Democracy: driving and drinking
Some people in this country, me included, believe there’s something pretty wrong with ‘democracy’ in the UK. It’s blown a gasket. It’s belching stinking pollution. It rattles and it bangs and threatens to seize up altogether at any moment.
Most people just stand around it, kicking the tyres and exclaiming, ‘nah, it’s alright, it’ll go round the clock another couple of times no bother.’ Jack Straw thinks it just needs another coat of paint and it’ll be sorted.
You get the impression that he knows what’s going on under the bonnet but doesn’t want to admit it to himself let alone those of us risking our lives by riding along in the death trap. It needs rebuilding or trading in, if we’re honest.
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I’m also backing the Bishop
I have a rule of thumb: if the Sun newspaper is running a campaign for something, it is generally a bad idea. It’s worked beautifully so far and its latest campaign to ‘Bash the Bishop’ is no exception. I make no apologies for this defence of Dr Williams.
First, let’s get the straw-man argument out of the way. I’m no fan of the sharia as it is intepreted now and have long recognised its bias against women. In fact I’m against religious interpretation by orthodox middle-aged men in general. I’ve also repeatedly pointed out how multiculturalism fails women, so I don’t need a lecture from the Sun or Daily Mail on feminism.
So what did he say, didn’t say and why the hell was the BBC coverage so bad?
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Has Compass given up on Gordon Brown?
Not long after he came to power, Compass held an event at the Commons, saying in essence that Gordon Brown was going to take the country into the promised land of building a better social democracy than the “false dawn” offered by Tony Blair. I wasn’t that optimistic myself but it was worth hoping.
But now it looks like Neal Lawson has soured on Gordon Brown’s faltering project. He says on on Comment is Free today: “We lost a battle in the 1980s with Thatcherism and the creed that said you can’t buck the market. But the party leadership conceded the whole war and surrendered the intellectual and organisational armoury to determine where business interest should and should not go. The multinational chairman’s group know they are fighting for their interests and their people. Labour now needs to do the same in the name of the rest of us.”
He doesn’t mention Brown by name but Digby Jones’ appointment is rued. Does this mean the honeymoon period is over?
[In other news, the Fabians are pushing Brown to start an inquiry over Iraq.]
In defence of Archbishop Rowan Williams
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is in trouble over his comments on the incorporation of Sharia law into UK law.
It is my opinion that Dr Williams’ suggestions deserve reasoned consideration; that they do not require a change in the nature of the law; and that much of the opposition to them, implicitly, requires a very grave change in the law from defining what is illegal to defining what is legal.
I think it’s important to work out exactly what the most reverend Primate is saying. It has generally been reported as ’sharia law is unavoidable’ along with cries of Londonistan and dhimmitude.
According to this transcript of an interview between the Archbishop and Jonathan Landau, what Dr Williams believes is that
“the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion seems unavoidable”
What I intend to do in this post is briefly to sum up Dr Williams’ argument before giving my reasons for supporting it. I will then seek to show not only that the arguments used to oppose his comments are based on misconceptions, accidental or otherwise, of his opinions and that they, in fact, to a great deal to damage community relations in the UK. Finally, I will reflect on the implications of Dr Williams’ comments and the reaction they have provoked.
We need to push electoral reform
Reform, change, improvement. These are words that are all important to us as voters and concerned citizens regardless of where we live and what our circumstances are. Unfortunately, as Nick Robinson states, politicians in the UK have got a hold of these words and made them mean something less than they are. While Barack Obama invigorates his campaign along with the hopes and aspirations of millions of Americans with the simple word “change”, it is getting to the stage on British shores that claims of reform are met with sideways glances and the rolling of eyes. “I’ll see it when I believe it,” says Nick, and I’d be surprised if he was alone in this way of thinking.
With the current vacuum of any real reform despite all of the talk at the beginning of Gordon Brown’s premiership, now is the perfect opportunity, as Sunny said on CiF last week, for those on the liberal-left to truly push reform forward.
At the very top of this list should be electoral reform.
I want to take you back in time, to 1969. This is the last time Britain saw meaningful reform on making the process of elections fairer by lowering the voting age to 18 for all eligible men and women in the UK. Twenty years earlier academic votes were abolished, twenty years earlier again women were given equal rights to men in voting. It seems the rate of necessary reform has begun to stutter and stumble since 1969.
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The reassertion of our social democracy
If Gordon Brown’s timid continuation of the New Labour project has demonstrated anything, it has underlined just how far British politics has become de-ideologised.
No longer do the mainstream parties fight on the basis of competing visions for society, even to the limited extent that they did in the late 1980s, let alone the period of polarisation between Thatcherism and Bennism that immediately preceded the Kinnock years.
