THE BRITISH INQUISITION

Chief Superintendent Sean White, the police divisional commander for Hull, has implemented a new policy that less serious crimes will not be investigated unless they are deemed to be racist or homophobic.

Theft, criminal damage, common assault, harassment and non-domestic burglary are to be ‘screened out’ due to manpower shortages and an attempt to meet government targets to cut the backlog of 3,500 unsolved crimes in Hull.

Lesser crimes are therefore to be recorded only. There are around 130 new crimes reported in Hull each day.

Mr White said:

‘This is unusual for Humberside, but in terms of the rest of the country I would say it’s not an extreme example of a screening policy.’

So if you are a victim of crime in Hull and are white, the best thing to do is claim to be a homosexual and then the police will investigate.

THE NEED FOR AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

Below are extracts from a speech given by Iain MacLean at a Demos conference [Scotland 2020], last year, regarding the future of Scotland.

Iain MacLean is Professor of Politics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Nuffield College. He is the author of The Legend of Red Clydeside and numerous papers and studies on devolution, finance and representation.

‘The tap which controls the flow of UK tax proceeds into Scotland will be turned off soon. I don’t know when, but certainly before 2020. Before it is turned off, there has to be a mature public debate in Scotland on what should take its place. Until recently, the Scottish defining narrative of the Barnett Formula has been that Scotland deserves all it gets and that anyone who questions that is no better than Edward II ... But the plucky Scots are threatened by the demon English who are imposing a wicked Barnett Squeeze on them. In England, the defining narrative reverses the roles. The Scots are a bunch of mean and arrogant whingers, featherbedded by the Barnett Formula that allows them to sup turtle soap with gold teaspoons while the English have to beg for a crust in the streets of Newcastle.

Things are at last getting a bit more grown-up, with all the Opposition parties, and some leading economists, saying they want fiscal autonomy (sometimes full fiscal autonomy). But they mean utterly different things. Some of them are more plausible than others. Once you understand what full fiscal autonomy would involve, you might prefer something quite different, such as a Grants Commission to distribute funds to the four countries (or the 12 regions) of the United Kingdom ...’

Scotland has enjoyed a higher public spending per head than England since about 1900. For that there has been one big reason, and it is not the one that people think. People think that Scotland gets more because it is colder, poorer, and has more difficult geography than England. All of these things are true (although 100 years ago and now, it was not much poorer than England). But the reason for higher spending is that Scotland poses a credible threat to the United Kingdom. In the 1880s, when formula funding started, it was named the Goschen proportion after the Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury’s Unionist government. The big problem was Ireland, not Scotland. To try (vainly in the end) to keep Ireland in the Union, the Unionists threw money at it. This was called Killing Home Rule by kindness. Not many people in Scotland wanted to secede, and almost none of them were violent. But governments decided to placate them too, starting with the crofters of Skye, who got the Crofters’ Commission (1886 and still with us) to settle their land grievances and prevent them festering as in Ireland ...

By the time the ghost of Goschen finally vanished in the 1970s, public spending per head in Scotland was about 20 per cent above that of England (and substantially higher than in Wales, which was as poor and almost as sparsely populated as Scotland, although it has fewer midges). The secretary of state could protect the Goschen proportion because he had a credible threat at his back. He could tell the Cabinet that unless they protected Scotland’s spending share the Nationalists would start winning elections, and where would the United Kingdom be then? All secretaries of state have done this, but the supreme practitioners have been Tom Johnston (Lab, 1941-5), Willie Ross (Lab, 1964-70 and 1974-6), Ian Lang (Cons, 1990-5) and Michael Forsyth (Con, 1995-7). It is easier for Conservatives, because theirs after all is the Conservative and Unionist Party. Although public spending in England was squeezed during the Thatcher administrations, the gap with Scotland stayed as wide as ever.

In Summer 1974, Prime Minister Wilson overruled Willie Ross and Labour’s Scottish executive, and announced that the party favoured devolution. This was to head off the expected SNP triumph in the polls. In fact, the electoral system did for them more effectively than Wilson. In October 1974, the SNP got 30 per cent of the vote to the Conservatives’ 24 per cent, but only 11 seats to the Conservatives’ 16. Labour retained the majority of Scottish seats on a minority vote. Nevertheless it had been a very close shave. On 35 per cent of the vote, the SNP would have swept the board, won more than half the seats in Scotland, and started to negotiate independence. Therefore, Labour prepared its flagship devolution plans. The Treasury started to prepare for life after devolution, and conducted (some would say bullied the Scottish and Welsh Offices into) a Needs Assessment ...

But by 1979, devolution was dead. An English backlash caused a government defeat which killed the original flagship bill in 1977. Separate bills for Scotland and Wales were then enacted, but the rebels added sections requiring a referendum on the plans, with a “Yes” vote not to be confirmed unless at least 40 per cent of the electorate voted Yes. In Wales, the referendum led to a crushing No; in Scotland to a faint Yes, far below the 40 per cent threshold. The government fell on a Conservative-SNP confidence vote, and the reign of Mrs Thatcher began.

However, the Treasury’s other preparative step has lasted. This was the Barnett Formula, so named (by David Heald in 1980) after Joel Barnett, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury form 1974 to 1979. Barnett’s officials designed the Formula as a temporary expedient to reduce Scotland’s relative spending advantage until a needs-based formula could be introduced. Lord Barnett, as he now is, told a Commons select committee that he expected “his” formula would not last more than “a year or even 20 minutes”. It has not only lasted, but was embedded into the 1997 devolution settlement ... However, the Formula is not statutory. It is not in the Scotland and Wales Acts, and it could be revoked unilaterally by a future UK government ...

The Barnett Formula is not about needs. It is just based on relative population. It leaves unchanged the baseline block grant from year to year. It merely stipulates that for every £1 of extra spending in England each year, Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland) will get an increase in their block grant proportionate to their relative populations ...[The original] population proportions were too generous to Scotland (and too mean to Wales) until altered by that hammer of the Scots Michael Portillo in 1992 to the correct population proportions. Now they are rebased every spending review for the next two years. So they track Scotland’s (declining) share of the British population, but with a time-lag that works in Scotland’s favour.

...the property of this formula is that in the long run it will converge until spending per head is the same in all four countries of the UK ...

The long run has been longer than anyone anticipated in 1978. Up to 1999 there was no perceptible convergence, even though the Barnett Formula supposedly operated throughout. Elsewhere we have given some technical reasons for this, but the main one is political. For all but the last two years of that period, the Conservatives were in office. As the pre-eminently unionist party, they so feared a nationalist threat to the continuation of the United Kingdom that whenever Barnett threatened to produce embarrassing results they bypassed it and found a way to supply off-Barnett goodies to Scotland. The change of government in 1997 caused no immediate change because of Chancellor Brown’s hair-shirted decision not to increase the Conservatives’ planned spending totals. If there is no increase in England, there is nothing for Barnett to bite on.

So Barnett began to bite only when the Labour government started to increase public spending in England. This grew most in the spending reviews of 2000 and 2002, and less but still substantially in the spending review of 2004. The three territories (as the Treasury calls them) are getting their population share of the extra largesse. But, as a proportion of the baseline that they were getting before, the extra is less than in England. Barnett convergence (in Scotland known as the “Barnett squeeze”) is in progress.

... Barnett cannot last because it has no friends outside Scotland. Also it is a lousy formula.

... The English regions, especially but not only the poorer ones, hate Barnett because they think it embeds privilege for Scotland. The campaign is strongest in the North East, engine-room of the 1977 defeat of the Scotland and Wales Bill. It is only too obvious there that spending per scholar is much higher in Duns than in Alnwick, and spending per patient is much higher in Berwickshire than in Berwick-on-Tweed. Strictly speaking this difference is not only due to the Barnett Formula, but also to the formula for distributing public expenditure around the regions of England - also broken. But English politicians will continue to put the blame on Barnett ...

More important still, Wales and Northern Ireland have changed sides ... Barnett never did Wales any favours. As her baseline spending was below her needs, the Barnett squeeze would take Welsh spending further and further below needs. Instead of converging towards relative need, it would diverge away from it. Under the Conservatives, this was masked by the generosity of the Unionist secretaries of state. Under Labour, the quiescence of Welsh Labour is more puzzling. It may be because their eyes were mistakenly fixed on the tawdry prize of EU Objective One status, which will be broken by 2006. Objective One areas are the poorest areas in the European Union. An artificial confection called West Wales and the Valleys has Objective One status. But with ten new member states, all poor, in 2004, no area in the UK will qualify for Objective One in future grant rounds ...

