What Hollande Means for Britain

This article appeared in the Guardian.

François Hollande as French president could suit Britain

29 February 2012

François Hollande comes to London today to energise the 100,000 plus French voters who prefer British capitalism to French statism and whose votes may prove decisive in what is expected to be a narrow outcome in the French presidential election in May.

I was in the Place de la Bastille in May 1981 when François Mitterrand was elected. It was seen as a major win for the European left reeling from the impact of the Reagan-Thatcher worldview of liberal market economics, anti-Sovietism and a deep distrust of the state, which had been running affairs since the war.

Alas, poor Labour. Mitterrand's victory ushered in a further three Conservative wins and an even longer period of power for the German centre-right. The rampantly eurosceptic Labour party had no idea of how to relate to Mitterrand's European project and spent its wilderness decade tilting at European or market windmills instead of supporting the aspirations of middle England.

Ed Miliband is a child of that era and will avoid the mistakes that kept Labour in opposition. He will lunch with Hollande today, mediated by an interpreter as none of the occupants or contenders for top power in Britain or France speak each other's language.

But the bigger question is whether it is in Britain's interests to see a further five years for President Nicolas Sarkozy or whether, as in 1981, the election of a socialist French president may make greater strategic sense for the UK. David Cameron has come out as a full-hearted supporter for Sarkozy's re-election. But the last presidential candidate the prime minister endorsed was Poland's nationalist, clericalist politician, Lech Kaczynski, who failed miserably in his efforts to succeed his brother, killed in a plane crash near Katyn.

Mitterrand supported Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands at a time when Washington was temporising and seeking to broker a deal with the antisemitic, thuggish junta in Argentina. He worked with her on the Single European Act and produced the immortal description that the British prime minister had "the mouth of Marilyn Monroe and the eyes of Caligula".

Hollande has been criticised in the City for saying "the financial world is my enemy". Yet it is Cameron who has denied bankers their bonuses, clawed back tax from Barclays, and stripped Fred Goodwin of his knighthood in the manner of the poor Captain Dreyfus having his epaulettes ripped off when the French establishment wanted to make an example of someone they felt had let the show down. Hollande is proposing a 45% tax rate on those earning €150,000. This is lower than the 50% rate George Osborne applies on similar incomes.

More important, Hollande is not Merkozy. The fusion of Berlin and Paris into a Euro juggernaut of austerity, anti-growth, job-killing 1930s-style economics should worry even the biggest debt and deficit hawks in the government. Angela Merkel is clearly in the EU's driving seat with Sarkozy fiddling with the satnav. The famous quip that the choice is always between a European Germany or a Germanised Europe has never been more appropriate. The French economy and public finances are now weaker than Britain in May 2010. As president, Hollande would not cure that but he would change the direction of travel for Europe, and Britain will not face a monolithic German-France project. As in 1981, a socialist president of France may be good for Britain. Whether he would be good for Labour is another matter. 

Update on the situation in Bahrain

This article was published in The Independent-Blogs

Bahrain: One year on

14 February 2012

I am used to endless lies and criticism from the BNP and its favourite blogster, as well as Islamist ideologues who hate my work on anti-semitism and the off-shore press obsessed about Europe. But this is the first time that a government, Bahrain, has sent a 17 page letter to the British Government telling William Hague to shut me up.

In a 17-page open letter to British Foreign Secretary William Hague,  Bahrain Foreign Minister Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa accuses me making several “demonstrably misconceived” statements about the political situation in Bahrain without visiting the country. It is true I have not been to Bahrain recently but I don’t need to go to Syria or Iran or North Korea to know there are serious human rights issues in those countries..

The latest news from Bahrain remains ever more worrying. There are regular pro-democracy demonstrations which are severely repressed by the police. In a new tactic, the police are raiding individual homes and throwing tear gas canisters inside. Amnesty reports that as many as 30 people may have been killed as they choked to death in confined spaces.

Last month 24-year-old Yousif al-Mawaly was arrested, tortured and then dumped in the sea. Photographs of his body seen by the BBC appear to show abrasions and bruises consistent with beating. Human Rights Watch report that Bahraini riot police beat a prominent human rights activist, Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, as he was leaving a peaceful protest last month. Rajab said that the police attacked him using their fists and batons at about 8:30 pm, as he was walking toward his car:

“I noticed a number of riot police behind me. They were all in uniform. They started beating me and I fell on the ground. I told them that I was Nabeel Rajab, hoping that they would stop, but they kept beating and kicking me.”

The Interior Ministry stated on its Twitter account that riot police had found Rajab “lying on the ground” and transported him to the Salmaniya Medical Complex for treatment.

The Bahraini government has refused to allow independent human rights observers from entering the kingdom, on the first anniversary of the Bahrain uprising on 14 February a year ago. The ruling Khalifeh family are trying to kid the international community that they are willing to move on human rights. They attach great store to the Bassiouni Commission which reported in November  on the widespread killing and torture after the democracy uprising that began a year ago. The 500 page report itself is valuable but few if any of its recommendations have been implemented. Some low-rank police officers have been suspended – including five Pakistani and two Yemeni police officers. But the men at the top of the royal family who authorized the brutal crackdown or even senior officers who oversaw torture and killings are still in place.

