The terrorism story that keeps getting bigger
Tim Ireland’s take-down of the Sun’s front-page story through lots of investigation and persistence, forcing it to retract and apologise twice was a shining example of how bloggers can also have a big impact. Forget McBride and Draper – this is the real meat. But the saga hasn’t ended yet.
The Guardian’s Hugh Muir wrote yesterday:
…Last week we raised the question of Patrick Mercer, who chairs the parliamentary counterterrorism subcommittee, and had endorsed Jenvey as a man “who needs to be listened to”. The MP strongly condemned Jenvey’s deception, which occurred in January. “My office certainly received information from him but never worked with him,” he said. And that’s fine with us. But not with Mr Ireland’s site, Bloggerheads, for now it publishes an email sent by a Mercer aide to the People newspaper. “I have been in touch with Mr Jenvey about a number of things, but most of all the following, which in my view would combine well to make a very good Sunday story,” it says.
All quite collegiate then, but it comes down to the definition of “working” together, say sources close to the MP. Mercer himself had no further dealings with Jenvey, though his officials occasionally received information from him. Sometimes it checked out. Sometimes not. Two months after doubts were raised about Jenvey’s dodgy activities, the link between the fabricator and Mercer’s aides had yet to be broken. A shadowy world, this counterterrorism.
Tories already politically interfering with the BBC
Outrageous. The Media Guardian reports:
The shadow culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said today that the BBC should recruit more Tories to its news division in order to counter an “innate liberal bias”.
Hunt, speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch today, said the BBC had acknowledged that those who wanted to work there had centre-left views and quoted its former political editor, Andrew Marr, who in 2007 described the corporation as having an “innate liberal bias”.
They may like to offer a cuddly image but the new Tories really are frothing-at-the-mouth conspiracy theory wingnuts.
Andrew Marr made one comment, which is contradicted by a whole bunch of other comments showing right-wing bias at the BBC, and yet the keep trotting out this rubbish.
And just to be clear:
When Marr was asked about his liberal bias comment by the House of Lords select committee on communications in November 2007, he said: “Every time I talk about this I get into terrible trouble. I think if there is a bias, it is cultural and not party political.”
Clearly when Tories read ConservativeHome they agree with the commenters that immigrants make up 60% of the country, asylum seekers get all the housing and Damian McBride is sitting behind every BBC programme pulling the strings. But the rest of the country isn’t stuck in the 1970s any more. It’s socially liberal now – get over it.
What Jeremy Hunt is doing here is trying to use Marr’s comments just so he can pressure the BBC to recruit more politically friendly frothing-at-the-mouth Tories. It’s meddling – plain and simple. If the Prime Minister had said he wanted the BBC to employ more Labour biased journalists to interview him these people would be screaming blue murder. But this is alright because the BBC is apparently run by revolutionary Marxists.
More reading
Duncan Stott: Jeremy Hunt: BBC-Bashing Coward
Sarah Ditum: Jeremy Hunt and the BBC: your ballot or your job
What the left has to fear from Ashcroft / PoliticsHome
A lot of the reaction to the resignations from PoliticsHome, listed on LibCon, has been interesting a> and entertaining. It has also missed the point, in my view.
I won’t go into Michael Ashcroft’s own affairs; they’ve been detailed all over the place. And I think it would be safe to bet the Tories won’t do anything tax havens or press their deputy chairman over his tax/ legal status. But that’s not the issue here.
Will Ashcroft directly influence PoliticsHome or ConservativeHome? I think he’d be foolish too. And he’s not a foolish person. That influence is more likely to be through osmosis, as Sunder Katwala points out, in the style of Rupert Murdoch (who’s newspapers all concidentally supported the Iraq war).
So why buy them?
This is where I think most of my peers miss the point, especially Mark Hanson, Jag Singh and Political Scrapbook, who think he will do hard-hitting TV ads. Erm no: he didn’t pay all that moolah for some camera-men.
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Tories arguing for extra borrowing shock
On the evening of Thursday 24 September, click here and you’ll be able to watch Conservatives arguing hard for additional borrowing.
Sounds unlikely? Well, it’s true.
The venue for this bizarre reversal of Conservative orthodoxy will be the Council Chamber in Preston, where Lancashire’s new Conservative administration will argue for an additional £10million in immediate borrowing to cover additional revenue costs, £9 million of this for ‘highways works’, and a further £39 million over three years to cover a range of capital costs. See press coverage for a quick overview.
A Tory council spending massively beyond its means? A Tory council making future generations hostage to fortune? What’s going on?
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Lessons in spending from Norway
It is common wisdom that back in the 1970s and 1980s the Hard Left in the Labour Party, led by Tony Benn, made Labour unelectable with their extremist ideas.
