The Bewilderness

North Korea bays to the moon

North Korea has played a strong defence from a position of weakness depending upon threats, bluster and the covert deployment of weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation to obtain aid from the West. Without such assistance, it is not clear that the existing regime: a revolutionary regime ossifying into a hereditary kleptocracy would have survived without reform. (One looks to the red princelings of its big brother, China, to see how one party states follow this path, even without personality cults). 

North Korea has recently conducted another nuclear test and stated that it has a ballistic missile almost ready for intercontinental attacks. The new leader, Kim Jong Un, has proved even more aggressive than his father (who is rumoured to have died in a fit of angry apoplexy). The rhetoric, the grooves, the moves have become shriller as the regime ups the ante.

This becomes a concern since it mirrors an increasingly assertive China. Foreign policy is partially restructured by the People's Liberation Army, which appears to wag the Communist party, not vice versa. Is it too far-fetched to think that North Korea's own repudiation of the armistice and bellicose threats to attack the US mirror those of its patron? 

With treaty conditions, Chinese assertions, increased tensions on the Korean peninsula and the freedom of manoevre for radicals and hotheads to aggressively threaten the status quo, is it not a concern that war could break out in the Far East? Will the Glosters again defend Imjin?

One Nation under Ed

Looking at utterances from a minor member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet can give us a better insight into the attitudes of the party as a whole. Shadow Welsh Secretary Owen Smith was interviewed by Welsh Online for the Labour conference. Two themes underline his statements: a divisive and political arrogance reinforcing a belief that they represent a collective notion of the people (even if this is not what the people actually want). Add a reference to plebs (since toffs is becoming a tired trope and does not fit the 'One Nation' idea).

Owen Smith wants more devolution for Wales (though this seems a token effort) and one assumes that the primary model of decentralised assembly, Labour dominance is preferred here. His main message was about the unity of working people and that only Labour's values could represent the country. This echoes the similar presumptive arrogance of New Labour who packaged themselves as the political wing of the British people, a rhetoric converging upon national socialist and fascist regimes of the nineteen-thirties. It is also ill-at ease with the complex and fractured politics now at play in the country.

Unable to corral this landscape, Labour is infantilising itself with wooden messages of unity and arrogating moral lanscapes that reflect some halcyon past. Owen Smith calls for a real weekend and the repeal of Sunday trading laws. Yet, when the law was relaxed, most people aimed for the supermarkets and used the time as they saw fit. Such economic liberties, "markets crowding moral arguments out of politics", are anathema to those who wish to impose their values upon us. In fact, politicians have crowded out markets through their uncontrolled spending and have allowed many to experience the increased value of free time through rising unemployment and regulations that destroy jobs. 

We will all certainly have more free time and less choice as One Nation under Ed.

Waiting for events.....

Record from a recent anecdote on quantitative easing: its effects. One hundred loaves at £1 each and the central bank releases a sum of £100 to combat a lack of growth; one hundred loaves now cost £2. The simple and clear link between money and inflation is not replicated so easily in our economy. Yet, the lack of evidence that QE has helped prevent recession and its distortion of the gilt market has led to cries of anger over its longer term effects.

By depending upon the reliance of aggregated savers for predicatble returns via their pooled funds, the Bank of England and the Tory party have collaborated in grand theft auto by stealth inflation. Frugal Peter has been robbed. But has that helped Profligate Paul? Compared to the United States, our deleveraging process in the private sector has not even commenced. After three years we are further away from making the necessary adjustment. And at what cost? By damaging savings, returns and investment, the Bank of England has crippled the economy and impoverished pensioners. No wonder companies are sitting on cash refusing to invest; who would, with such a government: reward scroungers, penalise thrift!

This may have been designed to erode the public sector deficit, but as a consequence and contra to the majority opinion, QE may have prolonged stagnation. The private sector has been handicapped at the expense of the public domain, accentuating the impact of austerity and dousing animal spirits. 

It is a one time offer from this government. The lack of urgency, the unwillingness to reform, the lack of bite in cutting expenditure, suggests that Osborne's complacency and micromanagement will come back to assault him. None of the political will to deal with this is displayed and the coalition's courage from 2010 is beginning to look like rigid rails, unable to turn aside or reverse if terms of trade worsen.

The coalition will defer to the ghost of Macmillan: events...

 

  

Will the defector muscle awaken?

Some Liberal Democrats did attend the Labour conference. They had form in opposing the coalition and contributed to sessions on potential alliances between the second and third forces in British politics. John Leech, a left-wing Liberal Democrat was quick to endorse future political pacts with the Labour party.

He said: "I wasn't sure if I was going to come tonight without my tin hat.

"In the north west, we have a level of hostility between Labour and Lib Dems that would make it impossible."

But Leech admitted that there was more common ground between the two parties than acknowledged by activists.

What does it say about outliers like Leech that they endorse a left-wing pact despite the antipathy of their own activists. Such sentiments sound like a precursor to defection.

