Former Minister Tells Commons India Needs to Move on Kashmir
There will be no stability and peace in Pakistan until India deals with the Kashmir problem by removing its 500,000 strong army in the region and allows the Pakistani military to focus on its western borders the former Foreign Office minister, Dr Denis MacShane, told the House of Commons.
Speaking in the Commons, MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham, also welcomed the statements by US President-elect Obama highlighting the importance of Kashmir and the need for India to contribute to a solution. In an exchange with the Foreign Office Minister, Bill Rammell, who is responsible for the region, MacShane said:
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab): Stability in Pakistan will be difficult to achieve while the Kashmir conundrum continues. Does the Minister welcome President-elect Obama’s underlining of Kashmir as an issue that America will have to address? Does the Minister also agree that the presence of half a million Indian troops in Kashmir means that Pakistan keeps most of its military on its eastern flank, instead of focusing on its western flank and helping us in Afghanistan?
Bill Rammell: The situation in Kashmir remains an important concern, and we are urging all parties to commit themselves and to support the composite dialogue in that regard. (Hansard Official report 11 November 2008)
The Rotherham MP said it was important that as the world community starts a new era of international relations with the election of a new US president and the world economic leadership by Gordon Brown the need to find a solution to the denial of political and human rights in Kashmir was urgent. "India maintains an army in Kashmir ten times the size of all the forces engaged in Afghanistan to stop jihadi Taliban terrorists from taking back control. India can play a constructive world role by allowing freedom for the people of Kashmir and remove the giant Indian army from the region. Stability on Pakistan’s eastern flank would allow Pakistan to engage with the anti-democratic forces promoting terrorism and dictatorship under the guise of the Taliban and jihadi fundamentalism."
Now the Europeans Have Their President ….
Europeans have the US president of their dreams. Barack Obama was Europe’s candidate of choice. Europe expects the new Democratic administration, to deliver a made-in-Europe world policy.
With one exception. The Kremlin’s welcome for Obama was chilling. Moscow announced it install short range nuclear missiles aimed at EU member states in east Europe. The missiles will be placed in Konigsberg, now called Kalingrad after Russia annexed Kant’s university town in 1945.
European socialists and liberals united with conservatives and Christian democrats in rejoicing at Obama’s victory. The Bush-Cheney-Greenspan axis of reactionary economic incompetence and foreign adventurism had been defeated, at last.
In this foam-filled warm bath of self-satisfaction no-one has asked whether Europe has got anything wrong in the last eight years. No one has asked if the new Senate and Congress will be more amenable to America becoming multilateralist which in plain language means doing what other countries want not what American law-makers or the President believes America needs?
President-Elect Obama has made a campaign theme his confidence that he can get Europeans to share more of the burden in Afghanistan. Wish him well as he tries to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel or her social democratic rival in next year’s German elections, Foreign Minister Franz-Walter Steinmeier, that more German soldiers should be sent to fight and die in faraway Afghanistan.
VP-Elect Biden visited Tibilisi to show solidarity with the people of Georgia after Russia poured armoured divisions, planes and even a fleet to pound Georgia. Russian parliamentarians have voted to dismember Georgia and, in effect, annexe part of the territory of a UN member state. Europe’s response has been to launch new talks with Moscow on an agreement on partnership and cooperation as if the Kremlin’s Sudetenland-like occupation of Georgian territory was of little consequence. How will Obama handle the newly aggressive Russia especially as windfall oil wealth goes down and Putin steps up nationalist rhetoric?
If Roosevelt had to fix the US economy in the 1930 (and still only managed to bring US unemployment down to 18 per cent in 1939. It was World War 2 that really set American growth and jobs on an ever-upward trend) Obama has to find a way out of today’s collapse of consumption, confidence and even a belief in capitalism itself. Europeans are enjoying the idea of the return of the state but since when did cautious, safety-first state bureaucrats go in for the kind of creative, new-product market economy that America and the world needs?
France and Germany have been lathering themselves with criticisms of the US economic model. But what happens when Americans stop buying Louis Vuiton and bottles of Bordeaux, let alone BMWs and Mercedes? Europe will discover that the one thing worse than Americans buying too much on credit is Americans not buying anything at all. Germans need to stop saving and start spending. And as in China Germans need to be told that trade is two-way. If you want to export, you have to import.
The EU has written a joint letter to Washington on managing the world economy but from Ireland to government-owned regional banks in Germany, the Europeans have been just as guilty of trading financial products which had no material reality while banking secrecy laws in EU member states like Luxembourg and Austria as well Switzerland and Lichtenstein and Britain’s off-shore tax havens have shielded dubious transactions from tax and regulatory authorities.
Europe still will not give up its seats at the IMF or World Bank to allow China and the emerging powers of Asian-Pacific capitalism to have a say. Each EU leader will be clamouring to be the first to see Mr Obama. Far from speaking with one voice on foreign policy issues ranging from Kosovo to Turkey, Europe’s national egos will be on display more than a European unity and willingness to share burdens with America.
Obama might well be tempted to paraphrase Kennedy and tell his new fans in Europe: "Ask not what America can do for you, ask rather what Europe can do for America."
For the time being, the optimism of the will, the sheer excitement at seeing an articulate, thoughtful, sensitive post-white American enter the White House is overwhelming the pessimism of the intelligence, the sense that deeply intractable policy questions about economics, the environment and geo-political relations and interventions have yet to be adequately asked let alone answered.
Obama can do much to reinvigorate America’s presence overseas by appointing professional diplomats in place of billionaire ambassadors. He might suggest to the EU the creation of a Global Endowment for Democracy to support fair elections, freedom of expression, women’s rights and social justice in the world.
There are no perfect partners but America’s refusal to offer diplomatic recognition to Iran or even to North Korea achieve little. Obama’s America must be present in every corner of the world, making friends and influencing people but also taking on and defeating the enemies of freedom.
Europe is America’s partner and foil in this new era of world history. Both Europeans and a Democrats-controlled US should enjoy the warmth and hope that now exists. But expectations need managing and after this week’s euphoria both Washington and Europe need to focus on what can reunite the Euroatlantic community instead of the divisions that have caused so much damage so far this century.
Europeans have the US president of their dreams. Barack Obama was Europe’s candidate of choice. Europe expects the new Democratic administration, to deliver a made-in-Europe world policy.
With one exception. The Kremlin’s welcome for Obama was chilling. Moscow announced it install short range nuclear missiles aimed at EU member states in east Europe. The missiles will be placed in Konigsberg, now called Kalingrad after Russia annexed Kant’s university town in 1945.
European socialists and liberals united with conservatives and Christian democrats in rejoicing at Obama’s victory. The Bush-Cheney-Greenspan axis of reactionary economic incompetence and foreign adventurism had been defeated, at last.
In this foam-filled warm bath of self-satisfaction no-one has asked whether Europe has got anything wrong in the last eight years. No one has asked if the new Senate and Congress will be more amenable to America becoming multilateralist which in plain language means doing what other countries want not what American law-makers or the President believes America needs?
President-Elect Obama has made a campaign theme his confidence that he can get Europeans to share more of the burden in Afghanistan. Wish him well as he tries to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel or her social democratic rival in next year’s German elections, Foreign Minister Franz-Walter Steinmeier, that more German soldiers should be sent to fight and die in faraway Afghanistan.
VP-Elect Biden visited Tibilisi to show solidarity with the people of Georgia after Russia poured armoured divisions, planes and even a fleet to pound Georgia. Russian parliamentarians have voted to dismember Georgia and, in effect, annexe part of the territory of a UN member state. Europe’s response has been to launch new talks with Moscow on an agreement on partnership and cooperation as if the Kremlin’s Sudetenland-like occupation of Georgian territory was of little consequence. How will Obama handle the newly aggressive Russia especially as windfall oil wealth goes down and Putin steps up nationalist rhetoric?
If Roosevelt had to fix the US economy in the 1930 (and still only managed to bring US unemployment down to 18 per cent in 1939. It was World War 2 that really set American growth and jobs on an ever-upward trend) Obama has to find a way out of today’s collapse of consumption, confidence and even a belief in capitalism itself. Europeans are enjoying the idea of the return of the state but since when did cautious, safety-first state bureaucrats go in for the kind of creative, new-product market economy that America and the world needs?
France and Germany have been lathering themselves with criticisms of the US economic model. But what happens when Americans stop buying Louis Vuiton and bottles of Bordeaux, let alone BMWs and Mercedes? Europe will discover that the one thing worse than Americans buying too much on credit is Americans not buying anything at all. Germans need to stop saving and start spending. And as in China Germans need to be told that trade is two-way. If you want to export, you have to import.
The EU has written a joint letter to Washington on managing the world economy but from Ireland to government-owned regional banks in Germany, the Europeans have been just as guilty of trading financial products which had no material reality while banking secrecy laws in EU member states like Luxembourg and Austria as well Switzerland and Lichtenstein and Britain’s off-shore tax havens have shielded dubious transactions from tax and regulatory authorities.
Europe still will not give up its seats at the IMF or World Bank to allow China and the emerging powers of Asian-Pacific capitalism to have a say. Each EU leader will be clamouring to be the first to see Mr Obama. Far from speaking with one voice on foreign policy issues ranging from Kosovo to Turkey, Europe’s national egos will be on display more than a European unity and willingness to share burdens with America.
