The Bewilderness

Wriggling on Abrahams hook

The electoral fraud carried out within the Labour party funding structure has been scrutinised with some intensity by newspapers and their blogs. There is another post on the alignment of the mainstream media with the blogosphere, but that is another story. What is clear, from the Mendelsohn episode, is that the handling has been clumsy and has left Brown open to criticism.

Cameron was unable to land many blows during Prime Ministers Questions yesterday, as his forensic questioning was constrained by the necessity of avoiding party political issues. Clegg scored a better line, yet the knockabout atmosphere let Brown off the hook.
 
For Labour, blows in Parliament are secondary to the systemic corruption that is creeping out. Whilst Brown's rhetoric tried to extend this to the issue of 'party political funding', it is Labour that have attracted public attention and opprobrium. They have endured the police investigation in cash for honours. They have set up an internal inquiry that, percieved with a pro-party bias from the start, reports to one of the politicians implicated in the scandal. Brown now states that another police investigation can only take best at the behest of the Electoral Commission. Really?

Four days in and the government appears to wriggle. More facts are coming out that contradict earlier statements. Not much is clearer, except the attempt of the Labour Party to plead that it is being honest, whilst trying to avoid hard questions.

Too late.

Brown says sorry

Brown says sorry very well and one wonders if the media narrative may now shift from savaging to pity. Personally, I would let the dogs lose. Mea culpa and apologising may deflect blame. After all, the doctor of spin defined the 'masochist strategy' as an escape when there was no other excuse. When we can see this, the appearance of apology stems from a government that ran out of excuses.

The latest revelation over party funding is not surprising. Like the case of Customs and Revenue, the narrative of incompetence is informed by a history of systemic failure. Party funding by Labour is permeated with practices that avoided the strict rules on transparency that they promoted.  Brown's major motivation is to shovel the toxic waste of such revelations onto the shoulders of his predecessor. We have seen some attempts from sympathetic ears in the media to downplay powerful evidence of lawbreaking and argue that these are the coda of the Blair years.

For the general populace, discs and data are more important that man in a van and Identity theft. The Tories can link the problems of identity, since Labour seem unable to identify their own donors, let alone those on child benefit. Perhaps that is why they need ID cards: to make sure that they stick to the rules.

The failure of political donation

A north-eastern businessman wished to protect his identity as giving to political parties is now viewed like leprosy. His route was opaque and unclear, possibly falling foul of the law, if the source of the funding was not clear.

Labour instantly fell on its sword promising full co-operation and an internal inquiry. Its due diligence appears to be lacking. Yet, private funding is preferable to public: whether small donations, time, trade unions or tycoons. Yet, we see a large donations from the wealthy tarred with the smear of 'interest' whereas trade union donations are left unscrutinised.

The coverage and debate on political funding in this country is dishonest, unbalanced and tarnished by the disillusionment with the political class. To avoid further stories, the parties will opt for state funding: robbing us for their benefit.

Missile defence upgrade at menwith

The government is criticised for not allowing any parliamentary debate on the upgrade of the 'not-so-secret' Menwith Hill base by the United States as part of their missile defence system. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has drawn attention to the timing of this announcement: on the last day of Parliament.

The all-party Commons foreign affairs select committee criticised the "manner and timing" of the announcement of approval of an American request to use the secret base at Menwith, North Yorkshire.

The defence secretary, Des Browne, made his decision public on July 25, a day before the start of the parliamentary summer break. Less than two months before, on June 4, the government had reported that the "discussions are at an early stage and there are no formal proposals".

The government is reluctant to open up aspects of its most important alliance to free and frank debate in front of a rebellious Labour party. The strong reservoir of anti-American ideology is coupled with a predilection for revolting that surpasses even the Tory party.

Brown's data defences breached

Brown's only response to the data protection crisis was apology in the hope that it would go away. This masochistic regime was necessary to limit the damage caused to that most dangerous of constituencies: parents with families. It only needs one paedophile....

That strategy has now begun to unravel. Politicians give firm statements when matters are uncertain or they will lose face. Yet, they lose face anyway.

During his time as Chancellor, the Treasury and other departments     were told repeatedly that slack practices among officials created a     serious risk of confidential information falling into the wrong hands.

     Only a few weeks ago, the Government insisted the current     enforcement regime for data protection was "fit for     purpose" - despite a Lords committee warning over the summer     that steps needed to be taken to improve it.

As the scandal over the loss of 25 million personal records     escalated, the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was accused of     misleading parliament by saying a "junior official" at HM     Revenue and Customs was to blame for the loss of the data, whereas     email evidence shows he was told two senior managers had authorised     the procedure.

He was also said to have misled MPs over the reason he delayed     announcing the loss of the child benefit records for 10 days.

Brown is now in a dangerous position. Darling's defence, duplicated in Prime Minister's Questions, has begun to unravel. Pinning the breach on procedural observance strikes many as an attempt to ringfence this event from a larger pattern of data failures. Ministers are then forced into the wierder position of defending ID cards on the grounds that they will be safe due to  biometrics. Their plausibility shredded: individuals will be compelled to give information to a government that they cannot trust.

