CentreRight

Seven reasons why the Pope's visit was a success

By Paul Goodman

I identified last week seven barriers to a successful Papal visit - modern secularism; the impact of 9/11; the child abuse scandal; media bafflement; the deterioration of the relations with the Church of England; and money - and wrote that I hoped that the barriers could be cleared.

It's evident that they were, and here are seven reason why the visit was a success.

• Low expectations.  If an occasion's written off in advance as a failure, it's more likely to out-perform the expected outcome than if it's expected to be a triumph.
• The Pope's message.  Whether one agrees with the Pope or not, he has a case to make, which is strongly rooted and carefully compiled.  He seized the unique chance of blanket British media coverage to get his message across.  Yesterday evening, others - not least the Prime Minister - were responding to his agenda.
• The Catholic Church's media exposure.  Intelligent and articulate lay Catholics - Eamon Duffy, Clifford Longley, Peter Stanford - don't usually get a lot of airtime, let alone at once.  The Pope's visit gave them and some of the Bishops a chance to put their view.  Like the Pope, they utilised the opportunity to do so.  Sky's coverage in particular was very good.
• The bomb plot that never was.  The apparent Al Qaeda Papal assassination bid turned out to be Algerian street cleaner banter.  Many of those who read huge headlines suggesting the former won't have read later reports describing the latter.  Most people won't have liked the idea of the Pope being killed in Britain, and reports of a murder plot will therefore have done him no harm at all.
• The child abuse apology.  If an institution's at fault, people want an apology.  The Pope delivered it according to his own timetable, which ran more or less to plan throughout.  He wasn't pelted with eggs or subject to a citizen's arrest.  In short, the visit wasn't knocked off course.
• A relatively small protester turnout and a relatively large Church turnout.  The brouhaha before the visit, particularly in the left-of-centre media, suggested that it was resented by the public.  Some ten thousand people marched in London against the Pope.  This was a reasonable turnout, certainly, but scarcely a popular uprising - and largely consisting, too, of a narrow sliver of society.  But the test of the visit was always likely to be whether British Catholics turned out for the Pope.  They did, in tens of thousands. 
• The Queen.  She made it known that she wanted the visit to go well.  That she did will have been no small contributor to its success.

Don't drop the TV debates

Lord Ashcroft's assessment of the 2010 general election campaign will doubtless make for interesting and important reading - and hopefully influential reading too. It is absolutely right that the relief of once again having a Conservative prime minister - and the comparatively successful way that the coalition was put together and is working out - must not obscure the fact that the party should have won a healthy overall majority.

I've had stimulating conversations with several sceptical loyalists about what could have been done (much) better, and there is a remarkable degree of agreement. But I differ from their received wisdom on one matter: that of the televised debates.

A compelling case can be made that they distracted from other aspects of the campaign, that there was no moral imperative (and still less a political one) to give Nick Clegg equal billing, that PMQs provides the proper forum for the leaders to show their merits, and that we don't have a presidential system and shouldn't do anything that gives the impression that we do. To which I say: that's so much waffle.

Any wannabe prime minister worth their salt should relish the opportunity to take on their direct rivals in this way. More importantly, the public deserve the chance to see how they fare. Communication and listening skills are a hugely significant factor in the make-up of a good premier. The primary system in America is much maligned, but it does ensure that candidates are tested. As a nation, we too should want our candidates to be tested. As a party, we should rise to the challenge.

What 'right-wing' questions would you like interviewers to ask?

Further to my post on BBC institutional bias yesterday, I'd be glad of your help in drawing up a list of 'right wing questions' for interviewers. BBC, Channel 4 and other journalists seem programmed to ask 'red corner' questions. Why aren't you passing a law to outlaw X? Hasn't this problem occured because of inadequate funding? Even when interviewers are giving Labour politicians a hard time it is usually from the Left. Just think of the way the BBC took on Blair over the Iraq war.

In my article for yesterday's Mail I suggested a few of right wing questions...

• Minister, how much of this extra spending will go directly to patients, and how much will be gobbled up by an even fatter NHS bureaucracy? 
• Why don't you cut taxation on small businesses in order to create more jobs for poor communities?
• Wouldn't violent crime be brought under control if we imprisoned more repeat offenders? 
• Given the ineffectiveness of the welfare state, shouldn't faith-based organisations receive a bigger share of poverty-fighting budgets?
• How can you support a benefits system that penalises couples who marry? 
• Why, Mr EU Bureaucrat, do you get paid twice as much as our Prime Minister?

What sort of questions would you, as taxpayers, Eurosceptics, churchgoers etc add to that list?

A quick question about the London Assembly

The sole purpose of the London Assembly is to approve the Mayor's budget and make policy recommendations. For this assuredly part-time job, Assembly Members are paid a satirically high salary of £53,439 plus pension.

Here's my question: why shouldn't we scrap the Assembly and pass the responsibilities of AMs to the leaders of the borough councils?

The head of MI5 talks control orders

Jonathan Evans delivered a speech yesterday which spelt out his support for control orders, the anti-terrorism legislation which allows the state to monitor terror suspects via electronic tag, curfew, a ban on overseas travel, and a variety of other measures. There is currently a review of terrorism legislation under way, so Evans' intervention is welcome one. Control orders are currently the best option we have, something I highlight in a Centre for Social Cohesion report on the issue, released last week.

