What you mean "legal" Kemo Sabay?

There's an old Mad Magazine* cartoon of The Lone Ranger and his trusty red indian sidekick Tonto surrounded by hostile natives. The caption reads as Tonto saying: "What you mean "we" Kemo Sabay?".

David Cameron is quoted over on Lord Ashdown's Politics Home blog as saying that the intervention in Lybia is "necessary, legal and right". The question is: what do you mean "legal" Mr Cameron?

There are so many moral and practical dilemmas in foreign intervention. What does "legal" mean in international law? What takes precedence? If an act is legal in your own national law, but "illegal" in international law, can you act anyway?  If an action is not in the interests of China or Russia and they veto it at the UN, the veto makes it "illegal" (apparently), but does that make it wrong? And if the action in Libya had been merely "necessary and right", but not "legal", should we not intervene? Surely if an action is "necessary and right", we should act to address the necessity and right the wrong, and not be hog-tied by the interests of China and Russia?

According to some (not all) opinion, the invasion of Iraq was "illegal", and deeply controversial, because it did not have UN backing. But by the same definition, the Kosovo intervention which raised no such controversy was also "illegal", but it has been deemed a qualified success. And the actions in Sierra Leone were just below the radar: nobody asked if they were legal or not, but they have been effective (so far) in stabilising that country.

On the other hand the long period on Tory non-intervention (some would say indifference) in the Bosnian crisis (before Tony Blair acted on the Kosovo events) was perfectly legal. And the blind eye that the international community turned on the horrific massacres in Rwanda was totally "legal" but, in my view, was immoral and wrong, as well as being immensely cowardly. In Bosnia and Croatia, thousands died "legally". In Rwanda a million and more ( and echoes of the crisis are still reverberating around the region), all of them murdered "legally" according to international law.

So what guide does "legality" give us in this vexed arena? Few would disagree that Gadafi is thug and a menace to his people and the world. But then so was Sadam. And Milosovic. And Taylor. And many others.

Should we have to wait for the UN, which provides extremely unreliable and unpredictable leadership on many of the world's problems, which bends to the will of the world's largest dictatorships, to give us the moral permission to do things that are "necessary and right"?

* could my memory be playing tricks....

The journalists wake up.

It has always puzzled me that people are taken in by David Cameron's "nice guy" act. I was never taken in. Cameron joined the Tory Party when Maggie Thatcher was at the height of her powers, when the mantra was "there is no such thing as society" and when Mrs T's policies were designed to back up that judgement with actions to cut "society" (read caring for your fellow citizen) down to size. David Cameron was Norman Lamont's (if it isn't hurting it isn't working) adviser on the day the pound collapsed on Black Wednesday. That's no background of  a caring and moderate "one-nation" MacMillanite wet.

No idealistic youngster would join the 1980s Tories to make things better for the majority. If you were willing to join Maggie in her crusade against all things "socialist" (i.e. decent and caring), you were no bleeding heart Tory wet.

It has been obvious for months to any sentient observer that Cameron and (at least) the Tory segment of the ToryDem coalition are no moderate modernisers either. That was the plot to get them elected. They are, in deep reality, still Mrs Thatcher's boys, and they were determined to move at breakneck pace to get their planned revolution implemented. They also saw that Tony Blair had been cautious in his first term and had lost some momentum after that, and they did not intend to be caught in that way.

The first indication was Michael Gove's dedication to getting his "free" schools established. Even before the legislation had been enacted by Parliament he was active, claiming 1100 schoos had volunteered (only 20 or so have actually decided to open next year, but that's another story...) and pushing local groups and local authorities to adopt his model.

The June budget with its immediate £8 billion in cuts was another signal, as was Eric Pickles "localism" drive to destroy local government, another example of a Minister being too impatient to wait for the legislation. Andrew Lansley at Health is eagerly cutting away at structures and abolishing PCTs while at the same time forcing GPs to take on organisational and budgeting responsibilities. Constitutional changes like fixed term Parliaments, cutting the number of constituencies and bringing in the Alternative Vote system have all been pushed through with effectively no consultation and very little scrutiny. The privatisation of university teaching  (disgiused as "raising tuition fees") is the latest radical Tory policy which has been railroaded through.

