Anthony Barnett

The following has been published in The Guardian's brilliant Comment is Free I was impatient for it to go up and having not heard from them ran it here. But it is their credit. So now it is in quotes. Thank you Cif.

Two developments yesterday have finally blown up Britain's uncodified constitution, symbolically just before the anniversary of Guy Fawke's early efforts (which thankfully did not succeed!).

The publication of the Kelly report on MPs expenses makes it certain that members of parliament will no longer be in charge of their own pay and remuneration. Their exceptional sovereignty as the supreme body, one which therefore had in its nature to be self-regulating, is now universally derided as a clubland hangover. They still call  each other honourable members. But who regards them as such, or trusts them to be so? Now, not even they do!  However, the legitimacy of the uncodified constitution rested on their being different from members of the assemblies of other, lesser countries. The normalisation of MPs, which turns them into employees, breaks the spiritual basis of Britain's unique form of rule.

At the same time David Cameron's commitment to pass a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill is explicitly designed to bind all future parliaments, breaking the larger, external mechanism of parliamentary sovereignty. Indeed, his proposal is justified by him has having the effect of a written constitution. He says, in his speech, which is well worth reading in full, that his proposal will "simply put Britain on a par with Germany, where the German Constitutional Court has consistently upheld - including most recently on the Lisbon treaty - that ultimate authority lies with the bodies established by the German Constitution".

"Never Again" is his slogan. But "never say never" is the genetic code of traditional British sovereignty. Cameron's proposes to formally recognise the termination of the formal uniqueness of the UK's unwritten constitution.

In practice it was already shredded. First by membership of the EU, then by the creation of Scottish and Welsh parliaments which Westminster cannot now undo on its own, third by the Human Rights Act. In effect, Cameron is recognising parliament's new constitutional status, that it is no longer sovereign. Previously, those who passed these laws always denied their transformative status. Now it is undeniable.

The old constitution is over, bust, no more, a dead parrot.

You might ask, does this make Cameron a constitutional radical? Or a democrat? Alas, it seems not. He has the better democratic argument on his sde with respect to the EU, though he has surrendered much of it by failing to call for a referendum of any kind. But he is playing the inheritance he hopes for in exacty the fashion of his role model Tony Blair: updating the centralisation it offers those who win office with a winner-takes-all system.

Anthony Barnett

I missed this letter by Helena in Sunday's Observer. It exactly sums up my views (assuming that his proposed role as a TV presenter is a joke - it made me laugh - but Helena is generous by nature and always looking for ways people might redeem themselves). I fear that Blair will try and sneek in under the radar now he is no longer a leading candidate and every effort should be made to prevent this. One of the other reasons he'd be very bad is the lowering effect he has on everyone's judgement. The number of cliches his supporters trot out are enough to sink the political class. Miliband especially excelled himself. Nonesense about Europe needing a 'big hitter' was perhaps the most frequent. Blair was a big misser. he couldn't even arouse 25 per cent of the electorate to support him in the 2005 election.

The presidency of Europe will be highly symbolic and Tony Blair is a wholly inappropriate person to hold the role. He misled our country – to secure support for a decision he had already made to join George Bush in the Iraq war. In doing so, he showed total disrespect for international law, the United Nations and the views of his European partners; he destabilised the world and was naively cavalier as to the cost in human lives.

Domestically,he was disrespectful of the rule of law and civil liberties, hollowed out the Labour party and deepened the divide between rich and poor. He cravenly bowed to the demands of Rupert Murdoch, the neoconservatives in America, the extreme pro-Israeli lobby and his friends in the City. He showed poor judgment in his choice of associates. His freeloading was shameful. Indeed, his lifestyle epitomises the worst values of a materialistic age. He does not have the qualities of a leader, but would be an excellent television presenter.

Helena Kennedy

 

Anthony Barnett

Just watched the BBC's Into the Storm on Churchill's - and Britain's - two Finest Hours. The first being May 1940 and the birth of Churchillism when the country and its Empire stood alone against Nazism and the country rallied to his standard, the second being April 1945 when the old brute was voted out and Labour given its Churchillist mandate to build a land for all.

There was compelling period detail and good performances. But overall I feel that finally Churchill may be slipping into history. The story was told as if it was a middle class marriage crisis: here were three in the marriage, Winston, Clementine and the damn war. It got into bed with him, wore him out, made him rude, but the good woman kept going, saved him - and the marriage - from himself and was generally speaking the grownup to his childish impetuosity. Hmmm.

While there was always endless fascination with Churchill the man and he played to the gallery in person and in his language, it was more than a matter of personality. The film ran him as a celebrity, looking behind the public figure to ask about the 'real' person. But what mattered was the way he triggered immense identification with the struggle and the war, from stoicism to sacrifice, from all classes and parties. Once this was created in 1940, it crystallised around him and carried him forward, he was shaped by the popular determination more than he shaped it, after the initial stand and appeal. 

Now, with shallow exploitation by the BNP and sentimental personification by the BBC, this unifying force is waning. His appeal to 'the British race' with the fall of Singapore a signal of his coming anachronism.

There were some inaccuracies that went beyond artistic license. At the start, Halifax's attempt to seek negotiation as Hitler's armies swept into France was much closer run and, again, not as personal as Into The Storm makes it. Read John Lukacs' short, gripping account, Five Days in London if you want to know what happened in May 1940 and how close it was. He gives an account of the tiny war cabinet. The meeting where the full Cabinet applauded was the aftermath. There had been a real battle for influence not just a him-or-me showdown.

Anthony Barnett

On Thursday I published an article in openDemocracy on the revolutions of 1989. I argue that they were a new kind of peaceful insurrection by people who want their societies to become normal. I also argue that this is what happened in Britain in the same year with the support for Charter 88, thought this was just about our political system. It still has to happen - the difference now is that everyone knows it. I think it is going to be an important essay for me. I wrote it on impulse and learnt what I thought as I wrote it. It opens up a fresh way of seeing the impulse for change that is all around us. I had a long standing committment to speak at the Battle of Ideas that I just blogged and I road-tested the argument from the oD article. Here's the text of what I said on Saturday. (PS: an audio recording of the whole session is here)

"Thank you for inviting me to talk to the Battle of Ideas at this session on Freedom, there is a very welcome, intense and serious atmosphere.

