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Theresa May MP: The questions Harman still has to answer

This week must have felt like an eternity for the Prime Minister.  The David Abrahams story that broke last Sunday has got worse and worse for the Labour Party.  Gordon Brown will now be the second British prime minister, after Tony Blair, to be questioned by the police.  His general secretary had to resign.  His chief fundraiser is on the rack.  And several ministers are in a state of nervous exhaustion.

So let me deal today with my opposite number, Harriet Harman.

On Tuesday, I wrote to Harriet demanding that she make a statement in the House of Commons in order to answer a series of questions about the donation she received from Janet Kidd.  Unsurprisingly, the Leader of the House of Commons – who is responsible for deciding what business is taken in Parliament – chose not to take my offer up.  Moreover, she failed to reply to my letter.  And most importantly, she failed to answer virtually all of the questions.

Amongst the questions were:

Why did you accept a donation for your deputy leadership campaign on 4 July – almost two weeks after your campaign ended?

Given that you say that you received the donation after you stepped down from the Department of Constitutional Affairs, why did you declare it to the Permanent Secretary of the DCA?

Why did you make the declaration to the Permanent Secretary three months after your received the donation?

Louise Bagshawe: Football clubs must pay to protect rail passengers from yobs

Louise Bagshawe wants clubs to protect travelers from football hooligans.

It’s tempting to write another anti-Labour column today, but the words “fish” and “barrel” spring to mind. Instead I thought I might explore one aspect of the social responsibility agenda; what football clubs ought to be doing about hooligans on public transport.

David Cameron’s early speech on flexible working suggested that politics had a duty to change the culture; to change how businesses contribute to society, other than making profits, through exhortation and not regulation. A light touch is the Conservative way. Certainly, Cameron has had great success with this; environmental progress like biodegradable plastic bags on the one hand, and national attention to the issue of sexualised children’s clothing on the other. On a morning when it looks likely that football will be hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, I thought we might examine ways to encourage football clubs to increase their sense of social responsibility. Football is a game at the heart of our national life. The legendary Bill Shankly once said “"Football is not just a matter of life and death: it's much more important than that". Back in the bad old days, of course, there were a few occasions when football hooligans regrettably did use the beautiful game as an excuse for their ugly violence, and made it very much a matter of life and death. Thankfully, those days have long gone from English football. But there’s still a fair way to go. And one way I think football clubs could show a strong sense of corporate responsibility is by contributing to prevent anti-social behaviour caused by fans after the game.

I’m thinking particularly of safety on public transport.

Peter Franklin: We need a Cabinet Minister dedicated to delivering financial stability

In Britain, the quantity of banknotes and coins in circulation (plus certain Bank of England deposits) is known as M0. Higher M-numbers, such as M4, describe progressively broader definitions of the money supply. But I expect you knew that already. 

What you may not know is that there are negative M-numbers, which describe progressively narrower definitions of the money supply. For instance, minus M9 is the quantity of loose change currently stuck down the sides of the nation’s sofas – or, at least, it would be had I not just made it up.

Still, the sum of money thus taken out of circulation must be considerable – so much so that I have written to Alistair Darling urging him to consider the deflationary influence of soft furnishings on the British economy. So far, he has failed to reply to this or any of my letters – perhaps the green ink is putting him off. Next time, I’ll download my ideas onto a couple of CDs marked “really secret personal details of 25 million people” – which ought to get his attention.

Of course, the real prize would be to find the actual disks – which, you never know, could be lurking in the hidden recesses of your favourite armchair. So the next time you’re grubbing around for an errant fifty pence piece, have an extra good feel. It’s a longshot I grant you, but surely worth a try. I mean, just imagine if you found them!

If it were me, I’d send off the disks to our glorious leader, David ‘Dave’ Cameron, so that he could present them to Gordon Brown during PMQs. Either that or I’d auction them off to the highest bidder – probably the Russian mafia or maybe the promotions department at Readers’ Digest.

Andrew Lilico: On advisory juries

Juries have a surprisingly significant place in our cultural understanding of justice.  The trials of Socrates, of William Penn, of OJ Simpson, the refusal of juries to convict when death penalties would follow for adultery in the Commonwealth or for theft in the early nineteenth century, the dramas of 12 Angry Men or LA Law, the complexities of the Guinness Four or Louise Woodward cases — for the educated layman, these and other examples are branded into what we mean by due process.  In recent years, jury trial has taken on an added political dimension, as it has come to be seen as iconic of the struggle to sustain key British constitutional features against encroachment by Europhiles, leftist “modernisers”, and authoritarians.

One issue of recent interest has been precisely where it is best to draw the line between cases in which a jury trial is to be assumed or guaranteed (as opposed to being available, perhaps, upon appeal being granted to a higher court) and cases in which a judge (say, a magistrate) might hear a case without a jury.  Such a line has always existed, and it is a pragmatic question, into which issues such as expense or the threat of jury intimidation are normally thought to enter, where it should be drawn.  I would have much to say on the matter, but that is not what I want to talk about today.

