Thursday 6 May 2010 - Election Day

I’m reminded of a scene from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

It is Election Day in Shinbone and John Qualen, playing his usual comic ‘Swede’, prepares to vote by donning his best suit. Waved off by his wife and daughter he presents himself at the polling station (the saloon) where he proudly flourishes his naturalisation documents and announces that he is an American citizen.

The scene is amusing but also moving because I too find the act of casting my vote rather special. Call it a right, a privilege or a duty, I cannot understand those who do not bother to turn out to play their small part in what we can still just about call our democracy.

Even before the rise of UKIP, when I was inclined to abstain in European Parliament elections, lest I should seem to be giving legitimacy to continental imperialism, I would take my ballot and politely but firmly spoil it.

So. Today. Who will benefit from my support? Not being tribal in my party affiliation, on what basis do I decide?

My political instincts are conservative. I hate big government, the nanny state and political correctness. I believe in the freedom of the individual and the freedom of the market.

I also would like to see a much stronger Parliament and greater independence of individual MPs. I admire maverick MPs, even Labour ones like Bob Marshall-Andrews and Alice Mahon

But the fundamental policy issue for me is opposition to membership of the European Union.

There’s a UKIP candidate standing. My decision should be easy then, shouldn’t it? Well, maybe.

What about the other local candidates?

We have a fascist parson, an embittered ex-chief executive of a hospital trust, an English Democrat (the saloon bar party) as well as the UKIP man.

They are the outsiders and I will consider only UKIP, although I know nothing of the candidate himself.

Lincoln is just about a three-way marginal. Of the three leading candidates, I eliminate the Libdem as a euro-fanatic.

Gillian Merron, Labour, and MP for 13 years, is a careerist yes-woman. There’s no way I will vote for her on any grounds, personal, partisan or political.

The Tory candidate looks to be similar to Merron, a well-fed party loyalist who has made no secret of his ambition to be in government.

So it’s still UKIP, is it? There’s no way that he will be elected, but a high number of votes nationwide might have some impact on future government policy.

Who am I kidding?

In fact, strong support for any of the minor candidates will simply make it more likely that Labour or the Libdems will take Lincoln. It’s possible that Labour’s national and Merron’s local unpopularity will, allied with the Clegg-factor, let the Libdem in.

Therefore, reluctantly but realistically, I shall vote Tory - the song, not our local singer - hoping against hope that a Conservative government will decrease interference in our daily lives and stand up to the Eurocrats.

It was a shame to hear this morning that Oliver Postgate, writer and narrator of many children's TV series, has died.

Like so many I was intrigued by his whimsical tales, charmed by by the primitive animation and mesmerised by his style and voice, of which this link will give a taste:

http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/tv/children/noggin/noggin.htm

A kindly man, it seems, who created my favourite villain, Nogbad the Bad.

*

What's this I hear about 'The EU's first naval task force' and 'The EU takes over policing in Kososvo'? Constitution or no constitution, we edge nearer and nearer to the Europhile Promised Land.

I also hear that the Irish are going to be dragooned into a second referendum on the constitution. Defying all logic - approriately - the proposed document will be presented as altered enough to justify a second vote in Ireland, but not enough to necesssitate re-ratification in other states.

*

Meanwhile our own Nogbads are busy. The government has used the whips to lob the Speaker's committee of wise men into the long grass, using the sanctimonious excuse that if it meets now it risks prejudicing the police enquiry into leaks. Drop the enquiry, I say. It's pitifully unimportant compared to the assault on Parliamentary sovereignty.

And shame on Gordon Brown for turning this into a party issue and interfering in a strictly internal Parliamentary matter.

For God's sake, Mr Speaker, speak out!

The Speaker has spoken, sort of.

He groveled a bit, 'regretting' this and that, but overall merely passed the buck.

The police were wrong, he says. Quite right. They didn't have a warrant, and the Serjeant-at-Arms didn't think to ask. So explicitly he balmes the police; implicitly he blames the Serjeant, Jill Pay, a former civil servant, appointed no doubt for reasons of political correctness. After all it's just a sinecure, isn't it, the only duties being to cart around the mace?

Is she ignorant of the symbolic significance of the mace? Is she so stupid she didn't think to as the police for their search warrant? Should not, in any case, such a search be permitted only after a resolution of the House itself?

So Mr Speaker Martin delays the inevitable by calling for a committee of enquiry. What enquiry? Does he not understand the authority of the House of Commons is supposed to possess?

I despair of the Commons. It's just an office block now, home to ambitious apparatchiks and timeservers. No wonder it's treated with comtempt.

Damian Green - the suspects

The arrest of Damian Green, accompanied by the police invasion of the House of Commons, must be the most overt and shameless assault on our constitution since – well, I can’t think. Do I have to go back to the 1640’s?

So who has committed this breach of Parliamentary privilege; who is in contempt of Parliament; who should be the subject of an Act of Attainder here? And I’m only half joking when I ask that, so angry am I about the Executive’s cavalier – I choose that word deliberately - attitude to our supreme democratic body.

Who are the suspects?

Sir Ian Blair? A couple of days before he leaves office, sticking it to the Tories who forced him out? Or the acting head of the Met? Whoever it was, he waited until Parliament was in recess before tramping in with their size twelves and trampling underfoot our liberties. The arrogance is beyond belief.

Maybe, being policemen, they were ignorant, just keen to bang up chummy and get a quick result. So who was there to stop them?

The Serjeant-at-Arms is supposed to be in charge of security at the Commons, but simply allowed these people to waltz in and leave with confidential data without even drawing a sword or waving a mace.

