CentreRight

You ain't seen nothing yet...

If you thought the Democratic primary cat-fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was getting nasty, you ain't seen nothing yet...

Let me direct you to the New Mexico Republican Senate primary between Republican Congressmen Heather Wilson and Steve Pearce to fill the seat of retiring Senator Pete Domenici which takes place tomorrow.

Behind in the polls, Wilson has just gone on air with an astonishing advert accusing Pearce of wanting to “cut off” social security benefits for orphans:

In response, Pearce has hit back with an ad accusing Wilson of being a "liberal" who votes to subsidise abortion clinics and supports moves to give illegal immigrants driving licences:

Are the Republicans as hell-bent on throwing away this seat away as they appear to be?   

Congressman Tom Udall, the sole Democratic candidate for the seat, leads both Wilson and Peace by double digit margins in early polling.

Only 24 days to go...

"The American President Americans have been waiting for"

John McCain has gone on air with the first television general election advert of the 2008 season; a sombre offering entitled "624787" which features footage of his time in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

The launch of this television ad coincides with the kick-off of McCain's high-profile 'Service to America' tour, a series of six speeches over the next week in places the Senator has lived and worked (Mississippi, Virginia, Maryland, Florida and Arizona) in order to highlight the experiences that have shaped his personal and political values. 

EDMs should be abolished

Given all recent controversy over Speaker Martin's refusal to reveal the expenses of Members of Parliament, it's only fair to give credit where credit's due and praise the Commons authorities for the publication of the costs associated with at least one aspect of Parliamentary business: Early Day Motions.

According to House of Commons Factsheet P3 published in February 2008, "the printing and publication costs associated with Early Day Motions in financial year 2005/06 were approximately £627,000" exclusive of the costs of "editorial preparation and control and electronic publication".

So, do we get value for money?  Judge for yourself.  Here are some of my 'favourite' EDM's tabled by Members of Parliament during this session of Parliament:

• Praise for Cornwall's Patron Saint, St Piran
• A celebration of Bruce Forsyth's contributions to broadcasting
• The need for YouTube to be "socially responsible"
• The failure of Oystercard machines to recognise Scottish banknotes
• The definition of a pint of beer
• The achievements of a Department Store in Colchester
• The work of Dolly Parton
• The 'Year of the Potato'

By my calculations, £627,000 is enough money to pay the annual salaries of 32 newly-qualified nurses, 31 trainee teachers and 20 junior doctors.

EDMs are expensive, wasteful and have potential to turn Parliament into a laughing stock.  They should be abolished.

Hillary's worst week

"Even if she doesn't realise it", David Brooks claims in his New York Times column today, Hillary Clinton has "just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign".

Despite conventional wisdom - and Hillary's increasing opinion poll lead in advance of the 22nd April Pennsylvania primary - suggesting that her campaign is finally getting back on track after months of ineptitude and failure, Brooks' three key arguments as to why her campaign is effectively over are fundamentally sound.

1. Team Hillary may well have been almost giddy with excitement at the negative press generated by video footage of Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright making allegedly anti-American remarks but his artful response to the controversy, a speech in which he addressed issues surrounding his faith and racial tensions in the United States, appears to have strengthened rather than damaged his campaign.  A poll conducted by CBS News shows that 71% of voters think Obama did "a good job explaining his relationship with Wright" with the number of people agreeing that Obama would "unite the country" increasing from 52% to 67% in the past month.  Nationwide polls show Obama continuing to hold a slim lead over Clinton.  Clearly, no lasting damage has been done.
2. Attempts to force a re-vote in the Hillary-friendly states of Michigan and Florida have stalled.  The Democratic National Committee has barred delegates from the two states from attending the Presidential nominating convention after violating the committee's rules on the timing of their primaries.  As a result of this, Hillary can kiss goodbye to securing the delegates of the country's 4th and 8th largest states.
3. Given that it is almost impossible for Hillary to win the nomination on the strength of primary votes even if she does win the remainder of the primaries by convincing margins, her campaign has become reliant on the support of ex-officio "superdelegates" (mainly party bosses, Senators and Congressmen).  As Brooks notes in his article, "superdelegates" have now coalesced around the view that "that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination". 

