There seems to be some despondency amongst activists regarding the 42 days result, the cynicism of the DUP, and the betrayal of some on the Labour benches who said they would rebel only for them to lose their spines at the eleventh hour.
Chins up though, this has still to go through the House of Lords, who will hopefully reject it and send it back to the Commons for them to think again. We must all then keep the pressure up.
I'm by no means a stranger to London so I hope readers won't mind me giving a quick tuppence on the Mayoral elections today.
If Boris wins, it will be the most ludicrous result since Hartlepool elected a monkey as Mayor. At least there, the monkey had some connection with the town and had one fairly decent policy of giving out free bananas to schoolchildren.
Wendy Alexander's donorgate scandal has moved on this week to focusing on Alex Salmond's meetings with representatives of Donald Trump.
Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen has said it "smells of sleaze". Mr Stephen has not been able to demonstrate how Mr Salmond in any way benefits from the Trump golf course. I would have thought this would be a prerequisite of any sleaze allegation. Alex Salmond is partial to a game of golf, but having seen him play, he's not that good. Maybe the LibDems think that Donald Trump is going make the course easier just to suit the First Minister (more with Calum and Richard).
For sleaze to be alleged, is Nicol Stephen suggesting a cash for golf courses scenario? If so, that would be very serious indeed, not least with Donald Trump not being a UK registered voter. That would be illegal. Imagine any of our senior politicians ever did that! Oh wait...
Douglas Alexander was meant to be on Question Time last night but appears to have bottled it the night before. David Dimbleby apologised to all those that had questions about his sister Wendy's breaking of the law.
Plus any questions on his role in employing Jon Mendelsohn and Brown bottling the election. But that will all have to wait till another time now.
With his not inconsiderable part in messing up the ballot papers for the Scottish elections, it's not been a good few months for Douglas.
Why do so many Labour donors seem embarrassed about giving to the Labour Party? David Abrahams did it through his employees. Wendy Alexander's leadership campaign, where she had to beat nobody, raised £17,000 through attracting several donors of £995, just under the £1000 mark where they would have to be declared.
One of them as revealed in the Herald today was Jersey based (and thus not allowed to contribute) but did it through a Glasgow company. To compound matters, this is no different from the case of Abraham, or I believe front organisations like the Muslim Friends of Labour, which have served the effect of keeping anonymous people who are embarrassed at the idea of donating to Labour openly.
Matthew Marr's descent over the last few days has got my unusually troubled by the antics of a Labour spin doctor. I know Matthew since we met at organising meetings for the Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh 2005. He was working for Catholic charity SCIAF at the time.
We later crossed paths again when he was an aide to Glasgow City Council leader Stephen Purcell. I won't go into the details, but I can well imagine the scene at Prestonfields last week as I was myself at the sharp end of a Marr tonguelashing over what was a relative non-issue. I was by no means under his employ or anything, and have seldom been spoken to like that in life over so little. It seems I'm not the only one either.
It's about time that I got round to doing a write up of last week's SNP conference in Aviemore.
As has been widely noted, it was the first one to be held under an SNP government. Accordingly, there were a lot more people there, and not just the 1000 or so delegates. The place was teaming with various lobbyists who have suddenly noticed we exist. I remember just two years ago at the same venue I organised a fringe meeting and I was the only person leafleting delegates that afternoon. Times have changed very quickly, and there were even some protesters standing outside.
It's about time I got round to telling my blog readers the news that I have been selected as the SNP's candidate for Glasgow Central at the next Westminster elections.
I look forward to expending my campaigning energies to get elected, and thereafter to represent the interests of my constituents.
The next general election will in my opinion be the last ever election to Westminster held in Scotland. 60% of Scots believe that we'll be independent within a decade. So much has changed in the last two years - remember people laughing at Alex Salmond's claim in 2005 that the SNP would win 20 Holyrood seats to take power? How many seats did we win in May this year? That's right. This is why the unionist parties in Holyrood oppose a referendum on our constitutional future. They know that if it's set, the SNP will win the argument.
If as Benjamin Franklin said, there are only two certainties in life - death and taxes - then Inheritance Tax manages to wrap both up into a neat package.
The Tories label it death tax, which some bristle at. I think it's accurate. It takes no account of who will be receiving the bequests. It is a tax on the deceased's estate (i.e. not the recipient) before distribution is made - therefore it is a tax on death. The name 'Inheritance Tax' is actually spin. Internationally it's known as the not quite as euphemistic Estate Tax, if it's not just honestly called Death Duties.
I'm not one of those who is in principle opposed to the idea of giving from a deceased's estate. I think it's very important that on our death we should be looking to make generous bequests to good causes. I'll leave it to others to decide whether the UK Treasury fits that description.
Paul Hutcheon at the Sunday Herald delved into the employment habits of MSPs at the weekend, highlighting that 50 out of 129 employ a close relative.
