Fred Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood
Good luck to Martin Salter, who has tabled a motion calling for the forfeiture committee to meet to consider stripping Not-Sir Fred Goodwin of his knighthood. Salter says this to Paul Waugh of the Standard.
Sir Fred Goodwin is a symbol of corporate greed and the honours system is there to reward service not selfishness. There’s clearly a powerful case for his refusal to hand back his knightood to be considered by the Forfeiture Committee in order to preserve the integrity of the honours system.
About which I have only one complaint.
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How liberal are the Conservatives?
With Shirley Williams speaking on liberalism and Labour in conversation with Michael Crick at last night’s Fabian event (previewed by Ed Wallis), and Stuart White setting out some challenges to the LibDems (though he also, rightly in my view, credits their strong overall record in this area).
So let’s complete the set.
Thanks to Evan Harris MP suggesting and coordinating the following letter to The Observer, published on Sunday, following the Convention on Modern Liberty, which senior Conservatives had been keen to use as an opportunity to project the party as “pro” civil liberties.
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Statement from Phil Woolas MP on who ‘is British’
I recently posted a letter to Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, in response to an article that suggested British-born descendants of immigrants shouldn’t classify themselves as ‘British’. I asked immigration minister Phil Woolas if he had any comment and received this:
Dear Sunder
Most people believe that it is the Government who have released these figures in this way. In fact, it was the ONS with no Ministerial involvement and indeed despite my objections. What’s worse is that the press release which ran to nine pages highlighted the 1 in 9 figure as the main finding. So, Government gets the blame by some for whipping up anti-foreign sentiment when it is the independent ONS who are playing politics. The justification from the ONS who had, out of schedule, highlighted the figure two weeks earlier because it was “topical” is, at best, naive or, at worst, sinister.
The fact that 1 in 9 people who are in Britain (for over a year) were born overseas is neither new nor informative. It includes around 370,000 undergraduates who will not stay in this country as well as those British nationals born overseas including around a quarter of a million born to our armed forces personnel serving overseas. The figure of twelve months is arbitrary. Surely the distinction between temporary residence and Indefinite Leave to Remain and full citizenship is more useful in framing a mature debate.
There are times in our history when the numbers of residents born overseas was higher than 1 in 9. Robert Winder’s brilliant history of migration estimates that at the time of the Huguenot migration the figure could have been as high as one in three.
The whole issue highlights the toxic nature of this debate.
Phil Woolas MP
Immigration Minister
So, who does the Mail think is British?
Dear Mr Dacre,
I was disappointed to read reported in today’s Daily Mail that the newspaper regards it as a mistake to consider that the children or grandchildren of immigrants are British, but rather would classify us as “second or third generation immigrants”.
although the figures from the Government’s Office for National Statistics show an increase in numbers of foreign born people they still fail to record the true impact of immigration because they record their children as British rather than second or third generation immigrants.
I hope that your proposed reclassification of Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry as not British, as second and third generation immigrants descended from the foreign-born Phillip, will not distress them too much.
But it does seem most ungrateful, when Winston Churchill was voted ‘greatest Briton’, to now strip him of that status because he had an American mother. (However strongly your newspaper disagreed with Churchill’s criticisms of appeasement in the 1930s, isn’t it now time to let bygones be bygones?)
Perhaps you could let us know who the Daily Mail thinks is truly British. I can see you probably think it is too late for my children – as “third generation immigrants”, currently aged under 3 – but perhaps there might be a tip or two they could pass on to their descendants.
So, given our shared interests in integration and citizenship, it would be terribly kind if you might let us know whether there is anything that those of us who were born here as British citizens could ever do so as to become British in your eyes.
Yours sincerely,
Sunder Katwala
Movement politics: a century ago
The new movement politics – the lessons from Obama and the potential of the internet for progressive campaigning, which new spaces such as Liberal Conspiracy seek to realise
– is both the idea of the moment and quite an old idea too.
