If you want to keep something secret…

…have David Heath state it quite clearly and explicitly, on the record, in the House of Commons.

Tonight, the BBC website is displaying the headline “Clegg says dissolution plans must avoid ‘limbo‘”, bringing us the extraordinary revelation that the Beeb’s (generally very good) Laura Kuenssberg detected earlier in the afternoon, that Nick Clegg might be retreating on the 55% rule by “fudging” a time-limit clause into it to prevent a “zombie government”.

Except it’s not really news at all.

A fortnight ago, David Heath stated, quite clearly and explicitly, on the record, in the House of Commons, that:

The legislation will be framed in such a way that, if no Government are formed within a particular time, Parliament stands dissolved.

He then went on to expand on this, saying:

Returning to where a vote of no confidence has taken place, it is extraordinary to suggest that there would be circumstances in which this House would refuse to vote for a Dissolution when it was clear that a Dissolution and a new general election were the only way forward. However, even given that, we are putting forward the automatic Dissolution proposal, as a safeguard that we will make part of the legislation, if no new Prime Minister can be appointed within a certain number of days. It seems to me that that is appropriate.

I know that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk has said that we cannot make any read-across to the Scottish legislation, but I am afraid that I do not entirely agree with him. One thing in the Scottish legislation is that although a two-thirds majority is required for an early Dissolution, there is a fall-back position, with which he will be familiar, which provides for automatic Dissolution if the First Minister resigns and the successor is not appointed within 28 days. That seems an entirely proper constitutional safeguard, and I am very happy to propose something of that kind for our legislation.

If you don’t believe me, you can see a complete video record of this, here. The latter quote can be found at timecode 1.09:20.

David Heath said these things on 25th May, the day of the Queen’s Speech, responding on behalf of the government to an adjournment debate specifically about the 55% proposal. And yet, half the media don’t seem to have noticed it. Until Nick Clegg says it at a convenient time of day, it hasn’t happened, as far as the media are concerned. And, it would seem, many in the Labour parliamentary party, who continued to pretend not to understand the proposal properly today in their interventions on Clegg’s speech. Quite rightly, Clegg called them out on grasping for “synthetic” reasons to disagree with fixed term parliaments. It is only when you pay attention to the ongoing debates on this topic, and see Labour MPs and others making the same crappy debating points again and again without ever seeming to listen to the answers, that it becomes obvious this is what they are doing.

Jenni Russell argued recently in a piece packed full of win, that:

This public and media culture isn’t inevitable. It’s just the one that we have developed, where raucous, capricious news machines justify any coverage, no matter how skewed, by pretending that it can all be defined as scrutiny. Too often … denunciation is preferred to understanding.

Sadly, this is the modus operandi of all coverage of political debate these days. “Scrutiny” seems to amount to the general principle that parties should be subjected to a general sort of “stress test” of having a set of stock criticisms flung at them. If they come out the other side still standing, they have been successfully “scrutinised”. If not, they have been found wanting. Nowhere in this process does any concept of objective truth seem to exist; the media long since gave up trying to find such a thing, in favour of maintaining a strict “balance” between government and opposition. The opposition could argue that black is white, and the media would still faithfully put this point to the government, five times a day on radio, TV and in print. They take their cue from MPs, so, even when Labour are being transparently opportunist and partisan, this will be the line of questioning which government ministers face.

Ultimately, we end up with an impoverished national conversation, because the media no longer bother to actually pay attention to what is going on and ask questions of their own. They are so used to being spoon-fed it all by the media operatives of the political parties or by leaks from MPs manoeuvring within their parties, it seems to completely pass them by when something is just said, openly, on the floor of the house. We in the Lib Dems have seen this before, incidentally, in coverage of party conference which seems to owe more to the briefings being given to journalists than to actual reporting of the proceedings of the conference.

I am increasingly struggling to shake off the sense that something has gone seriously wrong with coverage of politics in the UK.

Clegg Is Playing A Very Risky Game. Well.

Lets look back over the events of today:

- Talks with the Conservatives were going along OK, but some of their backbenchers were grumbling, and our party was evidently very iffy about signing up to anything which achieved no advance on electoral reform. There had been reports of some meetings going on between ourselves and the Labour party.

- Our own meeting of the parliamentary party made it clear to the negotiating team that they weren’t very happy with the offers on the table so far.

-David Laws gave a rather odd statement, in which he seemed not to say a whole lot.

-The BBC reported that there was some suggestion 10 Downing Street might be making a statement, and it was, somewhat bizarrely, suggested that whether they did or not depended on a careful analysis of what David Laws said.

-A statement was indeed forthcoming, with Gordon Brown announcing an opening of negotiations with Nick Clegg. Curiously enough, it was timed just before David Cameron was known to be meeting with his shadow cabinet and then later his backbenchers.

-Nick Clegg makes a statement, quite soon afterwards, confirming this.

-What had looked like a tricky meeting for David Cameron comes out with a result that he will concede a referendum on PR, which, presumably, a few hours ago was not even part of what he was going to try to sell to his MPs.

So, the conspiracy-theorist in me suspects that Labour and Clegg have managed to time an announcement at about the right time to focus the minds of the Conservatives when they were meeting, and screw a bit more out of them.

Good. It might seem cynical of us, but since we have such a crappy deal under an electoral system which is stacked against us, I think we can be forgiven for levering absolutely anything we can from a hung parliament when one comes along. We do, however, have to think about the perceptions of this. As Jennie points out, people will now assume we’re ditching talks with the Tories unless something comes forward pretty soon.

The game Clegg has been playing is striking a fine balance between screwing as much out of Cameron as he possibly can, and being seen to act in his own interest and not that of the country. I think he has strung this out about as long as he can afford to if he doesn’t want to consign the party to such unpopularity it might well not recover from it. I don’t intend that as a criticism, by the way; a hung parliament is such an unusual opportunity for us that he would have been wrong not to give the negotiations all he can.

The question is, has he now got something on the table that’s worth the headache? Lets assume, as most of the political world does, that a Lab-Lib deal is not really a viable option, for the simple reason that the seats don’t stack up. What this leaves us with is the conclusion that Clegg has to go with the Conservatives sooner or later. In today’s announcement from Brown, he has managed to flush out a better deal than was on the table before. He has to take this or leave it now, and if he leaves it, we remain out of power, with no referendum on AV, and minimal influence over Conservative policy.

But he hasn’t got PR, so has he got enough?

It’s a hard question, but I think, at the end of the day, that if he continues to play games with this tomorrow, we will go past the point where that balance between getting a good deal and being seen to pursue self-interest flips, and he starts to do massive damage to the party. I’m sure Nick knows this. So, if he carries on doing as well as I think he’s done so far, I predict that tomorrow will see the sealing of a deal for the only viable coalition on the table, the newly upgraded Con-LabLib coalition deal. If so, I would support it. Of course I want STV, but having got this far in the hung parliament talks we would be set back at the next general election, with little to show for it, if we don’t take it.

Nick Casts His Fairness Net Wider

In the first few days of the campaign, debate has centred around reducing the deficit and the Tories’ woolly pledge to partly reverse the NI rise. However, it’s become increasingly obvious that this argument is going to run and run, and in all likelihood isn’t going to reach any conclusions any time soon. Meanwhile, many voters are already said to be bored with the campaign.

So well done to Nick Clegg for moving on to some fresh ground. Today, I hear, we will be mostly talking about unfair bank charges.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg will today [Friday] launch the party’s manifesto for consumers.

The manifesto includes measures to ensure banks can’t charge customers unfairly for going over their limit or bouncing a cheque.

Sometimes it’s nice to talk about subjects a bit more off the beaten electioneers’ track. With all the hammering away at the four key pledges, I’d just about forgotten this was party policy. It’s a nice little surprise to be reunited with it!

