Jack Straw has gone up hugely in my estimation. He is going on BBC's flagship Question Time to debate the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. This is a change of policy from previous years, where the Labour refused to debate the BNP in an attempt to deny them publicity. That has now failed, with the BNP gaining two European seats and a number of Council seats.
The best (and only) way to deal with these groups is to show them up as the racists they are. Instead of ignoring them and allowing their policies to go undebated, you have to take them on issue by issue and point out the grave deficiencies with their populist, racist policy. Most BNP voters, when shown the reality of what the BNP stands for, may think again about voting for them.
The polls are closed and the final results are in. Angela Merkel will be Chancellor of Germany for another four years (excluding intra-party wrangling).
However, the make-up of her government has changed dramatically, since she has gone from a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SDP) to one with the right-wing, free market Free Democrat Party (FDP). Now she will be operating with a very narrow parliamentary majority and will most likely have to reduce her consensual style of governing and accede to some of the FDP's more free market policies.
And speaking of a narrow majority, the style of politics will change hugely over the next four years. Previously the government, while fractious, had 443 seats in a 614 seat Bundestag, with the rest split reasonably equally between three other parties. This meant that there was little opposition to the government's policy, since none of those three parties was strong enough or received enough media attention individually to hold the government to account (and they all hated each other too much to work together). Now one of the main parties (SDP) is in opposition, and will be able to lead a powerful campaign against the government, along with it's ideological (if not political) allies the Left and Greens. Expect politics become a LOT more combative.
Also, not only has the make-up of her government moved to the right, but the power of the FDP has increased dramatically from when they were previously in government. In previous governments the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) have had the lions share of the seats, allowing them to direct policy with little reference to their much smaller partner. But with a narrow majority in the Bundestag and the FDP scoring a record number of members, Merkel may be compelled to take more FDP policies on as government policy - especially since right-wing members of her own party will now be pushing for a shift away from the amorphous blob that was the governing ideology of the grand coalition.
But what does this mean for the parties? Firstly it means that people like Merkel as Chancellor, but did not like the grand coalition that she was forced to work under. Both the CDU and the CSU (the Bavarian sister party of the CDU) lost votes from 2005 (although the CDU gained seats), while the SDP saw it's vote plummet by more than 10% and lost more than 70 seats. The big winners were the FDP on the right, and both minor parties (Greens and Left Party) on the left.
Secondly it shows again that while Merkel is an excellent Chancellor, she is not a good campaigner. The centre-right went down in the polls during the campaign period, and only squeaked in with a majority. Large numbers of media stories have discussed Merkel (and, to be fair, the SDP leader) 'snored their way to election day'.
And thirdly expect serious ructions to break out from the ranks of the SDP (and these ructions could be a fore-runner to similar problems in the Labour party after the UK election next year). The SDP received it's lowest share of the vote ever and much of the blame appears to be landing on the head of the centrists (such as former Chancellor Schroeder). The argument by many appears to be a break with this centrist model and a sharp move to the left to combat The Left Party, which has been cannibalising increasing numbers of SDP voters for the last three elections. Obviously we cannot know who will win the battle for the SDP's soul, but if it does move sharply to the left to combat the Left, it could well find itself locked out of power for a long time to come.
This is something that really grinds my gears. In the London Lite (free paper given out to read on the Tube) last night there was an article that video games have insufficient diversity and basically intimating that 'something should be done about it'. They also claim that gaming businesses are missing out on potential business by not having diverse casts. I admit that I am not one of those hard-out gamers who play Starcraft or World of Warcraft for 26 hours straight. However, I enjoy gaming - and I have NEVER taken into consideration the diversity of the cast when buying a game. For example, I certainly didn't think when 'Shogun: Total War' came out (unsurprisingly entirely populated by Japanese characters) "oh, I cannot possibly buy that because I cannot personally identify with the characters". Seriously, aren't there enough serious issues of discrimination and under-representation out there to keep people busy, rather than looking into a private industry which creates fictional realities for people to lose themselves in? I wonder if, when compiling their list, they took into account the number of Orcs, Elves and Dwarves in games - they probably found a major over-representation of each category...
Baroness Scotland is the Labour Attorney-General, the chief legal officer in the Government, has been fined for unknowingly employing an illegal immigrant as a cleaner. Ironically she has been found to have breached a law that she shepherded through Parliament when she was a Home Office Minister. Even more ironically, the Government assured small businesses when the law went through Parliament that it would not lead to people breaking the law unknowingly.
