What if there isn’t a solution to what is politely called the “Arab Israeli dispute”, as if it were some dignified difference of opinion between sovereign nations. What if there is no two state solution, no one state solution, no road map, no basis for a lasting peace? What if the parties are so dedicated to destroying each other, that there is no prospect of a diplomatic solution brokered by the EU, America or anyone else?.
If a war is to end, then at least one side needs to want to stop fighting. There is every sign now that Hezbollah and the Israeli military are determined to continue this fight to the end. That’s what even Labour MPs in the Israeli Knessett were calling for yesterday: “no stalemate, no compromise - an end to Hezbollah”. Doves are in very short supply in Tel Aviv these days.
For its part, Hezbollah is equally resolved to fight a holy war against the Jewish state. The Islamic militants will not rest until Israel is driven into the sea - or until every Hezbollah martyr has won his place in paradise and Lebanon has been reduced a waste land.
There’s no real basis for negotiation here. No common ground, unifying principles, negotiating positions, honest brokers or give and take. Getting round a table in Geneva or anywhere else isn’t going to stop these people killing each other. Perhaps we have to come to terms to this ugly reality before the “West”, whatever that is, can be of any use in the region.
Of course, it offends our liberal principles to look at a conflict this way. Creatures of the Enlightenment, we like to believe there is always a rational solution to conflict. Has to be. War is madness, isn’t it? There is always a better way. Jaw Jaw and all that...
But you could equally have said this about Europe in the last century. Enlightenment didn’t do us much good then. Around a hundred million people lost their lives in two world wars, communist and fascist genocides, plus countless civil wars in Spain, Greece, former Yugoslavia etc. etc.. When we criticise Hezbollah for targeting Israeli civilians we forget that pattern bombing of Dresden, the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So, we’re in no position to lecture people on stopping wars. Especially since we, Europe and America, were intimately involved in the creation of the very states - Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Iraq - which are now proving so fractious. We repeatedly rearranged the map of the Middle East to suit our economic and strategic designs - still are today in Iraq.
But the game has changed. They are fighting their own wars now within these artificial states - and we no longer call the shots. Increasingly, they do. Four British soldiers have died in the last few days. America is bogged down in Iraq and in no place to tell anyone what to do.
Yet, while I was in France on holiday last week, I kept hearing about how America and Europe should step in and stop the fighting in the Lebanon, “like a parent stops squabbling children”. Not only is this patronising, it is quite unrealistic and unhistorical. We just don’t have the power to do that kind of thing any more - and even if we did, we’d probably make it worse.
These aren’t our children and neither side seems concerned about “world opinion”. Israel thumbed its nose at the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, extending its military action when it was supposed to be observing a pause following the massacre of Lebanese children on Sunday. It is as naive to believe that America could stop Israel’s aggression as to believe that the Lebanese government could halt Hezbollah. Even if the US cut off military aid to Israel, about a billion and a half a year, the Israelis would fight on, financed by Jewish defence groups across the world.
For its part, Hezbollah may not actually have used human shields at Qana, but is quite prepared to do so. A force which routinely uses suicide bombing against civilians has no use for UN conventions on the conduct of war. Hezbollah looks for inspiration to the Mujihadeen who defeated the Russians in Afghanistan, to the insurgents in Iraq, and to Hamas in Gaza.
This is not to exonerate Israel for the bombing in Qana - a terrible act which is legitimately being compared to a war crime. But the point is that taking sides here is very difficult. There are no good guys left in the Middle East.
Israel thinks it is in a similar state of war against an implacable enemy. That it is fighting a new anti-semitic force dedicated to the extinction of their country. And the terrible thing is, it is probably right.
Hezbollah is, in part, Israel’s own creation - it was born under the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The barbarity of the Hezbollah militants is a reflection of the barbarity of the Israeli massacres of Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla in 1982.
But Hezbollah is not like the PLO in Lebanon in the 1980s: a relatively small “state within a state”, composed of dispossessed Palestinians living in refugee camps. Hezbollah IS the state in most of southern Lebanon. It runs much of the civil administration, schools, hospitals and of course the military - there’s no way the other communities in Lebanon can curb its activities or its rockets.
So, if they aren’t going to stop fighting in the Middle East, what is there left for us to do apart from wring our hands and count the dead? Well, that’s not an insignificant role. The dead need to be remembered and war-crimes need to be recorded so that the perpetrators - on both sides - can be held to account. International law may not mean much right now in Lebanon, but it will in future when the fighting is finally over.
Humanitarian missions must continue, to minimise the civilian deaths in the Lebanon, and this will require the resolve of the international community. There has to be a curb on the sale of arms to the region - not that it will stop either side getting them. Channels of communication need to be kept open on both sides and all diplomatic avenues explored.
Above all, this war in Lebanon must be contained and not allowed to develop into what Tony Blair seems to be talking about - which is a generalised war against the Islamic world. He has made clear what side he’s on., and it isn't the same as the Foreign Office. The Labour Party must restore his sense of proportion.
But let’s not have any illusions about sending in the blue helmets to keep the peace. There is no peace in the Lebanon and there won’t be until there is a resolution to the broader contradictions in the Middle East. And that isn’t in our gift
This is a terrible, terrible war - and it has a way to go yet.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Bring me the head of John Prescott.
The sad thing about the "Deputy Dawg" affair is that hanging around with rich men is probably what John Prescott thought he ought to be doing. After all , hasn't his boss made a point of going on holiday chez dodgy billionaires like Silvio Berlusconi? Poor old Pressa probably thought he'd earn a stack of New Labour brownie points by accepting holidays - sorry fact finding missions - to the Colorado ranch of Philip Anschutz.
Fact that he was wanting to turn the Millennium Dome into a supercasino would only enhance Prescott's prestige among the cynical special advisers of Number Ten. New Labour "loves millionaires" - as Peter Mandelson once fatuously put it. If they are willing to take the wretched Dome off the government's hands, so much the better.
Has John Prescott done anything wrong? Well I'm tempted to say that if he didn't know, there's not much point in telling him. Was it a breach of the ministerial code? I doubt it, or else the PM and most of the cabinet would be in the dock for similar indiscretions. There may be some questions for Sir Phlip Mawer, the standards commissioner to consider about whether Prescot, whose department oversees planning issues, was too close to the contractual negotiations over the Dome to be accepting gifts in kind from one of the commercial interests. However, I doubt if this is going to be a resignation issue. Prescott doesn't have a department any more.
Anyway there's so much else for "Butch Calamity" to resign over, you hardly need a standards scandal. He is simply a huge, lumbering, incoherent embarrassment - not just to his party but to the country. How could a man who cannot utter a coherent sentence become Deputy Prime Minister? Party chairman, perhaps, but not a heart-beat away from leading the nation.
New Labour has lost all sense of propriety after nine years in office and become a liablityto itself. In the same week as Prescott's High Noon, we had confirmation that David Mills, the lawyer husband of the culture Secretary Tessa Jowell - another casino enthusiast who wined with Mr Anschutz - is to stand trial for embezzlement and tax fraud in his dealings with Silvio Berlusconi. You couldn't make it up. This really is turning into a spaghetti western. A fistful of fivers, and a few fivers more, perhaps.
Mr Mills had been providing legal services for the former Italian Prime Minister and had received a mysterious gift of some three hundred and fifty thousand pound from the "b" people. He may be totally innocent of any charge and deserves a fair trial. But it all contributes to the sense of a government which has become far too fond of wealth for its own good.
This is the Labour Party, after all, the party, supposedly,of the dispossessed. Why are they all so obsessed with money and status? Remember, it was a loan from a businessman, Geoffrey Robinson, that led to Peter Mandelson's first resignation. He needed the money to buy a posh London flat to impress his friends and there was no way he was going to do that on a mere junior minister's salary.
But why should the trappings of wealth become so attractive to certain left-wing politicians? They surely weren't attracted to Labour politics because they thought it would lead to financial gain. If that was their game they'd have joined the Conservatives, who not only value wealth for its own sake but were very good at converting public office into liquid assets.
Why is Tony Blair so fond of flash and glam? Designer clothes and champagne? Why buy that awful, tasteless house in London for 3.6 million - money neither he nor Cherie possess?
Being the PM's wife has turned Mrs Blair from being a spiky human rights lawyer into a grasping celeb who charges extravagant sums for delivering charity lectures and required the Labour Party to pay her 7 grand hairdressing bill during the last general election campaign.
Those were expensive haircuts alright. I wonder how many Labour activists tore up their party cards in disgust when they learned that they'd been paying their dues so that Cherie could employ her own Mr Teasy
Weasy.
How many more will throw their memberships down the toilet at the thought of John Prescott, supposedly the guardian of Labour's socialist soul, playing the high-roller with casino owners. Or Tessa Jowell ingratiating herself with the same Mr Anschutz in order to secure Britain's' first 'supercasino'? Who wants one anyway?
Or Tony Blair's soliciting of nearly fourteen million pounds in secret loans from rich business men, many of whom , by happy coincidence, found themselves on the honours list. The cash=for=peerages affair has been largely forgotten during the ho ha over the World Cup - which is exactly what the government hoped would happen. However, it is the great financial scandal of this administration. It will continue to haunt Tony Blair so long as he remains in office.
The police are still conducting their inquiries into an apparent breach of the 1925 abuse of honours act. Lord Levy - Mr Blair's fundraiser - invited plutocrats to convert political donations into loans so that they would not have to be registered. For me, the guilt lies in the secrecy of this operation. Not even the treasurer of the Labour Party, Jack 'the hat' Dromey was informed.
I think here we can begin to see where Labour's relations with wealth started to go wrong. In the mid 1990s Labour launched its "high value" donor programme, which was designed to free the party from financial dependency on the trades unions. They were following
American practice here. The Democrat President Bill Clinton's success was largely based on his ability to attract very large sums from private individuals and therefore to free himself from the US labour unions. New Labour thought they could do the same.
But the embrace of money became a bear hug. Staging lavish dinners and glitzy receptions became a great deal of what senior Labour politicians did. Many began rather to enjoyit. Who wouldn't? So nice to attend those private lunches with Lord Levy's glamorous friends. So pleasant, and so - well - 'modern' to have rich men fawning over Labour politicians for a change.
But rich men don't fawn for nothing. Nor do they hand over millions of pounds to a political party because they like their policies. Labour ministers were flattered to have these 'masters of the universe' hanging on to their every word. But they were only hanging on so that they could hang in long enough to win some advantage.
Influence, in British politics, is so ridiculously cheap and easy to buy. A few meals, a few holidays and ministers are eating out of your hands. There may be nothing whatever improper or corrupt about these transactions. Though there is compelling prima facia evidence that honours were traded for political donations.
But just having the ear of a minister is hugely valuable to anyone in business. Particularly the ear of a minister who might be awarding a contract in future, or giving clearance to a development, or who might be making a regulatory decision which would affect the trading position of certain firms. Just being in the know - able to lift the phone and speak to a senior politician - is hugely valuable. And all you have to do is throw a bit of hospitality their way, invite them to gawp your ranch, or country house. Or if you are Rupert Murdoch summon them to address your annual company get-together.
It's not just Prescott. They have all been morally corrupted by over-exposure to wealth. Mind you, Pressa's head on a plate would be a start.
Fact that he was wanting to turn the Millennium Dome into a supercasino would only enhance Prescott's prestige among the cynical special advisers of Number Ten. New Labour "loves millionaires" - as Peter Mandelson once fatuously put it. If they are willing to take the wretched Dome off the government's hands, so much the better.
Has John Prescott done anything wrong? Well I'm tempted to say that if he didn't know, there's not much point in telling him. Was it a breach of the ministerial code? I doubt it, or else the PM and most of the cabinet would be in the dock for similar indiscretions. There may be some questions for Sir Phlip Mawer, the standards commissioner to consider about whether Prescot, whose department oversees planning issues, was too close to the contractual negotiations over the Dome to be accepting gifts in kind from one of the commercial interests. However, I doubt if this is going to be a resignation issue. Prescott doesn't have a department any more.
Anyway there's so much else for "Butch Calamity" to resign over, you hardly need a standards scandal. He is simply a huge, lumbering, incoherent embarrassment - not just to his party but to the country. How could a man who cannot utter a coherent sentence become Deputy Prime Minister? Party chairman, perhaps, but not a heart-beat away from leading the nation.
New Labour has lost all sense of propriety after nine years in office and become a liablityto itself. In the same week as Prescott's High Noon, we had confirmation that David Mills, the lawyer husband of the culture Secretary Tessa Jowell - another casino enthusiast who wined with Mr Anschutz - is to stand trial for embezzlement and tax fraud in his dealings with Silvio Berlusconi. You couldn't make it up. This really is turning into a spaghetti western. A fistful of fivers, and a few fivers more, perhaps.
Mr Mills had been providing legal services for the former Italian Prime Minister and had received a mysterious gift of some three hundred and fifty thousand pound from the "b" people. He may be totally innocent of any charge and deserves a fair trial. But it all contributes to the sense of a government which has become far too fond of wealth for its own good.
This is the Labour Party, after all, the party, supposedly,of the dispossessed. Why are they all so obsessed with money and status? Remember, it was a loan from a businessman, Geoffrey Robinson, that led to Peter Mandelson's first resignation. He needed the money to buy a posh London flat to impress his friends and there was no way he was going to do that on a mere junior minister's salary.
But why should the trappings of wealth become so attractive to certain left-wing politicians? They surely weren't attracted to Labour politics because they thought it would lead to financial gain. If that was their game they'd have joined the Conservatives, who not only value wealth for its own sake but were very good at converting public office into liquid assets.
Why is Tony Blair so fond of flash and glam? Designer clothes and champagne? Why buy that awful, tasteless house in London for 3.6 million - money neither he nor Cherie possess?
Being the PM's wife has turned Mrs Blair from being a spiky human rights lawyer into a grasping celeb who charges extravagant sums for delivering charity lectures and required the Labour Party to pay her 7 grand hairdressing bill during the last general election campaign.
Those were expensive haircuts alright. I wonder how many Labour activists tore up their party cards in disgust when they learned that they'd been paying their dues so that Cherie could employ her own Mr Teasy
Weasy.
How many more will throw their memberships down the toilet at the thought of John Prescott, supposedly the guardian of Labour's socialist soul, playing the high-roller with casino owners. Or Tessa Jowell ingratiating herself with the same Mr Anschutz in order to secure Britain's' first 'supercasino'? Who wants one anyway?
Or Tony Blair's soliciting of nearly fourteen million pounds in secret loans from rich business men, many of whom , by happy coincidence, found themselves on the honours list. The cash=for=peerages affair has been largely forgotten during the ho ha over the World Cup - which is exactly what the government hoped would happen. However, it is the great financial scandal of this administration. It will continue to haunt Tony Blair so long as he remains in office.
The police are still conducting their inquiries into an apparent breach of the 1925 abuse of honours act. Lord Levy - Mr Blair's fundraiser - invited plutocrats to convert political donations into loans so that they would not have to be registered. For me, the guilt lies in the secrecy of this operation. Not even the treasurer of the Labour Party, Jack 'the hat' Dromey was informed.
I think here we can begin to see where Labour's relations with wealth started to go wrong. In the mid 1990s Labour launched its "high value" donor programme, which was designed to free the party from financial dependency on the trades unions. They were following
American practice here. The Democrat President Bill Clinton's success was largely based on his ability to attract very large sums from private individuals and therefore to free himself from the US labour unions. New Labour thought they could do the same.
But the embrace of money became a bear hug. Staging lavish dinners and glitzy receptions became a great deal of what senior Labour politicians did. Many began rather to enjoyit. Who wouldn't? So nice to attend those private lunches with Lord Levy's glamorous friends. So pleasant, and so - well - 'modern' to have rich men fawning over Labour politicians for a change.
But rich men don't fawn for nothing. Nor do they hand over millions of pounds to a political party because they like their policies. Labour ministers were flattered to have these 'masters of the universe' hanging on to their every word. But they were only hanging on so that they could hang in long enough to win some advantage.
Influence, in British politics, is so ridiculously cheap and easy to buy. A few meals, a few holidays and ministers are eating out of your hands. There may be nothing whatever improper or corrupt about these transactions. Though there is compelling prima facia evidence that honours were traded for political donations.
But just having the ear of a minister is hugely valuable to anyone in business. Particularly the ear of a minister who might be awarding a contract in future, or giving clearance to a development, or who might be making a regulatory decision which would affect the trading position of certain firms. Just being in the know - able to lift the phone and speak to a senior politician - is hugely valuable. And all you have to do is throw a bit of hospitality their way, invite them to gawp your ranch, or country house. Or if you are Rupert Murdoch summon them to address your annual company get-together.
It's not just Prescott. They have all been morally corrupted by over-exposure to wealth. Mind you, Pressa's head on a plate would be a start.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Bye Bye BBC Scotland
I'm mad as hell and I'm just not going to take it any more. So cried the suicidal anchor man in the 70s film,'Network News". After nearly thousand live political TV programmes, I was freeling much the same.
Every live presenter has the same fantasy of going berserk on air, even when your audience is a daytime handful of students, hacks and old age pensioners. Not that I have anything against retired people - at least they still vote, read newspapers and have some connection to the old virtues of public debate and political engagement. The viewers I didn't have a lot of time for were the Scottish Labour MPs in Westmnster who spent an inordinate amount of time and tax-payers' money lobbying to have me removed from the screens on the grounds that I was nationalist/anti-war/anti-Labour. None of which I am.
Odd that it was WESTMINSTER Labour MPs which found my face so obnoxious on the box. Since I was presenting, er, Holyrood Live, you might have thought it would be Members of the Scottish Parliament who'd be writing poison pen letters to the Director General. But in seven years of Holyrood coverage, in which I have not been wholly uncritical, there was scarcely a murmur from Holyrood. Or rather there was, but MSPs tended to take matters up with me face to face and up-front. Perhaps they're just too busy in the Scottish Parliament to bother trying to do the BBC's job for it.
You might have expected Westminster Labour MPs to have been targeting my Westminster equivalent, Andrew Neil, who presents (brilliantly) the Daily Politics. After all, Mr Neil is a prominent right wing Conservative, who has repeatedly expressed his views in colums and through the editorials in the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, when he was editor in chief and publisher. A greater Labour hate figure would be hard to imagine.