Twenty years ago Stuart Weir launched Charter 88 from the New Statesman. Its opening words were

WE have been brought up in Britain to believe that we are free: that our Parliament is the mother of democracy; that our liberty is the envy of the world; that our system of justice is always fair; that the guardians of our safety, the police and security services, are subject to democratic, legal control; that our civil service is impartial; that our cities and communities maintain a proud identity; that our press is brave and honest. Today such beliefs are increasingly implausible.

Protecting liberty from arbitrary power was also included in the 1,500 word manifesto that followed. But Charter 88 was a call for reforms that would have made the UK a normal European polity. Its theme and battle cry was for constitutional democracy.

There were two old-fashioned assumptions: that we knew what liberty was and that it would be protected by a classical constitution.

I know members of the Institute of Ideas are not keen on writing down our constitution and I still am - so that it belongs to us, the people. Perhaps we should have another discussion about this some other time.

I’d also defend the far-sighted radicalism of Charter 88 in the British context, where (as I have just argued in openDemocracy) it would have been this country’s equivalent of the revolutions of 1989. Not delivered on the streets in the same way. It was only a political not a social and economic revolution. But delivered eventually by Labour in alliance with the Lib Dems had Blair embraced the “new constitutional settlement” that John Smith (his predecessor) called for. We would then have seen holistic or (to use the cant phrase of New Labour ‘joined up’) constitutional reform. Instead New Labour implemented a far-reaching but disintegrative programme whose consequences we confront today.

So I want to talk about the need to move on from Charter 88. For a start we now need to call for modern liberty – where I think there is a lot of agreement between us. And I want to say why ‘modern’.

The assumption two decades ago was that we could renew a classic inheritance of liberty by means of turning the UK into a normal, constitutional state. Now it may be that if we had had a new settlement after 1997 this would have transformed the relationship between state and citizen, openly refounding our politics to create a confident government – as has happened in Scotland.

Instead, we got the worst of two worlds in which the strengths of each undermined the other to create a chronically fraught, hysteric and dangerous polity. A transformative programme of constitutional reforms – parliaments, human rights acts, FoI, abolishing hereditary peerage – all went though with no attempt at a coherent settlement. Instead, the old state fought back against the threat of its decomposition with the modernisation of centralisation. This was compounded by New Labour’s “corporate populism”, a term I came up in 1999 to describe the way it modelled itself on corporate methods with its central control, marketing and spin, rather than democracy.

Take just one example of the consequence as I have to be brief. We had a system of parliamentary sovereignty in which the proud honourable members of the Commons and their Lordships exercised supreme uncodified power expressed in a Cabinet system. Clearly this was old-fashioned and unsuitable for the globalised world. Blair and company drew on the tradition to concentrate all sovereignty on…. the sofa. They celebrated the strong government that resulted. Its underside was parliamentary weakness, often bought, as we now know, for a song.

Fine, you might say, as they did, that shows the old system really worked. But at the same time Freedom of Information was introduced which is part of a codified, plural system. The result was a toxic explosion we are still choking under today.

While much of what is happening is born of weakness. It is the weakness of incoherence, of clashing wills each in their own way determined and experienced (see for example the battles between politicians and the judiciary). Above all the drive to remain a power - a world player - grips the British state. In its cause advanced methods have been adopted even when inappropriate. Hence the pioneering application of database technology and surveillance the dangers of which I don’t need to point out to this audience.

In these circumstances what should we look for?

At the end of his wonderful novel – if you have to read it already you should, and its an ideal Xmas present - The Dying Light, Henry Porter has an exchange between two characters in their battle with the database society. One welcomes what he calls “a revolution”. The other, a Henry hero corrects him, “no a restoration: the restoration of our rights and privacies, nothing more”.

My argument is that we cannot look to just a restoration, but nor are we seeking a classic, revolution.

The normal itself has been transformed. I was thinking we might express this with a campaign called “YES to ID”. Not its management by the state on our behalf, as the government aspires to, to which we should certainly say ‘NO”. But to its recognition, ownership and control by ourselves.

For what we are has changed. It is changing with digitalisation: our society, economy and politics are all being fundamentally remade. In these circumstances we can no longer assume that liberty remains the same. Certainly democracy can no longer rest upon the rules of representation – even when these are reformed in the UK to be fair in terms of voting, open in terms of primaries, and democratic in terms of an elected upper chamber. For a start the relationship of necessary trust no longer holds as corporate and media power has become so much the equal of political power.

What we need is modern liberty. What this means has yet to be fully formulated, but here is a start to listing its essential elements, please add yours: transparency, Yes to ID, participation and deliberation (in addition to representation), informed consent, free speech, openness, and human rights especially the international dimension has to be added to citizen politics in an age of accelerated migration.

To reverse the terms of the subtitle to this session, we should not seek to celebrate liberty and secure rights: we need to secure liberty and celebrate rights.

But for liberty to be secured it has to be renewed, hence modern liberty."

Anthony Barnett

I spoke at the Battle for Ideas yesterday in the keynote session on Freedom. I'll post what I said shortly. I went along in the morning to hear a very interesting panel on the white working class, the best post BNP-Question Time discussion I've heard, with Susanne Moore and Gillian Evans. There was an odd call for the reintroduction of a peasantry by Geoff Dench, so that the country could find itself again. At first I thought it was a lament for a lost past but he seemed to be serious. I support 'back to the land' (so I can visit) but this would be a high-educated, scientific organic farming network. The late, great hugely missed Angela Carter once observed how most European countries have national characters who are from the rural peasantry whereas we have the 'toff'. I can hear her laugh at the idea of creating one here and now! 

In the discussion that followed in the session I spoke at, there was a sense of an initiative that has not caught up with the extraordinary change in mood across the country that distinguishes 2009.

Anthony Barnett

It is well known that Gordon Brown has an antipathy to elections, especially ones where he would have to phone an ex-Etonian afterwards and congratulate him. One way to avoid this is to declare illness and step down. I'd always thought this likely. A second option is to abolish elections altogether. As this might require a parliamentary debate, the way he and his colleages will go about it is by piecemeal measures that don't need legislation but have the same effect, just as they are doing with the database state. This is the report on progress in today's ePolitix press summary:

The Ministry of Justice plans to close polling booths an hour early, in order to make a £65m saving ahead of next year's general election.