One of Tony Benn’s extremist left-wing ideas was that the British government should keep the North Sea oil money ring-fenced for specific projects and ensure that the government planned to ensure maximum benefit from the revenues from the oilfields.
Maggie Thatcher, of course, opposed this and spent the oil money on tax cuts for the rich, profits for private companies, closing down coal mines and out of work benefits for millions of people.
In contrast, Norway decided on the same approach as Tony Benn recommended, and have built up a multi hundred billion dollar State Petroleum Fund.
As a result, in 2009, the Norwegian political debate is ‘how shall we spend the vast sums of money that we have’, and the British political debate is ‘how savagely can we cut spending and raise taxes’. And last week, our comrades in the Norwegian Labour Party were re-elected, increasing their share of the vote compared to 2005.
But, y’know, thank goodness Maggie Thatcher ’saved’ Britain from the loony left who wanted Britain to have its own sovereign wealth fund.
Clegg will only have himself to blame
Yesterday, David Cameron wrote a piece for The Observer, making a pitch to Lib Dem voters to desert to the Tories join a ‘national movement that can bring real change’. After rattling off a list of areas (e.g. the environment, civil liberties, ID cards) in which the Tories and Lib Dems supposedly speak with one voice, he said there was “barely a cigarette paper between us” in various policy areas.
Responding to the Cameron article, the Lib Dems took the only path realistically open to them: angry denial. Sunny Hundal says that “Nick Clegg… to his credit, is not touching Cameron with a bargepole.”
But it’s not really a reason to praise Clegg that he rebuffed Cameron – he couldn’t have done anything else. Despite the pretense that he was offering genuine rapprochement, Cameron’s claim that, on many issues, there’s no difference between the two parties was really just code for: ‘Look Lib Dem voters, these days we cater to your pet issues too. So how about you find out what it feels like to be part of the winning side for a change, eh?’. That message was seen by the Lib Dems for what it was: profoundly threatening. Hence the vehement rebuttal.
The Lib Dems, though, would idiots if they didn’t see this threat brewing.
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How did Nazi admirer become a national treasure?
I enjoyed reading the Alan Clark diaries back in the 1990s. They merit their classic status, in capturing a political age, while the dramatic descriptions of the plotting in the final days of the Thatcher premiership mean they are a historical document which will endure.
As Robert Harris writes in his Sunday Times review, “the universal acclaim for the high literary quality of his diaries, transformed Clark’s reputation. From sinister, adulterous crypto-fascist he morphed into lovable, roguish national treasure”.
And yet Ion Trewin’s authorised biography may be becoming the occasion for a reversal in reputations, with several reviewers focusing less on the personal infidelities for which Clark became renowned as on the extent of his fascist sympathies.
Dominic Lawson led the way, putting Clark bang to rights in a devastating Independent column last week. But this is also a theme followed up by Edwina Currie in The Times, and in Robert Harris’ Sunday Times review too.
This is the Alan Clark conundrum: how were literary talent, and a reputation as an entertaining and incorrigible rogue, enough to make a national treasure of a man who made little effort to hide his pro-fascist views? After all, Clark gained Ministerial Office, and was even able to return triumphantly to the House of Commons in 1997 before his death.
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Baying for Baroness Scotland’s blood
contribution by Steve
Right-wing newspapers are baying for Baroness Scotland’s blood. It was discovered that she had unknowingly been employing an illegal worker. To them it doesn’t matter that she says she was deceived by being presented with forged documents showing everything was legal. If there’s one part of society the right-wing papers hate more than gypsies and preaching Muslims – it’s illegal immigrants.
The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph have already called for her to resign. The Daily Telegraph said, “ignorance is no defence,” which could easily be applied to those who took out taxpayer-funded mortgages or sitting as shadow ministers despite having swindled the expenses system.
Naturally, the hypocrisy has been easily overcome at Conservative party HQ. Willing journalists have gone along with the charade.
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Why Tory ideas on welfare reform won’t work
Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice have published a report which they modestly claim is “the most far-reaching review of the welfare system in 60 years”. It can be downloaded here.
At the core of the CSJ’s recommendations are measures to make work pay, and reduce the working couple penalty. To encourage claimants into work, the report recommends more gradual rates of withdrawal of benefits.
It says there should be only two benefits for working age people: Universal Work Credit “earned” through participation in welfare to work schemes, which would integrate benefits such as Jobseeker’s Allowance and Income Support; and Universal Life Credit providing additional income to people with low or no earnings. The report also advocates changes intended to reduce penalties for socially constructive behaviour such as marriage and cohabitation, saving and taking out a mortgage.
