CentreRight

"Why do people often vote against their own interests?"

It's hard to imagine the BBC publishing an article as utterly patronising and unthinkingly biased as this one about any country but the United States.

If there is one area where the BBC really could do the British public a service, it would be by helping them understand Americans.  Most Britons are interested in what is going on over the pond and, thanks to the enormous raw economic power of the United States, they have an interest in understanding how its leaders and ordinary citizens think.

Instead, they try and feed us this kind of rubbish.  Describing opposition to the new healthcare bill as being driven by "the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state".  Or describing the town hall meetings - which were often heated but were thoroughly democratic - as "an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence".  Biased BBC have noted just how pernicious that term "barely suppressed" is, it allows someone to be cast as dangerous without them actually having done anything.

The British and US governments must stop undermining President Karzai

Afghanistan needs a strong government, one that will prevent groups such as al-Qaeda using the country as a base from which to plan and launch terrorist attacks and preferably one that is prepared to slowly and gradually liberalise the country.

Few would disagree with that. Yet the reality is that the West, particularly Britain and the USA have repeatedly undermined the standing of President Kazai in the eyes of his own people. This week’s London conference on Afghanistan organised by Gordon Brown is just one such example of this.

Yet Hamid Karzai is a unique man on the Afghan political scene.  Head of the important popalzai clan of the Pushtuns from which the Afghan royal family traditionally came, he is also Cambridge educated. He bridges the huge gap not merely between the Pushtun tribes and the Farsi speakers of the North and West of Afghanistan, but is also a man who understands the Western world. Even more significantly, in 2001 he was almost unique among Afghan political leaders in not having blood on his hands. Whilst other mujahaddin leaders had overseen atrocities committed against rival groups during the Soviet occupation, Karzai had been in the West mounting a diplomatic mission to bolster support for the Afghan resistance.

Yet President Karzai has been undermined by both the British and US governments:

1. The withdrawal of necessary military and intelligence support far too soon after the Taliban were ‘ousted’ from Kabul in 2001. This was due to the false assumption by the US and UK governments that the Taliban were ‘finished’, when in reality they were regrouping and re-establishing their hold on significant parts of rural Afghanistan. As a result huge amounts of western military and intelligence resources planned for Afghanistan were hurriedly ‘reallocated’ to Iraq following its occupation in 2003. These included 75% of all the predator drones that were so important in the fight against the Taliban, and the CIA's postponement of an $80 million plan to set up a new Afghanistan intelligence service. The British government was no less at fault with Defence Secretary John Reid publicly stating that he hoped the British troops he was sending to Helmand in 2006 would leave the country ‘without a single shot being fired’. So, the most immediate answer to the question Tony Blair this week posed to the Iraq Inquiry, about what the world would be like today if we hadn’t invaded Iraq – is that Afghanistan might now be a safer place.

Twenty years of the Conservative Christian Fellowship

Twenty years ago David Burrowes and I set up the Conservative Christian Fellowship while studying at Exeter University. David and I ran the Exeter University Conservative Association with Robert Halfon (hopefully the next MP for Harlow) and Sajid Javid (who is my hot tip to be Britain's first Muslim Tory MP). The three pictures below are from 1990 (with Lord Hailsham at our first ever event), 2000 (with Guy Hordern at our tenth anniversary party) and last Monday:

If you'd like to know more about the CCF please visit its website. Over the years I believe that the CCF has played an important role in encouraging Christian involvement in the party, connecting churchleaders with Conservative MPs and incubating the social justice agenda. Its current Director Elizabeth Berridge has a grand vision for its future. She's doing a great job in deepening the party's relationship with Britain's churches.

Political Relativism and Military Intervention

One of the worst effects of the Iraq invasion has been the loss of confidence in the virtue, for Britain and America, of invading foreign countries for moral reasons and the resurrection of the doctrines of realism, isolationism, and that matters occuring in countries "far away...about which we know little" are nothing to do with us. 

