The Hitch

Obituaries are a way of life in this country. Every newspaper carries at least one, if not several  each day, varying from those at the centre of policy making, to heroes of the two world wars that have been burnt on our collective conscience, aristocrats, and the seemingly ordinary. Even the PE teacher who berated Margaret Thatcher over the sinking of the Belgrano was recently granted a note in the Daily Telegraph.

In Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens remarked that one of his many literary friends announced to another quite gleefully over breakfast that he had been asked to write another’s obituary for the Times, which famously stockpiles its memorials just in case. The other stayed quiet, fully aware that he had already submitted his tormentor’s obituary some weeks before.

I delve into the unglamorous mechanics of how these words reach our retinas because the medium of writing could not be more important to my subject. How and what Christopher Hitchens wrote was the very measure of him, as almost all his friends and acquaintances acknowledge, and how his death at the relatively untimely age of sixty-two occasioned so many obituaries distinguishes him from each melancholy rememberance. Almost everyone is remembered, somehow, but few people are really celebrated.

Hitchens was hardly anything if not a writer, and a writer’s writer at that. He saved his most approving words and his most genial conversation for other writers, frequently offering a drink to young hacks in his adopted hometown of Washington, taking long boozy lunches with the Bloomsbury set in the 1980s and 1990s (the word games were legendary).

Politics, and politicians were distinctly on the other side – people to be watched and critiqued. The Clintons were his particular bete noir – he found Bill questionable in his approach to women and campaign monies, Hilary a compulsive liar and a coward for the way she sacrificed a meaningful intervention in the Balkans for a health care reform that was never achieved. Henry Kissinger he never could stand and wished to bring to trial. Such is the way of the professional journalist.

Ideas were also important, and marked the difference between Hitchens and the Gonzo school of journalism, which he claimed not to care a great deal for. Hunter S. Thompson could drink similar amounts and savaged Richard Nixon with words as savage as Hitchens ever deployed, but his journalism was fundamentally theatrical and more passionate than rational. Hitchens could hate and poor scorn over a person simply because of their beliefs, hence his critique of Mother Theresa, the woman whose resistance to female emancipation merely entrenched policy.

Hitchens’ tendancy to demolish words that could be used to describe him makes it difficult to pin him down. He considered neo-conservative a misonomer, pointing out that he was rarely conservative, and liberal wishy-washy. His lack of interest in political economy made his socialism a practical non-starter, despite his early Trotskyism. In a recent interview, Hitchens, trying to synthesise his militant atheism and support of the War on Terror admitted “I have one consistency, which is against the totalitarian… the enemy who tries to get inside your head.”

In time, I rather hope that the ‘Hitch Slap,’ the frequently-employed and entertaining verbal putdown, takes a back seat to the calm and considered way that Hitchens went about his business. Taking eighteen months to die is a miserable and unromantic misfortune, but to do so with courage is the best that can be asked of a man. Hitchens did that, as indeed he had been courageous and ignorant of self-pity for most of his life.

This was a man who collected his mother’s body after her self-murder and channelled the tragedy into his fury at the state of Greece and later Cyprus, who chose to tour his book God Is Not Great not amongst Britain’s middle-class intellectuals, but in America’s Bible Belt, and who not only defended the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but practically agitated for them in a way that was sure to have an affect on his liveihood.

Being called a ‘drink-soaked, former Trotskyist popinjay by George Galloway probably rescued Hitchens from ignominy at one point, but a shrewd marshalling of the facts, a brilliant sense of when to press home the advantage and a not insignificant ego meant that of the many challengers who hoped to best him, and finally convince him of his mistake, few if any went home satisfied.

Had Hitchens lived in some other place, at some other time, his influence could have been radically different. Born an Arab, he may have rotted in a Saudi jail, or been the chief protagonist of the Arab Spring. Active during the French Revolution, he would surely have cavorted with Danton and may have made the equation against Robspierre swing the other way. An upper-middle class Brit, in a country that resembled ‘Weimar without the sex,’ Hitchens was no revolutionary, but always challenging nonetheless. An American citizen for much of his life, he wrote in his biography that ‘the only revolution retaining any verve was the American one.’ This may have made little difference in Egypt, Syria or in Putin’s Russia, but Hitchens’ writing was a corrective to the hypocrisy in American foreign policy that welcomed any ‘son of a bitch, so long as he was our son of a bitch.’ Such a statment would now be virtually unthinkable.

Testimonies from politicians seem strangely out of place, given Hitchens’ anti-political, ideological background. Nonetheless, the debate with Tony Blair in Toronto not so long ago was a watershed in polite, well-informed debate between the religious and the atheistic, and the former Prime Minister played a genuine, well-meaning tribute. Few would believe that the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, had previously interned for Hitchens, but there too was an influence.

There will be many imitators, mostly inferior in language or courage. Johann Hari is one journalist who failed to reach the heights of his hero, and others will smell power or sense themselves to be on unsafe ground and retreat. Yet that ferocious love of liberty will also be coupled with a more generous soul in less gifted individuals and will make the political impulse relevant and vital for another generation at least.

Reports from the Warsaw Summit

The immediate aftermath of the second Eastern Partnership summit brought several different conclusions. The joint statement itself was a bland and uninspiring read. In true EU style, it read as though it was deliberately drafted so that you couldn’t get a story out of it if you rearranged all of the words in a completely different order. The view of the Swedish foreign minister, one of the most hawkish participants when it comes to human rights and the Eastern Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) sounded similarly unconvincing;

Overall, the assessment the day after is that the Eastern Partnership Summit in Warsaw was a success. Reinforced our commitment to region.—
Carl Bildt (@carlbildt) October 01, 2011

Others, less compromised, were also less inhibited. EurActive, a news website, described the summit as a diplomatic fiasco, inspired partly by the Polish opposition Law and Justice Party’s attacks on its government, currently conducting the EU Presidency.

