How social-democracy in Europe can renew itself

This article on the future of social-democracy in Europe was published in the French newspaper Le Monde

27 June 2009

La social-démocratie doit choisir entre protestation et appétit du pouvoir
Il faut assumer des compromis avec la réalité et trouver des leaders neufs

Née de la lutte contre l’exploitation capitaliste au 19e siècle, la social-démocratie dans ses différentes formes – le travaillisme au Royaume-Uni, le socialisme en France, le modèle social-démocrate en Allemagne et dans les pays scandinaves – a conquis le pouvoir d’Etat au XXe siècle.

Qu’en reste-t-il aujourd’hui ? La gauche démocratique est défiée par des partis concurrents qui se réclament de ses valeurs et empiètent sur son électorat. Le national-populisme, bien ancré dans certains partis anti-européens de la droite xénophobe, attire désormais les votants des classes populaires. Les partis anticapitalistes de la gauche populiste briguent une partie du prolétariat et des travailleurs syndiqués de la fonction publique. Les partis écologiques anti-industrialistes ont aussi capté beaucoup de votes progressistes.

Dans le paysage politique dessiné par les européennes, la gauche social-démocrate représente au mieux un quart des votants, souvent à peine un cinquième. Le Labour, au pouvoir au Royaume-Uni, a réuni 15% des voix. Le PS, dans l’opposition depuis 2002, n’a guère fait mieux. Madame Merkel et Monsieur Berlusconi ont battu le SPD en Allemagne et le Parti démocrate en Italie. En Europe de l’Est, les sociaux-démocrates (communistes rebaptisés ou partis neufs), sont relégués dans le camp minoritaire.

Comment expliquer cette crise de la social-démocratie ? On y voit trois raisons. Primo, il est erroné de penser que le contexte de crise économique est bénéfique pour la gauche. Lorsque les citoyens ont peur - pour leur emploi, leurs salaires et l’avenir de leurs enfants - ils votent de manière défensive et conservatrice. En réponse, la gauche doit offrir une analyse plus élaborée de la nouvelle économie. La dénonciation du néo-libéralisme, des riches ou du capitalisme sonne bien à la tribune, mais n’offre pas un modèle alternatif de société. Sans disséquer et comprendre la nouvelle réalité, celle qui rythme la vie et les aspirations des citoyens au quotidien, la gauche continuera de répéter des slogans qui appartiennent au siècle dernier et ne trouvent plus d’écho aujourd’hui.

Secundo, la social-démocratie parle global, mais agit national. Alors que le capital, la culture et les communications sont transnationaux, la structure des politiques publiques reste prisonnière de l’Etat-nation. La protection des intérêts nationaux – agriculture en France, industrie automobile en Allemagne, banques et City en Angleterre ou secret bancaire en Autriche – continue de prévaloir au détriment d’une politique paneuropéenne. Il est temps de rééquilibrer cette tendance, en fondant l'action nationale dans le discours internationaliste. En même temps, la gauche doit redéfinir sa théorie de la nation, et repenser l’Union européenne comme une institution au service des citoyens.

Tertio, la social-démocratie doit choisir son camp : demeurer une force de protestations et de propositions, ou retrouver l’appétit du pouvoir. Trop de ses idées ont été récupérées et appliquées par la droite. L’étatisation de l’économie et la création de l’Etat-providence pendant les « trente Glorieuses » sont des idées de gauche mises en œuvre par De Gaulle en France, Adenauer en Allemagne, les démocrates-chrétiens en Italie et les conservateurs en Grande-Bretagne. Aujourd’hui, la gauche regorge d’idées mais elle se désintéresse de la tâche politique suprême, la conquête du pouvoir.

La victoire implique des compromis historiques avec le capitalisme, avec la nation, et avec les électeurs. Pour l’instant, la gauche européenne se pose en contestataire idéologique pendant que la droite entretient et développe sa pratique du pouvoir. Le Parti socialiste européen peut dénoncer José Manuel Barroso, mais s’il n’est pas capable de proposer son propre candidat à la présidence de la Commission, il prêche dans le désert, ce n’est pas sérieux.

Il existe en Europe un nouveau prolétariat. Pourtant ces opprimés (immigrants, femmes salariées, pauvres, travailleurs précaires, mères célibataires) ne trouvent pas leur place dans la social-démocratie moderne. Celle-ci a produit une élite composée de technocrates bourgeois formés dans les meilleures universités et les grandes écoles. Elle n’est pas le reflet de la société et de ses inégalités. Où est la gauche d’en bas ? De façon tout aussi symptomatique, les syndicats européens ne sont plus des acteurs majeurs du monde de l’entreprise et ne restent puissants que dans le secteur public. Or la gauche doit réanimer son rapport au syndicalisme. Il y a plus de petites et moyennes entreprises en Angleterre et en France qu’il n’y a de travailleurs syndiqués dans le privé. Une faiblesse majeure de la gauche est de n’avoir plus de relais dans le monde du travail.

