On 24th October, Tom Watson MP made sensational allegations, speaking in the House of Commons under the protection of Parliamentary privilege, of about evidence of a past paedophile ring linked to an aide of "a former Prime Minister" and a "powerful paedophile network" linked to No 10 at that time. In his blog, he added that the person in question was not Sir Peter Morrison, now dead and beyond the threat of libel actions, but unmistakably linking the accusations to Margaret Thatcher's Premiership.
Until that day, there had been a series of sensational allegations and disclosures, day after day, about Jimmy Savile's abuse of children and young people at the BBC and in NHS hospitals and care homes.
Since then, acres of front page press coverage have been given to stories trumpeting the supposed existence of a Tory paedophile network, hinting at the name of a peer alleged to have been involved
Meanwhile, in Labour Rochdale, centre of a major child abuse scandal involving the abuse of young women in care in the town is currently under scrutiny in Parliament.The HoC Home Affairs Select Cttee in the very week following Watson's intervention grilled the senior Social Services professionals in Rochdale, and their bland "I didn't know, I wasn't told, I did everything I should" responses were remarkably similar to Entwistle's just before he resigned as Director-General of the BBC. What were the Labour MP and Cllrs doing during the period? Meanwhile, a Rochdale health services worker claimed that the abuse is still continuing, yet this astonishing testimony got little national coverage with the "Tory high-up paedophile" scandal running at full tilt.
A high profile by-election imminent is in the Labour seat of Rotherham, which manages to combine an almost identical running child abuse of girls in care scandal like Rochdale's, but where the by-election is happening because the Labour MP Denis McShane was forced to resign after being found to have fraudulently claimed thousands of pounds of expenses. The latter item was beginning to gain traction in the press just as Watson dropped his bombshell. McShane's misdemeanours sank into the back pages once "Tory paedophile rings" got taken up as the main story by media and BBC.
Another of the by-elections is in Middlesborough, caused by the death of Labour's Sir Stuart Bell, notorious for having led the fight in the last Parliament to have MPs' expenses kept secret on a range of grounds such as "security", and to have those who leaked them prosecuted. Bell also got a lot of stick in the last few years for ceasing to hold MP surgeries for constituents in Middlesborough. It was widely claimed that this was because he was living in Paris. Bell also achieved huge publicity by going after the child protection medics in the Cleveland child abuse scandal. He could not have known whether the allegations were true or false, but got huge newspaper and BBC coverage with his claims that the allegations were false.
There are elections for Police Commissioners in all areas outside London.
Also happening within a fortnight of Watson's bombshell. Margaret Moran, ex Labour MP goes on trial for £53,000 worth of fraudulent MPs' expenses claims. She will not face a full trial (and therefore a prison sentence) because she has medical certification stating she is not fit to stand trial.
Fraser Nelson at the Spectator thinks Tom Watson's motives are unrelated to anything else other than his siincere desire to unmask child abusers in high places, all coincidentally in Tory high places. Tom Watson has not raised any questions about or even hinted at any Labour folk in high places who have been alleged to have been involved in child abuse.
Nelson Jones at the New Statesman is equally convinced of Tom Watson's sincerity, but suggests that he's working himself towards becoming yet another conspiracy theorist:
Watson seems to be demanding a virtually unlimited inquiry into establishment paedophile networks that he has already decided must exist, and into a shadowy establishment cover-up that he is also presupposing. He had already issued an open letter to David Cameron, in which he vaunted his "experience of uncovering massive establishment conspiracies" and condemned "decorous caution" as "the friend of the paedophile". He came close to suggesting that Cameron himself might have reason to be part of a cover-up: "Narrowing the inquiry equals hiding the truth. That is the reality and it is not what you want."
This is the language of the witch-hunter, the conspiracy-theorist, or the architect of a moral panic down the ages. Is it really the language of a serious politician?
That's an impressively well-informed viewpoint. On the other hand.....it's remarkably helpful, no doubt, to the Labour Party that the words "paedophile network" now seem linked in the minds of a large proportion of the electorate to the words "high placed Tory".
Are his current efforts on associating highly placed Tories with paedophilia, at a time when Labour constituencies with upcoming elections are mired with scandals associated with corruption and child abuse, a distraction from or a masterly development of his role as Labour's by-election supremo?
In October 2007, the Evening Standard published a list of the 25 most influential people running London.[1] Livingstone headed the list which contained the names of 13 other individuals who worked directly or indirectly for the mayor, four of the people on the list were Livingstone's closest mayoral advisory they have also been members of a tiny Trotskyist party which has worked closely and discreetly with Ken Livingstone for more than 20 years.
Socialist Action is an organisation so discreet and secretive that it does not even admit its own existence and its members will not confirm they have ever belonged to the group. When I interviewed Ken Livingstone about Socialist Action for this book, he pressed me for evidence at first, before acknowledging its existence and the importance of the role played by those who had been associated with it . It has a website and it has a printing press and those who have been associated with it have enjoyed great influence over London.
By my calculation, at least five of the mayor's advisors are or have been members of Socialist Action, and there are several others who do work for the mayor or organisations with which he is associated. In 2007 they includedthen : Simon Fletcher, the mayor's chief of staff; John Ross, then Greater, then director of economics and business for the Greater London Authority (GLA); Redmond O'Neill, then GLA director of public affairs and transport (he subsequently died); Mark Watts, GLA climate change advisor; and Jude Woodward, senior policy advisor.
Others have included Atma Singh, the former advisor on Muslim issues and Professor Alan Freeman, who became prominent in the Unison branch at City Hall, and also runs the Venezuelan Information Centre - a propaganda organisation of which Ken Livingstone is president. The concentration of power by Socialist Action is the more astonishing when according to Ken Livingstone, it has probably had no more than 120 members in the last decade.[2]
On the face of it, Livingstone appears to have drawn much of his political talent from a comparatively small political gene pool. Livingstone's close association with Socialist Action is an integral part or his story. Under his patronage, the group has become probably the most successful and influential revolutionary Marxist organization in Britain. Socialist Action has long been Livingstone's guiding light, his foot soldiers, his mentors, and his political family.