But hey, I'm not bitter. BBC Scotland resisted these malign political representations on the grounds that it was their job to decide who to put on the telly, and that if they had no problems with my professionalism and impartiality, then they were not going to be told otherwise by politicians. In a curious way, the criticisms made my position more secure, because the BBC couldn't be seen to bend to political pressure. So - thanks Tom.
I hung up my microphone in a wholly amicable separation from the BBC last week to pursue what has always been my real interest - writing political commentary. Indeed, I only recount this story because of what it says about the condition of broadcasting in Scotland. There is an obsessive sensitivity, verging on paranoia, in London Labour about what goes on in Queen Margaret Drive.
MPs seem to believe that there is some deep-rooted nationalist conspiracy at the heart of BBC Scotland. There is not - though there may be a Gaelic one (that's a joke, honest). It really isn't a hotbed of separatism. But neurotic attempts to suppress this nationalist phantom are in danger of making it one.
The present state of impoverished dependency to which BBC Scotland is consigned, a kind of cultural house arrest, is the surest way to generate a political resentment. The hostility to the perfectly sensible proposals for a Scottish Six O'clock News have - I believe - ensured that, within a few years, Holyrood will wrest control over broadcasting from Westminster. Not because it wants to, but because it has no alternative.
Consider the absurdity. Up to sixty percent of the main evening news bulletin is now irrelevant to Scotland. Ok, perhaps not irrelevant, but of secondary importance. I'm thinking for example of the recent troubles in the English health service. These deficits and ward closures are a by-product of market reforms which not been introduced in Scotland. Doesn't mean that NHS Scotland is better - just different. However, it means that the Scottish Executive is being blamed for problems which aren't actually happening here. This is because it is not made clear that these health stories are about England.
One need hardly add the lunacy of turning the national UK news into an intoxicated, hyperventilating, cheerleader for the English football team in the World Cup. This indifferent squad was accorded the coverage of heroes, much to Scottish irritation.
And it happens the other way round too. Such is the metropolitan myopia that the Shirley McKie fingerprint affair was given minimal coverage - even though it is the most important single case in the hundred year history of finger print evidence.
The Six misrepresents the priorities of Scottish public life. What Scotland gets instead of a proper service are patronising 'opt outs' from programmes like Newsnight and the Politics Show. More and more local news. Oh, and the programmes I used to present, like Holyrood Live, for which mea culpa.
However, having presented the equivalent BBC network programmes in Westminster before I returned to Scotland in 1999, I was acutely aware of how miserable are Scottish political programme budgets. A tiny fraction of the resources that go into equivalent Westminster programmes. When I asked why, I was often told - ' Scotland has a tenth of the population so we get a tenth of the money".
This is a grotesque argument. If programmes are worth doing, they are worth doing properly. You don't give a Scottish hospital patient one tenth on the care or Scottish schoolchildren one tenth of the books. This patronising centralism is doing the SNP's job for it.
I have great respect for the people who work in BBC Scotland- some of the best journalists in the entire corporation. Producers like John Boothman who have a rare commitment to breaking stories, and correspondents like Glen Campbell, one of the sharpest tools in the BBC box . But they are ground down by relentless, tedious, mindless cuts. The only indigenous political programmes which seem to get proper money spent on them are in Gaelic - like 'Eorpa' because there is political clout behind the language.
What BBC Scotland manages to put on the screen is amazing, given the constraints. But it eats people up, destroys commitment drains creativity. It can't go on. The BBC is in serious danger of destroying what it is trying to protect - the unity of the UK broadcasting culture. It's time for Scottish viewers to get up and say they're mad as hell too.
Every live presenter has the same fantasy of going berserk on air, even when your audience is a daytime handful of students, hacks and old age pensioners. Not that I have anything against retired people - at least they still vote, read newspapers and have some connection to the old virtues of public debate and political engagement. The viewers I didn't have a lot of time for were the Scottish Labour MPs in Westmnster who spent an inordinate amount of time and tax-payers' money lobbying to have me removed from the screens on the grounds that I was nationalist/anti-war/anti-Labour. None of which I am.
Odd that it was WESTMINSTER Labour MPs which found my face so obnoxious on the box. Since I was presenting, er, Holyrood Live, you might have thought it would be Members of the Scottish Parliament who'd be writing poison pen letters to the Director General. But in seven years of Holyrood coverage, in which I have not been wholly uncritical, there was scarcely a murmur from Holyrood. Or rather there was, but MSPs tended to take matters up with me face to face and up-front. Perhaps they're just too busy in the Scottish Parliament to bother trying to do the BBC's job for it.
You might have expected Westminster Labour MPs to have been targeting my Westminster equivalent, Andrew Neil, who presents (brilliantly) the Daily Politics. After all, Mr Neil is a prominent right wing Conservative, who has repeatedly expressed his views in colums and through the editorials in the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday, when he was editor in chief and publisher. A greater Labour hate figure would be hard to imagine.
But hey, I'm not bitter. BBC Scotland resisted these malign political representations on the grounds that it was their job to decide who to put on the telly, and that if they had no problems with my professionalism and impartiality, then they were not going to be told otherwise by politicians. In a curious way, the criticisms made my position more secure, because the BBC couldn't be seen to bend to political pressure. So - thanks Tom.
I hung up my microphone in a wholly amicable separation from the BBC last week to pursue what has always been my real interest - writing political commentary. Indeed, I only recount this story because of what it says about the condition of broadcasting in Scotland. There is an obsessive sensitivity, verging on paranoia, in London Labour about what goes on in Queen Margaret Drive.
MPs seem to believe that there is some deep-rooted nationalist conspiracy at the heart of BBC Scotland. There is not - though there may be a Gaelic one (that's a joke, honest). It really isn't a hotbed of separatism. But neurotic attempts to suppress this nationalist phantom are in danger of making it one.
The present state of impoverished dependency to which BBC Scotland is consigned, a kind of cultural house arrest, is the surest way to generate a political resentment. The hostility to the perfectly sensible proposals for a Scottish Six O'clock News have - I believe - ensured that, within a few years, Holyrood will wrest control over broadcasting from Westminster. Not because it wants to, but because it has no alternative.
Consider the absurdity. Up to sixty percent of the main evening news bulletin is now irrelevant to Scotland. Ok, perhaps not irrelevant, but of secondary importance. I'm thinking for example of the recent troubles in the English health service. These deficits and ward closures are a by-product of market reforms which not been introduced in Scotland. Doesn't mean that NHS Scotland is better - just different. However, it means that the Scottish Executive is being blamed for problems which aren't actually happening here. This is because it is not made clear that these health stories are about England.
One need hardly add the lunacy of turning the national UK news into an intoxicated, hyperventilating, cheerleader for the English football team in the World Cup. This indifferent squad was accorded the coverage of heroes, much to Scottish irritation.
And it happens the other way round too. Such is the metropolitan myopia that the Shirley McKie fingerprint affair was given minimal coverage - even though it is the most important single case in the hundred year history of finger print evidence.
The Six misrepresents the priorities of Scottish public life. What Scotland gets instead of a proper service are patronising 'opt outs' from programmes like Newsnight and the Politics Show. More and more local news. Oh, and the programmes I used to present, like Holyrood Live, for which mea culpa.
However, having presented the equivalent BBC network programmes in Westminster before I returned to Scotland in 1999, I was acutely aware of how miserable are Scottish political programme budgets. A tiny fraction of the resources that go into equivalent Westminster programmes. When I asked why, I was often told - ' Scotland has a tenth of the population so we get a tenth of the money".
This is a grotesque argument. If programmes are worth doing, they are worth doing properly. You don't give a Scottish hospital patient one tenth on the care or Scottish schoolchildren one tenth of the books. This patronising centralism is doing the SNP's job for it.
I have great respect for the people who work in BBC Scotland- some of the best journalists in the entire corporation. Producers like John Boothman who have a rare commitment to breaking stories, and correspondents like Glen Campbell, one of the sharpest tools in the BBC box . But they are ground down by relentless, tedious, mindless cuts. The only indigenous political programmes which seem to get proper money spent on them are in Gaelic - like 'Eorpa' because there is political clout behind the language.
What BBC Scotland manages to put on the screen is amazing, given the constraints. But it eats people up, destroys commitment drains creativity. It can't go on. The BBC is in serious danger of destroying what it is trying to protect - the unity of the UK broadcasting culture. It's time for Scottish viewers to get up and say they're mad as hell too.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Crime hits back at Jack
Jack McConnell has made clear his big idea for the Scottish elections next year is law and order . If so, prepare for an SNP-LibDem coalition, for the war on crime is going about as badly right now as Tony Blair’s war on terror.
Crime is down overall, largely due to economic growth, but in the specific areas targeted by the First Minister’s five-year anti-crime drive – youth, drugs, knives, child abuse – the numbers all appear to be going the wrong way.
Just look at last week’s press. Knife crime is up, we are told, and stabbings actually increased during the recent UK-wide amnesty. Drug abuse is at epidemic proportions in Scotland, with one in eight babies being born with illegal drugs in their bloodstream. Scotland’s “drugs tsar”, Tom Wood, the former chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, declared that the war had been lost.
It also emerged last week that half of all prisoners released from Scottish jails are back inside within two years, and nearly two-thirds of youth criminals re-offend within the same period. The “ned” culture, which Labour promised to end, has flourished. The Children’s Hearing system is being swamped by tens of thousands of referrals.
In desperation, McConnell has taken to attacking the police and local authorities. Last month, he said councils were “doing a disservice” by failing to use Asbos. Last week he said it was “inexcusable” that only four of the country’s eight police forces had used dispersal orders, designed to prevent young people ganging up on the streets. The councils and the police said they weren’t aware of any “correct number” of orders, adding that there was a 60% increase in Asbos in 2005. So, sucks, Jack.
McConnell’s frustration is understandable. There are more police than ever; longer sentences than ever; more people in jail than ever; more anti-drug programmes; more people on paedophile and child abuse registers. The police have Asbos, closure orders, dispersal orders . But despite all McConnell’s efforts, people still think the government isn’t doing enough. Why?
Well, one possible reason is the phenomenon of crime inflation. The FM’s measures may affect real crime, but public perceptions of crime are another matter. Crime sells newspapers and with falling circulations, editors are desperate to keep readers attention. The pages of tabloids are filled day after day with stories of stabbings, beatings, gangs, illegal immigrants; terrorists on the loose; prisoners being let out of jail early; paedophiles at loose in the community and murderers being given derisory sentences by liberal judges.
It’s hardly surprising we’re are in a state of fear. A couple of people are beaten up, allegedly for supporting England in the World Cup, and you’d think that a racial war had broken out in the UK. Society is presented as saturated by lawlessness because it is a way of connecting emotionally with people. Saying crime is down doesn’t sell the evening rag.
I’m not saying all crime is a fiction made up by the media. But “if it bleeds, it leads” is the old newsroom adage. Newspapers don’t do “proportionate”. IT was ever thus.
But what happened in the early years of the new century is that the Left started trying to surf this crime panic. Finding that social justice, economic growth and working-class solidarity were no longer enough to motivate Labour’s traditional vote, the party turned from class politics to street politics. It embraced the law and order postures that used to be so successful for the Tories in working class constituencies such as Cathcart.
Now, there’s no doubt this is what many voters want – politicians testify to the sense of panic on the doorsteps. Crime hits those at the bottom of the social scale in run-down council estates far more harshly than the middle classes in leafy suburbs. Former left-wing Labour MSPs, such as Johann “hammer of the neds” Lamont of Glasgow Pollok, are only reflecting the concerns of electorate.
But while you develop policies for the crime wave, it is very difficult to do anything about the media wave. You can’t lock up editors. They will continue to report, in pornographic detail, every evil and misfortune to hit ordinary people in their areas, and their readers will want something done about it.
Moreover, cracking down on crime is all very well, but there is also the question of justice. The police simply can’t go around slapping dispersal orders on every young person on a city street corner on a Saturday night if they are doing nothing wrong. Yet many local people now regard the very presence of groups of young people as a threat.
And yes, the police could be doing more, by just being there. There’s nothing like a bobby on the beat to make people feel secure. But the police say they are up to their eyes in paperwork, thanks to Executive policies.
Last week, McConnell attacked the police for inundating the Children’s Hearings system with spurious cases. These were not offenders, but children at risk of abuse in the family home. However, this is a result of McConnell’s own campaign to protect children, launched after the death of baby Caleb Ness at the hands of his violent father in 2001. He called for all the agencies to take greater care of children in homes with violent or drug-taking adults. The result was that officials now automatically refer such children.
Those who live by the tabloid, die by the tabloid. The FM is sincere in his concern about crime, but he is fighting a phantom, and the phantom is winning.
Crime is down overall, largely due to economic growth, but in the specific areas targeted by the First Minister’s five-year anti-crime drive – youth, drugs, knives, child abuse – the numbers all appear to be going the wrong way.
Just look at last week’s press. Knife crime is up, we are told, and stabbings actually increased during the recent UK-wide amnesty. Drug abuse is at epidemic proportions in Scotland, with one in eight babies being born with illegal drugs in their bloodstream. Scotland’s “drugs tsar”, Tom Wood, the former chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, declared that the war had been lost.
It also emerged last week that half of all prisoners released from Scottish jails are back inside within two years, and nearly two-thirds of youth criminals re-offend within the same period. The “ned” culture, which Labour promised to end, has flourished. The Children’s Hearing system is being swamped by tens of thousands of referrals.
In desperation, McConnell has taken to attacking the police and local authorities. Last month, he said councils were “doing a disservice” by failing to use Asbos. Last week he said it was “inexcusable” that only four of the country’s eight police forces had used dispersal orders, designed to prevent young people ganging up on the streets. The councils and the police said they weren’t aware of any “correct number” of orders, adding that there was a 60% increase in Asbos in 2005. So, sucks, Jack.
McConnell’s frustration is understandable. There are more police than ever; longer sentences than ever; more people in jail than ever; more anti-drug programmes; more people on paedophile and child abuse registers. The police have Asbos, closure orders, dispersal orders . But despite all McConnell’s efforts, people still think the government isn’t doing enough. Why?
Well, one possible reason is the phenomenon of crime inflation. The FM’s measures may affect real crime, but public perceptions of crime are another matter. Crime sells newspapers and with falling circulations, editors are desperate to keep readers attention. The pages of tabloids are filled day after day with stories of stabbings, beatings, gangs, illegal immigrants; terrorists on the loose; prisoners being let out of jail early; paedophiles at loose in the community and murderers being given derisory sentences by liberal judges.
It’s hardly surprising we’re are in a state of fear. A couple of people are beaten up, allegedly for supporting England in the World Cup, and you’d think that a racial war had broken out in the UK. Society is presented as saturated by lawlessness because it is a way of connecting emotionally with people. Saying crime is down doesn’t sell the evening rag.
I’m not saying all crime is a fiction made up by the media. But “if it bleeds, it leads” is the old newsroom adage. Newspapers don’t do “proportionate”. IT was ever thus.
But what happened in the early years of the new century is that the Left started trying to surf this crime panic. Finding that social justice, economic growth and working-class solidarity were no longer enough to motivate Labour’s traditional vote, the party turned from class politics to street politics. It embraced the law and order postures that used to be so successful for the Tories in working class constituencies such as Cathcart.
Now, there’s no doubt this is what many voters want – politicians testify to the sense of panic on the doorsteps. Crime hits those at the bottom of the social scale in run-down council estates far more harshly than the middle classes in leafy suburbs. Former left-wing Labour MSPs, such as Johann “hammer of the neds” Lamont of Glasgow Pollok, are only reflecting the concerns of electorate.
But while you develop policies for the crime wave, it is very difficult to do anything about the media wave. You can’t lock up editors. They will continue to report, in pornographic detail, every evil and misfortune to hit ordinary people in their areas, and their readers will want something done about it.
Moreover, cracking down on crime is all very well, but there is also the question of justice. The police simply can’t go around slapping dispersal orders on every young person on a city street corner on a Saturday night if they are doing nothing wrong. Yet many local people now regard the very presence of groups of young people as a threat.
And yes, the police could be doing more, by just being there. There’s nothing like a bobby on the beat to make people feel secure. But the police say they are up to their eyes in paperwork, thanks to Executive policies.
Last week, McConnell attacked the police for inundating the Children’s Hearings system with spurious cases. These were not offenders, but children at risk of abuse in the family home. However, this is a result of McConnell’s own campaign to protect children, launched after the death of baby Caleb Ness at the hands of his violent father in 2001. He called for all the agencies to take greater care of children in homes with violent or drug-taking adults. The result was that officials now automatically refer such children.
Those who live by the tabloid, die by the tabloid. The FM is sincere in his concern about crime, but he is fighting a phantom, and the phantom is winning.
Wigs of Mass Destruction
OH dear. Just when Bush and Blair thought the worst was over in Iraq, and suddenly they are fighting on an entirely new front. And this time they’re up against an opponent who is a lot tougher than Saddam’s Republican Guard: the law.
Wigs of mass destruction are raining down on Number 10 and the White House as the courts rule that their conduct, from Guantanamo Bay to Belmarsh, is unlawful.
The US Supreme Court has told George W Bush his treatment of detainees in Cuba is contrary to the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, in Britain, a judge last week ruled house arrest of terrorist suspects under the Blair government’s control orders is illegal under the Human Rights Act. Which is unfortunate, because it was Tony Blair’s government that introduced the HRA.
Now, neither ruling means that the government will be throwing open the doors of Belmarsh and Guantanamo, at least not yet. But this represents a serious double blow to the moral authority of both governments, and the war in Iraq. After all, isn’t the rule of law what we are meant to be fighting for? If we don’t treat prisoners decently and in accordance with international conventions, how can we lecture tin-pot dictators about their maltreatment of their own citizens? You can’t fight a police state by setting up a police state – and that is what many senior legal figures fear is what the government is creating in Britain by default.
This new willingness of the judiciary to hold the US and UK governments to account will have serious implications for the war on terror. Practices like rendition of terrorist suspects for interrogation in countries that practise torture are almost certainly illegal under the Geneva Convention, it only needs someone to test it in court.
Such “torture by proxy” is, anyway, morally indefensible. As is maltreating prisoners in Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo Bay, or using interrogation techniques such as “waterboarding” – where a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe he might be drowned – which the CIA doesn’t define as torture, but every civilised person would.
