This is No Time for a Leader

A rogue government is the greatest threat to democracies.  By their nature democracies are not coercive.   They are consensual and rely heavily upon political actors (and we are all to some degree political actors in democracies) behaving in the spirit of the rules.  Their success has come from their flexibility in adopting forms of government adapted to the circumstances of the mass electorate.  Democracy can express itself through a spectrum of governmental forms from high levels of central control and direction to widely dispersed power centres responsive at the  levels of the smallest communities and even of individuals. A government in time of war will be conceded very different powers from a peacetime government in a period of economic growth.  More or less the electorate chooses a government on the basis of a manifesto and the implementation of those policies operates under the constitution and the rule of law, with powers that are available for other circumstances in abeyance.

When an elected government  acts inappropriately to the country's circumstances, particularly when it has been elected on a manifesto achievable without a particularly large spectrum shift, formal and informal checks and balances start to function.  When a government then uses its electorally-supplied majority to remove those checks and balances, and to alter the constitution, we have a rogue.

The evidence for this process under the Blair and Brown administrations is well known - we watched Chilcot yesterday, on the evisceration of the senior civil service,  for instance.  But it  is the Labour justification for becoming a rogue that is interesting, not least  because that must form part of the Labour manifesto for the general election.

The electorate do not like the situation into which Labour has delivered them.  A depression more serious than anything most have experienced in their lifetimes and with no quick or pleasant means to end it; a felt widening of the gap between the well-to-do and the rest  and a perceived collapse in opportunity through merit and work; a large rise in insecurity both in the home and outside in the  normal pursuits of everyday life.  An awareness that the government have broken the rules yet are hard to hold to account because they have removed themselves from the reach of the electorate.  The knowledge that paypackets are compulsorily relieved of far too much money before they reach the employee's bank account.  The conviction that while banks are in debt to the electorate for trillions they bully small retail customers - the electorate - with what are effectively grotesquely out of proportion punishments for petty infractions and often bank inefficiencies.  The experience of high levels of inflation in those spending areas over which the electorate has direct control; which dovetails into the conviction that the government is telling lies about the cost of living and corrupting government statistics while the press often assists in the promulgation of untruths.  The conviction among the electorate  that the Labour administrations unleashed a mass of cheap workers into the country who lower the social wage, and lower individual wage rates and worsen working conditions.   Finally, the realisation that by their war-mongering Labour has killed a lot of servicemen and women,  because it war-mongers on the cheap, killed a lot of other people in the world, made the country dangerous at home, and pokes its nose into every aspect of our lives because now the people they have attacked hate us.

The first Labour justification for all this is that the Thatcher administrations set a precedent for stepping far along the spectrum  towards central control and authoritarianism.  This, of course, is the reason for the constant reference back to those governments, and for the instrumentalisation of Mrs Thatcher herself by both Blair and Brown.  The exploitation is multi-level: Labour pretends that there were no unusual circumstances facing the Conservative government when it was voted into power in 1979, so spectrum shifts without changes in circumstance  are acceptable  (when in fact there was Communist-led, threatened and eventually realised insurrection against the capitalist state from the trade union wing of the Labour party);  that the dying of the heavy industrial sector based in the north of the country was the fault of government shifting and not the product of exhausted natural resources and organisational and organised inefficiencies which drove out any hope of investment.

What was the Thatcher administration supposed to do? Permit the overthrow of market capitalism by effectively unemployed industrial workers from the North and Scotland?  Led by Communist agitators?  Just as Communism was collapsing in the Soviet Union under the weight of its own contradictions, cruelty corruption, and with its peoples in open revolt, particularly in its realised socialist colonies?  Continue to defy economic reality?

Another level to justifying Labour's rogue behaviour via previous Conservative governments is the assertion that during the Thatcher administrations the distributional effects of market capitalism were not being ameliorated sufficiently, particularly at a time of major economic and technical change.  In truth the IMF had intervened to limit the country's  living well beyond its means - we were simply poorer than Labour wanted to believe,  our economy less efficient, our insulation from international capitalism at an end.  The electorate knew it and rejected Labour and its destructive indebtedness that was leading to even greater depredation of sovereignty.

Rogue Labour knows this.  It is well aware that the Thatcher administrations were outstanding in coping with quite exceptional times.  It knows that many of today's electorate know this too, that they see the Thatcher years as a turning back from the immediately preceding lunacy of Labour's reaction to circumstances.  So rogue Labour feeds its authoritarian leader meme by appearing with  the figurehead, in her advancing years, pretending to an affectionate regard for an individual  true to an ideology  (even if misguided) and replacing what was a pragmatic, determined, consensual, governmental  response with a falsely implied individual ideological fervour, thus reinforcing their own democratically inappropriate notion of the Leader set apart, whose vision marks and determines policy without reference to electorate or manifesto.

In our political culture, in our democracy, the very word 'Leader' makes us jump.  Our democracy is built within expectations of dealing pragmatically with circumstances where acting together produces better results than acting alone.  Our democracy has no 'vision' other than its own persistence as a vehicle for expressing our wishes to the administrations we elect from time to time.  We do not like to have to find a Churchill, it means the world has gone bad.  We do not like to have to face down attacks upon our market capitalist economy, it means axe-grinders have perverted our socioeconomic structures to special interests and global movements inimical to our culture and country's content.

Rogue Labour's justification for what it has done to disable our democracy is, furthermore,  precisely a perversion which argues  that an irremediable globalisation of our circumstances  must be welcomed, embodied even, in our culture and in our democratic institutions and expectations.   Hence we must have a Leader equipped with the experience, the grasp, the vision and, most of all, the powers of our formerly consensual and diffuse democratic system.  So that moments may be seized, decisions taken, worlds saved. Any dismantling of democracy that we object to is but evidence of our lack of understanding of our 'new' situation and of our need for 'leadership'.  Any failure to display this bombastic,  soul-destroying,  inappropriate, self-seeking, disturbed leadership behaviour is presented, by false analogy and other forms of lying, as a disqualification for office.

The last thing our democracy needs is the rogue Labour vision of a  Leader with power drained from a debilitated, no longer effective body politic.   We need a Restoration  -  a long, painstaking, skilled  job.  Restoration does not have much use for leaders, but calls rather for all the virtues and values of our  democratic practice to be used in rebuilding its laws and constitution, and limiting the possibilities for future abuse.    

Intelligence Community Declares "Not in Our Name"

Watching the Chilcot yesterday caused Angels to  shudder.  As the mists of battle cleared there arose from them the dreary spires of  the model for progressive post-democratic, global governance.  This time not Europe, but the United Nations in all its corruption and placemanship - the notion that it should be ignored by any self-respecting sovereign state not even entertained.  Saddam was not conforming to UN resolutions?  That gave us the legal and moral right to shock and awe Iraqi cities and infrastructure to smithereens and then land invade the life out of  the Iraqi people.  "A serious, credible threat to regional stability' ? Kill them. Prime Minister Blair is "an absolute believer in internationalism and the United Nations as a force for good in the world". (Campbell, yesterday).

The United Nations is about as much use to the modern world as Bretton Woods.

And after Fermanagh,  the  Tyrone spire.  It was right that the case for the invasion of Iraq should be 'intelligence based'.  The Foreign Office had it made clear to it that their input - historical, political, informed, specialised, assessing risk and gain for the United Kingdom -  was not required.  The case would be evidenced-based, factual, beyond dispute; in a word, 'settled'.

Then it was for the prime minister, indeed it was the essence of prime ministerial duty, to take political decisions based on undisputed facts; drawing on his world view, which he would formulate over weekends by reading books and phoning people up who might be able to help.

'Was any record  kept of this reading programme and of those consulted and what was said?'  Well, no.  But on Monday mornings Tony would tell Alastair all about it and present a brief note to his close circle  on what he wanted presented to the administration and, if deemed useful, to the rest of us at large.  More or less it was the rogue states, terrorism, proliferation of WMD world view.

Unfortunately the intelligence-based platform for action was no more robust than the global warming science-based platform.  The dossiers of ostensibly consolidated intelligence information were propaganda presented as evidence-based truth;  it irritated the intelligence community that it was put over their names just  as the climatologists who found themselves besmirched by the East Anglian propaganda were irritated.

At least in Copenhagen they failed to agree to attack China.

Note:

Botogol gives a fine account of attending the Chilcot Inquiry in the flesh.  And displays initiative in getting a cup of coffee.

Unconvincing Labour

Try as I might I do not see that many of us have a great deal in common with unskilled manual labourers.  Unskilled manual labour takes up a great deal of my time but it is not the source of my income, nor the focus of my intellectual interest or concern - though if a job's worth doing - I can scrub  a stone staircase or  beat a carpet, polish a floor or vacuum the sofa, as well as the next man.