Give it up, Hillary.  It ain't going to happen.

You can view the whole piece here.

Does anyone care what they think?

Over at the Daily Telegraph, Daniel Hannan has penned a characteristically witty piece regarding Angela Merkel's upcoming visit to Ireland to campaign for a "yes" vote on the European Constitution Treaty of Lisbon.  Merkel is rumoured to believe her visit to the country will help bolster support for the pro-Constitution lobby. 

This draws my mind back to a conversation between British Lib Dem Graham Watson MEP (Chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) and the German socialist Martin Schultz MEP (Chairman of the Party of European Socialists) regarding the upcoming Italian elections relayed in the EU Observer last week:

Liberal leader Graham Watson said: "I should be down there right now, campaigning for Veltroni. I hope Martin Schultz will join me."

"I told Martin a while ago, 'We should go and do something in Italy,' and he said, 'Yup!'"

Does it not speak volumes for the hubris and profound sense of self-importance felt by European "leaders" that they believe their very presence on the campaign trail is, by default, beneficial to the candidate or cause they wish to support?  I can only see how finger-wagging rhetoric and condescending speeches from foreign leaders and obscure (outside of the European Parliament) MEPs can harm rather than strengthen any given political cause

Call me a cynic, but recent political history shows people most certainly do not like being told what to do.

Eliot Spitzer’s walk of shame

Further to Louise Bagshawe's earlier post on the rapidly-developing news this evening regarding New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's membership of an elite prostitution ring, I thought CentreRight visitors would be amused to see the following advert from Spitzer's successful 2006 election campaign. 

In an ultra-cheesy, all-American effort, Spitzer takes us on a journey down "Honesty Road", "Trustworthy Turnpike" and "Integrity Lane", concluding our journey at "Responsibility Road".  How ironic. 



Tonight, it's painfully apparent that New Yorker's think little of their Governor's sense of honesty, trustworthiness, integrity or honesty.

Hastily-compiled opinion polls show that more than three quarters of the Empire State's residents would like their Governor to resign immediately.

Lieutenant Governor David Paterson could be sworn in as New York's first black Governor later this evening.

Scary Stuff

In a final effort to try and salvage her faltering Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has gone on the air with what must be the scariest ad of this Presidential cycle:

Will it work?  Probably not.  At this stage, however, anything's worth a try...

Barack Obama: Foreign Policy Lightweight

In recent days, Barack Obama has been attacking John McCain on Afghanistan.

The United States, Obama argues, has taken its "eye off the ball" in the country, thus allowing Al-Qae'da forces to flourish in the mountain range bordering Pakistan. 

So, Senator Obama, as the the Chairman of the Senate Committee on European Affairs responsible for the oversight of NATO operations in Afghanistan, what have you done about it?

Nothing.

Sickening: 69 MPs back Parliamentary motion praising Fidel Castro

Searching through the House of Commons website this morning I was stunned to find that 69 members of Parliament (65 Labour, 2 Plaid Cymru, 1 LibDem and George Galloway) have put their names to a motion praising Fidel Castro.

The Early Day Motion, tabled by the habitually unpromoted, Castro-lover Colin Burgon (who, by the way, sits for a marginal seat) pays tribute to Castro's "achievements" in the field of healthcare and education - in the face, obviously, of the "the 44 year illegal US embargo of the Cuban economy" - and "the esteem in which Castro is held by the people and leaders of Africa, Asia and Latin America for leading the calls for emancipation of the world's poorest people from slavery, hunger and the denial of human rights".