It appears that the ground is shifting on this debate.The Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were both quick to lambast the legislation when out of power, though the reality of government appears to have tempered this. Whitehall mandarins are now leaking to the Daily Telegraph that control orders "are likely to be retained in some form". Anonymous Tory ministers, talking to the Independent, also hint at a change in the Conservative position, saying they were "unaware of the gravity of the security situation while in opposition". This is hard to believe, considering how widely known the scale of the terrorist threat facing the UK is. More likely, control orders were being opportunistically used by the Conservatives as a stick to hit Labour with when in opposition and to make the party appear strong on civil liberties.

However, there is a real uncertainty over what the Liberal Democrat response will be on all of this. The likes of Chris Huhne were very explicit in their dislike of control orders, and his party has called for the system to be disbanded. It will be interesting to see how the Lib Dems plan on balancing national security, election promises and their principles on civil liberties without further disenchanting their core voters and badly damaging the Coalition.

RE: New EU Treaty - Something for you to do

Further to my previous post, some of you suggested that it was improper to permit me such agitation.  Eh?  What is ConservativeHome if not, inter alia, a venue for the encouragement of grassroots action to encourage MPs to abide by the promises they made to us in the Manifesto?  Here are a couple of extracts, from the section of the 2010 Conservative Party Manifesto called "Promote Our National Interest - An Open And Democratic Europe":

"We will work to bring back key powers over legal rights, criminal justice and social and employment legislation to the Uk"

"the steady and unaccountable intrusion of the european Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far." [NOTE: it says "too far", not simply "far enough", and thus it is not sufficient for matters to stay as they are.]

"a Conservative government will negotiate for three specific guarantees – on the Charter of fundamental rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation – with our european partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU. We seek a mandate to negotiate the return of these powers from the EU to the UK." [NOTE: it wasn't that there was a vague promise to try to prevent further erosion of powers to Europe.  It wasn't a matter of "This far and no further."  It wasn't even simply that the government would vote to oppose specific regulatory measures from being introduced in the UK under the existing framework of European law.  No.  It was a specific promise to "negotiate the return of these powers [on rights, criminal justice, and social and employment legislation] from the EU to the UK"]

So, as Conservative activists, you should be asking your Members of Parliament how they are progressing on delivering on this specific promise, given that a new Treaty is being formulated even as I write.

Here are some draft email texts to get you going.  One wouldn't want the MPs bored by all receiving the same thing, so I suggest you don't all use the first - but some of you should.

The Revenue’s power grab: what’s yours is mine first

Just as taxpayers finally lose confidence in the ability of the Revenue to calculate PAYE correctly, HMRC offers to take the matter out of our hands and present us with a fait accompli. The power grab implicit in the latest HMRC proposals – currently under consultation - to receive all salaries direct from employers, process all deductions and then hand to us what remains, should worry anyone who values freedom.

On Wednesday HMRC Chief Executive Dame Lesley Strathey told the Treasury Select Committee that the Revenue was backing down on its threat to charge taxpayers interest on repayments of tax underpaid through Revenue error. But there is no sign yet that “Centralised Deductions” will be strangled at birth.

Presented as a way of reducing administrative burdens on employers, this proposed system would put much greater power in the hands of HMRC. According to the consultation paper Improving the operation of Pay As You Earn (PAYE) (see customs.hmrc.gov.uk):

“The employer would send the gross payment through the electronic payment system to a central calculator where the deductions calculated by HMRC would be made automatically. The resulting net payment would then be sent to the individual’s bank account and the deductions would be paid directly to the Government.”

The consultation paper acknowledges that this could also increase what is described - with delicious irony - as “avoidable contact” with HMRC officials. In other words, endless frustrating telephone calls to your tax office trying to find out if you really have paid the right amount of tax or if the deductions are based on pure guesswork (or on someone else’s records).

The consultation, which opened at the end of July and closes on 23rd September 2010, invites “all groups of people who might be affected” to discuss the practicalities and issues involved. But there is a strong hint that the proposals will not be lightly abandoned; HMRC is “interested in hearing proposals that could deliver a similar or better outcome through different means.” In other words, if you don’t like it, come up with something better.

The acceptance by citizens – albeit reluctantly - of the concept of direct taxation might be said to rest on an unspoken understanding between tax collector and taxpayer that tax will be levied fairly and accurately. We surrender a part of our earnings to the State in order to share in a social good. But when an agent of the State takes the goodwill of its citizens for granted, especially when its own fairness and accuracy are in question, institutional arrogance threatens to undermine the social compact. This is no time for  a taxpayers’ revolt – so let us hope the Treasury will change tack and halt the Revenue’s power grab.

Letters from Zimbabwe - Mugabe, Morgan and Marange

I grew up with Zambia and Zimbabwe, but I only stepped on their soil for the first time in August. The flimsy, blue airmail letters which when I was a child brought monthly news of my cousins, of Kaunda then Mugabe, of sadza, puff adders, Lusaka, Livingstone and Harare were read out loud and left me with vivid memories. My aunt and uncle left the UK in 1970, and my cousin (one of five) with whom we are staying has lived half her life in Zambia, and the latter half in Zim. Now an awards-winning expert in wild dog and cheetah, she works with governments across southern Africa, promoting the co-existence of wild-life, farm animals and humans.  Living and traveling with her family for three weeks meant we had the chance to glimpse Zim life which she is at pains to say, gives her no authority to speak for others. Knowing a little about the shattered lives and pain of fellow citizens, sharing whatever they could whenever they could, feeling the impact of famine and fear but being able to evade the consequences leaves her humbled and not daring to assume anything on behalf of those for whom devastation was a reality they couldn’t escape. But she and her husband are also determined that their country should not be a hostage to the past, details of which much is still unknown because fear remains a silencer while Mugabe lives. 

