Zach Woodham

At the Labour party conference the Unlock Democracy stall displayed a selection of badges. I still haven’t pinned on the one that said ‘I want Local Power!’, because every time I think of doing so, I ask myself a rather pertinent question – do I really trust my local authority with more power? The great Edmund Burke said, “the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse”. Some argue that local authorities already have too much power and are free to abuse it with relatively little scrutiny. It was only last year that Poole Borough Council was found to be conducting physical surveillance on families merely to ascertain whether they were living in the right school catchment areas for their children.

A statutory instrument made and laid before Parliament earlier this year will allow draconian police powers intended to catch out crime barons to be delegated to councils, quangos and agencies so that they may seize assets from members of the public. The powers will allow councils and financial investigators for organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London to freeze assets, search homes, seize cash, confiscate property and obtain private financial records. The new measures come into force this week and will allow these dangerous powers, intended to be used by Police for serious criminal investigation, to be used against fare dodgers, families unable to pay their council tax and other ‘dangerous criminals’. Up until now, the confiscation powers have been accessible to councils and other agencies only through the police. They will now be directly accessible without any police involvement. The statutory instrument, made on 2nd April and laid before Parliament on 14th April came into force on 12th May 2009, although it wasn’t until this week that the powers were delegated. Perhaps just as worrying as the new measures is the fact that there has been so little media coverage of them.

When it says that they were “laid before parliament” this means that parliament laid down before it. There was no discussion, debate, coverage, statement, or justification of a quite extraordinary and potentially dangerous extension of the coercive power of the state.

The confiscations powers or “Al Capone powers” were given to Police in 2003, intended by Parliament to be used to crack down on organised criminals by seizing their wealth. The intention was, according to David Blunkett, to target “the homes, yachts, mansions and luxury cars of the crime barons”. Call me crazy, but something tells me that families struggling to pay their council tax aren’t likely to own yachts, mansions and luxury cars. I’m also guessing crime barons don’t struggle to pay their council tax or hop over the ticket barriers on the Underground, yet the Home Office believe it’s acceptable to use the same measures on people who commit minor offences and almost certainly don’t live extravagant lifestyles.

David Marquand

I read Anthony Barnett's piece on Blair and his supposed candidacy for President of the European Council with astonishment. This whole debate is nonsense from start to finish. The president of the European Council will be appointed by the heads of government of the EU. S/he will have a European job, not a British one. S/he will be the chair of a body consisting of all the EU heads of government. S/he will have no power, and head no government. The job has nothing whatever in common with the prime ministership of the UK, or of any other EU state. The British debate on this is utterly irrelevant to the real issues at stake. The fact is that it would be ludicrous to give the job to someone whose country has deliberately stood aside from virtually all the crucial developments in the EU since the early nineties. Britain is not in the Euro, and has not taken part in Schengen. It has deliberately turned itself into a marginal, offshore island, irrelevant to the concerns and future of the European mainland. It would be an affront to the EU’s heartland countries to appoint a Brit to this post – or for that matter to any other prestigious EU post. Britain is no longer an asset to the EU, if it ever was. It’s a pain in Europe’s fundament. Monnet had the right attitude to Europe’s British problem. Continental Europe, he thought, should go ahead with its integration without Britain; the British would then have to stew in their own juice; and sooner or later they would realise that they can’t get along on their own, and apply to join. That, of course, is exactly what happened. If the mainland Europeans had the guts to treat us like that again, that is what would happen again. The truth is that the extraordinary media hoo-ha about Blair’s supposed candidacy is merely one more sign that our political and media classes are living in a time-warp. They still think Britain matters. It doesn’t.

Quite apart from that, why on earth should Merkel and Sarkozy (who will necessarily be the key actors) dream of appointing a politician of the centre-left to this post, when the centre-right they lead has just won a crushing victory in Germany, and is in unchallenged power in France and Italy as well? That too would be an affront – not to the whole of mainland Europe, this time, but to its dominant political force.

