The Last Ditch

There is nothing Conservative about this Government

Anthony Peto QC: A very un-British Bill – my response to Robert Buckland MP.

Conservatives are supposed to defend ancient rights. In their hands the great principles of English Law such as "innocent until proven guilty" and the rules of Natural Justice should be much safer than with progressives who openly seek to sweep away ancient rights to build a new order.

Yet it was John Major who began the present un-conservative trend when he abolished the right to silence - a key element of the presumption of innocence. If a man is accused, it is for the prosecutors to make the case against him. Nothing should properly be inferred from his refusal to co-operate. So it used to be, but no more.

And now it's Ken Clarke who is sweeping into the trash can of history the principle of open justice. He is seeking to introduce secret courts in circumstances where "national security" is at stake. What does "national security" mean in such a context? Anthony Petro QC tells us in the linked article that evidence about a confession having been extracted by torture

...was successfully suppressed by the government on the grounds that it would damage national security...

Not exactly the most encouraging example.

Clarke tells us that we need secret courts to protect our intelligence sharing relationships with other countries. David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of Terrorist Legislation, has branded that a "scare tactic".

Former DPP Lord Maconald has said that 

Mr Clarke’s comments look like a smokescreen for plans which are aimed not at keeping the British people safe, but at sparing the embarrassment of the security services when they get mixed up in wrongdoing. Instead of promoting this thoroughly un-British legislation, which is designed to make our courts secret as though we were living in Europe in the 1930s, Mr Clarke and his colleagues in government should concentrate on holding the security agencies to account when they break the law.

Lest you think that these are just the voices of lily-livered sympathisers with our enemies, consider the words of the former top legal advisor to the British Army in Iraq, Colonel Nicholas Mercer

The justice and security bill has one principal aim and that is to cover up UK complicity in rendition and torture. The bill is an affront to the open justice on which this country rightly prides itself and, above all, it is an affront to human dignity.

 
The fact that some of those individuals who are complicit in rendition and torture can not only assist in the drafting of the bill but also vote to cover their tracks is a constitutional scandal.

The bill attacks the sacred principle of the Rule of Law that "be you never so high, the law is above you." It removes a citizen's right to bring a civil action against high officials for violations of their personal rights. As Anthony Peto QC says, 

These rights are so fundamental that for centuries they have been called the rules of “natural justice”.  This brand of justice has “Made in England” stamped all over it. It is our proudest and most enduring national product. This Bill would tarnish the brand for ever.

Could there conceivably be anything less "Conservative"?

Why can't our security services, like those in other countries, give evidence in court? If that threatens the secrecy of their activities, they can give evidence from behind a screen and via a voice changer, provided the judge is duly satisfied of their status. Then their evidence could be tested, they could be cross examined and justice could be done. Yet the British State prefers to screen them from scrutiny. It prefers to suppress evidence of their wrong-doing. It is entirely out of its box; a self-regarding beast operating in its own, not the national, interest. 

I have never been more sure that the greatest enemy of my liberty is the British State. Nor more sadly aware that this does not vary according to the politicians in charge. There could be no better evidence than this odious bill in which the state seeks to protects its own at the expense of those who are supposed to own it. It rather suggests it thinks it owns us.

Dog bites man

Dave Denies Debt Truth - Guy Fawkes' blog.

Old fashioned conservatives continue to be disappointed with Dodgy Dave Cameron; the ethics-free Etonian. Guido has said what needs to be said in the linked post but every blog in Britain should re-post the graph he sourced from the Office of National Statistics.

There is no question, ladies and gentlemen. Our Prime Minister is a liar. Does Eton have a mechanism to disown its alumni?

Is this government stimulating the economy?

'Online snooping' scheme expected to cost at least £1.8bn | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

The national debt continues to rise, yet the Tories have £2 billion to spare to snoop on our online activities. It will cost much more in the end no doubt, as government IT estimates usually bear very little relation to reality.

