Beyond Blairites and Brownites

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Charles Clarke may not have won much overt support for his attack on Gordon Brown this week, but his thesis that the future of the Labour Party cannot be understood in terms of Blairite and Brownite cliques seems to have won more general assent.

At Comment is Free, the Fabian Society's Sunder Katwala has pointed out that many of Clarke's own policy prescriptions don't fit the Blair/Brown New Labour template. In another piece on the Fabians' new Next Left blog (also at Liberal Conspiracy), Katwala suggests the same is true of many younger members of the Cabinet:

the generation of 40 and 30-somethings in the Labour Party have no interest at all in carrying the personal allegiances of 1997 around for the next twenty years. Which is lucky – as I doubt Ed Miliband wants to lead a rival army to take on his brother.

If there is one thing a ‘Next Left’ is about, it has to be about coming up with new answers, not thinking the work was done a generation ago.

Caroline Lucas elected Green Party's first ever leader

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): Last night, on September 5th, the Green Party made an historic decision.  We elected our first leader. This result, achieved after years of exhaustive internal debate, cannot be underestimated, for three reasons.

Firstly, as I've said previously here on OurKingdom, I believe our new leader Caroline Lucas MEP to be the most inspirational, intelligent, passionate and relevant politician in British politics today.  Faced with the looming triple crisis of the credit crunch, potential climate catastrophe and a peak in oil production that is causing energy prices to sky-rocket, the Greens are the only Party bold enough to take a stand and say what needs to be said, whether it be popular already or not. Caroline has embodied that spirit for over a decade, spearheading our Party in Europe and increasingly on the national stage.
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Brown backs fiscal powers for Scotland

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Gordon Brown has been coming around to the case for giving more tax powers to the Scottish Parliament for some time, as Brian Taylor notes, but last night's speech to the Scottish CBI puts fiscal devolution more firmly on the agenda.

"First of all," he told Scottish business leaders, "devolution has worked but I do see one problem. While there have been good reasons why this is so, the Scottish Parliament is wholly unaccountable for the budget it spends but not for the size of its budget. And that budget is not linked to the success of the Scottish economy. That is why we asked the commission to look carefully at the financial accountability of the Scottish Parliament and this is a critical part of Calman's remit."

What would a new Labour leader do differently?

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at the Independent's Open House blog, Steve Richards argues that unless they can spell out an alternative agenda, Charles Clarke and those who think like him will only make Labour's problems worse:

Those who want the removal of Brown have three obligations in the coming weeks. First, they must spell out in detail how they would deal with all the external factors that have derailed Brown’s leadership, in particular the credit crunch and the soaring price of oil and food. Second, they must spell out in more detail their policies for the future and how they connect with a party that is supposed to be on the centre left of British politics. Third, they must demonstrate that they can build a popular coalition of support that gives Labour a chance of winning the next election. Read the rest of this post...

A written constitution must not be a rock of ages

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): At the end of last month I wrote a post objecting to a phrase by A.C.Grayling. A written constitution should never  be described as "rock solid" and were it to be so it would be failing its democratic purpose. The slip was twofold, a written constitution can't be rock solid (academic point) but also we should not want it to be (political point).

Grayling did me the great compliment of responding swiftly and courteously on a subject that is a great issue. I then broke the First Law of Blogging NEVER POSTPONE A POST! Many apologies. I am engaged in a new project (more on which anon, I hope) that was intensely distracting at that moment and I wanted to gather my thoughts.

The problem with insisting on the argument is that it runs the risk of the narcissism of small differences, when two figures on the edge of a cliff with a landslide approaching and a storm brewing decide to have a punch up! One of the most striking things about British journalistic and political culture over the last twenty years, that I have become very aware of since campaigning for a written constitution as one of the key demands of Charter 88, has been this. For all the fine words and radicalism, and now even when Prime Ministers talk about the need for a new constitutional settlement, this obvious need is rarely addressed and then usually in passing. The media is part of the political class that benefits from the informal, unwritten order. The need for a proper constitution is passed over, drawn back from, or at best referred to as a gimmick. Read the rest of this post...

Charles Clarke questions Trident replacement

Tom Griffin (London, OK): As much as Charles Clarke deprecates talk of 'Blairite plots' against the Prime Minister, his article in the New Statesman today will inevitably be seen in that light.

However it is worth noting some less predictable and more interesting elements, notably a significant departure from New Labour orthodoxy on foreign policy:

Liberal interventionism must be underpinned by military force, but its moral authority was undermined by the glacial progress in preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the ill-considered determination to renew Trident.

'An eloquent lady in Edgbaston' - competition winner

Tom Griffin (London, OK):  Back in August, Borders and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne provided the theme for our summer limerick competition, when he recalled how "In my conversations around Britain, I met an especially eloquent lady in Edgbaston. She said, ‘We can learn to live together, if we only put our minds to it.’ I think she is right. And I think we should approach this task with an air of great confidence."