Stuart Weir

To follow up my post below on the Conservatives' new position on Europe - I consulted Keith Ewing, who probably knows more than anyone about economic and social rights on David Cameron's new EU pledges, which seem very likely to go the way of the cast-iron pledge of a referendum on Lisbon. Keith is in Sydney. His take is that he is not sure that the Tories know what they are talking about. Much of the provisions he thinks they are targeting were pre the Social Chapter of 1992 or independent of it – no question of getting rid of discrimination law, working time, or holidays. If they are talking about the Social Chapter, it would be things like information and consultation and protection for agency workers. But this is not a runner – he cannot see how it could now be done. We are in too deep, this is gesture politics of the most puerile kind. I asked him: "Why aren’t Labour making a fuss?" His reply: "Because they are not interested in the social agenda either, having done so much to frustrate it from within." At least the Tories have the advantage of honesty of sorts.

George Gabriel

"Maintain the momentum for democratic reform", the role for think tanks to take as they debate the ideas needed "for fixing the essential plumbing of our body politic". So says IPPR's collection of essays from 7 leading think tanks on "A Future for Politics" launched Wednesday in a panel discussion of its contributors: Carey Oppenheim - IPPR, Julian Astle - CentreForum, Daniel Leighton - Demos, Sunder Katwala - Fabian Society, Neil O'Brien - Policy Exchange, Jessica Asato - Progress and Nick Bosanquet - Reform together with Minister of State for Constitutional Renewal Michael Wills.

Though released in response to a symptom, the expenses scandal and its current culmination in the Kelly report, the volume of essays' 7 authors agree that the root cause is a profound lack of democratic accountability which has deeply undermined public faith in politics. From a baseline laid by the Minister - that our representative democracy has been struggled for, is valuable and cannot be perfect, one by one they took their turns to promote their key idea to save the system: ranging from the less than ambitious suggestion of open primaries to a revival for public accusation as in ancient Athens.

OurKingdom

Guest post by Helen of Police State UK

"Today is all about listening to you - we're not here to speak for the Met, nor to defend them." Thus Victoria Borwick, chair of the MPA's newly convened Civil Liberties Panel, opened this morning's open meeting. The scope of the meeting - an evidence gathering session on public order policing, and more specifically the G20 demonstrations in April - had been unclear to some. Many people had brought questions demanding immediate answers, but instead their concerns have been 'noted', with no clear idea if answers will be forthcoming.

It may seem late in the day for a data-gathering session on the policing of G20. Photos,video footage, eyewitness accounts and the Climate Camp Legal report have been publically available for months. Hundreds of complaints have been submitted to the IPCC, although fewer have been considered. The HMIC and Select Committee on Human Rights have both compiled investigative reports. This morning, however, the human aspect of hearing personal testimonies felt significant. People spoke emotively and powerfully about their experiences. For many people, this meeting was their first chance to express their grievances publically to those with the authority to address them. The chair handled the flow of speakers well, and I came away satisfied that all the most significant points of concern were granted a hearing. Some members of the panel, even if they were already familiar with the issues, seemed surprised and affected by what they heard. While the lack of clear answers was frustrating, the opportunity for dialogue was nonetheless valuable.

Significantly, engagement and human points of contact were a theme of the morning's discussion. Some flagged up the breakdown of communication between police and protestors - sometimes despite the best efforts of activists. One speaker suggested text messages as a communication tool for police on the ground to maintain contact with police liaisons, and another pointed out that confiscating the loudspeaker used by Climate Camp at Bishopsgate prevented the protestors from discussion and making decisions amongst themselves. Police have a responsibility to respond to efforts from protestors to engage them in dialogue and to maintain that communication - as much to humanise the disagreements between both parties as for any resolutions that might be found.

Thomas Ash

Over at the openDemocracy front page today we've published an alternative history in which John Casey of Cambridge University imagines what would have happened if Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators had succeeded in blowing up Parliament:

That gigantic explosion – never to be forgotten by any who heard it – destroyed James I, at least eight hundred members of the Lords and Commons, nearly all the Bishops of the Church of England, and the sinister head of James’s secret police, Lord Salisbury. It left the country incredulous, astounded and terrified. It seemed like the end of the world, the overthrow of all order, the day of doom.

Over the next few weeks,Fawkes and friends, with the help of the powerful pro-Catholic Earl of Northumberland, consolidated their power. They called in Spanish troops, seized the infant sons of James, brought them up as Catholics and officially restored Catholicism in this country. It proved quite easy – there were lots of secret Catholics, and anyway Spanish troops were a strong argument for conversion.