So the news that Mr Brown is rising in the esteem of unskilled manual labourers (cf the latest Populus poll) helps explain why his recent behaviour and pronouncements - they could hardly be graced with the word policies - have made him even more unattractive to Angels.

Even with teeth gritted and head averted from having to look at their Leader, imagining what Labour could offer to persuade me to vote for them is mine to do, for they are not being helpful. 

Reducing indirect taxation to lower the growth in inequality that has besmirched the Labour years?  They've just raised VAT and petrol duty.  And National Insurances rises are barely progressive.

Taking the lowest earners out of income tax altogether?  That's progressive, but Labour actually pulled lower and lower wage-levels into higher and higher tax bands.

Cutting Defence expenditure?  Labour went to war, is still at war.

Reducing unemployment?  The greatest of destroyers of social well being has increased every year to a disgraceful 3 million who are actually claiming unemployment benefits and another nearly 5 million economically inactive of working age on other kinds of payment.

A European-standard educational system?  Labour has just lopped the tertiary sector budget, the only educational sector that is of international standards, and the schools are not doing well for the least advantaged with 40% too unskilled to profit even from post-11 education. 

Concentrate the NHS on the things that happen to everyone, or go wrong for everyone - childbirth (men are just as involved), and eyes, teeth, creaking joints, and on preventative programmes, while facilitating us  all in insuring separately for the fancy stuff? Or go on pouring money into near-irrelevant treatments and research programmes.

Major housing programme?  Not just new ones but the refurbishment of older ones on the lines of the Birmingham refurbishments of entire terraces and city areas.  That would interfere with reinflating the housing bubble.

Labour say they're thinking about mutual and cooperative movements.  What a pity they did away with those founded long before Labour ever existed.

There are two difficulties in convincing Angels to vote Labour: the absolute denial Labour is in over what it has done in the last 13 years; and the absolute unattractiveness of these same policies they are offering now.   It's called persistence in sin, and it is unforgivable.

Aspiration: Gordon Brown Sucks

"Gordon is so impossible," says one senior figure,  "He wants to do everything from road-gritting in Dorset to body scanners at Heathrow. He is sucking the oxygen from the system."
reports Mary Riddell in today's Telegraph.

Everything that is except paint his own green house, do his own housework, and gardening, and shopping, and washing and ironing.   We might wish he spent more time as a normal person does cleaning up after himself and keeping his everyday life and surroundings in decent order rather than aspirating the life blood out of everyone in the country.  

Nick Drew opens the Seventh Seal

 

A Tarnished PM Foresees His Moral Death

I know that I shall lose the vote
Sometime in March, or May, or June
Those ranged against me laugh and gloat
Those on my side think me poltroon

My country is extremely cross
My countrymen despise my name
No likely end can spare me loss
Or flood of tears wash clean my shame

Nor law, nor sense of wrong and right
Nor moral compass did I heed
A sordid impulse of pure fright
Drove me to base and craven deed

I balance all, bring all to mind
I've dashed their hopes, betrayed their trust
‘Son of the Manse’ by all maligned
My reputation, turned to dust

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life: How Brown Sees Himself

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of fate
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years finds
And shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Angels wondered if Nick Drew might be seized by the Muse and give us some more verses on the Prime Minister's state of mind.

Jonah Brown Threatens Gas Supplies

Gordon Brown said that:

"because of the cold snap we are also facing record levels of demand for gas.
National Grid has confirmed that it expects supplies to meet demand.

I can assure you: Supplies are not running out."

UPDATE
Cold weather in Norway put Britain’s gas network on alert today as supplies dropped from Ormen Lange, a giant Norwegian gasfield operated by Norske Shell, reports today's Times.  The gasfield was supposed to be immune to weather conditions and was developed specifically to supply gas to the UK.

Labour is a Coalition and Brown is Destroying its Core

It is a truism that our main political parties are coalitions, and that with a first past the post voting system we have to accept coalition members who are unattractive to other parts of the party.  At least we know the worst about a coalition before we vote and are not faced with coalition-formation after the election.  Not usually anyway, first past the post having the supreme advantage of producing working majorities.

There are different models, mental images, of a coalition political party.  The idea of a core surrounded by fairly stable coalition satellites and then, further out floating voters who are attracted by the policy stance of the central mass is popular.  Another is of a much less stable group of party factions (or cores) reacting to the presence of one another and, again, surrounded  by coalition satellites; but in this model the floating voters who potentially could be attracted are  more numerous, but the pull from the centre is much weaker while the forces generated between the multiple cores can even repel outer floaters.

Coalitions can limit core splitting or absorb alternative cores by the imposition of hierarchy within the party - the authoritarian response that provides control and certainty but limits attractiveness to potential coalition partners and even more to floaters.  If that is the party practice then a split in the core is an absolute disaster.

Or coalitions can recognise their multi-core and the complex effects this has upon support and have a much flatter party structure with conflict resolution by negotiation and discussion, which produces dynamic policies pragmatically responsive to events in the world. Splits in the core are part of life and the party is designed to cope with them and reconstitute the coalition. 

Inflexible, hierarchical authoritarian parties deny expression to central parts of their coalition and lose not just floating voters; they shed core coalition support without means, or with only rudimentary or ad hoc means, to reconstitute the coalition. 

Labour needs to recognise what is happening and stop pretending that Brown's leadership is just a personality problem of unattractiveness to floating voters that is recompensed by a solidification of its core vote.    

Wondering about the Mandelson Defence of Brown

Peter Mandelson believes that Gordon brown is the best person to lead Labour into the general election.  No ifs, no buts, Mandelson's actions are as good as his words, for without him Brown would be long gone.

Why?

 Does he  want the Labour party to be the political arm of the union Unite?  He says Labour must represent the interests of all the people of the country, yet Unite's interests are only those of public sector employees and the few present, and many former,  employees of UK industry and manufacturing.  

Is he, then,  determined to make Brown hold still while we deliver his so well-deserved kicking?  To make Brown and Balls and the union Unite, and all the fellow-travelling long marchers receive their "nyet"  from the only source they have been unable to subvert, the mass of the electorate, albeit a kicker that only gets to act rarely. A calamitous object lesson in the end for Labour if it abandons social democracy for authoritarian statism and barely concealed socialist and internationalist tendencies.

Is there still something Brown can deliver for Europe and for global governance in the next few months that will otherwise be lost, or put at risk?  It would have to be a very short time scale because Labour is not going to win in 2010, not under Brown.  And Brown's announcement that he is seeking a five-year mandate suggests Brown will stay on even after defeat short of anything but a Conservative landslide.

Imagine Brown after the election, still Leader but with nothing to lose and still the political leader of a  Unite core political party arm.   We'd be back with the Who Runs Britain? confrontations of the Heath/Callaghan years.  (Wilson remains an enigma, so I don't count him in).

Does Mandelson want to ensure that even in defeat the Labour rump Opposition will be the least co-operative the Conservatives could face?   Does Mandelson see New Labour as a ruling faction only,  incompetent and under-resourced in Opposition?

Will the shredders be unable to work fast enough as the Labour regime exits and there is some dreadful corruption of our governance for which Brown must still be in place to be blamed?   After all, Brown could not replace Darling with Balls - his true darling ( even though Balls had cleared his desk and everything), and Darling must be drawing on more than merely personal inner strength in profiting from this week's letter - a simple letter from a couple of former ministers -  to set Labour policy to 'cuts the most severe for 20 years. '  Are there bodies in the Treasury that need to be properly attributed?

Whatever it is, Mandelson is preventing Brown's removal, and to the detriment of the current Labour party, and to the detriment of any serious social democratic party in our country.

The Disadvantages of Closed Examination Centres

Hundreds of thousands of students could 'potentially be disadvantaged' if bad weather affects the modular exams for AS and A-levels, and some  GCSE exams.

Malcolm Trobe, policy director at the Association of School and College Leaders [who he?  And what exactly is this particular quango?, ed.] said:

''There are concerns about disadvantaging youngsters that live in areas that are affected by severe weather conditions whereas youngsters that are not, where it is still fine, can get into school without any struggle and are advantaged over those that are affected.''  [and where was he taught to speak English? ed.]

Announcements on the BBC, who is our public service broadcaster, after all, that all examinations will be set back one month (insert date) and that otherwise all arrangements stand, should do the trick, Mr Trobe.   It is not  ''extremely difficult'' to move exams.  It is disadvantageous to the examinee if their examination centre is closed.