We had thought we had put this old-fashioned, outdated idea behind us, after it was totally discredited by resulting in the hideous mass slaughter of Rwanda and the massacre at Srebrenica.  Instead, under Blair we had the doctrine of liberal interventionism, spectacularly successful in Sierra Leone, Kosovo and Serbia.  But realism is a many-headed hydra, hard to kill, and with the slightest setback - in Iraq, for example - it has returned with a vengance.  So it is necessary to explain, once again, why morally-driven interventionism is justified.

Automatic stabilisers yes; one-off stimulus no

By Andrew Haldenby, Director, Reform.

 

One of the big questions of the moment is whether to cut public spending or whether to push even more fiscal stimulus into the economy.  A useful meeting in Westminster yesterday generated some answers.  A hundred Treasury, Bank of England and Number 10 Downing Street officials, City economists and academics gathered to discuss the output of the World Economy and Finance Programme, comprising the work of many academics led by Professor John Driffill of Birkbeck College.

The most important session for Reform’s work on public spending, and for the big political questions, was that on fiscal policy, introduced by Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University and George Alogoskoufis of the Athens University of Economics and Business (and the Minister of Economy and Finance of Greece until January last year).

The academic research was strongly against temporary fiscal stimulus.  The presenters argued that government spending should certainly rise in times of economic slowdown – but this should be achieved through the “automatic stabilisers” i.e. the automatic payments that governments make in hard times, such as extra unemployment benefits.  The great advantage of these is that they fall away of their own accord as growth picks up and unemployment falls.  Both speakers criticised one-off stimuli on the grounds that they may be politically difficult to withdraw.  This supports the finding of previous Reform research.

First Tory MP to successfully appeal against Sir Thomas Legg's expense demands speaks out

By Jonathan Isaby

Following reports this morning about the successful appeals against Sir Thomas Legg's demands for repayment of expenses from Lib Dem MP Jeremy Browne and Labour's Ann Cryer and Patrick Hall, I've just received the following press release from Thanet North's Conservative MP, Roger Gale:

The appeal lodged by Roger Gale MP (North Thanet) against Sir Thomas Legg's ACA repayment demand has been allowed in full. The MP, who had faced demands for the repayment of Parliamentary business telephone bills and for the alleged payment of "13 months' rent" in the 2008/2009 financial year said, following Sir Paul Kennedy's findings:
 
"I am, first, grateful to Sir Paul for quite clearly studying with care the information provided and for then reaching the only fair conclusion based upon the evidence that I had previously submitted to Sir Thomas Legg. I had never refused to repay any sums properly due and, indeed, had indicated to Sir Paul that if he found any repayment to be warranted then I would accept his adjudication without question. So far as I am concerned, this has never been about money but about reputation and I am naturally, therefore, pleased that Sir Paul's findings will be reflected in his report to the Members' Estimates Committee."

Lord Bates: It was Conservative peers who defended the attack on religious freedom this week

By Lord Bates

My postbag and inbox were bulging with communications from faith organisations, church leaders and members concerned about a clause in the government’s Equality Bill. The clause proposed by the government would have removed the ability of church and religious organisations to appoint people who adhere to the teachings of the faith community. It was a blatant attack on religious freedom in this country.

As the Archbishop of York summed up:

“If religious freedom means anything, it must mean that those are matters for the churches and other religious organisations to determine in accordance with their own convictions. They are not matters for the law to impose.”

The Amendment to reject the government clause in favour of preserving religious freedom was argued brilliantly and sensitively by Baroness O’Cathain in front of a packed chamber in the House of Lords. The Government, fearful that they would lose the vote, embarked on some despicable and low parliamentary procedures to try and scupper and defeat the amendment. The manoeuvrings were exposed and blocked by the inspired tactical awareness of Baroness Anelay and messages to supporters communicated by Opposition Whips’ scurrying through the corridors and tea rooms.

Iraq - Why we went in, and what we should be asking now

Blair will be "grilled for six hours" today, as the BBC puts it, concerning why we went into Iraq and what happened subsequently.  Apparently the questioning is "likely to focus on the justification he gave for war in controversial government dossiers".  But the reason we invaded Iraq is obvious and the discussion of government dossiers is a total distraction from the questions that should really be being asked.