The reign of James’s son, Charles I, is famous as being a period of peace and prosperity...

Happy bonfire night from OurKingdom!

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.

Stuart Weir

I wonder in despair what it would take to rouse that lumbering beast that we know as the Labour government into decisive action. But it looks as if David Cameron is once again going to dance rings around  Gordon Brown and his ministers.  Cameron has adroitly mollified most of the Tory Euro-sceptics with his foxy trot round the broken pledge to hold a referendum on Lisbon, and has perhaps picked up quite a lot of support among a public that is also broadly Euro-sceptic, if not noxiously so.

But surely there was an opportunity for Labour to knock him out of his stride?  Cameron's neo-liberal instincts may well be in tune with the rump of the party that he leads, but I do not believe that the public would accept that the price for asserting Britain's 'sovereignty' against Brussels should be to lose the social and employments benefits that they receive (unknowingly no doubt) through the EU - holiday entitlements, parental leave and much else.   But Labour seems to have lost its traditional instincts in its own move towards neo-liberal politics.  A government that wanted to protect the working population - once Labour's raison d'etre - should have protested long and loud about the potential loss of benefits to working people instead of waffling on about the 'bigger' issues of European politics.

Of course, Cameron ought to be more vulnerable on the Tory 'sovereigny' whinge.  Sovereignty over the British people, their Parliament and local democracy, yes.  But 'sovereignty' over the US that binds us into an unwinnable, illegitimate and unpopular occupation of Afghanistan, no. 'Sovereignty' over corporate and financial business, no.  But the government is equally vulnerable on these counts and equally committed to the brute sovereignty over their subjects in the UK that its party shares, albeit unequally, with the Tories.   There is a real opening here for the Lib Dems, but they don't have the guts to take it.    

On Tuesday morning one of our Treasury Ministers, Paul (Lord) Myners, remarked in a radio interview on the dangers inherent in ‘push button' computerised trading which now accounts for some 70% of all transactions in company shares in the U.S. and is a growing practice here in the U.K. Myners, a self-made man with a distinguished city career, was brought into the government by Gordon Brown to assist with the financial crisis in September 2008. The crisis has led to considerable, sometimes justified, finger-pointing at small sets of individuals and companies. Now Myners has raised a wider and deeper system issue and, predictably, this has received almost no public discussion. But it is just the kind of issue that demands wide debate. For Myners has raised the question of whether the fundamental relationship which he believes in between investors, especially institutional investors like pension funds, and the companies they invest in, will be destroyed by the spread of pre-programmed computers making buy or sell decisions.

Paul Myners has long argued that the best way to ensure that boards of directors manage effectively and with due regard to the social obligations of their companies is for shareholders to behave as responsible owners and play a stronger supervisory role in the companies in which they invest.

The trouble with this is that most institutional shareholders are disinclined to take on such a role. They have arguments on their side. They own shares in companies not the companies themselves. There are severe practical limits to the influence they can sensibly bring to bear on managers who know their businesses. And their own responsibilities to those whose funds they manage may be better discharged if they can take unrestrained advantage of the liquidity that a modern stock exchange affords them.

Moreover, it is simply not possible to plug the holes that the new computerised world has bored through the dyke: the old idea of joint stock companies - from which comes the notion of distributed ownership which Myners is talking about - is being swept away in the flood.

Nonetheless Myners has identified a serious structural problem. The boards of companies have great economic and social power. To put it at its lowest, it is in the interests of all of us that they are interrogated on how they use their power. If shareholders do not, who will?

Alan Pearce

Alan Pearce, author of Whose Side Are They On? How Big Brother Government is Ruining Britain, explains why he was compelled to write a book that would drive people insane with rage.

Writing a book like this makes you question your sanity. My wife certainly questioned mine. From out of my office came regular outbursts of mad laughter followed by torrents of angry obscenities. I even caught her Googling "Tourette's Syndrome".

When I came to write ‘Whose Side Are They On?' I had no idea just what a passionate and powerful grip it would have on me. I've never been political, not in the party sense, and my interests have always been in foreign affairs and history.