Instead, both New Labour and the Tories have cohered around a post-Thatcherite settlement, and are seeking to be elected on the basis of their greater managerial competence and the projection of the personalities of their respective leaderships in the mass media.
That such a state of affairs can have prevailed since at least 1994 does have some sobering implications for Britain’s political left. It implies that class politics can no longer be regarded as some sort of equilibrium state, or any kind of ‘golden mean’ to which politics inevitably reverts in the longer term.
Yet there are voices within the Labour Party who are unhappy with this situation, and not just unreconstructed Old Labourites, either. The clearest expression of this is support garnered by Jon Cruddas in his unsuccessful bid for the deputy leadership last year.
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Why concentrating on scandal misses the point
Political blogging is young even in its mother country, the United States. In the United Kingdom it is barely out of the cradle and murmuring its first words. Political blogging here insofar as it has come to the attention of mainstream journalists has come to their attention because of a couple of sites- notably that of Guido Fawkes. Guido writes about political scandal all the time. If you want the latest word on Peter Hain or Wendy Alexander or Harriet Harmon, head over to his blog and he’ll be sure to enlighten you. He doesn’t write about policy because he says its boring- he’d prefer to concentrate on the juicy scandals.
But he is wrong. Because its my case that even if politicians are as venal and horrible as Fawkes says, that doesn’t matter so much compared to the harm that they do with their policies. And it is precisely the kind of politicians that Fawkes believes exist that are most likely to adopt faulty policy ideas and carry them out in stupid ways.
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We need faith in fair minded politics
Kate Belgrave’s piece on Monday, Jesus. H. Christ. Rides. Again, refers to the “Jesus freaks” in Brown’s Cabinet and asks why followers of God still get airtime in politics and press. Kate’s piece well illustrates that many people – particularly those who take a left of centre approach to politics – either ignore or at least fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives.
With debate raging about the Embryology Bill, veils, faith schools and social cohesion, I wonder if it isn’t time for those who espouse the “progressive” agenda to debate just how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy.
We are not alone in struggling with this issue. In the United States Barack Obama has recently argued that his own party has been reluctant to engage in serious debate about the issue of religion and politics. Speaking back in June last year he said: “At best, we [Democrats] may try to avoid the conversation about religious values altogether, fearful of offending anyone and claiming that – regardless of our personal beliefs – constitutional principles tie our hands.”
The reality of political engagement is that we have to meet people where they are – even if we do not agree with where they are. If, as a progressive movement, we are to communicate our hopes and values in a way that is relevant to the lives of others, we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse. In his speech, Obama argued that secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into public debate.
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Can we create a ‘Progressive Immigration Policy’?
Over 150 people crammed into committee room 9 last night for a lively and informed debate on migration. The meeting was chaired by the country’s leading social policy commentator Polly Toynbee. The debate first heard from the Minister for Immigration, Liam Byrne who set out the reasons why he believes the policies being implemented by Labour are “firm but fair”.
Byrne drew on his own heritage as the decendent of a migrant family coming to work in the UK. Forwarding a “work hard and play by the rules” argument Bryne drew on the economic arguments for a progressive immigration policy and even touched on the moral ones. However, when it came to answering a question on what the differences were between Tory and New Labour policies Bryne did seem to struggle.
Byrne was followed by an impassioned speech by Don Flynn of the Migrants’ Rights Network, and editor of the Compass publication, Towards a Progressive Immigration Policy, who set out a critical view of the government’s record and called on the government ‘to stop moving the goal posts’, strongly urging that the government put social justice at the heart of policy, in order for its rhetoric to live up to the reality.
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Breaking the Deadlock – Transparency and Party Funding
I think we all know the situation: while politicians, journalists and bloggers pour assiduously over the financial records of politicians and political parties for even the mere hint of an anomaly that might serve the basis of an allegation of sleaze against an opponent, the review process, under Hayden Phillips, which was supposed to lead to reform of the current system of party democracy, has foundered on the unwillingness of both the Labour and Conservative parties to give ground on what are clearly partisan and private interests. On Labour’s side, its their Trade Union funding that is regarded as not negotiable while the Conservatives have baulked at the suggestion of limits on local party spending outside of regulated election periods.
The whole process is going nowhere and even if does begin to make progress, again, the most likely outcome is a series of uncomfortable compromises that suit no one very well and an increase in state funding for the main political parties that will serve only to widen the already yawning chasm between the political classes and the people they, notionally, represent.