The Times revealed the measures, identified in a leaked working paper submitted by the department for the Treasury.

It suggested staff numbers could also be cut, traditional polling cards removed in favour of election reminders and security cut backs at election night counts.

However, the plans drew fierce condemnation from election night officials amid fears they could increase the democratic deficit with further record-low turnouts to come.

And the Telegraph suggests the plans to close stations and cut back on staff could affect next year's election as it does not require legislation.

Hmmm, I think we may need to save a bit more than £65 million don't you? How about people texting in their votes to a switchboard in Downing Street run by Karzai's brother who has apparently has lots of good experience (and he owes us one).  

Anthony Barnett

There is a striking exchange coming out of a question to Nick Clegg - see the post from Guy Aitchison just here. Its starting point is Power 2010 and the effort to get proposals for reform up from below and give a positive expression to the sea change in the public's attitude towards the political class and the way it governs us. This should be the Liberal Democrat's moment. They have a young, intelligent leader who is really clear in himself about the profound link between our "rotten system" - his words - and the appalling outcomes, from housing and education to the banking crisis. Why then is he not picking up an Obama type wave of support? Why do the Lib Dems appear to be just like the others? I asked this here in OK at the start of the recent party conference season. I think my answer stands after Nick Clegg's reply to Salman Shaheen's interview on Third Estate that Guy has blogged, so I'll repeat it: "It ain't what you say, it is the way that you say it".

But I'm afraid it looks like no change. The euro has not dropped. Clegg argues, We've got to use the Westminster platform it would be "odd" not to. The other parties "lag behind". Yes, let's get out of the "Westminster bubble". "I meet people every week in town and village halls around the country. People can come along and ask me, to my face, anything and everything they like; believe me, they do too!"

This, I'm afraid, is politics as usual. The system is not just bad, Nick, it's broken. Westminster isn't any longer just a "bubble" it's a leaking submarine. The Lib Dems are going down with it. The fact that they were the first to warn that it is sinking does not qualify them for the captaincy. On the contrary, there is a sense that people are starting to feel, "Well, if you knew it all along why didn't you DO SOMETHING about it?"

In the debate when the Commons voted disgracefully for 42 days detention without charge, only Diane Abbott stood up and said the place had been turned into a Bazaar. Many smirked, no one refuted her, everyone knew. The fact that the Lib Dems opposed 42 days in a unanimous, principled fashion does not alter the fact they did nothing about it. OK, that is slightly unfair, they supported the walkout by David Davis by agreeing not to stand against him if he forced a by-election. But they should also have forced their own by-elections. We need action not just words or personal meetings. Indeed the whole model of the personal, town-hall meeting that Clegg invests so much time in, while honourable is also traditional. It draws onthe royalist tradition that parliament has internalised via its constituency system of the personification of authority. It relies on us trusting them to lend an ear and do what they can. However well meaning, these days this cannot escape the body-language of paternalism.

We need bold, simple, dramatic actions. Deeds and leadership around which popular disgust with the system can crystalise and self-organise. 

Anthony Barnett

It's a small signal only concerning a large issue of the day, namely are the national units of the UK moving in different directions politically? There is a rare opinion poll from Wales reported on the useful UK Polling Report. It says that in Wales figures are following roughly waht we are seeing UK wide. If so, it looks like bad news for the Liberal Democrats.

According to YouGov voting intention in Wales stands at CON 31%, LAB 34%, LDEM 12%, PC 15%. Since the general election this represents a 9 point rise for the Conservatives, a 9 point drop for Labour, a 6 point fall for the Lib Dems and a 2 point rise for Plaid Cymru – the equivalent of a 9 point swing from Labour to the Conservatives, and roughly the same sort of figures we’ve been seeing in GB polls, so Wales seems to be following the national trend.

A helpful comment on it by David E. Jones gives the following breakdown if the poll is correct

Current         Poll

Lab  30      Lab  20

Lib     4      Tory 12

Tory   3      PC    5

PC     2      Lib    2

Ind     1      Ind   1

At a time of what should be a historic opportunity, it's projected that the Lib Dems will crash to fourth place in the land of Lloyd George.

Anthony Barnett

The scale and intensity of police operations against anyone who says 'Hello, hello, hello, what's going on here?' is currently being revealed by the Guardian, today and yesterday with more promised tomorrow.  Outstanding reports from Paul Lewis, Rob Evans and Matthew Taylor. One of the arguments against the exaggeration that we are trending towards a police state is to ask where the nasty 'Big Brother' actually is, as if this shows it's all a naive conspiracy theory (eg David Goodhart).

Well, there is a related place not a thousand miles away from the police state that you get to by following the road of good intentions.

Whose intentions? Not those who claim to be in charge, those we voted for. It's being done by officers acting with, yes, the best intentions. There is an outstanding response on this by Henry Porter in yesterday's Liberty Central section of the Guardian's Comment is Free. He writes that Innocence

is a concept that has been steadily eroded by the authorities in the last decade. It is of vital significance that when Anton Setchell, national co-ordinator of domestic extremism operations for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), was asked for his reaction he said: "Everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once."

There you have it: everyone is a potential criminal – or domestic extremist – and so everyone becomes a legitimate target for police surveillance. The remit becomes infinite and with the advances of technology also possible.

Hold on a second, though, who is this well intentioned empiricist who dares to say this about us, where does he come from? Acpo is a private company and not a public body. The Daily Mail ran an excellent story on this shocking fact earlier this year. They pointed out that while it collects information on us, we are not allowed to use Freedom of Information to find out about it. Apparently it is just a private company of chief police officers minting a fortune from its monopoly on coordinating police work. Keep the fact of Acpo's self-created, para-judicial, non-parliamentary, private corporate status in mind and then read this from today's Guardian report:

Three units given the task of monitoring "domestic extremists" are run by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), including the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), which operates as a giant database of political activists.

David Smith, the deputy information commissioner, said: "We will raise this issue with Acpo and seek further information from them about the personal information the police are collecting.... We will need to talk to Acpo to understand why they consider it is necessary to hold lawful protesters' details in this way, before considering whether this meets the terms of the Data Protection Act."

