OurKingdom is very happy to be supporting Vote for a Change, the new campaign to demand a referendum on the voting system. Read this call to arms from the organisers and join us and them at the Rally for Change at Westminster Hall on July 9th. Politics is too important to be left to the politicians. The expenses crisis has revealed a political elite that has stopped listening and who are accountable to no one but their party machines. Too many MPs seem more interested in changing their homes than changing the world. Politicians have their own kind of change in mind, but we don’t need anything that is too cosy, too easy, or too popular with our political class. We need a system that serves us the voters, and we can start be asking voters what they want from their politics. We want a citizens’ jury to rewrite the rules of politics, by deciding on the new voting system for parliament. The government has until the next election to deliver a referendum on reform to bring accountability back to Westminster. Join the call for change at www.voteforachange.co.uk Rally for a Change We have to join together to make our politicians listen - and understand that it’s us, the voters, who need to be put first. So keep your diary free for 6:30, July 9th, as supporters gather in Methodist Central Hall to call for real reform of parliament. Already Damon Albarn, Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Fry and a long list of others are demanding the right to vote for a change. But we need your help to get over 1000 people together in Westminster for a festival of change. There will be music, poetry and the chance to put leading politicians on the spot. More details will follow soon but this is definitely an event not to be missed. To register or for more details email Naomi@voteforachange.co.uk

The former Speaker to the House of Commons, Michael Martin, was elevated to a peerage yesterday despite concerns raised by the appointment committee over the propriety of the nomination. The committee, having no power to reject nominations, reminded the Prime Minister of the terms of its vetting procedure, to assess whether particular appointments would diminish the reputation of the Lords, and warned of possible 'public controversy' if the appointment went ahead. And no wonder. If Martin's position as Speaker was regarded as completely untenable as a result of the Damien Green debacle and the expenses scandal, what should we make of the decision to grant him a peerage (which went unopposed in the Commons on Monday)? It is true that it would be wrong to see the ex-Speaker as the sole person responsible for MPs' abuse of their expenses, but at the same time his resignation and replacement with John Bercow, the so-called 'clean break' candidate, was presented by some as an indication that MPs saw the need to address the problems at the heart of our democracy. Michael Martin's elevation to the House of Lords is another sign that very little has changed, and calls into question whether MPs are at all aware of the need to radically change the way politics is done in this country. If the one who is seen by MPs to be most at fault for letting expenses get so grotesquely out of hand is also seen by them as deserving of a place in our second chamber, it is hard to believe that the problems with our rotten system will be seriously addressed. The way Martin is being bumped up to the Lords even after his disastrous time as Speaker reeks of exactly the kind of Old Boy's club attitude that Gordon Brown, among others, has been publicly decrying. Read the rest of this post...

The Local Government Association (LGA) has published a remarkable pamphlet to coincide with its annual conference, taking place in Harrogate this week. The glossy, professionally-designed eleven page document is what we've come to expect from local government these days. It is the text which is surprising. The pamphlet is written with a passion, immediacy and radicalism unheard of in local government circles since the days of Red Ken's GLC, David Blunkett's Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire and Derek ‘Deggsy' Hatton's Militant resistance in Liverpool. Even the title of the pamphlet - ‘Who's in Charge? A Manifesto for a New Politics' - is reminiscent of the language associated with the radical localism of the New Urban Left in the early 1980s. Much of the text could have been borrowed, with minor modifications, from David Blunkett and Keith Jackson's (1987) book: ‘Democracy in Crisis: The Town Halls Respond'. As such, established local government commentators will recognise that there is nothing particularly new in the demands made in the LGA's manifesto. It advocates rolling back the unelected Quango state; radical decentralisation to bring decision-making down to the lowest possible level; making local NHS bodies accountable to the electorate; a genuine power of general competence for local government, and real fiscal autonomy, including returning to councils the power to set local business rates. Read the rest of this post...