Brown Abandoned to the Labour Core Vote

The gentle push that Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon gave, in a single, mild-mannered letter, asking if the members of the Parliamentary Labour Party  would like to have a secret ballot on Brown's leadership, has had a notable response.  Major newspapers had running accounts and blogs as the story unfolded throughout the day; comment pieces poured out; the news for most of today has been dominated by what?  - a letter from two former Labour ministers (and yes, I do intend the adjective to precede Labour not ministers.  That debate has barely begun in the UK though it's well under way in the rest of Europe).

It is wrong to think that Patricia Hewitt and Mr Hoon do not enjoy considerable entree with the great and the good.  Not so much Islington dinner parties as Cambridge high tables and Masters' get togethers.  And this was no botched coup, no display of ignorance on how to topple a leader.  Where they are the in-crowd, toppling is a favourite and much enjoyed sport.  "You have the support of the College" from a smiling Master means support from an establishment of international and inter-temporal reach.  Consider your 'Yes, Minister'.

Brown does not belong in such a world, where else does his visceral loathing of what he calls toffs and tories come from?  Margaret Thatcher may have been denied honour by Oxford, but they did her the honour of organising to deny, which is just as good, if not better. 

Brown has been severely damaged by just a toe-in-the-water exercise.   A  statement has been made that he has been abandoned to the Labour 'core'.  Brown faces an electorate inviperito,  and we know now, without the slightest support from  the ruling classes of the centre left.

Labour 'Investment'

'British Gas said it could not immediately confirm that it had cut off some customers in line with Grid demands but said the problems were caused by transmission overload rather than the potential shortage of supplies ....
"If anything there is an oversupply of gas and certainly no shortage at this time. This [the current problem] is about moving it around the country," said a spokesman. (Guardian)

13 years of investment in UK infrastructure, missing because of Brown.  He invested in buying voters, but not in roads, railways, ports,  power grids, water supplies, flood control systems, housing, pensions; no wonder industry and manufacturing are in dire straits.

Enough with schools'n'hospitals.  Where's everyone supposed to go to work when they aren't ill and have finished school?

Brown Denies Referendums, Mr President

"I hope that the people of these two countries and their political leaders will, in keeping with the longstanding democratic traditions of Britain and the Netherlands, acknowledge that a referendum is a democratic way of making a decision,” said the President of Iceland where the referendum, on the bill to compensate Brown's payment of his clients' losses from their risky behaviour, is to be on 20 February.

Iceland is not unwilling to meet its financial obligations under European rules, as Brown is pretending with his threats,  it is deciding if it will meet Brown's excessive demands that all the risk losses should be compensated.

Brown is now so weakened by what Mandelson calls the 'initiative' to ballot his leadership it is doubtful the IMF and other Iceland supporters will lend themselves to his distasteful bullying.

With One Vote Iceland Will be Free

The Iceland Prime Minister can either withdraw the bill that would pay back the taxpayers' money Brown squandered on cushioning his clients from running silly risks with their own and other people's money, or have a referendum on the bill's acceptance, which will reject the bill and lead to the government's resignation.  Or resign now.  Which would mean another left government bites the dust.  Greece, Spain, Portugal, UK, Austria - not many of the Left in the European Union, and none of them covered in financial glory.

Of course Iceland is not yet in the EU; and the popularity of its application to join, among its own citizens, is iffy.  And the United Kingdom government has been putting all the pressure it can on the European Union to refuse Iceland's application to join, if it doesn't pay Brown's clients' money back. 

Would that we could be in such a marvellous position - cause a Labour government to fall, refuse to pay money to people who lost when they took a risk, and be prevented from joining the European Union.  All of this with just one vote.

Better to Face the Election Soonest

The current leaked and openly-published letters and emails among Parliamentary Labour Party members are all signed:

Yours fraternally,     .........

As the Italians say (Italians always have the mot juste for  fighting, particularly internecine and with  knives) -  fratelli coltelli.

And it's not good news for Brown's international status,  no matter how self-awarded,  considered either pre- or post-election, any of this.

Brown Slapped With a Wet Fish by Iceland

Invoking the UK Terrorist laws against Iceland, a NATO ally, was one of the more disgraceful of Brown's actions when Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  The President of Iceland has now refused to sign a bill to recompense the UK taxpayer for the money Brown used to pay off his client state 'investors' .  Brown sought to avoid political unpopularity by transferring the risk of non-payment onto the long-suffering tax-paying UK population, and compensated those who thought there was such a thing as a free lunch and if there wasn't, Labour would bail them out anyway.  They were right in the latter.

Brown dumped Labour supporters' debt onto us all.  Icelanders will now vote in a referendum whether they agree with Brown that they should pay off  the compensation given to those who risked and lost.  I wonder if there is a betting market for what the Iceland referendum result will be.

A Rapacious Appetite for Self-Aggrandisement

The United States administration has the measure of Brown's determination to be associated with power.  What began as a discreet refusal to meet insistent and repeated requests for  unnecessary public appearances with President Obama, has developed into the public refutation by the United States administration of claims by Downing Street to have supplied intelligence information or to have any special status in measures being adopted by the US  in the Middle East.

The noted jonah effect that hovers around Brown like a miasma is one thing - and can possibly be regarded as a misfortune that leads to his avoidance - but untruths and false claims to initiatives and successes to the detriment of allies is now so serious it has begun to merit public slap-downs.

The meeting called for by Mr Brown, at the end of January, on Afghanistan, is another display of the saviour and world leader complex.  Downing Street has announced importantly that the French President and the German Chancellor  are 'expected', (President Obama is not).  A normal person might think such a meeting should be held at NATO with Defence ministers, the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs, and various military, present;  and that it be convened by the United States.

At least the United States is showing the way in increasingly firmly dissociating from brownian displays of near-delusional self-importance. 

Political Polling and Political Prediction

Political polling was one of those areas of political study that failed to command my undergraduate attention.  It is a kellnerish area of study - ie it requires high levels of data handling skills and  niggly attention to detail, remote from political theory and, even more distressingly, immediate political events; its  objectivity was always being called into question which removed  its interest as a particularly valid external indicator of the effects of political choice and policies on voters; being such a thing would have made it fascinating, but as merely another political propaganda means of affecting voters' decisions, it wasn't worth the effort of mastering its arcane difficulties and subtleties.

So which is it: a boys' toy that keeps them entertained fiddling with  statistics and modes of comparison, and sample reliability and conformity that could be substituted with a well-informed guess; or a powerful predictor of voter behaviour that interacts with that behaviour.  That the answer might now be the latter (after technique refinements and the instigation of a professional rules-giving body)  is underpinned by the publication of political polls being prohibited, just before elections take place, in many democratic countries.

Political polls are only interesting when they are technically neutral, and most interesting when the questions asked are emotionally intelligent.   Emotionally intelligent questions are intrinsically part of truth-finding.  A true question requires a question that is capable of being answered; and a true answer requires maximum co-operation from the answerer.  To ask: "how will you vote at the next election?" is a question  incapable of  evincing a 'true' answer.  And the answer: "Labour", is not a 'true'  answer.

What is needed is a profile of a Labour voter, which is then matched or not onto  respondents by a series of much narrower and less loaded - culturally, historically, psychologically  etc., - questions; questions that are tailored carefully to the circumstances of the respondents.   Framing truth-seeking emotionally intelligent questions and evaluating the emotional intelligence of the answers is not yet highly developed in political polling.  A lot of what looks like neutral data-gathering and sophisticated adjustment and interpretation is still close to any informed, intuitive grab on what is being picked up from many and varied sources.

I think. But then I should have been paying more attention when I had the time and opportunity.   

Boxing-in Brown

'The PM told the Andrew Marr Show he would not be "boxed in" by announcing a date now.' [for a general election. ed.] (BBC)

The current Parliament expires at midnight on 10 May 2010.   Nearly 80 Labour MPs have announced that they will not fight the next election; some 30 Conservative MPs have also done so, along with various Members belonging to other Parties.   No matter what special circumstances might arise or be conjured up by Mr Brown to permit the extension of the life of the Parliament by amending the Parliament Acts, it is hard to imagine that he could command a majority in the House.

Mr Brown is no Winston Churchill.  And we will not be at war with Germany in four months' time. Brown is already boxed in.

Should any attempt be made to maintain in existence the current Parliament, how will Brown command a majority - faced with all those backbench, demob-happy, Labour MPs? Many of whom loathe him and all he has done to their Party, and some of whom loathe him, more honourably, for what he has done to our country. Every vote would become a vote of confidence.  You only have to win once (well, twice: first the vote of substance and then the vote to confirm the defeat.)  Untenable.

Unless Brown intends a real coup d'etat and to attempt government without Parliament.  Even Angels doesn't believe that, not even before breakfast. 

