The Bewilderness

Consumer Blues

Whilst Blair basks in his own halo, the economic driver of his good fortune, the British consumer, is finally pushed beyond endurance.

Economists said the CBI survey made grim reading. Howard Archer, of Global Insight, said: "The survey is disturbingly weak and will heighten concern that the slowdown in consumer spending is firmly entrenched." The survey has raised City expectations of further interest rate cuts.

Consumers have been squeezed by the series of rate rises before last month's cut; rising utility bills; council tax rises, and the housing slowdown. But sliding sales are not the sector's only problem: costs are soaring. House of Fraser's finance director, David Adams, said the chain this year faced a 4% rise in rents; a 6% rates rise, and utility bills more than 5% up on a year ago.

There is also pressure on wages - led by a rise in the minimum national wage next month - and big increases in distribution costs due to higher oil prices. Last week Tesco said steeper oil prices would cost it £60m - and pile further pressure on consumers to curb spending.

Britain appears to be more vulnerable to increases in oil prices than other economies, due to the rise in taxes and wages. If this translates into a fall in living standards, Labour's primary support, economic well-being, will erode very rapidly, as Blair's boast of stability is revealed as stagnation.

Four More Years, God Help Us!

Some have noted the authoritarian slant of Blair's speech, with its emphasis on security rather than protecting the individual. Others have considered his emphasis on public services to be a precursor of vouchers.

My own scepticism concerning the ability of Blair to deliver on public service reform is warranted following seven years of failure. Breaking the pattern of micro-management and centralisation is probably beyond the powers of this government, given that such strategies form the base of their political model. The whole tenor of the speech is arrogant and triumphalist, in a manner that would have been attacked in a vitriolic manner if spoken by Thatcher.

Only one Chancellor to have delivered that economic record: this one. Only one cabinet to have delivered these changes: this one. Only one government to do it all: your third term Labour government.

By the end of 2008, for the first time in decades, Britain will be investing twice as much in our schoolchildren and three times as much in the NHS than 10 years before. Only a Labour government would have done it. No government but a Labour one would have introduced the New Deal and given 1 million young people the chance of a decent job. Only a Labour government would have stopped the scandal of pensioner poverty or introduced the winter fuel allowance.

Only a Labour government would have made a record increase to child benefit or made Sure Start a vital part of some of the poorest communities in the country. Only a Labour government would ever have brought in a minimum wage, and increased it, and made it such a part of our national life that no Tory will ever dare or even threaten to get rid of it.

Even stranger is his secret dream that Seb Coe was London mayor, and Europe was towed away:

And let me tell you what won the bid. Yes, we had a magnificent team led by Seb Coe, a great London mayor who backed it to the hilt, a country behind us.

This is a country today that increasingly sets the standard: not for us the malaise of France or the angst of Germany. It's a national pastime to run ourselves down, so occasionally it's worth saying: Britain is a great country and we are proud of it.

Ever the conspiratorialist, I wondered about the (very convenient) timing of the IRA's disarmament, and the top billing that the event received in the speech.

Amid all the change and progress since our first election victory, it was interesting to see in the film there the pictures of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998, and then finally, yesterday, the completion of IRA decommissioning.

And there is a lesson from Northern Ireland: nothing good comes easy. And in government, whatever the noise around you, you just have to persevere with the things that really matter. The question now: how do we secure the future for our party and for our country? The answer lies in understanding why we can celebrate these victories.

How about this for complete insouciance (as if the last seven years were a mere bagatelle):

Let's be frank about why so many people are on incapacity benefit: under the Tories it was used to conceal unemployment. Next month we will publish proposals radically to reform the benefit for the future and help people who can work back into the workforce, where they belong.

The whole speech demonstrates that Blair has regained his self-confidence and self-belief. More worrying, he appears to believe his own hype. We face four more years of the same whilst he mouths 'change', 'progress' and '21st century'. He states that he prefers "strategic government" to "big government", although he has presided over the biggest expansion of public services.