I don't have a problem with this in principle, as long as the employee is actually earning their crust. My feeling on this is that quite often there is no work being done to speak of, but salary is still diverted into their bank account.
I would imagine that this is pretty much the same state of affairs as Westminster. As an adjunct to this I also note that the Treasury has responded to the Arctic Systems case by saying it will now enact legislation to effectively stop small companies from "income splitting". This is the practice of a business run by one spouse paying themselves a salary up to the 40% tax limit, and then paying their spouse who does not actually do any work for the business thereby allowing them to use their 22% tax band too. This effectively allows them to take out over £70,000 from a company a year at more or less the 22% level where normally this would fall under the higher rate.
Parliamentarians are also getting away with this with the rules on staff salaries. If they're going to pay their spouses for doing nowt, then at least make them pay at the 40% level for augmenting their income. It would be good to see the government set an example by first clamping down on Parliamentarians.
A glance at the Electoral Commission's latest report into party finances shows that the Muslim Friends of Labour donated over £300,000 to Scottish Labour's election campaign this year.
When the group was set up a few years ago with a dinner at Glasgow Central Mosque, the obvious problem was not whether Muslims were friends of Labour, but whether Labour were friends of Muslims.
The Herald reported that the "Muslim community" had donated £300,000 to Labour. While not strictly true, what MFL does is give cover to those giving donations by it not ending up on the Electoral Commission's web site. Noman Tahir calls for a naming and shaming (UPDATE: More in the Sunday Times).
Over the last few years, the decline in Muslim membership of the Labour Party has been well documented. What hasn't been reported however was a corresponding drop in donations from Muslims - probably because there wasn't much in the way of Muslim philanthropy of this sort in the first place. MFL is an attempt to recognise that money can buy you love in politics.
I genuinely thought that it was a joke when Tony Blair was first touted as a Middle East peace envoy. At best it must've been an initiative to massage his ego, nothing more. Even he can't be deluded enough to think he can make a positive difference.
Then it gathered momentum. Last week's Question Time pondered his suitability, and many concluded it didn't matter what the Arabs thought of it - he's a good man in our view and that's all there is to it. This was the same week where Pakistan were told to stop interfering in UK internal affairs, as if we always mind our own business.
Blair will have as much success and impact in the role as his own Middle East envoy in the last decade, Lord Michael Levy. Either Blair is extremely biased or he's extremely limited. Probably both. Last summer he couldn't get his head round calling for both a ceasefire of Israel's Lebanon bombardment, and looking for a longterm solution to the problem. It was one or the other for him.
Blair may be leaving office, but I have the sinking feeling he's not going anywhere. He's going to be part of the national body politic for some time to come. Not the move into the serious old age of Thatcher, or to the cricket of Major for him. This is bad news for us all, but none will take it as badly as Gordon Brown I think.
Anyway, Blair's aiming to go out with a bang for now. In an article in the Sunday Times this week he defended control orders:
We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong.
Blair better hope that whenever he comes up against a war crimes tribunal that it doesn't operate on his standard of human rights. For, it could easily be argued at the time that given the nature of the star witnesses, particularly in the security services, that it would be better not to have a trial at all and move straight to sentencing. But because that wouldn't be entirely fair, we'd just lock him up in his front room with no access to the outside world.
Michael White writes regarding Margaret Hodge's call for housing to be allocated to migrants after indigenous people, rather than on the current basis of need:
Last year the number of council and housing association units built in the borough fell from a very modest 572 to 230. What is true, as Jon Cruddas, Dagenham's Labour MP now running to be deputy leader, keeps saying is that social services in poor boroughs do feel the pressure of globalisation. So do falling local wage rates. "Racialising" problems will not help, better statistics leading to more Whitehall cash will, argues Cruddas whose local activists beat back the BNP. Labour in Barking did not, add Mrs Hodge's critics.
There's no point in beating the BNP by becoming the BNP. There can be no triangulation with them. But as White says, this strategy doesn't work anyway. If you make the far-right's rhetoric acceptable by aping it, why would you get the votes on that platform rather than the real deal?
Oxfam director Barbara Stocking said:
"Day in day out, Oxfam sees the human consequences of Britain's foreign policies at first hand, both good and bad. Labour's foreign policy has been at its best when it has been in tune with public opinion and international law. However it is now clear that the invasion of Iraq, and the government's failure to stand up to all governments when they break international law and harm innocent people, have seriously damaged Britain's capacity to be a force for good on the world stage.
"The Iraq war was a terrible misadventure. But it must not cause future Prime Ministers to return to the caution of the previous Conservative government. That administration stood by while the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda unfolded. We must say 'never again' as much to our failure to stop these atrocities, as to repeating Iraq."
