British National Party GLA member and leadership challenger Richard Barnbrook has expressed his disgust at what the anti-democratic sabotage of his official website by the web designer of fellow leadership challenger Eddy Butler.

and

the disgraced traitor former BNP webmaster Simon Bennett

and

Although Bennett had of course been suspended from the party for his treason, it was Mr Butler’s right to employ whoever he wanted to in his campaign team, despite the obvious questions over Bennett’s suitability.

Nice to see the BNP having a falling out with itself.

xD.

Given Mr Hollobone’s previous statements that the burka is ‘against the British way of life’ and ‘offensive’, it is fairly clear to me what its intent is.

Three points.

Firstly, this is deeply illiberal. I shouldn’t need to say much more, but I will. I understand that there are times – airport security, for instance – where we do need to make sure that the person matches the passport and we seem to be managing just fine with providing an area where people who wear the burka can be identified and so on. However, if people are just going about their daily business, I think they should be able to wear more or less what they want. Short of that, this must rank as an extraordinary expansion of the writ of the state and I don’t want the introduction of some sort of sumptuary law.

Secondly, this isn’t the way to go about it. If we assume that the burka is indicative of oppression and isolation, I don’t see how a ban will remediate the situation. If the premise is that women are oppressed and forced to wear the burka, they can be compelled to remain at home or only leave it occasionally. If the premise is that they are an isolated community, ditto, with the additional bonus of feeding into the extremists’ (al-Mujahiroun, the Daily Express…) narrative that it is impossible to reconcile being British with being a Muslim. Mr Hollobone and his fellow-travellers in UKIP haven’t talked about education or reaching out, just about bans.

Thidly, unintended consequences. It is far too easy for me to see how a badly-worded bill could lead to situations like welders’ masks having to be removed if you’re not welding for more than half a minute and not being able to dress up as a ghost for Hallowe’en. The alternative is to specify that this law only applies to Muslim women.

Ultimately, I don’t think this is about covering one’s face. I think that is being used as a proxy for Islamophobia.

I find this proposal abhorrent and I’m glad to say that, as Mr Hollobone came seventeenth out of twenty in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills, I don’t think it stands any real chance of making progress. The second reading will be on December 3rd, by which point the text of the bill should be available.

xD.

Whenever they get it right, they are joyless jobsworths sucking all the pleasure out of life. When they get it wrong, they are criticised for putting children at risk; viz., Godstone Farm.

The short version of the story is that Godstone Farm, a petting farm, did not have adequate measures in place to prevent people, principally children, from picking up diseases from animal dung. Ninety-three people became ill as a result of infection with a nasty strain of E. coli, O157, and it seems that some of the children who were infected will require dialysis for the rest of their lives. Insufficient attention given to handwashing at the farm seems to have been the original cause, coupled with an inadequate response from the Health Protection Agency. The independent Griffin Investigation reported yesterday.

I would make a few points about what might be considered by some to be unwarranted intrusion on our ancient liberties and so on.

Firstly, it’s not obvious. Just because it’s obvious to you (and as a reader of this blog, I can only assume that you are of quite exquisite intellect and positively overflowing with common sense) doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone. While I was aware that rolling in cow dung was probably not a good idea, it’s easy enough to see how the meme about children needing to get exposure to pathogens to strengthen their immune systems coupled with a lack of knowledge about, say, E. coli could lead parents to think the risks are lower than they are; in this case, there was a particular criticism that the risk was considered lower than it should be as, although the probability of it happening was low, the outcomes could be very negative. Moreover,

Secondly, people are used to a certain level of safety. Although we have evolutionary predispositions to react to certain dangers (in my case, to jump out of my skin when I see, hear or suspect a dog), we live in a relatively benign world. People are used to their environments being safe; strangely enough, we don’t like our gas pipes to leak or our computers to electrocute us, so there are systems and processes in place to prevent that and countless other dangers. The result is that we blithely go about our business, perhaps without remembering that there are dangers out there.

Thirdly, it’s about providing information so people can make decisions; in this case, providing better signage and information about handwashing.

Fourthly, if we’re going to draw a line, we have to err on the side of caution.

Fifthly, there have to be systems in place to deal with, for instance, outbreaks like this. The Griffin Investigation talks about greater awareness and co-operation between organisations involved with healthcare near Godstone Farm in particular and open farms in general. It would be very easy for that to be criticised as ‘excessive bureaucracy’ or somesuch. It’s too easy to criticise something where a successful outcome is ‘nothing happening’.

Sixthly, a lot is blamed on health and safety as it is a convenient and believable excuse. I happen to think, for instance, that people should have healthy and safe workplaces and so there are some rules and regulations (turns out asbestos is a bad idea). More frequent than this, I would warrant, are people using ‘elf and safety because they want to avoid litigation or just don’t understand why something has been done.

Yes, there are mistakes; I suspect, though, that the media take those few examples of poor decision-making and represent them as symptomatic of the entire health and safety culture, leading people to think that there are armies of clipboard-equipped bureaucrats just waiting, after a risk assessment, to jump out and ban whatever it is you enjoy doing.

xD.