The fiasco was two-fold. Firstly, no major announcement was made that could revitalise process that looks increasingly stalled in the wake of criticism of the Ukrainian government’s attitude to human rights and the rule of law. Secondly, an attempt to turn the boycott of the Belarussian government over criticism of their own human rights abuses to the organisers advantage failed to grab the imagination of the five countries that did turn up to negotiate enhanced relationships with the EU.

Few had very high hopes for the summit. Angela Merkel was one of two heads of government in attendance (including Donald Tusk of Poland who had little choice – in 2009, Merkel was the only premier to turn up and Germany undoes much of its good work in this regard by its close relations and bilateral energy dealings with Russia). However, Nick Clegg announced himself with a strongly-worded speech and this was to be a priority for the ambitious Polish EU Presidency.

Several problems with the ENP present themselves. The first is that the countries applying for what they ultimately hope will be an accession process are constrained by forces Europe hardly feels. Ukraine’s trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, which so exercises Western politicians (rightly) cannot be dropped while the Ukrainian government seek to renegotiate with Russia the basis of the gas deal for which she is being prosecuted. Many have similar experiences of corruption, subsidies that need to be reformed and uncomfortable domestic politics that are not as soluble as the EU would like to think.

The ENP is probably also underfunded; although the summit announced that the European Partnership would have a budget of €1.9bn, the €22m contribution towards building civil society and democratic movements has to be spread six ways. There is no politician in Europe today of sufficient clout or great internal need to subvert due process as has been done in so many cases in the past (Britain’s rebate, German Reunification, the Euro and the Schengen Treaty all spring to mind). Nonetheless, the importance of a westerly partner of strength and access to markets matters to the borderlands between Europe and Russia.

The major problem with the ENP is that it seeks to advance on a confessional basis. The Accession of 2004 followed economic ‘shock therapy’ and Serbia has moved rapidly along the road since the arrest of Ratklo Mladic earlier this year.

The Warsaw Summit attempted to make Belarus the sacrificial lamb by attempting to coerce the five attending parties to sign a declaration ostracising the Lukashenko regime. Admirable as this hard approach to Europe’s last dictator is, the governments of Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia objected on the basis that this was somewhat irrelevant to the task at hand and amounted to bullying. On the former count, they had a point, though there is no doubt that they would have helped their cause by putting aside any concerns on the latter.

Calls in the wake of the summit for a more bilateral process (as opposed to trying to fit six very differently shaped countries into an inflexible process) have some merit – but they also fail to acknowledge that these negotiations are labour intensive at a time when the EU has to agree a new budget, an entirely new mechanism for dealing with sovereign debt crises and the potential admission of eight new members at a time of enlargement fatigue.

Those who say that baby steps toward visa liberalisation will advance the Eastern Partnership are not entirely wrong, but they are misguided if they think that these countries are ripe to be harvested. EU enlargement is entering its most difficult phase and much will depend on direction that Russia takes when Putin returns to office. This part of the world is not recovering from the financial crisis in a steady fashion and human rights are imperilled. That is why Poland has staked so much on these negotiations when it usually takes a hard line on human rights in the East.

Much like the response to the Eurozone crisis, the Warsaw Summit is not exactly a step backwards. On the other hand, the EU does not appear to be keeping pace. With Tymoshenko expected to be given a sentence of seven years next week, it is difficult to see the momentum continuing.

The London Riots – Glimmers of Common Sense

David Cameron made a fair few remarks in his keynote speech on the causes and consequences of last weeks’ breakdown of public order that were reminiscent of his old compassionate conservativism. Society initially went from broken to sick and is now broken again – the implication quite possibly being that a sick society requires lots of expensive treatment, whereas there prison and the police can ‘fix’ a broken one together.

The Prime Minister has a few tricks up his sleeve – and before you think that the common sense in this title refers to Mr Cameron, it does not. The most spectacular is the return of his election pledge of national service, which now moves up the order paper. Germany, which is abolishing its system of to the anguish of its voluntary sector, might have been a useful model. Instead, the Prime Minister’s prescription sounds rather like a holiday camp, with fun activities such as archery providing a more purposeful use for itchy trigger fingers.

Of course, the whole idea is a dog-whistle to the Tebbit-right of the Conservative Party and what is more, a contradiction of Mr Cameron’s own ‘Big Society’. While taking individuals out of their inhospitable surroundings once a year (more likely, once ever) might not be such a bad thing, it is unlikely to take the Tottenham out of the boy/girl. Thus, the whole idea is just another spin on the Tory individual morality response to delinquency and not much more. Moreover, Tottenham itself remains much the same, albeit that the funding for this national service is more than likely to come from those voluntary groups that do something for the local area. Finally, it is perhaps worth remembering the distinctly unpersuasive manner in which Michael Caine framed the idea when it was announced at a Conservative election event:

The eponymous sensible man of the title of this blog is Nick Clegg, who has once again stolen a march on the Prime Minister. Admittedly, the inquiry into the causes of the riots was probably agreed with the leading partner in the Coalition, but there was still some steel in the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech. Reading between the lines of the community payback scheme, and indeed in some of his less trumpeted comments, Mr Clegg has disagreed with the arbitrary withdrawal of benefits and declared that the income tax threshold will have to rise before married couples are given a tax-break.