David Sifry described social networking and other new forms of communication in an emergent world of public opinion as a "conversation among the people formerly known as the audience". The phrase sprang to my mind when the Today programme wrestled with explaining to itself and its audience what is inspiring about Abbas Kiarostami's latest film, ‘Shirin', recently showcased in the Edinburgh festival. Is it subversive? What are its politics? What is the people's hunger and spirit behind the insurgency? Is it on our side? The problem is that the film consists of 90 minutes of close-ups of more than 100 women, including a headscarved Juliette Binoche, as they watch a film based on a 12th-century poem by Nezami Ganjavi about a love triangle involving an Armenian princess and a Persian prince.  "Light from a screen flickers on the women's faces; their expressions alone create the drama."  I learn more when I repair to Maya Jaggi's interview with Kiarostami in the Guardian, although I have to flap away an intrusive advertisement that informs me ‘Your opinion matters' and invites me to complete a short survey before I can proceed. Eventually, it appears that the maestro has been willing to give us a couple of clues. He has gone so far as to say that the "beauty of art lies in the reaction it causes", and that "a work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience". The fact is that this is yet another of those moments when one has to say: "They just don't get it do they?" This interesting rhetorical question has peppered political commentary in the last few weeks, most recently when the limousines drew up outside Mansion House. In politics it always carries the danger of complacency, since the people who point the finger are invariably the ‘brother' that had the ‘mote' in his eye last time around. This week one feels even more nervous using it because the onion has begun to unpeel with a vengeance as foolishly self-serving expenses claims settle around the ankles of those other ‘civil servants', BBC top management, with all around in the media ducking for cover. Read the rest of this post...

The date was fateful: 28 June 1919. The baptism was tough. The outcome: a multinational state

An inspiring scholar of poverty leaves a rich legacy

When do we want it? Now - The Guardian - 18th June, 2009 Dear Mr. Wills, You say, "Plebiscites... offer the wealthy and powerful an opportunity to manipulate outcomes" and, if the vote is a straight yes-or-no, then that is indeed the case.  You continue, "That is what 20th-century Europe teaches us."  I'm not sure if by this you mean the plebiscites of Hitler and Mussolini, the majority votes of Lenin and Stalin, or the referendums which the EU's Badinter Commission recommended for the former Yugoslavia; but I think it applies to all three categories. The two-option majority vote has long been regarded as manipulable.  After all, in many instances, the question is the answer, and it's a pity that the 20th century did not learn the lessons of the 19th, when Napoleon started the rut.  In 1800, he re-imposed majority voting in the French Academy of Sciences, where they had been using a Borda Count.  The latter "is a unique method... to minimise the likelihood that a small group can successfully manipulate the outcome," (Professor Donald Saari).  Furthermore, it "is the best protection ever devised from the tyranny of the majority," (Professor Sir Michael Dummett).  In the same year, Napoleon held his first of three two-option referendums. Read the rest of this post...

There have been several gatherings of the social democratic left in the last week or so. Today saw a Fabian Society conference on Climate Change and the road to Copenhagen (you can read about it on Next Left) coincide with a Soundings event on politics after the crash, which followed on nicely from the Compass conference I attended last week. I caught the last plenary at Soundings which was a group discussion with Plaid Cymru AM Leanne Wood and Mike Kenny of the ippr. Kenny had some of the most convincing analysis of the failures of New Labour that I heard at either of the two conferences. The current malaise on the left, he said, can be traced back to two historically traumatic events which it has yet to come to terms with: the advent of Thatcherism and the demise of state socialism. New Labour (which Kenny recognises to be a dead project) simply obscured these two crises, delaying a proper response. The coming audit of New Labour's time in power must identify and reject two of its principal and most damaging failings: its centralist statism and its flawed model of economic growth. In many ways, he said, this will involve re-discovering the reformist side of early New Labour which addressed imbalances of power and introduced devolution before this side of the party, never strong, was surpassed by an ideology which rejected pluralism in favour of capturing and deploying the power of the central state. A progressive conception of power - where it manifests itself, how it should be distributed - has been totally lost during the New Labour years, he said. Read the rest of this post...

