Thinking For The Individual

The Battles of Tomorrow

2006-06-24T21:41:00.000+01:00

Any visitors who might have crept upon this blog in the months since it became known as 'Thinking For The Individual' might have come to wonder whether the individual in mind was perhaps somewhat lazy and not quite the go-getting entrepreneurial individuals that people of my creed have in mind when they speak of individualism. All I can say is that since then I confess I have had to take a dose of my own medicine, and so I've spent the past months thinking of one individual in particular - me!

After weeks of patient and dogged preparation for GCSE exams, distracting me as they do from philosophical thought and political debate in their insistence that I understand every minute detail of eutrophication and the voltage and current on a series circuit and trigonometry and mitosis and settlement hierarchy and the French subjunctive, they've come and they've gone. But instead of a long and protracted essay on the state of British education (there have been about two or three of those since last June, so I'm covered on that one!), I have a short and simple thought. It's a thought heavily embedded in my mind more than many this week, with my education in the real world only just beginning now that academic instruction has had its chance and true experience of real life beckons. But it's a thought that is true for me as it is, as we move further into the twenty-first century and as the political map is still to be painted blue and red and whatever other colour it is destined to be, for the rest of our society.

The future begins now.

The coming week I'll be in London, living and working on an internship in the postcode where every affair of state is concluded. It's my turn to become one of the sniffling teenage boys sent by a school on work experience, and, in a flash of wisdom or a bow to my foolishness, I shall take my placement at Conservative Campaign Headquarters, 25 Victoria Street. My precocious instincts took charge over the good sense of all my friends who are working in places where they hope they'll have little chance to do any damage, where a spilt cup of coffee won't mean the difference between a Tory and a UKIP victory in Bromley & Chislehurst, and where, if they do leave a legacy of getting it wrong in the one week they there spend, it shouldn't matter for them in the slightest in their own glorious futures.

But so long as, when I make the journey back up north next weekend from my days on Victoria Street, I can be content that I've earned a great experience for myself, and come across the passionate and dedicated people I know work day in, day out at 25 Victoria Street, then my insistence that the future begins on this very day will be all the more true.

It's not merely I whose future starts now. As a society, eras come and eras go. We had the Thatcher years, then in 1990, when I was but an infant, a new man came to Number Ten, and then in 1997, another man came who works there to this day. But his time is running out, and even though the passage of history must never be simply a rewrite of the passage of statesmen and politicians, politics is changing too.

As Tony Blair insists on yet more legislation to combat crime, which has never in the history of human civilisation on these British Isles been so spread across society and so devastating to vast tracts of the country as it is today, and as Gordon Brown presides over an economy which is propped up by the tax returns of all the people, from the middle-class family in suburbia to the working man in the inner city, we can begin to see how the future battles between statesmen will be fought.

I know a young man of my age, a socialist by calling, so he says, though, I'm told, more through the words of his socialist mother and his socialist father. He lives a prosperous, happy lifestyle and lives in what in Yorkshire could easily be thought of as palatial wonder, with a swimming pool and a fencing gallery (hunting is too Tory, apparently, he much prefers to fence, if that's even the right verb). But his socialism persists, and his belief that the people must be saved from themselves by government and politicians is indefatigable.

When I deign to ask whether it is such a good thing to have an economy where Gordon Brown takes half the people's money for himself, and when I suggest the National Health Service is an institution designed to fail, and when I suggest that state education is in a rut (he is, incidentally, a private schoolboy, as am I, but I believe in them and he claims not to), he argues his soundbite. "You want to tear the government down from the inside," comes the eternal refrain.

As vulgar and sickly as I know I sound when, against this backdrop, I paint myself as the council estate boy done good, I can't help drawing the contrast. I can't help draw the contrast between I who believes in mankind, and he who believes in government. I can't help draw the contrast, for when I see how the petulant young whippersnappers like he and I debate and argue and politick the days by, I begin to wonder whether this is how the future might be.

I believe in mankind. I call myself a capitalist, a libertarian, or a Conservative, because it's easy. It takes no effort to give myself a label, for once I'm classed in a particular category, what's the need to ask me what I think of any issue of the day? My mind is then made up by which chair I sit in, which wall I'm stood against, which part of the room I take as my own.

But I am more than a label, as each and every one of us is. I believe in man, and I believe that man is a great creature, and a creature with as many co-operative, socialistic instincts as he has capitalistic, competitive instincts. And I believe that the best society in which man can thrive is the society which sets him free to thrive. That is why I believe in liberty and freedom, and why I find it so easy to call myself a capitalist, a libertarian and a Conservative. Man will make his money and make a name for himself if he is free so to do. Man will look after his neighbour and offer a helping hand to the friend in his community if he is free to do so. The greatest feats are only achieved when man is free.

But in Britain today we are not free. We have a very strange kind of freedom to call our own. We have political rights, and civil liberties that can only be dreamt of in some societies. We have freedom to waste money, freedom to do all we like with our bodies, freedom to hate our country and all it stands for. But all this is is a manifestation of the truer tyranny under which we are held.

We are plainly not free, because if we were we would be achieving. As a society, we would be a proud and happy, shining land if we were free. If we were free, we would give our neighbour a smile and a greeting, not a showcase of neighbours from hell on the television. If we were free, we would conduct ourselves with dignity and honour and respect, for these are the virtues of the self that can only come with freedom. We have a National Health Service, but we receive healthcare of a standard not befitting the fourth greatest economy in the world, and the vast majority of us have no responsibility for our own care, and none of the dignity and honour that responsibility brings upon man and the family. We have state education, but one in five leaves school 'functionally illiterate' and it is youths who are seen as the bane of society, incapable to carry the mantle of leadership in the coming decades, and the vast majority of us have no responsibility for our own education, and yet again none of the dignity and honour that responsibility brings upon man and the family.

The battles of tomorrow are going to be between me and my socialist friend. They won't be battles of Left and Right, or of radicals and moderates, or of managers and ideologues. They will be battles between people who believe either in mankind and people and families and communities, or who believe in the State and systems and politicians and government structures.

My future begins now, and the future of my society begins now too. And I know where I stand in the battles of tomorrow that my society will see when the future's golden sun rises beyond the dawn that comes now. In the battles of tomorrow, every man of us has to know where we stand. I certainly believe I do.

One Saturday In Beeston, Leeds

2006-04-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

It was a bright and clear Saturday morning. The golden sun looked down on two local Conservatives – one a seasoned campaigner in the area, the other most certainly not – as they posted leaflets through letter-boxes across the streets of the Cardinal estate in Beeston, an inner-city working-class area in the south of Leeds, typical of the old industrial heartlands of the northern cities.

The two activists, the elder having spent years working at the heart of the community and now standing for this very council seat, the younger out on this kind of campaigning for the first time, carried sacks of literature, designed to be on coffee tables in living rooms across the ward by the end of the day. Each house – by and large, small semi-detached council housing built after the war; ‘homes fit for heroes’, they called them before they’d been built – received a copy of ‘LS Life’, a glossy little brochure showing off what achievements the Conservatives had made in Leeds since joining forces with the Liberal Democrats and an offering of Green councillors in a coalition at the Town Hall to finally kick Labour out of power in the city, after God only knows how many years of the socialist red rose flying high in this county of the white rose. The slim pamphlet had been published in the city on the very day when David Cameron was elected leader of the party, whilst all the pomp and pageantry of the victory was enjoyed down in London, but fortunately it was not particularly dated (begging the question, perhaps, of what exactly the coalition has been doing in Leeds for the past four months). This was made even more fortunate by the rumour that this particular issue of the pamphlet – with ‘Issue 1’ ambitiously written at the very top of the front cover – was to be the last.

Alongside ‘LS Life’, a newsletter on Labour’s failure in the ward and throughout the city, setting out the Tory alternative, would await residents whenever they took their post from beside the front door that morning.

The year’s local election campaign was a week away from its official kick-off, but council politics was – as ever – far from the minds of the locals. And why should it matter? After all, politicians left the people of Beeston behind long ago. The political consensus in Westminster for generations by now has taken away the freedoms and the individual responsibility of everyone in areas like these. It’s now up to politicos and bureaucrats to make judgements for people, for families and for communities about their local school, about St. James’s Hospital (known as Jimmy’s) nearby, about how their streets are policed – about their whole lives.

This has given the people of Beeston a community where, according to the statisticians, only 58% of people of working age are actually in work, where almost half of citizens have no academic qualifications, and where – for those of us who prefer to look beyond the glib, black-and-white facts and figures – the misery and depression in the air says more than enough about how politics has failed the people.

In order to engage the people of communities just like Beeston in the council elections we face this year, and in the political challenges we face at the polls in every year ahead, we first have to acknowledge and act upon the moral imperative to strive for a better way of life in the broken estates of our country, regardless of the political merits or drawbacks. Educational standards are lower in these places. There is more crime. There is more unemployment. Drug addiction and dealing is rife. More broadly, we can see that there is no freedom in these areas for individuals and families to be responsible for their lot. There is more council housing, therefore fewer people have a stake in the place they live. And as the socialist politicians in these parts remain perpetually unchallenged, there is no real local leadership.

None of these are dogmatic, unsupported statements of my own belief. Everything I say is backed by the facts, but surely the facts are secondary to everything we see and hear from the real people who trudge on in a quiet despair through their existence (‘life’ is not the suitable word) in places like these.

The most important challenge for any party which seeks government is to present a programme for government. This doesn’t have to be a step-by-step plan for radical reform of the foundations of our society, as supporters of Cameron who look back on how Margaret Thatcher never did anything like this before the 1979 general election, yet still managed to oversee the boldest change in the political climate in this country since the Attlee government. But it most certainly should not be a series of empty catch-phrases, the odd promise we know we can’t keep, blended with the happy consequences of opposing an evermore discredited government. To be able to succeed in the inner cities of the north, we have to be able to say something to the people here that matters. We have to have an education policy that will give parents and teachers here freedom and responsibility, and that will raise the next generation of adults out of the poverty of aspiration, ambition and virtue that has ruined places like these. This means there must be no more politicking over great questions such as these. Up here, for example, people know from the national media that the Tories have been making a fuss about backing Labour’s school reforms, but we don’t actually know what Tory education policy is or is likely to be. We can’t be elected on the strength of how we behaved in opposition, but on how we pledge to behave in government. Candidates and activists must be able to state and explain what the Conservatives will do to make education better, not simply be able to describe (and sometimes defend) what we’ve done whenever Labour has put forward its bland legislation, dressed up as radical, but in truth as arrogant and futile as anything else they try to do. We have to have a policy for a reformed NHS which will give the British people world-class healthcare. We have to have something to say which matters, and ideas to offer which will work. We may all have ideas as to what will make our society better, whether it involves more government investment or more private enterprise, more trust in the individual or more power to local councils. But what matters is that we work out straight away what it is that we stand for, and how we can make life better for the working man in parts of the country like these.

It should be self-evident why this is so important. Candidates in local elections, just as much as David Cameron, George Osborne, David Davis and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet down in Westminster, need something to say. We need to be able to offer something to people, and to make promises that we will see through. In the northern cities especially, we can’t win just by knifing Labour and making plain its failures, which are manifold and clear to see to those of us who live here. All that will do is serve to remind us here that politicians are useless, have nothing good to offer, and even less to say. We must stand for something, and then activists and candidates up here can get out on the streets.

Now that we have something to say and something to offer, we can get on with real, energetic campaigning. Local politicians up here, as well as national politicians, need to come and speak to people, and remind these communities that they are concerned with them. The Conservative Party has to be an institution brimming with confident, upbeat and optimistic activists putting out this message, day in, day out. And if politicians here are worried about meeting people and speaking to the man on the street – as I sometimes fear may be the truth – the answer is clear: change your politicians!

Local issues must never be forgotten either. It seems odd that in a local election I am writing to remind activists and candidates about local issues, but too often they go forgotten. Or at the very least, they are treated with workaday disregard. Tories around the country need to be passionate about what they can do for their communities, especially in these poorest areas where there is little left to be passionate about. Politicians should not just be political leaders, but social leaders too, and this means standing up for what matters to local people. This does not mean that we have to promise that the local council will do more than small-government conservatives who believe in individual freedom and individual responsibility would like. It means, rather, that local leaders promise to be active in bringing their community together, being a force for good in whatever way they can. We didn’t get through the Blitz by making more and more laws, but by living and working together in strong communities, and that took a different kind of leadership to the typical statutory leadership that councils work by today. It is that kind of special leadership, hard to describe but easy to see, that is needed in the depressed communities of the cities and towns of the north, still in a state of decline, to bring them back up and let them thrive in this twenty-first century.

All of this requires a national commitment to poorer areas. The clear moral imperative to act is something that, thankfully, more and more Conservatives understand. It’s something Iain Duncan Smith understood when he went to Easterhouse. It’s something the Bow Group understood when they wrote ‘Go Zones’, a volume of ‘policies for the places politics forgot’. It’s something that is easy to talk about, but much harder to do, because it remains so tempting to focus all our efforts on those marginal seats which we need politically (admittedly more urgently than we need the inner cities). This is another, little-discussed problem with any A-List of the best and brightest candidates for election to Westminster: it gives the impression that only around a hundred marginal seats count, when we must fight with every fibre of our being in every corner of our whole country. The mind-set that we can’t win in Leeds Central, in Liverpool Riverside, in Newcastle East and Wallsend, or in Manchester Central is depressing and wrong. We can win wherever we put our minds to it, wherever we engage and excite the local people with promises to do great things for them which will make their lives so much greater, and make their societies so much stronger.

These are the lessons I have taken, and offer to you, from one Saturday morning in Beeston.

How The Little Men In Government Must Grow

2006-04-01T21:56:00.000+01:00

As the issue of peerages ‘sold’ to Labour donors in return for pre-election loans has been splashed all over the news for the past two weeks, and now that it is starting to muddy the waters across the whole political spectrum, I am tempted to ponder the histories of our great statesmen of yesteryear, for whom scandal and sleaze came as second nature, but who are still endowed with a golden reputation in the common consciousness of our society.

David Lloyd George was a man who, when he wasn’t cheating on his wife, used his prime ministerial patronage to sell honours, and in far more explicit a fashion than this government is accused of. Winston Churchill was a drinker and almost went bankrupt by being incompetent with his own finances. Lord Salisbury was unapologetic when it came to his blatant nepotism. Gladstone, meanwhile, regularly took prostitutes home to Downing Street.

The fact that statesmen such as these are admired today, whilst their modern-day alternatives are reviled for even the slightest association with that kind of sleaze and scandal, is enough to annoy any politician today. Whilst vice in politics back in the days of the great statesmen is today looked upon with nothing more than a wry smile, today it incurs the wrath of all, with no exceptions.

But most of today’s politicians will just leave it at annoyance. They will still go on making money wherever they can, forgetting their marriage vows with anyone who comes along, and getting involved in all kinds of repulsive behaviour most of us wouldn’t even know how to get into.

That politicians today are held to the highest of standards by the press and the public, no matter how hypocritical some of these standards are, should be enough to compel them to rise up to those standards and be truly good, decent and virtuous people in conducting the nation’s affairs.

The lesson to be taken from the way a Cabinet minister is castigated today for any whiff of corruption, whereas in the past he would have been left to enjoy all the sex, cash and bad behaviour he could ever want, is reason, if reason were needed, for the politicians of today to rise above the way politics in Britain have turned today, and stand up as bastions of integrity and respectability in a society which has lost its way.

That’s why the real reaction to the latest honours scandal should not be to tighten up the System to make wrong-doing impossible, but for our statesmen to tighten up their own hearts and minds so that they themselves would never do wrong. Integrity is something that those in a position of power must come to possess themselves. That is a far more profitable approach to the prevention of scandal than simply putting in place safeguards against those who clearly do not possess the slightest integrity.

So perhaps the best way for politicians today to rise into the realms of statesmanship is perhaps to take on a very difficult, but very worthwhile challenge: to be virtuous, to be upright, to be great men!

That’s how the little men at the top of our nation’s public life today will become great.

Here's A Chuckle For You...

2006-03-24T19:18:00.000Z

A small piece in The Independent today moved me to write. Apparently, some clever man at some Californian university for clever people has made some clever study which has concluded that the the "whiny, sit-at-the-back-of-the-class kind" of child is more likely to become a typical conservative, whilst "boys and girls who are resilient, smooth and sure of themselves end up liberal".

I'm not quite sure where to start in having a good laugh at this. I could be typically self-effacing and agree that I'm one of those whiny kids who has become a Tory... but even that would be having too much of a laugh.

I could criticise even the simple terms of this study. "The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests," it says, yet we all know that all those people in our society who profess to be liberal aren't exactly non-conformists! "Liberal" has become a code-word for the intolerant elites who think people can't be trusted with their own money, that parents can't be trusted with their child's education, that patients can't be trusted with healthcare, and that only their cosy but disturbingly arrogant worldview is the right one.

And in fact, whilst I think about it, isn't this holier-than-thou attitude of this survey absolutely typical of that cosy yet arrogant worldview of these suave, cool "liberal" people, and their cosy yet arrogant assumptions?

Or I might just - being the typical Tory Boy I probably am, according to these people (although, unlike most liberals, I've never been particularly fazed by words and names) - scoff at the clever, clever people who made this report and get on with having a good life, with not even the slightest of thought to them.

The man behind the study is called Professor Jack Block. Thick as a block, more like!

Freedom and Responsibility: A conservative educational revolution

2006-03-11T22:44:00.000Z

Education in Britain today is in a state of crisis. As a matter of fact, it’s not in a state of crisis - it is a crisis.

It’s a crisis which you don’t even have to be a student, a parent or a teacher to recognise and comprehend. It’s a crisis we are offered an insight into every August, when teenagers across the country open their envelopes and read off a short list of letters which will make or break their whole future, only for the media to proclaim that that list of letters, whether they’re ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’, is becoming more and more meaningless.

It’s a crisis which comes to a head sporadically, whenever some bureaucrat or politico makes a mistake – which, in the field of education, they seem to do with astonishing frequency! It’s a crisis we’ve seen already this year, when the woman with the whip hand over the minds of the youth of our country was accused of poor judgement in allowing sex offenders to take up jobs in schools. It’s a crisis we can begin to contemplate whenever we look at statistics which show that Maths teaching in Hungary and Slovenia is of a better standard than it is here in the United Kingdom. It’s a crisis we can observe when we discover that 82% of 11-year olds can’t spell ‘necessary’, or that a quarter fail with the word ‘castles’; when we discover that three million people have been educated so poorly in the most basic of areas that they would never even try to write a message to their friends and family at Christmastime; when we see that more than a quarter of Year 11 students in one state school at least three times a month (according to a survey taken on a school day - God only knows how many were absent when the survey was taken!).

However, it’s a crisis which runs so deep through our country that it can’t be measured simply by statistics, but by the experiences of those of us who play a role, however big or small, in it all. It’s a crisis which is so complex and so vast that it can’t be solved by simple policy gestures here, financial packages there, and handshakes and smiles for the cameras. It’s a crisis which has, in fact, gone on for decades, but has always been misdiagnosed, mistreated or, more often, completely ignored.

The problem with British education is that it is centred on the State. The government tells teachers what they can teach. The government tells headmasters how they can spend their money. The government tells parents where to send their children. The government takes away great freedom from teachers, parents and students, and this destroys the individual responsibility of all those people with a stake in the education of our citizenry.

This stands in stark contrast to those corners of our globe where education flourishes, such as Singapore, which stands head and shoulders above the pack whenever any new survey is released to set down in tabular form who teaches their students best. Whilst less than ten percent of British students at secondary school attend private schools which are, for the sake of argument, independent (although still bound and gagged by many strictures of State control), in Singapore the figure is virtually quadruple that. Parents take responsibility, as all schools charge them money, albeit amounts much lower than private education in Britain demands, for the education provided. The academic spirit of Singaporean schools is so different to that in Britain, with all the virtues of competition bred into the hearts and minds of their students. Education is at its best when it is set free to thrive, not when it is restricted by government. In Singapore and across the rest of the rapidly developing Far East, education is set free to thrive, and this has brought the diverse provision of education to their students, and the freedom and responsibility that parents and teachers must always possess so that they may excel. It’s no wonder that the Orient is becoming the brain of the world.

And it’s not just these distant lands which have taken the initiative by saying ‘No’ to the destruction and misery of State rule. Just as in the field of healthcare and social security, Britain remains the most centralised, State-run education system in the western world. The example of Sweden is one to consider, to prove that even our neighbours have it better than we do, never mind the people on the other side of town!

Sweden is one of only two countries across the world with a scheme of universal vouchers, where 75% of the average cost of tuition per pupil is given to parents to send their child to any school of their choice. This has led, in the jargon of the educational establishment, to a wider diversity of provision of education in the country, as any kind of school which fulfils simple, basic requirements according to a national body must be financed by the voucher, whether they are religious schools or institutions run by voluntary organisations. By 2004, twenty-two Swedish schools were run by an organisation called Kunskapsskolan, or ‘The Knowledge School’. Over the next five years, they intend to have grown to fifty schools, catering for 20,000 pupils. Their educational ethos is much different to the very formal to the Swedish State sector, which is more akin in its approach to traditional independent schools here in Britain. Their students wear no uniform, discipline and teaching methods are relaxed, encouraging an informal and friendly working environment. Individual learning is emphasised more than the formal, and often poorly-directed, nature of class-based tuition. Students are in charge of their own timetable and what they learn and how they learn, and this allows them to thrive, by encouraging a greater sense of personal responsibility (what conservative can criticise that?!). The leaders of the Kunskapsskolan have no qualms about being driven by the need to make a profit. Chief Executive Anders Hultin has said, “It is hard to see any conflict between the company and our parents as our profit comes from good results and satisfying parents and students. If we don't perform well, then we don't make any profit at all.” Herein lies a lesson for us all. It’s what Adam Smith was talking about when he declared that it is not through the benevolence of the butcher, the baker and the brewer that we expect our dinner, but through their regard to their own interests. Private schools keen to make a profit must satisfy their consumers, and in order to do that, they must provide a first-class education. There is no need for the stumbling apologism of so many conservatives about profit-making here. Capitalists who are happy to call themselves capitalists (as I am), as well as those who are not (like most right-wingers), should never be afraid to talk about the importance of making money, and how this drives business to provide a better service, and that benefits us all, from the humble worker to the almighty buyer.

The Swedish experience harks back to a long-gone era in Britain. Back in the Victorian years, education was thriving. Despite the tales Dickens told, by the end of the nineteenth century, virtually all youngsters had spent at least their primary years in formal education. This apparently revolutionary idea of ‘diversity of provision’ was the way they had always worked. Working men’s colleges, mechanics institutes, dame schools, ragged schools, grammar schools and Sunday schools were set free to thrive. Parents had the power to decide what education they wanted for their children. Victoria’s people had freedom and responsibility of a kind that Elizabeth’s can only dream and wonder about. And it is exactly that freedom and that responsibility that will let education flourish once again on our fair island.

The Swedish experience shows how parents and students can be given a choice over their education. The modern-day British experience and its ethos of ‘one-size-fits-all’ just doesn’t work! Every student is different, and can not be treated as simply part of a bigger and more important system. The needs of the student must always be paramount in education. The student should not be forced to fit into the system. And that is another charge against the British way.

Yet here in Britain, there are still pockets of resistance to the Statist monster. Private education still moves onwards and upwards, and refuses to baulk in the face of socialist anger and aggression. And it thrives!