And there is no doubt that they are waiting for Mugabe to die, as the only way he will leave office now is in a coffin. Hopes of overthrow or resignation never materialised, partly because of the refusal of Zim’s neighbours to support regime change and also the cultural commandment that you never challenge an elder. What is less clear is who will replace him. There are two high profile bitter rivals: vice-president Joyce Majuru who has Army support; and Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa who has the backing of the Intelligence and a reputation for evil. But of course they shouldn’t even be in office. Refusing to budge is not an unknown phenomenon in these parts and when the polls showed that Mugabe had lost the election in 2008, he rejected the people’s decision and insisted on staying. After pressure from Zim’s neighbours he offered the sop of sharing some power with the rightful victor, Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party. Tsvangirai, who for many years has fought peacefully for democracy, eventually accepted that this compromise was the only nonviolent way out of the impasse.  This was grace personified as Tsvangirai and other MDC officials started to work alongside ministers who had been responsible for their beatings and persecution and the deaths of supporters.  

Elections are scheduled again for next year, following a referendum on a new constitution which should be put to the country by February. Whilst constitutional consultations are being held around the country, the process is being subjected to the usual Zanu-PF treatment of intimidating the rural population into accepting Zanu’s ‘Kariba’ draft which would, amongst other things, allow Mugabe two more terms in office. He’s 86 and showing signs of intellectual deterioration so this is optimistic.

What became clear to us as we listened to people’s stories was that whilst Mugabe is responsible for the deaths and intimidation of hundreds of thousands of people, he is no ethnic cleanser. He is not interested in your tribe, only your support. His obsession with power knows no boundaries, to the extent that he conscripted the nation’s children into a control force from 2000 onwards. This youth militia were teenagers told they couldn’t get a job in the public sector without joining the National Youth Service. Subjected to beatings, abuse and brainwashing they were then sent to dispense fear and violence on MDC-T supporters before the country’s elections. One of the key democratic indicators will be the response of these ‘Green Bombers’ at the next election, many who now hate Mugabe but who also fear his reach and know his mercilessness.

Democratisation will also be influenced by the response of Zim’s neighbours, especially Zuma’s South African government at the time of Mugabe’s death. Will they finally intervene and insist on the verdict of the ballot box? Their experience too of ‘truth and reconciliation’ hearings could be invaluable in a country that would need to go through the healing process of understanding the past, whilst not being defined by it. And it would be wise for Zuma and his fellow Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders to anticipate the ramifications of Zanu-PF’s illegal requisition of the Marange diamond mine. Discovered just four years ago, it is reported to be the biggest in the world, and locals were simply gunned down as Zanu and the Army moved in to take control. Although some sales of the industrial diamonds were recently ‘approved’ by the Kimberly Process, these blood-diamonds have already given Mugabe the undeserved gift of a totally new revenue stream and another reason for his Army to oppress their fellow men.

Yet in this country where the soil is rich, where there are enough natural resources to produce power and create wealth, which is breathtakingly beautiful and in which their citizens take such pride, there is still hope. When we sat with people and talked they would smile and said ‘you are here, we are not forgotten, there is hope’. The message I took away from time with staff at Mpilo Hospital (as described in my last letter) is however that this hope is fragile. Tsvangirai hasn’t delivered the transformation they yearned for and despite the tangible improvements, doubts are now expressed about further progress. Their disappointment is understandable. They have been patient for so long, risking so much to vote MDC-T for four elections now, never retaliating with the currency of violence that is spent so freely by Zanu-PF conscripts. Politically it seems to me as an outsider that right now Tsvangirai is doing all he can, hemmed in by corruption, injustice and lacking the international support that hope-to-God will rise when Mugabe dies.  And practically, while excess has sapped the inspiration of hardship in the West, scarcity here stimulates stewardship and initiative that is humbling. Zimbabwe is still a country to be respected, despite its president.

New EU Treaty - Something for you to do

My recent post on the new EU treaty disturbed some of you, even upset you, making you call me names.  Good!  I want you agitated and agitating.

• Eurosceptics should be animated because this is their do-or-die moment.
• Europhiles should be eager to see action because if we don't renegotiate now we'll probably leave.
• Get-outers should be frightened because if we don't renegotiate now you may face evil people like me arguing that we should go the whole way in.

What I don't want to see is any get-outers believing that "worse is better", not bothering to press for renegotiation on this occasion because a failure to renegotiate might lead to increased pressure to withdraw later.  That would be a strategy for fools.

Some of you asked whether there is really a Treaty.  Obviously there is no draft text yet - much of my point is that we can't wait until there is a draft text!  But that there should be a new Treaty has been accepted in principle by even the British government - see here, for example (and discussion here).

Many of you, Dear Readers, will have Conservative MPs.  Perhaps you sat in selection meetings as those MPs, when mere aspiring candidates, gave a speech that went something like "Blah, Blah...Magna Carta...England is an Empire unto herself...didn't fight Napoleon and Hitler just so we could surrender our sovereignty to Brussels...virtues of the Common Law...importance of flexible labour markets, and that Brussels does not re-impose Socialism by the back door...as Mrs Thatcher said: No, No, No!"  It was a good speech.  From twenty-odd years ago until about 1998 (when it became boring) I used to give it myself.  And these same candidates then stood in General Elections in 2001, 2005, and 2010 promising renegotiation, that matters would not be allowed to rest.