The Bahraini government are now hiring human rights lawyers or former police officers including Commander John Yates, who had to leave Scotland Yard in disgrace, to come to Bahrain and assure the world that all is well. But women doctors and nurses are still on trial after they were arrested in their hospitals treating the wounded last year. Dr Fatima Haji, for example, was charged with, acts of terrorism, stealing blood from hospital and harming the public by spreading false news. She was sentenced to five years in prison on these turmped up charges worthy of Stalin’s doctors plot trials.  The Bassiouni Commission called for the release of all political prisoners – democracy protesters who simply tweeted or attended meetings but took no part in violence. Again the Khlaifeh regime rejects this key recommendation and refuses to negotiate with the opposition to create a balanced human rights commission that can investigate and punish those responsible for last year’s and end the continuing violent repression of human rights.

The Khalifeh elites try and paint the dark hand of Iran behind the protests and it is true that there is now an ugly Sunni-Shia split with a turn to violence, including throwing petrol bombs at the police, by the extreme end of the opposition. But the Khalifehs have brought this upon themselves by their own refusal to allow the educated Bahraini citizens to move towards a more democratic system. Local mayors say they do even have the power to build a footpath. Despite lip service to increasing democracy and a fortune spent on overseas PR companies or buying in prominent westerners to say things are not all that bad Bahrain remains the privately-owned torture-permitting polity of a royal family and its retainers who cannot live with modernity.

Foreign policy realists point out that compared to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain is freer and more liberal. The West in the shape of the US and the UK has major military interests there. Just as Russia will not criticise Syria which buys arms from Russia and allows the Russian Navy a warm water point, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, so ready to denounce repression in Libya (not today’s repression of course but that of Gaddafi) or Syria is utterly silent on Bahrain beyond the minimal tight-lipped expression of support for the so-called reform and dialogue efforts of the torturers and killers. Diplomats in other EU countries have noticed this double-standard in UK foreign policy and are commenting on it openly.

It is clear that the Grand Prix cannot and should not take place there while the stench of tear gas and the cries of those tortured hangs over Bahrain. The politics are a disaster with both Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran looking down their own lenses at tiny Bahrain. But that cannot excuse continued torture, tear-gas killing and holding political prisoners in jail. In the 1970s, similar arguments were made by realists about the military juntas of South America with their penchant for torture and dropping opponents out of helicopters into the sea. In the 1980s, the Conservatives supported apartheid South Africa as a force for stability. The left often found excuses for communist regimes despite their human rights abuses.

Arab nations are now joining world history. As their populations became urbanised, educated and open to the world the absurd medieval rule of a handful of monarchs and princes, or kleptocratic dictators like Mubarak, Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, or Ben Ali became unbearable. What comes next may be very ugly especially as the Mullahs and the Military forge alliances to create a Pakistanisation of politics. There has always been huge amounts of money to be made especially in London for the agents who serve these states. But things are on the move and writing letters to the Foreign Secretary complaining about an MP who raises these issues is a waste of ink.

Bahrain has a short period to see if the ruling dynastic group can find a way to some constitutional settlement with opponents who reject violence.  That is what British officials, human rights lawyers and other should be arguing for. But it may be too late.

Open Letter to the Foreign Secretary on Bahrain

This letter was published on the Dale&Co. website 


An Open Letter on Bahrain to Rt Hon William Hague MP

8 January 2012

Dear William,

              

Welcome back from Burma. The pictures of you there with Aung San Suu Kyi were heart-warming and it is good you went there in person to express British support for democratic change to liberate the Burmese people from their repressive regime. Today I am writing to ask that you give the same attention to the continuing repression of human rights in Bahrain that you give to Burma, Syria or Zimbabwe. Those responsible in Bahrain for the continuing repression, imprisonments, torture, and beatings up live in a culture of impunity because in part, the UK in all of its manifestations of state authority continues to soft-soap and turn a blind eye to the cruelties that take place under the ruling dynastic Khalifa elite family network. These people have been received at 10 Downing Street, continue to lavish presents on senior British representatives, including and seem to act as if they are under no pressure from Britain as HMG drops all the language and pressure on human rights you rightly apply and use when dealing with other unsavoury regimes.

        

I have just learnt today (Saturday 7th January) that the head of the Bahraini Commission on Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, has been severely beaten and arrested by police in Bahrain. This shows once again that the regime hardliners in Bahrain are refusing to back down and are now even attacking targets which everybody knows they have been told not to attack by the US State Department. Whether this arrest is attributable to officers on the ground who want to punish Mr Rajab, or whether it is an order from on high, I cannot tell from London. However, it is a very worrying sign at this point in the process of attempting to reconcile both sides in Bahrain to some kind of reform programme.