Northern Ireland has no elected government at the time of writing, but its civil servants have become anti-Barnett militants. They argue that (even leaving aside security, which mostly does not come under Barnett) Northern Ireland has high spending needs because of its young population, with more children and more of them staying on (in two separate school systems, it has to be added). They believe that by 2006, the block available under Barnett will be insufficient to fund Northern Ireland’s needs ...

Academic commentators insist that the formula is a very poor way of distributing block grant. Unless Scotland becomes independent, there will always be a distribution of block grant to Scotland from the UK government. But the Barnett arrangement breaks every rule in the public finance economist’s book. It is bad for the UK and bad for Scotland. It is bad for the UK because it distributes grant in a way unrelated to need. It fails to give the UK government control over things it should control and gives it control over things it should not ... They control the amount of public sector debt and borrowing in the UK. But the UK government cannot control what the devolved administrations do - under the devolution settlement they can switch their block grant between current and capital spending at will.’

And:

‘More profoundly, the Barnett arrangements give no incentives for efficiency. Wales and Northern Ireland have no power to tax at all. Scotland has only the 3p in the pound Scottish variable rate of income tax, so far not used. As the Scottish Executive cannot control the amount of money it gets, it might as well just spend it all. Faced with a choice between spending that will make the Scots richer and spending that will not, it has no incentive to choose the former, because it will not see any of the enhanced tax revenue that will result. For that reason, the recent discussions of fiscal autonomy for Scotland are welcome.

Fiscal autonomy comes in two main shades, a nationalist version promoted by SNP politicians, and a devolutionist version promoted by some Conservatives, some Liberal Democrats and some academics.

The nationalist version is just Scottish independence. If the Scots vote for independence in 2007 or later, they should have it. But they should not have any illusions about it. Some ingenious sums due to Alex Salmond MP purport to show that Scotland subsidises England. They rest on very dodgy foundations. In particular they assume that almost all North Sea oil revenues would flow to an independent Scotland, and that they would stay robust. But they would not all flow to Scotland; they fluctuate wildly (between £1billion and £5billion per annum in the last decade) and they are in long term decline ...

Scotland would begin life with a seriously imbalanced budget. It could not sustain public expenditure £8billion ahead of tax revenue. If oil revenue stayed at its 2001/02 peak of £5.2billion and if an independent Scotland got 70 per cent of that, the fiscal gap would close, but only to £4.4billion. To put this sum into perspective, the Treasury estimates that a 1p change in the Scottish variable rate of income tax in 2002/03 could be worth approximately plus or minus £230million. The entire 3p in the pound would therefore yield about £700million - a trivial contribution to closing the fiscal gap.

I am all for Scotland having full fiscal independence. But the Scots should choose it in full awareness of what it would involve.

Turning to the Conservative version of fiscal autonomy, I will describe it in words they would not necessarily use. Nor do you have to be a Conservative to support it. The Scottish Liberal Democrat conference backed it, against their leaders’ advice, and some Labour figures such as Wendy Alexander have started to raise the flag cautiously for what she calls fiscal federalism. The UK has one of the largest vertical fiscal gaps (also known as vertical fiscal imbalances - VFI) in the democratic world. A vertical fiscal gap exists when one tier of government has the power to raise tax and another has the duty (or the pleasure) to spend it. The Scottish Executive has the power to vary the standard rate of income tax by up to 3p in the pound ... The Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies have no power to tax, and none is proposed for the English regional assemblies either. Local government, which in the three territories is funded from their Barnett blocks, in England is funded by another set of broken formulae. Here again VFI is unusually high by international standards. Local government spends about 25 per cent of the identifiable public spending in England, but raises only about 4 per cent of the tax receipts because it has access to only one tax base, namely domestic real estate, taxed via the regressive and unsatisfactory council tax.

VFI is a bad thing. It reduces the incentives for central and local government to tax efficiently, and it encourages politicians to play games against one another. Especially, to play blame games. If citizens are unclear who provides which service then each tier of government can blame the other. As Scotland is not fiscally autonomous, Scots politicians can turn from the difficult task of blaming their problems on the English ... When [Barnett] disappears, as it must, they will face a tougher world. If the Scottish Executive raised more of what it spent, say the fiscal autonomists, it would face the tougher world immediately, to maybe short-term pain but long-term gain. Scots politicians and Scots citizens would face the true costs and the true trade-offs between public services and tax savings. Fiscal autonomy would require radical change.’

Iain MacLean then lists some of the ways in which fiscal autonomy could be implemented in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - but not to an English parliament - which should each have the same power to tax. That ‘a certain proportion of, say VAT and income tax receipts’ should be retained by the devolved administrations. Iain Maclean further advocates the introduction of a ‘more progressive and more comprehensive’ taxation of ‘real estate’.

He then continues:

‘This regime would introduce fiscal federalism to the UK ... Fiscal federalism reduces VFI by making each tier of government responsible for raising what it spends - or at least a higher proportion of what it spends. The Scottish variable rate of income tax would not be serious fiscal federalism even if implemented, because it could only fund a laughably trivial proportion of Scottish public expenditure. Serious fiscal federalism requires the Scottish Executive to raise a serious amount of tax revenue, and/or requires the UK government to assign a serious proportion of its tax revenue to Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland) ...

If the emperor of fiscal autonomy, once stripped of any comfort blankets, is naked, then the other viable alternative to Barnett is a needs assessment regime. But "needs" are what philosophers call an essentially contested concept. Every location in the UK would claim that what it happened to lack, it needed. Where needs formulae already exist, in local government and health funding, we see the results of decades of lobbying embedded in the needs formulae. For instance, the Scottish local government needs formula includes a weighting for miles of road built on peat. The English school needs formula includes a weighting for ethnic minority pupils. If you have a lot of roads built on peat and a lot of ethnic minority pupils, you can readily see why you need more public spending per head. If you do not, you may not.

A future territorial needs formula must ... ensure that each comparable citizen of the UK is treated equally wherever he or she lives; and it must be compatible with economic efficiency. The second criterion requires that there be no incentives to politicians to make their territory appear "needy" - something for which the present English regime (and it must be said, the present EU regime) is notorious ... There would need to be a Territorial Grants Commission, modelled on the highly successful Commonwealth Grants Commission of Australia. It would be an arms-length body like the Electoral Commission or the Committee on Standards in Public Life - appointed by politicians, but thereafter unable to be intimidated by them. Its commissioners would be appointed by agreement between the UK government and all the territorial governments, including those of London and any other self-governing English regions. Its staff would be public servants drawn or seconded from the relevant agencies such as the devolved administrations, the Treasury, the Office for National Statistics, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Each territory with an elected government would have one vote at meetings, and there would be a mechanism for ensuring that those English regions without elected assemblies also got votes.’

Iain MacLean then sets out some suggestions for the conduct of the decision making of his proposed Territorial Grants Commission. He concludes:

‘Scotland in 2020 will be more fiscally autonomous than it is now. That may have its painful side. But it should produce a self-confident, fiscally mature country, not the nation of spongers and whingers that is sometimes portrayed in the southern media. A country I would be proud to retire to.’

Given that this is a Scotland 2020 conference, Iain MacLean can be forgiven for looking at matters from a Scottish point of view.

Nevertheless, he has raised a number of important points which need consideration.

To start with, simply advocating English votes on English laws [EVEL] in the House of Commons is not a solution. It comes nowhere near to addressing the issue of the present devolution settlement. EVEL is a typical Tory fudge, and those who advocate it are merely ducking the issue and trying to con the English public.

Importantly, the problem regarding the English subsidy to Scotland is not a recent one at all, nor is it the result of the Barnett Formula. English monies have been pouring into Scotland for more than a century. The prime responsibility for this rests with the Tories. The policy is a failure in that it has reduced many in England into poverty [eg those old people who have their homes seized and sold by the state to pay for nursing home costs, when such costs are fully paid by the government in Scotland] and yet has failed to achieve its objective, which is to buy off the Scots.

Nationalism in Scotland is a major force, as is widespread Anglophobia amongst the Scots. The Tories were completely wiped out electorally in Scotland in 1997 although they have since managed to secure a solitary MP. Despite this fact, and the failure to placate the Scots by shovelling English money at them, the Tories remain blindly committed to pursuing the same policy. They have learnt nothing.

The Tories remain committed to pouring ever larger sums of English money into Scotland [see the English Rights Campaign entry dated 29 March 2005, 26 May 2005 and 5 June 2005] and are a part of the problem and not the solution.