Writing in the Observer, last Sunday, Andrew Rawnsley provided a reasonably fair overview of some of the more recent developments, one peppered liberally with the now standard observation that, by and large, British politics is relatively free of outright corruption and its scandals, such as they are, are often minor and rather trivial; and yet in entreating the main parties to make concessions and support the proposals advanced by the Phillips Review, Rawnsley misses a rather more important and fundamental point; that it is the process by which the rules governing party funding are formulated and agreed that lies at the heart of, and creates, these problems. continue reading… »
Can there be a liberal-left ‘08 manifesto?
Is it feasible to think about a liberal-left manifesto for 2008? I don’t mean one for the Labour party, or the Liberal Democrats – but one for the activists, thinkers and those on the left of the political spectrum as a whole. Gordon Brown’s “Autumn horribilis”, as Sunder Katwala dubbed it, makes it all the more important for the Labour party to seek new direction and ideas. Does that create an opportunity for those of us on the liberal-left?
The Fabian Society is concentrating on foreign policy this year, the theme of its annual conference tomorrow (I’ve been asked to pitch at one of the Fabian events, so if you want to say hello, get in touch). And though the American presidential elections and our foreign policy in the Middle East are obviously of interest and concern to us on Liberal Conspiracy, my question is: what can be done in the UK? What are the big ideas? The campaigns?
This is a prelude to me publishing my own manifesto and I’d like to hear what our readers and contributors have to say on the issue. Without getting into the exact definition of what liberal-left means again, is it even possible to have a year-long manifesto? Does it make any sense? Does it get us anywhere? Or are there specific issues that you would like to see more awareness of or a push on? This isn’t necessarily about a Brown comeback but more generally about liberal-left concerns. Thoughts welcome.
A Question of Priorities
The climate change denial blog has an interesting post from Roman Krznaric entitled ‘Does The Left Really Believe in Climate Change’. Krznaric recounts his attendance at a leftist conference on Latin America that he attended last year in London. He recounts that not only did none of the speakers mention climate change as a factor to be considered in Latin American politics, but support for Chavez in Venezuela appears to condone his reliance on oil to fund the ‘Bolivarian revolution’.
Krznaric says that
I can’t help concluding that the Progressive Left doesn’t yet really believe in climate change.
He gives the following reasons for this:
One factor concerns hope. For the first time in years there is a sense of hope about Latin America amongst the Progressive Left. Neoliberalism is in retreat and left-leaning governments are being elected throughout the region. Chavez is challenging the US and the multinationals, and having an impact on poverty reduction. Bolivia has its first indigenous President. But none of this, I believe, is an excuse for ignoring climate change.
A second factor is that many activists and policy-makers continue to keep human development issues separate from what they think of as ‘environmental’ issues. If you are interested in tackling poverty in the favelas of Rio, it is quite normal not even to consider that climate change is a related issue. I think there is a real need for development agencies and activists on the one hand, and environmentally-oriented organisations and campaigners on the other, to merge their thinking to create a new Ecological Humanism, so that climate change and social justice are considered interdependent issues.
A third, possibly deeper factor, is psychological denial. As individuals, we have an extraordinary capacity to shut our minds to the realities of issues that we think are frightening or insurmountable. Climate change is one of them. The good news is that people in rich countries are starting to overcome their denial and accept that climate change is not only happening, but will change their own lives, and that they have to adapt to and embrace the changes. The bad news is that most of them remain in denial when it comes to the world’s poorest countries. As a recent Oxfam report points out, the rich world is sorely lagging behind in its response to the need for developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change link..
The time has come for us to take our struggle against denial a stage further, and recognise that climate change is a reality not only for ourselves, but for the world’s poorest people in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions.
This article is absolutely right that in many left wing and liberal circles, climate change is nowhere near higher enough up the agenda. It’s also right to skewer the neo-Bolivarians for their short-termist relianceon petrodollars. But I can’t help thinking that the source of the problem isn’t so much denial or the other reasons Krznaric gives, so much as a more intractable problem with politics itself.
Swiftboats and Fixed Terms
With the Christmas festivities safely concluded, I’ve decided to take a little time out from some truly excellent Christmas reading – Christopher Hitchens’ “Portable Atheist” is well worth the investment in book tokens – to tackle one of the most risible pieces of hypocritical political sophistry I’ve seen in some considerable time…
…Iain Dale’s ‘campaign‘ for fixed term parliaments.