And if my experience is anything to go by, this is one message that should really resonate with anyone who’s ever been slapped with a ludicrous charge for going £5 overdrawn because one payment has left your account before another enters it. When money is tight, often the banks end up making life more stressful than it should be, by whacking you about the head for every slip up. Not much fun, and certainly not fair.

The Wave In Pictures (including Simon Hughes’s Skisuit)

Yesterday I went, along with quite a few other Lib Dems from all over the place, on “The Wave“, the march to put pressure on the government in the run-up to Copenhagen. I took a few pictures of how the day looked from where I stood. Here are a few of the less crappily taken ones:

We all gather at the Lib Dem rallying point

Susan Kramer, Catherine Bearder, Steve Goddard and Nick Clegg speak to the gathered Lib Dems

We optimistically form ourselves into a march-y configuration, in the hope that this might cause the rest of the march to get moving. Alas, it is in vain.

Some excellently Lib Dem slogans to be found in the crowd: “Effective feed-in tarriffs”, “Tax Fossil Fuels at £100 per tonne of CO2″ and others. Well they amused me, anyway. Possibly because we’d got about 40 metres in an hour of “marching” by this point.

Aliens against climate change

Dogs against climate change

And, in case you wanted more of those brilliantly specific placards, here you go!

The march gets into full swing. One thing’s for sure: the Lib Dem section of the march had the best choons (until the battery died). Fact.

Pirates against climate change

Catherine Bearder MEP and Susan Kramer MP show off their moves, spurred on by aforementioned choons

And for an encore, Catherine and Susan bridge the divide between the two wings of the party.

A sea of Lib Dem .. er.. blue.

Simon Hughes sensibly resists calls for any unpleasant partisan shouting at the massed ranks of the Holborn & St. Pancras Labour Party (both of them) in front of us. Although a few chants of “Ed Fordham, Jo Shaw” slip in there somewhere…

Simon Hughes had dug out this ski-suit ensemble from the back of his wardrobe, apparently not seen since his student days. “Look out Simon, it’s the fashion police!”

Shrewsbury & Atcham PPC Charles West finds his way to the front of the mob.

At last, we march down Whitehall, waving to Gordon as we pass No. 10 (“bye bye Gordon!”), and the event culminates in a great band of blue surrounding parliament. Alas, my camera dies at this juncture.

I have to say, as serious an issue as climate change is, I also had a great time at the Wave. Without wanting to make overly party political points, I think it really is worth noting that not a single Tory was spotted by me or anyone I spoke to on this march. I suspect that has as much to do with protests just not being something Tories do as it does their non-existent commitment to the issue.

Anyway, our party was out in force, from an impressive Liberal Youth showing to many OAPs, from rank-and-file to MPs (spotted: David Howarth, Susan Kramer, Nick Clegg, Simon Hughes (hard to miss!), Baron Roberts, and I’m sure there were others who I’ve missed). I got the same feeling of “political family” I get from going to conference, but coupled with the sense that this was what our party does best: face outwards to the world, not inwards to ourselves.

Now lets hope that the Wave helped to put that little bit of extra pressure that makes the difference on the UK’s representatives in Copenhagen.

Mandelson: Make life harder for MI6 and Police

Peter Mandelson has hit the news today, his deliberations over internet piracy coming down firmly in the headline-grabbing authoritarian camp, with which Labour is as familiar as ever. “Three strikes and you’re out!” he cries.

Curiously, one thing that seems to have disappeared down the memory hole (or at least been soft-pedalled somewhat)  in today’s reporting of Mandelson’s decision is that it comes after several law-enforcement and intelligence organisations let it be known that they opposed the plans, on the grounds that the inevitable sharp increase in encrypted traffic on the internet would make their jobs more difficult. The Times tell us that…

Law enforcement groups, which include the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Metropolitan Police’s e-crime unit, believe that more encryption will increase the costs and workload for those attempting to monitor internet traffic. One official said: “It will make prosecution harder because it increases the workload significantly.”

A source involved in drafting the Bill said that the intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, had also voiced concerns about disconnection. “The spooks hate it,” the source said. “They think it is only going to make monitoring more difficult.”

The slightly more predictable bodies are also opposed to the plans, of course: ISPs, the Open Rights Group, the general public, etc. Just about nobody with any knowledge of this situation thinks this is a good idea.

It’s unpopular, it won’t work, and it will make it harder for various people to do their jobs. It’s a perfect Labour policy, in other words. I guess that’s why Mandelson seems determined to plow on regardless.

If you want to do something about this, the ORG have this excellent three point plan:

1) Please download a copy of our MP briefing here (PDF)
2) Contact your MP and ask to see him/her at his next surgery and ask them to back EDM 1997
3) Share any key points from the meeting via this form

There is probably a political space to be filled here. Nick Clegg has already given his opinion in this area, and it’s broadly on the sensible ground that most of the public inhabit on this issuue. Nick’s liberal instinct has left him well placed to make some of the running on this issue. Go for it, Nick!

h/t Slashdot

Take Back Power

Nick Clegg has today launched a rather exciting campaign, Take Back Power. I really do hope it takes off; it frankly pisses all over David Cameron’s pledge to “give serious consideration to” a few half-measures. Nick’s plan includes:

1. Commitment to accept Kelly expenses reform in full
2. Recall power for MPs suspended for misconduct
3. House of Lords reform
4. Party funding reform
5. Fixed term Parliaments
6. Enabling legislation for a referendum on AV+
7. Changes to House of Commons procedure to reduce executive power

You can sign the petition to support the campaign here.

OK, so I have my reservations about point 6, but compared to the other two party plans, this is by far and away the best chance to clean up our discredited system. Forget trying to use your vote in the european elections to register your anger with Westminster. Get involved with a campaign directly about the issue at hand. It might not be as immediately satisfying, but it’ll get more done.

Explaining Michael Martin’s Exit

Nick Clegg can feel today that he has played an important part in a real move forward for the House of Commons, with the departure of Michael Martin now forthcoming. However, listening to comments from the public on today’s Daily Politics and yesterday’s Five Live Drive, it’s also clear to me that the public doesn’t share the view of many in the commons that this is an important step.

To those who follow politics, the case against Michael Martin requires no explanation. But I suspect that in their rush to do something to clean up the system, many of our politicians have allowed themselves to forget that most members of the public don’t really know what Martin has done, and if nobody makes the case to them, it would be very easy for them to conclude that Martin is a scapegoat, as his apologists have been claiming.

The sense that the Speaker is a figurehead, and therefore ultimately responsible, is the most immediately obvious reason for his removal, but it’s the wrong one. It’s not a general principle that has led to his downfall, it is a very specific record of opposition to opening up the Commons to scrutiny. No, Michael Martin doesn’t bare complete responsibility for this, we in the Lib Dems ought to ask questions of our own representative on the Members Estimate Committee, and those MPs from the Labour and Tory parties who voted down reforms should reflect on their own role in all of this.

But that doesn’t mean the Speaker hasn’t shown himself, in the stances he has taken protecting MPs from too much scrutiny, and being primarily concerned with maintaining their privacy rather than in opening up Parliament, to be, as Nick Clegg put it at the weekend, a “dogged defender of the status quo”. Just ask any of those MPs who have been trying to get more of these details out in the open, like Norman Baker, how helpful Michael Martin has been. The Speaker made his attitudes clear in his outburst to Kate Hoey and Norman Baker a few days ago. Anyone with much political sense who watched that should be in no doubt that the Speaker is no scapegoat.

What needs to happen now, though, if the tide is not to turn against Nick Clegg, is that firstly we must continue to make and defend the case against Michael Martin, and not give way to the temptation to leave him alone now he’s going. Those who want to paint us as political opportunists won’t stop pushing their scapegoat line, so we shouldn’t either. Secondly, we need to be visibly moving forward in cleaning up other aspects of this problem, perhaps deselecting Ming Campbell and Richard Younger Ross (that’s up to their local parties, of course). I wonder what the outcome of the Federal Exec meeting was, after the mutterings about Chris Rennard….

