Diary
A moment for the Ghurkas – and Parliament
30 April, 2009
There aren’t many occasions when we can be really proud of our politicians. But yesterday’s cross party defeat of the government over the issue of Ghurkha residence rights was one of them. It was a moment for punching the air and proclaiming that justice really could course through the veins of Britannia and that our MPs recognised the supremacy of moral duty above party politics. It was also another telling symptom of this government’s relentless decline into oblivion.
For the government’s attitude towards the Ghurkas has been simply inexplicable. These brave Nepalese fighters have stood loyally by the British flag for two centuries, defending our interests across the globe. They have earned a reputation for courage under fire and for instilling fear in our enemies on the battlefield. They have spilt their blood for the Union flag and been rewarded for conspicuous gallantry. Every one of them deserves a place on this island as much as our native citizens.
Yet their reward for years of patriotic service is to be shunned by the government. The rules announced last week by Phil Woolas would have effectively debarred over 99% of the Ghurkas who retired before 1997. The government has told us that they cannot afford residence rights for these men, citing a figure of £1.4 billion. Even though this figure seems ridiculously inflated, it is a small price to pay for rewarding the genuine valour of these soldiers.
What makes this all the more galling is that the government, aided and abetted by an army of human rights lawyers, is so desperate to keep the wrong sort of people here. Islamist fanatics have been welcomed to these shores (and still are) and all of them harbour the deepest loathing of our liberal, secular values. Yet attempts to deport them founder, as always, on questions of their ‘human rights.’
Months ago, there was much talk of offering an amnesty to over half a million illegal immigrants in Britain. Yet it seems very odd to claim that we owe these people any automatic right of residence, particularly when they have scarcely served this nation and, in some cases, harbour malign intent.
Amid the shambles and ruin of New Labour’s immigration policy, it is the Ghurkas who deserve to be fast-tracked to this island past all others.
topPrime ministerial stupor
29 April, 2009
Nothing better illustrates Gordon Brown’s utter disdain for Parliament than his latest you tube U turn over MPs second allowances. If you recall, the Prime Minister promised to make important policy announcements to Parliament, not the media, in an effort to end Downing Street’s obsession with spin. That pledge was violated (not for the first time) the moment that Brown made an internet video proposing the abolition of the second homes allowance for MPs. Instead of consulting with opposition leaders, whose consent was essential for any deal on allowances, the Prime Minister launched a half baked pre emptive strike on the internet.
It is scarcely any wonder that he failed to get sufficient cross party support, forcing him to ditch the idea in rather humiliating fashion. Now he is trying to pressure the independent body (the House of Commons Standards Watchdog) to bring forward their own proposals on allowances and they have rightly given him short shrift.
This episode has made Brown look ridiculous. In less than a week, he has announced a policy proposal and then ditched it. He has bypassed his own MPs and ignored the wishes of party leaders. He has used the internet as the forum for party policy and looked hopelessly insincere and out of touch. He has then tried to make up for his lamentable performance by pressuring a genuinely professional body of politicians who are overseeing this sensitive issue.
As it is, Brown’s notion of ‘cash for appearances’ is unworkable. The way to restore public trust in politicians who are perceived to be on the take is not to reward them for turning up for work. Any such measure would simply exacerbate the public’s low regard for our politicians, a group thoroughly tainted by allegations of financial impropriety. Not that the Prime Minister appears to realise this, or that his own handling of the situation has all the echoes of Blairism. Indeed this lamentable episode, like the 50p tax farce, reveals just how oblivious he is to the people he serves.
topGreen shoots of Israeli realism?
27 April, 2009
With Iran’s pursuit of nuclear status appearing relentless and inexorable, there is a hint of Israeli realism countering Obama’s drive for peace at any price. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) today, Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s new strategic affairs minister, offers a fierce rebuttal to the Chamberlainite follies coming from Washington. Noting the new President’s desire to restore diplomatic ties with Iran’s leaders, Ya’alon says: ‘I have no doubt that the Iranians will use any dialogue to stall for time if there will not be a clear time frame and clear benchmarks like telling them that they have two months to stop the enrichment.’