It's all rather breathless and uncordinated. Hit-and-miss might be a better way of putting it (the poor get hit, the bankers get missed).

Now the journalists are beginning to wake up to the pace and breadth of the revolution that is being carried out under our noses. Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer detects a "Maoist" backbone to the Tory programme. "In 5 years everything must be different. Everything". Steve Richards on R4 today judges that the changes are faster and bigger than 1945. The valuable Diary of a Civil Servant blog in the Guardian has a similar message, with (in his view) the NHS changes being particularly rapid, unformed and potentially dangerous.

At bottom it's about philosophy. Conservatives believe in the past. It worked then and will work now. Except it didn't work then. We have publicly owned and run schools and hospitals because the old system failed the majority of the population. We have (or had) publicly subsidised university teaching because the old system favoured (even more than today) a restricted and constricted class of applicant. It was unsuiatble for a modern democracy and economy. Parish councils are all very well in prospect (remember John Major's old ladies cycling to church on a summer evening), but they are not the vehicle for serious decisions and spending at any level of reality. As for giving GPs the responsibility for £80 billlion of commissioning in the NHS: it's frankly bonkers. They don't want it, there's no guarantee that they can handle it any better (probably much worse) than it is currently handled. The real expertise in budgeting and commissioning is meanwhile being sacked, the skills lost, the individual is no longer payng taxes while picking up dole money!

And we haven't even mentioned George Osborne's gamble with the economy.

Hold onto your hats, it's gonna be a bumpy ride!

I blame the teachers...

Dave puts his foot in it again... today claiming that Iran has a nuclear weapon....

here 

So in the last week our Prime Minister has shown that he doesn't know when the Yanks came in to the 2nd World War, and that he thinks that GB was the junior partner and now he thinks countries that don't have nuclear weapons do have them.....

I don't know about you, but that strikes me as a dangerous level of ignorance for a person in such a powerful position.

I blame the school he went to.... Windsor North Gasworks was it? He should order Michael Gove to send in the inspectors to ensure a decent level of historical accuracy is taught....

Tae see oorselves as ithers see us......

The international edition of The Namibian newspaper reports on the serious issues in UK politics...

The Malawian judge must have been watching the love-in in the garden at Number ten...

And, with an eye on the World Cup,  Michael Gove practices his simulation  ...

Boris Breaks Cover....Redwood Agrees...Davis Dives In. Coalition Blues.

The first cracks in the Tory support for the ConDem Coalition have appeared and, surprise surprise, they come from the direction of Boris Johnson, John Redwood and David Davis.

Two of the attacks are about finance and taxation.

Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London, professional buffoon and Cameron's most obvious rival for the affections of their party, is enraged by the coalitions plans, not yet clearly defined, to somehow curtail the activities of banks and the City of London in the wake of the banking crisis and the resultant recession. Boris isn't just politely dismissive, he thinks it's "nuts"...

I think it is completely nuts for people to want, as a matter of public policy, to attack the financial sector.

John Redwood, convinced neo-con, comical mimer to Welsh anthems and serial  unreconcilable, has revealed that he has organised a group of Tory MPs and Peers to oppose the ConDem Coalition's Capital Gains Tax plans.

Redwood says that ...

...Conservatives and Lib-Dems had deeply differing views on tax. Deep in Lib-Dem DNA is the Robin Hood principle — tax the rich and give to the poor.... It is superficially popular, and gives believers a feeling of moral superiority. Deep in Conservative DNA is the belief that society and the economy work better if you allow people to be successful and to pay their own bills....

Davis takes a diferent angle, voicing his concern over the proposed 55% threshold for the dissolution of Parliament. In Davis's opinion ..

