It’s Scotland’s Waste. Labour think they have scored a direct hit on the SNP’s nuclear policy, and they may be right. But Jack McConnell may also have deepened Labour’s own divisions over energy policy.
Last week, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon insisted that an SNP government would not use the national deep waste repository in England to store Scotland’s nuclear waste, but keep the stuff above ground in Scotland. Jack McConnell says he was genuinely surprised to learn this.
When he raised the nuclear waste issue after his John P MacIntosh lecture last week, McConnell was trying to make the case for maintaining the Union, on the grounds that, if Scotland went its own way, England might no longer be prepared to accept Scottish nuclear waste. A kind of ‘Waste Lothian Question’, you might say. But it seems the SNP don’t trust England to look after Scotland’s nuclear trash anyway.
Nicola Sturgeon isn’t opposed to English deep storage on racial grounds. SNP policy is that it is irresponsible to bury nuclear waste anywhere. This is partly because of the dangers involved in transporting the waste to the repository - imagine Dounreay nuclear convoys on the A9, being held up by caravans - and partly because of the risk of underground leaks.
Strictly speaking, deep storage isn’t a solution at all, as the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (Corwm) conceded in July when it proposed digging a half mile hole for Britain’s nuclear residue. This is containment rather than decontamination. And because the spent fuel rods and contaminated equipment will stay radioactive for 24,000 years, we could be handing a huge problem on to future generations. 10,000 years ago, Scotland was covered by half a mile of ice.
However, while the SNP is right to say that ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is no solution to the nuclear problem, I’m not sure that voters will agree with them nothing should be done in the here and now. Many Scots will find the idea of burying the waste five hundred metres under the Cumbrian coastline a more attractive proposition than leaving it on the ground at Hunterston or Torness.
There may be a theoretical risk of the deep nuclear storage site leaking because of geological disturbance. But there is clearly an even greater risk of leakage or accident from leaving the stuff lying around indefinitely in various rusty containers.
Then there is security. It is much more difficult to guard a multiplicity of temporary sites than one deep store, where it is more difficult for terrorists to gain access and where planes or truck bombs cannot penetrate. The terrorist risk is one of the main reasons CORWM argues that action needs to be taken urgently.
Now, you could say that nuclear power stations shouldn’t be there in the first place. That given the lack of any proper long-term solution to the waste problem, we shouldn’t be contemplating building any more of them. But the reality is that we already have five reactors in Scotland, three of them shut. Even if no new nuclear power stations are built, there will be a mass of new radioactive waste as the existing plants are decommissioned.
Would England block Scotland’s waste as McConnell claims? Well, assuming the national deep waste repository is sited in Cumbria (which is by no means certain, since Dounreay is also a candidate) it seems inconceivable that England would prefer to have Scottish waste kicking around, rather than have it underground, even if Scotland were independent. Quite apart from the safety issue, there is history. It would be an act of stupendous pettiness for England to reject Scottish nuclear waste, when nuclear power has been a common project involving the whole UK for five decades.
This is a joint responsibility. Britain’s experimental fast breeder reactor was sited in Dounreay, and has caused untold environmental damage there. Scotland exports much of its Torness-generated electricity to England. Jack McConnell may be right that there is a Union Dividend, but this is no way to argue it.
Moreover, in raising the nuclear waste issue, McConnell has exposed his own vulnerability on the broader question of nuclear renewal. He has repeatedly assured the Scottish parliament in the past that he would block any new nuclear power stations on planning grounds if there were no solution to the waste problem. Well, now we know from Corwm that there is no final solution - other than guarding the stuff underground. So what is McConnell’s position now? He will not say.
McConnell is no lover of nuclear power, and favours developing Scotland’s ample renewable energy sources. But many in the Labour party are enthusiasts, not least the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who supports a new generation of nuclear stations. The trades union Amicus intends to make renewal a key issue at the forthcoming Labour conference in Oban. McConnell cannot remain silent indefinitely.
The latest cracks in the graphite core of Hunterston B mean that a decision may have to be taken on renewal in Scotland sooner rather than later. The SNP will say that McConnell cannot rule out any new nuclear power stations, and nor can he rule out a deep storage site in Scotland for England’s nuclear waste. For there may be more than one, the environment secretary, David Miliband, made that clear last week. Nirex identified at least five suitable sites in Scotland.
So, this could be Jack’s nuclear nightmare too. Both the major parties in Scotland have got themselves in a bit of a nuclear muddle, and while the SNP have a presentational problem of major proportions, the First Minister, may regret having raised the issue at all.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Stern warnings
28/10/06
“We are sleepwalking to catastrophe” said the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, last week in the latest dire warning about climate change. He is wrong. We aren’t sleepwalking; we are walking towards catastrophe fully awake, with our eyes wide open.
There is no longer any significant dispute about the scientific evidence for global warming. Even the last of the climate-change sceptics, the Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, now accepts that climate change is happening, that we are responsible for it and that the worst impact will be felt in the developing countries. He announced as much during a recent debate at the Edinburgh Parliament Futures Forum.
The only remaining argument is whether it is worth doing anything about global warming right now. Many economists have argued that it makes little sense to destroy the world economy in the interest of combating a problem which may take decades to develop. This has been the standard response of the American Right.
Until now. For, even the market case for doing nothing will be destroyed tomorrow by a report prepared by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern. He will say that the world is in imminent danger of the most profound economic dislocation in history - a recession more serious than the Great Depression, a disruption more devastating than the Second World War. And the cause will be global warming.
This is no woolly-minded tree hugger, but a hard-headed conservative economist. The World Bank, for which Stern was Senior Vice President, has been widely criticised for its neoliberal policies and its promotion of free-market globalisation. For someone with Sir Nicholas Stern’s background to say that we are heading for an economic black hole is like George W. Bush apologising for Iraq.
Why should there be a recession? Well, the capitalist economy is composed of markets, which are made by humans guessing about the future. This is what the FTSE or any hedge fund is: a group of investors speculating about the future worth of a company, whether it is making cars, producing energy, leasing planes, lending money.
Investment is all about risk. So far the markets have not started to factor the risk of global warming into their speculations. But pretty soon they will have to. Insurance companies like Swiss Re are already agonising about how to set realistic premiums when no one knows the future risk anymore because of climate instability - extreme weather events, hurricanes, droughts, epidemics.
We know that the seas are going to rise. At present melting rates, summer ice in the Arctic will be gone in sixty years, and all that frozen water will go into the oceans.
So where does that leave house prices in flood planes and low lying areas like central London? Where does it leave low-lying nuclear power stations?
What happens when investors realise that air travel, motor transport, power generation and all the other carbon-based economic activities no longer have a future? We know that this is the case right now. The government’s chief scientist, Sir David King, says that Co2 levels in the atmosphere will reach catastrophic levels within thirty years. The horizons are getting very short.
Mass air travel can only have a decade or so left. Cars as we understand them have maybe fifteen years before we start riding around on electric trikes (bring back the Sinclair C5). When cracks were discovered in the pipes at the Hunterston B power station on October 16th, the share price of British Energy collapsed by 24%. Imagine what will happen when the government says that Hunterston will have to be moved to higher ground to avoid inundation?
Then there is mass migration, desertification, disappearing lands. At present the world economy is in denial about climate change, but eventually it will wake up. By then it might be too late.
Climate scientists have been trying to alert humanity to its greatest ever threat for most of the last decade. Last week alone there was confirmation that the destruction of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 was caused by Antarctic global warming; that the Gulf Stream was actually turned off briefly in 2004; and that a six year drought South Australia has been caused by climate change. Prime Minister John Howard, a sceptic, has now been persuaded that even Australia has to join the climate consensus.
Can the capitalist economy come to the rescue? Stern will argue that there could be economic benefits to tackling the carbon economy. We know this very well in Scotland - or at least we should. Sitting on our vast reserves of untapped renewable energy, with the first commercially viable carbon-capture project waiting to go on line in Peterhead, we could build the first post-carbon economy tomorrow.
But there is something about market economies that makes it very difficult to make this kind of change other than through economic crisis. This is because it is very difficult to plan for change when you are leaving all the key decisions to economic speculators. They tend to act, not calmly and rationally, but with the instinct of the herd, as they did after the dot.com frenzy in 2000.
Capitalist development is all about discontinuities, “creative destruction” as he great economist Joseph Schumpeter called it. But this might be a destruction too far; we cannot afford wait until the market makes its own climate change correction.
It is as if, right at the moment when the world needs a leap of human technological ingenuity, we have lost that capacity for adaptation that made our species so successful. We have instead become fatalists, passive objects instead of agents of renewal. The market is seen as some kind of inviolable force of nature. Politicians are hypnotised, irrationally convinced of its infallibility in the face of all evidence. We keep waiting for the free market to somehow make it all right.
It is not that we are incapable of acting collectively, even in a capitalist environment. During periods of crisis, like the Second World War, societies like ours were able to achieve extraordinary feats of organisation based on a selfless and single-minded pursuit of the common good. There’s a lot of evidence that collective, altruistic behaviour is hard-wired into the human animal. We tend naturally to form associations in which the interest of the individual are subsumed in the interest of all.
Yet here is a global emergency, a crisis of Biblical proportions, and we seem to have lost our ability to act. We are still promoting air travel, building roads, turning out millions of internal combustion engines, constructing houses that waste energy on a massive scale. Well, we say, the Chinese are building a new coal-fired power station every week, so why should we bother?
Unfortunately, the triumph of liberal capitalism came at precisely the wrong moment for humanity. Never before in history have governments been so reluctant to intervene as they are today, at the very moment when they must. We are all waiting for the market to tell us what to do.
Well, the market will get the message in the end, but it is likely to be through the greatest stock market panic in the history of capitalism. Then will we see what has been staring us in the face.
“We are sleepwalking to catastrophe” said the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, last week in the latest dire warning about climate change. He is wrong. We aren’t sleepwalking; we are walking towards catastrophe fully awake, with our eyes wide open.
There is no longer any significant dispute about the scientific evidence for global warming. Even the last of the climate-change sceptics, the Danish statistician, Bjorn Lomborg, now accepts that climate change is happening, that we are responsible for it and that the worst impact will be felt in the developing countries. He announced as much during a recent debate at the Edinburgh Parliament Futures Forum.
The only remaining argument is whether it is worth doing anything about global warming right now. Many economists have argued that it makes little sense to destroy the world economy in the interest of combating a problem which may take decades to develop. This has been the standard response of the American Right.
Until now. For, even the market case for doing nothing will be destroyed tomorrow by a report prepared by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern. He will say that the world is in imminent danger of the most profound economic dislocation in history - a recession more serious than the Great Depression, a disruption more devastating than the Second World War. And the cause will be global warming.
This is no woolly-minded tree hugger, but a hard-headed conservative economist. The World Bank, for which Stern was Senior Vice President, has been widely criticised for its neoliberal policies and its promotion of free-market globalisation. For someone with Sir Nicholas Stern’s background to say that we are heading for an economic black hole is like George W. Bush apologising for Iraq.
Why should there be a recession? Well, the capitalist economy is composed of markets, which are made by humans guessing about the future. This is what the FTSE or any hedge fund is: a group of investors speculating about the future worth of a company, whether it is making cars, producing energy, leasing planes, lending money.
Investment is all about risk. So far the markets have not started to factor the risk of global warming into their speculations. But pretty soon they will have to. Insurance companies like Swiss Re are already agonising about how to set realistic premiums when no one knows the future risk anymore because of climate instability - extreme weather events, hurricanes, droughts, epidemics.
We know that the seas are going to rise. At present melting rates, summer ice in the Arctic will be gone in sixty years, and all that frozen water will go into the oceans.
So where does that leave house prices in flood planes and low lying areas like central London? Where does it leave low-lying nuclear power stations?
What happens when investors realise that air travel, motor transport, power generation and all the other carbon-based economic activities no longer have a future? We know that this is the case right now. The government’s chief scientist, Sir David King, says that Co2 levels in the atmosphere will reach catastrophic levels within thirty years. The horizons are getting very short.
Mass air travel can only have a decade or so left. Cars as we understand them have maybe fifteen years before we start riding around on electric trikes (bring back the Sinclair C5). When cracks were discovered in the pipes at the Hunterston B power station on October 16th, the share price of British Energy collapsed by 24%. Imagine what will happen when the government says that Hunterston will have to be moved to higher ground to avoid inundation?
Then there is mass migration, desertification, disappearing lands. At present the world economy is in denial about climate change, but eventually it will wake up. By then it might be too late.
Climate scientists have been trying to alert humanity to its greatest ever threat for most of the last decade. Last week alone there was confirmation that the destruction of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 was caused by Antarctic global warming; that the Gulf Stream was actually turned off briefly in 2004; and that a six year drought South Australia has been caused by climate change. Prime Minister John Howard, a sceptic, has now been persuaded that even Australia has to join the climate consensus.
Can the capitalist economy come to the rescue? Stern will argue that there could be economic benefits to tackling the carbon economy. We know this very well in Scotland - or at least we should. Sitting on our vast reserves of untapped renewable energy, with the first commercially viable carbon-capture project waiting to go on line in Peterhead, we could build the first post-carbon economy tomorrow.
But there is something about market economies that makes it very difficult to make this kind of change other than through economic crisis. This is because it is very difficult to plan for change when you are leaving all the key decisions to economic speculators. They tend to act, not calmly and rationally, but with the instinct of the herd, as they did after the dot.com frenzy in 2000.
Capitalist development is all about discontinuities, “creative destruction” as he great economist Joseph Schumpeter called it. But this might be a destruction too far; we cannot afford wait until the market makes its own climate change correction.
It is as if, right at the moment when the world needs a leap of human technological ingenuity, we have lost that capacity for adaptation that made our species so successful. We have instead become fatalists, passive objects instead of agents of renewal. The market is seen as some kind of inviolable force of nature. Politicians are hypnotised, irrationally convinced of its infallibility in the face of all evidence. We keep waiting for the free market to somehow make it all right.
It is not that we are incapable of acting collectively, even in a capitalist environment. During periods of crisis, like the Second World War, societies like ours were able to achieve extraordinary feats of organisation based on a selfless and single-minded pursuit of the common good. There’s a lot of evidence that collective, altruistic behaviour is hard-wired into the human animal. We tend naturally to form associations in which the interest of the individual are subsumed in the interest of all.
Yet here is a global emergency, a crisis of Biblical proportions, and we seem to have lost our ability to act. We are still promoting air travel, building roads, turning out millions of internal combustion engines, constructing houses that waste energy on a massive scale. Well, we say, the Chinese are building a new coal-fired power station every week, so why should we bother?