Salmond announces Council Tax Abolition Bill

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Scottish Government revealed its legislative programme for the next year today. The centre-piece was Alex Salmond's announcement of "abolition of the oppressive council tax in favour of a fair local income tax, bringing much needed relief to household budgets."

Over at Conservativehome, Tory MSP Derek Brownlee raises a number of searching about the assumptions behind the SNP plan for a local income tax rate of 3p in the pound. Read the rest of this post...

Dealing with the past: postponed until further notice

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): Looks like the Observer's Henry McDonald has been hearing the same rumours around Belfast as I have – namely, that the report by the Eames-Bradley Consultative Group on the Past is to be postponed (yet again) until the end of the year at least.

The Group concluded its investigation as long ago as January. When I last blogged this topic in late May (Northern Ireland: 'It must never happen again'), at the time of a high-profile speech by the Group's chairs Archbishop Robin Eames and Denis Bradley, I mentioned that the report was expected later in the summer. Then, it was said, it would be out in September. Then October. Now McDonald is reporting December, while I am hearing that we could be into next year before the Group's findings finally become public. Read the rest of this post...

All Wales Convention meets

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The All Wales Convention holds its third meeting in Cardiff Bay today. As the Western Mail's Martin Shipton notes, it's been a slow start for the body that is meant to consider the case for more powers for the Welsh Assembly. Read the rest of this post...

The Wisdom of Crowds

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): The most remarkable thing about the Chancellor’s Guardian interview wasn’t his unusual candour about the parlous state of the economy (“arguably the worst in 60 years”) but his admission that a year ago he had no idea of what was in store. In fairness to Mr. Darling – an intelligent and likeable man – he was in good company, for most economists and senior bankers hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold: “No one did. No one had any idea”.

However it was pretty damn obvious to everybody else (other than practitioners of the ‘dismal science’) that the nation was gorging on an unsustainable debt and asset price bubble and that the whole pack of cards was about to fall down. Why is it that expert political judgment is so out of line with what has been called the ‘wisdom of crowds’? Read the rest of this post...

Donate to No2ID and Rowntree will double your money

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Lib Dem blogger Steph Ashley has news of a generous offer from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in support of No2ID. Any new donations received by No2ID will be doubled by Rowntree. Steph has the details:

From 1st September 2008, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd has generously agreed to match, pound for pound, any *new* income that NO2ID receives. Which means that for every pound you give from 1st September NO2ID will receive TWO pounds to spend campaigning against the ID scheme and database state.

Please send your donation by cheque to our office (please mark your envelope 'JRRT'):

The NO2ID Campaign
Box 412
19-21 Crawford Street
London W1H 1PJ

Or you can donate by credit card or via PayPal using the 'Donate' button on our website, http://www.no2id.net (left hand column)

Double your money offers like this don't come along very often so please, dig deep - encourage your friends, family and colleagues to make a donation. With your help we can stop this.

While you're at it, why not join the campaign, join a local group and take the NO2ID Pledge?

This is a direct repost (with permission) from the journal of superactivist "diffrentcolours"

Changing the agenda on faith schools

Simon Barrow (London, Ekklesia): For a number of years now the media has both witnessed and rehearsed a ‘debate’ about publicly funded faith schools in which two narratives pass each other in the night and important issues get lost in the shadows.

On the one hand, some say that religious schools are divisive, sectarian and biased, hijacking what should be the secular enterprise of education to perpetuate religion at the taxpayer’s expense. Others retort that faith schools are part of a rich diversity of provision, support community cohesion, give affirmation to minority communities and promote tolerance.
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Brown must recognise England's claim of right

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): The Scottish Claim of Right of 1988 was signed by all the Scottish Labour MPs, with the exception of Tam Dalyell.  In 1997, with the advent of the Labour Government of the UK, one third of that initial cabinet (8 out of 24) had signed that claim and were thus pivotal in influencing the Labour UK Government, which issued the white paper, the Scotland Devolution Bill 1998.

The Scottish Claim of Right acknowledged that the Scottish people have the sovereign right to decide the form of government best suited to their needs.  That 'form of government' must include independence as well as devolution, yet those cabinet members do not seem in any great hurry to hold a referendum on independence. When they signed the Claim quite possibly it never occurred to them that the Scottish people might decide to get rid of them altogether. They should be reminded of it at every opportunity.  Rather than display a willingness to hold a referendum on independence, apart from Wendy Alexander's short-lived "Bring it on!", the Unionists claim instead that because there is a Unionist majority in the Scottish Parliament, the people of Scotland have "voted for the Union". It is just possible that the SNP may gain a majority of the Scottish Westminister seats at the next General Election, and if so that will mean, according to Unionist logic, that the people of Scotland have voted for independence. I'm sure they will try wriggle out of that.