It is clear that from 1985, Socialist Action set out to make itself indispensable to Ken Livingstone and to seek control, or 'hegemony' over the forces and groups making up the Labour Left. It has proved phenomenally successful. Socialist Action has made remarkable attempts to cover its tracks and even disappear altogether as an organisation, as part of the deep entryist policy adopted in the mid 1980s to protect members from any potential Militant-style purge. In part it has derived its power over the years from its secrecy and its deniability.
As far back as 1983, the group resolved to disappear from public consciousness, or as one internal document put it at the time, to bring about 'the dissolution of the public lace'.[3] Leading members of Socialist Action are unquestionably talented and highly able but they blundered in thinking they could make their organisation invisible because they have left a paper trail a mile wide. .....
John Ross was at the forefront of the internal struggle to ditch the industrial strategy and get all IMG members to join the Labour Party en masse and then seek to control the Left bloc within it. Supporting Ross was another key figure in Livingstone's political career, Redmond O'Neill. At the December 1982 conference, Ross carried the day and over the next few months IMG members joined the Labour Party. A minority who disagreed with the policy of 'deep eritryism' split away and formed its own party, the International Group which became a political irrelevance.
Despite becoming Labour members, the Ross majority still remained organised as a separate political organization. They decided to rebrand themselves as the Socialist League, and to establish a newspaper called Socialist Action. Like Militant, the group became known by the name of their paper rather than as the Socialist League. 'The.next steps towards a revolutionary party comprise a fight for a class struggle within the Bennite current,' said one discussion paper at the time. 'For this a new newspaper is necessary - one that is seen as the voice of revolutionary socialists within the Labour Party and which can thereby give political expressions to the mass struggles of workers and youth who in the next period will seek overall political answers within the Labour Party. '…
Socialist Action will fight for leadership within the Bennite Current.'[12]
The Socialist League/Socialist Action met for the first time as a central committee at the Intensive English School in Star Street near Marble Arch for the start of a two-day conference on Saturday, 22 January 1983. The official launch of Socialist Action took place the following morning[13] and it first appeared on 16 March. The group's old paper, Socialist Challenge, ceased to exist.[14] The group's overall revolutionary objective did not change, only the strategy to bring it about, as an internal document in January 1983 made clear: '...
Socialist Action believes that it will be impossible to make the transition to socialism without incurring the armed resistance of the ruling class and thereby the necessity for violent self-defence by the working class.'[15] From the outset, Ken Livingstone was clearly an important force within the 'Bennite current' for Socialist Action. John Ross and comrades identified two Bennite wings: the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, a left-wing coalition within the Labour Party comprising Chartists from Briefing, and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, CLPD. Socialist Action identified the second wing 'crystallising around forces such as the Campaign Group of MPs, Livingstone, the left of Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (LCND)... and the constituency left...'[16] Its slogans were now: 'Deeper into the Labour Party!', 'Deeper into the trade unions!', 'For a new newspaper!',[17] 'Defend socialist policies!', 'Stop the witch-hunt!', 'Remove the right-wing Labour leaders!'[18]
In September 1983, Socialist Action took the decision to disappear from public view. This meant closing down the Other Bookshop and taking extreme security measures to guarantee invisibility and deniability. Two months after the decision, Socialist Action's leadership drew up a document entitled The dissolution of the public face'. It said: 'This is a historical fact - namely that the public face dissolved itself. This requires no public announcement but all bodies of the [Trotskyist] world movement must be informed and act accordingly.'[23] Some members disagreed with the decision; one wrote: 'The September meeting took a momentous decision. It voted 23 for and one against to formally dissolve our public organisation. The decision was taken on the basis of a false prognosis: that following the Labour Party conference there will be an immediate witch-hunt of our supporters within the mass organisation.'[24]
Although the purge stopped at Militant, no one at Socialist Action was taking any chances. The paranoia was evident in a Socialist Action document marked 'top secret', and called 'Practical implementation of the new security measures in the centre'.[25] The note warned that Socialist Action had to be on its guard against any unexpected visits from the media, and that 'any undesirable material should be kept out of sight'. In addition the print shop must be just a print shop and the bookshop just a bookshop,' it added. There had to be checks on anyone entering both buildings. 'This is important,' continued the note cryptically, 'because these areas have outside visitors, although some the most sensitive visitors at present (i.e. GLC) come UPSTAIRS frequently.'[26] (← p. 261)
One big problem was the post office box number used Socialist Action, it was the same box number as for the bookshop, the newspaper and its youth wing, later called Youth Action: P.O. Box 50, London N1 2XP. 'We cannot continue with sending everything out with the same box number,' according to the security document. 'Moreover, the box number is in the name of an organization.' Comrades were instructed to consider security even when writing memos and other documents: 'It is possible to write them so they appear to those not in the know that they do not necessarily originate from an organization - i.e. writing in the third person, using more of a commentary style etc… If documents are written with security in mind, there should not be so many problems.'[27] It also meant being extra careful about what was thrown out: 'We have a real problem in that we have no idea what happens our rubbish when it is taken away by the bin persons… 'The only solution is to make the rubbish safe before it is takers a way which means we have to get a shredder.' [28]
A new cleaning rota was instituted; leading figures, in Socialist Action, including John Ross and Redmond O'Neill, took it in turns to clean HQ. [29] Leading members now started using pseudonyms: Redmond O'Neill was 'Lark', Jude Woodward was 'Lee', while another member, Ann Kane, was 'Swift' [30] Alma Singh, who was 'Chan' says, 'The reason was secrecy so as not to let people outside know who was doing what' [31] After the closure of the bookshop, members met in rooms above pubs in the local Hackney/Islington area, namely, Cedar Room pub in Islington, the Cock Tavern in Mare Street, the Lucas Arms in Grays Inn Road and Tylor's in Shacklewell Lane near the print shop. The witch-hunters did not come for Socialist Action, but secrecy and security became second nature to the group over the next quarter of a century.
