is widely accepted that more effective regulation is needed. But such regulation should be agreed at a global level.

Sadly, this development is all too inevitable. But, I fear, City grandees bar a few concerned individuals have just woken up to the very real threat to the City from the EU. The EU’s (including the Commission’s) behaviour is only to be expected. Not only are they continuing to push ahead with “the ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” in all spheres including economic but they are also following their long-established pattern of achieving this objective by heavy, centralised regulation.

Sitting at the top table...

The true scale to which Britain sits at "the top table of Europe", as the Government love to claim, is finally becoming clear today. In Brussels our supposed friends are openly snubbing us, and in Westminster our own Government are discovering their own powerlessness.

After a few days of gloating from the Prime Minister that he managed to get notable nonentity Baroness Ashton appointed as EU Foreign Minister, Her Anonymousness has now made perfectly clear the reality of her role and her intentions, by telling a committee of MEPs that

"I won't be an extension of the British government. I have been appointed by the 27 member states."

Meanwhile, Alistair Darling is reduced to begging the new Single Market Commissioner Michel Barnier in the pages of The Times not to wreck the City with overly aggressive regulation.

This is the reality of our relationship with our "EU partners". We're not sitting at the top table at all, we are picking up the crumbs underneath it.