The pressure group Compass is taking action to place the public interest back at the heart of Britain. Joe Cox of the group's campaigns team reports on their latest event: a citizen's assembly organised with the economics think-tank nef.

When complex events occur the framing of the issue often determines which lessons we learn. When the News of the World phone hacking scandal erupted we at Compass wanted to help ensure that the UK learnt the right lessons in the right way. We, amongst others, argued that the scandal was not an isolated event. It was the third crisis in quick succession. First, the bankers and their bonuses; then some politicians and their expenses; and then the press, profiting from peoples’ pain, grief and private lives. We launched a petition calling for the Government to hold a new Public Jury that would explore possible reforms to banking, politics, media and the police, to enable us to put the public interest back into the heart of the system. (The idea is discussed here on OurKingdom.)

The ascendant 'Tory feminism' is not about equality for all British women. So what is it about?

Tory feminism takes a similar “strength in womanhood” posture as Sarah Palin's brand of “mama grizzly” feminism. It is loudly and proudly conservative. A major theme of Tory feminism is a rejection of the notion of “box-ticking”: Tory feminists rail hard against impact equalities assessments, with poster child for Tory feminism Louise Mensch going so far as to suggest that this is “ghetto feminism”. Mensch dismisses the significance of equality assessments in favour of producing some cherry-picked statistics to back up her laughable argument that the Tories are “relentlessly focused on social justice”. It is not hard to see why this idea is so decried by Tory feminism: the government austerity programme is affecting women disproportionately, and will continue to do so.

What is Tory feminism about, then, if not equality for women? Ultimately, it equates to career success, a personal quest for power. The “glass ceiling” is a focal point of Tory feminism, with the goal of getting as many women into high-earning positions as possible. This, according to Mensch, can only be achieved through playing the capitalist system:  "A feminism that stigmatises the profit motive stigmatises women's ability to get on and break the glass ceiling."

In response to a growing realisation that neo-liberal capitalism is morally and literally bankrupt, Britain’s political leadership have provided three visions of ethical capitalism for us to aspire to.  So, is there such a thing as ethical capitalism? And why is this question being asked now?

What is Ethical?

First, we must decide how we approach this question: from a binary or a spectrum view of ethics. In binary views of ethics, to use a metaphor, you are either pregnant or not.  You can’t be half pregnant.  Therefore, the question has a yes or no answer.  However, using a spectrum view, there is a sliding scale ranging from the most heinous unethical extreme at one end, to the apex of moral good standing at the other.  In short, binary ethics asks ‘if’ something is ethical, spectrum ethics ‘how’ ethical it is. 

It is interesting that this question – 'is there such a thing as ethical capitalism?' – is asked in binary terms, yet often answered in spectrum.  Notice the question is not ‘what is the most ethical economic system?’ or ‘which economic model promotes the most ethical economy?’

A call is going out to every British citizen who wants the financial sector to clean up their act. Move your money from the big banks to local, ethical or mutual alternatives and send them a message in a language they'll understand.

So, Stephen Hester decided not to accept his bonus after all.  You can bet that the Government will be grateful… 

But should we be?  Should the public submit themselves to the benevolence of individual bankers in the hope that, as bonus season continues, there are more Phillip Hammonds than there are Fred Goodwin’s in the City? 

The Anonymous 'V for Vendetta' mask is an icon of the Occupy movement. But how does this band of deviant web pirates fit with the Occupiers' apparent ethics of responsibility, transparency and democracy? Cole Stryker's new book goes some way towards deconstructing this tension.

The end of OurKingdom’s year-long debate on the Networked Society, making way for a new focus on the Occupy movement, comes at a formative moment in the future of online activism. Aaron Peters' excellent summing up of last year’s events demonstrated, amongst other things, the increasingly important role that networks have had in the mobilization of political resistance against states held to ransom by non-democratic financial bodies. His concluding question, 'What would it mean to 'occupy' everything?', is an urgent one, and in the context of the imminent Occupy LSX eviction and the low-key release of the networking site occupii.org, appropriately anxious.

One factor in danger of getting lost in this shift of emphasis onto Occupy, is the still germane issue of anonymous ‘hacktivism’, reference to which is notably absent from Aaron's walk back through 2011. Given the recent surge in DDoS attacks attributed to (capital a) Anonymous, including unprecedented assaults on government bodies supporting SOPA and ACTA, it is important that the online community do not make the same mistake as the mainstream media. We must keep this issue in discussion while the strategy of ‘occupy everything’ is being formulated.