Last week was the second time that the British government has been in the dock over Belmarsh. The House of Lords ruled last year that detaining terrorism suspects without trial or charge was illegal, and the government had to change the law to get the power to issue house arrest control orders as an alternative to detention. But it hasn’t satisfied m’learned friends.
Tomorrow the pugnacious new Home Secretary, John Reid, will be in court trying to overturn last Wednesday’s ruling by Mr Justice Sullivan on control orders. “Judge” Reid’s made clear he’s no’ huvvin’ it, and that the judges will have to sort themselves out or be sorted out.
Certainly, the ruling could hardly have been more provocative. It was like saying “thanks to the government’s own legislation, we can’t protect the public from terrorists”. It coincided with a call from Conservative Party leader David Cameron to scrap the HRA and replace it with a Bill of Rights.
Now you can be pretty sure that Reid is no enthusiast for the HRA, or at any rate its interpretation, but there’s a lot more going on here than a debate on the finer points of law. There is a suspicion in Labour circles that last week’s judgment was political – a shot across the bows by a judiciary incensed at the way the government has tried to blame it for soft sentences, such as that handed down to paedophile murderer Craig Sweeney.
Reid ruled that sentence “unduly lenient” and ordered a rethink, thus trampling across the supposed separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive. Reid doesn’t like being contradicted. He believes that he is the only man who can make Labour’s hardness on crime more than a slogan.
Tony Blair has, of course, has made no secret of his own contempt for the “legal establishment”. As he sees it, ivory tower lawyers are endangering national security by a punctilious and old-fashioned interpretation of the law. And this time it’s personal: the Human Rights Act was Blair’s policy.
It’s nothing new for the government to see a conspiracy by the legal establishment. This is the way politicians think, in terms of power struggle. There’s no evidence Justice Sullivan was pursuing a vendetta against Labour, or even trying to extend the powers and scope of the HRA. He did not outlaw control orders, but rather the “draconian” way they were being implemented.
Tagging people and then banging them up for 18 hours a day with no human contact is not just a restriction of liberty, it is the negation of it. These people are effectively being punished, just as much as they would be in prison. But they have not committed any known crime and are not subject to any charge likely to be tested in court.
What the judge was saying in effect was: “We realise that certain people have to be under close supervision, and that this may restrict their liberty, but to impose such sanctions on innocent individuals is incompatible with the Human Rights Act, 1998.” You can’t have it both ways – either scrap the HRA or shape up and stop being hypocrites.
The HRA did not invent human rights; nor was it the creation of woolly-minded pacifist lawyers. It simply incorporated into British law the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain helped to draft, and which was ratified by Winston Churchill in 1951. It allows people to pursue their rights under the convention in a British court, instead of having to go to Strasbourg.
Similarly, the 1949 Geneva Convention, which President Bush has fallen foul of, was a product of the war against fascism. In a real sense these conventions codify the freedoms that won the cold war against the Soviet Union.
This is what is so worrying about these two rulings. The courts shouldn’t have to remind democratic leaders of their responsibilities to guard our fundamental freedoms from arbitrary arrest, punishment without trial, torture and deportation. We are told the individuals under detention are dangerous terrorists, a threat to public safety. If this is so, then let’s put them in a court and hear the evidence – or let a judge hear it in private if the evidence would compromise intelligence sources.
We have seen from the accidental death of Jean Charles de Menezes last year, and from the recent shooting in Forest Gate, that intelligence is far from reliable. The Islamic world is watching with mounting suspicion. Miscarriages of justice can do greater damage than the terrorists themselves.
Wigs of mass destruction are raining down on Number 10 and the White House as the courts rule that their conduct, from Guantanamo Bay to Belmarsh, is unlawful.
The US Supreme Court has told George W Bush his treatment of detainees in Cuba is contrary to the Geneva Convention. Meanwhile, in Britain, a judge last week ruled house arrest of terrorist suspects under the Blair government’s control orders is illegal under the Human Rights Act. Which is unfortunate, because it was Tony Blair’s government that introduced the HRA.
Now, neither ruling means that the government will be throwing open the doors of Belmarsh and Guantanamo, at least not yet. But this represents a serious double blow to the moral authority of both governments, and the war in Iraq. After all, isn’t the rule of law what we are meant to be fighting for? If we don’t treat prisoners decently and in accordance with international conventions, how can we lecture tin-pot dictators about their maltreatment of their own citizens? You can’t fight a police state by setting up a police state – and that is what many senior legal figures fear is what the government is creating in Britain by default.
This new willingness of the judiciary to hold the US and UK governments to account will have serious implications for the war on terror. Practices like rendition of terrorist suspects for interrogation in countries that practise torture are almost certainly illegal under the Geneva Convention, it only needs someone to test it in court.
Such “torture by proxy” is, anyway, morally indefensible. As is maltreating prisoners in Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo Bay, or using interrogation techniques such as “waterboarding” – where a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe he might be drowned – which the CIA doesn’t define as torture, but every civilised person would.
Last week was the second time that the British government has been in the dock over Belmarsh. The House of Lords ruled last year that detaining terrorism suspects without trial or charge was illegal, and the government had to change the law to get the power to issue house arrest control orders as an alternative to detention. But it hasn’t satisfied m’learned friends.
Tomorrow the pugnacious new Home Secretary, John Reid, will be in court trying to overturn last Wednesday’s ruling by Mr Justice Sullivan on control orders. “Judge” Reid’s made clear he’s no’ huvvin’ it, and that the judges will have to sort themselves out or be sorted out.
Certainly, the ruling could hardly have been more provocative. It was like saying “thanks to the government’s own legislation, we can’t protect the public from terrorists”. It coincided with a call from Conservative Party leader David Cameron to scrap the HRA and replace it with a Bill of Rights.
Now you can be pretty sure that Reid is no enthusiast for the HRA, or at any rate its interpretation, but there’s a lot more going on here than a debate on the finer points of law. There is a suspicion in Labour circles that last week’s judgment was political – a shot across the bows by a judiciary incensed at the way the government has tried to blame it for soft sentences, such as that handed down to paedophile murderer Craig Sweeney.
Reid ruled that sentence “unduly lenient” and ordered a rethink, thus trampling across the supposed separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive. Reid doesn’t like being contradicted. He believes that he is the only man who can make Labour’s hardness on crime more than a slogan.
Tony Blair has, of course, has made no secret of his own contempt for the “legal establishment”. As he sees it, ivory tower lawyers are endangering national security by a punctilious and old-fashioned interpretation of the law. And this time it’s personal: the Human Rights Act was Blair’s policy.
It’s nothing new for the government to see a conspiracy by the legal establishment. This is the way politicians think, in terms of power struggle. There’s no evidence Justice Sullivan was pursuing a vendetta against Labour, or even trying to extend the powers and scope of the HRA. He did not outlaw control orders, but rather the “draconian” way they were being implemented.
Tagging people and then banging them up for 18 hours a day with no human contact is not just a restriction of liberty, it is the negation of it. These people are effectively being punished, just as much as they would be in prison. But they have not committed any known crime and are not subject to any charge likely to be tested in court.
What the judge was saying in effect was: “We realise that certain people have to be under close supervision, and that this may restrict their liberty, but to impose such sanctions on innocent individuals is incompatible with the Human Rights Act, 1998.” You can’t have it both ways – either scrap the HRA or shape up and stop being hypocrites.
The HRA did not invent human rights; nor was it the creation of woolly-minded pacifist lawyers. It simply incorporated into British law the European Convention on Human Rights, which Britain helped to draft, and which was ratified by Winston Churchill in 1951. It allows people to pursue their rights under the convention in a British court, instead of having to go to Strasbourg.
Similarly, the 1949 Geneva Convention, which President Bush has fallen foul of, was a product of the war against fascism. In a real sense these conventions codify the freedoms that won the cold war against the Soviet Union.
This is what is so worrying about these two rulings. The courts shouldn’t have to remind democratic leaders of their responsibilities to guard our fundamental freedoms from arbitrary arrest, punishment without trial, torture and deportation. We are told the individuals under detention are dangerous terrorists, a threat to public safety. If this is so, then let’s put them in a court and hear the evidence – or let a judge hear it in private if the evidence would compromise intelligence sources.
We have seen from the accidental death of Jean Charles de Menezes last year, and from the recent shooting in Forest Gate, that intelligence is far from reliable. The Islamic world is watching with mounting suspicion. Miscarriages of justice can do greater damage than the terrorists themselves.
So, would Scotland really be happier on its own?
“Some of us fervently believe in Scottish independence,” said the Guardian commentator Simon Hoggart, at the height of the World Cup footie wars, “they would be so much happier without us”. Well, would we?
Other small countries in Europe seem to be pretty happy on their own. Take Catalonia, the already devolved Spanish region, which last week voted three to one in favour of a new Statute of Authority which gives it national status, plus extensive powers over taxation, judicial affairs and immigration. No regrets there. At the other end of the economic spectrum, we have Slovakia, which also went to the polls last week and is forming a new left-of-centre coalition government.
Slovakia’s case is fascinating. It was regarded as an economic basket-case at the time of the “Velvet Divorce” from the Czech Republic back in 1993. Rather like Scotland today, it was regarded as ‘provincial’, backward and dependent on the richer, cosmopolitan Czechs. Not any more. Slovakia is now becoming an industrial powerhouse and the EU’s fastest-growing economy. Peugeot’s new plant at Trnava is one of the biggest in the world, and takes over much of the production that used to take place at Ryton in Coventry.
So, it’s not just the “original” small nations of Europe like Norway, Finland, Ireland which are doing well. It is looking increasingly as if Scottish-sized nations of around about five million citizens may have competitive advantage in the European Union. Catalonia and Slovakia have done well out of autonomy, even though the former has one of the highest and the latter one of the lowest wages in the EU. They are very different societies in many ways, and have different histories. But what they demonstrate is that regional independence, far from being a recipe for decline and introversion, can unlock latent economic and cultural dynamism.
Yes, size matters. It’s not just about oil or the possession of other natural resources. Small economies are, in many ways, better suited to the new economic political arrangements in the European Union thant the old, multipurpose nation states. They are nimble enough to adapt to a rapidly-changing global economic environment and don’t have the kind of political, cultural and class divisions that drain the life out of multinational entities like the UK.
In an over-centralised state like Britain, where London dominates the mass media, political decision-making and the allocation of public investment, it is very difficult for a province like Scotland to alter its own circumstances. Scotland has long had a lower growth rate than England, but is unable to rectify this by lowering business taxes or developing its own infrastructure. Or, indeed, formulating its own immigration policies.
In Britain, all roads lead south and that’s where Scottish entrepreneurs, professionals and skilled workers traditionally gravitate. They might still do so after independence, of course, but at least a Scottish government would be able to legislate for tax policies to attract them back.
Or replace them. It is now widely accepted that the UK’s recent economic growth could not have happened without the influx of low paid black and Asian labour. This has now run up against the limits of political acceptability among the white English urban community, so the government has responded by clamping down on immigration. But the Scottish economy is in a different cycle and needs more of it, not less - as the Fresh Talent initiative demonstrated.
So, there really is no doubt that Scotland could survive and thrive as an independent state in Europe, and most economists I speak to agree. Membership of the European Union has eliminated many negatives like separate currencies (except of course in Britain) and barriers to the movement of labour and investment. Guaranteed access to a market of 300 million, plus political representation in the councils of the EU, have removed the fear of being “too small to matter” which used to afflict small countries.
In Scotland autonomy has always been presented as a threat to economic stability. Labour’s 1999 election slogan, “divorce is an expensive business”, pretty much summed up the state of opinion at the time of devolution, and many Scots still believe it. Certainly, an independent Scotland would would have a structural non-oil deficit of several billion pounds if the Barnett formula, which allocates public spending, were to be wound up tomorrow.
However, despite what Lord Barnett says, his formula is already being wound down under the new population formula, according to economists like Strathclyde University’s Dr Karen Turner and Stirling’s Prof David Bell. Convergance is happening. Anyway, budget deficits needn’t be terminal - as America has demonstrated - and can be managed for many years. Britain has historically run budget deficits of around 50 billion without any economic distress. Moreover, with 12 billion a year in oil revenues going south, the Scottish budget deficit is in reality a theoretical one.
So, perhaps Hoggart and co are on to something. The English chattering classes, anyway, show every sign of being fed up with Scotland. "The loss of one-twelfth of our population”, said the former Tory Defence Minister Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times last week, “in a region that drags down our national performance could not harm us”.
The irony is that in other old nation-states like Spain, the talk is all about keeping the country together and avoiding fragmentation. Before the referendum campaign got underway a Madrid general even proposed a military invasion of Catalonia to prevent secession. It’s the same in Italy and France, where central governments are increasingly anxious about the example set by the new small nations.
But the metropolitan media in Britain seems relaxed about Scotland going it alone. The big issue in England right now is multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, which even members of the liberal chattering classes, like the editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, fear might have gone too far.
It is not acceptable to criticise immigrants as dependent, lazy spongers, who are undermining the integrity of the nation, but it is acceptable, apparently, to attack the Scots in this way, and claim that Gordon Brown cannot be Prime Minister because of his nationality. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a displaced ethnic antagonism. If so, the UK is surely doomed.
Other small countries in Europe seem to be pretty happy on their own. Take Catalonia, the already devolved Spanish region, which last week voted three to one in favour of a new Statute of Authority which gives it national status, plus extensive powers over taxation, judicial affairs and immigration. No regrets there. At the other end of the economic spectrum, we have Slovakia, which also went to the polls last week and is forming a new left-of-centre coalition government.
Slovakia’s case is fascinating. It was regarded as an economic basket-case at the time of the “Velvet Divorce” from the Czech Republic back in 1993. Rather like Scotland today, it was regarded as ‘provincial’, backward and dependent on the richer, cosmopolitan Czechs. Not any more. Slovakia is now becoming an industrial powerhouse and the EU’s fastest-growing economy. Peugeot’s new plant at Trnava is one of the biggest in the world, and takes over much of the production that used to take place at Ryton in Coventry.
So, it’s not just the “original” small nations of Europe like Norway, Finland, Ireland which are doing well. It is looking increasingly as if Scottish-sized nations of around about five million citizens may have competitive advantage in the European Union. Catalonia and Slovakia have done well out of autonomy, even though the former has one of the highest and the latter one of the lowest wages in the EU. They are very different societies in many ways, and have different histories. But what they demonstrate is that regional independence, far from being a recipe for decline and introversion, can unlock latent economic and cultural dynamism.
Yes, size matters. It’s not just about oil or the possession of other natural resources. Small economies are, in many ways, better suited to the new economic political arrangements in the European Union thant the old, multipurpose nation states. They are nimble enough to adapt to a rapidly-changing global economic environment and don’t have the kind of political, cultural and class divisions that drain the life out of multinational entities like the UK.
In an over-centralised state like Britain, where London dominates the mass media, political decision-making and the allocation of public investment, it is very difficult for a province like Scotland to alter its own circumstances. Scotland has long had a lower growth rate than England, but is unable to rectify this by lowering business taxes or developing its own infrastructure. Or, indeed, formulating its own immigration policies.
In Britain, all roads lead south and that’s where Scottish entrepreneurs, professionals and skilled workers traditionally gravitate. They might still do so after independence, of course, but at least a Scottish government would be able to legislate for tax policies to attract them back.
Or replace them. It is now widely accepted that the UK’s recent economic growth could not have happened without the influx of low paid black and Asian labour. This has now run up against the limits of political acceptability among the white English urban community, so the government has responded by clamping down on immigration. But the Scottish economy is in a different cycle and needs more of it, not less - as the Fresh Talent initiative demonstrated.
So, there really is no doubt that Scotland could survive and thrive as an independent state in Europe, and most economists I speak to agree. Membership of the European Union has eliminated many negatives like separate currencies (except of course in Britain) and barriers to the movement of labour and investment. Guaranteed access to a market of 300 million, plus political representation in the councils of the EU, have removed the fear of being “too small to matter” which used to afflict small countries.
In Scotland autonomy has always been presented as a threat to economic stability. Labour’s 1999 election slogan, “divorce is an expensive business”, pretty much summed up the state of opinion at the time of devolution, and many Scots still believe it. Certainly, an independent Scotland would would have a structural non-oil deficit of several billion pounds if the Barnett formula, which allocates public spending, were to be wound up tomorrow.
However, despite what Lord Barnett says, his formula is already being wound down under the new population formula, according to economists like Strathclyde University’s Dr Karen Turner and Stirling’s Prof David Bell. Convergance is happening. Anyway, budget deficits needn’t be terminal - as America has demonstrated - and can be managed for many years. Britain has historically run budget deficits of around 50 billion without any economic distress. Moreover, with 12 billion a year in oil revenues going south, the Scottish budget deficit is in reality a theoretical one.
So, perhaps Hoggart and co are on to something. The English chattering classes, anyway, show every sign of being fed up with Scotland. "The loss of one-twelfth of our population”, said the former Tory Defence Minister Michael Portillo in the Sunday Times last week, “in a region that drags down our national performance could not harm us”.
The irony is that in other old nation-states like Spain, the talk is all about keeping the country together and avoiding fragmentation. Before the referendum campaign got underway a Madrid general even proposed a military invasion of Catalonia to prevent secession. It’s the same in Italy and France, where central governments are increasingly anxious about the example set by the new small nations.
But the metropolitan media in Britain seems relaxed about Scotland going it alone. The big issue in England right now is multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, which even members of the liberal chattering classes, like the editor of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, fear might have gone too far.
It is not acceptable to criticise immigrants as dependent, lazy spongers, who are undermining the integrity of the nation, but it is acceptable, apparently, to attack the Scots in this way, and claim that Gordon Brown cannot be Prime Minister because of his nationality. Perhaps what we are seeing here is a displaced ethnic antagonism. If so, the UK is surely doomed.
Brown had to back Trident - but that doesn't make it right
It isn’t independent and it certainly isn't a deterrent. Britain’s fleet of Vanguard class nuclear submarines carry Trident D5 missiles leased from America which cannot be deployed without the agreement of the White House. Far from deterring emerging countries like Iran or North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, the renewal of Trident positively encourages them to do so.
