CentreRight

Tear down this wall!

Today, as we remember the twentieth anniversary of the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, let us also remember one of the finest pieces of oratory in modern political history:

Icelandic support for EU membership hits rock bottom

As Daniel Hannan predicted back in August, support for the Icelandic Government's application for European Union membership is falling faster than a piece of molten rock discharged by the Hekla Volcano.

The proportion of Icelandic voters favouring accession has fallen precipitously from its peak of 64% in the midst of the March 2009 bank collapse to only 29% today. Indeed, the 29% figure registered this week indicates the lowest proportion of pro-EU voters for more than half a decade.

While the Icelandic government is yet to announce the date for the country's accession referendum it strongly appears as if the attempts of Johanna Sigurdardottir's leftist coalition to subsume their country into the European Union are headed the same way as Norway's 1972 and 1994 applications: defeat at the hands of the people.

Republican Hara-Kiri

Unless you're a political anorak (mea culpa), it's likely you will have missed the special election (by-election) battle currently raging in New York's 23rd Congressional District (NY-23).  The special election has been brough about by the resignation of Republican Congressman John McHugh to take up an appointment as Obama's Secretary of the Army.  

This is, however, no parochial contest about local issues.  The upstate New York congressional district - which stretches along the state’s western boundary with Vermont and borders Canada to the north - has become a microcosm of the ideological struggle raging for the soul of the Republican Party.  As has become all too common in the Republican Party over the past few years, this ideological struggle sadly revolves almost entirely around social issues. 

Moderate Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava is facing an increasingly serious and well-funded third-party challenge from the Conservative Party's Doug Hoffman which appears likely to hand victory to Democrat centrist Bill Owens.

Labour’s unsavoury allies (part two)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's be serious now.

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

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

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

It's not as funny as this

Right, ok, the Norwegians have proved they have a good sense of humour in awarding America's modern-day Neville Chamberlain the Nobel Peace Prize but it's still not as funny as this.

Never have truer words been spoken...

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

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

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

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

Part two of the speech can be found here.

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

CentreRight readers: how would you reform the UN?

Merkel für Kanzler!

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

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

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

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

Baroness Scotland and Loloahi Tapui are victims as well as villains

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do Blairites think Brown's suffering from mental health problems?

This article on the Blairite think-tank Progress' website seems to suggest they do.

"Laurie Penny, staff writer for One in Four magazine, argues that Gordon Brown should be judged on his record as prime minister, not the state of his mental health"

Wednesday 4.30pm:

Jessica Asato, the acting director of Progress, has sent us the following statement:

"The point of this article by Laurie Penny was to highlight how unhelpful the gossip and rumours surrounding this issue were to the millions of people suffering from mental health problems in this country. On reading the article I’m sure that readers of ConservativeHome will see that this blog post has been taken out of context."

Time for 'wheels down' on MEP travel expenses

Over the last few years, much has been written about the obscene travel allowances Members of the European Parliament are able to claim in order to make their way to Brussels and Strasbourg.

Following a campaign by the Conservatives and other reform-minded Euro-deputies, the start of the 2009 session saw the abolition of the previous indefensible scheme which saw MEPs reimbursed for their maximum journey price even when flying to Brussels on budget airlines.

It now appears, however, that the European Parliament has implemented a similarly unacceptable system which, while not diverting cash surpluses to MEPs directly, does absolutely nothing to encourage members to reflect value for taxpayers’ money in their travel arrangements.

Figures that I have obtained on request from the European Parliament’s internal travel provider Carlson Wagonlit reveal the excessive travel fares MEPs are able to charge in order to arrange lavish executive-style travel to Brussels and Strasbourg.

At 2,174 € and 2,225 € respectively, the most expensive fare budgeted return fares to Brussels and Strasbourg is recorded as being from the Finnish capital of Helsinki.  A quick glance at Skyscanner, an online flight price comparison website, reveals this same journey to be available for £479.10 travelling on Monday 14th and returning on Thursday 17th September – the dates of the Parliament’s next Strasbourg session.  In short, even this last-minute price of £479.10 equates to roughly 550 € or a quarter of the maximum journey price for the Helsinki to Strasbourg route.

The London to Strasbourg route is little better, with MEPs being given a budget of 1,002 € in order to make their way to the Parliament’s plenary sessions - a journey some such as CentreRight’s own Dr Charles Tannock undertake by train each month at a mere fraction of the cost.  Quite apart from the wasteful nature of the Strasbourg sessions, this budget is clearly dramatically overblown.  Flights booked this lunchtime (less than 48 hours before travelling) in order to travel on Monday morning and return on Thursday afternoon are available for under 500 €.

