Cameron spits his dummy

There was a fascinating clash today between Gordon Brown and David Cameron when the latter used his six questions at Prime Minister's Questions to press Brown to agree that Sharon Shoesmith of Haringey Council was not the right person to investigate the failings of her own department in respect of the death of a seventeen-month old boy... Baby P.

Gordon Brown soberly resisted Cameron's invitation to agree that an internal investigation was inappropriate and when Cameron accused him of failing to answer the question, Brown accused Cameron of insensitively playing politics.

Cameron's reaction to this was so furious that viewers could be fooled into thinking that the accusation was unjust. Certainly the panellists who offer a post-match analysis on The Daily Politics seemed to think so. Charles Kennedy, Nick Robinson and even Labour MP Jon Cruddas all joined Andrew Neil in condemning the Prime Minister for being cold and unemotional when discussing the death of the infant. This they contrasted with Cameron's rage which they appear to think had been provoked by a human response to the tragedy.

Anyone who agrees with the interpretation of the exchange suggested by Andrew Neil and his guests should take another look. David Cameron’s anger is not aroused by the death of a child or by the failure of Haringey Council to prevent it... his anger is provoked by Gordon Brown correctly chiding him for attempting to make political capital out of the incident. Gordon Brown was neither cold nor unemotional in his response... he displayed a temperate and responsible attitude.

Cameron’s opening question about the death of Baby P included the peevish observation that “nobody has taken responsibility, nobody has resigned”. Running through all of Cameron’s questions and observations was a thinly veiled attack on Haringey council and the Conservative Party leader grew increasingly agitated with the Prime Minister’s reluctance to sign up for his witch hunt against Sharon Shoesmith.

In fact, the Prime Minister was quite right to show circumspection while David Cameron’s tabloid headline analysis was immature and unhelpful. When BBC pundits Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson admired Cameron’s display of emotion and condemned Gordon Brown for appearing ‘tone deaf’, they appear to forget that those who incite a mob are ‘emotional’... it isn’t always a good thing to be.

When asking the question that provoked Brown to express his regret that Cameron was playing party politics with the tragedy, the Tory leader spat out the words: “I don’t expect an answer now, you never get one [from Brown]” as an angry aside. This is language used by Cameron week after week on PMQs and, when he’s pressing the Prime Minister for a response on a political matter, it's a fair enough comment on Brown's modus operandi and very much part of the rough and tumble of adversarial politics. But when discussing matters of this gravity... it is ill-judged.

Quite why Cameron imagines Brown’s charge to have been unfounded is extremely hard to fathom. The idea that Cameron would have levelled criticism at Haringey in this fashion if it were a Conservative-run local authority is laughable and there was no question at all that he was seeking to blame the child's death on a Labour-run council.

It’s ironic that Cameron chose to characterise as “cheap” Brown’s assertion that his opposite number was playing politics with tragedy because ‘cheap’ is the perfect word to describe the Conservative leader’s decision to focus attention on the Baby P affair. It was a transparent effort to avoid asking questions about the economy... something Cameron is keen to do because of the manner in which the Tories have repeatedly fumbled the opportunity to snatch the initiative on the financial meltdown.

Gordon Brown refused to be drawn into easy criticism that would necessarily have pre-judged the outcomes of the various enquiries. What’s amazing about this whole business is the consensus in the studio of The Daily Politics that Brown had somehow failed because the public prefer their leaders to offer an ill-considered knee-jerk response. To judge from their analysis, you would think that Brown had declared that Baby P’s death was ‘just one of those things’. In fact, in Brown’s first response to Cameron, he said: “I believe I speak for the whole country [when I say] that people are not only shocked and saddened but are horrified and angered by what they have seen reported”. A fitting and dignified response to the tragedy by any measure.

Charles Kennedy’s analysis included the opinion that Tony Blair would have handled the exchange with more aplomb. In a sense, he’s right... Blair was a master of the faltering voice and the quivering lip but, ironically, this ability for superficiality was one of the sticks used to beat the former Prime Minister.

Are we really suggesting that Brown should be condemned for not maximising the sensationalism? Should we really criticise a Prime Minister because he lacks for lacking the acting skills required to milk a tragedy? No, we should celebrate the fact that our current Prime Minister is resistant to the obvious temptations and offers instead an intelligent and measured response to a dreadful tragedy.

Selective memory

Critics of the rituals associated with Remembrance Day often face the accusation that they are unpatriotic or, worse still, that they are disrespectful to those being honoured. In voicing reservations about the event, it’s hard to avoid a plea of guilty to the first charge but it’s certainly possible to accurately deny the second... indeed, a case can be made that the language used during the ceremonies which is far more disrespectful towards the fallen than any criticism of the ceremonies.