Obama might well be tempted to paraphrase Kennedy and tell his new fans in Europe: "Ask not what America can do for you, ask rather what Europe can do for America."
For the time being, the optimism of the will, the sheer excitement at seeing an articulate, thoughtful, sensitive post-white American enter the White House is overwhelming the pessimism of the intelligence, the sense that deeply intractable policy questions about economics, the environment and geo-political relations and interventions have yet to be adequately asked let alone answered.
Obama can do much to reinvigorate America’s presence overseas by appointing professional diplomats in place of billionaire ambassadors. He might suggest to the EU the creation of a Global Endowment for Democracy to support fair elections, freedom of expression, women’s rights and social justice in the world.
There are no perfect partners but America’s refusal to offer diplomatic recognition to Iran or even to North Korea achieve little. Obama’s America must be present in every corner of the world, making friends and influencing people but also taking on and defeating the enemies of freedom.
Europe is America’s partner and foil in this new era of world history. Both Europeans and a Democrats-controlled US should enjoy the warmth and hope that now exists. But expectations need managing and after this week’s euphoria both Washington and Europe need to focus on what can reunite the Euroatlantic community instead of the divisions that have caused so much damage so far this century.
What if McCain Wins?
This article first appeared in Newsweek.
1 November 2008
If John McCain becomes the next U.S. president, it will send europe into a fit of despair not seen on the old continent in decades. After all, Barack Obama is Europe's candidate, so much so that French President Nicolas Sarkozy—so happy to spend a vacation day with George W. Bush—turned Obama's fleeting summer stopover in Paris into an orchestrated photo op, to milk maximum publicity from the Democratic candidate. In Britain, Conservative M.P.s seem to have forgotten that McCain had been the keynote foreign speaker at the Conservative Party
conference just last year and now openly wear Obama buttons as they gossip in the House of Commons corridors and tearoom. German Christian Democrats from Angela Merkel's party swelled the 200,000-strong crowd who listened to Obama in Berlin in July. For the European left, Obama is the savior, McCain irrelevant. The intelligentsia and the political weeklies in every European capital seem to have long ago agreed to write off McCain and splash Obama's face on every front cover. If he loses, narrowly or otherwise, there will be a sense that America has lost its senses.
Ever since McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, Europe has looked down its collective nose at the thought of a McCain presidency. Little matter that Europe is awash with populist politicians of its own. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi or the late Jorg Haider in Austria proved that crude sloganeering and appeals to the gut rather than the intellect were as common in Europe, despite the self-regarding belief of Europeans that their political life is conducted on a higher plane than in America. McCain has been seen as the quintessential American from Mars who appeared to Europeans from Venus as a politician who never saw a geopolitical problem that could not be solved by throwing troops at it.
By contrast, instead of taking steps on its own to shape a united European Union that is willing to invest in security, extend the euro to Britain and lower the protectionist barriers that distort the single market, Europe has invested all of its hopes for a happy tomorrow in Obama. But in the excitement of waiting for the end of the Bush-Cheney years, which Europe blamed for all the woes of the world, few have examined the small print of his ideology. He has made clear that America would never take orders from the United Nations, yet the Europeans said they wanted more multilateral global decision making. He has said Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel, while Europeans have long ago awarded half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians as capital of their putative state. Obama has said America might have to bomb Pakistan in order to chase out Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from their hiding holes on the northwest frontier. To win U.S. labor support Obama has questioned free trade, the neoprotectionism that if enacted would cripple European exports. And while Obama had the good fortune not to be a member of Congress when the votes on Iraq in 2003 had taken place, he seems enthusiastic nonetheless about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan despite increasing European pessimism that any victory is possible.
So for a handful of politicians and professional policymakers there might be a sense of relief if McCain wins. A Republican, to be sure, and one with an odd vice president. But America and the world survived Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle. And McCain is anti-Bush across a range of policies. He has patrolled Europe's security conferences over the years. For many worried about Vladimir Putin's divide-and-rule authoritarianism—including leaders in East Europe, the Nordic countries and tougher politicians like Britain's clearsighted foreign secretary, David Miliband—a Washington that had few illusions about Russia's Soviet-style aggressive posturing would be welcome.
The fairy tale of Obamania has caused Europe temporarily to suspend all of its centuries-old cynicisms about the politics of Camelot and Sir Galahads single-handedly saving the world from evil. But with a Republican president holding sway, there could still be a kind of relief that it would mean politics as usual. The calls would be made. "John, cher ami," Sarkozy would say. "Mein lieber Freund," Angela Merkel would trill. "Come and visit your roots in Scotland," Gordon Brown would urge. In the wider European population, however, there would be a stunned refusal to accept the result.
Once again, it would seem that America had let down Europe, because despite the existence of the EU, Europeans still do not believe deep down that they can stand on their own feet without America. And with no leadership on offer to take on Europe's disappointment, to provide hope to Europe's pessimism, the continent would become more sullen, more inward-looking, more nationalistic and less and less able to be the united partner that the United States needs to defend democracy and promote freedom around the world.
This article first appeared in Newsweek.
1 November 2008
If John McCain becomes the next U.S. president, it will send europe into a fit of despair not seen on the old continent in decades. After all, Barack Obama is Europe's candidate, so much so that French President Nicolas Sarkozy—so happy to spend a vacation day with George W. Bush—turned Obama's fleeting summer stopover in Paris into an orchestrated photo op, to milk maximum publicity from the Democratic candidate. In Britain, Conservative M.P.s seem to have forgotten that McCain had been the keynote foreign speaker at the Conservative Party
conference just last year and now openly wear Obama buttons as they gossip in the House of Commons corridors and tearoom. German Christian Democrats from Angela Merkel's party swelled the 200,000-strong crowd who listened to Obama in Berlin in July. For the European left, Obama is the savior, McCain irrelevant. The intelligentsia and the political weeklies in every European capital seem to have long ago agreed to write off McCain and splash Obama's face on every front cover. If he loses, narrowly or otherwise, there will be a sense that America has lost its senses.
Ever since McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, Europe has looked down its collective nose at the thought of a McCain presidency. Little matter that Europe is awash with populist politicians of its own. Italy's Silvio Berlusconi or the late Jorg Haider in Austria proved that crude sloganeering and appeals to the gut rather than the intellect were as common in Europe, despite the self-regarding belief of Europeans that their political life is conducted on a higher plane than in America. McCain has been seen as the quintessential American from Mars who appeared to Europeans from Venus as a politician who never saw a geopolitical problem that could not be solved by throwing troops at it.
By contrast, instead of taking steps on its own to shape a united European Union that is willing to invest in security, extend the euro to Britain and lower the protectionist barriers that distort the single market, Europe has invested all of its hopes for a happy tomorrow in Obama. But in the excitement of waiting for the end of the Bush-Cheney years, which Europe blamed for all the woes of the world, few have examined the small print of his ideology. He has made clear that America would never take orders from the United Nations, yet the Europeans said they wanted more multilateral global decision making. He has said Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel, while Europeans have long ago awarded half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians as capital of their putative state. Obama has said America might have to bomb Pakistan in order to chase out Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from their hiding holes on the northwest frontier. To win U.S. labor support Obama has questioned free trade, the neoprotectionism that if enacted would cripple European exports. And while Obama had the good fortune not to be a member of Congress when the votes on Iraq in 2003 had taken place, he seems enthusiastic nonetheless about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan despite increasing European pessimism that any victory is possible.
So for a handful of politicians and professional policymakers there might be a sense of relief if McCain wins. A Republican, to be sure, and one with an odd vice president. But America and the world survived Spiro Agnew and Dan Quayle. And McCain is anti-Bush across a range of policies. He has patrolled Europe's security conferences over the years. For many worried about Vladimir Putin's divide-and-rule authoritarianism—including leaders in East Europe, the Nordic countries and tougher politicians like Britain's clearsighted foreign secretary, David Miliband—a Washington that had few illusions about Russia's Soviet-style aggressive posturing would be welcome.
The fairy tale of Obamania has caused Europe temporarily to suspend all of its centuries-old cynicisms about the politics of Camelot and Sir Galahads single-handedly saving the world from evil. But with a Republican president holding sway, there could still be a kind of relief that it would mean politics as usual. The calls would be made. "John, cher ami," Sarkozy would say. "Mein lieber Freund," Angela Merkel would trill. "Come and visit your roots in Scotland," Gordon Brown would urge. In the wider European population, however, there would be a stunned refusal to accept the result.
Once again, it would seem that America had let down Europe, because despite the existence of the EU, Europeans still do not believe deep down that they can stand on their own feet without America. And with no leadership on offer to take on Europe's disappointment, to provide hope to Europe's pessimism, the continent would become more sullen, more inward-looking, more nationalistic and less and less able to be the united partner that the United States needs to defend democracy and promote freedom around the world.