Private education in Britain is not all silly hats and Latin mottos. Private schools are mini-communities, with thriving societies to cater for every taste and desire. Sport, drama, art and music is encouraged, and involvement in the rest of the school community is just as important for students as getting the grades in class. They are well led by dedicated, committed and talented people, for whom the school is what they live for. In private schools, students take responsibility for themselves and for the school community as a whole. On the academic side, co-operation and competition walk hand in hand, in harmony, not in conflict. The best student is the one who does his work to the best of his ability, but will always offer a helping hand to his friend, who might be struggling to grasp some abstract idea or who has just remembered to do his homework ten minutes before the lesson is due to begin (let’s face it - it happens to us all!). These communities are far more diverse than State schools too, with students coming from a wider range of backgrounds, whether socially, economically or ethnically. This is because the best private schools attract interest from far and wide, and because parents of limited means but limitless aspirations for their children are assisted to make their dreams come true, whilst the State system simply compels students into the school which serves their community and only their community, having already sought to segregate poorer families on the council estates they made long ago. There is close parental involvement in the private school, with parents regularly meeting with their child’s teachers to discuss their progress, as well as a thriving social element for them to enjoy. And this is entirely understandable - they want their money’s worth! This kind of consumerism in education is clearly no evil thing. It works in Sweden. It works in Singapore. And when it’s allowed to, it works here too! Ruth Kelly and Tony Blair think they can simply pick and choose the characteristics of the private school, such as the prefects or the house system, and then expect them to work in the State system. This is fantasy. The private school is not just a concrete noun. It’s a concept, and it thrives as it does because it is built on the virtues of freedom and responsibility. Teachers, parents and students are free to be responsible, precisely because greater freedom demands greater responsibility, and because we can only be responsible for ourselves if we are free.

State education in Britain forgets all this. State education snatches children from their parents at three or four, and spits them out of the machine at the other end, with nothing valuable to show for it - no skills for their working life, no wisdom, no virtue. The State is not a teacher and it is not a parent, and whenever we, the people, allow the State to think that it is better than us at educating our youth, our society is on a path to destruction.

The history of State education in Britain is a treatise on the theme of failure. It’s why Oxbridge admissions tutors, when forced to choose between State-educated and privately-educated students of similar abilities, tastes and wishes, they will take the State-educated student - not because they want to prop up the State system, but because they know the State-educated student has not nearly had the same opportunities and the same chances as the privately-educated student, and because the State-educated student has endured such a hopeless education and has still come out fighting. It’s why education here in Britain as an idea is labelled a ‘problem’, which politicians say they want to ‘get to grips with’. Quite simply, it’s why our country is no longer a nation of aspiration, ambition and virtue, but a wreck.

Yet there is hope. There is hope from the lessons of Singapore and Sweden and all over the world, where the very conservative virtues of freedom and responsibility are as much a part of education as the sound of chalk on blackboard. The task for Britain is to develop an educational philosophy which believes in freedom for schools: for teachers, for parents and for students, so that this very freedom encourages we, the people, to take responsibility for our education.

Our educational revolution is not one which can be achieved by simplistic policy gestures here or there - after all, we are not socialists! As Stuart Sexton, a political advisor on education in the Thatcher years has written, “Today, the Department for Education and Skills tells schools what to teach, how to teach, what ‘targets’ to achieve, what to spend, what not to spend, and so on.” The first task is to bring this to an end. Government must give schools independence in all these areas. The National Curriculum forces schools to teach exactly what the State wants, from the age of four to eighteen, and perhaps even in the future, in the nursery! This must end. It gives teachers no trust and respect, no freedom and responsibility, and treats them as nothing more than agents of the State, placed in schools simply to do the Secretary of State’s bidding. Government-imposed targets must go. State-imposed regulation on what headmasters can do with their own money must go. Independence for schools in all these areas and more is the vital first step.

Having achieved colossal reforms such as these in the way schools work, we must set about challenging the Statist provision of education. The best option for Britain is the introduction of a universal voucher, learning the lessons of similar schemes around the world. The voucher would be used at any school of the family’s choice, and is open to all pupils. No government authority would be allowed to oppose the use of the voucher at any school, so long as it satisfies simple, basic standards as in Sweden. Schools would be able to admit students based on any criteria they wish, including according to religion. Any education provider would be allowed to participate in and benefit from the scheme, from charities and trusts to profit-making companies. At present, the State spends around £5,000 per year on every secondary pupil (which is, incidentally, roughly the average private school fee). However, with bureaucracy, only £3,000 of that gets through to the school. If we were able to eliminate bureaucracy on a massive scale in education, I see no reason why the voucher could not be worth 100 percent of what the State already spends on education. This is the conservative way and it gives parents, teachers and students respect and trust to make their own decision, and to chart their own destiny.

These are only the first steps. Our driving ambition must be the desire to eventually breed a society which thrives on the ethos of personal responsibility for education. Schools must become thriving communities, not simply places of great learning. It will require the growth in the kind of social entrepreneurialism and shared responsibility of which David Cameron has stressed so often in recent weeks and months to develop a greater education in Britain. The flag of State control must be lowered from every school in our country, and in its place, we must raise the standard of freedom and responsibility.

Education must always be the most important pursuit for us all. Education is not simply about the school or the college. Education is life, and life is education. It has always been important to me and my family, and that is why we scrimp and save to ensure I am well-educated and afforded the best chances and opportunities in life, because my family and I believe in taking responsibility for our education. I have no qualms about admitting that I am the first member of my family to attend a private school, and I have no trouble with telling the world that the freedom and responsibility that has allowed me to succeed in education meant that last August, when I was given the result of my GCSE French exam, which I, like many others in my school, had taken a year early, I became the first member of my family with a formal academic qualification. Despite the crushing impositions placed upon those who provide me, just one student, with my education, the freedom we seek and the responsibility we believe in has already brought me success, and we must all work hard to ensure that all students across the country enjoy success in all they seek. But to do this requires us to build an educational outlook based on freedom and responsibility.

To reform education in Britain, and to breed this educational revolution, takes an almighty will and determination. To do what I propose we do is a great challenge. It takes balls! Margaret Thatcher couldn’t even stomach it in the 1980s. This was one fight that she and her intellectual mentor Keith Joseph couldn’t live up to when they contemplated reforms such as these back then. So let’s show the world how it’s done!

Some day soon, we’ll have no choice. Education in Britain will be in a helpless heap. And it will either fall to the Cameron generation to lead this educational revolution, bringing about a new dawn of freedom and responsibility, or it will be my generation. Because I can pledge, with my hand on my heart, that I will make it my life’s work to build a stronger society based on a bold philosophy of education, held high by those pillars of freedom and responsibility, and many more will join me!

We’ve got the ideas, we’ve got the will and determination, and we’ve got the desire to build a greater, stronger, prouder society. We can do this!

Time Will Tell

2005-12-22T23:31:00.000Z

December 2005 will be remembered as the month when David Cameron was elected to the leadership of the Conservative Party by a significant margin. Like many other Conservative activists with a determined belief in the importance of bringing a Tory government back to power at the next election, and in the hope that he would be the best choice to achieve that goal, I placed my cross by the name of Cameron, and remain happy to have done so.

Outside the party, Mr Cameron has had a good few weeks so far. Opinion polls have placed him as the public's favourite choice for the premiership before he's even had to open his mouth on any significant policy area. But within the party, his plans for a centralised list to bring together the best candidates for the safest seats, not to mention his movement on environmental issues, as well as his recent manoeuvring to bring Liberal Democrats closer to the Conservative cause, and the overall general impression that our traditional conservative and libertarian principles are being ignored for the sake of electoral expediency, has stirred concern in some quarters.

It remains to be seen whether this concern is deserved or not. Time will tell.

"Thinking For The Individual"

2005-11-19T22:16:00.000Z

After a century of posts under the header of 'Thinking For The People', offering readers a wealth of views on the political and social issues of the day, not to mention a plan for real local democracy in Britain, a strategy to make trades unions the bastions of welfare reform in the twenty-first century, and a proposal that we privatise industry all over again, this blog shall henceforth be known, in true conservative spirit, as 'Thinking For The Individual'.

Take Away Responsibility, And Men Will Become Irresponsible

2005-11-12T20:25:00.000Z

The fires of poverty and injustice are raging through the suburbs of France this week, and have now made their way to the centre of the city of Lyon, a place which was once the home of a brave resistance, fighting off the distant Nazi tyranny. The smouldering whiff of rebellion courses through the air of a nation founded on the principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

We in Britain would be deluding ourselves if we claimed we did not understand the kind of violence that is tormenting the most depressed parts of the French Republic. Since the turn of the century, we've had rioting, which superficially we have concluded was down to racial problems. In Oldham, Burnley, Bradford and Leeds, we have seen violence, all of which we decided stemmed from the issue of race. In Glodwick, two Asian youths quarrelled with two white youths, before a wave of violence tore the last remnants of community in Oldham to the ground. In Harehills, the arrested of an Asian man was the catalyst for a night of violence in Leeds.

Whilst we may not yet have seen violence on a scale that France has endured for the past two weeks, it is still despairingly easy to come to one simple conclusion: our society is in a crisis.

The most deprived communities of Britain, just like the most deprived communities of France, are in a perpetual state of depression. Joblessness, criminality and dependence breed a society of men and women with no hope in their lives, and nothing to live for. Fear is a constant. These communities, often council estates created by government, designed to be the perfect havens for the working men of our nation, are under the thumb of violent youths, drug-dealers and gun-toting maniacs. Nobody can trust one another. People become atomised, destroying any sense of community and responsibility for one's society. This all sums up the dark, shadowy depression that has crept into the poorest parts of both our nations, and which can only be solved through serious change to the structure of our societies.

In France, the rioters and their sympathisers and apologists complain about the high-handed and apparently institutionally racist authorities, ruled over by the tough Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. It is quite possible that they are right. Too often, authority has no respect for the people who must submit to it. This is just as true in our nation, where the police have become distant and something to be quietly feared, even by the law-abiding majority. As they race across the streets of estates in their cars, sirens ablaze, stopping often to tell good people they are doing something wrong, and avoiding the gang on the street corner which looks as though it should be avoided at all costs, it is easy to conclude that they must regain the trust and respect of the most impoverished communities. It is easy for authority to demand respect, but only wisdom can teach you that the two guiding rules of respect are that it must be earned, and it must be mutual.

Of course, in Britain, there is no suggestion that respect will ever be mutual. The poorest people of Britain are ruled over by a distant government which has no respect at all for their wishes or their concerns. When the State takes away responsibility from the individual, the individual will become irresponsible. By removing freedom over all manner of issues from the British people, it has taken away their responsibilities. And now, in the most depressed communities, the lack of responsibility people have for themselves, their families and their communities is exactly what is destroying the very fabric of society.

The State has taken away the freedom and the responsibility of some of the poorest people in the French banlieues, and now the cities are burning. It truly terrifies me to contemplate how near we may be to the same thing in the inner cities of Britain.

Opening Up The Conservative Party

2005-11-10T19:30:00.000Z

Francis Maude writes on the Platform blog at conservativehome.com, asking how we can become a more open Conservative Party, and how we can ultimately craft ourselves into a stronger campaigning force. My comments on the blog are as follows:

"I think a reasonable starting point would be to find ways of establishing institutions which may not be under the diktat of the Conservative Party, but would have ties to us and would be designed to have influence within the party in return for them offering their time and money and campaigning leverage to the party. These institutions could be based on professions or different parts of the electorate, e.g. 'Conservative Mothers' Alliance' or 'Taxpayers for the Conservative Party' or 'Conservative Teachers'. That way, many distinct parts of the electorate can have influence within the party and can do more for our prospects around the country.

"The reason for this is clear: political affiliation is unfashionable and is unlikely to be made more popular just by changing our leader. However, many people throughout the country do want to have their voice heard and do want to have influence, if only for their own betterment, not just the betterment of their society. By encouraging people from all walks of life to become affiliated with campaign groups which seek to give them a better life, we may be able to attract the vast grassroots army that only the best campaigning organisations have at their disposal."

We're Still United!

2005-11-10T19:27:00.000Z

"There is no party more united than the Conservatives."

In recent months, I have repeated that refrain again and again. Oftentimes, as leadership candidates have come close to open warfare, this bold statement has seemed fragile and brittle. But when you take a closer look at exactly what the two Davids have to offer we, the people, you will see that very rarely has this party has such a great opportunity to maintain a unified front, gathered around a common cause.

David Davis writes in his manifesto, sent out recently to all party members along with our ballot papers, that we need 'lower and simplified taxes'. David Cameron agrees with him.

Mr. Cameron says 'No to the euro and the constitution'. So does his opponent.

David Davis wants choice and competition in the public services. David Cameron does too.

David Cameron believes in the importance of strong families and in the institution of marriage. So does David Davis.

Mr. Davis talks of 'radically devolving power to individuals and communities'. David Cameron says we must 'transfer powers to local government'.

The Conservative Party has for so long believed in the guiding values of freedom and responsibility: the principle that we should all be free from the State, but that we must never forget that we have responsibilities to our communities, our families and ourselves. Of course, the two Davids may disagree over the odd aspect of policy here, or some minor presentational matter there. David Cameron thinks it's wrong to talk too much about policy. David Davis disagrees. David Davis talks about school vouchers, whilst David Cameron offers 'real foundation hospitals'. And let us never forget that both of them, like all Conservatives, have an unequivocal commitment to the betterment of all people in our society, rich and poor, not just in their pocket, but in their hearts and minds too.

David Cameron and David Davis are two men who, like all Conservatives, believe in building a greater society, not a lesser one: not a society where the government keeps the whip-hand over its people, but where the individual, the family and the community are all free to thrive and excel, and reap the rewards when they achieve.

The question we may ask is which one really means what they say. Or we may wonder which one can present their case best to the British public.

But one thing is for sure: the Conservative Party is fundamentally united. What stronger start to his tenure in office could the next leader of our party wish for?

Cameron vs. Davis

2005-10-20T17:43:00.000+01:00

David Cameron and David Davis will go through to the final ballot of party activists in the Conservative leadership election, after today's second round vote brought this result:

David Cameron.......90
David Davis............57
Liam Fox................51

(EDIT: Forgive my inaccurate post which declared that David Davis had taken 90 votes from members of parliament. For those seeking to get an endorsement for one of the candidates out of me, they should not view the post as wishful thinking, just my failure to differentiate between two people with the same forename!!)

Exit Clarke

2005-10-18T18:14:00.000+01:00

The first round of voting for the election of the next Conservative leader has been concluded, and the result is as follows:

David Davis............62
David Cameron.......56
Liam Fox................42
Kenneth Clarke.......38

This means Kenneth Clarke is out of the race. Four pledged Davis supporters deserted their man, as I suggested may happen in a comment on the Conservative Home blog several days ago. And both Liam Fox and David Cameron take a significant number of votes from those MPs who have not pledged their support to any candidate. But until Thursday, the politicking and manoeuvring will go on as the three remaining candidates each seek to cement their place amongst the final two.

The Cameron Questions

2005-10-15T19:15:00.000+01:00

In my mind, David Cameron is faced with two major stumbling blocks in the coming weeks, as he goes into Tuesday's first round of voting on the election of a new Conservative leader as the new favourite. His problem is that he appears to have no intention of countering either of them.

Is Cameron more Blairite than Blair?
It is often remarked about David Cameron that he is very much in favour of pursuing the kind of modernising agenda that Tony Blair took on when he became Leader of the Labour Party back in 1994. This perception has gone unchallenged in the past few months (perhaps because many activists have finally come to the conclusion that, after eight years of Labour government, they want some power far more than they want their principles). It comes through whenever the man talks about his big ideas, like his speech on social entrepreneurship recently, which came across to many as just another Blairite initiative. It comes through whenever he discusses what he really believes in, such as another speech soon after the election when he criticised the Left for talking too much about resources in the public services, saving his anger too for the Right for talking too much about changing the structures of the services, when what he felt was that what the public really want from politicians are answers to their problems. That's a fair position to take, but it did come across as offensive to many of us on the Right, and I don't imagine that Mr. Cameron has changed his mind recently. And finally, the perception of his Blairite credentials comes across with today's suggestion in the Times that a senior Cameron backer says his man might try to cut off up to 7% of the party's core economically liberal and socially conservative supporters in order to appeal to the liberal-leaning voters out there. To some, Cameron's Blairite credentials are a sign of great things for the Conservative Party. But it is a serious flaw to many in the party, and it is a question that must be addressed by the man if he wishes to lead the party.

Is Cameron part of the ambivalent metropolitan elite?
There is not much which is Conservative (with a small 'c' or a big 'C') about the trendy London elites which Mr. Cameron is frequently thought of as being a part of. His background is one of affluence, with his Eton and Oxbridge education, his Oxfordshire upbringing and his West London lifestyle today all bearing witness to this truth. The question is whether he is a part of the liberal elite frequently criticised by the Right for their destructive social libertarianism, and for what comes across as their lack of understanding for what life at the rough end of society is like. And it is this perception which has come across with Mr. Cameron's drug history being at the centre of media attention. The stereotype of the liberal, metropolitan elite is that they are unmoved by the conventional principles of morality and responsibility for onesself and one's society. They don't care much for the institutions of marriage and the family. They feel no problem about moral questions of the day, such as abortion or euthanasia. And they take a very liberal, very trendy attitude to crime and especially drugs. Whilst that kind of attitude may work in Notting Hill or North Kensington, it is damaging to those of us who live and work in the crime-ridden and quietly depressed inner cities of this country.

Those are the two greatest questions that have to be addressed before I, as an individual Conservative Party member who believes in the virtues of freedom and responsibility, who believes firmly in taking the State out of people's lives, but whose principles are firmly socially conservative, could ever vote for David Cameron to be the next leader of my party - the only political party in modern Britain which believes in the same things that I and millions of others believe in and know to be true.

That is his challenge over the coming weeks. I hope he will live up to it.

And The Weeks Go By...

2005-10-09T16:03:00.000+01:00

At the end of a fairly promising and optimistic Conservative Party conference, things have changed.

David Cameron is pressing ahead. There are still doubts from the right about what he really believes in, but it appears that activists don't think of principle as such an important issue as power. And they feel that Mr. Cameron is the man who will give them power. I still feel that Cameron is a victim of what commentators have called 'initiativitis' - the desire to solve profound social problems with a media-friendly quick-fix and a misdirected but attractive cash injection. His speech several months ago about how the left goes on about resources in public services and how the right bangs on about changing the structures was rather insulting to Conservatives like me who do not necessarily favour his Blairite managerialist attitude to public policy. And whilst his belief in social entrepreneurship is impressive, it must be made to sound like something more serious than he has made it sound so far.

Ken Clarke, meanwhile, is becoming a part of Conservative Party folklore. He is without a doubt a great man, with the power to inspire, but the leadership may be the wrong place for him.

David Davis is slipping. The huge momentum he had built up without saying anything over the last few months since the election is starting to ebb away now that he's opened his mouth.

Malcolm Rifkind is well-liked, and even admired. But few see him as a potential leader.

Liam Fox certainly has plenty of valuble things to say and, as far as I'm concerned, has been the only candidate to put forward a cohesive agenda on which the Conservative Party can run, with his pursuit of traditional conservative ideas based on patriotism, the family and building a stronger and more confident society. But he clearly needs to work on his ability to rouse and inspire. A friend of mine who attended the conference spoke of how his speech was overshadowed by that of William Hague. Liam Fox has impressed me, but I don't think he has done enough to convince me that the leadership is right for him.

David Davis still takes most support from members of parliament who have officially declared their voting intentions. Of course, these official declarers should not be taken with absolute certainty. I can well imagine that some who have promised support to Mr. Davis (or other candidates) are now questioning his ability and hoping that they might vote for somebody else, under the radar, without him noticing. It could be highly amusing to the impartial observer for some of the 65 MPs planning to vote for Davis to move away from him.

Assuming that the two Davids go through to the final round of voting, it will be interesting to see how it turns out. For activists, the safe choice is David Davis. He is the man who they can be sure of as far as his beliefs are concerned. But perhaps the thirst for power is coming back to us so much that we are ready and willing to shift our position to make the party more attractive to voters throughout the country - voters we've lost in the past, and even voters we've never won before.

What a difference a week makes!

Conservative Party Conference

2005-10-02T12:47:00.000+01:00

The Conservative Party is gathering in Blackpool for the start of its annual conference.

Labour threw out an elderly gentleman for expressing his opinion. The Liberal Democrats faltered when an activist deigned to criticise them. What fun is in store for the party of the blue torch this year?

'Re-Privatisation'

2005-09-18T18:06:00.000+01:00

It is commonly assumed that the privatisation of coal under Margaret Thatcher did nothing to reverse the decline of the industry. Of course, very few of us in Britain have any problem finding and acquiring our energy. And yes, manufacturing and extractive industries alike were in decline trhroughout most of the twentieth century. And yes, the British economy is moving - perhaps inexorably - towards the new quaternary, high-tech industries of information technology or finance. And yes, now that our economy is more internationalised than ever before, heavy industry can find a much better place to locate than the regulated, taxing modern British economy. Maybe the decline of the coal industry is of no problem to a supposedly affluent and prosperous society like ours.

Unfortunately, I just can't accept this. In the past, conservatives have accused me of either sentimentalism or bad economics because of my belief in the importance of the great industries of yesteryear: the trades which built our nation's economic strength and which made us the foremost power in the world.

Most conservatives agree that private enterprise works. Free markets will always work more effectively - for businesses, for workers and for consumers - than the socialist concepts of collective, centralised planning. The general economic legacy of Thatcherism has been a success, even if its effects still remain barely felt in many parts of our country. As a northerner and a Conservative, I often find myself distancing my position and my philosophy from Margaret Thatcher and her government, not just because my own philosophy is much more libertarian than her actions were, but also because her government did not achieve as much for the long-depressed counties of the north of England, south Wales and the great cities of Scotland as it did for the prosperous pockets of the south. However, the fundamental belief that I and Margaret Thatcher share in private enterprise is something I have no wish to gloss over.

The only problem with Thatcherite privatisation was that, too often, it replaced one State monopoly with a private monopoly. This was probably never more true than in the coal industry.

Back in the Victorian era - to which libertarians and conservatives hark back with glee, for better or worse - coal was a thriving industry. It was of fundamental importance to the modern and exciting railways. It was an important export. The black stuff was what made us great. Of course, coal is undoubtedly a less important resource to our national prosperity today than it was then. But it is still an important commodity, and the lack of evidence of a decline in the industry in other major western economies shows that the typical Tory apology for the decline of coal is flawed.

So coal is still important. If we take for granted that a stronger coal industry in Britain would be a good thing for the nation, and for the individual workers in communities which used to rely on coal, then we can take a trip into the question of how we would boost coal mining in Britain.

UK Coal is the name of the company which controls most of what is left of the remaining industry in Britain. One big, national corporation, looking after all that remains. That's not private enterprise to me. In the Victorian era, coal mines were usually run by a local entrepreneur or a consortium, or a factory owner who wished to diversify for the economic interest of his firm. Despite the onset of globalisation, and the growth of the multinational, I feel that local, independent, private ownership of industry is still possible, and in the best interest of businesses, workers and consumers.

And that is the idea I put forward, in this great debate on our economy: that the government come to an agreement with UK Coal which would dismantle the entire company, and which would put every coal mine in Britain up for sale - even all those which have been left in a disused state for decades. Local entrepreneurs, consortiums and national or international businesses alike will be invited to make offers for whichever coal mine takes their interest. And when all those mines which have been left to rot are back up and running, that will be when we can say we have achieved.

It may not work. It may just be another of those pie-in-the-sky, well-intention but really very fatuous ideas that, I readily admit, men like me are famed for!!!

But it worked in the past. Yes, the British economy was very different when our economy was based on the principles of that independent, localised, entrepreneurial free enterprise. But in our modern era, the manufacturing and extractive industries have been in terminal decline for so long that by now it is fair to say that they are extinct. That is not a good thing for those communities throughout Britain which have been destroyed by this desperate trend. And it is for all those young men who are in need of work, for those communities who are in despair, and for the interest of the nation, that I propose this 're-privatisation'.