We invaded Iraq because we believed that, through the 1990s, Saddam Hussein, having fought a war against us in the early 1990s, had failed to live up to what were effectively his surrender terms, and instead had preferred to thumb his nose at us.  We believed that he had continued to build chemical and biological weapons and that he was attempting to develop a nuclear programme.  He was a sponsor of international terrorism, sending cheques to the families of suicide bombers in Israel and the Occupied Territories.  He had attempted to build a super-gun from parts exported from the UK and was rumoured to have plotted the kidnap or murder of George Bush senior.

Meanwhile he barbarically murdered his political opponents, including a particularly brutal putting down of the Shi'ites of southern Iraq, and we had found it necessary to maintain and enforce no-fly zones and engage in periodic bombing raids.  We had been forced, as part of containing his aggression towards us and towards his neighbours - aggression that had resulted in deaths on a scale of millions - to impose crippling sanctions on his country, sanctions that made life very miserable for ordinary innocent Iraqis.

To this point, the tale I have told was completely common ground amongst world leaders.  The Russians, the French, the Germans - all those who became oh-so righteous with their "told you so's" later agreed at the time that Saddam had been building chemical and biological weapons and developing nuclear weapons.  It was for precisely this reason that they had supported the sanctions against him.

Reflections from Auschwitz-Birkenau

I'm just back from my first trip to the concentration/extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which I visited to commemorate the 65th anniversary of its liberation by the Allies.

It was a grim and solemn occasion in the bitter cold of -18°C of the Polish winter which made me wonder how people so famished and underclothed could ever have survived this horrific place. But I met two survivors, who accompanied our visit, and I was moved by their sheer moral courage and determination to make something of their lives even after such a terrible experience. This restored some of my faith in humanity, having earlier seen at first hand the horrors of what humans can do to each other in certain conditions.

 

But what really upset me was seeing a photo of a family "resting" before being sent en masse to the gas chambers shortly after it was taken. The little girl in the photo was the same age as my two precious daughters and reminded me strongly of them. I cannot begin to conceive how anyone could carry out such a chilling crime on an innocent child.

The oft-repeated phrase "whoever forgets the past is condemned to repeat it" sprang to mind as I walked around the camps. But of course the world has not necessarily learned the lessons of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It's extraordinary that in our current timeframe enormous barbarities – albeit not on the scale of the Holocaust – still occur from the genocide of Darfur, Cambodia and Bosnia to the insanity of Rwanda.

Yet impunity still prevails for those criminals behind these atrocities and in the same way that in the past the vast bulk of those Nazis and collaborators who executed the Holocaust got away unpunished. Most of these war criminals are now dead although some may still be alive but very old. That does not justify allowing them to live out their days in freedom. There are many people in this world even today who go unpunished for what they have done – both in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity since – and this is something the world must address for the future.

MMR manipulation - it should never have happened

It's just been announced by the GMC that Dr Andrew Wakefield has been found guilty of unethical research practices. Along with some journalist's bellows and the deafening silence of Leo Blair's jab record, he fanned the flames of uncertainty about the safety of the MMR vaccine.

The GMC could not have found any other way: Dr Wakefield was in the pay of lawyers acting on behalf of families who were preparing a case against MMR, eventually receiving over £435,000 in fees. He undertook invasive testing on children that he said were in the interests of the children's own clinical care, not for research. And he did not publish his researcher's findings because they showed no evidence of any link between MMR and autism. Let me be clear - there never was any evidence of a link.

Although he did not jeopardise the health of our country's children all by himself, he should now be struck off the GMC register. MMR vaccination rates plummeted, they are still very low in some areas of London, and as a result of the lack of scrutiny of his original publications by those reporting them which would have revealed the paucity of the data, thousands of children have contracted measles over the past few years because they didn't receive their immunisation.