MPs have voted themselves an allowance of £10,000 a year for running websites. Why don't they just head down to Wordpress and get one for free?
Seems like some friendly web design company is going to be creaming £6.5m or so from this, when a basic blog would do the trick. MPs could keep us updated on their activities, give reasons for why they voted as they did, while people could leave comments and feedback.
In most European countries there is a party of the right whose basic definition is its attachment to the national interest of that country. Only here is there a Conservative party, and Tory press, largely in the hands of people whose basic commitment is to the national interest of another country, or countries.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft on the Conservative MPs whose allegiances lie with the US and Israel.
Can someone explain to me why the prime minister is telling us that Trident will be out-of-date by 2024, that we need to take a decision to renew it this year because it will take 17 years to build a new one, but we're also being told that Iran could potentially magic up a nuclear bomb that could imperil us more or less immediately?
According to the New Statesman's Martin Bright. He reels off a list of supposed gaffes emanating from the Tories in late February 2006 (he means 2007). First among them is:
The week ended with a distinctly shaky performance from David Cameron in Israel where he had felt it necessary to assure Foreign Office officials that he would try not to “screw up”. Yet by sticking to the script provided by the pro-Arab mandarins he provoked the disdain of the Israeli government by suggesting that it is standing in the way of peace by continuing to build settlements in the West Bank.
His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact.
Ali Abunimah from Electronic Intifada
I'm sure everyone has been following Tim Ireland's recent re-explosion back into the blogosphere. Not so much back with a bang but back with several. He's had a go at Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and now the laser is fixed on Nick Boles of Policy Exchange.
I blogged quite a bit about Policy Exchange last week, so I particularly welcome Tim's expose of the think tank director's use of its resources to help his bid to be next Mayor of London. Even more rich because of fellow Tory and Policy Exchange colleague Iain Dale's scoop last week where he got media coverage for the Smith Institute's close links with Gordon Brown. Think tanks that benefit from charitable status shouldn't be politically partisan you see...
When it comes to identifying mirror images of the BNP, you need to actually examine what the party are saying. Last month they complained that Tony Blair had stolen their clothes after his speech on multiculturalism. It was Blair who parked his tanks in the Tory garden but subsequently they have come to be influenced by the current prime minister in a spell only Margaret Thatcher could previously cast.
Outmanoeuvred on the right, Cameron played the party political game by condemning the ‘clunking’ initiatives from the Labour Party in the last few months, only to adopt a position more extreme than anything Labour have produced yet.
He said he would decouple the issues of terrorism and multiculturalism, despite the fact it was his national security policy review that was making the announcements regarding community cohesion and Britain’s Muslim organisations. In fact, in Monday’s speech he went further than any senior politician to date in fusing the two issues together.
David Cameron's managed to undo his good work in the space of 24 hours:
Likening Muslim extremism to the ideologies of the BNP, he stated: "We must mobilise the instruments of public policy to draw people away from supporting such ideologies. The BNP pretend to be respectable; but their creed is pure hate. And those who seek a sharia state, or special treatment and a separate law for British Muslims are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP. They also want to divide people into us and them. And they too seek out grievances to exploit."
I've already blogged at length today so for commentary please refer to some of my previous comments on shariah here and here.
The press release goes onto the issue of language:
Warning that multiculturalism has been manipulated to favour a divisive idea - the right to difference - Mr Cameron stressed the need to bring people close together, and pressed for Muslims to be taught English. He said: "We've got to make sure that people learn English, and we've got to make sure that kids are taught British history properly at school. I believe that the Government should redirect some of the money it currently spends on translation into additional English classes. This would help people integrate into society and broaden their opportunities."
How many Muslims can't speak English? Apart from the elderly, In reality they do so - with the appropriate regional accents. I can't understand why he's seriously raising this as a problem.
Today's Independent on the latest with cash for peerages:
The cabinet minister could not have been more adamant: "If Tony Blair is in the witness box it will be a disaster. Someone will call him as a witness if this goes to trial."
Crossing his fingers, he added: "It would be disastrous. Hopefully it won't happen. Inshallah!"
Wonder who this could be!
There was much to merit in David Cameron's Observer article looking forward to the announcements this week from his party's policy review on national security.
He decouples the issues of integration and terrorism (despite the fact its his policy commission on national security which will be making recommendations on community cohesion), and says he won't shy away from looking at the role of foreign policy on domestic affairs. He reminded us that it was not long ago that Britain questioned the loyalty of its Jewish and Irish citizens. I also liked this:
There is no easy short cut. Having tried to impose democracy in Iraq at the point of a gun, we must surely realise that we will never impose cohesion at home with the ping of a press release.
He condemns the "clunking" initiatives from the government recently such as asking Muslim parents to spy on their children.
