THE CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE ABOUT LABOUR AND TORY GROUPS IN EUROPE

by Marjorie Smith
Various right-wing bloggers (e.g. Harry Phibbs and Ian Dale) have tried to defend the Tories new found friends in the European Parliament by saying that ok a few might be oddballs but the Socialist group has some oddballs as well. It's the normal defence of the intellectually defeated, reminiscent of the playground.

The Party of European Socialist probably does have a couple of members who have a dubious past and may, undoubtedly, have said some rather unfortunate things. Whilst the Tory group seems to have, proportionately a lot more of these 'mavericks'.

However, the crucial difference is that if the Party of European Socialists (of which Labour is a member) expelled all their MEPs who allegedly have dubious histories (which they should) , the group would still be a vibrant, cohesive and effective opposition in the European Parliament.

Whereas, the Tories would be destined for the political wilderness. Under European Parliament rules you can't have a funded group unless you have MEPs from a minimum number of Member States. If the Tories lost their odious partners from Latvia and Belgium for example, they would be unable to form a recognised group in the EP, therefore losing any influence and funding, hence their great reluctance to face their demons so the Tories and their obnoxious allies are locked in a grim embrace. Consequently, it exposes the main reason why they have an extreme reluctance to admit their strategic mistake.

They are, simply, fellow travellers of neo-fascist and other right-wing reactionaries and like all fellow travellers, they are driven by their own selfish ends, disregarding the bigger picture in pursuit of their own self-aggrandisement.

BROWN BURIES BLAIR, AS DO THE EU SOCIALIST GROUP

By Marjorie Smith

Gordon Brown's snub to other Socialist leaders in the EU is the final nail in Tony Blair's coffin. Gordon turned up at the traditional dinner with other Socialist party leaders from across the EU. However, he gave a short presentation and then left immediately. Thus, in reality, depriving Blair of the only voice of support he could expect in the discussion.

Gordon also, curiously, shunned the family photo of the gathering of the Party of European Socialist leaders.

Not only did he not enthusiastically press the flesh for Blair but by snubbing other leaders he ensured that there would be a PES backlash against Blair. Going off to a press conferecne rather than staying for a dinner with his fellow leaders said it all in their eyes. It was therefore seen by other Socialist leaders that Brown blatantly does not want Blair to get the job, in that if he couldn't even be bothered to lobby vigorously for Blair amongst his own political allies in the EU. The only conclusion they could reach is that Blair is seen as being defenstrated by Brown.

EU socialist leaders said Thursday they were therefore aiming to secure the post of foreign policy high representative, also implicitly opposing the appointment of Tony Blair as President. "We socialists aspire to the post of high representative," said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Louis Rodriguez Zapatero at a pre-summit meeting of European socialist leaders in Brussels. Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, head of the Party of European Socialists, said Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Zapatero were asked to negotiate a deal with their conservative counterparts over the coming weeks. European socialists have frequently referred to Blair's involvement in the Iraq war when explaining their opposition to the British politician.

One other major point for consideration is that the post of 'Foreign Minister of the EU' is a potentially much more influental position than a titular President with an undefined role. Hence the PES have their eyes on the real prize and not on what could he booby prize.

Even more damming for Blair was comments made by other members of the Socialist group. "We have a common position concerning Mr Blair: we don't consider him a member of the socialist family," said Ramon Jauregui, a socialist MEP from Spain. Brown later retorted that people should look "forwards, not backwards." But he also acknowledged that Blair would have to fend off rival bids. The president is elected by qualified majority for a term of two and a half years, renewable once.

Blair is seen by many in the EU (and especially amongst the Socialist group) as a charasmatic leader but one who is in reality a Christian Democrat and not a Socialist.

HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM: HOW TO FINISH THE JOB

By Marjorie Smith

Gordon Brown's conference pledge to finally abolish the remaining hereditary peers from the Lords should be one of the final nails in the coffin of hereditary privilege in the UK (save for the ultimate target, the monarchy).

Successive Labour Governments have 'talked the talk' over House of Lords Reform, yet very few have delivered. Besides the concerns over a competing chamber with democratic legitimacy and a democratic mandate to fall back on, the other main objection is the supposed loss of the experience and expertise of the current members of the House of Lords.

The Blair administration's reforms of the second chamber went some way to giving a veneer of respectability with many of the hereditary peers no longer able to vote, although there still remains the general anachronism that 100 hereditary peers can still vote down or amend UK legislation agreed by the directly elected House of Commons.

The one hundred hereditary peers are at present a self-serving cabal in that they are elected by the rump of hereditary that was defenestrated in the last reform. There are two simple words why the system of keeping any hereditary peers in the House of Lords is indefensible is Mark Thatcher or for Labour voters is the grotesque outcome that Clement Atlee's grandson is now a Tory peer.

Whilst a few of the hereditary peers work hard and contribute to the workings of the House of Lords, it is impossible to justify their continued membership of the second chamber in a democratic system, they should however, be allowed to stand for election to the second chamber, they are currently a historical anachronism that should be unacceptable in a modern democratic society. The same argument for throwing out the hereditary peers is not as clear-cut for life peers.

A simple changeover of life peers by democratically elected replacements would risk certain aspects of the House of Lords that are well worth retaining. The one core principle should be that those voting on legislation must be democratically elected. However, there is no reason why life peers cannot continue to give service as members of the House of Lords select committees. Many life peers are highly qualified and retain high quality legal, administrative or political expertise.
Many of the House of Lords Select Committee reports are very well thought of and authoritative with a specialised but highly influential audience. For example the reports produced by the various House of Lords Select Committees on the EU are very influential and help to frame debate in the European Commission and in the European Parliament.

Another benefit of the current life peers is the expertise they can bring to bear when scrutinising Government. One of the most beneficial roles that a second chamber can deliver in a democratic society is to offer alternative scrutiny of Government. We shouldn't be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The proposed reform also presents the opportunity to immediately adopt proportional representation (without the need for a constitutional referendum) as a further way of democratising the second chamber. The balance to be struck is to retain the House of Commons as the primary chamber even if the second chamber achieves democratic legitimacy.

Gordon Brown should adopt a timetable of elections that differs from the general election for a House of Commons so as to build in an element of extra democratic accountability. National elections for a second chamber should take place between eighteen months and twenty four months after a general election.

In addition, the PR system for the second chamber should be based on regional lists with voters having the choice between parties and individuals on the list, rather than the appalling D'Hondt system. Jack Straw's choice of the D'Hondt system for European Parliament elections was the worst choice of all PR systems, with voters only able to vote for pre-selected lists for an individual party. It centralised power in party HQ and completely undermined regional and local constituencies.

The only other alternative is to have individual constituencies (similar in size to the old European Parliament constituencies), and use the Alternative Vote system, which would be more proportional than first-past-the-post and would have the extra benefit of making it highly unlikely that the BNP would have any electoral success under this system.

Regional lists for the second chamber have a dual benefit, not only being based on PR and anchoring democratic legitimacy in the nine regions of England as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. But also the regional members should also have a dual responsibility of, in each region in England, being members of a Regional Assembly responsible for all regional bodies and quangos in their area.