So, Dear Readers, here's what I want you to do.  I want you to write to your MPs asking them for a report on progress in the repatriation of powers from Brussels that they promised you continuously for over a decade, and in particular what they are doing to ensure that in the new Treaty that the British government has stated, in Parliament, that it favours, will include the repatriation of key powers to Britain.  If you can get to meet with them and ask them face-to-face - perhaps at a constituency surgery - even better.

Don't be fobbed off with any chat about referendum locks or sovereignty bills.  Don't waste your time or breath on the question of whether there should have been a post-ratification referendum on Lisbon.  And don't get distracted with flannel about the government "standing up for Britain's interests" in Brussels.  Focus on this sole point: the British government has stated, in Parliament, that it favours a new Treaty.  You are my MP (not David Cameron or William Hague).  What are you doing to ensure that this new Treaty includes the repatriation of key powers to Britain that you have promised me and everyone else in this constituency for a decade.

Time to act.

The voters should reject this farce over electoral reform

THE principle of putting to the British people a voting system such as the Alternative Vote (AV) which violates the basic principle of the individual use of freedom to exercise choice at the ballot box, and not to have that vote reallocated in any other way, is indefensible and dangerous. I said as much in my Yorkshire Post article on Monday. It is an assault on democracy.

The Conservative Party manifesto 2010 actually stated: “We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with.” Yet its leadership and majority of MPs passed the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill at Second Reading on Monday of last week to give people the choice over a flawed AV system.

The point of creating freedom of choice turns on the issue of democracy and not to give the electorate a choice of surrendering their vote to a shoddy, half-baked, proposal to reallocate many lesser-preference votes to third-rate lesser candidates.

Philip Booth: What ministers should learn from Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

To the socialists of all parties (to whom F. A. Hayek dedicated The Road to Serfdom), The Constitution of Liberty, is anathema. Hayek, they believe, stands for an atomised society full of selfish individuals all looking after their own interests. But nobody who has read the original texts could possibly represent him this way.

One person who understood this was Margaret Thatcher. Once during a party policy meeting a speaker started to argue that the Conservative Party should adopt a pragmatic middle way. According to John Ranelagh in Thatcher’s People, “Before he had finished speaking...the new Party Leader reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting, she held the book up for all of us to see. ‘This,’ she said sternly, ‘is what we believe,’ and banged Hayek down on the table.”

It may have been what Mrs. Thatcher believed, but she was in a minority amongst politicians and so there remains much to be done in terms of rolling back the state. Ministers are busy people, of course. But, for the new breed of Whig-minded Conservatives – or, for that matter, Whig-minded Liberals - within the coalition there is now no excuse for not understanding Hayek. The IEA has just published a summarised account of the arguments Hayek made in The Constitution of Liberty: the volume fits neatly into a minister’s red box and can be read in a few hours.

So what is The Constitution of Liberty about? In essence it explains how a complex cooperative, great society can come about in an environment of freedom under the rule of law. It emphasises the importance of tradition and of limiting government discretion. Whilst Hayek might not have been a Conservative, The Constitution of Liberty, to some extent, sits at the juxtaposition of a certain strand of Conservatism and liberalism. Without question it is more “Big Society” than “Big State”. However, the work demonstrates why the Big Society should evolve spontaneously and not be created and cajoled by the government – a lesson not understood by the coalition.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

Professor Philip Booth is Editorial and Programme Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is today releasing a new edition of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty.

If my identity has been stolen to buy goods, surely the onus should not be on me to prove that I didn't do so?

I was somewhat shocked yesterday to find a letter on the doormat from a debt collection agency.

Informing me that my total debt was now £164.32, the letter stated:

"Your debt has been passed to us because you have ignored previous requests to sort this debt out with our client... Pay or call us immediately to get this sorted out".

Utterly nonplussed, I called the number to see what on earth it was supposed to refer to, not least as it was the first communication I had received from anyone demanding payment of a debt.

The voice at the other end informed me that I had apparently bought items from "Jacamo" and not paid for them.

"Who or what is Jacamo?," I enquired.

"A catalogue," I was told, before explaining that I had never even heard of the company.

The debt collector proceeded to inform me that the items I had ordered had been sent to an address in Newcastle-upon-Tyne - somewhere I have only visited once in my life, let alone lived in.

I explained that there was clearly some kind of mix-up: I had never heard of Jacamo or lived in Newcastle, and therefore certainly could not have ordered anything from the catalogue from an address in the city.

But this was not good enough for the debt collector. He said that he wanted me to send them proof of address through a bank statement or council tax bill to show that I was not living in Newcastle last summer in order to close the matter.

I ended the call there, initially with the intention of trying to seek out an old bill to copy and send them.

But then I gave it just a moment's thought:

• Who are this debt collection company and how do I know that they are legitimate?
• Why should I give them further information about myself (as far as I know they currently only have an address for me) through sending them a copy of an old bill?
• If someone has falsely used my identity to buy something (although as far as I can tell, no money has been taken out of my bank account) surely the onus should not be on me to prove that I didn't do something, but rather on someone else to prove that I did do something?

Perhaps any lawyers reading might be able to give me some informal advice as to what, if anything, they think I ought to do next...

A look inside the new Spectator

I like it. No conservative magazine should be radically overhauled. The new design is fresher but hasn't tampered too much with a winning format. It's on sale from tomorrow!

Did Labour ex-Spad break code of conduct to attack Monarchy?