The Obama Campaign : Lessons for UK Politicians
This comment appeared in the Guardian Comment is Free website
What Britain can learn from the US
Campaigning for Barack Obama ahead of Tuesday's historic election, there are some valuable lessons for UK politicians
What Britain can learn from the US
Campaigning for Barack Obama ahead of Tuesday's historic election, there are some valuable lessons for UK politicians
3 November 2008
Campaigning for Barack Obama in the still warm and sunny battle-ground of Virginia, what lessons are there for British politics in this historic election?
1) First, find your Tony Blair. Watching Obama give a long interview to Rachel Maddow, a woman who the BBC could hire tomorrow to show how political talk shows can be interesting and fun, I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to Blair. It was time to get past tit-for-tat politics, said Obama. Capitalism was OK. The Republican party had many fine people in it, the Democratic candidate declared. Obama is as devout a Christian as he is devoted family man. Welcome to Barack Blair!
2) Speak well. The old rules of rhetoric never go away. Obama is a terrific public orator. Every time he stands at a podium, still, slim and in control of his body as he speaks without notes in short, effective sentences, he exudes command and control. By contrast, David Cameron's conference speech this year was as interesting as John McCain's Tory conference speech in 2007. 3) If you are a Conservative, be one. McCain is tarred with being the continuation of Bush-Cheney years by other means. In fact, he opposed much of the Bush ideology over the years. His latest TV advert shows Obama praising McCain for initiating environmental legislation in the Senate. This makes Obama look good but dismays American rightwing voters who don't like to see their man hugging the enemy close.
4) Gear up for door-to-door canvassing. Spending time with Democrats gives the lie to the view that American elections are all about big money and TV campaigning. They are but the intensity of phone canvassing and door knocking is greater than I have ever seen in the UK outside byelections. Canvassers have handheld personal data machines that allow instant transfers of voters' intentions and interests. As I write friends are taking leave from work to drive hours to North Carolina to get out the vote in a state where Obama and McCain are neck and neck.
5) Hit greed but love business. Obama lashes Wall Street but talks up Main Street. Small businesses are the new working unrich in America. The Tories chez nous are now the party of the super-wealthy as the millionaires' frontbench presided over by Oligarch Osborne and super-rich Cameron demonstrate. But Labour can come dangerously close to being anti-business especially in the rhetoric from those looking to a post-election leadership fight.
6) Be tough on international issues. Obama wants to increase troop commitments in Afghanistan and has taken India to task over Kashmir where nearly a million Indian and Pakistani soldiers face off against each other, instead of the latter being transferred to Pakistan's western borders to help uproot Islamist jihadists seeking to reconquer Afghanistan to close down every girls' school. His vice-presidential running mate, Joe Biden, is friend and supporter of Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili in contrast to Tory footsying around with Russian money or Tories on the Council of Europe collaborating with Kremlin puppets. Obama wants to work with Europe as a whole, not deal one by one with EU member states rejecting European unity as in the Hague-Cameron vision of Europe. His promise of an undivided Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel is a further example of a foreign affairs approach that his mixed-message language on Iraq should not occult.
7) Don't invite losers to speak at your party conference. Cameron cosied up to McCain who has been the only major international speaker at the Tory conference since Cameron became leader. At least one Tory shadow cabinet member has been spotted sitting with Republicans at the McCain-Obama debates. While some Tory MPs keep Obama buttons in their pockets and I came across a Tory activist working for Obama, the Cameron-McCain link is another example of Cameron's shallow judgment on international politics.
8) Talks about individuals not just families. Obama has dropped the tired Clinton line about hard-working families and now talks of hard-working Americans. This is right. In Britain, 30% of households are not family units. They are single people, widows, the divorced, parents alone. Tax policy now has to focus on the individual as much as the family.
9) Don't promise too much. Obama is riding two waves. One is the deep sense of despair mixed with shame that the Bush-Cheney years have done so little for America at home and abroad. The second is a deeper tide-of-history movement that is bringing to an end the long 30-year era of global market capitalism which begun with the arrival of Thatcher and Reagan just as they ended the 30-year era of welfare state capitalism initiated after 1945. Americans hope Obama will be the new Roosevelt. He may be a new Carter. But underneath the rhetoric of change, Obama is centrist, cautious and careful in limiting specific pledges. But he is offering a tax cut to all middle- and working-class Americans.
10) Don't fall for populism. Obama exudes thought and intellect. He can speak clearly and vividly. He acknowledges differences and seeks to bridge them, not use the culture and other wars throbbing in American civil society as a vehicle for partisan point-scoring. The arrival of 50 million non-Americans in the last 15 years as legal or illegal migrants has provoked political storms across the red (Republican)-blue (Democrat) divide. In Britain there is a loser-takes-all auction between politicians on immigration. Obama refuses to play that populist card and British politics could learn from him.
Limiting Free Speech
This argument appeared in the November 2008 edition of Standpoint.
‘Is there an absolute measure to settle the argument on limits of freedom of speech? No. Each law-making democracy must decide for itself’
What is hate speech? Who defines it? Who decides if it should be punished or not? An Australian, Frederick Toben, has been arrested in London as German courts seek his extradition. In Germany, he has been accused of Holocaust denial, a crime that could inspire others to reawaken Nazism. He and his supporters, like David Irving and the Lib-Dem MP, Chris Huhne, say he should not face his accusers in Germany because Holocaust denial is a question of freedom of expression. In Los Angeles, two British citizens, Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, are also in police custody. They were convicted this summer by Leeds Crown Court of publishing anti-Semitic and racist material. They skipped bail and flew to the US hoping that the authorities there would defend their right to freedom of expression.
There is a separate question of whether courts in one country can ask for the extradition of people to reply to accusations over crimes that may not be considered as such in the original country. The European Arrest Warrant allowed one of the 7/7 accused terrorists to be sent speedily back from Rome. By contrast, before the EAW was introduced in 2003, an Algerian Islamist, Rachid Ramda, accused of financing the 1995 Paris Metro bombing, was able to resist extradition from Britain to France for 10 years before being returned in 2005. He is now serving a life sentence.
However, there is not a settled liberal view on crimes like Holocaust denial. British libel laws are notorious for attacking free expression. Equally, British tabloids destroy families through invasions of privacy merely to boost circulation. Each democracy has its own interpretation of where the boundaries of absolute free expression lie. Even in the US, there is no right to cry "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Britain's race-relation laws going back to earlier public-order acts do not allow speech and publications that stir up hate against black or other ethnic minority citizens.
For some European countries, denying the historical factuality of the Holocaust is an untruth and a core ideological expression of modern anti-Semitism. If Jews were not exterminated by Nazi Germany, there is less moral blame to be attached to Hitlerism, which simply becomes a banal expression of German nationalism, and Nazism can thus be resurrected in modern political forms.
Holocaust denial's founding father was the French anti-Semitic politician, Paul Rassinier, who, like so many who ended on the far Right, started as a Communist and wartime résistant. He was briefly a French MP but lost his seat in 1946 to the Jewish socialist Pierre Dreyfus-Schmidt, a distant relative of the famous Captain Dreyfus. This seems to have triggered a decision to create the ideological theme of post-war anti-Semitism - Holocaust denial. Rassinier's 1950 book Le Mensonge d'Ulysse (The Lie of Ulysses) argued that an international Jewish lobby unleashed the Second World War and that the Jews had invented reports of gas chamber extermination. Following in Rassinier's footsteps, the former Vichy "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs", Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, said in 1978, "The only things gassed at Auschwitz were lice." The theme was taken up by Holocaust-denier Roger Faurisson, who told French radio: "The invented massacre of the Jews and the invented existence of gas chambers unite to create the political financial fraud whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and the international Zionist movement."
Holocaust denial unites European, American, Middle Eastern and other modern anti-Semites. The leader of the far-right British National Party, Nick Griffin, has written that "the very idea of Zyklon-B extermination has been exposed as unscientific nonsense". One of David Irving's loudest backers, Lady Michele Renouf, addressed the 2006 Holocaust Denial conference called by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her speech was entitled "The Psychology of Holocaustianity", whatever that means. In Germany, the far-right breakaway outfit "The Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Denying the Holocaust" is, as its name suggests, a classic front group seeking to portray anti-Semitic politicians as victims of pro-Jewish political correctness.
Post-1945 Germany and Austria based their policies, in part, on the concept of Nie Wieder - Never Again. They decided not to take the risk of allowing a form of post-war anti-Semitism any legal expression. France followed suit as it came to terms with its own complicity in the extermination of French Jewry. Britain has taken other routes, with tough legislation on stirring up race hate, which like Holocaust denial can be defended on freedom of expression grounds, as indeed the BNP seeks to do.
Is there an absolute measure that can settle the argument? No. Each law-making democracy has to decide for itself when speaking or writing crosses the line and becomes a crime because it so generates hate and violence against citizens that the right of each to live free of fear becomes endangered. While organised anti-Semitism is such a potent force in early 21st-century geo politics, it would be wrong to lower vigilance on Holocaust denial.
This argument appeared in the November 2008 edition of Standpoint.