La famille européenne sociale-démocrate est diverse. Il n’y a pas de modèle unique, pas de pensée unique. Les réponses politiques doivent s’inspirer de certains des éléments les plus réussis de ces modèles, tout en restant souples et variées. Il ne s’agit pas de transposer, par imitation simpliste, un programme enraciné dans le temps et l’espace. La flexicurité (grande flexibilité du marché du travail et forte protection des chômeurs) en est un exemple. Ce système marche au Danemark, où la paix sociale repose sur la conciliation, où les syndicats soutiennent les entreprises qui délocalisent, où les revendications salariales sont modérées et où les fonctionnaires ne font pas grève. En Allemagne, la Constitution interdit aussi le droit grève à ses quelque 1,5 millions de fonctionnaires. Mais envisager une restriction de ce droit à l’échelle européenne ? Impensable ! Pourtant, à moins de penser l’inconcevable, nous sommes condamnés à rester dans nos tranchées faites de désespoirs et de défaites.

Enfin, politique et personnalité vont de pair. La gauche n’a pas de leader convaincant. L’espoir viendra peut-être des nations nordiques, où une nouvelle génération de jeunes femmes est en train de modeler la social-démocracie du XXIe siècle. Elles viendront peut-être remplacer les anciens communistes et socialistes étatistes qui n’ont eu de cesse de rejeter les compromis historiques opérés par un Willy Brandt ou un Felipe Gonzalez. Pour faire naître des leaders audacieux et remobiliser les électeurs, les partis politiques doivent savoir se transformer. Tous, y compris le Labour, doivent s’ouvrir au changement. Mais il est tellement plus facile de répéter les incantations du passé.

Iraq War Inquiry: opening ears, and voices

This article appeared in the Yorkshire Post

Let's open up Iraq War inquiry to all voices

19 June 2009

Should the Iraq War inquiry be accessible to the public? Every sinew of me says yes. As a minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office during this period. I read many, not all but many, of the relevant documents, and had endless conversations with other governments in the period running up to the conflict.
I am reasonably sure that there is no secret hidden away that will alter anyone's view of the conflict. Every government I spoke to before the outbreak of the conflict believed Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. They disagreed over the means to deal with him. But neither Jacques Chirac nor Gerhard Schroeder, nor the French or German intelligence agencies, questioned Saddam's desire to develop WMD. Those who believe it was wrong to take action to enforce UN resolutions and remove Saddam Hussein will rest convinced of their belief. Those who think it was right to remove a dictator and tyrant who had killed two million Muslims and gassed his own people, much as Britain took action against Slobadan Milosevic after his murderous assault of European Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, will be unlikely to change their minds. The deaths of Iraqis after the spring of 2003 are attributable to those forces – Jihadi Islamist extremists, Iran-backed Shia militants bent on killing Sunnis, other groups backed by al-Qaida and those private armies of killers abusing the religion of Islam who have been in place since the 1980s, financed by individuals in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere as part of the global jihad against democracy. This inconvenient truth is ignored by those who want to blame the deaths in Iraq since 2003 on western democracies, just as they argue today that the Taliban killings in Afghanistan and Pakistan are the fault of President Obama and his decision to increase US military presence there. I am glad the inquiry will look into the military action against Iraq prior to 2003. Robin Cook, as Foreign Secretary, put together the coalition that started the bombing of Iraq in 1998 to stay Saddam's hand in killing Kurds. The issue is not about historical facts but about political judgement. For two years the Conservatives, in the person of William Hague, have been calling for an inquiry based on the Falklands War inquiry chaired by Lord Franks. This met, took evidence and deliberated in private. This week the Prime Minister granted William Hague his wish. Now the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties are insisting that politicians should sit on the inquiry. I am not sure, in today's climate, that MPs should clamour to be on the commission. David Cameron and Nick Clegg may have their placemen in mind, just as I am sure Gordon Brown could find Labour MPs to balance them. But will a ding-dong between party politicians help? The other big question is whether those called to give evidence should do so in public and whether they should do so on oath. If the latter, witnesses can reasonably demand to be represented by lawyers as what should be a truth-seeking inquiry becomes more of a court or a tribunal sitting in judgement. If lawyers are involved, as in the Saville Inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings, the process will take years. Saville is still sitting and costing millions in lawyers' fees. So for a full public inquiry taking evidence on oath from witnesses buttressed by lawyers opens a vista to a process that can take years and years. In addition, all the governments and foreign agencies whose papers can be revealed to a commission on inquiry which will not breach confidences would have a very different line if the most confidential communications were to be made public. It is not clear what the legal status is of diplomatic communications transmitted on the basis that they remain confidential. I am not sure any government in the world would talk to Britain in trust and in confidence on the basis that its communications were to be made public. So the call for a public inquiry actually vitiates the demands of those making the call. A full public inquiry would be a lawyers' dream and would not be allowed to disclose vital communications. That said, I hope the Iraq inquiry does agree to hold some sittings in public and interview key players, if they agree, in public. I welcome, therefore, Gordon Brown's move to change the terms of the inquiry so its members can determine which sessions are open and in public and which meetings take place in private to interview non-British players and to examine confidential material. And for every politician or civil servant questioned, I hope Iraqi civil society representatives are allowed to speak. They were ignored by democracy as they suffered under Saddam's tyranny. They have been ignored by many as they have fallen victim to the all-out assault on the elected Iraqi government by its state-sponsored and jihadist Islamist opponents. Let us hear from the people of Iraq as much as from our own politicians and officials.