Her position is now untenable. The person who has ultimate authority over the decision to prosecute over breaches of the law cannot remain in her position after such a breach of the law - especially a law she helped write. Gordon Brown has said that because she did not knowingly know the law, she should not resign. Possibly if it were any other Ministerial position, I would agree, but because she wrote the law and also because of her position, she must go. There was once a time where a Minister would have resigned days ago. Sadly these days are clearly gone. I would have thought that after the expenses scandal, politicians would have sought to do anything they could to avoid a 'one law for politicians, one law for everyone else'. It would seem not...
To quote Cromwell "go and let us have done with you. In the name of God go!" Such language could easily be applied to the entire Brown Ministry...
The Liberal Democrats have been meeting in Bournemouth this week (if you hadn't noticed the wall to wall coverage they have received...) at the first of the Party Conferences in the lead-up to election year. Some highlights thus far are: Vince Cable's (doesn't everyone just love him?) speech on the floor of the conference. He announced a tax on houses worth more than £1 million which has been dubbed a 'mansion tax' by the papers and will probably hurt the LD's in key LD/Tory marginals (including possibly Cable's own Twickenham seat). On the policy itself I am not certain how I feel. New Zealand local councils use a similar rating system which forces homeowners to pay a percentage of their home value in tax. However, the big problem with such a tax is that it forces people to pay based on an asset that appreciates or depreciates arbitrarily. For example, when I worked for a MP in New Zealand, I dealt with a constituent who told me he was a pensioner surviving on the basic state pension, and had bought his house for about $10,000 in 1970 but could now no longer afford the rates on the house because it had appreciated over the years to be worth more than $1 million. If there is going to be tax on things like land or shares, it is much better that the tax be taken from the profit gained from the sale. In London itself one can imagine that there are a number of properties that are worth in excess of a million pounds where the owners are not in a position to pay thousands of pounds a year in extra tax. And other highlights? Well........ ... I'm sure there were some... Well, one hilarious happening was the exposure of an 'unemployed' man who was part of a TV audience and who laid into the Liberal Democrats as a member of the Tory Party and a former Conservative Councillor.
How's it been going for the Lib Dems? To be honest, not well. The party is fundamentally confused over whether to target the Tories or Labour. Efforts to displace Labour in the north and policies to appeal to voters in Leeds, Manchester and Scotland will alienate voters in LD seats in the South-West. A misjudgement could see the LD's losing large numbers of seats to the Conservatives, while failing to make major headway into Labour's heartland.
Another fundamental confusion is the seeming divergence of views between Lib Dem activists and voters over who to support in the case of a hung Parliament. If neither party has overall control, Lib Dem activists want the Party to support Labour, while overwhelmingly Lib Dem voters would want the party to support a Conservative Government.
I've actually thought this for years, but it is always nice to be reminded. Jimmy Carter said yesterday that opposition to President Obama is based on racism, which may come as quite a surprise to the millions of people who oppose Obama's policies because they further hike the deficit, or will ultimately make health care worse for those who currently have coverage. I sure was surprised to wake up this morning and discover I was a racist.
Jimmy Carter truly is a gift that keeps on giving for the right. By intimating that everyone who opposes Obama is a racist, he is only going to further anger people, a number of whom already believe Obama's supporters play the race card too often already.
Also, if having a protest by at most a hundred thousand people in Washington Mall (and by most accounts far fewer) saying Obama is a socialist is an indication of racism, then what the hell was having 500,000+ people in the same place calling Bush a Nazi? It is possible to have strong opinions (let's not forget just how militant some people were about the Iraq War) without those opinions being entirely based on the skin colour of the person involved. Most of the same people had equally strong opinions opposing the Clinton health care plan. They aren't racist, they are small government conservatives. And Democrats trying to paint them as racist will certainly not help Obama's drifting poll numbers...
David Cameron and the Cameroons have spent years trying to 'detoxify' the Conservative Party and make sure the people of Britain do not see it as the 'nasty party'. Unfortunately, some conservative bloggers (note the small 'c', I do not for a second believe they are in any way affiliated with the Conservative Party) are undermining all the hard work by making a number of very unpleasant allusions to the state of Gordon Brown's mental health. The best example is a cartoon over on Guido's blog which, along with a couple of other comments and cartoons, appears to be making fun of the rumour that Brown is on anti-depressants.