On this occasion, I wish to focus on the recent debate as to whether certain sorts of cases are intrinsically unsuited to jury trial.  The kinds of cases people have in mind are those that turn crucially upon sometimes very involved expert evidence —fraud trials are perhaps the most well-known examples, though child abuse cases are also relevant, as would presumably be future criminal cases of alleged cartels.  The idea of the jury sceptic is that juries are fundamentally ill-suited to arbitrating in such cases, because understanding them requires either a level of technical expertise that juries do not have, or a degree of experience in listening to such evidence that juries do not have.  If the jury simply cannot understand the case properly, how can it come to a useful verdict?  Given these pragmatic vices of a jury, might it not, so the thought goes, be better to have a suitably expert judge, or perhaps a panel of suitably expert judges, come up with the verdict?

Stephan Shakespeare is away

Graeme Archer: Sex and the Single Woman

I know, I know: ID fiasco, Darling’s lies to the House about who’s to blame, broken military covenant, part-time defence secretaries, more foot-and-mouth (government sponsored!), Lord West publicly recanting his thoughtcrime (he loves the Big Clunking Fist, for ever), Charlie Whelan’s sad delusions printed in the Telegraph and 24 billion of our Earth Pounds being pumped into Northern Wreck (so presumably there’ll be no more rubbish about Tory “black holes”?). It’s almost Wagnerian in its horror, innit? Let’s close our eyes and pretend this government never happened. It is Sunday, after all. That’s better. And breathe out.

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The government has said that IVF should be available to single women and lesbian couples who want to have a child “of their own”, without involving anything as retro as a man. I nearly didn’t write about this, because I feel so strongly about it (which makes me suspicious of my motives); also I noticed what might look like an internal inconsistency in my reasoning, and, maybe, because I feared you would think “what’s it got to do with him?”, given that the closest I’ll ever come to child-rearing is the odd occasion we drag Keith’s nieces and nephews around London (“Can we go to Macdonald’s?” “No.” “I hate you. You’re a man and you’re married to my uncle. Ha ha ha ha ha … ” “Chicken-bits-burger or cow-bits-burger?”). Then a friend pointed me to this article on the BBC website, and I read, with a sense of outrage, this piece of anti-male orthodoxy from Carol Sarler in the Times and I thought, this is getting ridiculous.

Deliberately creating babies in the absence of a father is a terrible proposal and no matter how often I deleted my scribbled thoughts about it this week, I kept coming back to it. I can think of statistical, evolutionary and cultural reasons to reject the proposal.

The potential inconsistency in my reasoning is that I am a supporter of the legislation which requires adoption agencies to consider gay couples as adoptive families for the children in their (the agencies’) care. Yet I find the concept of gay couples or single women engineering the creation of a child through IVF – if I’m honest – repulsive. After careful thought, and some statistical reasoning, I don’t find this an inconsistency. The difference is between what statisticians call marginal and conditional inference, about the outcomes for the child. Children who need families exist, now, and it seems to me to be impossible to say, with complete certainty, “none of those children could ever be raised well by a gay couple”. We have to condition on the existence of the child, and consider the options available to him or her: there is at least a finite probability that the child would be better off in a gay family than would be the case were he or she left in institutional care (and we know that no child would be so placed unless he or she would benefit). This is the conditional inference – a posteriori – conditional on the existence of the child. However, before a child is born – a priori – we cannot make specific inference about his or her outcomes (because he or she doesn’t exist): we can only make marginal inference, averaged over the population – an estimate of the outcomes for an as yet theoretical, but definitely fatherless, child. And we’ve got enough evidence now, haven’t we, that the average outcomes for fatherless children are bad enough for us not to seek to increase the number of children in the fatherless pool? Haven’t we?

I have sympathy, I am human, of course I have sympathy, for women who are driven by an intense biological longing to be a mother. That need, however strong it may be, does not overwhelm my distaste at willingly creating a child whose likely life outcome is profoundly at a disadvantage vis-à-vis those for a child born to a mother and father. To do a quick Richard Dawkins impersonation, there must be an evolutionary requirement for some people to be childless (it’s my favourite theory for homosexuality too), because such people (infertile heterosexuals, gay people) exist, generation after generation. My theory is that we require surplus (childless) adults, in order to enable the tribe as a whole to continue to thrive, because there’s not much more physically demanding than raising children. It requires on average slightly more than two people, in fact. That’s also why I find it ridiculous to read those articles by lazy journalists, bemoaning the fact that people with children sometimes get a bit of slack cut them at work, slack which, of course, the childless tend to pick up, as though those of us without children don’t benefit in any way at all from the raising of a generation of well-rounded children. What’s the alternative, anyway? That we encourage people to stop having children, so they can put in longer hours in the office? And that would lead to what, precisely, for a culture? Exactly. It leads to where we are now.