In today's Daily Mail Peter Oborne sets out why Jack Straw must rank as one of the most devious and unprincipled politicians in British public life for decades. How this man, who knowingly pitched dodgy evidence to the United Nations about Iraqi WMD, is still at the heart of power in this country is a never-ending source of amazement to me and speaks volumes about our political culture and the broken system that supports it.  People occasionally ask me why I regard Jack Straw as a third-rate politician who has done grave harm to British public life over a long period. The perfect answer comes in his attitude towards the Human Rights Act. As Home Secretary, ten years ago, it was Straw who pioneered the Bill into law. Yet some months ago he gave an interview to the Mail in which he repeatedly criticised the Act. He labelled it a 'villains' charter', laid into what he called 'ambulance-chasing lawyers', promised to wage war against the compensation culture that it had spawned and attacked judges for being 'too nervous' about deporting terrorist suspects. He concluded that the Act had been such a travesty that he planned to rebalance it with a 'declaration of responsibilities'. Last Saturday, however, Straw attended a conference arranged by Liberty, which campaigns (very honourably) for civil rights and is one of the fiercest supporters of the Human Rights Act. Yes, Straw changed his tune again. He told this fashionable, metropolitan audience that the act was 'one of my proudest achievements'. Such pathetic U-turns go right to the heart of the crisis of trust in British politics. Voters would respect politicians more if they held genuine convictions rather than revealing an oleaginous desire to ingratiate themselves with whatever audience they happen to be talking to at the time.

The Government consultation on electoral reform hasn't even been launched, but already it seems ministers are pre-judging the debate and narrowing the range of options. It's especially disappointing to see Justice Minister Michael Wills, who gamely fought for deliberative elements in Brown's Governance of Britain programme supported by OK's Anthony Barnett, contributing to the growing perception that the whole thing's a stitch up. In a response to a question on voting reform in the House of Commons on Tuesday Wills criticised PR and lauded the current system: I emphasise that proportional systems tend inherently to produce coalition Governments. That may be a good thing for some parties, but it might not be a good thing for the country. First-past-the-post systems tend to produce clear majority winners and stable government. Although they tend to hand power to the biggest minority, the practice of forming coalition Governments often tends to hand power to the smallest minority. There is nothing inherently fair about that. He went along with a Tory MP who said that PR would let in "poisonous extremists" (ignorIng the inconvenient truth it's voters and not the system that lets in the BNP) and was approving of some utterly ridiculous comments by Labour MP Ken Purchase who took the classic establishment line that only "chattering classes" care about this debate and that "First past the post is the only sensible system" and we should therefore "do away with the flim-flam of proportional representation, which seems to take up an inordinate amount of time compared with other important matters" (in fact the latest poll shows, contra Purchase, that 61% of voters support a binding referendum on PR against 24%)  Having gone along with these hoary attempts to shut down debate on PR and had a few pops of his own, the Minister assured the House it would be the voters of this country who decide which is the best and most legitimate system, and not party politicians. Hm based on this performance you'll forgive me for saying I'll believe it when I see it! 

The secret empire of violation that shadowed the "war on terror" must be held to account  

Fancy that, a Labour Prime Minister coming under withering criticism from Lord Butler, the Lord High Chamberlain of government secrecy, for not being properly open in his (and let it be said, David Miliband's also) proposal to hold the long postponed inquiry into the Iraq war in private.  It was Butler, then Cabinet Secretary, who fought tooth and nail to confine and obstruct Sir Richard Scott's inquiry into arms sales to Iraq and Iran. At one point, Scott had to threaten to send the police into Downing Street to take possession of documents that Butler was withholding. In other words, Brown is capable of sinking even lower in the very stuff of open democracy after having boasted of his commitment to freedom of information.  Brown has justified the decision on the grounds that a secret inquiry will encourage witnesses to be frank; it seems a fair assumption that he is actually worried that they will be too frank in public. But enough of Brown and even Butler's particular arguments for more openness.  We are at a point in our democratic life when government has to open up fully to the public.  Scott did the whole country a great service by laying bare the "hidden wiring" and governing attitudes of Whitehall and Westminster.  He scoured the Augean stable. Read the rest of this post...