This makes me very angry indeed, both because it is nasty and also because it is incredibly stupid. Brown may or may not be on anti-depressants. Frankly, unless someone can show me it has affected his ability (and to be frank, I don't see that he is doing anything much worse now than he's been doing the whole time), I don't care. Winston Churchill fought World War Two while suffering from deep depression, and many other of the world's greats have suffered from it. Depression is a terrible and highly personal issue. The effects of it should not be taken lightly, and it certainly should never become a political issue or issue for humour.
But even worse are the possible political issues if this gets out of hand. As we stand now, Brown is so unbelievably unpopular that you might be hard pressed to find a majority of people in his own constituency who think he is doing a good job. Labour looks set to be utterly destroyed in the general election (whenever it may be), losing swaths of England to the Tories, and even half their Scottish seats to the SNP (according to recent polling). As it is, the Conservatives just need to avoid doing anything stupid (having Cameron appear on film killing kittens, while wearing a SS uniform and singing "I love bin Laden" comes to mind) and they will win the next election. However, the kind of nasty attacks now being seen on some blogs may just remind people why they have voted against the Tories all these year.
Let us not for a second forget, if the polls from most by-elections and European elections tell us anything, it is that the swing to the Tories is at least half down to Labour's vote collapsing and going to minor parties (or staying home altogether), and non-committed Tories seem not overly excited by the prospect of voting for David Cameron. While having the party leader being a figure of pity rather than dislike might not be the best election strategy in the world, the British people love an underdog, and if this 'Brown is Bonkers' campaign starts getting noticed by uncommitted voters and soft Tories, David Cameron could start to have a major problem.
The papers this morning have reports that Gordon Brown received a chewing out from Obama over the release of al-Magrahi. This is one of the few times I fully agree with Brown, and I think it only fair to say so. The Scottish Assembly is a fully devolved system. It, and it alone had to make the decision to free the al-Magrahi, and the Westminster Government (assuming there was no backroom deal) cannot be held responsible. To use another example, imagine if Gordon Brown rang up Obama and chewed him out if Texas executed a British citizen. Impossible, right? Because Obama is not responsible for Texas's justice policy. In the same way, blaming Brown for a decision by the Salmond executive in Scotland is just plain unfair.
The new laws for working with children are currently being debated on BBC. Basically if you work with children in any capacity (including if you drive your children and their friends to sports practice or carpool to school) you will have to be checked out by the Police as a potential abuser. It strikes me as nothing less than incredible that the government and quangoes cannot see the effect this law will have on relations between children and adults. We already have a situation where many adults see kids as potential muggers and kids see adults as potential sexual abusers. The different groups are already highly segregated. The new law will make this worse and further erode the trust between adults and children. It is another example of forcing everyone to jump through bureaucratic hoops for a highly dubious amount of public good
David Cameron spoke today about his plans to cut spending and reduce the deficit. He (quite bravely, in my opinion) spoke of actual spending cuts rather than pretending that the debt crisis can be solved with 'reductions in spending increases', or a 'zero-percent increase' (a favourite of the Labour party). Most of the speech dealt with small beer. Cutting back Quangos and other public sector 'fat cutting' that will probably create very little real controversy if the Tories come in to government (except with some in the civil service, no doubt). But the best thing about Cameron's speech was his obvious willingness to create a culture of smaller government and lower spending. He also finally pointed out that no-one in the Conservative Party will actually enjoy slashing spending and firing public servants (about time someone pointed out that Conservatives do not sit around rubbing our hands at the prospect of putting people out of work).
In a good, workmanlike speech, Cameron also spelled out a number of his plans for change in Parliament. He ran through a number of populist, Parliament-bashing themes, such as cutting the salaries of Ministers and halving the number of government cars for Ministers. However, there were a couple of suggestions that he had that I take some small issue with. First he plans to do away with the communication allowance that is given to MP's to allow them to communicate with their constituents. The argument is that this is little more than publicly funded propaganda and helps to protect incumbents against challengers. While I can see some good points in this argument, I believe that MP's need to be able to communicate with their constituents.
The other is cutting the number of MP's. I've heard all the arguments in favour of cutting the number of MP's, but I am concerned about the possible democratic deficit that would exist if you cut the number of MP's. As constituencies get bigger, it becomes more difficult for MP's to communicate with constituents, and also makes it harder to represent the people. If Britain had a federal system like the United States (and so people had a state or devolved Parliament to vote for as well as the Westminster Parliament) I would feel differently. However, I am a strong believer that the government governs best that governs closest to the people.
But I won't pretend like this is a major revolution. Cameron is calling for only 10% of the seats being cut, and to be fair most of these will certainly come from Scotland, where seats are significantly smaller than the English seats and ought to be increased to the same size.