Finally, I believe in credit where credit is due. Though in general not much of a fan of Diane Abbott, I have to admit that her Parliamentary speech on the riots was one of the best. On the one hand, student wins academic prize is not much of a headline. However, there really aren’t enough rewards for achievements in education or community affairs. Mr Cameron might want to consider using his leverage to set up a system of awards for public service in these communities to show that the good gangs have something on the bad.

 

King and his Courtier

When the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, revealed in his book on the coalition negotiations that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, was invoked as a supporter of the Conservatives’ plans to cut public expenditure by $6bn in an emergency budget, there was something of a furore. According to Anthony Seldon’s book, Brown at 10 (2010, p. 458), Gordon Brown demanded to know whether Mr King had spoken to Nick Clegg during the negotiations. The Bank of England denied this, but the incident provides more than irony, given that this was probably the first time Mr King and Mr Brown had spoken since the former called for a plan for reducing the truly terrifying deficit (Seldon 2010, p. 361).

Given this history, you would expect Labour’s approach to the Bank of England to be suspicious, if not outright hostile. The Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls’ interview this morning could be interpreted as such, given that he accused the Governor of being ‘loyal’ to the current government and not being true to his own ‘heart of hearts’.

On the other hand, Balls also sympathised with Mr King’s situation. The Bank of England, in a settlement engineered by Mr Balls when an advisor to Gordon Brown back in 1997, is responsible for setting interest rates, buying and selling bonds and setting inflation targets, without the intervention of Whitehall. During the credit crunch and subsequent recession, the Bank has opted to keep interest rates at close to zero and practicing quantitive easing – buying back bonds to ensure that cash circulates and keeps the economy active. Generally regarded as a success, the Bank has nonetheless had to explain to his political masters why inflation keeps exceeding the target of 2%.

Perhaps Mr Balls is embarking on a relatively subtle (for a man renowned as an ‘attack-dog’) excercise to win friends and influence Mr King. In accusing the government of failing to support the Bank of England’s efforts to boost the real economy by raising VAT and precipitating an unemployment crisis, Mr Balls is attempting to make Mr King a prop – willing or unwilling – in his efforts to paint the goverment as irresponsible in its handling of the economy. In addition, he is using a card associated with Mr Brown – highlighting the more interventionist approach of the American Treasury – or, at least, while that lasts.

Confidence in a political party is as much to do with lack of confidence in the alternative, and Mr Balls will be determined to turn the tables on the Conservatives as soon as possible. Mervyn King has already warned of the likely decline in living standards as wages stall and inflation rises – that much will be accepted by anyone still in a job and with a mortgage. Unemployment will be more of a political livewire, and with George Osborne reportedly complaining at Davos that he cannot get British companies to spend the 5% of GDP that they are hoarding in cash, Mr Balls will feel he is well placed to exploit this paradox of thrift.

Nick Clegg’s Island Nightmare

It has become quite easy to underestimate Nick Clegg of late, what with his seemingly perverse desire to contradict the inclinations of the Liberal Democrat’s members and grandees and the agenda set by sketchwriters and the more laughable columnists that he is somehow Cameron’s fag.

Nonetheless, his performance on Andrew Marr’s programme this morning was quite reasonable. Most politicians have the weight of their party behind them in interviews and frequently tow a very predictable line. Mr Clegg is obviously freewheeling in Downing Street somewhat, so a chance to question him on government policy is often quite a good way to view some of the dynamics of the Coalition.

In a quite understated way Mr Clegg made his case for the government. This consisted of three points;

1.    The economic situation was a millstone around the private sector’s neck and that the public sector would have to be reduced almost to 1997 levels to allow a recovery;

2.    The Liberal Democrats were proving by their willingness to confront the political challenges of the day that they were a party of government, and that their current working-relationship was a matter of professionalism, which would not tie them into any agenda for the next election;

3.    That the Liberal Democrats were still capable of extracting concessions out of the Conservatives.

The first two points have long been part of Mr Clegg’s strategy for the Liberal Democrats and go some way to explaining his confrontation of his party. The third is one that will become increasingly important as the party attempts to assess the results of that decision before they are able to test it at the ballot box.

What did Mr Clegg have to offer in terms of policy then? One of the big stories of the week – the pupil premium – was absent from the interview, suggesting that Mr Clegg is vulnerable to accusations of presentationalism. The three significant policies in the interview were the cuts to housing benefit and linked social housing development incentives, the decision to allow councils to borrow against their projected earnings (something that will be less effective with grants worth only two-thirds of previous years and a long Council-Tax freeze) and a cap on tuition fees.

I don’t wish to go into the detail of these policies here, but I do want to note that while I have long been aware of the first two policies, the idea of a cap on tuition fees seems new and in no way linked to the Browne report, which appeared to be taken in wholeheartedly by the government. Does this mean that Clegg is making policy on Sunday morning TV (à la Tony Blair stealing Gordon Brown’s budget in Janurary 2000)? More importantly, were the rest of the Cabinet aware that there would be some form of restriction on fees (apart from the funding guarantee to universities, which would make it appear that Mr Clegg was backing down if it were the sole adopted measure to restrict fees)?

It is not an easy time to be in coalition with the Conservatives, but the one advantage that Mr Clegg has is that any concessions are likely to look more impressive when there is so much to be miserable about elsewhere. That may prove to be a saving grace by the end of the Parliament, although I feel that George Osborne will start to restrict their freedom to manoeuvre before 2014. In the short-term, Mr Clegg is in a bit of a thicket and will have to be sharp to avoid being damaged by attacks like Andy Burnham’s in this week’s Guardian. In the long-term, it is Mr Osborne he may have to look out for.

Rights Supremacy

How and why the Conservatives became a Party of Civil Liberties

‘I love liberty by taste, equality by instinct and reason.’ Alexis de Tocqueville to John Stuart Mill in 1836.

