The old fetish

Friday was the day the old fetish returned. The day Cameron delved into nostalgia. And the day he set Britain at odds not only with the other 26 EU member states, but rationality itself.

What we saw on Friday was a Prime Minister with his hands tied by dogmatic backbench MPs. But not to worry, it seems Cameron had unveiled his all powerful ‘veto’. The only problem with this is that it’s not a true veto of any sorts. Negotiations will still be ongoing, the remaining 26 EU states will still formulate an agreement and Britain will not be present to have any say in the talks.

This is catastrophic failure for Cameron who has severed any attempts to help salvage the Euro which is not only in the EU’s interest but vital in Britain’s interests. In the words of a Facebook update by my own brother:

“Tory lol. Blame the economic problems on the Euro crisis, then veto the plan to save it knowing full well that the the EU will cut you out and essentially get rid of any say you have in determining the future of Europe, and by extension, Britain”

Some may call it Bulldog spirit, I’d like to call it naively dogmatic.

Max

That Old Chestnut

David Cameron has a nerve. Not only has he U-turned over his pledge in opposition to hold a referendum over the UK’s terms of membership of the European Union, but today he had the temerity to force Nicolas Sarkozy to back down and accept his presence at key Eurozone talks to try to deal with the Greek debt crisis on Wednesday.

Once again, only one year into the new government, a Conservative prime minister is becoming about as stable on Europe as Edwina Currie is on her feet. We all know deep down he is a staunch Euro-sceptic, so why doesn’t he have the guts to come out and be frank with the British people, and say that he would love us to turn our backs on our continental partners, but that he also loves us to lecture and patronise them on economic policy, despite the fact that UK growth is anaemic at best, and backwards at worst, thanks to his policies.

A referendum on EU membership now would of course be absurd, but having called for one in opposition, the PM should stick to his guns and create a disunited and discredited government, and do us all a favour by breaking up the coalition and triggering a general election. You can’t have your bun and eat it, and you can’t be half in, half out, of the EU – leaving the Eurozone (or more accurately, Germany) to do all the hard work and then turning up to talks this week to act as one of the key players while facing a referendum proposal at home from your own backbenchers is hypocritical and downright embarrassing for Britain.

It was Ed Miliband, incidentally, who called on Cameron to give up his trip Down Under and attend the meeting, therefore whether or not you agree that Cameron has a right to be there, it is clear that the Labour leader is ahead of the curve on this one, as he was on phone hacking and as he was at PMQs this week.

It might sound like a cheap shot from the comforts of opposition – and we all know Blair and Brown disagreed over the Euro – however it is clear that yet again the Tories are divided over Europe. Europhile or Europhobe, this is one of the few reliable constants of the European project.

The Euro Takes A Pounding

The single currency was once such a contentious issue; only a decade ago it seemed likely that the UK would be joining the Eurozone. What happened? Today, Jack Straw predicted that the Euro will indeed fail following the inevitable defaulting by Greece of its sovereign debt, leading to a return to those old holiday favourites like the Drachma. As the media keeps reminding us ominously, despite our not being part of the monetary union, a collapse of the Euro would have a devastating effect on our economy, because of the global nature of our trade regime and our over-reliance on our closest neighbours for exports. This begs the question that if we cannot escape the effects of these sorts of economic crises in a globalised world, is it not time to become more unified to prevent the two-track system we have at the moment, where richer nations are being forced to bail out those in trouble?

I am no economist, yet if I learned anything from my second-year Interwar Economy course (between lapses into and out of a coma), it is that the attempt to ‘force’ currencies of varying strengths to use the same interest rates as part of the Gold Standard was in hindsight a fairly disastrous decision, without some sort of accompanying political union where individual nations have the same tax-and-spending and trade regimes – like BULS members’ attitudes to musical theatre, it seems we can only be either completely pro or completely anti EU. Given that Labour is a progressive party, and that in today’s global economy an insular economic nationalism is unthinkable (we have no industry for that), is it not the time to at least ‘float’ the idea of some sort of European federal state, if we are to keep the post-war dream alive?