Willetts Backs Davis

2005-09-15T20:13:00.000+01:00

This is huge! The man thought of as the intellectual powerhouse of the Conservative Party, whose support has been canvassed from all the candidates for the leadership, is set to back David Davis to become the next Leader.

As David Davis finally steps up his campaign, he strikes too all the right notes with his speech calling for a new Tory idealism, stressing the importance of right-wing solutions for the problems of most concern to moderate conservatives, such as tackling the underbelly of poverty in the inner cities throughout Britain (even though I have always believed there was a common consensus in the party about this, as I have discussed after the general election on this blog).

This is very good news for David Davis and for the future of the Conservative Party, not to mention the whole country!

The Politics Of Trust

2005-09-06T15:29:00.000+01:00

There can be little doubt that trust is the decisive issue in any electoral campaign. No political party in living memory has ever been elected to govern with a decisive mandate in this country without the having the trust of the British people to run the economy. The Conservatives were kicked out of office in 1997 after scandal upon scandal which made the people inevitably lose faith and trust in their ability to govern. In 1979, the people refused to back Jim Callaghan's Labour government after it took the country down a perilous path and into a serious economic downturn, not to mention the Winter of Discontent. Trust in a political party to run the economy and govern honourably and well is the decisive issue in any electoral campaign, and is the foundation without which any elaborate manifesto will fall to pieces.

If the Conservative Party wishes to return to government soon, we can only do so if we are trusted. Trust is the one weapon we need in our arsenal, and it is one of the very few weapons that we can only attain through our own behaviour and our own efforts, and one that we can lose at any moment.

Trust is key to our future as a political party.

However, a radical Conservative platform might turn the issue of trust into something different: a pledge to the people, rather than their feeling for us. A radical Conservative platform would be plain with the British people, and we would get out on the high streets up and down our country, and tell them, "We trust you!"

No mainstream political party trusts the British people with their own lives right now. No political party trusts parents and teachers with the education of children, because all of them are seeking little or no fundamental reform of the structure of state education. No political party trusts patients and doctors with healthcare, because all of them are seeking no fundamental reform to the National Health Service. Indeed, this Labour government is moving in the opposite direction. Labour has no trust in smokers to be responsible with their behaviour in public places. Labour has no trust in parents of toddlers, because they want to provide something they term 'affordable childcare' in a big State network of nurseries and playgroups. Labour has no trust in the British people.

And that is where a Conservative vision for Britain can provide something different. If we trust parents and teachers with the education of children, if we trust doctors and patients with healthcare, if we trust people with their own affairs, then the Conservative Party will be forever remembered as the only political party which had faith in the people of this country, however much they earned, whatever colour their skin, and no matter how they exercised their freedoms and their responsibilities.

These should be the terms of the debate come the next election. The choice facing voters should be clear: do you want a government which thinks you are too foolish, silly and incompetent to run your own lives, or do you want a government which has respect for your choices, which believes in your capacity and your skills and which has trust in each and every one of you?

I believe that a political party which is ready, willing and eager to trust its citizenry is the one which will not only win a great victory, but which will bring deliverance to the people of these isles and build a stronger society, more at ease with itself, and more eager to achieve great feats.

Hurricane Katrina

2005-09-04T23:41:00.000+01:00

It is still very hard to come to terms with the enormity of Hurricane Katrina. In the short history of this blog, I have always been rather slow to respond to natural disasters and tragedies of this kind, largely because I never felt I had anything new to offer other than more sympathy and emotion. But with Hurricane Katrina, I feel more confusion than emotion and more a strange kind of anger than sympathy.

The confusion is how this all happened: not the hurricane, as the force of the earth is well known to the people of the Gulf States of the USA; but the aftermath. How is it that this tragedy failed to pull together the people of New Orleans in rugged, gritty harmony, no matter what dangers came their way? How is it that this tragedy, unlike the Asian tsunami or the man-made disasters of September 11th, 2001, and the more recent attacks on the city of London, made the people of New Orleans loot and steal and even shoot and kill? Some thinkers go as far as to say that this is symbolic of how an individualist state of mind destroys society. And then I, as a conservative, capitalist, individualist question my whole philosophy and outlook on life thanks to the behaviour of a few people in the United States whose lives have been ruined.

And then you remember: what kind of fool talks politics after a tragedy of this scale? Disasters do not call for philosophical debates, but for a proper response, and a keen and determined attempt by the authorities to save as many lives as you can. But then you see the response of George W. Bush's administration, which has been at best lacklustre in recent days, offering little other than heavy-handed troops to quell the riots or the stealing or whatever else is going on down there. Bush has visited Louisiana and is due to return tomorrow (Monday), but has been criticised for only seeking a photo opportunity. It's not a good performance from the man, is it?

But then you ask: what can Bush really do? I don't know the answer. More food and clean water, yes. Somewhere for the victims to stay, yes. But then you ask: are governments capable of providing all of that to people? And then you remember not to talk politics after something like this disaster.

And then you think the unthinkable. Is the federal government failing to act decisively because many of the victims are black? As I was sat with friends yesterday evening, one of them said, "Of course, you know why nobody's doing anything about it, don't you?" It wasn't said, but we knew what she meant. But then you think: is it really possible that a western government would ignore a crisis because of the race of the victims? Am I so naive that I'm the only one who thinks it's impossible that a president and a government would even want to behave like that, and then be able to get away with it?!

And then, when your train of thought gets back to where it started, with a natural disaster that has killed so many, and reduced a society to breakdown, when you stop trying to find someone to blame, and when you've given up trying to talk about what it all might lead to in the future and what it means for our understanding of society, you can't help but look at the pictures and hear the stories of the disaster and think, "Bloody hell!"

You Serve In Government For Years And This Is What You Get!!!

2005-09-02T01:14:00.000+01:00

After glancing at Gyles Brandreth's diaries of his time as a parliamentarian during the nineties today, I decided to put my investigative skills to the test. Looking through the pages of this chronicle of a government in decline, there are some insights of varying degrees of importance (usually low) which are worth taking a look at, particularly if, like me, you take particular enjoyment out of personal gossip or tales about senior politicians, no matter how old the gossip or the tales are!

Ken Clarke is a man noted for his desire to lead the Conservative Party, unless he is taking part in some elaborate wager to prove that the old saying 'third time lucky' is true. As Chancellor of the Ex-Chequer, Mr. Clarke did succeed in bringing what had been throughout the eighties a volatile economy to heel. However, on March 15th 1994, Brandreth wrote to him, sharing his concern that the Clarke Chancellorship lacked any coherent theme. In his diary, he wrote 'KC has been in government so long and is so comfortable in government, so easy with himself... if he's himself... he assumes the message'll get across'. If opinion polls canvassing the opinions of the general public are anything to go by, he has, over the years, appeared to have done that. However, you have to ask whether that kind of attitude is going to strengthen the Conservative Party's electoral prospects. On the one hand, we have a political climate at present which is unashamedly presidential, and the image of the leader is vital to the success of the party. But no political organisation can succeed without a broad and coherent theme. Ken Clarke's theme as leader of the opposition might end up being devoid of any plan for government, and nothing more than 'Look at me!'.

On Friday 22nd October 1993, Edwina Currie explains to Brandreth why she didn't want to rejoin the government front bench. Of course, now we know a little more about the lady's past, her comments twelve years ago might be taken with a pinch of salt. But she was nonetheless emphatic about Clarke. "Who'd want to be Prisons Minister? And I couldn't stand working for Ken Clarke again. He's impossible."

On Sunday 21st April 1996, Brandreth writes that David Davis (known as 'DD of the SS'), who is by now Europe Minister, is 'unhappy, already difficult, potentially more troublesome... believes he should be in the Cabinet now, now, now'. It's no secret that he's an ambitious man, and certainly by no means a criticism of him!

On Tuesday 15th June 1993, David Cameron was sacked as Chancellor Clarke's special adviser, and Brandreth describes him as someone coming 'from the Right'. That's a rather interesting perspective considering the suspicions many Conservatives have of him now as the candidate of the Soho modernisers (although perhaps not too surprising considering the transition many right-wingers, such as Portillo, who appeared to lose their faith in free markets and capitalism, went through at the end of the last decade).

There appears to be little love lost between Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind when they held the chancellorship and foreign secretaryship together before the election when Rifkind squarely dismissed the idea of the EMU. Clarke was agitated in his private conversation with Brandreth, unhappy that Rifkind had gone against the government line. Perhaps that is why optimists keen on the idea of the 'old guard' regrouping in this leadership election look to be proven wrong.

And finally he may have been ignored on Newsnight's recent coverage of the leadership contest, but I am keen to include him. Dr. Liam Fox is at least twice referred to as 'giggling' in some way. Whatever conclusion you take from that is your own!

Of course, to dredge up all of this many years later is unfair and puts me firmly in league with the most scurrilous of tabloid journalists!! But you can't help think back to the past, for the past shapes our view of the future.

Enter Clarke

2005-08-31T21:17:00.000+01:00

Posting on this blog has dried up of late, but that will likely change soon with the entrance in the Conservative leadership contest of Kenneth Clarke. Despite two failed attempts to win the leadership, and despite being thought to be very unpopular with activists (not to mention behind with the bookmakers), Mr. Clarke has pledged to stand. In an interview in the Daily Mail, he dismisses fears that he is too much of a Europhile, promises to give up his significant lucrative directorships if elected and gives hints that an alliance may be in the making between him and David Willetts, whose endorsement would be likely to hand the leadership to whichever candidate took it.

Commentators agree that Clarke's entry into the contest has sparked it up, even though I myself have not been particularly impressed with the consistent 'will he? won't he' which has been going on since May about whether he would actually stand. It is good to see that that is over now and that the leadership election can actually press ahead.

It will be interesting to see how Mr. Clarke's bid will turn out. Will it be the desperate last gambit of a man desperate to be the leader? Or could he be the one to revitalize the party and get us back on track to victory at the polls and bold, visionary reform of our society?

It will certainly be an interesting few weeks from now on!

Respect The Press; They'll Respect You!

2005-08-24T14:03:00.000+01:00

As the Prime Minister takes his vacation in Barbados, I can't resist this.

In her book, 'The Goldfish Bowl', which is a series of portraits of the spouses of the prime ministers of our country since 1955, Cherie Booth writes the following on Mary Wilson, the wife of Harold:

"Mary's real solace was their family holidays in the Isles of Scilly - in summer, at Easter and New Year. The press came for one day only for interviews and photographs and then left them in peace, a convention which sadly is no longer respected on prime ministers' holidays."

I wonder if the Blairs had actually told the press where they were going on holiday, and then let them have the briefest of interviews on location with them, and actually treat the media with an ounce of respect, her own experience of 'media intrusion' might be a little less horrific.

Treat the press with some respect, and your privacy will be respected. It's not a bad approach. Mrs. Blair (or Booth, depending on how popular her husband is at the time) should try it out some time.

Self-Help & Philanthropy

2005-08-21T18:09:00.000+01:00

In 1859, a man called Samuel Smiles wrote that, ‘The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual’. One century, two score and six years later, his message remains just as important today for us all as it was in his time, when man achieved great feats, and was rewarded for his own merits and his own strife, and not funded for his own dependence or sloth.

Yet no matter how important his words are today, there can be no escaping the reality that in his era, it was far easier for the individual to live out the true meaning of that creed. His contemporaries were not strained by the pressures of high taxation.

The poor in his society had a reason to live. They grew up knowing the importance of hard work, independence and self-help. They believed in their own strengths. They were not patronised by their government, told day in, day out that they were incapable of leading their own lives, and making their own decisions. They were free to thrive.

And the rich of his society believed that they had a moral duty to protect those who could not protect themselves. They knew the virtues of philanthropy. They knew that they had a responsibility to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless.

Today, however, Samuel Smiles would be ashamed that his belief in the importance of self-help and the duties of the rich has been forgotten by the ravages of time. Nowadays, when the working man earns five pounds, he has to hand over one pound to that bandit Gordon Brown, no questions asked. And if he drives a car, buys a packet of Marlboros or a four-pack of Carling, he has to hand over at least another pound too. How are we supposed to make work preferable to welfare and encourage the poorest in our society to look to their own efforts for the betterment of themselves and their families if a minimum wage family has to hand over its pay packet to a government whose only desire is to patronise and dictate, not let the very same men and women it seeks to protect thrive?

Today, Samuel Smiles would be ashamed by the rich too. In his era, the average middle class family gave 10% of its income to charity. He lived in a society of philanthropists, where the affluent believed that they had a duty to protect those less fortunate than themselves: those who worked hard but still had to struggle to support their families, and those who were too vulnerable to defend themselves. He lived in the same society where Dr Barnardo set up his homes for orphan children, where Thomas Armitage created the National Institute for the Blind, and where any social problem had not an armful of government initiatives to solve it, but dozens of charities, small and large, working to protect those who suffered and to bring an end their problems. He lived in a society where the homeless were protected by the SOS Society, by the Fellowship of St Christopher, by the Society for the Relief of the Houseless Poor, by Homes for Working Boys in London, by the Embankment Fellowship Centre, by the Morning Post Embankment home and by the Wayfarers Benevolent Association, not to mention a tonnage more in the same sphere of social work. He lived in a society where each and every moneyed family lived by the rule that charity never faileth.

And yet the rich of today, of which there are many more who are much richer, are stolen from by the State. They are robbed of their money, because the politicians think they can’t be trusted with it. How is a rich man expected to care for the poor, when the old-fashioned socialist system we have endeavours to make it hard for the rich man to take care of himself? The rich of yesteryear were the landowners and the gentry. They were the self-made men who rose from nothing and worked their way up through the ranks of society. In their place, today’s rich are the multi-millionaire footballers, the actors, the actresses and singers who, often at a tender age, have a profound influence on the next generation of leaders in our society. But if you can find me a Premiership star earning upwards of fifty grand every week of the year who offers the lion’s share of his ridiculously high salary to charity and to the protection of the vulnerable, I will be amazed. Today’s rich waste their money on expensive cars and cheap women. Charity and philanthropy are dirty words; words which many of them might struggle to pronounce. In a Conservative society, the onus must be not on the State, but on charitable, humanitarian individuals to protect the vulnerable. And politicians must not legislate to tell the rich how to protect the poor. All they will be able to do, and all they should do, is let them be free to do so.

It is the duty of the next Conservative government to free the working man, and craft a civil society where individuals, not the State, protect the vulnerable. That should be our ambition.

A Bad Time To Be A Copper

2005-08-20T11:35:00.000+01:00

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes now say that Sir Ian Blair has tried to buy their silence with an offer worth around £560,000 of compensation.

As someone who privately suggested that Sir Ian Blair should give money out of his own salary to pay for the cancer treatment of Mr de Menezes's father (and on this blog in a comment just days ago) my suggestion should, according to the family, have been treated as 'blood money'.

It appears that the family now want to drag this on and on. They say that all they want is to ask Sir Ian why he has told lies about the young Brazilian, which is not unreasonable. I just wonder when the family will let it rest. Sir Ian Blair's resignation should by now be inevitable (and greeted with a reserved, if slightly ashamed because the man does represent Britain for the Brazilian people, kind of joy on this blog). If that is achieved and they 'get their answers', will the family finally let this embarrassing affair lay to rest. Or do they want to make this go on and on so that nobody has any trust in the police any more?

On the Samizdata blog, meanwhile, I mooted a suggestion that the next Met Chief should be elected, and not appointed from the shadowy policing Establishment. After all, it works elsewhere in the world, in places where the politicians and bureaucrats and elites actually have some faith in the power of the people. The suggestion was met with a divided response, and the main arguments against it appear to be that we supposedly politically literate people can't trust the unclean masses to understand the issues or take it seriously.

Welcome to liberal Britain in the twenty-first century!

(EDIT: I don't know what and who to believe any more, but it now appears that the first paragraph of this article is not true, and the Brazilian family have not been offered compensation money.)

The Civil Service: Enemies of the People

2005-08-19T17:15:00.000+01:00

I've written here twice before about the flat tax revolution. The flat tax is a single rate of income tax, set at a low level, and preferably with a generous personal allowance. To those who have taken as little as a passing interest in the subject, it looks inevitable that some day soon we will adopt it here, and its proponents (of which I am proud to call myself one) argue the sooner, the better.

But Her Majesty's Treasury disagrees. Treasury officials have doctored a memo ('sexed down' perhaps) on the subject which proposed the introduction of this flat tax so that it gave a much more discouraging impression. Of course, we're used to this kind of stupidity from the State machinery. Perhaps they felt defensive because flat tax would significantly reduce their power. Perhaps it's because they knew a low flat tax would initially require savings in public expenditure. Perhaps it's just because it wasn't their idea!

What the Treasury thinks, doctored or not, has never been particularly important to me; not when our economy is sinking under the weight of tax and regulation, and when some of our poorest people are robbed of their hard-earned money to an incompetent Chancellor. If the elected part of the government really is interested in flat tax, then all they had to do when reading this doctored report was to say to their officials and advisors, "Get out of my office!"

But more important than the question of how many independent thoughts there are in Gordon Brown's head is the question of the Civil Service. The Civil Service has become renowned as a bloated institution, stuck in the past not just in its practices but in its elitist, Statist beliefs too. Any administration with the inclination has to shake up the Civil Service from top to bottom, and root out the prevailing patronising nature of its big government style, tearing down the structures which make politicians and bureaucrats the most powerful people in our society and which stunt the qualities and clog the capacity of the British people.

An end to massive government means the slow decline of the Civil Service as we know it. Therefore, let's speed it up by rejecting the still-prevalent post-war consensus and bringing about a radical reform of every part of our society.

School Examinations

2005-08-18T18:12:00.000+01:00

The country's A Level results came out today, bringing joy and relief to those leaders of tomorrow who never really had any need to worry about their future, and bringing nothing but indifference to those who have, during their years in school, become disillusioned with most of life, rendered 'kaput' on the scrapheap of society. In a week's time, the country's GCSE results will be announced, and doubtless similar coverage will be granted then.

True to form, according to the stereotypes held against my generation, I was too lazy to write any significant post unique for this blog today on this or any other matter. However, I did write a rather long comment on the matter on the Adam Smith Institute blog which I have published on this site.

"As a teenager who has completed one GCSE in French which I took a year early (I receive the result next week) I have a lot riding on my answer to the question of exam standards? On the one hand, do I degrade my own efforts and those of my friends? Or do I tell the truth? Fortunately, for me, the answer is straightforward.

"It is undeniable that education has changed in recent years. In history, whilst once factual recall was imperative, nowadays more emphasis is placed on source analysis. In English, whilst once a student had to be have a full knowledge of a text, today he might only have to understand the broad themes of a novel or other work. What is demanded of us has certainly changed, but that doesn't necessarily mean standards have fallen.

"I'm a private school student, therefore have an academic advantage over many (that's not snobbery; it's the truth!). But the facts are staring us in the face, and those are that educational standards have fallen over time, and it's not just affecting the life chances of today's teenagers, but has been affecting all of us since education became the prerogative of the State. One in five of school leavers, and doubtless one in five of the rest of the population, should be classed as 'functionally illiterate': in other ways, they struggle to find a plumber in the Yellow Pages or they can't decipher a simple supermarket receipt. Pupils at a primary level struggle to spell the words 'environment' and 'necessary' en masse. Surveys by international organisations consistently place Britain below other nations who (for reasons more than pure xenophobia) we should be thrashing, like New Zealand and Hungary in maths or science teaching. And, at the crux of the matter today, A Levels are in truth very easy compared to what they once were. I see the kinds of questions students my age were faced with just fifty years ago and die a little inside, not just because I have not been taught that particular mathematical formula or linguistic structure, but because it's do damn hard!!

"The problem with education in Britain is that politicians are in charge of it. I don't need to explain why that's true - I'm writing on the blog of the Adam Smith Institute, so you know that it's true! Therefore, any decisions that are made about our education and examinations are political decisions. As soon as we change that, and tear shift the centre of gravity from the Department of Education and Skills to every classroom in Britain, examinations will finally be made which challenge students appropriately, not according to some flash new idea which appeals to nobody outside the cafes of Islington or Kensington, but according to the wishes of teachers and parents.

"But I feel that the question which doesn't get as much attention as it deserves at this time of years is what is the point of these exams. Why put a kid through school from the cradle to the academic grave when it would be much more valuable for most teenagers not to be stuck in a classroom hearing ('listening to' or 'learning' imply too much activity) a teacher try to teach the intricacies of something which will never matter to them in the slightest, when they could be out of that classroom and in the real world, learning something that they can put to use throughout their whole life. Why should a teenage student, poor in aspiration and disillusioned by the status quo, be required to follow the exploits of Shylock and Antonio or solve quadratic equations when he could be learning a trade, acquiring the manual skills that once made Britain great?

"More pressing than this futile debate about examinations is the debate that we're ignoring: what is the purpose of education? How do we shape education? Where does education belong? And how do we legislate towards better education? For me, we need to devolve all powers over education to teachers and parents, through the abolition of the State structures which hold together the system, and empower parents, through, I would argue, school vouchers. And then, over time, education would be revolutionised. Schools would no longer be forced to adhere to some strict code or government diktat. Parents would be put in charge of their children's education, taking responsibility for their progress and for encouraging their success. And we humble students would not trundle through adolesence as part of the system, thrown in at the start and spat out at the end. Rather, we would learn all that we need to live a successful life, all we need to work and to earn, and all we need to have strong and noble character.

"There is a big debate to be had about education, and I've already decided where I stand. The problem is that all the people who claim to be looking out for the welfare of me and millions of others are determined to have a different, less challenging debate!"

This Bull Is Shifting

2005-08-17T14:29:00.000+01:00

When the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead at Stockwell tube station in London just weeks ago, I put forward a bullish defence of the 'shoot-to-kill' policy which took his life. I argued that police have to be trusted, that they should not be emasculated as they seek to protect our lives and our society and that that young man, according to the official account of his behaviour, posed the greatest threat to our safety on that day.

Well, this bull is shifting his ground. It appears now that the events of that fateful day were not quite so clear-cut as we have been led to believe. Jean Charles de Menezes, it has been said, was not running away from police. He was not quite the threat the police on the ground thought he was.

Perhaps we will never find out the full truth about what happened. Perhaps we might not like to hear it. But there are some serious and important lessons to learn from that tragedy about how to employ the 'shoot-to-kill' policy.

I still support the policy as a necessary evil, to be used only in extreme cases, and with all the necessary caveats attached. Only certain types of officers should be allowed to use the policy, and only when they are wearing uniform, and only when all other available and appropriate forms of restraint have been exhausted.

The family of the young Brazilian who was shot want the policy suspended, but that could prove to be disastrous for the safety of Britain. I believe the policy needs to stay, as unfortunate as it is to conclude that the police need to be heavily armed to defend our country, but only with the strictest conditions attached.

After my hurried, hard-faced and single-minded assessment of this shooting, I have, through this latest post on the issue, reverted to a more conciliatory tone. The bull has shifted.

Peace In Israel: If It Can't Be Achieved, Just Stop Trying; If It Can, Let's Start!

2005-08-16T07:33:00.000+01:00

As the Israeli government forces Jewish settlers out of their homes, pleading that this is the only way to actively pursue peace in the Middle East, the trenchant opposition of the Israeli people goes a long way in proving my long-held suspicion that the creation of a Palestinian state in the Middle East which would displace many Jewish communities would only replace Palestinian terrorists who feel as though they have been treated like dirt, with Israeli terrorists who will soon come to feel exactly the same.

There is so much to reflect on when discussing the state of Israel and Palestine as we march on through the twenty-first century. But one truth that comes to the surface all the time is that all the progress towards a Palestinian state amounts to more neglect of the wishes of the people of Israel themselves.