I appreciate that you have made statements in the House calling for reconciliation and dialogue and that Alistair Burt was only in Bahrain a few weeks ago. But it is clear the Bahraini regime are ignoring all  your calls for restraint and reform. Stronger words and action are now needed from you and it should be made clear to the Palace that it is very embarrassing for any representative of the head of state to receive gifts worth millions of pounds from men who are overseeing the repression of their own people.

It is now more than a  month since the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) published its findings into the political unrest in Bahrain. The report, commissioned by the King of Bahrain, nevertheless recounted gross human rights violations by the regime, including excessive use of force against protesters and the torture of political prisoners.

         

Can I urge you at the start of 2010 to call on the Bahraini authorities to release political prisoners as a gesture of reconciliation and an essential first step towards dialogue and reform in Bahrain? Both UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, and President Obama have called on the Bahraini authorities to release political prisoners. Now more than ever, the UK government has an opportunity to hold Bahrain to its promises of reform. Not doing so now would let the Al-Khalifa regime off the hook and indicate to our other allies in the region that human rights are a secondary concern within UK foreign policy.

         

The Bahraini government has a history and reputation for not living up to their promises. In 2002 the King unilaterally rewrote the new constitution in order to safeguard his grip on power after initially promising reform and political liberalisation of the autocratic system of government. Understandably, many in the Bahraini opposition and international human rights community are sceptical about current reform initiatives. It is therefore fundamental that the UK and US governments act in concert to show the Bahraini government that we are serious in our demands for good governance by our allies.

         

So far there has been no sign that the Bahraini regime intends to comply with the recommendations laid out in the BICI report. Three more protesters have died since the publication of the report, taking the total human cost of the uprising to around 50 lives. In the case of the arrested doctors, even more outrageous and unbelievable charges have been levelled against them, with AK47 machine guns being produced at their trial to support claims that they gave weapons to protesters. Of course, recommendations such as making the police and security forces representative of all religious communities, like in Northern Ireland, will take some time. But with Bahrain’s military and security forces seemingly controlled by hard-line elements, will the British Government be asking for assurances that Bahrain is serious about prosecuting those responsible for torture and ending the culture of impunity within the police and military?

         

The UK has great cultural and historic ties with the government of the Kingdom of Bahrain. We cannot afford to be timid to our allies while being belligerent towards our enemies. Human rights are universal, and should not be beholden to our special political or economic interests. It is in the Bahraini government’s economic interest to uphold human rights if they wish to hold the Formula 1 race and prevent capital flight from Bahrain. There has been an upsurge of political tension in the Gulf region in recent months and Bahrain is at the heart of it. Calming sectarian tension through effective reform in Bahrain could have positive knock-on effects throughout the region, especially in Iraq, where US and British intervention arguably exacerbated religious tension.

         

Delicate political situations such as this require a light hand, but if we do not take a stand in requiring allies to respect human rights, we risk damaging our own credibility as well as impeding the inevitable march of democratic values across the authoritarian world.

             

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacShane MP

Britain can't be more like Switzerland

This article was published on the Dale&Co. website

Let's Stop Dreaming of Being Swiss

14 December 2011

Switzerland is one of the best countries in the world. But Britain it isn’t. The dream of Britain becoming Switzerland plus nuclear weapons and a seat at the UN Security Council is just that – a dream Here’s why.

        

In the film version of Graham Greene’s “The Third Man”, Orson Welles, makes the point that “after 500 years of history all Switzerland has produced is the cuckoo clock.” That was inaccurate and unfair. The cuckoo clock comes from southern Germany, not Switzerland. And the history of Switzerland is full of far more turmoil and conflict – including a civil war in 1848 and the army opening fire to kill and wound scores of unemployed workers in Geneva in 1933 – than is commonly realised.

        

A Swiss anti-fascist shot dead the leader of the Nazi party in Davos in 1936 and the stability in Switzerland is the product of an iron discipline that arises from endless consensus and compromise. But once a decision is arrived at it is accepted. “What is not banned, is obligatory “ is a Swiss dictum. There is endlessly minute regulation from the number of potatoes that can be grown – all much more generously subsidised than the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy allows – to rules about running a bath or flushing the lavatory after 10 pm.

        

The core secret of Switzerland are the cantons which have control over taxation, education, policing and other swathes of policy which in London are controlled by Whitehall. The full title of the canton of Geneva is “the state and republic of Geneva” and Swiss cantons are very clear about their identity and independence. 

        

If British Eurosceptics want every county in England to decide its own tax levels it might have some idea of what their vision of a Swiss Britain might be. In 1938, the Swiss equivalent of the CBI and TUC signed what is called the “Peace Treaty” which enshrine trade union rights in exchange for unions agreeing to avoid strikes.

        

It is this industrial peace rather than the legendary bank secrecy laws that have made Switzerland rich. Industry takes up 29 per cent of the Swiss economy more than twice the share of British manufacturing. Swiss watchmakers did not roll over in face of cheaper watches flooding in from Asia. Instead they rolled up their sleeves, massively re-organised the industry into luxury watch-makers and the mass selling Swatch. This is the Swiss secret. The application of mind to matter to produce a product that becomes a world-beater on both price and quality. 