Electoral reform

Talk on Electoral reform given at the Royal Society of Arts

17 June 2009

I am delighted to be here with Professor John Keane, whose biography of Tom Paine I eulogised about in History Today when it was published some years ago. Now John Keane has written an important book, "The Life and Death of Democracy", which poses challenging questions.
Of course, so-called representative democracy is not sufficient to create the conditions of human happiness and the good life which should be the end of political activity. We have seen an election in Iran which has elected as President a Jew-hating extremist who denies the rights of women, gays, journalists, and trade unionists in Iran. We have seen a festival of representative democracy in India. Yet more than six decades after India took control of its destiny via representative democracy, more than half of the Indian population cannot read or write and there are more Indians living in absolute poverty than ever before. So representative democracy in Iran and India is not, in itself, enough.
I make this point to suggest that the notion that forms of election can deliver perfection or even better government needs more strenuous examination. The American constitution that Tom Paine’s endeavours brought about has not been much altered. Americans still elect their Congress and their President on a first-past-the-post basis. In contrast, France, a country I know well, has altered its electoral system about five times in the last 25 years. It has not guaranteed more honest politics, as the corruption accusations and destruction of political careers in France has been far more serious than the current MP expenses row.
I could run through a number of European countries which have PR systems and where voters have no sense of their elected representatives being accountable. No-one in Belgium or Switzerland has the faintest idea who their MP is. Party machines decide who can be chosen and elected. Party machines do deals after an election to decide who is a minister or even head of government. At the European Parliament in 2005, the centre-right won a clear majority. But the president of the European parliament was a Catalan socialist who had never served there before. That is what PR gives you.
In Britain, PR would bring in up to 20 BNP MPs, the same number of UKIP MPs, as well as other smaller groups representing separatist or religious parties. At the moment, people have to form a broad coalition within the democratic left, the democratic right and the democratic centre in the shape of the Lib-Dems. That puts the main national parties in Britain, as with the Democrats and Republicans in America, under the obligation to come to compromises and develop programmes that correspond to different demands.
Of course, parliament needs to be reformed. But the sight of party machines excluding MPs is not a pretty one. In 1939, the Labour Party expelled Nye Bevan because he was too left-wing. At the same time, the Conservative Party was trying to persuade Winston Churchill’s constituency party to de-select him because of Churchill’s opposition to the Tory appeasement policy of the day. Both Bevan and Churchill were protected by having been elected by a free people who chose within a specific localist area who would speak for them in Parliament. They and not party machines made that choice. If we move to destroying that system by allowing MPs to face being ousted by party machines, or by some new state quango, the Council of Guardians of MPs, or by a local campaign led by pressure groups to get rid of their MP under the so-called recall system, then we will have a very different democracy in Britain.
I am not opposed to electoral reform but please can we think through the consequences. It is policy, and party and personality – in the sense of the leadership of a party, that makes the difference. To confuse the form of election with the content of what an election should deliver – namely good government - is a fatal error.
I lived in Switzerland for many years and remain underwhelmed that endless referendums deliver political engagement. Voting in national, cantonal and local elections in Switzerland is much lower than in neighbouring countries. I also note that in California, a referendum has decided to abolish gay marriages. Again, we should be careful in case we get what we wish. Plebiscites are a populist device and populist politics is rarely, if ever, progressive politics.
Again I do not oppose a written constitution. Greece has one, as does Germany. In Greece, the ruling party dare not risk a vote on lifting the immunity of one of its MPs who, when a minister, was accused of taking political backhanders. If this gentleman appears before the courts, the government loses its majority and power. So its response has been to suspend the Greek parliament. In Germany, the firm Siemens is up to its neck in accusation of bribing politicians to the tune of €1.3 billion. Both the suspension of the Greek parliament and the allegations of massive corruption in Germany have happened under written constitutions.
I make these points, not to say nothing needs reforming, but to argue that politics depends on content more than form – on policy and good leadership rather than PR, AV, STV or even formal written constitutions. I wish this debate well but I will prefer to devote my energies to seeing how one can shape a progressive, reforming politics for the 21st century for my country, and for Europe.

This interview appeared in the Italian journal Europa

9 June 2009

CENTROSINISTRA ■ INTERVISTA AL PARLAMENTARE LABURISTA DENIS MACSHANE, EX MINISTRO PER L’EUROPA CON TONY BLAIR

"Basta slogan del secolo scorso, manca un’analisi della realtà"

Domenica è stata una giornata nera per la sinistra europea.
Queste elezioni sono una profonda sconfitta per la sinistra democratica.
È stato un errore storico credere che fosse sufficiente la retorica della denuncia dei fallimenti del capitalismo, ed è un errore pensare che la crisi economica sia un bene per la sinistra. Quando I cittadini sono spaventati per i loro posti di lavoro, per i loro stipendi o per il futuro dei loro figli, votano con atteggiamento difensivo e stanno con i conservatori. La sinistra ha bisogno di risposte convincenti e di un linguaggio tutto suo sull’immigrazione e sulla lotta all’estremismo islamico, per esempio.