Don't get me wrong: throughout my whole life, I have taken a studied neutrality on the whole issue of Israel and Palestine. Whilst I could consistently peddle rhetoric opposing the brutality of the Israeli government in defending her nation, or the history of the Palestinian leadership in sponsoring terrorism, I have instead opposed both. Neither side ever endears themselves to the opinion of the global community when they talk of seeking peace, but act in an evermore aggressive manner.

I have written before on this blog about how we must pursue real peace in Israel, not some fabricated, glued-together peace, which can be secured by trading some acres here or some resources there. Real peace is not in the hands of the politicians and military men, but in the hands of the Israeli and Palestinian people themselves. It is they and only they who can prove to the world that they are capable of living and working together, side by side, in harmony, not in competition or aggression.

Of course, it will not be as easy as that. The conflict in the Middle East has many roots, all of which are very deep: not just race or religion, but poverty and society too. So long as Palestinians live in poverty without anything to their names, peace can not be achieved. And so long as Israelis complacently oppose any attempts to show more friendship and harmony to the Palestinians, peace can not be achieved. And if the only conclusion we can make is that peace really can not be achieved, then I see no point in even trying.

One of the most important conclusions any philosopher has made was when Immanuel Kant wrote that perpetual peace could only come about either through the careful prudence and foresight of leaders and people, or after the destruction of our whole planet so that nothing is left. Whatever the closing words of the history of this age-old conflict may turn out to be, Israel may be the first opportunity we have to test that theory to its conclusion.

A Conservative 'Three-Point Plan'

2005-08-15T20:50:00.000+01:00

An interesting 'ten-point briefing' at Conservative Home on the Tory Party's electoral problems and varying theories on how we can move forward in the future. I wrote a comment on the site about what I felt the Party needed to do to win an election. My own 'three-point plan':

Develop a platform of radical policy ideas to reform every aspect of society, from health and education to policing to welfare to local democracy. The right-wing is full of ideas which, if implemented, could breed a great era of free enterprise and the development of a civil society.
Use compassionate words. I am a compassionate conservative in the sense that I want tax cuts first and foremost for the poor, not the rich (although the rich wouldn't be made to pay billions, as that has a devastating impact on the economy too). We should not seek to be thought of as a nice party, but as a party which stands up for the poorest, not let them fend for themselves. "I believe that people should work for themselves and look after their own lives and their families without help for the government." That is the first and last statement for the Bible of libertarian conservatives like me, and anyone else who believes in free enterprise. A party which developed a more compassionate spirit would not put it like that, but would say, "I believe that people should be free to keep their own hard-earned money, without let or hindrance from the State, and that the affluent should seek to protect the vulnerable themselves, as philanthropy will always triumph over the will of the State." Perhaps changing words like that is simply Blairesque spin or semantics. But the right-wing has always had a problem with communication. That needs to change, and with the right words it should be very easy.
To fulfill these goals and ultimately to bring our party to power, we need to have what is known as a strong 'grassroots army' to support the campaign. Every day should be treated like a campaigning day for senior Conservatives in a new Shadow Cabinet. The new leader should draw up a rota for his team so that each weekday of the parliamentary year, one or two shadow ministers are out in a particular consituency putting the case for our radical vision, canvassing along the main street, speaking to the local press, and making sure people see their faces! We also can't be scared of making our faces seen and our voices heard in those parts of the country where the masses would spit on you if they knew you were a Conservative. Whilst we should privately develop a carefully choreographed and targeted strategy for winning an election, in public we should be bold and declare that we are fighting for the rights and freedoms of all people, most of all the poor in the inner cities of the old industrial heartlands: the places we have a moral duty to act, not just a political one. I read a piece in The Times today which showed how parents desperate to get their children into decent schools are in uproar against the Labour-led council in Reading. I would have my Shadow Education Secretary in the town tomorrow, stating the case to any and all who will listen about the virtues of school vouchers, how the Conservatives want to liberate parents and how the Labour Party has a proud history of treating the wishes of the citizenry as secondary to its ideological dogma. What's more, I am convinced that when he comes back from the town, the Shadow Education Secretary would declare that he had Reading's two Parliamentary seats in the bag! We have to put forward our message every day of every week of every month of every year between now and the next general election, because I am convinced that the greatest election victories are won well before the Prime Minister drives up the Mall to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament.

Want To Know Something Interesting...?

2005-08-14T23:23:00.000+01:00

Did you know that today (August 14th) in the year 1040, King Duncan I of Scotland was killed in battle by Macbeth?

I didn't, and I still wouldn't if it weren't for the fact that I haven't made a noteworthy post on this blog for a very long time (funny or clever people would argue I've never made a noteworthy post, but fortunately I'm neither!).

So I hope you commit that piece of trivia to memory. I know I will.

Robin Cook

2005-08-07T23:46:00.000+01:00

Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons, who resigned honourably from the Cabinet when he objected to the invasion of Iraq, died suddenly yesterday after collapsing whilst climbing in the Scottish Highlands.

Aside from his inevitable resignation over a matter of principle, Mr. Cook will be remembered for his great ability as a parliamentarian and for his efforts as Foreign Secretary to achieve an 'ethical dimension' to our foreign policy.

I was fortunate enough to attend a talk which he gave at a bookstore in Leeds to discuss his memoirs around two years ago. And whilst I personally disagreed with almost everything that he stood for (from some of his efforts to modernise parliament to his position on Iraq) I have always been struck by how Mr. Cook, despite the very nature of his profession, has stayed forever true to his principles and kept his honour. That is what he is admired for, and rightly so.

He will be dearly missed.

I Hate Life

2005-08-05T15:59:00.000+01:00

I just spent fifty-six minutes writing an article criticising the claim that Britain's is an example of the liberal model of a Welfare State. But then I accidentally tried to copy the text, and doing so caused it all to be deleted.

So just to avoid logging off and feeling miserable all day for not publishing my rant, I'll say this: Charles Murray once said, 'When meaningful reforms (to the Welfare State) finally do occur, they will happen not because stingy people have won, but because generous people have stopped kidding themselves.'

(My lost post was better!!!)

Happy Slapping And The Permissive Society

2005-07-31T19:46:00.000+01:00

An excellent post on the horrors of happing slapping is to be found here by Peter Cuthbertson at Conservative Commentary.

Regular readers will remember similar posts on this blog on disrespect and associated matters from May 13th and May 29th earlier in the year.

Yet all these words are unnecessary. It would take a lot less for a man to reach the inevitable conclusion: our society is in a mess!

Lay Off Prince Charles

2005-07-28T14:35:00.000+01:00

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee is lashing out at the Royal Family yet again. This time, Prince Charles is being criticized for managing the Duchy of Cornwall, the estate which provides his main income. As ever the tax issues involved are complicated (we do have a Labour Chancellor at Her Majesty's Treasury!) and too complex for me, as a normal person, to understand.

But what I do understand is this: Prince Charles is a devoted and dedicated philanthropist and a pillar of our society. In 2004, he helped to raise £109m for charity. He is the President of the Prince's Charities, an organization which comprises the Prince's Trust, the Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust, PRIME and PRIME Cymru, the Prince's Drawing School, the Prince's School of Traditional Arts, the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Integrated Health, the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, the Prince's Regeneration Trust, Business and the Community, Scottish Business in the Community, the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, the Prince of Wales's Business & The Environment Programme, In Kind Direct, Arts and Business and the Prince of Wales Arts & Kids Foundation. He serves as the Patron or President of around 360 different organisations, including ActionAid, Help the Aged and the Royal Academy Trust. What's more, he already pays income tax voluntarily on what he earns.

For a group of MPs to take a swipe at the Prince of Wales about the danger of his role leading to a 'potential conflict of interest' (not even a real, concrete one yet!) is unbecoming of them. The Duchy of Cornwall is a private estate, and under the Prince's control it has appreciated in value by 80 per cent in the last six years alone. He already pays hefty taxation on the estate, but many want him to pay even more, despite the fact that the Prince's money goes much further in his hands than it ever would if it were in the Exchequer's.

Prince Charles deserves far more credit than he receives. He is a dedicated philanthropist, a capable leader and a vital cornerstone of the society in which we live.

The Social Conservatives State Their Case

2005-07-25T16:43:00.000+01:00

Edward Leigh and a group of two dozen socially conservative Tory MPs have put together a pamphlet which urges a move towards a more strongly conservative platform which the Party, they feel, should stand on come the next general election. It is neatly encapsulated with the terms 'Faith, Flag and the Family'. It is based on bringing back a greater sense of morality to our society, as well as strengthening our patriotic instincts and cutting short the decline in the institution of marriage and the family.

As far as I am concerned, as an individual, it hits all the right notes. I feel marriage is the best basis for a couple to live happily. If I were being technocratic, I would have a mountain of statistics on my side too to prove it. I feel the rebirth of the traditional family would be a great thing for our society too.

However, there is one vital political difference that I have with the considerable number of MPs who would support Mr Leigh's prescriptions. He wants to legislate heavily in favour of marriage and the family. All I want to do is take away the disincentives to marriage, even tear away the apparatus of the State so that we no longer have a situation where people are subsidised by the government for pursuing any particular lifestyle, but where men and women as individuals are taxed a little for what they earn and what they buy, with very limited benefits and no more tax credits. In short, I fear that Mr Leigh wants to use the labyrinthine system that successive governments have set up in order to pursue their own brand of social engineering. His group wishes to use that system to engineer our society towards more traditional instincts. I, on the other hand, would want to tear down that system and instead allow people - which they usually would - to marry and start a traditional family without any constraints against it or compulsion for it. And, alongside that, my way would ensure that anybody who pursued an alternative lifestyle would not become a victim of the government or society.

I have a lot of time for the social conservatives. I believe in faith, flag and the family as a great goal for our society. But to use the apparatus of the State to compel its citizens to follow their line goes against the root value of all conservatives - freedom. What's more, if we were to use the apparatus of the State to press the case for faith, flag and the family, there would be nothing to stop a succeeding Labour or - heaven forefend - Liberal Democrat government using the same structures to push the case for something markedly different.

If people were free to pursue their own lifestyle, with no incentives or disincentives either way, I am convinced the vast majority would opt for the traditional lifestyle. However, our people are not free to pursue their own lifestyle. Marriage and childbearing in the traditional way have been penalised financially - and socially, perhaps - over the years. Mr Leigh wants to counter this trend by potentially making the State even more powerful. "The Conservative Party should not be afraid to stand up for the traditional family," he writes. Yet the Conservative Party is a political organisation. The only ones who can stand up for the traditional family, are me and you, by marrying and raising children. All that the Conservative Party can do - and should do - is take away all the disincentives that make it such an arduous task. I do fear that Mr Leigh would seek to go much further than that. Whilst my personal philosophy is greatly in tune with that of the social conservatives, my political philosophy is far too libertarian for me to commit to their cause.

Now it's time to see what the Notting Hill set can come up with...

Shoot To Kill: The Defence

2005-07-24T17:47:00.000+01:00

It was bound to happen... and it has!

The political elites are in a frenzied debate about the police's 'shoot-to-kill' policy, by which any potential suicide bomber is, as the word suggests, shot and killed. It was this approach that killed an innocent Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, at Stockwell station last Friday.

Notably, the Chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers' terrorism committee, Ken Jones, has denied that the police operates a 'shoot-to-kill' policy.

And he's right. He says, rightly, that any steps that can be taken in that series of split seconds before a suspected suicide bomber could be set free to unleash devastation should be taken. "Everything else must be tried first before we consider taking life to save life. However, if we get to the point of no return as it were there's a moral duty, if not possibly a legal duty, on us as police officers who are armed and able to perhaps deflect an attack to take life to save life."

If a police officer suspects a man with dark skin might be a suicide bomber just because he is carrying a rucksack into a Tube station, then he would be treading that fine line between protecting the safety of the community and downright racism. But if a small force of police officers on the ground, as they were on Friday, become suspicious of the same individual; if they pursue the man on foot as he runs away from them; and if they shout 'stop, police' yet still the individual runs away, those officers would be quite right to pursue.

On Friday morning, Jean Charles de Menezes was running away from a number of armed police officers who were suspicious of him. For some reason, he didn't stop. Instead, he continued to run. You might say that he was running away because he was scared, or maybe as the officers were wearing plain clothes, he thought they were some kind of gangland thugs! But if I were a police officer on duty last Friday morning, and a suspicious man was heading onto a Tube platform, before running away from me as I tried to approach him, I would have shot the man and I would be standing by my decision today.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that the man was innocent. Yet on Friday morning, by running away from the police after acting suspiciously, Jean Charles de Menezes was the biggest threat to public safety for those officers on duty.

The 'shoot-to-kill' policy is a necessary evil. Unfortunately, on Friday morning the approach caused one death. But when you look at the story of the events as they unfolded, it's not hard to see why that death occured. And the blame for the death can not be placed squarely onto the policy.

Countering A Homegrown Threat

2005-07-22T19:03:00.000+01:00

A series of failed terror attacks on London's transport network yesterday followed by a series of arrests of suspects today has reminded us suddenly that the terrorists will not simply back off into the mountains of Tora Bora after every infrequent attack. The people who want to destroy our way of life are here, living and working in our own society. And they will be here, their activities gone unabated until the next attack, and the next attack, and the next attack.

In order to deal with our homegrown terrorists, we need to have a strategy; a clear plan of action to counter a truly dangerous and unparalleled threat to our peace.

Our security services have a clear knowledge of who those individuals are who pose the greatest threat to our safety here in Britain. If I am wrong and they don't, they are guilty of criminal negligence. But if, as I am confident, they do, then the police should be unrepentant in catching them instantly, before we lose trace of them and before they are allowed to plan and perpetrate their acts under a shroud of darkness. Those terror suspects whom we do catch should have serious limits imposed on their 'human rights', no matter what the lawyers like Cherie Booth, with their vested interests at stake, have to say. This should include, as it does in France, the interrogation of suspects without a lawyer present, lengthy pre-trial imprisonments and the use of evidence acquired in questionable circumstances. This might include too the extradition of wanted operatives to countries we would otherwise find it morally difficult to do business with. The security services too should have no fear of developing a stronger presence in those trouble spots where Islamic fanaticism have their roots.

However, any anti-terrorist strategy must not be allowed to mutate into a campaign to tear away the rights and liberties of the law-abiding majority. That is why I am still wholly opposed to the introduction of identity cards. And it is why I am still wholly opposed to the idea that the political Home Secretary should have the same powers in these matters as a judge or a jury.

More importantly in the long run than these simple initiatives is to tackle the roots; to address the 'causes' of homegrown terrorism (even though I am reluctant to use the word 'causes', considering its political history). We must note that young Muslims are being drawn into the snare of wild but cowardly masters; clowns like Abu Hamza who preach filth but expect the young and foolish to do their bidding. We must address those factors in the lives of young Muslims which push them over the edge and into terrorism. The poverty and the lack of opportunity, and the despair which are a fact of life in those places where today's arrests took place are surely not just coincidental. They are often a root cause in pushing the homegrown villains over the edge.

But that is no excuse for perpetrating terror on the rest of us. There is poverty of all kinds throughout Britain. But if the rest of us used that as an excuse to leave bombs on buses, we'd all be dead by now. The fact is that young Muslims in Britain can not claim to feel any sense of belonging in British society, precisely because it means very little these days to be British. That is not, as the racists would say, because of the Muslims and the other cultures in our society. That is because we have given up on feeling any love for our country. The British should not be afraid to show patriotism and to cherish everything about Britain that is great. That is why Liam Fox is right to say the Union Jack should be flown outside schools. That is why Trevor Phillips was right last April to say the conventional multiculturalist policies of the political elites are misguided. If young Muslims were encourage to integrate more into a society which is at ease with itself, not apologetic about itself, then there would be no opportunity for anyone to fall into the grip of the extremists. This does not mean that the 'native Britons' (whoever they are) have to go out of their way to accomodate an alien people. Rather, it means that we acknowledge all the good that immigrant cultures can bring, but at the same time hold dear our own traditions, institutions and our pride in ourselves, and what's more, we should teach all our young the importance of all of this.

We can still capture the hearts and minds of those young men who are on the brink of the abyss, with the evil of terrorism in front of them. We mustn't feel, however, that all that is left to fight them with is the bullet and the bomb. We can yet, and we must, capture their souls for deliverance.

Blair's Slack Way Of Tackling Terrorism

2005-07-19T16:18:00.000+01:00

I came across this article by an American writer today who says that regardless of all our bravado claims about standing shoulder to shoulder with America, particularly over Iraq, Britain has shown itself to be very weak and impotent in the face of Islamic extremism. Conversely, countries like France, who have been diametrically opposed to the American position at times, are standing up to Islamic extremism.

More and more, it is hard to condone the approach that the British government takes towards terrorist suspects. On the one hand, they seek to craft a society in which other cultures are effectively discouraged from integrating into our society and in which the home culture has to move mountains to integrate others. This is so devastating particularly in areas like Beeston in Leeds, where the terror suspects came from, because all sense of local community has been so destroyed over time that talk of integration is silly - there's nothing to integrate with!

And on the other hand, the government seeks to look tough by taking away more and more of the ancient civil liberties of the law-abiding majority and giving the incompetent and political Home Secretary the right to lock suspects up and not the right-minded (usually) and impartial judiciary.

The Prime Minister, it appears, has earned some credit for the handling of the terrorist attacks in London this month. But in truth, his government's position on dealing with terrorism has been consistently slack and misguided for years.

The Challenge For Tomorrow's Radicals

2005-07-18T12:59:00.000+01:00

The post-war consensus was established by the Labour government in the late 1940s. This said that it was the role of the State to take control of the great industries, of utilities and of public services. This consensus went largely unchallenged by successive Conservative governments, particularly that of Harold Macmillan. It then became the accepted belief that the duty of Conservative governments was to make socialism work more efficiently. It took nearly forty years for this consensus to be finally grappled with. In Margaret Thatcher's premiership, in the 1980s, the rule of the State was torn apart across industry - so much so that Britain now enjoys its status as one of the world's most free and most competitive economies (status which is slipping now that Gordon Brown has ensured one in five people take their pay-cheque from him).

The 21st century consensus is a slightly different one, but it still is based on the idea that the political elites deserve control over our society, and not the individuals, families and communities who make up society. The 21st century consensus is based on the idea of the nanny state. It says that healthcare and education are matters for politicians, not patients and parents, or doctors and teachers. It says that everything we can and can't do must be stated crystal clear in legislation. It says that freedom is the freedom to do what little the State will let you do, or emigrate.

It is a depressing thought, but perhaps it might take us forty years again to challenge this consensus. Just like the Conservative Party broadly accepted the post-war consensus, maybe we will lay down and take the 21st century consensus. This seemed apparent in the last election when the best the Tories could offer was more rises in public spending, but at a slower rate than Labour or the Liberal Democrats. This consensus may well prevail for decades. The next forty years of parents will be told how to parent; the next forty years of doctors told how to doctor.

It may take forty years for the first Prime Minister to challenge this consensus to come along, but when he or she does, the fight will be much tougher than it was in the 1980s. The fights will not be with the miners' unions, but with the educational and healthcare establishment, all of whom have a vested interest in State domination of society. The fights will be much greater, because State rule has been growing in perpetuity for so long, and it will take an almighty challenge to roll back the frontiers in our society. The solutions will have to be far more radical again than privatisation or deregulation. It will take the abolition of every aspect of the Welfare State, and the formation of a welfare society to win the war. What's more, the fruits will be far richer too, for we will come to live in a great society where all people, rich and poor, work to the best of their ability, in the firm knowledge that their efforts will pay off, and where each and every one of us will at last be free.

This is the challenge for the reformers of the 21st century consensus.

Britain Fights Back

2005-07-08T15:47:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, Britain wept. But today, she roars!

Fear, Terror And Panic? Never!

2005-07-07T20:50:00.000+01:00

As I write, it has so far been confirmed that a total of four terrorist attacks on London's transport networks have killed 37 people and left more than 700 injured.

An organisation has claimed responsibility for the attack. They call themselves the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe, and they say that 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic'.

These people have got it wrong. These people have failed in their reconaissance. For they have failed to recognise that the British people are made of far greater metal than that. In the last century we have fought and won battles against stronger foes than these cowardly men. If these terrorists are so vain that they think they can bring the United Kingdom to a state of fear, terror and panic, then they have got us very badly wrong.

Another Indictment of the French Elites

2005-07-07T18:22:00.000+01:00

On the same day that London's soul has been punched, just for a short moment, by cowardly terrorist thugs whose desire is only to harm their fellow man, the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has accused the London team of dirty tactics in the run-up to yesterday's vote which brought the 2012 Olympic Games to one of the greatest cities in the world.

"I am simply not sure that we behaved in the same way as regards the rules of the competition," he told Le Figaro newspaper. "Our bid was excellent. Our state of mind was really appropriate to sport and the Olympic spirit. Other things brought London victory and I am not sure they are to do with sport."

In a startling testimony to bad sportsmanship and being a bad loser, the French media have been unashamedly ruthless in their accusal of the London team, claiming that Britain had employed her secret services in some way to help the bid.

France deserves to be shamed. The third failed Parisien bid in twenty years is proof that a country of remarkable prestige such as theirs can fall to a new low when it loses its way. All the Frenchmen and women I know personally are delightful people. However, their nation has become stifled with another bout of self-loving and arrogant self-comfort in the wake of another defeat.

But that Olympic verdict must not be the last defeat to cripple Monsieur Chirac's ego and that of the French Establishment. It is time for the Franco-centric European Union to, as I have already said time and again - but most starkly of all in the early hours of this morning - reform or be destroyed.

The sickening behaviour of the French in the wake of the Olympic verdict is a damning indictment of a great country. Her people do not deserve to be thought of as so rude and villainous.

Terror In London

2005-07-07T13:57:00.000+01:00

A city of streets paved with shining gold can never have its soul destroyed. All we can do is remember the spirit of the Blitz and fight with all our heart and our stomach against the threat which will be there for the many long hours and trials ahead.

I Hereby Announce My Defection...

2005-07-07T00:07:00.000+01:00

Over the last few weeks, months and years, my never particularly strong support for the European Union has been waning. It has declined in my estimation so far that now the only defence I can muster is to argue that it is a part of the myriad of British influence in the world: we are the only country which can claim to be a G8 leader, to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, to be at the heart of the Commonwealth, to be a founding member of NATO, and to be a net contributor to the EU. Britain, I have told myself for too long, is the keystone of the global community. However, after glancing through Vernon Coleman’s book ‘England Our England’, subtitled ‘A Nation in Jeopardy - Sound reasons to reject the euro and the EU’, I have become convinced that there is no longer any defence for the great European project.

Taking just a sample of paragraphs from the short and concise, yet extraordinary book is enough to deal the fatal blow that the European Union deserves. If you read this book, you will discover that:

People will soon swear an allegiance to the European Union.

Political parties of which the EU disapproves may be banned under legislation to come into effect soon.
Members of Europe's official police force Europol can beat you up, smash your property, rape you and kill you for no reason at all and will be immune from prosecution.

£600 million is spent by the EU to hire university professors who will teach students the importance and greatness of the Union.

The EU wants to abolish habeas corpus in favour of a continental system called corpus juris. The lay magistrates will be abolished and trial without jury will be introduced (as has already been put to the House of Commons by a man who is sadly my near-namesake, Mike O'Brien).

The Deputy Prime Minister's regional assemblies aren't true devolution but will create a myriad of small subsidiary regions which will make up the European superstate.

As a result of EU regulation and the Common Agricultural Policy, the average British household spends £1,000 more on food every year.

Europol has set up files holding at least 56 different types of evidence on people it suspects may commit crimes against EU law in the future.