 "Why they consider it necessary"!!! "Please, Mr Policeman".

Anthony Barnett

Perhpas I should have ignored it, but I was very irritated by a 'look at how radical I am now' op ed by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Guardian last week and rattled off a letter. They ran it on Saturday. My dashing attempt at sarcasm in the opening got lost, and I've subbed the wording of the conclusion. Here it is:

Geoffrey Wheatcroft spends an entire column (Comment, 20 October) suggesting that he would have supported the Chartists in 1832, or at least that he would have done so by 1932. Then he calls for the crackpot idea of one year parliaments, as if such a gimmick would save the day. Yet when he had his chance to be like the "Victorian radicals" he now so praises, he was a cynical opponent of Charter 88 and a flag-waver for the closed Westminster regime. Today, he wants 'power to the people'! Naturally, this needs a democratic constitution and it's never too late to welcome a convert. But it would be a relief if he could say he'd been wrong.

 

Anthony Barnett

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: What is the BBC's game? Anthony Barnett > This post > After Nick Griffin and Question Time, Gerry Hassan > Get over it, David Elstein

I watched the Question Time under the heavy influence of lemon and honey so this may have effected my judgement. Here are my immediate reactions:

1. It wasn't a proper Question Time at all, a fact used effectively in the BNP immediate post-programme response (reproduced in full below and unfortunately necessary reading). Stung by the accusation that they were treating a racist as a normal politician the BBC turned QT itself onto him. This kind of interrogation should have been done by giving him an hour interview with a strong, experienced questioner, like Peter Oborne. The point of Question Time is to give its participants a platform to share their views on the issues of the day. This programme didn't do that. I was relieved when I watched it. But all the  cant of its Controller Mark Thompson about the BBC being equal handed in its treatment was shown to be hollow. This evening at one and the same time gave the BNP a much higher profile and a demonstrable grievance, which as you can see they exploited immediately. 

2. This matters because the BNP's current objective is not even to increase its vote but to double its small membership and revenues. It may well have done this.

3. Yet despite their unrelenting focus on one member of the panel, it was all about his 'views'. The vermin point that I made in my earlier post (about the role of the BBC being more important part of the story) wasn't taken up at all. The assumption was that Nick Griffin had opinions which needed to be engaged with. Thus Bonny Greer declared his claims about the 17,000 year ethnicity of true born Brits to be "loopy". Of course they are, if all you think they are is a historical proposition. But what they really are is a permission to supporters to take an uppity Muslim round the corner and beat the shit out of him - the starting point of fascism. The audience had a much better sense of this than the panel.

4. This is why they don't qualify for a high-profile democratic platform despite their votes. To say this is in no way to suggest they be "censored". Peter Hain made the point against the tendentious statement of Mark Thompson (and Paul Kingsnorth uses the same slack claim against me in his comment to my first post).

5. I liked the way that for the first time an ideology of 'who we are' finally started to emerge that really sees us as mixed not racial. Again this came from the platform.

6. And also from Sayeeda Warsi. The contrast presence and Jack Straw's was striking. The mandate of heaven has moved, from Straw blethering on about his 30 years in his constituency to Warsi and Tory immigration policy. It's a pity that she can't be elected.

7. In an excellent angry article today Gary Young argued "setting Straw – and the rest of the political class – against Griffin is simply putting the cause against the symptom". I wondered what Gareth Young who blogs and comments here as Toque, thought of it. 

8. But the elephant is the corporation. The rise of the BNP is the most vile and immediate danger, the role of the BBC remains the more important. 

The following is from the email sent out by the BNP after the programme:

Fellow British Patriot

"The man's got guts!" "At last, someone saying exactly what we all feel". "The hand-picked audience in the studio hated what Nick had to say, but we loved it". "I've never seen such political bullying on TV in my life." "When he pointed out how all the others are racist against the English, we were all cheering".

Just a few of the responses to the long-awaited BBC Question Time with Nick Griffin tonight. It was never going to be easy: Central London is the most 'enriched' and 'diverse' part of Britain, the BBC audience selection process is clearly guaranteed to 'weed out' politically incorrect guests, and the other panellists shared one aim: to rough up Nick Griffin.

As it is, no-one who saw Jack Straw turn ashen-faced when Nick responded to his 'Nazi' smear by pointing out that "my father served in the RAF during the Second World War - yours spent it in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler." Time and time again Nick gave as good as he got.

Most of all though, this wasn't a proper Question Time at all. The usual format was done away with for the first time in 30 years as the BBC over-compensated for allowing us on by setting things up for a televised lynching.

There was nothing about current affairs at all; no postal strike, nothing about the announcement that Tony Blair is about to be appointed EU President, nothing about the continued slaughter of young British soldiers in Afghanistan, nothing about the latest stages of the banking crisis and the scandal of the Government propping up corrupt banks while imposing savage cuts on essential services. On all those subjects and many more, the BNP's nationalist position offers a real alternative to the three old internationalist parties.

But the only non-BNP/immigration question was about a Daily Mail article on the death of Stephen Gately, and even that was a trap - which Chairman Nick Griffin avoided with both ease and principle.

Where does it leave the BNP? On this day alone our website has had in the region of 15 million 'hits' and over 2,000 new registrations for future membership before QT even started! Millions were shocked by the violence of the leftist mob sponsored by - among other MPs - Peter Hain and David Cameron.

With millions more people beginning to grasp the extent to which the three old parties are essentially the same, while the British National Party is really different. With millions of people knowing that in just a couple of killer soundbites in the middle of the programme, Nick Griffin summed up exactly how they, and all their friends and neighbours, feel about the mess that Lib-Lab-Con have made of our poor country.

They will also have noted very well that Nick Griffin and Bonny Greer clearly got on well, and that Nick listened with respect and answered with consideration even hostile questions from members of ethnic minorities in the audience; the hostility tonight wasn't from Nick towards anyone on account of their ethnicity or religion, it was from the representatives of the failed old parties towards the new kid on the block.

When the details of all the personal attacks against Nick Griffin are long forgotten, people will remember him standing up bravely to a barrage of hate to say things on behalf of the Silent Majority that have never been said on the flagship programme of British politics before. "Nick Griffin - he speaks for us".