        

Vince Cable wants to rebalance the economy. He will have a long way to go before he can match the Swiss share of manufacturing in the economy. The devalued British pound has done little to help exports compared to the over-valued Swiss franc – now pegged to the Euro. Swiss banks have to have much higher capital reserves than the City would ever accept. As for banking secrecy, as Nick Shaxson, argues in his exposé of tax havens, “Treasure Islands”, the world centre for funny money transit and preservation is the City, the English trust system and the network of Cayman and other islands protected by Britain to allow companies and individuals wriggle out of paying tax.

        

Would we accept in Britain the permanent coalition which has awarded the Swiss Socialists a quarter of all seats in the Federal Cabinet since 1959? Do we want referendums on the design of religious buildings as the Swiss organised to humiliate Muslims and their mosques with minarets? The share of immigrants in the Swiss population stands at 15 per cent. Albanian is the fourth language in Switzerland as more Kosovan asylum-seekers were accepted there than any other EU country. UK’s ugly anti-foreigner outfit Immigration Watch would explode with rage if it contemplated Geneva where nearly half the population was not born in Switzerland.

I lived and worked in Switzerland for more than a decade. Two of my children were born there and I love its culture, cuisine and mountains. Income tax was low but property, defence, and cantonal taxes plus astronomic health and dental insurance costs took away just as much of my pay as if I had stayed in Britain. The Swiss countryside is a delight but the flats and houses are the smallest in Europe.

Every Swiss law has to be in full compliance with EU directives and the Swiss pay a billion francs to Brussels to help new member states. So the idea that there is a non-EU Alpine heaven on offer to Britain is nonsense. Let Switzerland be Switzerland. What is to be done with Britain is a different question.

The Tory Eurosceptics have won their once-lonely battle

This article was published in the "Comment is Free" section of The Guardian.

There's little point in Britain staying in the EU now – Bill Cash has won

10 December 2011

The massive slump in imports into the UK announced on Friday is in many ways more important than Bill Cash's victory in Brussels. The voice we are hearing is that of David Cameron, but the script has been written by Bill Cash. His long (and initially lonely) campaign to reduce Britain's place and influence in Europe is now gathering speed. There is now little point in Britain being in the EU as all the key decisions will be taken by the 17 eurozone nations, plus the six which want to join the euro. Denmark keeps its currency but the Danish opt-out is purely nominal as the Danish crown follows the ECB policy in all regards and Danish exports are based on quality of goods, not a devalued currency.

Economic analysts are urging caution on the better trade figures announced today. The main news is the massive slump in imports as British demand shrinks thanks to the drop in consumption brought about by government policies. Britain is not spending and banks are not lending, so it is little wonder that fewer goods are coming into the UK. In that sense Britain is part of the generalised crisis of the EU economic zone. Tories and the rightwing press have sought to paint the EU as the source of the UK's economic troubles. It would be more accurate to report that weak, near-recession UK economic policy is doing serial damage to the rest of Europe, which no longer find buyers for their goods and services in Britain.

Bloomberg Business News has noted that manufacturing shrank "at the fastest pace in two and a half years in November". So much for rebalancing. And David Cameron, whose family wealth comes from the City, showed that in Brussels he would prefer to leave Britain isolated rather than negotiate a deal with the rest of Europe for a new treaty that began to move Europe away from the era of unchallenged, unregulated finance capitalism that brought about the crash of 2008, and provoked the subsequent recession.

George Osborne is currently taking the EU commission to the European court of justice over its decision that euro derivative trading should take place within the eurozone. Currently 75% of this trade happens in London, where hundreds of thousands of EU financial sector workers are located. The ECJ, like any court, smells the political coffee and Cameron's isolationist veto will reduce still further the UK's standing as a serious EU player. The loss to the UK of euro derivative trading may not matter in Rotherham, but it will hit the City and financial sector employment in London.

Cameron was within his rights to insist that any new EU treaty should not damage Britain. And, paradoxically, he may have saved the eurozone rescue package, as it is doubtful any new treaty would get through the sieve of an Irish or Danish referendum. But EU leaders knew that, and were happy to guarantee Irish low corporate tax rates and other sweeteners to ensure the treaty would be accepted.

Instead Cameron now finds himself without any friends. He has isolated Britain from the dominant centre-right political grouping where many EU decisions are discussed ahead of the main council meetings. Contrast this to Margaret Thatcher who was a robust, engaged European player. Yes, she won her (fully justified) rebate, but she did so by being in the room where decisions were made. She supported the Single European Act – the biggest sharing of sovereignty with other nations in UK history. She backed Jacques Delors for commission president. She increased the UK contribution to the EU from £656m in 1984 to £2.4bn in 1990. She lost her cool over the famous Delors TUC speech, but history will place her as a powerful influence wielding UK prime minister operating in Europe.