Unfortunately, the triumph of liberal capitalism came at precisely the wrong moment for humanity. Never before in history have governments been so reluctant to intervene as they are today, at the very moment when they must. We are all waiting for the market to tell us what to do.
Well, the market will get the message in the end, but it is likely to be through the greatest stock market panic in the history of capitalism. Then will we see what has been staring us in the face.
But who wants an English parliament
26/10/06
The redoubtable Canon Kenyon Wright threw a tartan cat among the constitutional pigeons this week by backing calls for an English Parliament. Canon Kenyon is an Episcopalian cleric who led the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the 1980’s which demanded - and eventually got - “Scotland’s Claim of Right” to a degree of national sovereignty. Now he’s calling for the “sovereign right” of the English people to have a parliament of their own.
Now, to most people, this will sound eccentric to say the least. Are English people not already sovereign? Do they lack self-determination? Are they under the domination of a foreign power? Clearly not. Unless you subscribe to the conspiracy theories of Jeremy Paxman et al, who believe that there is a “Scottish Raj” in charge of England because of the presence of Scots in the UK Cabinet.
So, what on earth is the Canon talking about? Is this just a piece of nationalist mischief making? The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, is himself an advocate of an English Parliament on the grounds that English nationalism is the surest way to bring about about Scottish independence. This week Salmond called for a new “Council of the British Isles”, based on the Nordic Council, which would bring together independent states of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and England as equal partners in a new confederation.
Now, Labour agree with Salmond that an English Parliament would hasten the break up of the UK, which is why Lord Falconer has ruled out any prospect devolution south of the border. But Canon Kenyon claims to be a unionist. He told the English Constitutional Convention in Westminster this week that an English parliament “may be the only way to save the UK”. His argument is one of simple equity. If Scotland has control of its own domestic affairs, why shouldn’t England? It is “quite irrational” he says for a government which supported Scottish devolution to deny the right to the English.
Well, irrational it may be. But there are serious problems with the idea of an English Parliament. It’s not at all clear that people in England want one for a start. They massively rejected elected English regional assemblies, which Labour saw as the best way to correct any constitutional imbalances. I suspect they would also reject the idea of federalism too - for that is what we are talking about.
If the UK constitution were to be ‘rebalanced’ so that an English Parliament took over domestic affairs, there would need to be a new federal level of government created to manage UK-wide functions like defence, foreign affairs, economic and monetary policy, constitutional relations etc.. There would probably need to be a supreme court too, and a written constitution to define the powers of the different levels of government.
. British people would have to get used to electing a wholly new tier of government - the UK government. There would be separation of powers, with - on present showings - a Labour-led Federal Government going head to head with a Conservative leadership in an English parliament. Taxation would also have to be disaggregated, so that specific revenues could be assigned to state and federal levels, with appropriate fiscal redistribution to take account of regional economic disparities. It's no easy option.
But federalism is the only coherent answer to the anomalies created by the present “asymmetrical devolution”. There is clearly a potential problem about Scottish MPs voting on English bills, like education, when English MPs have no such rights to vote on Scottish legislation. However, I’m not sure how many English voters have ever actually heard of the West Lothian Question, and I suspect very few could explain what the problem is.
This seems to me to be the key question here. Do English people care enough about Scottish devolution to go the distance? Is the governance of England so seriously distorted by the marginal influence of Scottish MPs in the Commons that we need a new American style constitution? I don’t think so - but I am open to persuasion.
The redoubtable Canon Kenyon Wright threw a tartan cat among the constitutional pigeons this week by backing calls for an English Parliament. Canon Kenyon is an Episcopalian cleric who led the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the 1980’s which demanded - and eventually got - “Scotland’s Claim of Right” to a degree of national sovereignty. Now he’s calling for the “sovereign right” of the English people to have a parliament of their own.
Now, to most people, this will sound eccentric to say the least. Are English people not already sovereign? Do they lack self-determination? Are they under the domination of a foreign power? Clearly not. Unless you subscribe to the conspiracy theories of Jeremy Paxman et al, who believe that there is a “Scottish Raj” in charge of England because of the presence of Scots in the UK Cabinet.
So, what on earth is the Canon talking about? Is this just a piece of nationalist mischief making? The SNP leader, Alex Salmond, is himself an advocate of an English Parliament on the grounds that English nationalism is the surest way to bring about about Scottish independence. This week Salmond called for a new “Council of the British Isles”, based on the Nordic Council, which would bring together independent states of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and England as equal partners in a new confederation.
Now, Labour agree with Salmond that an English Parliament would hasten the break up of the UK, which is why Lord Falconer has ruled out any prospect devolution south of the border. But Canon Kenyon claims to be a unionist. He told the English Constitutional Convention in Westminster this week that an English parliament “may be the only way to save the UK”. His argument is one of simple equity. If Scotland has control of its own domestic affairs, why shouldn’t England? It is “quite irrational” he says for a government which supported Scottish devolution to deny the right to the English.
Well, irrational it may be. But there are serious problems with the idea of an English Parliament. It’s not at all clear that people in England want one for a start. They massively rejected elected English regional assemblies, which Labour saw as the best way to correct any constitutional imbalances. I suspect they would also reject the idea of federalism too - for that is what we are talking about.
If the UK constitution were to be ‘rebalanced’ so that an English Parliament took over domestic affairs, there would need to be a new federal level of government created to manage UK-wide functions like defence, foreign affairs, economic and monetary policy, constitutional relations etc.. There would probably need to be a supreme court too, and a written constitution to define the powers of the different levels of government.
. British people would have to get used to electing a wholly new tier of government - the UK government. There would be separation of powers, with - on present showings - a Labour-led Federal Government going head to head with a Conservative leadership in an English parliament. Taxation would also have to be disaggregated, so that specific revenues could be assigned to state and federal levels, with appropriate fiscal redistribution to take account of regional economic disparities. It's no easy option.
But federalism is the only coherent answer to the anomalies created by the present “asymmetrical devolution”. There is clearly a potential problem about Scottish MPs voting on English bills, like education, when English MPs have no such rights to vote on Scottish legislation. However, I’m not sure how many English voters have ever actually heard of the West Lothian Question, and I suspect very few could explain what the problem is.
This seems to me to be the key question here. Do English people care enough about Scottish devolution to go the distance? Is the governance of England so seriously distorted by the marginal influence of Scottish MPs in the Commons that we need a new American style constitution? I don’t think so - but I am open to persuasion.
We can't allow Scotland to become racist by default
24/10/06
Now here's a funny thing. Ask Scottish MPs and MSPs what issue is most on the minds of their constituents right now and a surprising number will say immigration. Yes, race is right up there with drugs and hospital closures. Many Scots believe there are too many incomers and that they are taking our jobs.
We pride ourselves on our Scottish enlightenment and tolerance. Yet, race is the great subterranean issue in Scottish politics. The only reason we don't hear more about it is that there is a well-meaning conspiracy by the Scottish political parties to playdown the immigration issue.
The reason the parties don't want to play the race card is pretty obvious. No one wants to foment the kind of communal tensions evident in many English cities. There is no far Right in Scotland making capital out of Scotland’s latent suspicion of foreigners. The SNP, unlike some nationalist parties in continental Europe, is avowedly pro-immigration, and is celebrating the fact that it is likely to have the first Asian MSP after the May elections, Bashir Ahmad.
The other reason immigration isn't a political issue here, of course, is that there's been relatively little immigration over the last five decades. Scotland is, as GregDyke might have put it, "appallingly white" . There is a small but vigourous Asian community but virtually no Afro-caribbeans at all. Get off the train at King’s Cross and it’s like being in a different continent, not just another country.
Now, on the Holloway Road, where non-Asian shops are a rarity, or in London's East End, where white working class residents feel like an excluded minority, you might expect a little communal friction to occur. Similarly, in northern English cities like Leeds, where the London suicide bombers were born and bred, it would be surprising not to hear of resentment at Muslim communities allegedly refusing to adopt British culture.
But how many veiled women do you see on the Byres Road? Or fundamentalist Imams at the Bristo St moque in Edinburgh? Scotland’s silent resentment has no obvious focus.
When asylum seekers were dispersed to Glasgow some five years ago, there was some racial tension, and even one death in Springburn. But that was very much the exception that proved the rule.
Until now. For some reason, the influx of some 20,000 white and mainly Polish workers since EU enlargement in 2004 seems to have ignited antagonism in the most unlikely places. One MP told me of his bemusement at being berated by voters in Falkirk over jobs and houses being "stolen" by immigrants, when there was no immigration to speak of in the Falkirk area.
In Edinburgh, there is a significant and growing Polish presence. But there always has been and they have always been valued members of the community - many dental practices were run by Poles. The only way you can tell they are here in greater numbers now is the number of Polish newspapers on city centre new stands.
The economic reality, as we know, is that with a faltering population, Scotland needs more not fewer immigrants. They pose no economic threat to the indigenous population and bring valuable skills and a committed work ethic. With fewer young workers, we need immigrant workers to meet the cost of an ageing population.
Jack McConnell has been desperately trying to prevent the home Secretary, John Reid, from choking off the flow of as part of his latest crack down on immigration. The government has decided that immigration is too sensitive an issue to be left to the market, and has decided to introduce a points system to control the influx from Bulgaria and Romania.
Now, the Scottish Executive has, for some time, been trying to secure a Scottish ‘opt out’ from UK policy, allowing higher points for immigrants wanting to come to Scotland. There have been some minor concessions. Yesterday, the Home Office agreed that asylum applications should be processed in Scotland.
But so far the Home Office has drawn the line at allowing any significant departure from UK immigration policy for fear that immigrants would enter the UK by Scotland and immediately move south. Well, that’s what Scots do.
But to return to the original question: why, given this lack of immigration, is immigration such a problem for so many Scottish voters? Well, one reason might be that they keep being told that there is an problem.
One of the paradoxes of devolution is that while Scotland has become more Scottish in the last decade, the press has become more English. Scots are reading more copies of Scottish editions of UK papers, like the Sun and the Daily Mail, and fewer indigenous titles, like the Record.
While these papers are not necessarily anti Scottish - the Sun even supports the SNP, sometimes - they do tend to reflect the preoccupations of Middle England in their pages. Hence the endless banging on about illegal asylum seekers, Muslim terrorists and lately the invasion of workers from the new accession states of the EU.
Hardly surprising that people worry about foreign incomers when they read, day after day, that immigration is adding the equivalent of the population of Birmingham every five years; that Muslims are creating no-go areas in Britain; and that pay rates are being driven down by Eastern Europeans prepared to work for less than the minimum wage.
Or when they read that asylum seekers are jumping the queue for hospital operations; raising large families on benefits; and creating bomb factories in suburban houses. Most MSPs are pretty confident that press coverage fuels their constituents’ anxieties.
The recent row over the veil has added another dimension to the problem. I don't think I have ever actually seen a veil in Scotland. However, I do find that I have opinions about it, because, like everyone else, I get caught up in the controversies that dominate UK programmes like Question Time and Newsnight. You rarely hear any qualifications about there being a rather different situation in Scotland.
And because immigration isn't an issue for the Scottish parliament, you don't find the matter being raised much on Newsnight Scotland or other Scottish news outlets. The coverage here is dominated by the raging controversy that has afflicted urban England, and particularly London over the last five years.
Should we be worried about this? Well, I am. Four years ago, a System Three poll revealed that nearly a quarter of Scots were quite happy to be called “racist” and that that half felt it was acceptable to use racist abuse like Chink and Paki. These attitudes need to be exposed and challenged.
Ignorance breeds suspicion. Paradoxically, the fact that there are proportionately fewer non-whites in Scotland may actually make Scots more likely to be casually racist. If you don’t meet many people from another culture, it is easier to be prejudiced, and you are more likely to believe scare stories about them.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that immigration needs to become a responsibility of the Scottish parliament, even though this could create problems with London. The only way that immigration can be debated realistically in Scotland is if we repatriate the debate itself. We cannot allow Scotland to become racist by default.
Now here's a funny thing. Ask Scottish MPs and MSPs what issue is most on the minds of their constituents right now and a surprising number will say immigration. Yes, race is right up there with drugs and hospital closures. Many Scots believe there are too many incomers and that they are taking our jobs.
We pride ourselves on our Scottish enlightenment and tolerance. Yet, race is the great subterranean issue in Scottish politics. The only reason we don't hear more about it is that there is a well-meaning conspiracy by the Scottish political parties to playdown the immigration issue.
The reason the parties don't want to play the race card is pretty obvious. No one wants to foment the kind of communal tensions evident in many English cities. There is no far Right in Scotland making capital out of Scotland’s latent suspicion of foreigners. The SNP, unlike some nationalist parties in continental Europe, is avowedly pro-immigration, and is celebrating the fact that it is likely to have the first Asian MSP after the May elections, Bashir Ahmad.
The other reason immigration isn't a political issue here, of course, is that there's been relatively little immigration over the last five decades. Scotland is, as GregDyke might have put it, "appallingly white" . There is a small but vigourous Asian community but virtually no Afro-caribbeans at all. Get off the train at King’s Cross and it’s like being in a different continent, not just another country.
Now, on the Holloway Road, where non-Asian shops are a rarity, or in London's East End, where white working class residents feel like an excluded minority, you might expect a little communal friction to occur. Similarly, in northern English cities like Leeds, where the London suicide bombers were born and bred, it would be surprising not to hear of resentment at Muslim communities allegedly refusing to adopt British culture.
But how many veiled women do you see on the Byres Road? Or fundamentalist Imams at the Bristo St moque in Edinburgh? Scotland’s silent resentment has no obvious focus.
When asylum seekers were dispersed to Glasgow some five years ago, there was some racial tension, and even one death in Springburn. But that was very much the exception that proved the rule.
Until now. For some reason, the influx of some 20,000 white and mainly Polish workers since EU enlargement in 2004 seems to have ignited antagonism in the most unlikely places. One MP told me of his bemusement at being berated by voters in Falkirk over jobs and houses being "stolen" by immigrants, when there was no immigration to speak of in the Falkirk area.
In Edinburgh, there is a significant and growing Polish presence. But there always has been and they have always been valued members of the community - many dental practices were run by Poles. The only way you can tell they are here in greater numbers now is the number of Polish newspapers on city centre new stands.
The economic reality, as we know, is that with a faltering population, Scotland needs more not fewer immigrants. They pose no economic threat to the indigenous population and bring valuable skills and a committed work ethic. With fewer young workers, we need immigrant workers to meet the cost of an ageing population.
Jack McConnell has been desperately trying to prevent the home Secretary, John Reid, from choking off the flow of as part of his latest crack down on immigration. The government has decided that immigration is too sensitive an issue to be left to the market, and has decided to introduce a points system to control the influx from Bulgaria and Romania.