It is this cultural impact of fatherlessness which troubles me the most. Accepted, I have no paternal longings of my own; but like all of you, I had a father, and, like many of you, I can compare existence when he was alive with existence, now, without him. I think of him every time I cross London Fields to go to the Lido and see men kicking leaves for their children; I think of him every time I’m sat upstairs on the no.26, listening with half an ear to the tipsy, happy men phoning home to explain their lateness; I wonder if he would like Belle and Sebastian; I wonder what he would advise me to do about work (not that I’d listen, not at first, anyway); I think of him when Keith and I are falling about with laughter and then I wish, I wish every day, that he could meet Keith. I dream he’s alive quite often, and I suppose, in the sense that I am alive, and am a product of his love, that he is, metaphorically at least, still here. I told you before: most that is good in me, comes from my father. So. I’m unusual? I don’t think so. How can it be contemplated to willingly produce children – particularly boys – who will never have the love of a father?

I’ve written on a similar theme before, so apologies for the thematic repetition, but the educational and societal outcomes of the marginalisation of the male from families is all around us: and the government’s “solution” is to offer more of it? Society needs more children without fathers? Boys need less paternal input to their upbringing? Time for more deep breathing.

Cameron Watt: Time for a Treatment Tax on Alcohol

Cameron Watt is Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Justice; he writes here in a personal capacity.

Around 12 million people in the UK are dependent on alcohol, or drink at dangerous levels. Thirty times more citizens have a drink problem than the 400,000 abusing hard drugs. Few readers will be well acquainted with a heroin addict; almost all of us have at least one friend or family member who has had a serious drink problem.

Of course drinkers immensely damage their health. Alcohol is now responsible for four times as many deaths as illegal drugs. Nearly half our 14-15 year-olds, and a quarter of all men, binge drink at least once each month. Alcohol related death and disease has doubled in 25 years. And while they’re wrecking their health, problem drinkers make life miserable for the rest of us. Half of all assaults and most night-time admissions to hospital are drink-related.

Why has there been such a steep rise in consumption? For a start, booze is 50% cheaper in real terms than it was 25 years ago. Alcohol is also more easily available than ever before through a massive growth in the concentration of pubs and clubs in town centres, along with 24-hour access in many supermarkets. What was once a male and pub dominated drinking culture now warmly embraces women, adolescents and children. As a nation, we seem to have imbibed the advice of those 1970s ads, “Any time, any place, anywhere…”, even if Martini is no longer the tipple of choice.

The Social Justice Policy Group’s final report, Breakthrough Britain was published in July. Its 191 proposals to tackle five key areas of social breakdown were warmly received, both inside and outside the party, with one notable exception: the treatment tax.

Theresa May MP: What does this Government actually know?

If October was a bad month for the Prime Minister, November is turning into a nightmare.

This week, the Government revealed that it has no idea where the CDs containing the personal details of 25 million people are.  But it was just one of three stories this week where the public was left wondering: what exactly does this Government know?

1. They don’t know where the discs are

So the Government loses the personal details of 25 million men, women and children.  The Prime Minister says he “profoundly regrets” what has happened.  But that’s not much consolation to the millions of families who have been left following Alistair Darling’s advice to “check their bank statements”.

And, typically for this Government, we’ve had denial and spin.  The denial came from the Prime Minister.  He claimed that the fiasco was for ‘operational’ reasons rather than ‘systemic’ failure.  But according to a written answer just three weeks ago, there were 2,111 security breaches at HMRC last year.  This latest incident was the third in a recent string of embarrassing events.  And there are reports that two more CDs are missing.  Make no mistake – this was down to systemic failure in HMRC – a department set up by Gordon Brown himself.

The spin came from Alistair Darling.  He hadn’t told Parliament immediately, we were told, because the banks wanted enough time to put “appropriate safeguards” in place.  He said “the banks were adamant that they wanted as much time as possible to prepare for this announcement”.  But the British Bankers Association said: “None of our members asked for any extra time.”

He also told us that the fatal decisions in HMRC were taken by “junior officials”.  But we now know that it was a ‘Senior Business Manager’ who took the decision to put the information onto the discs, and it was done with the knowledge of the ‘Assistant Director of HMRC, Process Owner for Tax Credits and Child Benefits’. 

The Chancellor’s version of events lies in tatters.  And meanwhile, they still don’t know where those discs are.

Louise Bagshawe: Nine questions for a Government that is falling apart

Louise Bagshawe argues that Brown and Darling must come clean with the public.

Today is a special day in the LoCicero (my married name) house. It’s my daughter’s birthday, and it’s Thanksgiving. Since my husband and three children are Americans, we celebrate the holiday. Under ordinary circumstances, this column would have been an unfashionably warm tribute to our foremost ally and the second greatest nation in the world, the United States.

But these are not ordinary circumstances. Labour is falling apart. It is catastrophic for the nation to have to be ruled by such a bunch of incompetents.  A few weeks back, I was writing about the election that wasn’t on the day it ought to have been called. Back then all PPCs were lamenting that we’d have to wait another two years, or more, to get this government out. I am starting to wonder if that is accurate. I am starting to wonder if the government will not fall over this.

Today there are multiple questions the Prime Minister and the Chancellor need to answer over successive policy disasters. Not all of them relate to Datagate.