How far has people's faith in the way we are governed been shaken by Brown's fumbling and dishonest governance, civil liberties outrages, and expenses fiddles in both Houses of Parliament?  At first sight, at least, considerably, according to an ICM poll (opens pdf) for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.  And should we be cheering the result from the same poll, suggesting that two thirds of people want proportional representation for elections to Parliament? My apologies: a lot of figures now!  "Faith in the system" has been measured by a single question in opinion polls since it was first asked in 1973 for the Crowther-Hunt's Royal Commission on the Constitution.  Just under half of respondents then agreed that the system for governing Britain could be improved "quite a lot" or needed "a great deal of improvement".  Public dissatisfaction rose to peaks of 69, 73 and 72 per cent under Mrs Thatcher in the 1990s, and then subsided to 68 per cent in 2003 and somewhat less in the mid-2000s In last week's poll, ICM found that three-quarters of people (75 per cent) were dissatisfied, along whom two-fifths (42 per cent) agreed that the system needed "a great deal of improvement" - the highest ever level for real change recorded. Unfortunately, people who wanted change were not asked what "improvements" they would like to see. Read the rest of this post...

This is a talk given by Liam Taylor of the Camp for Climate Action at the session on "Radical democracy and imagination" hosted by Real Change at the Compass conference on Saturday. The views expressed here are his own.   I must admit that I feel like something of an anomaly at this conference. Before coming here today I looked on the Compass website at the impressive list of speakers that are here: people from think tanks, from policy institutes, from NGOs, journalists, elected politicians. In other words, people who might be considered ‘experts', people who do politics for their day job.   And I want to begin by immediately renouncing any claims to such expertise on my part. I probably know less about some of these issues than anybody else in this room. I don't spend my days reading policy papers for a living; instead, I spend my days teaching secondary schoolchildren in east London. But I think the fact that I am here, and that my presence here feels slightly anomalous, tells us something interesting about politics, and in particular the way that our politics has become increasingly professionalized. That, I think, is a problem - and it goes to the heart of our thinking about radical democracy in this discussion here today.    Climate Camp, I want to suggest, is the antithesis of professionalized politics. We are not an NGO, with a full-time staff; we are not a political party, with appointed leaders. We are a group of ordinary people, from all walks of life, who have come together because of our shared concern about climate change, and our desire to do something about it. Each year, we set up a week-long camp next to one of the root causes of climate change, from power stations to airports, culminating in some form of direct action. In the past we've camped outside Drax coal-fired power station; outside Heathrow airport; and, last year, outside the coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent. Most recently, on 1 April, thousands of people converged on Bishospgate in the City of London for a day-long camp outside the European Climate Exchange, the world's largest carbon trading centre. It's not just about protest: it's about building our little vision of the future, in the here and now, a vision which we develop through workshops and education, through sustainable living, and through the day-to-day practices of direct democracy. Read the rest of this post...

A debate on the morality of neo-liberalism - and of the bankers behind the financial crisis. See Thomas Ash's response and George Gabriel's follow-up.

Saturday saw Real Change: the open politics network go public in an excellent speech given by Helena Kennedy to the Compass conference. She appealed to conference-goers to get involved with and support Real Change, which aims to encourage a movement of engaged citizens whether Labour supporters or not. Citizens who organise together to advance the values of the public interest, civil society and reform through open discussion and debate. We can no longer rely on the parties and the political elite to deliver reform for us, she said. We must instead rely on ourselves. The idea behind Real Change, which I am involved in along with Anthony Barnett, Clare Coatman, Rosemary Bechler and others, is to have one thousand meetings to feed into a major people's convention in the autumn to draw up a minimal programme to clean up and reform politics, allowing citizens to audit parties and candidates on their commitment to reform in the run up to the next election. Behind the minimal is an ambitious radicalism, by holding parliament to account it will challenge the basis of British sovereignty. Baroness Kennedy is Chair of the steering committee of Real Change due to launch on 6 July. We'll be posting more on Real Change on OurKingdom over the next few days and I'll post the video of her speech as soon as it becomes available. In the meantime you can check out the plan here, and comment and feedback on the Real Change website and best of all...  join us. (PS: read Stuart Weir's thoughts on the day with Compass here)  