‘Is there an absolute measure to settle the argument on limits of freedom of speech? No. Each law-making democracy must decide for itself’
What is hate speech? Who defines it? Who decides if it should be punished or not? An Australian, Frederick Toben, has been arrested in London as German courts seek his extradition. In Germany, he has been accused of Holocaust denial, a crime that could inspire others to reawaken Nazism. He and his supporters, like David Irving and the Lib-Dem MP, Chris Huhne, say he should not face his accusers in Germany because Holocaust denial is a question of freedom of expression. In Los Angeles, two British citizens, Simon Sheppard and Stephen Whittle, are also in police custody. They were convicted this summer by Leeds Crown Court of publishing anti-Semitic and racist material. They skipped bail and flew to the US hoping that the authorities there would defend their right to freedom of expression.
There is a separate question of whether courts in one country can ask for the extradition of people to reply to accusations over crimes that may not be considered as such in the original country. The European Arrest Warrant allowed one of the 7/7 accused terrorists to be sent speedily back from Rome. By contrast, before the EAW was introduced in 2003, an Algerian Islamist, Rachid Ramda, accused of financing the 1995 Paris Metro bombing, was able to resist extradition from Britain to France for 10 years before being returned in 2005. He is now serving a life sentence.
However, there is not a settled liberal view on crimes like Holocaust denial. British libel laws are notorious for attacking free expression. Equally, British tabloids destroy families through invasions of privacy merely to boost circulation. Each democracy has its own interpretation of where the boundaries of absolute free expression lie. Even in the US, there is no right to cry "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Britain's race-relation laws going back to earlier public-order acts do not allow speech and publications that stir up hate against black or other ethnic minority citizens.
For some European countries, denying the historical factuality of the Holocaust is an untruth and a core ideological expression of modern anti-Semitism. If Jews were not exterminated by Nazi Germany, there is less moral blame to be attached to Hitlerism, which simply becomes a banal expression of German nationalism, and Nazism can thus be resurrected in modern political forms.
Holocaust denial's founding father was the French anti-Semitic politician, Paul Rassinier, who, like so many who ended on the far Right, started as a Communist and wartime résistant. He was briefly a French MP but lost his seat in 1946 to the Jewish socialist Pierre Dreyfus-Schmidt, a distant relative of the famous Captain Dreyfus. This seems to have triggered a decision to create the ideological theme of post-war anti-Semitism - Holocaust denial. Rassinier's 1950 book Le Mensonge d'Ulysse (The Lie of Ulysses) argued that an international Jewish lobby unleashed the Second World War and that the Jews had invented reports of gas chamber extermination. Following in Rassinier's footsteps, the former Vichy "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs", Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, said in 1978, "The only things gassed at Auschwitz were lice." The theme was taken up by Holocaust-denier Roger Faurisson, who told French radio: "The invented massacre of the Jews and the invented existence of gas chambers unite to create the political financial fraud whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and the international Zionist movement."
Holocaust denial unites European, American, Middle Eastern and other modern anti-Semites. The leader of the far-right British National Party, Nick Griffin, has written that "the very idea of Zyklon-B extermination has been exposed as unscientific nonsense". One of David Irving's loudest backers, Lady Michele Renouf, addressed the 2006 Holocaust Denial conference called by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her speech was entitled "The Psychology of Holocaustianity", whatever that means. In Germany, the far-right breakaway outfit "The Association for the Rehabilitation of Those Persecuted for Denying the Holocaust" is, as its name suggests, a classic front group seeking to portray anti-Semitic politicians as victims of pro-Jewish political correctness.
Post-1945 Germany and Austria based their policies, in part, on the concept of Nie Wieder - Never Again. They decided not to take the risk of allowing a form of post-war anti-Semitism any legal expression. France followed suit as it came to terms with its own complicity in the extermination of French Jewry. Britain has taken other routes, with tough legislation on stirring up race hate, which like Holocaust denial can be defended on freedom of expression grounds, as indeed the BNP seeks to do.
Is there an absolute measure that can settle the argument? No. Each law-making democracy has to decide for itself when speaking or writing crosses the line and becomes a crime because it so generates hate and violence against citizens that the right of each to live free of fear becomes endangered. While organised anti-Semitism is such a potent force in early 21st-century geo politics, it would be wrong to lower vigilance on Holocaust denial.
Book review : Lady Rendell's The Birthday Present
This book review appeared in Tribune
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine (Viking, £18.99)
31 October 2008
“WHY look into the crystal ball when you can read the book?” was one of Nye Bevan’s immortal metaphors as he invited people to contemplate the Conservatives of his generation. Today it is pointless reading the crystal balls of the press which give David Cameron and his millionaire front bench a free ride as the contradictions, corruptions, cuts and complacency that the next election is in the bag are allowed to flourish without any critical examination.
So as so often in the past it is to the make-believe world of fiction that we must turn to discover the real nature of the men who would govern the nation. Make-believe? Up to a point. In Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty we had a Channel 4 type documentary on the Notting Hill world of cocaine-ridden Conservative dinner parties and sleaze-ridden politics in which the devoted young worshippers of the goddess Thatcher cut their teeth.
These are the men who now control the Tory Party – rich beyond the knowledge of all but a handful of voters. Ivor Tesham is a perfect scion of this Conservative world. Like David Cameron he was educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford. He is charming, likeable, smooth and fluent on his feet. Like Boris Johnson he has a winning way with ladies. Tesham represents today’s Old Etonian clique who have won control of today’s Tory Party, sidelining oiks like David Davis and with better judgement than Yorkshire’s laddo, William Hague, who allows himself to be photographed for the Daily Mail swilling champagne with City wealth fund managers at a £1,000 a night luxury hotel for the super-rich on Lake Como.
Ruth Rendell, a Labour peer and crime novelist without peer, writing as Barbara Vine pushes back Tendall’s life a few years to the Thatcher-Major years. He swiftly climbs the ladder of promotion while all the time indulging himself. Above all in bed. He seduces the beautiful young wife of a Mr Pooter in the north London suburbs. Then, setting her up for a some bondage and S+M, something goes terribly wrong.
Tesham is not a killer nor a vicious man. He drinks champagne more than he sniffs cocaine. But Eton, Oxford, wealth and charm do not guarantee core human decencies and month by month our Tory hero slips into a net of deceit with his unwillingness to confront what he has done.
There are other characters of contemporary London – the loneliness of a woman who cannot find a partner or a life. The squalor of living on benefits. Rendell captures the House of Commons brilliantly and holds the reader’s hand as plot and character come together in a seriously satisfying thriller. It can be read as a classic crime novel. But Lady Rendell has done more. She has told us about today’s Tories. We have been warned.
So as so often in the past it is to the make-believe world of fiction that we must turn to discover the real nature of the men who would govern the nation. Make-believe? Up to a point. In Alan Hollinghurst’s Line of Beauty we had a Channel 4 type documentary on the Notting Hill world of cocaine-ridden Conservative dinner parties and sleaze-ridden politics in which the devoted young worshippers of the goddess Thatcher cut their teeth.
These are the men who now control the Tory Party – rich beyond the knowledge of all but a handful of voters. Ivor Tesham is a perfect scion of this Conservative world. Like David Cameron he was educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford. He is charming, likeable, smooth and fluent on his feet. Like Boris Johnson he has a winning way with ladies. Tesham represents today’s Old Etonian clique who have won control of today’s Tory Party, sidelining oiks like David Davis and with better judgement than Yorkshire’s laddo, William Hague, who allows himself to be photographed for the Daily Mail swilling champagne with City wealth fund managers at a £1,000 a night luxury hotel for the super-rich on Lake Como.
Ruth Rendell, a Labour peer and crime novelist without peer, writing as Barbara Vine pushes back Tendall’s life a few years to the Thatcher-Major years. He swiftly climbs the ladder of promotion while all the time indulging himself. Above all in bed. He seduces the beautiful young wife of a Mr Pooter in the north London suburbs. Then, setting her up for a some bondage and S+M, something goes terribly wrong.
Tesham is not a killer nor a vicious man. He drinks champagne more than he sniffs cocaine. But Eton, Oxford, wealth and charm do not guarantee core human decencies and month by month our Tory hero slips into a net of deceit with his unwillingness to confront what he has done.
There are other characters of contemporary London – the loneliness of a woman who cannot find a partner or a life. The squalor of living on benefits. Rendell captures the House of Commons brilliantly and holds the reader’s hand as plot and character come together in a seriously satisfying thriller. It can be read as a classic crime novel. But Lady Rendell has done more. She has told us about today’s Tories. We have been warned.
Globalising Hatred: Antisemitism today
This article based on an interview appeared in the Yorkshire Post
Undying hatred - why the spectre of anti-semitism is still haunting us today
30 October 2008
By Sheena Hastings
There's always been a streak of vicious sneering in some corners of Westminster
about the rise to political prominence of Jews.
Benjamin Disraeli's success was greeted by snideness in a few quarters, and
pre-1939 British politics was marked by anti-semitism, most notably in the guise
of Oswald Mosley, who told East Enders during council elections that "Jews
already in this country must be sent to where they belong... No more admitting
of foreigners into this country to take British jobs."
Margaret Thatcher's elevation of Leon Britton, Nigel Lawson and Michael Howard
led former PM Harold Macmillan to opine that the Cabinet was "more Old Estonian
than Old Etonian". According to Greville Janner, (formerly an MP and now a
Labour peer) when he supported the Israeli attack on Iraq's nuclear arms
facility in 1981, Labour colleague Andrew Faulds turned and said: "Go back to
Tel Aviv."