This idea may be too much for many people to swallow, and the media will never accept it, but do we really have any realistic alternative when we are competing with economies like China and India? We cannot afford to let the European ideal crumble on the back of this financial crisis.

Luke

Rambling all-purpose post-Guttenberg higher education rant

(it is a machine that copies)

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg´s gone at last. He´s lied denied and compromised his way through two tricky weeks of scrutiny at the hands of the media, his political opponents and even his own party the CDU. His situation reminds me of Andy Coulson´s in January, but was inherently more critical because he had been tipped as Merkel´s successor. As a campaigner for the SPD I am not an unbiased observer, but my feeling is that zu Guttenberg did not deserve a doctorate and does not deserve to remain an MP with such blatantly compromised judgement.

I hope this will be a lesson to those members of the older generation patronising enough to moan about how much easier it is these days to get good grades, or how the standard of higher education is dropping, or how this generation is lazy. Or to the traitors in our midst who decry the degrees taken by their contemporaries as worthless.

Because this kind of copying simply can´t happen anymore. Electronic submission through specific software is common practice in modern universities, and plagiarism is one of the gravest academic crimes we can be convicted of, worse than a lack of imagination, a lack of passion, or even unpunctuality. Degrees are tough and marks are harsh, and all of us have worked hard to get into and stay at the University of Birmingham.

This is why we have to keep campaigning for fairness and accessibility. Funding for all that want it, places for all that can meet reasonable requirements, and serious long term investment in all institutions of education.

Suzy

Equality and education

First of all I’d like to apologise for not blogging much recently, I’ve been travelling a lot and trying to get all my essays and presentations done for Humboldt, which is taking twice as long because they’re all in German!

During the holidays I’ve been talking to people in Sweden and Germany about schooling. I find it a really easy political topic to engage young people on because it’s a common and recent experience and a lot of us are concerned by the state of flux the system is tumbling into.

New Labour introduced a lot of initiatives and revolutionised the school system in many ways. These changes were not always popular with parents and teachers but the central aim of each one was greater equality. The general coalition push for the re-introduction of grammar schools and the sponsoring of free schools does not have the same aim and will not produce positive results.

Germany has had a 4-tier system in place for several decades, in which 10-year-old children are separated into achievement-based groups and sent to either a Gymnasium, Realschule, Hauptschule or Forderschule. Those who try to sell such systems as meritocracies overlook the real input and output of pupils, and the uncomfortable statistics that show that selection hits the most vulnerable hardest.

The PISA Study (Programme for International Student Assessment) was first carried out by the OECD in 2000 and showed Germany to have a highly unequal and unfair system, with bright non-native speakers of German being relegated to the Forderschule, which is essentially a school for the mentally disabled rather than those of another nationality. As British studies have shown, bright students from poor families lose out in the current system to averagely gifted children from rich families, because the parents themselves are often more highly educated, better informed, and more driven.

In Sweden independent schools set up by groups of parents resorted to television advertising to drum up interest. This was very successful in a many areas, but produced the unfortunate result that state schools had to spend taxpayers’ money on running expensive advertising campaigns in order to be able to compete.

We don’t need to worry about the high achievers, but the children who fall through the cracks. Becoming resigned to a low social strata so early in life is damaging and leads to serious consequences later in life.

Suzy

The Special Relationship

The BP oil spill was a massive PR disaster for Britain, not least in the hearts and minds of ordinary America.ns. The latest Wikileaks report that Mervyn King described the ConDems as economically “out of their depth” makes us look more like the embarrassing friend or silly little brother than a special partner.

But all is not lost. Tory europhobia likely chimes in quite nicely with a USA that routinely censures EU trade protectionism, and as we know from transatlantic politics the Tories can present themselves as having quite a lot in common with both parties, as they are right-wing but as a rule a lot more moderate and civilised than many Republicans, and by and large approve of Obama’s health reforms.

And what with La Roux storming the charts, Russel Brand marrying showbiz royalty and Vernon Kay, Cat Deeley; Len Goodman, Piers Morgan and maybe even Cheryl Cole presenting primetime shows we might be gradually getting to the stage where, as the guardian puts it, our accent is no longer just for aristocrats and villians.