During the mid to late 1980s, the group did successfully ingratiate itself with the Labour Left, For a fee, Socialist Action put its printing press at the disposal of many left-wing groups, including the CLPD and the Socialist Campaign Group for MPs. [32] At one stage, Socialist Action was losing an average of £762 a week and the press was vital for earning extra income. [33] It experienced money anxieties throughout the 1980s. .....
Trotskyist parties always inflate their membership numbers with their sense of self-importance but by the mid 1980s;.it is clear that about 500 people belonged to Socialist Action. This is made obvious in an internal document which stressed the importance of selling 4,000 copies of Socialist Action a week: 'This means an average of eight per comrade.'[34]
Later, Socialist Action members would be encouraged lo give 10 per cent of their pay to the party.' [35] Its members acquired a reputation for being intelligent, hard-working and even subservient to powerful left-wing figures, which meant they were often despised by other voices on the far left. Gerry Healy's News Line was one: 'This is how they [Socialist Action] see themselves: the chosen few, the brains trust, the-intellectual elite, the bright people with all the smart answers who are just waiting for the poor old working class to catch up. [36]
Certainly, Socialist Action considered Ken Livingstone to |be influential and clearly took time to cultivate him. In a rather convoluted reference to Livingstone's importance, one paper from John Ross showed that 'an intelligent reformism of the Livingstone type can incorporate elements of support for the oppressed. Socialist Action of course welcomes such support. But it does not represent intelligent reformism as the answer to Kinnock.' [37] Livingstone remembers being paid a visit by John Ross shortly after his falling out with the Chartists and the others on the far left over rate capping. 'He was the first in to say this was a temporary setback,' remembers Livingstone. Ross grew in importance, particularly after Livingstone became an MP. He had always felt vulnerable dealing with balance sheets, finance and economics,'[38] as Reg Race had observed at the GLC.[39] With a first class economics degree from Oxford, Ross proved to be a valuable teacher for Livingstone, who says; 'When I became an MP I employed John Ross to teach me economies, basically to be my economics advisor, and he'd turn up three times a week and we'd go through what was happening in the British economy and the world economy. He'd explain the theories behind it. This went on for two years.
And after about 18 months to two years we were asked to do a debate at a fringe meeting about the way forward and we went through it and I knew I was on top of the brief.' [40] By 1985, according to Atma Singh, a former long-term member of Socialist Action, Livingstone was possibly the most important figure on the Left; the group considered both Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn to be spent forces. 'They supported Ken Livingstone to make him as powerful as possible,' says Singh. 'Socialist Action understood that what they were after was some political power. If they couldn't see a way of getting political power, they just wanted to be the most powerful; the term they used was [to achieve] "hegemony over the Left". So they wanted to be the main group to dictate what was going on in the Left.' [41]
Socialist Action became increasingly powerful on the left of the Labour Party. Members of the group were elected to important positions in key left-wing bodies and campaigns, including CLPD, Labour CND and various student bodies, including its own, Youth Action. Socialist Action stood for many of the same issues as Livingstone: equality regardless of race, gender and class, troops out of Ireland; unilateral disarmament. It was for the miners and the Greenham Common Women, Fidel Castro and so on, and against Kinnock and his witch-hunt and pretty well everything else for which be stood.
Atma Singh says that Socialist Action was 'instrumental' in getting Livingstone elected on to the NEC in 1987 and 1988. [42] ..... Wadsworth claims that Ken Livingstone and Socialist Action now colluded to get rid of him because he would not do what they wanted, 'Socialist Action thought they could impose decisions on me including how we focused on the Stephen Lawrence campaign,' says Wadsworth. 'When I refused to go along with that they said, OK we're going to get rid of you.'
Through late 1993 and early 1994, the ARA deteriorated rapidly. A former Socialist Action member of the ARA insists Wadsworth's strategy was wrong, both in terms of the Lawrence campaign and towards the BNP by-election victory in the East End: "The correct response was to have a demo in the East End and Marc didn't want to do that so he was increasingly separating himself out from the most important issues that were going on in racism in order to pursue his own things.' [58] On 17 March 1994, Livingstone chaired a meeting of the ARA executive. [59] During the four-hour 'rowdy meeting' in a House of Commons office, Wadsworth threw a punch at Livingstone. He says: 'It was at one of these crazy meetings where he was making these rulings and telling me to shut up that I launched at him. I didn't actually hit him. I hit his hand. I was going to hit him. This had gone on for months and he treated me like a boy sitting next to him.' [60]
At another meeting, on 30 March 1994, Livingstone and the Socialist Action contingent failed by only one vote to persuade the executive to dismiss Wadsworth on grounds of professional misconduct. [61] The infighting continued for another six months as Livingstone and Socialist Action attempted to wrest control from Wadsworth.
On 23 September 1994, the Anti-Racist Alliance issued the foil towing statement: 'Ken Livingstone, supported by a faction called Socialist Action and a handful of unprincipled and unrepresentative members of the executive committee, has been waging relentless campaign to sack the national secretary. This behaviour is undemocratic and has led to unnecessary divisions in the ARA which the chair has made even worse by his repealed attacks on national office staff.' [62] (← p. 268) 'When they come for you they are incessant and they are like pit bulls,' Wadsworth says of Socialist Action. 'It's just incessant obsessive politicking.' On 30 September 1994, Livingstone went to the High Court to determine voting rights for the delegates to the ARA's forthcoming annual meeting and an out-of-court settlement was reached. At the meeting on 15 October 1994, both Livingstone and Wadsworth stepped down; Wadsworth gave way to Kumar Murshid, a future Livingstone mayoral advisor on race but not a member of Socialist Action. Murshid walked away from the job after turning up at the ARA offices to find that Wadsworth had changed the locks. ARA co
llapsed rapidly after unions including the Transport and General Workers Union withdrew support. By February 1995, the National Assembly Against Racism, or NAAR, had been established largely by Socialist Action members, namely Redmond O'Neill, Jude Woodward and Anne Kane. [63]
Former member Atma Singh says that Socialist Action was so used to splits and sectarianism that 'breaking one organisation and creating a new one is nothing dramatic for them'. [
64] Lee Jasper, who became Livingstone's senior mayoral policy advisor on equalities, was its first secretary. He had also been one of the few non-Socialist Action opponents of Wadsworth on the ARA. In 2007, the NAAR was one of Britain's biggest anti-racism groups with several subsidiary organisations, all supported strongly by then-Mayor Livingstone. Members of Socialist Action would continue to work closely with Livingstone throughout the 1990s. But they would come into their own when Livingstone became the first directly-elected mayor of London.