If Britain, as Gordon Brown believes, requires these devices to meet some nameless future threat, and to ensure Britain’s clout in the United Nations Security Council, then every industrialising country will argue the same. Iran is surrounded by nuclear nations - Pakistan, Israel, Russia, India - and has a greater cause for pleading the logic of deterrence than Britain, which faces no immediate threat from anywhere, unless you believe France has a sinister ambition to irradiate Albion.
This quintessentially Eighties weapon system, which Brown promised in last week’s Mansion House speech to renew, was developed under the Cold War doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). And mad it certainly is. Trident is designed to obliterate every significant city in the former Soviet Union. Since the Russians are now on our side, this makes the system anachronisitc to say the least.
We will be spending #20 billion on a system which cannot be used against any known enemy. Terrorists like al Qaeda will certainly not be deterred. However, Britain’s dependence on the US for supply and servicing of our nuclear weapons, more or less signs us up to American foreign policy, and to disasters like Iraq. Meanwhile our impoverished conventional forces struggle in Afghanistan with inferior kit.
At best, Trident is a military virility symbol, at worst a threat to world peace. Gordon Brown knows all this - he has been an opponent of nuclear weapons for most of his life and, I am convinced, remains one at heart. He knows also that the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons - the so called Reliable Replacement Weapon being developed at Britain’s nuclear laboratory at Aldermaston - is a breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That requires countries to work actively towards disarming existing nuclear weapons instead of developing new ones.
The Chancellor claims to be an internationalist, dedicated to eradicating poverty and promoting world peace. He spoke at Robin Cook’s funeral about this agenda. So, why did the future PM announce, out of the blue, that Britain is going to keep the very system that defines big power hypocrisy. That says to developing nations: ‘Just remember - there’s one law for us; another for you lot’ ?
The short answer, of course, is political expediency. It’s all to do with Brown’s obsession with ensuring that ‘orderly succession of power’. He believes he has to persuade Middle Britain that the future Prime Minister is not a man of the Left..
Like wrapping himself in the flag, and supporting England in the World Cup, Brown is appealing to the Daily Mail constituency, who believe nuclear weapons are a source of national pride and national security.
The Chancellor’s aides were tickled that Clare “It’s the end” Short, the former Development Secretary, disowned Brown last week declaring him to be beyond the pale. That’s exactly where the Chancellor’s aides want him to be - at least in the eyes of those mainly English Labour voters who suspect that Gordon’s true colours are not red white and blue, but plain red.
This column forecast, wearily, that Gordon Brown would make just such a public affirmation of his intention to maintain nuclear deterrent the weapons system, if only because it was in Labour’s election manifesto. His justification is that the future Prime Minister has to reassure Britain’s allies and the UN Security Council, that he does not intend to pull Britain out of its international treaty obligations.
To have made a declaration of unilateral intent now would have spooked America and created an unbridgeable gulf between himself and Tony Blair. This could have destroyed Labour as a governing party. Just imagine if Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader ever, were to disown his successor on the grounds that, to use Nye Bevan’s old phrase, he would “leave Britain naked in the conference chamber”?
Neil Kinnock, a hugely influential figure, might also have criticised Brown for endangering Labour’s electability and reopening the wounds of the 1980s. Needless to say, the tabloid newspapers and the mainstream press would have condemned Brown as a figure from Labour’s past - an unreconstructed Left-winger who is out of tune with public opinion and unsuited to the disciplines of office.
Put this way, Gordon Brown had little option but to make a statement affirming his support for Labour’s settled policy on our oxymoronic nuclear deterrent. However, I am not trying to apologise for this decision. It may be understandable but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable. It certainly doesn’t justify the nuclear chauvinism of his aides who spun the Chancellor’s bald announcement last week into a declaration of war on unilateralists and CND.
In private briefings to journalists, Number 11 spinners portrayed Brown as a kind of Dr Strangelove who had learned to love the bomb and was eager to show that he was signed up to MAD. Brown authorised these briefings and the Chancellor should be ashamed of them. He should look back on this moment, as with his defence of the PM’s conduct of the Iraq war, with a deeply troubled conscience.
He knows that the only way to justify the maintenance Trident is if it is used as a means of reducing the international arms race. The only utility of a system which, if it were used, could destroy a quarter of the planet is to employ it as a means to decommission other nuclear weapons. I may be naive, but I suspect Brown will try to do something about this when he becomes Prime Minister.
Britain’s nuclear deterrent is already “stood down” and only a token force actually takes to the seas. Trident missiles are targeted, not on any cities, but on the South Atlantic. It is questionable whether they could be used in earnest without a great deal of work being done on the fleet to make it fully operational.
And may they rust in peace. It is possible that Brown may use the renewal of the nuclear deterrent as an opportunity to downsize Trident, to make it compatible with the NNPT. There’s some evidence that the chiefs of staff would not be unhappy at the prospect of saving the 4% of the military budget that goes on Trident and using it to buy something more useful - like decent boots and rifles.
It may be wishful thinking, but I suspect Brown might try to use the nuclear system, constructively, as a form of bargaining with so-called rogue nations, to persuade them to put their own arsenals ‘beyond use’. To mothball all nuclear weapons, under a form of international supervision, is the only plausible way, ultimately, to create a climate of disarmament. Brown is an internationalist. In the age of climate change and global warming the last thing the world needs is further proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the reality is that, if things go on as they are, many more countries will join the nuclear club in the next two decades.
There is no way of stopping this race by running faster than the rest. Someone has to call a halt to the nuclear madness - we can only hope against hope that, in his pursuit of power, Gordon Brown keeps his sanity in reserve.
If Britain, as Gordon Brown believes, requires these devices to meet some nameless future threat, and to ensure Britain’s clout in the United Nations Security Council, then every industrialising country will argue the same. Iran is surrounded by nuclear nations - Pakistan, Israel, Russia, India - and has a greater cause for pleading the logic of deterrence than Britain, which faces no immediate threat from anywhere, unless you believe France has a sinister ambition to irradiate Albion.
This quintessentially Eighties weapon system, which Brown promised in last week’s Mansion House speech to renew, was developed under the Cold War doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (MAD). And mad it certainly is. Trident is designed to obliterate every significant city in the former Soviet Union. Since the Russians are now on our side, this makes the system anachronisitc to say the least.
We will be spending #20 billion on a system which cannot be used against any known enemy. Terrorists like al Qaeda will certainly not be deterred. However, Britain’s dependence on the US for supply and servicing of our nuclear weapons, more or less signs us up to American foreign policy, and to disasters like Iraq. Meanwhile our impoverished conventional forces struggle in Afghanistan with inferior kit.
At best, Trident is a military virility symbol, at worst a threat to world peace. Gordon Brown knows all this - he has been an opponent of nuclear weapons for most of his life and, I am convinced, remains one at heart. He knows also that the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons - the so called Reliable Replacement Weapon being developed at Britain’s nuclear laboratory at Aldermaston - is a breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That requires countries to work actively towards disarming existing nuclear weapons instead of developing new ones.
The Chancellor claims to be an internationalist, dedicated to eradicating poverty and promoting world peace. He spoke at Robin Cook’s funeral about this agenda. So, why did the future PM announce, out of the blue, that Britain is going to keep the very system that defines big power hypocrisy. That says to developing nations: ‘Just remember - there’s one law for us; another for you lot’ ?
The short answer, of course, is political expediency. It’s all to do with Brown’s obsession with ensuring that ‘orderly succession of power’. He believes he has to persuade Middle Britain that the future Prime Minister is not a man of the Left..
Like wrapping himself in the flag, and supporting England in the World Cup, Brown is appealing to the Daily Mail constituency, who believe nuclear weapons are a source of national pride and national security.
The Chancellor’s aides were tickled that Clare “It’s the end” Short, the former Development Secretary, disowned Brown last week declaring him to be beyond the pale. That’s exactly where the Chancellor’s aides want him to be - at least in the eyes of those mainly English Labour voters who suspect that Gordon’s true colours are not red white and blue, but plain red.
This column forecast, wearily, that Gordon Brown would make just such a public affirmation of his intention to maintain nuclear deterrent the weapons system, if only because it was in Labour’s election manifesto. His justification is that the future Prime Minister has to reassure Britain’s allies and the UN Security Council, that he does not intend to pull Britain out of its international treaty obligations.
To have made a declaration of unilateral intent now would have spooked America and created an unbridgeable gulf between himself and Tony Blair. This could have destroyed Labour as a governing party. Just imagine if Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader ever, were to disown his successor on the grounds that, to use Nye Bevan’s old phrase, he would “leave Britain naked in the conference chamber”?
Neil Kinnock, a hugely influential figure, might also have criticised Brown for endangering Labour’s electability and reopening the wounds of the 1980s. Needless to say, the tabloid newspapers and the mainstream press would have condemned Brown as a figure from Labour’s past - an unreconstructed Left-winger who is out of tune with public opinion and unsuited to the disciplines of office.
Put this way, Gordon Brown had little option but to make a statement affirming his support for Labour’s settled policy on our oxymoronic nuclear deterrent. However, I am not trying to apologise for this decision. It may be understandable but that doesn’t make it morally justifiable. It certainly doesn’t justify the nuclear chauvinism of his aides who spun the Chancellor’s bald announcement last week into a declaration of war on unilateralists and CND.
In private briefings to journalists, Number 11 spinners portrayed Brown as a kind of Dr Strangelove who had learned to love the bomb and was eager to show that he was signed up to MAD. Brown authorised these briefings and the Chancellor should be ashamed of them. He should look back on this moment, as with his defence of the PM’s conduct of the Iraq war, with a deeply troubled conscience.
He knows that the only way to justify the maintenance Trident is if it is used as a means of reducing the international arms race. The only utility of a system which, if it were used, could destroy a quarter of the planet is to employ it as a means to decommission other nuclear weapons. I may be naive, but I suspect Brown will try to do something about this when he becomes Prime Minister.
Britain’s nuclear deterrent is already “stood down” and only a token force actually takes to the seas. Trident missiles are targeted, not on any cities, but on the South Atlantic. It is questionable whether they could be used in earnest without a great deal of work being done on the fleet to make it fully operational.
And may they rust in peace. It is possible that Brown may use the renewal of the nuclear deterrent as an opportunity to downsize Trident, to make it compatible with the NNPT. There’s some evidence that the chiefs of staff would not be unhappy at the prospect of saving the 4% of the military budget that goes on Trident and using it to buy something more useful - like decent boots and rifles.
It may be wishful thinking, but I suspect Brown might try to use the nuclear system, constructively, as a form of bargaining with so-called rogue nations, to persuade them to put their own arsenals ‘beyond use’. To mothball all nuclear weapons, under a form of international supervision, is the only plausible way, ultimately, to create a climate of disarmament. Brown is an internationalist. In the age of climate change and global warming the last thing the world needs is further proliferation of nuclear weapons. But the reality is that, if things go on as they are, many more countries will join the nuclear club in the next two decades.
There is no way of stopping this race by running faster than the rest. Someone has to call a halt to the nuclear madness - we can only hope against hope that, in his pursuit of power, Gordon Brown keeps his sanity in reserve.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Give it a break Gordon - we know that you’re backing Britain. You don’t have to name your next child Wayne Rooney Brown.
In 1996, in a rather desperate bid to head off Scottish home rule, the then Tory Scottish Secretary, Michael Forsyth, decided to return the Stone of Destiny. Seemed like a good idea at the time. What better way to symbolise the permanence of the United Kingdom than for England to hand back this relic of Scotland’s ancient monarchy after eight hundred years of captivity in Westminster Abbey. The fact that was probably a fake hardly mattered.
As the wee magic stane trundled over the border, followed by a pipe band and Forsyth in a kilt, everyone but the Scottish Secretary could see that the move was comically counterproductive. The gesture was as tawdry as it was transparent. If anything, the stunt served only to remind Scots of their country’s historic independence. A year later, Scotland voted three to one in favour of restoring the Scottish Parliament.
Could a similar fate await Gordon Brown’s decision to mint a #2 coin to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the Act of Union ? The intention is clearly to remind Scotland that it has benefited hugely from the union with England and that Scotland’s flowering, intellectually and economically, dates from the extirpation of its national parliament. But the danger is that, like Forsyth and the Stone, the Chancellor’s coin will invite Scots to reflect on their historic subordination to England.
It would be ironic indeed if the 2007 Scottish elections turned out to be the beginning of the end of the Treaty which the coin commemorates. I don’t know if Gordon Brown has looked at the arithmetic recently, but Labour are on course for a pretty severe drubbing at the Scottish elections in May 2007. The Dunfermline by election showed that Scottish voters are not happy with Labour right now, even in the Chancellor’s own home constituency.
Of course, people don’t vote on things like commemorative coins, and we can be pretty sure that the Union of the Parliaments is unlikely to be a big issue on the doorsteps. However, small things do matter. To many Scots the coin affair looks like yet another contrived gesture by a Chancellor so apologetic about his nationality that he has to insist, not only that he supports England in the World Cup, but that his greatest sporting moment was Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland in the 1996 Euros. It’s not wrong, it’s just naff.
There was, of course, much wry amusement in nationalist circles at yet more evidence that Brown is “morphing into an Englishman” as Alex Salmond recently put it. The new coin was denounced by the SNP leader as the: "Brownie - full of brass, not very popular, soon to be devalued". But it should surely be called the “Roguie” after Robert Burn’s commentary on the union: “Bought and sold for English gold; Such a parcel o rogues in a Nation”. Now you can put it in your pocket.
The Union was massively unpopular in Scotland in 1707 and seen by most Scots as a sell out - that’s what it says on the BBC’s own website so it must be true. Burns' "parcel o rogues" were, of course, the Scottish nobility - this was long before universal suffrage - who valued their own wealth rather higher than their nation’s independence. A chest of coin amounting to #20,000 sent to Scotland for distribution by the Earl of Glasgow. Cheap at the price.
Some Scots believed that what they were signing up to was a reversible treaty rather than an incorporating union - shades of Maastricht here. But Queen Anne and the English Whigs were in no doubt about what was happening: Scotland was ceasing to exist politically in order to ensure a Protestant succession in England. The elimination of the Scottish Parliament represented a fundamental and irreversible shift of power from Edinburgh to London.
Now, I don’t want to get involved in the “what if” questions about how Scotland might have fared outside the Union. There is no doubt that the repeal of the Alien Act allowed Scotland to participate in the British empire, and enrich itself through everything from colonial administration to the slave trade. It’s hard to argue that Scotland would have done better on her own. Would those great Scottish philosophers - Hume, Fergusson, Smith - have been able to extend the boundaries of human enlightenment had they been confined to a backward peasant land? Probably not.
However, the Chancellor may find that provoking a debate on the consequences of union with England at this time, doesn’t go entirely his own way. Especially since so many English commentators, the latest being the Guardian’s Simon Hoggart on Saturday, are calling for a dissolution of the United Kingdom. As this column noted last week, the World Cup has provoked an extraordinary level of latent hostility to the Scots among people who should know better. Hoggart regards the ironic support of Trinidad and Tobago by many Scots as an offence which should be punished by a red card and an early constitutional bath. The sports commentator Alan Green agreed.
I still can’t see why people get so worked up about this. The “Soca Warriors” of Trinidad and Tobago were a noble if hopeless cause, in the best Scottish tradition. No one seriously expected T and T to win the tournament, or even beat England. Indeed, in supporting such no-hopers, Scots were expressing that very quality of sportsmanship that used to be so highly valued by the English amateur tradition. It’s not the winning that counts but how you play. And how they played! A team of enthusiastic unknowns with more passion in their boots than skill, held off the mighty English football machine for 83 minutes, and only lost after a bit of shameless hair-pulling by Crouch in their penalty box.
Look, football’s only a game, of course, and let’s keep it that way. But it was the Chancellor who chose to make it more than that by turning the World Cup into an opportunity to broadcast his Britishness. Trouble is, there’s no British team in Germany, so when Brown arrives in Cologne next week to cheer Beckham’s boys in their Group One final against Sweden, it may look to many Scots as if the Chancellor is simply supporting England.
Brown thinks he is making himself more acceptable to English voters, and heading off those London newspapers who say he cannot become Prime Minister because of his nationality. But flirting with English nationalism won’t make them like him any more and he seriously risks alienating his own back yard. It’s all so transparent and cynical. Like Michael Forsyth’s inept attempts to embrace Scottishness in the 1990s, it is unlikely to persuade anyone and by trying too hard conveys a kind of desperation. To this day the Tories are regarded as the “English party” by many Scottish voters.
Of course, the Union was a hugely important event in British history, and should be remembered - and I personaly am all for that. However, the coin will inevitably provoke a debate about Scotland's part in the union, past and present. Schools will be teaching how Scotland mislaid its parliament for three hundred years because of the venality of its ruling classes. The SNP will make the most of it, which they are absolutely entitled to do. And no doubt, all this will be interpreted by people in England as further evidence that the Scots are at best ambivalent about the UK and at worse positively
resentful of England's dominance of it.
Well, bring it on, I suppose. But perhaps Gordon Brown would have been better advised to avoid gesture politics, when the gestures can be so easily misinterpreted.
As the wee magic stane trundled over the border, followed by a pipe band and Forsyth in a kilt, everyone but the Scottish Secretary could see that the move was comically counterproductive. The gesture was as tawdry as it was transparent. If anything, the stunt served only to remind Scots of their country’s historic independence. A year later, Scotland voted three to one in favour of restoring the Scottish Parliament.
Could a similar fate await Gordon Brown’s decision to mint a #2 coin to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the Act of Union ? The intention is clearly to remind Scotland that it has benefited hugely from the union with England and that Scotland’s flowering, intellectually and economically, dates from the extirpation of its national parliament. But the danger is that, like Forsyth and the Stone, the Chancellor’s coin will invite Scots to reflect on their historic subordination to England.
It would be ironic indeed if the 2007 Scottish elections turned out to be the beginning of the end of the Treaty which the coin commemorates. I don’t know if Gordon Brown has looked at the arithmetic recently, but Labour are on course for a pretty severe drubbing at the Scottish elections in May 2007. The Dunfermline by election showed that Scottish voters are not happy with Labour right now, even in the Chancellor’s own home constituency.