Some quick thoughts:
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Can Cameron meet his own “honesty” test on cuts?
Let me make it clear: they are not wrong to be planning cuts but they are wrong to try to cover up their plans for cuts. This is about honesty, it is about trust. This is about not taking people for fools.
So said David Cameron at his news conference yesterday, excitedly promoting leaked Treasury documents about possible spending cuts. Yet Cameron refused to offer any substantive answer to questions from Nick Robinson and others about what the Conservatives are planning, as Andrew Sparrow’s liveblog for The Guardian captures.
But what is sauce for the goose … especially if there are already secret Tory plans for cuts already under discussion in the Treasury too. The senior and well respected Daily Mail journalist Peter Oborne seemed pretty confident in his report that the Tories have asked the Treasury to officially investigate much deeper cuts of 30% of departmental spending, as Next Left noted on Saturday.
The truth is that Osborne will be forced to implement swingeing cuts after the election. Indeed, I can reveal he has ordered the Treasury’s permanent secretary, Nick Macpherson, to find savings of nearly 30 per cent in departmental budgets which would come into effect immediately if the Tories gain power.
Lefties surrendering to the conservative movement
The Observer recently reported that ‘a senior government aide’ told them that, “I personally think we have got to look at universal benefits. It is unsustainable.”
Jackie Ashley wrote, “if there have to be cuts, then taking away child benefit from the better off, and the winter fuel payment from richer pensioners, would seem sensible ideas and are on Labour’s agenda.”
Comically, these are described as measures for Labour to shore up ‘the core vote’. They are nothing of the sort. The proposals to get rid of universal benefits are quite simply an unconditional surrender to people who loathe and despise left-wing values.
It has been a long term project of the conservative movement in this country to undermine the welfare state, and reduce it to a low cost, low quality residuum for poor people.
It is sad and pathetic to see government advisers and leftie journalists buying into the values and assumptions of the conservative movement and trying to undermine these achievements.
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Why I keep saying Gordon Brown has to go
Research by the Fabians showing the Labour party is losing women voters has elicited predictable comment. On Guardian CIF Rowenna Davis says ‘Brown must start listening to women‘, while over at Next Left Sally Gimson says ‘Labour needs to be less macho to win women voters‘. I don’t use “predictable” in a derogatory way because both make good points. But I fear they’re misunderstanding the problem.
The public are no longer interested in Labour policies. They have switched off and Gordon Brown is suffering from deep voter fatigue. This is partly because the government has nothing new to say, partly because there is no coherent message and partly because they’re tired. It’s not about policies; it’s probably no longer even about the message.
Labourites insist: ‘We must take on the fight harder and we must drive home how bad Tories are on public services‘. But it won’t work.
How shall I put this?
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Osborne’s immediate plan of 30% cuts
There is a potentially important revelation in Peter Oborne’s Daily Mail column today, which is mostly an entertainingly argued dismissal of the ‘push-me, pull-you ‘oxymoron’ of ‘progressive conservatism’, as a Blairesque ‘all things to all people’ project.
Oborne worries that about the mixed messages, but is confident that plans are being drawn up for the spending axe to fall more sharply
On the one hand Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has sent out the solid ‘conservative’ message to the City that he will enforce huge public spending cuts. Simultaneously, however, Cameron and other members of the Shadow Cabinet are keen to put out a more ‘progressive’ message …
The truth is that Osborne will be forced to implement swingeing cuts after the election. Indeed, I can reveal he has ordered the Treasury’s permanent secretary, Nick Macpherson, to find savings of nearly 30 per cent in departmental budgets which would come into effect immediately if the Tories gain power.
Oborne welcomes this approach but wants the Tories to come clean ahead of the election.
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Would the left benefit from a Tory landslide?
I’m going to get flamed for saying this, but what the hell. Labour’s a lost cause. The left is going to lose, the right is going to win, and it’s time we started thinking about what kind of Tory government we want.
Specifically, about the type of Cameron majority that would do least damage. There’s a chance, I think, that a narrow Tory victory would be the worst result possible for the progressive cause. A Cameron landslide (this is where I get flamed) might actually be better than a close-run thing.
Think this through for a minute. Imagine that, when the election rolls round, David Cameron becomes prime minister with a majority of 100. That should be enough to let him do pretty much he wants.
What he wants, he says, is a more liberal stance on civil liberties, prioritising spending on schools and healthcare, a more serious approach to climate change… It’s not perfect (hello EU), but lord knows there are worse manifestos out there.
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‘Big Brother Watch’ and Alex Deane
The Sunday Times yesterday carried news of a civil liberties campaign being launched by the TaxPayers’ Alliance in October.