By Invictus

The Guardian is currently trying to persuade the Information Commissioner to force Government departments to release confidential correspondence from Prince Charles to ministers.The paper obviously hopes to uncover material with which to pursue its long-standing and spectacularly unsuccessful campaign to abolish the Monarchy.

One disturbing feature of the Guardian’s attempt has been the involvement of Paul Richards, formerly Special Adviser to Hazel Blears, who has provided detailed information on how Charles’ letters were handled by civil servants.  Richards remains bound by the Special Advisers' Code of Conduct which states: "Under the terms of the Civil Service Code, special advisers must continue to observe their duties of confidentiality after they have left their employment as a special adviser".

Has Richards risked disregarding his obligations and, if so, why?  One clue may be provided by his attendance at a conference organised by Republic, an anti-Monarchist pressure group.  The event was titled: "It’s the Monarchy, stupid" and Richards spoke on the subject of "Prince Charles’ Political Meddling".

The "post-democratic" EU

A neat turn of phrase in an interesting article over at The Australian about the European Parliament's simulation game Citzalia:

"Just when you thought the European Union could not get more disconnected from reality, it gets more virtual. Soon, citizen-avatars will be able to experience "democracy in action" in virtual reality: let us hope they find it as disappointing as reality itself.

After the failure of its online TV Europarl, the parliament is preparing Citzalia, an educational "platform" described as a "3D world that captures the essence of the European Parliament".

Through role-play and social networking, citizen-avatars will walk the powerless corridors of the EU's talking shop (in the real world, power remains with the mandarins of the commission) and even interact with the avatars of actual members of the European Parliament.

Presumably their hope - at E275,000 ($387,550) - is to shed some light on the terribly important role of the EU legislature: that might be a bad idea. With record low participation in last year's elections (43 per cent), maybe people realised their vote was pointless and they could not vote for their preferred candidate anyway (one votes for a party list).

The thought of citizen-avatars trying to figure out the "co-decision" legislative process is dizzying. Good luck to them with the arcane consultations between the commission, the council and the parliament, and the culture of deals behind the proverbial closed doors.

Under the Lisbon Treaty, a new consultation process with the 27 national legislatures (the Barroso initiative) should add to the bureaucratic fun.

Exposing the boring, poorly attended and entirely managed non-debates in the parliament would indeed be in the interest of transparency. Not to mention the outrageous full relocation 12 times a year between Strasbourg and Brussels (annual cost E200 million).

Too much realism might confuse citizen-avatars. But the unelected and unaccountable (its accounts have not passed audit for many, many years) commission is the main creator of the laws that we must obey (about 85 per cent of all new British legislation comes from the EU).

The truth is the MEPs are confined to rubber-stamping, with the right to throw occasional delaying tantrums to earn their credentials as the guardians of EU democracy - or, rather, as the fig-leaves of this unique post-democracy.

One real nod towards democracy was the Lisbon Treaty's Citizens' Initiative (Article 11) enabling citizens to propose legislation. But it is hopelessly bogged down in red tape and controversy, strangled to the point of meaninglessness.

Forget the citizen-avatar. The real movers and shakers are the lobbyists - many of whom get EU grants to lobby the EU: cosy. As the International Policy Network study The Friends of the EU exposed in March, green advocacy groups are subsidised to lobby for more funds and to provide research. This is a self-serving circle of bureaucrats and lobbyists, not democracy in any sense citizens can recognise.

As our votes do not matter (a referendum can be run again for the right answer, as in Ireland, or merely avoided, as in Britain, and MEPs are pointless), we can make up for it with a tiny virtual thrill of involvement in a fantasy world inspired by a real nightmare: we can get online and spend every minute complaining about the democratic deficit - then we can at least pretend our voices makes a difference."

Good stuff.

Euroscepticism: Victory or death => and if death, then Europhilia follows

Euroscepticism ought to be at its moment of total victory.  Conservative Eurosceptics argued for many years that the current constitutional balance between UK and EU institutions was unacceptable, and that there needed to be renegotiation of our position in the EU, including the repatriation of powers.  Indeed, that was a Conservative Party General Election manifesto commitment in 2001, 2005 and 2010.  Three General Elections in a row.  Indeed, many Conservatives have been Eurosceptics for as long as they have been politically aware.

Now the moment is here.  The EU needs a new Treaty, to address the need for fiscal transfers and fiscal oversight to make the Eurozone viable that Eurosceptics always rightly said was inevitable.  So those that condemned Cameron's line that, once the Lisbon Treaty had passed there would be no purpose in a Lisbon referendum but that we should instead simply renegotiate, were wrong.  When they said that to renegotiate he would need a new Treaty and the other members of the EU would never, post-Lisbon, agree to a new Treaty, they were wrong.  Renegotiation was possible.  The moment is here.

The problem is, though, that we are completely blowing it.  The moment we have sought for all these years is here, and we are doing... well... nothing.  Now is when our government needs to be setting before our European partners the repatriation of powers we shall require for us to consent to the new Treaty that they need.  It will be no good waiting until the draft Treaty is there, until the Conference comes to finalise the Treaty, for the Conservative MPs to say: "Hey!  Oughtn't there to be some of those Treaty changes we wanted in there?"

In a fix?

The latest staging post on the coalition government’s whistle-stop journey of constitutional reform comes today as we debate the Fixed Term Parliament Bill. Much of the press coverage over this legislation concerns the technicalities around votes of confidence, which would trigger a general election before the end of the set fixed term.