So, sorry for not taking into account the effects of the expenses exposures, and for not considering the effects of the greatest turnover in MPs since the second World War, and for not listening to the assurances of blogosphere elders and betters that there will be a general election within constitutional time limits.

Thank Goodness the box is now so small, and shrinking by the moment.  We must hope there will be no intervention by the French - in Toledo or any other part of the European Union.

Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness

When the share of wages is too low and the rate of taxation on wages is too high there is a deficit in aggregate demand that results in unemployment, and consequently low  educational provision, rising levels of poor health and lower provision for its treatment,  lack of housing and capacity to establish independence in life, and aimlessness accompanied by alienation.

That a Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer should have failed to confront the Five Giants, and instead enslaved working people in debt, is disgraceful.

Striking at the Roots of the Crisis

Aggregate demand is not attention-grabbing stuff.  A decline in aggregate demand is, presumably, even less so. Inequality does little better.  Decline in the share of wages  - oh oh it's getting duller.  Add the effects of economic globalisation, and it could well be  all over for this post.  Except they are at the roots of the Crisis.

In America where it all started, (and in US intellectual-poodle Brownlandbritain), the policy response  to all of these  was to attempt  to meet their effects  with freely and inappropriately available credit; which  (not surprisingly to any market capitalist)  instead of creating productive  investment, created asset bubbles of remarkable size and pre-burst attractiveness.  Not just once, but over and over again.

Economic globalisation and, to some degree technological change-induced productivity gains, produced a decline in the wage-share in advanced  economies of ten full points - from 65% down to 55% of GDP (IMF).  Which generated huge and growing levels of inequality, unacceptable falls in aggregate demand... .

This is the real root of the crisis, not its financial manifestation  in 2007.  And the answer to it should never have been bundling up  liar loans granted to working and not working people inside better-looking loan packages, and spreading it all thinly about, eyes tight shut. And then beefing up your civilian control measures for the bubble-burst(s).  This is the response of economic and political boobies, and inequality deniers.  Without a shred of real moral or even political commitment to the intuitive political,  decent-behaviour-in-life agendas of most citizens in advanced market-capitalist democracies.

So what should have been, and now must, be done?

First off all competition must be enhanced; thus raising employment, raising the share of wages without even having to raise wages, so that the gap between output and potential output narrows. One of the proper functions of government is to unleash competition.  The sozialmarkt-Wirtschaft has this as a central tenet and it should have been, but was not, part of the New Labour agenda.

The burden of taxation must be reduced, particularly on wages, so as to raise the after-tax share of wages and enhance aggregate demand.

Participation in profits by employees, not just by shareholders and managers, must be promoted.  The timid notion of stakeholding by employees under New Labour was diluted and redirected to other categories - suppliers, consumers, local administrations, the environment - insofar as it was not dropped all together.

Government expenditure must be switched from transfers to investment.  Particularly public investment in infrastructures and research and development, including raising the population's life-skills.

Protectionism must be installed at the limits of state power.  Our government should be protectionist when facing international competition made unfair by the export subsidies implicit in artificially devalued currencies;  even convinced free-traders must respond with countervailing protectionism.

We must reject the pretence that there is global commonality of interest even while we accept increased global economic interaction.

Having Us for Lunch

Coming up:

Unprecedented unemployment, regardless of recovery, in every country.

A sputtering recovery; fits and starts; worse for old Europe and the United States, better for Emerging Countries.

Resumption of convergence in transition economies.

At least one high level political assassination in the developed world, and two in the emerging world.

Steady rise in energy prices contained only by continued slow growth.

Resumption of dollar decline, contrary to current trends.

Sovereign default, in Latvia to start with, with possible followers. one by one, not mass defaults.

Higher interest rates throughout or another bubble burst.

Return of inflationary pressure.

Intra-national inequality increases.

Social democratic agenda quietly withdrawn, and replaced by populism.

Sterling to be a shadow-euro with or without the blessing of the ECB.

Economic globalisation grows,  despite sprinkles of protectionism everywhere.

Champagne drinking at 4.30 in the afternoon becomes fashionable if not compulsory.

Re-Balancing Act

The fragility of the UK industrial and manufacturing base is underlined by the depth of the recession that continues to reign in the UK.  Without financial services we are very little.  Glancing at European once-equals but now leaders in exiting recession and growing again (the UK is still  shrinking) two factors are noticeable among the so much more successful  -  an extant, if uncomfortable, industrial and manufacturing base, and competent government.

The notion 'base' covers issues of dynamic complexity.  Physical plant, infrastructural support, and work-competent communities are not the product of command decision-taking.  They are organic and cumulative.  Once lost there is no way back by simple or quick measures.  And the loss of UK industry and manufacturing was particularly abrupt and final,  destructively far-reaching.  In part this was the result of well-rehearsed factors of lack of competitiveness, deliberate union-based sabotage, the exhaustion of the natural resources to be exploited profitably, and a government failure to seek the conservation and reform of less tangible but just as real resources  held within working communities.  The political damage to our entire culture of work and social patterning was bad enough, but the economic damage is of sowing-with-salt proportions.

This is not to say that there are not pockets of advanced, and small-scale manufacturing installed, particularly around the great universities in their science parks;  but none of this provides the employment and life-styles, the security of capacity to support ourselves, the self-determination and freedom from reliance on government provision that a mature capitalist democracy offers to its citizens.


Manufacturing industry must be set up in the United Kingdom all over again.  The unforgivable  failure under more than a dozen years of Labour government to use the resources available to facilitate the re-establishment of  a balanced economy, the ideological choice to use those resources to build a client state instead, has multiplied every aspect of disadvantage.  Incredibly it was the declared policy of New Labour to abandon middle-level technology manufacturing.  They set out to create an economy of the enabled and rich, and a serving class of state-dependent, poorly educated, and poor. Permanently cast in this mould under permanent progressive, global governance. The whole to be served up by a compelling message, an appropriately groomed media enterprise.

The 'news' that UK companies are reimporting manufacturing production due to poor quality standards delivered in manufacturing complexes abroad is broadcast by the BBC  and an inter-related network of industry and manufacturing media fronts, both freshly founded, and  taken over but paid for by Labour-allocated tax funded resources.  Look up the sources for these reports.   And then consider the complexities and time profile of re-establishing manufacturing, even at the levels of France or Germany, in the UK. 

Spin.

Opportunity, Opportunity, Opportunity

Standard of living, inequality,  levels of unemployment, educational achievement, access to credit, all these impact on independent establishment in adult life.  On this last day of the decade a sorry sight greets us. 

United Kingdom standards of living are lower than those of European countries comparable in size of population and of economy.  Unemployment is higher and, if economic inactivity in working-age groups is calculated as part of unemployment, is the highest in Europe. Educational achievement is marred by 40% of students transferring into secondary education with deficient skills in literacy and numeracy and with the poorest already withdrawing from full time education.  Access to credit is unprecedentedly difficult. 

Against all cultural trends since industrialisation and urbanisation,  households of parents and children are being forcibly reconstituted by the return of the young and even the young middle-aged unable to establish or maintain their independent households.

Setting out in life is always going to be tempered by the gifts with which we are born, the family into which we are born,  and then the  circumstances  of sociocultural stability and the wider economy with which our own world, and our country, is interacting.  The more choices we have the better we tend to do.  Only the low living standards and dull homogeneity  that embodied the lack of opportunity in the realised socialist states is worse than what is on offer, indeed required consumption for the many, now.  And at least under realised socialism you learned enough to master a skill.

So for the next decade how about new towns, modern rail and bus services, small schools, local hospital and nursing centres, the re-mutualisation of  local credit provision, lower taxes, and locally answerable policing.  And release the economy from the grasp of an over-weening state interference, planning, and regulation. 

Pie in the sky?  No, it is the one nation Conservativism, pragmatic, non-ideological, socially well-disposed but with high regard for individual privacy, in which so many of us grew and thrived.

The Risks of Denying Democracy

The devaluation of sterling by 30% is far too little.  Sterling is coming down from a ridiculous high achieved for wholly political, vote-getting purposes.   Angels write from among those who sold up just about everything to get out at 1.68 - even 1.70-something for a brief moment, if memory serves.  What was left behind was left for a mixture of nostalgia, hope, and insurance.

Well, none of those are worth the risk any more.  Not because England is in dire economic straits; not because there are  catastrophic levels of political uncertainty; but because England is telling lies.

Lies about its debt levels, lies about its de-industrialisation and the collapse of its manufacturing sector, lies about its workforce and its workforce skills,  lies about its social provision, lies about pension claims,  lies about its energy security, lies about its allegiances, lies about its intentions, lies about its governing capacities, lies about its democracy.