Anthony Barnett

I was on Radio 5 Live yesterday on the Simon Mayo spot with the great John Lloyd of QI,  Ian Dale and Mark Hanson from Labour List (you can hear the discussion towards the end of the link). We were brought together to discuss the launch of Open Up in a very hot and stuffy studio that seems to have given me the lurgie, so I'll be brief. Lloyd made the duck-u-mentaries that can be seen on the Open Up site. Iain talked about what it was like to take part in an open process at Bracknell - and lose. He has written about it nicely on his blog.

When will the people exercise good judgement? I really hope he gets into the Commons and speaks for England. Iain made the important point that the Tories while being way ahead of the rest in opening up their selection process are really running caucuses. Only at Totness was there a genuine primary where everyone could vote rather than attend a five hour meeting. It cost £40,000 apparently and how many constituency parties have that? The obvious answer is to have them American style, where the public voting system is put at the disposal of parties. But for this to happen six months before an election, say, to give candidates time, there would need to be fixed term parliaments.... something on which I have campaigned alongside Iain after Brown's great October on-and-off  (just too humiliating to accept without demanding change). Thus are constitutional changes joined one to another (beware of extreme pain when this is ignored).

I made the point that all initiatives that expressed the extreme disenchantment with the system should be strongly welcomed (I named Power2010 and Unlock Democracy's Constitutional Convention). I particular like Open Up Now's demand that all actual MPs put themselves up for reselection before the next election. Iain said he preferred campaigns that had realisable demands. Lloyd calmly repeated the point that we can do better than having ducks in charge. Mark Hanson was worried that we'd not gather enough support to make it happen. As I'm blowing my own trumpet, my reply (which I'll expand) is that there is now one thing we know for sure. Before 1997 the good and the knowing said changes could never happen and if they did they wouldn't work. Today we know better. Big changes, Scotland, Mayor for London, FoI Act, Human Rights Act, can be implemented and when they are they work. The British people are practical, inventive and when we get rid of the ducks, it works!

Anthony Barnett

OurKingdom on Nick Griffin and the BBC: This post > The BBC and the BNP, Anthony Barnett > After Nick Griffin and Question Time, Gerry Hassan > Get over it, David Elstein

As a good part of the nation prepares to sit down and watch the leader of our New Fascist party on Question Time, we need to ask what the BBC is up to? The argument about 'whether or not' Nick Griffin MEP should be invited to take part is less important, indeed it can play the BBC's game.

It is necessary and important to stress that Griffin is an English Fascist. This means he wears a cloak of reasonableness wrapped around his prejudice. We had a widely read encounter with this kind of politics in the early days of OurKingdom which you can read here. Choice phrases give the game away. Yesterday Griffin was interviewed by Martha Kearney on the BBC's World at One.

In the course of his answers he referred to prisoners in British jails as "vermin". She seemed to think this acceptable and let it pass. Of course, there are some very evil men behind bars in the UK. There are also over 4,000 women (in 2006, the last date given on the Prison Service website) and many sad, dyslexic short-term prisoners. To describe any of them as "vermin" is to fundamentally dehumanise some of our own citizens and part of the human race. Rats and cockroaches are vermin. You trap, kill poison... or gas them. The word was no slip, it occurs in official BNP communications. It gives permission to dream of extreme violence. It signals the real Fascism behind the New Fascism.

In these circumstances as the moral failure of the political class brings forth demons, the BNP has to be confronted. Stuart Hall got it right: they need to be engaged with by the media when they are part of a news story, but they should not be on Question Time giving us their views about everything as if they are an acceptable part of fireside conversation.

So what is the BBC up to? I refer to it in the singular as having an approach and an attitude. Of course, it employs a lot of people with minds of their own who have differences of view. But with over 40 people earning more than the Prime Minister and executives looking after its 'vision' paid over £500,000 a year, it is also a machine with a commanding perspective of its own, however this may be arrived at.

Anthony Barnett

I have just signed up to support the petition to open up British politics now by demanding that all current MPs put themselves up for re-selection (or not!) before the next election, in open constituency primaries.

Its an important new campaign. Its website is HERE

The critical thing at the moment is to release public energy and make sure that the political class - it is not just MPs it extends across the media and the civil service - does not get away with hunkering on. That's why POWER 2010 is also so important as it seeks out the inventiveness and ideas of voters themselves. We have to break the grip of the self-selecting, entitlement elite. Open Up wants to do this. That said it still has a touch of ye olde thinking. Here is how it sets out its pitch:

This is what Open Up is about. We want an honest, effective and modern democracy. We want a government of the best possible people, who truly represent us. We want to feel proud of our politicians again, to feel proud of our government, to feel proud of our country.

It's not just about expenses. It's about reforming our political system. The way Parliament is run and government does business must change - and getting the best possible people into office is the starting point.

That's why we want the people, not the politicians, to select who stands for election. That's why we want Open Primaries in every constituency, where the people select their own candidates, and where anyone can put themselves forward to be a candidate. That's why we want all current MPs to agree to stand for re-selection in an Open Primary. We want this before the next General Election. And this is what Open Up is calling on every political party to do.

This is great stuff, especially the emphasis on reforming the system. My post-it-sticker health warning is attached to the phrase calling for "The best possible people" to be running the government. It smacks of "If only we could have better chaps it would all be fine" - a classic Ukanian lament. The reason why we want to reform the system is that, the British being part of the human race, we will never have "the best possible people" in charge, certainly not most of the time. Hence the need to change the system from one that corrupts even the best.

Among the key supporters of Open Up is Alan Parker of Brunswick who has brought a very smart team together to create a warm and energetic website. The woman in front of the man is Becky Hogge who was a colleage of mine at openDemocracy and is running the blog. It was very nice to meet her at the launch event on top of Centre Point last night, where we strolled round the viewing platform as if we were on a ship at night floating way above London in the Paramount Club.

