How Long Before Cameron Takes Up Hacker’s Grand Design?

January 19th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

The Mirror yesterday reported that the Gordon Brown, as part of his plan to improve social mobility, will increase the army cadet force in schools.

Is the Parallax Brief the only one who gets a sense of where this is heading?

Number 10 Downing Street, 2011

David Cameron: Wait a minute! I’ve got an idea!

Cabinet Secretary: Goooood, Prime Minister

David Cameron: No, I really think I’ve got it. We roll the international development budget into the military budget, as planned; then we don’t buy the upgrade to trident; We use the money to reintroduce conscription. Of course, the conscripts wouldn’t go and fight in wars, that’d be left to the regular army — but they’d travel abroad on international development and basic, low risk peacekeeping missions, leaving the army free to do the real fighting. Not only do I solve my problem with military under-staffing, but I also solve my unemployment problems.

Cabinet Secretary: Prime minister, isn’t conscription a rather… courageous policy?

David Cameron: Courageous? My God! Is it? Ha! Well, in times of full employment it might be, but now it would just give unemployed young people something to do. Give them some training and some skills: a comprehensive education — to make up for their comprehensive education. It might even teach some of them to wash! And I think it’ll be popular with the papers and core voters, as well: instilling some discipline in the teenagers from the sink estates. I can see the Daily Mail headline now: “From ASBO to Army: Cameron’s Grand Design Gives Kids a Chance.” “I’m so proud says mother…”

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Categories [ Defence, Miscellaneous Titbits, UK Politics, Videos ]

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Foreign Policy and Opposition

January 16th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Bagehot, the Economist’s British politics columnist, believes that it is largely futile to build a foreign policy in opposition:

FOREIGN policy is a strange challenge for an opposition leader. It’s very important that he (in this case) shows that he is informed, sober in judgment and reasonably well-connected. The “3 am” question is an inevitable one, especially for a politician with no real executive experience. And yet, at the same time, there is only a limited point in having a highly evolved foreign-policy philosophy in opposition. Many of the most important diplomatic decisions that a prime minister takes in government arise in circumstances that it is almost impossible to pre-judge. Temperament and judgment matter, but “-isms” may not help much.

That’s a compelling argument. Afterall, it’s practicably  impossible to predict accurately beyond the very short term the course of global events. And it’s probably no coincidence that the many of the more celebrated ‘intellects’ in political history have been those politicians who have specialised in foreign affairs (Cardinal Richelieu, Lord Salisbury, Otto von Bismarck, Henry Kissinger, et al): it’s an infinitely complex, ephemeral and subtle game. Bagehot is therefore correct to argue that it is useless for an opposition to put in place a detailed foreign policy in the same way it might an economic policy.

However, the Parallax Brief believes that is only half the story. The foreign policy a nation pursues is often dictated by the framework that nation’s leaders use to make it’s key foreign policy decisions. In very simple terms, three of the aforementioned statesmen, Bismarck, Salisbury, and Kissinger, all attempted to achieve a global balance of power in which no Great Power would be able to achieve an ascendency that could threaten all the others. Decisions weren’t made based on right and wrong, but on national self interest, which led to spheres of influence. Woodrow Wilson, the US President, believed that international relations should be based on the rule of law, and sought the creation of international law and institutions which would enforce it and arbitrate disputes. The neo-conservatives believed that the free world would be safer, and the world better, if the strong liberal democracies used their military power to topple dictators and spread liberal democracy, and that the international institutions which Wilson had set in motion had become wholly ineffective in dealing with international disputes and the furthering of democratic ideals.

While it may be impossible to pre-judge circumstances, it’s is absolutely possible to build a framework of understanding upon which foreign policy decisions will be made once in power.

And it would be instructive to know more about where David Cameron and William Hague stand.

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Categories [ International Affairs, UK Politics ]

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Pots, Kettles, Negative Campaigning, and the Left-Right Blog Gap

January 14th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

Guido Fawkes has blogged accusing Labour of going negative by picking up on the “grass roots geek campaign” of snide and comic alternatives to the Conservatives’ airbrushed David Cameron advert. He ridiculed Labour Party HQ for being “so devoid of original ideas that they have taken to stealing internet memes again.”