Once a sovereign state is issuing lies on all fronts and at every level, through every means its rulers can control, cajole, influence, and buy,  then the steady and relatively discreet departure of wealth, unwilling to accept the veracity of this representation of the fundamentals, becomes a public run on the country. 

A demonstration of political maturity and democratic stability in the form of a general election, right now,  producing an elected government set upon correcting the lies and coping with debt and public expenditure splurging and misdirection is essential.  Brown might think he can go on fobbing off the rest of the world,  go on 'being in charge' but who is willing, as opposed to being forced by their own powerlessness,  to wait longer?  To wait until the last possible shred of legality and democratic hope has been expended.

An election must be now or it might as well be never.

Taking a Risk With Uncertainty

Assessment of risk and response to risk are the stuff of which economic behaviour is made. Traditionally an important distinction is made between risk and uncertainty. Risk is a type uncertainty for which we can have a probability distribution - life expectancy, fire, car accidents, and is, therefore, insurable.  There is, too,  pure uncertainty - uncertainty of which probabilities are unknown, thus is not insurable and leads to agents acting on the basis of arbitrary, heterogeneous, and ill-founded expectations.  In economics it is uncertainty of the latter kind that is the prime mover in economic decision-taking.

Sovereign default is technically insurable by the purchase  of credit default swaps but there is no certainty that credit default swaps will be honoured by bust guarantors; we are, therefore, in a no man's land between risk and uncertainty.  Greece, for instance, is a country on the cusp of assessment of risk as opposed to pure uncertainty, just as  sovereign default is on the cusp of insurable uncertainty  and pure uncertainty.

Terrifyingly, so is the United Kingdom.  Numbers can be found elsewhere, but that is where we are.

The United Kingdom is under authoritarian, big state, high tax, redistributive, governance.    Politically the UK is under a leadership that is so devoid of any sense of responsibility (at times reality might be a more appropriate word) that it is deliberately importing the economics of uncertainty and risk into political process.

Knowing that any general election will oust Labour rule comprehensively,  how close to sovereign default can the economy be brought so that political process is rendered wholly subject to economic diktat, and is interrupted?

There is 'must' be interrupted, which is the Brown junta's intention. And there is 'will' be interrupted, which is the bitter end of scorched-earthism when this appalling balancing act along the cliff-top of disaster, motivated by necessity born of Brown's economic incompetence, motivated by desire to leave nothing should power be wrested from him, and motivated by intention to create compelling circumstances for continuity in office, results in an economic fall, a political fall, or both.

Traditional economic analysis leaves little room for discontinuities, structural breaks, and regime changes: but Brown's junta will embrace war and politico-economic collapse before it cedes political power within our country's stable historical and political practice.

We Know Where We Live

No wonder Brown's Britain propaganda has failed.  Other than the obvious jonah reason, there is no such place.  Either we live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or we live in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland.  'Britain' doesn't include Northern Ireland, nor does the term 'Briton' refer to the many non-celtic inhabitants of the United Kingdom.

An entire, distasteful political culture and its agenda lies embodied in Brown's terminology 'Britain' and the  cack-handed collapse of his attempt to foist it on the rest of us (the Times reports derisory numbers attending regional 'Britishness' meetings being hosted by cabinet ministers, Straw got down to single figures at some) reassures us all that we, at least, know where we are coming from, even if Brown is in denial.

Going to University is Different from Going to College

Putting university entrance as the most desirable objective of the school system has had a dreadful result for school education and a poor result for university education.  The aim of enjoyment of a university education for all who could undertake one is wholly admirable.  But its provision should have been far more flexible than simply expanding acceptance rates at 18 to under-qualified and under-motivated school leavers.  The extension of a degree level qualification  to many quite mundane jobs, particularly in the state sector, that were formerly entered by those with school leaving qualifications, or at most A-levels, compounded the degredation  of degree-level study.  And as so many entered the university system the possibilities for support while studying for a degree, and for free tuition, receded.

Mass university entrance by possession of a school 18+ diploma requires a university system set up for: high levels of low-level teaching support similar to those within schools; integral provision for part time and distance learning; module-style examination systems; locally-based institutions with most undergraduates living at home.  The style of university teaching and research that in the UK has been beseiged by degree-seeking school students is inappropriate.  Models of the mass system abound - America, many continental European countries,  or - the past, too, being another country - technical colleges and polytechnics.

Somehow expanding tertiary education and training has become bound up with notions of employment qualification,  egalitarianism and universal availability.  Lopping money from LSE, UCL, Cambridge -  fill in choice of university of repute, or  individual faculties within any outstanding institution of learning and research -  satisfies such atavistic Labour urges but  does nothing for reforming any part of our failing educational systems at any and every level.

Update: Mr HG requires the spelling 'degradation'.  But his English is much better than mine.

Angels on Horseback

                                                 

                                  Angels wish you all a Merry Christmas

[The suggestion that Angels cannot fly is unworthy of refutation.  Of course the images of marble and painted angels studied by the learned professor cannot fly.  Angels usually fly Lufthansa or Meridiana to avoid attracting attention - and causing concern in the skies over Berlin, or Prague, Warsaw or Moscow. Angels' journeys this Christmas are short enough to use horse power.]

Submerged Truths About the Ecological Threats to Our Lives

A wall map of the world is on Angels' Christmas gift list.  In the Nordstream construction permissions news (another section has been OKed, by Germany this time) it is noted that the ideal line of Nordstream  is  straight but it will avoid ecologically sensitive areas and munitions dumps.

'I am not old enough' is a rare thought to cross my mind, but googling Baltic Sea munitions dumps jolted all kinds of attitudes into new perspectives.  Climate change or whatever you want to call it is as nothing. In ecosystem priorities.  In health and safety priorities.  In guilty parties priorities.  In clean-up priorities.

Did you know that after the end of armed conflict in 1945 both victors and vanquished threw  anything  and everything into the Baltic and round Heligoland, German Bight?  Those names used to lull me to sleep.  Not now.

Chemical weapons, as well as every other kind of munition, loaded into boats and carried the shortest possible distance before being tipped overboard to enable a fast return and a fresh load and a repeat payment.  What few records kept are locked down in the United States, one of the very worst offenders in the European seas pollution stakes.  The US is not too keen on facilitating a clean up and it is not too hard to imagine the geopolitical answer to: why not?

Nordstream will be built.  And as it is, understanding of what is really important in any international agreements on treating the earth with respect will rise to the surface.

Labour's Gifts Wrapped by Sarah Brown

 And lo, they came, bearing gifts, and they wrapped them in old newspaper, and scrawled across them the images of festive ribbons in red marker pen; and they offered their gifts to our children and to our children's children.

Brown Has A Cunning Plan

'Mr Brown said that he had an alternative plan in case the talks failed to yield an agreement. He declined to give any details about this plan, though it is likely to include convening another summit involving a smaller number of countries early next year.' (Times)

Well, it would have to be early next year, wouldn't it? There are quite a lot of people in the United Kingdom, ie., most of the UK electorate, who are expecting to vote Brown out of office next Spring or early Summer. So many summits to host, so little time. Perhaps it would be best to put off the inconvenience of a general election that would so interfere with saving the world (and saving his employment skin.)

And why is it that Brown can keep on jerking Obama's chain? G20s, Copenhagen Climate conferences, Afghan get togethers, now another Climate Cuddle (with only those who want to eat Sarah's wholewheat, vegetarian lasagne swilled away with local Scottish Chianti-U-like this time.)

Presidents of the United States used to preside over the rest of the world from Washington, benign and fierce depending on world circumstances. This one even gets caught in the kitchens, or in a freezing-cold Danish industrial mall (or should that be maul?) that is dreaming of global warming, while escaping from the Scottish Bogeyman.

Global Challenges Set New Tasks For the Secret Services, the Leader Underlines

'The secret services have been and remain the key link in the system ensuring security and sovereignty."

Security service personnel are responsible for preventing internal and external threats, as well as for "the whole range of issues which are brought together by one single notion - "the national interest."

Security service work "requires not only the procurement of knowledge in depth, but also great patience and personal courage...and these must be the characteristic features of security service personnel at all times,"

Recently, the state has made a number of moves to strengthen its security services. Their level of logistical support has been much increased, as has their operational and analytical potential.

"However, the modern world is ever-changing, with increasing competition in economic markets, and for domination in the spheres of knowledge and information. The stakes in this struggle are very high, and competition gets increasingly tough year in, year out.

"The global challenges we face set new and difficult tasks; and require the directed, coordinated and effective work of all of the secret services.