I still know parents who haven't had their children immunised. The success of public health measures like vaccination mean that people don't see the results of the illnesses they are protecting their children from. Measles can cause neurological and respiratory complications; mumps can cause sterility, deafness, meningitis and pancreatitis; congenital rubella syndrome can cause profound disabilities in the unborn.

What we need now is the same number of journalists and celebrities who jumped on the autism-MMR band-wagon to publicise that they have protected their children from these diseases, and perhaps we can put a stop to this contemporary, disastrous myth. And yes, both my children have had all their jabs.

Random Power

The social attitudes survey has gone to my head, a bit. Everyone sees in it what they want to see, anyway, so I choose to see: no-one's that fussed about gay people anymore, and we'd all like to pay less tax, thanks. Finally I'm riding the zeitgeist (baby). Fetch me my beads, I'm off to Tory conference. 

Surfing this wave, I'm going to have another go at resurrecting my perennially unpopular policy about the House of Lords, which also happens to be one of the few original political thoughts I've ever had. Its last airing was at the excellent Dragon's Den at last year's conference, where it attracted the support of approximately zero of the audience voters (never let me be accused of courting populism, or even popularity) [And you wonder why you can't get interviewed for a seat - Ed]. The trouble is, however much everyone laughs at it, I can't get the elegant simplicity of its central idea out, as Kylie might say, of my head.

The 'war for oil' fallacy

With Tony Blair due to give evidence to the Iraq inquiry tomorrow, the Stop the War Coalition are sending out emails encouraging their supporters to be protesting outside the inquiry venue by 8 am. When Blair leaves, the mob bravely aim 'to express as forcefully as possible our call for him to be arrested'.

In advance of the wearisome 'blood for oil' protests that will inevitably follow, I'd like to point Conservative Home readers towards the following from Alexander Hitchens and Shiraz Maher's excellent blog over at Standpoint. Hitchens quotes from last month's Reuters article, which covered the Iraqi Oil Ministry's auction of its oil to outside bidders:

The Oil Ministry on Saturday ended its second bidding round after awarding seven of the oilfields offered for development, adding to deals from a first auction in June that could together take Iraq up to a capacity to pump 12 million barrels per day.

[...]Russia's Lukoil on Saturday clinched a deal to develop Iraq's supergiant West Qurna Phase Two oilfield after having failed to convince Iraq to bypass the auction and revive an old Saddam Hussein-era deal for the field.

A better system of parental leave requires real reform, not more spending

By Patrick Nolan, Chief Economist, Reform

The government has revived the proposal for fathers to be eligible for six months of paternity leave while their baby’s mother returns to work. The government is not alone in looking for ways to help reconcile the challenges facing working families with young children, with the Liberal Democrats proposing 19 months of more generous parental leave (able to be taken by any parent) and the Conservative Party proposing flexible parental leave to help make Britain more family friendly.

The government’s proposal has, understandably, caused concern among business groups. One reason for this concern is the costs to businesses of administering this proposal – as it will require employers to monitor the leave use and entitlement of the spouse that does not work for them.

Indeed, the costs of administering the proposal alone were identified as between £8.4 million to £12.2 million in the first year, with businesses facing £1.8 million to £5.6 million of these costs. This is before we add in the direct costs of paying extra paternity pay, which could be around £500 million per year.

In an era when the UK is facing the toughest spending cuts for 20 years, this proposal is quite simply unaffordable. But more importantly this proposal also illustrates that current policy on reconciling work-life balance is stuck in a rut. Spending more money and extending the existing offer will not address the underlying problems in the existing system of statutory maternity and paternity pay – a new approach is needed.

Climategate Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

To me, the most blatant thing in the Climategate emails was the obvious attempts to circumvent legal requirements under the Freedom of Information (FOI) act.  It appears the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) agrees, but has found itself powerless to do anything because the University of East Anglia/CRU scientists stonewalled long enough for the statute of limitations to pass.  The ICO told the Sunday Times:

The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland’s requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information. Mr Holland’s FOI requests were submitted in 2007/8, but it has only recently come to light that they were not dealt with in accordance with the Act.