When I was first approached about the project I still believed Livingstone was an essentially benign figure. Like many on the left, I had been shocked when he extended the hand of friendship to the radical Egyptian scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an ideologue of the extreme religious right. But I assumed this could be explained by a combination of the Mayor's ignorance of the politics of the Muslim world and a characteristic desire to shock conventional opinion.
In fact, it was a self-defeating act of political grandstanding that fatally undermined his claims to be a progressive politician. Pictures of the Mayor standing next to a man who has supported female circumcision, the execution of homosexuals and the killing of innocent civilians by suicide bombers will haunt him forever.
The more work I did on the Mayor's office and its only incumbent, the more I realised there were serious problems with the way the institution was being run. Many of these lay with the institution of Mayor itself, which was designed to be run as a personal fiefdom. But there was more to it than that: Livingstone's personal style and his tendency to surround himself with cronies from the revolutionary left on six-figure salaries meant that, in many ways, he was the very worst person to leave with such untrammelled power.
Livingstone once told me at a lunch for the City business leaders he has learned to love that he surrounded himself with people he could trust with his life and that Gordon Brown should do the same.
This is an understandable strategy for a politician with as many enemies as Livingstone. But, as Hosken explains in scrupulous detail, many of these people emerged from one tiny Trotskyite splinter group, Socialist Action. The leader of this group, John Ross, was the Mayor's chief adviser on economics who prepared himself for helping run London by working in Moscow for most of the 1990s. He returned in 2000 to join up with his deputy, Redmond O'Neill, who had been running the faction in his absence. O'Neill now advises the Mayor on transport and Islamic issues. Each is paid more than £100,000 a year. Other SA advisers included Livingstone's de facto deputy in City Hall, Simon Fletcher, and his race adviser, Atma Singh, who was purged after he objected to the cabal's dalliances with radical Islam.
As Hosken explains, Singh has since revealed that this deranged group was still planning a 'bourgeois democratic revolution' for London when Livingstone first came to power in 2000. They believed they could set up a city state, independent from the rest of the country.
In extraordinary comments, he told the Standard he will use “amazing charm and subtlety” to get New York-style independence for the capital. Mr Livingstone, 66, added: “I would actually declare independence and run the whole city. They can’t even run hospitals in London. Everything government does in London it gets wrong. If you look at the city of New York, the mayor runs the benefits system, some of the prisons even, and the healthcare and schools. “I’ve watched all my life, irrespective of which government... ministers trying to run hospitals from Whitehall. It’s just too big, too complicated. I’m in favour of devolving everything — not just in London. I think you should have strong regions as well.” The former Mayor added: “I would always say, to this government and also the next Labour government of Ed Miliband, devolve more down. I’d like to take over our NHS immediately. I would like to take over a major house-building programme, I’d like to run the benefits system.”
Separated at birth or previous incarnation? The wooden puppet at the centre of this image went under the name of Archie Andrews during the 1950s. He looks uncannily like a younger incarnation of Nigel Farage, Leader of the UK Independence Party
Regular readers of Adloyada will know that, to put it mildly, I am no fan of UKIP or its way of doing politics. But for anyone who hasn't twigged my views on UKIP and their leader, Nigel Farage, I loathe both of them with a passion. We'll get on to the serious politics in a minute, but whenever I've seen pictures or videos of Farage, into my head has popped the name and image of Archie Andrews, one of the regular Sunday lunch listening experiences of my 1950s childhood. And it's always seemed to me that his political brain was likely to have been made of the same material as Archie Andrews'.
However, fair is fair, and credit where credit is due.
I think Nigel Farage's decision to stand against Speaker John Bercow at the next election is a move of real political brilliance, through which he's seized the initiative and wrong-footed all the main political parties. It's almost the ultimate in decapitation strategies for a party trying to build its base on opposition to the traditional political establishment, and particularly on opposition to the cosy agreements by all the main political parties known as "behind the Speaker's chair".
You see, the tradition is that no political party stands against the Speaker, who stands as "Mr Speaker standing for re-election"-- a platform in which he avers all political affiliation and claims to represent the House of Commons as a whole. And what is the collective public view of the House of Commons' members as a whole? And the fact that Speaker John Bercow presides over the Committees which make the rules on and manage MPs' expenses?
Wonder how Bercow will defend presiding over raising MPs' monthly chit-free expenses from £250 to £400 p/m once he got voted in? And how about the fact that helping him do that on the Committee was the entirely beloved Tory superstar Alan Duncan, he of the garden and now living on slightly larger rations than he was before the two of them, Martin-defender Sir Stuart Bell and H.Harman joined him in voting in this change once he became Speaker and just before Parliament went into recess?
Labour's also hoist with its own petard in having ensured that nominally Tory but actually Labour-leaning John Bercow got voted in to the Speaker's chair over Tory opposition
You can see the combination of utter dismay and huffing and puffing at the Tory fan site Conservativehome (admirably designed and managed by the very savvy Tim Mongtomerie). Almost all the commentary from the punters (as does Cameron) seriously underestimates the way the public feels and will go on feeling as long as the main political parties try to draw a line under the expenses scandal.