"Of course the war against terror, the containment of any manifestation of national and religious strife and extremism, and the active development of the border control infrastructure, remain among the priorities. [He means major regime goals, ed.].

"It is necessary, as well, to engage in long term, analytical surveillance, while ensuring the secrecy and security of secret service undertakings and activities,.."

Advanced technology and the modernisation of our economy demand higher security requirements for the "protection of our strategic, critical technologies and the steady development of science-intensive economic sectors."

Furthermore, given the state of world tension, every part of the secret services must effectively forecast and "calculate the possible consequences, of ongoing events for many moves ahead."

In practice, the secret services must be the protectors of the national interest, and of the rights and freedoms of citizens.

"They must be strong, and therefore they must be modern. They must be effective, professionally trained, and technologically equipped,".

He stressed that those serving with the security services must be well-paid, and provided with extensive benefits and protected, high-value pensions.

"We will be working to ensure this," he promised.

Brown the Sherpa

On 12 December Angels speculated that Brown's hopes for securing his future position were 'invested' (as he would put it, rather than 'bought' as others usually understand Brown's investments, in this case £1.5 billion of UK tax-payers money and rising) in becoming the fat controller of climate change and global warming. Controlling those funds and political resources is a destiny worthy of his world saviour status. Now the BBC (no less) reports:

'... those closely following the financial negotiations say that the big game is all about controlling resources and securing power.

"It certainly is a big power game," said a senior European representative actively involved in negotiations. "The fund will run into billions and getting to control it will mean you will be powerful in the world order."

Given the high stakes and the conflicting positions and passions involved, devising a mechanism, to which all parties agree, to manage and channel the new climate fund...' is why he ditched answering to the UK Parliament at, effectively, the end of his administration (DV), and rushed off to Denmark to sherpa any agreement that can possibly be cobbled together to create the role.

Brown won't get the job - c'mon, we know he won't, is Tony President of the European Union? Course not, even though he paid for his ticket with our EU rebate. This isn't a European's job at all. But he did get the photo ops.

Filming in Florence

Walking through Florence invariably means extending the courtesy, to visitors to the city, of the room to take their photographs and videos.  100 metres in any direction from my front door (and for the more refined taste, at my front door itself) and it's stop, smile, wave them on, check the photo shoot is over, and go on one's way.  Over and over again.  And why not?  People have travelled and paid to visit the ultimate renaissance city.

So what's with the London insults to visitors? London too is a lovely city, it deserves the homage of the dilettante photographer and should equally courteously accord them their claim to preserve their own experience and visual understanding of their surroundings.  What it should not have is a force of uniformed vigilantes  backed up by armed 'police' and savage fines for taking a picture.  London and the experience of London is photographed and videoed alright.  It's first up on the Eight O'Clock  News.

Next time you are in an Italian city and would like to picture your family, or your own, individual experience remember the vileness of England's surveillance state and its treatment of Simona Bonomo.

The Purpose of Our Nuclear Deterrent is to Ensure We Are Always Asked Nicely

Any country with nuclear weapons and competent delivery systems holds them for defensive, not aggressive reasons.  To argue that the Cold War is over and their cost could be more usefully diverted,   as Hattersley does in the Times today, is wholly specious.  At one time the Cold War enemy was the most likely enemy we wanted to stand up to.  But there were always other reasons for being able to look after ourselves.  When nuclear powers deal with any other state, including super-states, they are treated very differently from the unarmed.  Pakistan and North Korea underline this. 

Furthermore, it's bad enough to have the capacity of  independent nuclear deterrence degraded to having importance only in a past world and against past or specific, rather than any, threats, but coupled with:

  'Britain has a world role... peacekeeping, conflict resolution and fighting bush fires. ...—To finance it even adequately we need to abandon the pretensions of a superpower and ditch Trident now.' 

is highly tendentious too.  The United Kingdom's 'world role' is being horribly exposed in the Chilcot Inquiry as an off the wall agenda for defining inconvenient sovereign states as 'rogue' and then joining in aggressive wars against them in whatever status the United States cares to offer us, in breach of international law and of any moral notion of a just war.

To strip our country's defence capacities of deterrent and conventional resources for such a narrow and inadequate definition of the nature of any threat we could face, really will send us naked into any conference chamber.  And if our nuclear deterrent is not, as some argue, independent enough   that is a reason for making it so, not losing it.

Elections and Their Timing

Europe's new President is getting down to it. First he sends the member-states' foreign ministers off to play in their own meetings, which will be chaired by Catherine Ashton, not lurk about in the Council taking up space and time. Now Le Monde reports that he has called another Council meeting for February 2010:

'... il a annoncé, pour février 2010, un sommet extraordinaire afin de "dégager une stratégie économique claire dans les six mois".

Mr Van Rompuy may just have changed the 'discussion of the timing of the next general election' game. No-one in their right mind could think that Brown is going to risk missing such a shindig. (Go and look at the December European Council minutes - this is Saviour of the World stuff).

[declaration of interest: Angels has long held the view that Brown hasn't the slightest intention of conceding power.]

Brown's Got Form

There is something truly horrible about the Brown Labour regime's dividing lines. When an authoritarian , big state party starts to place blame on a particular group in a society for the failure of its policies, politico-historical antennae twitch. When the sector of society chosen as the target evil-doers are decried as toffs and bankers the antennae begin to tune into messages. When the targets are caricatured by derisive, grinning Party members wearing top hats and formal dress, then political cartoons from the 20th century lampooning another group of bankers, of toffs, of the rich in top hats and formal dress, set beyond the dividing lines in other authoritarian states, come to mind.

The German Chancellor considers that it might be unconstitutional to seek to lay extra taxes on bonuses. Germany has no plan to tax bonuses in the manner Brown is using. Brown announced a one-time 50 percent tax on bonuses of more than £25,000 pounds last week, in pursuit of a peculiarly disturbing attitude that some sorts of earnings by some sorts of people in England should be singled out for punitive action. This brownian pandering to class and cultural aggression is, too, wholly out of keeping with upholding the Basel, Financial Stability Board self-discipline accords, which:

'discourage bonus guarantees longer than one year, encourage companies to defer bonuses for senior executives and other key employees and enable pay to be clawed back if losses occur at a later date.' (Bloomberg). Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German Finance Minister, said two days ago that:

'German financial institutions including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank AG and Allianz SE, agreed to uphold the Group of 20’s so-called self-discipline accord, rather than resort to a new tax...' .

Regulators, central banks and investors all “need to take some responsibility,” the chairman of Morgan Stanley told Bloomberg Television in Berlin. Taxing the pay of bankers “doesn’t convey a sense of shared responsibility.” (Bloomberg)

Brown doesn't do 'take responsibility', nor sharing responsibility. Not even when he, personally, wrecked the regulation of financial behaviour in the United Kingdom. Brown does channeling blame to others, even when that involves encouraging a politics of dividing lines that puts some people beyond the pale. Last time it was British jobs for British workers; who is Brown whistling to now?

When Will We Ever Learn?

What did Brown buy with the one thousand five hundred million pounds of UK taxpayers' money that he has given to the European Union fund to aid poorer countries cope with climate change?

That is a lot of money (to borrow a phrase from Mervyn King before the Fall) even without considering the paltry amounts made available for flood defences in the United Kingdom, where, that is, there has not been an even worse Labour policy decision to abandon fertile agricultural land to the sea. (And no, the United Kingdom is not suffering from global warming-induced climate change, it is tilting from west to east for geological reasons which are arguably just as devastating in their effects upon our own communities and capacities to feed ourselves and create wealth for a decent living standard.)

How does a kick-start to a climate administration organisation, beginning under European Union Federation auspices, that is to be extended to a global governance role, as soon as the tax on global financial transactions is in place, sound? (So unfortunate it was identified as a Tobin tax when it's actually a Gordon tax on bank profits.) That is going to take lots of negotiation and administrative input which Gordon will provide, what with his masterly grasp of finance and taxation and it being his tax after all.

So, Germany and France (it's currently Sarkozy's turn to mind Gordon) get another £1.5 billion out of the UK towards EU administrative expansion merely by dangling a job application in front of the second UK Prime Minister in a row - and the unelected are no more likely to realise their dream than the elected, while we get mulcted again; first the UK rebate, now Brown's £1.5 billion.

Keeping Calm and Carrying On

The Parliament Acts are a very thin line holding against post-democratic rule. While Labour would prefer not to have to breach them (well it, they are supposed to be read together) as this will cause such a lot of trouble, it should be remembered that the reason why there are two Acts is because the 1911 Act limiting the term of a Parliament to five years was altered by Attlees' Labour government. In a series of attacks culminating in 1949, so that the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, and specifically the nationalisation of the steel industry, could be driven past the Lords opposition to the embodying of the War command economy into a socialist planning peacetime regime, and under the guise of amending the powers of the House of Lords, the 1911 Act was overturned. The five-year parliamentary term survived but is just as vulnerable as was the Upper House resistance to state ownership and socialist planning.