For any government to be giving parts of the UK extra money simply to buy votes leads to bad governance. It is also morally wrong.

Iain Maclean gets into difficulty when it comes to some arbitrary assessment of ‘needs’, as he himself recognises. Whose needs? What are the needs? And who decides? The EU has had a corrupting effect in this, as Iain Maclean realises.

Scotland is one of the wealthiest regions of the UK. There is absolutely no reason at all why the English should be expected to give money to the Scots so that they might have a higher standard of living than the English themselves.

The current English subsidies to Scotland and Wales are running at in excess of £20billion annually [the Scottish deficit is £11.3billion per annum, and the Welsh deficit is £8.9billion]. As elections are due to take place in Scotland and Wales in 2007, it is to be expected that these subsidies will increase sharply as Labour try to buy votes.

There is no particular reason why Northern Ireland should be swamped in English subsidies either. If the Irish Catholics hate the English so much that they support terrorist organisations, then we should stop insulting them with our money. With power comes responsibility, and they should take more responsibility for their own actions.

Iain MacLean asserts that ‘there will always be a distribution of block grant to Scotland from the UK government’. But this is not necessarily so. If there is genuine fiscal autonomy, especially to deal with the vertical fiscal gaps which Iain MacLean identifies, then there is no reason at all why Scotland should continue to receive any English money.

The UK government has no money of its own. It is English money which is distributed to fund the deficits in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - none of whom are meeting their own internal expenditure. It is English money which funds the interest payments on the national debt, overseas aid, defence, payments to the EU etc.

If the UK becomes a fully federal union, then Scotland, one of the wealthiest regions in the UK, will be expected to meet its own bills - as Iain MacLean is wary of. Lord Steel is also wary of this in his latest report too and advocates a new Barnett Formula [see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 15 March 2006].

For the avoidance of doubt, the English Rights Campaign is in favour of an English Parliament in a federal Britain.

The issue of the vertical fiscal gap is very important. Successive governments have fiddled around with the allocation of grants to both local government and the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish. This is bad governance and it must be brought to an end. With the power to spend money, must come the responsibility to raise that money.

But for there to be fiscal devolution and autonomy, then there must be a parliament to devolve matters to. That necessitates an English parliament to deal with England. Direct rule of England by a British parliament is not consistent with dealing with the vertical fiscal gap at all. There needs to be a clear division of responsibility between British matters and English matters, British money and English money, and British MPs and English MPs.

Tony Blair may represent an English constituency in the British parliament, but he is Scottish. This is the same for many others. Malcolm Rifkind has openly stated where his true loyalties lie [see the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 19 August 2005]. It is not good enough to adopt the stance of ‘he’ll do’ when it comes to the MPs for an English parliament and merely adopt the current British MP for that constituency. There needs to be a positive vote for the MPs to represent the English in an English parliament.

It is to be noted that the Scots have a tendency to blithely assume that all the North Sea Oil is their’s. That is not so. Iain MacLean allocates 70% to Scotland. Whatever the exact figure is, the fact is that the Scots will need to either increase taxes or cut government expenditure. That is a matter for them to decide.

What is unacceptable, is for both Labour and the Tories, with Lib Dem approval, to be happily taxing the English into penury in order to transfer huge sums to Scotland to enable the Scots to spend money they do not have, and so attain an even higher standard of living for themselves.

The English Rights Campaign would disagree with the suggested Territorial Grants Commission idea. The Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish should be responsible for their own internal expenditure come what may. Block grants should come to an end. That must surely be the only responsible way forward. The buck should stop with all the countries of the UK for their own internal expenditure. Each country should be forced to take that responsibility.

All that remains to be decided, is to what extent the English alone should continue to fund UK expenditure such as servicing the national debt, overseas aid, defence and payments to the EU etc.

THE WAR ON TERROR

Lord Ahmed, one of Labour’s nouveau toffs, was responsible for inviting a terrorist suspect into the Houses of Parliament.

The terrorist suspect, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a former Belmarsh detainee is now subject to a control order. He is tagged and needs Home Office approval for any meetings outside his home. He met Lord Ahmed at the Regent’s Park mosque.

Rideh, who is alleged to be working for Al Qaeda, denies fundraising and providing documents for Muslims travelling to Afghanistan. He has claimed that the fundraising was for charity. He has boasted of how he was given a security sticker and allowed to sit in the House of Commons gallery to listen to a debate.

Lord Ahmed has previously caused controversy by inviting a well known anti-Semite, Joran Jeremas, who lives in Sweden, to the Houses of Parliament for a book launch.

Rideh, who is a Palestinian, should be deported along with his family.

Lord Ahmed should be confined to history with the rest of Labour’s nouveau toffs. The House of Lords should be abolished and replaced with an elected chamber. This should be done as part of a package of constitutional reform to create a federal Britain, with each of the nations of Wales, Scotland and England having their own parliaments.

The House of Commons could be the home of the English parliament, with what is now the House of Lords being the home of the British parliament.

VOTE RIGGING

As if the cash for peerages row is not bad enough, the likely fallout looks even worse.

The scandal, and that is what it is, involves the main 3 parties, albeit primarily Labour and the Tories, arranging loans from wealthy donors. The donors, if not the loans themselves, are then not identified in the party accounts.

Had those loans been outright donations in the form of gifts, then there would have been a legal obligation to declare full details. Labour, in particular, has been asking these donors to make loans so that the details could remain hidden.

Some of those making the loans have been in receipt of highly lucrative government contracts.

Then there are the large number of Labour donors [whether by loans or outright donations] who have been awarded peerages and other honours.

This really is quite disgraceful. Corruption is not too strong a word.

The Labour treasurer claims he knew nothing of the loans. That is incredible. And where did the millions go [£14million is involved]? Did someone hide £14million under the mattress? Just how did Labour think all those cheques were being covered if the money was not flowing through their bank accounts? How were the bills being paid?

Money must go somewhere. £14million is a very large sum to be missing and unaccounted for!

Now the Tories have publicly recommended that donations should be capped at £50,000. Labour are in the process of altering the law so that loans are also disclosed as are gifts.

All the 3 main parties are now suddenly very much in favour of taxpayers’ money being made available for parties as a means of funding. One Tory said that his party should be compensated for the loss of donations that would arise if the size of donations were capped, as a means of justifying the access to taxpayers’ money.

Meanwhile, both Labour and the Tories are complaining that they will suffer financial difficulties if they have to repay the loans. Now the scandal has broken, those businessmen involved now want their loans repaid.

If those businessmen and donors cannot get their money back, that is their look-out. If the 3 main parties find themselves in financial difficulties, then that is their problem. If they cannot spend all they want at the next general election - tough! None of this is an excuse to dip their grasping hands into the taxpayers’ pocket.

Taxpayers should not be expected to repay those loans.

A major ramification of the £50,000 donation cap proposal, is that fringe parties will be disproportionately affected. Fringe parties can be much more dependent upon a few major donors.

For example, The Referendum Party would have been virtually disbarred under such a proposal. Sir James Goldsmith used his own money to launch a party to, as he saw it, save his country from being submerged into the EU. He wanted a referendum on this issue.

Why should anyone spending his own money to promote a cause he believes in, be banned from so doing?

Of course the Tories are adversely affected by such parties. The Referendum Party forced the then pro-EU government of John Major to offer a referendum on joining the Euro, for fear of losing votes at the general election.

It is wholly wrong for the 3 establishment parties to be introducing controls to prevent new parties from raising large-scale funding from donors.

That they should do so as a result of their own sleazy activities is nauseating.

This is just another example of vote rigging.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

‘We’ve seldom had bleaker weeks than this. First there’s an Education Bill so diluted it is an insult to every child in the country.

Then another pensions crisis leaves tens of thousands of savers with next to nothing.

Finally, a scandal over party funding makes Blair’s chum Berlusconi look almost saintly be comparison.

The PM has been rightly savaged by his own side. And with so much blood in the water, what do the Tories do? They jump in and act like they’re swimming with dolphins.

Education Bill? We agree. Iraq? Well done. Dodgy loans? Us, too. Peerages for sale? Ditto. Pensions? Silence.

There’s simply no point calling them an Opposition Party any more. They don’t deserve the title. As their collapsing poll ratings show, the Tories are as limp as a motorway service station salad.

“Dave” Cameron puts an end to Punch and Judy politics and all he’s left with is Judy Garland and a band of sweet but gormless do-gooders hopelessly lost in the wilderness.