The Speaker, the guardian of the Commons, who has to be dragged to the Chair because of the mortal danger of representing them to the Executive, lays it all on the Serjeant and hides behind gobbledygook about ‘procedures’. Where is the courage of the man who faced Charles the Second with the immortal words about having neither eyes to see nor ears to hear ‘except as this House gives me leave’.

So, let’s move to Whitehall, where we find the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office admitting he invited the police in. Obviously, to a civil servant, Parliament is just a nuisance, constantly raising objections and asking questions about matters that people like him know far more about. What’s he called – Normington? It doesn’t matter. And as a faithful servant of his minister he didn’t mention it to her. So Jacqui Smith is protected, because it’s deniable.

Jacqui Smith. She’s a Member of Parliament, in fact a ‘Right Honourable’ member of that body, but does she have any respect for it. Does she ****. She too skulks behind cant about the operational independence of the police, declares that she doesn't think they did anything wrong, and in any case knew nothing about it.

And yet this is the woman who not long ago was insisting that she was the one who had the authority to hire and fire the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and not the Mayor of London.

This drama was going on for nine hours last Thursday. Did she not hear about it? Did she not realise the constitutional implications? Could she not, like the Speaker or the Serjeant-at-Arms, have put a stop to it with a word?

My last suspect is the Prime Minister.

Maybe the police were just over-zealous; maybe the Serjeant-at-Arms thinks she’s just in some nominal sinecure; maybe the Speaker is a silly old duffer enjoying a comfortable retirement after a lifetime of time-serving on the backbenches; maybe the Permanent Secretary was overcome by loyalty; maybe the Home Secretary came to government so soon she never learned what being an MP meant.

But Gordon Brown has no excuse. He must have known. He has the authority. If he didn’t know he is incompetent.

If he knew and chose not to exercise that authority he is a tyrant.

I'd better conclude with a word about Harriet Harman, the only member of the Cabinet to express concern. I won't say that all is forgiven, Harriet, but it's a start.

Damian Green

The arrest of Damian Green, MP and shadow Immigration Minister is a shocking event.

He hasn't abused his office for personal gain; he has caught out the government and embarrassed it.

If reports are correct the arresting officer was accompanied by nine anti-terrorist officers, he was detained for nine hours and questioned for one and his home and Parliamentary office were searched.

Not only that, but the charge was ‘conspiracy’. I seem to remember that tacking on the word conspiracy to a crime turns it from what might be a simple misdemeanour to a felony.

What on earth have the ant-terrorist laws got to do with this, I wonder. But then if they can be used to muzzle hecklers at the Labour Party Conference or spy on people who put their wheelie-bins out too early, why the surprise?

The newspapers and blogs have been peppered with words like Stalinism, Stasi, and police state. Frankly they’re not far wrong. It’s impossible to overreact on a matter like this. Not just the personal freedom of us all is at stake but the very sovereignty of Parliament.

How on earth were the police allowed by the Sergeant-at-Arms to march into Westminster and turn over an MP’s office? Why did the Speaker, who was informed in advance, not warn the police that they would be committing a breach of privilege and threaten them with a charge of contempt of Parliament.

Was it not Sir Thomas Fairfax who said to Cromwell, when the latter had marched his soldiers into the House of Commons, ‘I seem to remember that we cut off a king’s head for such as this?’

Harriet Harman

If Gordon Brown loses the premiership it will be through sheer carelessness; if in doing so he allows Harriet Harman to take over it will be nothing short of criminal neglect.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1039714/QUENTIN-LETTS-So-Harriet-Harperson-WAS-PM.html

In fact, it may turn out to be Brown’s salvation that that those plotting against Brown will wake up to the fact that they run the risk of allowing Miz Harperson to transfer her posturing to Downing St.

She has denied confiding to an aide that ‘this is my moment’, following Labour’s humiliating defeat in Glasgow East, but I doubt there is anyone who doesn’t believe she thought it.

This is the woman who used the NCCL as the springboard for a political career which was to attack increasingly everything that organisation stands for.

Appointed to the Cabinet in 1997 she failed spectacularly as Secretary of State for Social Security and was sacked. After a short time she was back, holding a series of junior posts, biding her time and never forgetting to parade her feminist credentials, even to the extent of insisting that her children bear her father’s name rather than her husband’s – I’ve never understood the sisterhood’s logic in that. But playing the ‘we oppressed women must stick together’ card always a good way of trumping criticism, almost as useful as being black.

Then she stood for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, the main plank of her platform being that it was about time a woman did it, as long as it wasn’t Hazel Blears. Throw in a few leftist remarks about equality, some safely vague criticism of the Iraq adventure, an overcrowded field and a slice of luck and, hey presto, she feels entitled to be catapulted from apparatchik non-entity to Deputy Prime Minister.

But this was before Gordon Brown was transformed from Stalin to Mr Bean and he made it clear that a meaningless party job was just that, not a passport to greatness.

But he felt obliged to have her in the Cabinet, and there she sat, biding her time, for she has learnt the virtue of patience. And it wasn’t long before dear Gordon, weary, weighed down by the cares of office and no doubt worn down by ceaseless nagging, let her take PMQs. And then, to demonstrate his total lack of political nous, goes on holiday leaving at least three people to argue about who’s in charge. Harriet, of course, made the most of her opportunity.

So, will she succeed? I fear she might, for she has several factors in her favour.

