Haiti
There are few countries in the world more vulnerable and less well able to cope with calamity than Haiti. Punched by an earthquake of biblical proportions, hundreds of thousands, even millions, depend on a very swift and focussed response from the rest of the world. This is a moment went the best in everyone has to be mobilised for a humanitarian emergency. God speed to all.
Iraq War Inquiry
So Alastair Campbell gave another bravura performance under questioning yesterday. He let through a few snippets. Secret letters from Blair to Bush making promises to back military action for example. This time, however, he did not convince the panel of inquisitors. He certainly did not convince the public, because so much of what he asserted is already widely known not to be so. His declaration that he regretted nothing and stood by everything was quite chilling. The suffering and mayhem in Iraq since this probably illegal war (the Dutch now think so) is an utterly insupportable price for toppling our former ally, Saddam Hussein.
What did emerge benath the surface yesterday was the curious facility with which this spin doctor moved around the high offices of government and the inner coverts of the security services. The problem with spin doctors is that the nature of their trade requires them to believe in their spin, even when it is clear that it is wrong. This is why this intelligent and talented man with few, if any, peers in his trade, was able to assert with such gusto yesterday that ‘he stood by every word’ of the infamous dossier, which by every analysis and test is universally accepted to be absolutely wrong.
It is also why such people should never, under any circumstances, be involved in the decision making process of government. Either here or in the U.S. There is evidence that the Obama administration knows this. We need to make sure our leaders have learned this lesson too.
Northern Ireland
I suppose the time has come to deal with this. I did not go to it in my book, which is mainly about life issues in England, but this blog which roams freely in many tricky areas cannot duck its responsibility to go where many fear to tread.
In my young days there was A Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, the IRA was dormant, and Ireland was not an issue to which anybody gave a thought. I remember looking out of the window of my office in the West End when the first IRA car bomb went off, in the early seventies, with a tremedous concussion as smoke billowed up over the roofs undulating south east towards Big Ben. We all know the story.
Over the years since I have tried to form a view. I began pro unionist and anti republicans, who I dismissed as terrorists. Later I became neutral. I remain so, but only just. My sympathies are with the republicans. Not the terrorists. The politicans. The more I learned about the various factions of unionism the less I liked what I saw. This is how I see it now.
Ireland is one small country. Look at the map. It is a naturally catholic country with a history going back to the earliest days of Christianity. The protestants of the north are largely decended from the immigration of the Civil War era and Cromwell’s ruthless military supression. They have a very narrow and literal view of the teachings of the Bible, a sanctemoneous aura, a fundamentalist demeanour and a lust for provocation, any or all of which disaggreable attributes make them entirely out of kilter with the tolerance and inclusiveness, which is at the heart of the culture of the rest of the United Kingdom. In the whole of the U.K they are a tiny minority. In the whole of Ireland they are a small minority.
They live in a time warp of bitterness and triumphalism. Their marching tradition is as preposterous as it is incomprehensible. We do not celebrate Trafalgar or Waterloo by marching through Paris nor El Alamein by parades through Berlin. We know the difference between history and now. We know the value of reconcilliation and the benefits to human kind when enemies become friends. Unionists admit to none of that. They have their Orange Order. They celebrate their tawdry victory at the battle of the Boyne as if it were yesterday and march through areas of Belfast where catholics huddle, victims of the most offensive sectarianism, to show who is boss.
Of course the catholics are not without blemish. There has been the various incarnations of the IRA and sensless murder of innocents . But it is their country. The catholic church in Ireland is a very tarnished brand. This tarnish is beginning to spread to Gerry Adams at the same time as salacious and financial revelations hammer at the very foundations of the DUP. The outcome of the weakening grip of Sein Fein and the DUP is a stuttering revival of republican terrorism and a new, even more fundamentalist wing of unionism.
Just now the whole peace process is finely balanced. The government in London tries to remain impartial and ease the transfer of Police Authority to the devolved government. Talks are said to be taking place but the unionists are opposed to this move.