So where do we stand now? Will the special relationship take us as far as Iran? How will it affect our relationship with Europe? And come 2012 will Palin and Cameron egg each other on to even bigger cuts?

Suzy

Green and pleasant land

In my capacity as BULS’ tweeter in cheif I have started following Nick Griffin, and my suspicions about him have been confirmed straight from the horse’s mouth. The BNP is “bewildered” by its responsibilities in Europe. Nick himself delights in causing trouble, but is singularly slippery on facts. He expects others to listen, but does not reply to others who comment or engage in any kind of conversation with anyone on twitter. Perhaps inevitable when 90% of the population hate his guts.

He also usefully reminded me that yesterday was Trafalgar Day, and started me thinking about patriotism in its many guises. Being in Germany I find it a very interesting topic, because I sometimes feel as though I am experiencing more than homesickness for my friends and family – an actual longing for England itself.

Where does this feeling come from? Why do I  leap to defend the weather or cuisine when I know it is better in other countries? Why do I seek to protect the concept of Britishness against jokes and slander? I’m poud of our liberties, I’m grateful for our relative economic security and safety from attack. I love the infrastructure and the accents, the music and the telly, the literature and the arts. But Germany’s not bad either. I could have been born here, and lived a very similar life. I wouldn’t be disappointed with Australia or Greece. As the late Linda Smith observed, most people who are proud of being British are taking credit for something they took  no part in forming. No one alive now was alive to invent Britain. Most patriots were born and live here, so to call themselves British is not an achievement.

Nick Griffin’s attacks on foreigners in Britain and Brussels seek to include people like me, who want to feel proud and superior, who can define themselves as British if nothing else, who get excited by history and intrigued by ancestry. But it’s too easy. Patriotism is a luxury we don’t need. Defending the things that Britain does well individually is brilliant. But this concept of there being something more, an essence that runs through all of us and through the place itself is crazy. We see it taken to extremes world-wide, with broad hysteria on immigration, globalisation and EU integration. With MSPs preaching independence at all costs, with the Tea Party movement’s covert xenophobia, with the PKK committing violence in the name of the as-yet-unrecognised Kurdistan, with neo-Nazis in Berlin.

The British media heaps scorn with alacrity on any politician appearing to be less than delighted about their homeland. In the case of Gisela Stuart I more than once had to talk round voters who were unwilling to “let the Germans in” by electing her. Clegg was vilified for his foreign wife and europhile credentials. We have an unhealthy obsession with this second-hand pride.

The human race is entitled to liberty, good health and financial stability. It is not entitled to patriotism.

Suzy

Merkel’s mistake

In an end to the cosy “Multi-Kulti” rhetoric of recent years Angela Merkel has made the sudden announcement that it doesn’t work. That multiculturalism in Germany has failed, both in terms of community cohesion and economic reality. Her comments come on the back of statements made by her partner in the coalition, the leader of the CSU which specifically represents South Germany, who focussed on cultural purity and the higher birth rates among of immigrants. The comments seem to have been well received, with many Germans (up to 30%) agreeing that the country is “overrun” with immigrants.

In Berlin I’ve seen multiculturalism working. I’ve seen international art on the streets and in galleries, different cultures participating in sports together, learning and teaching together, eating together. Berlin has always thrived from being a real metropolis. Nothing that this city does well comes from cultural “purity” or homogeneity. It’s built on contrasts and mixing. Easteners, Westeners, Danes, Poles, Turks, Italian, Canadians all contribute.

It’s hard for a German Chancellor to make comments on immigration without being accused of holding far-right sentiments by the international community. Merkel is probably trying to reclaim the rhetoric from the real neo-Nazis in a way that our politicians so obviously failed to do before the election of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons. Sarkozy and Obama have both been able to go much further because they haven’t got the terrible historical reputation that Germany has. The legacy of history can be seen as a blessing in this context, because it acts as a very potent check and balance against racism in the national consciousness.

Suzy

Of saints and sinners

The pope’s latest round of canonisation has created the world’s first Australian saint. But why?