It is a damming indictment of democratic accountability that there are countless agencies and quangos in the regions (e.g. Regional Development Agencies) and sub-regions (e.g. Merseyside or Greater Manchester) that have strategic powers and responsibilities, yet have no regional accountability or scrutiny. Thus members of the second chamber would have the direct responsibility of legislative power in the second chamber and of scrutiny in their region. Of course, with differing models of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, variable structures should be designed.

To ensure the primacy of the House of Commons, with its legitimacy dependent on general elections, the basic inter-relationship between both chambers should apply, i.e. anything forming part of a party's manifesto cannot be overturned or blocked by the second chamber. In other words the Parliament Act would still apply.

One final benefit of pledging to finally finish the reform of the House of Lords is that it places the Tories in an invidious position, they can either oppose it and be denounced as the defenders of privilege or agree to reform and risk civil war breaking out in their party, especially if the commitment by Labour is to make Parliamentary sovereignty deriving solely from the people and not from the Queen in Parliament.

IMMIGRATION: LABOUR'S GREAT CONNUNDRUM

By Marjorie Smith

It's the issue that seems to be top of the political agenda in many areas of Britain. A multi-faceted political issue that has no easy answers, no easy solutions and creates differing political tensions amongst many Labour party supporters and wavering voters. It also seems to be a policy area 'that dare not speak its name' in polite Labour society.

The right and centre-right spotted the political benefit of hyping immigration as a stick to beat Labour with several years ago. The drip, drip, drip of political poison over this issue has been led by the obnoxious Daily Express and the right wing pressure group Migration Watch over the past several years. Incredibly, the Express has given over 75% of its front page headlines in the past five years to this issue.

The rest of the right's media forces have also realised the potency of the issue and have waded in on the issue, blithely swallowing any press release issued by Migration Watch as indisputable fact. The Daily Mail recently (24.10.09) even went so far as to run a story that claimed that mass immigration was a secret Labour plot to change the face of Britain.

What is worse is that the Tories have employed a strategy that allows them to keep themselves at arm's length whilst pretending to be compassionate conservatives. They have used well-funded pressure groups such as The Taxpayers Alliance and Migration Watch as attack dogs on public expenditure and immigration policy to distort the political debate in this country so as to paint the Labour party as weak and compliant. Of course this then has the effect of burnishing the Tory party's image as reasonable and decisive.

Immigration was always going to be potentially embarrassing issue for Labour as its internationalist principles would leave it instinctively in a defensive posture when confronted. Despite the public hard line approach of Jack Straw and David Blunkett as Home Secretaries as well as a No 10 edict to radically reduce the number of asylum seekers appealing against Home Office decisions, it is apparent that Labour remains uniquely vulnerable on immigration policy.

It also goes a long way to explain the success of the BNP in exploiting this issue. The Tories have learnt from New Labour's adoption of triangulation. By not commenting consistently on the issue they have allowed the far right to dominate the response from the right. In giving the BNP political space they have managed to give the far-right a modicum of political impact, yet know that this would never be translated into any prospects of success at a general election under the first past the post system and that it would have very, very limited impact on their voter share.

However, the Tories' main benefit is that it will allow them to triangulate and present themselves as the reasonable face of a tolerant Britain that will take steps to (reluctantly, as they claim) to 'properly' control immigration. This will be presented as a necessary step that has to be taken otherwise the BNP would prosper as a result of Labour weakness.

The main political question is what is the strength of feeling on the issue in marginals as well as the rest of the country; what sort of response the party should develop and what argumentation it can deploy on the doorsteps in order to convince voters (and the more reasonable media outlets) that scare stories about immigration should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

It does appear that the issue is a hot potato on the doorsteps both in working and middle class areas and that it is the subject of chatter across the country. It seems to currently inform perceptions of the character of the main political parties and could be a pivotal issue as to how voters make their electoral choices.

From both apocryphal feedback in the mainstream media (and discounting the coordinated efforts of the BNP to hype their support) as well as opinion polls and expert analysis, it appears that the only policy area that the BNP has found traction is in the area of immigration. This is hugely indicative of a much wider problem in that if some people overtly support the BNP, or sympathise with them, over this issue indicates that the concern is much deeper.

At moment, the more the BNP agitate on the issue and Labour isn't perceived to have a coherent response, the more votes are lost in both working and middle class areas. It's not the BNP who benefit in the main from the seepage of Labour support, it's the Tories, content to keep quiet as votes swing their way.

Thus, the issue needs to be addressed at several levels to be able to formulate a distinct message on the doorstep and in radio and television studios over the next 7-8 months leading up to the next election. This requires three different approaches to three very different patterns of immigration. Intra-EU movement of people, economic migration from outside of the EU and asylum seekers.

Firstly, let us nail the lie that we are being swamped by Poles, Lithuanians etc and others from the rest of the EU who take advantage of free movement to move to the UK as the EU works as a one-way street into the UK. Most of the Polish etc. work here for a relatively short time and then return home. The vast majority paying taxes and national insurance, very few claim benefits of any kind. Just to counter the BNP utilising the image of a spitfire as part of their xenophobic propaganda, the 303 Polish Squadron was the highest-scoring RAF unit in Battle of Britain.

More UK people live and work in other EU countries than people from the rest of the UK live and work in the UK. The consequences of closing our borders to citizens of other EU countries (which would require withdrawal from the EU) would have devastating consequences for millions of UK citizens. Not only would UK citizens be unable to work in the rest of the EU, unlike now, but the hundreds of thousands of Britons who live in Spain, France and the rest of the EU would lose their residency rights.

Furthermore, the dreams and aspirations of many hoping to own their own little place in the sun would be shattered. Malaga or Margate, anybody? If we turn in on ourselves our horizons dramatically shrink. It should also be noted that if we ever pulled up the drawbridge with the rest of the EU, then France, Belgium, Holland etc.etc. would have little if any incentive to stop people trying to enter the UK.

Immigration from the rest of the EU and emigration to there also, is clearly a two-way street, where the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

The thorniest problem of all is economic migration, much of it initially driven by desperation and despair. People from sub-Saharan Africa, from Turkey, Kurdistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the poorest parts of China etc. etc, all with a legitimate reason to believe that their lives would be improved if they could enter the UK. Most have a case on hardship grounds alone to merit consideration, yet the age-old problem is where do you draw the line?

The UK also 'suffers' from a unique combination of circumstances concerning immigration, not only do we have a large number of immigrant communities already based in the UK that can act as a support group to new arrivals. We also have a historical link with many countries as the aftermath of Empire, when we rapaciously plundered such places. Thirdly, there is the draw of the emerging universality of the English language

These immigration 'drivers' mean that the UK would likely be the preferred destination of choice for many economic immigrants aiming to enter the EU when compared with many other Member States (although France shares many similarities with its former colonies also being a catalyst). Hence, even if we were the most compassionate people on earth, an open door policy is unworkable.

Therefore immigration controls are a necessity and the more that is done to dissuade immigrants even setting off on perilous journeys across continents the better. There is nothing wrong in rigorous but fair immigration controls. They reward the legitimate immigrant who goes through the system, and deters criminal gangs who exploit the weak and the vulnerable for their own ends.

Labour has a good story to tell on immigration, it is one of fairness, compassion and understanding. But this has to be allied to a recognition that only in times of sustained economic prosperity can entry be granted to those who have the skills or who will fill jobs nobody else wants to do. It is also a fact of life, that as the UK population ages on average, we will need a radically improved birth rate (unlikely) or significant immigration in order e.g. to keep our pensions sustainable, our hospitals and care homes running. As well as the wider economy performing well.