If politics is the art of the possible, progressive change has depended on the arguments and campaigns which can change the possibilities of politics. One of the best descriptions of why this matters was offered a century ago, as Beatrice Webb recorded in her diary the reaction of Winston Churchill, then a New Liberal member of the Asquith cabinet, to her campaign for the abolition of the poor law.
That campaign arose from the publication – one hundred years ago tomorrow – of the Minority Report to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law.
October 3rd 1909 – Winston and his wife dined here the other night to meet a party of young Fabians. He is taking on the look of the mature statesman – bon vivant and orator, somewhat in love with his own phrases. He did not altogether like the news of our successful agitation. ‘You should leave the work of converting the country to us, Mrs Webb, you ought to convert the Cabinet’. ‘That would be all right if we wanted merely a change in the law, but we want’, I added, ‘to really change the minds of the people with regard to the facts of destitution, to make the feel the infamy of it and the possibility of avoiding it. That won’t be done by converting the Cabinet, even if we could convert the Cabinet – which I doubt. We will leave that task to a converted country’
Uneasy allies? Progressive dilemmas revisited
This moment of political flux offers opportunities to connect debates bubbling up at the level of ideas to more immediate political contexts. Both Phillip Blond’s Red Tory thesis in Prospect and my advocacy of a renewed Lib-Lab coalition politics of realignment in the New Statesman are political interventions motivated, in different ways, by the concern to do that.
Yet the difficulties in connecting ideas and politics are reflected in my scepticism about how far Red Toryism could influence David Cameron, and in what could be seen as a somewhat analogous sceptical challenge to me, particularly from LibDems including Richard Huzzey and James Graham who would both in principle be open to a liberal-left realignment yet who sought to ask of the barrier of the Labourist political culture “is it even possible to change?”.
Those are political questions and challenges – and we will find out how they are resolved. Yet, at the same time, these are also both arguments about political ideas – and how ideologies can rediscover traditions which have not been recently dominant – which might usefully be separated from the political cycle. David Marquand’s major new book Britain Since 1918, published last Autumn, offers an important starting point for debate, by illuminating the historic evolution – and potential future – of Britain’s ideological traditions on both right and left.
More Eurosceptic advice for Iceland
Iceland’s new Social Democratic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir is to lead a coalition government with the left-green party, expected to be formally announced today, with external support from another small Progressive Party, which is expected to seek a mandate for European Union membership in a General Election in May.
As day follows night, here is a dissenting note from our favourite deeply Eurosceptic Tory MEP Dan Hannan. He is a close observer of Iceland, particularly as a possible model for Britain’s own EU-free future, but he does rather, in these tricky circumstances, massively overplay his standard ‘EU as enemy of democracy card’.
Not informing the drugs debate
Today Programme. 7.10am slot. The Deputy Chair of the Magistrates Association, a John Fasselfelt, is on.
The Association has fully welcomed – indeed, vocally campaigned for – the government’s decision to upgrade cannabis to a plan B drug, which comes into effect today. But their complaint is about the sentencing guidelines which come with this. They aren’t as serious for possession as for other class B drugs. Less cases will get into a court setting, he complains. That’s unfair. What if you were caught with cannabis and I had some other class B drug, he asks James Naughtie.
Who reasonably asks what, for information, are those other Class B drugs with which he is sure cannabis must be treated identically.
“You’ve got me there”. He hasn’t got the foggiest. Not a clue.
“I’m not a big user of Class B drugs”, he says. (No, just an expert advocate on what drugs should and should not be in that class). Well done.
Here they are.
The lesson: perhaps the government might listen a little more to its scientific advisors (whose advice was ignored in this case), and a little less to the chuntering magistrates.
Cross-posted from Next Left
Will the red Tories spill blue blood?
The Conservatives would like to claim to be the “progressive” force in British politics.
Few would take seriously the rather thin pamphlet ‘Who’s progressive now?’ on that theme published a year ago by Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt, which even its authors would admit was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek smash and grab raid on the centre-left lexicon. But a more concerted attempt to produce some intellectual ballast for this political repositioning was launched yesterday by Demos, an event blessed by the presence of leader David Cameron and party big brain Oliver Letwin alongside several luminaries of the left.