PS Before anyone says anything, I know this came under the remit of the HPA rather than the HSE, but the points stand.

In terms of logistics, I would make three suggestions. Given the layout, it’s important that each table isn’t talking amongst itself thereby making so much noise that you can’t hear the speaker. Secondly, there are two breakout rooms. I would like to see the two used for an hour each for anyone to stand up a present an idea for five minutes. Thirdly, I’d like to see it recorded and ideally live streamed. Certainly, the plenary sessions could be on uStream or BlogTV.

—fold—

I start with some of the themes Sunny suggests, and add in some more. This is by no means exhaustive; just some things that interest me.

London

Firstly, I don’t think anyone who can’t beat Ken for the Labour nomination will be able to beat Boris. However, I’m not convinced that Boris will run again; it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion and it seems the main reason he would stay on is that there is no obvious heir apparent from the Conservative ranks, certainly not with with any significant profile. If the competition is between Ken and Oona, I would favour the former on the basis that he stands a better chance of building a broad coalition that goes beyond the Labour party. We will need to develop a narrative on the Conservative administration of City Hall, and I would suggest that it should focus on a lack of big ideas and not making the case for London in Whitehall and Westminster. Boris has also had a few bizarre flights of fancy – Boris Island Airport and the Boris Bus (especially its cost) – while scrapping ideas like Cross-River Tram that would have been beneficial to London.

When it comes to the Mayoralty, I have no idea who the LibDem candidate will be (although Susan Kramer is available). The choice of LibDem candidate may well indicate how London LibDems feel about the ménage à deux and whether they feel the Orange Book tendency has moved their party in a way with which they feel uncomfortable. We will have to determine whether attacking the LibDems for their coalition with the Tories is sensible, responsible and effective, and that may well depend on who the candidate is.

I am plotting an idea to set up a London political podcast. I will do a separate post on that as and when I have settled my ideas, but some of the ideas that have come out on that are important. We will need to look to the growth in Labour councillors and councils to be the starting point of a fightback against the Tories in the capital.

Wales and Scotland

We must avoid making this project too London-centric. Yes, it is being hosted in the capital and London has many millions, but we should look at the other devolved areas in Britain: Wales and Scotland. All three could learn from each other, but they may be particularly useful in working out a tack to take with regard to the LibDems. We also have to work out how we strengthen the progressive position at Holyrood and the Senedd, given that the former has extensive powers and it seems likely that the latter will be gaining similar powers. Alternate centres of power in Wales, Scotland and London may well be able to slow at least some of the damage I fear the current administration will bring.

The West Lothian Question

I think that progressives need to seriously consider the idea of English regions.

There is a lot of talk about devolution, giving power to the people and so on. We need to work out what that actually means. If we regionalised, we would see alternate centres of power. To give them meaning, they need powers substantial powers and we should consider the inclusion of policing, transport, housing, spatial planning and, potentially, health. I feel that counties are too small and too easily controlled by the centre to be able to effectively devise and implement policy.

Regions would mean the main parties would have to have some sort of meaningful regional structure. Much as I hope the regions would be able to stand up to Whitehall, I hope that meaningful regional structures within political parties would weaken the wearisome control from the centre to which so many people object.

I would hope that this would lead to the economic weight of the country shifting away from London and away from financial services and giving parts of England outside of London the opportunity to be something more than vassals.

We have spoken much about the sad state of local media. I merely raise the question as to whether regions would cause a re-alignment of newspapers, radio and television so that there could be meaningful coverage and scrutiny of politics and competition between outlets.

I reject the idea of and English Parliament as an answer to the West Lothian question out of hand (a Parliament for forty-eight million people isn’t much less unitary than one for sixty-one million).

We should emphasise that this would not create an extra layer of bureaucracy. There are already Government Offices for all the English regions along with Regional Development Agencies and Local Authorities Leaders’ Boards. This is about democratising those structures.

Ultimately, I think we have seen a flourishing of the London, Welsh and Scottish blogospheres that is indicative of better relations between citizen and state in those three areas and I want the same for the rest of England. This will mean addressing some of the mistakes and lack of ambition from the failed north-east referendum.

The LibDems

We should pursue a strategy of splitting the Social Democrats from the Liberals/Orange Book in the Lib Dems with a view to one side joining the Tories and the other Labour. We should make it clear that you cannot go into coalition with the Tories and call yourself progressive.

I think we should advocate that the cuts are being implemented too soon; that if they are going to do a zero-budget process, it has to be zero-budget across everything¹; that these cuts are also the political desire of the Orange Book and Tories; ensure efficiency where they are made; oppose the most egregiously unfair cuts; maintain support for industry.

That having been said, we need to work out how we can use social democratically-minded LibDems to control the excesses of the coalition.