The government is very welcome to inspect my private communications if it has sufficient prima facie evidence of criminal activity to persuade a judge that it should be able to do so. That's how the law stands. For all the moral panic that the Home Secretary and senior policemen are trying to create and for all their bullshit about "total war on crime" no change to that position is necessary, desirable or affordable.

Theresa May can call us conspiracy theorists to her heart's content, as long as we retain the freedom to call her an authoritarian disgrace to a party that claims to believe in liberty. OK, Theresa? Of course, it might be better if we could converse about it intelligently. Some hope.

Incidentally, our leftist chums over at the Guardian's site are remarkably sound in their criticisms of the plan now that it's coming from the vicious, right-wing Tories. Check out the comments and you may find yourself amazedly applauding. I don't remember them being quite as vocal when this authoritarian twaddle was coming from the Labour Party.

Can any Canadian reader please help?

 

Another video by Ezra Levant did the round of the blogs a while back. You know it; the one in which he was filmed taking an Alberta Human Rights Commission functionary apart. Now there's a new one in which he takes the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to task for running a kangaroo court. Looking at the decision on the Council's website, and reading there how the Council is constituted, his basic points seem to be true.

Yet it's hard to believe that Canada censors private media companies while exempting the state broadcaster. It's hard to believe Canada's government is so hypocritical as to describe the Council as "voluntary" while making membership a pre-condition for a broadcasting licence. And it is extremely hard to believe that the rules of natural justice can be flouted in a Common Law jurisdiction like Canada in the way that Levant describes. Can it really be true that he can be judged without being heard? That he can be judged by his competitors and political opponents?

I don't know enough about Canada to be sure whether I can take this guy at face value. His tone is pompous, hectoring and bombastic and he sounds like - to put it mildly - a blowhard. I am not sure I like him, but he seems to be making important points. If they are true, I probably have to refine my personal stereotype of Canada as a relaxed, open, amiable free society. Can any reader help me understand please?

While I await enlightenment, I have to say - in fairness to a country that only Americans seem able to dislike - that at least Canada seems to have political diversity in its media. Nothing like Levant's Sun News segment is possible on Britain's airwaves. And nothing like his broadcast "**** your mother" to his censors is remotely imaginable. Which is - in a way - precisely why I blog.

The brittleness of cast iron

David Cameron to shed 'cast iron' pledge on Lisbon treaty | Politics | The Guardian.

David Cameron was elected to lead the Conservative Party for his political and presentational skills, not his convictions. It remains to be seen if he has any convictions, but now we must also question his skills.

He has a tendency to give hostages to political fortune. He tried to seize the moral high ground on becoming party leader by pledging to avoid "Punch and Judy politics". He has been persistently prodded with political pitchforks by Mandelson and the lesser demons ever since, but if he responds in kind, they jeer "Punch and Judy" at him. I fear the phrase "cast-iron guarantee" is going to haunt him in a similar fashion.

People don't trust politicians and it's not entirely their fault. It is a defect in democracy itself that if you don't tell people some approximation of what they want to hear, you can't get elected. We all like to believe in the wisdom of crowds, but the truth is that the majority of modern Britons want to hear that the state will solve life's problems, without effort or cost to them. Politicians are torn between over-promising to stay in power and the fear of their lies becoming so obvious as to discredit them. Their corruption is a mirror held up to decadent, economically-ignorant, essentially amoral voters.

Politicians' careers are an assault course, during which they sustain repeated political injuries. For a while they run on bravely, but eventually the damage is too much and they fall. The most typical injuries are failures to deliver on those promises they would have preferred not to give. Gradually, inevitably, they become too discredited to continue.

Margaret Thatcher was the exception. She was principled. She promised nothing she could not deliver and she was utterly relentless in making sure she did. In pursuit of her objectives she fired one minister after another, making enemies within her party faster than outside it. In the end, the pygmies with wounded pride were numerous enough to bring down a political giant. I was at a dinner in the City with Francis Pym, prominent among the pygmies, on the night she fell. As all my hopes for the arrest of Britain's decline died - I bitterly watched him drink in gleeful celebration. There must have been dozens of others doing the same that night.