All Farage has to do is just keep publicising the huge hike from £250-£400 per month free of chits to win the fight. He's unanswerable on that one and I would love to see Bercow keep having to try and defend it, especially as he'll have to either defend himself as the apolitical rep of the whole Parliament (main evidence the monthly expenses hike), or he'll have to present himself as Mr Nice Guy opposed to nasty old political meddler.
He comes over slightly better than Alan Duncan in the Mr Nice Guy role but not that much--another man deeply in love with himself and who has the greatest difficulty in projecting humility other than in relation to his height. Expect lots of use of his excellent work for disabled children, based on his having a disabled child and pictures of him with lovable kids in his Speaker role (they're already up on his website). The BBC and The Guardian will go into total-worship overdrive to support him and present Farage as the Devil Incarnate. Will that be enough to overcome the "Hiked expenses free rides up from £250 to £400." Which way would you vote?
And, by the way, who will be bankrolling and paying for Mr Bercow's election expenses and publicity? That's a nice one.
Farage has also brilliantly put himself in a position where he will get endless publicity for himself and his party beyond anything his backers could dream of bankrolling. It will be one of the highest profile contests throughout the election, and UKIP will be able to take on the mantle of being on the side of the taxpayers and British fair-mindedness in the face of all the vested interests. It should do quite a bit to boost the UKIP vote in other constituencies, and most particularly those with a trougher or otherwise Inglorious Basterd MP in the safest of safe Tory seats.
Cameron can still outflank Farage by leaving Bercow to his fate and announcing a much more radical approach to his own troughers and troughers in general:
nominate public hero no-expenses Tory MP Philip Hollobone onto the Expenses Committees
promises to bring in a "vote the rascal out" system which can lead to recall and fresh election at national and local level
promise to rescind the free-monthly trough hand out and put it back to £250 with chits required.
Introduction of 100% democracy-- all voters have to vote but have the freedom to write in candidates AND vote for "none of the above"
Combine that plus "vote the rascal out" and the voters will feel at last that they can do something about parties and troughers who depend for their power base on otherwise impregnable seats.
Plus it will give much more legitimacy for whoever gets elected.
And it will send the most powerful of messages to those MPs who feel they're both safe for life and entitled. You know, like Alan Duncan and John Bercow.
Nothing less is going to impress the voters.
Unfortunately, there's not even the remotest chance in hell that the Labour Party will sign up to a programme like that.
And, given what I've said about my views of the nature of Farage's brain composition, I wonder which behind the scenes UKIP-supporting brilliant kid actually thought this one up?
But again, credit where credit is due. Farage deserves huge credit anyway (as I gnash my teeth) for seeing the political genius of it, picking it up and running with it.
The Duke of Omnium has denied top level NHS management changes are imminent on the day a shocking report has been published about National HaulAir Services flight provision for the elderly.
Omnium is the National HaulAir Service's Second Chief Executive, Executive for Servicing Passsengers, Director of Passenger Announcements, Chief of Grooming Facilities, Director of Public Airport Customer Relations, Master of In-Flight Entertainment, Head of Chief Executive Management, Manager of Aircraft Trading and Director of After-Dark Arts Programmes.
He was interviewed this morning, responding to previous speculation about his repeated flights to Flying Boats based in Corfu owned by Derria Spivchap, the Chief Executive of the Russian Executive Flying Boat Service.
He has angrily denied that he is seeking to obtain Flying Boat privileges from Mr Spivchap for the Executive Board of the National Haulair Service and related secret negotiations about joint Flying Boat privileges for the executives of the Eton Touring Company and the exclusive Bullingdon Flying Company subsidiary, the Bullingdon Very Private Flying Club.
"Mr Spivchap and I share a long-standing common interest in collecting old brass, he said, which we discovered during the time when he was seeking entry for his Russian Private Executive Flight Service to the United European Air Service Brokerage market during the time when I was Commissioning Executive for Trans-European Air Flights.
"While, in line with current flight standards for our passengers, we no longer install brass in our latest National Haulair Service passenger aircraft, the very best old brass in the International Air Haul market is that to be seen in Flying Boats, of which Mr Spivchap has a remarkable collection. We even have a friendly rivalry in presenting brassneck displays.
"Mr Matt Richkid, who has one of the largest collections of family old brass in the world, and has added several outstanding examples of Flying Boats through his shrewd Private Haul Air deals always meets up with us on Spivchap's Corfu Flying Boat to compare and swap our old brass collections.
"He happens to be an old school chum of George Newborn, Finance Executive of the Bullingdon Flying Company, who has a growing interest in collecting and managing old brass and joins us when Mr Richkid visits. But frankly, he's not in our league. And he ruffled a lot of feathers last year by misquoting my praise of Gordon Macavity as "an incomparable flightmaster" to the press as "an incomparable disaster".
The Duke has also brushed aside the speculation that has resulted from his recent move from the Senior Executive Suite in the VIP Arrival Lounge of Heathrow Airport, where he has been sited during the relatively short time since he was granted his Dukedom, to the Senior Executive Suite in the VIP Departure Lounge.
He dismissed speculation that provisions in the new Executive guidelines for members of the VIP lounge to be allowed to renounce their membership of the Lounge and move into the Senior Executive Suites in the Security Lounges are of any significance.
"I have no intention whatsoever of becoming Chief Executive of the National Haulair Service, he said. I am devoting myself in my current roles to improving the flying experiences of hard working passengers, supporting our outstanding Chief Executive Gordon Macavity and making sure the planes fly on time.
Our National Haulair Service is the envy of the world.
We have met our target, a record for the National Haulair Service, of holding fatal air crashes down to just five percent of the total. Our thoughts of course are with the families, and we are constantly setting up new enquiries to identify ways to improve our service. The number of passenger infections arising from inadequately serviced plane seats and undercooked in-flight meals is now below that of any Third World Haul Air Service. The recent survey of disappointing results from our special free flights programme for the elderly has spurred us to improve further. We are today setting up an urgent enquiry which is expected to report in three years' time. We do not rest on our laurels. Our record is the envy of the world.