Best of all for the current Brown Junta Labour regime would be to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, by calling a general election and winning it. Next best will be calling a general election and remaining in power by post-election coalition construction to resolve a hung parliament (Heath's attempt failed though). Next best is to find some form of national government that sets aside a general election in a time of grave threat to the national interest (tricky when the national interest is being dissolved in Brussels). Then comes the generation of such a financial crisis that the argument that Labour alone can deal with it (no time for novices) can be put, and the general election must be delayed - held, certainly, but that time must be given for measures to restore stability and growth.

Then there there could be the series (not just one) of domestic 'terrorist' outrages, or overseas war 'emergencies' that require the suspension of democratic process and institutions (Mandelson did a fine bit of suspension in Northern Ireland, often a practice ground for the rest of us).

And finally (shades of Frost) there is the suspension of all elections in the United Kingdom until electoral practices within our country conform to those democratic practices required by all member-states of the European Union (better to have the referendum on a different voting system before the general election rather than afterwards when there would be no guarantee an incoming administration would recognise its European Union subservience appropriately).

Lots of room here, then, for manoeuvre. We need to aim for options 1 and 2 - persuade them they might stay in power without all the other upheavals. Because we should not think that the Brown Junta is constrained to book its own tumbrils.

Temporarily Unavailable for Joyous Viewing

Great works of art, be they pictures, sculptures, buildings, musical instruments ... have a life of their own that is extinguished rarely and only under social and economic conditions of sudden and widespread barbarity.

The Mafia pentito who claims that The Adoration by Caravaggio was burned after it had been damaged by being stored in a barn and eaten by pigs and rats, doesn't convince. The Mafia may be pigs and rats but they don't eat their own wealth. They have used paintings as currency (nothing if not sensible, the Wise Ones) since for ever. And they do not restrict the acquisition of their stores of value to purchase in the art markets of the world. This painting was acquired in 1969, to order, from above an altar in Palermo; slightly damaged in the lift (the prospective owner in tears) but its charmed life ensures that it is hidden from our happiness supply only temporarily.

The Truth is out there and, as we know, Beauty is Truth.

Avoiding "an Orgy of Value Destruction"

Just in case there is any incipient value destruction with Angels as its epicentre, here is what I would like for Christmas.

Long-sleeved jumper by Jil Sander in charcoal wool, the one with the straight neckline and the extra long sleeves that rouche at the wrist or can be pulled over the hands in moments of angst.

Knee-high softest leather boots that rouche at the ankle (rouching is in for ankles as well as wrists) in green so dark it looks like black at first glance.

Half a dozen pairs of very dark brown tights in various deniers (not the climate deniers, the silk-weight deniers) from the shop in via della Spada.

A Kandinsky, preferably lateish and smallish (paintings do speak up so in a domestic environment) but any will do.

An enormous cashmere wrap. I cannot be drinking tea and reading in the early winter's morning risking a chill.

Fluffy slippers in a silly colour - see above.

A Drizabone. This is not fair - Elby has one and I have mentioned it before. And a Ute (with or without Dog).

Pair of linen, hand-hemmed sheets and appropriate pillow cases from Anghiari, in white.

Story books.

1 pair each of silk-lined, short but over-the-wrist gloves in: dark blue, black, green virtually black, in suede and/or leather.

A new bag for the coming twelvemonths (adjustable strap, reasonably capacious, plain, dark darker darkest brown, lots of compartments inside - don't you just hate it when everything sits in the bottom of your bag smirking inaccessibly?).

Lots of pairs of very soft, warm socks in pretty colours.

Iris-scented bath lotion from Santa Maria Novella.

I have been let down over the parrot. I recognise that it is now too late for a parrot to come and live with me, given their life expectancy and my own; the opportunity to foster a parrot in its own environment is, in any case, a better choice.
Parrot-at-large fostering opportunity.

Marrons glaces.

Marzipan animals and fruits,

A large wall map of the whole world set out flat so that I can understand what is going on.

A flat in Savignyplatz.

There may well be updates to this post during December.

UPDATE i
Christopher Andrew - In defence of the realm: the authorised biography of MI5

Client-state Beneficiaries and Reflecting Local Community Interests

The client state, in a first past the post, one member voting system democracy, faces the problem that clients are created in too few constituencies. Both industrial and manufacturing decline constituencies, and longstanding affluence and stability sequestered from technologically-engendered decline constituencies, create pile-ups of unused votes.

Except that people freed from the need to work will tend to migrate to areas with the highest social wage: decent neighbours - resulting in decent schools, lower levels of disturbed social behaviour, better communications systems, better social-networking opportunities, etc. The chances of affluent people migrating from the Home Counties to areas of the country with collapsed socioeconomic systems are, of course, much lower than benefit-dependent migration from despoiled areas to pastures new; as many coastal and rural constituencies once bastions of Conservative support show.

Which obvious observation is very much to the advantage of the Labour client-base creation policy. The self-exportation of your excess votes into the heartlands of 'privilege' damages the enemy voter base while lowering your client-state building costs. Unfortunately it also alters people's local environments at times quite dramatically.

Back in the USSR there were internal passports to control such internal migration, democratic expression having other means of control; unauthorised external migration was controlled by execution, as so many from eastern Europe discovered.

While, in our country we can still (though there is a query for how much longer) live where we like, it may be time to reconsider a voting system designed to reflect commonality of interest within a small geographic area and replace it with a system that reflects majority voting across much larger areas for national elections. The disparity of interests becoming quite such a sore point in many areas can be addressed locally by returning its lost powers to local government.

Cuckoo Clocks

"You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

For the whole of the 'thirties and the Second World War, for the Cold War 'aftermath', for the titanic struggle between capitalism and communism, between freedom and authoritarianism, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they had King's and Trinity, they had the Apostles and the love that dared not speak its name. They had MI5 bugging and burgling its way across London, they had the entire political Establishment in the wrong beds and cleaving to friends before country when it came to betrayal.

And what has New Labour produced? Lies about climate change from the University of East Anglia and sex workers in Copenhagen.

Taxing People is Wrong

To die in England leaving a reasonable house and some savings and investments is a fate not to be wished on your worst enemy. Not a grand house, not even a detached house in a decent-sized garden - an ordinary suburban house with front and back garden, three or four bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms would do it. A well-maintained house in one of the older roads in Hatfield Garden Village plus rainy-day savings in whatever form they are invested - and your children will be paying 40% tax on some of what you leave them.

Of course if you have chosen to end your days in a lovely house, this being your preferred consumption mode rather than motors, trans-continental summer-holidays, and Prada, they'll be taken for so much tax they'll lose your life-style - and what may well be theirs.

When the Italian centre right coalition announced it would abolish inheritance tax, the centre left lost power at the first opportunity the people got to vote. Despite a social democratic interlude under Romano Prodi (by the skin of his teeth) inheritance tax has never been restored. Prodi tried it, brought it back at a nominal 3%, and promptly lost the next election.

Brown's class hate policies and his repellent class hate rhetoric have proved already sufficiently destructive to cause back-pedalling on child care allowances and means-testing the few, very few universal welfare benefits. When we are told by a Downing Street official that Labour will focus on the Conservative policy of lifting the estates of quite ordinary people out of inheritance tax, “morning, noon and night until the general election”, Kenneth Clarke's observation (reported in the Times) that people are “only keen on tough measures so long as they don’t affect them and their families” takes on a new salience.

A Kangaroo Inquiry

Today we heard from witnesses who are (or were at the time) members of the Armed Forces. They were being asked to answer questions on their actions, the actions of others - both fellow soldiers and politicians and some who are , in the language used sometimes in the Inquiry, polmil.

The first witness was notably courteous and equally notably determined not to over-step his bounds of discretion. He answered in general terms and by describing some military processes and the kinds of background military undertakings are set against.

Usha Prashar insisted, even interrupted to insist, that process was understood, she wanted content. Angels shrank back at the witness's expression; the witness was being goaded by uncomprehending intrusive impertinence. Ushar Prashar may or may not have distinguished between the personal political response proffered, and the continued iron discretion on a campaign that the witness explained is, as are all campaigns, not really divisible into 'phases' or 'aftermaths' but could be still ongoing.

This is an ill-conceived Inquiry, even an evilly conceived Inquiry. To add insult to injury, witnesses are expected to sign transcripts declaring that their answers have been open, fair, truthful - as if they are engaged in producing advertising copy not, as seemed the case this morning, being asked to contravene private and professional reserve in public.