1. Did the Chancellor mislead the House of Commons?

In his mind-blowing statement to MPs on Tuesday, Alastair Darling stated that the announcement that 25 million personal details were lost in the post had been delayed so that banks could put in place security procedures. He repeated this several times. But the Telegraph reports today:

“The British Banking Association said: "The BBA did not ask for more time and none of our members asked for more time."  The Association of Payment Clearing Services, which manages the movement of money between banks, said: "We found out on Friday and were given until Monday to sort it out. There was no request for a delay."

Peter Franklin: Consensus confounded

Far from merging in the middle, British politics stands on the brink of a historic divide.

It is said that Gordon Brown is always on the lookout for a political dividing line – that is, something that might put him on the winning side of an argument, with David Cameron on the other. This might take the form of an issue, such as the extended detention without trial of terrorist suspects; alternatively, there may be no policy content at all – merely a stunt of some sort, such as Gordon’s GOAT (government of all talents).

If you ask me, I’d say that the Prime Minister is no more convinced of Britain’s need for 56 day detention than he is of the Labour Party’s need for Quentin Davies – it’s just that he calculated that the fissures thus created would leave his opponents on the shakiest ground. Luckily for us, he’s the one that got rumbled, his high minded proclamations of a new kind of politics exposed as petty gamesmanship. And yet there is something to be said for his approach. What he almost understands, and various Tory strategists have utterly failed to grasp, is that success in politics is not about you moving to the middle ground – it’s about defining the dividing lines that put the middle ground where you want it to be.

For instance, for most of the 20th century the great divide in British politics was over state control of the economy. On one side of the line was the Left, in favour of state control; on the other side was the Right, in favour of free enterprise. Under Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative were able to highlight the growing economic opportunities offered by the market, making it increasingly clear as to which was the winning side.

This is something that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair understood when they started New Labour. However, they did a lot more than simply cross the old divide. They surveyed the new political territory they found themselves in and drew a new dividing line right across it. This was the divide between private gain and the common good, with themselves on the side of the latter. Where once there had only been Left and Right, there was now a Third Way – in favour of free enterprise and the common good.

Andrew Lilico: Why trade is green

I decided to have roast lamb for dinner on Sunday.  I had my fourteen-year-old at the supermarket with me, and when I reached for the delicious New Zealand leg joint we later enjoyed, he scolded me thus: “But Dad!  That’s from New Zealand!  That’s so environmentally unfriendly — why not get the British lamb over there?”  I was therefore obliged to offer him an extended discourse upon why, in fact, purchasing the sort of products we import into Britain is typically more environmentally friendly than buying the domestic variant, not less.  Since my son’s error is a common one, and even seems to be drifting into policy formation, I thought I would explain my thinking to you, Dear Readers.

The fundamental basis of trade was set out by David Ricardo, more than a century-and-a-half ago.  Economists call it by the intimidating title of the “Theory of Comparative Advantage”, but the idea is actually very simple and intuitive, and comes down to the same concept as Henry Ford’s famous “division of labour” — indeed, it is the main basis of all commerce, whether international or domestic.  The idea is this: People (and countries) differ in their relative capacities.  One of us might be, say, an excellent farmer but only moderately good at designing pension schemes.  Another might be moderately good at both farming and pension scheme design.  If the person with the relatively greater skill in farming specialises in that, and offers for trade the extra food she produces through this specialisation, then the person that is moderately good at each can focus on pension scheme design (eschewing farming) and trade the extra pension schemes he has time to produce in exchange for food.  Trade allows us each to focus on our area of relative (or “comparative”) advantage.

So if in trading with New Zealand the Britons find that New Zealand sells us lamb, what that means is that New Zealand is relatively better at producing lamb.  Let’s strip away the complexities here and say that what it means is that lamb produced in New Zealand is, for the same quality, cheaper.  What does “cheaper” mean?  Again, setting aside certain complexities, it means “produced employing fewer resources” — less land, less energy, fewer minerals, fewer trees felled, and so on.  But what about the fact that the New Zealand lamb is produced in New Zealand, and so has to be transported all the way here?  Doesn’t that destroy the argument?  Typically not.  For the price of New Zealand lamb sold in Britain incorporates the cost of transporting it to Britain.  So if the lamb imported into Britain is cheaper than the British variant (for the same quality), that means that, even after allowing for the costs of transporting it, New Zealand lamb is produced using fewer resources than is its British alternate.

Stephan Shakespeare: Politics is still a matter of life and death

British society today is less divided, less ideological; there are no deep rifts in the public mind on basic policy issues or on values or on control; therefore politics is about personality, and winning elections is about mood music. So runs the familiar argument. As far as it goes, it has some validity.

Here’s an alternative angle: all life on earth is programmed for survival and dominance. Everything that really matters is therefore seen through the lens of “what difference will it make for me and my family?” It sometimes feels as if politics has gone pleasantly to sleep, but that can’t be right. If politics matters then it must be about survival and dominance, it must be a never-ending battle.

Maybe politics is no longer the medium for things that really matter? In a world of technocrats, have all the real decisions moved to another level? Certainly with interactive media there has been a huge growth of consumer power, and people are less subject to top-down government. But the politicians still have one basic power: To take something from us and give us something back.