Whilst the poor pay more tax, Blair has the gall to state that he would prefer a one party state:

In government, we can change lives. When I listened on Sunday to the tributes to Jim Callaghan, I recalled the 90th birthday party we gave for him in Downing Street a few years back

Around the room: Denis Healey talking to Roy Jenkins; Tony Benn with Shirley Williams. Michael Foot, Jack Jones. What brilliance; and what a pity. Because the seeds of 18 years of opposition were not sown in 1979, but in the 1960s, when great challenges came upon us. And instead of understanding we were simply being tested by the forces of change, we lived out a sad episode of charges of betrayal, questioning integrity and motives.

They were great people. But we were not ready then to see change was coming, accept it and then shape it to progressive ends. United, we should have been the advocates of economic and industrial change in the changing world. And if we had been, how many fewer lives would have been destroyed? How much harsh and bitter medicine for some of the poorest in our society might have been avoided?

People suffered in those 18 years because we let them down. We did so not because we meant to, but because we forgot that the first rule of any party with aspirations to government is to understand first the aspirations of people and how they change with time.

Pride goeth before a fall.

Basra, Balaclavas and Ballots

Questions must be asked about how far the Ministry of Defence and Blair's own political needs micromanaged the role of the British Army in southern Iraq. That a political dimension to the deployment exists is clear: the strong opposition to Iraq, especially on the Left and the Muslim community, was an influence before the general election. The government needed to avoid the appearance of a quagmire or British soldiers needlessly dying.

The presentation of British deployment was handled skilfully and engaged a number of different constituencies. Soldiers were placed on trial in British courts for serious offences if they were accused of murder or other actions that could be interpreted as war crimes. The military criminal justice system was dispensed with as the government wanted to demonstrate to prospective and actual supporters that all accused of war crimes would be put on trial. This political need outweighed the morale of the soldiers in Iraq.

More damaging was the unwillingness of the government to sanction the strong and sharp use of force when appropriate to ensure that local gangs and militias did not dominate the local provinces. The need to avoid casualties ensured that the  militias were provided with space in which to establish local power structures, and subvert the embryonic local democratic structures that Blair proclaimed as our objective.

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian points out that authority was required for stabilisation in Iraq and argues that the presence of British troops has prevented local power structures from maturing:

There are nothing like enough foreign troops to prevent civil war. Yet their presence is enough to deny other sources of authority space to emerge. In the south such authority must mean the Shia clerics, probably under Sciri leadership. Only this is likely to end the chaos on display last week in Basra. It alone will curb the feuding Badr brigades and Mahdi army, and such shadowy groups as al-Fartusi's irregulars. The alternative is more of the present, Iraq as a proxy battleground of Iranian factions.

The opposite argument can be presented. If the British government had shown the necessary force to curb Shi'a militias that used threats and violence to maintain and extend their power, then political space may have opened up to allow the emergence of more moderate and democratic voices. As a counterfactual, any representative institutions in southern Iraq would have fallen under the influence of the Shi'a clergy, but the worst-case scenario of militia dominance could have been avoided. As it is, local elites are not accountable to their voters, but to the men who hold the guns.

Simon Jenkins also states that withdrawal would blunt Iranian expansionism.

Meanwhile, the longer we stay, the more fertile the soil for Iranian expansionism. Of all the ironies to result from this adventure, nothing would be more bizarre. We topple the Saddam we once backed against Iran's mullahs, only to hand his oil riches over to them after all, to be converted into nuclear weapons.

Iranian incursions into southern Iraq are subtle and elusive, designed to strengthen its factions and weaken the influence of the traditionalist clerics. Their long-term goal appears to be a weakened Iraqi ally that would never regain the power to invade, but it is doubtful that they would wish to add the Shi'a provinces to their territory. Such new territory would dilute Farsi dominance and undermine Persian claims to dominate Iraq, although the religious mullahs may view this strategy as a goal to block nationalist irredentism. The presence of British forces has not prevented the development of Iran's influence.