Now, the Scottish Executive has, for some time, been trying to secure a Scottish ‘opt out’ from UK policy, allowing higher points for immigrants wanting to come to Scotland. There have been some minor concessions. Yesterday, the Home Office agreed that asylum applications should be processed in Scotland.
But so far the Home Office has drawn the line at allowing any significant departure from UK immigration policy for fear that immigrants would enter the UK by Scotland and immediately move south. Well, that’s what Scots do.
But to return to the original question: why, given this lack of immigration, is immigration such a problem for so many Scottish voters? Well, one reason might be that they keep being told that there is an problem.
One of the paradoxes of devolution is that while Scotland has become more Scottish in the last decade, the press has become more English. Scots are reading more copies of Scottish editions of UK papers, like the Sun and the Daily Mail, and fewer indigenous titles, like the Record.
While these papers are not necessarily anti Scottish - the Sun even supports the SNP, sometimes - they do tend to reflect the preoccupations of Middle England in their pages. Hence the endless banging on about illegal asylum seekers, Muslim terrorists and lately the invasion of workers from the new accession states of the EU.
Hardly surprising that people worry about foreign incomers when they read, day after day, that immigration is adding the equivalent of the population of Birmingham every five years; that Muslims are creating no-go areas in Britain; and that pay rates are being driven down by Eastern Europeans prepared to work for less than the minimum wage.
Or when they read that asylum seekers are jumping the queue for hospital operations; raising large families on benefits; and creating bomb factories in suburban houses. Most MSPs are pretty confident that press coverage fuels their constituents’ anxieties.
The recent row over the veil has added another dimension to the problem. I don't think I have ever actually seen a veil in Scotland. However, I do find that I have opinions about it, because, like everyone else, I get caught up in the controversies that dominate UK programmes like Question Time and Newsnight. You rarely hear any qualifications about there being a rather different situation in Scotland.
And because immigration isn't an issue for the Scottish parliament, you don't find the matter being raised much on Newsnight Scotland or other Scottish news outlets. The coverage here is dominated by the raging controversy that has afflicted urban England, and particularly London over the last five years.
Should we be worried about this? Well, I am. Four years ago, a System Three poll revealed that nearly a quarter of Scots were quite happy to be called “racist” and that that half felt it was acceptable to use racist abuse like Chink and Paki. These attitudes need to be exposed and challenged.
Ignorance breeds suspicion. Paradoxically, the fact that there are proportionately fewer non-whites in Scotland may actually make Scots more likely to be casually racist. If you don’t meet many people from another culture, it is easier to be prejudiced, and you are more likely to believe scare stories about them.
This is why I have come to the conclusion that immigration needs to become a responsibility of the Scottish parliament, even though this could create problems with London. The only way that immigration can be debated realistically in Scotland is if we repatriate the debate itself. We cannot allow Scotland to become racist by default.
Tony Soprano
19/10/06
The more you hear about the sordid soap opera that was Labour government in the early years of this century, the more it sounds like a version of the Sopranos - except that the New Jersey Mafiosi were at least able to keep their mouths shut.
Not only did most of them, from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to the spin-doctor, Alastair Campbell, seem to suffer from profound psychological distress - at least according to the testimony of their colleagues - many emerge as men of explosive temperament, who showed a disturbing eagerness to resort to force to get their way. You didn’t want to get wise with these guys.
Now, it may well be that the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, did not expect to be taken seriously when he told the head of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, to send in the army and “machine gun” rioters in October 2002. I’m sure Blunkett was overwrought. According to his own diaries, which were serialised last week, he was overwrought a great deal of the time.
He records that at the height of the Iraq invasion he advised the PM to bomb offices of the independent Arab news service, Al Jazeera. He’d probably have liked to machine gun liberal lawyers as well, and the BBC who he claims had a vendetta against him.
However, there are all sorts of mechanisms in government which are designed to prevent ministers, however over-stimulated, from talking in this way - just in case anyone does take them seriously.
The presence of permanent secretaries, for example, who take notes of all important ministerial conversations, is supposed to ensure that ministers don’t forget themselves. They can’t just lift the phone and bark at people, any more than they can march into the offices of public officials and threaten to have them sleep with the fishes.
Unless they are David Blunkett, that is. For these mechanisms seem to have broken down in this administration. David Blunkett was allowed a licence to go massively over the top. Perhaps this was because of a kind of inverted prejudice about his own disability; a reluctance by the sighted to censure a blind man. Or maybe, staff were just afraid of him.
Hardly surprising that Blunkett ended up being sacked twice, effectively, for misconduct. First, over fast-tracking the visa of his lover’s nanny and, second, over failing to declare shares in a company which could benefit from public contracts.
But it’s the personal pettiness and animosities that saturate the Blunkett account of the life and times of the Labour Cabinet that is most disturbing. They all seemed to be at each others’ throats.
Blunkett had a profound loathing for John Prescott, and basks in Schadenfreude at the Deputy Prime Minister’s subsequent downfall over his own sexual antics and his freebies from an American businessman, who wanted to turn the Millennium Dome into a super-casino.
Yes, you feel John Prescott would hve been very much at home in the Ba Da Bing, and not just because he’s built like Sal “Pussy” Ponopensiero. The Bing is brash, American, involves gambling and employs women who are available for sex with the boss. The DPM showed just how good he is with his fists when he floored that countryside protester during the 2001 general election campaign.
Prescott certainly knows where Labour’s bodies are buried. Afterall, he isn’t one of the longest-serving Cabinet ministers because of his command of the English language or his felicitous turn of phrase at the Dispatch Box. He was Tony’s muscle.
But how soon before we learn that, like Blunkett and Campbell, Prescott was seeking professional advice about his ‘issues’? Psychological eccentricity was practically a job-requirement in Tony Blair’s second administration. Yet the PM himself seems such a mild-mannered decent sort of a guy. You wonder how he kept control of these rampant feuding egos.
Men like Charles Clarke, the who replaced Blunkett as Home Secretary, and “Dr” John Reid who soon replaced Clarke. Clarke completely lost the plot before the 2006 Labour conference and publicly accused the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of being a “delusional” control-freak who couldn’t delegate, wouldn’t listen and didn’t tell the truth.
As for John Reid, his behaviour has frequently on the far side. Ask Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary standards commissioner, who accused him of intimidating witnesses in her investigation into the employment of Reid’s son Kevin as a parliamentary researcher. Reid also famously came close to blows with the former First Minister, Donald Dewar, at the 1999 Labour conference.
With other Cabinet hard men around, like the Blairite former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, and the former Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, you wonder what Cabinet away-days must have been like. A cross between the Borgias and Goodfellas.
And of course when it comes to using force to get your way, Tony Blair is right up there with the best of them. After all, he signed up to the Iraq invasion, which has so far caused around half a million civilian deaths, according to the medical magazine Lancet last week. This is where it gets serious.
The PM drove this country to war, against its best instincts, and inpursuit of weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist - except in the dodgy dossiers produced by his aide, Alastair Campbell, who now says he was suffering from clinical depression. The Prime Minister clearly wanted to start a fight, and he got one.
But not even Tony Soprano at his most belligerent would have tried to take on the entire Middle East. Yet by invading a Muslim country, Tony Blair has inflamed the entire region and turned Britain into a prime terrorist target. And British forces in Afghanistan are paying the price.
This Labour administration may go down in history as one of the most belligerent and authoritarian in British history. It has sought to curb civil liberties - freedom from arrest, freedom of speech - in a way no peacetime administration has attempted in modern times. It has started wars which were almost certainly illegal, and undermined international institutions like the UN. Ministers can’t seem to stop themselves from confronting Muslim groups.
I don’t particularly subscribe to psychological interpretation of history, but you have to ask whether there wasn’t some kind of group psychosis at work in the British Cabinet. All top politicians lose touch with reality after a while, but this lot seemed to be out to lunch from day one.
Something of the embattled mentality which Labour politicians acquired during the long years of opposition, when they were repeatedly beaten up by the press and the voters, was translated into government. Perhaps, like the abused child, which grows up into a dysfunctional adult, Labour couldn’t help itself turning delinquent.
But there was something more. Having lost the moral compass of socialism, New Labour lapsed into populism and the politics of law and order. And now, adrift with nothing but vanity to keep them going, they are desperately blaming each other for the collective mistakes of the past.
The more you hear about the sordid soap opera that was Labour government in the early years of this century, the more it sounds like a version of the Sopranos - except that the New Jersey Mafiosi were at least able to keep their mouths shut.
Not only did most of them, from the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to the spin-doctor, Alastair Campbell, seem to suffer from profound psychological distress - at least according to the testimony of their colleagues - many emerge as men of explosive temperament, who showed a disturbing eagerness to resort to force to get their way. You didn’t want to get wise with these guys.
Now, it may well be that the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, did not expect to be taken seriously when he told the head of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, to send in the army and “machine gun” rioters in October 2002. I’m sure Blunkett was overwrought. According to his own diaries, which were serialised last week, he was overwrought a great deal of the time.
He records that at the height of the Iraq invasion he advised the PM to bomb offices of the independent Arab news service, Al Jazeera. He’d probably have liked to machine gun liberal lawyers as well, and the BBC who he claims had a vendetta against him.
However, there are all sorts of mechanisms in government which are designed to prevent ministers, however over-stimulated, from talking in this way - just in case anyone does take them seriously.
The presence of permanent secretaries, for example, who take notes of all important ministerial conversations, is supposed to ensure that ministers don’t forget themselves. They can’t just lift the phone and bark at people, any more than they can march into the offices of public officials and threaten to have them sleep with the fishes.
Unless they are David Blunkett, that is. For these mechanisms seem to have broken down in this administration. David Blunkett was allowed a licence to go massively over the top. Perhaps this was because of a kind of inverted prejudice about his own disability; a reluctance by the sighted to censure a blind man. Or maybe, staff were just afraid of him.
Hardly surprising that Blunkett ended up being sacked twice, effectively, for misconduct. First, over fast-tracking the visa of his lover’s nanny and, second, over failing to declare shares in a company which could benefit from public contracts.
But it’s the personal pettiness and animosities that saturate the Blunkett account of the life and times of the Labour Cabinet that is most disturbing. They all seemed to be at each others’ throats.
Blunkett had a profound loathing for John Prescott, and basks in Schadenfreude at the Deputy Prime Minister’s subsequent downfall over his own sexual antics and his freebies from an American businessman, who wanted to turn the Millennium Dome into a super-casino.
Yes, you feel John Prescott would hve been very much at home in the Ba Da Bing, and not just because he’s built like Sal “Pussy” Ponopensiero. The Bing is brash, American, involves gambling and employs women who are available for sex with the boss. The DPM showed just how good he is with his fists when he floored that countryside protester during the 2001 general election campaign.
Prescott certainly knows where Labour’s bodies are buried. Afterall, he isn’t one of the longest-serving Cabinet ministers because of his command of the English language or his felicitous turn of phrase at the Dispatch Box. He was Tony’s muscle.
But how soon before we learn that, like Blunkett and Campbell, Prescott was seeking professional advice about his ‘issues’? Psychological eccentricity was practically a job-requirement in Tony Blair’s second administration. Yet the PM himself seems such a mild-mannered decent sort of a guy. You wonder how he kept control of these rampant feuding egos.
Men like Charles Clarke, the who replaced Blunkett as Home Secretary, and “Dr” John Reid who soon replaced Clarke. Clarke completely lost the plot before the 2006 Labour conference and publicly accused the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, of being a “delusional” control-freak who couldn’t delegate, wouldn’t listen and didn’t tell the truth.
As for John Reid, his behaviour has frequently on the far side. Ask Elizabeth Filkin, the former parliamentary standards commissioner, who accused him of intimidating witnesses in her investigation into the employment of Reid’s son Kevin as a parliamentary researcher. Reid also famously came close to blows with the former First Minister, Donald Dewar, at the 1999 Labour conference.
With other Cabinet hard men around, like the Blairite former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, and the former Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, you wonder what Cabinet away-days must have been like. A cross between the Borgias and Goodfellas.
And of course when it comes to using force to get your way, Tony Blair is right up there with the best of them. After all, he signed up to the Iraq invasion, which has so far caused around half a million civilian deaths, according to the medical magazine Lancet last week. This is where it gets serious.
The PM drove this country to war, against its best instincts, and inpursuit of weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist - except in the dodgy dossiers produced by his aide, Alastair Campbell, who now says he was suffering from clinical depression. The Prime Minister clearly wanted to start a fight, and he got one.
But not even Tony Soprano at his most belligerent would have tried to take on the entire Middle East. Yet by invading a Muslim country, Tony Blair has inflamed the entire region and turned Britain into a prime terrorist target. And British forces in Afghanistan are paying the price.
This Labour administration may go down in history as one of the most belligerent and authoritarian in British history. It has sought to curb civil liberties - freedom from arrest, freedom of speech - in a way no peacetime administration has attempted in modern times. It has started wars which were almost certainly illegal, and undermined international institutions like the UN. Ministers can’t seem to stop themselves from confronting Muslim groups.
I don’t particularly subscribe to psychological interpretation of history, but you have to ask whether there wasn’t some kind of group psychosis at work in the British Cabinet. All top politicians lose touch with reality after a while, but this lot seemed to be out to lunch from day one.
Something of the embattled mentality which Labour politicians acquired during the long years of opposition, when they were repeatedly beaten up by the press and the voters, was translated into government. Perhaps, like the abused child, which grows up into a dysfunctional adult, Labour couldn’t help itself turning delinquent.
But there was something more. Having lost the moral compass of socialism, New Labour lapsed into populism and the politics of law and order. And now, adrift with nothing but vanity to keep them going, they are desperately blaming each other for the collective mistakes of the past.
Salmond leaps
15/10/06
Who would have thought that the SNP would stage the most successful party conference of the entire season? Labour were at war with themselves, the Liberal Democrats shell-shocked ,and the Tories accident prone. The nationalists, by contrast, seemed united, confident, businesslike, purposeful.
Hasn't always been so. I have been to too many nationalist conferences which were little more than an intoxicating shambles. Not this year. Salmond's speech wasn't a master class in political oratory, but it was a first class leader's speech delivered with genuine conviction and a minimum of ad hominem abuse. . Retread he may be, absentee landlord even, but Salmond saw the occasion, and rose to it.
The policies on local hospitals, schools, student debt, renewable energy and business taxes were rolled out clearly and efficiently. True, they weren't properly costed overall ( the Chancellor will do that for them) and it was a little rich for the SNP to start calling for higher drink prices after decades demanding cuts in whisky duty.