The unravelling of responsibility goes further. If Brown did not act on earlier warnings, his own role as Chancellor is reopened. And the ten years that dare not speak their name are the rod that strikes Brown's back: chickens, roosting and so on and so forth.

The voice of the street

One must wonder if Jimmy McGovern was looking for some support in his puerile and crass response to the award of an Emmy for his show, "The Street". It is customary and mannered to demonstrate an appropriate level of gratitude for recognition of your achievement. The rejection of the award, on the grounds of cultural imperialism, could be construed as ingratitude. More bizarre was the incoherence of McGovern's response.

He has no axe to grind against individual Americans, the starting let-out clause before any aggrieved luvvie can stereotype and characterise a hated enemy such as Whites or the United States of America, Israel and so on.

He added: "I hate what they have done to the world. I was in New York at the outbreak of this war in Iraq. I know that more than half of New York was opposed to this stupid, futile war, so I'm not condemning all Americans, but any award is tinged with that regret. The US foreign policy takes the shine off any award."

This tired refrain, a natural knee-jerk announcement, becomes more laughable when we see that the Emmy is awarded by predominantly non-US citizens. Is it then the very existence of a US award that bugs Mr McGovern? The assertion that he knows New York (a symbol of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan un-American city) and that those Americans who agree with him do not need dserve condemnation. Underneath this statement is a solidified orthodoxy, reasoned debate exits right as the curtains of moral condemnation come down. His unoriginal thinking in politics is then released to the press as a signal of his concern.

But the veteran Liverpudlian scriptwriter, whose work includes Cracker and Brookside, remained unmoved by the accolade. "I'd sooner win a Bafta," he said. "It's nice to win, but I've got a wee bit sick of American cultural imperialism. Should we really give a damn about what they think about our culture?".....

It is no surprise that the Independent gave McGovern a voice. We know that  the Americans will probably laugh at his stance and  no-one else  really cares. Why give him the attention? Just to show that old attitudes on anti-Americanism are losing their power

Comrade Bob saves the day

News from the bunker...Mugabe foils UK invasion ++++more to follow

Fearsome patriotic Zimbabwean forces today foiled spying attempts from Britain killing thousands of squirrels attempting to destroy our groundnut schemes.

Further inquests question government

Another inquest, another demand for government representation due to possible supply flaws:

Flt Lt David Stead was one of 10 servicemen killed when the RAF Hercules he was flying was shot down near Baghdad in January 2005.

His father, Richard, said at a hearing that the families wanted to question a Government representative, preferably the Defence Secretary, on press reports that foam which could have prevented the crash had not been fitted to the plane because of the cost.

Similar aircraft owned by the US Air Force are fitted with the foam, which stops the fuel igniting if tanks are shot.

Richard Stead wishes to hold someone to account. No-one in this government is willing to stand up and face the families of those they sent to die.

Calamity Clinton and Barmy Obama

Were the Democrats jealous of their British namesakes, the Liberal Democrats?

Relations between the Democratic presidential nomination frontrunners Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have deteriorated markedly after Obama's team condemned as "slime politics" a reported personal slur from the Clinton camp.

We await a briefing on Calamity Clinton and a paper on Barmy Obama.

Liberal Democrat chiefs are today considering whether to take action against leadership contender Chris Huhne over a campaign document describing his rival as "Calamity Clegg".

Nick Clegg's team lodged an official complaint with the party's chief whip yesterday after Huhne's camp issued the briefing note.

Balkan headaches

One of the chickens that Clinton and Blair concocted as the first lesson of liberal internationalism are now coming home to roost. The international community has proven that soft power is little more than justification for another form of colonialism.

Britain and the United States would prefer Kosovar independence to be channelled through the United Nations, but their time has run out. The European Union just dickers. Now that the Democratic Party of the geurilla leader, Hashim Thaci, has won an election, a unilateral declaration of independence will follow shortly. We can see how this might play:

Belgrade, for its part, is warning that independence for Kosovo would mark the first stage of further disintegration of the Balkans, starting with Kosovo itself, as the Serbs in the north break away to join Serbia proper, followed by a similar move by the Bosnian Serb republic in Bosnia.

Kosovo is looming to be a major foreign policy headache for the EU, which is anxious to avoid a repeat of the dilemma it faced in the 1990s, when internal splits over how to deal with the Balkan wars showed its ineffectiveness in forging an effective foreign policy.

"This is a European challenge. It is not one we can ask the United States to solve for us," [Britain's Minister for Europe, Jim Murphy] Murphy said.

Events will undoubtedly propel Murphy's sentiment into deserved oblivion. The wider context of Russian influence in the Balkans and Serbia's repositioning as their client state bodes badly for renewed stability in the medium term. The United States should stand idly by and wait for the Europeans to **ck up.