Telegraph Expenses Story: Odd Priorities?

So, the Lib Dem day of reckoning is here, and nobody seems quite sure how to react. Jeremy Paxman has just delivered himself of the opinion that some of it is “pretty small beer”, Alix isn’t happy, Mark Littlewood thinks it’s all going to be OK, and we await Nick’s reaction.

What strikes me about the Telegraph story, though, is that they lead on Andrew George’s daughter using his flat, when they claim to have accusations to make against Nick Clegg, surely the highest profile target. Tucked a few paragraphs into the article is the following:

Nick Clegg, the party leader, claimed the maximum possible on his second home allowance and exceeded his budget by more than £100 at the same time as he was calling for the reform of the system. He has now promised to repay a phone bill that included calls to Colombia and Vietnam.

OK, that sounds embarrassing. So why wasn’t it the lead story? Something tells me that if the Telegraph had lead on this and therefore had to explain the details of these accusations in more detail, they wouldn’t quite add up to what they’re suggesting. I just don’t see why else they wouldn’t have lead with this.

I mean, come on, I’ve hardly even heard of Andrew George, and I’m a politics geek and party member. Why lead on this man’s expenses, unless you haven’t really found anything very exciting elsewhere?

PMQs: Does Brown Have A Point?

Watching PMQs today, you would have had to be almost comatose not to have picked up on Gordon Brown’s main point of rebuttal against the Tories: that they weren’t talking about the issues. Of course, it’s a convenient way for him not to answer awkward questions about his own leadership, but it has to be said, the man has a point. PMQs today had what seemed like more than its fair share of throughly pathetic, Westminster-village questions.

The Tory questions today included (and I paraphrase, here, but you get the idea):

• Cameron: You’re shit, and you know you are.
• Bullying in the Workplace! Arf!
• Look, an online petition for you to resign!
• How are you doing on the whole setting out your vision thing?
• Will Hazel Blears’s article be dealt with in “the usual way”? Titter.

But it certainly wasn’t all coming from the Tories. Labour MPs are often to be found offering fuckwittedly craven softballs to the leader, on the glorious achievements of Her Majesty’s Government. Today’s included:

• Rother Valley’s unemployment is not yet as bad as it was in 1997. So no worries, keep up the good work!
• Tell me all about your plans to exclude tips from the minimum wage.
• Let me tell you about my local football team, Brighton & Hove. They wunned at the weekend, you know…
• Swindon borough council is run by evil Tories. Would you like to join me in denouncing them?
• Please can you confirm that the £300m available for higher education building projects might include the plan in Blackpool to build, well, a higher education building? Just to clarify.
• Please will you give a meaningless, open ended commitment to do whatever you can to save jobs at General Motors factories?
• Please agree with me when I say that the government is brilliant, and creating 1000 jobs in Gloucester docks.
• Would you care to join me in attacking the Tories, who might cut police in Greater Manchester. ps. We’re building some new stuff in Bury, wooo!

There were, to be fair, some non-pathetic questions from the two biggest parties. From the Tories, we had:

• Will the Gurkhas vote be binding?
• Compensating the fund for Christie hospital for losses in Icelandic banks.

And Labour MPs offered:

• Will you secure a report to the house on the government’s actions to tackle child trafficking?
• Will you meet with me to discuss illegal gangmasters in the construction industry?
• What’s going on with the trouble at Stafford hospital?

And then we have today’s Lib Dem questions. Nick Clegg tackled Gordon on his big speech about children and education, in a similar manner to Cameron, only Nick had a point about an actual thing. Here’s the run-down of our questions:

• Clegg: Education and young people.
• Low returns on savings offered by bailed out banks.

That was it for us. Today also saw the DUP doing some special pleading for Northern Ireland, and Plaid Cymru asking about Trident.

So after all that, what conclusions can we draw? Which parties have made a good use of the opportunities that PMQs present? Here’s a little summary:

Labour: 11 questions, ~3 of them with much substance to them.
Conservatives: 12 questions (6 from Cameron), 2 of them with much substance to them.
Lib Dem: 3 questions (2 from Clegg), 3 of them with much substance to them.

That’s a success rate of

Lab: 27%
Con: 17%
Lib: 100%

I know the Lib Dems have an easy time under this kind of metric, because we don’t really have the number of questions to piss some of them away taking the piss. But really, can we not expect any better than that from the other parties? If Gordon Brown is serious about wanting better questions from the Tories, he could start by planting some slightly less pathetic questions for himself from his own side.

A Good Day for Democracy: Government Loses Gurkha Vote

Today’s big political news has just broken – that the government has been defeated in the vote for the first of two Lib Dem motions, which make up our opposition day debate. The motion called for an equal right of residence to be offered to all Gurkhas, rather than the unfair cut-off for those whose service ended pre-1997 which the government was doing all it could to preserve. I should firstly say a big congratulations to Chris Huhne, who opened the debate powerfully, and fended off a number of pathetically twatty interventions from the Labour benches with ease.

What is amazing about this is not the vote itself, so much as the fact that the government allowed itself to lose. Governments really don’t like to lose votes. Even on harmless things like David Heath’s Private Members’ Bill on Fuel Poverty, they would rather defeat good ideas, and then implement them later, perhaps in watered down form, as part of a wider piece of legislation. It completely undermines the way parliament and our democracy is supposed to work, but there you are.

So it was that before the debate, on the Daily Politics PMQs coverage, Nick Robinson sagely told us that it wasn’t a government defeat we should be watching for, but how much the government had to give away in order to keep its backbenchers on side. Look out, he advised us, for little slips of paper being passed to the minister towards the end of the debate if the whips don’t think they can win the vote as things stand, thus prompting further concessions.

As it happens, though, the Labour party is in such a state of complete incompetence/powerlessness that its whips clearly weren’t able to guage support sufficiently accurately. Perhaps they simply don’t have enough leverage over backbenchers who all expect to be out of a job soon anyway. In any case, the government, in not announcing a U-turn or something, has allowed itself to be humiliated. Not only that, but on an issue that has attracted an awful lot of public anger; Andrew Neil and Anita Anand said on today’s Daily Politics that they’d never seen such a large and unanimous email response on a subject before.

The other notable thing about this is the photo opportunity that it produced outside the House of Commons, where protesters were making their own opinions on the subject clear this afternoon. There, sandwiching Joanna Lumley, admittedly, were Nick Clegg and David Cameron, side by side. Some will inevitably read a lot, probably too much, into the body language of the two, and whether they looked to be getting on well. Personally, I think they were both genuinely happy to see the typical workings of parliament, where the government simply stifles the ability of MPs to act as the voice of the nation on such straightforward issues as this, subverted for once.

Global Peace & Unity: Closure?

Back in October last year, Nick Clegg attacked Policy Exchange for releasing a dodgy dossier on various speakers at the 2008 “Global Peace and Unity” event. At the time, I looked at the dossier and offered my opinion on it, but the general consensus that came out of the comments thread brouhaha on LDV was that we should reserve judgment on Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes’s decision to attend the event until we could see what they had to say.

Well, that day has come, the videos of speeches at the event are here.

Nick’s speech:

Simon’s speech:

Currently, I’m sat in Starbucks, Virgin Media having continued to not supply me with internet access for two weeks now. Consequently, I haven’t been able to actually watch the videos with the sound turned up myself yet, so I will have to reserve judgement.

Of course, the really interesting thing might also be to find the speeches of the controversial speakers to whom Nick and Simon might have been lending credibility by appearing on a common platform with them. If you can be arsed to do so, go here or here. Personally, I have more important things to do with the 18 mins of laptop battery left to me!