With the general public – and many European Union member states - tightening their belts in these straitened economic times, European Parliamentarians must now reflect this in their travel entitlements. 

This isn’t about left versus right, pro-EU or anti-EU; it’s about doing what’s right.

The full list of maximum permissible claims is as follows:

Capital City	To Brussels	To Strasbourg
Amsterdam	455 €	965 €
Athens	1,738 €	1,983 €
Berlin	1,139 €	1,699 €
Bratislava	1,248 €	1,507 €
Brussels	n/a	540 €
Bucharest	1,661 €	2,048 €
Budapest	1,223 €	1,516 €
Copenhagen	1,265 €	1,525 €
Dublin	1,369 €	1,501 €
Helsinki	2,174 €	2,225 €
Lisbon	2,087 €	2,112 €
Ljubljana	1,261 €	1,617 €
London	616 €	1,002 €
Luxembourg	101.60 € (train)	104.80 € (train)
Madrid	1,840 €	1,857 €
Nicosia	1,140 €	1,070 €
Paris	270 €	248 €
Prague	1,535 €	1,693 €
Riga	1,174 €	1,750 €
Rome	1,829 €	1,581 €
Sofia	1,992 €	2,192 €
Stockholm	1,674 €	1,593 €
Tallinn	1,151 €	1,445 €
Valletta	1,255 €	1,377 €
Vienna	1,716 €	1,747 €
Vilnius	1,217 €	1,642 €
Warsaw	1,170 €	1,599 €

The above fares exclude taxes. Flexible business fares are normally the fares taken into account by the European Parliament to set the maximum airfare that can be spent for a specific event or for regular trips to Brussels or Strasbourg.  They are subject to change.

"No real debate about the Lisbon Treaty could happen. This was a deliberate decision"

Countries, when they democratically reject EU treaties, are usually told to vote again until they produce the “right” result – something the EU establishment hope will happen in the re-run Irish constitutional referendum on the Lisbon Treaty taking place exactly a month today.

The Irish political establishment are almost unanimous in their support for the document; the leaders of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour all enthusiastically calling for its speedy passage into law. 

Any impartial observer will tell you that the Lisbon Treaty is no different in composition from the document – the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe - democratically rejected by the people of France and the Netherlands in national referenda.

Much of their argument in favour of accepting the ‘revised’ Lisbon Treaty centres around the supposed “concessions” the country has won – chiefly, the ability to retain its European Commissioner and domestic control of laws governing social issues such as sensitive aspects of medical research.  I use the word “supposed” advisedly, as these concessions are nothing more than oral promises to the Irish government from other European countries as their formal incorporation into the Treaty would require the ratification process to start afresh in the twenty-three countries (including the United Kingdom) who have already given their ascent to the document.

As with the previous referendum, opposition is being coordinated by an unappealing alliance of Sinn Féin Teachtaí Dála and far-left radicals such as Dublin’s self-proclaimed Marxist MEP Joe Higgins.  The “no” campaign expects to be outspent by a margin of more than ten-to-one.

Irish referendum aside, a clever question from European Conservative and Reformist Group MEP Nirj Deva at the approval hearing being held for incoming Development Commissioner Karel du Gucht yesterday afternoon neatly surmises the wholly deceptive nature of the EU establishment towards the implementation of the European Constitution.

Kamiński's credo

I am sure much will be written today about the election of Polish MEP Michał Tomasz Kamiński as the President of the new European Conservative and Reform Group in the European Parliament.

Mr Kamiński's election comes after Timothy Kirkhope's dignified and party-minded decision to withdraw from the race after a rank act of treachery from Edward McMillan-Scott.

Tim made reference to Mr Kamiński's maiden speech in the European Parliament last night but I thought it was worth quoting in full here:

"Polish is the language of over 40 million Europeans. Before our eyes, ladies and gentlemen, the division of Europe is coming to an end, a division whose sources date back to the Second World War. In these days of joy and emotion, it is fitting, therefore, to remember all those to whom the New Europe is indebted for its reunification. I would like to pay homage to the millions of my countrymen, soldiers and civilians, who were victims of the Second World War. Unfortunately, their blood, spilled on the fields of battle, only secured peace and prosperity for one part of Europe. I would like to pay homage to all those in Poland and Central Europe who, in the Stalinist era, sustained the flame of freedom on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Their inspiration was varied: from democratic socialism through liberalism to Christian-democracy and conservatism. Today we must also pay homage to the political prisoners and victims of the Stalinist terror, although many of them did not live to see a united Europe.