TPA chief executive Matthew Elliott wants the campaign, called Big Brother Watch, “to become the central hub for the latest on personal freedom and civil liberty – a forum for information and discussion on something that directly affects British citizens in their everyday lives.”
In response, Spy Blog challenges many of the claims in Elliott’s article and asks:
Why exactly should Spy Blog, or anybody else who cares about these issues, support Yet Another Campaign Organisation rather than existing ones like:
• the NO2ID Campaign,
• Privacy International,
• GeneWatch UK,
• Open Rights Group
• the Foundation for Information Policy Research
• Liberty Human Rights.
Tories valuing different opinions? Yeah right
The unsurprising reaction to Daniel Hannan’s praise for Enoch Powell has been that the Tories should be able to live with different opinions in their midst. On that point, Oliver Kamm’s skewering of Hannan and Powell is worth reading.
Tory MP Nadine Dorries says:
Poor Dan Hannan has had a summer of attack, I had a little of it myself, however, as the Times asks this morning, if an MP can’t say what he or she thinks, what’s the point of us?
…
I have written before on my blog and Dan makes the point this morning, opinion in the Conservative party is valued – it’s a by product of freedom, our core value.
The same point was repeated across numerous Tory blogs in defence of Hannan (who, obviously, preferred to erect free-speech strawmen). But the idea that the Tories respect or foster different opinions within the party is patently rubbish.
It only applies when someone offers a wingnut opinion from the hard-right of the party. In contrast liberal Tories, especially who oppose the god-botherer wing of the party, (Nadine Dorries et al) are pilloried. The most obvious example here is John Bercow, who opposed reduction on abortion legal limits during the HFE Bill last year. He has been a big hate-figure within the party since, attacked continually by Nadine Dorries, lots of writers across ConservativeHome, repeatedly, Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes etc, and across the right-wing press (Quentin Letts, Peter Hitchens and many others).
So when they use the free-speech argument, call bullsh*t.
EasyJet Councils – pushing inequality
The Guardian newspaper yesterday carried a story of the Tory borough Barnet pushing the EasyJet business model
As such, the council will provide a basic no-frills service, a reduced-sized bin or for those who require adult social care in Barnet “budget on whether to have a cleaner or a respite carer”. EasyCouncil it shall be called.
Seems modest enough, but to me there remains a major alternative to the revolutionary approach by Barnet. Namely, the idea of sensible public service spending can be achieved by a reallocation of funding rather than the EasyCouncil way.
Reallocation for the local government allows for a renegotiation of necessities; say if it is vital to employ 24 hour wardens in care homes this should be prioritised over building a new welcome centre in the local natural park.
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What’s really worrying about Tory health plans
The more I think about Tory health plans, the more they worry me. And I’m not talking about Daniel Hannan.
Hannan does worry me, of course, because there’s clearly something wrong with him (a case study in the dangers of under-funded mental health services if ever there was one). But he will, at least, be a very long way from anywhere he can do any real damage.
The people who’ll decide the fate of the health service in any Conservative administration will likely be David Cameron and Andrew Lansley. And what they’ve decided, it seems, is to keep throwing cash at the NHS.
That is what worries me.
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Is Dan Hannan really a libertarian?
contribution by Soho Politico
As we have all now read, yet another recorded interview with culture warrior Daniel Hannan has surfaced and caused much controversy.
What I’m interested in is the defence of Daniel Hannan over this emanating from the right.
Their claim is that Hannan’s lionising of Powell is benign, because he never associated himself with Powell’s views about immigration specifically, and is in any case personally a ‘libertarian’ on borders.
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Tory MEP Dan Hannan praises Enoch Powell
Daniel Hannan MEP has given another interview to a right-wing US group. When asked who was among his greatest political influences, Hannan says it was Enoch Powell:
Yeah, all of those guys…In the British context, Enoch Powell. He was..as somebody who understood the importance of national democracy, who understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small government Conservative.”
The importance of national democracy and living in an independent country? More like Enoch Powell was someone who wanted a racial war in the UK merely because a few immigrants had come over to settle here.
According to Paul Waugh, this is the response from the Conservatives:
CCHQ is not going to comment formally, but sources say that Dan’s remarks clearly refer (as I pointed out above) to Powell’s views on non-immigration issues. If he had explicitly praised Powell on race or immigration, David Cameron would have had a different response, I’m told.
I suppose praising the BNP, as long as it’s not immigration related, is ok too? After all Nick Griffin must be a lovely chap as long as you ignore his mad, racist conspiracy theories. Why not invite him around for tea Mr Hannan?
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» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
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» 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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