Then one day I picked up a newspaper and read that the government was creating around 320 new laws a year, according to the Liberal Democrats, and more than half of those had never been debated in Parliament. I wanted to know why and particularly why they thought it necessary.

Some of it appeared plain bonkers. What were our law-makers thinking when they made it an offence to "disturb a pack of eggs when instructed not to by an authorised officer"?

Why should we need a special license to have a sing-song in the village hall or put on a panto at the community centre? How many of us know we can no longer go to a fancy dress party as a barrister or traffic warden? It's all very amusing but don't they have better things to occupy their time?

Guy Aitchison

If any more evidence were needed that the Westminster system is itself sick and in dire need of treatment then the behaviour of MPs in the build up to today's release of Sir Christopher Kelly's report on expenses is surely it.

Watching the sorry charade of MPs clinging to their second homes, "golden goodbyes", and the right to give jobs to their nearest and dearest, you can't help but wonder where this outspoken bunch were when we needed them to fight the issues that matter to the British people.

If they'd spent half the energy they have sticking up for their perks and privileges into defending our civil liberties, challenging the government on climate change and reining in the banks you can bet we'd be in a far better state than we're in now.

It now looks like the party leaders will accept Kelly's recommendations and urge their MPs to do the same. But what our politicians need to understand is that public anger over expenses is just a symptom of a much larger crisis in our democracy - not a cause of it. The current set of MPs have shown themselves unable and unwilling to face up to this crisis. For the good of our democracy, the best thing they can do now is take Kelly's medicine and be done with it. It's time for the people to take the lead in fixing our broken politics.

It's with this message that Pam Giddy, director of Power210, has written an open letter to the three main party leaders, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

We need as many people as possible to co-sign the letter so that the party leaders hear our message loud and clear: a new politics means more than just a clamp down on expenses - it means listening to the people and delivering the changes our democracy so desperately needs. Co-sign the letter here.

Gerry Hassan

Churchill is everywhere - claimed by Nick Griffin and the BNP, praised by historian Andrew Roberts, and the subject of two recent biographies on his war years by the American writer Carlo d'Este and Max Hastings (Warlord: Churchill as War Leader 1874-1945, Allen Lane 2009, and Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45, Harper Press 2009).

As the Second World War nostalgia industry gets into gear - passing the 70th anniversary of the European branch of the war (the Chinese-Japanese war starting earlier) - the build up goes on towards the marking of the Battle of Britain and 'our finest hour' next summer.

Into the Storm was a timely dramatisation of Churchill at war and Anthony Barnett has already commented that there was a sense of a figure slipping into history - and of all of this seeming to come from a far off place and time.

Yet, Churchill's shadow still lingers over us - the last British imperialist who presided over the demise of the British Empire but the continuation of the Empire State.

Today, Churchill is long gone, but his imperialist delusion resulted in the creation of a wartime consensus which created in Anthony's words the ideology of 'Churchillism' (see his book Iron Britannia: Why Parliament Waged its Falkland War, Allison and Busby 1982). Consensus at home and Britain becoming the junior partner to America in the global order.

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.

Ayesha Saran

"They lie, they cheat and they'll say anything to stay..." The voiceover on Sky TV announces a new documentary series, not about Westminster MPs but featuring an equally maligned group - immigrants. UK Border Force charts the lives of "diligent enforcement officers...cracking down on illegal immigrants". The cameras accompany UK Border Agency officials on deportation flights and searches for alternately tearful or unrepentant stowaways.

Elsewhere in the media, recent headlines have been dominated by the irregular immigration status of Attorney General Baroness Scotland's housekeeper, cruelly dubbed an "illegal skivvy" by the News of the World.  This coincided with rolling television coverage of the French police bulldozing the ominous sounding ‘Jungle' camp in Calais, prompting complaints that this would cause an upsurge in asylum applications in the UK. The disinclination of most politicians to venture into the minefield of immigration politics is therefore understandable. The debate is toxic.

Marta Cooper

On Friday morning the UK woke up to news of yet another resignation from the Advisory Council of the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) over the sacking of its former chairman, Professor David Nutt. The Home Secretary Alan Johnson potentially faces ‘collective action’ from these protestors for his treatment of Nutt, a stance he is defending in a letter to today’s Guardian. This episode reveals that Johnson, who was only recently projected as a sane, down-to-earth, and distinctive alternative Prime Minister to Brown, to be someone who has now fully absorbed New Labour’s lack of respect for rational and informed debate and its pandering to Murdoch - which disqualify it from tackling the roots of the illegal drugs problem.