He goes on: ‘What is happening between the Western world and the Islamic jihadists of Iran is a process that is built on previous surrenders and concessions. What the West needs to do is stand up against this wave and confront it." He is of course absolutely right. Tehran’s leaders have exploited the weakness and disunity of the West for many years now, using every opportunity to buy time for themselves and their jihadist regime.
Obama’s foreign policy ‘change’ is in fact an extension of the initiatives undertaken by the so called EU3 (Britain, France and Germany) to prevent an Iranian bomb in return for economic incentives. Yet with a regime intent on achieving great power status, at least in the Persian Gulf, such incentives hold little water. What is needed, Ya’alon believes, is for the West to pressure Iran with the ‘stick’ of military action, rather than offer yet further craven concessions. This hard headed form of diplomacy, despite appearing belligerent, is in fact the surest path to peace and stability in the long term.
Ya’alon also dismisses the notion that the Palestinian Authority at Annapolis was on the cusp of a peace agreement. ‘Mahmoud Abbas refused to insert the words "two states for two peoples" into the mutual statement and only allowed the words "two states."’ Indeed, and Abbas also refused to talk of a ‘Jewish state’ while all the time remaining committed to ‘the right of return’ for Palestinians, a euphemism for Israel’s destruction. With peace partners like this, does Israel need enemies?
Ya’alon’s is an encouraging voice of realism in what may hopefully be a more robust and creditable Israeli administration.
topShock horror: Labour is milking the rich!
22 April, 2009
So now we know it: New Labour is True Labour through and through. The party that pledged never to raise income tax and which signed a Faustian pact with Britain’s wealth creating classes has reverted to socialist type. By creating a new 50% tax band for those earning in excess of £150,000, New Labour has abandoned any pretence to fiscal responsibility and played havoc with basic economic rules. The rich will be mercilessly flayed in order to make up for the appalling shortfall in government revenue. They are the sacrificial lamb at the altar to New Labour’s profligate decade.
Of course, this measure is as immoral as it is counter productive. Wealthier individuals will use all the means at their disposal to avoid paying tax or simply leave the country altogether. The net gain in revenue, assuming there is some, will be tiny in comparison to overall GDP. And the price to be paid for this lunatic policy is that the City’s reputation for competitiveness will be shattered. Which foreign innovators or entrepreneurs, the very people whose talents are needed to kickstart our economy, would now choose to start their businesses in London instead of New York?
Darling, no doubt at Brown’s behest, is playing to the gallery. Amid the clamour to hang every banker in the land, he probably thinks it is worth sacrificing a few plutocrats in order to give his party a boost in the polls. After all, doesn’t the government always tell us that it was unregulated corporate greed (alone) which brought this country to the brink of collapse? But it was this government which sat idly by as financial fat cats took huge bonuses, knowing full well that the Treasury’s coffers were swelling in the process. Now that the party’s claims to economic competence have been shot to pieces, they have turned on the monster that was feeding them.
This budget is demented nonsense, a glaring admission of defeat from a party that has simply lost the plot. Labour's old habits sure die hard.
topThe diplomats walk out on Ahmadinejad. But they should never have attended this grotesque conference.
21 April, 2009
One has to ask those diplomats who walked out of the Geneva conference today quite what they were expecting when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned up. Did they believe that the Iranian President would offer a restrained contribution to the proceedings with his appalling track record on Jews and the Holocaust? Did they think he would pass up the opportunity to indulge in odious anti Semitism when it is so deeply etched into his world view?
What they heard was the Iranian demagogue in full flow, denouncing Israel as a ‘cruel and racist state’ built on the ‘pretext of Jewish suffering,’ a perverse comment to make on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. Far from walking out, these diplomats should never have attended Durban II in the first place. Instead they should have followed the example of a number of Western nations, including America, Canada and Israel, who stayed away in protest. They knew that their attendance would lend an unwarranted legitimacy to the whole rotten spectacle.
Lest we forget, this grotesquely misnamed ‘anti racism’ conference is designed to re-affirm the principles of the first Durban Conference, an event which demonized Israel and Zionism and which saw attacks on Jewish participants. It is also designed to outlaw ‘derogatory stereotyping and stigmatisation of persons based on their religion’, which means an attempt to ringfence Islam from criticism. It is more an attack on human rights than a defence of them. But when you consider that this Geneva farce is being chaired by those well known beacons of human rights, Iran, Russia, Cuba, Libya and Pakistan, none of this is surprising.