...we could have a government in parliament which could command 45 per cent, or 45 per cent plus one, of parliamentary votes, but no more, and therefore couldn’t deliver a budget, couldn’t deliver its manifesto, couldn’t deliver its normal legislation and yet couldn’t be thrown out either......a government in parliament which could command 45 per cent, or 45 per cent plus one, of parliamentary votes, but no more, and therefore couldn’t deliver a budget, couldn’t deliver its manifesto, couldn’t deliver its normal legislation and yet couldn’t be thrown out either.

It has been clear that many Conservative grass-roots activists are not happy at the Cameron/Clegg beterothal. So far they have been content to grumble in private and wait and see. But the emergence of such pointed criticism from the upper echelons of the party, so soon after the election and in the persons of such eminent and instantly recognisable Tory heavyweights might push the unease into the open.

It certainly cannot be helpful to Cameron/Clegg and their Conservative Coalition. It must rate as the shortest honeymoon period for any government in modern times.

Be Very Afraid.....Thatcher MKII

This warning is worth listening to...

Cameron: Inheritence Tax Only a "Small Amount of Money"

An audience member at the Leaders' debate, one Keith Bevan,  asked DC why he didn't answer questions on inheritence tax. To which the apparent reply was "It's only a small amount of money"...




As told to the BBC today. Strange it's not a lead story anywhere.....

Will Dave Bottle it -v- Paxo?

Nick Glegg has had half-hour Panorama interview with Jeremy Paxman which passsed without conmment, but that was before Cleggy became the star of the show. Gordon Brown has also agree to be grilled by the BBC's Grand Inquisitor.

David Cameron, on the other hand, is prevaricating... it appears that he doesn't want to face the firepower (and sometimes outright contempt) the heavyweight interrogator habitually trains on his victims. Some say Cameron''s a big fearty..... I would tend to agree, although you have to have a litttle sympathy. After his relatively poor showing in the first of the big debates, Cameron has a lot to lose: he is supposed to be the most media savay and the best communicator of the three party leaders, but he bombed on Thursday night.

And I don't see him having the grasp of detail of the strength of personality to combat Paxman. He also made a number of minor gaffes during the leaders debate, including a story about a sailor he met in Plymouth..( no ribald interventions please, this is a serious blog).

Anyway. Picture the scene..

Paxo: Tell me Mr Cameron, how does the Big Society work?

DC "Er um, ask Hilto or Govey, they think it's a great idea....".

P "Is it even a Conservative idea?"

DC "Isn't it? I thought it was...."

P "And what about immigration..."

DC "I met this 40 year old black man who had been in the navy 30 years....".

etcetera etcetera...

Of course, if Dave bottles it and doesn't turn up, the BBC has he option of showing the Panorama programme on Lord Ashcroft that the Tories have had banned. It's almost ready for broadcast now, and if Dave funks out, then there is a free spot just ready to reveal all on the Ashcroft affair once and for all..... a public service just crying out to be done by public service broadcasting... over to you BBC..

The Dust Settles

Two items of news: the dust cloud from Iceland closes all airports and the dust settles from the Leaders' debate.

So who is the winner? Well the planes are still grounded, so the traveller and the airlines both lose against nature.

As for the debates, for what it's worth, I thought Clegg won the beauty contest, Brown won the contest of argument and substance and Cameron lost over all.

How that plays over the next few days and whether it has a long term impact on the opinion polls and the real election poll is still to be seen.

If it has an effect, and the Lib Dems pick up and hold on to a few more marginals, the Tories will be the big losers.

And the SNP in Scotland might rue a Lib Dem surge, with two or three holds that the Nats might be targeting.

Of course, there are two more debates to go, so it could all still change. Maybe Nick will bomb and Dave will soar.

Mandelson Raises the Class Question...

The London Evening Standard is reporting that Lord Mandelson has indulged in a bit of class warfare, with references to "David Cameron's toffee nose..". It seems a bit tame to me, but it causing ructions at ConservativHome with charges of spite and jealousy and envy and what not...