There are two big issues here. One relates to how we can grow intelligent government, which must include the open input of unelected specialists, the other to what an effective drugs policy ought to be.

Johnson’s reason for sacking Nutt was a paper in which the Imperial professor claimed alcohol and tobacco were far more dangerous than the use of LSD, ecstasy and cannabis. Nutt said the evidence shows the risk of psychotic illness from the drug was relatively small. He also goes on to argue against Jacqui Smith’s position of upgrading it from its current class C classification to class B, claiming the former home secretary was playing into the ‘precautionary principle’ and ignoring scientific evidence. For Johnson, however, the bottom line was that Nutt “cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy.”

Kanishk Tharoor

A commentary on the BNP in British politics, written for the Independent by openDemocracy associate editor Kanishk Tharoor last week...

If the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of domestic skirmishes is perspective. After last week's furore over the far-right and immigration in Britain, doom and gloom stalked the headlines. It seemed that the BNP and its odious "politics" had truly arrived, that the country will be forced to face, one way or another, its mono- and multicultural demons. But missing among the outrage and pieties of the past few days was a modest, but necessary, concession to reality: things in Britain are really not that bad.

Serious problems certainly remain to be tackled. The threats of radicalism among alienated Muslims and far-right bigotry among the "white working class" are very real. So too are the social tensions generated by immigration and the economic downturn. But in general, British society has handled (and continues to handle) the cultural convulsions shaking Europe in the 21st century with no small amount of grace and reason.

This is made particularly evident by a brief tour of other Western European countries that wrestle with similar issues of diversity and immigration. Look at the Netherlands, a state with a far older tradition of tolerance than Britain. There, the bleach-blond, anti-immigrant demagogue Geert Wilders and his "Freedom Party" led Dutch polls as recently as this March. Could Nick Griffin and his politics win a plurality of British public support? Not now, and probably never.

Tom Griffin

Tom Griffin (London, OK): I am not normally fan of blog memes, but Guy Aitchison's appeal to the British blogosphere for suggestions that will change our democracy for the better has thrown up some interesting ideas.

For my submission, I want to put forward an idea that speaks directly to Power2010's remit to ensure that the next Parliament is a reforming one.

What's the Big Idea 

A compulsory register of lobbyists,  including details of who is lobbying decision-makers and how much they are spending on lobbying activities.

In the US, strict disclosure requirements have contributed to the downfall of corrupt lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff. In Britain, a coalition of civil society groups in the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency are campaigning for similar legislation. The idea has also been backed by the Commons Public Administration Select Committee and by over 200 MPs in two early day motions by Gordon Prentice and Michael Meacher.

It has nevertheless been rejected by the Government, in a response to the Public Administration Select Committee last week.

Why is this change important to you? 

The cash for laws affair has shown that the British Parliament is not immune to lobbying scandals, but it only came to light because of a journalistic sting operation. As MPs face a crackdown on expenses, there is a real danger that they will become even more susceptible to lobbyists' influence.

The Government is already backsliding on any commitment to reform in the  wake of the expenses crisis, as its preference for self-regulation of lobbyists shows.

The Conservatives take a traditional Westminster view that personal corruption is best dealt with through an election to cleanse the Augean stables. Yet there are worrying signs that the parliamentary clearout may leave us with even more MPs drawn from a homogenous political class.

The Tories themselves share Labour's preference for self-regulation, and some 28 current lobbyists will be standing for the party at the next election.

If we are to get a reformist parliament, it is up to us to ensure we elect one. An ideal way to do that is to include a lobbyists register among the five pledges that Power2010 asks all candidates to sign up to.

That's my Power2010 idea. You can submit yours here. 

I'm going to tag the following as five bloggers whose ideas as I'd like to hear:

Alex Harrowell - Yorkshire Ranter

Gareth Young - Little Man in a Toque 

Simon Dyda - The Dyda Dispatches 

Joan McAlpine -  Go Lassie Go

Mick Fealty & Co - Slugger O'Toole

 

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.