In any event, the headlines today have focused on those who stormed out as opposed to the many listening delegates who loudly cheered the President’s hate filled speech. It is these bigoted fellow travellers who offer the truest measure of what the UN stands for today.
topA shameful abuse of power
17 April, 2009
Yesterday the Crown Prosecution Service delivered a damning blow to the government by deciding there was no case against Damien Green. They should be congratulated for reaching this decision. From the start, as I wrote last year, there were serious doubts about whether the law of ‘misconduct in public office’ actually applied to Green. He was, after all, just an opposition MP doing his job, not a public servant abusing his position for financial gain. His ‘crime’ was merely to receive invaluable information about security lapses within the Home Office.
No doubt the Home Secretary, like the permanent head of the Home Office, was angered by the actions of Mr Galley. She even had the right to demand that he be investigated for possible breaches of the Civil service code. What she had no right to do was involve the police in a protracted, expensive and heavy handed investigation. This is the behaviour we associate with authoritarian regimes.
The Cabinet office had originally told the anti terror police that the documents passed to Green posed 'considerable damage to national security'. But as Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, pointed out, they did not contain ‘secret information’ or ‘information affecting national security'. In other words, the claim was blown out of the water. Instead the documents Green received concerned matters which were very much in the public interest and which the media had a right to disseminate to the public.
In one case, it was revealed that ministers believed that the recession would lead to an upsurge in violent crime, theft and burglaries. In another, that 5,000 illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards at sensitive sites in Whitehall. Smith’s priority should have been to address this immigration shambles, rather than turn on the messenger.
Clearly she emerges incredibly poorly from this despicable state of affairs. So too do the increasingly politicised civil servants who danced to New Labour’s tune, the lame duck Speaker of the Commons, Michael Martin, the overzealous police who stormed into Green’s house and a host of other mediocrities. What a sad spectacle for a supposed democracy.
topBowen exposed
16 April, 2009
So finally Jeremy Bowen is caught out for disseminating Arabist propaganda. The body which oversees the corporation on behalf of its audience has criticised an online article by Jeremy Bowen in which he comments on the 1967 Six Day War.
In the online article from January 2007, Bowen is accused of breaching BBC guidelines on impartiality and using language which is insufficiently clear and precise, thus failing to meet BBC standards on accuracy. Take this gem: ‘The Israeli generals... had been training to finish the unfinished business of Israel's independence war of 1948 - the capture of East Jerusalem - for most of their careers.’ Quite what evidence Bowen could provide for such a statement is difficult to gauge but he follows it up with this: Zionism has had an ‘innate instinct to push out the frontier’ and what he has in mind is the settlement movement: ‘Forty years on, Israel has settled around 450,000 people on land occupied in 1967, in defiance of almost all countries' interpretation of international law except its own.’
Bowen clearly should have done his research properly. There is no innate ideological bent towards expansionism within mainstream Zionism. The Zionists were originally offered a national home which covered what is today both Israel and Jordan. They were somewhat disappointed by the emasculation of Palestine in 1922 which reduced the potential state by 80% and when the country was further reduced in 1947 through the partition plan, the Zionists were again frustrated.
Yet it is amazing that this ‘expansionist’ group still voted for partition, despite the state they were offered representing around 10% of the original Palestine mandate. Bowen reproduces the canard that Israelis were bent on the conquest of East Jerusalem when the truth was that the Jewish state told Jordan to stay out of the Six Day War. It was only King Hussein’s decision to engage in conflict that led to the Israeli conquest of the West Bank.
Bowen fails to mention that Israel put out peace feelers shortly after the Six Day War, only to be rebuffed by the Arab League at Khartoum. Neither is there an acknowledgment that in 2000-1, Israel offered back over 95% of the West Bank and Gaza, only to find that Yasser Arafat preferred an intifada to peace. Indeed so blinded is Bowen by Arabist propaganda that he fails to reflect on Israel’s two pull outs since 1967: from Sinai in 1978-9 and Gaza in 2005. A strange expansionist movement indeed!
