The Bewilderness

BNP dogwhistle is now highpitched and heard

There is little surprise. Yougov shows that overt support for the BNP has risen: the usual response to increased publicity. It has also given us a snapshot of its sympathetic constituency and the dividing line between two camps. Labels are difficult to devise for these though Labour would say 'racist' and 'non-racist', an inaccurate response to the poll.

The survey found that 22 per cent of voters would “seriously consider” voting for the BNP in a future local, general or European election. This included four per cent who said they would “definitely” consider voting for the party, three per cent who would “probably” consider it, and 15 per cent who said they were “possible” BNP voters....

More than half of those questioned said they agreed with the BNP, or thought that it “had a point” in wishing to “speak up for the interests of the indigenous, white British people ... which successive governments have done far too little to protect.”

This included 43 per cent who said that, while they shared some of its concerns, they had “no sympathy for the party itself”.

Arguments on what have caused the rise of the BNP are a blame game for the political class and an evasive tactic to avoid engagement. With such a wide constituency, the political party that can harness these sentiments with some authenticity will reap an electoral harvest and again sideline the dogwhistle role that the BNP has established for itself.

Labour will not be that party after a former policy adviser stated that it was a policy, without legitimacy, to use mass immigration as a tool for a diversifying Britain and creating a left-wing client bank for socialism.

Labour encouraged mass immigration to help socially engineer a “multicultural” country and to try to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”, according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair.

Le Pen or the road to Spode?

When watching the Question Time debacle last night, the whole disaster was a mistake. By concentrating on Griffin, the man was given a platform. Through continuous attacks by all other parties, his role as underdog and outsider was assured. Griffin may have appeared weird and Janus-faced in his dogwhistling, but his sentences were addressed to the television audience, not the left-liberal attack dogs.

Griffin was described as a “wolf in sheep's clothing”. Perhaps, but it was a pitch to mythically migrate to the mainstream: acknowledge the past and appeal to a wider audience. Will this work?

In 1984, the French National Front (FN) leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, below, appeared on the TV show L’Heure de Vérité (the Hour of Truth). At the time, the FN was largely boycotted by mainstream media, and electorally irrelevant.

Mr Le Pen’s appearance provoked intense opposition, but he later described it as “the hour that changed everything”.

He performed well, doing much to dispel his image as a drooling neo-Nazi: viewing figures were huge, and the FN claimed that its membership rose by 30,000.

In European elections later that year, the party won 2.2 million votes. Mr Griffin’s performance on Question Time and the public reaction to it, will determine whether, like Mr Le Pen, he joins “the big time”, or whether he goes down in history as just another Roderick Spode.

There are precedents, especially at a time when the whole political class is despised.

Brown's role reversal on the rule of law

If the Human Rights Act incorporated the Charter and the case law of the Strasbourg Court in statute law, then one wonders why there was a need to go back to the original court. This is the case with the retention of the DNA for those charged but not convicted. The situation does shine a light upon why 'human rights' has not curbed or constrained the actions of this authoritarian government. As a consequence, legal provisions have been dropped from the latest bill.

Is this a victory from human rights protestors, a breed apart from libertarians or civil libertarians? Or does this provide a salutary lesson in the breakdown of our rule of law?

Chief constables have already been warned by the Home Office to ignore the European court ruling and carry on adding the DNA profiles of the tens of thousands of people they arrest to the national database. But the further delay in clarifying the legal situation is likely to increase the possibility of a high court legal challenge from individuals who feel their DNA has been unlawfully kept.

As of now, it is unlawful to keep the DNA of citizens without a criminal record indefinitely, but that DNA is still being collected without a formal framework in statute law. The law has become a tool to retroactively justify and confirm state action.

An arid debate prevents a solution to terror

The government's approach to counter-intelligence has been counter-productive, in many cases. Laws that have been passed to combat extremism were used against peaceful protestors whereas jihadists are seen to incite violence with impunity. Trapped by the arbitrary and inconsistent nature of their own laws, is it any wonder that the government is now charged with establishing a spying programme that targets the innocent though its key goal is preventing extremism.

The hearing follows a Guardian investigation that revealed allegations that the programme, whose public aim is to prevent Muslims from being lured into violent extremism, is being used to gather intelligence about innocent people not suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Information the authorities are trying to ascertain includes political and religious views, information on mental health and sexual activity and associates, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Other documents reveal that the intelligence and information could be stored until the people concerned reach the age of 100.

If these allegations are true, then the programme may have been distorted by the zeal with which government obtains personal information, without reason or use. However, the major accusation seems to be that the government was spying on Muslim communities, using the information obtained under this policy.

Liberty has argued that the collection of information is an abrogation of their right to privacy. They are right. Collecting aggregate data on Muslim communities as a form of profiling is not useful, except as a sociological exercise. And the resulting database would prove as error-prone and ineffective as similar government exercises.

This tells us that the intelligence campaigns undertaken by New Labour are laborious and useless. This does not dispel the need for surveillance on those suspects who could prove a threat to the general populace: hanging round radical preachers, belonging to the usual organisations, attendance at suspected madressehs in Pakistan, and so on. Identifying such potentials is important, so that a turn to jihadism can be monitored and prevented.

"It would be morally wrong of a taxpayer-funded programme designed to prevent terrorism if it was not designed to gather intelligence in order to stop that terrorism from happening.

"The alternative is to let the buggers do what they wish, until they appear on the violence radar, which is too late. If you are in the business of counterterrorism, you must want your intelligence services to know what is going on."

Ed Husain is not right as the two goals are probably incompatible. Other methods of obtaining intelligence are preferable. But any of the following, as the Tories propose, deserve attention:

The focus turned to hunting down terrorists, but now the debate focuses on whether any Islamist extremism, even behaviour falling well short of advocating violence, must be tackled.