They take some of our freedoms, and give back protections. They take some of our money, and they give back services. They command resources, and they redistribute them. How they do this is vitally important. Rely on an inefficient health service, and you’re more likely to die. Send your kids to a failing school, and you slash their chances of thriving. Politics creates our environment in a very basic, life-and-death way.

Graeme Archer: Common People

Monday 12 November, 7pm

So. I’m sat on this bus, heading up the Kingsland Road, the No. 242. I’ve never been on this bus before and I’ve never been so far up the Kingsland Road either: we’re about to go through Clapton, or so the very annoying, omnipresent Machine Voice keeps informing me. I’m going to the Homerton hospital, to visit John.

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About twenty minutes ago I was sat outside Caffe Nero on Bishopsgate, finishing off some “urgent” memo and then emailing it to my boss in Italy. One of the very few good aspects of modern life: wifi. Two years ago I’d have had to stay in Harlow until I’d finished work, and I’d not have had time to get to the hospital. Now I can draw my graphs and conclusions on the train, then email them from nearly every café in the City. When I was negotiating for my current position at work, I demanded: a huge pay rise; and –  I wanna be a vice-president; and – I want the smallest laptop money can buy. Well. I got the laptop. Two gay men sit down at the table behind me and instantly irritate me. Their conversation is about parties in New York and the emails they’d just sent each other from their iPhones. I want to shout Why don’t I get asked to parties? Why am I sat here drawing ****ing graphs? What happened to that youthful promise? Then I remember Mr Keith waiting at home for me, and where I’m going in a minute, and feel bad.

Cameron Watt on the Second 'Conservatives for Social Justice' international gathering

I have spent most of this week in Washington DC with Tim Montgomerie, Philippa Stroud and like-minded conservatives from the US, Canada and New Zealand.

Tuesday 13 November

Arriving at Dulles late afternoon, we face the usual hour long wait to clear passport control. Tim, whose flight landed ten minutes after ours, conscientiously declines the opportunity to save himself half an hour by ducking under the barrier to join us further up the queue.  I suppose the resulting extra delay is a small price to pay for maintaining our Editor’s integrity.

On leaving the airport, it’s uplifting to see that a new lounge has just opened for the exclusive use of American servicemen and their families. Can you imagine that at Heathrow? Later in the week at a shopping mall, I notice mobile phone provider Cingular is offering special deals to service personnel. BAA and Vodafone – please take note.

Wednesday 14 November

Philippa and I begin our day meeting Bob Woodson at his Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. A veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, Bob left when he felt middle-class black Americans were using it to seek privilege from cultivating the status of victims. CNE works with community leaders based in many of America’s toughest urban areas, building their capacity through training and introductions to donors.

A man of sound conservative convictions, Bob’s network of grassroots poverty-fighters helped provide Newt Gingrich with the justification he needed to pioneer the 1996 federal welfare reforms. They told Gingrich that recipients of welfare in the communities they served would benefit most from a time limit on entitlement of just two years. The five year limit eventually settled seems rather generous in comparison.

Theresa May MP: Protecting women from sexual violence

All too often, politicians shy away from the difficult decisions and sensitive issues.  I think that’s why there was so much media interest in what David Cameron and I announced about tackling rape and sexual violence on Monday.  For too long, it’s been an issue that politicians have failed to confront, and the results are clear to see.  Too many young men think that it is ok to force themselves on women; too few rape victims get the support that they need; and too many fail to see justice done.

Consent

Several surveys have shown that, when it comes to respecting a woman’s right to say ‘no’, Britain is going backwards, rather than forwards.  According to a recent study by Amnesty International:

• 27 per cent think it is acceptable for a boy to “expect to have sex with a girl” if the girl has been “very flirtatious”.
• The same view is held by eight per cent of young people if the boy had “spent a lot if time and money” on the girl.
• Eleven per cent think it is acceptable for a boy to expect to have sex if sexual activity had been initiated and the boy was “really turned on”.

This evidence is deeply disturbing, and we need to do something about it.  We believe that the education system should educate young men and women about sexual consent. A Conservative government will therefore make it compulsory for the teaching of sexual consent to be part of the sex education curriculum. Where sex education is taught in schools, it will be mandatory that sexual consent is discussed – including an emphasis on empowering young people to say no to sex and resist peer pressure regarding sexual matters.

Louise Bagshawe: The collapse of the police force

Cast your mind back to when David Cameron was first elected leader of our party. He did a number of things that shocked the media commentariat, and announced that he would be a new kind of Conservative. Of course, in his victory speech he said that he would act to end the scandal of women’s under-representation in the parliamentary party; and speaking as a beneficiary, I am grateful for that. But a few weeks later, he moved on to another sacred cow. He let it be known that he would not stop at reforming the police; and that acknowledging that they did a difficult job, a brave job in difficult circumstances, should not stop politicians from criticising and questioning them. One of the most heartening, bold, and potentially life-changing policies David Cameron has come up with is his pledge to give local people control over their police force.