Sister Mary MacKillop did many wonderful things in her life for the poor, for the aboriginal community, for children. She was a good and pious nun. But she had been excommunicated for her role in exposing a priest as a paedophile.

This canonisation might be more than just the remembrance of a forgotten continent. It might be a gesture towards acknowledging the pope’s own criminal concealment of paedophilia. If so, then it’s a step. But it’s not nearly enough.

Aside from common decency, humanity and remorse, what could be more Christian than to make a full confession and beg for forgiveness? It’s too late to maintain the illusion of infallibility. All that can be given now is a semblance of moral goodness and honestly.

Suzy

 

Why it still matters

The month is April 2010. The location is Joe’s Bar in the Guild. A lively debate is taking place over four pints of beer.

“So you’re trying to tell me that the Conservatives are anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-public services.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Well then you’re full of **** because I heard Cameron’s speech on the NHS and he says he’s gonna protect it! They haven’t mentioned anything about punishing the poor either, you’re just making that up, cos we’re all in this together. And they have gay front-benchers, and JUST in case you’ve forgotten Thatcher was a woman.”

How many times have we experienced this rebuttal? This battle for hearts and minds, with us hungover in scruffy jeans on one side and Cameron’s big air-brushed face on the other?

And how many people came back to us over the following months and said “Mate, I’m sorry, if I’d known they were gonna cut my cousin’s benefits I wouldn’t have voted for them.”

But by then it’s too late. We need a shorthand, to unpick all the rhetoric, all the speeches, all the elaborate policies with questionable motives. Left and Right.

To say that a party is right wing is to know its history. Its history of opposing measures for the greater equality of gender, race and sexuality. Its financial backers in big business, its think tanks and advisers comprising the bigoted, the religiously extreme, the regressive. Its instincts to offload responsibility, make a profit, and favour choice over health and happiness. How it will respond in a crisis, where its priorities will lie, what it wants to achieve and the kind of country it’ll leave behind as its legacy.

Right wing and left wing speak for themselves.

And once you understand the divide you can read between the lines of speeches, because you know the place they are coming from in the first place. Ed Miliband declaring that he’s not in the pockets of Unite isn’t going to scare the Unions because they also know that they share a common, left wing, goal with Ed to defend workers against cuts. Whereas Cameron promising not to include the NHS in his cuts was a plea to those old enough to remember the last Tory government for another chance.

Right wing and left wing are more important than election promises. Years after everyone has forgotten that speech that leader made at conference the backbone of the party is still the same, and will react to each new problem in an essentially typical way. Giving credit to the Tories for cutting child benefit for the relatively wealthy is to silently acknowledge that it’s a surprise, that it’s essentially out of character, that it’s even a little bit left wing, because the true right-wing instinct would be to just scrap it altogether.

But that would make them unelectable.

Suzy

Royal approval

The swedish royal family is significantly less extensive, overfunded and ridden with controversy than our own. Hoever the recent opinion polls from the SOM institute show support decreasing to an overall low of 56 % despite the recent bounce in popularity created by the wedding of Crown Princess (and 197th in line to the British throne) Victoria.

The opposition is well-organised and highly politicised, with most left-wing parties and groups featuring desposing the royal family on their agendas, and the Republican Association growing in membership.

The Daily Mail, perhaps in an effort to undermine the republican movement, or perhaps in an effort to feature lots of pictures of women in gowns, focussed chiefly on Stockholm joining in the fun of the wedding, relegating campaigners to outsider status.  

The New York Times took a different approach, ending by speculating on the fate of the king if a Swedish republic is ever declared.

Could this be the start of a European-wide (or world-wide, if we`re including Australasia) movement to oust the royals?

Suzy

It`s all relative

Yesterday evening an unknown man was buzzed into our building, entered our apartment through the door we often leave open and offered my flatmate money for sex. After a clear refusal in Turkish, English and Spanish, a violent struggle and threats to call the police he eventually went home, and we were left feeling terrified and dirty.  