Policy Exchange on GP&U, and Nick Clegg: A Fisking

Lib Dem Voice has already noted Nick Clegg’s attack on Policy Exchange’s document (.doc) profiling certain speakers and exhibitors at this year’s Global Peace and Unity event. The discussion on LDV included several people suggesting that Policy Exchange might have a point, so I thought I’d have a look into this. To my mind there are several questions here that should not be confused, so I will deal with them separately.

1. Are Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes lending credibility to cranks by going to this event?

Well, only if they are equally endorsing the views of Tony Benn, Ian Blair, Dominic Grieve, Tony McNulty and a host of others by doing so.

Here’s a list of the attendees Policy Exchange have issues with:

Director:
Mohamed Ali Harrath

Speakers:
Sheikh Yusuf Estes
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi
Sheikh Muhammad Alshareef
Rt Rev Riah Abu El-Assal
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss
Mohammad Ijaz ul Haq
Ebrahim Rasool
William Rodriguez

Here’s a list of the people they don’t mention who are also speaking:

Yusuf Islam
Abdul Wahid Pedersen
Sheikh Tawfique Chowdhury
Jermaine Jackson
Reverend Jesse Jackson
Tony McNulty MP
Jack Straw
Simon Hughes MP
Nick Clegg
Sir Ian Blair
William Ernest “Bill” Rammell
Moazzam Begg
Sir Iqbal Sacranie OBE
Lord Sheikh
Shahid Malik MP
Dominic Grieve MP
Ahmed Zakayev
Zareen Roohi Ahmed
Salma Yaqoob
Tony Benn
John Rees
Lord Nazir Ahmed
Sadiq Khan
Stephen Timms
Richard Barnes
Imran Khan
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari

Obviously, many on the latter list are also muslims, but Policy Exchange aren’t lauding the event for encouraging dialogue with moderate Islam, they are trying to pick out those people with allegedly reprehensible views. This is legitimate, certainly, but somewhat divisive and negative of them. More importantly, the presence of other politicians at the event, including from Labour, Conservative and Respect, serves usefully to underline the point that in no way do speakers at this event think they are endorsing the views of other speakers at the event, any more than MPs who speak in the House of Commons are endorsing the views of everyone else present in the chamber at the time.

2. If we believe in free speech, do we have a responsibility to challenge people saying bad things?

I mention this only because Geoffrey Payne seems to think we do:

Well I do not see the point in allowing free speech and then not taking the opportunity to challenge the opinions you disagree with. [ie. boycotting the event]
Free speech allows debate, but you do not want a debate, and so you will leave these opinions to go unchallenged. How is that useful to anyone?

I have to say, one reading of the above seems a bit odd. Surely we cannot, as liberals, be expected to be responsible for rebutting all things which we disagree with that are ever said, wherever they are said, just because we are in favour of people’s right to say them?

However, there is rather more of a case that since Nick (and Simon) are there, they do indeed have a responsibility to speak up against views they disagree with. There doesn’t seem to be much point in their being there if they don’t.

3. Is Nick right to criticise the dossier Policy Exchange have produced?

Well, the specific criticism he makes is that the dossier “seeks to raise alarm over a number of the speakers planning to attend the conference. The accuracy of the allegations is variable, with a notable lack of evidence to support many of the claims.”

Of those assertions for which sources are quoted in the footnotes, the sources are as follows:

Probably Reliable:

• Companies House documents
• Interpol
• The Guardian
• The BBC
• South African Broadcasting Corporation News
• Muslim Council of Britain
• The Washington Post
• A Youtube video of Sheikh Yasir Qadhi speaking for himself
• The Houston Chronicle
• The BBC
• Court Documents from Pennsylvania

Not sufficiently well known to me that I’d consider them an authority, but nothing I can find wrong with them:

• Pakistan’s “Daily Times”
• ComeandSee.com (a christian website)
• An article on Sunnah Online (a muslim website)

Dubious:

• Insight Magazine (a controversy over the specific article cited is noted on Wikipedia; this is the citation of evidence from SANE to which Nick refers. Policy Exchange’s quote from David Gaubatz takes on a rather different sense when you bear in mind that SANE believe Sharia is treasonous)
• The Investigative Project on Terrorism (whose founder showed some prescience of the threat from Osama bin Laden, but has not gone without criticism, and looks to be something of an alarmist)
• Frontpage Magazine (edited by git-wizard David Horowitz)
• Open letter printed on Al Manar TV‘s website (Al Manar being a Lebanese Hezbollah mouthpiece likely to present things in a way that reflects well on Hezbollah)

So Nick seems to be on reasonable ground to point out that some of the people cited are equally biased as the people they are quoted in criticism of, but that’s by no means true of all of them. Now, lets look properly at the claims themselves. All of Policy Exchange’s dossier is quoted below, in this colour. Anyone else’s material will not be coloured, to make it easier not to get confused.

Director

According to Companies House, the director of Global Peace and Unity PLC is Mohamed Ali Harrath. Mr. Harrath is also the CEO of Islam Channel. He is a Tunisian national for whom there is currently a red notice on the Interpol website. According to the notice, the Tunisian Government has issued an arrest warrant for offences including: counterfeiting, forgery, crimes involving the use of weapons and explosives and terrorism. His date of birth and nationality provided in the red notice match the details given by Companies House. It must be noted however that the Interpol red notice is not an arrest warrant, but indicates that the Tunisian Government has requested he return to the country to face charges.

Fair enough. Director of the company in charge seems to have a dodgy past, at least according to the Tunisian government.

Sheikh Muhammad Alshareef

Mr. Alshareef is the Canadian born founder of the Al Maghrib Institute and a graduate of the University of Medinah. He graduated in 1999 with a degree in Sharia.
He has written an article entitled Why the Jews Were Cursed, in which he explains that Allah has punished the Jews because of the way in which they responded to his blessings. He concludes by saying that Muslims “should not take them (the Jews) as our close allies…should not imitate them…(and) a Muslimah may never marry a Jewish or Christian man that remains in his beliefs.”

Well, yes, but the article in question appears to be more or less a survey of all mentions of Jews in the Quran, and interestingly, Policy Exchange don’t quote the following from straight after the bit that they do quote:

Is all this a death sentence on the Jews? Nay, Allâh’s infinite Mercy has left the gate open for ANYONE who wishes to come back to him.

[And if only the People of the Scripture had believed and feared Allâh, We would have removed from them their misdeeds and admitted them to joyful Gardens] – Ma’idah 5/65

So we are left with an impression of Muhammad Alshareef as maybe more bigoted than he is. Whilst the views they quote from him are unpleasant, that is in the nature of religion and in particular the notoriously cherry-pickable Quran. I don’t see a reason to single out Alshareef over this.

Mohammad Ijaz ul-Haq

Mr. ul-Haq is the son of former Pakistani president Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. He is a Pakistani MP and former Federal Minister for Religious Affairs.

As such one might argue that this alone qualifies him to be at the conference. No matter what awful views they might attribute to him, he is a valid choice to invite to an event aimed at promoting useful dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims from around the world, in the interests of peace.

In June 2007, after Salman Rushdie was awarded a Knighthood, Mr ul-Haq, who was at the time Religious Affairs Minister, suggested this was a justification for Muslims to carry out suicide bombings. He was reported by a number of UK newspapers to have said: “This is an occasion for the 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision…The west is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologises and withdraws the ‘sir’ title.”

One might almost suspect that this controversial pronouncement was one of the reasons he was considered an interesting choice to invite to the event. There is absolutely no point inviting people with views we can all agree with to an event to promote dialogue and understanding. By definition, there has to be something to understand and reach accomodations over. Bridging (somehow) the gap between the more fundamentalist demands of Islam and the tenets of liberal democracy (including freedom of speech) are central to promoting peace. No?