Cameron barely said anything new at all, articulating the progressive ends (fairness, equal opportunity, sustainability, public safety) towards which he hopes to find some conservative means (work in progress, to say the least). But he stayed on for a much more interesting speech by Phillip Blond (read it here), who is heading the Demos progressive conservatism project, before the leader and the thinker took questions together.
Malcolm Gladwell and the social mobility white paper
Polly Toynbee’s column today enthusiastically reports, as Labour’s biggest idea for 11 years no less, that today’s white paper on opportunity and social mobility will announce government plans to introduce a public duty on public bodies to address class disadvantage. The dynamics of advantage and disadvantage in Britain today are complex. But we can not understand them without bringing class back in.
A Christmas present from my brother meant that I read Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ over the holidays, a book whose pre-publication buzz included the author selling out a theatre. Gladwell is very readable, as those who read his long form journalism in the New Yorker (see www.gladwell.com) will know. And I have little sympathy with the criticism that he popularises research. This is A Good Thing: he seems to me to play very fairly in citing and crediting academic sources.
What surprised me is how political – and how essentially social democratic – a book it is. The broader Freakonomics phenomenon often strikes me as a rather apolitical series of conjuring tricks. I was expecting something similar here: Gladwell’s ‘ethnic theory of plane crashes’, the focus of his stage talk, was much discussed in the media.
Europe’s centre-left and the Gaza crisis
Our modest Fabian blog Next Left is a newcomer to the progressive blogosphere, but we have recruited an ex-Prime Minister to write regularly for us this year, in Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who was Prime Minister of Denmark for eight years in the 1990s and who remains among the most significant voices in shaping the European social democratic agenda.
As President of the Party of European Socialists, Rasmussen reports that he has written to Ehud Barak - Leader of the Israeli Labour Party and Defence Minister – on behalf of Europe’s social democrats to express his dismay at the appalling loss of life from the “hugely disproportionate” Israeli military response, calling for an immediate ceasefire and a comprehensive political agreement between Israel and Palestine.
Guardian scoops: Obama will talk to Hamas
The Guardian’s front page story – headlined Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’ - certainly heralds a significant shift in US foreign policy, but the report itself makes clear this is rather less dramatic than it at first sounds.
There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on in his administration, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive.
That this would be the likely direction of travel will not surprise foreign policy analysts. However, the move is much less a reaction to current events in Gaza than something which is likely to be complicated (and delayed) by them.
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Quantitative easing: the case for ‘printing money’
‘Brown plans to print more money’ was the front-page headline on tonight’s Evening Standard, and tomorrow’s Daily Mail front-page splash follows suit.
With interest rates set to fall again in the morning to their lowest level since the Bank of England was founded in 1694, the question is whether government should look at expanding the money supply.
‘We are looking at the issues. No decisions have been taken’, a senior Treasury source tells the Standard.
Apparently, Osborne wants Ken back
Many years ago, at school, the smart sarcastic thing was to scratch your chin and make references to Jimmy Hill “itchy chin” and “chinny reckon” if somebody was being just a little implausible.
Now that is a little bit ‘playground’ for such an esteemed public figure as the Shadow Chancellor, to say nothing of an ancient serious think-tank, but for some unfathomable reason, that image just flashed into my mind when I saw this this Telegraph news report, which effectively confirms that Ken Clarke is coming back. And what do you know, but it was the Boy George’s idea all along…
Some believed that Mr Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, would be against Mr Clarke’s return as it would undermine him. However, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that contrary to those reports, Mr Osborne has been actively lobbying for his return. He has told friends that he works well with Mr Clarke and values his advice.
One friend of Mr Osborne’s said: “George has been talking to Ken about his return and Ken has been very supportive of George. The two get on very well and George would not have a problem with him coming back – in fact is pushing for it.”
Ooh. Itchy, itchy chin. That’s better.
(Cross-posted from Next Left)
How to find out if you could be a conservative
There must be something about the holiday season that brings out the political philosophers in us all.