The consensus about the event among my Turkish friends is as follows: that it is known in the neighbourhood that our apartment is occupied by young foreign women, who are probably not Muslim and definitely without the support of a large family bent on avenging insults to its women. Our brothers, fathers and uncles are far away, and we probably act like the American women in gossip magazines anyway, so will welcome advances. And if we don`t like it we can go back to where we came from.

Other things I find difficult to adjust to in İstanbul are the poor record on women`s liberation, the high birthrates, the tradition of the hostess never sitting down during a meal but continuing to serve throughout, the constant and indiscriminate leering by men of all ages and the incredible statistic that only 10% of Turkish women are in employment.   

It all makes the Ed/Yvette leadership issue look very, very trivial.

Suzy

This time for Africa?

It`s been a disappointing world cup, and I don`t just mean for England. The 2004 announcement of South Africa winning the bid to host led to predictions of a massive leap forward for the whole continent, as the World Cup was expected to raise Africa`s profile, increase levels of tourism, bring in revenue in prize money and foreign currency, provide investment and give it a greater sense of pride and identity.

Six years and sixty (?) matches later we have two anthems sung by a Somali-Canadian and a Columbian, a tournament dominated by European teams with Ghana the sole African representative past the group stage, inter-African xenophobia in Johannesburg… Time will tell but I think it`s already safe to say that hosting the World Cup was not South Africa`s holy grail.

Suzy

The twisting of the evidence

Like most people at BULS, up until the UK emerged from recession I was beginning to find it rather boring of Dave and Osborne attacking the government for lagging behind in recession while the “world left us behind”. But, this has been showed by recent figures that this well is not going to happen just yet.  Europe’s biggest economy, Germany failed to grow at all in the last quarter of 2009 while other countries such as Spain, Italy (who’s also apart of the G20) and Greece are still in recession. This shows that no Dave, we weren’t being left behind, and drastic cuts will plunge UK and then potentially parts of Europe back into recession also.

Mini-rant over

Max

So we’re not the only ones…

Just to show we’re not the only ones who think the Tories have aligned themselves with extremists in Europe. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8460940.stm

Max

Hang on?…Did they just contradict themselves..again?

Well I dunno about everyone else, but there has been a many a facebook update from BUC”F” members on the subject of the SNP’s attempts at Scottish independance being along the lines of “Remember Salmond, we are stronger together than apart”..now for the majority of BUC”F” members, they are in fact Eurosceptic…do you think that is a little bit of a contradiction…again? Pro-unity at home but self-interest abroad

4 points closer

2 new polls published a fortnight after the previously blogged upon Ipos-MORI poll in the Observer (which showed the Tories lead to be shrunk to 6 points), show that the Conservative party’s lead over Labour have in both polls shrunk by 4 points, leaving it at a 10 point lead. Is this the fight back mentioned at the conference in Brighton caused by Cameron’s incoherant policy over Europe? The economic optimism? Or merely a (big) blip?

Tories true policy on the EU

Saw a few posts similar to this on BUCF blog (i.e. clips from youtube) and so I couldn’t resist (plus it gives you a very useful insight into Tory HQ).

Lisbon Treaty

Based upon the assumption that less of a blog means more comments:

So much for a “Cast-iron gaurantee”. And sorry I couldn’t resist with cartoon.

By Max Ramsay

Euro Matters

Today members of the European Parliament showed us just how much power the EU juggernaut can wield over its members and ultimately its citizens. MEPs voted 421-273 to scrap Britain’s opt-out from the maximum 48-hour working week. The 48-hour limit already exists in many EU countries, such as France, where market flexibility is perhaps not as important as workers rights. The bill was pushed through the EP after many doctors across the EU have filed lawsuits against hospitals for not complying with rulings from the European Court of Justice regarding working-time limits. This is a clear demonstration of the ECJ’s increasing role in European integration, however indirectly.

The working week limit will surely benefit doctors, teachers and other over-worked public servants, but it will not help graduates and young professional couples who need to work 55 hours a week in order to pay their mortgage. Some may argue that people should not work more than 48 hours for their own health and piece of mind, but if they choose to work so many hours, then so be it – more work can only benefit the economy at large.