The Conservatives are seriously considering adopting a new policy called Preventing Extremism.

Among those who would be considered extreme under those plans are those who advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries; those promoting Sharia law; and those who believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world.

This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military and those who fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.

It is not necessary to draw some false equation between liberty and security. Intelligence is required on those who are jihadist or are at suspicion of travelling down that fanatical path. Arguably, as soon as you take up a belief in actions that present a danger to the citizens of the United Kingdom through supporting or abetting terrorist action in this country, you become a viable target for surveillance. If there is sufficient evidence that have committed a crime, then you should be charged. This is not at variance with the laws of a liberal democracy.

It is an arid and incorrect debate that pits human rights against the security of the citizen. Robust defence of our liberties requires understanding and preventing jihadism. If New Labour had not traduced our values, we would not face such confusion on this issue.

Backbenchers place privilege before party

Gordon Brown faces a revolt on the backbenches. Understandably short on understanding propriety, they feel let down by the shop stewards they have appointed to defend their interests. So, they view the need to replace a failure and are emboldened by a rise in the polls as the electorate turns away from reality.

The Prime Minister was barracked at last week's stormy PLP meeting.

Disaffected MPs say Barry Sheerman, Parmjit Dhanda and Jane Kennedy are all under pressure from colleagues to put themselves forward to challenge Mr Lloyd for his job.

Mr Sheerman, the chairman of the schools select committee, has become an outspoken critic of Mr Brown, calling in June for him to step down and make way for a leader with a better chance of wining the next general election.

These disaffected ructions will explode over the next few days, as the Kelly report is submitted for debate.

Pakistani consensus falls away

The military campaign undertaken in southern Waziristan by the Pakistan army is a necessary measure. The elites have found that their social legitimacy has been undermined by the depredations of the Taliban, feeding upon a pre-revolutionary situation amongst the rural dispossessed. The link-up between the Waziristan cohorts and Punjabi elements was proved by the series of suicide bombings over the last fortnight.

The success or failure of this campaign is linked to the continual presence of NATO in Afghanistan. If the Pakistani elites prove incapable of defeating this insurgency in the tribal areas and overcoming radicalism in the heartlands of Punjab and the Sindh, then their country will shift to a new level of instability. Eric Margolies, in an op-ed, states that the actions of the United States have proved counter-productive in welding the military and the political elites. Some inaccurate reporting on US attempts to gain control of the Pakistan military is followed by speculation on a military coup.

Margolies is too certain for this uncertain environment, though he is one of the few to recognise the hugle level of anti-american sentiment in the country. The aid bill is not necessarily a channel for US control, though it is an obvious and overt conduit of influence. It exerts civilian control over the military and has led to disruption. Yet, the mishandling of Pakistan's internal affairs could prove disastrous for NATO.

Keynes runs with the bulls

Are the bears wrong? Every small setback is shrugged off, every small signal of economic growth is cheered onwards. The Dow has just broken the 10,000 barrier and new statistics indicate further growth.

Economies are always very hard to read, yet the had trends remain very uncomfortable for economic growth. Bullish analysts have little foundation for their sentiments, and rely on the thrust of fiscal stimuli to kickstart the economic engine.

Why should this offshoot of Keynesianism prove right now?

The SS arrivistes

A Forbes survey of the Singularity Summit is shallow in its survey, though every little publicity helps. Yet, the participants they quote show that the meme is widening as those with an interest attend to learn more:

So where's the money in AI? Over lunch on the first day, two London-based hedge fund managers said they'd flown in for the weekend just for the summit because the Singularity is vital to their work in long-term investments.

Can we get them to sponsor Humanity+?

LBW: Legg before whip edges brown offstump

This could be the crisis that spells the end of Gordon Brown's premiership and, perhaps, even propels an early election. Ever since Sir Thomas Legg carried out his urgent report, the rumblings of MPs have grown louder throughout the day at the expense of their leaders. Parties in crisis have set up meetings: the Parliamentary Labour Party met Harriet Harman and the 1922 Committee.

Such conduct as this called the word unedifying into being. No neologism is required. Early in the day, Cameron proclaimed that all Tory MPs would enter 'Legg before whip' or stand down at the next election. Brown, servant to the master of this manoevre, followed suit with a promise that his MPs would lose the whip if they failed to pay up.

Both leaders have forgotten that the ties of party only matter with the fear of the whip and the bribe of advancement. All that is lost. Why do they need to obey Brown or Cameron when the incumbency is up? This realisation may spread further and faster than the whips can respond:

The Prime Minister's own MPs began openly defying his call to pay back expenses claims, while some Cabinet ministers blamed him privately for allowing Sir Thomas Legg's investigation to run out of control.

They accused Mr Brown of enabling Sir Thomas to decide his own remit which has led to hundreds of requests for retrospective expenses payments by MPs.

Now the revolt is co-ordinated, shared and determined. Brown and Cameron have managed to achieve a bipartisan consensus of the mediocre and the entitled. Of course, these backbenchers, allied in indignation, must realise that the more they cry out, the more marked they are for decapitation by the electorate.

This is a useful fillip for the smaller parties and, ironically, indignant backbenchers, freed from the whip, may become a Parliament of individuals, for a while.

A monstrous regiment of libel lawyers

The rights on which our liberties depend have gradually been overturned by zealous judges and the authoritarian Left. After the 'disproportionate' arrest of Damien Greene, we have a new attack. The Grauniad has reported that they are unable to report the proceedings within Parliament itself, under the laws of libel.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

It is important that monster of libel is constrained, circumscribed and put back in its box. When libel threatens the right of the public to know the proceedings of Parliament, then reform becomes a necessity. One wonders which judge was willing to agree to such tyrannous conditions.