The Assault on Liberty by Dominic Raab (2009)

Since the Thatcher era, there have been two complete reversals in the politics of civil liberties. Under Tony Blair, Labour became a Party intolerant of anti-social behaviour, dedicated to making public services accountable through targets and perhaps overly cognisant of the claims of public safety with the advent of the War on Terror. Then, and ironically, given their perceived authoritarianism in the 1980s, the Conservatives became before the last General Election one of the parties most interested in civil liberties.

The change is striking, not least because the last time the Conservatives were in power, they faced many of the same challenges; terrorism (of the Irish variety), civil protest (Trade Union strife and Poll Tax riots, both admittedly more serious than protests against the Iraq War), and a strong line on law and order. Michael Howard was a key personality as Minister for Local Government, Secretary of State for Employment and finally Home Secretary under both Thatcher and Major. Yet it was under his leadership that the Conservatives finally found an adequate voice to condemn the government’s attitude to human rights, as the Human Rights Act 1998 came under consistent attack from the Daily Mail for its supposed lure to the criminal classes, successive Home Secretaries failed to cope with the problems of immigration and the left-wing press grew uneasy with Blair’s ‘better to fall doing the right thing’ attitude to pre-trial detention (November 2005) and ID Cards scheme earlier in the year.

Part of the reason for the Conservatives’ about-turn is that they have had the chance to consider the issues more deeply in opposition. Dominic Raab’s fairly complete survey of a decade’s worth of policy neatly summarises some of the thinking of the new Tory school. In particular, Mr Raab is an associate of David Davis who resigned as Shadow Home Secretary and fought a flat by-election on a civil libertarian agenda in 2008. Mr Raab’s strongest recommendation is that he is a lawyer by trade and he compiles a body of evidence and opinion, shrewdly (albeit perhaps somewhat myopically) portrayed to support his claims that Labour’s anti-terror legislation in particular has been of little benefit and great cost. Among this evidence is the fact that no evidence used in a criminal trial after the 7 July Bombings was acquired more than 21 days after arrests had been made and that new offences of withholding information and encryption details render the extended detention ineffective.

A good deal of the Conservative libertarian position is principled. Mr Raab argues that John Stuart Mill was right to argue for a pluralistic society, so that freedom of speech should not be restricted on the basis of spurious protests. He is also keen on economic freedoms, something Davis refers to in his short introduction to the book. More importantly, however, Mr Raab advances the argument that much of the new ‘surveillance state’ that Labour introduced through various databases has been relied upon too heavily by the police and has been exercised by local Councils without oversight.

Another part of the Conservatives’ shift is political. Although David Cameron’s calls in 2007 to scrap the Human Rights Act would not have formed part of any plan to attract Liberal Democrat supporters, there has been something of a convergence. The Conservatives were also trying to attract ethnic support for the first time. At the risk of my sounding cynical, Mr Raab argues sensibly that if we expect Muslim communities to be the first line of defence in the War on Terror, we ought at least to avoid tainting or alienating them by introducing laws which effect their liberties disproportionately.

The third reason for the new Conservative position on civil liberties is that they dislike the type of society Labour’s interpretation of Human Rights is producing. They agree with the Daily Mail view that the interpretation of European law through British Courts has made judges, Councils and other institutions risk-averse, unpredictable and unscrupulous, particularly without oversight. The apparent inability of the last government to deport criminals plays a major part in this critique, but so too do new claims on the welfare state in the form of targets and the broad interpretation of rights such as life.

Gordon Brown, the bête-noir of most Conservatives, intended to play his own cards on liberty, making speeches and writing pamphlets calling for a Bill of Rights and a ‘positive’ interpretation of liberty, influenced by Amartya Sen, and based on enhancing the development potential of the individual. However, none of this came to anything of significance and unkind voices whispered that Brown enjoyed his macho image upon assumption of the Premiership, when calling a COBRA meeting became a response to any eventuality.

Wooly Liberals or Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing?

David Davis and Dominic Raab do not necessarily feature in Cameron’s inner-circle. Mr Davis is persona non grata after his by-election campaign and the two clearly do not get along, while Mr Raab is finding his feet as one of the new influx of MPs. Nonetheless, his call for a Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act (rather than to stand alongside it like Brown’s) bears similarity to Cameron’s announcements of 2007 and 2007. Civil Liberties featured strongly in the Coalition Agreement, including an investigation into a Bill of Rights and ‘a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion.’

Much of what Mr Raab has put up for debate in his well-written book is worthy of consideration. If, at times, it reads like a manifesto, that is because it is – the codification of Mr Davis’ campaign. The Coalition will not be able to act boldly on all of it, however, because the Liberal Democrats like many of the positive freedoms that Labour has introduced. Nick Clegg has already ruffled feathers by allegedly planning to allow those in prisons on election days the opportunity to vote (part-timers can vote if the ballot falls on one of their ‘off’ days).

The problem for David Cameron (or, more acutely, for Mr Clegg) is that the focus on rights appears to be part of a larger campaign against universality, and what is perceived as in left-leaning circles as fairness. Mr Raab does not go out of his way to avoid showing contempt for the use of the State as a tool for social mobility, even though he does not condemn it outright. Similarly, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) comes in for some abrupt words for suggesting that the well off can load the system in their favour. However, having argued that a broad interpretation of human rights reduces the ability of Ministers to decide on the size of the State, it seems to me that Mr Raab can only be arguing for a more laissez faire society and the allocation of treatments would be one of such a society’s greatest injustices.