To conclude, there are clear parallels between the government's handling of armed terrorists in Northern Ireland and militias in southern Iraq. Instead of stamping their authority in order to provide clear rules that favoured disarmament, the government feared to engage armed groups and preferred to allow representative institutions to develop that could be held to ransom by the Armalite and the Kalashnikov. Domestic pressures for appeasement outweighed military objectives of a strong (and merciless) campaign to undercut the opponents of democracy.

The hallmark of this government is the appeasement of violence, as witnessed in Belfast and Basra. The United States must regret the decision to allow Blair's administration the 'zone' of southern Iraq, as, once again, the men of violence are not challenged or curbed.

The Long Haul Returns

It is unclear how decisions concerning Basra were decided between the Ministry of Defence, local forces and the  Iraqi representatives. The 'hearts and minds' approach where security has been mediated through local structures proved successful in stabilising the southern Shi'a sphere of Iraq despite occasional disturbances. The proof is the lack of an insurgency developing along the lines of the Sunni triangle.

However, there are vulnerabilities with the approach that the British forces have undertaken, vulnerabilities that have been reinforced by the decision to tolerate the existence of Shi'a militias. The Al-Sadr army and the Badr brigade have become local protection societies, overriding the traditional influence of the clerics. In a predictable development, militias have infiltrated the official  security services and have started targeting British reconnaisance in the area.

The actions of the militias are still a mystery. This challenge may be an attempt to cow the British forcse and hasten their withdrawal.  If so, it has failed. The Ministry of Defence is now determined to replace the police force in Basra and lengthen the period of deployment in order to ensure that the militias do not gain local dominance.

Reid ordered a root-and-branch review of security in the troubled province following last week's disastrous clashes between British troops and Iraqi police.

The violence has also led to the scrapping of a detailed plan that could have seen UK forces withdrawn by May next year. Instead, it now seems certain Prime Minister Tony Blair will have to keep British troops in the country until 2007 at the earliest.

The sudden U-turn on Britain's military commitment to Iraq has caused anger and despair in military circles. One former defence chief told Scotland on Sunday the Iraq expedition had been a "colossal political failure".

In comments that will pile pressure on Blair over his handling of the conflict, General Anthony Walker, a former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, told Scotland on Sunday: "The soldiers should have said to the politicians 'f*** this, we are not going into this conflict until you tell us how you are going to deal with this country once we have won you the war'.

These developments have to be linked with the extremist stance of the Iranian government, who have extended their influence  in the post-Saddam environment.  Most of the Iraqi  Shi'as  are unwilling to  consider Iranian dominance  but they accept Shi'a help in order to shorten the occupation and assert majority rule. Given the example of the Iranian majlis, Shi'as view democratisation as a guarantor of their power.

The Iranians have overextended their hand and played a round too early. Aware of Saudi concerns over Iranian influence and unwilling to provide a haven for terrorist activities, the British have now had to ensure that the local security forces are restructured on a more robust footing. This increases the probability that Britain has to scale down any reinforcements for Afghanistan or seriously tackle the problems of overstretch.

The Duff-Voggenhuber Masterplan

Euractiv is still giving free publicity to the European Parliament's campaign to revive the constitution. This was detailed in an earlier post but the source of this movement, the Greens and the Liberals, has criticised Barroso for a lack of leadership.

Duff said the "steely determination" of the  EP would only grow. He critised the French and Dutch political leaders for having done a bad job of winning their voters for the Constitution. "The campaigns were poorly prepared, and poorly executed. They should be seen as rehearsals. Practice makes perfect," he said leading on to the Duff-Voggenhuber masterplan.

How sad that a Liberal Democrat does not understand the meanings of the words he supposedly represents.

Types of Failure

All state structures contain the seeds of failure, but the methods of failure are mediated by the local contexts of history and culture. Martin Kettle points out that the long-term trend towards centralisation in Whitehall, accelerated under Blair, has the style of an ad-hocracy, with policy accretions and institutions designed to resolve particular problems.