Finally, the furore around the much-maligned asylum seeker needs to be addressed. It is this that the centre-right has succeeded in turning a noble definition into a highly pejorative term now loosely bandied about by many who should know better. As ever, the malicious editorialising of the Daily Express and the Daily Mail have a lot to do with it.

The asylum system was abused, let's admit it, desperate people do desperate things, yet it is Labour who have introduced a high degree of rationality into the system and it is only through perseverance will an asylum system built on intelligent fairness be embedded.

Over the past ten years, the explosion of global communication through the internet and the advent of cheap air travel has revolutionised people's ability to understand their local situation and to compare and contrast life in other countries.

Make no mistake, even under a rabid right-wing Government in the UK, illegal immigration and asylum seeking, won't disappear, it won't even decline, Labour doesn't need to allow itself to be tarred with this brush. As for workers from other EU Member States, that is a zero sum game where we stand to lose a lot more than we could theoretically gain.

WHAT WOULD A FUTURE TORY GOVERNMENT LOOK LIKE?

A VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN TRIBUNE MAGAZINE 6/11/09

By Marjorie Smith

If the Cameron clique were to win power at the next general election, how would they go about governing Britain and what would be the consequences of 4-5 years of Tory rule? Although David William Malcolm Cameron and George Gideon Oliver Osborne have been deliberately vague in laying out their agenda, it can be accurately predicted where their priorities lie and where their prejudices will impact.

Besides the public pronouncements of the leadership clique and its camp followers, the future make-up of the Parliamentary Conservative party must also be taken account of. Cameron and his cohorts may well control the electoral fortunes of the party, but the Conservative party remains a far more reactionary grouping than its leadership. Where Thatcher reflected the prejudices of her party supporters, Cameron's apparent acquiescence/acceptance of personal liberty in the private sphere is at odds with the petite-bourgeois prejudices of most of his party. Even though it does resonate with the much smaller libertarian wing of the party.

Furthermore most of his support within the Tory party is based on a mute acceptance that Cameron's apparent electoral popularity can deliver a Conservative Government for the first time in twelve long years of opposition. There is little real support for Cameron's commitments concerning the NHS and Overseas Development aid and Cameron would rapidly lose the confidence of his party if he was ever to become to be perceived as an electoral liability.

Like the Labour party in the mid-1990s, most modern day Conservatives will accept a weak ideological leadership clique if it appears to promise, firstly, electoral success and secondly delivers on a modicum of core party values. That acceptance however, is predicated purely on producing electoral success and the continued delivery of such core values in traditional policy areas that the party has always been concerned with (e.g. health and education for Labour).

For the Conservatives this means firstly, an abiding belief in that the market will nearly always be the most efficient method of delivering goods and services. Secondly, as a consequence they believe that the State is incapable of delivering public services through the public sector without incurring gross inefficiencies. Thirdly, they will expect to see tax cuts, both on earned and non-earned income with cuts in inheritance tax being a particular favourite. Finally, the party wants to see an aggressive euroscepticism that should aim to leave the UK as a semi-detached member of the EU, happy to benefit from the advantages it delivers for capital (free movement of goods), but continually hostile to any advantages it delivers to labour (e.g. The Social Chapter).

To deliver on such core Tory values in the current economic climate means making savage cuts in public services. It will be public sector workers who will bear the brunt of a Tory government hell-bent on reducing the size of the state. The Tories have already claimed to have ring-fenced Health and Overseas aid and you can't see them taking an axe to the Ministry of Defence, despite their bluster over the size of the Defence bureaucracy. They have long professed their green credentials so would find it hard to scrap too many environmental commitments or projects either.

As a consequence there will be massive job cuts, as privatisation of selected public services, especially at local government level, will be back in vogue. This will undoubtedly radically effect the education and social services budgets and lead to mass redundancies/outsourcing in these areas. Local Education Authorities will be the first in line for decapitation.

Central Government expenditure will also face swingeing cuts especially in the other areas of Children, Schools and Families with Sure Start being just the first in the Tory firing line. It can also be expected that the school building programme will be radically scaled back and Tory promises about the NHS will eventually be exposed as the sham they are.

They may now promise to keep to the level of current expenditure on the NHS, but this will undoubtedly be frozen in the medium to long-term leading to cuts in real terms. The same will apply to Overseas Development, with an initial commitment designed to disguise a decline of funds committed in the future.

The commitment to the NHS should be seen as the product of base self-interest and a reflection of the success of Labour's massive investment in the NHS. By the successful squeezing out a large amount of self-funded private health care, the private sector in health is presently incapable of providing chronic health to any great degree (e.g. intensive care beds, treatment of chronic illnesses and of long-term care of the severely disabled).

Hence, even committed Tories have to accept the status quo, for now. However, expect a gradual but perceptible rise in the role of private health care providers creaming off lucrative work from the NHS and providing alternative private care in an increasing number of areas. Remember that Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP, is not alone amongst Conservatives when he called the NHS a “60 year old mistake” live on US television.

They will strive, though, to have massive cuts in the field of local government care services for example. They have already signalled that only the rich and the affluent middle classes will be insured against the cost of chronic needs care in old age with their recently trumpeted care for the elderly policy. Despite the fact that Osborne's figures don't add up, this will be out of the reach of many, with a couple having to find £32,000 at retirement age to opt in. Of course Labour's proposal for a National Care Service will be cast aside.

Public sector pay will also be continually in the Tory firing line, with below inflation pay-rises, year upon year, leading to damagingly lower pay levels and a growing lack of esteem for public sector jobs. This prejudice against the public sector was a central part of Thatcherism and it took a long time for the public sector to recover from 18 years of Tory misrule.

The Tories commitments to tax cuts remain undiminished, they still have a Reaganite belief that the lower the tax take, the more efficient the country is. It appears, to them, that the last period of Tory Government was in fact a Shangri-La with a highly efficient economy producing unparalleled levels of public service provision efficiently delivered by the private sector, when in fact public services were moribund, with a crumbling infrastructure, historically low levels of pay and continual cuts in resources as everything and everybody was turned into a profit centre.

The first tax cuts the Tories will introduce will be in the field of inheritance tax, with the richest 20,000 families befitting disproportionately when compared with the middle classes and the working class getting nothing out of it. Amongst those receiving the biggest benefit will be D.W.M. Cameron and G.G.O. Osborne. Cameron is already worth in excess of £30,000,000 (yes, a staggering thirty million) and Osborne is currently worth in excess of £4,000,000 and stands to inherit a whole lot more.

What a future Tory Government will also strive to do is to deliver on cuts in income tax either through cutting higher rates of tax for the well-off or initially increasing the levels that higher rates of tax kick-in. It is only because of the current economic crisis that the Tories have reluctantly agreed to keeping the higher rates of tax for the first year of a prospective Tory Government. Make no mistake they want to go a whole lot further and will do so if they are returned to power.

One of the biggest dangers to the Labour Party is the Tories proposals on constitutional reform. Herein lies the opportunity for the Tories to jerrymander their way to a leviathanatic position in British politics for the foreseeable future. Using the expenses scandal as their Trojan horse under the guise of reforming Parliament and cutting down on the cost of running the Parliamentary estate is a unsubtle constitutional mendacity designed to ride the wave of public disgust over the expenses scandal. Be aware that if they get away with it, it will establish a Tory hegemony over central government in the UK that would take an electoral earthquake of 1997 proportions to break.