Cameron has now handed over power to France and Germany to decide Britain's fate. The iron law of five centuries of British statecraft – opposition to any continental hegemon – has been cast aside. The new rules will be shaped without UK input. They are not narrowly on sorting out EU debt problems, though it is remarkable that a Conservative prime minister is rejecting German demands for tough enforceable controls on public borrowing and spending.

Britain will have to comply with the new rules of face restrictions on access to the new market arrangements. John Major thought he had won "game, set and match" with his Maastricht treaty opt-outs in 1992, but his victory proved hollow – just as Cameron's veto will turn out to be.

On Tuesday, at a major business leaders conference, a top French business leader said Britain was "anti-European". I corrected him, pointing out that France had voted "non" to the EU constitutional treaty in 2005 and that 400,000 French citizens made a living working in the City – our country was that EU-friendly.

But I fear the Frenchman was right. Bill Cash has won and there is little point in Britain staying in the EU now. Will we prosper outside, or semi-withdrawn? Norway implements more EU directives than Britain and all of Swiss laws have to be EU compliant. Both nations pay billions to Brussels as a kind of fee to get market access.

But no one has made the case for Europe in British public life for several years now. The press is vehemently hostile. Tony Blair did make some pro-EU speeches but always in Europe, never in Britain. After 2007, the pro-EU cause was silent in government. The chief boast for some in the party is that Britain never entered the euro – something which was never on the cards, because of well-known economic difficulties. The once proudly pro-EU party of Paddy Ashdown, Charlie Kennedy and Ming Campbell is now silent. Britain has never been so marginalised and few MPs have won as big a victory as Bill Cash did in Brussels this morning.

Press Release


Serbia Does Not Merit EU Accession Status After Tadic Again Snubs Kosovo Says UK MP

8 December 2011

Speaking at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC Denis MacShane MP, former Minister for the Balkans in the UK Government said that the EU should not reward Serbia’s refusal to bring about a  final settlement in the Western Balkans by its continuing refusal to admit that Kosovo exists.

MacShane, a senior foreign minister in Tony Blair’s government travels regularly to the Balkans and has just published a book, ‘Why Kosovo Still Matters”. “Today we have in a nutshell the problem that confronts all policy-makers in the Balkans. The president of Kosovo, Aitfete Jahjaga, one of the new young women political leaders in the region addresses the Kosovan Parliament in Serbian, appealing for help from Belgrade to find a settlement. To speak in Serbian will be seen by some ultra-nationalists amongst Kosovo Albanians as a provocation. But Kosovo is Albanian and Serb just as Spain is Spanish and Catalan, Belgium is Flemish and French, Switzerland is German and French and Italian. She is reaching out to Serbs in Kosovo and to the political elites in Belgrade with this linguistic gesture.

“But from Belgrade we have an article from my friend, President Boris Tadic, in the Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung, saying No, Never, No Way will Serbia recognize Kosovo as an independent nation state in line with the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Hague and along with 85 other nations like the US, France, Germany, the UK, Japan, Canada and Turkey.

“It cannot be right for the EU to reward such intransigence and contempt for EU policy on recognition which is backed by the democratic international community. Sadly I believe that the EU should continue to try and knock heads together but it would be wrong to open accesses negotiations for Serbia based on the Serb nationalist myth that Kosovo is just a breakaway province that one day will return to Belgrade’s rule.

“In his FAZ article, Mr Tadic makes a bizarre comparision between West and East Germany – one in the European Community, and one outside until reunification. But there is no question of “reunification” of Kosovo and Serbia. In addition, there were many West German politicians at height of the Cold War who refused to recognize East Germany until Willy Brandt came along and decided that reality was moer important than fantasy. The reality is that Kosovo exists and the fantasy is that Serbia should not exercise hegemony over any part of Kosovo.

“It is a tragedy that President Tadic, a profoundly decent man, has not had the political support in Belgrade to face down his ultra-nationalist and a the remaining nostalgics for the days of Greater Serbia in the Milosevic era but the EU cannot afford to compromise its principle and values by indulging Belgrade’s belief that it does not have to come to terms with the reality of Kosovo’s existence,” Dr MacShane told international policy experts at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington DC today ( 1230 EST 8^th December).

Why Anti-semitism is on the rise

This article was published on the Dale&Co. website

The Beast is Back

30 November 2011

It just won’t go away will it? Next year Verso will publish a book by the French intellectual Alain Badiou, a professor at the heart of the Paris intellectual establishment in the École Normale, which argues that anti-semitism is an invented concept created by Zionists to justify oppression of Palestinians.

But what would he make of the statement by a prominent British pro-Palestinian activist, Stuart Littlewood, who has just written of Britain’s Ambassador in Israel, Matthew Gould, that “Many will feel it is intolerable for a Christian country like Britain to be represented by a Jew.” I first came across Mr Gould when he was the preferred wordsmith of Robin Cook, no mean scribbler himself. Cook recognised a good writer which are far more rare in the Foreign Office and in Whitehall than might be thought.

I did not know that Gould was Jewish because when you work with people you do not start, at least in the England I grew up in, by checking a person’s religion. I don’t ask if a British friend who clearly comes from the sub-continent is Muslim or Hindu, and unless he is wearing a turban, I cannot work out if someone is a Sikh.