Were I Prime Minister, an event not in prospect, I would follow a more robust approach. I would summon the Unionist leaders to Downing Street for a meeting. It would be quite short. I would lay before them the terms for the continuance of the Union of Ulster with the United Kingdom. The terms would be simple. Agree the transfer of Policing, close down the Orange Order, the Apprentice Boys and all their ancillaries and fall into line with the way we go about life in this country right now, or I will put an emergency bill through Parliament to hold a referendum to dissolve the Union. They would then find themselves cut adrift, because the majority of the people are heartily sick of them and the referendum would be carried en masse. They would become a minority in someone else’s country, whose majority they have insulted and provoked over centuries and who would now call them to order.
Time to think it over. Certainly. Half an hour. I will have someone bring them some tea. The cake will come only after they have signed. If they walk out of the meeting, they walk out of the United Kingdom.
The time to deal with this is now. Once and for all.
For the new Government
Whoever heads it and whenever it comes, new priorities emerge. The Health and Safety Act has created a farce and should be repealed and replaced with a simple law of proper maintenance and a reminder that we are all under an obligation to take reasonable care wherever we go and whatever we do.
The Human Rights Act requires trimming so that it does what it is supposed to. It needs also to make clear that violent criminals, terrorists, people who break into other people’s homes and so on are outside its protection.
In the meantime there is the matter of the housewife who waved her cooking knife from her kitchen window at an approaching intruder. She was warned by police that ‘brandishing an offensive weapon’ in her own kitchen was ‘an offence’. Someone high up needs to telephone the Chief Constable of the force concerned.
No incoming government should add a single line to regulate our daily lives until the drivel at present sitting on our statue books is sorted out.
Forward Planning
I am tired of seeing top people on T.V, from the Prime Minister downwards, telling us that conditions are unusually bad, everything possible is being done etc. There have been lots of meetings. Oh yes, meetings.
Tonight we are told by the Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, I am a fan of his because he is pro rail, that he has asked local authorities to reduce the use of salt by 25%, because the weather is set to get worse. Wait a minute. Reduce?? If it is getting worse you increase surely? No because they are running out because……
I do not care what the reasons are. This blog will accept no excuses. It has been obvious for years that sooner or later we were in for a really cold winter. We pay all these civil servants local and national, especially the bosses in charge of the plans, excessive salaries to plan properly.They have let us down badly. An incoming government has some opportunity for economy here. Top earnings in local and national government service cut to £100, 000 a year. Plenty. Oh you will all leave? Go then. You have done a lousy job.
Failed Coup
As bungled coups go, Hoon and Hewitt certainly earn a mention for incompetence. Bad judgement, misreading mood, disloyalty, the list is long. Oh dear. But what about the Cabinet? No marks here either. Some are loyal, some are spineless and some will back whoever is the winner. Everything hinged on the brooding Lord Mandleson. Without him the plotters were doomed. The oily Milliband and plotting Harman knew this. So did Gordon.
The nation, or those who vaguely care, outside the media and Westminster Village that is not many, was astonished. Astonished not just because overthrowing leaders in the midst of an election campaign is political suicide, but because it is slowly dawning that Gordon is doing rather well. The architect of the banking rescue and global action to fight the recession, champion of climate change, everywhere to be seen on the world stage pushing here and prodding there, undaunted by disaster, setback, backstab and other calamities, rumpled and gloomy and above all the underdog.
This blog will not commit its support to any political party and always feels free to have a go. The message today is this. The British love underdogs. They worship heroes who from certain defeat and all hope abandoned, surrounded by panicking lieutenants, snatch victory against the odds. Our Gordon knows this and is beginning to show some real colour. Yesterday Cameron was plastered across the walls of the Commons at PMQ.
This may be the point. People are now beginning to look at Cameron seriously. Such a nice young man at first, well intentioned and all that. But is that what we need? All those posters with that smiling face. Is this not echoes of Blair? Back to the spin merchants and the big spend campaign? And what about his team? Apart from Ken and William there is nothing there. Just a bunch of careerists who could have been bankers but decided they had more to gain out of politics. Third raters at very best but mostly just the kind of people we really do not want in charge.