Cameron's proposals to cut the number of MP s from 636 to 500, is a naked attempt to redraw constituency boundaries in Labour strongholds and cut the number of MPs from the same areas. London, the North West, the East and West Midlands, Scotland and Wales will see a significant reduction in the number of MPs, all of them, by no coincidence, Labour heartlands.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Labour could lose up to 50-75 constituencies for ever where it would be expected to be the leading party, whilst the Nationalist and Lib Dems could lose 20-30 seats and the Tories 10-20. This would lead to an inbuilt Tory majority in England and the likelihood of the Tories having a semi-permanent veto over who would form a UK government in Westminster.

It would also add grist to the mill of separatist nationalism in Scotland and Wales as their traditional political cultures will find themselves in a continual confrontational position with a Tory Government. Of course continued House of Lords reform would be halted and proportional representation will be put on the back-burner. Alex Salmond and David Cameron would inevitably discover they have real common interests.

Finally, the Tories are prepared to adopt an isolationist foreign policy for the UK that is at odds with historical UK interests for the for the first time in centuries. The decision to opt-out of the main centre-right grouping in the EU presages a desire to achieve ideological purity in the area of euroscepticism. Expect a bellicose nationalism to consistently erupt from the backbenches of the Tories as they deal with the EU as if it was 'a foreign power hell-bent on breaking up Britain into bite-size morsels for its masters in Brussels'.

The frontbenches will also try and enhance the one-way special relationship with the USA, failing to see the contradiction in their policy position on the EU. With the US far preferring the UK playing a leading role in a stable EU as a strategic partner, rather than a medium-size country sniping from the sidelines, reduced to being a useful gopher in NATO and not much else.

The duplicity of the modern-day Tory party, with its smarmy leadership, skilled in communication and not much else; with a Shadow Chancellor already found guilty of economic innumeracy; an unreconstructed rabid right-wing forming the vast majority of its membership as well as most of its parliamentary party, would be a disaster for the UK.

After all they are led by an Old Etonian who blames big government and not the financial sector for the current recession. Throw in the fact that there policies in the face of the economic crisis would inevitably lead to a double-dip recession. The return of a Tory government would be a disaster for the UK, with the likelihood of an independent Scotland and a permanent right-wing majority in the remainder of the UK a very real possibility.

EURO'S CLIMB CASTS SHADOW OVER EU'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY

The euro's advance in recent months has come at a critical junction for the 16-member eurozone as it battles to emerge from what has been dubbed the Great Recession. After gaining about 20 per cent against the dollar since the early months of 2009, Europe's common currency is now within reach of breaching the key 1.50-dollar barrier.

"The euro is currently a victim of its own success," said ING Bank currency analyst Chris Turner. "Global investors have distinctly fallen out of love with the US dollar and there are very few alternatives."

Success always brings problems, but it's not bad for a currency written-off by right-wing eurosceptics as a toilet currency (Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun). The pound has continually weakened against the euro since its inception slipping form 1.65 €uros to a pound to 1.10 €uros today.

A letter from Brussels looking at the UK political scene from an outsider's point of view.

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN TRIBUNE MAGAZINE 30/10/11

Following the UK's annual conference season, the political outlook for 2010 appears to be a little more opaque than before.

What many thought would be a depressing experience for those attending the Labour conference was inaccurate once the conference had started in earnest. The mood was more upbeat and united than expected and has given some short-term encouragement to party activists.

Whist the Lib Dems shot themselves in the foot, the Tories treated champagne as if it was cocaine (not to be consumed in front of the servants or dogs).

Whilst Labour had received a very temporary boost in the opinion polls it is still doubtful if there has been any major shift so far, in how the Government is currently perceived. What has helped Gordon Brown was that there were no signs whatsoever of a leadership challenge, so a united front was shown to the public (party conferences in the UK are the subject of intense and unrelenting scrutiny by all forms of the media). Mainly as a result of the approaching general election which has served to make all aspects of the Labour party more disciplined and more focussed.

As the general election draws closer (on or before 3 June 2010), the comparisons between the Government and opposition will become more and more searching and the scrutiny of the Conservatives will increase exponentially. However, the Conservatives large lead in the polls has (at present) an air of permanency.

Following Labour’s Conference it is quite clear that Labour will hammer a few key themes as part of its electoral campaign;
Stewardship of the economy with an unrelenting attack on the Conservatives economic policies and their experience and competence.
That the Conservatives cannot be trusted to continue to deliver high-quality public services even if a Labour Government will have to reduce levels of public expenditure.
Attitudes to the EU will undoubtedly be used by Labour in an attempt to demonstrate that the Conservatives are still the same old ‘reactionary’ political force that they were seen to be in the latter days of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership.

Labour also has to persuade voters that they are still relevant and have policies to take the country forward (e.g. its proposals for a National Care service). However, this is an area where the Brown leadership has singularly failed over the past two years.

As the general election approaches, whilst some parts of the media will become much more partisan (e.g. The Daily Mail and The Sun) many others will want to be seen as more neutral and therefore Labour will have more opportunity to get its message across to voters than it has done so recently.

Furthermore Labour has to shore up its vote on its left with it needing to win back support from the Nationalists in Wales and Scotland, hence an energetic campaign claiming that a vote for nationalism is a vote for a Conservative Government.

The Labour party’s fortunes are still in a parlous state, whilst the Conservatives have access to large funds and have spent a lot of resources on targeting the key parliamentary seats that will decide the outcome of the next election. However, the Trade Unions will subsidise Labour and should ensure that that the Labour party has access to substantial amount of funds and other resources, although not any comparative level that the Conservatives will still enjoy.

It is undoubtedly true that the main opposition party, the Conservatives remain favourites to win the next general election, but the situation is not yet set in stone. Unlike in 1997, when Labour came to power, although the governing party is unpopular, the opposition have not yet persuaded the electorate that they are a credible AND reliable alternative.

However, Labour face the problem that David Cameron and his leadership group have been extremely successful in re-inventing the brand image of the Conservatives and it will be much more difficult for Labour to paint the Conservatives as unreconstructed free-market fanatics who will slash and burn public expenditure in all areas.
Cameron has already pledged to keep spending levels on Health and International Development at the same level as the current Labour Government plans in order not to be exposed to head-on attacks about wanting to slash public spending across the board.

Like most previous elections in the UK, the support for the incumbent Government will increase as polling day approaches and consequently the Conservative’s lead in the polls will narrow. It depends on how much the Labour party can either revitalise itself in the coming months (which is unlikely to be significant) OR it can persuade the electorate that the Conservatives are unsuitable for Government and undeserving of voters’ unqualified support.

The Conservatives have a large lead in the level of funding available to them compared to the Labour party. The have already outspent the Labour party in the key seats they need to win over the past three years and this investment in the key seats will undoubtedly produce some positive returns for the party regardless of what the national mood will be.
Despite Conservative protestations that they have an electoral mountain to clim, the reality is somewhat different. The Conservatives quietly made major advances at the last general election and hollowed out a large number of Labour MPs majorities. Allied with the tax-dodging Michael Ashcroft's donations from the tax haven of Belize targeting of all marginal seats, the mountain is more of a hill.