The EU will soon be able to ban books (and probably weblogs!) which are critical of the Union.

Talking or writing about the possibility of leaving the EU may soon be illegal.

When Edward Heath signed up to the Treaty of Rome which took Britain into the EU, he knew it would lead to a European superstate, but he denied this to the British people.

This disturbing mixture of economic, political and social reforms, coupled with the undertones prevalent in them all show that the European Union is an institution founded on the basis of taking freedoms away from we, the people. Not only do the European political elites seek to create a new European State. They want it to be so tyrannical and so oppressive and so brutally intrusive that the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany alike would have been impressed.

These can not be described as the ramblings of silly, eccentric men dreaming it all up. That would doubtless be the rebuttal of the European Establishment, who are precisely the people who want to take our freedoms and create their basis for power.

We should seek to craft a European Union which respects and preserves the identity of its member nations, not one which glosses them over so that we may all conform with the perverse fantasies of our leaders and see the creation of one European nation. We should seek a Europe on the model of the Commonwealth - an institution for trade, to bring together nations in harmony, not in Statehood. That would require the abolition of all the trade barriers in Europe, all the regulation and directives created in the name of harmonisation, and all the institutions of Statehood, from the Parliament to the Commission. And if we fail, then Britain should no longer attempt to justify her place in the European Union.

It is for all these reasons that I, Mark O'Brien, hereby declare that it is my fervent wish to see Britain leave the European Union and become great and free once again.

WE DID IT!

2005-07-06T15:32:00.000+01:00

LONDON 2012!!!

Let's show 'em how it's done!!!

Live 8 And Making Poverty History

2005-07-06T10:25:00.000+01:00

Whilst it is admirable to see the modern-day Good Samaritans like Bob Geldof and Richard Curtis raise awareness of some of the most awful problems in the bleakest pockets of the globe, one can't help but feel that their respective campaigns are fundamentally misguided.

Their insistence that more money will solve Africa's problems is at best a dubious claim. As Moeletsi Mbeki - brother of South Africa's President - has written, offering hand-outs to Africa breeds a lack of accountability on the part of governments to their people. What's more, aid is a disincentive to prudent financial management. The only problem for me is that those two counter-arguments are just not very nice. Imagine if 'The Girl In The Cafe' gave a lecture to AU leaders about the importance of cautious and sensible fiscal and monetary arrangements within a framework of accountability, so that investment and trade may follow. It's just not as sweet and fluffy as Richard Curtis's offering, is it?!

I remain convinced that free trade on the global stage and democratic accountability at home will bring prosperity to Africa. Of course, Africa is a continent of deserts and mountains; of drought and flood. Africa does not have the paradise of resources that have tilted the balance of global power westwards. But if we brought their people out of the cesspit of dependence and dictatorship, that would be a step in the right direction.

Sadly, I can't claim to have heard Pink Floyd or Sir Paul McCartney bound on to the stage in Hyde Park with a homily on the importance of trade without barriers or democratic accountability. Instead, they want us to sign a petition calling on the G8 leaders to double their aid to Africa.

The biggest opinion formers on the issue of global poverty have, I'm afraid, got it wrong.

No Smoke Without Fire

2005-07-06T10:10:00.000+01:00

Last week there was renewed talk of a ban on smoking in public places to be introduced in Britain. After contemplating all of this, I've found myself taking a rather unusual and unexpected position on the issue. I am the kind of person who truly detests smoking. Words can't express my disgust at the habit. Yet I am ready to become the smokers' champion. Not because I want to defend their rights, but because I want to instill their responsibilities.

I've realised that a ban on smoking would take away any responsibility on the part of the smoker to ensure that his habit does not impinge on the quality of life of any of those around him. It is the smoker's duty, not the State's, to protect his health and the health of those passing by. To ban smoking in public places would take away that responsibility.

A ban on smoking in public places would be another step in that shortening journey to crafting a nation of people who have no responsibility to themselves or their neighbour, but who will look first to the State to solve their problems. A smoker should not look to the authorities to let him quit his habit; that should be his prerogative. A smoker must not be bound by law to protect passers-by from his habit; rather, he should be bound by his sense of duty to his fellow man.

Identity Cards And All That

2005-07-06T09:57:00.000+01:00

The last time I wrote on this blog about identity cards (December 2004) I seem to remember that I was rather indifferent. Personally, I have flipped and flopped on this issue from start to finish. When they were first mooted, days after September 11th 2001, I thought they'd be useful, but not to combat terrorism. Then I became more opposed to them; then I subsequently started to favour them again. But now, there can be no doubt: I am firmly and unequivocally opposed.

As Peter Lilley wrote in a report for the Bow Group earlier this year, they are supposed to combat terrorism, benefit fraud and illegal immigration, yet they are bound to fail in each respect. Terrorists don't conceal their identities but their intentions. Benefit fraudsters don't conceal their identities but their circumstances. And illegal immigrants can already claim asylum through a system which requires them to have an identity card.

The inspirational speech from Charles Clarke to bring we, the people, round to this authoritarian idea is yet to be given. We have not heard any reasonable justification for an identity card system, only some half-hearted rebuttal to its opponents. Let us not forget too that Mr. Clarke does have a background as a Marxist in his student days, so perhaps this disdain for liberty is not so stunning.

The Second Reading of an enabling Bill for identity cards is through (and let us not forget where we've heard the words 'Enabling Bill' before!). It can be chopped and changed, nipped and tucked through committees and the Lords, but it won't be destroyed. Now that Parliament has forgotten its duty to the people, and as the Labour MPs have been dragged like lobby fodder through the 'Aye' lobby, it is up to the people to fight back.

Identity cards are not an idea whose time has come. They are a depressing example of the new consensus of State power shared by the British Establishment. They must be destroyed.

Trade Union Reform (With A Difference)

2005-06-25T12:39:00.000+01:00

In the last few weeks, I've offered a vision for 'true' democracy, sounded the rallying cry for the defeat of the Fabian philosophy and proposed suggestions to amend the government's plans for a scheme of national road pricing. Now I'm going to push the boundaries of my ideas even further, by proposing a radical reform of the structure of trade unions.

Nowadays, a Tory without the heart and stomach of a lion would baulk at the idea of taking on the unions once again. They would expect huge strikes and demonstrations, and even if the politicians won, most of them would be rendered evil throughout the country. But I propose union reform with a difference: reforms which will be good for the unions, and which will cement their place as an insurmountable facet of a civil society.

Is it really possible? Provided both the politicians and the growingly elitist union establishment have the bottle to go for it, then it can be done. Let me explain how.

The crux of my idea is that the trade unions should become friendly societies, like the kind that were commonplace in the Victorian era. These were essentially a form of welfare - that much-loved 'safety net' - which preceded the Welfare State. People would join a small friendly society and pay a small amount of their income into the society on a regular basis, so that whenever one of its members became unemployed or suffered illness, the society would assist in paying the cost. As they were intimate groups with close contact between the members, they became a better means of pursuing social and moral betterment than State dependence, as most friendly societies also sought to ensure their members were good citizens, leading decent, honest lives, within the law and away from danger. Friendly societies were a key part (some say symptom, some say cause) of the Victorian emphasis on self-reliance and personal betterment. Yet they have declined, ever since the Welfare State crippled philanthropy and self-help, not only under Clement Attlee in the forties but by Churchill and Lloyd George decades before.

The trade unions, I feel, are better placed than any other institution in Britain, to offer the kind of social change that friendly societies helped to bring in the Victorian age. Under the O'Brien Plan for the unions, national unions would be 'banned'. Instead, the would be required to operate on a county or municipal scale. By that, I mean the National Union of Mineworkers would become the West Yorkshire Union of Mineworkers or the Ebbw Vale Union of Mineworkers. Obviously, they would have to operate on a large enough to scale to be able to seek redress of grievance in case of employment disputes. The last thing I want is to emasculate the unions, like many of my political persuasion. Rather, I seek to give them power.

The unions would then provide welfare in place of the State, just like the great friendly societies.

Yes, my scheme has its impracticalities. Nowadays, in the age of the free market, people move around for work and do not necessarily settle in one area long enough to keep their livelihoods there. What's more, it may be economically unfeasible for unions to provide that kind of welfare. Imagine if some kind of Birmingham Union of Automobile Manufacturers were faced with providing support to the masses of workers made redundant by the collapse of Rover. The union would be faced with economic disaster (and would probably need the government to bail it out!).

Nonetheless, I do feel that reforms which take welfare out of the hands of the State and into those of small communities and charities is what we should aspire to in the new century.

The trade unions could be pioneers. I bet you never thought you'd hear a Tory say that!

We Must Destroy The Fabian Slavery

2005-06-19T19:16:00.000+01:00

We see socialist propaganda all around us. We’re taught in our schools more and more that competition is akin to evil. We hear it in conversations which conclude when one person says, ‘Why can’t the government do something about it’. And sometimes it comes with enduring images like the Tale of the Two Donkeys which is supposed to show us why it is good to co-operate.

I was thinking about this cartoon - which I’m sure many readers will have come across in their time - and I suddenly realised what the capitalist, the libertarian and the conservative solution to the donkeys’ problem was.

The two donkeys should not have kept on pulling in opposite directions to reach their food. Instead, you have to ask why it is that they were tied together in the first place. This shows the socialist ambition for people: to control us and tie us together so that all our spirit and all our creativity is drained away and so that we will just follow their ideals without question. The best way for people to work - and the best way for the two donkeys to be fed - is to release them, to give them the freedom to roam and to seek their own nourishment, to chart their own destiny.

I do not believe that this is the capitalist way, the libertarian way or the conservative way. I believe it is the way any man or woman with respect for the freedom of every individual, family and community would consider the right way.

And perhaps it is unfair to label the other way as the socialist way, when many of socialist leaning do not condone the rule of the State in every aspect of the lives of we, the people. Perhaps it is the doctrine of the Fabians which we should rise up against, as their ideas are the very cornerstones of our broken society. The Fabians believed fundamentally that scientific answers were the only ones which could solve social problems. They believed that some distant, omniscient expert could reach the right answer to our problems, not the citizen. They believed that the answer to the complexity of modern society required central planning for it to avoid implosion. And they believed that democracy was a social bad, because they assumed people would happily agree with the logical results of social scientists without objection.

The Fabian way is sinister and basically evil, yet it is the basis of British governance today. Decisions are made about our schools, our hospitals and every aspect of our lives by ‘experts’ in government departments. We, the people, are ruled from afar, with only the limited freedoms that have been won back by political leaders with the guts to stand up and say ‘no’. We are treated with contempt by the ruling elites, who expect to have the first and last say on our lives. We are not a people at freedom, but suppression.

The challenge of the twenty-first century is to destroy the Fabian orthodoxies that have drained the spirit of Britain and that have turned us all into subjects of the State, not free citizens. The challenge of the twenty-first century is to fundamentally and radically change British society so that we take back our liberty and become great again. The challenge of the twenty-first century is to cut the rope that keeps the donkeys from deliverance.

How awful!

2005-06-18T22:57:00.000+01:00

The European Union screws up once again

Oh dear! What a shame!

A Vision For True Democracy

2005-06-10T19:28:00.000+01:00

Some of the brightest younger Conservative MPs and activists have written a new book called 'Direct Democracy', which is a critique of some of our society's biggest problems, and the remedies they feel are needed. You can find out much more about all of this here.

So whilst Conservatives are beginning to embrace a full programme for a radical future government, I today proclaim my own vision for true local democracy.

Parish Committees
Every neighbourhood, consisting of around 200 households, would elect a very small number of non-party councillors. One of these would be appointed to be Chairman of the Committee. The committee would then exist as a generally informal forum but with some fund-raising and decision-making powers. Each committee would receive £2,500 per year from local taxation or subsidies (it is, of course, preferable for local taxation to be collected, as this would bring a truer sense of local identity). This money would be spent on their local area, creating a kind of city village.
The committee would meet frequently and its discussions would be held for public viewing. On matters of expenditure, the committee may propose investment ideas, and it would be the duty of the larger populace to vote on such matters. This would bring an almost classical direct democracy to local people.
These neighbourhood committees would have various local responsibilities, including the upkeep of parks and recreation, the state of the local environment and maintenance of public buildings. They would also have a large role in planning. Neighbourhood committees may also have a role in welfare provision. Placing welfare at such a local level would boost the idea of mutual support at work.
Members of the committee would be elected every four years, at the same time as council and national elections. Different committees would have different numbers of councillors. Most councillors would be elected to represent the entire parish. Only if there are more candidates standing for election than there are seats on the council would an election be held.
Each parish would create its own charter, directly establishing its status and its powers. Parish committees would exist much in the same manner as parish councils presently do. Every square inch of British soil would be divided up into parishes, so that these committees would be open to all, regardless of their historic status.

General Councils
General councils would serve as the next tier of local government, above parish committees. A number of parish committees shall be ‘merged’, from which a non-party councillor would be elected. One councillor is appointed Chairman of the Council, and takes the term ‘Mayor’. The Mayor appoints a small executive to discuss local issues, and to show leadership, like a Cabinet. The general council would received income through a universal local sales tax, and should be far less dependent on state finance.
These councils would be responsible directly for local environment matters such as refuse collective and environmental health, and many matters which are too large for parish committees but too trivial for national government. These councils primarily provide local leadership.
One important role for the general council is the maintenance of its very own community hall, which would serve the people in many important ways. The community hall would contain premises for community and not-for-profit organisations and shared support facilities for such groups; location for job centres, including national electronic search facilities; public access to other key databases, such as housing vacancy lists; free-to-use meetings space for community groups; location for local councillors’ drop-in clinics; public display of all planning notices, etc.; exhibition space; small police stations; food and drink and other retail concessions, leased to the private sector. These community halls must be elaborate and ornate buildings, in order to foster a greater sense of local pride.

Public Service Commissioners
I have already written on this site of the need for Transport Commissioners, to take control of local matters in that field. In addition to this, Commissioners would be elected to cover other areas of policy. The most obvious case would be policing, with Commissioners elected to serve the public in that field. However, a Commissioner may be elected to serve as the guarantor of 'public services' within a local area. As I am an advocate of school vouchers and true independence for all schools, that may make Educational Commissioners unnecessary. But as proponents of school vouchers argue that light touch regulation is needed to ensure all children have access to a school, perhaps this could be done at a local level. Educational Commissioners might also serve as a powerful mechanism for the redress of grievances if parents are very unhappy at the policies and practices of schools.
Commissioners would set the priorities in their field and direct expenditure around their own service. The role of national government would be to act as guarantor of the service and keep an overall check on the national picture. If locals are dissatisfied with the performance of their Commissioners, they would have the right to demand the resignation of the Board in a recall election. Elections would be held regularly and the Commissioners would be clearly accountable to people.

In short, this means true local democracy of a style never before dreamt of in our modern world.

Britain's EU Budget Rebate

2005-06-08T15:53:00.000+01:00

Tony Blair has told MPs that there is no question of Britain giving up her rebate from the European Union budget, as pressure from the continent mounts for the Prime Minister to be more open to negotiation. It is thought that a compromise might be reached so that the scope of the EU's cripplingly protectionist agricultural subsidies may be cut in exchange for the abolition of the rebate, won by Margaret Thatcher back in 1984 after the UK had been paying well over the odds for too long into the Community budget.

The emotional connection we appear to have in Britain to our rebate is doubtless perpetuated by the tabloid press and by the everpresent feeling that we are always being well and truly screwed by the Europeans (if you pardon my language). But I am willing to be more conciliatory about this issue. We got our rebate when our economy was in a bad state and when it was entirely unfair that Britain should pay as much as it did. But now, thanks to the long-term effects of Thatcher's reforms and the short-term effects of reforms under John Major's government - and NO THANKS to the tax and spend policies of Gordon Brown - our economy is in a better situation. We are now stronger than our EU partners, who are in a state of perpetual decline, for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps on that count we could be willing to negotiate a settlement. Doubtless Blair and his team would spin it and the message would become something like: 'Look how great we're doing: we don't need our cash back from the EU when we're doing so well by ourselves'.

But if the rebate is abolished, then it is right and proper that we should get something in return. The abolition - or at the very least the phasing out - of the subsidies we pay to inefficient farmers, particularly in France would be a great thing. It would tear away a key strand of continental protectionism and would be a significant step in bringing down the poverty of the Third World as it would let farmers sell their products in our markets. It would cut supermarket prices by a third, some estimates suggest, and that is no small measure when you consider the difficulties those earning a pittance for their hard work and those getting by on the state pension have in buying food. The end of the Common Agricultural Policy would be a tremendous achievement, and we should be eager to move towards it if Her Majesty's Government took a leap of political faith and ended our budget rebate.

The European Union: A Tryst With Folly

2005-06-06T16:40:00.000+01:00

The House of Commons has been debating the crisis with the European Constitution today. It has been interesting to watch how this has become a debate in which we can all merely shout out our complaints about the practices and the policies of the European Union. Bernard Jenkin (Conservative) has been rubbishing the idea of a European common defence and foreign policy. Jeremy Corbyn (old Labour) has complained about how the constitution may have, in its old state, been harmful to social welfare throughout the continent. The Liberal Democrats have been persistent today in calling for greater transparency over how the EU works and operates.

Debates over the constitution have always been and are always going to be about our biggest and heaviest gripes with the European Union. Considering that we know so little about how it works and who does what and why, it is unsurprising that the EU gets a bad press here in Britain. And let me say, the number of times I have heard people say the words 'when we go into Europe' in the last few weeks has been astounding.

But it's not as though I'd ever have it any other way. As an ardent and self-proclaimed Eurosceptic, I am delighted that the popular view of the EU is of a bloated bureaucracy doing nothing at all except shuffling papers and regulating the size of bananas. But if we really intend to debate our place in Europe, then we all need to have a much greater idea of where our place is now, and what it is that we want or don't want a place in.

However, if the European Union remains a club for the continental political elites to get what they want; if it serves for the French to get their farm subsidies, for the British to hang on to its last slice of power in world events; if its opponents pick and mix everything they don't like about it, whether that is its alleged attempts to bring about a common foreign policy or its failure to bring about a common foreign policy, or its leaning towards the free market or its failure to lean towards the free market enough; if Europe can not work together, then the Union deserves to perish.

Unless the continental elites secure that glued-together alliance they hunger for, then the Union will perish, and I shall be the first to celebrate the end of this tryst with folly.

Road Tolls & The Need For Transport Commissioners

2005-06-05T15:44:00.000+01:00

The government is planning the introduction of a nationwide scheme of 'pay-as-you-go' road charges, aimed at cutting congestion, and which would ultimately replace road tax and petrol duty.

I am strongly in favour of a system of road pricing, which would be much fairer on motorists than the present charade we have with various taxes and duties. What's more, road pricing is based on how far you travel, not merely whether or not you own a car or how much gas it guzzles.

But what is imperative is that road tolls do not merely become another source of revenue for the government but rather that the profits are directly returned to the transport infrastructure.
Statistics from the year 2000 told us that motorists raise over £36 billion for the Treasury but receive back only about £6 billion of investment in the infrastructure. Therefore, to see that costs levied on transport users go back into a better transport network I would also like to see the creation of elected transport commissioners throughout the country. These commissioners - who would not be party political but independent-minded - would set the tolls and take the receipts and then spend them on boosting our roads, railways and ports, with no interference at all from central government.

What's more, this would be true democracy in action. The idea that one day we humble voters might be able to just walk down the road and cast a vote to decide who should run our roads and railways, and then go into the town centre to have a chat with the commissioner about a pot-hole that needs fixing down our street or how difficult it is to get into the flow when we're coming out of the drive - that idea fills me with a sense of optimism about local democracy.

Transport is the traditional kitchen-table issue. It might not win a party any votes, but it certainly gets people talking. But wouldn't it be a refreshing change if transport was no longer a matter for politicians far away, but for we, the masses. It's an inspiring thought!

What Is So Unendearing About Politics

2005-06-04T18:04:00.000+01:00

What is so unendearing about politics, as conducted in the modern era, is that it has become the sport of aberrant men and women, in which points are scored and victories earned if the participant succeeds in making a sly or ironic remark, which is usually at best remotely amusing, at the expense of his or her opponent.

Readers will either be utterly shocked at such a bold assertion, or they will shrug and ask, "What's new?"

But it truly disturbs me that political debate today is about futile point-scoring. It probably comes from the top. As political campaigns are conducted in such a way where public criticism of our leaders is prevented sometimes with force, and as debates become based around simple soundbites rather than clear and cogent arguments, then it is inevitably going to be the case that the winners of the public debate are the ones who think up the witty one-liner rather than the ones with intellectual clarity and a purposeful vision for society.

My words, I realise, make me sound scornful of all those people who are better with the witty one-liners and the soundbites than I am, but I still find it dangerous that debates are conducted like this. It's just another part of the systematic dumbing down that has been going on for such a long time in our society.

But it doesn't stop there. A consequence of this dumbing down is that our political leaders and elected representatives are themselves 'dumbed down' as part of this process. And what this leads to is a society where people in power are no longer people with a great vision for their country, a view of a new utopia, but who either serve as lobby fodder for our ultimate rulers or simply as robots and hacks.

Am I alone in seeking a return to a society where politics is where we look to for our source of inspiration, where the masses look for greatness? The politicians of yesteryear were different to the ones of today. Even our Prime Ministers were different. In the past, we had leaders with such diverse visions for society as Margaret Thatcher, Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill. Yet each one of those had their vision for society. They all knew what had to be done to make life safer and happier. They had personality too. They weren't afraid to utter the unpopular word or to think the daunting thought. They would speak out if they didn't like something. They were true leaders.

But today we are left with leaders like Tony Blair. Today, we have men and women who won't go anywhere near the unpopular, because they're too afraid that the next batch of opinion polls will go the other way. Today, our leaders have no concept of 'right' and 'wrong'. Today, they have no vision for a better society, because they are too afraid that a vision might alienate certain groups in their society. So instead they offer kind words and a few pennies to people in the vain hope that they'll still be popular at the end of the day.

I look to a future in which society is much different, where we return to the days when leaders had values and principles which they weren't afraid to be martyrs for. I look to a future of great men and great women, not merely feeble hacks wandering through the electoral desert scouring for another drop of popular water for their survival.

I look to a better future where men and women go into politics with great aspirations and come out with even greater achievements.

David Willetts: A Mountain Mover or a Spectator?

2005-06-03T10:09:00.000+01:00

It appears that David Willetts has emerged as David Davis's principal rival in the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party. This week he has been on the circuit with an article in the Times about the need to lift the poorest parts of Britain out of the pit of despair, and with a speech to the Social Market Foundation declaring that ours has become 'the sick society of Europe'.

With his talk about the need for greater school choice, for the kind of policing that has brought peace to the streets of New York and for serious welfare reform, he certainly has the intellectual credentials to be leader. A piece by Peter Oborne in The Spectator gives Willetts some credit for refusing to follow the lead of other Tories by plotting their way to the crown. Instead, he is the only one doing some serious thinking. And now this morning The Sun says that he looks set to be the candidate who will call on Conservatives to 'reclaim the centre ground'.

But I worry that David Willetts is too much of a nice man for the job. He doesn't have the fire in his belly that's been absent from Conservative leaders for a long time, and which I believe would make a refreshing change from the conceited arrogance that's hidden underneath Tony Blair's folksy exterior, as well as the sheep-like attitude of Charles Kennedy. I would like a leader with spirits and guts. I would like a leader who does not talk about Conservatives being ready to 'reclaim the centre ground', but a leader who goes out and takes the centre ground for himself. I would like a leader who will move mountains, not just admire those who reached the top of them first.

