Melanchthon: No, Mr Cameron, we're not all in this together this time

Suppose you caught a thief with his fingers in the tin, and he said "You caught me, but I am part of a broader system.  We have all failed.  To coin a phrase - 'We're all in this together'.  Which of us has not taped our own music, or failed to pay our tax on time, or failed to return to the shop when we realised we had been under-charged?  We live in a society of avarice, in which we court wealth in an unhealthy way.  We are all guilty."  Would you find this a persuasive and impressive response?

My guess is that you would think this socialist claptrap if asserted by someone other than the thief himself - the worst kind of caricatured "Society made me do it" nonsense.  But if it were the thief himself, well the chutzpah alone might give you pause to admire for a moment, but once the stunning nature of the manoeuvre had worn off, you would just think it pathetic.

Somehow, though, Mr Cameron believes we should react differently.  He's been caught palling up to someone that appears to have been ultimately responsible for hacking the phones of murdered schoolchildren and bribing policemen (and who says that there is much worse to come), and for hiring someone else apparently involved, and his response has been "The Political System made me do it!  We have all been guilty of becoming too friendly with the media.  The culture needs to change!"  For goodness' sake grow some cajones, man!  Take a little personal responsibility.  Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson didn't make you become involved with these people.  You chose that for yourself.

Melanchton: "Inventing facts" and "blanket untruths"

OK.  Let us manfully resist exploring the comedy value inherent in Simon "the straight choice" Hughes accusing anyone else of lies and nastiness.  And let us set aside the chutzpah of the Lib Dems - the party most notorious in British politics for its deceit, distortions, evasions, half-truths, and dishonourable tactics - proposing to report other political organisations for made-up facts and underhand campaigning (presumably calling your opponents a "right-wing clique" when they include more than half of Labour MPs doesn't count?).  Let's just focus on two things: are the Yes campaign's claims straightforward facts; and are the No campaign's claims lies?

Melanchthon: The main problem with permitting assisted suicide

Suicide has been back in the news recently, with the tale of a non-terminally-ill woman having an assisted suicide and of a video discussing assisted suicide being shown in school philosophy classes.  I don't personally see any problem with philosophy classes discussing assisted suicide and euthanasia and watching videos featuring advocates and opponents - surely that's a very relevant philosophical issue for teenagers to debate.  But I do still feel that most of the debate on assisted suicide misses the main point.

We are told that if assisted suicide or euthanasia become legal, then sick elderly people that might prefer to hang on for a while will feel pressured into ending their lives so as not to be a burden, or that terminal illness might be mis-diagnosed, or that murders might be disguised as assisted suicides or euthanasia.  These are issues, but they are not by any means the main problem with permitting assisted suicide.

The main problem with assisted suicide, as I have written about before, is that if we permit assisted suicide - doubly so if we assert there is any kind of "right" to commit suicide - then we will not be able to sustain society's many invasive suicide prevention methods.  At present, if people appear suicidal we lock them up, we tie them in restraints, we drug them, we force them to receive counselling.  If we see someone in the process of attempting to commit suicide, we understand ourselves as having a duty to intervene to try to prevent it.  We do not accept that people have any kind of right to kill themselves.

We've officially rejected Christianity as our state religion - so now what?

Another week, another case of Christians being oppressed because of their religious beliefs.  What has attracted particular interest on this occasion is this section of the judgement, in which the judges state openly that Britain is "a secular state not a theocracy".  They declare: "We sit as secular judges serving a multi-cultural community of many faiths. The laws and usages of the realm do not include Christianity, in whatever form."  This is not isolated judgement, but one of many, of which a notable recent example was the admirably clear statements by the judge in the recent Cornish guest-house controversy: "Whatever may have been the position in past centuries it is no longer the case that our laws must, or should, automatically reflect the Judaeo- Christian position...this decision does affect the human rights of the defendants to manifest their religion and forces them to act in a manner contrary to their deeply and genuinely held beliefs."

Our political system has decided to abandon Christianity as the state religion.  Of course, this actually happened in substance long ago - one only sees these things clearly after the event.  Now, having done so in practice, the system now makes it official in legal judgement.

Melanchthon: And on to Control Orders

With Parliament asserting itself on votes for prisoners, there must now either be reform of the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court's interpretation thereof, or of Britain's relationship to the Convention.

But isn't this an opportunity to get the Lib Dems on side, to help with another big ECHR-related issue before us: Control Orders?  Lib Dems and Conservative backbenchers were mustard-keen to get rid of Control Orders.  But it was impossible to do so without revising our relationship to the European Convention or the Convention itself (as I've explained before).