The relatively poor performance of the Liberal Democrats at their annual conference the previous week to Labour’s has also muddied the waters as voters will be less persuaded that voting Lib Dem is more of an attractive choice than what’s on offer from the main parties. However, a poor Lib Dem performance is a double-edged sword as Labour expects more of disillusioned Lib Dems to switch to them rather than the Conservatives. However, at previous elections it was the Lib Dems ability to take more seats from the Conservatives than Labour that helped Labour achieve comfortable majorities in Parliament.

However, in recent years voters disillusioned with Labour have switched their support to the Lib Dems (as well as to the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales) in many Labour-held constituencies. Labour can therefore expect some benefit from the perceived poor performance of the Lib Dems, but may yet continue to lose votes to the Nationalists.

If the Lib Dems were to hold the balance of power in a Westminster Parliament, then an accommodation with the Conservatives cannot be ruled out. However, it is more likely to be with the Labour Party, especially with Gordon Brown offering a vote on the Alternative Vote (AV) system after the 2010. The Lib Dems have long been campaigning for Proportional Representation and although the AV system is not their preferred option (STV is), the prospect of a referendum on PR would be enough for them to prefer to support the Labour party.

If Labour wins (unlikely) or there is a Labour/Lib Dem coalition (a possibility), then UK policy as regards the EU will continue very much as before (constructive engagement). However, if the Conservatives win outright (currently quite likely), then the mood music will change dramatically. However, a vocal aggressive pragmatism is likely to emerge, with Ministers sounding far more belligerent in public than they would be around a negotiating table.

The modern-day Conservative party is a far more Eurosceptic party than that under Thatcher or Major. Whilst the number of influential pro-EU Conservative politicians has decline dramatically, the number of eurosceptics within the parliamentary party has been strengthened greatly. In fact, euroscepticism is now one of the few defining political positions shared by a large majority of the party. A Conservative UK Government will have to be seen (domestically) to be pandering to the prejudices over the EU, whilst still trying to find an accommodation on most issues with other Member States in the Council of Ministers.

It looks like the UK, if a Conservative Government is returned, will return to its bellicose nationalism for domestic purposes (e.g. Major's Beef wars) whilst marginalising any influence it will have because of its overt behaviour and because of the highly questionable allies it has in the European Parliament.

Be prepared for the British national interest to be sacrificed in the pursuit of a scarcely veiled xenophobia towards the EU whilst trying to become more and more Atlanticist (as if George Bush was still in the White House). What Cameron, Hague and their neo-con supporters seemingly fail to realise is that Obama wants a UK fully engaged in the EU, so it can act as a respected partner rather than a marginalised and angry island on the periphery of the continent reduced to little more than George Orwell's Airstrip one.

The Tories and their torturious position on the Lisbon Treaty

By Marjorie Smith

So, drunken text messages in a highly pretentious manner begin to reveal the true extent of the hidden division over Europe in the Conservative party.

Having made an incoherent speech at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester, in which he undermined Cameron's deliberately opaque position on the Lisbon treaty by calling for a referendum when (IF) the Tories get elected to Government, Boris Johnson then scuttles back to London.

Having returned from the conference in Manchester on October 5, Mr Johnson then received the pretentious threat by text in Italian , “La vendetta è un piatto che va mangiato freddo”, by text message in the early hours of Tuesday. It translates as: “Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”

Nick Boles from the Cameron Clique admits sending the text, which is indicative of the tantrum Cameron would have thrown following Johnson's speech to the Conference. Make no mistake Johnson's position is much closer to the vast majority of his party over Europe than Cameron's is. Cameron knows this and behind his 'nice guy' image is a man who acts like a spoilt brat when he can't get his own way. He will have certainly have been stamping his feet in a fit of pique following Johnson's intervention.

The Conservative party has become a much more eurosceptic party than it ever was under Thatcher or Major and euroscepticism is now one of the few ideological poles (besides an abiding belief in the reforming power of the market) that is shared by 90%+ of the party. Cameron has spent a lot of political capital both collaborating with the eurosceptics (hence leaving the sane centre-right bloc in the European parliament) and also talking about the EU in order to keep his rabid right quiet in the UK.

However, what would really stoke up a civil war in the Tory party , in which the Cameron Clique could not contain the outpouring of vitriol would be if Tony Blair was to be appointed as EU President.

Whatever the rights or wrongs about Blair being appointed rto this position form a left perspective, it would be worth it to watch the Tory party tear itself apart over Europe and Blair's appointment would be incendiary.

Cameron would not be able to hold the line of having an aggresssively pragmatic attitude to the EU and consequently, the Tories important first year in Government would be completely overshadowed by their usual compulsive /obsessive fascination with the EU.

END THE TARGET CULTURE NOW

THE HEGEMONY OF STATISTICS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR AND ITS DANGEROUS CONSEQUENCES

By Marjorie Smith

The public sector in the UK faces a bleak future if the target culture still favoured by this New Labour administration, after 11 years in office, is not radically addressed and mostly jettisoned. The obsession with targets risks fatally undermining any sense of a public service ethos and by extension the consent of the electorate for the state to play a significant role.

As a probable consequence, the Conservatives could be presented with an opportunity to advance their well-concealed right-wing agenda and hand over vast swathes of public sector activity to private sector interests. Let us not be fooled by David Cameron's commitment to maintain public expenditure levels in the first two years of a Tory Government. Paying the private sector to deliver public services instead of public sector workers would still be classified as public expenditure.

Trumpeted as the way to make the public sector as 'competitive' as the private sector, target-setting has permeated nearly every aspect of public sector activity. Often put forward by private consultants (with their snouts deep in the Treasury trough) as the panacea for what, they allege, had become a moribund system of public officialdom which was incapable of responding to the challenges of an increasingly complex modern world.

Workers and management were supposed to respond to this brave new world by dropping, supposed, entrenched habits and providing outcomes that achieved the targets set. The process was accompanied by a brand new vocabulary that served only to make the rationale behind such initiatives more and more opaque.

Since winning power in 1997, New Labour has fallen hook, line and sinker for the idea that private sector target-setting can be successfully transplanted into the public sector in order to increase its efficacy. Minister after Minister, have "rolled out" target after target in their particular field of responsibility year on year.

Not withstanding that there are serious fundamental flaws about target-setting as a management tool in any field of activity, whether private or public, we, as citizens, are supposed to be reliably informed by the publication of statistics arising out of such public sector monitoring.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families has recently suggested that schools may have to answer to eighteen new performance indicators (on top of the myriad of targets they have to measure themselves against currently, such as exam results and truancy levels). This is supposed to measure pupils' drug problems, pregnancy rates, criminal records, obesity levels, bully incidents and cases of neglect. The eighteen indicators are then intended to be aggregated so as to provide a comparative measurement capable, so it is intended, to identify problem schools.

We seem to have been intimidated by a business school mentality into blithely accepting that more and more target-setting is the only way forward for the public sector. It is as if any activity in the public sector should only be measured quantitively and that the quality of work undertaken is immaterial.

The abject failure to see beyond the figures produced by Government in collusion with the public sector senior management actually is the greatest threat to the future of public sector activity in this country. This is partly because the very same public sector management is normally made up of those who are most expert at producing the figures that Ministers and civil servants are looking for as the outcome of their policies.

