Graduates of life

Reading today’s blogs about the riotous behaviour last night (and Cranmer’s take is especially worthy of perusal) made me remember an incident from my own antediluvial student days.

Back in the late Eighties, the Queen Mother dropped by Royal Holloway for a visit (and, rumour ran, a pint). The Socialist Workers were naturally out in force. To cut a long story short, the protest used a few choice words and after the event the comrade leaders were hauled in front of the full conclave of the Students Union to defend themselves of charges of bringing the body into disrepute.

The debate proved a rather juicy event, in the course of which the President was forced to threaten to throw people out of the building for rowdiness. But what really shut people up was the threat to ban miscreants from the Union premises for the rest of the term if they didn’t calm down.

It wasn’t much of a Damoclean blade – there was only a week to go in the term – but it certainly proved powerful enough. You could see the palpable torment in the face of the fellow in front, forced to sit down just as he had been about to whip out a huge Union Flag banner and run patriotically amok.

The pressure point, of course, was that the Union was where the bars were.

As more details emerge on the criminals lately engaged in student activity (as opposed to vice versa), adding a litany of shame and dishonour to the vandalism and recklessness of the recent fire extinguisher day, I wonder whether the time has come for other authorities to step up and shoulder their responsibilities.

Having brought their colleges into disrepute, surely educational establishments must now review whether expulsions are in order (with correct form and procedure)?  In turn, student leaders should signal to their union members that vandalism, violence and disrespect for the nation’s dead are bang out of order – and merit a spell deprived of the luxuries and comforts that student premises can afford. Perhaps then the palpable punishment will temper the crime before it is committed, and a life is needlessly lost by an act of uneducated stupidity.

Lee Rotherham: the blogosphere should help Zimbabwe

Whatever your take on the underlying morality of the current Wikileaks affair, some of the documents can be read without feeling too many guilty pangs about risks to frontline sources.

A few items put modern circumstances into context. Forget the “Children of Thatcher” quote famously supplied by Hague to an American diplomat (in 08LONDON930 – for now to be found here). Is the real story that Hague was predicting power sharing issues way back in 2008;

Hague said the polls showed the British public is “less hostile” to the Conservative Party and, while he is optimistic about Cameron’s chances, said it is also likely the Conservatives will come to power as a minority government.

Well, perhaps. But I would suggest that much more worthy of review is this diplomatic telegram: 07HARARE638. It reviews the state of Zimbabwe three years ago.

Of course, it has been significantly overtaken by events (though worryingly as some more knowledgeable commentators on this site might explore, perhaps far less than we might hope). Yet the diplomat raises some fascinating avenues on the long term prospects for the country after Mugabe, and the key role that the expat community may yet play in developing future direction.

This raises a crucial question. If as the telegram suggests Britain’s role is politically limited in helping the country forward, is there not something that we – including ConHome – can achieve through providing support to reformers developing the policies of the future?

Can we better help Zimbabwe’s current embattled ministers and also its future returning expats prep for rescuing the country’s economy and society?

Can mechanisms be created to support professionals in the diaspora suggesting ways out after the elections there next year?

In short, after Wikileaks exposed the flaws, is there an opportunity for Wikipolicy to play a part in suggesting ways to mend them?

Lee Rotherham: The hard sell of EU propaganda - the hidden case of Slovenia

Lee Rotherham, lately returned from a tour of Afghanistan with the Territorial Army, writes about one aspect of his new book for Open Europe on the EU’s PR budget.

Recently, Open Europe has published a mammoth piece of research, The hard sell: EU communication policy and the campaign for hearts and minds. It details in depth some of the mechanisms the European institutions, particularly the Commission, use to sell themselves and the project of European integration.  This book has already been launched in electronic form, with hard copy coming out in a few days.

The problem with the subject matter, on which I worked long months with Lorraine Mullally, was that the end result was simply too overwhelmingly massive to all put into print. Some sections, in particular the annexes, had to be pruned or dropped.

One such lost element perhaps merits here putting on the record. In the UK, we are fortunate in having an alert and developed press, with a tradition of long years of critique. It is no coincidence that a pro-integrationist children’s cartoon book printed by the Commission (the infamous Raspberry Ice Cream War) was only withheld - and probably pulped - in one country, after an outcry in the national papers challenged its appropriateness in schools.

That was in Britain. In many other EU member states, the media is apparently less ready to question the manner in which the EU uncritically sells itself and its policies of ever-closer union. The result is a well-oiled PR system selling European integration. The case of Slovenia proves this point well.

Lee Rotherham: The danger of LibCon co-operation on... Europe

In the latest of a series of Platform pieces examining the dangers of a Lib-Con pact, Dr Lee Rotherham looks at the LibDem agenda on Europe.