According to Denis MacShane, a feeling that Jewish MPs - of whom there are 22:
11 Conservatives, eight Labour and three Liberal Democrats - are not quite
British still pervades, a feeling encouraged by a certain bitchy Whitehall
prejudice among the dinosaurs of the herd.
Mostly, British Jews live happy and fulfilling lives, says the MP for Rotherham.
Yet there is, according to the novelist Howard Jacobson, "a certain grinding low
level of anti-semitism all Jews learn to live with".
Denis MacShane isn't Jewish, so what is his interest in all of this, and why has
he written a book called Globalising Hatred - The New Antisemitism? He says it
flows from a life spent in great part studying and challenging vicious and
destructive ideologies.
Born in Glasgow, educated at Oxford and gaining a PhD in London, he worked as a
journalist with the BBC before becoming an international
trade union official - which led to him being arrested in Poland and South
Africa as he worked with independent trades unions against communism and
apartheid.
He has been an MP for 15 years, and he was number two in the Foreign Office,
then Minister for Europe under Tony Blair. A French, German, Spanish and Italian
speaker, he has written biographies of Francois Mitterrand and Edward Heath, as
well as many other books and pamphlets on European and global politics.
Three years ago, he led the first ever All-Party Commission of Inquiry into
Anti-semitism, and the material gathered by the Commission forms the basis of
the new book.
"I've always been interested in how ideologies shape the world and its
thinking," says MacShane. "I don't think we as a society are antisemitic in
this country, yet I was interested in the increasing incidence of violence
against Jewish students on our university campuses, and as a minister I
travelled and picked up on antisemitism in other countries."
The evidence taken by the Commission was an eye-opener. "It was quite shocking,
the level of violence that was unreported and unknown to the political community
- verbal abuse, graffiti, some attacks - leading, among other things, to the
hiring of private security around synagogues. No other faith has to take such
measures, although I know there has been some racist feeling against Muslims and
attacks on Asians."
The Commission's rigorous factual report was presented to the Government, and as
a result support and security for Jewish schools was stepped-up. Police forces
also pledged to spend more time investigating antisemitic attacks. The report
concluded that "...too many British Jews lived with a level of fear, anxiety and
concern about their Jewishness that was not acceptable".
No-one, including MacShane, is saying that the Jewish population of this country
is at risk because of a small increase in overt episodes of anti-semitism. The
greater problem, he says, lies in a resurgence of anti-semitic feeling around
across Europe and around the globe. He calls this neo anti-semitism.
The book examines evidence from many countries, including the boasts of
Holocaust denier David Irving, who declared he was "back in business" on his
release by a higher Austrian court after his 2005 incarceration after referring
to the gas chambers at Auschwitz as "a fairytale".
Despite his alleged change of views, Irving told one British newspaper that his
beliefs had merely been solidified further. The Jews, he said, were not only
responsible for what had happened to them during the Second World War, but they
also had caused nearly all of the wars of the last 100 years.
"Anti-semitism is not just traditional Jew-hatred; nor can it be reduced to a
variant of racism," says MacShane. "It is a growing component element of
international politics. Anti-semitism is exported by a number of states and has
an impact on geo-politics that should not be underestimated."
While some thuggish Manchester United fans chanted "Roman's on his way to
Auschwitz" against Chelsea Football Club's Russian Jewish owner Roman
Abramovich, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told students at New York's
Colombia University that he stood by his view that the Holocaust was a lie.
In India, the home of 5,000 Jews, a range of luxurious bedding called "The Nazi
Line" was launched - but the company claimed the word Nazi stood for something
else, of course.
After the death this summer of Bronislaw Geremek, the Jewish Polish social
historian and politician and intellectual founder of the Solidarity movement, a
presenter on a national radio station which regularly broadcasts anti-semitic
propaganda said: "Thank you, God, for taking Geremek away."
MacShane also examines the conspiracy theory about a Jewish lobby which, rather
than being a group seeking the ear of power, anti-semites
say infiltrates all high places and effectively run everything through
"conspiratorial networks and hidden influence and powers".
He says we need to be alert to the manner in which Arab opposition to Israel has
led to Islamist anti-semitism, and how this has escalated the struggle for
territory in the Middle East into a global movement against all Jews.
MacShane believes Islamic anti-semitism is glossed over in a way that prejudice
against any other group would not be. A supporter of the Palestinian state, he
argues that it's not until the cause of Palestinian rights is separated from
anti-semitism that it can truly thrive.
In his examination of the religious texts of radical jihadi Islam, he finds they
are full of abuse of Jews, with an essential ideology that upholds the idea of a
global Jewish conspiracy.
He says a hatred of Jews is being exported and constructed in communities across
the world.
"In denying the right to Jewish identity, the rights of Jews to live on their
terms in part of the land that is as historically theirs as
any Semitic race, the hardline Islamists are playing into the hands of
conservative bigots and the extreme right."
The point of the book, says MacShane, is to sound a warning and underline the
reality of racism and intolerance. The fight is ongoing.
"There are too many people turning a blind eye to anti-semitism, as a global
force and in some areas of British life. Jews can lead full and satisfying
lives, but there's a reluctance among some to acknowledge and be honest about
what goes on."
Hate talk and antisemitism
This article appeared in the Jewish Chronicle
It’s time to confront the hate talk
30 October 2008
Antisemitism flourishes in tough economic times — so we must act now.
Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has the answer to the world's financial turbulence: blame the Jews. Speaking at the United Nations last month, Iran's elected leader accused Jews of "dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centres as well as the political decision-making centres of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner".
He is not alone. "It's difficult, if not impossible, for one honest investor to neutralise the efforts of thousands of Jewish swindlers," was a post on a Yahoo Finance group site. YouTube hosted a video called The Court Jewsters and shows a shot of a dollar-bill emblazoned with: "In Zionist bankers we trusted".
The myth of the conspiratorial influence of the Jews remains as potent and seductive as ever. Our own homegrown Jew-hater, the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, has only one major publication to his name. Called Who Are the Mind-Benders?, it seeks to depict Britain's newspapers and TV under the secret control of a Jewish lobby whose members have cunningly changed their names to avoid being detected.
The rise of a fanatical Islamist antisemitism has been well-documented. From Bin Laden to the Muslim Brotherhood's chief theologue, Sheikh Qaradawi, the constant attacks on Jews and Judaism - and the support for murdering Jewish children and women in Israel or Jewish establishments elsewhere - is central to contemporary Islamist fundamentalist ideology.
For many of my fellow MPs, it is fashionable to think that antisemitism died with the Holocaust. Surely no one in their right mind can believe that Jews are behind the world's major problems or that their religion, beliefs and affinities should again suffer assaults which remind us of the past?
Yet two of Britain's major professional unions, representing university teachers and journalists, adopted resolutions calling for boycotts of Jewish academics and journalists in Israel. The Nazi slogan "Kauft nicht bei Juden" - don't do business with Jews - has been seized on by the extreme left across Europe as its members seek to organise boycotts and censorship of Jews who work in Israel.
Neither union would contemplate for a nanosecond supporting boycotts against Israel's neighbours, where the rights of journalists, independent academics, women and gays are subject to brutal repressions far, far worse than anything that could be laid at Israel's door. But, as with media coverage which seizes on any fault by Israel but glides over what happens in Saudi Arabia, Syria or Iran, there is a double-standard at play, which does no service to truth and still less to the causes that secular, democratic Palestinians uphold.
If the left is guilty of one-sided dislike of Israel and turning a blind eye to Islamist antisemitism, the right is guilty of creating the culture of intolerance in which antisemitism, along with other hates against non-majority races, nations and religions, pullulates.
In 1938, the British population stood at 30 million but the Daily Mail told its readers: "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring into every port of this country is becoming an outrage." In 2008, Britain's population stands at 60 million, though still only 10 per cent of UK land surface has dwellings on it. Yet to read today's tabloids is to be told that Poles, Pakistanis and almost anyone without a British passport is unwanted.
So, confronting antisemitism also means confronting racism and xenophobia. I tell Muslim constituents in my South Yorkshire constituency that they have every right to respect for their faith but no right to promote an ideology - fundamentalist Islamism - which denies Jews their right to live free of fear.
A fashionable trope has it that ideological hate against Jews is simply a matter of criminality. To be sure, Jew-hating terrorists are criminals. But what drives them on is ideology - a value system which treats Jews as enemies. The same ideology lay at the heart of the late Austrian far-right leader Jorg Haider's thinking. The antisemitism of the far-right parties in Europe is essential to their core beliefs. Although anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-European language currently predominates, the dislike and contempt for Jews is central to Europe's growing extreme right.
Today, it is doubtful if one voter in 10,000 who puts a cross against a BNP candidate's name is aware that Nick Griffin believes that "the very idea of Zyklon-B extermination has been exposed as unscientific nonsense" as well as other antisemitic nostrums that would make Griffin a perfect envoy for the current president of Iran.But, by this time next year, the BNP could have its MEPs in the European Parliament and win its first directly elected Mayor in Stoke.
As Britain heads for economic slowdown and rising unemployment - two handmaidens of extremist politics - the time has come not just to confront contemporary antisemitism, in its open and unwitting forms, but also other forms of hate journalism against Europeans, asylum seekers and those who are not white English Christians.