Let’s start with the word ‘sacrifice’. In many ways, it’s an accurate word to use when describing the fate of the young men who fought in the First World War. But to describe them as having ‘sacrificed’ their lives for their country is largely inaccurate. Instead, we should acknowledge that they were ‘sacrificed’ by their country.

Those who died in the first two years of World War I did, at least, volunteer to join the various armed forces. The same cannot be said of those obliged to serve after the introduction of The Military Service Act 1916 which introduced the military draft in this country. Once this Act was enacted into law, anyone meeting the stated criteria was obliged to serve unless they also met one of the criteria which enabled them to be excepted from the draft.

Interestingly, one of the exception criteria was ‘conscientious objection to the undertaking of combatant service’, however anyone making such a claim had to face a tribunal to determine their sincerity. Since the tribunal panels were generally composed of individuals with a highly conservative attitude, most of the 20,000 men who sought to avoid military service through such a claim had their applications dismissed.

Since most ‘conscientious objection’ appeals were denied, the only way of determinedly avoiding the draft was to refuse to comply... considered an act of desertion and punishable by death.

So it’s fair to say that most of the young men who were sent to the trenches in the second half of the First World War were compelled to do so. Any sense of them having made a ‘sacrifice’ already looks dubious since self-sacrifice is, by definition, a voluntary act.

What was required of these men once they reached the front line makes the notion of them ‘sacrificing’ their lives yet more contentious. The nature of warfare in the second decade of the 20thy Century was a permanent brutal stalemate. Attempts to break the stalemate could be considered suicidal if the men making the decisions had been required to carry them out themselves... but they weren’t. They passed their orders on to the mixture of volunteers and conscripts in the trenches and those men had no choice but to comply... any attempt to resist the duress could have the dissenter in front of a firing squad. Therefore, the attempts to break the stalemate were not suicidal... they were homicidal.

‘Never again’ was the abiding motto in the aftermath of World War I... but what was it that was not supposed to happen again? War itself? Or was it just something that was said because there was no adequate way of trying to justify the slaughter and ruination of a whole generation of young men? A meaningless platitude among other meaningless platitudes designed to placate the righteous anger of a population forced to fight a War whose significance they could not grasp?

These men are often described as having ‘given their lives’. This phrase offers a nobility to the squalid deaths of millions. They did not give their lives... in a lot of cases they didn’t even willingly risk their lives. They had their lives taken off them and it doesn’t dishonour them to accept this truth.

Who won Glenrothes?

The obvious answer is Labour. Or, more specifically, Labour’s candidate Lindsay Roy. And this is undeniably true... Roy not only won the seat, he managed to increase his party’s share of the vote from 51.9% at the 2005 election to 55.1%. And this wasn’t achieved on a particularly low turnout... the proportion of the electorate who made it to the polling stations was only a little down on the 2005 total. A resoundingly unambiguous win then?

Well, no. Politics is seldom that straightforward. A closer examination of the details reveals something less heartening for the Labour party. They were lucky... very, very lucky.

The win was secured on the back of a collapse in votes cast for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. In 2005, the two parties secured 7,379 of the votes cast which represented almost twenty per cent of the total. Yesterday, those two parties won just 2,328 votes which is just six and a half per cent of the total.

The Liberal Democrat vote was decimated. It fell from 4,728 to 947 which is a quite astonishing collapse... roughly four out of five people who voted for the Liberal Democrats three years ago decided not to do so this time around.

What’s the significance of all of this? It’s hard to be absolutely certain but when people opt to switch from supporting minority parties in this fashion, it usually indicates a high level of tactical voting. Many commentators seem to think that tactical voting demonstrates the electorate's sophistication... but they vastly overestimate it. All that tactical voting really signals is a willingness to cast a vote for whichever party is most likely to prevent the least desired outcome. It is an inherently negative act. Most of the five thousand or so voters who abandoned the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats must have done so in the hope that they would prevent either Labour or the SNP from winning the election.

Unfortunately for the SNP, even though they won around eighty per cent of the votes of these dissatisfied souls, it wasn’t quite enough to give them a win.

Even though Labour won a small proportion of the votes made available by this “third-party squeeze”, it was not only enough to secure an unlikely by-election win, it ensured that the raw mathematics of an increased share of the vote would stop most commentators from realising it was a lucky escape.

Much of the analysis has suggested that the voters of Glenrothes used the by-election to offer a damning verdict on the policies of Fife Council which is run by the SNP and includes Glenrothes in its hinterland. But this doesn’t really add up. How can a party which increased its vote by over fifty per cent be said to have received a bloody nose from the electorate?