Management by utilising econometrics is a weak and inherently poor method of management, were those who are prepared to be complicit in massaging figures the most adeptly are rewarded with promotions. This promotes a culture of deceit and cynicism that pervades an organisation and turns the target into the main raison d'etre of their activity, even if it blatantly contradicts what their organisation was originally set up to deliver.

The private sector is not immune from the corrupting influence of a target-led business culture. For example the recent scandals in the USA such as the collapse Enron and WorldCom were caused by a need to continually demonstrate increased shareholder values by manipulating results in order to achieve increased stock market price for shares at, as it turned out, any cost.

Children are no longer educated; they are trained to pass exams and tests. Hospitals first priority is not curing the sick, but achieving targets set by Trusts in response to Ministerial diktat. Tax is no longer collected in an equitable manner, it is raised from the easiest targets whilst the more complicated cases are ignored because they take too much time, use up more resources and, crucially, distort statistical results in a negative manner.

For example, the police are currently alienating a significant number of young people by issuing fixed penalty notices and cautions for a whole host of activities that would have been overlooked, or been the subject of a stiff talking to at most, in the past. This is not driven by some right-wing authoritarian regime, but by a public sector organisation that has been told to demonstrate an improved performance as a result of increased public investment.

There are two immediate negative results of such demands. Whilst clear-up rates have been improved demonstrably, with very small scale or non-existent crimes being included in official statistics, the actual real outcome is much more problematic. Large number of young people see a criminal justice system based on sophistry and what is blatant dishonesty, whilst the workforce itself is alienated by being complicit in such a cynical manipulation of official statistics.

This culture of manipulation of official statistics pervades many aspects of public life, from teaching to medicine (e.g. if you are not on a list then you can't be part of a queue when it comes to waiting times for operations). Those who can manipulate figures the most successfully are valued most by management and those who can see a wider picture are seen as trouble-makers incapable of adjusting to 'new challenges'.

We seem to have arrived at a situation akin to 'Soviet Five Year Plans' in the sixties and seventies. Like production figures for tractors in Volgagrad, as reported to Moscow, bore little resemblance to reality. Ministerial claims about success in this or that area of activity are increasing viewed as unreliable and having little meaning. This is especially true of official figures that people believe can be tested (albeit anecdotally) against reality.

The current official statistics about inflation and the separate figures on cost-of-living seem to bear little relation to real-life experience for most people. Large price hikes for food, domestic energy and road fuel amongst others seem to undermine claims that public sector wage increases are inflationary when they seen to be actually below the perceived real rate of inflation.

Governmental activity seems to be increasingly reliant on measuring its performance against figures that probably have increasingly less relevance as they become more and more subject to manipulation designed to produce the evidence desired.

This Labour Government needs to urgently address the culture of statistical deceit that is increasingly taking hold in the upper echelons of public sector management in this country What is actually at stake is the future of the public sector in the UK. Once the electorate lose confidence in Government statistics they will lose confidence in the very organisations that collect and collate such statistics. However, they will also lose confidence in the public sector as a whole and that is the greatest danger.

For what is the purpose of a Labour party which believes in an enabling role for the State if it is reduced to overwhelmingly relying on the private sector to deliver its policy objectives?

George Gideon Oliver Osborne is a crook?

By Marjorie Smith

Don't forget, during the current furore over MPs expenses, George Gideon Oliver Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, still has a lot of questions to answer about his sharp practice in 2009 when he received strong criticism for the way he had handled his expenses.
This after he was found to have 'flipped' his second home, changing which property he designated as his second home in order to pay less capital gains tax. The Lib Dems estimated he owes £55,000 to the public purse. Has Osborne offered to pay (as Hazel Blears did, and paid her liability in full)? The short answer is No.
Remember, Osborne, who is worth in excess of 4 million pounds, yes, 4,000,000 organised a totally spurious mortgage so he could get his snout in the second home trough for the sum of about £20,000 per annum. You would have to earn about £30,000 before tax to be able to devote your entire salary to the mortgage payment.
This the guy who will be lecturing public sector workers to show pay restraint, many of whom earn less than £30,000.