In summary, it seems right that a Minister’s first instinct should be to question the need for new laws, and not to search desperately for initiatives. Some of the case studies are manifestly absurd, even though it is the purpose of the judiciary to avoid these pitfalls. The case for repeal of the Human Rights Act is not convincing, however. Perhaps a better alternative would be to improve the oversight of our contested civil liberties – not by some Big Brother figure, but by checks and balances. If the government were to make Council uses of databases, CCTV and ASBOs permissible only at the approval of Councillors, who would take the hit if embarrassment results, there might be fewer cases of children followed home to check that they really did live in a school’s catchment area.

Uncertainty – the Line Between Aggression and Defence

It really is amazing how little is known specifically about the ‘flotilla’ and Israel’s purpose in intercepting it. It may well be a question of the prevention of terror, and it looks like provocation at best, but the chickens of Israel’s lack of proportion and indifference to international opinion in recent years are coming home to roost.

Such have been the actions of Israel’s current government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and its previous one, led by Ehud Olmert, that Israel’s ability to credibly portray this exercise as an act of self-defence has been severely hampered.

A Steady Slide of Responsibility

Although Israel has never peacefully enjoyed the fruits of its existence, its history since 2006 has been worrying. On January 4 of that year, Ariel Sharon had a massive stroke and lapsed into the coma that he is still in to this day. Sharon had never been regarded as a liberal, but he was a canny operator who knew how to play up Israel’s vulnerabilities – often by provoking its enemies. His policy of Unilateral Withdrawal from the Gaza Strip may not have won him any new supporters, for his motives were certainly open to question, but he effectively carved out a central position in Israeli politics and left none other than Netanyahu high and dry.

Sharon’s stroke, coupled with the election of Hamas in Gaza, had the effect of enfeebling his policy. His successor, Ehud Olmert, overreacted to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and trampled over Lebanon, perhaps its most sympathetic neighbour. The war indicated the beginning of a period in which Israel would be easily provoked and led into situations where it could be accused of disproportionate aggression It also began the separation Israel from its allies – finishing off Tony Blair’s premiership.

The Lebanon War was followed by an attack on Hamas in Gaza in 2008. Gaza was a repeat of Lebanon in terms of public reactions, though its justifications were sounder. Rocket and mortar attacks on Israel had increased by 240% on 2007 levels, but the legacy of the war in the minds of most has been the Goldstone Report, which accused both sides of war crimes, a situation which Hamas could better endure than Israel.

Olmert was forced to resign over a corruption scandal in 2009, leading to elections in which Netanyahu has been able to form a coalition. Netanyahu, a noted hawk, has made it his mission to divide the relatively sceptical President Obama from the more unquestioning pro-Israel grouping in Congress by announcing further settlement expansions, although domestic political considerations also play their part.

A Misjudged Act of Defence

The circumstances around the loss of life in the boarding of the six ships sailing from Turkey to Gaza are very murky, which is why an inquiry is right. However, the success of that inquiry will depend on how much assistance the Israelis give, and how willing they are to divulge their intelligence, which seem unlikely.

Israel says that it had been in contact with the ships for days previously and warned them to divert but in the event that they did not do so, surrounded and boarded the ships. If Israel had tried to minimise fatalities – there is some contradiction between ‘shoot to kill’ and reports of rubber bullets and stun guns – it did not try hard enough. What’s more, it appears that the flotilla was not necessarily the bunch of terrorist sympathisers that Israel had anticipated – hence their enthusiasm to deport the detainees.

Another part of the controversy is that Israel acted in international waters, and its blockade of Gaza has drawn criticism from Nick Clegg and David Miliband today. The UN has previously criticised Israel for allowing less than a quarter of the recommended humanitarian aid into Gaza, and indeed, this list of proscribed items seems draconian.

An Unhappy and Uneasy Settlement

The fact remains, however, that policing shipments of aid into Gaza is a sensitive subject. Unwilling to trust any other supervisor, Israel issues its own warrants and carries out its own searches. That said, the limits of its allies have been comprehensively illustrated by this incident. Relations with Turkey, one of Israel’s most significant Muslim allies have been deteriorating for some time now, and the Turkish government’s uncompromising response to the nine deaths gives the impression of a trap that Israel has walked into. The UN, meanwhile, has diluted criticism of Israel, but the Security Council responds only to crises and with a kind of creative tension that still leads to calls such as this; to release all ships.

Israel is now caught in an awkward situation. If it intends to bluff out this latest blow to its image, it may well find itself even more isolated. That is not a consideration that will sway Netanyahu, but were more protestors to attempt a second flotilla he will have to decide whether to risk more violence and more outrage, and possibly another war, or a loosening of the blockade. Netanyahu is an instinctive conservative, who resisted Sharon’s great gamble in 2005. There is no sign yet that Israel will not be able to endure, even if the situation worsens, but a revanchist attitude will deepen the injustice that it is currently perpetrating.

Jo Grimond: Centrist Radical

Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire by Michael McManus

Jo Grimond was a vocal leader of the Liberal Party between 1956 and 1967, a period when it looked as though the vehicle of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George might slip between the cracks of a period of Labour and Conservative dominance. It was testament to his intellectual honesty and sympathetic personality that the Liberals instead grew their share of the House of Commons and the vote.

Grimond took on his party’s inefficient structure in a way reminiscent of recent Labour leaders, establishing solid campaigning machinery. He was also one of the stars of early political television – perhaps the first man to really master it – without ever coming close to a position of influence. It was under the leadership of David Steel from 1974 onwards that the Liberals came closest to power, rejecting Edward Heath’s overtures to support Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, from which position they were largely outmanoeuvred.