I won't personally seek to offer any points of clarification on this issue but ask you instead to take a look at Danny Finkelstein's excellent article in the Times this morning for a full appraisal of the malevolence that has characterized the 49-year Castro regime:

"Let's eliminate from our inquiries the idea that Fidel was somehow better than the rest of them, better than Honecker and so forth. Those cigars, those battle fatigues, that beard. Kinda cool, no? No. Death sentences for those who want to flee, prison sentences for dissidents, gags for the press, jail for homosexuals, ruinous central planning for the economy, his support for a nuclear first strike against America, his opposition to any kind of reform, his four-hour long speeches, his personality cult. Fidel Castro was just like the rest of them"

I will never understand how any British Member of Parliament feels able to voice their support for such a cruel and undemocratic regime.

The full, grubby little list of signatories can be found below...

"Bush's brain" on Obama

After months of self-imposed exile at his Texas ranch, Karl Rove is back - and this time the focus of his fury is Barack Obama.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Rove launches an at times desperate-sounding attack on Obama, questioning his experience and ridiculing the attempts of his advisors to cast him as the “centrist” candidate.   

"For Mr. Obama, words are merely a means to hide a left-leaning agenda behind the cloak of centrist rhetoric... As voters see what his agenda is, his opponents can now far more effectively question his authenticity, credibility, record and fitness to be leader of the free world."

Read the whole article here.

The 10:07 train taught me that British society really is broken

I've always hated articles like the one I'm about to write. 

Every day, the newspapers are filled with reports of burglaries, vicious assaults on elderly men and women who dare to stand up to violent gangs and so on.  As an optimist,  I'd always let out a sigh of slight frustration at reading articles declaring Britain's society to be "broken" or discussing the "ASBO generation", thinking the examples offered in the pieces were merely one-off, tragic events.  Whilst isolated individuals had suffered problems at the hands of unruly youths, these were isolated.  I failed to believe that British society was genuinely as troubled as these writers claimed.

I hate to admit it: they were right and in my naivety, I was wrong.  Britain's society is broken and it took the 10:07 train to London Waterloo to prove that to me.

Obama is the Democratic nominee

There's a very interesting piece from Ben Smith over at The Politico highlighting a comment made by Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe regarding the now near-impossibility of Hillary Clinton securing the Democratic Presidential nomination:

"The only way she could do it is by winning most of the rest of the contests by 25 to 30 points.  Even the most creative math really does not get her, ever, back to even in terms of pledged delegates.  This is not about votes -- it's about delegates"

I think he's right.

For Clinton to even narrowly win the nomination she would have to capture around 60% of the remaining delegates with this figure increasing further if, as expected, Obama wins his birth state of Hawaii next week. 

Looking ahead to March - and mindful of the fact that Obama has so far trounced Clinton in Republican states - he is likely to carry Texas on 4th, Wyoming on 8th and Mississippi on 11th before moving on to victory in Indiana, North Carolina, Nebraska and Idaho in May.  Even though many polls still show Clinton with a (rapidly shrinking) lead in big states such as Ohio (March 4th) and Pennsylvania (April 22nd), she would have to carry these states by a vast margin to even get close to Obama in the delegate count. 

This race is as good as over: Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Rowan Williams must step down

I am not religious, I don't attend church and I don't claim to understand the intricacies of the scriptures of any religion. 

I am, however, convinced that Rowan Williams’ position as Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior of the British High Officers of State, is untenable following his remarks about the introduction of Sharia law in the United Kingdom.

It is a "bit of a danger", the Archbishop argued, for the United Kingdom to follow an "approach to law which says that there's one law for everybody".  The introduction of Sharia law, he stated, is "unavoidable". 