Antisemitism is the canary in the coal-mine. Listen and the song of tolerance grows weaker and weaker as hate against Jews and others once again begins to fuse into with mainstream political activity.
A European look at the Americain presidential elections
This article is published in the autumn 2008 edition of The Wilson Quarterly, the journal of the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC
An Admirable Folly
An Admirable Folly
Every four years, when the British and other Europeans watch with shock, awe, and incomprehension the presidential contest that convulses the United States, I’m reminded of President Julius Nyerere’s joking retort decades ago to American visitors who criticized his one-party state in Tanzania. The United States is a one-party state too, he would say, but since America is so big, it takes two parties to do the job. Nyerere saw no real difference between America’s two major political parties and nothing much at stake in its elections, a view typical of the mid-20th-century socialist tradition he absorbed as a student in England and one that still informs views of American politics from across the Atlantic.
Because European politics are defined by an almost religious divide between socialist and conservative parties, we can look down our noses at the contest between Republicans and Democrats as the equivalent of a squabble over whether you take your tea with sugar or lemon. But this narcissism of small differences makes for hugely enjoyable elections, as personality appears utterly to dominate, and these contests are irresistible to the European news media. As a politician passionate about making the idea of Europe work, it causes me some dismay that British coverage of politics in Germany or France or Spain is picayune by comparison.
The fabled British-Canadian press proprietor and politician Lord Beaverbrook insisted that all politics should be reported in terms of human interest, and there is nothing of greater human interest than the character of an American president. What novelist would have pitched a black freshman senator against a septuagenarian war hero? Europe is agog at the prospect of an Obama presidency, and there are no politicians in Europe who have John McCain’s experience as a warrior and courageous prisoner of war. This is larger-than-life Hollywood politics for Europeans, whose politicians are machine professionals who crawl their way up the greasy pole of power.
Yet in their obsession with personality—the actor Ronald Reagan versus the moralizing Jimmy Carter, or the 1968-generation Bill Clinton versus the preppy George H. W. Bush—Europeans are blind to the fact that the American system is far more likely to produce dramatic change. The shift from the Jim Crow America of the early 1950s to the civil rights America bequeathed by Lyndon Johnson at the end of the 1960s was one of the biggest revolutions in relations between peoples in world history. The gap between the détentist foreign policy of the first President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker and the confrontationist foreign policy of Bush’s son and Vice President Dick Cheney a handful of years later represents a far bigger distance between two approaches to international affairs than anything seen in Europe during the same period.
But foreign affairs do not loom nearly as large in America as they do in Europe. With Germany dependent on Russian gas and oil supplies, and Poland and the Baltic states unable to forget the Soviet occupation of their lands, European elections often turn on foreign issues. In 2004, the Socialist Party in Spain defeated the ruling Spanish conservatives led by José María Aznar because the latter was seen as a puppet of Washington who sent Spanish troops to die in an unpopular war in Iraq. For more than a decade before Tony Blair assumed its leadership in 1994, Britain’s Labor Party was seen as unelectable because it was hostile to European Union membership. Today, EU issues influence all national elections on the eastern side of the Atlantic to an extent unimaginable in the United States. In Britain, the Labor Party likes to present the oppositionist Conservatives as isolationist and anti-European, while right-wing parties present Labor as being too close to Europe and too willing to trade British sovereignty. In the United States, no matter what the rhetoric used to win the nomination, and despite the barrage of mutual accusations that so excites foreign-policy specialists, the question of America’s international relations or foreign-policy perspectives does not sway many voters.
The key difference, however, remains that Europeans elect politicians to run their nations, while Americans elect a politician. Even the most dominant political leaders in Europe—the Margaret Thatchers and Tony Blairs—can only do what their parliaments allow, and must regularly appear before and answer pointed questions from their fellow parliamentarians. In the United States, the chief executive rarely ventures to Capitol Hill except in magisterial passage to deliver his State of the Union speech, which rapt legislators are expected to receive with no sound but respectful applause.
The singularity of the American system—one vote for one person to head the nation—contrasts with the European tradition of one vote for one person who then with other parliamentarians decides who will run the country. It frequently happens that one prime minister can succeed another without a general election, as Gordon Brown did in replacing Tony Blair. The only exception to the European norm is France, with its relatively powerful president elected in a national vote, but even in France a presidency that amounted to an elected monarchy in the days of Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand is in the process of being reshaped into one more constrained and dependent on support in France’s parliament.
In Europe, voters choose a team of political personalities in the knowledge that the person who will be finance or defense or interior minister will be as important as the head of government. American presidents, by contrast, are virtually unchallengeable for four years. Every head of government in Europe has to deal with a team of ministers who have their own power base because they have been elected and usually are party grandees. Thus, European voters know not just who will be their president or chancellor or prime minister, but who is likely to be foreign or finance minister. In America, voters decide on a single individual who will lead the nation and, as commander-in-chief, decide when to wage war. Cabinet members are mostly bit players, usually lacking the kind of independent authority European ministers possess.
American candidates seeking a presidential nomination have to promise the passionate and the angry in their political family that they will have what they want: an end to war, lower taxes, health care reform, and so on. Once the candidate is past the hurdle of the nomination, however, these promises start to make contact with public-policy reality, and after the election many fly out the window, as Democrats become free-traders and Republicans embrace protectionism. Of course, European leaders, once in office, bend to reality and external events. But at least up to Election Day, they have to be coherent and offer a manifesto of specific promises that determines if they win or lose. And having won high office, European leaders still have to face fellow parliamentarians who believe in the party manifesto on which they were elected and expect their leader act on it. Failure to deliver on campaign promises can be fatal. A European leader who flubbed health care reform and saw his party lose control of the legislature, as Bill Clinton did in 1994, could never have survived.
To be sure, American presidents are not complete monarchs. They must contend with Congress, state and local governments, and a Supreme Court that decides major issues such as abortion, gun control, and capital punishment (matters that in Europe are reserved for elected legislators). And, of course, a president must face the voters. But America’s chief executive has unparalleled powers, which is one reason why the personalities of candidates—their whims, impulses, and habits—matter more than they do in other countries.
Although the personality strengths and flaws of top political leaders in Europe are under constant scrutiny, nothing matches the minute examination of those who aspire to the White House. John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s prime minister in 1990 without anyone knowing or reporting that he was carrying on a passionate affair with a fellow Conservative member of Parliament and minister named Edwina Currie. The story came out only when she published her diaries after both had left public life. François Mitterrand became president of France while keeping his mistress and their child in a Paris apartment. I am not making a moral point, but a practical one. To the European eye, the American news media’s relentless invasion of the privacy of those who seek the nation’s highest office is another factor that firms up the perception that personality rather than policy is central to U.S. presidential contests.
Another striking difference between the American and European styles of electoral warfare arises from the fact that paid political advertising is banned from European television, removing some of the heat and personal vitriol from campaigns and keeping the focus on policy differences. I once showed a group of hard-bitten British political infighters the Willie Horton ad George H. W. Bush’s backers used to destroy Michael Dukakis in 1988, featuring the African American Horton, who committed violent crimes while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison. These veterans of the British political wars sat back in horror at the vicious but effective crudeness of the attack, with its blatant exploitation of fears about race and crime.
In British, German, and Spanish elections, televised political pitches are limited to formulaic party broadcasts. Each party is allocated a number of slots—usually of up to five minutes—after the main evening news. An independent commission oversees the broadcasts, and while the tone is partisan, direct onslaughts are out of bounds. Some broadcasts simply present the party leader talking directly to viewers—as boring as can be, especially compared to the normal fizz and snap of television advertising in Europe.
Because European politicians have little direct access to the public through the media, journalists are the perpetual mediators (which leaves politicians perhaps even more obsessed than their American counterparts with controlling the news). Televised inquisitions of wannabe government leaders are a major feature of elections. Some countries have formal debates in which the main candidates answer questions from a panel moderated by journalists. Face-to-face debates between aspirants do sometimes occur (though not, oddly, in Britain, where no prime minister has ever consented to debate the leader of the opposition). Yet, as in the United States, the TV duels usually disappoint, as both candidates are prepared and coached to be expert on defense so that punches rarely land. Moreover, since, other than in France, there are usually more than two main party leaders bidding to win seats in the parliament, there is rarely a one-on-one duel. Instead, European candidates endure tough individual inquisitions by respected TV political journalists who avidly seek to trip them up. This is a continuous process, not confined to elections, and any politician in Europe who aspires to high office has to face regular hard-hitting interviews on TV and the still-popular European radio services such as the BBC, which command big audiences for political programs every week.
Aspiring American presidents mostly avoid such rigors, especially during the primaries, when candidates can largely confine their audiences to the adoring crowds of staged town hall meetings and the small caucuses in some supporter’s living room. Anyone hoping to lead a government in Europe has to convince the public and party professionals over months, if not years, by dominating in parliament, public meetings, and the press, and by walking on the hot coals of a televised grilling without flinching or fumbling. By the time an election arrives, a principal candidate will have been battle hardened in dealing with the toughest of broadcast interrogations. When Tony Blair sought to oust Britain’s Conservatives from power in 1997, he already had 14 years of tough parliamentary experience behind him and had forced his Labor Party to come to terms with economic and geopolitical modernity by imposing his will upon recalcitrant Labor leftists. But the Tories still sought to depict him as Bambi—a child without experience.