The proposal that power should be vested in the Speaker of the day to issue a certificate declaring that parliament had no confidence in the government places the Speakership in a potentially damaging position of partisanship at a critical political juncture. Worse still such certificates would – in the opinion of some constitutional experts – be challengeable in the High Court. In short, at a time of the most acute and sensitive political crisis, the time-critical decision to call an election might be open to legal challenge.

Rather curiously, however, less has been made of the fact that the coalition has chosen five years as the fixed term for a parliament’s duration. It is almost exactly a century since the maximum term was reduced from seven years to five, with the Prime Minister of the day, Asquith, expressly recognising that elections were likely to be called within this time frame.

Indeed generally in UK politics a fixed term tends to be set at four years (think local elections, Mayoral contests, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly terms). If we look at the average time between general elections since World War Two, there have been seventeen elections since the 1945 contest in sixty-five years, so the average tenure of each parliament in this period has been three years and ten months.

Strangely enough even Labour opposition to the longer term has been muted. One need not be too cynical to observe that it is only candidates who really like elections – sitting MPs have potentially too much to lose. For them, perhaps no fixed term is too long!

Douglas Carswell leads the way on bank reform

There is a doctrine which creates wealth and spreads it around. It is just and moral. It works. It is called capitalism and, today, in practice, there is very obviously something wrong with it. 

If one were to summarise the doctrine of capitalism in one word, it would be "property". It is property which enables human social cooperation through production, exchange and consumption. The voluntary exchange of property has rules and these are known as contract.

These two concepts, property and contract, are fundamental to capitalism and yet, in relation to money held on demand in bank accounts, they are applied at best inadequately. 

On Wednesday, immediately after Prime Minister's Questions, Douglas Carswell MP will be introducing a moderate and conservative ten-minute rule bill which would introduce sound property rights and contract to monetary deposits. It is potentially of profound importance and I am delighted to support him.

Allow me to explain.

If you deposit securities at the bank, they are held in safe custody, ready for immediate use. They are your property, not the bank's. If you wish to increase the yield of your securities by lending them, then you enter into a securities lending agreement with the bank, which borrows your shares for a period, lending them on at a premium. You have forgone your shares for a term in exchange for a fee. The bank is contractually obliged to return your property at the end of the term. 

In other words, you either deposit your securities on demand or you save them by lending them to the bank for a term.

I was once intimately involved in the design of a securities lending system for a major international prime broker. There was no requirement to take securities held in safe custody and lend them while maintaining a liability to return them on demand. Lending securities not contractually designated for the purpose would have been an infringement of property rights in breach of trust, that is, a fraud.

While banks maintain clear property rights in securities on deposit, the same cannot be said of monetary deposits. Thanks to a base of judicial decisions, when you deposit your money on demand at the bank, ready for immediate withdrawal without penalty, it is not your property, but the bank's. Banks can lend money held on demand and of course they do so. 

This is fractional reserve banking and it may not be the good thing most bankers think it is. 

Fractional reserves on demand deposits allow banks to extend credit in excess of real savings. That leads to the creation and destruction of fiduciary media: claims on money for which there is insufficient money to meet all claims. It is what makes bank runs possible. It means that, as the great economist Irving Fisher wrote in 1935,

our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks; and our thousands of checking banks are, in effect, so many irresponsible private mints. 

As I explained in my maiden speech:

Unlike the situation in respect of any other commodity, in the case of money, price controls do not drive the product off the market. Artificially lowered interest rates increase the demand for credit, and decrease the supply of savings, but the legal privilege granted to banks means that they can meet demand by extending credit that is unbacked by real savings. There is a good argument to say that that causes the boom-and-bust cycle, the misdirection of resources in the capital structure of production, and over-consumption by consumers.

And since the money supply contracts when banks lend less, we find central banks injecting new money through QE, further distorting an economy already distended by excess credit expansion, in an attempt to cope with the anarchy of money creation and destruction caused by fractional reserve banking.

To repeat: demand deposits of money are not subject to the same principles of property and contract as any other commodity. Banks enjoy the legal privilege of open access to money which they are liable to return on demand. In concert with the central planning of interest rates and a range of government interventions, this is what is wrong with capitalism.

It is around this point that scholars of banking theory begin disagreeing, often with very great passion. However, it is a fact that various economists of the three great traditions - Keynesian, Monetarist and Austrian - have, at various times and for various reasons, proposed ending the system of fractional reserve banking.

Douglas's Bill would assert property rights over demand deposits. Real savings - term deposits - would be loaned to entrepreneurs, delivering an economy built on save and invest. 

There is a great deal to communicate on this subject, some of which you can find through the links below. In the meantime, I will conclude with some remarks by Nobel Laureate James M Buchanan at the Mont Pelerin Society in 2009:

The market will not work effectively with monetary anarchy. Politicization is not an effective alternative. We must commence meaningful dialogue with acceptance of these elementary verities.

Moreover:

Let us not waste this set of crises by exclusive recourse to jerry-built efforts to patch up the failed monetary anarchy we have witnessed.

Douglas is attempting to begin the process of correcting capitalism by asserting sound property rights and contract in banking. I hope Parliamentary colleagues and activists will hear him out, particularly those who wish us to have an economy built on the investment of real savings.

A Shady customer - and a case for exclusion

By Paul Goodman

I wrote earlier this summer about the forthcoming Global Peace and Unity conference taking place in London next month -  the Royal Ascot of the British Islamist calendar, organised by the Islam Channel, a TV station which has a number of fundamentalist and extremist presenters - see Quilliam's report on the broadcaster.