So, what has gone right? Is Tom Farmer’s money already reaching the parts Sean Connery’s could not reach? Has Cardinal Keith O’Brien put God on their side? Well, the SNP has been quietly getting its act together for some time now, and has been trying to formulate a coherent policy agenda instead of a post-independence wish list.
The experience of the Scottish Parliament has been upsetting in many ways for the nationalists. But the discipline of participating in a real legislative forum for seven and a half years has forced the SNP to become more professional and to accept the compromises involved in being a party that aspires to government.
I think the SNP has also come to terms in its heart that independence, as it traditionally conceived it, is an anachronism. Now, of course, no one says this publicly in the movement, and even privately, nationalists remain nationalists. But there is a much more realistic and incremental approach to national freedom, which is now shared by a wide range of non-SNP opinion in Scotland.
They have plenty of time, of course, to screw it up. The SNP are past masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have been much further ahead of Labour before in the polls, only to fall before the finish line. Their policies have yet to be tested in the heat of battle, and some - like the abolition of all student debt - look very expensive.
Moreover, Salmond’s remarkable statement, in his interview for the Sunday Herald, that “the largest party will always have the moral authority” to form the governing coalition, could be a hostage to fortune. No one seriously believes that the SNP can win a larger number of seats than Labour in May.
But the nationalist are on their way at last. Come in Mr Salmond, your time is up.
Who would have thought that the SNP would stage the most successful party conference of the entire season? Labour were at war with themselves, the Liberal Democrats shell-shocked ,and the Tories accident prone. The nationalists, by contrast, seemed united, confident, businesslike, purposeful.
Hasn't always been so. I have been to too many nationalist conferences which were little more than an intoxicating shambles. Not this year. Salmond's speech wasn't a master class in political oratory, but it was a first class leader's speech delivered with genuine conviction and a minimum of ad hominem abuse. . Retread he may be, absentee landlord even, but Salmond saw the occasion, and rose to it.
The policies on local hospitals, schools, student debt, renewable energy and business taxes were rolled out clearly and efficiently. True, they weren't properly costed overall ( the Chancellor will do that for them) and it was a little rich for the SNP to start calling for higher drink prices after decades demanding cuts in whisky duty.
So, what has gone right? Is Tom Farmer’s money already reaching the parts Sean Connery’s could not reach? Has Cardinal Keith O’Brien put God on their side? Well, the SNP has been quietly getting its act together for some time now, and has been trying to formulate a coherent policy agenda instead of a post-independence wish list.
The experience of the Scottish Parliament has been upsetting in many ways for the nationalists. But the discipline of participating in a real legislative forum for seven and a half years has forced the SNP to become more professional and to accept the compromises involved in being a party that aspires to government.
I think the SNP has also come to terms in its heart that independence, as it traditionally conceived it, is an anachronism. Now, of course, no one says this publicly in the movement, and even privately, nationalists remain nationalists. But there is a much more realistic and incremental approach to national freedom, which is now shared by a wide range of non-SNP opinion in Scotland.
They have plenty of time, of course, to screw it up. The SNP are past masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have been much further ahead of Labour before in the polls, only to fall before the finish line. Their policies have yet to be tested in the heat of battle, and some - like the abolition of all student debt - look very expensive.
Moreover, Salmond’s remarkable statement, in his interview for the Sunday Herald, that “the largest party will always have the moral authority” to form the governing coalition, could be a hostage to fortune. No one seriously believes that the SNP can win a larger number of seats than Labour in May.
But the nationalist are on their way at last. Come in Mr Salmond, your time is up.
Madness at the top
14/10/06
According to David Blunkett’s diaries, the Prime Minister told cabinet sceptics in February 2003 that “the management hadn’t lost its marbles” on the eve of the Iraq invasion. But it was clearly a few balls short of a full bag.
Any sane UK administration mighthave wondered what it was getting itself into when the Americans insisted that there would be no need for any civil administration in Iraq. Or military reconstruction after the war. Or that the Iraqi army could be dumped on the dole.
But the madness has now been replicated in Afghanistan where. The sane and well balanced Dr John Reid, when he was Defence Secretary, said British troops would return from Afghanistan “without a shot being fired”. Senior military analysts have been trying unsuccessfully to identify which planet Dr Reid has been living on. In Afghanistan, the army has been facing its most testing military engagement since the Korean War.
With everyone above the rank of junior minister now booking in to the Priory, it’s not too surprising that the generals have decided that they will have to fill the vacuum. The head of the armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, stepped up last week and said what everyone but the government can see as clear as day. That the Western military occupation is part of the problem in Iraq; that we are making the insurgency worse in many areas; that the soldiers are exhausted; and that we should get out as soon as possible. At last, someone talking sense.
This astonishing break with protocol - no serving chief of general staff ever criticised a government publicly for the conduct of a war while the war was still being fought - caused astonishment among politicians of all parties. Even Labour critics of the war, like the former defence minister, Doug Henderson, said Sir Richard had gone too far.
But the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said he “agreed with every word” Sir Richard had said. Now, this really is the politics of the funny farm. If Tony Blair endorses this assessment, then it seems very difficult to know how he can remain in office without sacking himself.
At the very least, the government should be preparing for a change in policy following the imminent departure of Tony Blair from Number Ten. A new beginning, perhaps a few modest apologies, peace with honour. But no. Following the delusional tradition of this administration, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, seems to have decided that, now the war is finally lost, it is time for him to start supporting it.
For, just as everyone accepts that the war has damaged community relations, undermined civil liberties and - through the Iraq engagement - antagonised Muslim nations, the Chancellor has launched a cultural revolution. In his Chatham House speech last week Brown called for a “cultural war” on terror. All government departments, he says have to start fighting a “generation long” struggle against extremism. He wants ID cards and 90 day detention too.
This all sounded rather more Mao Tse-Tung than moral compass. Kim il Jong isn’t the only delusional politician in charge of nuclear weapons. The madness of King Tony seems to be infectious.
According to David Blunkett’s diaries, the Prime Minister told cabinet sceptics in February 2003 that “the management hadn’t lost its marbles” on the eve of the Iraq invasion. But it was clearly a few balls short of a full bag.
Any sane UK administration mighthave wondered what it was getting itself into when the Americans insisted that there would be no need for any civil administration in Iraq. Or military reconstruction after the war. Or that the Iraqi army could be dumped on the dole.
But the madness has now been replicated in Afghanistan where. The sane and well balanced Dr John Reid, when he was Defence Secretary, said British troops would return from Afghanistan “without a shot being fired”. Senior military analysts have been trying unsuccessfully to identify which planet Dr Reid has been living on. In Afghanistan, the army has been facing its most testing military engagement since the Korean War.
With everyone above the rank of junior minister now booking in to the Priory, it’s not too surprising that the generals have decided that they will have to fill the vacuum. The head of the armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, stepped up last week and said what everyone but the government can see as clear as day. That the Western military occupation is part of the problem in Iraq; that we are making the insurgency worse in many areas; that the soldiers are exhausted; and that we should get out as soon as possible. At last, someone talking sense.
This astonishing break with protocol - no serving chief of general staff ever criticised a government publicly for the conduct of a war while the war was still being fought - caused astonishment among politicians of all parties. Even Labour critics of the war, like the former defence minister, Doug Henderson, said Sir Richard had gone too far.
But the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said he “agreed with every word” Sir Richard had said. Now, this really is the politics of the funny farm. If Tony Blair endorses this assessment, then it seems very difficult to know how he can remain in office without sacking himself.
At the very least, the government should be preparing for a change in policy following the imminent departure of Tony Blair from Number Ten. A new beginning, perhaps a few modest apologies, peace with honour. But no. Following the delusional tradition of this administration, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, seems to have decided that, now the war is finally lost, it is time for him to start supporting it.
For, just as everyone accepts that the war has damaged community relations, undermined civil liberties and - through the Iraq engagement - antagonised Muslim nations, the Chancellor has launched a cultural revolution. In his Chatham House speech last week Brown called for a “cultural war” on terror. All government departments, he says have to start fighting a “generation long” struggle against extremism. He wants ID cards and 90 day detention too.
This all sounded rather more Mao Tse-Tung than moral compass. Kim il Jong isn’t the only delusional politician in charge of nuclear weapons. The madness of King Tony seems to be infectious.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Unilateralism works
The invasion of Iraq has demonstrated not the strength of America and its allies but their profound weakness. With the “world’s policeman” held down by a few thousand insurgents in Iraq, the bad guys of the world have seen their chance and taken it. Iran will surely be next. If for no other reason than that North Korea has confirmed that the possession of nuclear weapons is the only way to guarantee national security.
That’s the logic of deterrence, after all. It’s the same argument we use for renewing Trident. It’s why 40 years of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty has left us even more insecure than during the Cold War. At least then there was a balance of terror, and a relatively predictable geopolitical order.
North Korea adds a totally new factor to the equation. For the first time we have nuclear weapons in the hands of someone, Kim Jong Il, who is quite prepared to use them and is not subject to any diplomatic constraint whatever. Kim doesn’t care about sanctions - his people are already starving. He is just the kind of madman who might decide to go out in a blaze of glory.
Which is why he will surely provoke a new nuclear arms race. Japan has been nuclear-free since Hiroshima, but not - I suspect - for much longer. Similarly, South Korea is going to want some guarantees against any nuclear intimidation by a country with which it is still formally at war.
And after them? Well, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, possibly Egypt. Then what about the bellicose Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who has a lot of oil dollars to spend. Brazil might then want its own deterrent. Within a decade, there could be a real possibility of nuclear war breaking out in half a dozen conflict zones.
Was there another way? Of course there was. In the 1990s North Korea was in its box - like Saddam in fact - and was being weaned away from nuclear ambitions by subtle but persistent diplomatic engagement. The Clinton administration had used a combination of fuel oil and economic sanctions to persuade North Korea to freeze its military programme and cease producing plutonium - the key to successful bomb-making. When he lost office North Korea was on the point of giving up nuclear ambitions in exchange for aid and diplomatic recognition. It was only after George W. Bush made his “axis of evil” speech, and cut off the oil, that Kim started producing plutonium again.
Disarmament can work, provided it is clearly in a country’s economic interests to do so. Ukraine unilaterally abandoned nuclear weapons in exchange for economic guarantees, as did South Africa and even Libya. But Bush thinks talking is un-American and decided instead to give them all a taste of “shock and awe” by invading Iraq. He shot himself in the foot even before he took it out of his mouth.
Until we stop giving countries incentives to developing nuclear weapons, we are never going to stop them acquiring them. Of course, diplomatic engagement is difficult, time consuming and frustrating. As with decommissioning the IRA, progress can appear glacial - one step forward, two steps back. But it works in the end, because there is no alternative. Or if there is a military alternative, why are we not using it now?
The power of the West is not primarily military, it is economic and moral. America lacks the resolve and the means even to pacify a ramshackle country like Iraq - it doesn’t ‘do’ occupation. But it won the Cold War. It was always America’s ‘soft power’ - its economic and cultural leadership of the world - that was its real power. Rock music and computers. American democracy became the best political brand on the planet, and everyone wanted a piece of it.
Not any more. Bush destroyed America’s moral hegemony as surely as he destroyed its claim to military invincibility. The handful of neo-conservatives who seized power in 2000 like to talk tough, but they’re not saying Bomb Kim Now.
That’s the logic of deterrence, after all. It’s the same argument we use for renewing Trident. It’s why 40 years of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty has left us even more insecure than during the Cold War. At least then there was a balance of terror, and a relatively predictable geopolitical order.
North Korea adds a totally new factor to the equation. For the first time we have nuclear weapons in the hands of someone, Kim Jong Il, who is quite prepared to use them and is not subject to any diplomatic constraint whatever. Kim doesn’t care about sanctions - his people are already starving. He is just the kind of madman who might decide to go out in a blaze of glory.
Which is why he will surely provoke a new nuclear arms race. Japan has been nuclear-free since Hiroshima, but not - I suspect - for much longer. Similarly, South Korea is going to want some guarantees against any nuclear intimidation by a country with which it is still formally at war.
And after them? Well, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, possibly Egypt. Then what about the bellicose Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who has a lot of oil dollars to spend. Brazil might then want its own deterrent. Within a decade, there could be a real possibility of nuclear war breaking out in half a dozen conflict zones.
Was there another way? Of course there was. In the 1990s North Korea was in its box - like Saddam in fact - and was being weaned away from nuclear ambitions by subtle but persistent diplomatic engagement. The Clinton administration had used a combination of fuel oil and economic sanctions to persuade North Korea to freeze its military programme and cease producing plutonium - the key to successful bomb-making. When he lost office North Korea was on the point of giving up nuclear ambitions in exchange for aid and diplomatic recognition. It was only after George W. Bush made his “axis of evil” speech, and cut off the oil, that Kim started producing plutonium again.
Disarmament can work, provided it is clearly in a country’s economic interests to do so. Ukraine unilaterally abandoned nuclear weapons in exchange for economic guarantees, as did South Africa and even Libya. But Bush thinks talking is un-American and decided instead to give them all a taste of “shock and awe” by invading Iraq. He shot himself in the foot even before he took it out of his mouth.
Until we stop giving countries incentives to developing nuclear weapons, we are never going to stop them acquiring them. Of course, diplomatic engagement is difficult, time consuming and frustrating. As with decommissioning the IRA, progress can appear glacial - one step forward, two steps back. But it works in the end, because there is no alternative. Or if there is a military alternative, why are we not using it now?
The power of the West is not primarily military, it is economic and moral. America lacks the resolve and the means even to pacify a ramshackle country like Iraq - it doesn’t ‘do’ occupation. But it won the Cold War. It was always America’s ‘soft power’ - its economic and cultural leadership of the world - that was its real power. Rock music and computers. American democracy became the best political brand on the planet, and everyone wanted a piece of it.
Not any more. Bush destroyed America’s moral hegemony as surely as he destroyed its claim to military invincibility. The handful of neo-conservatives who seized power in 2000 like to talk tough, but they’re not saying Bomb Kim Now.
Bomb Kim Now
We should surely invade North Korea without delay. It possesses the power to detonate a nuclear device but hasn’t yet developed a delivery system. The world surely cannot allow a ruthless dictator, with expansionist ambitions and little concern for the welfare of his people, to hold the world to nuclear ransom. Like a madman with an automatic weapon, he needs to be taken out.
No, I haven’t turned into a Republican warmonger, and I don’t advocate a nuclear strike on Pyongyang. However, I ask you to consider for a moment why you have not heard anyone in the Pentagon advocate such a course of action in the last forty eight hours. The silence speaks volumes.