While the settlements do have a dubious position in international law, Bowen again ignores the fact that in 2000, the Israelis offered to dismantle them as part of an overall settlement. And what about the 7000 settlers moved out of Gaza?
Predictably, the BBC dismissed the Trust’s conclusions by saying that Bowen was ‘simply exercising his professional judgement on history.’ They go on: ‘Clearly there is no consensus view of history and it is self evident that there are others who have a different analysis.’ There may be no consensus on the Arab-Israeli conflict but professionals working for an impartial organization must take account of all the facts rather than a selective subset that reflects a hidden bias. As the BBC ought to acknowledge.
Footnote: But read http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-how-can-you-trust-the-cowardly-bbc-1669281.html for Robert Fisk's ultra Arabist take on the Trust's conclusions.
topWhat the email scandal reveals about Brown’s addiction to spin
14 April, 2009
Gordon Brown has attempted to draw a line under the McBride scandal with a series of letters to the people affected. These letters reflect a classic Brown formula: distancing himself from unfortunate events for which he bears a great deal of responsibility. Thus while acknowledging that the emails sent by his former special adviser were ‘a matter of great regret’, he added elsewhere that ‘no minister and no political adviser other than the person involved had any knowledge of or involvement in these private emails.’
Perhaps Brown knew little about these emails, the lurid contents of which have now been disseminated across the globe. But to pretend that he knew nothing about McBride’s character, or his reputation for engaging in the ‘dark arts’ of media manipulation, is disingenuous in the extreme.
For McBride was not some random Whitehall apparatchik but one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisers. As a key member of the Treasury inner circle, McBride smeared anyone who crossed his boss’ path, dripping ‘pure poison’ on the likes of David Miliburn, Alan Milburn and John Reid. He therefore played an important role in the Brown/Blair rift that disfigured New Labour for a decade.
Yet now the Prime Minister has effectively disowned his political attack dog, writing to Gus O’Donnell that he is ‘ready to take whatever action is necessary to improve our political system.’ Somehow we are supposed to believe that there are two Prime Ministers, the one who employs these shifty characters and the other who vows to clean up politics. No wonder Gordon Brown was accused of having a split personality!
For keen observers of Gordon Brown, the events of last week are barely surprising. In 2007 the burly Scot rose to power promising to remove the insidious culture of spin that had poisoned the Blair era. As many pointed out at the time, this had to be taken with a generous pinch of salt for Brown was no stranger to the spin machine. In his first budget in 1997, he carried out a punitive raid on private pensions with his new tax on dividends. For years, he declared that he was never informed of this policy's doleful consequences yet, after a Freedom of Information request, it became clear that the opposite was the case.
In his last budget as Chancellor, he donned the mantle of a 'tax cutter' by reducing the basic rate of income tax from 22p to 20p. Yet the abolition of the 10p rate impoverished millions of low paid workers who saw their disposable income plummet. His plethora of stealth taxes was itself a form of spin, allowing him to declare that income tax remained low even while he was increasing the tax burden each year.
Then as Prime Minister, Brown promised to make foreign policy announcements to Parliament before briefing the media. Then almost immediately, he travelled to Iraq to declare the imminent withdrawal of British forces, a calculated attempt to draw media attention away from the Tories. He famously called off an election because of shifting opinion polls, yet denied this had anything to do with his decision. He embraced the EU Constitution, only to pretend it had nothing to do with him by refusing to attend the signing ceremony.
Most importantly, he has presented Britain’s current financial predicament as the result of purely ‘global’ forces imported from the American sub prime debacle. Yet this deliberately ignores our own housing bubble, the burden of public debt, the collapse of sterling and the glaring failure of regulation, all problems for which Brown must take much responsibility.
In reality, the PM's use of spin has fooled very few people. An increasingly disenchanted public now view him as just another cynical, career politician. Having promised ‘whiter than white’ politics, Gordon Brown has proved to be New Labour through and through, obsessed with power over principle and using all the dark arts at his disposal to trounce his enemies. When he comes to reflect on his failed Prime Ministership, Brown will surely lament this failing more than anything else.
topPolicing the G20
8 April, 2009
Some months ago at the height of Israel’s Gaza offensive, I attended a peaceful rally outside the Israeli embassy. It was designed to counter a pro Palestinian rally being held nearby and was, by and large, a peaceful event. After a couple of hours, I moved to the other side of the road where some pro Israeli supporters were soaking up the genial atmosphere. Admittedly there were some isolated scuffles involving passers by but little to suggest any imminent outbreak of violence.