Perché la crisi economica non ha aiutato la sinistra?
Alla sinistra serve un’analisi più sofisticata della nuova economia. La semplice denuncia del neo liberalismo o del capitalismo suona bene sulla carta, ma non offre una via d’uscita. Senza una comprensione profonda del nuovo contesto materiale che la gente vive, la sinistra continuerà a ripetere gli slogan del secolo scorso che non sono pertinenti al nuovo contesto globale.

L’ultima copertina del settimanale Newsweek era dedicata a un suo articolo, in cui lei ha scritto che «anche nell’attuale clima anti-mercato la socialdemocrazia deve imparare a diventare pro-mercato».
Mentre i capitali, la cultura e le comunicazioni sono ormai transnazionali, l’organizzazione della politica di sinistra non riesce a liberarsi dalla gabbia della nazione. Quello che conta però non è la scelta tra più o meno mercato, ma tra un mercato efficiente e uno inefficiente. La destra italiana, nazionalista e protezionista, indebolisce le forza economica dell’Italia e le farà perdere molti posti di lavoro.

Perché i cittadini britannici hanno punito così pesantemente il Labour di Gordon Brown?
Ci sono tre crisi che convergono nella politica britannica. La prima è la crisi di un trentennio di capitalismo globale deregolato, che è finito in un disastro del sistema bancario e negli attuali problemi economici che colpiscono la Gran Bretagna come l’Italia e altre nazioni. Poi c’è la crisi legata alla fine del progetto New Labour di Blair-Brown-Mandelson, che aveva dato al paese il suo periodo più lungo di egemonia socialdemocratica. Infine c’è la fine di un certo tipo di cultura parlamentare, di un modo di comportarsi dei deputati. Tutti i paesi soffrono per la prima crisi, ma il Regno Unito deve affrontare anche le altre due. Questa situazione ha coinciso con il governo di un primo ministro come Brown, brillante nell’elaborare politiche economiche, non altrettanto nel comunicare con gli elettori.

Il blairismo è morto, ma anche la sinistra renana non se la passa tanto bene.
Non c’è un unico modello da seguire. Le differenze tra il Ps francese e la Spd tedesca sono più grandi di quelle tra il blairismo e gli altri modelli europei. Ci sono elementi che da ogni sinistra democratica europea di successo si possono trasferire da paese a paese, ma le risposte politiche devono essere flessibili e variabili, non possono essere una semplicistica imitazione di un programma radicato nel tempo e nello spazio in una parte d’Europa.

La crisi della sinistra si spiega anche con il fatto che la paura dell’immigrato (tema caro alle destre) è oggi importante tanto quanto quella della disoccupazione, come dimostra la vittoria della Lega, dei fascisti britannici e di tanti partiti xenofobi?
Temo di sì, anche perché l’immigrazione può essere assorbita solo da un’economia in crescita. Ed è anche vero che molti se non la maggior parte dei richiedenti asilo sono vittime di un traffico criminale di esseri umani e la sinistra deve essere molto più chiara nel denunciarlo. E non dimentichiamo che, tra le altre cose, è la politica agricola protezionista dell’Europa a impedire all’Africa di uscire dalla povertà. Se gli africani non possono esportare i loro beni finiscono per "esportare" se stessi.

Tra i progressisti c’è anche un problema di leadership?
Non si può separare la politica dalla personalità. La sinistra manca di leader convincenti, ma i leader devono essere i primi a essere convinti e sicuri di sé e questo non succede in molti paesi. C’è qualche segnale di speranza nelle nazioni nordiche, dove una nuova generazione di leader donne sta delineando una nuova socialdemocrazia per il XXI secolo.

Dove vede gli esperimenti più interessanti, nella sinistra globale?
La combinazione di economia aperta e riformismo sociale e culturale di Zapatero è interessante. Dovrebbero essere esaminati i partiti di sinistra liberal in Australia e Canada, così come gli esperimenti politici progressisti di alcuni stati degli Usa. Dovremmo guardare al Brasile e al Cile. La sinistra in Europa è soddisfatta di poter amministrare città e regioni, ma rimane incerta sulla conquista del potere a livello statale, che richiede un’alleanza con la borghesia e il capitale.

(daniele castellani perelli)