Matthew Taylor has been trying to redefine a new progressivism; I have been musing on the legacy of Bernard Crick and also on the nature of Fabianism to mark our 125th birthday this week.
And Tim Montgomerie, the esteemed editor of ConservativeHome, has been thinking out loud about how to write a modern statement of conservatism.
Now my view, in principle, is that we should approach these exercises in a spirit of generosity and even mutual exploration, wherever possible. It would be good to have more discussion of political ideas, and not less; and parties which competed on distinct visions, values and ideologies would have less need to make daft claims to be uniquely possessed of managerial competence. Tim’s initial list struck me as a pretty scattershot selection of propositions. Neil Robertson has already pointed out the tensions inherent in an alliance of social conservatism and economic liberalism. But Tim is thinking out loud, and so we will await his great statement with interest.
However, Tim’s latest post today does prompt the friendly advice ‘stop digging’, or at least start digging in a rather different direction.
This bizarre post entitled “six indispensible hallmarks of a Conservative (and why Hitler was a socialist)” recommends this second-hand tosh outlining six litmus tests without which one can not be a conservative. Why not see how you do?
No election update (move along please)
Let’s try to keep this brief – and sorry to be boring. But I don’t want to have to shoot myself.
Another not too bad poll for Labour (ICM in The Guardian) confirms the trend in public opinion back towards the government. That does capture the initial public response to the political debate over the economic crisis. But I doubt the polls – good or bad – will tell us too much about future voting intentions for some months yet.
So stand by for a few pre-Christmas days of February election speculation – with silly season written all over it.
Why? Three things.
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The strange exile of the non-novice Tories
Imagine that you are the proverbial Martian just landed on planet Westminster. You find yourself called upon to advise David Cameron, Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, as part of his commendable efforts to increase the diversity of his party, on how his party can recover the political momentum.
The leader is charm personified and looking forward to your out of this world ideas. But the briefing on current party policy is over in a couple of minutes. So you ask an old friend – John Redwood has offered – to make a few introductions so you can get up to speed on the talent available to the party.
Eureka! How quickly you see some simple steps which could help the Conservatives can get back in the political game.
Liberal principles and partisan allegiances
While my first instinct, last night, was to be wary of the general rush to judgement before any facts were available,
the arrest of Damian Green appears a very strange affair indeed (on the information which is currently available). If politicians are to be arrested for the receipt of leaked documents, then the Commons benches could be rather empty.
So let me propose a credibility test for such issues: do we take a similar view about the principles involved, regardless of whether a member of their own party or another party is involved?
There is an economic narrative
I disagree with Sunny’s argument that Labour lacks a narrative for the economic crisis: it is very clear what the Labour public argument and narrative is: this has introduced a much clearer sense of what the major parties disagree about.
Secondly, I don’t see that Labour is losing the argument. I don’t claim the opposite. It is just too early to tell. Any incumbent government is going to be unpopular in a downturn, but Labour’s framing of the key debates is certainly making the political weather. It will take longer to judge what the public response is. The YouGov poll on the PBR is – as others here have noted – fairly positive for those who believe in a more active role for government in the recession.
But the more important thing at this stage is that centre-left should be clear about which arguments we should be trying to win.
Speaker’s conference on diversity in Parliament
To the House of Commons last night, to hear Harriett Harman speak to a motion launching a Speaker’s Conference to be held over the next year, and to make recommendations on how the House of Commons could better reflect the British population, particularly with regard to having more MPs who are women, from ethnic minorities and disabled.
The 1917-18 Speaker’s Conference finally generated cross-party agreement on votes for women: last night’s highly consensual debate saw all major parties speak of their shared commitment to the importance of more diverse House of Commons.
That may in part have reflected relatively sparse attendance on the Conservative benches: Shailesh Vara welcomed the Speaker’s Conference for the opposition frontbench supported by backbenchers, such as John Bercow, who had championed a more inclusive party long before it became fashionable, while the “political correctness gone mad” advocates stayed away.
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» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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