Of course, people don’t vote on things like commemorative coins, and we can be pretty sure that the Union of the Parliaments is unlikely to be a big issue on the doorsteps. However, small things do matter. To many Scots the coin affair looks like yet another contrived gesture by a Chancellor so apologetic about his nationality that he has to insist, not only that he supports England in the World Cup, but that his greatest sporting moment was Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland in the 1996 Euros. It’s not wrong, it’s just naff.
There was, of course, much wry amusement in nationalist circles at yet more evidence that Brown is “morphing into an Englishman” as Alex Salmond recently put it. The new coin was denounced by the SNP leader as the: "Brownie - full of brass, not very popular, soon to be devalued". But it should surely be called the “Roguie” after Robert Burn’s commentary on the union: “Bought and sold for English gold; Such a parcel o rogues in a Nation”. Now you can put it in your pocket.
The Union was massively unpopular in Scotland in 1707 and seen by most Scots as a sell out - that’s what it says on the BBC’s own website so it must be true. Burns' "parcel o rogues" were, of course, the Scottish nobility - this was long before universal suffrage - who valued their own wealth rather higher than their nation’s independence. A chest of coin amounting to #20,000 sent to Scotland for distribution by the Earl of Glasgow. Cheap at the price.
Some Scots believed that what they were signing up to was a reversible treaty rather than an incorporating union - shades of Maastricht here. But Queen Anne and the English Whigs were in no doubt about what was happening: Scotland was ceasing to exist politically in order to ensure a Protestant succession in England. The elimination of the Scottish Parliament represented a fundamental and irreversible shift of power from Edinburgh to London.
Now, I don’t want to get involved in the “what if” questions about how Scotland might have fared outside the Union. There is no doubt that the repeal of the Alien Act allowed Scotland to participate in the British empire, and enrich itself through everything from colonial administration to the slave trade. It’s hard to argue that Scotland would have done better on her own. Would those great Scottish philosophers - Hume, Fergusson, Smith - have been able to extend the boundaries of human enlightenment had they been confined to a backward peasant land? Probably not.
However, the Chancellor may find that provoking a debate on the consequences of union with England at this time, doesn’t go entirely his own way. Especially since so many English commentators, the latest being the Guardian’s Simon Hoggart on Saturday, are calling for a dissolution of the United Kingdom. As this column noted last week, the World Cup has provoked an extraordinary level of latent hostility to the Scots among people who should know better. Hoggart regards the ironic support of Trinidad and Tobago by many Scots as an offence which should be punished by a red card and an early constitutional bath. The sports commentator Alan Green agreed.
I still can’t see why people get so worked up about this. The “Soca Warriors” of Trinidad and Tobago were a noble if hopeless cause, in the best Scottish tradition. No one seriously expected T and T to win the tournament, or even beat England. Indeed, in supporting such no-hopers, Scots were expressing that very quality of sportsmanship that used to be so highly valued by the English amateur tradition. It’s not the winning that counts but how you play. And how they played! A team of enthusiastic unknowns with more passion in their boots than skill, held off the mighty English football machine for 83 minutes, and only lost after a bit of shameless hair-pulling by Crouch in their penalty box.
Look, football’s only a game, of course, and let’s keep it that way. But it was the Chancellor who chose to make it more than that by turning the World Cup into an opportunity to broadcast his Britishness. Trouble is, there’s no British team in Germany, so when Brown arrives in Cologne next week to cheer Beckham’s boys in their Group One final against Sweden, it may look to many Scots as if the Chancellor is simply supporting England.
Brown thinks he is making himself more acceptable to English voters, and heading off those London newspapers who say he cannot become Prime Minister because of his nationality. But flirting with English nationalism won’t make them like him any more and he seriously risks alienating his own back yard. It’s all so transparent and cynical. Like Michael Forsyth’s inept attempts to embrace Scottishness in the 1990s, it is unlikely to persuade anyone and by trying too hard conveys a kind of desperation. To this day the Tories are regarded as the “English party” by many Scottish voters.
Of course, the Union was a hugely important event in British history, and should be remembered - and I personaly am all for that. However, the coin will inevitably provoke a debate about Scotland's part in the union, past and present. Schools will be teaching how Scotland mislaid its parliament for three hundred years because of the venality of its ruling classes. The SNP will make the most of it, which they are absolutely entitled to do. And no doubt, all this will be interpreted by people in England as further evidence that the Scots are at best ambivalent about the UK and at worse positively
resentful of England's dominance of it.
Well, bring it on, I suppose. But perhaps Gordon Brown would have been better advised to avoid gesture politics, when the gestures can be so easily misinterpreted.
Shetland wants Sakchai Makao, so why is he being deported
Last week, almost the entire population of Shetland united in opposition to the compulsory deportation of Sakchai Makao, a young Thai athlete who has lived in Shetland for 13 years. Makao had been arrested by police officers at his home in Lerwick and flown to a detention centre in Durham to await deportation.
Makao works as a lifeguard and is very popular locally, not least because he’s represented Shetland at three International Island Games. However, he was jailed for 15 months in 2004 after he set fire to a porta-cabin and a car in what was described in court as “two moments of madness”.
But the local MP, Alistair Carmichael, the MSP, Tavish Scott, and the convener of Shetland Islands Council, Sandy Cluness, united last week in demanding that Makao should be released. Mr Cluness said he had “paid his debts to society and had become a valuable member of the Shetland community”.
No, you couldn’t make it up. When Tony Blair fulminated against foreign rapists and murderers, and ruled that all foreign prisoners should be deported on release, he didn’t have in mind valuable members of the community. He should have - after all he’s a lawyer himself and his wife remains a partner in Matrix Chambers, a legal firm which specialises in human rights issues. If anyone should have been wary of making law on the hoof, it should have been Tony Blair.
The media tribunes who had been demanding the deportation of all those foreign prisoners, were strangely silent about Makao. They’ve been equally silent about the case of Ernesto Leal, another valuable member of the community who has been caught by the presumption of deportation. The Edinburgh arts and music promoter, came to Britain thirty years ago to escape persecution by the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He was jailed in 2002 after getting involved in a pub brawl in East London. Now he is languishing in high security prison awaiting deportation to - wherever. Campaigners led by the author, Irvine Welsh, are still trying to get him freed.
These are only two of the many victims of this government’s passion for instant justice. Tony Blairs determination to respond to every media scare by creating a new edict. It’s becoming as regular as clockwork, you could almost set your watch by it. Every week brings another crime panic; another immigration scandal; another case of Home Office incompetence.
We’ve had prisoners walking out of open prisons; murderers being released after five years; foreign felons going
undeported; paedophiles being given derisory sentences; prisoners being released en masse because of over-crowding.
The Home Office has given up on keeping track of illegal immigrants, we’re told, and instead is handing out national insurance numbers so that illegals can take up jobs in the Immigration and Nationality Department.
Sounds appalling. Is it safe to walk the streets with the prisons spewing out murderers and rapists? Are our children safe from paedophile perverts; are our women-folk safe from illegal immigrants? Just what is the government doing about all this lawlessness? I don’t know about you, but I’m getting out before this country goes to the dogs...
Such are the kind of anxieties that are likely to afflict anyone who has exposed themselves to the popular press in recent weeks - or listened to government ministers, which nowadays amounts to much the same thing. The Prime Minister has himself adopted the Sun’s super soaraway criminal justice manifesto and intends to implement it this week by introducing tougher rules on minimum sentences. These will be to, er, replace the tougher rules on minimum sentences that the PM introduced in 2003, and in 2001, and in 1999...
Governments used to blame the politicians who were in charge before they came to office; but New Labour blames itself: “This disgraceful regime of lenient sentences and automatic release, which we inherited from ourselves, is irresponsible and constitutes a danger to the public. The immigration policies we have created are a national scandal. It’s about time something was done about us.”
What you don’t hear, of course, is that prisons are already stuffed to breaking point because of the government’s policy of mandatory minimum sentences; that overall levels of crime are substantially down everywhere; that immigrants have been an essential component of the decade-long economic boom; or indeed that prison, very often, just creates more prisoners. Two thirds of those released from jail reoffend within two years - which kind of suggests that prison isn’t working.
Soft sentences? The number of life sentences given out has nearly doubled in the last ten years, according to the Prison Reform Trust, and the sentences actually served by prisoners are fifty percent longer. They did the crime and they are doing the time.
No matter: just have tougher prisons, longer sentences, paedophile registers, compulsory mass deportation of foreign prisoners. Yes, that’s a good idea - send ‘em back where they came from, let someone else put up with their criminal behaviour! Except, er, when they try to send them back here - as was the case recently when Australia deported to Scotland the paedophile William Gallagher, 62, who has a string of sex offences against boys dating back to 1973.
How dare they dump their evil fiends on us after forty years in their country! Send em back to where they didn’t come from! It’s the only language these monsters understand! What is the government doing about this!
Common sense solutions to complex criminal issues generally turn out to be the reverse - particularly stupid. By leaping on every tabloid scare and creating instant policy to deal with it the government is making a nonsense of criminal justice.
Take the deportation of foreign prisoners. The government discovers that hundreds of non-British felons are being released from jail without being assessed for deportation. Shock! Horror! Foreign murderers and rapists being let loose on British streets.
Get rid of ‘em, cry the press. The government agrees, and Tony Blair issues a new legal doctrine: “the presumption of deportation”, meaning that all foreign prisoners who have served prison sentences for serious offences are sent to their countries of origin no matter the particular circumstances of the case. Sun approves. Job done. Except for the unintended consequences. In Shetland.
Makao works as a lifeguard and is very popular locally, not least because he’s represented Shetland at three International Island Games. However, he was jailed for 15 months in 2004 after he set fire to a porta-cabin and a car in what was described in court as “two moments of madness”.
But the local MP, Alistair Carmichael, the MSP, Tavish Scott, and the convener of Shetland Islands Council, Sandy Cluness, united last week in demanding that Makao should be released. Mr Cluness said he had “paid his debts to society and had become a valuable member of the Shetland community”.
No, you couldn’t make it up. When Tony Blair fulminated against foreign rapists and murderers, and ruled that all foreign prisoners should be deported on release, he didn’t have in mind valuable members of the community. He should have - after all he’s a lawyer himself and his wife remains a partner in Matrix Chambers, a legal firm which specialises in human rights issues. If anyone should have been wary of making law on the hoof, it should have been Tony Blair.
The media tribunes who had been demanding the deportation of all those foreign prisoners, were strangely silent about Makao. They’ve been equally silent about the case of Ernesto Leal, another valuable member of the community who has been caught by the presumption of deportation. The Edinburgh arts and music promoter, came to Britain thirty years ago to escape persecution by the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He was jailed in 2002 after getting involved in a pub brawl in East London. Now he is languishing in high security prison awaiting deportation to - wherever. Campaigners led by the author, Irvine Welsh, are still trying to get him freed.
These are only two of the many victims of this government’s passion for instant justice. Tony Blairs determination to respond to every media scare by creating a new edict. It’s becoming as regular as clockwork, you could almost set your watch by it. Every week brings another crime panic; another immigration scandal; another case of Home Office incompetence.
We’ve had prisoners walking out of open prisons; murderers being released after five years; foreign felons going
undeported; paedophiles being given derisory sentences; prisoners being released en masse because of over-crowding.
The Home Office has given up on keeping track of illegal immigrants, we’re told, and instead is handing out national insurance numbers so that illegals can take up jobs in the Immigration and Nationality Department.
Sounds appalling. Is it safe to walk the streets with the prisons spewing out murderers and rapists? Are our children safe from paedophile perverts; are our women-folk safe from illegal immigrants? Just what is the government doing about all this lawlessness? I don’t know about you, but I’m getting out before this country goes to the dogs...
Such are the kind of anxieties that are likely to afflict anyone who has exposed themselves to the popular press in recent weeks - or listened to government ministers, which nowadays amounts to much the same thing. The Prime Minister has himself adopted the Sun’s super soaraway criminal justice manifesto and intends to implement it this week by introducing tougher rules on minimum sentences. These will be to, er, replace the tougher rules on minimum sentences that the PM introduced in 2003, and in 2001, and in 1999...
Governments used to blame the politicians who were in charge before they came to office; but New Labour blames itself: “This disgraceful regime of lenient sentences and automatic release, which we inherited from ourselves, is irresponsible and constitutes a danger to the public. The immigration policies we have created are a national scandal. It’s about time something was done about us.”
What you don’t hear, of course, is that prisons are already stuffed to breaking point because of the government’s policy of mandatory minimum sentences; that overall levels of crime are substantially down everywhere; that immigrants have been an essential component of the decade-long economic boom; or indeed that prison, very often, just creates more prisoners. Two thirds of those released from jail reoffend within two years - which kind of suggests that prison isn’t working.
Soft sentences? The number of life sentences given out has nearly doubled in the last ten years, according to the Prison Reform Trust, and the sentences actually served by prisoners are fifty percent longer. They did the crime and they are doing the time.
No matter: just have tougher prisons, longer sentences, paedophile registers, compulsory mass deportation of foreign prisoners. Yes, that’s a good idea - send ‘em back where they came from, let someone else put up with their criminal behaviour! Except, er, when they try to send them back here - as was the case recently when Australia deported to Scotland the paedophile William Gallagher, 62, who has a string of sex offences against boys dating back to 1973.
How dare they dump their evil fiends on us after forty years in their country! Send em back to where they didn’t come from! It’s the only language these monsters understand! What is the government doing about this!
Common sense solutions to complex criminal issues generally turn out to be the reverse - particularly stupid. By leaping on every tabloid scare and creating instant policy to deal with it the government is making a nonsense of criminal justice.
Take the deportation of foreign prisoners. The government discovers that hundreds of non-British felons are being released from jail without being assessed for deportation. Shock! Horror! Foreign murderers and rapists being let loose on British streets.
Get rid of ‘em, cry the press. The government agrees, and Tony Blair issues a new legal doctrine: “the presumption of deportation”, meaning that all foreign prisoners who have served prison sentences for serious offences are sent to their countries of origin no matter the particular circumstances of the case. Sun approves. Job done. Except for the unintended consequences. In Shetland.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Hey, Reid leave them judges alone
“There appears to be a disconnect between the public's common sense view of right and wrong and how it sees that reflected in judicial decisions” according to the Prime Minister’s spokesman yesterday, referring to the five year sentence handed down to paedophile, Craig Sweeney. Disconnect there certainly is, though I’m not sure common sense comes into it.
It seems that a Downing St factotum can now second-guess the judiciary with impunity. And only a day after the Attorney General himself, Lord Goldsmith, had censured the Home Secretary, John Reid, for doing the same thing. This looks like war.
Couldn’t happen here of course. Scottish judges are jealous of their privileges and no mere minister, or newspaper editor, would dare to second guess them. Well, think again. In fact it is happening here. Not only are politicians second-guessing judges, they are threatening them with the sack.
In a recent consultation paper, the Justice Minister, Cathy Jamieson, proposed disciplinary action for judges and sheriffs who are too lenient. Sanctions which could be imposed on judges or sheriffs would include a formal warning, a reprimand, transfer to another court or an order to undertake "judicial studies or training". They're expected to feature in a forthcoming bill.
North and South of the border, there is a full frontal assault on the principle of the separation of powers. Indeed, the government seems to have decided that the judges are the new class enemy. The Prime Minister has expressed contempt for “liberal” judges who have criticised his anti-terrorist legislation. One Law Lord suggested that the government was more of a threat than the terrorists.
But in taking on the courts directly in the Craig Sweeney case, Dr John Reid has escalated the conflict. Reid felt that five years was too short and said so. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, replied the Home Secretary’s intervention was “not helpful” - which, roughly translated, means “get your tanks off my lawn, Jimmy”.
But there are a lot of people in the legal profession in Scotland and England who believe that the tanks have already flattened the constitutional separation between the judiciary and the government . Roy Martin, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates believes that the Scottish Executive is introducing political direction in a way that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.
The Executive is setting up an independent appointments board for judges, which sounds benign but isn’t . Appointments to the board will be made by Scottish ministers. It will be Judge Jack decides who sits on the bench. The fear is that the FM will ensure that, in future, judges are only selected if they have the “right stuff’, and approve of things like mandatory minimum sentences, abolition of early release of prisoners and tightening up the bail regime so that murder suspects can’t go on holiday to Bulgaria.
But does this matter? Should we worry? Why should judges be able to sit in their ivory towers handing down judgements which don’t find favour with the public or politicians? Why should judges be above the law?
Well, think about the alternatives. If politicians make the law, which is what increasingly seems to be happening, then the law will become the hostage of yesterday’s newspaper headlines. Politicians live in the short term. They don’t have time to reflect on the significance of any particular ruling - they just want to look and sound tough on crime, and aren’t particularly bothered about the complexities of the case.
Take Craig Sweeney. Appalling crime, undoubtedly. Kidnapped and raped a three year old girl. Bang him up and throw away the key. In fact, it’s not quite as simple as that. Sweeney was given an 18 year minimum sentence for his crime, but he got a discount of one third in mitigation for pleading guilty without reservation, and for expressing extreme remorse. That’s the law.
The headline five year sentence was actually twelve years, (taking account of the time he had already spent in prison on remand) with the possibility of release after six. But Judge John Williams told Sweeney that it was very unlikely that he would be let out after six years. So, already, this isn’t quite the absurdly lenient sentence that got the tabloids into such a lather.
Now, perhaps you believe that even the possibility of a paedophile getting out after six years is unacceptable for a crime of this magnitude. But such an approach would make a nonsense of the policy of rehabilitation. It also makes little sense when the prisons are so overcrowded that the Home Office and the Scottish Executive are planning for the “administrate release” of thousands of prisoners to make room for the thousands who are being banged up. (Contrary to popular belief, the courts in Scotland are handing out much tougher sentences, which is why there is up to 65% over crowding in Scotland’s jails).
Now, both in Scotland and England - cases like that of Craig Sweeney are reviewed by judges on the appeal court. And indeed only last month, another paedophle, Alan Webster, had his jail term increased from six to eight years by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips. There is already a machinery for reviewing light sentences.
But the Lords of Appeal are too slow for Judge Reid - he wants action this day, in order to appease the High Court of Fleet Street. The risk is that newspapers are effectively handed the final say on sentencing. Cathy Jamieson’s proposal for disciplinary action for lenient judges came after the appeal court refused to increase the three year jail sentence imposed on Steven Weir last year for knife crime.