But Mr Littlewood clearly believes that his (Christian) Britain should not have a Jew as an Ambassador. Gould is Ambassador to Israel just as the excellent diplomat Francis Campbell who didn’t quite finish training as a priest was a first-rate Ambassador to the Vatican. In 2011 are we really saying Jews cannot be diplomats in Israel or Catholics diplomats at the Holy See or, as in the case of Sir Michael Pakenham, a brilliant ambassador to catholic Poland.

I was proud to see the first Muslim ambassador appointed to a European country when I was Minister for Europe. I am tempted to say that some of my best friends are Ambassadors and I have no idea which of them are Jewish. I can think of one or two I know to be Jews and one of two I think may be Jewish but I don’t care and don’t want to care.

But it appears to matter to Mr Littlewood and he seems to believe that “Many will feel it is intolerable” that Jews can be Ambassadors. It mattered to Oliver Miles, himself a former Ambassador to Libya, who protested that a Jew, Sir Martin Gilbert, was sitting on the Chilcott inquiry. Sir Martin is one of our greatest historians and his account of the Dardenelles inquiry into that first world war folly, more than justifies his presence on the Chilcott inquiry. 

At the Oxford University Conservative Association last month a student sang a ditty about killing Jews in the Holocaust. At St Andrews University earlier this year two members of the Palestine Solidarity campaign burst into the room of a Jewish student from New York, called him a “Nazi”, urinated in his sink and ripped a Star of David off the wall to wipe their genitals.

For M Badiou, these are just exuberant expressions of solidarity with the suffering Palestinians. I think that is rot. Anti-semitism is here, there and where you would never expect it. I hope the FCO appoints its Ambassadors because they can serve the nation well. If they wear, a kippur, go to mass, or take their prayer mats with them is none of our business.

This article was published on the Dale&Co. website

Forget the people, the elite must rule

31 October 2011

Europe is the No 1 obsession of the political elite in Britain. Never has there been such a focused effort to force the British people to accept the position of the dominant elite in politics and the media. Dissenting voices are pushed to one side. Opponents of what the ruling elite want are dismissed with contempt.

Commentators beginning with A for Anderon, B for Brogan, C for Charles Moor, D forD’Ancona and ending with W for Waugh all make the same points in their different ways as if they had nothing else to write about. MPs on and off the record talk about Europe with a passionate intensity as if this was 1917 or 1940 and England had to be protected from the Bolshevik or Fascist menace. Wealthy political donors pour money into think-tanks to propagate the correct line on Europe. Never in the last 60 years has the dominant British political elite convinced itself of its belief that it’s Eurover time to use the cute formulation of Sam Coates of The Times.

But like so many elite projects there is an almost complete disconnect from the British people. Poll after poll has more than nine out of ten voters seeing Euope as being of little importance in their daily lives. Three days in my constituency last week produced not a single person in different meetings, public events, social occasions, or my Saturday surgery who mentioned Europe. I had four emails before the EU referendum vote and other than a few coupons without addresses from the Daily Express no-one in my constituency appears to share the elite’s almost-manic focus on Europe.

This Yawn of Indifference between the obsession of the elite and the disinterest of voters is further evidence of the disconnect between politicians and the people. The project to redefine, reduce, or renegotiate Britain’s EU membership pits the political-media elite against the people in a way rarely seen in British politics in a generation or more.

All international treaty commitments involving a superior authority (League of Nations, WTO, Law of the Sea, European Court of Human Rights, International Court of Justice etc) produce opposition from nation-firsters. The populist left was for many years hostile to the post-war alliance with the USA. In the early 1980s when Chris Mullin was handing out his pamphlet “How to Deselect Your Labour MP” it was impossible to be selected for a Labour seat unless you sported a CND badge or denounced the “Commons Market” as Dennis Skinner still likes to call the EU. Both unilateral nuclear disarmament and anti-Europeanism were projects of the left political elites (including constituency activists) out of touch with voters’ concerns. Today the right political elite (especially constituency activists) is obsessed with Europe in a similar fashion. But are voters?

Euroscepticism has some fair points. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing never tires of saying that the European Commission and its directives are too busy-bodyish and much more should be left to national regulation. Many in Europe dislike Single Market directives. They have launched their own campaigns against liberalising services which constitute 70 per cent of the EU economy. They would like nothing more than to repatriate powers from Brussels to Paris or Madrid to stop the EU Commission from insisting that financial services should be conducted on a common EU level. They welcome the efforts of the UK elites to renegotiate EU competences as it sets importance precedents to reduce the specialist role of the City as the main single market locus for financial trades.

Of course opinion polls will always provide an echo for public opinion. Stopping immigration, sending people home, bringing back capital punishment – a favourite of the BNP and other right-wingers who have launched an E-petition for hanging - find support. 750,000 people, rather more than the 100,000 in favour of the EU plebiscite petition debated with such solemnity last Monday, have signed a Bodyshop petition to say the Government should introduced a guardianship system for trafficked children. The Prime Minister has said No and, to my knowledge, no MP has got up on his or her high horse to insist the 750,000 should be listened to and the law changed.