The chief legacy of Grimond’s leadership was his proposition of a ‘realignment of the left,’ effectively a call for the Liberals to replace Labour as a counterpoint for Tory reaction. As it happens, his alternate call for the Liberals to occupy the radical centre frequently led to the charge that he would inevitably prop up Labour in office wherever possible, but Grimond was by no means uncritical of the Labour brand of socialism. Indeed, his later ideas are given the flavour of a kind of early Thatcherite conversion by McManus, who was last heard of seeking nomination as a Conservative PPC.

This is, nonetheless, an excellently written biography – sympathetic but not apologetic, informative and schematic, but raising as many questions as it gives answers. Whether Grimond would have made a good minister, let alone Prime Minister, is therefore very much an academic question, but his influence extends to the modern day in various guises.

Though McManus sensibly doesn’t seek to address the level of that influence head on, it is clear that many of Grimond’s tenets have indirectly become part of today’s political settlement, either as policies of Labour or the Conservative Parties (witness; control of inflation, pro-European integration and the enhancement of educational opportunity), or as more recent developments (Cameron’s communitarianism and the cutting of bureaucracy), and if not, as legacies kept alive by today’s Liberal Democrats.

Grimond often talked of the opportunity for people to use their vote to influence affairs in a liberal (and Liberal) direction. He accepted the Alliance and subsequent merger as inevitable and was lauded by Paddy Ashdown as a ‘lion of the liberal cause.’ It seems unlikely that had circumstances been different during his lifetime, Grimond would have taken his party into coalition with the Conservatives. He was of the school of Liberals who sought to ride a crest of Lib-Labbery at the turn of the twentieth century, and might well have sceptically welcomed Tony Blair’s talk of a ‘progressive century.’

The split of Liberal issues across the political spectrum, however, and the mild ascendancy of the Conservatives makes the Coalition that the current leadership has accepted sensible. Grimond would have been pleased with many of the measures suggested, but his legacy was the battle for the independence of liberalism and it would be a pity if in perhaps ten years time his mantle was not adequately filled or the Liberals were again reduced to six seats. Happily, rumours of liberalism’s demise appear to be exaggerated.

A Liberal Moment

It is a little over two years since Nick Clegg referred to the Liberal Democrats as ‘very much a national party,’ the only opposition to Labour in the North, and the Conservatives in the South. Now, the Liberal Democrats are in power for the first time, and Clegg holds the office of Deputy Prime Minister, albeit in a state of affairs described by William Hague as the best of their ideas (and people), and the bulk of the Conservatives’. And yet, there is little disguising the extraordinary way in which the Lib Dems have been incorporated into Conservative plans. Although there have undoubtedly been compromises on both sides, the negotiations of these past four days have struck everyone by their seriousness and affability.

The Coalescing of the Parties

Only the most die-hard activist (on either side) would deny that the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have had much more in common in recent years. In the early years of the now historical Labour government, the Conservatives went right under William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, focussing on immigration and cession of powers to Europe, while Charles Kennedy (after Paddy Ashdown had taken the Party closer than it wanted to be to the Labour Party), gave the impression that the Liberal Democrats were the party of the Left with his opposition to Iraq and to Top-Up Fees.

Since then modernisers have risen on both sides and moderators to both leaderships. The Liberal Democrats, intellectually driven by David Laws and the Orange Book Liberals, began the acceptance of the Blairite line on public services – reform led by markets. The Conservative intellectual revival was driven by the young Notting Hill set, but particularly by Michael Gove, the one-time biographer of Michael Portillo and proponent of Burkean Toryism.

The recession has also had a significant impact on both sides. For Cameron, it necessitated the return of Ken Clarke to the Shadow Cabinet and let loose George Osborne’s tax-cutting instincts. The Liberal Democrats had adopted a policy of tax cuts for low-earners and saw the logic of becoming more critical of Gordon Brown’s efforts to prop-up the economy through state-action. Nonetheless, the oracular Vince Cable’s tendency to criticise the Conservatives as much as Labour, their position on Trident and Chris Huhne’s previous advocacy of green taxes maintained the impression that they were a party of the centre left.

Cameron’s Clause IV

That all changed with the General Election of last Thursday. Clegg had said during the campaign that he felt that the winner of the ‘largest mandate’ deserved the first opportunity to form of government in the case of a hung Parliament and that he would find it difficult to work with Brown (who, by Andrew Rawnsley’s account had been particularly patronising to his opposites during the expenses crisis). Accordingly, and despite a disappointing net loss of seats in the aftermath of the election, Liberal Democrat negotiators (Clegg’s Chief of Staff, Danny Alexander, David Laws and Chris Huhne), met with Hague, Osborne and Oliver Letwin to discuss areas they could co-operate on.

It is hard to conclude other than that both leaders were immediately in favour of a coalition, surprising a result though that is. For the Liberal Democrats, it would offer the best chance of their policies being implemented and an opportunity to present themselves creditably to the electorate as a party of government. Cameron arguably had less to gain, and could have opted for a confidence agreement, whereby the Liberal Democrats would back the Conservatives on key votes. That would not, however, have offered the stability that Cameron craved to make a successful fist of reforming the economy and public services.

Even so, Cameron has given a lot of ground. The Liberal Democrats bring with them commitments to tax cuts for middle-earners, increased spending on schools and civil liberties. Admittedly, there are those in the Conservative Party who agree, but those belong largely to the modernising vanguard. Cameron has also sacrificed Chris Grayling for his recent inability to stand up for gay rights, but the most significant concessions involve political reform. Cameron has locked himself and his party into the deal for five years and has promised to deliver a referendum on the Alternate Vote System (although he will campaign for a ‘no’). There is even the suggestion that Proportional Representation will be introduced for the House of Lords.