Well, that may be so. The Labour Party should remain aloof of such matters, and let the grass roots take care of such indecorous — if funny — activities, while perhaps providing the occasional bit of inconspicuous encouragement. It really doesn’t do Labour any favours to be seen to be at the front of a snarling, infantile pack. But Guido’s hardly the right person to be moaning about this kind of campaigning. He personally revels in his image of being the Right’s leading gadfly, and his blog was almost certainly the trailblazer for such campaigning, and is still at the vanguard. Nobody did more than Guido to bring this tabloid, viral, populist style into the British political blogosphere — an achievement of which he is openly proud.

And he is right to be proud, says the Parallax Brief. His is still the most entertaining political blog out there, and his perspicacious muckracking is bitchily underrated by a jealous printed media corps. But that also means he’s probably about as qualified to complain about this kind of thing as Kelvin MacKenzie is to decry the dumbing down of the newspaper industry.

Meantime, in the same post, Mr. Fawkes raises a penetrating point about the relative quality of the Right’s electronic presence compared to the Left’s:

The official Labour Party site is usually visited only by the party faithful. You have to push your message out. Look at what the Tories are doing, they are paying to advertise their Cameron videos on YouTube, reaching out to people who are not already signed up supporters. There are no votes to be gained from repeating your message to faithful party supporters on the official website or the party affiliated sites like LabourList and LabourHome.

Ignoring for a moment the merits of advertising on YouTube,  one thing that has always struck the Parallax Brief as odd is how much better the Right’s blogs are. If it were just a case of popularity and page traffic, then one may have been able to conjure all kinds of arguments (perhaps that it’s easier for the right to be sensationalist, or that it’s easier to blog when in opposition, or the right has better networks for promotion, or simply that right wing views are more popular.) But it goes beyond that. ConservativeHome is simply better than LabourList. There simply is no Guido fascimile of the left (thank God, they might touch and send the world supernova, or something). That’s not to say that there are no good left leaning blogs. Hopi Sen and LeftFootForward are both consistently excellent. It’s just that the general standard of content on the right is better than on the left.

If anyone can explain this, please let the Parallax Brief know.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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Make Your Own Airbrushed David Cameron Poster

January 14th, 2010 by The Parallax Brief

David Cameron Airbrushed Ad

Via former Labour Party head of campaigns, Hopi Sen, the Parallax Brief has found a brilliantly immature website, My David Cameron.

Building on the the schoolyard giggles generated by the Conservative Party’s decision to give David Cameron a Cosmopolitan-cover style airbrushing for their most recent outdoor ad, mydavidcameron.com allows visitors to construct their own version.

Can you do better than the ones pictured above?

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Categories [ Miscellaneous Titbits, UK Politics ]

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Highlighting an Anti-Semitic, Extremist Muslim Group Does Not Make You An Islamophobic Bigot

November 25th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Today in Prime Minister’s questions, David Cameron asked Gordon Brown whether Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni Muslim vanguard group whose goals include the reunification of all Muslim countries into a single state under the Muslim citizen-elected leadership of a caliph, had received any government money. He later accused the organization of extremism, backed up his claims with several direct quotes, and offered evidence that it had, in fact, through a front organization, received government money.

The line of questioning clearly caught the Prime Minister off guard and wholly unprepared. He shouldn’t be criticised too strongly for this: as the Guardian put it, Mr. “Cameron bowled a googly,” and Mr. Brown cannot be expected to know literally everything about every aspect of government business.

However, what the Prime Minister can be criticised for are some of his words later in the exchange.

From Hansard:

“Let me also say—let us be clear about this—that the vast majority of Muslims in our country are part of the law-abiding majority of this country. I do not want it to be said that those people who are citizens of our country who hold the Muslim faith are to be held responsible for acts of terrorism”

And then later:

“[Mr Cameron] may regret some of the remarks he has made this morning.”

In a way, it’s understandable that the Prime Minister should want to make this point, to reaffirm that the actions of one person or group are not, and should never be, transferred to entire communities. But the message, presented in the way it was, contains a pernicious undercurrent — the hint of a suggestion — of chiding the leader of the opposition for even bringing up the subject, as if to do so was to somehow pass unfair judgement of all Muslims.

Racism is filthy and abhorrent, but criticising a Muslim organization is no more Islamophobic than accusing a black man of a crime is racist. It becomes racist if the black man is accused because he is black (whether consciously or unconsciously). Likewise the Muslim organization.