According to online Pakistani news portal, The Daily Times – translating an article in an Urdu newspaper called Daily Jang – during a controversy over the sexual abuse of children by ulema (Islamic scholars) at Islamic seminaries in Pakistan, Mr ul-Haq urged that the reporting of such incidents should be concealed so as not to blemish the reputation of the scholars.

Well, again, this just emphasizes that this is a man who is not from the liberal democratic tradition, and who sees his role as to some extent a religious one. The Catholic church has arguably spent years keeping similar issues quiet for the same reasons. That doesn’t make either right, but lets not get ahead of ourselves in our condemnation of other people’s extremists.

Rt Reverend Riah Abu El-Assal

Until 2007 Mr. El Assal was the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem.

Again, as much as we might disagree with his views, this somewhat justifies his invitation in and of itself.

According to a Christian website based in Nazareth called Come and See, Mr. El Assal gave a lecture in Ramallah in February 2003 where he said: “Greetings of appreciation to all martyrs that were killed on the Land of Palestine.” He also added that all martyrs receive eternal life and they “live in the Kingdom of Heaven”. In order to support his statement he quoted the following Koranic verse: “Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord”. When he was questioned about these remarks during an August 2006 BBC Hardtalk interview, he did not deny the comments attributed to him by Come and See, though he did claim that he was referring to “worldwide martyrs” and not Palestinians.

As bizarre as the quoting of Koranic verse by an Anglican minister seems, none of this seems all that outlandish to me. We don’t know what he means by “martyrs” without more context – he may not mean suicide bombers, which is what we are supposed to assume. We oughtn’t to forget, of course, that Christianity has its own hall of fame of martyrs. I might be wrong, but I suspect in the eyes of Policy Exchange, Ijaz-ul-Haq’s real crime is failure to fall in line slavishly behind Israel.

Ebrahim Rasool

Mr. Rasool is a member of the South African ANC party and a former Premier of the Western Cape Province.

In May 2007, Mr. Rasool, in his capacity as Premier of the Western Cape Province, received a Hamas delegation to South Africa for discussions.

In June 2007 he addressed the MCB, and according to the MCB press release: “He commended the MCB for serving as a ‘point of coherence’, ‘a point of articulation’ and a ‘point of focus’ for British Muslims and their religious identity. He noted that Government cannot pick and choose with whom it seeks to speak to – the only credible dialogue will be with the institution that represents the community and has its trust.”

Errr… and? I don’t even see what it is this guy is supposed to have done wrong, other than talking to Hamas. If Policy Exchange want to take the McCain-Palin side of the “talking to people we don’t like” argument, fine, but I don’t agree with them on that, so to me this seems a rather pathetic attack.

Sheikh Yusuf Estes

Sheikh Estes is a convert to Islam and director of the Islamic Mission Foundation International in the United States.

In an October 2006 Washington Post article, the author Asra Q. Nomani reports that she heard an audio sermon by Estes where he advises men on how to deal with disobedient wives:

First, “tell them.” Second, “leave the bed.” Finally: “Roll up a newspaper and give her a crack. Or take a yardstick, something like this, and you can hit.”

Ms. Nomani then writes that she contacted Mr. Estes to ask him for a clarification of his position and he said he was attempting to limit how and when men hit their wives.

OK, I’ll give them this one, he doesn’t seem like a very nice person, and if he’s based in the US he doesn’t even have the cultural relativist defense, he has every opportunity to know better. I would just add, however, that the Quran is arguably on his side (ridiculously interpretable book that it is), and that by the sound of Nomani’s article, this view is pretty widespread in Islam, even in the US, so again, the central point that you have to talk to the people you disagree with if you aren’t wasting your time.

Sheikh Yasir Qadhi

Sheikh Qadhi is an instructor at the Al-Maghrib Institute and the Al Kauthar Institute.

In a March 2008 lecture on the Islam Channel he refers to the original Channel 4 Undercover Mosque Programme. In this talk he claims that the Wahhabi cult is a group invented by non Muslims in order to “divide and conquer” the Muslims. He also states that “we are loyal to our countries insofar as it does not conflict with our religion of Islam”, and that homosexuality is an “aberration against God.”

In the Houston Chronicle, Qadhi has mentioned that he is on the US Department of Homeland Security terrorist watch list.

Yes, he does. Specifically, he says:

“The main problem the Muslim community has … is the presumption of guilt,” said Yasir Qadhi, a Houston imam and a doctoral candidate at Yale University. “It is the singling out of people just because of their looks or their identity.”

Muslims are routinely detained and questioned at airports and other ports of entry, he said. Qadhi also protested the denial of visas to imams and other religious leaders who are invited to this country to speak.

Sutherland said his office was empowered to investigate any complaints over discrimination and urged Muslims to report any incidents and problems.

Qadhi said he was detained for five hours, along with his wife and three small children, about four months ago when he drove back from Canada through Niagara Falls. He said he is routinely detained whenever he enters the country.

Qadhi said his name is on a terrorist watch list. He said he has no idea how he got on the list.

Anyway, back to Policy Exchange:

According to David Horowitz’s Frontpage magazine, during a 2006 lecture on the Koran’s Surah Yusuf, Mr. Qadhi denies that Hitler’s aim was the genocide of the Jewish people:

“All of these Polish Jews which Hitler was supposedly trying to exterminate, that’s another point, by the way, Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.”

As I’ve already mentioned, I’m going to take Frontpage with a pinch of salt for now. I don’t have any reason to specifically disbelieve this, though, so I’ll give Policy Exchange that this guy probably isn’t very nice either.

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss

Rabbi Weiss is an activist and spokesman for Neturei Karta International, an anti-Zionist group of orthodox Haredi Jews. This group is known to actively support both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Meaning what, exactly? No source quoted.

In March 2008 Rabbi Weiss was a co-signatory to a Neturei Karta open letter to Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah. Much of the letter praises Nasrallah and his work:

We now turn to Your Excellency, Sayyed Nasrallah ever so humbly, and ask you to accept our words and to convey these words with the following message to the citizens of Lebanon and to the Palestinian people in refugee camps in your country.
May we reiterate that we speak to you as the voice and messengers of true Jewry — the Jewish people, true to the Almighty’s Torah, from around the world.

Although we are limited in the means of expressing our deepest and true feelings, by the barriers of words, nevertheless, the Jewish people humbly offer to you and all of Lebanon, Gaza and the entire Palestine, a few words, to attempt to convey our support, deepest sorrow and heartfelt sympathy that we all feel for you, in this present tragic and traumatic time.

Once again may we state it would be only proper and fitting, that we personally write to and address each and everyone who has fallen victim of the Zionist state of “Israel”. Unfortunately and how tragic, the list of victims is daunting.
May our few and humble words be a message of consolation, friendship, loyalty and support to you, the people of Lebanon, and to the people of Gaza and the entire Palestine.

Doesn’t look all that supportive of Nasrallah to me. Yes, they express support for “the citizens of Lebanon and to the Palestinian people in refugee camps in your country”, and later, “you, the people of Lebanon, and to the people of Gaza and the entire Palestine”, but they say nothing in the quoted section of the letter in support of Hezbollah’s actions. It’s a pretty standard anti-zionist statement of regret about the grievances that people in Lebanon and the occupied territories have towards Israel, which they are understandably keen to separate from Judaism per se. Nothing especially reprehensible on display here, other than opposition to the state of Israel (NB. Not to the people who live there).

Naturei Karta also attended a December 2006 conference in Iran informally known as the ‘Holocaust denial’ conference, which questions the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Though they do not deny the Holocaust, the group believe that it was and still is being used by Jewish people as “tool of commercial, military and media power”.

As Jews, they have some right to say this, and they are free to go where they want and talk to who they want.

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik

Imam Johari Abdul Malik is the Director of Outreach at the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Centre in Virginia, USA.