The Scottish Claim of Right was a principled recognition of the sovereign right of the people.  It is hypocritical of Gordon Brown, and others who signed that Claim of Right, to now deny that same sovereign right to the people of England, especially as recognition of the Scottish sovereign right has moved power away from Westminster in a way that has damaged English voters.

For the Disappeared

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Amnesty have been marking the 25th Day of the Disappeared. We may think that this is something that only happens elsewhere in the world. To remind us that this is not so, Patrick Corrigan has dedicated his recent Amnesty post to Northern Ireland's disappeared:

Kevin McKee: disappeared 2 October 1972

Seamus Wright: disappeared 2 October 1972

John McIlroy: disappeared 1974

Brendan Megraw (24): disappeared 8 April 1978

Capt. Robert Nairac: disappeared 1977

Sean Murphy (25): disappeared 1986

You can read the full post HERE.

David Cameron: Modern Whig, Traditional Tory

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Guardian brings us news of the latest edition of Progress magazine, in which Skills Minister David Lammy makes Labour's latest attempt to develop a line of attack against David Cameron:

The truth is that the Tories' change in language has touched a nerve, reflecting a big gap in our own political narrative. Yet beneath Cameron's rhetoric lies the basic philosophy that failed Britain in the past. The Tories demand responsibility without offering support; they appeal for fraternity without any real belief in equality; they have finally noticed 'society,' but remain implacably hostile to the state.

Over at Comment is Free, David Marquand suggests that the Tory leader won't be so easily pinned down Read the rest of this post...

Gordon goes long in Glenrothes

Tom Griffin (London, OK): If The Scotsman is to be believed, Gordon Brown is set to take the advice of Iain MacWhirter rather than Martin Kettle over the fortcoming by-election in his Fife backyard:

A final decision has not yet been taken, but it is understood Labour leaders favour either Thursday, 30 October or Thursday, 6 November for the contest.

The November date is the favourite simply because it comes only a day after the expected result of the American presidential election, and if Labour was to lose, party managers believe the bad news would be partly buried by the US coverage.

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Stormont Crisis: Justice, the IRA, and MI5

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): The situation in Stormont may now merit the term crisis. A prominent Sinn Fein representative in the South of Ireland, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, has threatened collapse of the Assembly if policing and justice are not devolved: “we will have no option but to pull out our ministers.” Jeffrey Donaldson MP, MLA, Privy Council member and possible Justice Minister, has called for clarification of the threat: “Do they want to stay in the executive? If they do, let's meet and address these issues."

Both sides claim the other refuses to talk; it is widely held that Sinn Fein are blocking the passage of other Ministerial business until their key electoral promises have been resolved – or as Peter Robinson has it: “Adams seems to think that it is the role of everyone to move to his position.” The other parties are unforgiving, nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan saying “The soundings coming from Sinn Féin at the minute are more ludicrous than ominous.” Moderate unionism's leader Sir Reg Empey warned “This sort of behaviour cannot continue for much longer.” Read the rest of this post...

No such thing as a "rock solid" constitution

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There  was a short, strong overview of the threat of an authoritarian, corporate cash cow database state by A.C. Grayling in yesterday's CiF. It reinforced the alarm set off by No2ID's Phil Booth in his excellent OK post. I particular liked Grayling's raised eyebrow over Seimens of Germany who are "already supplying 60 countries with a device that monitors and integrates data from phone, email and internet activity". Apparently its system is notorious for throwing up "huge numbers of false positives". I like that phrase "false positives". I suspect it will run and run, as in "We are all false positives now!"

My only objection was to Grayling's stirring conclusion,

We need to stop this assault on civil liberies going further, we need to roll back the attritions they have already suffered, and we need a rock solid written consitution to protect us from those who aim to make us all suspects in the gaze of the unblinking universal eye.

He should know better than that. No constitution, written or unwritten is "rock solid", nor is ever meant to be. Of course he is spot on to see that to roll back the surveillance state we need to constitutionalise our governing settlement. But this is in order for it to be lived in a democratic fashion, not to be set rock solid. Simply to change the governing culture we have to show everyone that our values are rooted in popular sovereignty encoded in a democratic constitition. This is the precondition for stopping the mandarins treating us as colonialised natives. But the constitition that results will be flexible as well as principled, an aid for us to better govern ourselves, a step on the road to emacipation and freedom, not a rock-like fixed point that we will have to bow down to. 

The perils of a progressive English nationalist

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Comment Is Free, Paul Kingsnorth reflects on his recent OurKingdom debate with Vron Ware, and re-states his left-wing case for English nationalism:

because the English, unlike the Scottish, the Welsh or the people of Northern Ireland, have no political focus for their concerns, they have nowhere to turn to express them. What can happen when such a focus does exist can be seen north of the border. The last decade has seen a transformation of Scotland, as a direct result of the creation of a Scottish parliament.

Of course, the Scottish Parliament is itself the product of decades of political mobilisation. Scottish nationalists had no political focus either until they created one. Perhaps the first step for progressive English nationalists is to figure out how to follow that example.