Europe never ceases to amaze

So the Irish voters voted no to the Lisbon Treaty. According to the terms of that treaty which demands ratification by all or the treaty cannot come into effect, the Treaty should now be in the morgue awaiting a decent send off. Any sane set of individuals would realise that the Treaty is impossible to implement and start to think about a new solution. However one can never accuse the Euro establishment of sanity.

It seems that the Irish result is being blatantly ignored. Either the Irish will be forced outside the circle like the unpopular schoolkid or they will be obliged to ‘get it right’ this time in a new vote. This betrays the cynical heart of Europe, the Henry Ford approach to European democracy - you can give any answer you like providing it is yes. Eurosceptics suffer because they are unprepared to play the same game as the Europhiles. The Eurosceptics adhere to quaint notions of the ‘rules of the game’, Europhiles are happy enough with the rules until it means they lose the game then they simply alter the rules. This is why the public in Britain and elsewhere is increasingly suspicious of the EU. I don’t think they are hostile to the concept but they are very hostile to being taken for fools. The leaders of the EU need to realise that when people say no, it isn’t a licence to carry on regardless.

The Lisbon treaty should be dead, it should remain dead and be buried. It may well be sacrificed, but you can see what will happen if it is. The Eurodrafters will get out their Thesauruses change a few words here and there that have no impact on the force of the articles and the whole squalid rigmarole will start again. It is a disgraceful way to behave.

The government are incompetent

Another bunch of files have been mislaid, this is becoming habitual. If the government cannot keep secret information that it has a vested interest in keeping secret then what confidence can anyone have that it can keep information secure that it has less interest in. I am of course referring to our personal data that it more and more requires us to hand over. The revelation of more files going missing this weekend makes David Davis stand on the increasing surveillance state more not less relevant.

Are we witnessing the Principle Revolution?

Throughout history for every successful revolution there are half a dozen that never really get off the ground. The ones that fail usually do so because the revolutionary’s mistime their assault. David Davis explosive resignation yesterday on a point of principle is a revolutionary step. It remains to be seen though whether it will be successful or whether it will run in the sand. I hope it is the former, although some of the signs are pretty mixed. The political class are stunned, it is utterly left field and for a generation of the political class schooled in the art of positioning, calculation and triangulation this just isn’t part of their frame of reference. The media are likewise stunned because they have become used to the nature of the current political class so all the references they use are set to that political meme, David Davis has done something that a politician doesn’t do now and relied on his own judgement and prinicples.

If my friends are anything to go by though the reaction among normal non-political people is entirely different. Phrases like ‘breath of fresh air’ and ‘finally a politician with a principle’ are at the fore. Some agree with Davis, some do not, all admire him for actually taking a stand. It might actually be that David Davis catches a mood with this. I have long argued that politics should be about passion and principles and not about positioning. Every politician has a set of beliefs but too often these get suppressed as they climb the ladder because the modern art of politics is to define two extremes and attempt to split the difference. Along with that depressing approach is an attitude of doing not what is right but simply what can be got away with. This can we get away with it is one of the main reasons that civil liberties are under threat as never before, because governments have been getting away with it. David Davis is right to unfurl his banner against this.

I think though that David Davis has planted another concept back into politics, the concept of independent thought, principle and standing up for what you believe in. It needs to catch on, politics and government would be infinately the better for it. I think that David Davis has caught the public imagination on this. I hope he has because we need more principled fighters in our politics. I always had huge admiration for David Davis, if he pulls off a return to principle in politics and successfully defends liberty for future generations, the this country will owen him a bigger debt of gratitude than they would for any of the measures he could have introduced as a reforming Home Secretary.

David Davis - You absolute legend

Wow! What a day. What an absolute corker of a left-field announcement. When I first heard of David Davis’ decision to force a by-election over not just the passing of 42 days detention but the general drift of illiberalism I have to admit to being shocked. As I have had time to consider it over the course of this afternoon I have realised that this is a seminal day in modern British Politics. I cannot see anything of its like since the second world war. I cannot think that we will see anything like it again in our lifetime. This is a politician of deep conviction, huge moral courage and immense credibility preparing to potentially sacrifice his career and his future for the sake of his country. His constituents would have known before today that they were represented by a hugely substantial figure. If they back him and re-elect him they can know that they will be represented by a Titan.

In every generation, at all points in history, freedom and liberty need champions. Sometimes the task for those champions is easy, at other times it is hard, at all times it is necessary. Freedom is never guaranteed by default it is only guaranteed by those willing to defend and promote it. It is often threatened and attacked from without, rarely but recently it has been threatened from within. David Davis is taking a huge risk, opinion polls suggest that the public put security above liberty. He is absolutely right to take the stand he is because as I mentioned previously without liberty and freedom your security consists only of your chains.