The legislation requires action within six months of the offence taking place, so by the time the action taken came to light the opportunity to consider a prosecution was long gone. The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it.

This being the case, I find it hard to believe that the UEA's internal investigation will not recommend severe disciplinary action against the UEA scientists involved.  Anything less would demonstrate an appalling disregard for the spirit of the Freedom of Information laws.

The ICO leaves open the possibility of action under the Data Protection Act.

Short term expenditure vs. long term growth

By Nick Bosanquet.

It is not yet a recovery – just a blip from Christmas shopping. If the effects of Christmas, the car scrappage scheme and the stamp duty holiday are deducted from UK GDP, national income probably also fell in the fourth quarter of 2009. We seem to be in the grip of short-termism with no clear medium term recovery plan on offer from the government.

The first step is to make a clear distinction between the short term expenditure multiplier and the medium term growth multiplier. The expenditure multiplier depends on public spending: but this cannot promote growth in the longer term for it is quite clear that this expenditure is going to decline in the next four years.

The growth multiplier depends on containing tax rises and maintaining lower interest rates. This regime requires greater confidence and to improved expectations about the future.

Future growth will be driven by smaller and medium sized business. It is already clear that large companies are shifting east. For insurance the Pru has already halved its capital in the UK and is expanding in Malysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. The large pharma companies are also shifting their investment east. Financial services giants are also moving offshore.

Small and medium sized companies are the best realistic source of growth in the UK regions. The growth multiplier is much more important for them than the expenditure multiplier since the public sector buys little from small firms and is even now being urged to centralize procurement even further.

The Tory Crime Manifesto

Now that the dust has settled, I thought I'd write about the Conservative Party's recently published chapter on crime for their manifesto for the forthcoming general election from Big Brother Watch's perspective.

It's a bit like their Rolling Back the Surveillance State paper, really - not bad, could be better.  Beyond noting the basic fact that it's very short and without a great deal of detail, I simply divide up their pledges of most interest as follows:

GOOD

Freeing the police from paperwork - self-evidently sensible, and unlike so often when parties promise this it seems that they've actually thought about what bits of bureaucracy they'd cut.

More late-night licenses (with revenue to go to more policing) - we should have the freedom to enjoy ourselves as we wish as long as we're not harming others, and more freedom in this direction (in a country which still labours under licensing laws meant for wartime conditions) should always be welcomed.  Furthermore, this kind of localised, hypothecated tax is a good idea - and better to take money from those willing to pay than from those unwilling in the ever-more-numerous fines to which we're all subject.

Protection for members of the public (especially householders) who tackle criminals - we've already expressed our approval.

Naming and shaming persistent criminals - it's not a civil liberties issue - you've got no right to break the law again and again, and any right to privacy etcetera persistent offenders do have has to be balanced against those of the law-abiding majority, as I've said before.

Releasing statistical data about crimes in local areas - we should have the right to know how our local police force is performing.

BAD

Allowing councils to shut down businesses that sell alcohol to children - fine if we lived in an age of discretion and common sense, but we don't - and we all know that under such a scheme, councils would be militantly closing up long running, hard-pressed businesses which make one mistake selling a pint to a 17 year old.

Tax hikes on some kinds of alcohol - people should be free to choose to drink (or eat, or smoke) whatever they want, and in any case "sin taxes" tend not to stop people doing what you want to stop them doing, they just pay more, thus harming the poor, particularly; furthermore, if it does work, people aren't stupid - they'll just switch to other kinds of booze to avoid your tax.

Strengthening stop and search powers - weren't they listening? That's entirely contrary to both recent law and to the proper relationship between individual and government. Absent good cause, reasonable suspicion etcetera, the state should never be empowered to halt a citizen, search him, demand his papers.  This is one of the areas in which more detail is really needed - without it, this just looks like a terrible policy.

Early intervention measures like "grounding orders" for children - ASBOs by another name.