"Flights are always free from the point of the Passengers' Departure Lounge, and no-one will ever be asked to pay for a ticket at the point of boarding the plane.
"Gordon Macavity is doing a superb job, constantly investing in our National Haulair Service by printing money to buy more planes, employ more pilots and flight attendants and cut down waiting times for free flights.
"Donald Poltroon and his Eton Touring Club Company and their pathetic and privileged premium class passenger cartel at the Bullingdon Flying Company have no alternatives to offer whatsoever, and are trying to keep their plan to make 20% cuts in free flights carefully hidden from passengers. But our passengers aren't taken in by their ruses. And they know that the number of fatal crashes would soar if they were to succeed in securing the new contract for the National Haulair Service.
"We are not surprised that the Eton Touring Club Company's Strasbourg Executive Mr Hardman, who constantly carps about our low 5% fatal crash record, has turned out to be a admirer of discredited West Midlands Conservative Air Race Executive, the late Mr Egot Badsmell, on the very day that another scurrilous report has come out which seeks to smear the proud record of our much-loved National Haul Air Service.
"The continuing huge enthusiasm for our Twitter Microflights #welovethenhs free mini-flights service proves that our passengers know that we at HardLabour are the natural Executive of the National Haulair Service."
This morning I revelled in listening to an almost totally deadpan documentary in the BBCR4 "In Living Memory" series-- on the origins of the Section 28 legislation in the furore over the publication of "Jenny Lives with Eric & Martin". This hilarious bit of tendenz literatur was read aloud, complete with the bit where nice, liberal Mr Jones transformed the homophobia of his wife, grumpy Mrs Jones, to the gay male couple with daughter living next door by the simple expedient of explaining to her that he had once loved a man, but decided that he loved her better and married her. Don't try that one at home, folks.
a couple of whom appear in the equally wonderful documentary on the seventies/early eighties Angry Wimmin of the clip above.
Today's programme included a priceless soundbite from one of the more plausible of them, who got herself elected as a councillor in charge of running (and presumably playing some role in recruiting the staff of) the Lesbian & Gay Unit. She proclaimed that the opposition to the circulation of propaganda books about happy gay male couples bringing up daughters represented anxiety that if knowledge of gayness as a valid lifestyle became widespread, it would threaten the continuation of capitalism.....
Tory grandees and foamers at the mouth were also given lots of past & present soundbites, the latter mostly shamefacedly recanting of their then attitudes.
I've never been in the least tempted to vote for UKIP-- the one-issue political party whose sole raison d'etre is to campaign against membership of the European Union.
But I've been gobsmacked by the sight of this UKIP election poster plastered here and there in odd corners I've passed in my car driving across London.
So there's Churchill, proudly invoking victory in his Homburg (hello--a European hat style) as their poster boy.
Does UKIP not know one of Churchill's most famous post-war speeches was the one where he advocated not just a European common market (as was being discussed at that time)-- but a federal United States of Europe, way beyond anything the current EU has proposed?
Here's some extracts from what he was saying back in 1946:
If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance, there would be no limit to the happiness, to the prosperity and the glory which its three or four million people would enjoy.....
Yet all the while there is a remedy which, if it were generally and spontaneously adopted by the great majority of people in many lands, would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and would in a few years make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland is to-day. What is this sovereign remedy? It is to re-create the European Family, or as much of it as we can, and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living. The process is simple. All that is needed is the resolve of hundreds of millions of men and women to do right instead of wrong and to gain as their reward blessing instead of cursing.....
Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations Organization. Under and within that world concept we must re-create the European Family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe. And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join the Union, we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and those who can.
Of course, at that time, Churchill spoke of Britain as if it was somehow not really part of Europe. But his vision was of Britain as head of the Commonwealth. That's pointed out by some of the defenders of this campaign in the comments here. However, a key feature of the Commonwealth he advocated was one in which all of its citizens had unlimited right of immigration to Britain. It was the Conservative governments of his time and subsequently which turned to mass immigration from Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent as the answer to Britain's postwar labour shortages. Churchill did express reservations about the policy in racist terms--but it can hardly be UKIP's case that they stand behind Churchill's suggestion, towards the end of the time when he was barely able to function as a politician, that a Conservative Party slogan should be "Keep Britain White"?
So, if UKIP is going to invoke Churchill, are they going to support substituting membership of the EU with that of a Commonwealth of unlimited rights of immigration? Or are they hinting at support for Churchill's sometimes-expressed white supremacist attitudes?
The UKIP grandees like Campbell Bannerman, who picked Churchill as their poster boy, seem to have arrested their awareness of his historical role at Dunkirk, the biggest military defeat in British history, in which his role was primarily to inspire and commit Britain to fighting Nazism and totalitarianism.
David Campbell Bannerman commenting on the launch said: "Sir Winston is an ideal icon for our campaign because it is high time that Britain found that old Dunkirk spirit again and learned to fight its corner in adversity. We've accepted far too much nonsense from Brussels over the years and it is time to say NO MORE! The only way to do that at this election is to vote UKIP, as none of the old parties have anything to offer other than more Europe.
UKIP's barely concealed agenda is a decidedly Little England one. No, they're not fascists in smart suits, like the BNP. But their view of politics is simplistic, ignorant and ultimately a prescription for economic dead-endery.
They would hardly stand a chance in next Thursday's election were it not for the disastrous failure of the UK's three main political parties to confront and put a rapid and decisive end to the cosy, all-in-it-together morass of self-serving corruption through our own Parliament's expenses rackets.
I'm probably going to vote for Libertas in the EU elections, because I think trans-EU parties with a focus on accountability and a combination of commitment and scepticism are the least worst choice.
The local UK elections are more problematic. Any temptation I was beginning to have to vote Tory in protest at Gordon Brown's handling of just about any policy or crisis you care to mention has been laid to rest by David Cameron's shying away from dealing with (and sometimes open support of) those expenses miscreants of his own party he happens to be most sympathetic to.