Part of the answer lies in the historical peculiarity of modern Britain. We have been through a lot in the last quarter century. Our individualistic culture, our weakened institutions and our class and cultural divides - both the cause and the effect of Thatcherism - give this country a distinctive, disorganised and ad hoc quality which, while not without attractions and advantages, would tax the ability of any better-ordered government to master. That is why we've never been the consensual social-democratic Sweden that Robert Taylor hymns in a new Compass pamphlet. But it is also why the import of individualistic American prescriptions does not work either.

Britain's complexity is not unique. Complexity is a condition of all modern societies and systems, private as well as public. You cannot always pull a lever at the centre and know what the effect will be at the grassroots. But politicians can see when something isn't working. The big divide is between foolish ones, who think that the response to failure must be to micro-manage everything more ferociously that ever, and smart ones, who recognise that, having invested and tried to ensure that the country was getting something for its money, the big challenge now is to let go. That's why one of the new big ideas in Whitehall is to let systems become self-sustaining.

There is hope, but it will take some time before Whitehall remembers that smaller is better.

For Whitehall watchers, Kettle also recommends the forthcoming reform pamphlet by Sir Christopher Foster, "Why Are We So Badly Governed?"

Bliar Bullshit

Blair, interviewed by Andrew Marr, as a pre-conference warm-up for Brown, told us that he hoped public sector services would be so good that individuals and families would not need to seek alternatives.

As state monopolies are socially embedded failures, his Chancellor has opted for Plan B: tax us into the earth so we cannot afford alternatives.

Nice one, Bliar

How the government targeted absenteeism and increased truancy

The Blair administration has returned to the mercantilist staple of economic competitiveness in order to justify the centralisation of policy with regards to education. Whilst this justification shares a discourse  with the Thatcherite wing of the Tories, the tired refrain is a standard of governments that wish to legitimate their policies. The latest incarnation has taken micromanagement with its centralised demands for information and structured results to a more controlled stage than any previous government.

As an example, we can look at the recent statistical release from the Department of Education and Skills measuring truancy. These are placed in three categories as unauthorised absences, authorised absences and total absences:

The information is based on data collected from the absence in school returns and is currently in the process of being checked by schools as part of the Achievement and Attainment tables exercise. This will contain statistics of authorised, unauthorised and total absences in maintained primary and maintained secondary schools analysed by Local Authority and Government Office Regions, together with a time series by main school type for all absences, authorised and unauthorised.

These statistics are located in Education and Skills, subcategory: School welfare, behaviour and attendance.

Having obtained this information (with its accuracy open to question) and identified 'problems', the government has to establish policies that will resolve these. Therefore, the latest press release from Jacqui Smith identifies 8,000 'serial truants'. Their parents are required to sign parental contracts and join a 'Fast Track to Attendance' program in order to ensure that their children attend. To reach the targets set by the centre, local education authorities are provided with powers and policies that coerce parents into sending their children to school, irrespective of the problems that the child may face. For example, a proportion of absenteeism is caused by those who are bullied in school, when security in these establishments is notably worse than it used to be. Forcing parents to send their children back to a school that they fear is a cruel act, one that only a bureaucracy obsessed with figures could achieve.

Annual attendance data published today for 2004/05 shows that overall school attendance continues to rise and has reached a new record level, with 8,000 more pupils regularly attending school every day in the previous year - 50,000 more than in 1996/97.

Working with schools and local education authorities, the Government’s drive to improve school attendance has led to the fourth annual consecutive fall in the number of absences such as medical appointments or family holidays which are agreed by schools. These authorised absences, which account for 4 out of 5 days missed from schools have reduced by over 1.5 million days - equivalent to 12,500 more pupils in school every day in 2004/05.

At the same time there has been a rise in the number of unauthorised absences which account for 1 in 5 days missed from schools, increasing by 875,000 days - equivalent to 4,500 more pupils out of school every day in 2004/05.