There is a recording of Imam Abdul-Malik giving a sermon at the Dar al Hijrah in 2004, in this lecture he spoke of how Islam shall become the primary religion in the United States:

“People even under the pressures that you and I know about, the deen of Islam is growing because people see even within all of this struggle it is better to be a Muslim under these conditions than to be a kaffir under any conditions… before Allah closes our eyes for the last time you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America-that’s where we are now – to being the first religion in America.

Um… this seems like a pretty standard aspiration from any evangelical religion. Why are we supposed to think this makes him an extremist?

William Rodriguez

Mr. Rodriguez was a janitor at the World Trade Centre and survived the 9/11 attack on the North Tower.

In October 2004 he filed charges against 156 parties including: The President of the United States, The Vice President, The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), claiming their complicity in the 9/11 attacks. Among his allegations were that the Twin Towers were brought down through the use of controlled explosions, and the Pentagon was in fact struck by a missile and not by American Airlines flight 77.

Uh-huh. A 9/11 truther. Well, yes, it is disappointing that such a person is invited to this event, when there are all sorts of 9/11 survivors they could have invited if they wanted one. But I’m not convinced this is evidence that this man is a dangerous extremist. There are any number of slightly naive teenage rebels who are convinced of the same arguments, widely available from websites and films like Loose Change. People can think what they want. In this case, they’d be wrong. But it’s a good thing that Rodriguez tried to bring the issue to wider attention in a forum where evidence could be properly presented etc., and rather more laudable than just spreading silly rumours online, claiming anyone who argues with you is obviously drinking the Kool-Aid.

I can’t be arsed to look at stallholders, I’m sure that out of a whole bunch of stallholders, Policy Exchange will have managed to dig up two dodgy ones. Big whoop.

So, to sum up:

Director:
Mohamed Ali Harrath – criminal record in Tunisia, seems fair enough.

Speakers:

• Sheikh Yusuf Estes – wife beater
• Sheikh Yasir Qadhi – David Horowitz says he’s a holocaust denier, and he thinks Channel 4 are trying to “divide and conquer” Islam
• Sheikh Muhammad Alshareef – provides a roundup of what the Quran says about Jews
• Imam Johari Abdul-Malik – wants to convert people
• Rt Rev Riah Abu El-Assal – quotes a Quran verse about “martyrs”, whatever he might have meant by that
• Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss – anti-Zionist
• Mohammad Ijaz ul Haq – supports bombers over Rushdie award and wanted to cover up child abuse
• Ebrahim Rasool – spoke to Hamas
• William Rodriguez – 9/11 truther

So, it’s fair to say that there is a mixture of some fairly unsavoury and some relatively innocent people in Policy Exchange’s list. They are right to say that some of them hold some pretty unpleasant views, but in other cases their dossier is rather slippery and unfounded.

Anyway, are Nick’s criticisms justified? Well, we’ve got this far, so let’s just go a bit further, and take his criticisms bit by bit:

I am writing to ask you to retract an offensive dossier that Policy Exchange has been privately circulating condemning the Global Peace & Unity Event scheduled for the coming weekend in London.

This is the fourth year of this conference. It will be attended by 30,000 people and is geared towards promoting harmony and dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The Policy Exchange briefing I have seen seeks to raise alarm over a number of the speakers planning to attend the conference. The accuracy of the allegations is variable, with a notable lack of evidence to support many of the claims.

Maybe overstating his case a bit here, but some justification for this. What he also could have mentioned is that some of the “evidence” is quoted as if it amounts to rather more than it actually does, which is a subtler accusation, so maybe he was wise to steer clear of it.

In particular I was appalled to see ‘evidence’ quoted from the Society for American National Existence, an organisation which seeks to make the practice of Islam illegal, punishable by 20 years in prison. I need hardly point out how illogical it is to attempt to criticise one set of extreme views by citing another.

Fair enough, with the elaboration that by “the practice of Islam”, SANE mean signing up to Sharia law in its totality, a divisive but not unreasonable position.

My concern is not limited to the facts in the document, however. Your attempt to raise a boycott of this event by privately briefing against it is bizarre, and underhand behaviour for a think-tank supposedly interested in open public debate. The information you are disseminating is extremely narrow in focus and as a result tars with the brush of extremism the tens of thousands of Muslims who will be in attendance.

Yes, and not only this, but it also attempts to tar the majority of speakers at the event, whose existence Policy Exchange doesn’t even let on.

Of course, no-one should condone violence or bigotry. But neither must we allow the repugnant acts of a minority of dangerous individuals to be a reason to deny the one million British Muslims – and indeed all other members of British society – the right to meet together to celebrate faith and discuss the importance of peace. The sad truth is you play into the hands of the men you seek to discredit, driving further the alienation of the majority of Muslims who see themselves mischaracterised everywhere they turn as would-be terrorists.

That a think-tank professing to promote ‘a free society based on strong communities [and] personal freedom’ would act to undermine tolerance across our society worries me greatly.

The space for debate is currently filled with few voices, a fact that extremists capitalise on. If we are to truly achieve a society in which all peaceful members are free and equal, that space must be filled with reasoned and principled debate. That is why I shall be speaking at the conference, not hiding from open discussion. We must challenge publicly the ideas of those who propagate terrorism and instead promote the cause of peace and freedom in Britain for all citizens.

All very true, and I can only say that for Nick to follow through on this, he does indeed have to challenge the few genuinely objectionable views that Policy Exchange highlight.

I therefore urge you to withdraw this briefing and to call off any plans to circulate it further. I also suggest that if you want to make a positive contribution to this debate that you step out of the shadows and make yourself heard.

Eminently fair.

So, all in all, I’m not quite sure what the LDV commenters are up in arms about. Yes, if I was Nick I might have reworded this slightly, but in its general thrust, the letter is entirely correct.

I will finish, if I may, with a reiteration of this point: To urge a boycott of an event just because there are people with dodgy views at it is bonkers. What Policy Exchange are arguing here is that we shouldn’t talk to people with views we disagree with. They are just opposed to the whole idea of the event, but they choose to hide this in favour of attacking some of the specific people who happen to have been invited. This is a cowardly way to make an argument. They would have done much better to make a proper case for no-platforming (which is what they are arguing for, really), and to have made it publicly. That they didn’t is underhanded of them, and Clegg is quite right to have called them out on it. Meanwhile, by going to this event, Clegg and Hughes (and various other MPs) are making an explicit stand against no-platforming. Good for them.

Make It Happen: A Note of Caution

The Lib Dem blogosphere is buzzing with excitement about Make It Happen (pdf), which has indeed attracted some press reaction to it, as Stephen discusses. To this I just want to add my own paranoia. Here goes…

Lib Dem bashers frequently claim that we try to out-Tory the Tories in Tory seats, and that we try to out-Labour Labour in Labour seats (thus giving away their own belief in the natural order of things, and the specific tenet that there are only such things as Tory Voters and Labour Voters, “really, you know, deep down…”). Which is one of those analyses that’s so half arsed, it’s a good job nobody spends too much time thinking about it, or it’d fall apart. Because a moment’s thought reveals that the way to take a seat from a Tory is to bleed them of a few voters (if they happen to actually have more than 50% of the vote), and then persuade Labour voters, Green voters, etc. that to get rid of the Tory, they could do worse than vote for you. Now, I hate that idea, to be honest, but needs must as the Devil’s Very Own Voting System drives.

FPTP requires that you build a coalition. Every government which has gotten itself elected successfully has understood this. Every now and then, you can build a groundswell around a genuine point of ideology (eg. Thatcher?), but mostly you win by being moderate and sounding competent. The question for Nick Clegg here is, is this a time when a genuine feeling in favour of low tax is going to be big enough to drive voters his way. And, two years out from an election, there’s no point in me or anyone else making predictions about that.