WHY CAMERON IS A FUNDAMENTALLY WEAK MAN

By Marjorie Smith

One of the marks of anybody who aspires to true leadership is the ability to acknowledge when he or she has made an error and change course accordingly. Only the weak or megalomaniacs carry on regardless in the face of overwhelming evidence they have made a wrong choice.
Cameron's European policy bears all the hallmarks of a calculated rash promise being fulfilled in the teeth of overwhelming evidence that he has made a wrong decision.
Initially trailing in the leadership stakes to David Davis, he made the tactical decision to pander to the extreme eurosceptics in his party as a way of shoring up his right flank in the face of possible attack from the neo-Reaganite and Bush apologist, Liam Fox who had also entered the Tory leadership contest.
Under pressure from an obscure collection of the mad, bad and sad more extreme Conservative MEPs, he pandered to their prejudices and promised to withdraw from the main centre-right grouping in the European Parliament, the European Peoples' Party, because it was, allegedly, too 'federalist', code for 'not being anti-EU enough'. As far back as three and a half years ago it was apparent to those on the left in Europe that Cameron was already making a disastrous choice.
Tribune's 28 April 2006 issue (entitled Chameleon Cameron and his fellow reptiles) was one of the first to neatly exposed Cameron's allies and warned of the danger of associating with them. Nicolas Watt, the then Europe Editor of the Guardian; did an expose piece the following week, laying out how extreme Cameron's future allies really are. Toby Helm in the Observer last Sunday (October 13) reiterates why the Polish Law and Justice party are highly unsuitable allies for the Tories (probably not for the majority of Tory members but for Cameron's presentational-obsessed leadership clique).
Despite being warned as to the foolhardiness of his choice by the leaders of most European centre-right parties, including Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, Cameron ploughed on regardless impervious to constructive criticism from his natural allies. Following the European elections in June, William Hague and David Cameron made good on their promise and set up his new EU-wide group
Even after, fulfilling the promise he recklessly made, he appears to still not only be happy to live with the consequences, but he allows senior Conservative figures to defend the decision to allow his party to be aligned with Nazi sympathisers, homophobes, climate change deniers and anti-Semites in the European Parliament as part of the newly founded European Reformist and Conservatives group; whose midwives were William Hague and the bumptious Tory spokesperson on Europe, Mark Francois..
The Polish Law and Justice party (or if you prefer, the Union of Polish gay-bashers and holocaust revisionists) and the Latvian for Fatherland and Freedom parties ( or the Latvian Coalition for Peace through Waffen-SS security) are reprehensible examples of right-wing idiocy run wild and now given a veneer of democratic legitimacy by being aligned to the UK Conservatives.
Roberts Zile, the Latvian chairman of the For Fatherland and Freedom party and a Latvian MEP, cannot make any excuses for his party's close links with Waffen SS veterans. Each year on March 16, veterans of the Latvian Legion of the SS march to commemorate their fallen Kameraden. March 16 is no anniversary of Latvian democracy or benign nationalism; it is the anniversary of both brigades of the Latvian Waffen SS fighting together under the banner of the Latvian legion in 1944.
Although the Latvian brigades were to become reliant on conscription (some of it forced), its founding members were virulent anti-Semites who took the lead in the slaying of the entire Jewish population of Latvia. Members of the infamous Arajs SonderKommando, formerly Latvian Auxiliary Police, for example, alone killed over 26000 Jews in Latvia (out of a total population of 60,000) after the German invasion of Latvia and the capture of its capital, Riga. It should be noted that more Latvian Jews were killed by local anti-Semites than by the invading Germans, whose bestial Einsatzgruppen where particularly grateful of the assistance. The Arajs SonderKommando grew to 1500 men and with other home-grown murderous groups formed the core and philosophy of the Latvian SS, being its founding volunteers.
The vile Fatherland for Freedom party, to its eternal shame, are one of the very few democratic parties in Latvia that still give the Waffen SS veterans in Latvia a veneer of political respectability. The Latvian Waffen SS were also guilty of a war crime against Polish troops when they murdered 32 of them by tying them up with barbed wire and burning them alive in a Church. This in no way can be explained away as a fight against Soviet aggression which is the modern-day excuse for the actions of the Latvian SS.
This goes to the very core of Cameron and Hague's judgement on this matter, they are willing to associate with a party that sees nothing wrong in commemorating the Latvian Waffen SS whose founding members were virulently murderous total believers in the Final Solution and shared all aspects of the Nazi's extreme nationalistic theories. Current day apologists for the For Fatherland and Freedom party are sailing very close to the wind when they excuse such parties by trying to emphasise their anti-Soviet rather than their pro-Nazi sympathies, as if the two were mutually exclusive.
Michael Kaminski, the Polish leader of the Law and Justice MEPs in the European Parliament (and thanks to the support of Cameron's Conservative MEPs the leader of ERC group) is clearly a holocaust apologist. In that he argues that the example of one Polish village (Jebwabne) that rounded up all the Jews who lived in the village and murdered them by burning them all alive does not have the moral equivalency of German Nazis when they were murdering Jews. For those villagers who murdered the Jews of Jebwabne and the Jewish victims themselves this was a total holocaust. He has refused to apologise for such actions instead excusing such actions as being the over zealous actions of Polish patriots who were suspicious of their Jewish neighbours loyalty to the Polish state.
Cameron's other main ally in his European cabal is the Czech ODS party. Whose most prominent member is the Czech president Vaclav Klaus an arch-climate change denier and unreconstructed Thatcherite who often states that the European Union contains some of the worst aspects of the old Soviet Union.
Let's be clear, this motley collection of obscure eastern European right-wing parties and mainly virulently eurosceptic Conservative Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) is an obnoxious amalgam of some of the most bad and mad political scum that mask there extreme views behind the slightly less extreme neo-conservative views as espoused by right-wing think tanks mainly based in Washington DC.
Both David Cameron and his shadow foreign secretary (and arch-Atlanticist) William Hague, shoulder a great deal of responsibility for the disastrous choice made. Hague himself took well over two years trying to find stitch together a coherent coalition of interests in the European Parliament
Yet the so-called anointed caring and compassionate modern-day Tories still make excuses for their Latvian and Polish Kameraden especially and continue to work closely with them in Brussels. Eric Pickles, the chairman of the Conservative Party even went so far in defending the Latvian for Freedom and Fatherland Party links with the Latvian Waffen SS legion by explaining that the Latvian veterans had only been following orders. Sometimes modern politics is truly beyond satire.

Analysis of the Irish Referendum Result

I've received this from a source in the European Parliament

"To recall the outcome:

2008 2009
TURNOUT 53% 59%

YES 46.4% 67.1%

NO 53.2% 32.9%



Following a survey on voting behaviour in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty referendum in Ireland, compared with the 2008 referendum, it appears that the following lessons can be drawn.

Firstly, the performance of the Irish economy in 2009 compared to 2008 was highly significant for all 'Yes' voters and in particular for those voters who switched from 'No' to 'Yes' or 'Abstain' to 'Yes'.

Secondly, the change in support amongst women voters was very significant, 66% of women voters voted 'Yes' in 2009, compared to 44% in 2008. The 'Yes' campaigns' outreach to women voters was particularly successful.

Thirdly, apart from women, the increase in support for the 'Yes' campaign was most marked in the categories of people who stayed in education post-20 years of age and amongst manual workers, the latter being most susceptible to the economic crisis.

Fourthly, the credibility of the 'Yes' campaign was dramatically improved as reflected in the referendum outcome. 67% of voters believed that the 'Yes' campaign had been the most effective in 2009 whilst the same percentage thought that the 'No' campaign had been the most effective in 2008. Voters also felt more involved in the debate in 2009.

Fifthly, the increased level of information about the Treaty among citizens was notable, although attention should be paid to the switch from official sources to informal or independent sources which were quite marked.

Sixthly, the guarantees obtained by the Irish Government eliminated an argument for the 'No' campaign but compared with the economy – was less decisive for the 'Yes' vote.
Finally, most citizens who voted decided which way they would vote in 2009 shortly after the first referendum and hence fewer of them made up their minds only in the last week of the 2009 campaign.

This stability indicates that the 'Yes' campaign was successful not only in safeguarding the already existing support basis of the Treaty, but also in counteracting the effects of the 'No' campaign, which had a reduced traction as an increased proportion of voters had already made their decision.

The Government's wrong-headed obsession with early years education

By Marjorie Smith

What is it with the Ministerial team at the Department of Education and Science's obsession with formal early-years education? It appears that there now flying in the face of susstantial evidence out forward by a prestigious review.

Children should not start formal learning until they are six, a review of primary education in England says. Instead the kind of play-based learning featured in nurseries and reception classes should go on for another year, the Cambridge Primary Review says.

There is no evidence that an early introduction to formal learning has any benefit, the review says, but there are suggestions it can do some harm.

Yet, Ministers in their infinite wisdom say a starting age of six would be completely counter-productive. Vernon Croker England's schools minister states "A school starting age of six would be completely counter-productive - we want to make sure children are playing and learning from an early age and to give parents the choice for their child to start in the September following their fourth birthday." Yet they stick to their position and still want to start formal learning at 5.

How is it that in nearly all of the rest of the EU, children don't start formal learning until they are 6 or even 7 in some countries and yet have a far better outcome at 16, 18 or 21 than the UK does.

Leave the children alone to learn through play and let them buil up their own self-confidence and let them assimilate into learning in groups and adjust to social inter-action before introducing them to formal structured learning.

Or are most of the continent and the evidence produced in the review wrong?

Cameron the Chancer

By Marjorie Smith

David Cameron’s pontificating about cutting ministers’ pay and MPs’ perks demonstrates a blatant and contemptuous hypocrisy that seems to know no bounds. It also reveals a shallowness of thought that does not bode well if the Tories win the next election.

Cameron has the gall to accuse others of abusing the parliamentary expenses system, when it can be convincingly argued that he and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne have acted with the most mendacious avarice.

Both are independently hugely wealthy. Cameron has in excess of £30 million. Osborne is worth £4 million and will inherit a great deal more. Yet they structured their personal affairs so that British taxpayers financed mortgages on their second homes of approximately £300,000.

Neither needed to have mortgages on their second properties. Neither needed to claim the lucrative second home allowance from the public purse, yet both did so. And Cameron still seeks to occupy the moral high ground over the expenses furore and lectures other MPs of all parties about how they must mend their ways.