I also met a hero of mine, Heather Brooke who will be guest blogging for Open Up. She blasted up the expenses scandal by initiating and - far more important - doggedly persisting with freedom of information requests for MPs expenses. I must admit, I thought that when the Telegraph got sent the hard drives they were part of the normal administration of the House of Commons. In fact, Heather explained, all the paperwork was being scanned only because of her successful bid to get the expenses of 14 MPs released, thus making the lot open for scrutiny in principle. As they still wanted to cover up what they were doing, this meant each submission had to be assessed for censorship before being released. This led to them being scanned. So the final exposure was all down to Heather. A big THANK YOU! Now she is pondering her next, equally revolutionary campaign... to, as the website says, Open Up Now!

Anthony Barnett

To laugh or to cry? Up and down the land people are asking themselves this question as they watch Harriet Harman, Nick Clegg or... well here is something by Charles Moore. He's an old adversary of mine having adamantly opposed Charter 88 and any attempt at reforming the British system in a democratic fashion since yonks.

Now he is following the lead of Douglas Carswell MP, the Tory backbencher who took the scalp of Speaker Martin and is calling for open primaries in the selection of MPs. Moore doesn't follow him so far as to support his audaciously titled book: The Plan (what socialist would dare to issue a volume with such a title!).

The ductile Moore slips away from embracing the idea that there is anything fundamentally wrong. Instead he has this delightful approach to an argument:

I keep asking myself how all this has come about. How is it that a Parliamentary system which really was the envy of the world even only a generation ago is now the butt of its jokes? I think I have a possible explanation.

For a hundred years, the great issue which Parliament debated most often was the franchise. Who should be allowed to elect MPs? From the Great Reform Bill of 1832 until the final admission of all women as voters in 1928, this argument raged. It made MPs super-conscious of the people who put them into Parliament, since they kept on debating who those people should be. And it made the public feel that the right to vote really mattered.

With these battles won, people felt satisfied, for the time being. But after the Second World War, politicians began to take advantage. With their legitimacy uncontested, they made things more comfortable for themselves. MPs forgot that their House was esteemed because it genuinely made the laws for the people it represented, and so they transferred much of that right to Europe.

So there you are. What went wrong was that they just stopped talking about the right things. Whoops, this led to them "forgetting" they were they to make the laws so they transferred this to Europe. What a slip! 

Having handed over their birthright, MPs then focused on their mess of pottage. Individual offices, more paid advisers, bigger pensions, shorter hours, second homes, free ginger-crinkle biscuits! It is not a coincidence that Tony Blair, the first prime minister in our history ever to show consistent contempt for the House of Commons, was also the first to make the hand-outs really gargantuan.

Corruption and ginger-crinkle simply followed loss of focus. Blair almost comes out of it well, or at least better than forgetful. He genuinely despised the place and so he pioneered a new level of corruption. One has to admire his consistency. However, "In the party conference season which has just finished, little bits of this subject came up", Moore laments, 

David Cameron, in particular, was specific about one or two tough things which he wanted to apply in the next Parliament, such as an end to the MPs' pension scandal. But the mood in all the leaderships was that they wanted to "move on". They are avoiding plans for real reform. They should be reverting to Prime Minister's Questions twice a week, relinquishing government control of parliamentary business, providing for referendums. But of course they do not want to strengthen Parliament against the executive which they themselves hope to lead.

Here, at last, there is a glimmer of the deeper picture. "They are avoiding plans for real reform". They? It can only mean all of them. The whole lot of them - enfolded into the hope for unchecked executive power.

Now where did I hear that analysis before? Blow me down if Charles Moore isn't starting to make the case for a new Charter 88 now that liberty and freedom are no longer safe. Will he ever admit that only a generation ago, well 20 years, this was already being set out loud and clear?

OK, let's put the trumpet aside and recognise the strange common ground that is emerging - like a fresh island from the sewerage emitted by our ancient constitutional arrangements. In a striking analysis  Timothy Garton Ash, just back in the UK after three months, wrote in the Guardian that he was puzzled and alarmed. Why has the constitutional moment not been seized? Where are the political forces and organised arguments able to take on a system in which all are, as Moore says, "avoiding plans for real reform"?

Garton Ash discusses Democratic Audit's hilarious 'Unspoken Constitution'. Set out for what it is, who can support the regime in its true light? Perhaps now that Moore recognises that the old regime has lost its vital link to the public even he will recognise the need for a new settlement.

Anthony Barnett

I went along last night to the launch of the brilliant Democratic Audit pamphlet on 'The Unspoken Constitution' which starts with the immortal words, "We, the elite". You can get a taste of it here and the link to the pdf. The launch was in the Atrium on Millbank and it joined forces with Power 2010 and its call for your ideas as the start of a movement to reform the way we are governed. I was cheered on the way, walking past parliament, to see the Greenpeace protestors doing their heroic bit to change the system from outside by taking their concerns to its roof. It was great to see them, so much so I renewed my financial support for Greenpeace when I got home. I think there is something stirring in the air.

Anthony Barnett

I have repeated said and it bears a great deal more repetition that Labour was taken over by a coup whose ring-leaders were Blair, Brown and Mandelson.

Whatever their fights they all needed each other. Now yesterday's Mirror confirmed Mandelson's targetting of 10 Downing Street. Outrageous as it seems, we could have President Tony and Prime Minister Peter by March. Brown will be cared for with a prestige job - after all, imagine what he knows! - doubtless a role will be found for him at the G20. Even if Cameron wins the election in May or June as the "Heir to Blair" he will be safely surrounded as Peter will make sure the Labour party is in good hands, then he'll be off to President Tony's entourage.

Anthony Barnett

Every time you think to yourself, "It's bad but at least I know", Henry Porter comes out with another appalling revelation. Did you know that there is a Human Provenance Pilot operation underway, using methods tricked from scientists, to try and profile people by examining their hair and DNA to see where they "really" come from? How is it possible to invest in and launch such a thing without a public debate - or even, save us! - in parliament? Where are the MPs saying, 'hold on', who rules this country? It shows that the forces of the deep state in the Home Office regard the population as little better than animals, to be tracked and managed. That's us, I'm talking about. Read Henry's post in CiF's Liberty Central and wonder: what's next?

Anthony Barnett

The Sun has come out against Brown and Labour - as I warned was likely earlier this month. Nick Robinson is rightly clear about its potential impact. Sunder at the Fabians tries whistling in the wind. 