For if ever there were a case for a pre-emptive strike it should surely be now. After all, we invaded Iraq to deprive a deadly dictator the means to launch nuclear warfare against regional states. Okay, he didn’t actually have any weapons of mass destruction - but there’s no such intelligence difficulty here. You don’t need Hans Blix to confirm that North Korea has WMD in an advanced state of readiness.
The whole point of the Bush/Blair doctrine was supposedly to deprive rogues states of the ability to develop a nuclear capability. This is how the National Security Strategy of the United States put it in 2002: “Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction. The United States will not allow these efforts to success” continued this classic statement of the Bush doctrine, “And as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed”
‘Before they are fully formed’. Well, if that is still what Bush thinks then surely the marines should be preparing to kick some serious Korean butt, because Kim Jong Il has already developed a missile - the Taepodong 1 - capable of hitting targets two thousand kilometres away - he just lacks the means to squeeze a nuke into the warhead.
There is a window of opportunity. Kim heads feeble and paranoid administration with no regional support - even the Chinese have disowned him. East Asia desperately wants him gone. So come on guys - stop fiddling around with sanctions and UN resolutions like some wussy Frenchmen before Baghdad, and put your money where your mouth is. God Bless America!
But of course, this is one butt they can’t kick. For all the big talk after 2001, America and the west has been forced to sit by and watch while the most repellent and unstable dictator on the planet, a murderous megalomaniac who lets his people eat grass while he spends the national product on weapons of mass destruction. , becomes a member of the nuclear club, Tony Blair insists that there is no military option under consideration. The very idea. We only threaten non-nuclear rogue states.
No, I haven’t turned into a Republican warmonger, and I don’t advocate a nuclear strike on Pyongyang. However, I ask you to consider for a moment why you have not heard anyone in the Pentagon advocate such a course of action in the last forty eight hours. The silence speaks volumes.
For if ever there were a case for a pre-emptive strike it should surely be now. After all, we invaded Iraq to deprive a deadly dictator the means to launch nuclear warfare against regional states. Okay, he didn’t actually have any weapons of mass destruction - but there’s no such intelligence difficulty here. You don’t need Hans Blix to confirm that North Korea has WMD in an advanced state of readiness.
The whole point of the Bush/Blair doctrine was supposedly to deprive rogues states of the ability to develop a nuclear capability. This is how the National Security Strategy of the United States put it in 2002: “Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction. The United States will not allow these efforts to success” continued this classic statement of the Bush doctrine, “And as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed”
‘Before they are fully formed’. Well, if that is still what Bush thinks then surely the marines should be preparing to kick some serious Korean butt, because Kim Jong Il has already developed a missile - the Taepodong 1 - capable of hitting targets two thousand kilometres away - he just lacks the means to squeeze a nuke into the warhead.
There is a window of opportunity. Kim heads feeble and paranoid administration with no regional support - even the Chinese have disowned him. East Asia desperately wants him gone. So come on guys - stop fiddling around with sanctions and UN resolutions like some wussy Frenchmen before Baghdad, and put your money where your mouth is. God Bless America!
But of course, this is one butt they can’t kick. For all the big talk after 2001, America and the west has been forced to sit by and watch while the most repellent and unstable dictator on the planet, a murderous megalomaniac who lets his people eat grass while he spends the national product on weapons of mass destruction. , becomes a member of the nuclear club, Tony Blair insists that there is no military option under consideration. The very idea. We only threaten non-nuclear rogue states.
So now we know; they really are mad
According to David Blunkett’s diaries, the Prime Minister told cabinet sceptics in February 2003 that “the management hadn’t lost its marbles” on the eve of the Iraq invasion. But it was clearly a few balls short of a full bag.
Any sane UK administration mighthave wondered what it was getting itself into when the Americans insisted that there would be no need for any civil administration in Iraq. Or military reconstruction after the war. Or that the Iraqi army could be dumped on the dole.
But the madness has now been replicated in Afghanistan where. The sane and well balanced Dr John Reid, when he was Defence Secretary, said British troops would return from Afghanistan “without a shot being fired”. Senior military analysts have been trying unsuccessfully to identify which planet Dr Reid has been living on. In Afghanistan, the army has been facing its most testing military engagement since the Korean War.
With everyone above the rank of junior minister now booking in to the Priory, it’s not too surprising that the generals have decided that they will have to fill the vacuum. The head of the armed forces, General Sir Richard Dannatt, stepped up last week and said what everyone but the government can see as clear as day. That the Western military occupation is part of the problem in Iraq; that we are making the insurgency worse in many areas; that the soldiers are exhausted; and that we should get out as soon as possible. At last, someone talking sense.
This astonishing break with protocol - no serving chief of general staff ever criticised a government publicly for the conduct of a war while the war was still being fought - caused astonishment among politicians of all parties. Even Labour critics of the war, like the former defence minister, Doug Henderson, said Sir Richard had gone too far.
But the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said he “agreed with every word” Sir Richard had said. Now, this really is the politics of the funny farm. If Tony Blair endorses this assessment, then it seems very difficult to know how he can remain in office without sacking himself.
At the very least, the government should be preparing for a change in policy following the imminent departure of Tony Blair from Number Ten. A new beginning, perhaps a few modest apologies, peace with honour. But no. Following the delusional tradition of this administration, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, seems to have decided that, now the war is finally lost, it is time for him to start supporting it.
For, just as everyone accepts that the war has damaged community relations, undermined civil liberties and - through the Iraq engagement - antagonised Muslim nations, the Chancellor has launched a cultural revolution. In his Chatham House speech last week Brown called for a “cultural war” on terror. All government departments, he says have to start fighting a “generation long” struggle against extremism. He wants ID cards and 90 day detention too.
This all sounded rather more Mao Tse-Tung than moral compass. Kim Jong Il isn’t the only delusional politician in charge of nuclear weapons. The madness of King Tony seems to be infectious.
SNP have arrived - about time too
Who would have thought that the SNP would stage the most successful party conference of the entire season? Labour were at war with themselves, the Liberal Democrats shell-shocked ,and the Tories accident prone. The nationalists, by contrast, seemed united, confident, businesslike, purposeful.
Hasn't always been so. I have been to too many nationalist conferences which were little more than an intoxicating shambles. Not this year. Salmond's speech wasn't a master class in political oratory, but it was a first class leader's speech delivered with genuine conviction and a minimum of ad hominem abuse. . Retread he may be, absentee landlord even, but Salmond saw the occasion, and rose to it.
The policies on local hospitals, schools, student debt, renewable energy and business taxes were rolled out clearly and efficiently. True, they weren't properly costed overall ( the Chancellor will do that for them) and it was a little rich for the SNP to start calling for higher drink prices after decades demanding cuts in whisky duty.
So, what has gone right? Is Tom Farmer’s money already reaching the parts Sean Connery’s could not reach? Has Cardinal Keith O’Brien put God on their side? Well, the SNP has been quietly getting its act together for some time now, and has been trying to formulate a coherent policy agenda instead of a post-independence wish list.
The experience of the Scottish Parliament has been upsetting in many ways for the nationalists. But the discipline of participating in a real legislative forum for seven and a half years has forced the SNP to become more professional and to accept the compromises involved in being a party that aspires to government.
I think the SNP has also come to terms in its heart that independence, as it traditionally conceived it, is an anachronism. Now, of course, no one says this publicly in the movement, and even privately, nationalists remain nationalists. But there is a much more realistic and incremental approach to national freedom, which is now shared by a wide range of non-SNP opinion in Scotland.
They have plenty of time, of course, to screw it up. The SNP are past masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have been much further ahead of Labour before in the polls, only to fall before the finish line. Their policies have yet to be tested in the heat of battle, and some - like the abolition of all student debt - look very expensive.
Moreover, Salmond’s remarkable statement, in his interview for the Sunday Herald, that “the largest party will always have the moral authority” to form the governing coalition, could be a hostage to fortune. No one seriously believes that the SNP can win a larger number of seats than Labour in May.
But the nationalist are on their way at last. Come in Mr Salmond, your time is up.
Hasn't always been so. I have been to too many nationalist conferences which were little more than an intoxicating shambles. Not this year. Salmond's speech wasn't a master class in political oratory, but it was a first class leader's speech delivered with genuine conviction and a minimum of ad hominem abuse. . Retread he may be, absentee landlord even, but Salmond saw the occasion, and rose to it.
The policies on local hospitals, schools, student debt, renewable energy and business taxes were rolled out clearly and efficiently. True, they weren't properly costed overall ( the Chancellor will do that for them) and it was a little rich for the SNP to start calling for higher drink prices after decades demanding cuts in whisky duty.
So, what has gone right? Is Tom Farmer’s money already reaching the parts Sean Connery’s could not reach? Has Cardinal Keith O’Brien put God on their side? Well, the SNP has been quietly getting its act together for some time now, and has been trying to formulate a coherent policy agenda instead of a post-independence wish list.
The experience of the Scottish Parliament has been upsetting in many ways for the nationalists. But the discipline of participating in a real legislative forum for seven and a half years has forced the SNP to become more professional and to accept the compromises involved in being a party that aspires to government.
I think the SNP has also come to terms in its heart that independence, as it traditionally conceived it, is an anachronism. Now, of course, no one says this publicly in the movement, and even privately, nationalists remain nationalists. But there is a much more realistic and incremental approach to national freedom, which is now shared by a wide range of non-SNP opinion in Scotland.
They have plenty of time, of course, to screw it up. The SNP are past masters at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have been much further ahead of Labour before in the polls, only to fall before the finish line. Their policies have yet to be tested in the heat of battle, and some - like the abolition of all student debt - look very expensive.
Moreover, Salmond’s remarkable statement, in his interview for the Sunday Herald, that “the largest party will always have the moral authority” to form the governing coalition, could be a hostage to fortune. No one seriously believes that the SNP can win a larger number of seats than Labour in May.
But the nationalist are on their way at last. Come in Mr Salmond, your time is up.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Lomborg
The Scottish Parliament discovered climate change this week - or rather the denial of it. The Futures Forum had decided to invite one of the last of the climate change sceptics, the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg.
Now, there’s not a lot of argument these days about the basics of climate change. The scientific consensus is so complete that few serious academics try to buck it. The national academies of science of all the G8 industrialised countries, and China and India, all agree that climate change is happening, we’re responsible for it, and something has to be done. Even Rupert Murdoch accepts this now.
The only question about climate change is why we do nothing about it. Well Bjorn Lomborg is one reason. This photogenic author of “The Sceptical Environmentalist” “one of the 100 most influential people on the planet”, according to Time magazine is feted across the America for telling it what it wants to hear.
But here’s the catch - even Bjorn Lomborg now accepts climate change. He told Holyrood on Thursday: “there is no doubt that climate change is happening and that the poorer countries will be hit hardest”. Game over.
Where he departs from the consensus is in what to do about it. Lomborg believes that there are more important things to worry about than something which may not have any impact for centuries. “Kyoto is a luxury we can’t afford”, he says. Better to spend 7 trillion on combating HIV, providing clean water to sub Saharan Africa, combating malaria etc etc. “Save people, not the planet”, he says.
Well, it’s a superficially attractive argument. And seems to have a number of supporters in the Scottish parliament. Though the Scottish Executive chooses to spend its money, not on the poor, but on new motorways and fast links to airports, thus encouraging the two forms of transport which are most profligate in their use of fossil fuels.
The point is this: not doing something about climate doesn’t actually help anyone, certainly not the poor. Lomborg says that Kyoto is a misallocation of resources which should have gone to the Third World. But America’s boycott of Kyoto in 1998 didn’t lead to more resources for the wretched of the earth.
All that Lomborg’s arguments do is delay any action about climate change, which is why he is so popular with American corporate interests. And this is a delay that could simply cost the earth. Even he agrees with this, though he thinks that the imminence and catastrophic nature of the climate change disaster has been exaggerated.
Of course, there is doubt about exactly what the impact will be. The scientific consensus is that global warming will lead to climate instability, but you can’t predict exactly how fast the glaciers will retreat or the polar ice melt. Scotland may get another mini ice age as a consequence of the Gulf Stream being switched off.
But what we do know is this: recent decades have seen the highest temperatures in a thousand years. Temperatures rise with increases in the concentration of C02 in the atmosphere.
At around 360ppm this concentration is currently the highest in 650,000 rise, and it is set to rise dramatically in the next four decades, to 600ppm..
The government’s own chief scientist, Sir David King, says that the planet cannot sustain this without “consequences which are likely to be catastrophic in nature”. So, do we go along with the consensus of the world’s climate scientists? Or do we do nothing. Indeed, do we go on promoting the very policies that are making this potential catastrophe more actual?
I know who I go with, and I hope the Scottish parliament, next time, will invite someone who knows what they’re talking about.
Now, there’s not a lot of argument these days about the basics of climate change. The scientific consensus is so complete that few serious academics try to buck it. The national academies of science of all the G8 industrialised countries, and China and India, all agree that climate change is happening, we’re responsible for it, and something has to be done. Even Rupert Murdoch accepts this now.
The only question about climate change is why we do nothing about it. Well Bjorn Lomborg is one reason. This photogenic author of “The Sceptical Environmentalist” “one of the 100 most influential people on the planet”, according to Time magazine is feted across the America for telling it what it wants to hear.
But here’s the catch - even Bjorn Lomborg now accepts climate change. He told Holyrood on Thursday: “there is no doubt that climate change is happening and that the poorer countries will be hit hardest”. Game over.
Where he departs from the consensus is in what to do about it. Lomborg believes that there are more important things to worry about than something which may not have any impact for centuries. “Kyoto is a luxury we can’t afford”, he says. Better to spend 7 trillion on combating HIV, providing clean water to sub Saharan Africa, combating malaria etc etc. “Save people, not the planet”, he says.
Well, it’s a superficially attractive argument. And seems to have a number of supporters in the Scottish parliament. Though the Scottish Executive chooses to spend its money, not on the poor, but on new motorways and fast links to airports, thus encouraging the two forms of transport which are most profligate in their use of fossil fuels.
The point is this: not doing something about climate doesn’t actually help anyone, certainly not the poor. Lomborg says that Kyoto is a misallocation of resources which should have gone to the Third World. But America’s boycott of Kyoto in 1998 didn’t lead to more resources for the wretched of the earth.
All that Lomborg’s arguments do is delay any action about climate change, which is why he is so popular with American corporate interests. And this is a delay that could simply cost the earth. Even he agrees with this, though he thinks that the imminence and catastrophic nature of the climate change disaster has been exaggerated.
Of course, there is doubt about exactly what the impact will be. The scientific consensus is that global warming will lead to climate instability, but you can’t predict exactly how fast the glaciers will retreat or the polar ice melt. Scotland may get another mini ice age as a consequence of the Gulf Stream being switched off.