A series of newspaper stories of lenient sentences like that one convinced the Scottish Executive that they needed, effectively, to have the power to direct the courts. And make no mistake this is what is happening. The forthcoming Sentencing Bill will end automatic early release. Indeed, Cathy Jamieson appears to be calling for mandatory sentencing. Sentences, she says, should “mean what they say”. The Scottish Labour Party is planning to make this a major plank of their campaign for the Scottish parliamentary elections next May.,
Now, I don’t have a lot of time for judges myself - they are often out of touch, conservative and insufferably pompous. But speaking personally, I’m not sure that I am better equipped than they are to decide on important matters of law which could affect the lives, not just of the people involved in any particular case, but the people affected by the consequences of any rush to judgement. Like any other father, I become slightly irrational whenever paedophiles rape children and tend to think that hanging’s too good for them. However, the law is the law. If politicians and journalists make it up as they go along, then we go to hell in the proverbial hand cart.
It seems that a Downing St factotum can now second-guess the judiciary with impunity. And only a day after the Attorney General himself, Lord Goldsmith, had censured the Home Secretary, John Reid, for doing the same thing. This looks like war.
Couldn’t happen here of course. Scottish judges are jealous of their privileges and no mere minister, or newspaper editor, would dare to second guess them. Well, think again. In fact it is happening here. Not only are politicians second-guessing judges, they are threatening them with the sack.
In a recent consultation paper, the Justice Minister, Cathy Jamieson, proposed disciplinary action for judges and sheriffs who are too lenient. Sanctions which could be imposed on judges or sheriffs would include a formal warning, a reprimand, transfer to another court or an order to undertake "judicial studies or training". They're expected to feature in a forthcoming bill.
North and South of the border, there is a full frontal assault on the principle of the separation of powers. Indeed, the government seems to have decided that the judges are the new class enemy. The Prime Minister has expressed contempt for “liberal” judges who have criticised his anti-terrorist legislation. One Law Lord suggested that the government was more of a threat than the terrorists.
But in taking on the courts directly in the Craig Sweeney case, Dr John Reid has escalated the conflict. Reid felt that five years was too short and said so. The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, replied the Home Secretary’s intervention was “not helpful” - which, roughly translated, means “get your tanks off my lawn, Jimmy”.
But there are a lot of people in the legal profession in Scotland and England who believe that the tanks have already flattened the constitutional separation between the judiciary and the government . Roy Martin, the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates believes that the Scottish Executive is introducing political direction in a way that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.
The Executive is setting up an independent appointments board for judges, which sounds benign but isn’t . Appointments to the board will be made by Scottish ministers. It will be Judge Jack decides who sits on the bench. The fear is that the FM will ensure that, in future, judges are only selected if they have the “right stuff’, and approve of things like mandatory minimum sentences, abolition of early release of prisoners and tightening up the bail regime so that murder suspects can’t go on holiday to Bulgaria.
But does this matter? Should we worry? Why should judges be able to sit in their ivory towers handing down judgements which don’t find favour with the public or politicians? Why should judges be above the law?
Well, think about the alternatives. If politicians make the law, which is what increasingly seems to be happening, then the law will become the hostage of yesterday’s newspaper headlines. Politicians live in the short term. They don’t have time to reflect on the significance of any particular ruling - they just want to look and sound tough on crime, and aren’t particularly bothered about the complexities of the case.
Take Craig Sweeney. Appalling crime, undoubtedly. Kidnapped and raped a three year old girl. Bang him up and throw away the key. In fact, it’s not quite as simple as that. Sweeney was given an 18 year minimum sentence for his crime, but he got a discount of one third in mitigation for pleading guilty without reservation, and for expressing extreme remorse. That’s the law.
The headline five year sentence was actually twelve years, (taking account of the time he had already spent in prison on remand) with the possibility of release after six. But Judge John Williams told Sweeney that it was very unlikely that he would be let out after six years. So, already, this isn’t quite the absurdly lenient sentence that got the tabloids into such a lather.
Now, perhaps you believe that even the possibility of a paedophile getting out after six years is unacceptable for a crime of this magnitude. But such an approach would make a nonsense of the policy of rehabilitation. It also makes little sense when the prisons are so overcrowded that the Home Office and the Scottish Executive are planning for the “administrate release” of thousands of prisoners to make room for the thousands who are being banged up. (Contrary to popular belief, the courts in Scotland are handing out much tougher sentences, which is why there is up to 65% over crowding in Scotland’s jails).
Now, both in Scotland and England - cases like that of Craig Sweeney are reviewed by judges on the appeal court. And indeed only last month, another paedophle, Alan Webster, had his jail term increased from six to eight years by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips. There is already a machinery for reviewing light sentences.
But the Lords of Appeal are too slow for Judge Reid - he wants action this day, in order to appease the High Court of Fleet Street. The risk is that newspapers are effectively handed the final say on sentencing. Cathy Jamieson’s proposal for disciplinary action for lenient judges came after the appeal court refused to increase the three year jail sentence imposed on Steven Weir last year for knife crime.
A series of newspaper stories of lenient sentences like that one convinced the Scottish Executive that they needed, effectively, to have the power to direct the courts. And make no mistake this is what is happening. The forthcoming Sentencing Bill will end automatic early release. Indeed, Cathy Jamieson appears to be calling for mandatory sentencing. Sentences, she says, should “mean what they say”. The Scottish Labour Party is planning to make this a major plank of their campaign for the Scottish parliamentary elections next May.,
Now, I don’t have a lot of time for judges myself - they are often out of touch, conservative and insufferably pompous. But speaking personally, I’m not sure that I am better equipped than they are to decide on important matters of law which could affect the lives, not just of the people involved in any particular case, but the people affected by the consequences of any rush to judgement. Like any other father, I become slightly irrational whenever paedophiles rape children and tend to think that hanging’s too good for them. However, the law is the law. If politicians and journalists make it up as they go along, then we go to hell in the proverbial hand cart.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
This flag worship isn't progressive nationalism, it's national laddism.
11/6/06
The most extraordinary sight of the week, indeed the year, was the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition riding into Westminster with a Cross of St George Fluttering from the back of his bike. We’ve all gone flag crazy - except in Scotland where it’s viewed with more than a little unease.
Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is flying two, or is it three. Tony Blair announced, after initial wariness, that the Cross of St George would fly above Downing St. for every Engerland match for the duration of the World Cup.
Politicians of every hue are wrapping themselves in the flag.
And if they aren’t then the guardians of English nationalism are soon on their backs. “Tony Has pledged to fly the flag”, taunted Boris Johnson in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph, “Will Gordon have the nerve to do the same? Will Gordon have the nerve to resist”. It’s not enough for the Chancellor to back the England team, he has to bow before the flag too.
There is a hectoring and bullying note creeping into this the new English nationalism. Middle class intellectuals, who have clearly forgotten everything George Orwell wrote, are embracing the flag like teenagers on a bender. They pretend that it’s ironic, a laugh, an affectionate revival of antique passions. But this isn’t progressive nationalism, it is national laddism.
I hate to be a killjoy, but I find it tasteless and faintly sinister. I’m all for rediscovering national symbols and I can even accept a little post-modern patriotism. But there are limits. The attitudes and emotions unleashed by flag worship can rapidly become oppressive. Look at America, where the flag is a kind of fetish - a piece of cloth imbued with almost mystical significance.
And I don't like Saltire worship either, with all the blood-soaked "Braveheart" romanticism. But it’s one thing for a small nation like Scotland, with a tenth of the population and a fraction of the wealth, to be flaunting national symbols - a kind of regional attention-seeking; when the dominant partner in a union of nations starts stuffing its flag down our throats, day after day, on a London-dominated media, I reach for my sick bag.
And I have no problem with people supporting the English football team - my own twelve year old son does. And by the way he isn’t bullied or fire-bombed at his state school in Dalkeith for doing so. But I’m fed up being asked where my own loyalties lie. Scottish politicians can’t approach a microphone without being challenged to say whether they support England. This isn’t football - it is a new version of Norman Tebbbit’s cricket test.
And why does every television programme and every article about the phenomenon seem to include a dig at the Scots for being unpleasant spongers? There was Max Hastings on Question Time on Thursday accusing the Scots of being “nasty to the English even when we pay their bills”. On Tuesday, the London Mayor Ken Livingstone girned about how London continues to “pay the Scots to live in the manner to which they are accustomed”.
Boris Johnson announced in his own flag-waving piece that Gordon Brown couldn’t be Prime Minister because he is Scottish. That isn’t funny - it’s racist. The UK parliament is a unitary one in which all MPs are supposedly equal. You cannot deny an elected politician high office because you don’t like his ethnic origins. Or is this now an English parliament?
Ken Livingstone’s idea that London is subsidising Scotland is economically illiterate. Tens of billions are being spent on public projects like the London Olympics and the cross-rail link funded in part by Scottish taxpayers. And before Max Hastings mouths off about subsidising the Scots he would do well to remember that the UK Exchequer is currently benefiting from #12 bn a year in oil revenues.
This is nasty nationalism - the patriotism of fools. And in brings out the worst in all of us. The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, went totally over the top in the Commons last week when he accused Gordon Brown of “morphing into an Englishman”. The nationalists are willing the England team to do well or even win the World Cup, because every extra day of this brings an SNP victory in the Scottish elections in May closer.
There’s nothing wrong with people exploring their national identity and even rediscovering symbols. And there’s nothing wrong with football that a change of rules and lower salaries wouldn’t cure. But when we start importing the passion of the terrace into British politics it turns into tribalism.
Or chauvinism. Love of flag has blinded Americans to the fact that across half the world the Stars and Stripes has become a symbol of imperialism and military supremacism. The Cross of St George has some unfortunate associations also. Like the Salford Councillors, I was distinctly uneasy about Labour cabinet ministers wrapping themselves in a flag which was, in the not too distant past, the emblem of the British National Party. Ten years ago, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown wouldn’t have been seen dead near a Cross of St George. Now they’re getting their underpants made of it.
Yet when the deputy chief constable of Wales dared to suggest that waving this flag might be a little provocative in the principality, he was hounded by the new patriots. Schools in England have been instructed to fly the flag with pride.
But surely if Prime Minister is so keen on preserving the union shouldn’t they be flying the Union Flag above Downing St., as was the case in 1966. If it was good enough for Harold Wilson, why not for Tony Blair? And, anyway, since when did the government of the country become the property of England? The Union flag, remember, is supposed to incorporate the Cross of St George and the Saltire. Surely that symbol of inclusion should correctly fly above all UK institutions.
You don’t see the flag of St. George flying above Buckingham Palace - at least not yet. Flags are where emotion and politics collide. This is infantile behaviour from a country with a long enough memory to know that it’s wrong.
The most extraordinary sight of the week, indeed the year, was the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition riding into Westminster with a Cross of St George Fluttering from the back of his bike. We’ve all gone flag crazy - except in Scotland where it’s viewed with more than a little unease.
Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is flying two, or is it three. Tony Blair announced, after initial wariness, that the Cross of St George would fly above Downing St. for every Engerland match for the duration of the World Cup.
Politicians of every hue are wrapping themselves in the flag.
And if they aren’t then the guardians of English nationalism are soon on their backs. “Tony Has pledged to fly the flag”, taunted Boris Johnson in Thursday’s Daily Telegraph, “Will Gordon have the nerve to do the same? Will Gordon have the nerve to resist”. It’s not enough for the Chancellor to back the England team, he has to bow before the flag too.
There is a hectoring and bullying note creeping into this the new English nationalism. Middle class intellectuals, who have clearly forgotten everything George Orwell wrote, are embracing the flag like teenagers on a bender. They pretend that it’s ironic, a laugh, an affectionate revival of antique passions. But this isn’t progressive nationalism, it is national laddism.
I hate to be a killjoy, but I find it tasteless and faintly sinister. I’m all for rediscovering national symbols and I can even accept a little post-modern patriotism. But there are limits. The attitudes and emotions unleashed by flag worship can rapidly become oppressive. Look at America, where the flag is a kind of fetish - a piece of cloth imbued with almost mystical significance.
And I don't like Saltire worship either, with all the blood-soaked "Braveheart" romanticism. But it’s one thing for a small nation like Scotland, with a tenth of the population and a fraction of the wealth, to be flaunting national symbols - a kind of regional attention-seeking; when the dominant partner in a union of nations starts stuffing its flag down our throats, day after day, on a London-dominated media, I reach for my sick bag.
And I have no problem with people supporting the English football team - my own twelve year old son does. And by the way he isn’t bullied or fire-bombed at his state school in Dalkeith for doing so. But I’m fed up being asked where my own loyalties lie. Scottish politicians can’t approach a microphone without being challenged to say whether they support England. This isn’t football - it is a new version of Norman Tebbbit’s cricket test.
And why does every television programme and every article about the phenomenon seem to include a dig at the Scots for being unpleasant spongers? There was Max Hastings on Question Time on Thursday accusing the Scots of being “nasty to the English even when we pay their bills”. On Tuesday, the London Mayor Ken Livingstone girned about how London continues to “pay the Scots to live in the manner to which they are accustomed”.
Boris Johnson announced in his own flag-waving piece that Gordon Brown couldn’t be Prime Minister because he is Scottish. That isn’t funny - it’s racist. The UK parliament is a unitary one in which all MPs are supposedly equal. You cannot deny an elected politician high office because you don’t like his ethnic origins. Or is this now an English parliament?
Ken Livingstone’s idea that London is subsidising Scotland is economically illiterate. Tens of billions are being spent on public projects like the London Olympics and the cross-rail link funded in part by Scottish taxpayers. And before Max Hastings mouths off about subsidising the Scots he would do well to remember that the UK Exchequer is currently benefiting from #12 bn a year in oil revenues.
This is nasty nationalism - the patriotism of fools. And in brings out the worst in all of us. The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, went totally over the top in the Commons last week when he accused Gordon Brown of “morphing into an Englishman”. The nationalists are willing the England team to do well or even win the World Cup, because every extra day of this brings an SNP victory in the Scottish elections in May closer.
There’s nothing wrong with people exploring their national identity and even rediscovering symbols. And there’s nothing wrong with football that a change of rules and lower salaries wouldn’t cure. But when we start importing the passion of the terrace into British politics it turns into tribalism.
Or chauvinism. Love of flag has blinded Americans to the fact that across half the world the Stars and Stripes has become a symbol of imperialism and military supremacism. The Cross of St George has some unfortunate associations also. Like the Salford Councillors, I was distinctly uneasy about Labour cabinet ministers wrapping themselves in a flag which was, in the not too distant past, the emblem of the British National Party. Ten years ago, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown wouldn’t have been seen dead near a Cross of St George. Now they’re getting their underpants made of it.
Yet when the deputy chief constable of Wales dared to suggest that waving this flag might be a little provocative in the principality, he was hounded by the new patriots. Schools in England have been instructed to fly the flag with pride.
But surely if Prime Minister is so keen on preserving the union shouldn’t they be flying the Union Flag above Downing St., as was the case in 1966. If it was good enough for Harold Wilson, why not for Tony Blair? And, anyway, since when did the government of the country become the property of England? The Union flag, remember, is supposed to incorporate the Cross of St George and the Saltire. Surely that symbol of inclusion should correctly fly above all UK institutions.
You don’t see the flag of St. George flying above Buckingham Palace - at least not yet. Flags are where emotion and politics collide. This is infantile behaviour from a country with a long enough memory to know that it’s wrong.
What are the Liberal Democrats for?
What use are the Liberal Democrats? What are they for? It’s a question which has long been asked by Labour and Conservative politicians, but now even some Liberal Democrats are beginning to ask if they know what they are here for.
Both the Independent and the Guardian, the two newspapers closest to the LibDems, have been critical of the direction the party has taken under Sir Menzies Campbell. “Insipid...directionless” according to the Indie. “Just what - and whom - are they for?” queried the Guardian on Friday, decidedly unimpressed by Sir Menzies Campbell’s latest relaunch. The rest of the press more or less ignored it.
Under Charles Kennedy, the LibDems had carved themselves a niche somewhere to the Left of the political spectrum, as a party of redistribution, civil liberties and opposition to the war in Iraq. But the party has apparently abandoned progressive taxation and has been sounding decidedly muted on the war.
It’s well known that Sir Menzies was never as hostile to the Iraq invasion as Charles Kennedy and that he genuinely believed that Saddam posed a serious threat to the West. Certainly, the party’s antiwar edge has been blunted since Kennedy left. Some in the party are anxious to learn what Sir Menzies’ position is gong to be on Trident when Tony Blair announces the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Whatever he is, Campbell is no pacifist.
Last week, the gibe was that Sir Menzies not only looks like a Tory, he is sounding like one too. His big idea for Liberal Democracy has been to join the tax-cutting consensus by ditching the 50p higher rate, and promising #20 bn in tax reductions.
Now, Sir Menzies insists that his tax policy is in fact designed to benefit the less well off, and that the assets of the very wealthy will continue to be taxed. But he knows, and everyone else knows, that the new tax policy is far from socialist.
For a start, cutting income tax and shifting the burden on to green taxes may help the environment, but won’t help the poor. Indirect taxation is much less progressive than direct taxes on income. Taxes on air travel, road transport, home heating are paid at the same rate by all taxpayers, irrespective of their ability to pay. Many low income people depend on their cars and are already struggling with #1,000 a year heating bills. Nor, under the LibDems will they be able to afford that occasional holiday abroad using cheap flights.
Now, this is not an argument against taxing activities which damage the environment. Climate change is something we will all have to pay for and, like the congestion charge in London, it is going to hit poorer people particularly hard. But to claim, as the Liberal Democrats do, that this is redistribution of wealth, just because you fiddle with thresholds, is disingenuous.
If you want to tax wealth, you tax income - it’s the only reliable way. If they’d wanted to be really redistributive, Liberal Democrats could have levied a climate tax on the wealthy in order to pay for public transport improvements. But that wouldn’t have gone down well in the Tory constituencies in England that the Liberal Democrats are targeting.
The LibDems remain committed of course to introducing a local income tax, and perhaps that is where the redistribution is supposed to come from. However, the LibDems have been reviewing the whole idea of scrapping the council tax, on the grounds that it is politically unacceptable to middle income earners, so there is a degree of uncertainty there also.