Ed Miliband’s sortie against Stephen Hester and City bonuses is a sign of life in Labour. But Labour’s position on the benefit cap reveals a deep-seated weakness.

By taking the lead in rejecting the government’s “benefit cap” in the Lords, the bishops exposed a gaping vacuum in our politics.  The Church of England, long derided for the wishy-washy character of its religious faith, turns out to possess a creed of compassion that is of sterner stuff when it comes to the politics of poverty and social justice than either the Social Liberal tendency among the Liberal Democrats and whatever remnants of Social Democracy remain in the Labour party.

Englishness is finally finding a voice, after more than a century. Why has it been muted this long, and is it time now for a strong civic nation, or will an England of blood and soil emerge?

‘Why aren’t we even allowed to be English?’ has become an increasingly vocal refrain in the identity debate across the nations of Britain, and debated in depth in OurKingdom’s ‘For England’s Sake’ page.

'What’s stopping you?' is one fairly reasonable answer. The English have a self-image as a pretty anti-statist people. That should make it difficult to pin the widespread ignoral of St George’s Day, for example, purely on some great political conspiracy, from Whitehall to town halls, to suppress a bubbling up sense of English pride. Yes, there has been an official reluctance to articulate an English identity, but the relative lack of knowledge even of the St George’s day date, let alone the kind of self-organised voluntary activity common on national days elsewhere across these islands, must reflect a broader apathy across much of the English public.

That is changing. How Englishness is finally finding a voice is set out in the new ippr report ‘The Dog That Finally Barked’, published last week. A rebalancing of British and English identities sees the English (just about) joining the Scots and Welsh in giving primacy to their national identity over the multinational one recorded on their British passports. 'England Arise!' was also an implicit theme of Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s Hugo Young lecture last week. As we decide, across the UK, whether and how we want to reshape, or to end, the British political settlement over the next three years, we will certainly find ourselves talking and hearing more about England and Englishness.

“We all know what we must do, but we do not know how to get re-elected after we have done it.”

When he spoke these words many years ago, long-serving prime minister of Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker was referring to fiscal sobriety, whose benefits are felt only in the long term, after the next election. That applies of course even more so to policies to mitigate climate change, with even more distant benefits. In a time when many European governments are struggling from month to month to pay salaries and pensions, how then can we create the necessary political space for sufficiently ambitious climate change policies?

Storm clouds are gathering over whether Iran should be invaded as a pre-emptive strike to prevent its manufacture of nuclear weapons. Already, Israel seems to be moving pro-actively, while the subject would have been discussed by Cameron during his recent trip to Saudi Arabia. The US has initiated the tightening of economic sanctions against Iran and has raised its naval profile in the Persian Gulf, though it would clearly prefer to postpone any military action until after the US Presidential election in November. Meanwhile, are the various diplomatic manoeuvres around Syria a rehearsal for future action against Iran?

A child who has been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted can grow up to feel unsafe in the world, to feel that everyone is going to hurt it, to have little self-confidence, be fearful, isolated and angry. This child can feel powerless, fear losing control, and lack respect for and trust in authority.

All this is compounded and intensified if the child has no support, is met with disbelief or simply cannot tell anyone. A child is isolated by abuse.

The Scottish Government has announced its suggested question for the forthcoming referendum, ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’

At the same time it has suggested that ‘civic Scotland’ might like to organise, define itself and the idea of ‘devo max’, and ask a second question.

With his reference to Mugabe and that flippant question about transporting gold to Scotland, Jeremy Paxman did no favours for unionists in his interview with Alex Salmond last Tuesday. But he did pick up on two important ideas from Salmond’s Hugo Young Lecture. The first is the idea of the ‘social union’. The second is Salmond’s hope of an independent Scotland being a ‘beacon of progressiveness’ to those south of the border and beyond.

The ‘social union’, a term cannily appropriated by the SNP, appeals to those in Scotland and the rest of the UK (RUK) uneasy with the ‘breaking up’ of a multi-national state with strong social, economic and personal connections: the independence movement is in a strong position if it can argue that the social union will be preserved and even strengthened after independence. SNP strategists are well aware of the strategic value of the ‘social union’ argument. Prof. James Mitchell focussed on the term in a lecture to the SNP conference last November, making a brave and influential claim that the SNP is “the true social unionist party”[1].

Britain's 'third party' is no longer worthy of the name. Trevor Smith joined the Liberal Party in 1955 when it had five MPs; he fears he may die with the LibDems having the same number!