However, if we are now forced to revise our relationship to the Convention by the votes for prisoners issue, why don't we deal with the Control Orders issue at the same time - thereby securing many Lib Dems as allies?  Surely it is just as intolerable that the European Convention insists (de facto) that we must have procedures whereby Britons are subject to house arrest without trial or open accusation as that the European Convention insists that we must permit prisoners to vote?

Melanchthon: There is no “human right” to vote

I’ve said before that I would have no particular problem with those on very short prison sentences — a few weeks, a month — being permitted to vote.  And if some countries, like the Swiss, want to allow all prisoners to vote, good luck to them.  But there is obviously nothing illegitimate about preferring the path whereby prisoners don’t get to vote.  Are we in Britain really to have foreigners tell us who gets to vote in our elections?

Just for now, let’s set aside discussions of whether human rights exist at all as standardly conceived (they don’t), or whether the human rights doctrine is fundamentally illiberal (it is) or incompatible with basic tenets of Conservatism (manifestly).  For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that there are indeed things called “human rights” and that where they exist it is a good idea to respect them in some way.  Does it even begin to be plausible that denying certain categories of people the vote is a denial of human rights?

Melanchthon: The coming constitutional crisis on votes for prisoners

So let’s see. The government grants a free vote on votes for prisoners (no choice, really).  The measure goes down 500 votes against, 80 for.  We then have five thousand prisoners complain that their human rights have been violated, and they sue for compensation.  The courts rule in their favour at – what shall we say? - £10,000 each including costs?  So that’s £50m.

The government then has to decide whether to pay.  But in Parliament MPs are already putting down motions forbidding the government from paying any such compensation.  The current motion may not get any air time, but someone will soon work out how to deliver such a motion properly, and it will surely pass with a huge majority, since, when families are struggling to pay increased taxes and with their benefits being cut, who is seriously going to vote in favour of paying out tens of millions in pounds to prisoners?  So then the courts instruct the government to pay compensation, and Parliament forbids it.

A constitutional crisis, clearly.

Is there a way out?  Well, the Council of Europe has already condemned the government for taking more than five years to comply with the 2005 judgement involving John Hirst, giving the government six months to comply.  So we can’t just wait and hope it goes away.  The British judges will be itching to rule against the government anyway.  Surely the only ways forward are to comply or to change Britain’s relationship to the European Court of Human Rights and to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Suppose we could get that latter option past Nick Clegg.  We’d then have to get it past the European Council.  But complying with the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights is an obligation of the Lisbon Treaty for membership of the Council of Europe, and hence of the EU.  I suppose we could just not comply and dare the Council of Europe to kick us out – but then how would we prevent the UK judges from ruling government officials guilty of malfeasance for failing to comply with obligations under a ratified Treaty?  The only way to avoid that would appear to renegotiate the Treaty.  But could we get that past Nick Clegg?

Melanchthon: The Government couldn’t abolish control orders

Whether they’re called “control orders lite”, “revised control orders”, “continuity control orders”, or whatever, almost everyone agree that the announcement today constitutes the continuation of control orders, not their abolition.

The objections to controls orders are well-known.  It is odious, and an offence against our national traditions, that Britons can be subjected to such restrictions on their liberty without being convicted or even openly accused of any crime.  And yet, Robin Simcox is quite right to remind us of why they exist.

We could not deport foreign nationals, known to have committed (even convicted of having committed) dangerous terrorist acts abroad to countries that might torture them.  (Robin isn’t correct to say that the only reason we couldn’t do that was because of the European Convention on Human Rights – deporting people to be tortured would have violated older British norms.)  Instead of deporting them, we offered them asylum.

Obviously, since they were extremely dangerous people (indeed, some of them might even have general antipathy to the West and if let loose might go on to plan terrorist acts in the UK), the form of asylum we offered them couldn’t be just allowing them into the general community, so instead their form of asylum was at Belmarsh Prison (though they were not prisoners, as such, because they were free to leave the prison if they left the country).

The Belmarsh arrangement was ruled to violate in particular Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because our laws applied a different standard to foreigners (they could be detained at Belmarsh when in Britain, without being charged with or convicted of any offence) from that applied to British nationals (who could not be held in prison without being charged with or convicted of an offence).  Since it was obviously impossible not to have the power to detain very dangerous foreigners, the government dealt with the issue of discrimination by introducing a system under which both Britons and foreigners could have their movements controlled without charge or convictions – control orders.  Of course, as was inevitable, once the government had the power to impose control orders on Britons it did so – and indeed all those subject to control orders today are Britons (but of course that doesn't mean we can abolish them, because otherwise we would have no means to control a dangerous foreigner if one arrived).