This constitutional radicalism has earned Cameron comparisons to Disraeli, the Conservative statesman who trumped the Liberals by expanding the franchise further and faster than Gladstone. Cameron will certainly be thinking that the strong share of the vote that the Conservatives have traditionally had in the twentieth century can give them the edge in a more proportional system, and he must be calculating that an alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is a more natural beast than between Labour and the Lib Dems.

It is difficult to say what kind of ideology motivates Cameron. Indeed, he has always given the impression of being a pragmatist – as The Economist approvingly noticed last week. Notably, it was for Clegg to speak at their joint press conference of ‘a radical, reforming government,’ but his affirmation of a common purpose was striking;

This is a government that will last because despite those differences, we are united by a common purpose for the job we want to do in the next five years.

Our ambition is simple and yet profound. Our ambition is to put real power and opportunity into the hands of people, families, and communities to change their lives and our country for the better.

For me, that is what liberalism is all about: ensuring that everyone has the chance, no matter who they are and where they are from, to be the person they want to be. To live the life they want to live.

You can call it fairness. You can call it responsibility. You can call it liberalism. Whatever words you use the change it will make to your life is the same.

(The Guardian bitterly suggested that you might call it wishful thinking).

For Cameron, the government was predictably more about business. His paean to strong government might have come from Hague’s biography of Pitt the Younger, but he also talked of a ‘historic new direction…of hope and unity, conviction and common purpose.’ Cameron has purported to be a One Nation Tory and his government will be measured as much against its social impact as its economic orthodoxy.

For this reason, another significant part of the agreement is ‘the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups.’ This will need to be made accountable and to be properly funded. Margaret Thatcher’s total opposition to local government was at the root of her poll tax and therefore her downfall, but the rumours of a greatly enhanced Office of the Mayor of London and Scottish Parliament promise a more Chamberlainite future.

Will it Last?

Matthew Paris’ sunny dispositon (“I ought to be cynical, I ought to be saying it’s all going to end in tears, but I just sense something good and genuine in the air and it just might work. You almost have a sense of two men staging a coup against the British political system,”) seems typical of the mood at the moment. The two parties have not merged, however, and nor have we necessarily seen a permanent rupture in the British political system. This is a finely negotiated programme for government, as much as a statement of ideals.

Any one of a number of crises or changes in the weather could make this coalition unsustainable. Among the front-running contenders would be a movement for further integration in Europe, war in the Balkans or a breakpoint with Iran. More serious still, perhaps, would be a fall in the standard of living through some further recession or greater unemployment. As a general rule, governments tend to be more unified when they have money to spend, and this Parliament will see little of that. However, Cameron has been smart to ask a Liberal Democrat to be his executioner in the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Political factions will also have a role. Labour lost the election because the feel-good feeling had left them and their rearguard in favour of a ‘Future Fair For All’ seemed hopeless. A rejuvenated party could help to suppress dissent within the coalition, but it could also start to tempt Liberal Democrats away from their current partners. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats claimed that their negotiations collapsed on the basis of ‘deliverability,’ although it looks more like Clegg was forced to make overtures when his party expressed doubts about the Conservative offer on Monday evening. Then again, the Labour and Conservative reactions (David Blunkett likened them to ‘every harlot in history’ and Sir Malcolm Rifkind expressed a sense of betrayal occasioned by Brown’s game-changing resignation) will likely dissuade a precipitate withdrawal.

Then there are Cameron’s back-benchers, and indeed certain of the old-guard within his Cabinet. Ian Duncan Smith’s Work and Pensions brief will pander to Tory (lack of) sympathies to unemployment and William Hague is a noted Eurosceptic and realist in foreign affairs. Some activists have been critical of a lacklustre campaign, which they felt should have been won outright and would have been with good old Conservative values, and plenty of leadership rivals (David Davis and Liam Fox) lurk on the right wing of the party.

Ultimately, ideology is a luxury for any government and despite the fixed term, the fortunes of the coalition, the Prime Minister and his Deputy depend on the perceived likelihood of an electoral success for either party. If things are going badly, the Conservatives will want to shift right, and the Liberal Democrats will want to disinvest themselves of responsibility. This government’s ambition to devolve power will depend on whether people are willing to get involved, and whether public services will improve, but an age of prosperity will certainly not harm its chances.

Britain’s Choice

And so the General Election, for such a long time a fixed point in the distant future, looms up. This Thursday the different messages, commentaries and clips are reviewed a final time, reconciled and compartmentalised, signed off and acted on.

It has been a smart campaign, and a very good one, it seems to me. Quite ignoring the continuous coverage of meet and greets and Q and A’s (which I haven’t been able to do, admittedly), there has been rather more focus on policy than British Democracy is usually given credit for. The debates, a focal point, here to stay and in danger of taking over future election campaigns, have enhanced the misleading impression that the choice is between three leaders but they have also brought character into the campaign, have ferreted out disagreements that most people didn’t think were there and given new opportunities for narrative-spinning – the much promoted science of centrality and comprehensiveness of message.

There are three worthwhile points of discussion in any overview of this campaign, and appropriately enough in the spirit of the debates, they all revolve around the leadership of the three parties. The results of the election will change our perceptions from where they stand at this moment but I think it is very difficult to see beyond these three truths – that David Cameron has become the totem for a new, rejuvenated conservative movement, that Nick Clegg’s earnestness entranced the media, and that Gordon Brown is temperamentally unsuited to campaigning.