First, Brown’s position is precarious. He may survive to the next election, but is unlikely to win it. Even if he were to scrape in the pressure for change would be strong.

Second, most of the potential contenders for Labour Leader are associated with the Iraq invasion and recent economic failure. Harman, only recently a Cabinet minister, can appear relatively clean of either mess.

Third, unlike, say, David Milliband, she has cultivated the grass roots and appears to have principles. The fact that she doesn’t is neither here nor there.

Fifth, after their expected defeat, Labour will probably feel an urge to return to more traditional ways and Harman will score there. I think it likely that Alan Johnson would beat her in the Commons vote if such an urge is in the air, but she will win in the constituencies.

Sixth, she will shamelessly demand to be elected on the basis of her sex. ‘If you don’t vote for me, it won’t be because I’m unprincipled, devious and downright incompetent; it will be because I am a woman. Don’t you oppress me!’

Hail to the Irish

Yesterday I drank my first pint of Guinness in 30 years. Just a gesture to say thank you to Ireland for voting down the EU constitution [sic].

Unfortunately thinking it will make any difference is about as fanciful as my having shared that pint with Caprice.

Now I await the usual weaseling out by the Euro-imperialists. We shall hear that the Irish didn't understand the 'treaty'; or that they voted for the wrong reasons; or not enough of them voted. And that they'd better do it again and get it right next time.

In fact the people of Ireland have demonstrated that they know what most British people now know, that for all the talk of streamlining the decision-making process, that this was yet another sprint down the road to the United States of Europe.

The Irish do not wish to become a mere province of a foreign empire. They had enough of that with us.

For all the talk of scaremongering about abortion and taxation I think that the recent floating of the idea of a European army was what put a lot of Irishmen off the treaty. Quite apart from the fact that they cherish their neutrality what more tangible proof is that there we are heading towards a European state.

I'm listening to Jim Murphy, our 'Europe Minister', who's smarming about 'respecting' the Irish decision and that nation's 'sovereignty', before going on to say that the process continues and that the Irish government will have to come to Europe with its proposals on 'the way forward'.

Gordon Brown plans to blunder on on with our own Parliamentary ratification process. What's the point if we are 'respecting' Ireland's decision? I often hear that Brown is not keen on the EU. That's surprises me. He's such an arrogant bully, that he's a natural for it.

Hail David Davis

This is a day to salute David Davis.

His action in resigning to fight a by-election on the single issue of civil rights may be quixotic but it is a magnificent gesture.

His leader - a spinner and trimmer - may be doubtful, and jobsworths like Gillian Merron may be totally mystified, but all who see politics as more than an argument between two sets of potential managers will applaud him.

Politics is about principle.

There are four things I constantly hear in the arguments about the chipping away of our freedoms:

One is the strange idea that locking potentially innocent people up for six weeks will prevent terrorism. How? How would it have prevented the London bombings? Yet, I only have to ask this question to be accused of being 'soft on terrorism'.

And yet I'm not soft at all, neither on terrorism nor on any sort of crime. I believe in capital punishment, more prisons and longer sentences. But only after due process of law, speedy trials and the presumption of innocence.

Second is the theory that 'terrorism' is different in kind from other murders. Is it?

For example, suppose one man decides to blow up his neigbour's house over some petty dispute. Another man does the same thing because he thinks it will help bring about the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan. Why should the (suspected) motive of each man be a factor in how long he can be held without charge?

Third, there is this frequent declaration that 'terror' investigations need longer to complete before charges are brought. But does this not apply to all conspiracies, to fraud cases for example.

Fourth - and this applies to all the infringements of our liberty, CCTV, ID cards, the DNA database, stop and search, on-the-spot fines, etc - 'If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear.'

On the contrary, it is we the innocent who have most to fear from the presumption of our guilt.

One last thing, on this day of fighting for political principle. Later on we'll hear the result of Ireland's referendum on the EU constitution. With any luck, I'll be drinking a pint of Guiness in honour of that country's vote against.

Question Time in Lincoln

When you happen to meet Geoff Hoon in the gents, it is perhaps not the most convenient moment to ask for his autograph. So when my son found himself in this situation the other Thursday, he contented himself with a grunted greeting. Mr Hoon is not my son’s favourite politician.

We were both at Lincoln’s Drill Hall for the recording of Question Time.

To be honest, I’m not a fan of the programme, nor of its radio equivalent, Any Questions. There are too many predictable questions, followed by answers that are either evasive or blatant claptrap. And there’s something about applauding just because you agree with someone that I find irritating.

But, what the hell, it would a free night out and something to talk about in the pub later. So we both applied, and after a few questions about our age, occupation and views, designed to ensure a reasonably balanced audience, we received our tickets.

The programme is recorded but not edited and the whole process took about 3 hours. We arrived about 6.30 to be checked in and frisked – that was a first for me. Well, it was a metal detector check; I’d better not exaggerate.

Through to the bar. Which was closed. I would have thought that a few drinks would help the show go with more of a swing, but I was to discover that there are plenty of people opinionated enough to have no need of Dutch courage. I noticed Max Nottingham, our local letter-writer and phone-in celebrity, lurking about in his trademark green woolly hat.

So after coffee, a BBC apple and a packet of crisps, a distinguished-looking David Dimbleby addressed us – two or three hundred I would say -with a few jokes and handed us on to the floor manager who, after a few jokes of his own, staged a rehearsal, with volunteers acting out the part of the panel. To my son’s embarrassment I volunteered and took up a position in favour of corporal punishment in schools. I’m not sure that I hold that opinion, as a matter of fact, but it’s more fun being illiberal.