When in opposition, the Conservative Party said it would review control orders with a view to their removal.  But that was part of a package that involved repeal of the Human Rights Act and renegotiation of our position within the EU.  The only way we could remove control orders would be if we could move to a system whereby we could detain dangerous foreign nationals, known to have committed terrible crimes abroad, without also detaining British nationals.  The only way we could do that would be to repeal the Human Rights Act and either withdraw from or resile from certain aspects of the European Convention on Human Rights.  And the only way we could do either of those things would be if we renegotiated our position within the European Union, because the Lisbon Treaty forbids any EU member from resiling from any aspects it has previously accepted of the European Convention on Human Rights (you don’t have to accept everything to start with – many EU Member States don’t - but once you’ve accepted something you can’t go back).
And so, since the Coalition opposes any renegotiation of our position within the European Union, and hence cannot resile from any aspect of the European Convention on Human Rights, it was never going to be able to remove control orders.

I’m afraid it’s as simple as that.

Melanchthon: Two Problems with the European Union Bill 2010

I stood up in support of Cameron and Hague when they launched their new post-Lisbon-Treaty policy.  A number of Eurosceptics criticised me for that at the time; other assumed I was just being a good egg so as not to create splits in the run-up to the General Election.  Actually, I still believe that the policy as specified then was fine.  The problem wasn’t the policy; it was the will to enact it, which has been (perhaps predictably, as my critics note) totally lacking.

This government has so far been worse than Tony Blair’s in regards to Europe: he at least kept us out of the euro; the Coalition has evaded the best opportunity Britain has ever had to secure a re-negotiation on terms favourable to us, namely the revision to the Treaty to create a fiscal union necessitated by the Eurozone crisis.  Since this was in no way necessitated by the Coalition with the Lib Dems (the Coalition agreement did not commit us to not seeking renegotiation under any circumstances, there was no chance of the Lib Dem leadership walking if we had sought to renegotiate, and if they had done so, precipitating a General Election over Europe, over 80% of the General Public would have supported renegotiation (that was the figure opposing the Lisbon Treaty) and we would (under those circumstances) have secured a significant electoral dividend) – since it is manifestly not true that renegotiation was prevented by the Coalition agreement, the only possible conclusion is that Cameron and Hague did not want to renegotiate, that their claims to believe in renegotiation (their claims to be Eurosceptics) were – and probably always had been – a fabrication to placate the mainstream of the Party.

In supposed compensation for refusing to renegotiate – for breaking undertakings given repeatedly over many years – the government has brought forward the European Union Bill 2010.  This is obviously a totally inadequate measure, a distraction from the key issue (which is still on the table): that we should use the opportunity of the revisions to the Treaty currently underway to renegotiate Britain’s position.  But, that point aside (and that itself could well be a good enough reason for rejecting the Bill – to say: “My commitment to resolve the European Question will not be bought for this mess of pottage”), I see two more specific problems with the measure.

First, this is not in the least what I meant to support when I favoured a Sovereignty Act.  This measure requires referendums under a range of circumstances.  But I’m not in favour of referendums at all, and the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament is blatantly reduced, not increased, by mandating referendums.  The concept that plebiscites are necessary to deliver constitutional changes is some kind of nationalist/Democrat concept – the very opposite of traditional Conservatism.  The objection was that the European Union encroached upon the sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament, not that it somehow encroached upon the “sovereignty of the People of Britain”.

Melanchthon: “Scandal: Rich people spending money!”

Melanchthon questions the Mail on Sunday's decision to splash this morning on the story of MPs enjoying themselves on New Year's Eve.

Prize for ridiculous article of the day goes to the Mail on Sunday.  An appropriate title for the article might be “MPs use holiday season to... go on holiday!”  Instead it had the title: “All in this together? Osborne is skiing, Zac Goldsmith is in £8k-a-week villa and Mr Speaker hosting a lavish party for MPs as Britain faces year of austerity”.

Let’s set aside the fact that the article tells us that the “lavish” New Year’s Eve party cost £22 per head.  (Not sure I fancy attending many Mail-sponsored parties if that’s their concept of “lavish”!)  Let’s ignore the point that we are told that Osborne’s hotel rooms were only £500 per night (hardly the £10,000 per night Emirates Palace Hotel, and that’s before we even get on to seven-star places).  For the sake of the argument, let’s suppose that these really were as expensive as the headlines implied.