Minette Marin, writing in The Times this morning, puts it best:

“The danger, surely, is rather the archbishop and those who think like him, who seem unwilling to hold fast that which is good. What is good and best and essential about our society [is that it] isn’t merely a matter of “social identity” [but] the principle of equality before the law. That principle and its practice have made this country the outstandingly just and tolerant state it is; it is one of the last remaining forces for unity as well… Our law expresses and maintains the best virtues of our society. Anybody who does not accept it does not belong here”

I have no quarrel with those who support the principle of Sharia law (indeed it is unclear, given that its interpretation appears to vary from state to state, what exactly the system entails), only a belief that in the United Kingdom our many and varied cultural and religious communities must live under the one common law that has served the country so well for hundreds of years.  As Baroness Warsi correctly points out, existing abritaration mechanisms already exist under British law in order to take into account individual religious beliefs and cultural practices.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in advocating the introduction of distinct legal systems for individual religious groups that can only lead to division, distrust and divisive rhetoric from both the left and right of the political spectrum, has abdicated his responsibility to "speak authoritatively for the faith and witness of the Church".

He must step down, if not to safeguard the survival of his own church but to defend the future of the United Kingdom as the liberal, secular state I sincerely believe he hopes for.

Lessons from America: uniting the British conservative coalition

For the past week, I have been in Washington DC looking at some of the campaigning methods utilised by the American conservative and libertarian movements in order to promote their work and influence the policy process.  It will come as no surprise to hear me say that the British conservative movement has some catching up to do.

By far the most interesting meeting I attended during the week was Grover Norquist's Wednesday morning for influential members of the centre-right movement at the headquarters of Americans for Tax Reform.  Represented at the meeting were congressional candidates looking to fight marginal seats in the House of Representatives, think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, the Republican National Senatorial Committee and the Whitehouse. 

With a maximum contribution from each speaker of only three minutes, summing up their organisation's work over the past seven days, discussion was brief, free of what Bill O'Reilly calls "bloviation" and hugely informative. Sure, I didn't agree with or even feel comfortable with the content of every speaker's presentation but you couldn't help but leave the meeting impressed at the unity of purpose displayed by American's conservative coalition. 

"Hey", I heard one speaker call to another after the meeting, "really interesting point you made there about business deregulation, do you think we should put together a joint conference on that?".   Another attendee, clearly impressed at the strength of a congressional candidate’s presentation, offered his think tank’s help in exposing the pro-tax votes of his opponent. 

Websites such as ConservativeHome have gone a great way towards uniting the conservative coalition in the UK, but the British centre-right coalition - from Policy Exchange to Cornerstone, from the Adam Smith Institute to Conservative Way Forward - could do with working together much more.

Re: Why it's right to quit the EPP

Douglas Carswell is absolutely right to say that we must leave the EPP.  Daniel Hannan will not be crying any tears tonight at his apparent "expulsion" from the group for making what EPP Chairman Joseph Daul has preposterously described as "intolerable remarks". 

Drama aside, today's events are a mere sideshow. 

Attention must now turn to the formation of the new parliamentary grouping promised by David Cameron during the 2005 leadership election, a task delegated to the rock-solid Geoffrey Van Orden by the delegation's new leader, Giles Chichester. 

Following the "Malaga Agreement" signed following the 1999 European elections, Conservatives were led to believe they would be part of a technical grouping (the "European Democrats") which whilst sitting with the EPP for "strength of numbers" would possess their own funding streams and freedom to determine its own agenda and staffing arrangements.   After the 2004 elections, the ED element of the group was apparently boosted by the arrival of new MEPs from the Czech Republic and further promises of increased autonomy. 

To this day, the ED has no funding, no staff and no prospect of any in the near future.

The same promises made in 1999 and 2004 will be made in the run up to the 2009 elections as the EPP desperately – and disingenuously - attempts to keep their "allies", the British Conservatives, on board.

The Party must hold its nerve on leaving the EPP and not allow itself to again fall victim to the hollow promises of the Gaullist EPP. We need our own group.  Nothing more, nothing less.

The Invisible Man

I agree entirely with the sentiment of David Lidington MP's article regarding the necessity of engaging with the rapidly-expanding economies of the Gulf States.  Whilst I have immense reservations about the human rights situation in this region - particularly the abject lack of personal and political freedom in Saudi Arabia, the jailing of government opponents in Oman and Kuwait’s lack of affirmative action on the issue of human trafficking - the British government would indeed be foolhardy to ignore the enormous opportunities offered to the UK by our "old friends" in the Persian Gulf. 