What surprises me is the lack of movement despite the fertile grounds for swaps in personnel that political pacts and coalition government provides. Three disaffected communities are evident: Blairite MPs (after the election of optimistically optical illusionist, Red Ed), left-wing Liberal Democrats gravitating towards public sector interest groups and those Tories who may occasionally be mistaken for conservatives. With Labour's shift towards the trade unions, broad churches may become fissiparous and sectarian.

Tory on Tory torture in the Star Chamber

The Liberal Democrat conference highlighted stresses and strains within the coalition. Yet, whilst this sideshow of irrelevance fed media lust, did the Tories tighten their grip on government? The star chamber, that body devoted to the bloodletting of the red line, has been beefed up wit Caroline Spelman and Eric Pickles. Both are viewed as enthusiastic cutters and austerians. Apart from Danny Alexander not one Liberal Democrat has made a seat though, given the opposition of Fox and IDS, the room will mainly deal with Tory on Tory action.

The star chamber has been negotiating cuts for months but will now become a final court (of appeal, if you are an optimist) for the ministers who wish to feed the maw. 

Relief at Portaloo

One can tell how one government differs from another in terms of the small matters. Is it not a hallmark of Labour's lack of decency that they just did not care: no empathy, no understanding and an arrogance of office designed to further separation.

I have personally been promised by someone very close to the new Prime Minister that a portaloo will be introduced - and she even said she's trying to organise a supply of tea and coffee for the hacks in the street - though we clearly do not want the latter without the former.

The small details provide as much of an indication of a government's ethics as the policy drives. A pity Brown never faced the battle of Portaloo.

Call in the IMF now

I watched the Chancellors debate with some unease; the unease that one always feels when the statists get round a table. Why am I not surprised that they did more to agree than disagree? When George Osborne robbed New Labour of its rhetoric, clothing himself in the guise of the "many" rather than the "few", I knew that the cycle of crossdressng was complete.

A faint echo of fiduciary duty is not the same as a debate about liberty and the size of government. The ideological roots of popular capitalism had been replaced by token managerialism. And was the populist Vince Cable, his stance redolent of the shallow roots within the Liberal Democrats, channel MacMillan in his reference to the "family silver"?

On reflection, he annoyed me most of all. For he was the most reactionary, perhaps due to his age, harking back to some golden era of Butskellite consensus: the last time we got into this farce.

But we sat three statists who have to cut the state back. A crisis seems inevitable.

Ramping up the rhetoric

Overshadowed by the Chilean earthquake, both Labour and the Conservatives have ramped up rhetoric in the face of political fatigue and public indifference. The electorate are tired of the campaign. Both of the parties have adopted strikingly similar stances: presenting the election as a choice between their ruination and what has been achieved/what could be achieved* (please delete as appropriate) I suspect that whatever choice the electors make, a short-term outcome will be ruin.

There was, for a while, a perception of shallow difference between the two parties, as we faced a battle of “cuts versus investments” or “investments versus cuts”. This has fizzled out: replaced by a greater danger for the Conservatives. Despite the damage Brown has caused, and the deceits that he daily airs, the electorate have gifted him a cloak of authenticity; whereas Cameron, who genuinely believes in some principled politics, has been damaged by a biased media carping on about slick salesmanship. Not helped by the asinine idiocy of his 2010 campaign, he faces a fearful outcome: that Brand Cameron is too tainted to provide that poll uplift for the Tories.

So, just before the starting gun occurs (and it may be tomorrow to drown out Cameron's speech), we face a political and moral inversion: where he who is false is considered a truthteller, and he who is principled, becomes tainted by unscrupulous scandal, and hos own unforced errors.

Labour's drug fuelled mania

Labour's fear based scenario broke down under the pressure of evidence. The transparent use of authoritative experts expands the free flow of knowledge and results in better, or hopefully, a reduction in policy.

Shock! Cannabis is not as risky as alcohol or tobacco. So why is it illegal? Faced with such an irrational breakdown in their assumptions, Labour resorts to control, sackings and hysteria. Control wedded to responsibility works at an individual level and within a free-market context.

Burnham positioning for power

Why is the Times providing a platform for Labour now, with a non-existent row over the NHS? As a non-story, it lost its legs over the weekend and has had no impact upon the public mood, unless you count a flurry of tweets. Nevertheless, Andy Burnham, Health Secretary, has tried to stoke the fire by calling on David Cameron to ban all critics of the NHS from the Tory Party Conference.

Set up an obvious and foolish trap. When Cameron ignores it, use this 'fact' to display your cunning and berate the Tory leader for not defending the NHS by closing down debate about it. This does not count as an "August godsend" for Labour.

It does display the paucity of tactical ability on their side. If this is the level of low cunning that they can muster, then they are truly heading for defeat. As an exercise in political stupidity, it cannot be bettered. At a time when your activists are demoralised, and the lack of debate within your party has contributed to your demise, is it creative to try and get the Leader of the Opposition to act in the same way as yourselves.

Labour's secret weapon: call on David Cameron to act like New Labour...