"As a Pole, I take particular pride in pointing out to the House that today’s celebrations would not be taking place were it not for the spiritual inspiration of our great fellow countryman, His Holiness John Paul II. He inspired Solidarity, the powerful social movement that led to the fall of Communism. President Lech Walesa, the leader of this movement became a symbol of the struggle for democracy and human rights for the world. He is our guest today in this Chamber. I also want to recall with pride that the leaders of my party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc [Law and Justice], as well as many of its members, were active participants in the movement for political independence that was Solidarity . At this time I would also like to express gratitude to two great leaders of the Western world whose steadfast attitude in the eighties helped break the fetters that bound the nations of Eastern and Central Europe. I would like to thank Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan. The great task now before us is to make certain that the fruits of the reunification of the continent are fairly divided among all the nations of the New Europe".

Opponents of the European Conservative and Reformist Group have queried the group's "credo" - and its vision for changing Europe.  From here on, I shall simply refer them to the above speech.

Good luck Mr Kamiński!

Bob Crow and the RMT need to grow up

Many thanks to my (Labour activist) friend Chris for sending over this rather disturbing photograph he took whilst passing the headquarters of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) this lunchtime.

Yes chaps; that is a Cuban flag.

We shouldn't be surprised.  Bob Crow does, after all, have a framed photograph of vicious killer Che Guevara in his office and is proud to host an "RMT Annual Cuba Summer Party".  I do wonder, though, if Bob Crow and his merry band of brothers have ever taken a moment to learn the truth about the supposed Cuban "workers' paradise"?

Unlike in the United Kingdom, where the RMT's sporadic strikes frequently paralyse city centres and cost British business hundreds of millions of pounds, strike action is outlawed.

Under the 1995 Foreign Investment Law, all employment and wage bargaining must be centrally coordinated by state employment bodies.  "Investors", according to the ITUC, "pay the agencies in dollars, but the agencies pay the workers the equivalent figure in pesos, pocketing up to 95% of their salaries".  Wow, that's fair!

The only professional body in existence is the Central de Trabajadores Cubanos, a 'union' controlled solely by Fidel Castro's thugs. Debating with the CTC is a non-starter - unless one fancies a spell of "re-education" in one of the numerous gulags the Castro regime operates. 

Take a look at the International Trade Union Confederation's (ITUC) annual survey of violations of trade union rights in Cuba for more - including information on the independent trade unionists jailed for, well, unionising.  "Workers' paradise", eh?

Bob Crow and the RMT need to grow up.

It's over

With the issuing of this press release, the European People's Party group in the European Parliament has finally conceded, after seventeen acrimonious years and numerous rearguard actions to keep the party in the group, that its formal association with the Conservative Party is over.

A press release from Joseph Daul MEP, the President of EPP said:

"Today, [the group] went back to its roots as the Group of the European People's Party (EPP), following the departure of the British Conservative and Czech ODS MEPs... The EPP Group has proposed that Mr Barroso commits to a 5-year legislative pact based on the main priorities of the EPP Warsaw Manifesto".

Given that the EPP's Warsaw Manifesto commits the group to pushing for "the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty", maintaining Europe's bloated "Social Market Economy" and rejecting the "ideas of market fundamentalists", it strikes me as an ideal time to get out.

The new Conservative group in the European Parliament - one characterized by a belief in market liberalism, institutional reform and an Atlanticist approach to foreign policy - will sit formally for the first time on July 14th.

The Conservatives - and kingmakers - in the European Parliament

According to the provisional results of the European elections, the European People's Party group has captured 264 seats in Strasbourg, way ahead of the Party of European Socialists with 162 MEPs.

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party captured twenty six seats – the same amount as the Labour and UKIP combined.

As seasoned observers of the European Parliament will know, the trans-national political group structure operated in the European Parliament makes it virtually impossible for any one political party to secure an outright majority in the 736-seat chamber. 

As such, the system necessitates that informal 'coalitions' operate between two or more of the Parliament’s groupings in order to allocate positions such as the Presidency of the chamber, senior committee appointments and to pass legislation in plenary.

The scale of defeat

Even the BBC has been forced to admit it: “the Conservatives have been the big winners in the local elections”.