Perception is everything in politics however and Labour has been allowed to portray the Glenrothes result as a huge triumph and as a vindication for Gordon Brown who, unusually, campaigned personally in the constituency which borders his own. The Sun has devoted special attention to the idea that Brown’s wife Sarah played a special part in the success. By going along with the idea that this by-election win represents a change in fortune for Labour, the media have overlooked the quirkiness of the result.

But momentum is momentum and the broad interpretation of Glenrothes as a Labour triumph makes it just that... and it simply doesn’t matter that it’s based on a false premise.

The dangers of 'socialism'.

Republicans in the US used to accuse their political opponents of being 'liberals' in a bid to portray them as weak and indecisive. It was odd that this worked for so long... it all it needed was for someone suitably red-blooded to stand up and say: 'yeah, I'm a liberal... what of it.' Instead Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry all managed to allow this innocent and inoffensive tag to become the accusation it was intended to be.

Can the same be said of John McCain's attempts to smear Barack Obama as a 'socialist'? After all, socialism is a perfectly respectable creed... its long but largely erroneous association with totalitarianism has enabled right-wing commentators to present it as an anti-democratic philosophy but that is far from the case. ‘Socialism’ or ‘social democracy’ (as it is more typically known these days) has more in common with Christianity than it does with communism.

It’s strange that the outgoing President and those of his philosophical ilk appear to be such devout Christians. After all, a political philosophy built upon Christ’s teachings would be anathema to the George W Bush for whom ‘compassionate conservatism’ was nothing more than a campaign slogan (and not one he dared revive for his re-election bid in 2004). Jesus Christ may have made some grandiose claims to get everyone’s attention but once they were listening he came up with ideas which would not sound out of place if they were being proposed at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference in the 1980s.

Quite how the right in America managed to appropriate Christ as representative of their laissez-faire approach is a mystery. Has this been achieved by well-meaning thinkers on the right who genuinely believe that the New Testament justifies an approach which suggests that society as a whole is best served by each individual pursuing their own selfish interests? Or are they using Christianity as a cloak to hide the unpalatable aspects of their political creed?

Interestingly, the right’s claim that Jesus is one of their own has come at the same time as the section of the left have largely rejected religiosity and this may even account for the tendency of politicians such as George W Bush to continually stress their Christian fervour. Could it be that this is part of an attempt to demonise the left as Godless? And could it be that this, in turn, contributes to the American notion that there is something dangerous about ‘socialism’?

Over the centuries having God on your side has often been important to people who know they cannot win the argument. This is because religions deal in ‘faith’ rather than ‘reason’... indeed, it isn’t sufficient to say religion is irrational... it’s anti-rational. Just look at how Christianity treats anyone who requests ‘proof’ of their arguments about an existence of God. They don’t just fail to provide it... they don’t even apologise for being unable to provide it... they suggest that the person requiring ‘proof’ is spiritually impoverished.

This is the stuff of Karl Rove’s dreams. Imagine being able to prevail every time you engage the opposition simply by telling them that their requests for rationale argument merely demonstrate their inability to properly understand. This paradox of Christianity has sustained the belief of the craven and the gullible for centuries and it sometimes feels as though elements of the right have tried to cloak their politicians in the same cloth.

It was never clear why Mondale, Dukakis et al didn’t combat the accusation that they were ‘liberal’ by loudly explaining that they are indeed liberal... and that the United States was founded by individuals who sought ‘liberal’ freedoms. This would surely have spiked the guns of their accusers. Barack Obama is not a socialist. Therefore, it would be not only unwise but untrue if were to adopt this approach when facing those whispering the ‘s’ word at him. But at least one of his most fervent champions, Hendrik Hertzberg, wrote an editorial piece in The New Yorker, which supportively conceded that his man probably is a socialist. It’s probably just as well that Hertzberg speaks to a niche audience and that Fox News and other element of the hysterical right didn’t draw broader attention to Hertzberg’s piece... as there’s no question that the ‘socialist’ tag could have damaged Obama.

Still, perhaps the transition from stigmatising leftist candidates as ‘liberal’ to the altogether more damning ‘socialist’ represents progress. Can we expect the next generation of left-leaning politicians to be characterised as ‘communists’ by the scaremongers of the right?

Unholy matrimony

News coverage that UKIP leader Nigel Farage has turned down an attempt by the BNP to draw the two parties into an electoral alliance includes an extraordinary statement from Farage who says: "I'm simply amazed that the BNP thought we would even consider such a thing". Are you Nigel? Are you really?

Nigel Farage would have to phenomenally naive if he didn't understand why the BNP would want to court UKIP... and the idea that he’s some kind of political ingénue is not one that’s easy to swallow so it's fair to assume that he's displaying political astuteness by using incredulity to reject the notion.