David Willets was so nice to Pensions Minister Margaret Hodge on BBC1's Question Time on Thursday night that it was like being licked to death by a pet guinea pig.

David Dimbleby used to sit between Labour and Tory adversaries for their own safety. Now it’s to stop them hugging. Small wonder the biggest cheer of the night went to one member of the audience who attacked the consensus politics that have left Britain so devoid of true debate.

As for Cameron, his idea of leadership is to announce in this crucial week that he will drink only Fair Trade tea and will send his new son to a state school.

That’s the worst kind of gesture politics Dave. And the gesture is two fingers up at the British people.’

Amanda Platell [former Tory press secretary], writing in the Daily Mail.

The mantra that people have ‘got to vote Tory to get Labour out’ no longer applies, assuming it ever did. People have not voted Tory and are not voting Tory.

As for ‘Dave’ Cameron and his Fair Trade tea - words fail.

It is a good job that there is an English Democrats Party.

We have to look to the future and not the past.

THE EU

Below is a copy of an article written by Daniel Hannan MEP in today’s Daily Telegraph, which is self-explanatory:


So, you thought the European constitution was dead, did you?
By Daniel Hannan
(Filed: 20/03/2006)

Two years from now, the European constitution will be in force - certainly de facto and probably de jure, too. Never mind that 15 million Frenchmen and five million swag-bellied Hollanders voted against it.

The Eurocrats have worked out a deft way of getting around them. Here's how they'll do it.

First, they will shove through as many of the constitution's contents as they can under the existing legal framework - a process they had already begun even before the referendums.

Around 85 per cent of the text can, with some creative interpretation, be implemented this way.

True, there are one or two clauses that will require a formal treaty amendment: a European president to replace the system whereby the member nations take it in turns to chair EU meetings; a new voting system; legal personality for the Union.

These outstanding items will be formalised at a miniature inter-governmental conference, probably in 2007. There will be no need to debate them again: all 25 governments accepted them in principle when they signed the constitution 17 months ago.

We shall then be told that these are detailed and technical changes, far too abstruse to be worth pestering the voters with.

The EU will thus have equipped itself with 100 per cent of the constitution, but without having held any more referendums. Clever, no?

Don't take my word for it: listen to what the EU's own leaders are saying. Here is Wolfgang Schassel, Chancellor of Austria and the EU's current president: "The constitution is not dead."

Here is Angela Merkel, leader of Europe's most powerful and populous state: "Europe needs the constitution. We are willing to make whatever contribution is necessary to bring the constitution into force."

Here is Dominique de Villepin, who, in true European style, has risen to the prime ministership of France without ever having run for elected office: "France did not say no to Europe."

And, on Tuesday, our own Europe minister, Douglas Alexander, repeatedly refused to rule out pushing ahead with the bulk of the text without a referendum.

For the purest statement of the Eurocrats' contempt for the voters, however, we must turn to the constitution's author, Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Here is a man who, with his exquisite suits and de haut en bas manner, might be said to personify the EU: so extraordinarily distinguished, as Mallarma remarked in a different context, that when you bid him bonjour, he makes you feel as though you'd said merde.

"Let's be clear about this," pronounced Giscard a couple of weeks ago. "The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected."

He went on to remind his audience that the Danish and Irish electorates had once been presumptuous enough to vote against a European treaty, but that no one had paid them the slightest attention.

The same thing is happening today. Since the French and Dutch "No" votes, three countries have approved the text and three more - Finland, Estonia and Belgium - look set to follow in the coming weeks, which would bring to 16 the number of states to have ratified.

At the same time, the European Commission has launched a massive exercise to sell the constitution to the doltish national electorates.

Their scheme goes under the splendidly James Bondish title of "Plan D". I forget what the D stands for: deceit, I think, or possibly disdain.

Anyway, squillions of euros are being spent on explaining to us that we have misunderstood our true interests.

While all this is going on, the EU is proceeding as if the constitution were already in force. Most of the institutions and policies that it would have authorised are being enacted anyway: the External Borders Agency, the European Public Prosecutor, the External Action Service, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme.

The text is not, as the cliche of the moment has it, being "smuggled in through the back door"; it is swaggering brazenly through the front.

Whenever one of these initiatives comes before us on the constitutional affairs committee, I ask my federalist colleagues: "Where in the existing treaties does it say you can do this?"

"Where does it say we can't?" they reply. Pressed for a proper answer, they point to a flimsy cat's-cradle of summit communiques, council resolutions and commission press releases.

To be fair, this is how the European project has always advanced. First, Brussels extends its jurisdiction into a new field of policy and then, often years later, it gets around to regularising that extension in a new treaty.

The voters are thus presented with a fait accompli, the theory being that they will be likelier to shrug their shoulders and accept it than they would have been to give their consent in advance.

This, indeed, is how the EU was designed. Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval.

So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion.

Indeed, the EU's structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic in that many commissioners, a la Patten and Kinnock, have been explicitly rejected by the voters.

In swatting aside two referendum results, the EU is being true to its foundational principles.

Born out of a reaction against the Second World War, and the plebiscitary democracy that had preceded it, the EU is based on the notion that "populism" (or "democracy", as you and I call it) is a dangerous thing.

Faced with a result that they dislike, the Euro-apparatchiks' first instinct is to ask, with Brecht: "Wouldn't it be easier to dissolve the people and elect another in their place?"

To complain that the EU is undemocratic is like attacking a cow for being bovine, or a butterfly for being flighty. In disregarding public opinion, the EU is doing what it has been programmed to do. It is fulfilling its prime directive.

Sadly, we British are also exhibiting one of our worst national characteristics, namely our tendency to ignore what is happening on the Continent until too late.

With a few exceptions - and here I doff my cap to the pressure group Open Europe, which is waging a lonely campaign to alert people to the danger - we are carrying on as though the French electorate had killed off the constitution, and so spared us from having to think about the European issue at all.

Once again, we are fantasising about the kind of EU we might ideally like to have, rather than dealing with the one that is in fact taking shape on our doorstep. Will we never learn?

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP.

THE NEED FOR AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

Lord Steel, former MP and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, and now an MSP and head of the Steel Commission, has advocated the introduction of ‘fiscal federalism’ in a new report. The Steel Commission’s report was published after 18 months of study.

There is speculation that the new report is likely to lead to a realignment in Scottish politics with the Scottish Liberal Democrats forming a coalition in Holyrood [the Scottish parliament].

The report comes at a time when even the Scottish Tories are expected to demand that Holyrood be given more control over taxation.

Lord Steel believes that Holyrood should be able to raise as much of the money it spends as possible.

However, there is little detail in the report, and the details have been left to a new Scottish Constitutional Convention to resolve.

Lord Steel said:

‘We must build a political and public consensus around the case for new powers. No self-respecting parliament should expect to exist permanently on a grant from another parliament.

The Scottish government should be responsible for raising as much of its own spending as practical. It should have control over a number of taxes so that it can pull the levers necessary to develop the economy.

That does not mean independence. It means a new, modern settlement for Scotland in the UK based on more federal principles.’

LORD Steel's plans for Holyrood include:

A constitutional convention to review the powers of the Scottish Parliament, looking at which taxes could be devolved.

•• A written constitution for the United Kingdom, entrenching the rights of Scotland, or a review of the Scotland Act.

•• Devolving control over energy, Holyrood's electoral system and the operation of the Scottish Parliament.

•• Considering giving Holyrood control over betting and gaming, bank holidays and broadcasting policy,

•• drug policy, asylum and immigration, firearms, employment law, mergers, Scottish national security and some welfare.

•• Giving the Scottish Parliament control over tax, with only a few specified taxes remaining at Westminster.

•• Considering giving Scotland control over all personal and business taxes.

•• Giving Holyrood the power to abolish existing taxes and create new ones.

•• An inland revenue for Scotland. The Scottish government should be allowed to borrow money, and there should be a new Barnett Formula to allocate UK money.

•• Making the Scottish Executive the Scottish government.

•• Introducing single transferable votes for Holyrood and enshrining proportional representation in the constitution.

•• Replacing the Scotland Office with a UK department of the regions.

•• Making sure the Scottish government is consulted formally by the UK government on major policy proposals.

•• Replacing the Commons Scottish Select Committee with a joint committee of Holyrood and Westminster

This is all very well, but what about England? Lord Steel merely assumes that he can alter the UK constitution and devolution settlement to suit Scotland at will. That is not so as all his proposed changes affect England.