Pat Stamp

Pat Stamp's letter on the postal workers' strike in the London Review of Books...

I am a postman and concerned at the absence in the media of any account of how mail delivery is organised and what Royal Mail's modernisation programme entails. The programme was introduced because the popularity of email and texting has caused a drop in mail volume. Royal Mail's first step was to reduce the number of walks. It did this by cutting some walks in each area and making the remaining walks longer. A postman who normally delivered mail to six streets, say, now found himself delivering to eight or nine. During the summer months, when mail volumes were low, he could, perhaps, just cope with this. But as autumn begins and the Christmas catalogues start to come out, every week and sometimes every day can be heavy. In the run-up to last Christmas, there were postmen who only finished their walks at 7 or 8 p.m., sometimes two or three times a week. In one depot alone, around 15 postmen phoned in sick. This Christmas, with the even longer walks, it could be worse. Royal Mail is a strong promoter of general health and safety, but as the walks lengthen and the loads increase, many of us feel that our own health isn't being taken into consideration.

The next step in the modernisation was to stop overtime. The new, longer walks were generated by a computer program called Pegasus. We were assured that Pegasus had made all the new walks around three hours long. Some of the walks were indeed three hours long, and the postmen on those rounds had no trouble completing them in time. But a significant number turned out to be considerably longer - some of them up to four and a half hours long - and mail began piling up as postmen brought post back at the end of the day because they couldn't deliver their loads without working extra, unpaid time.

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).  

This article originally appeared on the blog of Open Up Now, the campaign for open primaries.

I have just finished reading a fascinating book about the collapse in September 2008 of Lehman Brothers. Well informed and informative, it describes in vivid and authentic detail how that banking house careered towards the biggest bankruptcy in history dragging much of the world's financial system into chaos with it. The book is titled A Colossal Failure of Common Sense and is a study of the deadly interplay between personal and institutional greed for both money and power, the desire of those in power to maintain the status quo, the reluctance to recognise inconvenient facts and the willingness of those with "common sense" to become complicit and not ask the key "what if?" questions. It should be required reading for the leaders of our political parties.

It is our political parties that have become a necessity in, but also the kidnappers of, our representative democracy. And it is they that are leading us headlong towards the collapse of public confidence in our parliamentary system. They are doing this, as they have for some time, in three main ways.

They exercise substantial control of parliamentary candidacy by deciding at central or local level who is allowed to put themselves up for election as representatives of constituencies.

They are the self-appointed guardians of the rule that all holders of ministerial positions sit in one of the two houses of Parliament and are members of (or, in rare cases, supporters of) "the party".

They make clear to "their" MPs (via the whipping system and other more subtle pressures) that the realisation of any ambition to have a political career including ministerial office is dependent on supporting "their" government and not "rocking the boat".

By these means the political parties have captured our freedoms and largely destroyed the notions that Government should be subject to the control of Parliament and that Parliament should consist of the people's representatives freely elected. We are, in effect, forced to vote for a party which will create the next government with our MPs reduced substantially to cannon fodder in relation to national matters and encouraged to focus on "constituency matters". Test this by asking your MP two questions, one relating to a purely local matter and the other to a national matter. You will get a prompt response to the former but, very likely, will have to wait for a response to the latter until someone on the MP's staff has checked with "central office" what the party line is.

Andy May

The past week gave a slightly schizophrenic picture of policing post-G20. The recent Climate Change protest at Ratcliffe was met with relatively restrained policing compared to the G20, continuing the trend from the Blackheath Climate Camp in August/September. Yet, six days later we find out that thousands of peaceful protestors are being logged as 'domestic extremists' for as little as attending demonstrations. It appears that whilst our law enforcers have been taking some pains in recent months to show that they are respecting protestors' rights, they are still very keen to collect their personal data and secretly regard them as an 'extreme' problem.

As Paul Lewis points out in his article on the future of policing, some senior figures in ACPO and the Met appear to be listening and learning after the G20 debacle. When the final HMIC report on 'Adapting to Protest' is released later this month hopefully we may see the foundations for real long term change from the excessive force which has characterised policing of political protest since the miners strikes. Senior Met Officers like Bob Broadhurst and Chris Allison, who champion the knuckle-dragging tactics we saw at the G20 and who were responsible for misleading statements in its aftermath, look increasingly isolated in this new world.