I was surprised to hear a young teacher advocating the cane. This moved a furious-looking man, who described himself as a school governor, to declare that he would never employ a teacher with such views. (I wasn’t aware that governors had a hand in appointments). It struck me as amusing that this guy, and another one who claimed a more optimistic view of children’s response to ‘love’, manifested such suppressed violence in their eyes. I think they would have loved to give me and that young teacher a bloody good thrashing.

The floor manager gave us a piece of advice. ‘When you hear a panellist say, ‘’What’s important to remember here . . .’’, you know they’re flannelling.’ I made a note of that.

We finally got going about 8 o’clock. The panel assembled.

There was Geoff Hoon, of course, a politician with no apparent convictions of his own, rather like our own MP, Gillian Merron. You always feel that if you asked, ‘How are you?’, they would ring up number 10 to find out the official answer and then preface their reply with a list of the government’s accomplishments.

The Tory was Eric Pickles, the hero of Crewe and by the sound of him not an old Etonian. Politically lightweight, physically quite the opposite.

Caroline Lucas is a Green MEP, with cropped hair and an earnest air. She has some sort of strange title which avoids her being called ‘Leader’, apparently too authoritarian in tone. Whatever she is, moreover, she’s a joint one.

Ruth Lea is a former Treasury civil servant who confessed to a personal dislike of Gordon Brown and is now involved in an anti-EEC group called ‘Global Vision’.

Last, and definitely least, Dan Snow, son of his father.

It seems to be a law of political interview that the straightness of an answer is in inverse proportion to the likelihood of the interviewee exercising power. Likewise the naiveté of it. That was Dan Snow, who announced with great conviction, ‘Prison doesn’t work.’

Ruth Lea talked a lot of sense. When I mentioned this to someone in the pub later he merely replied, ‘Must be a bit right wing then.’ Do I have some sort of a reputation?

The questions were, as I predicted, predictable: petrol tax, MPs’ pay, health and safety ‘gone mad’, knife crime, the Labour Party’s ‘leadership crisis’.

Nothing about Iraq, the US presidential race or local Lincolnshire issues like migrant workers or post office and pub closures.

Caroline came in for criticism in the local press, in the days following the broadcast, for using a car, first to get to Lincoln from Retford, where she had missed her rail connection, and then to return to London. The latter journey, to make matters worse for some reason was by ‘chauffeur-driven’ car.

The woman is obviously a hypocrite, isn’t she, her green and leftist principles a mere sham?

I don’t think so. If she were to fulfil her obligation to appear she could hardly have done so trying to get to Lincoln by bike. As for the chauffeured drive home, that was a BBC car that was going back to London anyway and in any case was shared.

This little post-broadcast episode, ad hominem in tone, was typical of the standard of debate throughout the media, in Parliament and in pubs.

The Election that Never Was

As soon as Gordon Brown became Prime Minister TV and newspapers began to talk about a snap election in the autumn. I thought it would be a strange kind of snap election that was predicted three or four months in advance, but such things are typical of the press.

And that early election was indeed almost called. But just as the press was congratulating itself on its prescience, the PM decided not to go ahead after all. The newspapers were furious. ‘Gordon Brown bottles it!’ was a typical headline.

I couldn’t help but think that if the election had gone ahead the tabloids would have been shouting about the government ‘cutting and running’. And the serious papers would have complained about an opportunistic manipulation of the parliamentary system. they would have been right there.

There were two reasons, I believe, for the media outrage. The first is that the government had exploited them, by briefing about the possibility of a poll in order to test the water and draw attention away from the Conservative Party conference. And second, because they had been deprived of some excitement. The press hates the boring routine of government administration. It wants conflict, drama. It wants change.

The PM doesn’t come out the past fortnight very well either. In political terms he’s shown himself as a ditherer. Having tried to use the press for his own purposes, he’s discovered that it can turn on you and give you a very nasty bite.

I imagine he looked ahead over the next couple of years and saw a slowing economy, mounting government debt, no likelihood of improvement in Iraq, not to mention the bubbling discontent about the European constitution. If there was a chance of going to the country and getting another safe five years of power, better to grab it.

If that were the decision he could trot out some cant about ‘seeking a renewed mandate’.

But when a fleeting opinion poll seems unfavourable he can wait for a better opportunity and use the fallback cliché about ‘getting on with the job of serving the British people’.

One of the constitutional issues raised by this episode is whether or not Gordon Brown has the right to be Prime Minister. As has been pointed out, he was not leader of the Labour Party when the general election was fought; and he didn’t even face a contest when he became leader of the party. Does he not, in fact, need a mandate of his own?

No, he does not. He is not a President. We elect Parliaments, not governments, and certainly not prime ministers. The media might like to reduce our system to a simple matter of two or three personalities, and the parties themselves are complicit in it for reasons of their own (party discipline for one). But under our system the Queen sends invites to form a government the person who can command the confidence of the House of Commons.

The Commons are elected by law every five years, although Parliament may be dissolved at any time, under the Royal Prerogative (ie the PM’s prerogative). Choosing the date of the election has always been at advantage to the governing party, but it is against the spirit of the constitution to rush to the country every time there is an encouraging opinion poll.

That’s why I wouldn’t have been happy with a general election this autumn. It’s not as if the government has lost its majority; or suffered a defeat on a motion of confidence; or as if a national emergency had overtaken us (like the miners’ strike of 1974); or a constitutional crisis (such as the Lords’ rejection of Lloyd George’s budget in, I think, 1906).