It was a curious experience being at the Compass conference on Saturday.  Here was a gathering of the centre left, open-minded, democratic, pluralist, knowledgeable and conforming not at all to media stereotypes.  Not a "loony" left, a sane left. And yet I left the conference dispirited. It was partly that there was for me and my companions no buzz, no feeling of excitement. But I felt far more that the hundreds of people there were “kettled”, by political circumstance, by an electoral system that blocks free political choices, by the failed Labour regime to which most of them were still committed, by the closed opportunities all around - but also by the unreality of the debates.  Policies policies policies: regulate the market; don't privatise the Post Office; scrap Trident, the third runway, ID cards; demand a referendum on proportional representation; and so on.It is not that I disagree with any of this.  Some of it may even happen if this wretched cabinet wakes up to the greater realities all around and if, a big if, its members are somehow liberated from strict conformity to speak out and act by Brown's weakness and the crisis they have come through. Moreover a great deal of good sense was spoken (and probably more than I heard in the break-out sessions) on Saturday. Read the rest of this post...

The Sunday Times suggests Alan Johnson may be paving the way for a U turn on ID cards, surely the cleverest single move he could make as Home Seretary. It would be a victory for civil liberties and common sense, save the country billions and improve Johnson's own prospects and those of his party. And best of all, it's free and easy. From the ST:    ALAN JOHNSON, the home secretary, has launched an urgent review of the £6 billion identity card (ID) scheme, paving the way for a possible U-turn on one of Labour’s flagship policies. Johnson, who was promoted in Gordon Brown’s latest cabinet reshuffle, is understood to be “sympathetic” to critics who claim identity cards will undermine civil liberties. The home secretary told officials that he wanted a “first principles” rethink of the plan, which was launched by Tony Blair following the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and has since been championed by Brown as a way of fighting terrorism. “Alan is more sympathetic to the civil liberties arguments than previous home secretaries,” said an insider.Read on. 

I've just blogged on Cif my response to Tom Watson MP's sudden Damascene conversion to electoral reform (of the unproportional AV kind), which, by wonderful coincidence, has happened at the same time his leader, Gordon Brown, has converted and not long before his party faces a thrashing in the polls. We deserve better than this!

The word "crisis" is perhaps one of the most over-used in the lexicon, but when it comes to the astonishing collapse of political and economic orthodoxies in recent months it rings undeniably true. Is it a "good" crisis? Established modes of thinking and organisation have been de-legitimated but it's not yet clear that anything radically new or different is going to take their place. Thinkers like Jeremy Gilbert have joined a growing call for new democratic forms to give individuals more meaningful control over their own lives, but so far the response from the political elite can best be described as "reforming so as to preserve". Can anything positive be taken from the simultaneous collapse in trust in the political system and the financial markets? How do we build on this crisis to secure much better liberty and democracy in the 21st century?  This Saturday you are invited to join a panel of thinkers and activists to discuss these questions and more at a workshop on "Radical democracy and imagination: people and power after the meltdown". It's taking place 1.30 - 2.45pm at the excellent Compass conference at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury. On the panel will be our very own Anthony Barnett (founder of openDemocracy, first director of Charter 88 and Co-Director of the Convention on Modern Liberty), Gerry Hassan (author, political commentator and columnist for the Scotsman), Liam Taylor (member of Climate Camp) and David Babbs (38 degrees) and hopefully we'll be joined by Suzanne Moore (Mail on Sunday) and Oxford philosopher Stuart White. We'll be launching a major initiative at the conference to help build an open movement for democratic reform to influence candidates and parties before the next election. There are lots of other great speakers and workshops there too and only a small handful of tickets left. If you haven't got yours already, get one here.