For one thing is certain. The police are a pillar of our society. And Labour has weakened that pillar. Under Labour, the police are centralised, ineffective, under-resourced, and politicised. The utter collapse of the police force is a national scandal. When I see Ken Livingstone and Jacqui Smith defend Sir Ian Blair, the poster boy for poor, politicised policing (try saying that after a glass of wine), it seems fitting; an execrable government defending the indefensible.

Peter Franklin: That's enough fascists, thank you

Once upon a time the insult-of-choice for the acne-ridden juvenile lefty was “fascist!” – which could be applied without thought to just about anyone in authority. As a tendency it was brilliantly caricatured by the Rik Mayall character in the Young Ones, who’d spit out the f-word at all and sundry.

In the real world the young ones are getting on a bit, and the teenage Marxists of yesteryear now find that it is they who fill the positions of authority – the truth having long dawned upon them that a sensible degree of order and discipline does not in fact amount to the horrors of fascism. However, while the zits of the new establishment may have disappeared, the language of leftwing abuse lives on – by virtue of a remarkable migration across the political spectrum:

If someone calls you a fascist these days, and you’re not in fact of the goose-stepping persuasion, then the likelihood is that your accuser is a rightwing polemicist. For instance, should you have the temerity to deplore the rise in, say, obesity or excessive alcohol consumption, then it’s not because you’re concerned about the well-being of your fellow citizens, it’s because you’re a ‘health fascist’. Now, as I recall, the real fascists weren’t that bothered about the health of their victims; so perhaps equating Dr Gillian McKeith with Dr Josef Mengele is just a tad inappropriate.

Andrew Lilico: The reform of state marriage

Certain elements in the Conservative Party today exhibit strong libertarian instincts.  One manifestation of these is suspicion about the appetite of David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith and others to endorse marriage in various ways.  One hears questions along the lines of "Whether two people get married and whether those two people stay married doesn't really warrant state intrusion - why is cohabiting "worse" than marriage?"

Those who cohabit are simply imprudently married, in my view (as indeed is the view of the government, with its recent proposals of extending marriage rights to cohabitees), so I shall simply employ the language of "married" rather than saying "married/cohabiting" etc..  Then the question becomes "Why should the state take an interest in the details of people's marriages?"

States have always taken a close interest in whether two people should be married and whether they should stay married. States offer marriage contracts; stipulate conditions for divorce; restrict the numbers and nature of people one can marry; make the level of welfare benefits and taxes dependent on whether or not one is married; regulate adoption of children according to marital status; make inheritance after death dependent on marital status; adjust their assessments of rape and violence dependent on marital status; and many other things.

Why? Many reasons. But here I shall offer just five.

Stephan Shakespeare: Get going now, Boris

Last week ConservativeHome noted how CCHQ was concerned at "drift" in Boris Johnson's campaign. Since when we have received numerous examples of a stalling campaign.  In his regular Monday column, Stephan Shakespeare calls on the Tories' Mayoral candidate to demonstrate discipline and courage now.

As a big fan of Boris, I’m getting worried. A while back I wrote that Boris could beat Livingstone and be a good Mayor, but that he needed a ‘Prince Hal Moment’ – where he rejects his bumbling comedic character just as Prince Henry rejects Falstaff to make himself fit to be King. That hasn’t happened. I’m beginning to suspect that dear old Boris thinks it’s enough to be dear old Boris.

There are two types of politician. The one who enters the arena because he or she really wants to change something, driven by a sense of injustice to fight for the people, angered by the stupidity or greed or fear in the affairs of man to order things in a better way, believing against the odds in a vision of how to make the world better - not just by gracing it with his superior grace and wisdom, but by putting everything at the service of progress.

And then there is the type of politician who is driven by mere desire for the job, by simple vanity, a self-admiring impulse to sit in the top seat, or because it’s a jolly good wheeze.

I’m hoping, and I still believe, that Boris is of the first type. London desperately needs a champion who is appalled at the waste and the organisational mess and who wants to change it because he knows that it’s the poor that pay for it with crappy lives. A champion who understands how criminally disproportionate is the slice of the tax-take from Londoners’ pockets that is exported to prop up failure in other parts of the country; who knows that the glittering success of the capital obscures the miserable lives of so many of its citizens.

Graeme Archer's column will return next week

Cameron Watt: The Education Dividend – in praise of co-operative schools

Thursday was a good day. I awoke from my slumbers to hear the CSJ’s Breakthrough Manchester report leading the news bulletins on Five Live Breakfast. (Aren’t Nicky and Sheelagh great? I could never stomach John Humphrys’ rudeness or Jim Naughtie’s pomposity first thing in the morning.) What’s more, Nicky gave the report a fair hearing, acknowledging Iain Duncan Smith’s serious work on social justice.

Unlike the Labour councillor from Manchester City Council, Nicky’s guests from the city’s hard-pressed communities were not interested in attacking us. They were eager to discuss the pressing issues highlighted in the report. Gun crime is up 10% in the last year. For all the prosperity of the city centre, 30% of working-age adults are on out-of-work benefits – 50% higher than the national average. Only 29% of pupils in Manchester’s schools achieved five good GCSEs (including maths and English) last year, compared to the English average of 46%.