It was at this stage that the police cordoned off a section of the crowd and began to march us forcefully down Kensington Road. Their stern faces of the police showed they were in no mood to tolerate any opposition. At the time it all seemed an unnecessarily provocative, heavy handed and confrontational response to what were minor incidences of trouble.
These events were brought home to me after hearing about the tragic experience of Ian Tomlinson who died last week during the G20 riots. Footage, which has been widely disseminated, shows an officer push Mr. Tomlinson to the ground and leave him there, with little apparent provocation from the victim. A few minutes later Tomlinson was dead, having suffered a heart attack.
Now there is no proof that the blow caused Tomlinson’s heart attack and that he would not have died without bring thrown to the ground. But this case does raise pressing concerns about the activities of the Metropolitan Police. A number of questions need to be answered therefore with some urgency.
Firstly, some light needs to be shone on police tactics on the day of the G20 protests. Why were police advised to cordon off thousands of people and keep them confined in a small space for several hours? Was this not likely to unnecessarily antagonise some in the crowd and even raise serious health concerns? The police did come under attack from a small number of protestors and perhaps the tactics of 'kettling' will be seen to be justified on this basis.
But this would not justify the apparent brutality meted out to innocent individuals. The officer who struck Tomlinson must be identified swiftly and suspended, pending the outcome of the investigation. Then it will be possible to determine exactly why Tomlinson was struck and whether this resulted from a ‘higher’ order or from the actions of the officer alone. Above all, the City of London police must not be allowed to conduct this investigation when their impartiality will obviously be compromised. This is a job for the IPCC alone.
Of course, no one should defend the hooligans who seek to hijack otherwise peaceful protests for their own violent purposes. Nor should we minimise the risks taken by police to protect members of the public. But let us never forget that the primary role of the police is to serve and defend the public, not the other way round. A balance must always be struck between preserving the social order and allowing citizens the right to peaceful and legitimate protest. An independent investigation must determine whether the police struck that balance during the G20 protests.
topObama appeases tyranny - again
7 April, 2009
In today’s Telegraph, Gerald Warner has a superb take on Obama’s failure to act against North Korea last week. Deriding the President’s posturing over the illegal launching of the Taepodong-2 missile last week, Warner poses an obvious question: ‘What was the point of America deploying two missile-killing destroyers, the USS McCain and the USS Chafee, in Japanese waters, only to spectate as Kim Jong-il's Taepodong-2 missile took off?’ He continues: ‘Overnight, posturing and sabre-rattling, formerly the province of Kim, has become the role of America and its allies. Such chest-thumping followed by inaction is deadly dangerous. Do the names Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia not ring any bells?’ Obama, for all the cosy image of virtue, is ‘Jimmy Carter II.’
Indeed. Obama appears to be a fan of the diplomatic school of ‘bluff’ where you trick an enemy into submission by merely threatening force. But it is a game where the stakes are high. When your own bluff is called, your negotiating position is compromised. And this is exactly what happened here.
Instead of shooting down the Taepodong 2, which the missile killing destroyers could have done, Obama called for nuclear weapons to be scrapped and for the 6 party talks to be resumed. But these talks have stalled precisely because of past violations by Kim Il Jung’s regime. Pyongyang repeatedly violated the agreement signed in 1994 according to which it would shut down its nuclear power plant in return for heavy fuel oil. In 2007 the Bush administration, under the influence of the State department, agreed a deal with Kim to freeze the Yongbyon plant in return for much needed supplies of fuel oil. Again, the North reneged on its pledges. The strategy of Clinton and Bush involved, in the words of John Bolton, a ‘prayer to negotiate the North out of its nuclear weapons’ and it was a forlorn hope.