And rightly so... after all, UKIP’s relative respectability would be massively compromised if they contemplated such a move and Farage knows it. That’s why he’s acted so swiftly to expel Buster Mottram from the party for attempting to broker the deal. (Though, given Mottram’s previous affiliation with the openly racist National Front, it’s strange that he should have been permitted to gain a high profile position within UKIP in the first place).

The audaciousness of the BNP’s move is part of a continuing bid by Nick Griffin to secure a role on the edge of the political mainstream. They are aided and abetted in this by the reluctance of the three main political parties to defend immigration... as it leaves the BNP (and UKIP) to fill the silence with prejudiced rhetoric which consistently misrepresents those who arrive in Britain looking for work. As long as this continues to be the case, white Britons will continue to buy into the stereotype perpetuated by The Daily Mail that this country is being flooded by systematic benefit fraudsters.

The reality of what newcomers to these shores face is brilliantly described by Marina Lewycka in her book ‘Two Caravans’. Anyone under the impression that newcomers to these shores are freeloaders should be forced to read this book so they can understand the tribulations endured by those hoping for a better life over here.

And we should also understand that much of the wealth which is being pissed down the drain by the derivatives traders was generated by the gap between what these people earn and what they ought to earn. That money makes its way up the financial food chain into the coffers of the institutions who, it turns out, have gambled it on far-fetched prospects in other countries. Frankly, we all would have been better off had the immigrant workers who are prepared to take on these wretched jobs had been paid a fair wage as they would have kept most of the money in the UK economy.

The BNP don’t want you believe that and neither do UKIP... they want you to believe that the ease with which citizens of other EC countries can come into this country has damaged our economy. This is piffle, of course, but when was the last time you heard anyone in the political mainstream overtly challenge this idea. If they are not prejudiced themselves then they are scared of the backlash from constituents whom they suspect of harbouring racist views.

They should be braver. Anyone who saw the recent edition of BBC’s Question Time broadcast from Peterborough will have witnessed a really encouraging display of solidarity with migrant workers from the majority of those in the audience who spoke. There were one or two exceptions, as you might expect, but the overwhelming impression was that people in Peterborough from a wide variety of backgrounds recognised that immigrants have had a raw deal.

Big towns in the East of England are generally thought to be those most prone to anti-immigrant views because they have had to absorb a disproportionate number of those arriving, but the people of Peterborough rejected the prejudice and made up their own minds. The MPs of the main political parties would do well to pay attention to this and recognise that their silence tacitly allows the BNP and UKIP to peddle their prejudice. Then, even if the two parties are united in unholy matrimony, they can expect a proper sustained argument against their jaundiced points of view.

Slogan's run.

In one of Barack Obama's speeches leading into the last weekend before the Presidential election, he casually mentioned the “twenty months” he has spent travelling the country during the campaign. Obama declared his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination in January 2007 which means that he will have spent almost two years trying to secure the Presidency by the time the result is declared. That's one hell of a job interview.

The extraordinary length of the campaign combined with the attention it gains from the media is starting to create a situation where ‘becoming’ President is more important than ‘being’ President. According to modern lore, the new President will begin his re-election campaign before he even delivers his inauguration speech.

The challenges of our era are not inconsiderable and it is profligate to devote so much time and energy to deciding who will lead us through it. It’s like turning up to a major sports event and discovering that most of the interest surrounds the coin toss... it’s become massively disproportionate and it gets worse with each election. It’s obvious that we need to claw back from where we are today... but it’s very hard to know how this can be done.

And we can’t really pin the blame on politicians for all of this. We can’t even blame the media. It’s actually the public who have created this monster because of our interest in politics is only roused by conflict and the certainties delivered by a contest. All of the focus and energy of the coverage is dedicated to uncovering the answer to a single question... ‘who will win?’ Once that question has been answered, the only question liable to provoke similar excitement is... ‘who will win next time?’

And while it’s understandable that many commentators are encouraged by the massive interest generated by this year’s election, they are being naive if they imagine that interest will be sustained once the election is over... it’s like expecting sports fans to stick around to watch their favourite combatants warm down after the game is won.

Presidential elections have become ‘The X Factor’ of global politics. The public are thrilled with the prospect of watching a group of wannabes being whittled down to the last two and then slugging it out on live television to determine which of them will win the prize but they really don’t care too much what then happens to the victor. How then does it remain something that people want to win? Is it because of a belief that they can buck the trend and become the winner who makes a difference? Or is it because they are so focussed on the contest that they too don’t really see beyond it?

We are constantly told how much this election matters. And, to be fair, if any election matters then it has to be this one. But arguably the most important thing determined by this election is the identity of one of the two candidates in the 2012 Presidential election... and that’s too depressing for words.