The 'Radical Liberals': Enemies of Freedom

2005-06-01T16:55:00.000+01:00

According to today's Guardian a roving band of 'radical liberals' to the left of the Liberal Democrats are growing evermore voluble in their attacks on the leadership for their unimpressive performance in the election. They say that claims that the party failed to do better because it was too much to the left is 'the first big delusion'.

I had a chuckle to myself when I saw this. Who exactly are these 'radical liberals'? These people are cranks and goofballs. Do they have any representation in Parliament? If so, why?! Can you imagine what would happen if the Liberal Democrats went even further to the left to please these 'radical liberals'? We'd have State ownership of everything yet again. These people are enemies of freedom, and anybody who wants to start a witch-hunt against them has my personal backing!!

2001: The Bad Old Days

2005-06-01T16:49:00.000+01:00

An opinion poll has been carried out which shows that 54% of Conservative Party members would support David Davis as Leader of the Party. But this was never really in doubt, was it? Of course the Conservative Party would back David Davis, which is precisely why the leadership wants to take away the remaining powers of the grassroots in elect a leader. The worst thing about polls like this coming out day after day is that they get the press, and thus the people speculating about the future leadership, even though the contest has not even begun yet. This Phoney War is not only frustrating and pointless, but will only damage us. Michael Howard has announced he shall resign soon. He can't go back on that, so now he must do it soon so that we can get this leadership campaign over with quickly and then mount an almighty fight to get back into government and do great things for society.

The last leadership election shall be remembered as one of division, tearing our party apart, not just over trivial policy areas, but over principles too. The Conservative Party - the most unified mainstream party in Britain, full of men and women all devoted to the cause of freedom of the people against State supremacy - was in seriously danger of drifting into the abyss, of becoming destroyed by an earthquake made at a fault line that MPs, activists and the press had imagined and which was never really there. 2003 was a watershed, as it marked a turning point. The whole party united around a leader so remarkably that there was no need for a conventional election process. 2005 should not be the year when we go back to the bad old days of 2001 and beyond.

School Vouchers Are Catching On

2005-05-31T16:35:00.000+01:00

The following snippet comes from the excellent think-tank Reform's Media Summary for the weekend, which can be found here.

Neil Collins: Tony Blair’s “big idea” should be education vouchers.

In Monday’s Telegraph, Neil Collins advised the Prime Minister to adopt education vouchers as his “big idea”. He said: “For many parents, the process of trying to get a child into the school of their choice is one of the most stressful experiences they suffer, short of seeing the child being ill …. It’s no surprise that parents will try any trick they can think of, from a sudden interest in religion to renting a property they have no intention of occupying, or even straight bribery, to get that precious last place in a decent state school …. [The Chancellor] is spending enough on education, Lord knows; £59 billion last year, £63 billion this year, £72 billion next, and £77 billion by 2007-08. This last sum is equivalent to £5,500 per pupil, and is quite enough to buy a decent education; annual fees for a Girl's Day School Trust school outside London – if you can get in – are currently £5,025 …. The way out of this slough of despond is to empower parents and teachers with education vouchers. The bureaucrats are terrified of the very word, since it would mean the end of them; an education department cut down to a few hundred administrators, local authorities cut out completely, and Ofsted disbanded …. Any small group of teachers could start their own school; 20 pupils would produce an annual income of £100,000 …. New schools would spring up everywhere, competing for pupils; some would strive for academic excellence, but some would target those who are today being excluded …. A dream? Almost certainly. A chance for Mr Blair to change the face of Britain for the better? Absolutely. Education, education, education, as someone once said, long, long ago.

School vouchers really are the right's big idea for education. They've been thought about for decades, ever since Friedman came up with them. They work wherever they've been tried. They help poorest kids most of all. The only people they harm is the educational Establishment: the unions-bureaucrats axis. There is a real opportunity in the coming years for the economic libertarians in our society to become the revolutionary, anti-Establishment heroes. This is one of the many ways Britain can be transformed.

Not So Quiet On The Tory Front

2005-05-31T13:59:00.000+01:00

As a decent, honourable person I have tried over the last few weeks to ignore the endless speculation over the Conservative Party leadership. Alas, my determination to focus the efforts of the centre-right on the real issues of the day, like the European Constitution, like taxation and all the rest of it, have been met with failure.

So, in the time-honoured tradition of lone voices like myself, I say, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"

David Davis remains in front at this stage, gaining some kudos in my mind for encouraging the party to tone down the rhetoric on the future leadership. The real movement is occuring amongst the 'anyone but Davis' camp, as that is what the likes of David Cameron and Malcolm Rifkind amount to. The latest news, which is growing in the public consciousness since the good people at conservativehome.com broke it, is that some kind of Cameron-Rifkind-Clarke axis is being engineered. There is little doubt that this kind of triumverate would be overwhelmingly backed in the parliamentary party, but again there is the niggling problem for the Westminster elitists that the grassroots wouldn't fall for such a scheme.

Then there is the reforms to the Party's constitution, which would see power centralised even more to Central Office (if that's what we call Party HQ nowadays). We really do not want to follow the Blair model of central control in our political campaigns. I firmly believe that we should do the exact opposite, and bring power back to constituencies. Part of the disillusionment of people from politics today is that so much of it is conducted in Westminster corridors and party headquarters, a long way away from Main Street or suburbia. If local parties were given greater powers over who they wanted as their candidates and how they distributed their resources, then future Conservative MPs might be more likely to become thorns in the side of the leadership, but they'll be damn good constituency representatives!

But perhaps the leadership is a different matter. After all, Conservatives in Glasgow or Newcastle might want someone different to Conservatives in Berkshire or the South Downs, because their political priorities are so different. My mind is still open to changes in the way we elect a leader. Yes, constituencies should have a say, but maybe not the final and decisive say. I don't like all this talk that the grassroots were responsible for Iain Duncan Smith. Back then, it was a choice between him, a careful and measured Eurosceptic who had risen to the top by an extraordinary combination of luck and others' failure, or Kenneth Clarke, a Europhile who would have been completely inappropriate. If the liberal wing of the party had a problem with Duncan Smith's election, then maybe they should have been a bit more sensible in how they approached the 2001 leadership contest, and maybe they should have dealt with Michael Portillo slightly better and embraced him as part of a Clarke-Portillo union. Instead, they spent the next two years moaning and groaning.

The Conservative predicament is that we have a tonnage of talent. We have so many famous faces on our benches, so many bright stars, so many intelligent thinkers, so many popular men and women that it is nigh on impossible to find a true leader with all of the qualities needed and whom all sections of the party can embrace. We have potentially a myriad of centre-right policy ideas at our disposal, on education, on healthcare, on taxation, that our problem may become summoning the kind of confidence we need to present these ideas to the British people.

If a leader emerges with talent and ideas, as well as a vision which he or she believes in and has the confidence to propose to the party and the nation, then the Conservative Party will be cruising into government in four or five years' time, and its leader shall not only become Prime Minister, but shall be remembered as one of the greatest reforming leaders our society has ever had.

The opportunity is there. Let us grasp it!

Tax Freedom Day

2005-05-31T12:01:00.000+01:00

Today is Tax Freedom Day!!

Today is the day when we stop working just to line the government's pockets and start working for ourselves. Today is the day when the average worker in Britain has earned enough to pay their tax bill for the year.

It comes three days later than last year and five days later than the year before. The Adam Smith Institute has pinned the blame for the rise on Labour's national insurance and council tax rises. What is even more stark is that it is set to move into June next year unless taxes are cut.

We all know the dangers of high taxes. We've all rehearsed them over and over again, and we've all worked out that only the naive and the unthinking believe higher taxes will bring better services and a better economy. It is urgent that taxes are cut, and they must be cut at a phenomenal rate - by that I don't mean raising taxes but at a slower rate, or cutting national insurance just a tad. I mean a real overhaul of Britain's tax system. The abolition of all the silly nuisance taxes would be a good start - the abolition of inheritance tax or car tax, in favour of road tolls.

I believe in a strong Britain of only two taxes - a flat-rate of income tax, with a generous personal allowance of non-taxed income; and a local sales tax to replace VAT, which would pay for local government.

We don't need a mighty State any more, because a mighty State is the most abhorrent obstacle in the face of economic progress, which benefits the richest and the poorest, and which is ironically the greatest way to achieve the kind of social equality that pro-government socialists like to talk about.

A truly reforming government would not push Tax Freedom Day back by one or two days, but by months!

France and Europe

2005-05-29T23:45:00.000+01:00

It appears that the French have rejected the European Constitution. Of course, we know absolutely nothing about what this will mean for the future of the EU. This institution is one of the most secretive around the globe, and has been designed for that purpose. Jean Monnet, its founding father, did say that the Community should take slow steps towards federalism which would be disguised as having an economic purpose.

Over the last few months I have often come to think: can you imagine George Washington putting a spin on the American Constitution back in the 1700s or the people of Massachusetts rejecting the draft because it was geared too much to the benefit of New Hampshire. The charade of the Constitution is proof if it were needed that Europe can never be one great power. It's just not our destiny, and it should not be forced by the federalists who make up the continent's political elites.

It has often been said by those who support the free market as the greatest way of achieving a great society that the European Union will eventually either evolve into an organization truly committed to free trade, or it will simply collapse.

My hope has always been that one of those outcomes will come true - I'm not too bothered whether it is the former or the latter. But the people of Europe can not - and must not - surrender themselves to become part of a European superstate against their wishes. That is not our destiny at all, and we must merely accept that. We can not become an evermore glued-together union just to satisfy the wishes of men like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder, as well as their friends concealed behind thick doors in Brussels and Strasbourg.

The coming months will make the scene clearer. If the European Union refuses to learn their French lesson, then it will become obvious that the 'dream' of a European superstate is fast becoming a reality that we must use all force at our disposal to combat. But if they listen and take note, then we will all be better off.

Am I cynical in expecting the Europeans will go on arrogantly ignoring the wishes of their respective electorates? Am I not communautaire enough because I can not accept that a truly unified Europe is our destiny? Am I plainly obstinate because I want to do all that is humanly possible to ensure that Britain is a strong power in the world and not part of a glued-together Europe?

Please, be you British, European or Martian, tell me that you are not part of the elite who want a European superstate, but part of the majority who want freedom!

The Disrespect of Britain's Youth

2005-05-29T23:31:00.000+01:00

A lot has been said in the last couple of weeks about the rise and rise of Britain's hooded youth. The decent, law-abiding majority are angry at this symbol of our modern society's way of accepting every chav and scally boy that threatens our peace.

I have only one piece of advice for anyone who feels worried, amused or indifferent about this debate: the last time the government had any gripes with people wearing hoods, it was the monks. Perhaps the answer to the appalling disrespect in Britain's youth is better history teaching. Because if they start to associate hoods with the monks, it might be a less cool fashion!

On a more serious note, there is a problem with the way the debate about respect in Britain's youth is conducted. Readers who have followed my posts regularly may not have gathered, but this writer is considerably younger than he lets on. Yesterday evening, I was sat amongst a gathering of older friends who were complaining typically about the way things used to be and how kids today don't behave like they used to. They found a number of reasons why, ranging from my sublime way of blaming it on the Welfare State - I was the lone voice in the room at that time - to the ridiculous of blaming it on Thatcherite individualism. The truth is that changing Britain's youth is not as easy as rolling back the years and setting policies so that our society accurately resembles the state of affairs of some bygone epoch, some zenith of respect. The debate is much different to that. My friends who last night bemoaned 'kids today' passed the following hours talking about how appallingly-behaved they used to be when they were younger. They even gave a few examples of how rude and disrespectful they had been in the last few weeks, and each time they had another tale I would conclude sardonically (like a typically disrespectful yob) 'kids today'! But most importantly of all, they tried their hardest to absolve themselves of most of their responsibilities as parents.

Quite simply, government diktat can not make a respectful, law-abiding youth. That is the job of each and every parent and teacher throughout this island. But so long as we are forced to put up with nannying governments who are willing to devolve no powers to parents over how to bring up their children, how the hell do we achieve that?

Perhaps 'disrespect' is an entity. Perhaps it's there. Perhaps it has been there all the time, exemplified by 'mods and rockers' in the past and by 'hoodies and chavs' today. I don't know, but that seems like too convenient and too lily-livered a conclusion to me.

Why The Liberal Democrats Are On Their Way Down

2005-05-19T18:24:00.000+01:00

A lot has been made of the great successes of the Liberal Democrats in this recent general election. They have won 62 seats in the new House of Commons, gaining 11 overall. They secured a significant share of the vote which, although goes unrewarded under our system (which I have already written about at length on this site) can easily be commended. Their tactical strategy has sent home Labour MPs in some parts of the country, and Conservatives in others. Regardless of the policies their candidates were forced to campaign on, their election strategy has stunned their Labour and Conservative colleagues in the House.

They are particularly proud of their victory in the student seat of Leeds North West. Greg Mulholland took well over a third of the vote in a close, three-way marginal. They gained 10% of the vote over their 2001 standing. With a majority of nearly two thousand votes, this was some success, which has been repeated elsewhere, whether in the metropolises of the north or the fields of the south. Their growing strength continues to make Tory and Labour MPs sit up and think.

But this tryst across the country with the Liberal Democrats may be short-lived. Take a look at Cornwall North, a constituency which the Liberals won with over 50% of the vote in 2001. They lost nearly 10% of their share this time round, leaving them with a majority of just 5.5%, compared with 18.2% previously. Unless there is some kind of local issue which the sitting Liberal MP Dan Rogerson has lost some of his popularity over, this may signal a trend. Whilst areas of the country which have never flirted with the Liberal Democrats before are growingly dismayed by the Labour government and the Tory alternative, those seats which have endured at least four years of Liberal representation are unenthralled and disenchanted. They're not turning away from the Liberal Democrats before they think it's a wasted vote in our system of first-past-the-post. They just think that the Liberal Democrat MPs are weak, limp failures, offering nothing great to local people. And they think Charles Kennedy's team is offering a vision for a weaker Britain, not a stronger one, and a society which bows down to the enormous problems we all face.

The voters of old Liberal Democrat seats are growing tired with bad MPs. The newly-elected, euphoric Liberals in the House of Commons should take not that the people will never forgive them if they fail in their first duty to their electors. Alas, when one looks at the 'talent' apparently on show on the Liberal Front Bench, I am sure that battle has already been fought and lost.

Good Luck, Mr. Blunkett

2005-05-18T07:13:00.000+01:00

Last week I found myself discussing with a friend the relative successes and shortcomings of New Labour's economic agenda over recent years. Of course, he had fallen for the same Brownite/Blairite mantras: low mortgage rates, low interest rates and low unemployment in contrast with the days of Tory boom and bust.

But as someone who believes entirely in the virtiues of individual independence and freedom, Labour's most annoying claim to me is that we are living in an era of higher employment levels than ever before. This is a lie, wrapped in a myth, veiled under spin. On the contrary, there are around nine million people out of work in our country who are of working age. Let it be noted that my friend went wild with laughter at this idea.

Of course, that figure is true, but it is not an appropriate measure to use. It takes account of students and those in early retirement, for two examples. But it also takes account of those receiving invalidity benefit. When I cited this particular group of people, my friend asked what I classed as 'disabled' and was particularly amused at the thought of nine million invalids walking through the streets of Britain.

The remarkable rise in the number of people claiming incapacity benefit occured during the era of the last Conservative government. In 1979, 600,000 people claimed the benefit. By 1995, this figure had jumped to 1.5 million. Far and away the most claimants are taking this benefit on the grounds of of 'mental and behavioural disorders' as well as 'diseases of the musculo-skeletal system and connective tissue'. Notwithstanding my complete ineptitude at understanding anything scientific, one can easily class stress and backache as two of the conditions which fall under these two categories. What's more, one can easily claim that it is virtually impossible to prove their existence. Yet these two categories account for well over half the diseases which cause incapacity. The benefit is predominantly claimed in those locales with already high levels of unemployment. As James Bartholomew writes in his excellent book The Welfare State We're In, 'Backache appeared to be something people particularly got if wages were low in relation to invalidity benefit'. Indeed, the top five districts for highest levels of incapacity benefit claimants are Merthyr Tydfil, Easington, Glasgow, Blaenau Gwent and Liverpool. In addition to this, it should be recognised that that incapacity benefit differed from unemployment benefit in that it was paid indefinitely, not for a fixed term. Yet the most serious issue with this rise in disability claimants is that it conincided with the time period after the level of invalidity benefit were increased. Beveridge had intended all people to receive the same, whether they were unemployed or incapacitated. But in the seventies, under both Prime Ministers Heath and Wilson, the benefit rose so that it was worth nearly a quarter more than unemployment benefit. This has gone up slightly more again in the years since then. 7% of Britain's working-age population claims the benefit, as opposed to 2% in France or 3% in Spain. Research by Sheffield Hallam University has estimated that half the number of incapacity benefit recipients should be termed the 'hidden unemployed'. Therefore, 750,000 of the 1.5 million on incapacity benefit in 2003 should be the key targets of any attempts to finally break through the red brick wall standing in the way of any politicians who believe in the economic independence we all aspire to.

Now that David Blunkett has all but confessed to the existence of this underbelly of unemployment, perhaps my friend will start taking this matter more seriously. He is the archetypal New Labour Blairite. He was, naturally, privately educated, and comes from a good, 'hard-working family'. Indeed, he was probably next in line for a photo shoot during the election campaign. He hasn't really got a clue what life is like in the tough inner cities throughout Britain, where the words 'despair' and 'misery' don't come close to explaining their state of life. He doesn't know what it's like in the old industrial areas of south Wales, Yorkshire and the North because 'The Guardian' is yet to do a special report on it. He hears about recession in the Tory days, but he's happy and relaxed by Labour tax and spend and by the fact that public spending in the north is higher than it was in eastern bloc Hungary. He'll listen to soliloquies from Vera Baird, who told MPs yesterday that this is all necessary to ensure 'nobody gets left behind', even though anybody who truly cared for the people in my part of the world would know that it is precisely that high spending that is holding us back, like slaves under the weight of oppression. But, nonetheless, as long as Vera Baird is speaking as if we're all on some collective journey to a new Jerusalem, he'll feel safe and happy that his politics are left intact, despite what all the nay-sayers and doomsters like me are arguing.

He feels fine with the loss of a million manufacturing jobs under Labour. He is contented by Blair's inability to bring light to the darkest corners of Britain, where Thatcher's economic dynamism - as remarkable as it was elsewhere - brought devastation to whole communities. And he is fine with the face that the only jobs on offer in the Britain of 2005 have titles you could only ever find in the public sector, like 'Community Liaison Team Manager' or 'Supervising Deputy Assistant to Manchester City Council on Racial Interface and Diversity Issues'.

Britain is in a rut. Our real state is covered up by layers of statistics strewn with spin. It is kept hidden away by the perilous orthodoxies perpetuated by Blairite mantra chanters just like my friend who thinks we're in a paradise, a utopia, just because his middle class household owns two cars and the kind of security and independence that is the stuff of dreams for too many British people.

A good starting point in tearing down the misery and despair of dependence is by helping people off invalidity benefit. David Blunkett is a capable man with the kind of Yorkshire grit that I always try to muster up in myself.

Mr. Blunkett, your cause is a noble one, but you face some enormous challenges. How can you expect to give people work so long as businesses are heading abroad to break free from the strains of the high tax and high regulation typical of Blair's Britain?

All I can say, Mr. Blunkett, is this: good luck, sir.

Britain: Happy Slapping Capital of the World

2005-05-13T08:22:00.000+01:00

If any readers watched an ITV programme last night which contained footage taken by a camera phone of real incidents of a new craze called 'happy slapping' and if you felt a sense of fear, anger or vengeance, let me say that you were not alone.

It appears that this popular pastime is taking Britain's youth by storm. It involves stalking up behind complete strangers - usually with a cocky spring in the step - and simply smacking them in the face, while - like psychotic wildlife - shouting 'happy slap!' It has caused the bursting of at least one man's eardrum, and led ultimately to the burning of another.

What do we do about it?

A drunken friend declared whilst watching these horrifying images: 'They should root it out in the schools'. That's a fair point, but isn't that a little late? Traditional, small-c conservatives like me are shouting at a brick wall when we declare that the real centre of education is the home. If you don't get them in the first years of life, you never will.

Or is it part of our culture? Should we ban the television programmes and films that perpetuate the idea that random violence is the way to get kicks? After all, this craze can - for once - be sourced directly to at least one television programme (American, obviously!).

Is there anything anybody can do? Is there anything that citizens can do? Well, of course. It is the role of good, sensible parents to ensure this kind of behaviour never reigns in the minds of tomorrow's leaders. I will say this again and again: the role of good parents is to keep their children on the straight and narrow.

But ultimately this is one of those issues where we individuals, families and communities are powerless. If a yob in Birmingham or Leeds couldn't give a damn about setting alight a stranger who fell asleep in a bus shelter, there is no hope for the brave, courageous heroes who try to take the law into their own hands. The yobs will always beat us. We don't stand a chance.

Police forces which are unaccountable to the citizenry are perhaps just as poorly placed. There is no respect for authority in Britain's youth, and it may be all down to the days when we became a 'permissive society'.

I don't advocate a return to the days when people were stoned for the colour of their skin or whom they chose to share a bed with. But if the Blair government - a government which has handed down regulations on how people should wash their hands - believes in a protective State, then this is the time for the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister to show their true colours.

Socialism Is Responsible For Global Warming!!!

2005-05-11T18:40:00.000+01:00

I have a theory. Yes, it makes me sound like a crank. Yes, it's probably mostly wrong. But here me out at least. My theory is that socialism is responsible for global warming.

In Britain, socialism saw the centralisation of industry and public services. Whilst before the Welfare State, there were clinics and small schools serving every two or three small streets, now there is a comprehensive serving a catchment area of miles. Whilst before the nationalisation of industry, there were small factories and workshops at the end of every street, now people's workplaces are much further away.

Because people work further from their homes, and are required to travel further away to drop their children off at school or to go for a scan at a hospital, they can not necessarily live their lives on foot.

One of the key reasons many car owners cite for their reliance on their little, colourful boxes of metal and oil is precisely that. People nowadays must travel further to work and to live.

It is a commonly accepted fact that transportation is responsible for a significant proportion of the global environmental problems our planet is suffering. 18% of the UK's CO2 emissions are caused by cars, and that figure is rising. And CO2 emissions are responsible for some of those dangers facing our earth, including global warming.

No matter what we may individually think about the science behind global warming (I myself believe the scare stories of the environmentalists are rather dubious, but that's for another time) the fact is that people rely on cars today because of the centralising nature of socialism, which has destroyed the strength and spirit of small, local communities. This is precisely what the twenty-first century should be about. The defining characteristics of our new century may have something to do with the global environment, or terrorism, or, as ever, warfare. I sincerely hope, however, that the politicians make our new century about something different. The twentieth century will go down as the era when they took away power from local people and gave it to meddling, interfering politicians and bureaucrats. We should go back on all of that, so that one day in the twenty-first century we can simply walk down the street to work or skip to school with a spring in our step.

A localised society, based on the strength and spirit of the community, not the State, is, inevitably, the way to relieve the burdens we have placed on Mother Nature.

Tory Reshuffle: Make or Break for the Next Leader

2005-05-10T19:39:00.000+01:00

Michael Howard has made a rather daring Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, bringing together all the talents and all the qualities that the Conservatives have on their benches. We have some youthful shadow ministers full of vitality, of which George Osborne and David Cameron are undoubtedly two. We have experience too, best personified by giants like Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

It is a Shadow Cabinet which brings together all wings of the party - yet, as I have written recently, that is hardly difficult in a party so fundamentally united over its guiding philosophy as the Conservatives are. There is Alan Duncan and Andrew Lansley on the left, and David Davis and John Redwood on the right (whatever 'right' and 'left' mean in the Conservative Party).