So Gordon Brown has done the right thing, but probably for the wrong reason.

Now the press can move on to the next non-event.

Letters to my MPs

For the second time in my life I have received a letter bearing the distinctive portcullis crest of the House of Commons.

When I arrived home yesterday I was told that there was ‘an official-looking letter’ awaiting me. Now, a pessimist would think that the Child Support Agency or the DWP had finally caught up with him, but, ever the optimist, I naturally assumed that one of my Premium Bonds had at last won me a million pounds.

But no. Instead this was the second time in my life that I have received a letter bearing the distinctive portcullis crest of the House of Commons.


THE FIRST TIME was a reply from Richard, later Sir Richard, Body, MP for Boston. It was around the time Edward Heath was traitorously doing what Napoleon and Adolf Hitler had failed to do, namely hand over UK sovereignty to a European empire. Strong words, I know, but I feel strongly about it.

I wrote to Body, MP for Boston and therefore mine, who was one of the few anti-Common Market MPS on the Tory benches, encouraging him to stand firm.

By this time I was a regular voting Conservative supporter, but in 1974 I voted Labour purely on the basis of their promise to hold a referendum on continued membership of what was then called the EEC, or maybe the EC. The name kept changing in order to downgrade the economic element of the ‘project’.

It was never just economics, of course, whatever Ted Heath and the eurofanatics would have us believe. Two things have stuck in my mind from all the arguments in the early 70s about Europe. One was Ted Heath patronisingly telling us that we would still be able to drink tea. And saying that sovereignty was worth ‘sharing’ – ‘shared sovereignty’? Now there’s an oxymoron, and as daft an idea as a shared bank account – in order to gain some sort of commercial advantage. In other words, sell your birthright for a mess of potage.

And here we go again. The perfidious constitution is likely to be slipped in through the back door, disguised as ‘an amending treaty’. We are told that the ‘constitutional elements’ will be dropped, namely the anthem, the flag and the motto. They’ll all still be used, as they increasingly have been, but it won’t be written down anywhere. I think we’re back to tea-drinking here, because it appears that a log-term president, a foreign minister and an extension of qualified majority voting and a reduction in the right of veto will be there. And by this sleight of hand we will be denied a referendum, which would undoubtedly be negative.


MY MORE RECENT LETTER was from Douglas Hogg, whom I e-mailed about the old Ghurkha VC who wished to resettle in Britain and benefit from better medical attention. I wrote to protest at the Foreign Office’s denial of his request. As it happened, the FO recanted pretty quickly.

Hogg’s full title is ‘The Right Honourable Douglas Hogg, QC, MP, and Viscount Hailsham.’ This was on the compliments slip attached to his letter and reminded me of the days when I first became interested in politics. This was 1963, (as it happens also the year when one of my greatest friends was born), when the Conservative government was not only tottering with fatigue and scandal but also found itself without a leader.

Douglas Hogg’s father, Quintin, took advantage of the new law allowing him to disclaim his peerage, so that he could run for the Tory leadership. It didn’t do him any good, because the Earl of Home ‘emerged’ as the new and short-lived Prime Minister. He waited until he succeeded before giving up his peerage. A more circumspect character, it would appear. I rather think that Quintin’s action counted against him, because it wasn’t really the done thing to run quite so blatantly for office.

However, he went on to sit in the Commons and, when he was appointed Lord Chancellor, he had to be given a life peerage because a peerage, once renounced, is lost for your lifetime. I always thought it was gone forever, but not so. It is revived for your heir. Douglas, himself an MP when his father died in 2001, succeeded as the third Viscount but was able to remain an MP because by this time a peer no longer had the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. I suppose if Douglas is ever rewarded with a seat there when he retires he will have to be made a Life Peer and end up with two titles.

Another point of interest, to me at least, is that the Hoggs rotate christian names - Douglas, Quintin – as the Churchills alternate Winston and Randolph. Nice idea.

I'm not laughing

I AM NO humorist but I have read about one or two of the tricks that jokesters and wits use to create a joke.

For example, start at the end of the joke with, say, a well-known phrase, such as the standard phrases we hear at the end of news broadcasts.

So, ‘police have nothing to go on’ can be placed at the end of spoof report on the theft of lavatory pans. Or ‘police are looking into it’ will close a report on the discovery of a consignment of pornography. Or, ‘government steps in’ in response to a sewage leak in Scunthorpe. (It’s never a bad idea to include Scunthorpe. Wigan’s good too; so is Tunbridge Wells in the right context).

Another trick is one that Oscar Wilde used quite frequently, namely that of turning a phrase, preferably a cliché or pompous statement, on its head. Thus, ‘drink is the curse of the working classes’ becomes ‘work is the curse of the drinking classes.’ I particularly like that one for some reason. Another one of the same type is 'If one tells the truth, then sooner or later one will be found out.'

IT’S NO JOKE though what I’ve heard coming out of ministerial mouths recently. That old Stalinist, John Reid, for example, reacted to the disappearance of a few control order suspects – sheer incompetence on the part of the authorities – by calling yet again for 90 day detention powers. Gordon Brown disabused us of any hopes of a revival of civil liberties by echoing Kommissar Reid’s remarks. Even in his political death throes, Tony Blair is calling for a return to the old ‘sus laws’, allowing the police to stop anyone on the street and ask impertinent questions. That will fit nicely with ID cards. ID cards! Christ, even dogs don’t need licenses any more.