English may still be the best political lingua franca for a continent protective of its linguistic differences

Latvia’s financial meltdown raises questions about the role of a neighbour and regional power

This is incredible. Officers in Enflied have been accused of using Guantanamo-style torture techniques in a drugs investigation. If true, it's further proof, following on from the G20, that we have a serious problem in this country with police behaving like a brutal and unaccountable private militia. The Times reports: Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt. The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects' property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers. However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique to simulate drowning. Scotland Yard is appointing a new borough commander in Enfield in a move that is being seen as an attempt by Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner, to enforce a regime of "intrusive supervision". Read more

Brown has put his great clunking feet in it again. If reports on BBC-TV are to be believed, Brown's new National Council on Democratic Renewal - a body that may very well meet mostly in private - is to propose that the UK adopt the alternative vote (AV) for elections to Parliament. There is apparently to be a referendum. Quite what Brown and his wretched party - I am a former member - hope to achieve is beyond me. There is a very strong group in the party - Mandelson, Hain, Martin Linton, etc, etc - who have long argued the dubious case for AV since they think it is the "electoral reform" option that will best preserve their place in national politics; and since it will block the move towards proportional representation that will alone free Parliament from bondage to the executive. So there is a simple self-serving motive at work. But this is such a stupid gesture that I suspect that they would be happy to put the proposition to a referendum and lose, having falsely demonstrated their commitment to democratic renewal. So why is this so outlandish? First, because AV is even more disproportionate than first-past-the-post (FPTP). In 1997, we at Democratic Audit - Patrick Dunleavy, Helen Margetts and me - carried out an expert simulation of the actual general election result that year and calculated that AV would have produced a more disproportionate outcome than FPTP - the deviation from proportionality was 23.5 per cent under AV, 21 per cent under FPTP. Labour's bloated seat count would have risen to 436 seats.  The Lib Dems would also have benefited disproportionately. Read the rest of this post...

There is rising international concern over the conduct of Italy’s premier

Labour is in an historic crisis. It has been pummelled in the council and Euro elections. Gordon Brown's Premiership hangs on a loose thread. A wider existential crisis now faces Labour about its purpose, who it represents and its future. Labour Government's have faced huge crises before and faced into the abyss. They have experienced division and fratricide and ultimately been defeated at the polls. In post-war times three Labour Governments have fallen from power, 1951, 1970 and 1979, each of which offer lessons for today. In 1951 after the Attlee administration fell from office, the party was plunged into a battle between the Gaitskellite right and Bevanite left. The Gaitskellites wanted Labour to modernise, drop nationalisation and emphasise redistribution. The Bevanites stressed the need for a more traditional approach and extending nationalisation. The Gaitskellites are seen by some as the precursors of the Blairites - the former trying after Labour's third defeat in 1959 to abandon Clause Four - something Blair finally accomplished in 2005. The Gaitskellites talked of changing the name of the party to embrace the middle classes and aspiration; the Blairites did it creating ‘New Labour'. This comparison is unfair to the Gaitskellites who are like left-wingers compared to the Blairites with their emphasis on public spending redistribution and greater equality. Read the rest of this post...