What is really being objected to by the Mail here?  The objection is to rich people spending their own money.  The Taxpayers’ Alliance foolishly allowed itself to be dragged in, declaring that the MPs’ conduct was “highly insensitive”.  But "insensitive" would be Goldsmith giving a speech or a TV interview boasting about the Ferrari he just bought, or if Osborne had finished his last Commons statement by saying: "I don't know about you lot, but I'm off to Davos."  The only thing being alleged to be insensitive in this stupid article is rich people spending money.  Imagine that: being rich and actually spending money!  The very thought!

MPs get paid.  They spend the money they are paid and that they have from other sources by buying things.  You and I spend some of our money going on holiday.  Why shouldn’t MPs?  I had champagne with my New Years’ celebration (which I can assure you summed to considerably more than £22 per head for the evening).  Why shouldn’t MPs?  Journalists querying MPs’ holiday or party arrangements to write sensational stories should be told to get lost and mind their own business.

Melanchthon: The worst thing about the BNP, at the moment, is how many true things we let them say

Melanchthon prefers to remain anonymous.

There is much anguish about the election to the European Parliament of two BNP candidates, with passionate debates about whether they should be ostracised, countered in debate, or pelted with eggs.  I, personally, find much of the BNP’s platform and personnel unpleasantly beyond the realm of proper democratic debate — in other words, I don’t think certain of the things they want should be permitted even if there were an overwhelming vote in favour of them.  In addition to their unpleasantness, my understanding is that they are also typically incompetent in office, failing even to promote their own agenda.  Thankfully, that has up to now tended to mean that BNP councillors rarely last more than one term in office before being voted out.

Unhappily, I don’t believe that we can rely on this continuing.  This is partly because Nick Griffin is much more articulate and intelligent than the clichéd thug that the BNP has often put forward in the past.  But much worse than that is that Nick Griffin has identified a number of true (though uncomfortable, for many of us) things to say.  I believe that to counter him properly — and with the platform of his elected position he will be democratically entitled to much more media exposure than he has been granted up to now — we need to consider the truths he presses, and consider in which cases what we really need to do is address the point (stop it from being true) and in which cases we need to find a way to justify the point.

It will perhaps be clearer if I mention some of the things I mean.  I emphasize that in none of these cases do I share the BNP’s interpretation of their implication and in few, if any, would my policy response be remotely similar to theirs.  I accept that by stating what will follow some readers may feel that I am giving unnecessary publicity to potentially inflammatory points of view.  Indeed, if it were not for the fact that the BNP has just gained two elected members in a national election, I would probably take that view myself.  But we now will have no choice but to debate with them, and if we are to debate with our opponent properly we need to understand the strongest part of his case.

So here goes.  I shall start by putting down two such “truths” in italics, then ponder how one might respond.

When challenged as to why members of ethnic minorities are not allowed to be members of the BNP or stand as their candidates, Nick Griffin responds that the media do not regard it as racist when there are associations that exist to promote the interests of Afro-Caribbeans or Africans or Indians.  And there are many such organisations, such as Operation Black Vote or ABPO.  So why should it count as racist that there is a group that exists to represent the interests of ethnic Britons, and thus has a membership consisting of those it exists to represent?

Here we have two ways to go.  First, we might condemn all racially-based interest groups as racist — and indeed this is a path that some liberals, including some prominent people in the media, do indeed take.  This insulates them from this attack.  Alternatively, we might say: okay, but what you fail to mention is that the groups of this sort that we do not condemn restrict themselves to lobbying and pastoral assistance.  They do not stand for election.  You do.  If you are going to stand for election in a liberal democracy, you need to stand as people that can represent the whole community including those not like you.  If you can’t do that, then you are not merely acting as one lobbying group amongst many.  Instead, you are putting yourself forward to act, with political executive power, in the sectional interest of one race over another.  And that’s racist.

Melanchthon: When the defence of "I acted within the rules according to advice" is not enough

Melanchthon prefers to remain anonymous (and is NOT an MP).

How bad a defence is “I acted within the rules and according to the advice I had received as to what was appropriate”?

Suppose that you worked for a company in which expenses on business trips were capped at £100 per meal.  The understanding was that it didn’t matter what you had to eat or drink, provided that the total claimed was not more than £100.  Sometimes new employees weren’t sure whether this included claiming for wine and so they asked the accounts department for clarification.  The advice always came back that it was fine to claim for wine, provided only that the total claim did not exceed £100.

These had been the rules and the understanding of them for as long as almost anyone remembered.  Virtually no-one in the company had even been around when these rules were first established.  Of course, some people didn’t like wine and so didn’t claim.  A few were so extravagant with their food that they used up the entire £100 on food and paid for their own wine.  But many claimed for their wine.