The trend in recent years has been too much towards illiberalism, snooping, curtailing, curbing and diminishing freedom. Without doubt we face a grave external threat to out freedom, however the response has too often been a not dissimilar threat to our freedom from a government that should be protecting it. We have too often seen legislation that chips away our historic liberty by debate in a way that external threats have not been able to achieve by all the means of death and destruction. David Davis is only one man, but he has taken up an historic mission, he has had the courage to say “Enough”.

I fully support David Davis decision, he is a bigger man for having the courage to do it. He has shown that some things are bigger than partisan advantage, bigger than personal ambition, bigger than the interests of one generation. David Davis has seen that the continual pushing back of the frontiers of freedom must arrested and reversed. He has taken a look at 42 day detention, ID Cards, DNA Databases, masses of Cameras, snooping powers, and all the emerging paraphanalia of a modern technological tyranny and is screaming at the top of his lungs “NOT IN MY NAME”. It is incumbent upon all freedom loving democrats, regardless of politics, to join in and scream back “NOR IN OURS”.

42 Days

So Parliament voted by a 9 vote majority to extend terror detention to 42 days. As a result I believe that the UK is just a little less free. It remains to be seen if we are any more secure. I have debated this issue with friends for weeks, and it is clear that the issue tore people between the liberty and security argument. There is a balance to be struck between Freedom and security, I believe 42 days is the wrong one. I was none too sure on 28 days. The problem as I see it is that because this is pre-charge detention it is an incredibly sensitive area. Once you charge someone with an offence you are telling them they have a case to answer, I believe then that remand is then appropriate as you are saying to the public generally that when someone has an answerable case and is deemed a potential public danger then the public will be protected. With detention prior to charge there is no case being put to be answered, in fact you are detaining persons to pursue enqurires. In practical terms that of course is justified for a highly limited period, and no-one would see it as a fundamental attack on freedom. It is probably also justified to have an extended period for terrorism due to the nature of the crime and the complexity of distilling the evidence. Such powers though should be renewable annually. The sun is setting on our liberty because it will not set on these terror measures.

There are other principles at issue with long pre-charge detention. Not the least of which is that in many respects by having so much longer in terrorism cases than in ordinary cases you can in effect be seen to be saying that those accused of terror are less innocent until proven guilty than those accused of other crimes. This to me is dangerous ground, it also feeds into another worry that I have namely that by holding people for 6 weeks on suspicion of an offence without actually laying a case against them you are pushing other people to infer guilt on mere accusation. To me that is incredibly dangerous. A person is not a terrorist until terrorism activities are proved against him or her, in the same way that a person is not a rapist or murderer until such crimes have been proven. The longer we hold a person on suspicion without laying the case the greater the danger that suspected terrorists will be treated as though the ’suspected’ was irrelevant. I have heard people talk about the police having ‘arrested a terrorist’ and whilst they would say the same substituting other types of criminal, the mindset on terrorists is subtly different and legislation such as 42 days feeds that differential mindset. 42 days is very bad law, it is excessive and an attack on our freedom as a nation. It represents one more link in the chain that makes up the bonds of tyranny. Parliament has decided though, but it is within the power of Parliament to revisit this. Terror detention periods when they are longer than ordinary detention periods in the pre-charge phase should be subject to annual renewal. That way our liberty would have greater protection.

Having a geeky day

BBC Parliament is showing the 1983 election coverage all day. I have a day off so gonna be geeking myself watcing it!

Can we have an election please?

I am mystified at the way this government is disintegrating before our very eyes. Today we have had a procession of ministers foreshadowing a U-turn that is being furiously denied elsewhere. We have had the almost derisory spectacle of the PM and Chancellor doing a turn for the Cameras and being caught out in the process. Meanwhile it is clear that ministers will be taking their eye off the ball whilst they position themselves for the inevitable fall out of the next election result. I don’t blame them, ministers are only human after all. The problem I have is that this is going to be the pattern for the next two years. Crisis succeeding crisis, one minister saying one thing another something else. The Prime Minister oscillating between Stalinist hyperactivity and comatose gloom. Young Turks trying to leverage every event to place themselves in a better post election position. The good governance of the country will be extremely low down the priority list. It would be better to have the General election now, get a government that for a few years would be busy working out that some of it’s policies don’t work as well in practice as we all hope they will. Labour can then tear each other apart in an orgy of fratricidal feuding if they so wish without the country being the principal victim of any collateral damage. I suspect however that we are stuck with this second rate shower until all the sand has run out!

Soaring petrol - Government response

So the PM is to respond to soaring petrol by meeting industry leaders. I can imagine that this will rapidly turn into a dialogue of the deaf. The industry will claim that they only make a few pence per litre profit from pump fuel. The government will claim that the tax cannot be removed as it will unwind the budget. There is degrees of truth in both of these positions. The meeting will therefore be purely and simply for show. It is not about doing anything, simply being seen to try. It is bogus.