But what we do know is this: recent decades have seen the highest temperatures in a thousand years. Temperatures rise with increases in the concentration of C02 in the atmosphere.
At around 360ppm this concentration is currently the highest in 650,000 rise, and it is set to rise dramatically in the next four decades, to 600ppm..
The government’s own chief scientist, Sir David King, says that the planet cannot sustain this without “consequences which are likely to be catastrophic in nature”. So, do we go along with the consensus of the world’s climate scientists? Or do we do nothing. Indeed, do we go on promoting the very policies that are making this potential catastrophe more actual?
I know who I go with, and I hope the Scottish parliament, next time, will invite someone who knows what they’re talking about.
It's not just Roy Hattersley who'll shoot himself
John Reid must not become leader of the Labour Party. This pugnacious product of the Lanarkshire Labour badlands is temperamentally unsuited to the role of Prime Minister. He is an aggressive and unstable character who thrives on confrontation and conspiracy. The thought of John Reid with his finger on the nuclear button is frankly terrifying.
This is the politician who thought it was appropriate to spend three days in a luxury hotel with Radovan Karadzic. He famously punched a House of Commons attendant in 1991 during his years as a violent alcoholic. But giving up the bottle didn’t tame his temper. He nearly came to blows with the late Donald Dewar - no pugilist he - over the so-called “lobbygate affair” in 1999. The next First Minister, Henry McLeish, described Reid as a “patonising bastard”.
Reid’s son Kevin, who working for the firm Beattie Media, had been secretly taped boasting of his access to ministers. Kevin Reid’s subsequent employment as a parliamentary researcher led to the astonishing confrontation between the then Northern Ireland Secretary and the parliamentary standards commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin.
She accused John Reid of intimidating witnesses and attempting to undermine her inquiries. She even had tape recordings of Reid browbeating the former general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Alex Rowley into committing perjury.
Ms Filkin - who subsequently resigned - said "the conduct of Dr Reid caused serious and increasing concern" and it has continued to do so. He has been in eight ministerial posts in his post-alcoholic career each more disastrous than the last.
When he was at health he negotiated the disastrous consultants pay deal which, with the parallel GP contracts, has been a major cause of the current financial crisis at the NHS. At defence he famously attacked “rogue elements” in M15 and M16 and said that British soldiers in Afghanistan would “return without firing a shot”.
Now at the Home Office, he claimed that the department was “not fit for purpose” and promised to fire senior civil servants over illegal immigration. However, he has not succeeded in tracking down the foreign prisoners released without being assessed for deportation - the reason for his predecessor, Charles Clarke’s removal. The issue has been quietly dropped.
Instead, Reid has done what he has always been best at - being Tony Blair's attack dog. Mouthing slogans about “the presumption of deportation”, attacking civil libertarians, confronting British Muslims, and enthusiastically fronting the latest round of anti-terror legislation including 90 day detention.
. Most didn’t notice, but in his farewell speech Tony Blair set out Reid’s leadership prospectus by saying that Labour should attack David Cameron for being soft on criminals and too anti-American. This was a direct appeal to Reid as the only man willing to take on the Tories from the Right, rather than the Left.
Tony Blair was extravagant in his praise for Reid conference speech, the opening bid in Reid’s campaign for the leadership. But if Labour installs him as its leader, the party will complete its transition to an authoritarian party of the populist right. It will mean riots at home; new wars abroad. There will be imprisonment without trial, a massive increase in police powers, curbs on immigration.
This must not happen. If Reid becomes leader, I will be voting for David Cameron.
This is the politician who thought it was appropriate to spend three days in a luxury hotel with Radovan Karadzic. He famously punched a House of Commons attendant in 1991 during his years as a violent alcoholic. But giving up the bottle didn’t tame his temper. He nearly came to blows with the late Donald Dewar - no pugilist he - over the so-called “lobbygate affair” in 1999. The next First Minister, Henry McLeish, described Reid as a “patonising bastard”.
Reid’s son Kevin, who working for the firm Beattie Media, had been secretly taped boasting of his access to ministers. Kevin Reid’s subsequent employment as a parliamentary researcher led to the astonishing confrontation between the then Northern Ireland Secretary and the parliamentary standards commissioner, Elizabeth Filkin.
She accused John Reid of intimidating witnesses and attempting to undermine her inquiries. She even had tape recordings of Reid browbeating the former general secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Alex Rowley into committing perjury.
Ms Filkin - who subsequently resigned - said "the conduct of Dr Reid caused serious and increasing concern" and it has continued to do so. He has been in eight ministerial posts in his post-alcoholic career each more disastrous than the last.
When he was at health he negotiated the disastrous consultants pay deal which, with the parallel GP contracts, has been a major cause of the current financial crisis at the NHS. At defence he famously attacked “rogue elements” in M15 and M16 and said that British soldiers in Afghanistan would “return without firing a shot”.
Now at the Home Office, he claimed that the department was “not fit for purpose” and promised to fire senior civil servants over illegal immigration. However, he has not succeeded in tracking down the foreign prisoners released without being assessed for deportation - the reason for his predecessor, Charles Clarke’s removal. The issue has been quietly dropped.
Instead, Reid has done what he has always been best at - being Tony Blair's attack dog. Mouthing slogans about “the presumption of deportation”, attacking civil libertarians, confronting British Muslims, and enthusiastically fronting the latest round of anti-terror legislation including 90 day detention.
. Most didn’t notice, but in his farewell speech Tony Blair set out Reid’s leadership prospectus by saying that Labour should attack David Cameron for being soft on criminals and too anti-American. This was a direct appeal to Reid as the only man willing to take on the Tories from the Right, rather than the Left.
Tony Blair was extravagant in his praise for Reid conference speech, the opening bid in Reid’s campaign for the leadership. But if Labour installs him as its leader, the party will complete its transition to an authoritarian party of the populist right. It will mean riots at home; new wars abroad. There will be imprisonment without trial, a massive increase in police powers, curbs on immigration.
This must not happen. If Reid becomes leader, I will be voting for David Cameron.
Brown's too Scottish
Let's face it. Gordon's real problem is that he's just too Scottish. A lot of the recent sniping at his driven, dour, brooding and 'uncollegiate' nature is code for Brown's unreconstructed Caledonianism. Why don't they just come out and admit it?
Many Labour politicians are open about the nationality issue in private. Some of them are Scottish themselves.
Blairites don't really think Brown is a socialist who'll turn the clock back on new Labour. The Chancellor practically invented new Labour and is in many respects more neo-liberal than Blair. What they fear is that he will revive 'southern discomfort' among the English lower middle classes.
They think that much of David Cameron's appeal - as registered in Friday's Guardian/ICM poll' - is a reflection of this latent hostility to the beetle-browed Scot. "He just makes people feel uncomfortable", as one ex-Labour minister put it.
"Bulldog " Brown's recent embarrassing attempts to affirm his "Britishness" betray his own anxiety that nationality is his Achilles heal. Brown made himself a laughing stock in Scotland during the World Cup by saying his favourite sporting moment was an English goal against Scotland and that he wanted to see a Cross of St George in every Scottish garden. That kind of Uncle Tom tokenism fools no one.
Blairites think the Tories will relentlessly target Brown's Scottishness and they're probably right. Cameron's 'team stop Brown' is working on plans to undermine the Chancellor's right to be in government at all.
Since he sits for a Scottish seat, Tories will argue, Brown should not become Prime Minister on constititutional grounds. He'd impose policies on England which have no impact on his own Scottish constituents. "English votes they cry, for English laws!". Scottish MPs should not be able to vote on English bills, like variable tuition fees, when they don't apply in devolved Scotland
The irony of Brown's plans to devolve the NHS is of course that it will stop at the Border, as did Blair's market reforms to health and education. Some conspiracists think that Brown only supported devolution in the first place so that he could create a socialist homeland in Scotland, which would be immune to modernisation.
Pure fantasy of course. Brown loathes the Labour First Minister, Jack McConnell and all he stands for. But the level of paranoia in Labour right now is beyond reason. A tribal war has broken out, which has robbed the party of its senses.
Anyone with an ounce of political nous can see that Brown is Labour's best indeed its only hope. He's the longest serving and most successful Chancellor in 200 years. The only thing that's gone right is the economy.
It's Labour's USP.
It's not as if there's an alternative. Brown is an internationally respected figure, praised by everyone from Bill Clinton to the World Bank. Alan Johnson is a postman.
Yet the Blairites and their press tribunes seem determined to 'scotch' Brown's chances by conducting a rebarbative running commentary on his alleged character flaws and his offensiveness to English sensibilities.
Yes, for the first time in my adult lifetime, race has become the key issue in British politics. And Labour has pressed the self-destruct button.
Many Labour politicians are open about the nationality issue in private. Some of them are Scottish themselves.
Blairites don't really think Brown is a socialist who'll turn the clock back on new Labour. The Chancellor practically invented new Labour and is in many respects more neo-liberal than Blair. What they fear is that he will revive 'southern discomfort' among the English lower middle classes.
They think that much of David Cameron's appeal - as registered in Friday's Guardian/ICM poll' - is a reflection of this latent hostility to the beetle-browed Scot. "He just makes people feel uncomfortable", as one ex-Labour minister put it.
"Bulldog " Brown's recent embarrassing attempts to affirm his "Britishness" betray his own anxiety that nationality is his Achilles heal. Brown made himself a laughing stock in Scotland during the World Cup by saying his favourite sporting moment was an English goal against Scotland and that he wanted to see a Cross of St George in every Scottish garden. That kind of Uncle Tom tokenism fools no one.
Blairites think the Tories will relentlessly target Brown's Scottishness and they're probably right. Cameron's 'team stop Brown' is working on plans to undermine the Chancellor's right to be in government at all.
Since he sits for a Scottish seat, Tories will argue, Brown should not become Prime Minister on constititutional grounds. He'd impose policies on England which have no impact on his own Scottish constituents. "English votes they cry, for English laws!". Scottish MPs should not be able to vote on English bills, like variable tuition fees, when they don't apply in devolved Scotland
The irony of Brown's plans to devolve the NHS is of course that it will stop at the Border, as did Blair's market reforms to health and education. Some conspiracists think that Brown only supported devolution in the first place so that he could create a socialist homeland in Scotland, which would be immune to modernisation.
Pure fantasy of course. Brown loathes the Labour First Minister, Jack McConnell and all he stands for. But the level of paranoia in Labour right now is beyond reason. A tribal war has broken out, which has robbed the party of its senses.
Anyone with an ounce of political nous can see that Brown is Labour's best indeed its only hope. He's the longest serving and most successful Chancellor in 200 years. The only thing that's gone right is the economy.
It's Labour's USP.
It's not as if there's an alternative. Brown is an internationally respected figure, praised by everyone from Bill Clinton to the World Bank. Alan Johnson is a postman.
Yet the Blairites and their press tribunes seem determined to 'scotch' Brown's chances by conducting a rebarbative running commentary on his alleged character flaws and his offensiveness to English sensibilities.
Yes, for the first time in my adult lifetime, race has become the key issue in British politics. And Labour has pressed the self-destruct button.
Scottish coalition problem solved
Sorted. The great conundrum in Scottish politics - how to get the Liberal Democrats and the SNP to overcome their referendum difficulties - has been resolved, I can reveal.
Well, ‘resolved’, may be a little premature, since you can never over estimate the capacity of political parties to invent divisions. However, it is now possible to see how Nicol Stephen and Alex Salmond can get over the issue of a referendum on independence. If they want to.
First, the problem. Last week, in Brighton, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Nicol Stephen, appeared to shatter hopes of a Lib-Nat coalition when he re-affirmed that he would, on no account, accept a referendum on independence as part of a deal with Alex Salmond’s SNP. This is firstly because they are unionist and say they would do nothing to undermine it, and secondly because a referendum would dominate any SNP-Lib coalition to the distraction of everything else. With such a big event on the horizon - the possible extinction of the Union - Libs say it would be very difficult to get anyone interested in lesser matters like abolishing the council tax or promoting energy self-sufficiency.
Now, since the Scottish National Party is committed to holding a referendum within the first term of any SNP administration, that appeared to be the end of the coalition. Except that it isn’t. For it turns out that the LibDem reservations about a referendum are increasingly shared by SNP MSPs. Indeed, as we report today, the former chief executive of the SNP, Mike Russell, argues against an automatic referendum on independence in his new book “Grasping the Thistle”. Most MSPs I speak to seem to agree.
After all, what is the point of having a referendum which the SNP is likely to lose? If it fails to win a majority in a parliamentary election it assuredly will lose the referendum too, and could destroy itself in the process.
The SNP is committed to tabling a bill for its independence referendum within the first hundred days of their entering government. This would provoke a huge row with Westminster, if for no other reason than that the constitution is a reserved matter. The full forces of the unionist media would be directed at the “teenage madness” of a novice SNP, with no experience of government, trying to subvert the constitution. Prime Minister Gordon “bulldog” Brown would warn of the dire consequences of cutting Scotland’s financial lifeline, erecting customs posts at the border etc..
Westminster might even try to pre-empt the Scottish National Party by calling a referendum on its own account, perhaps adding a third option of ‘federalism’ to the ballot paper. The Liberal Democrats would support this. The result would be that no option gained an absolute majority, and the whole thing would descend into farce.
No, the more you go into it, the more self-destructive SNP policy looks. The referendum was anyway, a political device to stop Labour saying that the SNP would break up Britain on day one after winning an election. The referendum allowed the SNP to assure wavering voters that voting SNP did not mean an inevitable divorce with Britain.
But the SNP approach to independence has evolved in the six years since they agreed the new policy. Nationalists now talk of “completing the powers” of the Scottish Parliament, an incremental process, rather than a ‘big bang’ independence event. A referendum would still be necessary, but it is a long way off.
A very long way off, it appears. For, last week, when asked by a sunday newspaper whether an independence referendum remained a non negotiable condition of any coalition, Alex Salmond said: “Yes - if we win.” Hmm. So, what if they don’t win? Well, this is where it gets interesting.
What the SNP leader is saying - as I understand it - is that if the SNP wins the race, ie become the largest party in May, then a referendum will be a condition of any deal. However, it would NOT be a condition if the SNP fails to win a majority of seats. With one bound, the SNP is free.
No one seriously believes that the SNP is going to beat Labour at the next election, and it doesn’t need to win to be in government. If the SNP returned , say, 36 seats to Labour’s 46, and the Liberal Democrats came back with 20 and the Greens 10 - the possibility opens of a Nat-Lib-Green coalition, without the SNP winning anything at all.