European elections: the victory of Euroscepticism

This article appeared in the Evening Standard

This anti-Europe spasm will take Britain nowhere

8 June 2009

The hammer blows from voters continue to smash down upon Labour. Yesterday's disastrous showing in the European Parliament election will be seized upon by those urging the Prime Minister's removal and an early general election. But the real winner is British Euroscepticism.
The nearly 60 per cent of votes cast for parties broadly hostile to today's EU now has to be taken seriously, as Britain's political class works out how to deal with the apparently unsolvable European question.
Sadly, Britain now also joins other European countries in electing two racist, extremist MEPs from the BNP. The party leader, Nick Griffin, is anti-Semitic and will join France's Jew-hating National Front and other anti-Semitic and racist MEPs in Strasbourg. British mainstream political parties can no longer dodge the BNP question and why xenophobic politics are digging such deep roots in Britain.
Yet the miserable turn-out, not much better than for local council elections, the absence of any serious policy debate and the overwhelming dominance of the MPs' expenses scandal mean that last Thursday's European poll was as much about domestic politics as the future of Europe. This is odd, as the European Parliament is important and influential — and will become more so if, as looks likely, the Irish will ratify the Lisbon Treaty.
The European Parliament is increasingly the co-legislator on trade, harmonising standards so that goods can be sold in 27 different nations without different national regulations, and on global environmental policy. MEPs also say Yes or No to the President of the Commission and to its commissioners.
So battling for British interests in Strasbourg and Brussels is what our MEPs are tasked with. Instead, the European election was fought, as it always is, on domestic national politics: thus Britain has chosen to send a majority of MEPs to Strasbourg who do not like the EU, who will claim the maximum of expenses — Ukip's Nigel Farage boasted he had trousered more than £2 million in his 10-year stint as an MEP — and whose main desire is to see Britain move to the exit door of the EU.
The slump in the Conservative vote to less than 30 per cent should worry David Cameron, even though Labour has deeper wounds to lick. The Conservatives are relentless in promoting their anti-European line. But Cameron cannot concede the politics of total withdrawal, which would leave Britain isolated on the world stage, with dwindling significance to the United States, China, India or Russia.
This goes to the heart of the Tory dilemma over Europe. Voters assume that if the EU is as bad as William Hague paints it, then Britain should be out. So the Ukip or even BNP vote allows British citizens who dislike Europe to speak the truth that the Tories dare not utter — that the logical end of Euroscepticism has to be withdrawal.
Every political leader in Europe calls for a better, reformed EU. But to achieve that desirable goal requires engagement in, not rejection of, the European Parliament. Yet in a couple of weeks, the new Tory and Ukip MEPs will turn up in Strasbourg but have nothing to do.
The Conservatives will not sit down and work with fellow centre-Right parties headed by Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel, even though both did well yesterday. The Tories are pledged to form a new alliance with homophobic Polish Right-wingers and a Czech party whose leader believes global warming is a myth.
This small grouping will be powerless and marginal. British ambassadors in EU capitals are openly expressing concern about a Tory government with William Hague as foreign secretary, in open conflict with major EU governments.
As a result, British businesses and NGOs cannot turn to Tory MEPs to advance their interests. Mr Cameron's isolationist politics turns Tory MEPs into political eunuchs, without power or influence to promote UK plc or any other cause which requires winning support from fellow centre-Right MEPs.
Yet Labour can offer little alternative. Despite Tony Blair's promise to place Britain at the heart of Europe, Labour's failure to make the case for engagement has left Britain as the EU's most faint-hearted member. Blair made pro-European speeches — but usually on the continent and rarely in Britain.
Ministers have seen the EU as a source of problems and irritation, not an opportunity to create new networks of British influence. Blair and Brown have appointed as many Europe ministers as Labour's years in office, while two of Labour's four foreign secretaries have come from the Eurosceptic wing of the party.
Margaret Thatcher spent £25 million to promote Britain in Europe in the advertising campaign of the late 1980s to get Britain ready for the single market. When I was Europe minister, my budget to explain the EU to voters was slashed to £200,000, a derisory amount given the billions Whitehall spends promoting its preferred policies.
Yet while voters and politicians turn their backs on Europe, citizens embrace the EU as never before. There are more Brits living in Europe, running businesses or owning homes there than ever before in our history. Our low-cost airlines take advantage of the single market to make the whole of the EU the place where we shop, drink and relax. Our universities all have thriving European departments.
So while our politics remains more and more hostile to Europe, our lived experience becomes ever more integrated. Indeed even the good showing for anti-European ideology in this election also shows Britain becoming more, not less, continental, as the Continent's nationalist and xenophobic politics cross the Channel to become commonplace in Britain.
Like the great 19th-century political questions of free trade or Ireland, which divided British politics for decades until some consensus was found, the question of Britain in Europe will agitate our political class for the foreseeable future. Right now Euroscepticism has triumphed. But no British government will ever dare offer an official policy of full withdrawal.
Thus we will hear sound and fury over Europe and send many MEPs to Strasbourg with little to do but claim expenses. Until we can reach a pro-European consensus Britain, alas, will remain a sour, crabbed member of an EU in which we should and could lead with panache, confidence and style.

Call upon Iran to respect all faiths, including the Baha'i faith

News release

1 June 2009

Former FCO Minister Appeals for Respect for Baha’i and all faiths

Denis MacShane MP for Rotherham has called upon the Iranian government to allow members of the Baha’i faith to worship freely in Iran.

“All UN member states are signed up to the UN Declaration of Human Rights which respects the right of people of all faiths to observe and worship according to their beliefs providing they do not seek to impose those beliefs on others.

“Iran’s disregard for its international obligations is particularly sad and bad in respect of the Baha’is. Those trying to hold the Baha’i faith together in Iran face arrest and imprisonment without due process or worse.

“It is too easy to see Iran only in geo-political terms and in the context of its race to get nuclear weapons. But we should never forget the persecution of Iranians of a different Islamic faith from the majority Shia community – even if that latter version of Islam is regarded disfavourably by some fundamentalist Sunni ideologues.