Anthony Barnett

The excellent Open Europe email service includes this item:

"French Foreign Minister suggests Blair is currently the only real candidate for EU President. In an interview with France Inter, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was asked if Tony Blair will become EU President if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified. He said, "In any case, Tony Blair is a candidate and people are talking about it a lot, yes."  Asked if there are other candidates, he said, "Not many."  Asked who, he said, "No, honestly", to which the interviewer replied, "So it's Blair then?"  Kouchner said, "At one point there was Verhofstadt.  Wait! There are others who will perhaps put themselves forward; it is not for straight away.  But for the moment, indeed..." Asked if he thought it is right that a supporter of the Iraq war should become the first President of Europe, he said, "He has given several speeches on Iraq for a long time; he has been a supporter of peace; he has been the representative of the Quartet for peace in the Middle East.  On the other hand, there will also perhaps be Mr. Rasmussen, the Danish President of the Socialist International who will put himself forward, but we don't know of any other candidate."

Anthony Barnett

In Bulgaov's wonderful novel The Master and Margaritta, the Devil comes to Moscow. The desperate crowds lose their clothes in the various forms of mass hypnosis that follow. The story haunts me when I watch Mandelson at work. I doubt if he will lose his. Take a look at this

Anthony Barnett

This weekend's German elections have been reported as utterly dull. Beware of still waters! It may come to be seen as historic - thanks to those who Chancellor Merkel calls "My friends from the internet".

Flashmobs in the tradition of the Swedish pirate party have arrived on the scene. Reuters report that

blogger Rene Walter, who writes for nerdcore, says there is a serious idea behind the light-hearted gatherings. “We are not just going to swallow the election messages, we are spitting back the rubbish Merkel speaks in the ironic form of a “Yeahhh!”, he says in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.

You can watch a YouTube video here. Every single sentence of the Chancellor is greeted with a loud cheer of "Yeah" to the increasing hilarity of the crowd. It's been watched by over 330,000 so far! Somehow, if the leading candidates in our election next year are called David, Nick and Gordon can flash be far behind? 

Anthony Barnett

I smell sulfur, the cold and mephistophelian odor of Mandelson of trade, business, higher education, oligarchs and the Lords. All of a sudden a story is leaked to the Guardian that Brown has asked five times for a one-to-one meeting with Obama and been "snubbed". It's the five that arouses suspicion. It has a spurious accuracy about it. Who was doing the counting and then leaked it? At the same time Brown is asked questions about his health. He has been blind on one eye since, well since Obama has been black. He has never been interrogated about it by the press before. Now, all of a sudden, supposedly because of the book extract by Sky TV's Adam Boulton (married to ex-Blair aide Anji Hunter), the Prime Minister's 'health' has been put on the public agenda. Journalists have been given the nod that this is a legitimate line to pursue. By whom?

I wrote in June, at the time Brown was saved by Mandelson, picking up from a column by Steve Richards, that there was a plot to heave Brown out of the leadership at the Party Conference while using it to ensure a coronation - if he had not lifted the polls for Labour by then. Well, then is now next week! It looks as if Brown is resisting the deal and the gloves are off.

Anthony Barnett

This is the complete letter of resignation by Stephen Hesford MP. It is clear and principled. I don't know anything about his record yet, but there is some judgement which has survived all the compromises and I think it is worth reading in full

Dear Gordon

It is with considerable personal regret that I find myself writing to inform you of my decision to resign my positions as PPS to several ministers, principally the solicitor general.

My decision comes about because as an aide to the Law Officers, whilst I have great personal regard for the attorney general, I cannot support the decision which allows her to remain in office.

In my view the facts of the case do not matter. It is the principle which counts, particularly at a time when the public's trust of Whitehall is uncertain to say the least.

We have to be seen to be accountable.

In addition, could I just mention matters of policy where I believe leadership is vital.

On the constitution:

We must legislate to offer a referendum on how we elect Members of the House of Commons.

We must finish off reform of the House of Lords.

Generally, I would urge you to move as quickly as possible to withdraw from Afghanistan and to signal a change in our position over Trident replacement.

Finally, on the economy, the Government is to be congratulated upon its clear-sighted and effective response to the downturn.

You have my continued support in your resistance to David Cameron's myopic and siren calls for an "Age of Austerity".

My constituents benefit greatly from using our much-improved public services and they would not wish to see these jeopardised nor have our continued economic recovery put in doubt.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

Stephen Hesford MP

Anthony Barnett

This story would scupper any chance of a Labour fight back, even under a new leader. If ratification of Lisbon is postponed and the Tories can run with their pledge to hold a referendum on it, a lot of small party voters will switch and abstainers will turn out to ensure they can have their call on the Lisbon Treaty. It will also damage the Lib Dems who ducked out of being fearless democrats on the issue.

 

Anthony Barnett

I'm not being rude or cynical. But diplomatic concern seems pointless. The UK needs some kind of Obama force that offers a significant and positive change of direction and draws on new energy but can deliver inside the system. This is hardly a revolutionary desire! The Lib Dems, with over 50 MPs, millions of votes, a party machine, young leaders, are in the perfect position to be this force.

Much more important, they call it right on issues that are popular. They got the economic crisis right and are believed, immensely important in terms of credibility and popular respect. They led on liberty where the latest poll shows overwhelming, eight-to-one support for the view that the state is taking too much power, a classic liberal view and a constitutional one. Nick Clegg denounced our "rotten" system in the most robust and systematic terms since he became leader. He made a great speech saying that the acuteness of the economic collapse in the UK was caused by the political collapse of Westminster, well before the expenses crisis struck. On the issue of the Iraq war, that gave Obama his original moral authority, the Lib Dems stood out from the crowd. And this is an issue that those who vote still care about.

Why then, when their answers are so often right, principled, consistent and popular are the Lib Dems so useless? Why aren't they at 30 per cent support plus? Why should they have to ask for a place in any television debate, rather than being the main contenders?

The answer seems to be: It ain't what you say, it is the way that you say it.

I recall watching what I think was their spring party conference. For a few flickering seconds, Clegg was in the top half of BBC News. We need an act of faith. It sounded good. It disappeared. I saw no other report. But who was to make the leap? He was calling on voters to bet their faith on him. But what he and his party need to do is to take a bet on the people. It is they who need to make the change, not the voters.