And do not forget. The all ticket sell out of Blair at Chilcot. A massive reminder of the dangers of the young wiz kid premier who thinks he knows best and who sees it as his duty do to what he thinks is right even if the wise know he is wrong. Gordon set up this enquiry so that it would be spilling the beans he knows are in the tin, as the election campaign gets going. He knows that hate of Blair plays for him and against Cameron.
Gordon is a good deal smarter than many people think.
The Battle Opens
So what promises to be a long and confused election campaign has opened with losses on both sides. The Tories made new promises and cancelled old ones casting doubt on their reliability and Labour produced another of their silly dossiers, which nobody will believe. One of the papers, I think it was the Mail, said it was not a clash of competing ideoligies but an argument between managers over detail.
This is the nub. The public want major reform not of schools or the health service but of the way we are governed and our view of the rest of the world. There is a mood for as near revolution as the people of thse islands ever get. Yet who bestrides the political stage, a giant among among them all, to offer hope and a new beginning? Oh dear, you are so right. There is nobody.
In 1945 there was just such a mood for root and branch change in the whole structure of the economy, society and social priorities. Attlee, tried and tested as Churchill’s deputy over the harsh years of war, stood ready with a tough team of experienced members of the war cabinet by his side. To the astonishment of the world and by all accounts Attlee himself the nation turned to him and away from the hero who had hauled it victory out of certain defeat.
There is no such figure now. Yet Attlee was no giant. Mild mannered, self effacing, crisp and businesslike yes,but not one to turn heads. In modern parlance there was no motorcade factor. In this coming electoral battle there is however, one dark horse, whose name sounds ghastly and who would vanish in a half crowded tube. Nick Clegg. Yet he talks of reform of the way we are governed, of a written Constitution, a much fairer voting system, an elected House of Lords, a fairer society, taxing according to ability to pay, power sucked from the centre to the community. Hmmm.
The Lib Dems make not quite break through to make Nick king, but kingmaker is much more on the cards than even seven days ago. And they have got Vince. People trust him with the money more than either George or Alistair. This could just be a rather interesting time in politics after all.
Common View with the U.S.
The anxiety in the White House and Downing St. over Yemen underlines a key element of the special relationship. Although America was traditionally opposed to the British Empire, seeing itself as having broken free from it, it has also seen itself as an inheritor of its influence and power, which it has used ever more overtly and especially since the end of the Cold War. This draws it to Britain even more than common language and origins. It also points up something about the foreign policy of both countries, which for all practical purposes is the same. Both countries see their border security in far off lands. Neither has a real threat on its actual border. Britain traditionally engaged in European wars to enhance its security, but after the Norman conquest, faced only three actual threats and all were defeated. The Spanish Armada, Napoleon and Hitler. America dealt with Mexico in the 1840s and has never realistically been threatened by Canada.
I no longer think that such a policy is constructive. As the post cold war years unfold it has become apparent that the key dynamic of world relationships is United States determination to have the world go round its way. This has given succour to the multitude of Islamic terror groups who see themselves as heroic fighters for freedom from U.S influence. We trot behind at America’s coat-tails, because traditionally our foreign office was brought up to see things through a colonial and then post colonial perspective.
Our European neighbours have always been much more interested in the security of their land borders between each other. Historically the aspirations of France, Germany and Russia involved Europe in centuries of war. The European Union, seen by us as an economic structure, is to the Continent a political triumph which has brought unprecedented stability to its member countries. The only source of tension is to the east and here it is not Russian aggression which is the issue, but American driven NATO expansion.
The plain fact in the world today is that it is America which is seen by most as the power to restrain. Whilst in the conviviality of any dinner party or country pub most people see it that way, as a nation we are still wedded to securing the safety of our streets in military operations in some far of land. We no longer have the power to actually do this, so we tag along with the Yanks. But it is not quite as simple as that. In the subtle, subliminal way of ancient statecraft we encourage our staunchest ally to do our bidding, whilst letting it think we are doing its.
There will be no end to terror attacks and mayhem so long as this foreign policy is in force. It no longer serves the interest of either country, let alone the rest of the world. The time has come to wind it down and move in a different direction. There are days when I feel Obama sees this. We need to see it too.