We in this country have blithely disregarded the subtle slicing away of our freedoms for years. We can’t visit a pub or a shop or walk down the street or drive a car without appearing on CCTV; our e-mails, phone calls and text messages are monitored by GCHQ; the police are building up a DNA bank of innocent people; rape trials are being rigged in favour of the complainant and double jeopardy is disappearing fast. Forget habeas corpus.

WHY do we put up with the death of our democracy by a thousand cuts? Partly laziness and complacency, partly because of the belief that’s been allowed to grow that government is responsible for everything. Name any problem and we expect a solution from the government.

Yesterday, for example, the head of some government agency outlined her plans to improve standards of courtesy. She actually recommended that we each ‘do a good deed every day.’ Can you believe it?

But the main reason why we tamely submit is fear. Fear of crime, fear of illegal immigration, fear of paedophiles, and fear of terrorism. Fear subtly promoted by government whose very nature is to garner increasing power to itself. Elizabeth I had her Jesuits, William Pitt had Boney, Lloyd George and Churchill had fifth columnists and McCarthy had a red under every bed. Tony Blair has Osama bin Laden, who so far has killed fewer of us in his whole campaign than we have ourselves on the roads of Lincolnshire.

I THINK Oscar would have said that we have been lulled into a false sense of insecurity.

Get out and vote

I believe I am right in saying that the biggest turn-out of voters in a British general election, in percentage terms, occurred in 1950. Nearly 23 million cast their votes that year to give the Labour government another few months in office. But the following year almost as many people voted again and the Tories were back in. In fact Labour received just under 14 million votes in 1951, more than the Conservatives and their allies, but that’s another story.

Turn-out fluctuated around 75% for the next 50 years, and then plummeted to 59.4% in 2001. Commentators have agonised over the reasons for this sudden apathy. Is it because the old, clear-cut political divisions have gone, now that we’re all ‘conservative’, now that we are all fat and well-off, our passions diluted by TV reality shows and computer games?

Or have we become so cynical and sunk in despair that we see no point in registering our opinion?

Maybe, maybe not. Whatever the reason, the government thought voter apathy was a problem and with its usual short-termism saw the way to fix it.

Postal voting. If people can’t be bothered to get off their fat arses and wobble down to the polling station once every few years, let’s make easier for them. Send out thousands of ballot papers and anyone who finds them lying around can fill them in. Computer voting. Why not? No matter that the government cannot look at a computer system without its crashing or leaking private information.

They’ve even floated the idea of lowering the voting age to 16. God help us. I can see the Monster Raving Loony Party finally winning a seat. In any case, isn’t it true that the younger you are, the less likely you are to vote?

Postal voting has been a disaster. Following the last local elections in Birmingham, five elected councillors had to resign when ‘irregularities’ were exposed. And now we hear that a review of the electoral roll there has seen a 20,000 drop in the electorate.

No wonder. You just ring up and ask for as many ballots as you like. There are few checks. In blocks of flats, hundreds of voting forms arrive to be picked up by whoever finds them first. In certain families with, let’s say, a patriarchal culture people’s votes can be checked by whoever’s in charge. Helpful party workers will show residents of old folk’s homes how to vote and who to vote for.

No. If people don’t want to vote, fine. I don’t want my representatives chosen by people who don’t know the name of their own MP, or by people who don’t even exist. I’d like to see it more difficult, not easier. We should have to register personally with the same checks as are used to open a bank account and produce ID when we go the polling station. Postal votes should be for those who genuinely need them, not the idle and indifferent.

A scene from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes to mind.

John Qualen often played a comic Swede John Ford, ‘by Golly.’ In this film he plays an immigrant who is about to attend an election meeting. He puts on his best suit and hat, is seen off by his proud wife and daughter, arrives at the meeting-hall and flourishes his papers. ‘American citizen,’ he declares and goes in to vote.

That’s the spirit of democracy.

The House of Lords

So the House of Commons has given its opinion – both of them – on the composition of the ‘other place’.

80% elected or 100% elected, they’re not sure. The Lords themselves are. They reject both options, and of course they would, wouldn’t they? Who cares anyway?

I do, for one. And not just because I’m a traditionalist, with a taste for pomp and pageantry and idiosyncratic British institutions. No, we need a House of Lords, or a Senate, call it what you like, that that can save the House of Commons from itself.

Because the Commons, for all its posturing as being the supreme law-making body and the watchdog of the executive, is a failure. It’s a place where debate is superficial and partisan, where most legislation goes through without any scrutiny at all, either because its another statutory instrument or a European directive. It’s a place where members are bullied, bribed and blackmailed by the whips into conforming, and where success is measured, at best, in terms of office or, at worst, in mere re-election.

In the recent past, at least, only the House of Lords has shown intelligent thought on issues or demonstrated any concern for the constitution and our liberties.

So I find myself, surprisingly, against an elected upper House, whether 80 or 100%. As I see it, the proposals carry the following implications:

Ø We are set to lose the experience, even wisdom, of many of our appointed Lords. People who have made and have nothing left to prove or gain. Even the odd bishop can have a point of view to contribute, not to mention judges, generals, former PMs, businessmen, artists and trade unionists. They no longer have to be ambitious and therefore corruptible.

Ø Many of these people, and even former party MPs, do not accept a party whip,the so-called crossbenchers. They are not susceptible to the threats of party managers

Ø Instead the second chamber will be composed wholly or predominately of elected and therefore party men. They are likely to be the same kind of candidates who stand for the European so-called Parliament, second-raters and non-entities.