The Lib Dems have a more unified approach to the EU than either the Conservatives or Labour. Up until relatively recently, there remained a small Eurosceptic rump. However, its weakness was underlined when Nick Harvey played his scepticism down during the leadership campaign of 1999. Similarly, the staff of Liz Lynn are today shocked when told over in Brussels bars that their MEP boss has a Eurocritical history.  Outright support of national sovereignty today is reserved for the separate and distinct Liberal Party.

Hence Lib Dem politicians can today be divided into two camps. The first is what one might call the thematic integrationists, who support the European process piecemeal. In many ways, they are ideal EPP members.  However, the Lib Dems place more faith in debate and referenda.

The second group are the arch-Europhiles like Andrew Duff, who have a clear end game vision, and whom privately even some Lib Dems rebuff as being too extreme on Europe.

A quick dip into some of the amendments put into the drafting Convention on the EU Constitution reveals a party which backs the Social Chapter, a federal constitution, the primacy of EU law, common defence, coordinated employment policies, yoked economic policies, regionalism rather than localism, stronger MEPs rather than MPs, and a host of concepts in keeping with continental integrationism.

Dr Lee Rotherham: Tony Blair, EPP exit and glass houses

Dr Lee Rotherham is a former adviser to three Shadow Foreign Secretaries, and co-author of the Bumper Book of Government Waste.  In this article he catalogues the backgrounds of certain unattractive members of the Party of European Socialists.  His conclusion:

"The reputations of Blair’s PES allies are much shakier than Cameron’s friends promise to be. Clearly there is enough muck to go round, and if the Conservative-led Eurosceptic alliance is now indeed formed in Brussels, New Labour would do well to keep out of any ditches."

The debate over Conservative membership of the EPP is now beginning to sound like a broken record. Even to raise it these days makes you seem like a bigger bore than the one in Geoffrey Robinson’s back garden.

And yet… and yet…

With the arrival of July, we are potentially but days away from the moment when policy will (finally) be set. We will clearly see set the deadline for leaving the EPP. The battle now, of course, is whether it will be marked for the near future, or for 2009. If the latter, it might as well be never at all.

The arguments for leaving remain unequivocal. Financially, structurally, ideologically, psephologically, campaign-wise, we will be better off. No need here to reiterate past arguments (but see this from Dan Hannan and this from me). Anyone still unsure can spend some time scooting around the quotes and the in-depth analyses to be found on www.adieu-epp.com to boot. Frankly, how often do you get whistleblowers telling political groups that they’re useless anyhow? We heard it when we looked into the track record of the EPP.

I’ve been involved on two occasions now of putting together a list of respectable parties we could link up with. I had no real ambition this time to repeat the experience, which was previously so ultimately frustrating and unrewarding for all concerned. After all, when you have  had two MEP leaders stood three feet away from a Shadow Foreign Secretary’s door and he changes his mind and cancels owing to a row in Shadow Cabinet, then you lose a lot of the incentive to repeat the exercise. The work’s been done; everyone knows what to expect; everyone knows what’s needed. What’s needed is simply the nod from the Conservatives. From past experience, and from recent conversations, the jigsaw has been laid out and all the pieces are there, ready to fall in place.  It requires a single public sentence from Cameron or Hague.

But what I am more than happy to write about is the sheer hypocrisy, the absolute blinding gall of those who point at specks of dust when there are motes in their own eyes.

Dr Lee Rotherham: A Real Millennium Project

Dr Lee Rotherham, a political consultant and prominent Eurosceptic, served in Iraq as a mobilised Territorial Army NCO. Those interested in learning more about either the work of the Dhi Qar Directorate of Archaeology, or the Keppel’s Column campaign, can drop him a line via the usual conservativehome email address - here.

It is a sight that can never be forgotten. In the empty silence of the desert, a land that lies aching after a baking 47'C day, the full moon rises behind the Temple of the lunar god Sin. This is the land of Ur of the Chaldees, home to the Old Testament’s Abraham, and resting place of fabled kings of antiquity’s antiquity. Opposite the vestige of a royal palace stands a doorway with the oldest archway in the world. Down deep shafts lie the cool stale tombs of monarchs and townsfolk that Agatha Christie excavated with her husband, source of familiar treasures that adorn the British Museum. It is a spellbinding world, all the more powerful as its acreage lies surrounded by barbed wire and its paths almost entirely untrod.