But the point for Dave Cameron on this is that he long ago committed himself to the de-toxifying of the Tory brand, and he knows he couldn’t say what Nick has anyway, for exactly that reason. So if I was a Tory who subscribes to the idea that the Tories will win the next election on moderate-ness, not on hard Toryness – like, say, Iain Dale – then what would I try and do right now? I might start shouting long and hard about how Nick Clegg is leading his party into “a radical tax-cutting platform [that] has left the other two parties gasping”. I would say that it “marks the triumph of the so-called “Orange Booker” tendency”, and I might write something like:

He hasn’t just pledged a reduction in taxes; he has promised a cut in public spending, too. Admittedly, it is only £20 billion, a mere three per cent of total government spending, but it’s a start. And it’s a damn sight more than any other politician has had the guts to do.

The bonus point of selling the idea that the Lib Dems have now become the party of the government spending cut enthusiast (which Iain tries to do whilst not quite sounding like he’s actually saying he’s agreeing with us), is that part two of that narrative is to be used in debates:

“The Lib Dems now want to cut taxes, before they wanted to raise them. YOU CAN’T TRUST THEM!”

The amateurs are trying to jump to this step before they’ve done the groundwork of establishing that we are now a party of rabid taxcutters. But the professionals are letting this sink in for now, and just chipping in with their usual chippy bollocks about “yes, well, the Lib Dems can say what they like, etc….”

Can we not run headlong towards the idea that we’re now the party of a radical tax-cutting agenda unless we really are? Because as far as I’m aware, conference hasn’t passed anything other than the policy of cutting income tax at the low end so we can introduce LIT and implement the Great Green Tax Shift.

I hate to be a buzzkill and that, and I understand the imperative to get media coverage, I’m sure it’ll be good for the poll numbers and thereby for Nick’s narrative, and I’m not knocking that, really I’m not. But let’s not get carried away with all the media and start letting people put words in our mouths.

The Vexed Question of Green Car Taxation

Nick Clegg has got a piece up on CiF today. It’s nothing very new to anyone who pays attention to Nick’s every utterance, as will be true of many Lib Dem bloggers. What I found notable about it was the comments thread it has sparked. Like all dicussion of this issue, it is full of people arguing for some system or other, who talk past each another, not to each other.

What I mean by this is that they proudly proclaim the benefits of the tax instrument they favour and the shortcomings of the those proposed by others, but they don’t address the shortcomings that others raise about their own preferred tax instrument.

Essentially, what we have on offer here are three alternative forms of taxation, all imperfect:

1. Vehicle Excise Duty – “we tax people on the car they own”

Pros:
-Allows the annual check on insurance and MOT to be bundled in with its administration; these things are Good Ideas for other, obvious, non-environmental reasons.
-Allows us to incentivise people to buy fuel efficient cars.

Cons:
-Penalises the owner of a car for simply having it, not for using it, which is the polluting part.
-Doesn’t distinguish between people’s reasons for owning a car. Those who need a car because they live in a rural area pay as much as those who live on a perfectly usable bus route for owning the same car.

2. Fuel Duty – “we tax the petrol”

Pros:
-Is the best green tax; it allows us to straightforwardly penalise the polluter in proportion to the amount of fossil fuel they burn.

Cons:
-Doesn’t allow us to make value judgments on the “worth” of the journey being made. Someone who lives in a rural area and has little choice but to use their car if they want to get into town to do some shopping pays just as much as someone who lives five minutes’ walk from the newsagents but is too lazy to walk there to buy a paper (say).

3. Road User Charging – “we charge people for each journey they make” (includes congestion charges, motorway charges, etc.)

Pros:
-Allows more specific targeting of “the wrong sort of journey” – as long as we can all agree on what that is.

Cons:
-May involve the use of some fairly intrusive technology if we want to do anything more clever than making motorways into toll roads (for instance).

The only thing we know for certain about this choice is that, unless we want to see some other taxes go up significantly, we have to choose one of them, and it is right that we do so, because discouraging car use is an important part of any effort to meet our CO₂ reduction targets. So which way should we as a country jump? Nick Clegg is making a pitch in his piece for option 3, Road User Charging:

So the real solution we should be focusing on to cut driving is to abolish VED altogether and cut fuel tax, replacing them with revenue-neutral road user charging on motorways and trunk roads only.

But he doesn’t even mention the concerns people have about Road User Charging in his piece (the intrusive road use tracking that may be involved). By neglecting to pre-emptively rebut this point, he makes the fundamental error of leaving space for a glib response in a CiF piece – give these people an inch… But never mind that, reforming CiFers is better done by those with the stamina for endless perseverance in the face of fuckwittery, such as Citizen Alix.

Now, we over here in the more civilised domain of Lib Dem Blogs may have read James Graham’s post exploring why RUC needn’t be as intrusive as some suggest, but why there’s plenty of other reasons to dislike it as a policy:

My main objections are threefold: it would take bloody ages to introduce, it is an IT disaster waiting to happen and it falls foul of the unintended consequences law.

By that last comment, by the way, James means that it doesn’t penalise “60-something retirees living the life of Riley out in the sticks and driving a Mercedes”.

And that’s the problem with this whole argument, really: everyone can think of some unutterable git who they would like to punish for living in the wrong place, or having the wrong job or the wrong lifestyle, or making the wrong choices, who gets off lightly under a given policy. Or if they can’t manage that, they can think of some poor unfortunate who is being driven out of house and home by being taxed as highly as they would be under said policy.

Meanwhile, the problem I have with Nick’s suggestion is the idea that motorway journeys around the country, when one could go by train, are in any way a more pernicious form of pollution than journeys into town from home, when one could take the bus. If we want to make a serious dent in greenhouse emissions, surely we need to tackle both? The journeys that can justifiably be discouraged are those with truly viable public transport alternatives, regardless of the distance of the journey. So what constitutes a viable alternative?

To me, there is a distinction to be made between a journey by car whenever you feel like it, and a journey by bus or train that you have to plan in advance because they only run every so often. What makes the London tube such a great public transport system (at least compared to the rest of the country) is that it runs regularly enough (most of the time) that you don’t bother to plan a time in advance, you just walk into a station and get the next train to where you want to go. To me, public transport has to have that kind of convenience before it can be considered a truly comparable alternative, as well as simply not taking an inordinately longer time to travel. Of course, exactly how regular something needs to be before you consider it viable will vary from person to person, so this is not the reliable deciding factor it might look like.

And of course, we still want to gently suggest to people that they might take public transport even when it does notably inconvenience them. After all, it would reduce emissions if people took a bus from their suburban home into town which runs every half an hour, even if that is a pain in the arse.

Once we get into the business of deciding how worthwhile or defensible everyone’s decisions to take a car are, we run the risk of an overbearing state intrusion to make the whole system workable. If we don’t want to go down that route, then we are going to end up with a piecemeal system of toll plazas on motorways and congestion zones in town centres, with unintended consequences of encouraging people to drive on B roads and thus increase their emissions.

So can we please stop these silly games? Can we instead focus the argument on what it is we are trying to achieve here? In the end, we are trying to achieve a greener Britain. To do this, we must discourage all usage of fossil fuels. Ultimately, the best way to do that is to make it really jolly expensive to burn fossil fuels. Full stop. Then we can start having an argument about giving certain people special dispensation if we want: hauliers, for instance, or people who live in rural areas (though I’m with James on that one; unless you’re a farmer, you don’t have to live out in the middle of nowhere, and anyone choosing to do so knew that they stood to be dependent on car travel when they bought the house. It’s swings and roundabouts; they get the lower house prices, they can also take the costs of driving about the place.) Ultimately, the best way to lower emissions is for the cost of polluting to be reflected in the price of the journey.

So my conclusions here are as follows:

- A VED regime which simply covers the cost of administration of checks that each car is insured and has passed its MOT.