Banning businesses from selling alcohol below cost price - there's nothing wrong with loss-leaders; indeed, we as members of the public benefit from them. It's a product people want. It's legal. It's none of your business. Push off.

So, all in all, not bad. I have to say that their general approach of common sense is good, but the authoritarian tendencies are deeply worrying.

And as an aside, their pledge to have someone locally elected to determine policing priorities (and indeed the localist thrust of the paper generally) will please Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannan.

Saving the saver

By Andrew Haldenby, Director, Reform

Saving has become the basic fault line of the economic policy debate. Some (e.g. Paul Krugman and David Blanchflower) argue fiercely against saving and in favour of borrowing. But the balance of economic opinion (and Reform's own work) follows classical economic thought  arguing  in favour of a rebalancing away from debt. Derek Scott has written powerfully on this, as has John Taylor in the US. Mervyn King nailed his colours to the mast in an important speech last week,  stating: "The proportion of our domestic output that we save has fallen by around a third over the past decade, as the share of consumption, especially public consumption, has risen sharply. Looking ahead, monetary and fiscal policy together must help to bring about a switch of demand from private and public consumption to net exports and business investment as the recovery takes hold."

Yesterday's Reform event on saving set out the ideas that will do much determine policy in this area. The speakers - David Gauke, Frank Field and representatives of SOS Savers, a new independent campaign group - agreed on the need to encourage saving but differed violently (if politely) on how to achieve this. David Gauke and the SOS Savers campaign argued in favour of tax incentives, with much praise of ISAs. David Gauke said that the state of the public finances meant that any idea to reduce taxes (including reversing the Lamomt and Brown raid on pension funds) could only be an aspiration. Frank Field took a different view, in favour of compulsion. He argued that such a policy would provide huge gains to the exchequer by (over time) removing the cost of both means-tested benefits and tax incentives for pensions. SOS Savers raised a third idea, to guarantee savings income at a certain rate.

The audience broadly favoured the second and third ideas. A tax expert worried that low taxes on saving were a distortion (although Nick Bosanquet argued that taxes on saving were a double tax on income, and inheritance tax a triple tax). There was disquiet about the current levels of savings rates offered by many institutions, which were seen as unjustifiably low.

One important part of the discussion concerned the new personal accounts - Adair Turner's near-compulsory personal pensions - to  be launched in the next Parliament. David Gauke said that his Party was formally committed to them. Frank Field called for them to be abolished since they could result in a colossal mis-selling scandal. He also warned that they would leave nearly half of the pensioner population in receipt of means-tested benefits.

After the event, Patrick Nolan, Reform's Chief Economist, added his voice to the criticism of low taxes on savings. He suggesed that a reduction in tax revenue would simply substitute public savings for private savings, and much of the increase in private savings would simply be people changing how they save (this switching has been estimated to be in the order of 30 to 50 per cent). Add in the deadweight costs of taxation to this and there’s little evidence that these tax policies work.

He said that, in the end, the only way to increase savings is to increase national incomes and lower the cost of living (lower inflation). Saving is what is left over after consumption. In the longer term increasing the rate of growth of incomes has a powerful effect on increasing the levels of households’ savings. Inflation is also particularly damaging to saving as it encourages consuming now rather than consuming in the future.

Whether and how to encourage saving will be a central preoccupation of the next Parliament. Yesterday’s event will feed into Reform’s research on how to shift responsibility for funding health and welfare from government to society.

Libertarian Britain

There has already been some discussion here, both by Tim and Melanchthon, of the findings of the annual British Social Attitudes Survey, but I think there is a broader trend than those they identify. Yes, Britain can be said to be moving "to the right" to a certain extent, but in this Survey we see yet another sign that the simplistic terms "right" and "left" are actually becoming defunct. In fact, it shows Britain is becoming broadly libertarian.

In the traditional, stereotypical view of what "right" means, a right winger would be for the free market and low taxes in the economic sphere, and strict and moralistic policies in the social sphere. This is the assumption that the BBC, for example, tends to make.