15 EU countries, including the UK, are beneficiaries of the opt-out, so it is unlikely that an agreement will be reached between the EP and the Council of Ministers. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the European project, but it’s frightening that in an economic climate such as this, the European Union can have so much control over our right, our need even, to go out and earn a bit of extra dosh. Even more frightening is the fact that Gordon Brown clearly has no control over British MEPs, many of whom are Labour. Tory MEP Philip Bushell-Matthews summed up Big G’s failures quite nicely in today’s Guardian:

“This is a double failure of Gordon Brown. Not only has he failed to control his MEPs, but he also naively signed up to a package deal that saw Britain give ground on the agency workers directive in exchange for our working time opt-out.
His folly was to assume the left in the European parliament would not sabotage the deal. British businesses have been given two damaging pieces of employment legislation for the price of one”.

This post was written my Kathryn Woodroof, BULS member

The Tories’ EU horror

Tony Blair shows us that as far back as 1999 the Tories had no coherent policy on the European Union.  Little changes.

Fin

I never wanted a referendum anyway. but at least now its over.  The Government defeated a Tory amendment to put the EU Bill to referendum with a comfortable margin.

Interesting that both Gisela Stuart (whips love her, Birmingham Edgbaston) and Lynne Jones (whips hate her, Birmingham Selly Oak) both joined up on this one.  Roger Godsiff in Birmingham Sparkbrook also voted for a referendum.  Divisions run very deep, it seems.

It will come back to haunt me, I am sure, but I bet that the local elections in May will revolve heavily around a national vote on a European Treaty.  Nothing like opportunistic opposition parties to make one simple vote about something completely unrelated.  See above for details.

And in a final point, it looks like the Lib Dems have imploded/exploded.  William Hague made an amazing point, captured by Simon Hoggart.  Clegg said that Eurosceptics lacked the ‘cojones’ to take a referendum on EU membership to the electorate.  Hague replied that, in light of the Lib Dem leaders inability to enforce a whip across less people than the average rugby club, he mocked that ‘these unfortunate objects are now to be found, impaled on a distant fence.’  I do like a bit of Hague, now and then.

Ken sums it up

Flicking through the channels over a late lunch, I caught Ken Clarke on BBC parliament summing up (I thought quite nicely) why he thought each party had an unjustifiable position on having an EU referendum.

His points were:

•  The Tories had failed to explain how this needed a referendum when none of the ones they had signed did;
•  Labour had failed to explain how this was different from the treaty they had promised a referendum on;
•  The Lib Dems just didn’t have an opinion, and didn’t have a good reason for not having one (having listened to their spokeswoman minutes earlier on another channel, I couldn’t make head or tail of it either.)

He seemed as bored of it all as I am.

Being nice sometimes pays off…

Frank Field MP doesn’t come up with truly eye-catching schemes that often, but lets give him credit for his imagination when he came up with this. 

Mr. Field is rumoured to be in lots of trouble with the Whips office for his part in the EU referendum campaign, which Gisela Stuart quit having been threatened to have the whip withdrawn.  There are also rumours that BULS will be reforming its discipline procedures after a display of dissidence earlier in the week!

Some lines should never be crossed

Having recently consulted a lawyer over a practical issue closely related to the hot-topic of Freedom of Speech, I was extremely relieved to find that I am covered by a number of fundamental protections under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR – pictured in all its splendour) and the Human Rights Act.  Under Article 10 of the former, I have a right to freedom of expression.  This means, amongst other things, that if I wish to express what I think is wrong with the world, I can express that without fear of repercussions.  It also means, thankfully, that if I consider someone else acting in a deplorable and abhorrent way, I may express my disdain of this, providing that expression is not both untrue and defamatory.

Looking at the ECHR, its articles protect me in a number of ways, not least in a right to life, liberty, security, fair trial, private life, thought, conscience and religion and to protest.  The ECHR, amongst other things, also prohibits the death penalty, torture and slavery.  The ECHR was enshrined in UK law by Labour under the Human Rights Act 1998, which the Conservatives are currently promising to repeal, should they form a government.