It is completely impractical for Scotland to have a separate immigration policy, without a major change in Scotland’s relationship with the rest of the UK, as most immigrants move to the south east of England.

Devolving power over taxation is a good thing. It must surely be right that a parliament is responsible for raising the money it spends. But Lord Steel also advocates a new Barnett Formula to allocate UK money.

By UK money, he of course means English money. In other words, in reality, Lord Steel wishes to keep Scottish money for Scotland but still allow Scotland to help itself to English money as it sees fit.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Furthermore, Lord Steel then advocates a new UK department of the regions. Regionalisation is a programme to divide England up into regions. The governance of England is a matter for the English and not the Scots.

It is deeply offensive for Lord Steel to be interfering in the internal affairs of England in this way.

Meanwhile Lord Falconer, a Scottish Labour peer, has pronounced that there is ‘no demand at all’ for an English parliament, that there is ‘no evidence’ that the English resent not having their own parliament [despite the Scots and Welsh having their own, and despite Scottish and Welsh MPs continuing to vote on English matters] and that there will not be an English parliament - ‘not today, not tomorrow’.

How the English react to the devolution of power to Scotland and Wales, with those countries now having their own parliaments, is a matter for the English. Unelected Scottish peers can mind their own business. The Scots and Welsh have been allowed referendums on whether or not they are to have their own parliaments, and the English are also entitled to their own referendum.

The fact is that the British ruling class, including the Tories, are brazenly content to sacrifice English interests for their own convenience. It is expedient to allow the status quo to continue. No one is standing up for English interests.

This all demonstrates why it is so important that there be the creation of a new English parliament to represent English interests. And also why it is so important that the English have their own nationalist party, as do the Scots and Welsh, in order to re-balance the political debate.

The present 3 main British political parties are more than happy to sacrifice English interests for their own political ends.

VOTE RIGGING

The Boundary Commission has now launched its final draft for the suggested redrawing of constituency boundaries. This is supposed to update the boundaries to reflect demographic changes. Such reviews are ongoing and are supposed to ensure that the elections are as fair as possible.

In a report entitled Guide to the New Electoral Boundaries, by Anthony Wells, the details of the major proposed changes are listed. The opening paragraph of the Summary states:

‘The Boundary Commissions of the UK (one for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland) conduct general reviews of the Parliamentary constituencies every 8 to 12 years. This is the fifth general review since 1949. The review started in 2000 and the new boundaries are based upon the population in each seat in February 2000. The new boundaries in Scotland have already been adopted and were used at the 2005 election. Unless there is a very early snap election, the new boundaries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be introduced in time for the next General Election.’

The report makes grim reading for those who genuinely believe in the democratic process. It should be recalled that the last general election resulted in a Labour majority of 66, which was completely out of step with its percentage vote [the outcome was Labour 36%, Tories 33% and Lib Dems 23%, which means that Labour received a substantial parliamentary majority despite a low vote and despite only being 3% ahead of the Tories].

The 66 Labour majority includes 70 Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs. In other words, Labour is governing England solely as a result of the manner of the devolution settlement imposed on England. Labour’s majority in England is totally dependent on its Scottish and Welsh MPs. This is an illegitimate government.

In a section entitled Why is there still Labour bias?, the report states:

'The perceived bias in the electoral system is slightly reduced by the boundary changes, but not eliminated. This is because time-lag in the boundaries is only one factor in the bias in the system.

Even on the new boundaries if both of the main parties were on the same percentage of vote - for example 35% - then Labour would have 87 seats more than the Conservatives. There are several reasons for this:

1. Over-representation of Wales. Scotland’s over-representation was resolved by the new boundaries introduced in 2005. Wales, however, remains over-represented. The electoral quota in England and Scotland is 69,934, in Wales it is 55,640. If Wales were to use the English quota, it would be entitled to only 32, rather than the present 40. Given that Labour holds almost three-quarters of the seats in Wales the current over-representation is to their benefit, and gives them an extra 5 seats over the Conservatives. (In practice would probably still have more than 32 seats even if it did use the English quota - Scotland has 59 seats rather than the 57 it “should” have because of geographical considerations in the highlands and islands. Similar factors in Anglesey and the Welsh mountains would probably have a similar affect).

2. Time-lag. It takes several years to conduct a boundary review and to introduce the new boundaries. The rules state that the electoral figures used are those at the date the review started. The boundaries in this review will come into force at the next election, probably in 2009 or 2010, but are based on the population in 2000. Hence they will be 10 years out of date by the time they are introduced.

Since 2000 there have already been major changes in the population of some seats - for example, Stretford & Urmston, Preston and Derby North have all seen their electorates fall by over 8,000 in the last 4 years. Cambridgeshire North-West, Westbury and Croydon North have all seen their electorates grow by over 6,000 in the last 4 years. The situation will obviously be more extreme in 2009/10.

The trend is for the population to increase in Conservative and fall in Labour areas as people move out of declining inner-cities and into suburbs and the country (though not, it should be pointed out, exclusively - another rapidly growing seat is Bethnal Green & Bow). Therefore this time lag tends to favour Labour whose heartlands would receive considerably fewer seats were boundaries drawn up on projected population figures in the future as local ward boundaries are.

Given that the changes in this review, reflecting the population movements over the nine years between 1991 and 2000, have decreased the “labour bias” by 24 seats, it seems reasonable to assume that had boundaries been drawn up on the likely population figures when the boundaries are due to be introduced (probably 2009), “Labour bias” would have been reduced by something in the same region.’

The section goes on to draw attention to the lower turnout in Labour seats and the effect of anti-Tory tactical voting as also being reasons for the Labour bias.

There is absolutely no reason why Wales should continue to be over-represented, and nor for that matter Scotland at all. So what if there are some mountains and islands in Scotland and Wales? This is the 21st century and not the age of the horse and cart.

The two Scottish constituencies of Orkney and Shetland, and Na H-Eileanan An Iar have electorates of roughly 33,000 and 21,500 respectively. Meanwhile, the Isle of Wight, an English island and single constituency, has an electorate of roughly 109,000. The English Isle of Wight constituency has an electorate roughly 3 times that of Orkney and Shetland, and more than 5 times that of Na H-Eileanan An Iar. It is roughly twice the size of a normal sized Welsh constituency.

Such huge anomalies are intolerable in a normal democracy.

The 3 East Yorkshire constituencies of Haltemprice and Howden, Yorkshire East, and Beverley and Holderness [all Tory] have a combined electorate of roughly 222,500, compared with the combined electorate of roughly 189,500 for the neighbouring 3 Hull constituencies [all Labour]. The 33,000 difference is equivalent to the electorate Orkney and Shetland and 50% greater than that of Na H-Eileanan An Iar. To put it another way, the 3 aforementioned East Yorkshire constituencies are equivalent to 4 normal sized Welsh constituencies.

This matter has already been highlighted in the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 26 May 2005, when urgent action was advocated. Yet nothing has happened and we are now sleepwalking into another rigged election in 2009.

The idea that the new boundaries and constituencies are based on population figures which are already known to be wrong, with the figures being 10 years out of date, is absurd. The new constituencies should be based on projected figures as are wards.

Are the Tories, or anyone else, objecting to this? No. Not a squeak.

Labour is in the process of turning this country into a one party state. English democratic rights are being ignored and subverted by a rigged voting system.

THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO GO ON.

RACE WAR POLITICS

Below is a copy of an extract from an article from Christopher Booker’s notebook in the Sunday Telegraph:

Racism in placenames

Ken Perrin runs a construction business in March, Cambridgeshire, and when he needs men to prepare building sites, he advertises through local job centres. Because his workers need transport to the sites, the firm has pick-up points in Peterborough and Chatteris. He therefore specifies that the work is suitable for people living nearby.

Recently, however, Chatteris was dropped from his advertisements. This meant that Mr Perrin received job applications from as far away as Edinburgh and Southampton. Asking for an explanation, he was told by JobCentre Plus Partnerships in Sheffield that by referring to any specific place he could face criminal charges for racial discrimination.

He was warned that "by not wishing to consider jobseekers from a particular geographical area where minority ethnic people may live, you could be leaving yourself open to charges of being in breach of the Race Relations Act 1976". Is there no end to this madness?

THE BRITISH INQUISITION

Liverpool footballer, Steve Finnan, has been accused of racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra in a match between the two teams on the 22 January. Mr Evra was born in Senegal and has a French passport.

The basis of the allegation is not a complaint by Mr Evra, or any of those present at the time. The allegation has been made by two deaf people who watched the match on television.