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. 

Guy Aitchison

Salman Shaheen has just posted an exclusive interview with Nick Clegg MP on the excellent Third Estate group blog in which he asks the Lib Dem leader a question I suggested on behalf of Power2010.

This was my question:

At the height of the expenses crisis, you responded to David Cameron and Gordon Brown's attempts to position themselves as democratic reformers by pointing out that the Lib Dems alone had consistently called for reform of a "rotten" Westminster system. Power2010 has received nearly 2000 submissions from members of the public beyond Westminster who also want democratic reform.

But what are you doing to mobilise people's anger with the way we are governed beyond engaging in the very routines of Westminster village politics that puts them off in the first place? 

And this was the Lib Dem leader's reply:

"Well, it would be odd if we didn't use the platform that Westminster gives Liberal Democrat MPs to make it clear where we stand on political reform," Clegg says. "We've always favoured a much more open, transparent and responsive system of government. And whether it's freedom of information or the way in which MPs get elected, we've always led the way in calling for change. The others just lag behind, and - as we've seen after 12 years with Labour - they see constitutional change as a sort of refuge from other political crises, running to talk about it when they're in trouble and drifting back into their establishment ways the second they think they're out of the woods."

As a party that has always been held back by the first-past-the-post electoral system, it is, perhaps, natural that the Lib Dems alone should remain consistent to their message on democratic reform. "For us, changing the way politics is done is a central part of what we're here to do," Clegg says. "But you're right: speaking up in Westminster isn't enough. That's one of the reasons 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! One of the great things about Power2010 is that it's asking for your ideas, from people well beyond the bubble at Westminster. I'm really looking forward to reading what people come up with after November 30th. Politicians don't know it all, and we have to ask people directly if we're to know what they want.

You can read the rest of the interview over at The Third Estate. 

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.

Jacob Ignatius

The appearance of the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, on BBC's Question Time would have been unthinkable a few years ago, yet that is what happened last Thursday. Despite the controversy surrounding his appearance on the show, there is no denying the fact that his party has achieved a certain amount of success lately. While some people, like Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, a veteran anti-Apartheid campaigner, were opposed to giving Mr Griffin such a prestigious platform, opinion polls showed that the majority of the public were in favour of him appearing on the show because, after all, the BNP had done well in the European elections in June, getting nearly a million votes. Indeed, the BNP is now able to get enough votes that it can no longer be ignored.

Hundreds of anti-fascist protestors, most of them white, vented their disgust and anger outside BBC TV Centre in west London before the show began. Griffin was exposed for the racist, homophobic, anti-Islamic, Nazi sympathising bigot he is as he came under intense scrutiny in front of a largely hostile audience. In other countries, the appearance of a politician or spokesperson from the political far right does not cause such outcry. In India, for instance, it is quite common for members of the extremist Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh to appear in the mainstream media. However, in such countries, there is a greater acceptance of views deemed to be at the far right of domestic public opinion.

Guy Aitchison

Important developments showing how protest in this country is being criminalised and undermined are now being brought to the attention of the mainstream. Not by the BBC of course which remains as spineless as ever when it comes to challenging the regime's slide into authoritarianism, but by Channel 4 and the Guardian.

First, there was last week's Ready for a Riot, the Dispatches documentary which asked an important question, namely is training officers for "public order" policing in battle-like conditions, where they're pelted with petrol bombs, and then kitting them out like stormtroopers, the best way to ensure they fulfil their obligations under human rights law to "facilitate" peaceful protest? Or is there a tiny little danger that, as Denis O'Conor, of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (whose report on protest policing is released soon) said, this approach becomes "self-fulfilling"? The G20 showed for everyone to see on YouTube that a bunch of pumped-up stormtroopers are less likely to be in the mood to "facilitate" the peaceful protest of a few hundred campers than crush it mercilessly, even when the enemy has its hands in the air shouting "this is not a riot".

So, who is responsible for setting such inappropriate training for riot officers then? Why it's the Association of Chief Police Officers, of course. And why are they apparently so oblivious to their obligations under human rights law? Well, wouldn't you like to know. But you can't. Because they're a private company not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

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".