In recent years the word libertarian has been adopted to identify a distinct ideology that is separate from this. As a libertarian, I believe in free market, low tax economics but on the social side I believe in individual liberty, and freedom of choice in terms of lifestyle, sexuality and religion. (It should be noted that there are some self-declared "Left Libertarians", who are more economically controlling but supportive of social liberty. They are however very rare.)

I don't care about international law

From PoliticsHome:

"Sir Malcolm Rifkind said that today’s evidence to the Iraq inquiry from Sir Michael Wood [chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office between 2001 and 2006] showed that Jack Straw had shown a disregard for the legality of law. Jack Straw rejected advice from Sir Michael in early 2003 that invading Iraq without UN backing would break international law. Sir Malcolm said Mr Straw had shown “a disinterest a disregard as whether what the government planned to do was legal or illegal”. He said today had been “the most important day of evidence so far” and had put the government in a “dangerous and damaging position”."

At the time Sir Michael had advised that "to use force without Security Council authority would amount to the crime of aggression." 

There are all sorts of good reasons why good people oppose or opposed the Iraq war but the obsession with United Nations approval is driving me nuts. Free nations should certainly follow Just War criteria and build broad coalitions for major actions like the Iraq war but many great causes will never be advanced if we wait on the UN for a green light. Look today how it is dragging its feet on sanctions against Iran. Ask the people of Srebrenica (when Sir Malcolm was in the Major Cabinet), Rwanda and Darfur if they think the UN is a great moral authority. Too many members of the UN Security Council have blood on their hands and lack all moral authority. Too many are motivated by commercial interests (including the sale of arms and the purchase of oil).

International laws as defined by Sir Michael Wood deserve to be broken. I don't care about international law. I do care that the Iraq war was incompetently prosecuted. But that's another issue.

Attitudes

On this morning's Today programme, there was a discussion just after 6am about the British Social Attitudes survey.  I felt the characterisation of the two key results discussed was flawed.

First, it was suggested that the change in the proportion of people believing that practicing homosexuality was wrong, with "only" 36% now believing this (a remarkably high proportion, it seems to me) versus 62% in 1983, indicated that society had become more tolerant.  But this is precisely wrong.  Since, by definition, to be tolerant is a matter of how we deal with what we consider wrong or which impinges upon us in some way, we cannot become more tolerant by changing our moral opinions.  What happens instead, is that if we come to believe that something we previously thought wrong is not wrong, the issue of tolerating or not tolerating it disappears.

Guardian exclusive: 0% of US citizens face political persecution

The Guardian has made more petty attempts at moral equivalence today by running a ‘story’ in which they get overly excited about the fact that between 2004 and 2008, 45 Americans tried to claim political asylum in the UK in order to avoid ‘persecution’ in the US.

The article complains that ‘They hail from the land of the free, the home of the brave, a place where it is said anyone can prosper regardless of colour, creed or religion. But dozens of Americans have tried in recent years to gain asylum in the UK’. These 45 applicants attempted to claim they have a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ if returned to the US. A further 15 applications came from Canada. All 60 applications were turned down by the Home Office.

I guess we’ll never know if the 45 who applied survived the final years of Bush’s reign of terror. But we do know that of 132,640 asylum applications to the UK between 2004-2008, US citizens make up 0.03% Furthermore, all of these asylum claims were turned down. So of 132,640 applications, the Home Office decided that exactly 0% of them would face persecution if they were returned to the US. That’s what the Guardian deemed worthy of a story.

A Brief History of Islamism

Jaw-dropping quote of the day: "At what point has Jihad equated to incitement to violence?" I am not sure if the person who wrote that, in response to my previous article Stop the preachers of hate, was being facetious, but if he wasn't, I am wondering what inter-galactic experience I have suddenly found myself in. Have I been accepted by Cape Canaveral and sent into orbit to another planet, unconsciously, or has he?

To him and other contributors, all I would say is read The Quilliam Foundation's report A Brief History of Islamism. It's only 16 pages, and I have just read it in half an hour. I would think that everyone who blogged responses to my previous post, even those whose remarks would win Nobel prizes for stupidity, could cope with 16 pages? But for those who would find such a task too onorous, here are a few extracts from the report.