A police source said:

‘We have never before had to investigate allegations of racial abuse reported by people with impaired hearing, who are obviously much better at lip-reading.

We believe this is a truly unique case and if the evidence is strong enough, then the perpetrator could face charges.’

The Greater Manchester Police have launched an investigation and are reviewing television footage of the match. They are to ask lip-readers to analyse what was said.

Mr Finnan, who is from Limerick, has denied the allegation.

The maximum sentence for someone found guilty of a racially aggravated offence is two years in jail.

THE PAREKH REPORT [11]

'2.20 There has never been a single “British way of life”. The idea that Britishness is universally diffused across society is seriously misleading. For there have always been many, often contested, ways of being British. Outside the heartland (earlier “Home Counties”; more recently “middle England”), Britishness always existed alongside, and was strongly challenged by, the Irish, the Scots, the Welsh, and also by a range of local and regional loyalties. Identification with Yorkshire, the North East, Manchester, Lancashire, the West Midlands, East Anglia and the West Country has co-existed with, and sometimes seems to override, national identity - there have been alternative versions of national identity not only within Britain but also within England itself ...

2.21 Deep differences in social and political outlook and opinion continue to exist, even in today’s less politicised climate, and reflect different, often dramatically opposed, versions of national identity. A young columnist remarked: “It could be argued that a universal sense of “Englishness” is impossible when our class system provides so many different “Englands” ... Exactly the same would be true of Britishness as a whole, as seen from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, or by people of different genders, regions and generations ... All classes were involved in and benefited from empire, but men and women related to it in different ways.

3.6 Caribbean culture has a distinct social and geographical basis and it the product of a unique historical experience ... British-born African-Caribbeans are socialised through family and neighbourhood into a migrant version of this culture. Following the rediscovery of an African and slave past at home (as communicated through reggae music), and resistance to white racism in Britain, blackness has become an essential part of their self-definition. They are conscious of their subordinate, racialised place in global power systems.

3.9 ... In recent surveys nearly all Asians questioned have said that religion is important to them, but it has not inhibited full participation in the wider society. Recently, Muslims have emerged as the principle focus of racist antagonisms (“Islamophobia”) based on cultural difference. The politicisation of Islam throughout the world has contributed to this. Often, however, what Islam means is that “new ways of living and the process of gradually becoming a part of British society have to be ultimately justified in terms compatible with Muslim faith” ...

3.10 Anti-Irish racism developed in tandem with racisms directed at people outside Europe. There are around 3 million Irish people in Britain today - by far the largest migrant community. All too often they are neglected in considerations of race and cultural diversity in modern Britain. It is essential, however, that all such considerations should take their perceptions and situations into account.

3.12 The generations of Irish born in Britain remain under-researched. However, the few available studies indicate a continuing pattern of low achievement for young Irish men and disproportionate ill health in the second generation. The position of the Irish in Britain as insider-outsiders is uniquely relevant to the nature of its multi-ethnic society. For generations, Irish experience has been neglected owing to the myth of the homogeneity of white Britain, but it illuminates Britishness in much the same way that the experience of black people illuminates whiteness.

3.16 ... Few in the Jewish community would question the significance of the Holocaust or of Israel, but many now say that the focus of communal attention must be on values, culture and religious practice, on positive images of Jewish culture and civilisation, and they are concerned with how to maintain Jewish distinctiveness in British society. Their desire for cultural recognition in a pluralist society offers probably more potential for shared goals with Asian and black people than the shared history of racist oppression.

3.17 The kinds of tension and complexity outlined above are issues also for Gypsies and Travellers. As is the case with Irish people and Jews, they are often neglected in considerations of Britain as a multi-ethnic society, or included only as an afterthought. But they too were defined in the past as an inferior race and are part of the history of British racism ...

3.19 ... Despite the great diversity between and within travelling groups, all are lumped together in the minds of settled communities. They suffer from high degrees of social exclusion, vilification and stereotyping. Anyone who does not fit the traditional stereotype (painted wagon, campfire, swarthy complexion, much gold jewellery) is assumed to be a mere traveller, to be feared and despised.

3.23 Britain continues to be disfigured by racism; by phobias about cultural difference; by sustained social, economic, educational and cultural disadvantage; by institutional discrimination; and by a systematic failure of social justice or real respect for difference. These have been fuelled by a fixed conception of national identity and culture. They are not likely to disappear without a sustained effort of political will. Is it possible to reimagine Britain as a nation - or post nation - in a multicultural way?

3.24 ... Black identities have been positively embraced. Difference now matters profoundly. However, differences are not necessarily either/or - many people are learning to live “in between”, it has been said, or with more than one identity. The famous Tebbit cricket test is not only racially demeaning but is also out of date. People today are constantly juggling different, not always compatible, identities. South Asians and African-Caribbeans support India, Pakistan and the West Indies against England but England against Australia, especially when the English team includes Asian and black players. This is just one aspect of the complex, multifaceted, post-national world in which national allegiance is now played out.

3.25 What broad strategies are shaping the ways in which people deal with this shifting situation? Hope once centred on assimilation. However, this really meant the absorption of so-called minority differences into the so-called majority - people were expected to give up everything in order to belong. But since racism has continued, assimilation has come to be seen as an impossible price to pay - blackness and Asianness are non-tradable. Cultural difference has come to matter more. The awareness that “non-recognition or mis-recognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being” has led to a politics of recognition alongside the struggle for equality and racial justice.

3.28 Does Britishness as such have a future? Some believe that devolution and globalisation have undermined it irretrievably ... It is entirely plain, however, that the word "British" will never do on its own.

3.29 Where does this leave Asians, African-Caribbeans and Africans? For them Britishness is a reminder of colonisation and empire, and to that extent is not attractive. But the first migrants came with British passports, signifying membership of a single imperial system. For the British-born generations, seeking to assert their claim to belong, the concept of Englishness often seems inappropriate, since to be English, as the term is in practice used, is to be white. Britishness is not ideal, but at least it appears acceptable, particularly when suitably qualified - Black British, Indian British, British Muslim, and so on.

3.30 However, there is one major and so far insuperable barrier. Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations. Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness, is racially coded. "There ain't no black in the Union Jack", it has been said. Race is deeply entwined in political culture and with the idea of nation, and underpinned by a distinctively British kind of reticence - to take race and racism seriously, or even to talk about them at all, is bad form, something not done in polite company. This disavowal, combined with "an iron-jawed disinclination to recognise equal human worth and dignity of people who are not white", has proved a lethal combination. Unless these deep-rooted antagonisms to racial and cultural difference can be defeated in practice, as well as symbolically written out of the national story, the idea of a multicultural post-nation remains an empty promise.'

The last two of the above paragraphs have already been dealt with in the English Rights Campaign entry dated the 22 October 2005, and the press focussed on paragraph 3.30 in particular in its denunciation of the Parekh Report.

Those paragraphs have been included again here in order to present a complete picture of the ideology which is being presented.

Firstly, the report undermines the concept that the British were ever united. To that end it tries to divide up the British and even the English. It seeks to rubbish the concept of nationhood.

We have been spared Trevor Phillips’s and Alabhai Brown’s views on the Irish as of late, but the purported anti-Irish racism was a key part of their attack. The report is trying to portray the British as being no more than a collection of different non-homogenous groups. By trying to draw in the Irish the report reinforces its assertion that the British/English are inherently racist, and that such racism is responsible for all the world’s problems [hence the quiet references to the empire etc].

Ireland was of course once an integral part of Britain. The idea that those of Irish decent born in this country do not fully integrate, and suffer discrimination and racism, is rubbish.

To speak of the British Empire being a ‘single imperial system’ is rubbish. The British were the rulers and the natives of Africa, Asia and elsewhere were the ruled. Britain was a democracy, the colonies were not. Then there were the Dominions. The British Empire no longer exists, and peoples of the former colonies have no claim on Britain or England - apart from the British ex-patriots and their descendants.

The report’s ideology is political correctness in its true neo-communist form. It seeks to create division and hatred, and exaggerate and invent racism. It is pure race war politics.

IT IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT WOOLLY-MINDED IDEALISM NOR IS IT AN ATTEMPT TO ENCOURAGE POLITENESS.

It is evil.

The report seeks to alienate virtually all minority racial groups [Jews, Irish, gypsies, Asians etc] against the English, having first tried to divide the English themselves. All these minority racial groups are, of course, supposedly, victims of British/English racism.