The rights that are afforded me under this convention are, in my humble opinion, truly wonderful, and I find it upsetting that my fellow comrades want to cherry-pick parts of it that seem convenient to their particular cause at some particular time.  We already have controls on Freedom of Speech, prescribed by law, and these have been articulately outlined in another comment.  The most recent post on this issue says “if we let the likes of the BNP spread their views to the Oxford Union they may just appear to becoming mainstream. They are not mainstream and we shouldn’t let them be.”  I concur.  But why should we do this by eroding the fundamental principles we should be protecting.

I have seen the rhetoric of “those who died in the holocaust didn’t die because their arguments were not as good,” used twice in this short debate.  It is absolutely true, but that doesn’t make it remotely relevant.  The reason over 6 million people died in the holocaust was precisely because Hitler’s regime (and for some of the time, the German people) did not observe the fundamental principles which would have prevented it.

I’d like to conclude by going slightly Lennonist (note the spelling).  Imagine, for just a moment, that rather than expend our energy in protesting against free speech when we don’t like what’s being said, we promote to the hilt the very principles espoused by the ECHR (see above), to the extent that our citizens appreciate them and we take them for granted as easily as we do our right to breathe.  Would we need to get into a paranoid frenzy over disgusting scum like Griffin and Irving?  Would we have seen the rise to Nazism in Germany in the late 20s/early 30s?  Would we have even had the circumstances which ultimately resulted in that?

I think next time we go out to fight against something, we should spend a little bit of our time considering just what we’re fighting for.

Anyone fancy a pint?

I was reading on Ceefax that the EU has finally given up on the UK’s funny little ways- it’s going to allow us to keep our imperial measurements. It might be rather quaint, but the scientist in me is not amused.

Since they’re going to be sticking around, I feel I probably ought to find out how these imperial measurement things actually work. I don’t remember learning anything about them at school. How many pounds are there in an ounce? How many stone in a furlong? Oh sod it, it’s all too confusing. Anyone fancy a pint?

Vote Blue, Go into disarray

The opinion polls since late 2005 must have rocked most Labour Party members – we wondered whether the public were really being sucked in by Cameron. Surely not? I knew – we knew – Cameron’s rhetoric was meaningless. The rebranding of the Conservative Party was precisely that; it carried no real directional change to the party and no sign of its ruling elite taking any time to persuade the grassroots that their policies were the only way to return the party to power, as Blair had done in 1994.

Where did that leave us? We had an electorate who were desperate for a government they could trust, but didn’t like either of the options. Were they to trust Blair and his associated baggage of the Iraq war, or were they to trust Cameron’s Conservatives, who were then new, fresh-faced, and hadn’t put a foot wrong? It was the latter, of course, but that was not because the public were enthused by Cameron, more they thought (to quote the mantra any campaigner hears repeatedly on the doorstep) “he’s the best of a bad bunch.” The Tories were very careful to not put a foot wrong too, by keeping any controversial policies well under their hat.

But the events of recent weeks have finally flushed them out. The prospect of Gordon Brown’s arrival as PM, and the realisation that they could no longer get away with the all-fur-coat-and-no-knickers approach of avoiding controversy by avoiding policy, the Tories’ flagships sailed out. We’ve seen the Tories’ new thinking on grammar schools, or rather the leadership’s means of trying to drag its bigoted grass roots (and even front-benches) into the 21st century; we’ve seen Dave fly off to Africa whilst the country (and not least his own constituency) was under feet of water; we’ve seen backbenchers defect to Labour and others call for Dave’s resignation; we’ve even seen very important donors withdraw their support, citing Cameron’s “arrogant, old Etonian” style of leadership, exemplified in his ignoring the party’s wishes and imposing a puppet candidate for the Ealing Southall by-election: following that up with lots of appearances on the campaign trail, and just to show Brown how weak Labour is in the aftermath of the Tories’ win, change the party’s name on the ballot paper to “David Cameron’s Conservatives.” Oh dear.