Like Matthew Sinclair, I’m by no means averse to the idea of fixed parliamentary terms, but unlike Iain and other new found Tory converts to the ’cause’ of constitutional reform I actually understand the workings of the British constitution, in theory and practice, well enough to appreciate that the introduction of even a seemingly simple innovation, like fixed parliamentary terms, would require a significant restructuring of our entire constitutional settlement in order to prove workable, not least in necessitating a far greater and more substantive separation between the executive and legislature than has existed at any time since the English Civil War. continue reading… »
The lump of indignation fallacy
Once more, Polly Toynbee steps in to protect the helpless state against the bullying individual:
The Porter view has become fashionable because it allows the middle classes to pretend to be victims, too. But it is decadence for mainly privileged people to obsess over imaginary Big Brother attacks on themselves, when others all around them are suffering badly from neglect by the state – or sometimes from real aggression by government. Indignation is precious, not to be squandered on illusory threats, but saved for real injustices.
Blimey: how to unpick this lot? I like the idea that there’s a finite lump of indignation which has to be saved for special occasions, non-renewable and somehow outside the self. The lump of indignation fallacy, you might say. I like the idea as well that you’re supposed to balance your income against your freedom.
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How do we get a fairer society?
We all want to live in a fair society. But what should that mean – and how could we get there? I propose that our core fairness test could be this: that we should not inherit our life chances at birth.
In Britain today, where we are born and who our parents are still matters far too much in determining our opportunities and outcomes in life. And so our own choices, talents and aspirations count for too little.
The vision of a free and fair society would be one which extends to us all the autonomy to author our own life stories – challenging the extent to which this is determined by forces beyond our control.
This ‘fight against fate’ – breaking the cycle of disadvantage to make life chances more equal – could provide the lodestar to guide future action and campaigns for equality.
But even if we have an accurate understanding of social mobility, we need a deeper agenda for more equal life chances.
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Clegg and the Digital Revolution
At the Social Market Foundation on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidate Nick Clegg began a speech by outlining the technological context of 21st Century politics. It is a good approximation of my own view. He said:
… the innovations and technological advances that are already shaping and defining the 21st century – Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube – are about something very different: they are about creating the tools that will enable people to deliver services to each other.
The old model was about constructing the institutional hardware of the paternalistic state. The new model is about developing the democratic software of the empowered society. The old model was controlled by a professional elite. The new model is operated by ordinary people.
…
This is the great paradox of our times: in our private and professional lives, we have never been more empowered.But in our relationship with the state, we have never been so powerless. And make no mistake; it is the poorest and the most vulnerable amongst us who lose out the most.
Mr Clegg’s campaign website has the full text (in which he goes onto propose that LEAs and PCTs be directly elected), and I’ve quoted the introduction at more length at my own place, if you’re interested.
Clegg is often viewed as being on the right of his party, but this introduction looks like a left-wing analysis to me. As I tried to articulate in Graachi’s post (which discussed What Blogging Can and Can’t Achieve), the attraction of blogging and the wider digital revolution, is in its potential to redress the power imbalance, leaking power from the elites to the masses. Does Clegg’s talk of “delivering services to each other” spring from the Right’s affection for the free market and the choices of individuals, or from the Left’s long held belief that we can achieve more through collective action, than we can alone? Given the free and social nature of blogging, YouTube and the political campaigns we see online, I’m inclined towards the latter view.
Why I’d like a British constitution
Last week I wrote an article for CIF on why we need a constitution as a glue that binds us together.
I believe we need a constitution that explicitly codifies the rights and responsibilities of British citizens. It would not only be a vital tool in politically educating existing Britons of their rights and responsibilities as citizens, but would also be a source of empowerment for immigrants. It would accord them civil rights and responsibilities and signal that they are part of a new home and they have to adjust to that.
…
I’m talking here about a nation bound together not by race or culture (when has Britain ever been mono-cultural?) but common political values, expressed through a strong parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and expression, secularism, stronger civil liberties and more transparent political engagement.
To which Anthony Barnett at OurKingdom responded with several points:
Firstly, he says Britain is already multi-national, so a constitution would only apply to England, and Scotland wants its own. I hadn’t considered this to be honest. I thought a single constitution would have been an ideal way to keep England, Scotland, Wales and N Ireland together politically, while they could become more decentralised over time. Oh well, point taken.
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Christianophobia and secularism
Far from being on the margins of British life – as Conservative MP Mark Pritchard weakly tries to argue – Christianity maintains a prominence far in excess of that merited by its number of adherents. However much the Tories would like to see the emergence of a cohesive ‘religious right’ core vote in the UK, the evidence is that the social base for such a phenomenon it simply does not exist in this country.