But Cameron's injuries were never going to be of Thatcher's kind. He is one of the pygmies, lacking her political courage and her moral vision. His was always going to be the routine political failure of one too many broken promises. That's why his "cast-iron" pledge of a referendum over Lisbon was so foolish. He will now suffer more injury from every future broken promise because of one broken before he even took office. A promise he need not have made.

A referendum only made sense if it would prevent the adoption of the EU's constitution-in-all-but-name. Once it had been adopted, any referendum (as the Euro-sceptics baying for it well know) would be on our continued membership. The issue of the EU dangerously divides the Conservative Party. Any Conservative leader must manage the issue constantly and cleverly. Cameron's mistake was not to break the promise. It was to make it in the first place, and to make it - again - in such memorable terms.

Margaret Thatcher will go down in history as the Iron Lady. This farce means that Cameron will be remembered, if at all, as "Cast Iron Dave".

What is the best we can hope for from the Conservatives?

The Conservative Conference in Manchester is effectively the beginning of the Tory campaign for the 2010 General Election. We can confidently expect that Labour will pay the price in that election for its epic fail as a government. Once again Labour will leave Britain with worse education, more structural unemployment, a debased currency, massive debts and a moribund economy. The election will give the people their moment of revenge, but can we hope for more than that brief pleasure from the Conservatives?

David Cameron personifies High Toryism, with its noblesse oblige approach to social problems. He sees a powerful role for the state in "improving" our lives. His version of the traditional High Tory concern for conserving the countryside is a radical approach to "Green" issues. Advised by his chum Zach Goldsmith, he embraces the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming and is ready to use authoritarian measures to "save the planet." While previous Conservative leaders had to pretend to believe in the Soviet-style National Health Service for political expediency, Cameron actually does. If you believe the important healthcare industry works best as a state enterprise, why stop there?

In short, the man is barely a Conservative at all. Still less is he a free-market classical liberal. He is as much a Statist as Gordon Brown, but merely wishes to pull the government's levers to (slightly) different effect.

New Labour has criminalised well over 3,000 formerly legal activities. It has been one of the most authoritarian governments in British history. Cameron's Conservatives are suggesting the repeal of none of them. The "ratchet effect" Margaret Thatcher struggled to combat is back. If the New Conservatives repeal none of New Labour's laws and then add more of their own, all we can confidently expect is to be less free after their first term. I am far more interested in a programme of legislative repeals than in any new measures. No such programme is on offer.

To fix "broken Britain" needs courage. Taxes for the lower paid should be reduced, both to eliminate the nonsense of minimum wage-earners paying income tax and to open a wide gap between those on benefits and those who earn. Only then will we get our 6 million "economically inactive" back into production. The benefits system needs to be radically simplified and all abuses ruthlessly eliminated. The National Health Service needs to be replaced with a compulsory insurance system and all healthcare providers privatised. Education too should be privatised and the National Curriculum eliminated. Not only will Cameron's Conservatives not attempt all of this, they will not attempt any of it. They lack the testicular fortitude.

I fear the best we can hope for is for the Conservatives to slow the rate of economic decline and the drift to a police state. Not very inspiring is it?

What is Thatcherism?

ConservativeHome's ToryDiary: What is Thatcherism?.

Conservative Home is inviting definitions and has stimulated the usual polarised debate. It will take historians as yet unborn to set Margaret Thatcher in context. She is simply too great an historical figure for us to evaluate her without the benefit of distance.

Right now, people see her as either demon or angel. Of course (though I incline more to the angelic view) she was neither. I have ventured my own definition in the comments there. Why not click on the link above and have a go yourself? Let's at least give those poor future historians some contemporary, non-establishment, sources to work with. Here's my definition:

A belief in the family as the basic unit of society; free enterprise as the main engine of economic, scientific and social progress and the people - as represented by parliament - as the only legitimate source of political authority. All this, combined with duties of; public service for those with the right talents, self-reliance for those capable of it and responsibility to help the less fortunate. Finally, an affectionate (though critical) regard for tradition.