Now, things start to look clearer. Nicol Stephen’s precondition can be met because the SNP’s precondition is shelved for the life of the parliament. Instead, the parties could look to form a coalition around the Liberal-backed Steel Commission proposals, published earlier this year, which, involve massive extension of the powers of the Scottish parliament in to broadcasting, tax, even immigration and welfare. The referendum would become a kind of post-nationalist Clause 4.
This may all sound like fantasy politics, and in a sense it is. But look at the arithmetic. With the polls putting the SNP level with Labour, and with more people than ever telling pollsters for the Electoral Commission that they want more powers for Holyrood, there is the real possibility of an alternative.
I’m not saying that the parties will seize it. Indeed, I fear that for their own essentially tribal reasons, the opposition parties would rather NOT have to form an administration. But for the first time, it is now possible for it to happen. That a start at least.
Well, ‘resolved’, may be a little premature, since you can never over estimate the capacity of political parties to invent divisions. However, it is now possible to see how Nicol Stephen and Alex Salmond can get over the issue of a referendum on independence. If they want to.
First, the problem. Last week, in Brighton, the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Nicol Stephen, appeared to shatter hopes of a Lib-Nat coalition when he re-affirmed that he would, on no account, accept a referendum on independence as part of a deal with Alex Salmond’s SNP. This is firstly because they are unionist and say they would do nothing to undermine it, and secondly because a referendum would dominate any SNP-Lib coalition to the distraction of everything else. With such a big event on the horizon - the possible extinction of the Union - Libs say it would be very difficult to get anyone interested in lesser matters like abolishing the council tax or promoting energy self-sufficiency.
Now, since the Scottish National Party is committed to holding a referendum within the first term of any SNP administration, that appeared to be the end of the coalition. Except that it isn’t. For it turns out that the LibDem reservations about a referendum are increasingly shared by SNP MSPs. Indeed, as we report today, the former chief executive of the SNP, Mike Russell, argues against an automatic referendum on independence in his new book “Grasping the Thistle”. Most MSPs I speak to seem to agree.
After all, what is the point of having a referendum which the SNP is likely to lose? If it fails to win a majority in a parliamentary election it assuredly will lose the referendum too, and could destroy itself in the process.
The SNP is committed to tabling a bill for its independence referendum within the first hundred days of their entering government. This would provoke a huge row with Westminster, if for no other reason than that the constitution is a reserved matter. The full forces of the unionist media would be directed at the “teenage madness” of a novice SNP, with no experience of government, trying to subvert the constitution. Prime Minister Gordon “bulldog” Brown would warn of the dire consequences of cutting Scotland’s financial lifeline, erecting customs posts at the border etc..
Westminster might even try to pre-empt the Scottish National Party by calling a referendum on its own account, perhaps adding a third option of ‘federalism’ to the ballot paper. The Liberal Democrats would support this. The result would be that no option gained an absolute majority, and the whole thing would descend into farce.
No, the more you go into it, the more self-destructive SNP policy looks. The referendum was anyway, a political device to stop Labour saying that the SNP would break up Britain on day one after winning an election. The referendum allowed the SNP to assure wavering voters that voting SNP did not mean an inevitable divorce with Britain.
But the SNP approach to independence has evolved in the six years since they agreed the new policy. Nationalists now talk of “completing the powers” of the Scottish Parliament, an incremental process, rather than a ‘big bang’ independence event. A referendum would still be necessary, but it is a long way off.
A very long way off, it appears. For, last week, when asked by a sunday newspaper whether an independence referendum remained a non negotiable condition of any coalition, Alex Salmond said: “Yes - if we win.” Hmm. So, what if they don’t win? Well, this is where it gets interesting.
What the SNP leader is saying - as I understand it - is that if the SNP wins the race, ie become the largest party in May, then a referendum will be a condition of any deal. However, it would NOT be a condition if the SNP fails to win a majority of seats. With one bound, the SNP is free.
No one seriously believes that the SNP is going to beat Labour at the next election, and it doesn’t need to win to be in government. If the SNP returned , say, 36 seats to Labour’s 46, and the Liberal Democrats came back with 20 and the Greens 10 - the possibility opens of a Nat-Lib-Green coalition, without the SNP winning anything at all.
Now, things start to look clearer. Nicol Stephen’s precondition can be met because the SNP’s precondition is shelved for the life of the parliament. Instead, the parties could look to form a coalition around the Liberal-backed Steel Commission proposals, published earlier this year, which, involve massive extension of the powers of the Scottish parliament in to broadcasting, tax, even immigration and welfare. The referendum would become a kind of post-nationalist Clause 4.
This may all sound like fantasy politics, and in a sense it is. But look at the arithmetic. With the polls putting the SNP level with Labour, and with more people than ever telling pollsters for the Electoral Commission that they want more powers for Holyrood, there is the real possibility of an alternative.
I’m not saying that the parties will seize it. Indeed, I fear that for their own essentially tribal reasons, the opposition parties would rather NOT have to form an administration. But for the first time, it is now possible for it to happen. That a start at least.
Brown must go Green
What a week. The government of California took leading car manufacturers to court for manufacturing polluting vehicles; Richard Branson said he would plow the proceeds of his various transport interests into renewable energy; we learned that the Arctic is melting so fast that it’s possible to sail to the North Pole; and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research said that we would have to cut C02 emsissions by 90% by 2050 to avert catastrophe.
What does all this have to do with Gordon Brown? Everything. Assuming he makes it to Number Ten, climate change is the issue that will dominate his administration. Brown will have to be green. Management of the environment, and the lifestyle changes required to global warming, will dominate all democratic politics over the next two decades.
And there seems little doubt that it is Brown whom history has chosen to address this problem. Friday’s Guardian/ICM poll may have shown him trailing the Tory leader, David Cameron, in personal character, but that’s hardly surprising after a month of character assasasination from the Chancellor’s own colleagues. When the papers have been full of ex-Labour ministers accusing Brown of “back-stabbing” “stupidity” and “psychological flaws” it’s hardly surprising that the public picks up the theme.
But when people start to consider who they want to run the country, and who they want to deal with the massive challenges ahead, it seems likely they will agree with the vast majority of the Labour Party that Gordon Brown is the only politician around with the experience, intellect and confidence to meet the demands of the times.
Like him or loathe him, Brown is simply the most substantial politician of his generation. The longest-serving and most successful Chancellor in 200 years, an international figure who is able to win the support of othe IMF to Make Poverty History. John Reid and Alan Johnson are also rans even before the race has begun. Their shallowness is matched only by their equivocation.
The Chancellor is an internationalist, a moralist and a ‘do’-er. He revels in complexity and big projects, and in addressing the great ethical issues of the times, as her showed over the G8 anti-poverty drive. Climate change is the biggest and most complex problem around. And it’s happening now.
There is a marked change in public attitudes taking place as the success of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” has indicated. Even in America, home of climate-change denial, 70% of the population now accepts that climate change is happening, according to the polling organisation, Zogby. The science of climate change has never really been in doubt, but the various commercial forces which sought - like tobacco manufactureres in the 1950’s - to sow doubt are on the run. There wills soon be nowhere left to hide as the glaciers melt and the seas rise.
The recrimination has already begun. The public are going to be very, very angry about and will want to find out who is to blame. I would not like to be on the boards of big oil, big carm big air or big power in the next twenty years. Not only will their stock be worthless, they could become the target of mass litigation. Airline boss Richard Branson may be protecting his own back.
An entire generation of politicians also stand accused of fiddling while the world burned. Government’s pursued profligate energy policies when the government’s own advisers, like Lord King the chief scientist(?) had been warning them that the carbon economy was killing us. They will have to unlearn their habits of spin, short-termism and consumerism.
Gordon Brown realises the people behave best when they are faced by a great challenge and common purpose. The Second World War brought an entire generation together, across class boundaries, and created the moral climate for the creation of the National Health Service, which Brown loves. The challenge of climate change is greater than any in human history.
When there is a common moral goal, a lot of political problems disappear. The new climate-conscioiusness will make it very much easier to deal with problems like transport and housing. People will accept limitations on their freedoms when they accept the moral and social purpose of them. Theis is the lesson of the Scottish smoking ban. Similarly, restrictions on car use, smaller houses, higher heating bills, reduced foreign travel will be relatively easy to achieve, once people accept the reality of the situation.
As Al Gore points out in “An Inconvenient Truth” the means to reduce CO2 emissions are already to hand. The technology is not complex; it just needs the political will. As it happens, Britain is rather well adapted to the new kind of post-carbon economy. We don’t have a mass car industry for a start.
Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal energy, and we have an excellent record of developing renewable technologies - though unfortunately we have a habit of handing the development of them to other countries.
Brown could use climate change to address a whole series of domestic problems, like congestion and the housing crisis. Infrastructure itself becomes a moral crusade. What about a network of fast rail links, bringing Scotland and England closer together, and integrating our economy with the rest of Europe? This would greatly reduce dependency on motor transport. Tesco is already shifting freight to rail.
The costs of heating and insulation will inevitably bring house prices in Britain back to earth. But the economy needn’t crash with them. What will be needed is a national programme for building smaller, affordable, energy-efficient housing units, using micro-generation for power, to replace Britain’s out-dated housing stock.
So, greening Britain could actually promote economic development and bring together a number of strands of Brown’s policy agenda. The Chancellor will have noticed the favourable response to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell’s, new green taxes unveiled at the LibDem conference in Brighton last week. Brown has been toying with the idea of switching the burden of taxation from income to pollution. I suspect he might lift a lot of the LibDem ideas wholesale.
Green taxation could even provide the theme for any Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition after the next general election in 2009. It is becoming clear that Labour is unlikely to win a working overall majority, and reducing C02 could be the basis for cooperation across parties. Brown could even challenge David Cameron to put his money where his mouth is and back an agreed programme of infrastructural and taxation changes aimed at ending carbon incontinence.
Cometh the hour; cometh the man. You can readily imagine Brown at global press event with Al Gore, Bill Clinton announcing the creation of institutions designed to meet the international impact of climate change. It’s going to happen, and Brown is up for it. People were wondering what replaced socialism. This may be it.
What does all this have to do with Gordon Brown? Everything. Assuming he makes it to Number Ten, climate change is the issue that will dominate his administration. Brown will have to be green. Management of the environment, and the lifestyle changes required to global warming, will dominate all democratic politics over the next two decades.
And there seems little doubt that it is Brown whom history has chosen to address this problem. Friday’s Guardian/ICM poll may have shown him trailing the Tory leader, David Cameron, in personal character, but that’s hardly surprising after a month of character assasasination from the Chancellor’s own colleagues. When the papers have been full of ex-Labour ministers accusing Brown of “back-stabbing” “stupidity” and “psychological flaws” it’s hardly surprising that the public picks up the theme.
But when people start to consider who they want to run the country, and who they want to deal with the massive challenges ahead, it seems likely they will agree with the vast majority of the Labour Party that Gordon Brown is the only politician around with the experience, intellect and confidence to meet the demands of the times.
Like him or loathe him, Brown is simply the most substantial politician of his generation. The longest-serving and most successful Chancellor in 200 years, an international figure who is able to win the support of othe IMF to Make Poverty History. John Reid and Alan Johnson are also rans even before the race has begun. Their shallowness is matched only by their equivocation.
The Chancellor is an internationalist, a moralist and a ‘do’-er. He revels in complexity and big projects, and in addressing the great ethical issues of the times, as her showed over the G8 anti-poverty drive. Climate change is the biggest and most complex problem around. And it’s happening now.
There is a marked change in public attitudes taking place as the success of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” has indicated. Even in America, home of climate-change denial, 70% of the population now accepts that climate change is happening, according to the polling organisation, Zogby. The science of climate change has never really been in doubt, but the various commercial forces which sought - like tobacco manufactureres in the 1950’s - to sow doubt are on the run. There wills soon be nowhere left to hide as the glaciers melt and the seas rise.
The recrimination has already begun. The public are going to be very, very angry about and will want to find out who is to blame. I would not like to be on the boards of big oil, big carm big air or big power in the next twenty years. Not only will their stock be worthless, they could become the target of mass litigation. Airline boss Richard Branson may be protecting his own back.
An entire generation of politicians also stand accused of fiddling while the world burned. Government’s pursued profligate energy policies when the government’s own advisers, like Lord King the chief scientist(?) had been warning them that the carbon economy was killing us. They will have to unlearn their habits of spin, short-termism and consumerism.
Gordon Brown realises the people behave best when they are faced by a great challenge and common purpose. The Second World War brought an entire generation together, across class boundaries, and created the moral climate for the creation of the National Health Service, which Brown loves. The challenge of climate change is greater than any in human history.
When there is a common moral goal, a lot of political problems disappear. The new climate-conscioiusness will make it very much easier to deal with problems like transport and housing. People will accept limitations on their freedoms when they accept the moral and social purpose of them. Theis is the lesson of the Scottish smoking ban. Similarly, restrictions on car use, smaller houses, higher heating bills, reduced foreign travel will be relatively easy to achieve, once people accept the reality of the situation.
As Al Gore points out in “An Inconvenient Truth” the means to reduce CO2 emissions are already to hand. The technology is not complex; it just needs the political will. As it happens, Britain is rather well adapted to the new kind of post-carbon economy. We don’t have a mass car industry for a start.
Scotland has 25% of Europe’s wind and tidal energy, and we have an excellent record of developing renewable technologies - though unfortunately we have a habit of handing the development of them to other countries.
Brown could use climate change to address a whole series of domestic problems, like congestion and the housing crisis. Infrastructure itself becomes a moral crusade. What about a network of fast rail links, bringing Scotland and England closer together, and integrating our economy with the rest of Europe? This would greatly reduce dependency on motor transport. Tesco is already shifting freight to rail.
The costs of heating and insulation will inevitably bring house prices in Britain back to earth. But the economy needn’t crash with them. What will be needed is a national programme for building smaller, affordable, energy-efficient housing units, using micro-generation for power, to replace Britain’s out-dated housing stock.
So, greening Britain could actually promote economic development and bring together a number of strands of Brown’s policy agenda. The Chancellor will have noticed the favourable response to the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell’s, new green taxes unveiled at the LibDem conference in Brighton last week. Brown has been toying with the idea of switching the burden of taxation from income to pollution. I suspect he might lift a lot of the LibDem ideas wholesale.
Green taxation could even provide the theme for any Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition after the next general election in 2009. It is becoming clear that Labour is unlikely to win a working overall majority, and reducing C02 could be the basis for cooperation across parties. Brown could even challenge David Cameron to put his money where his mouth is and back an agreed programme of infrastructural and taxation changes aimed at ending carbon incontinence.