The Independent features a poll today showing that under Alan Johnson's leadership the Labour party would be able to avert an outright Cameron victory at the next general election. If reports are to be believed the PLP made a big show of rallying around Gordon Brown in their Monday evening meeting with only a small number calling on him to go (though apparently many of the rebels weren't there and the reports seem to have mostly come from briefings by Brown's allies). The results of this poll, which provides the first evidence that Labour would do better under a new leader, are likely to strengthen the resolve of Labour rebels and provide further support to their view (if any more were needed) that Brown's exit is the best chance they have of preventing a Tory landslide. According to the Indy: The findings were described as "stunning" by rebel Labour MPs last night. They believe it could influence Labour's agonised debate over whether it should back or sack the beleaguered Prime Minister. Under Mr Brown's leadership, the Conservative Party would win an overall majority of 74, according to ComRes. But if Mr Johnson, the Home Secretary, replaced Mr Brown, the Tories would be six seats short of a majority in a hung parliament - raising the prospect of a deal between Labour and the Liberal Democrats to keep the Tories out. Mr Johnson is the only one of eight possible Labour leaders who could prevent an outright Tory victory. Under Jack Straw, David Miliband, Jon Cruddas, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman, James Purnell or Mr Brown, Mr Cameron would win a majority of between 10 and 94, ComRes found. Significantly, Labour would do better under Mr Straw, Mr Miliband, Mr Cruddas and Mr Balls than under Mr Brown.  Read the rest of this post...

I left the UK on the 17th of September, in the dark hours of one of those dry and cold autumn mornings so particular to this country. The storm clouds of unstable debt, so long hovering over the transatlantic housing bubble had broken furiously with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, but the politicising forces of the recession gave me hope as I heard ordinary people increasingly break the taboo of talking politics. The Hope not Hate campaign, which I'd become familiar with at university, seemed to be effectively battling fascism in the UK, the Independent Asylum Commission was spearheading a creative new form of campaigning with the release of its final reports, and the first rumblings of a Convention on Modern Liberty could be heard in response to the erosion of British freedom. I left this country optimistic, firm in the belief that an organised, effective and ethical citizenry would be strong enough to keep this country together.  I return in the saddest of days. Each morning of the past month the reputation of Britain's highest authority has been dragged deeper through the filth of parliamentary expenses. 2.1 million people are now unable to find work. Around 70,000 families face the prospect of repossession as the flagship policy designed to protect them has pathetically reached only two families. The government stumbles blindly as Gordon Brown clings to the premiership, the knives in his back inspire confidence in neither this small inept man, nor the disparate and desperate rebels. And then today, one wakes up to read that fascists, who deny the holocaust, aim to expel "non-indigenous" citizens, and who advocate the return of corporal and capital punishment have been elected to represent this country in the European Parliament, an institution that proclaims human dignity is inviolable, the bedrock of Human Rights. Read the rest of this post...

The victory of the centre-right will not slow the transfer of responsibilities to Brussels, but how can the EU arrest its decline in credibility?

A grim day for British democracy and a shocking indictment of the mainstream parties, especially New Labour which always took working class voters for granted, calculating that they've nowehere else to go. Result: they stayed at home. In the North West, where lifetime Nazi Nick Griffin was elected, the BNP vote was down 134959 to 132094, but turnout was down by nearly half a million. This is a failure of the mainstream parties to offer a positive reason to turnout and vote for them rather than a surge towards the BNP. As so often in the world of political blogging, Sunny Hundal has one of the speediest and most sensible reactions with 6 points on the BNP posted on Cif: 1. The BNP is not increasing its votes. In both Yorkshire and the north-west, its total number of votes fell from 2004. This absolutely does not mean that more people are being seduced by the BNP's propaganda. It means that Labour's share of the vote collapsed and went to other parties, thereby helping the BNP under a proportional system. If the party makes a comeback then there's no reason why the BNP will continue to get its MEPs elected. 2. It may stop Labour ignoring its traditional working-class origins, now so comprehensively stomped over that they're migrating to other parties in droves. This is not an indictment of high immigration and multiculturalism, as no doubt some will call it, but of a centralised party ignoring local concerns. As Sarah Ditum points out, our media tell people every day that their crumbling infrastructure is the fault of those dastardly asylum seekers (rather than lack of investment, which might mean higher taxes). Immigration wouldn't be such a big issue if local councils presented information more quickly about population movements, so resources could be poured in or taken out in response, ensuring local public services didn't suffer. This is also a result of the lack of investment in social housing. Read more.