Taken for granted, lied to, ripped off and ignored

Dan Hannan speaks for England; again. How wonderful to see a liberty-minded Conservative who can hold his own behind enemy lines on Newsnight.

h/t Guthrum

Labour have failed to control binge drinking. No ****, Sherlock

Link: Labour have failed to control binge drinking - News Story - Conservative Party.

I was a member of the Conservative Party for years. I led my University's Conservative association to control of our student union. I have an instinctive affiliation with the party. Knowing that I will probably not live to see the new Libertarian Party have real influence, let alone office (it took the Labour Party 24 years from its foundation to see office for the first time) I must still hope for Conservative electoral success.

Conservatives are not naturally so extravagant as Labour, which means a smaller state. They are not naturally so authoritarian neither, though the mumsy/chumsy wing are paternalist authoritarians - “for your own good, dear." 

For two days this story from the Conservatives' site has been sitting in my RSS feeds infuriating me. What people do with their money and their bodies is entirely a matter for them. Yes, when people are drunk they sometimes do bad things, as they sometimes do when sober. So hold them accountable for their actions in either case. In choosing to become intoxicated, they took the risk that alcohol's dis-inhibiting effects (for which they bought it) might lead them into trouble. Their choice; their responsibility. Without alcohol's dis-inhibiting effects, the reserved British would probably die out. Or at least only the physically attractive would be able to breed, which would mean that the political classes would die out. Is that what the Conservatives want?

To make the political point that Labour has “failed to control” binge drinking is to accept that they have the right to do so. It is also to imply that the Conservatives will succeed in controlling it, which is a particularly stupid hostage to give to political fortune. Has the Shadow Health Secretary any idea how much state power he would need to deploy to stop all those who want to get drunk from doing so? Does he not realise that the consequences of such power would be worse than the evil he seeks to cure? If not, does he not realise that he is in the wrong political party?

To bracket "excessive drinking" and "associated violent crime" is to  exonerate criminals and blame alcohol. Then action on alcohol can be "spun" as genuine action on crime (and to hell with holding people responsible for their own actions, as a civilised society must). It is is just the sort of sodden thinking that got us into our current social nightmare. It has no place in the Conservative Party. But then neither, these days, do I.

David Davis: fool or hero?

Link: Analysis: David Davis' hollow victory in Haltemprice by-election - Telegraph.

The received political and media wisdom about David Davis's "one issue by-election" says more about the commentators than the man himself. To a cynical, unprincipled careerist (and a journalist accustomed to reporting on such creatures) Davis's actions make no sense. All they can see is that he damaged his "career" by distracting attention from his Party's leader to the latter's annoyance.

Perhaps that is even how David Cameron sees it. I hope not. As Gordon Brown is discovering, no PM can stand alone. He needs to be surrounded by high quality people to prosper.

Davis has proved that to him there are things more important than his career. I would hope that is true for all of us. As the things Davis values are those that our ancestors valued more highly than life itself, it should not really be shocking. That our political classes are shocked shows how much our island race has dwindled.

It used to be a commonplace that people went into politics out of a spirit of public duty. They had a desire to "give something back" to a society of which they were proud. We can all think of many historical politicians who derived only the dubious benefit of fame from their careers. By their cynical comments on Davis's actions, our modern politicians and pundits are proving that those days are over.

Since parties began to prefer "career politicians" as candidates; men and women with politics degrees and a "real life" background only in think tanks, lobbying, political journalism and government consultancy, people have increasingly lost faith in the political process. Politics should not be a game. It should be an honest pursuit for concerned citizens; ideally those whose experience and understanding of real life equips them for the job.

Only those who see it as a game with prizes could see David Davis as a failure. Since the "prizes" are paid for by the rest of us, we should aspire to exclude such people from politics. I regard David Davis's campaign as a useful litmus test. Every politician and journalist who sneered is to be regarded with suspicion.