However David Cameron and IDS did not want to dwell on Labour’s failures when they met with local charities at a community hub in central Manchester. The CSJ presented Breakthrough Britain and its proposals for tackling social breakdown. In his speech, David Cameron set out his vision for ‘co-operative schools’ to play a major role in reversing educational failure.

Louise Bagshawe's blogroll

I’m afraid my young son had a tremendous coughing fit yesterday night and I didn’t get time to write a column this week. So as a substitute, I thought I might do a blogroll and pick out a few of the sites I read on a regular basis. As a novelist I always have the internet open in the background, and these are some of the sites I read during my probably too frequent coffee-breaks...

Political Betting: Simply the best website around for poll analysis. Updates frequently, main post up early in the morning. Attracts commenters from across the political spectrum, and thus unique in the world of political blogging

Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes: No introduction needed:.

Ben Brogan This guy is the ultimate Westminster insider. Gets poll news first. Usually doesn’t update in the early morning.

Anthony Wells: Brilliant polling site. Constituency discussions on each individual seat. Again, commenters from across the spectrum but Anthony’s analysis is the draw here – that and the individual seat analysis, which is not copied.

Theresa May: The Marginal Seats (Gerrymandering etc) Bill

Last weekend, in previewing the Queen’s Speech, Jack Straw said that the Labour Party was “despondent” and that they needed a good week to “get out of this rut”.  And I think with a programme that borrowed yet more Conservative policies (take flexible working), demonstrated Gordon Brown’s weakness (watch that shaking hand), and proved his lack of vision, it is clear that Labour are still very much in a rut.  But instead of writing another critique of our flailing Prime Minister (I’ve done enough of that recently), I want to write this week about one of Labour’s proposals in particular: the Marginal Seats (Gerrymandering etc) Bill.

Of course, the bill I’m referring to isn’t called that – but it might as well be.  What the Queen’s Speech actually said was that the Government will bring forward proposals “on the regulation of party funding and expenditure” in due course.  There is every need for reform – but what do Labour actually want to change with their proposed new law?   

We are clear about what we want: this includes a cap on donations from individuals, trade unions, corporations and institutions; tax relief on small donations; a ban on loans except from financial institutions on commercial terms; and lower caps on election expenditure.

Peter Franklin's column will return next week

Andrew Lilico: Why I am not a "liberal Conservative" in foreign policy

I believe in duty-driven imperialism. This isn’t quite the same as being a neo-con, as I shall explain in a moment, but since the difference relates to what happens after one topples wicked, corrupt and oppressive regimes, I wasn’t expecting it to result in any practical disagreement between myself and the Conservative leadership (whom I understood until only a couple of weeks ago to be, for practical purposes, straightforward post-Iraq neo-cons of the Rumsfeld (you can intervene to destroy oppressors but you shouldn’t imagine you can build a democracy afterwards) type, as opposed to the pre-Iraq Wolfowitz (by creating a democracy in Iraq, we can create a virtuous domino effect across the Middle East) type). Alas! I was wrong.

Belief in duty-driven imperialism has two components: the "neo-con instinct" and the "you break it, you own it principle." Here is how I understand the neo-con instinct: If you lived in a country with no police force, and your neighbour regularly beat up his wife and children, and you were bigger and stronger than he were and could go round and stop him, what should you do? Perhaps you would say the following:

"So long as he sticks to beating up his family inside his own house, he is no threat to me. If I go round to stop him something may go wrong and he might hurt me, or his family may get hurt during my fight with him. Furthermore, other people in the street may come out and complain and I shall get a bad reputation as a bully. So best to leave him alone unless and until he represents any material threat to me."

If this is your attitude, then I shall call you a "realist". I shall also think you selfish and dishonourable.

Stephan Shakespeare: Barn owl sings the Blues

We like to think of ourselves as analytical creatures, capable of taking complex data and making sense of it. I think that’s a fair claim, although very often it’s an inversion of what we mean. We do indeed constantly analyse, comparing small bits of new data to the mass of previously categorized data in our memories, and that is what perception is. When we proudly speak of our analytical abilities, we generally mean something different from plain moment-by-moment perception: we mean producing some grander design. This, I think, is usually an illusion.

Whether or not we consider ourselves ‘musical’, we all have an incredibly advanced ability to process sounds in terms of pitch, rhythm, timbre, and so forth. Even if we can’t sing in tune, we can recognise the distinctive profile of overtones that distinguish the sound of a violin from a piano. (Any note produced by an instrument has a basic pitch and many overtones, that is, additional higher-frequency pitches, of which some louder and some softer, creating a pattern that is the particular sound of a particular instrument).

In fact our recognition of those overtone profiles is so automated once we get beyond early childhood that if we are played only the overtones without the fundamental note, we create the fundamental in our own mind – we hear the fundamental note as if it had been actually played.