After yesterday’s results, the Labour Party has simply ceased to be competitive in vast swathes of the country.

In the East of England, the Labour Party has essentially become an irrelevance on a local government level. Across each of the seven local authorities polled in the region on Thursday, the Labour Party secured only 19 (or 3.9%) of the 481 seats on offer. Labour now holds only 1 seat on Essex County Council, 2 in Cambridgeshire, 3 in Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk and 7 in Bedford, a parliamentary seat they easily won at the 2005 general election. 

Based on these results, Labour faces across-the-board meltdown across this crucial region; from coastal seats such as Great Yarmouth and Waveney to the New Towns of Basildon, Stevenage and Harlow which delivered Labour 10,000+ majorities at the ’97 election.

In Kent, where Labour narrowly clung onto the parliamentary seats of Chatham and Aylesford, Dartford, Dover, Gillingham, Medway, Sittingbourne and Sheppey and South Thanet at the 2005 general election, the party’s representation in County Hall has dropped from 20 to 2 seats. Labour even faced defeat in previously rock-solid wards like Sheerness and Swanscombe and Greenhithe which stayed loyal to Labour throughout the dark days of the late 1970s - their vote dropping by in excess of 20%.

Labour’s unsavory allies

As we approach European Election Day on June 4th, we're going to have to get used to a succession of soon-to-be-unemployed government ministers criticising David Cameron’s decision to withdraw the party from the federalist European People’s Party group in the European Parliament.

They will, as Jonathan Isaby wrote yesterday, smear our new allies as extremists and allege that the party will soon be sitting in "splendid isolation" on the "lunatic fringes" of European politics.

The excellent Daniel Hannan has already blogged about the extremist positions adopted by many of our current partners in the EPP but, in the interest of fairness, I thought it only right to share a few quick examples of some of the Labour Party’s unsavoury allies in the pan-national Party of European Socialists.

Proinsias De Rossa MEP (Ireland)

Born Francis Ross, Proinsias De Rossa is PES MEP for the Dublin constituency and former member of the IRA. De Rossa was interned by the Irish government in the late 1950s for his involvement in the IRA’s border campaign – a campaign which caused the deaths of six British policemen.

Democratic Society Party (Turkey)

Despite being outside the European Union, the Party of the European Socialists has awarded the Turkish Democratic Society Party associate membership of their party. According to the European Union Institute for Security Studies, it is an “obvious secret that [the Democratic Society Party] is connected to the PKK, the militant terrorist organisation headed up by Abdullah Öcalan. Following a KPP terrorist attack in October 2007, Labour’s very own David Miliband had the following to say: “The PKK is trying to destroy the Turkish government's efforts to improve the situation of people in the south east of the country, provoke conflict between Turkey and Iraq and damage regional stability... I call on the international community to be unequivocal in its condemnation of PKK terrorism and to support Turkey in restoring stability”.

Self-Defence of the Republic (Poland)

The Self-Defence of the Republic party claims to represent the interests of poor, agricultural workers against big business. It is more famous, however, for the erratic behaviour of its leader Andrzej Lepper, the recipient of two honorary degrees from the anti-Semitic Interregional Academy of Personnel Management which counts, amongst others, American white supremacist David Duke as an honorary professor. According to the BBC, his party anthem once featured the line "this land is your land, this land is my land [and] we won't let anyone punch us in the face" – somewhat unsurprising, given Lepper’s multiple convictions for assault. The Party of the European Socialists welcomed a Self-Defence MEP into their grouping in December 2004.

Giulietto Chiesa MEP (Italy)

A former communist party official and television journalist, Giulietto Chiesa has sat with the British Labour delegation in the Party of European Socialists since 2006. Over the past five years, his parliamentary activities have largely focussed around organising screenings in Parliamentary buildings of his 9/11 conspiracy theory film “Zero” which alleges that the Pentagon was actually hit by a missile and that the Twin Towers were really detonated by explosives placed inside the building. Turning to other international events, Chiesa stated his opinion that “Russia did precisely what had to be done” during last year’s Georgia crisis.

...and how they treat the good guys

While we've already established that the Labour Party has some strange bedfellows, it's worth looking at how they treat those with a genuine commitment to rooting out corruption and exposing the wasting of taxpayers’ money.  