In this specific circumstance, to infer that those making the point may be doing so because of the religion of the accused organization is not just misguided, but hugely counter-productive. It leads to “language inflation” where a genuine accusation or suggestion of anti-Islamic bigotry ceases to have the devastating impact it should.

But even if such inference was absent and the statement wholly innocent, it’s certainly not helpful to use this type of language when dealing with the situation. Mr. Cameron was not making a point about Muslim extremism in general, rather a point about government bookkeeping, so to say; about how carefully the government monitors the destination of its money.

It wasn’t a Muslim matter, but a matter of the government being lax about where it spends tax payers money that just happened to involve Muslims.

Actual racists, like members of the British National Party, habitually seek shelter under the idea that they’re not really racist but just branded as racists because of the “political correctness-gone-mad” world in which we live. Statements like the Prime Minister’s, therefore, even if made genuinely rather than to cast hidden aspersions, actually live up to that accusation of political correctness, feeding tiny but manifold zephyrs of oxygen to the racist/bigoted/sexist/homophobic fire.

This should not obscure the fact racism, bigotry, sexism and homophobia are far greater problems and threats to our society than political correctness. To listen to some, one would assume than there is no such thing as racism these days, just the soppy, Guardianista, politically correct Taliban making accusations of racism. We should give no credibility to this view. But nor should we have to preface our answers to questions such as those the Prime Minister faced today with a little verbal jig to make plain that we’re not a racist or a bigot. Everyone sensible knows that highlighting the extremism or support of terrorists of one Muslim group does not make Mr. Cameron a bigot, and those who get the wrong idea, and take the accusations about one group as being further evidence against the whole of the Islamic world, are plain ignorant and hateful people whose attitudes will not be changed anytime soon.

Worse, by raising the spectre of racism or bigotry, they’ll be fuelled.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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Number of Privately Educated Tory MPs Set to Rocket — So What?

November 7th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Guardian ran with an interesting article yesterday — albeit one that blatantly played to the foibles of its natural readership — highlighting the number of Conservative MPs likely to be elected in the next election which will have been educated in independent schools.

At the last count, 52% of the Conservatives’ so-called “A-list” of prospective candidates had been privately educated.Among likely new Tory MPs whose education is a matter of record, 43% went to independent schools. Among the same group, only 36% would have gone to comprehensives, compared with 88% of the population at large.

All this feeds into one striking statistic. After next year’s election about a third of all new MPs will have been to fee-paying schools, compared with 13% of new arrivals when the Commons last underwent major change in 1997.

Most of this data is to be found in The Class of 2010, a report put together by the lobbying firm the Madano Partnership, based on work by academics from Plymouth University. The research suggests that relative to 1997, the number of new MPs from comprehensive schools will fall from 46% to about 30%; and that 17% of the new intake will come from grammar schools, despite only 5% of pupils attending such schools.

[...]

The arrival in power of Cameron and his circle will be heralded as a return to more well-heeled Tory stereotypes. In that context, the arrival of so many privately educated newcomers will be of a piece with the general mood. Politics will feel much posher.

The Madano Partnership profiled 242 of the likely next parliamentary generation, and focused on the Conservative candidates who will have to make it to the Commons if the party is to win a majority. There is a smattering of Old Etonians, including millionaire campaigner Zac Goldsmith, Tory intellectual Jesse Norman, and Rory Stewart, once a tutor to princes William and Harry. The ranks will also include at least two alumni of Harrow, and three from Radley College, along with old boys and girls from Highgate, Millfield, Winchester, Charterhouse, Stowe and Roedean.

To which the question the Parallax Brief asks is, so what?

The Guardian report laments the lack of representation, arguing that Dave has been at pains to try to sculpt a “Conservative parliamentary party that looked more like Britain”. Why should it look more like Britain in terms of gender and ethnicity, the Guardian’s argument goes, but not in terms of education?

Two points. First, the Parallax Brief has already gone on record in saying that discrimination of any kind, even that favouring those who must struggle harder in life to achieve because of a variety of social and educational disadvantages, is morally wrong. He has nothing more to add to that other than to say that beyond the moral scope, it is surely the case that favouring comprehensively educated candidates will be a horrendous, asinine example of simply treating the symptoms of the disease rather than the illness itself. The real problem is social mobility, and having more comprehensively educated candidates in the Parliamentary Conservative Party will contribute exactly nothing to the cause of creating true meritocracy in the United Kingdom.