Reasonably we can expect our politicians, even our now-politicised civil servants, to answer us or our representatives in any forum they, or we, set up. They answer to us. The armed forces do not. They answer to the state whose power is exercised by those constitutionally entitled and there are conventions - forums with standard and formal rules. When it comes to the military, this is a kangaroo Inquiry. And what is more, the politicians should stop hiding and effectively disavowing their responsibilities behind the soldier's proper reticence.

When the politicians are brought back Angels will return to taking pot shots at them.

The Longest Pause

The 'circle of silence' took other victims than accepted governance practice and propriety: it severely hampered the execution of the strategic, options-available planning that had been properly carried out at the Ministry of Defence. That politically-driven imperative, that Parliament and the public should be kept unaware of commitments to war, under the guise of preserving the integrity of attempts to gain more effective containment and inspection of Saddam's regime rather than war, left the soldiers (at every war stage - prewar, action itself, and properly administrating the victory) without time and without resources.

Lawrence Freedman - having listened to the reasons for prohibition on engaging the defence logistics organisation to obtain equipment, requisitioning of transport, funding for all aspects of the war from the Chief of Defence Staff during the Iraq war, Admiral Lord Boyce - asked The Question:

What other reasons prevented execution of the strategic planning?

The silence went on, and on. It was damning. At last the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, in finely wrought mandarin-speak, said that at no stage did the Treasury deny funding for this operation [empasis added, ed.] The Defence budget was too small.

Well, it would be wouldn't it? It wasn't set for waging an aggressive war despite such an act having been New Labour policy from long before the last Defence budget had been set.

There was failure to authorise the purchase of 'long lead items', heroic efforts were needed to move from strategic to executive planning: for 'silence' reasons; from unwillingness to tell the military which strategic option of the three prepared New Labour wanted; and, unforgiveably, from over all lack of Defence funding.

What were the military supposed to do? Go to war on a just-in-time basis?

"An Exemplary Role" Denied

Gordon Brown may have dug his own grave in ordering yet another Iraq War Inquiry. He may have thought to gain or regain voters from the vast desertion of the Labour party that resulted from New Labour's war on Iraq. He might have thought to damage Blair by the exposure of the circumstances of the Iraq war - which is certainly happening. He might have thought to load all vilification for this policy so destructive not just of the New Labour faction but of the whole Labour Movement onto Blair alone and distance the New Labour cabinet and, most importantly (for he is so very self-important), his own role in the attack upon Iraq. A major role, for as Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown was absolutely responsible for the funding of the United Kingdom's part in the Iraq war.

Brown is, perhaps, unaware enough not to grasp what Blair's reaction might be to the trashing of Tony. And what the reaction of other acolytes of New Labour is to the damage this Brown-instigated Inquiry is doing to the progressive governance post-democratic project, we can judge from Mandelson's response to the evidence given by the United Kingdom's then ambassador to Washington.

The witnesses on Tuesday (there were no hearings today)have already shifted the focus from Blair-alone-with-Bush, to ministerial briefings, circulated papers, the importance of other ministries (particularly the Foreign Office) in ensuring that the various stages of preparation for war, war itself, and the aftermath of war were legally sanctioned. And legality specifically requires the proper conduct of occupying forces both during and after the conflict. How unfortunate that the United States was displaying a to-the-victor-the-spoils standpoint, "a US blind spot", on the aftermath of Shock and Awe.

The United Kingdom attacked in the south of Iraq. Reasonably it was there that our standards should be applied - at a minimum international legal standards - to the conduct of the attack and the conduct of the occupation, for a state of war 'alters the legal landscape'.

"Did we have enough resources to play an exemplary role" in this, the witnesses were asked. We were told that the budget was insufficient - there were not enough people, not enough funding for the needs of the South. Half a million troops were needed to cope with the post-conflict situation in all of Iraq. The US sent enough to win a war but not to hold a victory.

While the UK government could have no influence on what was going on in the US zones, our troops sought to play an exemplary role but our government, our Exchequer acted so that:

"The resources were never provided for us to play an exemplary role in the South."

Brown must be brought before the Inquiry to explain why not.

The Near Abroad

The former ambassador to Jordan turned up today as a witness, flanked by an old trouper from the Foreign Office. Despite a few remarks about the Ottoman empire and the British Mandate, the Inquiry was moving on through modern time and we arrived in the immediate pre-attack phase, skipped the war itself, and considered the aftermath in some detail.

International law does not regard the act of war as sufficient unto itself, it has an integral before and after; legality and illegality rest upon intention, exhaustion of all other measures than war, an envisaged outcome better than the prewar condition, conduct of the war and behaviour towards non-combatants, and proper provision for post war civil administration and maintenance of civil order and human rights. All of that or war-makers are illegal at best or criminal by definition.

Surrounding states take a view as well. Jordan was unconcerned about Saddam's supposed WMD, or even about his conventional bellicosity; Jordan was worried about its oil supplies from Iraq and the reaction of Israel to the Intifada. We can see Jordan's point as could the former ambassador, and he properly communicated it to London. Saudi Arabia had no fear of WMD but a well-founded concern over the disruption of the entire Middle East and disturbances in its backyard if the United States and the United Kingdom made war on a large advanced capitalist country next door. Iran, not unnaturally, did feel concern about gas attacks and chemical WMD having suffered them only a decade earlier, but was more concerned along Saudi lines, weapons inspections having determined that all chemical WMD had been dismantled. Turkey wasn't letting the United States attack through Turkey unless it got the top third of Iraq (those Kurds) handed over, in which case it would be discourteous (and so self-denying) to refuse. Unfortunately attacking a sovereign state in order to dismember it is an international law no-no as well.

Iraq's post war status had to guarantee Iraqi borders, sovereignty, civil administration including law and order, all civil services (effective government, energy, water, sewage, health, education...) or international laws and standards back to 1907 would be violated. It was desperate for the United Kingdom to obtain United Nations resolutions governing any threat of, or actual attack upon, Iraq because otherwise rules going back a century would apply to UK acts. Blair might have been pressing for United Nations sanction as a Potemkin front while war preparations were completed but the rest of the UK administration wanted UN resolutions (in the plural) covering the exhaustion of all remedies other than war and covering post war administration or there was nothing between them and international regulation coverage that had responded to the Armenian massacre, the Holocaust, and even earlier acts of barbarity.

Meanwhile the US State Department was stripped of its leading role in post-war administration for which it had been conscientiously preparing should other factions of the US administration prevail and war be launched. The Foreign Office sent representatives to represent, to stand alongside the minimal, wholly US, Pentagon provision for post war coping. Rumsfeld and the visceral loathers of the United Nations were going to set up what was referred to as the Authority. The Pentagon had "taken few steps to involve their own colleagues" we were informed, never mind consult Blair's out of their loop government As the witness turned up in Washington armed with advice and plans for post conflict administration (essential remember to the legality of waging war at all), the only response he got, apart from low-level meetings, was "We hear you" (and ignore you). The UK had no voice in the US transfer of post war planning to Rumsfeld's Pentagon from the State Department, but still the UK planning to invade went on. By now the waging of war was clearly illegal in its lack of provision for all parts of any war undertaking. The UN finally passed resolution 1483 in May 2003 setting out post war necessary provisions, but after eight weeks of death and destruction (or should that be shock and awe?), had all ready killed hundred of thousands in Iraq. For the manner in which the duty of care for civilians and combatants in a post war scenario was met, recall the if you can bear to, the photographs of the tortured and the dying in US and British prison camps, and in looted Iraqi hospitals.

Years of support and help were needed if the models offered by the Australians from their administration of East Timor, or our own experiences in the Balkans were correct. The US was told that half a million troops were needed to ensure civil society after the assault phase was completed; officials from our FO who had been advised by a committee of Iraq and of war specialists that had been set up by Lawrence Freedman, (a member of the Inquiry) so intense was his anxiety about the immediate post fighting phase, returned to Washington repeatedly to press the point.

And through all this there was no collective cabinet discussion, just bi-laterals with Straw or Blair and briefing papers made available to ministers. Under a propaganda shield provided by suspect Iraqi exiles that all would be well the moment Saddam was deposed, the US refused to entertain any intervention or responsibility by the UN for coping with the devastation in post war Iraq. The prize of Iraq was theirs and theirs alone, not to be ceded to the UN.

As for the UK's near abroad - Europe - they had stated that any resolution sanctioning an attack upon Iraq would be vetoed. All that was left for the ordinary government of the UK , the government outside 'the circle of silence', was the certainty that UK commanders needed assurances from the law officers that an order to attack was lawful.