I described the Ascot Gavotte danced out each year between the GPU organisers and the main political parties, as the former aims to gain credibility, patronage, and muscle among British Muslims by manoevering politicians to speak from the event's podium - and linked to Dominic Grieve's GPU address, in which he read the organisers the riot act (politely, but firmly).

I concluded: "Theresa May's made a good start at the Home Office by barring Zakir Naik and Bilal Phillips from entering the UK.  The final list of speakers for GPU has yet to be published.  Part of the annual gavotte is backstairs negotiation between the organisers and politicians.  Ministers don't have to make up their minds at this stage whether or not to attend."

"But they shouldn't lend legitimacy to people who support attacks on our troops, on civilians as a matter of principle, or incite hatred and violence - and who, furthermore, don't represent the mass of British Muslims for whom they purport to organise.  If such people are on the platform, Ministers shouldn't go to the GPU this year."

Here's one of the Speakers: Sheikh Shady Al-Suleiman.

According to The Age, Anwar Al-Awlaki, linked both to Major Nidal Hasan, perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre and to Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day bomber, was engaged to speak at a youth event at an Australian mosque.  The Age reports - 

"According to a director of Lakemba mosque, Ziad Ghamraoui, Sheikh Shady al-Suleiman was in charge of organising evening youth events at the time of the sermon. Sheikh Suleiman refused to comment. He would not say whether Mr Awlaki was paid and would not comment on the subject of his speech."

Al-Awlaki was spiritual adviser to three of the 9/11 perpetrators, and has been described as the number one terrorist threat to the U.S.  Harry's Place has the story, and notes re Suleiman: "I wonder why he has been coy with the media. You can still see an ad for the event on one of Suleiman’s websites. There’s nothing hidden there."

This is a clear case for exclusion.  If - for whatever reason - he's admitted, Ministers certainly shouldn't share a platform with Suleiman on the basis of the Australian reports.  Oh, and a footnote: since I last posted on the matter, the video of Grieve's speech has been "removed by the user" from YouTube (try clicking the link above).

Funny, that.

The cap fits

The idea that London requires more immigration could only be held by someone who hasn't been canvassing in the East End recently. I knock on a door. Woman opens it. I say the name on the roll. She says in broken English: they do not live here. The roll is up to date. A large amount of our social housing in Hackney appears to be sublet to new immigrants (by whom?). How many do Boris' banker friends think we need, and how much poverty and overcrowding and - yes - dislocation are they prepared to countenance to get it? Economic theory like this is pointless when it leads to too many adults crammed into too few bedrooms. The only liberation I see it delivering is for the rich people who employ the newcomers as cleaners. 

Fixed term parliaments bill on its way

Having got its AV referendum bill through Second Reading - but with bloody battles still to come, one suspects - the next piece of constitutional vandalism the Coalition intends to visit upon us is fixed term parliaments.  I have previously explained why I consider them unnecessary and why they are undesirable.  Indeed, in many ways fixed term Parliaments are even worse in concept than AV.  I assume that the limited public outcry about their introduction is because the Americans use them - and obviously any constitutional arrangement the Americans use must be okay.

Koran-burning is a liberal right

When our soldiers fight and die and kill to defend our "freedom", amongst the things they are defending are our right to do, say, and think unpleasant things that most of us disagree with.  That's a lot of what it is to be a liberal society.  So if some lunatic wants to burn a Koran, and some other folks are terribly offended about that and plan to murder US and British and other Western soldiers, is the right thing to do (a) to urge the lunatic not to burn the Koran on the grounds that his doing so might provoke the deaths of the soliders; (b) to say to the folks offended in other countries: "A consequence of our sort of society is that lunatics are allowed to burn the Koran.  That's essential to a free society, and we are prepared to kill and be killed to defend the right of such lunatics to their lunacy.  You need to understand that and get over it - or feel our wrath."; or (c) to do both?

Most of our political leaders appear to think (a) is the answer here.  I think it's somewhere between (b) and (c), tending towards (b).  I also think it's blatantly and grossly unfair that political leaders only become animated about such issues when those upset by the exercise of freedom have resorted to violence to pursue their upset.  If it had been Taoist works or if someone had been burning Bibles or burning crosses then our political leaders would have shrugged it off as an irrelevance and not wasted airtime pronouncing upon it.  Did the Prime Minister or President urge against the showing of Jerry Springer the Opera, despite the deep offence that gave to many Christians?  No.  Why not?  Because Christians didn't murder people in expression of our outrage.  The message Barack Obama gives is quite clear: the way to get the American president as your ally over matters of outrage is to murder enough people.  This is a lesson Muslims have learned well, over the years.  I fear that, unless our political leaders change tack and stand up against the Muslim murder threats and for the rights of those that want to make cartoons featuring Mohammed or burn Korans, then other groups may learn the same lesson in due course.

Conservatives should reform First Past The Post

Are we Conservatives right to set our face against reform of the First Past the Post (FPP) voting system?

Despite FPTP being better than a proportional system or even AV, it does have one major flaw.  There are too many constituencies where an MP can get elected with just less than 50% - or even 45% of the vote.  Does this matter?  If you accept that a parliamentary majority requires +50%, then surely a constituency MP should be elected by a majority.  Democracy must by its nature be majoritarian, provided it is subject to the rule of law and minorities have genuine ‘input’ into the political process and the right of redress.