Indeed, vagueness is the most serious criticism of the present Liberal Democrat image. Under Kennedy, they presented a clear alternative to New Labour, and the Conservatives. No one who voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last election could have been in any doubt about who and what they were voting for. That may be a problem for a small party whose fortunes depend on political visibility. Now, there is a very real question about where David Cameron's 'liberal' Tories end and the LibDems begin. The new Tory leader was also calling for redistribution of wealth last week.
This problem is compounded by the new leader’s uncertainty in the House of Commons. I don’t think Ming’s age as such is a problem - we make far too much of youth in our system, and in America he would be regarded as a politician in his prime. But his orotund courtroom delivery simply doesn’t work in the playground atmosphere of question time. He hasn’t learned how to be brief, how to poke and mock. Sir Menzies sounds a little like one of those patrician Tory knights who were killed off by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to be replaced by used car dealers.
But Campbell is improving. His challenge to Tony Blair on “extraordinary rendition” last week was pointed and hit the mark. Indeed, here I think we answer the question of what the Liberal Democrats are for. If it hadn’t been for Sir Menzies, the Council of Europe report into the alleged transport of terrorist suspects by American security services to countries which condone torture would have been completely ignored in parliament. There is strong prima facia evidence that Britain has connived in this “torture by proxy” turning a blind eye to what has been flying in and out of our air space.
In his reply, Tony Blair said that the government had said all they were going to say on this matter and he wasn’t going to say any more. Which is rather like a defendant in court saying that the charge was an old story and therefore he wasn’t going to answer any questions about it. Condoleezza Rice has given a very coded non-denial denial and Jack Straw said he “had no evidence” that there was torture traffic, even though he hadn’t looked very hard. Everything the government says on this reeks of evasion. A report from Europe on an important issue like this cannot just be dismissed.
The Liberal Democrats are an important part of our political ecology. They are the only party which offers a serious challenge to the growing authoritarianism of New Labour. And here’s another use to which the LibDems could be put. According to Proof John Curtice last week, we are “in a new political era’ of minority government. His take on Labour’s recent opinion poll slide is that it is now unstoppable and that Labour will no longer have a working majority after the next election.
The Liberal Democrats with their sixty odd MPs will very likely hold the balance of power and Gordon Brown, assuming he becomes Labour leader, will have to do a deal with Ming Campbell if he wants to stay in office. This puts enormous responsibility in the hands of Britain’s ‘third party’. How they handle themselves in the next couple of years could decide the future, not just of government, but of the British constitution, for they may be able to demand that Labour introduce proportional representation to Westminster as a precondition of any stable deal. That could change British politics for ever, because leaders like Tony Blair will no longer be able to act like absolute monarchs thanks to artificially inflated majorities in the Commons.
So, the stakes are very high. If Sir Menzies Campbell gets his act together, the Liberal Democrats could be a very useful party indeed.
Both the Independent and the Guardian, the two newspapers closest to the LibDems, have been critical of the direction the party has taken under Sir Menzies Campbell. “Insipid...directionless” according to the Indie. “Just what - and whom - are they for?” queried the Guardian on Friday, decidedly unimpressed by Sir Menzies Campbell’s latest relaunch. The rest of the press more or less ignored it.
Under Charles Kennedy, the LibDems had carved themselves a niche somewhere to the Left of the political spectrum, as a party of redistribution, civil liberties and opposition to the war in Iraq. But the party has apparently abandoned progressive taxation and has been sounding decidedly muted on the war.
It’s well known that Sir Menzies was never as hostile to the Iraq invasion as Charles Kennedy and that he genuinely believed that Saddam posed a serious threat to the West. Certainly, the party’s antiwar edge has been blunted since Kennedy left. Some in the party are anxious to learn what Sir Menzies’ position is gong to be on Trident when Tony Blair announces the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Whatever he is, Campbell is no pacifist.
Last week, the gibe was that Sir Menzies not only looks like a Tory, he is sounding like one too. His big idea for Liberal Democracy has been to join the tax-cutting consensus by ditching the 50p higher rate, and promising #20 bn in tax reductions.
Now, Sir Menzies insists that his tax policy is in fact designed to benefit the less well off, and that the assets of the very wealthy will continue to be taxed. But he knows, and everyone else knows, that the new tax policy is far from socialist.
For a start, cutting income tax and shifting the burden on to green taxes may help the environment, but won’t help the poor. Indirect taxation is much less progressive than direct taxes on income. Taxes on air travel, road transport, home heating are paid at the same rate by all taxpayers, irrespective of their ability to pay. Many low income people depend on their cars and are already struggling with #1,000 a year heating bills. Nor, under the LibDems will they be able to afford that occasional holiday abroad using cheap flights.
Now, this is not an argument against taxing activities which damage the environment. Climate change is something we will all have to pay for and, like the congestion charge in London, it is going to hit poorer people particularly hard. But to claim, as the Liberal Democrats do, that this is redistribution of wealth, just because you fiddle with thresholds, is disingenuous.
If you want to tax wealth, you tax income - it’s the only reliable way. If they’d wanted to be really redistributive, Liberal Democrats could have levied a climate tax on the wealthy in order to pay for public transport improvements. But that wouldn’t have gone down well in the Tory constituencies in England that the Liberal Democrats are targeting.
The LibDems remain committed of course to introducing a local income tax, and perhaps that is where the redistribution is supposed to come from. However, the LibDems have been reviewing the whole idea of scrapping the council tax, on the grounds that it is politically unacceptable to middle income earners, so there is a degree of uncertainty there also.
Indeed, vagueness is the most serious criticism of the present Liberal Democrat image. Under Kennedy, they presented a clear alternative to New Labour, and the Conservatives. No one who voted for the Liberal Democrats at the last election could have been in any doubt about who and what they were voting for. That may be a problem for a small party whose fortunes depend on political visibility. Now, there is a very real question about where David Cameron's 'liberal' Tories end and the LibDems begin. The new Tory leader was also calling for redistribution of wealth last week.
This problem is compounded by the new leader’s uncertainty in the House of Commons. I don’t think Ming’s age as such is a problem - we make far too much of youth in our system, and in America he would be regarded as a politician in his prime. But his orotund courtroom delivery simply doesn’t work in the playground atmosphere of question time. He hasn’t learned how to be brief, how to poke and mock. Sir Menzies sounds a little like one of those patrician Tory knights who were killed off by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to be replaced by used car dealers.
But Campbell is improving. His challenge to Tony Blair on “extraordinary rendition” last week was pointed and hit the mark. Indeed, here I think we answer the question of what the Liberal Democrats are for. If it hadn’t been for Sir Menzies, the Council of Europe report into the alleged transport of terrorist suspects by American security services to countries which condone torture would have been completely ignored in parliament. There is strong prima facia evidence that Britain has connived in this “torture by proxy” turning a blind eye to what has been flying in and out of our air space.
In his reply, Tony Blair said that the government had said all they were going to say on this matter and he wasn’t going to say any more. Which is rather like a defendant in court saying that the charge was an old story and therefore he wasn’t going to answer any questions about it. Condoleezza Rice has given a very coded non-denial denial and Jack Straw said he “had no evidence” that there was torture traffic, even though he hadn’t looked very hard. Everything the government says on this reeks of evasion. A report from Europe on an important issue like this cannot just be dismissed.
The Liberal Democrats are an important part of our political ecology. They are the only party which offers a serious challenge to the growing authoritarianism of New Labour. And here’s another use to which the LibDems could be put. According to Proof John Curtice last week, we are “in a new political era’ of minority government. His take on Labour’s recent opinion poll slide is that it is now unstoppable and that Labour will no longer have a working majority after the next election.
The Liberal Democrats with their sixty odd MPs will very likely hold the balance of power and Gordon Brown, assuming he becomes Labour leader, will have to do a deal with Ming Campbell if he wants to stay in office. This puts enormous responsibility in the hands of Britain’s ‘third party’. How they handle themselves in the next couple of years could decide the future, not just of government, but of the British constitution, for they may be able to demand that Labour introduce proportional representation to Westminster as a precondition of any stable deal. That could change British politics for ever, because leaders like Tony Blair will no longer be able to act like absolute monarchs thanks to artificially inflated majorities in the Commons.
So, the stakes are very high. If Sir Menzies Campbell gets his act together, the Liberal Democrats could be a very useful party indeed.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Putting prisoners back on drugs and then taking away their children away when they are released is madness. There is a better way.
Some issues are so serious that it takes a comedian to tell the truth about them. Ben Elton didn’t tell the MSPs on Holyrood’s drug and alcohol committee anything they didn’t know last week. They are acutely awar that hard drug abuse is one of Scotland’s key social problems. So, why did they feign shock and surprise when he proposed a radical solution - the end of prohibition. It’s not as if they haven’t talked about it themselves
Well, it’s our old friend political acceptability. The voters would be appalled if they knew the truth - that far from combating hard drug-taking the present laws on drugs are actually promoting it. Politicians pretend to fight the war on drugs, even when organisations like the Strathclyde Police Federation tells them that it is a lost cause.
There are over fifty thousand known problem drug users in Scotland, and they’re getting younger - nearly thirty percent of pre-teens have been exposed to drugs, according to Glasgow University. The casualties now include eleven year old girls who are turning up to school stoned on heroin. The Scottish Executive is threatening to take up to 50,000 children of drug-abusing parents into care in what might be called the Pol Pot solution.
Up to three quarters of property crimes are thought to be drug-related and seventy percent of prisoners enter jail with drug problems. The jails simply become smack universities dominated by drugs barons. Of course, prisoners are offered help to get clean and some do. But the final idiocy of our system is that - as BBC Scotland revealed in 2002 - some prisoners who have broken their habit are being given hard drugs by the prison authorities to “retoxify” them before release, so that they aren’t killed by their first fix of high strength street heroin.
When we are actually putting prisoners back on drugs for their own safety, only to take their childen away from them when they get home, it is surely time to start asking whether there isn’t a better way. There is, but it needs economics not zero tolerance.
By allowing the criminal underworld to retain a monopoly on the supply of heroin and other addictive drugs we have allowed it to build a unique trade. Narcotics is the only business in the world selling a commodity which creates its own demand. The consumers become the salesmen as addicts turn into street pushers in order to finance their own habit. The result: a three hundred billion pound a year global industry which is spreading like a disease.
The underworld mystique of drugs, which the film Trainspotting” captured so well, is highly seductive to troubled young people in the West who find that, perversely, addiction gives their empty lives a kind of meaning. It is something to do. A chance to opt out the world of work, training, pensions, mortgages - all the numbing complexities of modern life.
To break into this two things are necessary: the market for drugs has to be tackled at source, and those afflicted by this disease must be prevented from spreading it. Tackling at source doesn’t mean bombing poppy fields in Afghanistan. Four years after the allied invasion of that country, it is producing more opium than ever. The market mechanism is far more devastating than high explosive. Take the money out of drugs and you take the criminals out too.
This requires an alternative supply regulated by the state. As soon as drug addicts leave prison they should be placed under medical supervision and provided with heroin under prescription, as was the case in the 1960s before the war on drugs began. We already dope them with methadone, so why not give them the related chemical, diamorphine, which is generally believed to have fewer side effects?
The deal would be that the NHS would provide reliable safe supply in registered premises provided the addict agreed to voluntary rehabilitation. Regulating heroin in this way would prevent the addict falling back into the cycle of dependency which turns them into criminals promoting the drug to finance their habit. It would wreck the business model of the drug industry which would see its monopoly ended and its sales teams dispersed.
As for the mystique - only by medicalising this problem can drug addiction be exposed for what it truly is: a debilitating psychological dependency rather than a romantic bohemian life-style choice. It is a condition, like diabetes, which can be managed - but is unpleasant, frequently painful and ultimately life-shortening. Addicts are like any other ill person - they need help. It’s not pleasant and it’s not cool.
Most people I speak to who have any knowledge of the problem believe that something like this must happen eventually. However, unlike Ben Elton, I would not immediately legalise all drugs. Non-medical use of heroin should still be a serious offence, and pushing a very serious one. This way the law would help the detoxification programme - as it should properly be called - by increasing the incentive for addicts to use state heroin rather than street heroin.
This way the abusers can be monitored and targetted by all means possible to help get them off. For in the end, it is up to the individual - you cannot force people to be well. Ultimately, if someone is determined to kill themselves, by drugs or other means, society cannot stop them. But society can protect our children from them.
Now, the obvious objection to all this is that the voters wouldn’t buy it. I mean, turning the government into a supplier of addictive drugs? Monstrous idea. Well, it might have been twenty years ago, but attitudes change. Drug use is part of popular culture, as Ben Elton pointed out in his talk, and everyone under the age of forty has either taken illegal substances or knows people who have. The clubbing scene runs on ecstacy and amphetamines - has done since the 1980s. Cocaine is everywhere - in politics, business, the arts. Cannabis is virtually legal already.
The present generation knows the score - that drugs aren’t going to go away and that pious hypocrisy is the last refuge of the politician. I bet half the MSPs in Holyrood have taken drugs. Which means this is the first generation of politicians which could finally demonstrate that the drugs really don’t work.
Well, it’s our old friend political acceptability. The voters would be appalled if they knew the truth - that far from combating hard drug-taking the present laws on drugs are actually promoting it. Politicians pretend to fight the war on drugs, even when organisations like the Strathclyde Police Federation tells them that it is a lost cause.
There are over fifty thousand known problem drug users in Scotland, and they’re getting younger - nearly thirty percent of pre-teens have been exposed to drugs, according to Glasgow University. The casualties now include eleven year old girls who are turning up to school stoned on heroin. The Scottish Executive is threatening to take up to 50,000 children of drug-abusing parents into care in what might be called the Pol Pot solution.
Up to three quarters of property crimes are thought to be drug-related and seventy percent of prisoners enter jail with drug problems. The jails simply become smack universities dominated by drugs barons. Of course, prisoners are offered help to get clean and some do. But the final idiocy of our system is that - as BBC Scotland revealed in 2002 - some prisoners who have broken their habit are being given hard drugs by the prison authorities to “retoxify” them before release, so that they aren’t killed by their first fix of high strength street heroin.
When we are actually putting prisoners back on drugs for their own safety, only to take their childen away from them when they get home, it is surely time to start asking whether there isn’t a better way. There is, but it needs economics not zero tolerance.
By allowing the criminal underworld to retain a monopoly on the supply of heroin and other addictive drugs we have allowed it to build a unique trade. Narcotics is the only business in the world selling a commodity which creates its own demand. The consumers become the salesmen as addicts turn into street pushers in order to finance their own habit. The result: a three hundred billion pound a year global industry which is spreading like a disease.
The underworld mystique of drugs, which the film Trainspotting” captured so well, is highly seductive to troubled young people in the West who find that, perversely, addiction gives their empty lives a kind of meaning. It is something to do. A chance to opt out the world of work, training, pensions, mortgages - all the numbing complexities of modern life.
To break into this two things are necessary: the market for drugs has to be tackled at source, and those afflicted by this disease must be prevented from spreading it. Tackling at source doesn’t mean bombing poppy fields in Afghanistan. Four years after the allied invasion of that country, it is producing more opium than ever. The market mechanism is far more devastating than high explosive. Take the money out of drugs and you take the criminals out too.
This requires an alternative supply regulated by the state. As soon as drug addicts leave prison they should be placed under medical supervision and provided with heroin under prescription, as was the case in the 1960s before the war on drugs began. We already dope them with methadone, so why not give them the related chemical, diamorphine, which is generally believed to have fewer side effects?
The deal would be that the NHS would provide reliable safe supply in registered premises provided the addict agreed to voluntary rehabilitation. Regulating heroin in this way would prevent the addict falling back into the cycle of dependency which turns them into criminals promoting the drug to finance their habit. It would wreck the business model of the drug industry which would see its monopoly ended and its sales teams dispersed.
As for the mystique - only by medicalising this problem can drug addiction be exposed for what it truly is: a debilitating psychological dependency rather than a romantic bohemian life-style choice. It is a condition, like diabetes, which can be managed - but is unpleasant, frequently painful and ultimately life-shortening. Addicts are like any other ill person - they need help. It’s not pleasant and it’s not cool.
Most people I speak to who have any knowledge of the problem believe that something like this must happen eventually. However, unlike Ben Elton, I would not immediately legalise all drugs. Non-medical use of heroin should still be a serious offence, and pushing a very serious one. This way the law would help the detoxification programme - as it should properly be called - by increasing the incentive for addicts to use state heroin rather than street heroin.
This way the abusers can be monitored and targetted by all means possible to help get them off. For in the end, it is up to the individual - you cannot force people to be well. Ultimately, if someone is determined to kill themselves, by drugs or other means, society cannot stop them. But society can protect our children from them.
Now, the obvious objection to all this is that the voters wouldn’t buy it. I mean, turning the government into a supplier of addictive drugs? Monstrous idea. Well, it might have been twenty years ago, but attitudes change. Drug use is part of popular culture, as Ben Elton pointed out in his talk, and everyone under the age of forty has either taken illegal substances or knows people who have. The clubbing scene runs on ecstacy and amphetamines - has done since the 1980s. Cocaine is everywhere - in politics, business, the arts. Cannabis is virtually legal already.
The present generation knows the score - that drugs aren’t going to go away and that pious hypocrisy is the last refuge of the politician. I bet half the MSPs in Holyrood have taken drugs. Which means this is the first generation of politicians which could finally demonstrate that the drugs really don’t work.
Why the World Cup means a red card for Blair
John Prescott has, in a very real sense, become the unacceptable face of New Labour. Those grumpy jowls, that Les Dawson mouth, the fiery eyes - it’s not so much that people hate him, more that they are fed up with the sight of him.
And the sound of him. They don’t want to be reminded that the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain can barely utter a coherent sentence. Prescott has been sent to Canada to speak about climate change - in which case God help the planet. He is the image of a government which has become a bad joke.
It’s all rather reminiscent of the moment when David Mellor, the egregious “minister of fun” became an emblem of John Major’s dying administration in the 1990s. Mellor came from a very different social background, but his arrogance, his affairs, his alleged incompetence turned him, like Prescott, into the minister people loved to hate.
Mellor also took on the press and lost, accusing them of “playing in the last chance saloon” when he was the one who was drinking after time. Major insisted that he would not allow David Mellor to become a casualty of the tabloid press - but of course he eventually he eventually did. Mellor resigned because he had become “a burden”.