However, the greater scrutiny does not necessarily make for better leaders. Europe has had its share of duds. Although politicians such as John Major in Britain and Jacques Chirac in France won elections, the economic, social, and foreign policies of their countries under their stewardship were unimpressive. The Austrian Socialists won power in the fall of 2006, but so ineffective was the new Socialist chancellor that he had to dissolve his government and call fresh elections after less than two years in office. The center-left administration headed by Romano Prodi in Italy won power in 2006 but was so incoherent it could not stay in office for more than 20 months. Even under the presidential system in France, both Mitterrand and Chirac found themselves in office but having to share power with opposition parties that had a majority in the National Assembly and could determine who would be prime minister and hold other cabinet posts.
The differences between the American and European political systems have provided fodder for thousands of doctoral dissertations and books. But today the differences may be more apparent than real. If in the 20th century the contest in Europe was between two different economic systems, free-market economics versus totalizing statism and welfarism, with America firmly supporting the former, the contest today is different. Europeans accept liberal market economics and struggle as American politicians do to find the right approaches to health care, social reform, and the demands of aging voters.
The 21st-century global political contest is now a three-way fight. In one corner is democracy. In another is a new form of autocracy represented by the Russian-Chinese model of politics, with its emphasis on stability, economic growth, and a strong centralized state. In the third corner is Islamist politics, whose practitioners, in different soft and hard manifestations, are seeking to win power from Morocco to Indonesia. Europe and America both support market economics, the rule of law, freedom of expression, and rights for women, gays, and minorities, and thus whatever fur may fly over American presidential contests should not hide the fact that a broader Euro-Atlantic community exists with common values independent of differing systems of political representation.
American democracy, even with the flaws, furies, and occasional fun of its quadrennial presidential bouts, remains an example for the world. When Barack Obama was born and John McCain was a young naval officer, half of Europe lay under communist rule and big Mediterranean nations such Spain, Portugal, Greece, and intermittently Turkey were not yet democracies. By taking the democratic road that America exemplified, Europe has left poverty and bad politics behind. The United States is still needed to inspire others to follow.
European wiseacres often decry the vulgar animalism of the American political system. But it works. In their own way European politics are just as personal, crude, and creatively destructive, but their great differences, rivalries, and contests over who governs are often resolved by private carve-ups rather than the more democratic public spectacles that America conducts every four years. And given the limited quality of leadership it has to offer at the moment, Europe should look in the mirror before it looks down its nose.
Because European politics are defined by an almost religious divide between socialist and conservative parties, we can look down our noses at the contest between Republicans and Democrats as the equivalent of a squabble over whether you take your tea with sugar or lemon. But this narcissism of small differences makes for hugely enjoyable elections, as personality appears utterly to dominate, and these contests are irresistible to the European news media. As a politician passionate about making the idea of Europe work, it causes me some dismay that British coverage of politics in Germany or France or Spain is picayune by comparison.
The fabled British-Canadian press proprietor and politician Lord Beaverbrook insisted that all politics should be reported in terms of human interest, and there is nothing of greater human interest than the character of an American president. What novelist would have pitched a black freshman senator against a septuagenarian war hero? Europe is agog at the prospect of an Obama presidency, and there are no politicians in Europe who have John McCain’s experience as a warrior and courageous prisoner of war. This is larger-than-life Hollywood politics for Europeans, whose politicians are machine professionals who crawl their way up the greasy pole of power.
Yet in their obsession with personality—the actor Ronald Reagan versus the moralizing Jimmy Carter, or the 1968-generation Bill Clinton versus the preppy George H. W. Bush—Europeans are blind to the fact that the American system is far more likely to produce dramatic change. The shift from the Jim Crow America of the early 1950s to the civil rights America bequeathed by Lyndon Johnson at the end of the 1960s was one of the biggest revolutions in relations between peoples in world history. The gap between the détentist foreign policy of the first President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker and the confrontationist foreign policy of Bush’s son and Vice President Dick Cheney a handful of years later represents a far bigger distance between two approaches to international affairs than anything seen in Europe during the same period.
But foreign affairs do not loom nearly as large in America as they do in Europe. With Germany dependent on Russian gas and oil supplies, and Poland and the Baltic states unable to forget the Soviet occupation of their lands, European elections often turn on foreign issues. In 2004, the Socialist Party in Spain defeated the ruling Spanish conservatives led by José María Aznar because the latter was seen as a puppet of Washington who sent Spanish troops to die in an unpopular war in Iraq. For more than a decade before Tony Blair assumed its leadership in 1994, Britain’s Labor Party was seen as unelectable because it was hostile to European Union membership. Today, EU issues influence all national elections on the eastern side of the Atlantic to an extent unimaginable in the United States. In Britain, the Labor Party likes to present the oppositionist Conservatives as isolationist and anti-European, while right-wing parties present Labor as being too close to Europe and too willing to trade British sovereignty. In the United States, no matter what the rhetoric used to win the nomination, and despite the barrage of mutual accusations that so excites foreign-policy specialists, the question of America’s international relations or foreign-policy perspectives does not sway many voters.
The key difference, however, remains that Europeans elect politicians to run their nations, while Americans elect a politician. Even the most dominant political leaders in Europe—the Margaret Thatchers and Tony Blairs—can only do what their parliaments allow, and must regularly appear before and answer pointed questions from their fellow parliamentarians. In the United States, the chief executive rarely ventures to Capitol Hill except in magisterial passage to deliver his State of the Union speech, which rapt legislators are expected to receive with no sound but respectful applause.
The singularity of the American system—one vote for one person to head the nation—contrasts with the European tradition of one vote for one person who then with other parliamentarians decides who will run the country. It frequently happens that one prime minister can succeed another without a general election, as Gordon Brown did in replacing Tony Blair. The only exception to the European norm is France, with its relatively powerful president elected in a national vote, but even in France a presidency that amounted to an elected monarchy in the days of Charles de Gaulle and François Mitterrand is in the process of being reshaped into one more constrained and dependent on support in France’s parliament.
In Europe, voters choose a team of political personalities in the knowledge that the person who will be finance or defense or interior minister will be as important as the head of government. American presidents, by contrast, are virtually unchallengeable for four years. Every head of government in Europe has to deal with a team of ministers who have their own power base because they have been elected and usually are party grandees. Thus, European voters know not just who will be their president or chancellor or prime minister, but who is likely to be foreign or finance minister. In America, voters decide on a single individual who will lead the nation and, as commander-in-chief, decide when to wage war. Cabinet members are mostly bit players, usually lacking the kind of independent authority European ministers possess.
American candidates seeking a presidential nomination have to promise the passionate and the angry in their political family that they will have what they want: an end to war, lower taxes, health care reform, and so on. Once the candidate is past the hurdle of the nomination, however, these promises start to make contact with public-policy reality, and after the election many fly out the window, as Democrats become free-traders and Republicans embrace protectionism. Of course, European leaders, once in office, bend to reality and external events. But at least up to Election Day, they have to be coherent and offer a manifesto of specific promises that determines if they win or lose. And having won high office, European leaders still have to face fellow parliamentarians who believe in the party manifesto on which they were elected and expect their leader act on it. Failure to deliver on campaign promises can be fatal. A European leader who flubbed health care reform and saw his party lose control of the legislature, as Bill Clinton did in 1994, could never have survived.
To be sure, American presidents are not complete monarchs. They must contend with Congress, state and local governments, and a Supreme Court that decides major issues such as abortion, gun control, and capital punishment (matters that in Europe are reserved for elected legislators). And, of course, a president must face the voters. But America’s chief executive has unparalleled powers, which is one reason why the personalities of candidates—their whims, impulses, and habits—matter more than they do in other countries.
Although the personality strengths and flaws of top political leaders in Europe are under constant scrutiny, nothing matches the minute examination of those who aspire to the White House. John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher as Britain’s prime minister in 1990 without anyone knowing or reporting that he was carrying on a passionate affair with a fellow Conservative member of Parliament and minister named Edwina Currie. The story came out only when she published her diaries after both had left public life. François Mitterrand became president of France while keeping his mistress and their child in a Paris apartment. I am not making a moral point, but a practical one. To the European eye, the American news media’s relentless invasion of the privacy of those who seek the nation’s highest office is another factor that firms up the perception that personality rather than policy is central to U.S. presidential contests.
Another striking difference between the American and European styles of electoral warfare arises from the fact that paid political advertising is banned from European television, removing some of the heat and personal vitriol from campaigns and keeping the focus on policy differences. I once showed a group of hard-bitten British political infighters the Willie Horton ad George H. W. Bush’s backers used to destroy Michael Dukakis in 1988, featuring the African American Horton, who committed violent crimes while on furlough from a Massachusetts prison. These veterans of the British political wars sat back in horror at the vicious but effective crudeness of the attack, with its blatant exploitation of fears about race and crime.