Ø And they’re going to be there for 15 years at a time. That means you only have to be elected twice and it’s a job for life. Despite that, unlike the current unelected Lords, these are people who will do as they are told. Some MPs have expressed fear that an elected other place will give it ‘democratic legitimacy’ and lead to constitutional conflict. I don’t think it will, which is a pity, because we don’t have half as much conflict as we should.

Ø It will be made even worse because they will be elected on the ‘list system’ of PR, which puts the whole process in the central power of party machines.

What about democracy, I hear you say. My reply is that the Commons provide the democratic representation of the people and it doesn’t matter if unelected people contribute to the democratic process, whether they be the Queen, civil servants or the barmaids in the pub next door to Westminster.

Maggie, Tony and Gordon

I don't know what happened here. I tried to change the font size and my blog just disappeared.

My words of wisdom lost forever.

Sexual Orientation Regulations

It looks like the protests have failed, as have the moves in the House of Lords, and gay rights regulations will become law. I, for one, am disappointed.

Now, as soon as I say that, I will be categorised as either a 'homophobe' or a right wing religious fundamentalist. I am neither.

I am not going to use the old cliche about some of my best friends being homosexuals, because it isn't true. In any case, 'best friend' is a phrase I use very sparingly. But I have had homosexual friends and acquaintances. I used to spend a lot of time with a fellow called Robert, a pretty promiscuous gay, but our relationship was mainly based on an anorak-ish love of films. He was having an on-off affair with Ben. While Rob was extravert and displayed many typical 'gay' mannerisms - and they do exist - Ben was much more reserved. He liked to sit with a quiet pint and chat about Frank Sinatra. Sometimes he would confide his hurt feelings over Rob's behaviour and I would share my own romantic troubles.

If this pair had wanted to share a bed in my flat I would have raised no objection. My only problem would have been the same that I would have felt if a heterosexual couple were enjoying themselves in the next bedroom, while I was drinking a cup of cocoa and listening to Book at Bedtime.

But I still object to these regulations. Obviously I could not tolerate any inoffensive, law-abiding citizen's being excluded from a pub or a train or a hotel because of their colour, religion or sexual orientation.

But I can't help worrying about the small private B&B, to pick just one example, run by a couple with 'old-fashioned' views on morality. The are not just running a business. They are living in their home. And that gives them the right to set rules. If they don't want unmarried couples or children or pets or people without luggage, why should they be forced to take them? And if it upsets them to lie awake in bed knowing that anal penetration is going on under their roof, I don't see why they should have to suffer it.

It is one thing to tolerate behaviour of which you disapprove, quite another to be obliged to embrace it, even encourage it. And it's behaviour we are talking about, which is where the analogy with blacks falls down. Blackness is a state of 'being', homosexual practice is behaviour.

Why can't we let the market decide these matters. In Lincoln, for example,we have 'gay' pubs, which 'straights' avoid, and some pretty tough pubs, which are avoided by practically everybody. To live and let live is a pretty good principle, but it should not be imposed.

New presbyter is but old priest writ large.

Dictatorship in Northern Ireland

I am surprised so little is made of the fact that Northern Ireland is a dictatorship.

Because its legislative assembly cannot agree on an executive, it is suspended and the UK imposes direct rule. This does not mean that NI is treated as an integral part of the UK, given adequate representation in Parliament and subject to laws passed their along with the rest of us.

It means, in fact, that their Secretary of State rules by diktat. Smoking in public places, for example. In devolved Scotland, the act outlawing it was debated and agreed in a democratic manner. Similarly in England and Wales. In Northern Ireland, Peter Hain just signed a piece of paper.

to anyone who believes in constitutional procedure this is quite obnoxious. And quite unnecessary. It seems to me that the government does not understand the fundamentally separate functions of an executive and a legislature. Government does not have to be parliamentary, as in Britain and Canada. Look at the US.

Let's accept that NI should have a devolved government, let's accept that it has to be based on power-sharing, let's accept that the politicians there are not yet capable of forming one. But why are the NI assemblymen, elected, paid, and idle, not told to do the job of legislating if not governing. Peter Hain would still have the power to veto and to introduce legislation.

Who knows. They might learn to work positively together.

The Christmas Repeal

BBC's Today Programme has been inviting votes to choose an Act of Parliament which is particularly unpopular and which most people would like to see repealed. The plan is to find a tame MP to take up the cause of the winning (= losing) law and make a forlorn (I'm sure) attempt abolish it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/today

The shortlist of six are pretty fundamental to national sovereignty, the constitution and individual freedom.

If The European Communities Act (1972) is chosen, and I hope it is, there's not a cat in hell's chance of it being repealed. The Establishment are fully behind the European Union (how I hate that phrase) for all kinds of sentimental, political, economic and plain selfish reasons. I can understand Luxembourg liking it. How else could a prime minister with roughly the same power as the chief executive of a British county council get to sit at the top tables of Europe?

But Britain? Great Britain? Discarding a millennium of inheritance for a mess of potage. Gradually divesting itself of hard-won national freedom and submitting tamely to the dictates of foreign bureaucrats.

If we must abandon national sovereignty, let's become the 51st state of America. At least they speak English.

The Human Rights Act (1998). How can anyone be against human rights? Not me, there are two problems with this Act:

It seems that every conceivable 'right' has been included, almost as if they were jotted down on a flip-chart in a seminar on the subject, not subjected to any test of practicality and imposed from outside. That's why we have the 'right' of murderers to vote in elections, or of convicted terrorists no to be deported.