One example is Austria MEP Hans-Peter Martin.  First elected for 1999, Martin is a sincere pro-European who doesn't have a Eurosceptic bone in his body but was appalled by the widespread abuse of the parliamentary expenses system, where scores of MEPs 'signed in' for their daily allowance of nearly €300 before immediately heading home for the weekend.  Upon further investigation, Martin presented the then President of the European Parliament Pat Cox with evidence (including photographs) of more than 7,000 alleged expenses abuses.  Outraged at his behaviour, the Socialists in the European Parliament expelled him immediately.  Reform and rooting out corruption is, clearly, at the heart of everything the PES believes in...!

Richard Corbett MEP, spin doctor extraordinaire!

One of my favourite 'opposition' blogs is the irritating yet strangely compelling website of Richard Corbett MEP, Labour's Deputy Leader in the European Parliament and MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber.

His hysterical attacks our party ("swivel-eyed, nationalistic europhobes who are totally divorced from reality") and Eurosceptics across Europe ("Klaus's rant raises the noise level but loses the argument") make for genuinely entertaining reading.

In many ways the antithesis of spin, the bureaucrat-turned-MEP looks more like the proprietor of a second hand bookshop than a front-line politician. When it comes to writing blog posts, however, he proves that he can spin with the best of them.

In his latest blog post Corbett claims, during a recent canvassing session, to have "only encountered one Tory (who after a long chat, promised me to vote Labour for the first time in his life on June 4th)" and that "out on the doorsteps and streets in Yorkshire [the Labour Party] has been getting a remarkably good response from people". Amongst his many other pronouncements includes claims that the same Labour MEPs who voted to restrict the rights of British people to decide how many hours they work have passed legislation "leaving ordinary people with more money in their pocket"!

Perhaps the Euro-lovin' Mr Corbett has eaten one too many dodgy bowls of moules marinières?

Joking aside, Corbett is right on one thing: "The public is aware that there are substantial policy differences between Labour and the Conservatives... These differences do matter and people are becoming increasingly aware of them".

Need more proof of how important it is vote Conservative in the European elections on June 4th?! 

Derek Desperate

An amusing aside... I was just discussing the Derek Draper controversy with a friend via text message and was amused to see that my BlackBerry, upon having the characters for the word ''Draper'' inputted, is hell-bent on displaying the word ''desperate''. Given recent events, that name seems rather apt!

£80,000 per hour - close, but no cigar!

You may have noticed (although, being a story about something that happened in the European Parliament, you probably haven’t) that Bill Clinton made an appearance yesterday at the Party of the European Socialist’s annual Global Progressive Forum in Brussels.

Speaking for just under an hour, Clinton shared his views with delegates on the state of the world economy, climate change and international development. Other conference participants included former European Commissioner Pascal Lamy, former Democratic Presidential candidate Howard Dean and former Danish Prime Minister and PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen.

For sharing his views, it is widely rumoured in the corridors of the European Parliament that Clinton was paid the princely sum of £80,000 - the going rate for a one hour speech by the cigar-lovin’ former President.

At £150,000, a one hour speech plus fifteen minutes of media questions, was deemed too expensive for the PES to justify.

Clinton's fee was paid from a general fund replenished each year by the generous 'information allowance' slush fund provided by the Parliament - and then 'top sliced' by the individual political groupings - to each MEP.

Is this really the kind of thing, in the middle of the present economic crisis, that the Party of the European Socialists should be squandering taxpayers’ money on?

And given that we’ve spent the last week listening to socialist heads of government complaining about the economy collapsing due to unrestrained greed; why should an ethically-challenged former politician get paid £80,000 per hour from public funds; when bankers, operating in the private sector, have just been told (by these same politicians) they will have their pay and bonuses more-closely regulated (again, by these same politicians).

Welcome to the tawdry world of international socialism.

Who are the "leaders" of the Republican Party?

On 7th November 2006, the Republican Party lost control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Two years later, the party's presidential nominee John McCain was blown out the water by the young Illinois Senator Barack Obama by a margin of 365 electoral votes to 173. For the first time since 1994, the Republicans control none of American's three levers of governmental power.

The party, for all intents and purposes, lies in a state ruin; rudderless, leaderless.

Like the post-97 British Conservative Party, the numerous disparate voices clamouring for the affections of the party faithful - and the all-important independent voters - stike an imperfect cadence. The modernisers, the traditionalists, the small-staters, the big-staters, the religious conservatives, the urban liberals; the list is almost endless.

In this piece, I intend to explore some of the figures and influences who may help turn the fortunes of the Republican Party around after two of the most devastating election cycles in the party's history.