However, one thing I would have liked to hear from Cameron but didn't is a cut in the number of Ministers. If you want to cut the waste in government, then there is plenty of fat to cut in the number of ministers and junior cabinet secretaries.
Update: David Cameron has since announced he will cut the number of Ministerial positons
While watching Alastair Darling's speech (and David Cameron's, which I'll blog about in more detail later), I was struck by a line from Darling's speech that sums up how the left seems to view the private sector. "No business, no matter how well run, could survive the economic crisis by itself" is what he said. And it suddenly struck me - is he for real? Does he truly believe that no company can survive economic difficulties without active government intervention?
If so, then we see encapsulated the problems of the left - that the economy is based around the government, with the private sector seemingly relegated to the role of hanger-on - providing services that the government doesn't really want to, but always needing government direction and bailing out when things get tough.
For those of you who do not know, Ian Dale (former Conservative candidate and publisher of the magazine 'Total Politics') recently released his top blogs for 2008/9, for all the different categories (left of centre, right of centre etc).
A truly hilarious (and good natured) barny has erupted over on Hopi Sen's blog. Hopi got the award for second place on the list of Left Wing Blogs. He has since declared the number one blog (by Tom Harris MP, whose blog I also recommend) is 'an enemy of the people' and has assumed the position of number one blog. Very funny. And make sure you read the comments section!
There is nothing I love more than public figures who say crazy things that come to light immediately AFTER an election. Hatamoya's wife is on the record claiming she was abducted by aliens and flown to Venus - which was green and beautiful, according to Mrs Hatamoya.
Unsurprisingly, this has caused some consternation with Japanese voters, since the new PM-designate openly talks about how much he relies on his wife's views and opinions.
Now, this is not going to have any effect whatsoever on anything political. But funny nonetheless, neh?
Nigel Farage has decided to resign as leader of the UK Independence Party in order to fight the Buckingham seat in the next General Election full-time. I am highly dubious over this decision. The major reason that Farage's challenge to John Bercow is newsworthy is because Farage is the leader of UKIP. It may well be that once he resigns as leader he will suddenly find himself starved of the media air he needs to mount a strong challenge in that seat.
Of course, it could be the new UKIP leader who is starved of media attention as any media who want to interview someone involved with UKIP come to Farage rather than whoever is the new leader.
It may be a brilliant move - giving him time to fight the seat rather than having to race all over the country to help candidates. Or it may make it more difficult for him to challenge an entrenched incumbent. We will only know on election night.
You may remember a while ago I attacked Gordon Brown for claiming spending was going to go up under a Labour Government, and the danger this meant if Labour were to win the next election on the basis of 'no budget cuts' only to have to make budget cuts - and therefore be without any popular mandate to make them.
In the interests of being fair and balanced (unusual for the blogosphere, I know), I feel obligated to then say the same to David Cameron. Cameron has been cleverly avoiding the flack over the NHS comments by Daniel Hannan and others by saying that a Conservative Government would not cut spending on the health service. However, now the Tories have gone further, claiming they would not only not cut the NHS budget, but would also increase NHS spending more than Labour would. This risks destroying the Conservative plans to make the necessary and vital spending cuts to decrease Britain's dreadful fiscal deficit. The NHS accounts for close to 30% of the public budget, and by ring fencing it (let alone increasing it) it becomes much harder to achieve serious savings. And NHS spending is not the only issue.
Opposition parties must be very careful, since they can sometimes have a tendency to go after the government on a number of spending issues - mostly implying they would spend more. So the Tories have now committed themselves to increase NHS spending, as well as increasing defence spending (they can hardly cut it after the amount of airtime they have had criticising government spending on defence). They also face an increased welfare budget thanks to the economic crisis and higher unemployment. It will be immensely difficult for the Tories to cut spending in a meaningful way unless they can find savings in the NHS.
Now, there are arguments that Cameron hasn't given a timeline for NHS ring fencing (so possibly in his mind he'd ring fence it for a year and then make some cuts in the second year of his government). But this semantic point will not carry weight with voters. If Cameron goes into an election campaign saying he will not cut spending at all in the NHS, he will have no popular mandate to do so. Any attempts to turn around two years into his term and say "we ring fenced the NHS spending, but now we feel we have fulfilled our promise and will now cut with wild abandon" will not fly.
Cameron needs to be honest with the public. If he ring fences the NHS spending then the debt crisis that George Osbourne mentions at least twice a day cannot be solved. If he is going to really deal with Britain's indebtedness there will have to be either serious reform of the NHS or cuts to its budget. Cameron's shadow cabinet needs to pick a side and stick to it. The big difference between Opposition and Government (that few Tories have first hand knowledge of nowadays...) is that you cannot have your rhetorical cake and eat it too.