“We should all pray that the different branches of Islam can compose their differences and stop persecuting one another,” said MacShane.

MPs' expenses row - now Bill Cash

This article was published by the Independent on Sunday

Keep Bill Cash in the Commons
31 June 2009

My heart sank when I read that Bill Cash, the doyen of anti-Europeans in the Commons, had been fingered in the MPs’ expenses row. In my former lives as a BBC journalist and trade union official I was paid per diems, overnights, living-in-London supplement and all sorts of allowances that the professional classes are awarded to boost their salary.
Uncomfortable as it is for all MPs – and my allowance claims have come under scrutiny in the national and local press - the exposure of a system that should have been wound up years ago has to be healthy for democracy.
But must every MP be defenestrated to prove that the burghers of Bromsgrove are right as they devour their hard-working MP Julie Kirkbride live on television? They have got Ms Kirkbride. Must they get Mr Cash?
I hope not. Cash is my opposite in almost every way imaginable. He is passionately anti-European. I am passionately in favour of Britain being fully in Europe. He is a devoted Thatcherite free-marketeer. I am a social democrat who wants the market to be our servant not master. He is romantic Catholic public school Tory. I consider religious ideology to have invaded and colonised too much 21st century political space.
We have done battle over Europe in the Commons for 15 years. He was a thorn in my side as Europe Minister and has won his internal battle to make the Conservatives the most isolationist anti-European mainstream party in the democratic world. That is dangerous for my vision of what Britain should be.
But today I leap to his defence because if the Commons does not have room for Bill Cash it will be an infinitely poorer place.
For that is the beauty of this battered place called the House of Commons around which so many want to heap a funeral pyre. It has always been full of the Bill Cashes, the Tony Benns, the Clare Shorts, the George Galloways, the Nicholas Wintertons, the Shaun Woodwards ready to cross the floor, all of them hated by their whips and party bosses. MPs are weak, strong, vain, proud, stupid, fiddling, clever or ultra-honest individuals who will never fully conform to the New Model Army of perfect MPs that is now demanded.
Going just a little further back the Labour Party was quick to suspend Nye Bevan as an MP at about the same time in the late 1930s that the Conservative Party was actively seeking to de-select Winston Churchill as a Tory MP because he did not conform to the party leadership.
But both Churchill and Bevan were both cloaked in the invincible democratic armour of having been elected freely by a free people, rooted in a time and space that constituted an unbreakable bond between a few square miles of our nation and the Parliament that decides our laws.
So when Nick Clegg calls for MPs to be recalled by a baying mob organising a petition with the help of the press, he surrenders our parliamentary democracy to those with money or hate in their hearts. When David Cameron and Labour ministers call for proportional representation they hand over power to centralised party machines to choose or unchoose MPs. Those nations most associated with political corruption and money buying ministers – think Ireland, Greece, Romania amongst others – all have written constitutions.
When Nick Clegg says no outside earnings for MPs he is saying goodbye to Lloyd George, Jo Grimond, Paddy Ashdown, Charlie Kennedy and Ming Campbell without mentioning the big MP outside earners like Roy Hattersley, John Smith or William Hague..
Please can this cant come to an end. And please can Bill Cash have some protection from David Cameron, even if he did not go to Eton. New rigorous rules are in place and the wrongs exposed cannot happen again. But the Commons should remain a mirror of our nations, not an assembly of clones appointed by the centralised party bureaucrats.