A separate article in the Observer quotes him wanting to campaign for the rights of women, who he says are being held back not by Islam, but by culture. In this regard, I agree, but am not sure what he can do about it (Indigo Jo has some thoughts on this). I also do believe the problem is lessening as years go on.
Cameron caps this all off by saying he's going wage a "crusade for fairness". Just as with George Bush in 2001, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, and say that he was silly rather deliberately provocative with his choice of words. I can't though understand the Western obsession with it. If you want to get something done, the crusades are hardly the model of best practice. Many, many people had their blood spilt, and ultimately they did not achieve what they set out to do. There was certainly nothing "fair" about it. The word should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
UPDATE: Cameron has compared Muslims who believe in shariah to the BNP.
The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign have announced that the trustees of Holocaust Memorial Day have pulled off mention of their events from the HMD website.
The SPSC are showing the play Perdition this week in events they have organised to mark the occasion. The work highlights the role that Zionists in Hungary had in collaborating with the Nazis. HMD claims this is "anti-Semitic".
The SPSC had advocated that everyone should engage positively with HMD. Here's their announcement:
There was a time that the peg that Tony Blair hung his Middle East policy on was democracy. We all remember being continually frustrated every time the slaughter in Iraq was raised, to get the stock response that it didn't matter how many people had been killed or how unstable the country was, because at least now Iraqis could get out there and vote.
As Toby Helm of the Daily Telegraph described, the prime minister cut a sad figure this week on his tour of the Middle East. There was once so much hope invested in him. He could have played a real constructive role in the region. Instead he was compromised by the small matter of hundreds of thousands of deaths, a pile of lies, and an ever changing range of policies towards the region. This was exemplified by his speech to business leaders in Dubai at the end of his tour.
Democracy is no longer the issue. He went into Iraq with the stated motive of tackling WMDs, only to later justify himself by saying he wanted to topple Saddam and democratise the country and then the region. Since then he's attempted to influence the result of the democracy that he bombed into existence, and continues to ignore the calls of those that were thereafter elected for a timetable of US and UK withdrawal. Outside of Iraq, Blair no longer even pretends he cares about the ordinary people of the Arab world.
Tony Blair said in his Dubai speech, that in wanting to "pin back" Iran:
... we need the open and clear backing of the countries in this region who know better than we what is happening and why.
It's however an ambiguous statement and could mean any number of things, no matter how strange it seems on the face of it.
But on the back of the tour, Sky's Adam Boulton also said that the PM's people were forced to deny that the speech "amounts to calling for a Sunni Moslem alliance against Shia Iran".
Then yesterday, in responding to the Archbishop of Canterbury's criticism of the Iraq war, this:
'It's not the policies of the UK which are causing suffering for Christians in Iraq or the Middle East,' said a Foreign Office spokesman. 'It's the fact that there are intolerant extremists inflicting pain and suffering on people. These extremists are indiscriminately killing Christians, moderate Muslims, Sunnis and peoples of all faiths.'
Why the special emphasis for sunnis? After all the fuss made about rescuing shias in Iraq, now that the boot is being aimed at Iran, are the sunnis now in favour? The words don't mean much to a British audience, but are statements being carefully crafted for the anti-shia elements in the Arabian peninsula?
A couple of months ago I bumped into Alex Salmond in Glasgow's George Square. He was recording some YouTube broadcasts, and was good enough to take the time out to recording something with me. You can view it here.
We talked about he state of community relations on the back of the Jack Straw niqab "debate".
For those outside of Scotland, Alex Salmond is the leader of the Scottish National Party, whom the polls show are on course for victory in next year's Scottish elections. If you're interested in moving to a country where the political leadership is as enlightened as this, please note that Scotland is welcoming of those wishing to bring their talent here.
Incidentally, Alex was nominated by the BBC Politics Show for their poll of political heroes - no mean achievement in a London based programme. You can vote among the final seven here.
The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust:
"The key to successfully combating terrorism lies in winning the trust and cooperation of the Muslim communities in the UK. However, the government’s counter terrorism legislation and rhetorical stance are between them creating serious losses in human rights and criminal justice protections…they are having a disproportionate effect on the Muslim communities in the UK and so are prejudicing the ability of the government and security forces to gain the very trust and cooperation from individuals in those communities that they require to combat terrorism.”
At virtually the same time, 90 days detention without charge is back on the agenda, thanks to Gordon Brown and Sir Ian Blair.
The Terrorism Act 2000 brought into law provisions enabling you to be held without charge for seven days. In 2003, this was increased to 14, and this year it went up to 28.
In times gone by, getting arrested was a big deal. Not something that the state could do while they built up a case against you. Arrests came on the basis of real suspicion and a body of evidence. I can't understand the argument that detention without charge is necessary in order to gather evidence against a suspect - how can you arrest someone if you haven't gathered evidence against them?