A Brief History of Islamism provides an idiot's guide to the ideology of Islamism and a valuable refresher course and reminder for those who have already read around the subject. It describes the key players, recounting the background of Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood, the origins of  Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the story of Maulana Mawdudi and Jamaat-i-Islami, the influence of Sayyid Qutb,  all the way through to Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and bin Laden.

Stop the preachers of hate

Once again, the alarm bell is ringing - yet still much of Britain sleeps. The news that the threat level has been raised to "severe" should not surprise us. And of course, it shows that while much of Britain sleeps, there are excellent people in our security services working night and day to protect us. They, at least, are awake to the threat. But even if policy makers are awake to the immediate threat of terrorism, large parts of society - including government, media and academia - have still not got to grips with the ideological underpinnings of these terrorist threats.

Audio tapes purport to carry warnings, by Osama bin Laden, of more attacks. Al-Qaeda has reportedly trained female suicide bombers, from "non-Arab" backgrounds, poised to launch attacks on western targets. A prominent Muslim businessman, Iqbal Wahhab, warns today that a new '7/7' is imminent. And what are we doing? We allow a hardline cleric, banned in the US, who believes Jews are "monkeys and pigs", to tour British university campuses.

It seems mind-bogglingly naive, not to mention stupid, to allow Yahya Ibrahim to speak at Birmingham University in March and the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff next month. He reportedly advocates conflict with the West, promotes Wahhabism and Salafi ideology, and has received funding to do so from the Government's anti-extremism Prevent strategy.

Three cheers for technical Academies

One of the least commented on aspects of the schools chapter of the draft manifesto launched last week by David Cameron was the reference to and support for vocational and technical education. For business this was probably one of the most welcome of the many positive messages in the chapter.

One of business’s perennial criticisms of the British educational system is the inadequacy of vocational education. Concomitantly, the improvement of the technical skills levels of would-be employees has long been high on business’s wish list of priorities to help their overall competitiveness.

This was confirmed at a roundtable discussion for senior manufacturing industrialists held by Civitas, where I am the director of their manufacturing project, and the ERA Foundation which was held at the Royal Academy of Engineering last November. The top issues they believed should be tackled urgently by any incoming government included...

• competitive energy costs
• promoting the importance of manufacturing to Britain’s future
• encouraging the young to consider working in industry and
• the improvement of technical skills.

We will leave the need for competitive energy costs until another day – but changes to our secondary schools could do much to address the other three.

If Labour continue as ostriches over our broken society, their 1997 theme tune will have to be rewritten

David Cameron has pointed out the blindingly obvious, and in doing so appears to have sparked a controversy.

The Daily Telegraph's headline today, "The battle rages over 'broken Britain'", caught my eye, because I did not think Cameron's observations were controversial - they were correct, factual, indisputable. A society which has the highest divorce rates in Europe, the highest rates of teenage pregnancy, the highest abortion rates, binge drinking and anti-social behaviour not just in the cities but in every market town in the country, can surely be described, in Cameron's words, as heading into a "social recession"? How is it even disputable?

The debate should not be about whether or not we live in a broken society, but about what to do about it. But because far too many people, not only government ministers, are like ostriches with their heads in the sand, clinging to Cool Britannia and refusing to accept the truth that we have profound social problems, we have to have a debate about whether it is broken before we can fix it. It is like a family standing around a dining table. Two of the legs of the table have broken and the table is only just about upright but at a strange angle. Plates slide off it and it's in serious danger of collapse. Does the family stand around debating whether or not the table is broken, or do they get the table fixed?

For Ed Balls to say that David Cameron's "broken Britain" analysis shows he is "completely irresponsible" and "out of touch with the reality" is the most ironic quote of today. It is the government, and others who refuse to see the problem, who are irresponsible and out of touch. If they carry on with their heads in the sand in this way, then the theme tune of their 1997 election campaign will have to be rewritten - for things can only get worse.