The report is aggressive in its assertion that Britain is now a ‘post-nation’. It also asserts that allegiances are to many different entities and not the nation [‘national allegiance is now played out’]. This is the line which Vince Cable was pushing in his outburst last year [see English Rights Campaign entry dated the 11 September 2005]. All Mr Cable was doing was parroting the Parekh Report [which shows how influential the report is in certain quarters].

A key part of the attack is the assertion that assimilation is impossible. This is not least due to the report’s denial that there is a host nation into which the immigrant minorities can assimilate into [note the reference to Britain being a ‘multicultural post-nation’]. Trevor Phillips’s recent quibbling about the problems of assimilation/integration are disingenuous on this point [see English Rights Campaign entries dated the 18 September 2005 and the 5 October 2005]. The fact is that he is opposed to assimilation/integration per se.

What he really wants is race quotas and anti-English ethnic cleansing.

Given that Labour in particular, and the British ruling class in general, adhere to such views, then it is little wonder that we are now experiencing increasing racial violence and terrorism.

RACE WAR POLITICS

Nursery school children at two centres in Abingdon and Oxford have been banned from singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’.

Instead, they are being compelled to sign ‘Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep’.

Stuart Chamberlain of the Oxford Sure Start Centre in Sutton Courtenay said:

‘Basically we have taken the equal opportunities approach to everything we do. This is fairly standard across nurseries. We are following stringent equal opportunities rules. No one should feel pointed out because of their race, gender or anything else.’

This is not the first time that race zealots have tried to ban or tamper with the nursery rhyme. Previously attempts have been made to change it to ‘green’ or ‘happy’ sheep. In 1999 the Birmingham City Council banned the rhyme on the basis that it was racially negative and likely to cause offence.

In fact, the rhyme has nothing to do with race and is believed to have originated from the Middle Ages and relates to a tax imposed by the king on wool.

Both the so-called Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality have refused to comment.

THE BRITISH INQUISITION

The West Mercia police seized 3 golliwogs from a display in a shop window, at Pettifer’s gift shop in Bromyard.

The shop owner, Donald Reynolds, was told that the police were acting on a complaint that the golliwogs were offensive.

The police stated that they were acting under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, which outlawed the display of offensive material that was likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress.

However, after a 2 week investigation and consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr Reynolds was told that he would not be prosecuted and that the golliwogs would be returned to him.

But the police further warned that they would be giving Mr Reynolds ‘suitable advice about the sensitivities of placing such items on display’.

Mr Reynolds said:

'I thought they would be good sellers and they were. Within ten minutes of putting them out I sold two of them.’

TORY SOCIALISM

In his latest stunt to reinvent the Tories as a trendy, politically correct, social democrat party, David Cameron is to ballot the entire membership to agree a new statement of Tory aims and values.

These aims and values are comprised of a list of vague waffle, some of which is disingenuous, with which it is hard to disagree. Presumably, Mr Cameron believes that once the Tory ballot is over, with a 99.9% approval for his waffle, then the ordinary voters will be too stupid to recognise a PR stunt when they see one.

The Aims and Values are listed thus:

Economic stability before tax cuts
Policies must help the least well-off, not the rich
Women's choices on work and home lives will be supported
Public services will not necessarily be run by the state
Party will fight for free and fair trade
Tories will be hard-nosed defenders of freedom and security
Government should support home ownership, saving, families and business
Government should be closer to the people

It may well be that there are Tories who believe that helping the rich is more important than helping the poor, as opposed to those who believe that Tory policies must not help the rich. Or that economic instability is an absolute must. Presumably, these will be the 0.1% who will vote against his list.

But what does the ‘government should be closer to the people’ actually mean? This is actually explained in a more detail thus:

We believe that government should be closer to the people, not further away. We want to see more local democracy, instead of more centralisation - whether to Brussels, Whitehall or unwanted regional assemblies - and we want to make the devolved institutions in Scotland and Wales work. Communities should have more say over their own futures.

For those who tend to forget such matters, it was the Tories who started regionalisation, and the Tories who took the UK into the EU [and lied about the extent to which sovereignty would be surrendered] and have handed over so much power to the EU since [the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, in particular].

There is no commitment from Mr Cameron that he wishes to leave the EU, despite the relentless drive towards a superstate.

And what of England? With respect, it is up to the politicians in Scotland and Wales to make their local parliament/assembly work. But Mr Cameron prefers to meddle in their activities and ignore the outrageous settlement which has been imposed on England.

If he wanted to address the issue properly, then he would be advocating an English parliament.

Mr Cameron has neatly abolished tax cuts as a Tory aim. The detail of the ‘economic stability before tax cuts’ waffle states:

A successful Britain must be able to compete with the world. We will put economic stability and fiscal responsibility first. They must come before tax cuts. Over time, we will share the proceeds of growth between public services and lower taxes - instead of letting government spend an ever-increasing share of national income.

Is it really to be believed that there are Tories who are in favour of economic instability and fiscal irresponsibility? Sharing the proceeds of growth between the state and tax cuts might sound all very nice and touchy-feely to some, but it is disingenuous and socialist.

The point is that higher taxes inflict lower growth. Low tax economies are high growth economies. Cutting taxes is a pre-requisite to a more prosperous economy.

A successful Britain needs lower taxes and less red-tape.

Furthermore, on a moral basis, the state does not have a right to help itself to as much of people’s money as it can get away with. Only socialists think that it does.

APPEASEMENT

Below is a copy of an article by the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which first published the cartoons which have caused such outrage amongst Muslims and their apologists, in which he explains why he published the cartoons.

One should not forget that it was not the content of the cartoons, in that they featured Mohammed, which was controversial, but the fact that they involved Islam at all. This is not the first time this has happened.

When Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, that too was denounced loudly and a fatwa was issued calling for him to be killed. Likewise death threats and fatwas have been issued, and bounties have been offered for the murder of the cartoonists, who are now in hiding.

Also, more recently the Bedfordshire Chief Constable, Gillian Parker, condemned a police magazine which featured a cartoon showing police officers taking off their shoes and tip-toeing towards a mosque as a terrorist makes his escape [see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 10 November 2005]. Mrs Parker found the cartoon no laughing matter and said:

‘The stereotypical portrayal of religious communities and the use of places of worship in a sacrilegious manner are bound to offend. Insensitive actions only serve to make our life more difficult.’

With The Satanic Verses, there was an unequivocal condemnation of the threats and violence, by the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Today, the British ruling class may wish to disassociate themselves from the violence and calls for violence, but they share the Muslim desire for censorship. They are not prepared to defend freedom of speech, although they are prepared to tolerate Muslim extremists calling for people to be beheaded.

The British press has of course refused to publish the cartoons. The stance is that of appeasement.


Why I Published Those Cartoons

By FLEMMING ROSE, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten

Childish. Irresponsible. Hate speech. A provocation just for the sake of provocation. A PR stunt. Critics of 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten have not minced their words. They say that freedom of expression does not imply an endorsement of insulting people's religious feelings, and besides, they add, the media censor themselves every day. So, please do not teach us a lesson about limitless freedom of speech.

I agree that the freedom to publish things doesn't mean you publish everything. Jyllands-Posten would not publish pornographic images or graphic details of dead bodies; swear words rarely make it into our pages.

So we are not fundamentalists in our support for freedom of expression.

But the cartoon story is different.

Those examples have to do with exercising restraint because of ethical standards and taste; call it editing. By contrast, I commissioned the cartoons in response to several incidents of self-censorship in Europe caused by widening fears and feelings of intimidation in dealing with issues related to Islam. And I still believe that this is a topic that we Europeans must confront, challenging moderate Muslims to speak out. The idea wasn't to provoke gratuitously -- and we certainly didn't intend to trigger violent demonstrations throughout the Muslim world. Our goal was simply to push back self-imposed limits on expression that seemed to be closing in tighter.

At the end of September, a Danish standup comedian said in an interview with Jyllands-Posten that he had no problem urinating on the Bible in front of a camera, but he dared not do the same thing with the Koran.

This was the culmination of a series of disturbing instances of self-censorship. Last September, a Danish children's writer had trouble finding an illustrator for a book about the life of Muhammad. Three people turned down the job for fear of consequences. The person who finally accepted insisted on anonymity, which in my book is a form of self-censorship. European translators of a critical book about Islam also did not want their names to appear on the book cover beside the name of the author, a Somalia-born Dutch politician who has herself been in hiding.