Others

• Low pay. We must continue to support the living wage, consider the benefits of a citizen’s wage and ensure that the minimum wage is increased appropriately.
• Europe. As people will know, I am pretty pro-European. However, we should explicitly say that there should be no further integration for a couple of Parliaments to give the Lisbon changes and expansion time to bed down. We could expand to the relatively small countries of the Balkans when the time is right, but we will need to be in an economically strong position to welcome Turkey to the EU when the time is right. It should be made clear that member state of the EU have the right to nationalise, municipalise and deprivatise and that the principles of the free market should not prevent this (although I would retain the state aid prohibitions as they are).
• Co-ops. It strikes me that this is a movement to which we should reach out; surprisingly large, but often very local and potentially powerful for community organising.
• The BNP. We need to consider what’s going to happen next with the BNP and their fellow-travellers. I welcome their thorough trouncing at the recent election and I look forward to Richard Barnbrook being invited to pursue interests of his own choosing by the good people of Barking and Dagenham. However, I have three concerns. One is that we will become complacent about the BNP et al. and that they will be able to regroup. We must keep the pressure on them. A second is that the BNP’s problems may lead to more support for the EDL; while they are clearly not going to get anywhere electorally, they are violent. Thirdly, we need to explicitly oppose and combat the rising populist nationalism that we see in UKIP, sections of the Conservative party, sections of the media and, frankly, amongst people who should know better.
• Women’s rights. We must defend the right to abortion. I feel the likelihood of an attempt at restricting it in this Parliament is high and I feel there is a good chance it could be successful. I feel that we should also be looking at Norwegian-style rules for gender-balance in the boardroom. We should discuss the sex industry and the objectification of women.
• Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t want to belabour these subjects. For the moment, I want to set aside whether they were a good idea or not, and just look at the conduct of the campaigns. It is clear that there were mistakes and shortcomings. We should look at what they were, how they happened and how we stop them happening again. In order to do it properly, we must be able to do it without always going back to the morality of the conflicts. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider the morality of the conflicts; I’m saying it’s not the only issue.

I’ll probably do something on electoral reform in the coming days.

xD.

1 – Including the NHS and Trident. I am prepared to at least consider that (for instance) industrial promotion is currently more important than (for instance) fertility treatment. I am not saying that is the case, but that we should be prepared to consider it.

xD.

There isn’t much to add to the above except that, even though I have political differences with Luke, I know his experiences at all levels of the party would make him a valuable member of the NEC as we rebuild the party.

xD.

In short, it isn’t anything to do with his actions in the chair. There are grumblings from all sides about him being insufficiently unbiased, which I regard as being par for the course. Rather, it is because certain members – not least Nadine Dorries – dislike him because of his move towards the centre over recent years and that he was elected because of Labour’s support with a perceived desire to stick it to the Tories.

That may or may not be true, but so far as I can tell he has not been biased in his chairing. As the Speaker must be an MP, they will always have a party political past. The mystique comes from them rising above party politics, to the extent of their seat being uncontested. As none of the people contesting Mr Bercow’s Buckingham seat came close to winning (Mr Bercow has a majority of over 12,000, David Cameron ordered the local party to toe the line and the UKIP candidate came in third), there is no challenge there.

No, the challenge comes from within Parliament. It is much easier to break the spell than to make it; indeed, it may be impossible to remake it. Given the nature of our Constitution, that strikes me as quite an un-conservative thing to do.

By breaking the spell, the Speaker and future Speakers may now feel more at ease in defending their record; indeed, if there was an election despite a sitting Speaker, it would not be unreasonable for the incumbent to talk to their record. Given the last election for Speaker saw people standing on platforms, it is not hard to see the Speakership becoming more political. I don’t think that is a good thing, and I don’t think Ms Dorries would see it as a good thing either.

As I said, our constitution operates on nods and winks and I feel the debate around Mr Speaker’s re-election is symptomatic of broader constitutional issues. Too often, it feels that the immutability of precedent is in fact very mutable and is dependent on the interpretation of a few high priests – and, yes, I’m thinking of Vernon Bogdanor. Here’s the rub; if the operation of the constitution is dependent on acceptance of unwritten norms that are increasingly being challenged, it becomes relatively easy to tinker with the constitution without anyone’s approval, without anyone’s consideration or even without anyone’s noticing.

More at Conservative Home and New Statesman.

xD.

Labour have been in government for thirteen years, we’ve had two unpopular wars, we have an unpopular prime minister, we have just had an expenses scandal, the economy is tanking, the Liberal insurgency was a woozle that wasn’t and most of the media are pro-Tory and they still can’t win a majority?

If I was Lord Ashcroft, I’d be pissed off.

xD.

Let’s see how they did in their various elections.

Shaun Bailey (Hammersmith) lost
Mark Clarke (Tooting) lost
Joanne Cash (Westminster North) lost
Annunziata Rees-Mogg (Somerton and Frome) lost
Peter Lyburn (Perth and North Perthshire) lost
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol NW) won
Jeremy Brier (Luton North) lost
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) won
Helen Whately (Kingston & Surbiton) lost
Kulveer Ranger (not running)

So that’s two wins, one not running and a whomping seven out of ten failures. Sorry, guys, but after hubris comes Nemesis.

xD.