Anyway, IMHO, the point about class is that it isn't really about class: nobody cares about that. Everybody nowadays agrees with Robert Burns: a man's a man for aw' that, an honest labourer is as worthy in human terms as any upper-class-twit-of-the-year.

With the Eton toffs the problem (apart from maybe not agreeing with the above) is that they belong to a very restricted milieu. They only mix with people the same as themselves, people who went to "school" (that's Eton for the uninitiated) or Harrow or Winchester or some such and then on to "oxbridge", and other millionaires and Aristos and Aristo-hangers-on. That's about 1% of the population, most of whom live in Chelsea and Knightsbridge and go to each others dinner parties and belong to the same clubs, and help each other through the original "social network" (no, not youtube).

So they have only a distant intuition about how us normal folk live and think. "The cost of living", what's that? D'ye mean caviar's got a bit scarce? I say!"

It is utterly unbelievable that David Cameron and George Osborne and Boris Johnson are simultaneoulsy the three people most able to run the country and that they went to the same school at the same time and the same university at the same time and were members of that same hooray henry club in the same university at the same time.

Co-incidence is one thing, privelege is another.

I wouldn't want to be David Cameron even if we swapped bank books and I'm sure he wouldn't want to be me. But I have a much better idea of how the vast majority of people live from day to day than he ever will.

So it is quite legitimate, and not envious at all, to question the ability of these people to be as good as they need to be and to be in touch with the needs of the electorate as they must to be to form an effective government for all of us, and not just a few of their mates.

The Real Question for Cameron

Just watched David Cameron meets undecided voters on the Politics Show.

It was interesting. Cameron was good, smooth and pausible, but he could not/did not answer at least half of the questions, preferring a "wait-and-see-we'll-tell-you-during-the-campaign", approach.

The transcript can be found at PoliticsHome

The most interesting question which I think could be asked of Cameron, but which no-one seems to want to ask is this: if he is so much in favour of social progressiveness and government intervention and green issues and relieving poverty and touchy-feely-we-feel-your-pain, why did David Cameron join the Thatcher Tory Party, which believed the exact opposite of all these things, in the first place?

Was he a nasty youth who is now a nice adult? Or is he still a nasty adult, but understands that he won't get elected if he admits it?

 David Cameron claims that he has changed his party, particularly on social issues like homosexual rights. This interview for the Gay Times website shows that a) he is lying, or b) he is not really in control of his party.

Last year, all Tory MEPs abstained on a vote against a Lithunian "section 28" dsigned to limit homosexual freedoms. When asked about the vote Cameron waffles, changes his mind, fluffs his lines and asks to stop the interview. He eventually claims that he knew nothing about the vote and then offers the excuse that his MEPs do not take part in votes about the internal matters of other countries. This is shown not to be true when Conservative MEPs later table a bill on press freedom in Italy, a clear interference in the internal affairs of another country. A Channel 4 report is shown here, watch it....



...and make up your own mind.

The suspicion has always lingered that the change that Cameron brought about in the social attitudes of his party was no more than skin (or press release) deep, and that the "nasty party" instinct still lurks deep in the heart of many Conservative MPs and MEPs.  This interview offers strong evidence to support that suspicion.

Broken Britain, or Wishful Thinking

Just what is it about the Conservative party and the spreading of fear and panic? Why do they think a fearful electorate will run to them?

The Tories have been banging on about what they call "Broken Britain" for months now. According to their analysis the UK is a crumbling society: crime is rising, children are being killed in unprecedented numbers by "beasts" and the public should be trembling with fear.... until Dave rides to the rescue....

Except.... Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, has been rebuked by the head of the Office of Statistics for issuing statistics for campaigning Torys that show violent crime rising. In fact the basis for gathering and reporting the stats was changed in 2002. Violent crime is actually falling, but Grayling's figures give a false impression of the actual level of violent crime. Now why would the Tories want people to think that violent crime is rising when it's not?

read more here

Another thread of the "Broken Britain" narrative has unravelled today with a report which shows that the violent deaths of children have decreased by 40%-50% since 1974. And the main reason identified was the interventions and actions of social workers.