Moreover, it means that our own supreme court, the House of Lords or its successor, can be overruled. Technically, that means that our Head of State, the Queen, is no longer being sovereign, and neither is our Parliament.

The Act of Settlement (1701) follows on naturally from my mention of the Queen. Now, I'm no royalist, but I am a monarchist, at least in British terms. In my estimation, Britain is a republic, but happens to have an hereditary president. If we had a republic on the German model, we'd have a toothless politician as head of state; if the American model, we'd have a totally different constitution, not that that's not worth considering, in view of overwheening prime ministerial power her.

Basically, our monarchy works constitutionally and, emotionally, I like the link it provides with the past. (I'm obviously no radical).

But the Act of Settlement excludes Roman Catholics from the throne, as well, if I'm not mistaken, as other non-communicants with the Church of England. I think the implication of this would be the disestablishment of the Church of England, no bad thing, but bang goes all that tradition by which I set so much store. So be it. And while we're about, let's abolish the primacy of male children in the succession. It won't make any difference for 50 years anyway.

Next is The Serious Organised Crime Act (2005), with particular reference to the banning of demonstrations within a certain radius of Parliament. I don't know about the act as a whole, but I have to say I have no worries about keeping demos away from Parliament. At best, they can disrupt the work of MPs, at worst they can intimidate. After all, we don't want to be like the French National Assembly after 1789, with the mob howling outside.

The arrest of that woman reading out the names of soldiers killed in Iraq was obviously foolish and lacked common sense. So maybe an amendment is required, but libertarian as I am, I can't see an erosion on free speech here. There's plenty of erosion going on elsewhere.

The Dangerous Dogs Act (1991) is one of those silly laws brought in on a wave of press hysteria

about some very nasty injuries inflicted on children by pit bull terriers. The government had to be seen to be doing something about it, and this was it. It was the same sort of thing with the law banning handguns - a lot of inconvenience for innocent citizens because of one or two irresponsible or criminal people.

As for The Hunting Act (2004), it is hardly worth repealing because it's impossible to enforce, and when normally law-abiding people start finding ways round an unpopular and intrusive law. I don't hunt, never have, don't want to; but I see no reason why those who enjoy it should not indulge. It's another area where Parliament should mind it's own bloody business.

I've voted to choose the EC act, but I would happily see the back of 5 of these laws. Sometimes I think we should abolish all laws and start again.

Alastair Cooke

Anyone clicking on my title should get to one of Alastair's Letter from America. That's assuming, of course, that I've done it right. It's easier on 'Live Journal', Mr Blogger.com.

Yes, I did it wrong. I've just checked. It should be:

http://news.bbbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_America/239651.stm

Now that gets you somewhere near , but it's still not right. Try this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/letter_from_America/default.stm

Bingo! Now all I have to do is learn how to paste URLs etc, because it's a real pain copying them out.

I'm very fond of Alastair Cooke. Maybe his talks are not so good when you read them, without hearing his voice, but read them I do, frequently. I love his style, discursive, knowledgeable, literate, anecdotal. He usually has two main themes, which he eventually gets round to linking up, after a circuitous journey involving many diversions and stops to admire some historical monument or to chat about golf and jazz.

I'm an Americanophile myself. I love their films, their music, their constitution, their variety, their humour, their generosity, their optimism. All of which means I'm often disappointed, even hurt, by their antics. The French, the Germans, the Australians, the whole of Africa - what else do you expect? But the Americans are the best of British, the ones with courage, enterprise and a desire for freedom and self-expression, for whom this country was too much of a straitjacket, who left it and invented their own country.

They can be so naive. They're like a huge, cuddly bear which just wants to be loved and can't understand why so many people are frightened of it, or why things tend to break in its great clumsy claws. Look at Iraq. They can't understand why those idiots aren't grateful that they've been given the great gift of democracy. God forbid we should think they're a bunch of childishly fanatical savages who can only function under dictatorship.

Their heart is definitely in the right place. I just think they've forgotten sometimes where they left their brain.

Extremists

An extremist is someone who who holds stronger views on something than I do and who wishes to use more radical methods to achieve his goals.

To call someone an extremist is often merely a way of avoiding logical debate -it's the 'argumentum ad hominem'. On the other hand, those who are usually thought as 'extremists' are so often incapable of reasoned thought themselves.

The BNP, for example, who have announced they are targeting Lincoln. I have an uneasy feeling that they might do well. I hear normally civilised people sympathising with some of their policies - capital punishment, withdrawal from the EU, tax reduction - bloody hell, I sympathise with those things myself. But in Lincoln, as anywhere I suppose, it's immigration, and that new term of abuse, 'asylum seekers.'

Now, maybe there is cause for concern. Maybe these people, many of whom have been dumped in this area, are being doled out large sums of money, council houses and cars, at the expense of good British scroungers - sorry, I meant to say benefit claimants.

But. But. It's always the way with fringe parties like this. They latch onto issues of concern to unthinking people, buying their votes with appeals to prejudice and easy answers. The days of demagoguery are over. Now the spokesmen are besuited, bespectacled and speak in reasonable tones. We do not see the frothing hatred of the bully-boys behind them, their foul-mouthed, drunken love of violence.

In the thirties, Hitler offered an end to ludicrous inflation, to mass unemployment and Germany's humiliation. People listened and he delivered. And he hinted that the Jews were to blame. The racism latent in even the most decent middle-class breast was stirred. But, when they voted for stability and employment and national pride, did they know they were voting for World War II, Auschwitz and eternal shame? I have a feeling they did.

For Christ's sake, I hope the British are better than that.