Second, what would really be best for the country would be having the best people for the job representing their constituency in Parliament. Jesse Norman and Zac Goldsmith will surely add to the intellectual vigour of the Parliamentary Conservative Party and the Commons. Why should the location of their education matter?

The Guardian is right to point out that the system could be changed to improve social mobility. One of the examples it gives is that many parliamentary and public policy interns, a surefire — and perhaps these days compulsory – route into Parliament, remain unpaid, which genuinely excludes the less wealthy. That’s a commonsense proposal that Parallax Brief could get behind — Choosing MPs based on anything other than calibre and popular vote, on the other hand, is nonsensical and something he can’t support on any terms.

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Categories [ UK Politics ]

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Tory EuroFissure: French Government Lashes Out at “Autistic” Tory EU Plans

November 5th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

If there was any reason to doubt the egregiousness of the euroscpetic view that the major repatriation of powers, or even the post-facto nullification of the Lisbon Treaty if a referendum returned a no vote, would not lead to the mother of all diplomatic rows with Europe, last night should have dispelled any doubts, as the French government lashed out at the mere prospect of such steps.

According to the Guardian, France’s Europe minister, Pierre Lellouche, accused the Conservative Party of “castrating” Britain’s position within the EU by adopting an “autistic” approach to European relations and policy.

“It’s pathetic. It’s just very sad to see Britain, so important in Europe, just cutting itself out from the rest and disappearing from the radar map …. This is a culture of opposition … It is the result of a long period of opposition. I know they will come back, but I hope the trip will be short.”

“They are doing what they have done in the European parliament. They have essentially castrated your UK influence in the European parliament.”

The Guardian also reports that Lellouche said he has told Hague personally that his position was a “waste of time for all of us”.

The Parallax Brief is particularly interested in this point, as it provides some indication of just how difficult any negotiations with the EU will be for William Hague and David Cameron. How much compromise will Britain have to make? What will it have to give in return? And, most important, what compromise will his own party members, for many of whom all-out diplomatic war with the EU, far from being something to avoid, would likely be welcomed as an opportunity to reset Britain’s position in Europe altogether.

The Parallax Brief asks the question again: Can Cameron offer the Eurosceptic wing of his party enough red meat to satiate their appetite for a major recalibration of Britain’s EU relations without boxing himself into a corner where a major blow up with our EU partners becomes inevitable?

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Categories [ International Affairs, Tory EuroFissure, UK Politics ]

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Tory Eurofissure: Dan Hannan Resigns Post in Lisbon Protest

November 5th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

Daniel Hannan, Conservative Party MEP for South East England, has resigned his post as party European legal spokesman in protest at Conservative leader David Cameron’s decision to recant from his promise to hold a referendum on the ratification of the Lisbon treaty. Mr. Hannan has become an immensely popular figure within Tory circles, due to his hit book, The Plan:12 months to renew Britain, uber-Eurosceptic views, and sharp, Labour-baiting tongue.

Recently the Parallax Brief has focused on the idea that only the Conservative Party can stop the Conservative Party from winning the next election, and it is the fissures that run internally — especially the intra-Tory split on Europe — which have the potential to derail the Tory locomotive which has hitherto appeared unstoppable as on its way to an election victory.

Indeed, the Parallax Brief believes that in the event of another election loss, hung parliament of slim majority, the Euro issue has the potential to become the kind of issue that might see the Conservative Party split altogether in the way Shirley Williams, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Bill Rogers broke away from Labour to form the SDP in the early eighties.

The Eurosceptic branch of the Conservative Party simply does not see how the ratification of the Lisbon treaty makes a referendum any less feasible. They accept that it would lead to far greater diplomatic problems with the EU, but given that most want a vastly restructured relationship with Brussels, this is no concern.

Cameron must tread carefully if he is to offer these absolutists enough red meat to satiate their appetite for a showdown with the EU, while not enraging the europhile wing of his party by backing himself into a corner from which he is obliged to roll back Britain’s relationship with the rest of the EU.

The previous assumption had been that Tory MPs would hold their tongues and maintain discipline as long as it looked as long as the party was successful. But Mr. Hannan’s resignation and call to arms might suggest otherwise.