Yemen
So, as predicted in this blog and in my book, terrorist training camps are now popping up in Yemen which now looks likely to become another centre of Al Qaeda operations. Whilst we should pay tribute to the success of intelligence and other covert counter measures against terror attacks which have kept the West more or less safe thus far, the extent of the Foreign Policy failures is really extraordinary. Not only has there been no meaningful progress to solve the catastrophic Israel/Palestinians cauldron of violence, suffering and despair, but what about everywhere else?
Iraq remains an unstable and violent mess with a serious potential for Civil War when the Americans go, Afghanistan is such a shambles that Karzai cannot get his corrupt government nominees through the Afghan Parliament, so the country blunders on without a government, undermining the whole agenda of the flawed adventure of foreign intervention. The Taliban are the power in this collapsed state and in the border region, together with Al Qaeda, they occupy a major slice of the Pakistan military, while various factions blow up Pakistani civilians almost every day.
Iran grows more unstable and anti western as protests among its own people against the regime mount. There is no real sign of movement in the negotiations to force it to give up its quest for nuclear weapons, another misguided policy line doomed to fail. It is not possible to navigate the Indian Ocean without risk of attack by pirates from another failed state Somalia, in a weird echo of the dangers of sea travel in the eighteenth century.
Beneath all this there runs a thread. As often stated in these columns the source of Islamic violent fundamentalism is the mess surrounding Israel. But there is another element. The big problem everywhere is the aggressive imperialism of the United States of America. It sees itself as the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong in the belief that its way is best. It is for Americans, but many in the rest of the world have other options they prefer. Containing the U.S is the foreign policy objective of an increasing roll call of the world’s peoples. America believes it is good, it is right and at all times its rampant military are acting all over the world in the defense of their homeland. Obama and Clinton are strugling to put forward a more constructive theme, but zealots on Capitol Hill give them a hard time.The truth beneath it all is very simple. The greatest threat to America is the United States itself.
2010 and The Economy
Happy New Year everyone! The year just gone has been testing for most, difficult for many and tragic for some. After so much disaster and heartache, we need a better outcome for this year just begun. There are so many issues which need to move forward, but just now I want to concentrate on the one at the heart of our lives. The Economy.
There are hopeful signs that we are out, or nearly out, of the recession. Much effort, perhaps too much, been has been made to smooth what might have been an even tougher and more difficult road. Too little has been done to bring about the fundamental restructuring of how our economy works in the U.K. Because whilst many countries in the world were caught up in the mayhem, the origin of the contagion was said to be in the United States. This was not entirely true. The epicentre was here in the U.K., not just in London, but in every High Street, Mall and Retail Park.
At the start of the calamity the credit card debt of the citizens of the U.K was greater than the total of all the rest of Europe put together. Our total public and private debt owed overseas was nearly four times our GDP. But it was not just this. Because of the idiotic inflation in residential property values the cost of housing was sucking resources out of the coffers of every family in rent and mortgages, so that incomes had to keep pace over the years for people to stay afloat. Thus we could not afford to make anything and manufacturing jobs were exported to reduce costs.
Because the financial services, legal and professional sectors grew and grew, ordinary people funnelled more and more of their earnings out of their own pockets into pockets already overflowing, in the form of interest and fees. Bankers took this money and gambled it on obscene bets which they lost. Financial meltdown was averted by rescue from the beleaguered ordinary taxpayers, whose money, otherwise available for new schools, hospitals, railways and environmental projects was diverted to the rescue of these greedy unprincipled scoundrels whose assertion that they are too important to fail and unless there are paid millions they will all run away is such total and utter rubbish that nobody outside the Westminster Village and that eye-sore Canary Wharf believes them.
Anyone who thinks we can go on as before is a fool. The people have already started to take matters into their own hands. We are again a nation of net savers, with the highest level of personal debt reduction since records began. Any attempt to go back to the old way will fail. We must make more of what we buy, earn more of what we spend and our taxes have to be used to regenerate manufacturing industry, modern infrastructure, a clean environment and more locally accountable public services.
The bankers must be kept on a very tight rein. Future rescue should be denied. Pay must be socially acceptable. If they do not like it they can go to hell. Even there they may not be welcome.