In breaking news, the Daily Telegraph has just broken the story that John Bercow MP - Speaker of the House of Commons - will be challenged at the next election by the leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage MEP.
This creates a very interesting dynamic in the seat. Nigel Farage is the European Parliamentarian for the region that incorporates Bercow's seat of Buckingham. Buckingham is one of the safest Tory seats in the country, with Bercow defending a majority of about 18,000. However, this now becomes an interesting race for three reasons: 1) Farage will run to the right of Bercow, who is not widely liked for his shift leftwards on a number of policy issues, and is also disliked by many Conservatives because he actively wooed the Labour Party to get himself elected Speaker (while most Tories voted against him). 2) Bercow has been tainted by the expenses scandal, and more recently was lambasted by the papers for spending an enormous amount of money to upgrade the Speaker's flat in the Palace of Westminster. This could give Farage an opportunity to attack him (although UKIP is hardly clean as a whistle either). 3) The tactical voting for other parties will be very interesting. By convention the major parties do not stand against the Speaker, so the other parties vote (more than 40% in 2005) could go almost anywhere.
The average Tory is highly Eurosceptic. A lot of them are drawn towards UKIP but often blanch from voting for them in General Election as they see it as a wasted vote. Now almost anything could happen.
Update: Over on Conservative Home there appears to be a very lively debate - with a surprisingly large number of posters saying they'd switch to UKIP.
Really good series of articles over on Der Spiegal (in English) about the lead-up to World War II and whether Hitler could have been stopped during the lead up. It is in two sections, the first section here, and the second section here.
I think it is good to reflect on the past, and remember the lessons that so many paid the ultimate price to help us learn.
The voters of Japan have spoken, and as expected they have unceremoniously thrown the 'natural party of government', the Liberal Democratic Party (oh that the Lib Dems in Britain could aspire to such a title!) out on it's ear. In a complete switch, the LDP lost 177 seats (and their allies the New Komeito Party lost another 10), while the Democratic Party of Japan gained 195 seats to win 308, the largest number of seats held by any single party in more than 35 years. In this election we can see parallels with the United States Presidential election that swept Obama to power.
Both ran more on opposition to previous administration and a message of 'change' than on a set of policy goals. Although both Obama andHatoyama (DJP leader and soon to be Prime Minister) laid out policy manifestos, both spent most of their time on the hustings attacking the previous government, and promising broad, incontestable goals like 'change' and 'love'. This allowed both to get into office with huge positive support from the public. However, Obama at least is now discovering the pitfalls of not putting your specific policy goals front and forward during the campaign - you discover that the public has not bothered to read your policy manifesto and suddenly is not willing to support you on major policy planks.
Also, both have come into power with almost unattainable expectations from the public. Many in Japan expect the new government (which lacks many who have served in government previously) to swiftly put the economy to rights and solve many of the underlying problems that the LDP has failed to deal with in the last ten years. If Hatoyama's government fails to live up to expectations, the DJP may find the swing against them all the stronger because the public believed so much in them when they started. Obama has haemorrhaged support since taking office since he has failed to fulfil people's expectations (expectations which were, to be fair, completely unrealistic).
Finally, neither Obama nor Hatoyama have much time to get their programmes in place before they are forced to face voters again - and neither will face the voters directly in off-year elections. Both Obama and Hatoyama face off-year elections next year which will be taken both as a measure of their continuing public support, and could also have a direct impact on their ability to pass their agenda. Hatoyama faces elections for the upper house of the Japanese Parliament next year. Currently the DJP and their allies hold a narrow majority, and thanks to the electoral system the LDP are unlikely to gain a majority (fewer seats are up for re-election next year than at the previous election), but the DJP could lose their control over the house, potentially leading to gridlock. In America Obama indirectly faces the people twice in the next two years. This year there are two hotly contested governor races in New Jersey and Virginia (more on them later), and next year are the mid-term elections, which could see the Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives (but almost certainly not the Senate). Democrats losing big next year would be seen both as a rejection of Obama's policies (as Clinton's massive defeat in 1994 was a result of voter disapproval of his policies on health care and social issues) and also make it immensely difficult for Obama to get his agenda through. Obviously a year is almost a lifetime in politics, and anything could happen in the interim, but both governments have (and will have to in the DJP's case) hit the ground running to pass laws before facing the voters again.