Sound recognition is one of the few areas where we can map firing neurons precisely to an outside stimulus, in this case particular notes. In fact, they fire at the same rate as the frequency of the note. We can see what note is being ‘heard’ by the particular part of the brain that is firing. This allows an astonishing trick (I highly recommend “This is your brain on music” by Dr Daniel J Levitin, for a proper explication). Electrodes were placed in part of a barn owl’s brain, and it was played the ‘Blue Danube Waltz’ using tones which excluded the fundamentals (that is, the basic part of the note). In other words, only the overtones were played. Now, by the process previously described, known as ‘restoring the fundamentals’, the owl’s brain produced the missing parts of the tone. And as this meant the neurons firing at the exact rate of the frequencies of the missing notes, it meant that by amplifying what was picked up by the electrodes, the missing fundamentals could now be heard as a playback from the owl’s brain.

Graeme Archer: The Time of the Angels

Friday 2 November

I write a lot about London Fields, I know. It’s not quite square, and not quite safe; the archetypal London park. One step further today: I’m writing this while sat on a London Fields bench, watching the mums pushing their toddlers and the dogs chasing their sticks. Step into my office, baby. I’m not sure why, but a wistful, melancholic happiness settles on me here, as well as a sense of calm. Normally. Today I’m feeling more of a bladder-pain type sensation, since I’m just back off the overnight flight from Philadelphia, to find the flat filled with surly Polish builders, who have destroyed our old bathroom, but not yet fitted the new one. For the first time I notice that to which I was previously blind: there are no public conveniences in Hackney parks. 

*
The Democratic candidates for President held a debate in Philadelphia while I was there, so I grabbed a ticket and went along, to bring you all the news from the campaign frontline. Just joking! Instead I went to dinner (El Vez, brilliant Mexican) with some American friends, all of whom are Democratic. I did ask them who they thought would win the primary: all thought Hillary. None wanted to vote for her, and not all of them were convinced she would become President. Strangely, they didn’t think any Republican could win either. What I notice about the Americans I know –  and none of us are gonna like this –  is that decent people vote Democrat, and revile the Republican party. It’s got nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with manner and culture. Conservatives everywhere need to remember this. If you cut off your educated middle-class nose, pretty soon you end up spiting your face.

Cameron Watt: Bridging the North-South divide

After 18 years of prevarication, Gordon Brown has committed to delivering Crossrail for Londoners. In Scotland, ‘Wee Eck’ has promised his SNP administration will build the badly needed high-speed rail link between Edinburgh and Glasgow. At the next General Election, what should Conservatives be offering rail passengers?

Britain’s railways are almost at capacity. More passengers are now travelling by train than at any time since 1946. Despite over-crowding, steep fare rises and saturation on many lines, passenger numbers are growing faster here than in any other European country. Growth in demand shows now signs of abating; Government predicts a 25% increase in passengers by 2014, but more realistic estimates are closer to 40%.

In its five-year plan for rail announced in July, the Government took the easy option of attempting to choke demand through steeply increasing fares, rather than addressing the urgent need for new lines in helping meet greater capacity. Track-building will be limited to tackling a few bottle-necks and small increases in capacity achieved through adding carriages to some of the busiest trains.

Our transport infrastructure is now woefully inadequate after decades of such under-investment by governments of both parties. This negligence has made our lives miserable through ever longer and more uncomfortable commutes. A considerable economic price is also being paid for these failures. This includes further exacerbation of the gulf between turbo-capitalist London and the many parts of the country sustained by near Soviet levels of public spending.

Theresa May: 130 days later - Gordon Brown’s embarrassing case of premature emasculation

In his first hundred days in Number Ten, Gordon Brown and his spin doctors tried to create an image of a politician born to be Prime Minister.  His image was to be based on five pillars: principle, prudence, competence, strength and trust. 

He has now been in power for 130 days.  And in the last thirty days, those five pillars have already crumbled beneath him.

Principle: It all seems so long ago, doesn’t it?  Gordon Brown’s first speeches as Prime Minister were littered with references to being the son of a Manse, to his belief in the power of education, to his determination to rid Africa of poverty.  They were there for a reason: to make him appear to be a man of principle.   

But in truth, Gordon Brown’s premiership has already been defined by its complete lack of direction. He has no big idea, no project driving him to achieve, apart from the sad determination to cling to power. The now infamous Pre-Budget Report summed up his leadership in half an hour: no new ideas, just a crass attempt to poach Conservative ideas on inheritance tax, non-domiciles and aviation taxes.

Louise Bagshawe: Just another Thursday

It’s a bittersweet day for me today. I’m off to David Cameron’s constituency of Witney, to attend a key speech. I have a book deadline, so will be writing in the back of the cab. In the morning I’ll be doing the laundry and getting the children off to school; my eldest needs to do his reading practice. All in all, for a candidate it’s just another Thursday.

It might have been different. Wednesday night, when I’m writing this, might have been the most sleepless since the night before my wedding day. We would have started with a dawn raid in the constituency, been out knocking up pledges all day long, talking to tellers, co-ordinating an election day campaign. By the end of the day, my life might have changed; as a Tory PPC in a marginal seat, I might have been elected to Parliament.

On Yellow Saturday (it seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?) I was election planning all day long with my very able young agent. We were on the phone to each other planning an election event when the texts started coming into the Blackberry – from Tim, from my Campaign Director, my regional director, various friends. As you were. Brown’s bottled it.