Newsweek's article on the left in Europe

The following text was published in Newsweek

How the Left Can Rise Again

8 June 2009

This should be the left's big chance in Europe. Capitalism is in crisis. Growth is collapsing. Unemployment is rising, and the state is back in business. The time is ripe for the left to push a coherent alternative to the right's free-market vision of the world. But no, the classic 20th-century parties of the left—social democrats in Northern Europe, socialists in the Mediterranean, Labour in Britain—are struggling, and 20 of the European Union's 27 member states have a right-wing government head. They include Nicolas Sarkozy in France, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Angela Merkel in Germany. Among the big four EU nations, only Britain's Gordon Brown hails from the left, and he's hanging on by a thread. Even supporters of the left look back a decade or more—to Willy Brandt in Germany, Felipe González in Spain or François Mitterrand in France—to find a political giant.
In many ways the left has become a victim of its own success. Years ago, Leszek Kolakowski, the exiled Polish political scientist, defined social-democratic politics as "an obstinate will to erode by inches the conditions which produce avoidable suffering, oppression, hunger, wars, radical and national hatred, insatiable greed and vindictive envy." Now the mid-20th-century horror of out-and-out poverty has been smothered by welfare statism, and old class conflicts have been replaced by a more complex proletariat, including immigrants and part-time women workers who don't fit neatly into the white, male party ranks. There are more small businesses than unionized workers in Europe's private sector. No wonder fundamentally antibusiness parties of the left don't know how to respond to the worst financial crisis in memory.
Today no leader steps forward. In Athens in May, the bookish head of the Greek Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), George Papandreou, brought together fellow European left leaders like France's Ségolène Royal, Spain's veteran González and Italy's former leftist prime minister Massimo d'Alema in an attempt to essay a new synthesis. PASOK is only one seat short of being able to defeat the ruling right-wing New Democracy government, which makes Papandreou the closest the left now has to winning power in Europe. But his relevance did not help focus his peers. They offered only musty rhetoric against neoliberalism and neoconservatism, as if angry denunciations of contemporary capitalism or attacks on George W. Bush would persuade voters to return to social democracy.
Left-wing candidates for the European parliamentary elections this month are united only by a lack of focus. For months, the parties of the European left have been working to produce a joint manifesto, but they cannot even agree on a candidate to head the European Commission. The left-wing prime ministers of Britain, Spain and Portugal all back the current right-wing European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso. And without a common leader, what can the manifesto offer?
It is long on critiques, short on solutions. It does not support massive Keynesian public-spending boosts, in the style of Obama, because the German Social Democratic finance minister has denounced "crass Keynesianism"—the first time Keynes has been a taboo for the European left. It does not mention nuclear power as part of the solution to climate change because German Social Democrats thought that would upset their Green allies. Nor does it call for the abolition of European agricultural subsidies—a major cause of poverty in Africa and Asia—because French Socialists always veto any cut in farm subsidies. Every attempt to advance traditional left-wing ideals was blocked by national parties, which were worried about domestic election lobbies. The manifesto does offer one credible answer to the current crisis—a smart plan to regulate the wilder extremes of banking and finance—but in party-functionary prose so leaden that it cannot possibly generate votes.
Today, social democrats give the impression that they prefer protest to power—better a clever op-ed in The Guardian than an appeal to people who feel there is too much state and taxation. Typical of this is Sorbonne professor Aquilino Morelle, who wrote speeches for former French Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin. He had a lengthy op-ed in Le Monde in May denouncing the right and praising what the socialists had done in the last century, with not a single policy proposal for today. And Morelle is a reformer; in French terms he is almost a Blair-like modernizer.
The left's attachment to old beliefs stops a new generation of left intellectuals from offering hard answers. Royal and her rival, French Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry, join any passing street demonstration. Their personal attacks on Sarkozy may make for vivid television, and Royal's call for "radicalité" pleases militants but does not attract voters to the mainstream left. When González in Athens urged younger comrades not to flirt with the nondemocratic forces of the radical left, he was ignored as a voice from the past, made to speak late in the evening to a hall that had been crowded to hear the glamorous Royal, but half empty when the Spaniard representing the glory days of social democracy uttered his warning.
The crisis of today's social democrats is perhaps best embodied by the leader of the party for which I currently serve as an M.P.: Gordon Brown. He is acknowledged as a Tiger Woods on policy, and in May he gave a master class in international economic policy at a mesmerized annual dinner of British employers in the Confederation of British Industry. British bosses are fed up with the sudden collapse of the economy, dislike Brown's tax increases and in their hearts would prefer to see one of their own, David Cameron, in Downing Street. Yet they listened in rapt silence as Brown, without notes, explained the decisions he, Obama and other world leaders had to take.
But the low poll numbers of the social democrats show that policy-wonking is not enough. Brown, like other European social democrats, cannot find the populist and personalized politics that comes naturally to his conservative rival, David Cameron, or to the likes of Sarkozy or Berlusconi. The past success of the left rested on leaders like Brandt and González, who were willing to defy conventional wisdom—that the left should stay on the left—and instead build a coalition with business interests. Both were seen as too pro-NATO, in parties still infected with anti-Americanism. Today's social democrats must also be brave enough to speak truth to the power—in their own party. They must acknowledge that their parties still claim to speak for the working class but have become small university-educated elites, composed of full-time professional politicians. They must recognize there is no longer a classic industrial working class defined by Marxist-trained party officials, and that the trade unions have hollowed out yet still claim grandfather rights as the main ally of social-democratic parties. Most trade unionists are employed in the public sector, so when they demand more pay, they are in effect saying fellow workers should pay more in taxes to cover their raises. Social democrats must begin crafting policies with the new proletariat in mind: immigrant, female, part time and in competition for better-paid unskilled work with the nativist, white working class. While social democrats like to proclaim their internationalism, the white working class in Europe does not like foreign workers, resents the left's multiculturalism and hates globalization.
The left must embrace the goal of strong economic growth, which allows room for both immigrant workers on low pay and a fair deal for the middle class. But it is business, not the state, that creates jobs—even if it is the state that shapes social justice. Social democracy without full or nearly full employment ends up as a bitter battle over shrinking revenue. Even in today's antibusiness, antibanking climate, social democracy has to learn to become pro-business.
Explaining why open trade, a.k.a. globalization, is good for European social democracy is a task most on the left shrink from. It is easier for them to go misty-eyed about Venezuela under the red beret of Hugo Chávez. The latest fashion is to admire China as a successful market economy run by the left, with little notice of Chinese gulags or the harassment of democracy activists. Like those who admired Stalin for building socialism in the 1930s, many of today's social democrats tend to admire the wrong people for the wrong reasons, undermining their standing with mainstream voters. They campaigned against the Iraq War, and saw voters reject the war's opponents, like Gerhard Schröder, and reelect leaders like Blair or Berlusconi, who fought to remove Saddam Hussein and let Iraqis hold elections.
It's not hopeless for the left. Europe's leaders may be nominally conservative, but they are following quite orthodox social-democratic, mixed-economy models. The state is back and it is being run by the right, but no rightist party has a clear majority either. Sarkozy has to govern by bringing in smart socialists like Bernard Kouchner, Immigration Minister Eric Besson and anti-poverty czar Martin Hirsch. In Germany and the Netherlands, social democrats are in an uneasy coalition with the center-right. In Britain, Tory leader David Cameron dare not call for tax and public-spending cuts because recentering the conservatives means adopting much of social-democratic policy.
The dawn of the left could start in the Nordic states, long the leading innovators on the social-democratic model. In Sweden, Denmark and Finland, younger women are being pushed into party leadership and are serious about winning power, not just making protest speeches. In Denmark, a young mother of two, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, has been pushing her party back into position to win after the nation's prime minister quit to become NATO secretary-general. As a woman who is a former researcher at the European Parliament, fluent in three languages and married to a British citizen, Thorning-Schmidt represents the new face of the social democrats. They must reoccupy the center, either alone or in alliance with the powerful centrist parties—the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the Democratic Movement in France, the Free Democrats in Germany—to defeat the ruling right-wingers. They must forge coalitions for progressive and reformist politics with parties that dislike the pro-rich economics, the moralizing against single moms and, often, foreigners, as well as the Euro-skeptic nationalism on offer from European conservatives.
Social democracy broke away from classical liberalism more than a century ago because liberals were protecting narrow middle-class interests at the expense of workers and a wider, more generous vision. Reforging that coalition is the best way back to power. But this time, social democracy has to acknowledge that history may not be on its side unless it sloughs off old skins; puts economic growth first and redistribution second; and learns that if the left treats as enemies the business community, goods made overseas and workers with another passport, it may please its militants but will continue to be rejected by voters.