The party's body language is way too Westminster. When push comes to shove, the Lib Dems are reasonable. Their leather radicals in the Lords look forward to an increase in MPs that will make them the arbiters of a hung parliament and their advice stifles the party - they are the UK's last true Establishment.

Now Clegg has written a Demos pamphlet saying it is The Liberal Moment. It's "jolly good". You can hear the plaudits from the noble Lib Dem Lords being dripped into his ears. Their murmurings are poison! Labour displaced the Liberals a century ago because of organised forces outside Westminster, in the Trade Unions and the Co-operative movement. The reshaping of British society now, that Clegg writes about, does indeed undermine traditional Labour. But its institutional forms are in the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and the London Mayor and movements against the EU. There are potential networks across civil society that could and should support the Lib Dems. But the party has to make the first move, demonstrate a hunger for power on its own terms, appeal to these supposedly dangerous elements. Clegg celebrates citizens as unruly and not wanting to be controlled by the state. I agree. No, I strongly agree. But the way it is said seems patronising. The Lib Dems need to be the unruly party if they are to appeal to the unruly majority.  

The Lib Dems have got to start being different and stop playing the game in the same old way.

PS - James Graham from inside the party makes a parallel, thoughtful argument that ends with a call for a Liberal Democrat "movement" as he gasps for oxygen of life.

PSS - The is a response from David Marquand that takes the argument further into a full OK post here.

PPSS - Sunny is in on the act too HERE

Anthony Barnett

The Rowntrees backed Power 2010 coalition for the renewal of politics launched yesterday (see Guy's post). Helena Kennedy had an article in the Independent with the headline "This is our chance to seize power - it may be the last one we get". They are calling on everyone to send in their ideas for reforms that will make a difference. Over 100 came in on the first day. You can post your ideas and proposals HERE on the new Power 2010 website and back it up with a video too. I'll be writing more about this important development. But here is the proposal I just sent in:

No More Lords - no more peers to be appointed to the Lords. None. Busta! Because people want to see an end to corruption and backhanders and the crony appointments to the Lords is the main source of corruption in British politics. Unless we stop them now there will be a tranche of Blairite riff raff all saying they have to serve out the rest of their lives there or get compensation. It is a simple demand with big implications and would provide a clear expression of public contempt for the status quo.

 

Anthony Barnett

Tomorrow sees the launch party for Henry Porter’s gripping The Dying Light which leaves the reader wondering at the end about what he – or she – would have done, in the most satisfactory way. As The Economist put it in a professional book review, “For those who like political thrillers, this is one of the season’s best: scary, informative and, alas, eminently believable.”

In case a declaration of interest is necessary, Henry was completing the proofs and all those demanding final re-writes of The Dying Light while he was directing the Convention on Modern Liberty with me (and I know how hard he worked at that), publishing his Observer column every fortnight, launched and wrote his Guardian blog while going to the States as the London Editor of Vanity Fair.  I have to admit that it crossed my mind that no-one could manage to write a good novel as well.

He has excelled even himself. There is a small dark power that haunts this land. The power of the Prime Minister to call an election at his own timing, manipulating events in the interests of accumulating and continuing a personal influence that is rooted in kingship not democracy. We are witnessing the ruthless exercise of the power now by the PM’s Faustian proxy who longs to be himself officially known by his initials. The fact that it can be buggered up by incompetence (see October 2007) does not make it any the less dangerous. Someone can shoot themselves in the toe without taking away from their gun its potential as a murder weapon.

I never thought anyone would weave this dark power into a credible thriller. Not only does The Dying Light achieve this it also pulls off another quietly brilliant expose that only dawns upon the reader gradually. The Dying Light is set in the near future with an all too believable Prime Minister who has elements of Blair and Major about him, being run close by an opposition party that is… You are well into the book before you realise that you don’t know which political party the PM represents or what the opposition stands for: they could be Tory and Labour or Labour and Tory. Something that makes the story all the more believable.

If I pick out these two political points because they are so original, while the larger dark power the heroine finds herself threatened with is the surveillance society itself. It is wonderfully done - and there is a dubious player over whom a question hangs: the British people.

Anthony Barnett

There is an ominous article by Trevor Kavanagh in today's Spectator. It calls for the last minute resuscitation of British greatness by David Cameron. Greatness is seen in bellicose, military terms of projecting power, as viewed through the American optic. The tone is bullying, the longing is sheer will power. It concludes saying that a "profound sense of despair will take Mr Cameron into government almost by default":

But the mood is itself a problem. No senior civil servant has yet said that the government’s job is to ‘oversee the orderly management of decline’, as Sir William Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, famously did in 1973. But this time, no one needs to. The politics of decline is stamped in everything this exhausted government does. Decisions on our defence are being taken on the basis that Britain no longer can claim to play a major role in the world, that we are a little country, which should stop pretending to be a big one.

This sense of defeatism may be pervasive, but it need not be terminal. It can be turned around — as Britain demonstrated, to the world’s amazement, 30 years ago. All that is requires is the right kind of courage and leadership. Thatcher had it. Heath did not. But does David Cameron? It is not much of an exaggeration to say that Britain’s future now depends on the answer.

It is well worth a read, and in the first number of the Specator to have Fraser Nelson as its helm. There is no way, it seems to me, that the Sun can now endorse Brown at the election, without losing its Political Editor. More important will be its effect on the Tory leadership. As we know from New Labour this kind of bullying works. 

What we need is a strong political voice that absorbs the quite different tones of Paul Gilroy. Some hope, of course. But when it comes to rejecting a neuralgic obsession greatness, his meditation on Postcolonial Melancholia is a must read. Reflecting on the way that "greatness" is still at stake in the arguments over the nature of Britain he notes that Blair's efforts to mimic Thatcher's Falkland success in Iraq came up against a  popular oposition that "desperately seemed to want to become something different, something less great but more noble, more consistent, and more autonomous".

Anthony Barnett

Excellent article by Andreas Whittam Smith in today's Indie does just what a columnist ought to do. He decodes David Cameron, gets a shattering blow in at Tony Blair, exposes in a calm and succinct way how spin has corrupted politics, sets out two questions that need to be answered if parliamentary authority is to be restored (it won't be) and establishes an intelligent base from which to judge what is going on, without an exaggerated word or a false note.