Cometh the hour; cometh the man. You can readily imagine Brown at global press event with Al Gore, Bill Clinton announcing the creation of institutions designed to meet the international impact of climate change. It’s going to happen, and Brown is up for it. People were wondering what replaced socialism. This may be it.
The Scottish Press is Doomed
We're all doomed - how often have we heard the Scottish media sound its own death knell? But look around – the stench of decay is unmistakable.
The Scottish press is engaged in a desperate war of all against all in a rapidly-shrinking market. Scottish broadcasting is in a dreadful state, with stv having given up the ghost, slashing staff and factual programming, while BBC Scotland is forcing through cuts of 25 per cent in its news and current affairs budget. The Scottish parliamentary elections are seven months away.
Just imagine if the BBC in London had tried to cut network news and current affairs by a quarter in an election year? There would have been a political outcry, a media firestorm. But the Scottish quality press has utterly failed to appreciate the significance of this act of cultural vandalism, even after the resignation of Blair Jenkins, the highly respected head of News and Current Affairs at BBC Scotland. Jenkins resigned after making clear to BBC bosses that there was no way he could sustain the quality of output with the loss of a quarter of his journalists.
Collapsing the English language service of BBC Scotland (Gaelic retains its prodigious funding) is not just bad news for broadcasting. It will upset the delicate ecology of the Scottish media. Broadcasting played a major role before and after the creation of the Scottish Parliament in raising the quality of political debate and had been offering some protection against against the rising tide of parochialism and trivialisation. Not for much longer.
But the Scottish quality press seems too preoccupied with its own troubles to notice what is happening in Queen Margaret Drive. The Scotsman’s circulation fell 11% year on year in July, and the advertising revenues have plummeted by 9.4% as jobs and motors move to the internet. The Scotsmans new owners, Johnston Press - who bought Scotsman Publications from the Barclays nine months ago, have shed a hundred jobs at the title since the turn of the year. The Glasgow-based broadsheet Herald isn't in great shape either, with sales down 7%.
The Daily Record, which used to be the top selling Scottish tabloid, has capitulated to the Sun, which now sells 407,294 against the Record’s 392,844. The Record faces an uncertain future under publishers, Trinity Mirror, who recently axed the Scottish Mirror. The launch of evening cheapos by the Record - a vulpine attempt to feed of the decaying carcass of the Scottish evening press - will help no one.
All the indigenous titles in Scotland are in negative territory, and while this is a phenomenon throughout the newspaper industry, the Scottish proprietors seem singularly reluctant to invest their way out of the crisis. Johnston's profit margin on existing business is a staggering 35%.
The group has appointed as editor of The Scotsman, a local newspaper man who has no obvious familiarity with the Scottish political or media scene - Mike Gilson of the Portsmouth News. "Life is Local", as the Johnston Press mission statement puts it. Well, now we know.
Mr Gilson may indeed be a brilliant operator, but his appointment was greeted with dismay among the Edinburgh chatteratti who fear that The Scotsman is being turned into another local paper, rather than a forum for a national conversation. The editor of the Scotsman used to be one of the pillars of Edinburgh society.
Bring back Andrew Neil, say denizens of Barclay Towers, who are shell-shocked at the latest humiliation. At least he had national ambitions for The Scotsman and was prepared to pay for them, instead of syphoning cash to keep share-prices up.
The decline of great national papers is a matter of crucial importance to Scotland. The national media is disintegrating before our eyes, to be replaced by editionised English titles - Times, Daily Mail, Sun. This has real effects on Scottish civil society.
Speak to Scottish MPs and MSPs right now and many will say that their constituents are preoccupied with immigration and the "swamping of Scotland". This has nothing to do with demographic reality and everything to do with the prominence given to immigration in the English titles, like the Mail and the Sun, which Scots increasingly read.
There is no immigration crisis in Scotland – we remain appallingly white, as Greg Dyke might have put it. The Scottish population has been falling and the influx of 2000 Poles has done nothing but good for the Scottish economy. But that isn’t what people are reading. The Scottish conversation is being hi-jacked by the racial obsessives of another country.
The Scottish political classes must wake up to the nature of the crisis and start to make waves before it is too late.
The BBC is central to what happens to Scotland. It is what has been keeping the rest of the Scottish media honest. But increasingly, the BBC is being reduced to a localised service.
Just look at the BBC Scotland website in which national stories are eclipsed by local tales about Edinburgh city parking arrangements and a school being closed because of a tummy bug. Meanwhile, Scots put up with patronising opt-outs from Newsnight and the Politics Show rather than properly-financed Scottish programmes in their own right.
The BBC seems to believe that since it finally fought off the demand for a Scottish Six O’clock news two years ago, it no longer has to worry about the Scottish dimension. That since the SNP has been in apparent decline, the political pressure is off and there is no risk of broadcasting being brought into the remit of the Scottish Parliament. It's up to the political classes to prove them wrong.
Moreover, this is unlikely to stop at the Border. Many BBC insiders believe that the cuts being piloted in Scotland will provide a template for downsizing news and current affairs across the corporation.
But the first fear is for the integrity of the Scottish national media. Pessimism may be a national sport in Scotland, but sometimes the doom-sayers are right. And right now is one of them.
The Scottish press is engaged in a desperate war of all against all in a rapidly-shrinking market. Scottish broadcasting is in a dreadful state, with stv having given up the ghost, slashing staff and factual programming, while BBC Scotland is forcing through cuts of 25 per cent in its news and current affairs budget. The Scottish parliamentary elections are seven months away.
Just imagine if the BBC in London had tried to cut network news and current affairs by a quarter in an election year? There would have been a political outcry, a media firestorm. But the Scottish quality press has utterly failed to appreciate the significance of this act of cultural vandalism, even after the resignation of Blair Jenkins, the highly respected head of News and Current Affairs at BBC Scotland. Jenkins resigned after making clear to BBC bosses that there was no way he could sustain the quality of output with the loss of a quarter of his journalists.
Collapsing the English language service of BBC Scotland (Gaelic retains its prodigious funding) is not just bad news for broadcasting. It will upset the delicate ecology of the Scottish media. Broadcasting played a major role before and after the creation of the Scottish Parliament in raising the quality of political debate and had been offering some protection against against the rising tide of parochialism and trivialisation. Not for much longer.
But the Scottish quality press seems too preoccupied with its own troubles to notice what is happening in Queen Margaret Drive. The Scotsman’s circulation fell 11% year on year in July, and the advertising revenues have plummeted by 9.4% as jobs and motors move to the internet. The Scotsmans new owners, Johnston Press - who bought Scotsman Publications from the Barclays nine months ago, have shed a hundred jobs at the title since the turn of the year. The Glasgow-based broadsheet Herald isn't in great shape either, with sales down 7%.
The Daily Record, which used to be the top selling Scottish tabloid, has capitulated to the Sun, which now sells 407,294 against the Record’s 392,844. The Record faces an uncertain future under publishers, Trinity Mirror, who recently axed the Scottish Mirror. The launch of evening cheapos by the Record - a vulpine attempt to feed of the decaying carcass of the Scottish evening press - will help no one.
All the indigenous titles in Scotland are in negative territory, and while this is a phenomenon throughout the newspaper industry, the Scottish proprietors seem singularly reluctant to invest their way out of the crisis. Johnston's profit margin on existing business is a staggering 35%.
The group has appointed as editor of The Scotsman, a local newspaper man who has no obvious familiarity with the Scottish political or media scene - Mike Gilson of the Portsmouth News. "Life is Local", as the Johnston Press mission statement puts it. Well, now we know.
Mr Gilson may indeed be a brilliant operator, but his appointment was greeted with dismay among the Edinburgh chatteratti who fear that The Scotsman is being turned into another local paper, rather than a forum for a national conversation. The editor of the Scotsman used to be one of the pillars of Edinburgh society.
Bring back Andrew Neil, say denizens of Barclay Towers, who are shell-shocked at the latest humiliation. At least he had national ambitions for The Scotsman and was prepared to pay for them, instead of syphoning cash to keep share-prices up.
The decline of great national papers is a matter of crucial importance to Scotland. The national media is disintegrating before our eyes, to be replaced by editionised English titles - Times, Daily Mail, Sun. This has real effects on Scottish civil society.
Speak to Scottish MPs and MSPs right now and many will say that their constituents are preoccupied with immigration and the "swamping of Scotland". This has nothing to do with demographic reality and everything to do with the prominence given to immigration in the English titles, like the Mail and the Sun, which Scots increasingly read.
There is no immigration crisis in Scotland – we remain appallingly white, as Greg Dyke might have put it. The Scottish population has been falling and the influx of 2000 Poles has done nothing but good for the Scottish economy. But that isn’t what people are reading. The Scottish conversation is being hi-jacked by the racial obsessives of another country.
The Scottish political classes must wake up to the nature of the crisis and start to make waves before it is too late.
The BBC is central to what happens to Scotland. It is what has been keeping the rest of the Scottish media honest. But increasingly, the BBC is being reduced to a localised service.
Just look at the BBC Scotland website in which national stories are eclipsed by local tales about Edinburgh city parking arrangements and a school being closed because of a tummy bug. Meanwhile, Scots put up with patronising opt-outs from Newsnight and the Politics Show rather than properly-financed Scottish programmes in their own right.
The BBC seems to believe that since it finally fought off the demand for a Scottish Six O’clock news two years ago, it no longer has to worry about the Scottish dimension. That since the SNP has been in apparent decline, the political pressure is off and there is no risk of broadcasting being brought into the remit of the Scottish Parliament. It's up to the political classes to prove them wrong.
Moreover, this is unlikely to stop at the Border. Many BBC insiders believe that the cuts being piloted in Scotland will provide a template for downsizing news and current affairs across the corporation.
But the first fear is for the integrity of the Scottish national media. Pessimism may be a national sport in Scotland, but sometimes the doom-sayers are right. And right now is one of them.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Sunshine for Cameron
David Cameron has been handed the easiest job in politics this week in Bournemouth as he makes his first annual conference address to the Conservatives as their leader. All he needs to do is stand there, smile and sound reasonably sane. The public can do the rest.
Manchester was a freak show, a horror story.Gordon Brown, cast as the evil plotter, with his “psychological flaws”. John Prescott, the Les Dawson of British politics apologising to everyone except his wife for his trouser-dropping and cowboy antics. John Reid, the thug’s thug, setting his jaw for a square go with anyone who wants a piece of it
Labour ministers were congratulating themselves on the success their conference. Can’t think why. The party has destroyed its reputation for discipline, unity and responsible leadership. We’ve seen a party driven mad by seething rivalries and animosity, presided over by a charismatic crowd-pleaser who can’t let go.
If Tony Blair had wanted to help Cameron on his way to Number Ten, he couldn’t have done better. The Prime Minister delivered a tear-stained farewell only to reveal that he’s staying on because he can’t trust his likely successor. His wife called the Chancellor of the Exchequer a liar.
There will be months more of this uncertainty, backbiting, plotting and snide asides before Blair finally goes. It is an impossible situation, a purgatory. Is Blair going to give another tearful farewell to the Scottish Labour conference ? And then another to the Spring conference? And when he finally goes?
And what of the Scottish elections in May? They will be against a background of division and confusion as the old regime tries to ensure that the new regime sticks to the script written by Tony Blair in his departure address. There will be no “Brown bounce” because the Blairites have resolved to destroy the Chancellor’s image. They have fed public perceptions of Brown asa grim and humourless back-stabber who can’t work with anyone except his Scottish cronies.
This is manna for the Conservatives. David Cameron will have another year to establish himself as the agreeable leader of a relatively intelligent and united political party of the centre right. Certainly, there are concerns in some opinion polls about his policies - he doesn’t really have any. He has postures instead - on the environment, on human rights, on Iraq and not being too close to the Americans. This is post-modern politics.
However, the Leader of the Opposition really doesn’t need to worry about policy right now. The government has been reduced to a rabble of malcontents, who no longer know which end of the political spectrum they belong to. Tony Blair has served notice on them that they must support his discredited policies on Iraq, health, civil liberties - or he’ll make sure they lose the next election.
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps Tony Blair had become a kind of political double agent. Having decided that Labour no longer deserved him, he’d decided to do his best to wreck the party before jumping ship top his natural home, the Conservative Party. However, we know this is fantasy because the Tory party is now far to left-wing for Blair.
Manchester was a freak show, a horror story.Gordon Brown, cast as the evil plotter, with his “psychological flaws”. John Prescott, the Les Dawson of British politics apologising to everyone except his wife for his trouser-dropping and cowboy antics. John Reid, the thug’s thug, setting his jaw for a square go with anyone who wants a piece of it
Labour ministers were congratulating themselves on the success their conference. Can’t think why. The party has destroyed its reputation for discipline, unity and responsible leadership. We’ve seen a party driven mad by seething rivalries and animosity, presided over by a charismatic crowd-pleaser who can’t let go.
If Tony Blair had wanted to help Cameron on his way to Number Ten, he couldn’t have done better. The Prime Minister delivered a tear-stained farewell only to reveal that he’s staying on because he can’t trust his likely successor. His wife called the Chancellor of the Exchequer a liar.
There will be months more of this uncertainty, backbiting, plotting and snide asides before Blair finally goes. It is an impossible situation, a purgatory. Is Blair going to give another tearful farewell to the Scottish Labour conference ? And then another to the Spring conference? And when he finally goes?
And what of the Scottish elections in May? They will be against a background of division and confusion as the old regime tries to ensure that the new regime sticks to the script written by Tony Blair in his departure address. There will be no “Brown bounce” because the Blairites have resolved to destroy the Chancellor’s image. They have fed public perceptions of Brown asa grim and humourless back-stabber who can’t work with anyone except his Scottish cronies.
This is manna for the Conservatives. David Cameron will have another year to establish himself as the agreeable leader of a relatively intelligent and united political party of the centre right. Certainly, there are concerns in some opinion polls about his policies - he doesn’t really have any. He has postures instead - on the environment, on human rights, on Iraq and not being too close to the Americans. This is post-modern politics.
However, the Leader of the Opposition really doesn’t need to worry about policy right now. The government has been reduced to a rabble of malcontents, who no longer know which end of the political spectrum they belong to. Tony Blair has served notice on them that they must support his discredited policies on Iraq, health, civil liberties - or he’ll make sure they lose the next election.
The thought crossed my mind that perhaps Tony Blair had become a kind of political double agent. Having decided that Labour no longer deserved him, he’d decided to do his best to wreck the party before jumping ship top his natural home, the Conservative Party. However, we know this is fantasy because the Tory party is now far to left-wing for Blair.
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