But that’s the problem with elites. They are always right. The people are always wrong. Forget the 96 per cent of voters who don’t think Europe is important. Forget the 750,000 voters who think protecting trafficked children should be a priority. When our political-media elite want something nothing else counts, does it?

Europe set to become the Irish question for today's MPs

This article was published on the Dale&Co. website

Beware the European Question

30 October 2011

The reverberations from Monday’s debate will echo for the remainder of this parliament. The Conservatives are not just banging on about Europe they have taken every instrument out of the political orchestra and making as much noise as possible. Yesterday Bill Cash, introduced a 10 minute rule bill, calling for the government to put to a referendum any plans to create fiscal union amongst Eurozone member states. It is a marvellous piece of Cash chutzpah that instead of, as usual, complaining that Europe is telling us what to do he is proposing that the UK should dictate to the Eurozone with the threat of a plebiscite in a country that does not even use the currency.

Poor Lord Ashcroft rightly warns on Conservative Home that Europe can lose the Tories the next election. No-one in the Tory end of the Tea Room is listening. The Faragesiste Europhobes are to David Cameron what the Tea Party are to Republican hopes of beating Obama. But the Prime Minister has only himself to blame as he, William Hague and other Tory leaders since John Major, all erected the call for a referendum on Europe into a totem of Tory philosophy. Adam Holloway, a decent, respected, liked MP, was selected and elected because he believed Cameron and Hague and did not realise the referendum and renegotiation promises became inoperative after May 2010.

Luckily David Cameron flies to the Commonwealth conference from Brussels otherwise he would be obliged to make a statement tomorrow. This morning, Yesterday in Parliament mocked the Conservatives for allowing Europe to dominate FCO questions. But, wait, the Commons again debates Europe tomorrow, this time the Council of Europe which has oversight of the European Court of Human Rights. This is nothing to do with the EU but for Tory Europhobes anything with the word Europe in instantly turns them into Mad-Eye Moodys. In the EU, Cameron has allied the Conservatives to what Nick Clegg rightly called “nutters, anti-semites and homopohobes.” Their group, Conservatives for European Reform (CER) is slowly disintegrating. The Latvian Freedom and Fatherland Party has dissolved into another right-wing party which lost most of its seats in the Latvian parliamentary election. The Polish Law and Order Party lost badly in both the parliamentary elections last month and the presidential elections a year ago. The Czech ally of the Tories now faces accusations of serious share-trading fraud against two of its MEPs.

In the Council of Europe, the Conservatives sit with Putin’s hand-picked delegation of Kremlin approved MPs. The former Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, and leader of the Liberal Group in the European Parliament argues in the International Herald Tribune this week that the Council of Europe should no longer allow the Russian delegation sit at the Council of Europe as it does not consist of independent MPs.

In short the Tories keep very odd company in Europe. But this will reinforce the growing isolationism that was reflected in Monday’s vote. Cameron has PMQ’s today and while he may seek comfort at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference most of our Commonwealth friends have many more protectionist barriers against UK exports than is realised.

When Cameron comes back, Europe will haunt his premiership much as Ireland haunted prime ministers in the 19th and early 20th century. And where does Labour stand in all this? Ed Miliband certainly took the right decision on the vote and forced Cameron onto the back foot with his insistence that the prime ministers could not skip off to Australia as the European economic crisis intensified. But an examination of the Labour MPs who spoke in the debate shows that not a single new or younger Labour MP sought to make the case for Europe. Ten Labour MPs spoke against Europe and voted with the Tories and only five – all long-serving Labour MPs with memories of Labour Euroscepticism – spoke up for the official party line. To be sure fewer than 20 Labour MPs voted with the anti-EU Tories and their position is long-held and well-known. But is it worrying that no new Labour voices and none of the 2010 or 2005 intake took part in the debate. This may be due to lack of interest and opinion polls say that 96 per cent of voters do not consider Europe to be an important issue. But Labour ran out of speakers an hour before the debate ended. This should worry the leadership.

Yeats got our Europe debate right when he wrote:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity”

You have to be in the Commons chamber to feel the intensity of passion amongst Tory MPs – egged on by the EU hating Tory tabloids and Telegraph – which is unlikely to fade away despite Michael Ashcroft’s sensible appeal. The white coats are flapping as never before.

The two elections in Europe that Britain should watch

This article was published on the Dale&Co. website

Forget the US – Two Elections in Europe Count Right Now

10 October 2011

Today two elections vital to Britain’s future are taking place. In Poland, the Civic Platform government headed by Donald Tusk, is likely to be re-elected. This will the first time since the end of communism that a party forming a government in Poland will have won a second term. It marks the coming of age of Polish democracy. Two of the key – and most successful - ministers in the Polish government, Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, and Finance Minister, Jacek Rostowski, are British educated, know London well and would like the two countries to be close.