In the past, I've resorted to voting for the Green and Liberal parties when protesting against the worst excesses of the former ultra-left Hackney Labour Council in its heyday. Looking at the policies of the Green and Liberals today, their policies seem to me a lot more disastrous than those of Labour and their politicians no more trustworthy.
I'll be looking at the other minority parties over the next few days to see if there's one I can square my conscience on registering my vote with.
Into my mailbox pops a breathless little communication from Teachers' TV telling me it's Behaviour Management week. Well, so it is. I hope the voters get their sanctions and rewards right and our politicians decide to change their ways.
I'm talking about Oliver Kamm, one of my very favourite bloggers, and now a Times columnist and leader writer. He's been called the Pope by some of his detractors, probably because of his tendency to pronounce on various matters with a degree of assertiveness that might suggest he thinks he's infallible.
However, even Kamm has his limits, and today's Sunday Times shows him making one of his worst misjudgements ever.
Here's his recommendation for a replacement Speaker for the appalling and irredeemably tarnished Michael Martin:
Oliver Kamm, leader writer and former investment banker, nominates Gerald Kaufman He understands the business of government while upholding the rights and prerogatives of backbenchers. And he is genuinely witty.
And here, published in some detail, is a slice of the track record of Sir Gerald Kaufman, showing his wit in defence of what he's seen as his rights and prerogatives as a bankbencher making absolutely gross claims for expenses. A particularly telling demonstration of someone who " understands the business."...
The former environment minister was asked to attend a meeting with officials from the parliamentary fees office to discuss details of another claim relating to £28,834 of work on the kitchen and bathroom at his London flat.
He told them that the work was necessary because he was “living in a slum”, though his second home, off Regent’s Park, is in one of the most fashionable areas of the capital. He was eventually reimbursed for £15,329.
On one occasion he asked a civil servant “why are you querying these expenses?” and on another threatened to make a complaint unless a dispute was settled by noon on the day in question. In one document, an official in the fees office noted that invoices Sir Gerald had submitted took him to “within 6p” of his annual limit. He also claimed £1,262 for a gas bill that was £1,055 in credit.
Between 2001 and 2008 the Manchester Gorton MP, one of the Labour party’s longest-serving members, claimed a total of £115,109 in additional costs allowances on his London flat, which he owns outright. In June 2006, he submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen Beovision 40in LCD television. The maximum amount MPs are allowed to claim for TVs is £750.
On July 7, 2006 the fees office wrote to Sir Gerald to say: “I regret to inform you that this item falls within the not allowable category of luxurious furnishings, and as such has been rejected.”
He was paid £750.
In March 2007 Sir Gerald submitted a claim for £1,461.83 for a “second-hand rug replacing 24-year-old carpet”, with an additional £389.91 for “customs duty on rug”, which was paid. The receipt showed that Sir Gerald bought the rug from the Showplace Antique Centre on West 25th Street in Manhattan for $2,750. The Green Book strictly forbids “antique, luxury or premium grade” furnishings.
Later that year, on Dec 29, Sir Gerald, who was knighted in 2004, submitted an invoice from ABC Carpets in Harrods for £598, which was also paid.
A note of a telephone conversation between Sir Gerald, 78, and an official in the fees office, states that his reasons for claiming £28,834 for home improvements between 2005 and 2007 were: “Old flat, facilities out of date, decrepit, health reasons, update, living in slum.” Sir Gerald added that he had “not carried out any repairs/maintenance for 32 years”.
Sir Gerald was also challenged over regular claims for “odd jobs” which he submitted without receipts at a rate of £245 every month — £5 below the then limit for unreceipted expenses. He replied: “Why are you querying these expenses?”
On May 18, a senior official in the fees office noted details of another conversation about the kitchen and bathroom, saying: “MP believes that I have seen a detailed breakdown of the £12,416.51 claim he has submitted [for that financial year]… MP is becoming agitated and will be making an official complaint against me, if this matter is not resolved by 12 noon today.” When detailed invoices were submitted, they included £575 for undertile heating in the shower room and £2,695 for Bosch and Miele kitchen appliances. Sir Gerald was asked to attend a meeting with officials on the matter and the fees office eventually agreed to pay him £15,329 of the £28,834. Sir Gerald accepted, saying that he wanted to “draw a line under the issue”.
In June last year Sir Gerald submitted a £1,262 claim for his gas bill, covering the period March 2006 to May 2008. The fees office pointed out that his gas account was £1,055.60 in credit, and only agreed to pay £122.46.
A note in the file on July 10, 2008 quotes Sir Gerald as saying: “I received a letter from [official] saying not pay as is credit. I paid £1,252 THIS year so want reimbursing!!!”
The fees office wrote to him on July 14 to say: “You might wish to ask British Gas to repay you the credit.”
Sir Gerald’s claims between 2004 and June 2008 also included £19,200 for food — close to the maximum — and £4,692 for cleaning.
Last night Sir Gerald offered to repay the money for the rug and admitted that his claim for the £8,000 television was “a bit daft”.
He said that his flat had been in need of complete refurbishment because he had “neglected” it over the years and he had overclaimed for the gas bill because he “misunderstood” the invoice.
He said that his odd jobs bill was actually more than £245 a month, so he had claimed close to the limit. His food claim was “appropriate” because his job meant he often had to “spend a lot of money” eating out, he added.
As for Oliver Kamm's claim about his wit in general, I recently featured a post with a clip of Sir Gerald Kaufman in full flow from the Labour backbenches making a long speech read straight off a script equating the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza with those of the Nazis against the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Maybe Kamm was just trying to be tongue-in-cheek witty with his nomination of this man as the replacement speaker for Michael Martin? If he was, he's in danger of being seen as less of a Pope than a Lord of Misrule.
Incidentally, from the picture in the Telegraph article on Kaufman's claims about the "slum" he's been living in, it's not just "near" Regent's Park, it's in a prime block directly overlooking the park, with fabulous views over one of the finest parks in the world, complete with exotic glimpses of the giraffes and the other wild life in the London Zoo, just down the road.