The LibDems are in a very serious state, possibly facing meltdown of the kind experienced by the Canadian Conservatives some time ago (though they managed a spectacular come back), or the Canadian Liberals in last year’s elections. The burning question is how, at the very minimum, to limit the electoral damage and/or revive the party’s fortunes.

It is four years now since then Foreign Secretary David Miliband confirmed (despite previous government denials) that two extraordinary rendition flights had stopped over at Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory, in 2002. Addressing the issue of whether the Government had deliberately misled the public over its knowledge of - or collaboration in - rendition, Miliband apologised and stated that “mistakes made in those two cases are not acceptable”.

The revelations about Diego Garcia were symptomatic of the slow, piecemeal uncovering of information about the UK’s potential role in the ill-treatment and torture of terror suspects after September 11, 2001. The hazy picture of what occurred has begun to be pieced together by the first-hand accounts of victims, investigations of journalists and human rights organisations and protracted litigation in the courts, despite the best efforts of the government to keep everything out of the public domain.

The council were tightening their belts of imitation alligator leather over pale paunches and shiny grey trousers —librarians had been living high on the hog for too long and now it was time for what?  … for more bollocks… for more training sessions, for new chief executives with their real ale beer bellies, all called Mike, who popped their head round the door of our Department, ‘you’re doing a great job—keep quiet—they’ll forget about you until the next restructure…’  

In the newly published IPPR pamphlet The Dog That Finally Barked: England as an Emerging Political Community, Richard Wyn Jones and Guy Lodge demonstrate, to anyone’s satisfaction, that there is such a thing as English identity and that it has a political component.

Perhaps their most surprising finding was that in comparative context, England has a stronger sense of identity in terms of the standard 'Moreno scale’ than Bavaria, Galicia, Vienna or even Wales. Only Scotland and Catalonia (of areas surveyed) were stronger sub-state units of identity. The research found that only about a quarter of English respondents were happy with the constitutional status quo, although there was no consensus about an alternative and the question demonstrated some of the qualities of an issue that is ill-formed in the public mind, for example a strong effect from the wording of the poll question.

The National Health Service (NHS) in England has been a leading international model of tax-financed, universal health care. Legal analysis shows that the Health and Social Care Bill currently making its way through the UK Parliament[1] would abolish that model[2] and pave the way for the introduction of a US-style health system by eroding entitlement to equality of health-care provision. The Bill severs the duty of the Secretary of State for Health to secure comprehensive health care throughout England and introduces competitive markets and structures consistent with greater inequality of provision, mixed funding, and widespread provision by private health corporations. The Bill has had a turbulent passage. Unusually, the legislative process was suspended for more than 2 months in 2011 because of the weight of public concern.[3] It was recommitted to Parliament largely unaltered after a “listening exercise”. These and more recent amendments to the Bill do not sufficiently address major concerns that continue to be raised by Peers and a Constitution Committee of the House of Lords,[4,5] where the Bill now faces one of its last parliamentary hurdles before becoming law.

This is a wake-up call to the people of England. If we do not rouse ourselves we are going to find that when we or our loved ones, friends and family, neighbours or colleagues fall ill it will be too late to ensure that medical help is available. The universal service that has lifted fear and insured our health for three generations since the Second World War will be in the hands of international corporate 'providers' who profit from scarcity and privileged access to Ministers and administrators.

Anyone who even slightly believes the government rhetoric about health care “reform” — that “We are committed to an NHS that is free at the point of use”, that it’s about giving “patients the power to choose the treatments that are best for them”, and “strengthening the power of doctors and nurses as patients’ expert guides” — might take just a few minutes to read a deeply shocking and rigorous exposé in the current edition of The Lancet (republished here on OurKingdom and downloadable as a PDF).

Labour could not be more wrong to accept the general approach of 'cuts and realism'. But what alternative approach could be adopted this side of a revolutionary replacement of capitalism altogether? This article sets out the case for a transformational budget and suggests some of the elements it would include. We hope to develop the debate on what the UK’s economic government could be.

Regulatory reform of Britain's media is coming: the question is how, and when. This year's annual Oxford event brought the big players together to wrangle over the future of the press.

There was a lot of side-stepping at the annual Oxford event this year. Culture minister Ed Vaizey expressed his admiration for Ofcom, the UK media regulator so loudly criticized by the Tories (when in opposition) for over-stepping its remit.

In turn, Ofcom boss Ed Richards, whilst advocating a coherent structure for future media regulation, to cover content accessed by viewers from the entire range of sources, declared he had no personal or corporate appetite for becoming a super-regulator, least of all with responsibility for the press.