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Categories [ International Affairs, Tory EuroFissure, UK Politics ]

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Tory EuroFissure: Lisbon Ruptures Party Discipline

November 4th, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

The Parallax Brief maintains that the only party that can stop the Conservative Party winning the next election is the Conservative Party. Labour has been in power too long, the economy is in too much of a mess, and its poll figures have stubbornly refused to budge for too long to imagine that Gordon Brown can work out a way to get himself back into 10 Downing Street next spring or summer.

But the Tories can defeat themselves.

Offering hope to Labour are the classic fissures within the broad church of the Conservative Party, and primary among those is Europe. David Cameron has hitherto kept the Eurosceptic monster placated by promising a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. It was his cast iron guarantee, but one — which most fail to realise — that was more for his own party than for voters. And the ratification of Lisbon makes that cast iron guarantee meaningless unless Dave has the stomach for all out diplomatic war with Brussels. Which he doesn’t.

Already the Europhobes are up in arms. David Davis is openly challenging Dave’s authority by demanding a referendum on Britain’s future relationship with the EU. Dan Hannan is using Orwellian language (”the boot continues to stamp on the human face”) while arguing that “referendum shouldn’t be dependent on what happens in other countries.” Meantime, Barry Legg, co-founder of the cross party ultra-sceptic Bruges Group, and former Tory chief exec tells David Cameron that he “needs to come clean with the British people: why is he breaking his pledge to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty? What is the point in David Cameron upending one pledge on Europe, but promising he’ll offer us yet more European promises in his general election manifesto? Why will they be any more credible than the ‘cast-iron guarantee’ he has just broken?”

Worse, Dave has a second front to fight on, as the UKIP use his referendum climbdown to make hay, branding David Cameron as “gutless and dishonest.” If the Tories aren’t careful, they cold perhaps see the traditional conservative vote split by the UKIP in certain seats.

Make no mistake, Lisbon ratification is a gift for Labour. Can it capitalize?

Probably the answer to that question lies in whether David Cameron can maintain public unity within his party. But, certainly, the abandonment of the referendum guarantee has awoken powerful forces within the Conservative Party that will not be easily silenced without enraging the pro-Europe wing of the party.

Can Cameron shut his Pandora’s Box?

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Categories [ International Affairs ]

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Tory EuroFissure: Was Heseltine a Stalking Horse?

November 3rd, 2009 by The Parallax Brief

As mentioned in the previous post, on TrussGate, the Parallax Brief thinks it’s pretty obvious that from here on in the election is there for the Conservative Party to win. From this position, only they can lose it. Labour has been in power too long and the economy and public finances are in too much of a mess for Brown and Mandelson to hope to win by communicating a positive narrative about their vision for the future of the country. What they can (and likely will) do, however, is take the Karl Rove route and hammer away at Tory stereotypes (which is why Cameron must deal adroitly with TrussGate), and traditional fissures, the primary of which is Europe.

The Parallax Brief actually believes that so bad are the divisions on Europe that the Conservative Party has an (albeit incredibly small) chance of splitting on the matter.

Make no mistake, Mandelson will be leveraging at those cracks with everything he can muster every single day.

Cameron will have to, like Blair with the left wing of his party, keep iron discipline between now and summer 2010.

Which is why it was a great surprise for the Parallax Brief to see Michael Heseltine out of his iron lung and in front of a microphone complaining about David Cameron’s Eurosceptic decision to move the European Parliamentary Conservative Party away from the mainstream centre.

The only explanation the Parallax Brief can think of is that the more Europhile of the Conservative Party have tired of the Eurosceptics of the Telegraph and ConservativeHome dominating the intra-Tory debate from an anti-Europe platform, but are mindful of the wrath they would incur for opening up the party’s vulnerable European underbelly to the media. In such a scenario, Heseltine, with weight of reputation behind him but not beholden to the CCHQ mafia, would make the ideal stalking horse.

And perhaps he has. Certainly, it seems unlikely that this was a lone gunman case, something like the Last Temptation of Tarzan. Clearly, now that Lisbon looks as if it will be ratified by the Czech Republic, Mr Cameron and William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, will have some tough choices to make, and it seems that the lobbyists on both sides of the argument are gearing up for the fight.

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Categories [ International Affairs, UK Politics ]

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