As the grey language of the press release states, law-abiding parents have been coerced into reducing their 'authorised absences', although since these are agreed, they presumably should not count anyway. Truancy, or its euphemism, 'unauthorised absences' has risen. Truancy accounts for a fifth of all absences and, if one checks the relevant spreadsheet, we can see, unspoken, that 'unauthorised absences' increased by nearly ten percent between 2003/4 and 2004/5 (Excel spreadsheet).

The data indicates that in order to reach their targets for absenteeism local authorities have coerced those who follow the rules whilst neglecting the very individuals who may require help with their schooling. Another example of how bureaucracies set incentives for problems and then fail those who most need help.

Ian Blair reads 2000AD

We know that it took Ian Blair a day to find out that an innocent man was killed by his officers. We know that he foresees little difficulty in retraining ex-soldiers to act as armed police officers, accelerating the trend towards paramilitary forces in British cities.

Sir Ian's suggestion that soldiers could be used as firearm officers is specially controversial after the shooting in London in July of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician mistaken for a suicide bomber the day after the failed July 21 attacks.

A Scotland Yard spokesman later said that retiring servicemen were just one group with pre-existing skills that could be hired on short-term contracts to allow police officers to focus on core policing activities. "It is absolutely not about hiring in soldiers for use on London’s streets," the spokesman said.

We also know that, infected by memes of 'command and control', he wishes to shortcircuit archaic constitutional liberties that protect the individual, reduce the accountability of the police and  give them additional quasi-judicial powers:

Radical proposals for a new breed of supercop with on-the-spot powers to confiscate driving licences and issue Anti-Social Behaviour Orders have been put forward by Britain's top policeman.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, whose proposals were backed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), admitted allowing officers to impose instant punishments could blur the line between police and magistrates.....

Director of civil rights group Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, accused the Commissioner of behaving like Judge Dredd, the post-apocalyptic policeman-come-executioner in British comic 2000AD, whose catchphrase is "I am the law".

Ian Blair stated that he thought of resigning (as if it were a particularly hard day at the office?) :

However, he told Mr Sakur he did not come "very close at all" to quitting. "Because the big job is to defend this country against terrorism and that's what I'm here to do." He added it would not have been right for the force, "the country or the city of London" for him to resign.

Yes it would.

Eurocon Revamped

There is a danger if the objectives of federalist activists are not publicised. Their ideas are public flags, no doubt agreed with that sympathetic wing of the Commission, to see if their institutional support in Brussels will break the stasis gripping the European Council. A grave precedent is the willingness of federalists to abandon the Constitutional text and extract those structures which could provide a suitable 'solution' to deadlock and economic crisis. This effort has been launched by Euro-MPs, giving their reforms a self-styled veneer of democratic legitimacy:

Initial treaty
Under these ideas, there would be an initial treaty next year containing all points of the constitution that are not considered disputed.

UK liberal MEP Andrew Duff, one of the report's authors, told the EUobserver, that it could contain articles dealing with the institutions and the decision-making process - he suggested these are areas where there is broad consensus.

This initial treaty could then be agreed by the European and 25 national parliaments.

If this report is completed by the end of the year, Duff is calling for the initial treaty to be agreed by a European wide vote in 2009.

EU-wide referendum in 2009
The convention method was used to draw up the now-rejected EU constitution - and the precise issues highlighted by Mr Duff were among the ones that were most contested in the 16-month process.

The two MEPs envision that this definitive treaty, which has taken into account the concerns expressed by French and Dutch voters, would be ratified by popular vote across the EU on the same day as the European election in 2009.

Why does one anticipate that ratification would be agreed, by treaty, at an EU-wide rather than at a national level, outflanking problematic national vetoes? We can expect to see more piecemeal efforts, cannibalising the Constitution to advance the federalist cause. For now, the European Parliament has opted for the archbishop's hat, and strikes a pose as kingmaker to dispel rumours of utter irrelevancy and stinking corruption.