In truth the PM and the Chancellor have little room for manoeuvre on this score as they have nothing in the tank to rely on as the bad times roll. The problem for the rest of us is that vehicle fuel is rocketing on the back of the high oil price. The politically uncomfortable truth is that we are going to have to get used to higher prices. In the short term the government should seriously consider deferring the next fuel duty rise to stave off the worst impacts of the current price acceleration. It could also pledge to look at the extraordinary double taxation of petrol whereby it is hit by excise and VAT. Finally though there is going to be no avoiding the urgent need for next generation domestic fuel for cars. The government needs to come up with some means of encouraging the development of fuels for our cars that are not based on oil. For too long all our fuel eggs have been in one basket, we are all now paying the price. Of course we will continue to do so in the short to medium term, but the government must now signal serious intent to diversify our energy supply both in terms of electricity production but also in terms of the fuels to power our transport.

Politics doesn’t have to be boring

I have been interested in politics ever since I can remember. My life tends to be punctuated with political events. I am a political animal. I, however, find that current practioners of politics are dull, pedestrian, soulless and charmless in the main. The reason that the odd politician here and there stands out, is simply because they have a flash of colour in an otherwise barren landscape. I find it monstrous when I switch on BBC Parliament to watch a debate and see Members of Parliament clutching their papers and reading from them in the same dull monotone that they would reserve for reciting the telephone directory. Sentences are barely evident as they drone from concept to concept with neither an inflection nor any appeal to any passions that might be stirred in the soul of man. Many of these MP’s really do bore for Britain.

If I go down to the pub and I see groups of people discussing their interests then I often see arms flailing, and passions raised as everyone is excited by their own take on what they are discussing. Politics is no different, politicians are excited or should be by the subjects they discuss. They should be animated, and passionate. Often though they sound like a pre-recorded message. It is so dispiriting. I am not one of those types of people who decry the lost art of speechifying as if their was a halcyon day when orators traded in the noble art of rhetoric. My point is somewhat simpler, that actually the standard of modern oratory is bad not against what once was but what could be now. Humans are passionate beings, and politics which is chiefly concerned with the interrelationship of human beings should be passionate. The reason that politicians, rhetoricians and orators of the past are endeared today and that historic speeches can still inspire is that the speaker spoke prose in a poetic way. The reason that nowadays Parliamentary speeches are hardly worth the Hansard stenographers efforts is that all too often they are prose reduced to a repetitive recitation.

My advice for anyone who speaks in public is simple. Never ever speak from a full script. Know the points you want to make, in the order you want to make them. Practice your tone of thought. Jot down the key ideas on a postcard. Free your thoughts and your passion for the subject at hand. A good speech takes effort no doubt, but you do not need to be burdened with too much paper. The more words you have written down the more you will be tempted to read them out loud. If you are too busy concentrating on your script then you have no spare effort for convining with tone and inflection. Ditch the script, free your passion. If more politicians did so, politics would be transformed. I want more from politics than what we have on offer at the moment. Politics doesn’t have to be boring, but at the moment it is.

Harriet Harman is a disgrace

Harriet Harman represents everything about tokenistic, sectionalised politics that I utterly detest. Her entire political raison d’etre has been and continues to be to be the field marshall of the womens side in a spiteful and unnecessary gender war. Her whole career has been to play to tokenism and to advance the cause of women not in and of itself as a good thing but at the expense of men.

Now it seems that Harriet was spearheading a whipping operation against the proposed change to the abortion laws. It also appears from a certain quote that the bulk of their rationale wasn’t any scientific evidence related to the foetus but was simply to do with one twisted version of feminism. When someone is quoted as screaming “Vote against us and the sisterhood will never let you forget it” it is fairly clear that rational and dispassionate analysis of science has been booted out of consideration. I am personally agnostic about whether a change in time limits is necessary but I certainly wouldn’t pitch it as the latest divide in a gender war, to do so is in my view utterly and totally reprehensible and acually rather sinister.

Harriet Harman also claims she wasn’t whipping, the quote she gave to the Mail on Sunday tells a different story. She states that “It was a free vote and I worked with others to ensure that as many MPs as possible voted for the status quo”. That to me sounds like whipping. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

The thing is that Harman and others of her ilk on all sides of the equality debate see the whole thing as some extensive zero-sum gain. If womens rights are advanced it can only be at the expense of men’s rights. If Gay rights are advanced it must be at the expense of Straight people. This is really unneccessary and is a deliberate ploy to advance a martyr complex when opinion is unconvinced and a victor and vanquished commentary. It is entirely possible that womens rights can be advanced without prejudicing men in fact that would be the default scenario. If Harriet could see the consummate damage that her us against them mentality does to her cause she would desist. The trouble is that as too often the reality is that in terms of equality struggles, people like Harriet Harman prefer favours to fairness.