In British, German, and Spanish elections, televised political pitches are limited to formulaic party broadcasts. Each party is allocated a number of slots—usually of up to five minutes—after the main evening news. An independent commission oversees the broadcasts, and while the tone is partisan, direct onslaughts are out of bounds. Some broadcasts simply present the party leader talking directly to viewers—as boring as can be, especially compared to the normal fizz and snap of television advertising in Europe.
Because European politicians have little direct access to the public through the media, journalists are the perpetual mediators (which leaves politicians perhaps even more obsessed than their American counterparts with controlling the news). Televised inquisitions of wannabe government leaders are a major feature of elections. Some countries have formal debates in which the main candidates answer questions from a panel moderated by journalists. Face-to-face debates between aspirants do sometimes occur (though not, oddly, in Britain, where no prime minister has ever consented to debate the leader of the opposition). Yet, as in the United States, the TV duels usually disappoint, as both candidates are prepared and coached to be expert on defense so that punches rarely land. Moreover, since, other than in France, there are usually more than two main party leaders bidding to win seats in the parliament, there is rarely a one-on-one duel. Instead, European candidates endure tough individual inquisitions by respected TV political journalists who avidly seek to trip them up. This is a continuous process, not confined to elections, and any politician in Europe who aspires to high office has to face regular hard-hitting interviews on TV and the still-popular European radio services such as the BBC, which command big audiences for political programs every week.
Aspiring American presidents mostly avoid such rigors, especially during the primaries, when candidates can largely confine their audiences to the adoring crowds of staged town hall meetings and the small caucuses in some supporter’s living room. Anyone hoping to lead a government in Europe has to convince the public and party professionals over months, if not years, by dominating in parliament, public meetings, and the press, and by walking on the hot coals of a televised grilling without flinching or fumbling. By the time an election arrives, a principal candidate will have been battle hardened in dealing with the toughest of broadcast interrogations. When Tony Blair sought to oust Britain’s Conservatives from power in 1997, he already had 14 years of tough parliamentary experience behind him and had forced his Labor Party to come to terms with economic and geopolitical modernity by imposing his will upon recalcitrant Labor leftists. But the Tories still sought to depict him as Bambi—a child without experience.
However, the greater scrutiny does not necessarily make for better leaders. Europe has had its share of duds. Although politicians such as John Major in Britain and Jacques Chirac in France won elections, the economic, social, and foreign policies of their countries under their stewardship were unimpressive. The Austrian Socialists won power in the fall of 2006, but so ineffective was the new Socialist chancellor that he had to dissolve his government and call fresh elections after less than two years in office. The center-left administration headed by Romano Prodi in Italy won power in 2006 but was so incoherent it could not stay in office for more than 20 months. Even under the presidential system in France, both Mitterrand and Chirac found themselves in office but having to share power with opposition parties that had a majority in the National Assembly and could determine who would be prime minister and hold other cabinet posts.
The differences between the American and European political systems have provided fodder for thousands of doctoral dissertations and books. But today the differences may be more apparent than real. If in the 20th century the contest in Europe was between two different economic systems, free-market economics versus totalizing statism and welfarism, with America firmly supporting the former, the contest today is different. Europeans accept liberal market economics and struggle as American politicians do to find the right approaches to health care, social reform, and the demands of aging voters.
The 21st-century global political contest is now a three-way fight. In one corner is democracy. In another is a new form of autocracy represented by the Russian-Chinese model of politics, with its emphasis on stability, economic growth, and a strong centralized state. In the third corner is Islamist politics, whose practitioners, in different soft and hard manifestations, are seeking to win power from Morocco to Indonesia. Europe and America both support market economics, the rule of law, freedom of expression, and rights for women, gays, and minorities, and thus whatever fur may fly over American presidential contests should not hide the fact that a broader Euro-Atlantic community exists with common values independent of differing systems of political representation.
American democracy, even with the flaws, furies, and occasional fun of its quadrennial presidential bouts, remains an example for the world. When Barack Obama was born and John McCain was a young naval officer, half of Europe lay under communist rule and big Mediterranean nations such Spain, Portugal, Greece, and intermittently Turkey were not yet democracies. By taking the democratic road that America exemplified, Europe has left poverty and bad politics behind. The United States is still needed to inspire others to follow.
European wiseacres often decry the vulgar animalism of the American political system. But it works. In their own way European politics are just as personal, crude, and creatively destructive, but their great differences, rivalries, and contests over who governs are often resolved by private carve-ups rather than the more democratic public spectacles that America conducts every four years. And given the limited quality of leadership it has to offer at the moment, Europe should look in the mirror before it looks down its nose.
We create new barriers to immigration at our own peril
This was published on the Guardian Comment is Free website 21 October 2008
Keep xenophobia at bay
Keep xenophobia at bay
21 October 2008
Britain is the most internationally open of EU nation states. We create new barriers at our peril. Yesterday Phil Woolas, Britain's new immigration minister, sat beside his Dutch opposite number and said that immigration policy needs a rigorous counting in and counting out of everyone who enters Britain. His Dutch colleague would have been bemused as it is impossible to count who enters and leaves the Netherlands because there are no longer any borders there. Even if Europe gave up on the free flow of people and tried to reintroduce stringent frontier controls it still would not work.
When I worked in Geneva 25 years ago at a time when passports were checked at main borders there were still dozens of small roads going from France into Switzerland which had no permanent border checks on them. Schengen – the system that allows Europeans to move about freely – was introduced not in a fit of Euroliberalism but because the system of trying to stop and examine the papers of every car, lorry, bike, or walker crossing the hundreds of thousands border roads of Europe had become impossible.Today most cars drive across Swiss border controls without any check.
Britain actually was a forerunner with its mini-Schengen with Ireland. Even though Ireland is a sovereign republic with policy that over the decades has been at times inimical to Britain, no British politician – even during the worst of the IRA terror attacks – suggested imposing border control or passport checks on Irish citizens coming into Britain.
Recently, the Lib Dems in South Yorkshire distributed a xenophobic newsletter attacking a Labour councillor of Danish origin who has lived in Britain for 24 years. The Lib-Dems described her as "non-British" in a cheap BNP-style dog whistle to local voters. Yesterday in the Commons, UKIP's sole parliamentary representative, Bob Spink, wanted to know how many "non-British" people there are in the workforce. Tories fell in behind the UKIP man and shouted at ministers about the level of this new category of "non-Brit" who work here.
The answer is that we cannot know unless we want to start counting every Irish, American, Australian, Canadian and other foreigner all the time. The queues at our airports are surely long enough as it is without insisting on another long line for everyone who catches a Ryanair or Easyjet holiday flight to be registered.
There are 300,000 "non-Brit" sudents at our universities providing an economic lifeline to stretched university finance as well as creating new cohorts of young men and women who, one hopes, will appreciate their stay in Britain and become economic and political friends of Britain when they go home.
The Federation of Poles produced a dossier of Daily Mail headlines this year which described Poles in lurid, hostile, xenophobic language. Migration Watch constantly attacks foreigners in Britain. Yet now the Poles are going home fast. The easiest way to cut immigration is to have a recession.
Britain has 24,000 foreign-owned firms according to a parliamentary answer I recently received. I would like to see that figure go up and when I am abroad at economic conferences I promise foreign investors they will be welcome in South Yorkshire despite Lib Dem and BNP xenophobia.
But if all the language from top Tories is about limiting the presence of foreigners in Britain and ministers echo that refrain, why on earth should anyone come to a country where the media-political discourse is so hostile?
Britain's economic comparative advantage under Blair and Brown is that we are the most internationally open of EU nation states. We create new barriers and type-cast "non-Brits" as the unwelcome other at our peril.
After the Russia's invasion and dismemberment of Georgia, David Cameron said he wanted to punish Russian businessmen visiting Britain with heavy new visa restrictions. Given today's news about the Tories and the oligarchs, Mr Cameron may regret his comments. But as a strong critic of Russian geo-political bullying I welcome the presence of 150,000 Russians in Britain adding and spending wealth in our country. The dispute with Russia is with the neo-authoritarian Kremlin. The wider and deeper the Russian economy grows the better and while Mr Cameron today has questions to answer about George Osborne and Russian billionaires Britain should not seek to punish Russian economic actors.
If I believed there were easy measures that would reduce asylum seeker backlogs, send back the economic migrants who abuse the asylum rules, or reduce tensions when my constituents hear languages they cannot understand, practices they do not share, or ways of life they cannot understand, I would embrace them.
In the 1930s, the Daily Mail described Britain as an over-crowded island which should prevent German Jews from emigrating here. Then our population was 30 million. Today it is twice that but still only 10% of UK land surface has dwellings on it. And with a bigger population we have become richer and freer.
The Tory idea of a population limit is not far off Canute telling the tide not to come in. We have raised the age at which people can marry. Our brothels and massage parlours pullulate with teenage girls trafficked into Britain to satisfy ever-increasing demand for paid-for sex. But we cannot marry a non-EU citizen until he or she is over 21. Again, as with English language lessons (as if the 800,000 Brits in Spain were expected to speak Spanish) I have no objections but these are surface scratching measures.
Britain has to be open for business, for ideas, for people. The immigration debate as defined by the Tories, the Daily Mail, Migration Watch and the BNP is about shutting down Britain.
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