Suppose that you had been one of those that routinely claimed for wine, having sought clarification on the point shortly after you joined the company.  One day, a new Chief Executive takes over.  He gets you into his office and says: “I’ve been going through some old expenses claims and I see you’ve claimed for wine with your dinner.  What made you think that was okay?”  My guess is that you’d reply something like: “Well, the rules said I could claim up to £100 for my dinner costs, I checked with accounts whether this included wine, the advice was that it did, and lots of us claim for our wine.”  Suppose that the Chief Executive responded: “It’s all very well saying that it’s ‘within the letter of the rules’ and ‘I was advised that this was okay’ and ‘lots of people do it’.  What I want to know is what made you think it was right?  What made you believe that such a claim was within the spirit of the rules?”

Melanchthon: We probably don't need professional politicians at all

Melanchthon prefers to remain anonymous (and is NOT an MP).  Melanchthon wrote a first post yesterday.

Everyone now agrees that the system of remunerating MPs needs to change.  But an interesting question is raised by that.  For in many ways the logical way to go would be to abolish the MPs allowances system, perhaps proving actual accommodation for MPs (e.g. by purchasing an apartment block and assigning each constituency its own apartment), and raising the basic salary.

But would the public accept this?  MPs have extraordinarily low reputations now.  What do they actually do that might justify a basic salary of, say, £100,000?  Many people regard them as little more than jumped-up county councillors or citizens’ advice providers.  Much of their time is occupied in passing on constituent queries about housing matters or why constituents’ children didn’t get into their preferred schools.  Otherwise they vote on a large volume of legislation they cannot change at all (for it comes from the EU) or in which the Whip is absolute.  Some commentators such as historian David Starkey argue that modern MPs do nothing of value except choose the Prime Minister — they are thus of no more significance than Electoral College delegates in a US Presidential Election.

One way to go would be to radically reform the constitution so as to increase the true role that MPs have.  But this is not the only way to go, or by any means either obviously the best or in fact the most feasible.  Another route would be to embrace this notion of an MP, and follow the logic through.

Historically, going back into Saxon times, the King called assemblies only rarely, when he wished to be advised upon or gain consensus around some important course of action.  Do we really need a Parliament sitting permanently (or, at least, 36 weeks of the year)?  What do we really need MPs for?  Is it really any more than, say

• Choosing the Prime Minister (i.e. voting for or against the Queen’s Speech)
• Approving the Finance Bill (the Budget)
• Approving important international treaties (e.g. EU treaties)
• Perhaps voting on the conduct of wars
• Occasional other crises

It is at least arguable that there are really no more than perhaps half a dozen to a dozen times a year that MPs really need to be in Parliament voting.  Of course, they currently spend a lot of other time looking at measures they can’t change or occupying themselves with trivial provisions of a few areas such as housing that have no yet been subcontracted to regulators.  But couldn’t these matters be dealt with perfectly satisfactorily by specialist bureaucrats?  No-one complains that MPs don’t vote on every line of some interminable FSA or Ofcom regulation.  Would we really miss it if they didn’t vote on the things they do spend their time on?

Melanchthon: MPs have not been unethical in their expense claims, and should stand up for themselves

Melanchthon prefers to remain anonymous (and is NOT an MP).

In the current scandal over MP expenses, there have been perhaps three or four cases that appear criminal or verging on the criminal — apparently outright frauds in which claims were made for expenses that simply didn’t exist.  Beyond that there have been five or six cases that, though perhaps not illegal, were politically highly problematic — such as schemes for avoiding tax set up by people that preached about the wickedness of attempts by others to avoid paying taxes, inviting the charge of hypocrisy.

Now, there being perhaps eight to ten MPs engaged in serious wrongdoing or blatant hypocrisy is quite a high number.  But the vast majority of the claims that have been discussed in the press, including most of those about which voters have been most upset, have not involved any wrongdoing or unethical behaviour at all, and it is only straightforward ignorance or knowing distortion that has made it seem as if they did.

Suppose I employed you to work for my company, and required you to go on a business trip to New York in which you had to stay overnight.  You would need somewhere to stay, and would need to eat.  You need these things in order to do the job I sent you to do.  You would probably rent a hotel room, then buy some dinner in a restaurant.

Now, suppose that when you brought back your receipt to make your expenses claim I looked at it closely and said “Your expenses claim includes a chocolate mousse for your dessert.  Did you need a chocolate mousse?  Was your having a chocolate mousse necessary for you to do your job?”  Do you think you would be able to defend your claiming for a chocolate mousse against this line of scrutiny?  I put it to you that you would not.