He is increasingly resorting to gesture politics. His proposal to reduce ministers’ pay by 5 per cent is reminiscent of the calls Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair used to make for pay restraint from others. This was while they were anticipating the millions they were going to make once they quit British politics.

A 5 per cent reduction in the Prime Minister’s salary is nothing to a rich man such as Cameron. However, he will use the gesture to cut public service pay and jobs and impose worse jobs. It’s going to be very bad news for thousands of low-paid workers in public services.

The Tory leader’s idea of introducing a big hike in the price of subsidised food and drink at Westminster is typical of this calculating chancer who fails to think things through as he chases the cheap headlines Britain’s pliant and lazy popular press are increasingly happy to provide. The more upmarket media then follow suit, as they do not wish to be seen as out of step on a hot political topic.

Cameron and Osborne are penny-pinching political parvenus. They have only been in Parliament for eight years and neither has any ministerial experience. They combine social ignorance with an astounding duplicity.

The Tory leader has been extremely sanctimonious over the MPs’ expenses scandal. He was lauded in his local newspaper, the Oxford Mail for having expenses records that took up only 20 pages, while some of his colleagues needed 90 to itemise everything. What the Oxford Mail neglected to point out was that Cameron had claimed very close to the maximum amount, so he had no need to pad out his expenses any further. Cameron claimed a total of £141,820 over a five-year period on his second home allowance.

Cameron and Osborne are happy to advocate cuts in living standards for the many while they are featherbedded by family wealth and the taxpayer-subsidised purchase of lavish second homes. Osborne was also able to avoid paying significant amounts of capital gains tax.

Cameron asked why MPs should be able to buy a pint of Fosters for £2.10 in a House of Commons bar when it can be nearly double that in a pub. For his information, Wetherspoons is currently selling Fosters for £2.89 in its Whitehall pub – that’s just 200 yards from the House of Commons. Cameron may pretend otherwise, but is out of touch with ordinary people and the everyday costs they face.

He claimed £5.8 million could be saved if subsidies for food and drink in the House of Commons were scrapped. He is not so much in tune with public anger as pandering to crude populism.

The people who would mainly suffer if Cameron’s proposal were implemented are low-paid parliamentary support staff and MPs’ frequently under-paid employees. As the recent report from House of Commons Administration Select Committee states: “The refreshment department serves drinks, snacks and meals to several thousand customers a day. The vast majority of these customers are not Members.”

One reason why the Commons subsidises its refreshment department is the unsocial hours which its employees have to put in because of Westminster’s variable working day. With sittings often ending late in the evening and with no consistent finishing time, it is no wonder that the cost of doing business in politics does not correspond to the financial demands of the tuck shop at Eton.

And the main reason why the Commons has traditionally kept unsocial working hours is so that MPs could pursue their primary and more lucrative income source (often in the City or the law courts) and pop into Westminster later in the day. The main beneficiaries of these arrangements have invariably been Conservative MPs.

Incidentally, the approximate size of the unnecessary mortgage on Cameron’s second home, which enabled him to chisel in excess of £20,000 a year in parliamentary expenses (more than £140,000 over five years) is nearly matched by his wife’s annual salary of £300,000 in 2006 alone.

Irwin Stelzer's ignorance knows no bounds

By Marjorie Smith

Irwin's paean to Tony Blair in today's Guardian (15/10/09) contained his usual brand of casual xenophobia about the EU that should not go unchallenged.

As a long-time adviser to Rupert Murdoch, regular contributor to the The Weekly Standard in the U.S. and obviously highly thought of in American neo-conservative circles, Stelzer is undoubtedly an intelligent man with a coherent set of beliefs based on a wide experience of US politics. You might find many of his views disagreeable, but they are well constructed; well argued and consistent. He is no fool.

However, whenever he ventures onto the subject of the EU, his prejudices (like most of Murdoch's media empire) seem to overwhelm his normal rational approach and he sinks to the level of an ignoramus polemicist more interested in composing invective than advancing a rational case to support his views.

His reference to the EU "I yield to no one in my dislike of the unaccountable kleptocratic bureaucracy and its appropriation to itself of the prerogatives of Parliament" is empty-headed rhetoric that demonstrates a profound ignorance of the structures of the EU, its origins and its legal basis. He also has a casual dismissive reference to democracy when he states "The EU's interest, which is what the role is all about now, is clearly in appointing (elections are not the thing in the EU° a famous dynamic leader ….". which reveals the shallowness of his knowledge about the European Union.

First of all, the use of the emotive term "Kleptocratic", more usually used in reference to African dictators of yore, such as the Former President of Gabon, Omar Bongo and the late President Mobutu of Zaire, who thieved millions upon millions of pound, dollars etc. etc. whilst Western leaders turned a blind eye.

To claim that the EU's bureaucracy (the Commission) is kleptocratic is a crass insult that demonstrates an appallingly lack of knowledge about the workings of the EU. 80% of the EU's budget is managed and spent by he EU's Member States' at the national level. The remaining 20% is tightly controlled and subject to very very little fraud indeed. An in-depth study of other bureaucracies in Western countries may unearth some disturbing comparative data.

The use of the word kleptocratic is clearly designed to represent a form of intellectual shorthand as part of a lazy slur. Like the application if the words rape/raped or accusing somebody of being a denier, it is a manoeuvre designed to cast a slur by using emotive words completely out of context.

This overt political attack is based on the fact that the EU has not had its accounts signed off for over 10 years. This is true, partly because of the complexity of the budget process, the high levels of validation demanded by its auditors and the fact that most is spent by the Member Sates and not by the Commission. However, it might be educational to Stelzer if he were to look at other Governmental systems for similarities.

The US Federal budget has not been signed off as satisfactory for many years (in excess of 10) and the UK's Audit Commission has stated that if the UK's budget was subject to the same rules as the EU's it would have been in a similar position. In fact the Audit Commission has stated that the Treasury and the Department of Work and Pensions budgets are not satisfactory and have not been for many years. As for kleptomania, the legal, but dubious, practice of pork barrel politics in the US Congress is an example to the world of how to appropriate tax revenues in the pursuit of personal electoral gain.

As for the kleptocratic bureaucracy being unaccountable, the accusation is laughable and should be treated with the contempt it deserves. Appointed by the democratically elected leaders of the 27 Member States, confirmed by the directly-elected European parliament and subject to full force of EU law interpreted by a wholly independent judiciary in the European Court of Justice, the 27 Commissioners are fully accountable. Furthermore, the Council of Ministers (the directly elected national Governmental Ministers from Member States, oversee every part of the Commission's legislative and administrative roles. Whilst the European Parliament has complete control of the Commission's budget.

For the remaining 20,000 people who work for the Commission (N.B. smaller in number than the administrative staff of many large Metropolitan Councils in the UK and smaller than most Government departments in the UK), the slur that they are kleptocrats and unaccountable is outrageous and highly insulting.

As for the suggestion that the EU has appropriated the prerogatives of the UK Parliament, this is an empty-headed claim of little substance. All powers that now rest at the EU-level are either the product of Treaties passed by Parliament and receiving the royal assent or the subject of Court rulings by an independent judiciary, based on an interpretation of such treaties and firmly grounded in the rule of law.

An American commentator on the workings and ethics of the European Union might gain some respect for his views if they were even loosely grounded in facts.