By now it should be abundantly clear that the ‘Great leader’ of this isolated, Stalinist state is unappeasable. He will never abandon the quest for the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. Like Iran’s ayatollahs, Kim is playing for time, hoping to exploit the weakness and indecision of the powers around him and, like the Iranians, Kim is playing the West for suckers. For rogue regimes like North Korea are excited, not by strength, but by weakness – the weakness of their opponents. It is their tonic and their oxygen. And while most Republicans appear to understand this, Obama does not.
Still, at least the North Koreans are happy. And Ahmadinejad too for that matter.
topSarkozy humiliated. Brown rebuffed.
02 April, 2009
Let’s be thankful for small mercies. Nicholas Sarkozy did not achieve his vision of a global banking regulator to impose transnational rules on the world’s bankers. The suggestion was preposterous and undemocratic and it was quite right that he was shunned by his colleagues. Sarkozy’s talk of victory is rather shallow and one has to suspect that his hissy fit was a form of Gallic brinkmanship designed for domestic ears.
Some measures in the G20 communiqué were welcome, like the commitment to a freeze on protectionism and a crackdown on tax evaders. There was also an important recognition that bad banks had to be cleansed of their toxic debts in order to function more effectively. The moves to augment IMF reserves were also needed though they will scarcely affect major exporters like Japan and China, both of whom are suffering terribly from the collapse of world trade.
But for all his bluster about remaking the world, Brown was also rebuffed. The Prime Minister had talked up the benefits of fiscal stimulus and splurging on debt in order to restore growth. He wanted this to be the shining centrepiece of the summit, his piece de resistance. But thanks to the objections of a determined Franco-German bloc, all Brown could do was mention the vast sums of money already spent, rather than promise a further raft of fiscal commitments. And just as well. For while the US and China can afford more spending, the UK, as Mervyn King recently pointed out, cannot.
For now, Brown is the star of the show. He can bask in the after glow of the G20 summit and the warm words of praise from world leaders, especially Barack Obama. But soon he will return to the ‘prosaic’ task of saving the UK from meltdown, which is a bit like asking Superman to repair a leaking roof after solving global warming. But like it or not, this is Brown’s primary responsibility and it will ultimately decide his destiny.
topSarkozy’s grandstanding must not disrupt the G20
1 April, 2009
It is becoming a truism that world leaders at the G20 summit need to show unity to stave off financial disaster. George Soros himself said something to this effect and his calls have been echoed by leading think tanks, including the OECD. But unity of purpose has been in short measure recently. Gordon Brown’s plans for a global ‘fiscal stimulus’ have been rudely shattered of late, with the Czech president describing plans for more government debt as ‘the road to hell.’ His view was echoed in more cautious terms by Mervyn King.
Now we have the spectre of President Sarkozy threatening to torpedo these talks unless world leaders agree to his demand for a global banking regulator. Of course this is nothing but Gaullist grandstanding, a blatant attempt to take the shine off the free trading Anglo-Saxon bloc dominated by Barack Obama. But it also reflects his attempt to paint the global crash of 2008-9 as an Anglo-American affair, something that ignores the rather excessive leverage of European banks. Regardless of Sarkozy’s motives, the G19 would be right to resist his madcap proposal.
A global regulator, by its very nature, would be a totally unaccountable monster. It would not be answerable to any government and would therefore lack the stamp of democratic legitimacy. So it is hardly surprising that Obama, among others, has rejected the idea as unworkable in the current climate. That Sarkozy is championing a global regulator is unsurprising. Lest we forget, he is a leading light in the European Union, an elitist institution that shows brazen contempt for the demands of voters. So this is another attempt to bypass national electorates and create a supranational organization by the back door. The Frenchman’s plans must be fiercely resisted.
But this is no excuse to avoid the issue of banking regulation. The banks do need tighter control to rein in the more reckless urges of their chairmen and this means a return to a dual system of banking. In 1999 the Clinton administration abolished the Glass-Steagall Act which had, for many decades, separated commercial from investment banking. In effect, this put taxpayers’ cash at risk from the casino style activities of the securities market.
Glass-Steagall (and equivalent legislation) must be put back in place to provide protection to depositors and to ensure a minimum level of regulation for the banking industry. But it is up to individual governments to introduce this legislation and to improve their own regulatory mechanisms. It should not be the role of a supranational institution that is answerable to nobody.
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