Almost predictably, Cameron hasn’t been able to stand the heat for long, and his response has been exactly as you’d expect from the old-Etonian who spearheaded the 2005 General Election manifesto in asking “are you thinking what we’re thinking?” Not quite content at the public’s unequivocal answer to that, enter none other than Mr John Deadwood Redwood. Cringeworthy images of him singing the Welsh national anthem aside, was there ever any question what a former right-wing member of Thatcher’s government would come up with? It would seem Conservatism is only Compassionate as long as the polls allow it to be. Yesterday’s report did nothing more than just lightly scratch the surface to expose what we all knew was lying beneath: fundamental cuts to hard-fought protections for working people and consumers from which Hague and Howard would have shied away because they were too right-wing and Europhobic. The tag-line, as Daily Mail-esque as one could imagine, was “saving businesses billions by cutting red tape,” not “removal of health and safety and working time regulations to protect workers.” Shame, shame, shame.

We can be delighted about one thing: the public are starting to see the political spectrum open up for what it is, and for how each party will govern. Gordon Brown and Labour for firm resoluteness in times of crisis, real constitutional reform that will bring decision-making closer to the people, and a commitment to equality and social justice. David Cameron selling a product that was rotten at least 15 years ago, but a product for which he’s been frantically and constantly changing the sell by date, without thinking what’s happening to the product inside…

I’m glad we finally got our first taste.

Don’t let the Tories’ rhetoric put a cloud over the EU

A common experience for readers of right-wing middle class rags is the withering clangour of invective that accompanies seemingly every European Union directive.  Xenophobic, near racist statements, are badges of honour amongst the narrow-minded bigots of Torydom, and none more so than those directed at the “foes” of the continent.  So much for the Little Englanders, the Tories, and it may be noted there are also conspicuously Englanders, little Scotlanders are (un)ably represented by the fools of the SNP.  There is a widespread attitude that somehow Britain is the same country that it was 150 years ago, where Palmerston could threaten to bombard Athens to the ground for the justice of a single British passport holder.  This is, alas, abject nonsense.

Britain is no longer a country in splendid isolation.  No country, not even the most powerful, is anymore – and neither would such a state of affairs be morally justifiable.  Foreign policy driven by the pure raison d’etre of British expedience – as William Hague and other leading Tories have stated on many an occasion as what they regard to be the chief motivating force of British foreign policy – is base and wicked in the extreme.  Such a policy would gladly see the exploitation and deaths of millions at the British government’s behest simply because they happen not to have a British passport.  No, the world’s challenges can no longer be faced in such a crass manner.  The world is a huge interconnected community, in which people act regardless of national boundaries.  Issues vis-à-vis the environmentalism, trade, terrorism, arms trafficking and a myriad of other issues are only to be resolved with co-operation amongst nations.  Many right-wing commentators regard these problems as zero-sum games, and they a right, except it is not a zero-sum game for Britain but for humanity. 

The EU is just one, but one of the strongest and powerful international organisations ever created.  An entity all Europeans should be proud of creating after the ashes of 1945, and one that has many proud features – how easily we forget where blinkered nationalism leads us!  Many in the Labour party felt uneasy in the past with the EU, and rightly so.  In the 1970’s the EU may well have become a travesty of the noble international organisation as conceived after World War I.  For others have become excessively focused on economic issues, such as the IMF or World Bank.   But ultimately these fears were unfounded – for despite the efforts of the Tory government to block the Social Chapter and deny the proud (and at the time ever more oppressed by the demoniac, ‘woman’ Prime Minister) working class population of Britain their rights – the EU has become ever more focused on the social, as well as economic, rights of its citizens.  There are unresolved tensions, not least the CAP, but these should be considered in light of the great progress made here in Europe towards a model that may one day grant the world peace in the manner it has done Europe for 60 years.  Labour has had a proud tradition of internationalism and defiance against Tory jingoism, from the principled opposition to Hitler as the Tories appeased their fascist fellow-travellers on the continent, to the massive increases in foreign aid under the present Labour government (always begrudged by the rich Tory misers).

Ignore the ignorant, racist, warmongering rhetoric of the Tories (and their “newspapers” – always handy as a standby if the toilet paper runs out) and support the EU, for such is the only position of the enlightened, intelligent person.

Posted by Sam Keays, BULS Political Education Officer