The Conservatives have a real cheek pursuing this thread. Under Mrs Thatcher crime and poverty doubled. Violent crime increased. There was a great deal of social disorder, with riots in the streets of the major cities of England in 1981, 1982 and 1987. If Dave wants a paradigm of a "Broken Britain", he should dig up his old diaries of the time when he was a back room boy at Smith Square.

Crime, poverty, violence all up, and riots in the streets.

Now that's broken.

Dave's plastered.....

The Conservatives have started their election campaign early with a poster showing David Cameron and saying how much he cares about the NHS.

Unfortunately for them, it has attracted more comment for the perfect sheen and tone of the Dave’s skin. Pimples? Dave? No way! Moles? Blemishes? Not  a one!

He has literally no pores! Not one! No chin follicles! Nothing! Our Dave, he’s flawless he is.

The man with no skin blemishes, and no policies either….

And isn’t air-brushing the perfect metaphor for the Conservatives strategy.

We’re nice Tories, not those naughty Tories of recent experience. We love the NHS and everything nice. We'll cut and slash all that nasty government spending....except the bit you like, missus.

That Maggie Thatcher, she was a one, but she had nothing to do with us….we’re smooth, dead smooth…

Just like Dave….

Class war... as in "all in the same class in school..."

David Cameron calls Gordon Brown "petty" for mentioning the fact that he and his shadow cabinet seems to be comprised of toffs who went to the most expensive public schools.

This, according to Dave, is "class warfare". Dave says "it doesn't matter what school a chap went to.....It's policy and priority that matter..."

Aye. Well. Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Of course it doesn't matter what school any particular individual went to: even Eton will produce the occasional outstanding individual. But when half the Shadow cabinet went to the same school, at the same time, and then went to the same university at the same time, and while at university they were all members of the same club at the same time, and then the went and joined the same party at the same time, and now we are supposed to swallow the argument that these half-a-dozen blokes that went to the same school, university, club at the same time are, by some miracle, the half-a-dozen people in the country best qualified to form the next government....

It does stretch credulity a teeny bit, does it not?

If me and the other alumni of Gasswork Comprehensive 1972 were to come along and make a similar claim, what would the Tory press say? What would George and Dave say?

"Oiks" would be the least of it, I fear.

Then we would find out what class warfare really is.....

...Does anyone remember "Gorbals Mick"...?

When the sheet metal worker from Shettleston had the temerity to rise above his station and become Speaker of the toffs' own (they believe)Parliament, to the rage of certain Tories? Now that was nasty. That was class war.... but we didn't hear Dave whingeing then, did we?

It seem the Tories can hand it out in the war of the classes. But they seem mighty reluctant to take it....

The Budget....is that it?

I watched the budget. I listened to the Chancellor. Almost every word.

Usually you get a "steer" from the wording and the emphasis of the speech. The "steer" would be what the Chancellor wants you to think, the message he wants to send, the headlines he wants to read in the evening papers, whatever else is the real meat of the budget.

But this time..... I really got no impression. No spin. No "steer" from the politicos.

Except that we're in a really bad place. We have to borrow eye-watering amounts to stay afloat. And we hope to be out of it soon.....

On the other hand, the budget will not balance again before 2015/16, which seems an awfully long time....

One thing is clear though, and that's the weakness of the Conservative position. Cameron made a stinging attack on an open door, on the lines of "the situation is dire". But since the Chancellor had already admitted that the situation is dire, the Cameron angle, - "I agree, it really is dire" - seemed blunted and obvious. And it exposed the fact that he had no realistic alternative proposals.

Because the Tories seem to oppose measures to boost spending, they seem to prefer "responsibility" (i.e. cuts, or at least no easing) but they have no detailed, worked out, spelled out, policy alternative.

If the situation really is dire, shouting out as loud as you can "it's really dire", is not a solution.