Perhaps two years on it is worth revisiting this place, at least from afar. Over the intervening time I have rattled a few cages, written a few articles for the likes of Rescue Archaeology and the Salisbury Review, and pestered contacts in the Italian government – it is the Italians who are the local Coalition Forces on the ground – so it has been something of an eye opener to hear of how the situation pans out today in a policy area frankly low on the priority list, at least as far as the British Government is concerned.

Ur is in Dhi Qar Province, north west of Basrah, whose chief town An Nasiriyah lies 380km South of Baghdad. It is a place littered with history, quite literally. There are some 800 known sites locally, and surprisingly few of them have been properly excavated. The world of the cities of Gilgamesh and of the princes before the flood still lies undisturbed.

Except for the looters.

Dr Lee Rotherham: In Defence of Lower Taxation

Dr Lee Rotherham is co-author of the Bumper Book of Government Waste, a light-hearted look at state squander, due out on 2 February. He fought the eponymous seat of Rotherham in 2005 and unleashed butlers in St Helens South in 2001.

Conservatives seem at the moment to be living a twilight moment, or perhaps rather a Ray Harryhausen one. Shrouded in mist, our eyes pierce the gloom to behold a dark form glide softly from across some Acheron shoreline, a haunted barque to transfer us to the mythical realm of policy.

Noone seems to quite know yet where we stand...

Are we a party of selective education? Apparently not, unless you’re in Ulster.

Europe? A vast field, seemingly taboo.

What about our position on ID cards? Well, that one was also a veto subject from the whips for any candidate wishing to put it in their campaign literature in the last election.

With the flood that overthrew the Duncan Smith leadership, only a bare raft of beliefs seemed to have survived, the ideological flotsam considered ‘safe’ enough to carry the weight of a battered party. Clearly, Michael Howard’s inner circle feared that the survivors would end up following the fate of the Méduse, the frigate immortalised in the dark painting in the Louvre by Théodore Géricault, with the lean and the plump eyeing each other up in a death struggle. Better then to campaign around small concepts than great ideologies. Far less risk in the run up to last June.

And now, of course, we find ourselves once more in the half-light of policy reflection, with several working groups set up to thrash about in policy waters, to suggest ideas which may – or may not – be taken up at the close of day.

But what about one of the key fundaments of Conservative philosophy, the cause of lower state expenditure? Or to use the seemingly politically incorrect term, “lower taxation”. Where stands that today? It's not just Murdoch who is inspecting the tea leaves in the Osborne porcelain.

A year ago, a death hush would have descended in public gatherings with the use of such a phrase, and indeed it famously cost the head of more than one candidate, to be impaled upon spikes at Traitor’s Gate.

How have we come to such a fix, where stating even the possibility of significant tax cuts is enough to bring anathema and damnation from the party that was its erstwhile synonym? John Redwood alone seemingly stands, as the metaphorical outpost in Acre after the collapse of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Dr Lee Rotherham: The Twelve Lies of Christmas

Dr Lee Rotherham - an expert writer on the European Union - makes the case for David Cameron's decision to take Britain's Conservative MEPs out of the European Peoples' Party.

Festive spirit is somewhat lacking at the moment. We hear a lot of talk about Brussels, but it’s not about sprouts, just the stuffing.

There’s a concerted effort going on by EPP addicts to justify their need for the needle, and their fear of being weened off their prop. So far, it’s been possible to identify twelve big fibs that have been touted as excuses: appropriate, really, given the symbolism of the twelve star flag. But none of these claims actually stand up. It’s the same old Euro saga of claims being thrown out as bald facts, and hoping the media will swallow them whole.

Time then to look at these claims in turn, and see where the truth actually stands.

1. Conservatives will be isolated

The Conservatives are not the only right-of-centre party in Europe. We have a number of friends across the continent with whom we have a closer affinity than other EPP members. Were we to leave the EPP, we could certainly link up with them: indeed, for the best part of a decade, I have seen senior members of these movements actively trying to wean the Conservative Shadow Cabinet off the EPP opiate. The Polish and Czech conservative parties are even in government. It is firmly within the bounds of realism to anticipate that several other parties, who have shown an interest in the past, will be amenable to a formal approach.

We can link up with friends who share some basic philosophies: respect for democracy; Trans-Atlantic friendship; the defence of the nation state; and the free market. Clearly, there would be differences in opinion on certain votes. But currently, the Conservatives vote against the EPP one time in three.

We have to remember a key element of Brussels politics here. Unlike Westminster, the European Parliament is not a bear pit; it is a hemisphere. You do not have one political grouping running the show. Alliances need to be formed. Up to now, the EPP-Conservative alliance has been a formal one. But once the Conservative parties of Europe form their own bloc, the EPP will still need our vote. That’s why before sessions, various reps get round tables to broker deals to get legislation through. They simply cannot afford to just ignore us.