Accepting this point does not mean one has to be in favour of Proportional Representation or even the Alternative Vote.  We know that PR - as has been shown by the European Parliamentary elections - destroys the constituency link and ensures that individuals depend primarily on the support of party activists to maintain a good ranking on the electoral ladder. Similarly, the Alternative Vote places an artificial construct on voter's intentions, forcing them to make second preference choices - before they actually know the result, which inevitably would disproportionately favour the Liberal Democrats as being the 'centre' party.

So, how to square the electoral circle. The answer is what is termed as ‘The Second Ballot’ (TSB) system, as used by France (for both Parliamentary & Presidential elections), the Czech Senate, Lithuania and Hungary.  Austria, Finland and Slovakia use TSB for their Presidential Elections.

The beauty of TSB is both its fairness, and simplicity.  Instead of having an 'Alternative Vote' and artificial second preferences, a ballot is held a week or two later in which the top two candidates slug it out for pole position.  Not only does this give electors a few extra days to consider their options based on the first result, it ensures that they are not forced into making a 'saccharine' second choice (which AV would force them to do), before they know whether or not their first preference candidate will get over 50% of the vote.

It also preserves Constituency representation and usually guarantees strong Government.  Of course there is a greater cost, because there are two elections - but these are not as great as might be supposed.  According to an analysis by the House of Commons Library, the cost of the French TSB Parliamentary election in 2007 was approximately £2.30 per voter.  In the UK, the estimated costs of the 2010 General Election was £1.75 per elector. Not a huge difference.

TSB, if introduced in England, would preserve the FTP principle, but ensure that every MP in every constituency had a majority of over 50%.  Unlike AV, it does not give undue weight and influence to the second preference votes of minor parties, but could signficantly change electoral behaviour.  Because voters would know there would be a strong likelihood of a second ballot, the evidence shows that there is a wider spread of voting intentions.  Moreover in some instances, it encourages bigger parties to build alliances with smaller parties, in order to attract their voters in the second round. To win this battle of the referendum on AV, Conservatives should not be closed to some reform of First Past the Post. I accept it is the least worst system we currently have, but why not make it even better?

We know that the electoral reformers are very determined people. The choice is between improving FPTP or ending up with something very different. If we do not make FPTP even better we risk its critics trying again and again to replace it with something much worse. If we introduce The Second Ballot my belief is that we will protect the best of First Past The Post and guarantee faith in its continuation.

A plan to save the taxpayer billions from the state's wasteful IT budget

We shall soon see who is more powerful in this country, the elected government or the civil service.

The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age today publishes its first detailed report on one way we can get better-for-less. This has been put together by some of the UK’s best thinkers on the subject, led by Liam Maxwell, IT specialist and Councillor at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. It presents examples of where their approach has succeeded and a clear plan – a playbook – for implementation. But will government actually be able to put this into action, or will it be blocked?

The report - ‘Better for Less: How to make Government IT deliver savings’ - investigates the quagmire of government IT.

The British government currently spends somewhere between £16 billion and £23 billion on IT every year. The astonishing lack of clarity over expenditure is symptomatic of appalling failures in IT strategy, procurement, and process. This cannot be allowed to continue, especially during a time of spending cuts in frontline services. The annual cost dwarfs some government departments. It is three times the amount we spend on the army, more than the Department for Transport. Worse, it has been designed badly and, unfortunately this time, the process has been built to last. The problems come from ineffective procurement – much of which is waste.

Each year about the same amount of money is spent on the procurement process (the jumping through hoops to secure contracts) as is used to run the Foreign Office. Savings just in the procurement process - without even counting the savings from better IT -  could finance the entire Sure Start programme, they could fund 50% more school building. And even when the form-filling is done only 30% of projects work. Indeed government productivity has actually declined since IT was introduced. At a time when dynamic change is required -  to reduce cost and deliver better services – one of the principle barriers to that change has become government IT.

Liam and his co-authors are dedicated to bringing government into the information age, and have looked in detail about what should be done to deliver government IT more effectively, and at a much lower cost to taxpayers. The paper spells out exactly how government can deliver a better service for less money – a very different proposition to proposing mere ‘cuts’, where less money means poorer service.

The full report is available at http://pbage.org, directly here and as an ibook here.

We would really appreciate any comments from anybody who reads the paper: one of the central tenets of the post-bureaucratic age is that knowledge and skills exist within informal networks, not just companies and departments. We recognise this and encourage anyone to comment, regardless of their political affiliations, on http://pbage.org.

***

Note: Stephan Shakespeare chairs an informal network of people who are interested in the development of policy towards a ‘post-bureaucratic age’, and has written about what this means here and here.

Brain Trust

If you have concerns over the way Short Money is handled, and if you have bunnies over the public funding of pan-EU political parties, look away now.

A new paper from the TaxPayers’ Alliance out today reviews a lesser-known angle: the extent to which Brussels has been funding the think tanks of political groups.

You might at a pinch be able to argue a case for it. I personally disagree, but in any event judging by the newspaper headlines over the years the released figures cover, the taxpayer has not been getting value for money. Given the state of the European economy and the fiasco over the EU Constitution, the think tanks tanked.

The really criminal part is yet to come, however. What is clear is that political movements favouring deeper European political integration have received the lion’s share of the £6.4 million at stake, by a factor of 10:1 over those critical of ever-closer union.

A council that funded ten players from Rovers and just the goalie from United would rightly be accused of bias (as well as waste). Surely that’s the case here?