The reason I know that is ironic. I grew up in a real slum-- a small, damp house in the bomb-cratered streets between the Commercial Road and Cable Street, in post-war Stepney. There was an outdoor toilet and no bathroom or hot water. It had already been marked for demolition as unfit for human habitation when my parents moved in in the late forties. My parents were confident that this was a good move, as they would eventually get a council flat when it was demolished. They weren't aware at the time that the LCC excluded non British nationals from rehousing in council flats. But they got British nationality and waited patiently. We were eventually rehoused-- in 1962. And the landlord of the little house was a Mr Simmons, who lived in the very same grand Regent's Park block that Sir Gerald now describes as inflicting "slum" conditions on him.
It's not often you see my favourite UK left of centre blog, Harry's Place, put up posts praising the Tories, but here's David T positively gushing over the newly established anti-BNP site established by Tim Montgomerie's ConservativeHome group and allies.
Much as I would love to see this campaign succeed, and much as I admire the fact that people like Tim Montgomerie have been able to galvanise Tories & others to support this campaign, I think the first video is pretty dismal.
It offers an image of a sweet-looking Afro-Caribbean boy to counter the BNP's propaganda that our troubles are caused by supposedly unlimited immigration and their taking of our resources by people who shouldn't have the right to them. Behind the BNP's racist message is also the conviction that shadowy and corrupt Hidden Hands (yes, that's Jews like me) are behind all of this.
I don't think this approach is going to persuade a single potential BNP voter to cast their vote differently.
For a start, it insults the intelligence of the target audience, something I'd have thought media-savvy people like Tim Montgomerie are intensely aware of.
Non racist potential BNP protest voters are perfectly aware that there are very likeable people amongst the ethnic groups that are its targets. Doesn't stop them from voting for the BNP as a protest against the perceived corruption of mainstream parliamentarians, or as a protest against particular forms of maximalist minority group critiques of mainstream society (as promoted by the Hizb and the Saviour Sect).
Back in the days preceding the Nazi success in the German elections, the angry non-fascists who voted for them in 1933 mostly knew quite a few cuddly Jewish children, or dedicated Jewish doctors and the like. Some of them had close Jewish friends. All this didn't prevent them from voting against the existing traditional parties, because they thought drastic action was needed, and they didn't see anything wrong with being against Jews as a whole whilst simultaneously being very fond of the odd Jew.
Many otherwise sane and reasonable Palestinians voted for the atrocious Hamas and their exterminationist propaganda as a protest against the corruption of Fatah. They were perfectly well aware of what Hamas stood for, and they supported the two state solution, but their anger with Fatah overcame their real political convictions, because they felt they had to "do something" and bring the corruption to an end.
Non-racists who consider voting for BNP as a protest also know that if they send a few BNP MEPs to the EU Parliament and elect a few BNP councils, they will never have the power to affect the actual lives and conditions of ethnic minorities in this country. So they feel they can safely use the BNP to register a protest, or, as with non-ideology driven Palestinian Hamas voters, to take action against corruption whilst forgetting all about the baggage that comes with the protest party.
So what sort of video message might help persuade decent, ordinary people not to cast a protest vote for the BNP? Maybe something that recognises the justice of widespread public anger-- and then puts across the message that the answer to corruption isn't to cast a vote for racism, anymore than a vote for out-and-out terrorism was the answer to Fatah's corruption.
Maybe it should be a "your vote matters" video. Maybe it should show what happens to countries and peoples who cast despair votes for totalitarian and racist parties, and then contrast that with countries where the electorate took some action that voted the corrupt out (Japan?).
A video which put across the message "when you want to stop corruption, don't vote for violent criminals" would enlighten the many potential voters who don't know about the BNP's track record of convictions for appalling offences.
Most of all, all of us who are committed to the mainstream left and right parties need to put all the pressure we can on our party leaderships to come to terms with what we the people feel, and make really radical moves now that will begin to shift the public's perceptions.
Sadly, there's too much evidence that Brown and his circle, even the ministers who despair of him, are virtually incapable of radically changing their direction and stopping the corruption--and its leaders in the form of the guardians of the parliamentary expenses system right now.
Cameron made something of a move, and it has had an impact, but it's nothing like enough. Listening to Hague on BBC R4 Today programme, it's clear that the Tory hierarchy still haven't got it. He's just pushing the latest Tory line of chipping away at the bits that suit them (like the communication allowance) whilst claiming the public don't really care about the Speaker and the corrupt Parliamentary apparatus that enabled the MPs and the Lords build up their sense of entitlement to be above the laws that the rest of us live by, and line their pockets accordingly, whilst chorusing "it's all within the rules".
If you don't want people to vote BNP:
Ensure that the Speaker of Parliament resigns immediately by organizing a whipped vote of no confidence.
Sack all the members of the Parliamentary Privileges Committee and the senior staff of the Fees Office.
Only MPs with impeccable expenses claims records to sit on the Committee in future.
All MPs to place itemised expenses claims on their web sites every three months.
All claims going back to 2005 to be scrutinised by senior HM Revenue & Customs to check that they meet the test of "wholly, necessarily and exclusively" for use in their job as MPs. Claims that don't meet the test to be paid back in full and with penalty fines and interest.
Commit to prosecuting all MPs who knowingly made false claims or submitted improper accounting.
Commit to reducing the number of MPs by half in time for the next election. If practically impossible for boundary commission reasons, commit to having a second election as soon as possible after 2010 to elect the lower number of MPs
All sitting MPs to face reselection meetings with their constituency parties within the next two weeks (ie ahead of the June elections)
Legislation to be passed immediately to enable peers who breach laws on corruption to be stripped of their titles and rights to sit in the House of Lords.
Any major party that committed to that could face down challenges from the BNP and other fringe parties.
Anything else is tokenism and papering over the cracks. And it won't wash with the electorate. Those who are minded to vote BNP will still do so.