And so surely goes Prescott, who is too great a burden for this exhausted government. He has been stripped of his ministerial responsibilities, his grace and favour mansion and his #133,000 salary, surely, has to be next to go. The race to succeed him as Deputy Prime Minister has already begun, with the ambitious Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, pitching for the job - perhaps seeing himself as a David Cameron figure who might even snatch the Labour leadership against Brown. Who dares wins. Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, has said a woman should get the job - meaning her.
Of course it isn’t fair. John Prescott is an extremely hardworking minister, despite the croquet on the lawn, as anyone who has worked with him will testify. There is a great deal of snobbery in the way he his being pilloried in the press. There are legitimate criticisms of his conduct - having sex with someone who depends on you for their career is extremely unwise, if only because you can hardly give an objective appraisal of someone's work when you are shagging them behind the office door. However, relationships with secretaries are hardly new in Westminster. Many prominent politicians have fallen in love with theirs, and, like the former Tory Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, married them.
Prescott has paid the price for his sexual incontinence. But he will pay the ultimate penalty for the incompetence of the administration he represents. Not because he is to blame, but because he is there. Prescott has no direct responsibility for any of the recent cock ups over illegal immigrants or the continuing tragedy that is Iraq. But he is a very big target and people who want to kick this government can hardly miss. So, the sooner he goes the better - for his own sake.
The government is beginning to disintegrate, from the top down and from the bottom up. While the leadership crisis remains unresolved, the activities of the government on the ground are blighted. Nothing works. The Home Office staggers from crisis to crisis as incompetence is piled upon confusion. Last week we learned that illegal immigrants are being given national insurance numbers, that conviction rates for serious offences are unacceptably low, according to Lord Goldsmith, and that plans are being laid for a mass early release of prisoners because of overcrowded jails.
The inability of the Home Office to get its act together is threatening race relations in this country. We’ve had inmates walking out of open jails; foreign prisoners not being deported; illegal immigrants cleaning the offices of the Immigration and Nationality Department. Public attitudes are hardening toward all immigrants, legal or otherwise, who are all being regarded as a potential threat.
Dr John Reid’s decision to take on the civil servants is understandable, but high risk. There is evidence that some of the recent revelations have come from within the Home Office from disgruntled civil servants who don’t like his style. His eighth ministerial post looks like being his last.
But the Home Office isn’t the only dysfunctional department in Whitehall. Last week we learned that the IT system for the English NHS is now fourteen billion over budget - yes, that’s #14,000,000,000. The “choose and book” system for putting medical records online wasn’t exactly cheap when it was six billion, but now the cost has risen to twenty - and doctors still aren’t using it.
Then there is the two billion that the Treasury has distributed in overpaid tax credits - for the second year running. The Child Support Agency scandal is finally being resolved - but only by winding up the entire agency and writing off billions in unpaid child maintenance. Fathers who have been paying responsibly are made to look mugs.
I’ve said it before, but this UK administration makes the Scottish Executive look like a model of competent administration. It is hard to find any area of UK government activity which seems to be running smoothly right now. This is a direct result of the collapse in authority of the Prime Minister and the evaporation of political leadership in Westminster. The government has become “accident prone” - has hacks call it - just as in the dying days of John Major. The stench of sleaze, following the loans-for honours scandals is also redolent of a decadent administration which is on its way out.
It is a measure of the government’s desperation that Labour MPs are seriously looking to the World Cup to draw a line under this catalogue of misfortune. Yes, David Beckham’s men are expected to ride to Blair’s rescue by putting up a good show and uniting the country once again - give or take Scotland. You may laugh, but it is imprinted in Labour’s collective memory that Harold Wilson won the 1966 general election on the back of England’s victory in the world cup that year. Perhaps, some Labour analysts think, history might repeat itself. Some hope. Voters aren’t so easily fooled these days.
Though there is, perhaps, an opportunity here for the government to regroup. From Friday, England will become obsessed with what is happening in Germany and Prescott’s belly will become an unpleasant memory. This is a window through which Labour might be able to toss some of the rubbish that has accumulated in the last few months - such as John Prescott himself. But even a World Cup victory could not salvage his boss - the rot has gone too far.
However, the summer sporting events might just possibly provide an opportunity for Gordon Brown to take over as captain, and for Blair to get a free transfer to the US lecture circuit. It is as plain as the three lions on England’s shirts that the only way to put this government together again is to provide a new leadership, a new start under a new man. There is still time - just.
If England do well, and the country is at peace, Tony Blair might see it as a moment to announce that he is going to go after the Labour conference in September. Unfortunately, that’s about as likely as Trinidad and Tobago winning the World Cup.
And the sound of him. They don’t want to be reminded that the Deputy Prime Minister of Britain can barely utter a coherent sentence. Prescott has been sent to Canada to speak about climate change - in which case God help the planet. He is the image of a government which has become a bad joke.
It’s all rather reminiscent of the moment when David Mellor, the egregious “minister of fun” became an emblem of John Major’s dying administration in the 1990s. Mellor came from a very different social background, but his arrogance, his affairs, his alleged incompetence turned him, like Prescott, into the minister people loved to hate.
Mellor also took on the press and lost, accusing them of “playing in the last chance saloon” when he was the one who was drinking after time. Major insisted that he would not allow David Mellor to become a casualty of the tabloid press - but of course he eventually he eventually did. Mellor resigned because he had become “a burden”.
And so surely goes Prescott, who is too great a burden for this exhausted government. He has been stripped of his ministerial responsibilities, his grace and favour mansion and his #133,000 salary, surely, has to be next to go. The race to succeed him as Deputy Prime Minister has already begun, with the ambitious Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, pitching for the job - perhaps seeing himself as a David Cameron figure who might even snatch the Labour leadership against Brown. Who dares wins. Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, has said a woman should get the job - meaning her.
Of course it isn’t fair. John Prescott is an extremely hardworking minister, despite the croquet on the lawn, as anyone who has worked with him will testify. There is a great deal of snobbery in the way he his being pilloried in the press. There are legitimate criticisms of his conduct - having sex with someone who depends on you for their career is extremely unwise, if only because you can hardly give an objective appraisal of someone's work when you are shagging them behind the office door. However, relationships with secretaries are hardly new in Westminster. Many prominent politicians have fallen in love with theirs, and, like the former Tory Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, married them.
Prescott has paid the price for his sexual incontinence. But he will pay the ultimate penalty for the incompetence of the administration he represents. Not because he is to blame, but because he is there. Prescott has no direct responsibility for any of the recent cock ups over illegal immigrants or the continuing tragedy that is Iraq. But he is a very big target and people who want to kick this government can hardly miss. So, the sooner he goes the better - for his own sake.
The government is beginning to disintegrate, from the top down and from the bottom up. While the leadership crisis remains unresolved, the activities of the government on the ground are blighted. Nothing works. The Home Office staggers from crisis to crisis as incompetence is piled upon confusion. Last week we learned that illegal immigrants are being given national insurance numbers, that conviction rates for serious offences are unacceptably low, according to Lord Goldsmith, and that plans are being laid for a mass early release of prisoners because of overcrowded jails.
The inability of the Home Office to get its act together is threatening race relations in this country. We’ve had inmates walking out of open jails; foreign prisoners not being deported; illegal immigrants cleaning the offices of the Immigration and Nationality Department. Public attitudes are hardening toward all immigrants, legal or otherwise, who are all being regarded as a potential threat.
Dr John Reid’s decision to take on the civil servants is understandable, but high risk. There is evidence that some of the recent revelations have come from within the Home Office from disgruntled civil servants who don’t like his style. His eighth ministerial post looks like being his last.
But the Home Office isn’t the only dysfunctional department in Whitehall. Last week we learned that the IT system for the English NHS is now fourteen billion over budget - yes, that’s #14,000,000,000. The “choose and book” system for putting medical records online wasn’t exactly cheap when it was six billion, but now the cost has risen to twenty - and doctors still aren’t using it.
Then there is the two billion that the Treasury has distributed in overpaid tax credits - for the second year running. The Child Support Agency scandal is finally being resolved - but only by winding up the entire agency and writing off billions in unpaid child maintenance. Fathers who have been paying responsibly are made to look mugs.
I’ve said it before, but this UK administration makes the Scottish Executive look like a model of competent administration. It is hard to find any area of UK government activity which seems to be running smoothly right now. This is a direct result of the collapse in authority of the Prime Minister and the evaporation of political leadership in Westminster. The government has become “accident prone” - has hacks call it - just as in the dying days of John Major. The stench of sleaze, following the loans-for honours scandals is also redolent of a decadent administration which is on its way out.
It is a measure of the government’s desperation that Labour MPs are seriously looking to the World Cup to draw a line under this catalogue of misfortune. Yes, David Beckham’s men are expected to ride to Blair’s rescue by putting up a good show and uniting the country once again - give or take Scotland. You may laugh, but it is imprinted in Labour’s collective memory that Harold Wilson won the 1966 general election on the back of England’s victory in the world cup that year. Perhaps, some Labour analysts think, history might repeat itself. Some hope. Voters aren’t so easily fooled these days.
Though there is, perhaps, an opportunity here for the government to regroup. From Friday, England will become obsessed with what is happening in Germany and Prescott’s belly will become an unpleasant memory. This is a window through which Labour might be able to toss some of the rubbish that has accumulated in the last few months - such as John Prescott himself. But even a World Cup victory could not salvage his boss - the rot has gone too far.
However, the summer sporting events might just possibly provide an opportunity for Gordon Brown to take over as captain, and for Blair to get a free transfer to the US lecture circuit. It is as plain as the three lions on England’s shirts that the only way to put this government together again is to provide a new leadership, a new start under a new man. There is still time - just.
If England do well, and the country is at peace, Tony Blair might see it as a moment to announce that he is going to go after the Labour conference in September. Unfortunately, that’s about as likely as Trinidad and Tobago winning the World Cup.
McConnell is right not to support England
Football isn’t a political matter - it’s much more important than that. The First Minister, Jack McConnell, was taken severely to task last week for failing to support England in the World Cup. There have been cries of outrage from the guardians of the Scottish media. McConnell is supposed to be a unionist, they cried! Surely he should be able to support our UK brothers in this great endeavour. Where is his patriotism?
For refusing to back England, McConnell has been accused of fomenting anti-english prejudce, of making a cheap bid for the nationalist vote and of demonstraing his immaturity and woeful judgement. And Jimmy Hill didn’t like it much either.
Er, but, hang on. This is a football match we’re talking about, not the war in Iraq. Since when was it obligatory for unionists to demonstrate their commitment to Britain by supporting a handful over-paid prima-donnas prancing around the pitch showing off their latest hair styles?
The First Minister isn’t alone. The redoubtable Scottish Tory leader, Annabel Goldie, told me that she would be waiting to see the “form” before deciding whom to back. She may be an arch unionist, but she certainly wasn’t going to back England until she had had a chance to inspect their fetlocks. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t ventured an opinion, though I am assured she will be joining the “gone shopping” party for the duration of the World Cup.
As a non-believer, the World Cup largely passes me by, as it does the other half of the Scottish population. But I certainly don’t feel under any obligation to support the English football team, unless they demonstrate that they’re worth it. And I don’t see any reason why the First Minister should lie about something as trivial as who he is minded to support in a sporting fixture.
McConnell said he would be supporting the underdogs, which seems to me far truer to the great British sporting tradition than backing lisping chavs like David Beckham, who seems about as far as you can get from a true patriotic role model. The idea that McConnell has betrayed his country is ludicrous. Were Chelsea supporters weeping when Barcelona defeated Arsenal in the Champtions League? Hardly. Was that unpatriotic?
I think supporting Trinidad and Tobago is a great idea, and not just because they have a goal-keeper whose second name is “Scotland”. The SNP leader Alex Salmond set the TT ball rolling, and I think it will go the distance. Scotland is the ultimate sporting underdog, and we should be supporting outsiders. Surely it would be good for sport in general for a team from this small former British colony to take the title - or even defeat England.
The truth, as everyone knows, is that the vast majority of Scots will not support England and will indulge in Schadenfreude at every set back for the three lions. And no Shadenfreude isn’t a new brand of white beer - it means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Many will do so almost in spite of themselves. And the crunch will come if there is a replay of 1966.
I vividly recall having dinner with some Scottish BBC executives in a smart Westminster restaurant patronised by MPs and ministers on the night of the finals in the 1996 Euros. When Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, the Scots rose as one, and then hastily sat down again when they realised that half the Tory party was watching them. It was the funniest thing since Basil Fawlty tried not to mention the war.
The BBC Jocks weren’t being racist or unpatriotic, they were just being Scottish. Is it wrong? - well, its a little childish I suppose, but hardly a sin. I’ve been known to indulge in this vice myself on occasion - often at the expense of the United States of America or Tony Blair, and while I’m not proud of it, I’m not going to pretend that it doesn’t happen.
But what of the English? Will they forgive Scotland for not supporting the greatest heroes ever to walk planet earth? Already Jimmy Hill, the hammer of the Scots, has put the boot in, ably assisted by Jack Straw and the Scottish Labour MPs.
We are warned that a tide of anti-Scottish feeling is mounting over the prospect of a Scot - Gordon Brown - entering NumberTen. What this has to do with football, I’m not sure. However we are told that there is a connexion. The Daily Telegraph says a Scottish “Raj” is ruling England. A poll conducted by the BBC recently suggested that 52% of English voters think Gordon Brown shouldn’t become Prime Minister because he is Scottish.
Actually, this is not football, it’s racialism. Change “Scot” to “black” or “Jewish” and the Telegraph would be in the dock for inciting racial hatred. We are told that supporting England in the world cup is the best was of appeasing this anti-Scottishness that is allegedly running rampant along with the Cross of St George. Well, I say you don’t appease racialism - you defy it.
Anyone who cannot understand the difference between supporting a football team and placing a racial barrier to political office needs to read some history. But look, I am not ruling out supporting England. I’m no great follower of rugby, but when England won the World Cup I couldn’t help but admire their extraordinary skill and courage.
If the England football team prove themselves on he pitch in (where) by their sportsmanship (hah - an archaic concept that) their commitment and their brilliance then they will have earned the support of the Scots. But then, I can’t promise that I won’t turn off the commentary.
For refusing to back England, McConnell has been accused of fomenting anti-english prejudce, of making a cheap bid for the nationalist vote and of demonstraing his immaturity and woeful judgement. And Jimmy Hill didn’t like it much either.
Er, but, hang on. This is a football match we’re talking about, not the war in Iraq. Since when was it obligatory for unionists to demonstrate their commitment to Britain by supporting a handful over-paid prima-donnas prancing around the pitch showing off their latest hair styles?
The First Minister isn’t alone. The redoubtable Scottish Tory leader, Annabel Goldie, told me that she would be waiting to see the “form” before deciding whom to back. She may be an arch unionist, but she certainly wasn’t going to back England until she had had a chance to inspect their fetlocks. Nicola Sturgeon hasn’t ventured an opinion, though I am assured she will be joining the “gone shopping” party for the duration of the World Cup.
As a non-believer, the World Cup largely passes me by, as it does the other half of the Scottish population. But I certainly don’t feel under any obligation to support the English football team, unless they demonstrate that they’re worth it. And I don’t see any reason why the First Minister should lie about something as trivial as who he is minded to support in a sporting fixture.
McConnell said he would be supporting the underdogs, which seems to me far truer to the great British sporting tradition than backing lisping chavs like David Beckham, who seems about as far as you can get from a true patriotic role model. The idea that McConnell has betrayed his country is ludicrous. Were Chelsea supporters weeping when Barcelona defeated Arsenal in the Champtions League? Hardly. Was that unpatriotic?
I think supporting Trinidad and Tobago is a great idea, and not just because they have a goal-keeper whose second name is “Scotland”. The SNP leader Alex Salmond set the TT ball rolling, and I think it will go the distance. Scotland is the ultimate sporting underdog, and we should be supporting outsiders. Surely it would be good for sport in general for a team from this small former British colony to take the title - or even defeat England.
The truth, as everyone knows, is that the vast majority of Scots will not support England and will indulge in Schadenfreude at every set back for the three lions. And no Shadenfreude isn’t a new brand of white beer - it means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Many will do so almost in spite of themselves. And the crunch will come if there is a replay of 1966.
I vividly recall having dinner with some Scottish BBC executives in a smart Westminster restaurant patronised by MPs and ministers on the night of the finals in the 1996 Euros. When Gareth Southgate missed his penalty, the Scots rose as one, and then hastily sat down again when they realised that half the Tory party was watching them. It was the funniest thing since Basil Fawlty tried not to mention the war.
The BBC Jocks weren’t being racist or unpatriotic, they were just being Scottish. Is it wrong? - well, its a little childish I suppose, but hardly a sin. I’ve been known to indulge in this vice myself on occasion - often at the expense of the United States of America or Tony Blair, and while I’m not proud of it, I’m not going to pretend that it doesn’t happen.
But what of the English? Will they forgive Scotland for not supporting the greatest heroes ever to walk planet earth? Already Jimmy Hill, the hammer of the Scots, has put the boot in, ably assisted by Jack Straw and the Scottish Labour MPs.
We are warned that a tide of anti-Scottish feeling is mounting over the prospect of a Scot - Gordon Brown - entering NumberTen. What this has to do with football, I’m not sure. However we are told that there is a connexion. The Daily Telegraph says a Scottish “Raj” is ruling England. A poll conducted by the BBC recently suggested that 52% of English voters think Gordon Brown shouldn’t become Prime Minister because he is Scottish.
Actually, this is not football, it’s racialism. Change “Scot” to “black” or “Jewish” and the Telegraph would be in the dock for inciting racial hatred. We are told that supporting England in the world cup is the best was of appeasing this anti-Scottishness that is allegedly running rampant along with the Cross of St George. Well, I say you don’t appease racialism - you defy it.
Anyone who cannot understand the difference between supporting a football team and placing a racial barrier to political office needs to read some history. But look, I am not ruling out supporting England. I’m no great follower of rugby, but when England won the World Cup I couldn’t help but admire their extraordinary skill and courage.
If the England football team prove themselves on he pitch in (where) by their sportsmanship (hah - an archaic concept that) their commitment and their brilliance then they will have earned the support of the Scots. But then, I can’t promise that I won’t turn off the commentary.
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