Most importantly of all, this is a Shadow Cabinet from which the next leader of the party will almost certainly emerge. Whether you prefer a social and economic liberal like Alan Duncan or a hard-line right-winger like David Davis - in a leadership race which hasn't actually kicked off yet - these are the names which will be looked at first.

Their performance over the coming months with their respective portfolios may well make or break potential leaders. David Davis has identity card proposals to oppose as Shadow Home Secretary, yet what a treacherous position he would be put in if the rest of the leadership decided - after much dithering - to back identity cards after all. What if Sir Malcolm Rifkind flops in the House of Commons against David Blunkett as the government promises an overhaul of the Welfare State? What if Liam Fox tries to fight against a Foreign Secretary who suddenly stops being a puppet and starts standing up to both the Americans and the Europeans, and begins to pursue the feisty and independent foreign policy a nation like Britain should be used to carrying out? What if George Osborne stands up against a Chancellor of the Ex-Chequer who becomes stunned by the virtues of lower taxation and lower spending?

I realised I'm drifting from the sublime to the ridiculous by now, but the next few months will make or break those leadership campaigns which have been silently spiralling to fruition in the last few days. I think I have decided whom I personally would support in such a campaign, yet we will have to see how time progresses.

The Liberal Democrats would be the real losers under PR

2005-05-09T18:00:00.000+01:00

We all understand why the Liberal Democrats are consistently the greatest proponents of introducing an element of proportional representation to elections to the House of Commons, and it is perfectly understandable that they should wish for it, since, as Charles Kennedy proclaimed last week, we are now in an era of three-party politics.

Regardless of the arguments for and against proportional representation, on reflection it is rather odd that the Liberal Democrats believe in the system for Westminster elections.

Because we elect Members of Parliament, who then indirectly form a government, rather than having our votes used directly to elect a governing party, all sorts of quirks pop up. Some of us live in constituencies which are solidly Labour or Conservative. Some of us live in marginals which might go either way, or even to the Liberals themselves. Therefore my argument is that because we elect representatives rather than governments, we do not treat our vote in the same way as we otherwise would.

I must confess to having no statistics on which to back up my argument, but the overwhelming feeling throughout the country is that few people want a Liberal Democrat government led by Charles Kennedy. Perhaps, as in a system of proportional representation, if a ballot was used to elect a government, not just a representative, then we would all be more 'mature' (without wishing to sound too arrogant) in whom we support. The Liberal Democrats undeniably recieve the lion share of their support from protest votes at the Tories and Labour, as well as in marginal seats where the Liberals are close challengers to the major two.

Perhaps in a system of proportional representation, we would not protest, nor feign support for a Liberal to kick out a sitting Tory or Labour MP. It is one theory and it may be wrong. But I do worry that as the debate on PR moves up a gear after last week's terrible, yet equally successful performance by the Labour Party, we may forget that it will not be the Conservatives and Labour who are the winners because they'll be too busy trying to forge weak and ineffective coalitions. Ironically, it won't be the Liberal Democrats either because the mainstream voters will not take them seriously, and the protestors will just treat them like all the rest. The real winners from PR will be the cranks and the extremists, because people will no longer protest at the mainstream two by voting Lib Dem, but they will protest at the mainstream three by voting UKIP, Veritas, Green or even BNP.

Without intending to sound too melodramatic, this is largely how Nazi Germany started.

All Conservatives must unite around one common cause

2005-05-08T18:37:00.000+01:00

I have lost count of the number of times people tell me that this country has never been so prosperous. I have lost count of the number of times people talk about money, as if the size of their bank balance or the number of carats in their golden jewels is the most fundamental measure of success. Perhaps it is because too many politicians only ever talk about money. We measure the success of a government on how much we’re earning, how much we’re paying to the Exchequer and how much is going in to the public services. Yet this is an ignorant position, because it ignores the real poverty which is crippling individuals, families and communities on a mass scale in Britain.

A Conservative Party which seeks to form a government in four or five years’ time must be ready to propose a radical programme ultimately designed to empower the poorest members of our society. We need not be afraid of giant reforms. After all, Beveridge’s Five Giants are still dangerously prevalent in our modern era, and are far more deeply rooted than they were in the forties. The poverty we must have the vision and the will to address and defeat is not simply the material poverty that the other parties talk about, but the poverty of ambition, the poverty of aspiration and the poverty of virtue too.

Traditionally, governments have come to accept the Welfare State as the best way to help the most disadvantaged in our society. Yet on the contrary, the Welfare State continues to be the biggest obstacle facing the men, women and children who must live and work in some of our society’s most despairing places. The Conservative Party has a duty to put forward a manifesto which is so radical and so visionary that when the next Conservative leader walks over the threshold of Number Ten Downing Street, he or she shall be remembered as one of the giant reformers of the twenty-first century.

The next Conservative government must focus on bringing support to the disadvantaged, the deprived and the depressed individuals, families and communities which should be a scar on the conscience of politicians everywhere to their charming, many-bedroomed abodes in their expensive Jaguars and BMWs, dressed in their nice, tailored suits.

I do not subscribe to the view that the Conservative Party is fundamentally divided. Yes, we have factions, some of which are more powerful than others. There are those who take a relaxed attitude to social change, and believe our political masters should ‘live and let live’. They support gay rights and accept lone parenthood. On the other hand, there are those who feel that the cavernous poverty of which I have written in this article is the most important challenge for the politicians of today to face up to. There are those who want the Conservative Party to focus on its core voters, by presenting a tougher line on immigration, tax cuts and zero tolerance in fighting crime.

There is a falsehood about the Conservative Party peddled by many both in and out. It is claimed that a Conservative Party which has some social changers, some poverty crusaders and some hard liners can never truly work together. This is plainly untrue. The Conservatives are absolutely some of the most decent people I know. The way to get these groups, these factions working together for a collective cause is in fact fairly simple.

We need firstly to embrace the social changers by having equal respect for all people, no matter whom they share their beds with, where they pray or how many parents are in their household. The Conservative Party has always had a deep commitment to personal privacy and liberty, so it is foolish that we should baulk at the sight of a gay couple or a single parent. We should, in truth, be the ones who are supporting the rights of all people to live a happy and fruitful life.

We must also demonstrate the utmost compassion for society’s most vulnerable people. Labour and the Liberal Democrats talk persistently about how much money people are earning, and describing the rich as people who take home more than a certain amount of money. Perhaps this is because it’s so much easier to set down in tabular form average incomes, or numbers receiving state benefits. Or perhaps it’s because they don’t have the ideas, the determination or the bottle to tackle real poverty. The Conservative Party has a unique and unparalleled opportunity to present a programme for government which would fight and destroy the drivers of despair which still haunt us today.

And finally we have those who believe that our core vote strategy should go on as it did in 2001 and 2005. They believe in fighting the creeping monster of Europe and the yob culture of modern Britain. They want lower taxes and lower spending. Those people are absolutely right to make these demands. After all, I know of few better ways to encourage hard work than to stop forcing a man or a woman on the minimum wage to hand over a vast proportion of their earnings as income tax without any question of their situation.

The Conservative Party is a broad church full of individuals and groupings who believe in a better society which is based on the principles of fairness, tolerance and acceptance. All we need to do is come together and put forward a radical vision for the next Conservative government to put into practice. It is not impossible. If the next Conservative leader can walk through Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate or along the River Mersey and proclaim a vision for modern Britain which accepts the rich diversity of our society and fights for the betterment of every man, woman and child, no matter where they come from, what they look like or who they live with, we will form the next government.

The recipe for a Conservative renaissance

2005-05-08T18:31:00.000+01:00

The last few days have been taken up by talk about where the Conservative Party will go under a new leader. Articles have been written, interviews have been given and speeches have been made by potential leaders. Some say that we need to denounce Thatcherism. Some talk of a liberal naissance for a Tory Party hoping to be modern and cool. Others want us to follow the tack of this last election by talking about the issues that matter to people in their daily lives.

People have been nagging themselves silly, worrying that we need to have a fundamental change in our underpinning philosophy. I disagree. Now more than ever, the Conservatives need to trumpet their principles of small government, the freedom of the people and local empowerment. Our belief in families and communities stands in stark contrast to Labour’s inexorable move towards a powerful Whitehall. Our belief in enterprise stands in contrast to Labour’s treatment of small businesses, especially their disdain for the self-employed – which became apparent when they wanted to ignore them in statistics for average income. Our belief in rewarding hard workers stands in contrast to Blair’s Britain, where a man earning the minimum wage must pay twenty pence for every pound instantly to Gordon Brown, and then usually at least another twenty pence if he buys a four-pack of Carling or twenty Lambert & Butler’s.

My party does not face the same challenge that Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair tried to overcome in the eighties and nineties, when Labour was a party full of foolish thinking and loony left madness. The Conservatives have a strong founding philosophy which we must never be afraid of trumpeting. We need to change only three things. We need new people at the top. This has already been going on under previous leaders. There is a tonnage of capable figures in our shadow cabinet and on our backbenchers, ranging from tough, strong right-wingers like David Davis, to liberal, more homely chaps like John Bercow – to name only two. I firmly believe that the Conservatives are the best equipped party in the House of Commons with Members of Parliament who have all the qualities that the people seek in their leaders – charisma, charm, intellect and strength. All of these people must be in the public eye when our new leader – however popular he or she may be on their own – is elected.

Then we need new policies. We have fought a successful election campaign with a decent strategy that has paid off. But we can not simply win the next election by playing up to populist fears about immigration, disciple in schools or cleanliness in hospitals. Thinkers on the centre-right have a mass of ideas which will propel the Conservatives into power one day with a huge popular mandate. We should not be afraid to put forward radical plans for the future of Britain. We should not be afraid to speak about empowering parents in the way we fund schools, or giving patients the opportunity to spend their money at hospitals of their choice. We should not be afraid to talk about a massive relief in the burden of taxation and an immense lessening of the role of this part-Napoleonic, part-Stalinist State of ours. There is a wealth of ideas, from school ‘vouchers’ and social insurance for healthcare to a flat-rate of income tax and elected commissioners for public services, that we should discuss readily and eagerly and which will one day be part of a radical Conservative manifesto.

Finally, with our star team and our radical programme, there is only one other challenge we need to face up to. Across Britain, particularly in the forgotten inner cities of the north which I have written about recently, people are flocking away from their traditional Labour allegiance by the million. They are fed up with the champagne-drinking, Mercedes-driving, dinner party lovers who reign on high in the Labour Party. They don’t like the memories of the war in Iraq, but what they really don’t like are politicians who are all talk and no action, who only want them for their vote once every four years and then for their money all the rest of the time. What this last general election tells us is that we need to make a breakthrough in the inner cities, because unless we pull back our support there, the Liberal Democrats will be the beneficiaries of a Labour decline, not the Conservatives. With a four-year campaign starting the day the new leader is elected, promising honesty and virtue, offering salvation from the misery and depression which is sadly commonplace around the country, we will win the next general election with a colossal popular mandate.

These guidelines must be followed to the word whoever the next leader of the Conservative Party may be. With a strong team of leaders, a radical manifesto for government and a strategy which refuses to brand any part of Britain a ‘no-go area’, we will become the true party of government once more. Thanks to Michael Howard’s successes in the Midlands and the south, that task has been made easier. The next Conservative leader, with a mediocre share of the vote nationally, has a challenge ahead. But it is one worth fighting.

The Tories must not ignore the inner cities – morally as well as politically

2005-05-07T15:19:00.000+01:00

Looking at the raw results from the general election, we can make some simplistic assertions. Labour suffered a beating across the country, causing them to lose some of their key marginal seats. The Conservatives had some tremendous successes, as well as a little misfortune in failing to do even better than we did. The Liberal Democrats have suffered once again from an unfair electoral system, and deserve much credit for reducing the Labour vote in cities across the country. With the exception of one or two cases, such as in Bethnal Green & Bow or Blaenau Gwent, where George Galloway and an ex-Labour Welsh Assembly member pushed through the boundaries of expectation to take those seats, these assertions apply throughout the nation.

This general election has differed from the previous two in many respects. Not least, the Conservative Party has done better, in terms of raw seats in the House of Commons, than in the previous elections. But more importantly for me, as a Conservative, is that our result has not been treated like a disaster from which we will never return.

There can be no doubt that the Conservative campaign was a skilled one. As this election was never going to bring in a landslide Tory government, we were obliged to focus our efforts on those key voters in marginal seats across the country who have a great deal of influence in deciding who governs these isles. In doing this, the strategy we employed has paid off. We only need to take a glance at our successes in constituencies which were low on our presumed target list to see this. Enfield Southgate, Reading East and Gravesham were three English seats that we needed to take to return to government, but not if our only objective was to make inroads in certain pockets throughout the country.

However, we must not assume that all will be rosy now that Tony Blair will face inherent difficulties in overcoming opposition to his dangerous and foolish plans. When one considers the Prime Minister’s inability to lead his own party, and to inspire the rest of us to agree with him, it seems likely that he shall struggle. My only advice to the Prime Minister: expect some defeats.

Despite the smug look the Conservatives deserve to have on their faces whilst the economy founders and whilst questions over the Prime Minister’s leadership go on, we must not forget that in terms of the national vote, we have made only an insignificant success. Where Labour and the Conservatives battled closely, we have succeeded. Yet one can handpick seats in cities throughout Britain where it is not my party, but the Liberal Democrats and others have succeeded. In Leeds Central, a constituency I often look to with interest as it is the place where I was brought up, Hilary Benn’s share of the vote fell by 6.9%. Yet it wasn’t the Conservative candidate who reaped the benefits – he lost 1.1%. It was the Liberal Democrats and even the British National Party who are winning up there.

If we intend to win an overwhelming majority in the next election, then we need to enter government as a party which represents the whole nation, not just the useful bits down south. Our strategy worked considerably in this election, but next time round we need to take our cause to the forgotten inner cities, particularly in the north, in Scotland and in Wales. One might argue that the Conservatives do not stand a chance in Leeds Central, so why bother? But I think that is pessimistic and arrogant. The Conservative Party can not go into government dependent on rural votes and a smattering of marginal seats alone. If we intend to change the political landscape, we should plan to shake the ground under the cities of Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow and Leeds. We should fight to be heard in the valleys of Wales and by the lochs of Scotland. We can not afford to ignore the people who live in the northern inner cities, or the people who have suffered from the decisions of both parties when in government. We should never say that a Tory MP for Blaenau Gwent is a crazy thought, because if a lowly independent can bring down the Welsh Establishment, then so can a Conservative Party which focuses its efforts on bringing salvation to the forgotten corners of our island. All we need are the right policies, the right people and the right strategy, as well as a touch of optimism.

Lib Dems: A Recipe For Disaster

2005-04-07T20:45:00.000+01:00

The Liberal Democrats have spent the day trumpeting their education policies, particularly their promise to bring down primary school class sizes. I'm sure we are all enthralled by their hopes, and we can't wait for the day when they bring their dreams to fruition, but one must ask the question: HOW?!

School headteachers have been crying out that bringing down class sizes is practically an impossible job. It can not be done by governments when there is a scarcity of teachers and buildings for schools (something that can not be quickly fixed by more money). It just can't be done. The Liberal Democrats are not telling us how they intend to do it - but rest assured that it will have something to do with higher taxes and bungling bureaucracy!

So that's one policy thrown to the lions. What about tuition fees?

Yes, they want to abolish university tuition fees. They want to see universities facing massive underfunding, just like all the hospitals and schools across Britain that rely on state funding. Many would, I'm certain, have to close. Those that don't would be hanging on by a thread. It is worrying to think that the likes of Oxford, Cambridge or Durham will become state-funded, state-ruled, state-destroyed cesspits of educational poverty. Abolishing tuition fees is another example of Lib Dem woolly-thinking, designed to attract students across the country. The big worry is that so far they're succeeding in doing precisely that!

The Liberal Democrats clearly do not understand the massive problems in every nook and cranny of the education system, and if they ever had a chance of gaining power, please be afraid of anybody who becomes Education Secretary under a Charles Kennedy administration.

It's Election Time!

2005-04-05T18:25:00.000+01:00

It's election time and the whole country comes to its feet declaring their love for our political leaders in proud and united voice, only to realise, so unfortunately, that they must make a choice between the greatest men and women ever to have graced our fair island.

Okay, irony's not attractive! But this general election could turn out to be quite an important one for so many reasons. The solid gold economic legacy left by the last Conservative government is ebbing away thanks to futile tax and spend programmes emanating from the office of our revered Chancellor of the Ex-Chequer. There are growing fears about the state of British public services, and our society in general. There is a desire for radical reforms across all different fields in our country's affairs.

Yet the political parties are offering much more of the same.

The Labour Party is proud of its economic record, even though the economy was made great by men and women who had nothing to do with the Labour Party (merely a determination to destroy it). Labour has been expedient in destroying the economic legacy of previous governments. They naively make the Great Follower Mr. Blair out to be a Great Leader on the world stage. And they make hundreds of neat-sounding pledges which will simply place an ever greater burden on the taxpayer, and give enormous powers to the State.

Meanwhile the Conservative Party are promising fairly radical changes, but these are pretty meek. As has been pointed out by observers of the Howard Flight affair, the remarks he made about 'true' Tory spending plans were the stuff of dreams for so many Thatcherite thinkers in the party. They will still increase government revenue as a percentage of GDP, only at a slightly lower rate. The Tories are not offering the radical programme we need in this country.

And then you have the Liberal Democrats. The wooly-thinking, silly, naive Liberal Democrats who want to raise billions through raising taxes for the highest earners so that they can pay for top quality care for the elderly and the abolition of university tuition fees (even though taxing people much more ironically yields lesser government revenue thanks to the negative effect of high taxes on economic growth and the desire of high earners to find loopholes around a harsh tax code).

This general election could be an opportunity for great radicals to offer a new programme of reform for our country. Instead, it is yet another showcase of blandness.

The Future of the Papacy

2005-04-04T15:32:00.000+01:00

The world is still in a state of mourning over the sad but dignified loss of the Pope, John Paul II. It may be premature, even a tad disrespectful, to begin agonising over where this leaves the Catholic Church and, ultimately, who its next leader will turn out to be. But these questions are surely in the minds of the cardinals who descended on Rome today to pay their respects to a great leader of people.

We’ve all heard the life story of Pope John Paul II over this last weekend that it seems unnecessary to repeat it, but it is certainly not unnecessary to remember just how great his contribution was in bringing down the spectre of communism that had been haunting Eastern Europe for so long.

The cardinals who met to elect Bishop Wojtyla to the papacy in 1978 must have known that they had made a radical and intensely political decision. Of course they would have borne in mind his position on the most controversial of religious issues of the day, but I am sure they knew that by electing a man from the vastest Catholic member of the Eastern bloc, they were declaring a signal of intent. That signal sent ripples all the way to Moscow and reached its ultimate climax with the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the liberation of the Eastern European peoples in the late eighties and the early nineties. The significance of the papacy of John Paul II was enormous in bringing down communism.

And the cardinals who congregate in the locked chambers of the Vatican later this month may be preparing for another worthy contribution to global politics. If they are simply seeking a kind of stop-gap pope, after the epic tenure of John Paul II, then clearly there will be no room for grand gestures. But if they seriously believe in bringing to an end the problems of today’s world, then they are capable of making a fine decision.

In an article in today’s Times, William Rees-Mogg summed up the predicament of the world, neatly and succinctly, as the material poverty of the Third World and the spiritual poverty of the First. The importance and significance of global poverty is reaching epic proportions. Never does a week pass us by without any story of oppression and persecution in the remotest corners of our globe, or even another huge natural disaster in a forgotten pocket of Asia or Africa. The ultimate response of the western world is to offer what little help they can, which is worthy but, inevitably, rather futile.

I feel like we are in the same kind of quandary we were in 1978, when the world was bringing itself to an apocalyptic end, only this time the problem is not two superpowers staring one another down, but the reign of poverty in the Third World. It looks as though there is no way out. It seems as if the only thing we can do is grin and bear it. Eleven years later, who could have imagined that a monstrous yet so symbolic wall in East Germany would be torn down by people rejoicing that the end of their pointless terror had come? Perhaps eleven years from today, we may be saying the same about the poverty of the Third World.

Such a statement sounds fanciful, but it will be much, much more than that if some gigantic leaps are made in working towards great things in the poorest regions of our planet. The greatest step those cardinals in Rome can take this month is to play copycat, and hand the papacy to a man whose life’s work has been devoted to supporting the Third World and bringing an end to the injustices of our global society.

Therefore, with complete disregard to all the sage advice offered by those who have seen events like these often before in their lifetimes that anyone who walks into the conclave as a pope walks out a cardinal, I would eagerly supporting the election of a pope from the Third World. Of the names being offered around, I would support the election of Cardinal Francis Arinze, a black Nigerian – what a signal of intent that would be! – or even Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who is a part of the powerful South American bloc.

Cardinals Arinze and Hummes may come to be judged as the wrong choices for the papacy. Closer scrutiny of their background may render them unacceptable. But at first face, the appointment of either of these two men would serve as yet another significant milestone in the modern history of Catholicism and Christianity, not to mention the progress of the planet Earth.

UK 'not close to full employment'

2005-04-01T15:59:00.000+01:00

The Financial Times reports today that, “The UK is not close to full employment despite reductions in unemployment levels in recent years, says new research by the northern office of the Institute for Public Policy Research”.

Until the day comes when Britain’s tax code is reformed so that enterprise and job creation is rewarded, this kind of conclusion is precisely what we should learn to expect.

The Pickpocket Chancellor

2005-03-31T17:28:00.000+01:00

For the first time in over a decade, average household incomes have fallen in the last year after tax and benefits. As economic growth has continued reasonably well in the last few years, it is very easy to propose that this decline is a direct result of the huge taxes crushing hard-working people imposed by the socialist Chancellor of the Ex-Chequer, whom many people hope will be the natural successor to Tony Blair.

Considering that economic experts have identified a black hole in the nation’s finances, we can be sure that taxes will have to go up once again after the election. The high-taxing, high-spending Labour Chancellor should be held to account for the systematic daylight robbery of our income that he is responsible for.

School Dinners

2005-03-30T15:36:00.000+01:00

So the benevolent government have taken action. 60 pence is going to be spent on secondary school students’ meals, and 50 pence on those in primary school. That solves the problem, doesn’t it?

Of course not. Firstly, what kind of foods can be purchased for 60 pence? Only the worst, least nutritious crap ever processed by a machine. Second, who seriously thinks an extra few pence per student will end the dependency of our society on junk food? All this means is the junk food schools make available for their students will be a trifle more expensive. Third, who ever wanted the government to intrude on schools?

Here’s a wicked idea: why not give schools complete independence from the State, accompanied by complete independence over their own budgets? Why not give parents endowments from the government to spend at any school they wish? That way, schools would be made accountable for every move they made, including the value they place on good nutrition for their students.

And then there’s the government. I’m not so reckless to advocate a government which does nothing about these serious problems. Why can’t the government make an agreement with the companies who provide school meals so that trashy foods like turkey dinosaurs and smiley faces made of fried potato can finally be confined to the dustbin?

Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money. It’s the government’s response to every populist cause. It’s easy for them to do. It looks good in the press too, because it actually gives the impression of action.

Do not expect a great change in the food children eat at their schools – often the most substantial meal they get on any given day. Do not expect change when the government gives a little more money.

The Common Agricultural Policy

2005-03-29T11:33:00.000+01:00

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is becoming increasingly difficult to justify. Its auditors call it organised crime. It is a crushing weight which keeps down the farmers of the Third World. It is subsidising farmers across the continent for producing what nobody wants. It is making agriculture an old-fashioned industry in this country, lacking the kind of dynamism we associate with other trades nowadays. And it is the hobby horse of the political elites of Europe, but few others.