- A fairly punitive fuel duty, to be poured into increasing bus services and making train tickets cheaper.

- Renationalise the railways! Maybe unpopular with the liberal wing of the party, but frankly, the record of the private railway franchises in Britain doesn’t seem great as far as ticket prices are concerned. We now subsidise the railways around four times as much as we did under British Rail, and all we have to show for it is rocketing ticket prices despite services which are in more demand than ever.

Alright then, tell me why I’m wrong!

UPDATED: Telegraph – Clegg Would Offer Tories Supply & Confidence

UPDATE: Paul Walter is reporting that he has it on good authority this is bollocks planted by the Tories. Interesting. I had noticed with some curiosity that none of the other MSM sources had picked up the story (other than the Mirror, who are forever wailing that we’re a bunch of closet Tories and have been since the days of Charles Kennedy, so whatever). Still, if that’s true, it means the Telegraph has been printing some pretty dishonest stuff, since the article contains the words “Mr. Clegg ruled out…”, and so on.

I wonder who Paul’s source is, and how they can be so sure?

Here is the original story, anyway:

The Telegraph is reporting that Nick Clegg will support the Tories if they are the largest party in a hung parliament.

Note, of course, that “support” in the Telegraph’s language appears to mean “keep Tory policy firmly under his boot”. The devil is, as ever, in The Telegraph’s detail:

Mr Clegg ruled out taking a Cabinet seat in a Conservative government in return for his support and instead would provide Mr Cameron with “supply and confidence” – meaning he would promise to back a Conservative Budget and would side with the Tories in any votes of confidence.

As a result, Mr Cameron would be free to accept the post of Prime Minister from the Queen on the day after the next general election, even if he failed to win an outright majority.

In return, the Liberal Democrats would reserve the right to vet Mr Cameron’s first Queen’s Speech – the publication of his legislative programme for his first year in office.

Mr Clegg would have an effective veto over the Tories’ domestic policy proposals as he could withdraw the support of his MPs and order them to vote with the Labour opposition on measures with which he disagreed.

Before now, it had been thought likely that Mr Clegg would wait until after an election to embark on negotiations with both of the main parties in the event of a hung Parliament.

But The Daily Telegraph understands that he has decided that the public would not forgive him if he propped up a Labour administration that they had voted to throw out.

He is uninterested in taking up a Cabinet seat led by either of the other parties, as he believes it would fetter his ability to criticise an administration.

Instead, he wants the power to veto legislation, which, he hopes, would raise the Liberal Democrats’ profile enough to allow them to become the second largest party at a future general election.

Essentially, if you stop and think about this for a moment, that’s the surest way Nick has of ensuring that A) as much Lib Dem policy as possible is enacted and B) the Lib Dems aren’t associated for ever more with the Tories. Think about it: We aren’t in coalition, we aren’t sat round the cabinet table, we aren’t responsible for government cock-ups. We are, however, able to exercise judgment on legislation the government passes, and to exert pressure on those issues which we prioritise. All in all, a pretty good position for us to be in.

If this is true, then I think it’s pretty well judged by Nick.

Hat-Tip: Φ

Unassailable

Why is it that whenver someone says on GMTV that the party is not doing well enough, it is interpreted not as the statement of the obvious that it is, but as a comment on the leadership? And yes, I know that Ashley asked specifically about the leadership, but presumably as a response to Vince making this (crushingly banal to anyone with a smidge of perspective) observation that the party is not doing well enough.

Any self-respecting political party should want to be in power, or what is it there for? If the polls suggest that this is not about to happen, then the party is not doing well enough. The further the polls are from showing that, the less well they are doing, ultimately. Of course, direction of travel is also important, but that’s another matter. The way these statements are interpreted by the media (in their wider sense) is bizarre, until you realise that for them, the Lib Dems’ purpose is not to be in power, because they don’t see us as a normal party. They couldn’t give a shit about the policies; as far as they’re concerned, the Lib Dems are there as the protest vote, the kingmakers in hung parliaments, and not much else. Oh, yes, and they are mostly to be represented in the form of their leader, whose position is to be continually reassessed when they get bored of discussing anything else. In this light, it makes sense. Problem is, it’s not true. That’s not why I, or any Lib Dem I’ve ever met, joined the party.

Oh, and as for The Sunday Programme, I don’t know why any of our MPs bother to talk to them. It only gets seen by the Westminster villagers who remember to set the video and insomniacs, since this week it will be on at 6am on Sunday. The program only survives by trying to extract some piece of intrigue from a given interview, safe in the knowledge that the spin they are putting on it will not be made to look silly because nobody is actually going to watch the complete interview.

Clegg was a member of CUCA?

So Guido thinks he’s onto something pretty scandalous, with suggestions that Nick Clegg paid a year’s subs to Cambridge University Conservative Association. Now, I don’t know if he was or not, but as a current Cambridge student, I would just like to point out that CUCA has a reputation as an oddly non-political organisation that is worth being a member of even if you’re not an awful Tory because it organises some pretty good dinners. I know of at least one member of CUCA at the moment who is not actually a Tory; some people join it just because they are interested in politics and would like to hang around other people who are interested in politics, and can’t face the factionalised in-fighting of the student left. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was much the same in Clegg’s day, which was, after all, not that long ago.

Cleggover

OK, now I have been fairly unmoved to post about this in recent days. But I just went and looked at Dale’s blog, and was struck by the absolutely bizarre degree to which the right is wetting itself about this minor gaffe. They are desperately trying to keep it in people’s minds, when most of us are quite happy to move on from what is clearly a fairly open and shut case of Piers Morgan being a rascal and a politician not wanting to sound like a prude.

I am reminded of nothing more than Bill Hicks’s bit about the manufactured controversy over Basic Instinct at the time of its original release. Here, I’ve rewritten it to explain the parallel I’m drawing:

I saw this news story recently which everyone called “Cleggover”. Okay now. Quick capsule review: Piece-of-Shit. Okay now. Yeah: end of story, by the way. Don’t get caught up in that fevered hype phoney fucking debate about that Piece-of-Shit interview.
“Is he bragging about this, is that too many, are politicians becoming too dddddddd…..”
You’re just confused, you don’t get it, you’ve forgotten how to judge correctly. Take a deep breath:
“Huuh.”
Look at it again.
“Oh it’s a Piece-of-Shit!”
Exactly, that’s all it is. Piers Morgan squatted, let out a loaf, they put a fucking title on it, put it on a marquee, Morgan’s shit, piece of shit, walk away.
“But is it too, how would we feel about a female MP who ddddd…..”
You’re getting really baffled here. Piece-of-Shit! Now walk away. That’s all it is, it’s nothing more! Free yourself folks, if you see it, Piece-of-Shit, say it and walk away. You’re right! You’re right! Not those fuckers who want to tell you how to think! You’re fucking right!

This doesn’t matter. It’s like Blair’s “5 times a night” thing; yes, everyone sits around and goes “ewww” for a week or so, but it’s nothing more than that, and most people realise this. Unfortunately, the Tories are so unsettled by Clegg that they will make themselves sound absolutely batshit crazy trying to drive forward a media narrative that isn’t there that this is “the beginning of the end for Clegg”.

You might think that’s a charicature, by the way. Well go look here, for instance:

Nick Clegg has had a disastrous week. His comments about the number of women he had slept with have made him into a laughing-stock while his party’s position on the Lisbon treaty becomes more incoherent by the day. Clegg’s interview with The Times this morning shows how difficult it is going to be for him to get past the Clegg-over business. Helen Rumbelow and Alice Miles press him repeatedly on the issue and you have to imagine that every other interviewer is going to do the same for the foreseeable future.

Guys, take a deep breath here, and listen to Hicks. As much as you may want this to be something more, this is a piece-of-shit news story, and nothing more. If you want to have an argument with Clegg about policy, go for it. This makes you look silly.