Around the same time, the Tate gallery in London withdrew an installation by the avant-garde artist John Latham depicting the Koran, Bible and Talmud torn to pieces. The museum explained that it did not want to stir things up after the London bombings. (A few months earlier, to avoid offending Muslims, a museum in Goteborg, Sweden, had removed a painting with a sexual motif and a quotation from the Koran.)

Finally, at the end of September, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met with a group of imams, one of whom called on the prime minister to interfere with the press in order to get more positive coverage of Islam.

So, over two weeks we witnessed a half-dozen cases of self-censorship, pitting freedom of speech against the fear of confronting issues about Islam. This was a legitimate news story to cover, and Jyllands-Posten decided to do it by adopting the well-known journalistic principle: Show it, don't tell it. I wrote to members of the association of Danish cartoonists asking them "to draw Muhammad as you see him." We certainly did not ask them to make fun of the prophet. Twelve out of 25 active members responded.

We have a tradition of satire when dealing with the royal family and other public figures, and that was reflected in the cartoons. The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims.

The cartoons do not in any way demonize or stereotype Muslims. In fact, they differ from one another both in the way they depict the prophet and in whom they target. One cartoon makes fun of Jyllands-Posten, portraying its cultural editors as a bunch of reactionary provocateurs.

Another suggests that the children's writer who could not find an illustrator for his book went public just to get cheap publicity. A third puts the head of the anti-immigration Danish People's Party in a lineup, as if she is a suspected criminal.

One cartoon -- depicting the prophet with a bomb in his turban -- has drawn the harshest criticism. Angry voices claim the cartoon is saying that the prophet is a terrorist or that every Muslim is a terrorist. I read it differently: Some individuals have taken the religion of Islam hostage by committing terrorist acts in the name of the prophet. They are the ones who have given the religion a bad name. The cartoon also plays into the fairy tale about Aladdin and the orange that fell into his turban and made his fortune. This suggests that the bomb comes from the outside world and is not an inherent characteristic of the prophet.

On occasion, Jyllands-Posten has refused to print satirical cartoons of Jesus, but not because it applies a double standard. In fact, the same cartoonist who drew the image of Muhammed with a bomb in his turban drew a cartoon with Jesus on the cross having dollar notes in his eyes and another with the star of David attached to a bomb fuse. There were, however, no embassy burnings or death threats when we published those.

Has Jyllands-Posten insulted and disrespected Islam? It certainly didn't intend to. But what does respect mean? When I visit a mosque, I show my respect by taking off my shoes. I follow the customs, just as I do in a church, synagogue or other holy place. But if a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission. And that is incompatible with a secular democracy.

This is exactly why Karl Popper, in his seminal work "The Open Society and Its Enemies," insisted that one should not be tolerant with the intolerant. Nowhere do so many religions coexist peacefully as in a democracy where freedom of expression is a fundamental right. In Saudi Arabia, you can get arrested for wearing a cross or having a Bible in your suitcase, while Muslims in secular Denmark can have their own mosques, cemeteries, schools, TV and radio stations.

I acknowledge that some people have been offended by the publication of the cartoons, and Jyllands-Posten has apologized for that. But we cannot apologize for our right to publish material, even offensive material. You cannot edit a newspaper if you are paralyzed by worries about every possible insult. I am offended by things in the paper every day: transcripts of speeches by Osama bin Laden, photos from Abu Ghraib, people insisting that Israel should be erased from the face of the Earth, people saying the Holocaust never happened. But that does not mean that I would refrain from printing them as long as they fell within the limits of the law and of the newspaper's ethical code. That other editors would make different choices is the essence of pluralism.

As a former correspondent in the Soviet Union, I am sensitive about calls for censorship on the grounds of insult. This is a popular trick of totalitarian movements: Label any critique or call for debate as an insult and punish the offenders. That is what happened to human rights activists and writers such as Andrei Sakharov, Vladimir Bukovsky, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Natan Sharansky, Boris Pasternak. The regime accused them of anti-Soviet propaganda, just as some Muslims are labeling 12 cartoons in a Danish newspaper anti-Islamic.

The lesson from the Cold War is: If you give in to totalitarian impulses once, new demands follow. The West prevailed in the Cold War because we stood by our fundamental values and did not appease totalitarian tyrants.

Since the Sept. 30 publication of the cartoons, we have had a constructive debate in Denmark and Europe about freedom of expression, freedom of religion and respect for immigrants and people's beliefs. Never before have so many Danish Muslims participated in a public dialogue -- in town hall meetings, letters to editors, opinion columns and debates on radio and TV. We have had no anti-Muslim riots, no Muslims fleeing the country and no Muslims committing violence. The radical imams who misinformed their counterparts in the Middle East about the situation for Muslims in Denmark have been marginalized. They no longer speak for the Muslim community in Denmark because moderate Muslims have had the courage to speak out against them.

In January, Jyllands-Posten ran three full pages of interviews and photos of moderate Muslims saying no to being represented by the imams. They insist that their faith is compatible with a modern secular democracy.

A network of moderate Muslims committed to the constitution has been established, and the anti-immigration People's Party called on its members to differentiate between radical and moderate Muslims, i.e. between Muslims propagating sharia law and Muslims accepting the rule of secular law. The Muslim face of Denmark has changed, and it is becoming clear that this is not a debate between "them" and "us," but between those committed to democracy in Denmark and those who are not.

This is the sort of debate that Jyllands-Posten had hoped to generate when it chose to test the limits of self-censorship by calling on cartoonists to challenge a Muslim taboo. Did we achieve our purpose? Yes and no. Some of the spirited defenses of our freedom of expression have been inspiring. But tragic demonstrations throughout the Middle East and Asia were not what we anticipated much less desired. Moreover, the newspaper has received 104 registered threats, 10 people have been arrested, cartoonists have been forced into hiding because of threats against their lives and Jyllands-Posten's headquarters have been evacuated several times due to bomb threats. This is hardly a climate for easing self-censorship.

Still, I think the cartoons now have a place in two separate narratives, one in Europe and one in the Middle East. In the words of the Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the integration of Muslims into European societies has been sped up by 300 years due to the cartoons; perhaps we do not need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe. The narrative in the Middle East is more complex, but that has very little to do with the cartoons.

Flemming.rose@jp.dk
Flemming Rose is the culture editor of Jyllands-Posten.

THE BRITISH INQUISITION

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who put the ‘loony’ into ‘loony left’ in the 1980s, now finds himself in a spot of bother with the British Inquisition stemming from some crass remarks he made to a Jewish reporter, Oliver Finegold, whom he compared to ‘a concentration camp guard’, after first asking if he was a ‘German war criminal’.

The exchange occurred after a party for a gay politician last year.

The comments created a brouhaha, and Mr Livingstone refused to apologise. Instead, he accused The Daily Mail, a sister paper to the one Mr Finegold works for, The Evening Standard, of having supported the Nazis in the 1930s.

Mr Livingstone has previously acted as a freelance restaurant critic for The Evening Standard.

This led to a complaint by a Jewish group to a quango called the Adjudication Panel for England, which is supposed to adjudicate on the conduct of members of local authorities. A 3 member disciplinary committee of the quango unanimously ruled that Mr Livingstone had brought the office of mayor into disrepute and suspended him from office for a period of one month.

The disciplinary committee accused him of being ‘unnecessarily insensitive and offensive’.

However, Mr Livingstone made a High Court application and has had his suspension stayed pending an appeal.

Mr Livingstone’s legal team are claiming that the suspension has breached his human rights to a private life, and his right to freedom of expression.

In a democracy, except where there is gross misconduct or criminal activity, an elected politician is answerable to the electorate - and not to a series of quangos, judges, or so-called human rights activists.

The voters of London voted for Mr Livingstone in full knowledge of who he is.

It was only in 2004 that Mr Livingstone invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi to a conference at the City Hall in London, despite the fact that Mr al-Qaradawi supports suicide bombings, which he has described as ‘martyrdom operations’.

This episode is the latest in a line of embarrassing gaffs from Labour and its supporters, involving the British Inquisition. Sir Ian Blair has run into trouble over the shooting of the Brazilian Jean Menezes [see English Rights Campaign item dated the 22 August 2005], Sir Iqbal Sacranie regarding comments he made about homosexuality, and even Tony Blair himself relating to an allegation that there might be an allegation that he had used the term ‘fucking Welsh’ [see English Rights Campaign item dated the 2 October 2005].

It might, of course, serve them right. But we cannot allow Labour and the British Inquisition to continue to undermine our democratic freedoms. Those freedoms have been eroded too much already.