Last time I saw any statistics, only 48% of Britons described themselves as belonging to any religion at all. Some 14% said they do not know who Jesus Christ is, and a further 22% believed he is ‘just a story’. Yet one Christian sect has been singled out as an official state religion, with its leadership given a voice in legislation through seats in the House of Lords. Christianity alone enjoys the protection of the blasphemy laws.
Extensive government funding is available to schools with a ‘Christian ethos’, even if that entails the teaching of creationism in science classes. Nor is anybody seriously arguing, pace Pritchard, that we should forget the Christian contribution to the arts, science, and culture. But this is best achieved in examining the ideas that inspired Milton or Newton in actual context. To judge by his website, Mr Pritchard is an enthusiast for nuclear weapons and Israeli membership of NATO, although his concept of Christian charity seemingly does not extend as far as immigrants.
But oddly enough, he bases his spurious ‘Christianophobia’ claims on the same tenet that most of the secular left would also use as a starting point: ‘Freedom of speech and of religion are fundamental principles of any liberal democracy.’ This is exactly the point. A true liberal democracy can only be premised on a separation of church and state. Precisely because we all want freedom of speech and freedom of religion, it cannot be right for the state to compromise such freedoms by privileging any one religion over any other.
Christianity competes in the free market for ideas on the same basis as other ideologies, and stands or falls by how far it succeeds. As many intelligent Christians would surely agree, believers cannot rightly ask for any more than that.
cross-posted from Dave’s Part
Labour’s real funding scandal
Charlie and Mick have been debating the bloggers’ role during the Abrahams affair. My take here is that the main task of bloggers is not to chip in snippets of Westminster gossip, but rather to ask: why does this matter?
And here, the MSM misses the wood for the trees. The real scandal is that this was never supposed to happen. The ideal of the Labour party is that it was supposed to be funded by a mass of tiny donations. And the funding was supposed to pay for party officials and organizers, not for advertising.
The job of campaigning for Labour ideals was meant to be done gradually and subtly by Labour supporters themselves, in everyday informal chats over teabreaks and in the pub, not by bill-boards and TV adverts.
As Dave says, the very fact of Labour relying upon kleptocrats’ money is a sign that the party has abandoned democratic left ideals.
Instead, the party has become, at best, just another consumer good provided by big business, and, at worst, a cabal of megalomaniacs clinging to office for its own sake. The Abrahams affair matters not because it shows that Labour politicians are petty, corrupt and incompetent – anyone who seeks advancement in any hierarchy is – but rather because it highlights the death of a noble ideal.
You might reply that all this is obvious. And isn’t this the biggest scandal of all – that we’ve taken the death of mass politics for granted? And this is where bloggers come in. Insofar as we have a role, it’s to resuscitate mass politics – to assert that politics is something the people do, not something that’s done to us.
Why we need to reform party financing
New Labour’s latest funding scandal is part of a bigger problem, and one that goes to the heart of why a strong liberal-left movement is needed now more than ever.
Since 1997 New Labour top brass have actively pursued a policy of occupying the centre ground and gradually discarding any notion of what the party stood for. Rather than specific ideals, marketing and positioning (aka spin) would be the way to ensure the Tories stayed out of power. It was no longer interested in or even needed the grass-roots, actively aiming to financially wean itself off trade-union support and money by courting rich businessmen. The unsurprising fall in membership has exacerbated this need to find alternatives.
Gordon Brown has pursued this aim of occupying the centre-ground on policies by enroaching on traditional Tory territory. He wants to build a “party of all talents” not only to imply the Tories were vacuous but because he has no alternative. The days of a leftist government supported and funded by grass-roots movements, standing up for its ideals and convincing the electorate of the viability of those ideas seems to be over. Following New Labour’s lead, they are all interested only in marketing and positioning themselves as the least worst option.
This raises several questions:
1) Is Labour still the vehicle for liberal-left ideals?
2) Or is that only because it is in power?
3) What should be the future for party financing?
4) How can any grass-roots liberal-left movement have impact?
Is the American example relevant here? The McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 had a huge impact there, especially for the Democrats. The party, if you watch elections there closely, has since been forced to reach out to the grass-roots more than ever before and solicit small donations from people and spell out policies that their traditional base would support. [The Act also had other impact too but I won't go into it here].
My point is this. Surely the best liberal-left position here is a campaign for a party financing reform that forces them to rely on small donations from individuals for their income. They would once again be forced to build and appeal to grass-roots organisations and people, and have to spell out their policies more strongly. It may not make our politics wonderful but I think it will go a long way in connecting the parties with their rightful constituencies again. I don’t want a party of all talents. I want a party that will stand up for my ideals and be able to vote for them. What say fellow Conspirators?
Update: Dave Cole also weighs in.
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» 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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