I have to give it to Tony Blair; despite his tardiness in advocating abolition of reform of the EU's damaging trade barriers, he at least appeared to understand the importance of engaging with developing markets and promoting the future of the United Kingdom as an international trading power.

Speaking to friends around the world over the past few weeks, what our American friends pithily descibe as "the buzz" has been entirely focused on "that new French President", Nicolas Sarkozy.  Few have even heard of "that new Brit", Gordon Brown.

Consistency, thy name is Mitt Romney

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to spend as much as $40 million of his $250 million fortune on his campaign.  Is this the same Mitt Romney who once ruled out the possibility of self-financing his campaign as "akin to a nightmare"?

Is this the same Mitt Romney who once said that abortion should be "safe and legal" and now describes himself as "consistently pro-life"? 

Is this the same Mitt Romney who once angrily distanced himself from Ronald Reagan, stating he was an "independent during the time of Reagan/Bush and did not want to return to Reagan/Bush" and now praises the Gipper as "a president of strength"? 

Is this the same Mitt Romney who, when running for the US Senate in 1994, spoke of his desire to make "equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern" and whose website now features a commitment to pass a constitutional amendment "defining marriage as between one man and one woman"?

"Consistency", Oscar Wilde once said, "is the last refuge of the unimaginative".

Mitt Romney is clearly a man with a vivid imagination.

Why Ken Livingstone is not fit for office

Apologies for not posting this link earlier but I thought I'd share Nick Cohen's piece in this Sunday's Observer in which he launches an outspoken attack on Ken Livingstone, his "tawdry political history" and his "dubious allies".

Describing Ken as "unfit to be the Labour candidate for mayor of London", Cohen offers an interesting insight into the Mayor's links with far-left groups funded by Saddam Hussein and Socialist Action's grip on City Hall.

With the Boris/Ken catfight likely to be decided by only a few percentage points, Ken can certainly do without attacks of this sort from his supposed allies at The Grauniad.

Labour and the LibDems: what's going on?

Has anybody else noticed the overly conciliatory tone being struck by the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith towards the Liberal Democrats on Question Time this evening?

Less than twenty minutes into the programme, Smith has not only heralded the Lib Dem position on party funding (has she forgotten the Michael Brown affair?) but has also praised their "consistency" throughout the Northern Rock saga.  At the same time, she has repeatedly fired bitter, partisan salvos at Dr Liam Fox and Louise Bagshawe. 

Does this represent a shift in Labour strategy in terms of attempting to shore up dwindling LibDem support in order to undermine the huge steps forward the Conservatives have made in attracting their voters in the past eighteen months?

Should we be doing more to help online "subversives"?

Whilst researching the Belarusian regime, I stumbled upon a fascinating report published back in November 2006 by Reporters Without Borders detailing the "13 enemies of the internet".  The thirteen countries who are said to "systematically violate online free expression" are Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. 

Each of these sworn enemies of democracy, human rights and freedom of expression view the internet as a dangerous tool through which "subversives" are able to spread anti-government propaganda to the masses with relative ease.  China, for example, can easily and brutally disperse an opposition rally of 100,000 in Tiananmen Square but it is considerably more difficult to control what's accessed by 150,000,000 internet users, regardless of the sophisticated filtering technologies they employ.

Are Michigan Republicans about to kill off Mitt Romney’s presidential bid?

With a little less than four hours to go until the polls close in the Michigan Republican primary, the temperature at Mitt Romney’s HQ must be reaching fever point.

Following two hugely disappointing performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, states in which Romney spent tens of million dollars of his own money in an effort to score momentum-building wins in early-voting states, he now needs to win Michigan in order to keep his Presidential ambitions alive. 

With unemployment in the state running at 8%, largely as a result of the decline of the traditional industries which once made Michigan the manufacturing capital of the world, Romney has made much of his experience of turning around failing companies in an attempt to win the support of middle class blue-collar workers.