A look at other parliamentary practices

This article was published in Tribune

29 May 2009

There are other parliaments in just as much of need of reform as Britain’s

You think the House of Commons is sleazy? Come to Athens. In the birthplace of democracy, the parliament has been suspended simply to protect corrupt Conservative politicians from facing justice. In an astonishing move, the right-wing New Democracy government currently presiding over the worst economic record the country has seen in decades, decided to shut down the legislature until after the European elections.
The reason is to stop votes taking place that would force conservative politicians having to defend themselves in a series of corruption cases. One involves alleged bribes to a minister who awarded ferry boat contracts to take tourists to the Aegean Islands.
Another more serious case involves the German firm Siemens, which is accused of paying £1 billion in bribes to politicians in Greece, Germany and other European Union countries, and to American officials in order to win public contracts.
Greece’s Conservative government has a one-seat majority. One of its MPs, a former minister, made clear that, if he had to face corruption charges, he would vote with the opposition and force an early general election. According to current opinion polls, Pasok, Labour’s sister party, would secure a majority. The ruling party used every parliamentary trick to stop the ex-minister having his parliamentary immunity lifted and going in front of a special court.
The leader of a small, nationalist and virulently anti-European Union party was said to have taken all his MPs’ voting papers and filled them in himself before returning them to his followers in sealed envelopes for them to hand in.
Despite a majority of just two to indict the ex-minister, there were not enough votes to secure the lifting of parliamentary immunity. However, faced with this close shave, the Greek conservatives decided to suspend parliament in the hope that, by the time it re-opens, other issues will be preoccupying the Greek people.
George Papandreou, the Pasok leader and president of the Socialist International, condemned this manoeuvre. But Pasok was not free from accusations of corruption in its era of dominance of Greek politics.
Compared to David Cameron using his House of Commons allowance to get his wisteria pruned or a Labour minister charging a £3.49 bottle of wine to expenses, the scale of corruption in Greece is far graver. So, too, is the Siemens case.
The German truck maker, MAN, is currently being investigated over allegations of paying £1 million in bribes to win orders. At least one senior left-wing German politician has been named in German newspapers in connection with this scandal.
Labour has paid a high price for the successive refusal of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to accept the recommendations of independent review bodies, which have set out what MPs should earn. For the sake of cheap headlines about getting tough with MPs’ pay, both Labour Prime Ministers stored up trouble for the whole political system. In the meantime, Labour turned a blind eye to professionals in the public sector – town hall executives, senior education and police officers, GPs and armies of executives employed in taxpayer-funded agencies – giving themselves massive awards in pay and allowances disconnected from any increase in frontline services.
As workers in the private sector lose their jobs and homes, and savings evaporate, many look with envy at the pay, pensions and job security in the managerial and executive strata of the public sector.
Labour has to listen to this anger. It is all too easy in the bunkers of Westminster and behind the windows of a ministerial car to feel that the world does not understand the problems of MPs and ministers. And the nauseating, holier-than-thou moralising from some Labour MPs parading their goody-two-shoes approach on Sky or in lucrative comment pieces for the Daily Mail does not help. But the failure to show contrition, in some cases to stand down from ministerial office, and reluctance to move fast to reform the system will do damage to Parliament in general and Labour in particular, as the governing party.
British politics under Labour is not as corrupt as Greek politics under conservatives. But time is fast running out to win back public trust.