Arguments against nationalisation

A left-leaning Christian Democrat colleague has just fired over an interesting link to an blog post by Paul Krugman, a Keynesian economist who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, outlining the various anti-nationalization arguments abounding on centre-right blogs across the globe.

It's well worth a look.

Among the arguments Krugman outlines (and then promptly disagrees with), I find the following response to a blog post by Alan Blinder particularly interesting:

"...why can’t a bank just split itself, giving the bad stuff to one piece and the good stuff to the other? Because it has to divvy up the liabilities as well as the assets. And if it gives the bad bank (which isn’t solvent) a bunch of the liabilities, this amounts to defaulting on its debts — and the bondholders will sue. So the good bank-bad bank thing seems to implicitly carry the assumption that someone, namely you and me in our capacity as taxpayers, guarantees the bad bank’s liabilities"

While human beings are naturally hesitant to leave their comfort zones, Krugman's 'Conscience of a Liberal' blog is well worth the occasional browse.

Hugo Chávez cares nothing for human rights

International news coverage this morning was dominated by news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has won a narrow 54-46% victory in a national referendum approving the abolition of term limits for elected officials. The hard left are, predictably, cock-a-hoop at the victory of a "democrat" and "champion of the poor".

Less well publicised, however, is Chávez's decision on Sunday to expel Spanish Partido Popular MEP Luis Herrero, a guest of the opposition Un Nuevo Tiempo party, from the country.

According to the Miami Herald, Herrero was "shoved into a car, accompanied by about seven plainclothes policemen, driven to the airport and put on the next flight out" of Venezeula after describing Chávez as a "dictator" and voicing fears that he would engage in electoral fraud in order to rig the referendum in his favour.

Herrero's case is not an isolated one. In September, two representatives of Human Rights Watch were surrounded by twenty military police and forcibly deported from the country for launching this insightful report into Chávez's habitual abuses of civil society, the media, courts and organised labor. On a daily basis, numerous opposition members are beaten and their families intimidated for their refusal to blindly support Chávez and his crony-dominated government.

Chávez - and his naive supporters - may conceal his actions behind fig leaves of democracy but, in practice, his brand of personality politics and ruthless suppression of political opponents appears to be more closely modelled on the management style of Juan Perón than a more genuine (if occasionally misjudged) sincerity to reduce poverty such as that shown by the Lula government in Brazil.

Chávez may well have won the right to stand for another term but let's hope that - as with our own Labour Party - his fourth term eludes him.

Is there an international development "industry"?

There's an interesting post today from my friend Ben Harnwell on his insightful new Brussels Dispatch blog.

Reading his piece, it occurs to me that the huge army that exists to regulate international development would be out of their collective 'jobs' were the poor to actually become rich: their ideal world would be one in which increasing amounts of money needed to be regulated and disbursed - whilst the poor moved only incrementally forward in prosperity. Not too much to obviate the need for international support - but not too slow to fundamentally discredit the machinery.

Do take a look.

Please, let's have some consistency

I've seen Geert Wilders' film Fitna. I didn't think much of it.

It's distasteful, misleading and unneccessarily inflammatory. On top off that, I fear that in the hands of certain people the film could be used to stir up racial hatred and tensions that can only play into the hands of political extremists like the BNP.

That said, I've never believed that the way to tackle intolerance is to forcibly close down debate about unsavoury or uncomfortable topics. The way you defeat extremists is through an open, intelligent and reasoned public debate which highlights just how ludicrous their views really are.

By refusing Geert Wilders, an elected Member of Parliament from a democratic country like the Netherlands, entry into the United Kingdom all Jacqui Smith has done is raise awareness of his tawdry film (freely available following a three second Google search) and increase opportunities for the BNP to rail against the so-called "liberal elite" who defend our multi-ethnic society.

Wilders, as unedifying a man as he may be, does at least appear to be a democrat.  He has not called for the elimination of entire states and ethnicities or the forcible incorporation of any country into an Islamic caliphate.

The same cannot be said for many of the individuals this government has allowed to freely walk the streets of our towns and cities spreading their brand of debauched bile.  The names of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Abu Hamza al-Masri and Abu Qatada instantly spring to mind.  Similarly, the British government was less than forceful in its efforts to block Robert Mugabe from attending the European Union's Africa summit in Lisbon in December 2007, instead opting to stage a headline-snatching faux boycott of the meeting.

Please; let's have some consistency from Jacqui Smith and this Labour government.