Nick Clegg has clearly been the leader who has done best out of this year’s political clashes. To be fair, he has earned his spurs over the past three years. The number of victories he has racked up in and out of Parliament – Gurkhas, the Speaker’s resignation and getting Brown in front of the Chilcott inquiry –  as well as his bold performances at Prime Minister’s Questions have given him a solid base from which his critique of the ‘Old Parties,’ however nonsensical, looks justified. His performance in the debates was certainly assured and his tax policies, though not as favourable to the lowest earners as he may think, will probably strike a chord, as will his railing against bureaucracy – quite ill-considered when in the past week he has been talking about how inadequate ‘efficiency savings’ are.

That said, the fetishising of opinion polls and the nationalisation of politics has given the impression that a Lib-Dem surge can deliver a windfall of a greatly enhanced Parliamentary position, completely sidelining the politics of the swing-o-meter and the local constituency. He also therefore has the most to lose, especially when “the sky is the limit.” It all sounds rather ominously like David Steel’s exhortation to prepare for government. The great weakness of the Liberal Democrats is that they are ‘the only national party’ as Nick Clegg has pointed out – they lack a local base and are liable to be squeezed out by the Conservatives when the mood is for lower taxes, and Labour when it is for higher public spending.

Now, when there is little enthusiasm for either, it is natural for Clegg to seek to maximise the anti-politics vote. But the fall-out from this election will determine the position of the Lib-Dems for a generation. If they get traction, such as a coalition or just influence from outside, they will be able to show what they stand for. Their four priorities for government are not a bad indicator, but the Lib-Dems have always been a strange coalition. There is a sense that they are mostly made up of people who left the Labour Party because it was too left-wing and now won’t rejoin it because it seems too right-wing. There is also a section that sees itself as closer to the small-state conservative tradition, and any coalition deal could make the party difficult to manage.

Gordon Brown has been the big loser from this campaign, it seems (or perhaps just the big loser, given the tendency for things to go from bad to worse). It is a rare thing to see a politician who is apparently so reviled. Thatcher’s sin was to tolerate such high unemployment, but it is not entirely clear what Brown’s is.

The damage, I suspect, has been to his credibility and it has come from three areas. The first has been the economy, previously Brown’s great strength. I believe Brown has squandered some of the goodwill – the acceptance that British policy was not the root cause – by rejecting the advice of the hawks in his cabinet. When Labour fought a brief civil war over the importance of cuts in the wake of George Osborne’s conference speech last year, Brown reverted to the politics of left versus right, ignoring the tendency of the British public to vote with the right in times of economic crisis. Secondly, the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has come at an unfortunate time, and a series of mishaps has lost Brown credibility when it comes to treating the army fairly.

Thirdly, the Brown whose poll boost in 2007 was the result of apparent command of government and distance from Blairite spin has given way to a Brown who is not in command even of his Cabinet. It is striking how openly Alistair Darling, previously thought of as an ally of the Prime Minister, talks about Brown’s weaknesses as a leader and moreover, how much he is his own Chancellor. Brown, it seems, is being treated as he treated Blair. And Brown’s character has mattered because his clumsy efforts to deal with the expenses scandal and his tactics in the TV debates have been rebuffed by the other two leaders, who clearly loathe him.

The strength of Labour’s manifesto is undermined by the weakness of their leader, and what is more tragic is that Brown as a thinker is more than capable. In his reaction to the economic collapse, and in a recent pamphlet for the Fabian Society, Why the Right is Wrong, is the germ of a sensible policy narrative. Based on Roosevelt’s New Deal, Brownism consists of investment in skills-based training, a subsidised shift towards future areas of growth and advanced infrastructure. Outside of the economic sphere, he is right to say that public services ought to reach those most in need of them and that they ought to encourage participation and responsibility. This is feeding into well-balanced policies such as personal budgets in health and the option for parents to hold the senior management of their children’s schools to account, without dividing the education budget and without leaving children in failing schools.

David Cameron divides people. Some say that the Conservatives should be further ahead in the polls – when they are effectively forecasting a decline in the standard of living and when the Labour Party, unlike Brown, is down but not yet out – and some simply laugh and call him a toff, or ‘same old Tories’. It is the ‘same old Tory’ platform, but that should not lead people to underestimate Cameron, certainly. The leader of the Conservatives has played a blinder in this campaign, from the Nixonian ‘great ignored’ he spoke of on the day the election was called, to this morning’s performance on the Andrew Marr show, where he batted away the suggestion that 80% of the painful consequences of his manifesto was still unannounced.

The apotheosis of the campaign so far was Thursday’s debate. Cameron knows conservative ideology inside and out and gave a masterful exposition of the central tenets – that the state is wasteful, that welfare is inherently demotivating and that the role of government should be restrained to protecting the poorest and weakest. Who can forget him telling Gordon Brown that someone on £20,000 a year was not rich!

And yet, there was no apology for the inheritance tax cut that is being planned and will almost certainly be carried out in the next Parliament while other services are cut. There is ‘the Big Society,’ which to me sounds like an excuse for the State doing nothing, rather than a productive role, an education policy that suggest that it would divide the weak from the strong, and an apparently destructive attitude to Europe.

This election sees Britain in a peculiar balancing-act. There is a large public deficit, but growth is forecast next year and with the banks already profitable, a windfall can be expected on the sale of their shares. Education, health and welfare are relatively well-served by high levels of funding, but need reforms to make them accountable to the people they serve. What appears to be happening is a kick against the size of the State – a classic reaction of a Gladstonian, property-owning democracy against requisitions and appropriations. At this moment in time that would not be a good idea. The market cannot solve all of the problems with the British economy, public services and the enfranchisement of the poor, the ignored, the dispossessed (as The Evening Standard called them this year). That’s why I still want to see a Labour government next Friday.