As difficult as it may be, and as controversial as it certainly would be, I believe Britain should attempt to secede from the Common Agricultural Policy. At a stroke, prices in our supermarkets would tumble. A typical refrain by those who are happy seeing Britain turn into a nation of junk-food eaters is that it is cheaper to buy a chocolate bar than it is to buy a chicken. Leave the CAP, and that will never be an easy claim to make. If we were to leave the CAP unilaterally, that would be a significant gesture against poverty in the Third World. The gesture would become action if our departure led to the collapse of the wretched system. If Britain were to leave the destructive CAP, there would be a benign ripple around the globe.

For the good of farmers, for the good of consumers, and for the good of the poorest people in the Third World, we must support the cause of abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy.

The Practicalities of the Flat Tax

2005-03-28T12:11:00.000+01:00

An expert on taxation, Richard Teather, has written a report on how the flat tax (see March 25th) could be implemented in the UK. He calls for a flat rate at 22% with a generous tax-free personal allowance of £12,000. This would make low earners exempt from the tax altogether, with those on below-average earnings boosting their incomes by over 12% once taxation was taken away. The average benefit to top earners would work out to be 0.5%. The cost to the Treasury would be £50bn in the first year, but against this would be a saving of £12bn from the abolition of minor reliefs, and the large savings which will be made when many who are currently receiving welfare benefits get back into work.

See the full report here: A Flat Tax For The UK - A Practical Reality

Natural Aptitude Testing

2005-03-27T13:10:00.000+01:00

As claims that universities are tending towards discrimination against students from private schools are becoming evermore voluble, I believe it is time to address the roots of these fears. So far as I can see, universities want students with natural ability that they can nurture, not simply some acquired polish. There is a great difference between the large number of privately-educated students who have gone through their academic careers being taught facts after facts, and a proportion of less well-off kids who have raw talent which has never been tapped. Perhaps it is fair to say that universities are crying out for natural aptitude, not some kind of 'textbook regurgitater'.

To meet this desire for true talent, I believe the examinations system should be reformed. As the A-Level and the GCSE are both the same kind of fact-based test, only one is slightly more in-depth than the other, why not replace one of them with an aptitude examination? I suggest that Years 12 and 13 (before the A-Level) may be devoted to studying the area of expertise a student wishes to study at university of make a career out of in later life. The only examination should be a test of natural aptitude, much like the American SAT which, until recently, was a test of abstract reasoning and which had done great things for education in that country.

To reform our examination system to test the natural aptitude of students would be real reform, worthy of a modern society like ours.

A Department of Commerce

2005-03-26T13:30:00.000Z

What do we think about when we hear the words 'the Department for Trade and Industry'? Perhaps we think of the old, nationalised, state-dominated industries that belong to a past and less prosperous era. Perhaps we think of the pointless bureaucracy that seems to sum up most of the work in modern-day Whitehall. No matter what we think, not much of it is positive.

Now is the time for the old-fashioned DTI to be remodelled as a Department of Commerce, with a general responsibility for maintaining a favourable economic environment for business, for technological, economic and statistical infrastructure, for trade policy, for regulation and competition policy, and for identifying and, where appropriate, advising on the national industrial and commercial needs.

A new department should rigorously examine the programmes of other government offices which impinge on the competitiveness of the British economy and should give more robust ministerial advice, and ultimately a stronger voice in government.

A new, modern department resonsible for trade, industry, commerce and e-commerce would work in partnership with business, not interfere. A new, modern department would send a signal that Britain is determined to re-vitalise her economy once again, and to make her one of the most prosperous nations in a changing global field.

The Flat Tax Revolution

2005-03-25T13:05:00.000Z

There is an interesting idea making its way through the once dark and hellish pit that is Eastern Europe. It is an idea which goes all the way back to the 1940s, when it was embraced by the people of Jersey and Hong Kong - two nations on opposite sides of the globe, but which have seen great success thanks to this idea. It is an idea which is bringing prosperity to the likes of modern Russia and Singapore. This idea is something very simple, yet so very radical for a nation like Britain: the flat tax.

The flat tax is a low, single-rate of income tax levied on all earners above a certain threshold. Theoretically, the flat tax inevitably brings more revenues than our present complicated income tax system. This is based on two ideas. A more dynamic economy is the supposed result of a flat tax because, as is nowadays an accepted truth, lower taxes bring greater prosperity to a nation in general terms. Thanks to this greater prosperity, fewer people would be placed into the low-earners category and therefore fewer people would be exempt from the tax. In addition to this is the fact that high-earners today tend towards tax evasion. If tax regulations are the size of a postcard, and if the rate at which their income is taxed is kept low, there is no capacity or incentive for these people to spend exorbitant amounts in time and money in finding loopholes in the tax law for their benefit. There is strong evidence in recent economic history which agrees with this. In the eighties, US President Reagan reduced the top rate of income tax drastically from 70 percent in 1980 to 28 percent by 1988. This caused enormous economic growth and total tax revenue expanded by 99.4 percent during that decade.

The flat tax makes an intricate tax code simple to understand. It considerably reduces the time and cost of completing tax forms, making the whole system more efficient. The flat tax gives individuals greater control over their own money and reduces the role of an intrusive government.

There are far more benefits to the flat tax than the economic efficiency, the simplicity and the fairness of what I have outlined above. But these are perhaps the most important.

The flat tax provides a brilliant opportunity for Britain to become one of the most enterprising and dynamic economies in the western world. As 'old' Europe and the US stagnate with our high taxes and complex laws, and as 'new' Europe and parts of the Far East boom with their low taxes and simple code, it becomes clear just how much the flat tax could bring to our small island.

The Lessons Of History

2005-01-23T20:55:00.000Z

Prince Harry's decision to sport a swastika on his arm at a fancy dress party earlier this week will go down in common memory as a silly mistake by a boy who could do with a good kick up the back side. Yet the legacy of these silly mistakes could well be devastating.

The European Union may well decide later this week to introduce legislation throughout the community to ban Nazi symbols. Considering that EU justice ministers meet on the 27th (Thursday) and considering too that on that day 40 international leaders will be gathered at Auschwitz to commemorate the liberation of that concentration camp in 1945, the chances are that a grand gesture may be made to seize the opportunity.

There are some obvious problems with any such law. For example, where do you draw the line? Do we ban symbols, or do we ban the claims of modern-day fascists that the Holocaust never happened? If we ban symbols, then in what context? Do we ban people from sporting symbols in public? Do we ban symbols in history books? And if we ban the Nazi swastika, then why not ban the Communist hammer-and-sickle or the fascist insignia of other Fascist movements?

If some kind of ban on the swastika is presented, then the immediate reaction of the opponents will be to cite freedom of speech as a key right that we have in today's society, and something that the Nazis tried their hardest to destroy. They will say that it was the Nazis who tried to dispose of anything from their history that they didn't like. They will say that we do not ban a symbol, no matter what it represents or what it represented.

There is also the point that the Nazi swastika is a part of history, and history can not be changed. And there is the argument that a ban on the swastika should not be imposed on other nations who have little or no connection with Nazism (other than that they tried their hardest to destroy it). Why should Britain be forced to ban the symbol of a regime they helped destroy?

It is hard to see where the justification would lay in a ban like this. Is it because Nazi symbolism is offensive to those who suffered because of the Nazis? Yet surely it is not the symbolism which offends German people, Jewish people and the peoples of Nazi-occupied Europe, but the actions of the Nazis. I find it difficult to accept that the swastika brings more painful emotions to these people than the words of fascists who condone the murder - the genocide - perpetrated by the Nazis. Is a Jewish man today more horrified by a flag than by the certain knowledge that a group of people wanted his kind dead just sixty years ago?

On reflection, it is understandable if some people are deeply offended by the sight of the swastika. But surely they must be able to accept that it is an insoluble part of modern European history and can not be thrown into the dustbin. I would hope that the people of today's Europe would learn the lessons of that part of our history than simply ignore them.

So in short, history is something that can not be ignored. History tells us something about ourselves. History tells us where people went wrong. History tells us how we can do it better. If we go through the excrutiating process of banning a symbol of history, we are in danger of failing to learn these lessons.

As fascism, in its various forms, rises in voice and stature throughout Europe and the rest of the world, a ban on Nazi symbolism appears to have some justification. But one danger we must face is the certain knowledge that no fascist movement is going to copycat the symbolism of the Nazis, even though they may have ambitions of copycatting the brutal, murderous, genocidal actions of those awful people.

Abolishing this apparent last strand of Nazi history may make us slip into a false sense of security. It may make us think subconsciously that fascism is something that belongs in a textbook. It is not. Fascism is still around, and it is rising again. The British National Party say so. Jean-Marie Le Pen says so. Anyone who has seen nationalist rhetoric emblazoned on derelict estates says so. If the peace-loving democrats suddenly start to believe that fascism has gone, then we are in danger of ignoring the worrying return of racism and bigotry.

The next time a despotic fascist begins to threaten the peoples of Europe, he will certainly not be wearing jackboots on his legs and the swastika on his arm. But he will most likely be preaching the same values of that odd little Austrian with the square moustache! And we should be ready for him with a collective knowledge of the vile brutality of his doctrine.

Labour's Self-Congratulation

2005-01-16T13:46:00.000Z

This comes from this week's edition of 'The Economist' and it certainly proves a thousand and one points about how Labour continues to get it wrong.

"GORDON BROWN joined forces with Alan Milburn, Labour's campaign supremo, and John Prescott, the deputy prime minister to unveil on January 11th Labour's poster campaign for the general election expected in May. He was there not just because the government wanted to pretend, after a week of feuding, that everybody was friends: the purpose of the posters is to boast about how well the economy has been doing with him in charge.
There are four claims. All are striking—and, in varying degrees, dodgy.

Britain has had the longest period of sustained economic growth for 200 years. Labour neglects to mention that this period started in 1992, when the Conservatives were in power. The claim relies on quarterly GDP estimates. Annual figures show unbroken growth between 1949 and 1973—much longer than the eight years this government has been in power.
Unemployment is at its lowest for 29 years. That's true of the official unemployment figure, which stands at 4.7%. But it is a tiny part of the employment picture. The posters are silent about the economically inactive, who are not included in the labour force and therefore not counted as jobless. Since 1997, inactivity has stuck at just over a fifth of the working-age population.
Inflation is lower than at any time since the 1960s. It is certainly true that RPI inflation fell to just 0.7% at the end of 2001, the lowest since early 1960, but it currently stands at 3.4%, the highest since mid-1998. Anyway, since inflation has subsided around the world, Labour should not get much of the credit.
Mortgage rates are lower than they have been for 40 years. True, but low inflation, not Labour, is the reason. For most of Labour's time in office, real interest rates have been around the level they were when it came to power.

The economy has certainly been doing better in the past few years than it was doing earlier. But the turning point was not in 1997, when Labour took office, but in 1992, when the Conservatives adopted an inflation target."

Euthanasia: This Century's Big Question?

2005-01-14T22:30:00.000Z

A retired policeman who killed his terminally ill wife and then tried to kill himself has been spared jail. Naturally, this will probably reinvigorate the whole long and drawn-out, ethical debate over euthanasia (and the debate will be conducted with the same poor, uninteresting soundbites we're used to).

It is an awesome challenge to try and comprehend the virtue of endowing a human being the right to his or her own death. Certainly, I am nowhere near reaching a conclusion in my own mind to whether euthanasia (even for the most chronically ill patient whose family and whose doctors agree that their life is not worth living) is a good practice for a society to conduct.

Perhaps one day we will all reach a conclusion. Certainly, after today's news it appears the law courts are beating the rest of us to the answer.

RIP The Legacy of Tony Martin

2005-01-12T18:59:00.000Z

We have been told that laws on the amount of force a homeowner can use against trespassers will not be changed. I am undecided about this whole question, which has gained steam ever since one evening several years ago when an intruder was killed on the Norfolk estate of farmer Tony Martin. On the one hand, a property owner should have strong rights to defend their property. But such strengthenings of the law might well have very negative social consequences.

For a start, this kind of law would be very difficult to draft (would you be allowed to use a knife, or a gun; if not, why not?; when would you be able to use this force?). It would also be difficult to enforce, as the police could probably only act on any case that involves such a law once someone has actually been injured, or worse killed.

What is more important than this is the very dangerous suggestion that people can take the law into their own hands. The law should generally not be enforced by individuals, as individuals are much more likely to get it wrong than our police forces. If the law is enforced by individuals, they usually turn into a kind of vigilante mob, which is a state of affairs that would be very unfortunate for society.

Of course, if our police force was given the ability to leave their paperwork and to get back on the streets, this whole problem might largely disappear.

Grow Up, Boys!

2005-01-10T18:05:00.000Z

A very short post tonight.

The leadership quarrels between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair are doubtless unsettling to everyone involved, not least to those few dozen million people whose government is led by these two men.

In simple terms: grow up, boys!

Why We Should Care

2005-01-08T15:15:00.000Z

In the last few days there has been only what I can call some 'Scrooge-esque' criticism of the response to the Asian tsunami disaster. Why did we have a three-minute silence for this tragedy, but not for other past tragedies of this scale? Why is this so important? Why is everybody so bothered about something going on in a distant part of the world?

These criticisms do not deserve much credence. Certainly, I believe we have now found the clinching argument against these criticisms with the news that the number of Britons killed in this quake could very easily end up as the largest in a single event since the Second World War.

That is why we should care.

Education Belongs Elsewhere

2005-01-06T21:46:00.000Z

Ruth Kelly, Britain's new Education Secretary following Charles Clarke's recent promotion to the Home Office, says that parents are at the centre of a child's education.

It is wonderful to finally hear such a true statement from a government minister responsible for the welfare of British youth.

Mark Twain, I believe, once said, 'I never let my schooling interfere with my education'. It is a philosophy on education I truly believe in. Schools in Britain have become, for the most part, glorified daycare centres - nurseries for the slightly older. We all have idealistic visions of a perfect school, whether that vision is of a strict, authoritarian regime or of a free and liberal workplace for tomorrow's adult. But the real fact is that the young do not receive their 'proper' education in a sweaty classroom with thirty other disruptive clowns and show-offs. They learn what they need to learn from their family, from their friends (though the latter is sometimes a less fruitful lesson). And anything else they want to learn, they read about or learn about by themselves, with only very limited interference from anyone else.

School has always been regarded as the centrepiece to all education. It is not. Education is something that can not be truly acquired at school. Education belongs elsewhere.

Politicians: Losing The Faith?

2005-01-04T20:35:00.000Z

The Conservative Party say they will stand up for the ‘forgotten majority’. Michael Howard argues that there are many people who feel let down by Tony Blair, and who share the values of the Conservatives. In the foreword of the party’s election manifesto published this week, he promises to focus on restoring order, trying to lower taxes and returning power to the people.

It is a worrying fact when we can muster up no trust at all of the word of a politician. After years of spin and soundbites, yet no substance, from New Labour, it is so easy to lose trust or hope or faith. We must pray that Michael Howard does not join the list of reasons to distrust politicians.

Alcoholism Needs To Be Destroyed, Not Fuelled

2005-01-03T15:23:00.000Z

The Royal College of Physicians say plans to allow 24-hour drinking will increase the £1.7 billion spent by the NHS every year in treating alcohol-fuelled harm. They say the plans ‘fly in the face of common sense’.

The changes will be made next year as part of a complete overhaul in licensing laws. It is hoped that allowing pubs and clubs to stay open all day will stagger closing times and avoid drinkers spilling onto the streets at the same time.

The very fact that the government believes this move is necessary for that reason is proof that people are far too dependent on alcohol these days. Pubs are not just there as a social centrepiece any more. They are there to fuel the dependence of an alcoholic society.

A drastic social change is needed to solve this problem - and perhaps we could smash a few alcoholic heads together to get us out of the mess.

The Asian Tsunami Appeal

2005-01-02T14:46:00.000Z

The United Nations is saying that areas hit by the appalling tsunami in south Asia could take up to a decade to recover. This is quite honestly a frightening prospect, but it is a prospect we simply have to live with now.

It is time for western nations and western people to do all they can to help the people of this shattered region.

The Japanese government is to send £260 million in aid; the Americans are to send £182 million; the British are promising £50 million. The nations of the west are doing a great deal, and there is probably very little else they can do.

It is probably an unfortunate thing when a society can only offer money to another group of people that have been destroyed in all ways. But so long as that is all the people can do, I urge anyone who feels so inclined to get out their wallets and purses and see what they can give.

The British people have a fine tradition for supporting those less fortunate parts of the world. It was a principle on which we built an Empire (though many tend to baulk at proclaiming such great things about the British Empire). Let us see if our international conscience is still with us.

A Better New Year?

2005-01-01T14:47:00.000Z

It's the first afternoon of a brand new year. It's the time when the last dregs of idealism from the night before have all but faded away. It's the time when the resolutions begin to falter (or rather, when the people who make them begin to falter).

I don't wish to be too pessimistic, but I do wish to be a realist. To all of you out there who have given something up or have promised yourselves that you will be in a far greater state of affairs come this time next year, I offer the very best of luck.

I myself have made a series of rather vague promises to myself, some of which might be fulfilled, the rest probably won't.

My message is this: let 2005 be the year when, once and for all, we do not let ourselves be guided by our hopes. Instead, let us guide our own hopes. Let us be the masters of our own destiny, not vice versa.

I have a huge tendency to think about the future a lot. What it might hold. What good may come. And what bad. I am starting to worry that whenever I have high hopes about the future, they fail to be fulfilled. Perhaps that is because I have got my head stuck in the clouds, rather than down on the ground where I should be.

In short, my message is this: let's control ourselves before we make 2005 another of those years in which we wanted so much, but earned so little.

A very happy new year to all.

Some Bits and Pieces For 2004

2004-12-31T13:32:00.000Z

Here are a few interesting little factoids picked up from the news this year, some of which show serious problems in society, some of which are just pointless!

Brazilians are the nationality most likely to read spam.

Some pigeons follow roads and turn off at motorway junctions to navigate their way round.

The opening lines of the Communist Manifesto - "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism" - were initially translated as "A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe".

Up to 65% of children with a father in jail get imprisoned themselves, according to Home Office figures.

Having breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone may seem cutting edge, but the Daily Express pioneered the service back in 1914, offering personal war updates via telegram for a shilling each.

The bookmakers William Hill loses 80,000 little pens a day - the sort used to fill out betting slips.

"Square eyes" might be real - Australian researchers have found that children who spend a long time inside watching television or on computers become more susceptible to short-sightedness.

Poets die young... "On average, poets lived 62 years, playwrights 63 years, novelists 66 years and non-fiction writers lived 68 years," according to California State University's James Kaufman.

In the past decade, four people in the UK have died in cemetery accidents, crushed by falling tombstones.

There are a third more children at grammar schools now, under Labour, than there were 10 years ago under the Tories (150,750 now compared with 111,846 in 2003.)

Matt Groening's father - the inspiration for Homer Simpson - has only complained once about his alter-ego's actions. It was an episode in which Homer badgered Marge into walking some considerable distance on a hot day to fetch him something.

One in four 16- and 17-year-old girls in the UK is on the contraceptive pill - more than ever before.

Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails while he was president.

Thanks to BBC News Online for these interesting bits and pieces. You’ll find many more on their site.

Here’s to another year of pointless information in 2005!

Iraqi Elections Mustn't Be For Propaganda

2004-12-30T17:01:00.000Z

Baghdad's envoy in London says that the rising tide of violence in Iraq will not stop the long-awaited elections from taking place at the end of January.

Regardless of the debate over whether there was any true justification to go to war in Iraq, we should all be hopeful that this is true. There are still many people who use the apparent lack of justification to attack the government from all sides of the political spectrum. But that kind of behaviour will not help solve the problems the people face in Iraq.

What is important now is that processes take place to bring the rule of law and some sense of stability to the troubled country. Elections are one step on that journey of a thousand miles.

But, considering some of the mistakes made by the coalition in Iraq, I do hope that these elections are not simply propaganda instruments for the west, and particularly the US. We have all been practically instructed to herald the arrival of these elections as a great turning point. Whenever the Americans have been challenged for failing to defeat terrorist cells in Iraq, their response has been to say, 'Well, at least there will be elections soon'.

Whilst they are important, what is imperative is that the west or any other power does not use these elections in order to prove themselves. These elections are to bring some order to a country in a state of anarchy. We must be very careful that the western powers in Iraq do not use them as proof that they know what they are doing.

What The Gov't Won't Tell Us

2004-12-29T13:33:00.000Z

It turns out that the government is not going to tell the British people how many escaped convicts are still on the run. The number is on the rise, but we are not to be told exactly what the figure is.

We are left merely to guess at how many criminals are on our streets, running away from the law, and doubtless capable of committing crimes now that they're out of their cells.

It is dreadful that over 1,200 criminals escaped last year, and surely inevitable unless stringent security measures are put in place in all prisons - and that does NOT involve giving prisoners greater freedoms as some liberals might have you believe. That is a contradiction in terms!

What is just as dreadful is this government's blatant refusal to put this information into the public domain, or even to simply acknowledge that such a problem exists.

Let us hope they take the two issues at the crux of this matter - the problem of prison security and the problem of freedom of information - a little more seriously in the future.

What The West Must Do

2004-12-28T13:50:00.001Z

Gordon Brown has said that the coming year offers a 'once-in-a-generation' chance to eradicate global poverty. He says a new approach is needed to improve aid. Britain takes the presidency of the EU and G8 in 2005, and he wants donor countries to double their international aid budget and to eliminate the debts owed by the poorest nations.

Despite all the sweet sentiments and the high-minded rhetoric, the Chancellor has a big task ahead of him if he wants to Make Poverty History, as one umbrella group committed to ending global poverty call themselves. Even if his idea of progress is to eliminate debt and to offer charity to the poorest of the world, he must realise that that alone is a policy that would set the poverty-stricken up for a fall.

What is imperative is that poor nations and poor communities have the means to help themselves, not just to be helped for evermore by the rich nations and the rich communities. An individual does not get rich through charity, but only can stay poor. The same is true of these poor nations that the Chancellor talks of.

I would like to quote a passage from Niall Ferguson's recent book 'Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire':

"Most poor countries stay poor because they lack the right institutions - not least the right institutions to encourage investment. Because they are not accountable to their subjects, autocratic regimes are more prone to corruption than those where the rule of law is well established. Corruption in turn inhibits economic development in a multitude of ways, diverting resources away from capital formation and the improvement of human capital through better health care and education. According to the African Union, the costs of corruption are equivalent to around one-quarter of African GDP. Moreover, poor countries are more likely to succumb to civil war than rich ones, making them poorer still. In the absence of nonviolent means of bringing dictators to account, political violence is of course more likely to occur... Besides extreme poverty and (in nearly every case) average life expectancy of little more than forty years, all these countries fall far short of being liberal democracies, and all have experienced in the recent past, or continue to experience, some form of war. In most cases, their only hope for the future would seem to be intervention by a foreign power capable of constructing the basic institutional foundations that are indispensable for economic development."

This passage explains not only the real background to this huge problem of international poverty but also the daunting prospect of what the west may have to do one day to bring hope to the poorest of the world.

Any Hope For Ukraine?

2004-12-27T13:08:00.000Z

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has won the repeated presidential election in that country by a clear margin, according to election officials.

Let us now hope that this brings the whole charade in Ukraine over. Somehow, I am doubtful of that.

The situation they now have in Ukraine is less than promising. They may have a pro-western, democratically-elected leader, but if you were to look at a map showing how the votes have been cast, there is a straight split down the middle between those areas of the country which voted for Yushchenko, and those which supported the pro-Moscow candidate. In a country which has seen all this mess in its election; and in a country in which the other half of the population now feel duped; and in a country which is in danger of being torn apart in some post-Cold War fight between Russia and the West, the chances of political stability are slight at best.