In France, the choice is made today of who will stand against President Sarkozy in next spring’s election. The contest is based on a primary system as the French socialists copy Labour and move away from a closed selection made at a conference or party cabal. Although Sarkozy is a political street fighter and is soon to be the first president of France to become a papa while in the Elysée the polls are not looking good for him. The French right is badly split between Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party and the ultra-nationalist Eurosceptic National Front, headed by Marine le Pen, who has sought to reposition her party away from the crudely racist, anti-semitic style of her father’s leadership.

But to watch the Sunday political shows on television or to catch the World This Weekend, the British media world just does not acknowledge that two vital elections and political choices that will impact on Britain are taking place on the continent. Instead on Sky we were treated to an interminable interview with an American political pundit (unknown to this keen observer of US politics) about the confused and confusing list of Republican wannabee candidates.

This disdain for anything political that happens across the Channel is not new but as Britain becomes more and more mono-lingual our editors and news-shapers have lost all interest in anything that happens other than in the United States.

Take the Polish election. Britain and Poland used to be the closest of friends. From Spitfire pilots in 1940, to Margaret Thatcher’s denunciation of Soviet communism in the 1980s, or Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for Poland joining the EU this century, Warsaw has looked to London as its best friend, after Washington in the world. Not any more. The grievances between the two centre-right governments or major countries at either end of the European Union are growing, are worrying, and are serious.

Tusk and Cameron have fallen out badly over the latter’s crude political support for the ultra-nationalist Polish politician Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the PiS (Law and Order) party. Last autumn Cameron hosted a red-carpet reception for Kaczynski at Downing Street on the eve of the Polish presidential election where Kaczynski was easily defeated by Tusk’s candidate, Bronislaw Komorowski. This was seen as blatant and crude interference in Polish internal political affairs. Cameron is tied to Kaczynksi in the Conservative Party’s alliance with ultra-nationalist and anti-EU political parties – dubbed by Nick Clegg as “nutters, anti-Semites and homophobes”. Rostowksi and Osborne disagree on EU financing and the future shape of the European union. The Poles are the fourth biggest contributor to the UK rebate. They recall how Mrs Thatcher quadrupled Britain’s contribution to the EU budget between 1984 and 1990 to help poor countries like Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece grow. Now Britain wants to freeze all EU budget support for Poland.

On foreign and defence policy, Warsaw is angry at William Hague’s refusal to support Sikorksi’s ideas on EU defence. Poland offered to provide free accommodation and training terrain for British soldiers when they leave Germany. It will be very costly to relocate these armoured army units in the UK. But Hague and Fox dismissed Sikorski’s offer out of hand.

As a result Poland now looks to Berlin as its main ally in the EU and is forging links with central, East, Baltic and Nordic states in the EU as there is no friendship on offer from Tory London. This is a barely reported failure, if not worse, in Britain’s European policy. The re-election of the Tusk government should produce a re-think in London but if Polish politics gets no coverage why should Whitehall think Poland is important.

On France, clearly the choice of a socialist candidate does not mean an automatic change of power next spring. But if there is a convincing choice of the man or woman to try and win the Elysée for the left for the first time in 30 years, then Britain should take note. Even if Sarkozy does win, there is every chance that the Socialists or a coalition of non-UMP parties could win a majority in the National Assembly as parliamentary election follow on directly from the presidential contest. Britain should thus prepare for a socialist Prime Minister, Foreign and Finance ministers taking opposing position to the UK across a range of EU and foreign policies.

Cameron has placed a great deal of UK ouefs in the Sarkozy panier. The UK-French defence Treaty and Cameron’s following Sarkozy’s initiatives on the Libya interventions are two main achievements of Tory foreign policy since May 2010. Both can be justified but if there is a change of either president or parliament in Paris in a few months’ time post-Sarkozy France will have very little contact or natural friendship with Tory Britain.

But at the BBC and Sky, editors are oblivious to anything happening east of White City and Hounslow and even our serious papers (other than the FT) have so downgraded their coverage of European politics it is doubtful if more than a few specialist MPs and foreign policy wonks have the faintest idea of the key importance of the Sunday elections for Britain’s future

Demands for Russia to uphold the rule of law

This article was published in The Guardian 


David Cameron's trip to the Kremlin must address the Sergei Magnitsky case 


12 September 2011 

In diplomacy there is an unofficial statute of limitations on rows that poison state-to-state relations. November will see the fifth anniversary of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by Russian agents in London. David Cameron will certainly raise the case when he goes to Moscow for his first trip to the Kremlin but equally certainly will have to swallow the Russian dismissal of the crime. But he will find it less easy to swerve around the case of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer employed by a British citizen and his London-based investment company. Magnitsky exposed the biggest tax swindle in Russian history, and was put to death by Russian officials for his pains.

The Magnitsky case is poised to return to Parliament as a private members' bill will push for 60 named Russian officials to be put on a visa ban by Britain with any assets they have in Britain frozen. In the United States, Washington has already imposed a similar travel ban on named Russians who took part in the process that led to Magnitsky being arrested, flung in prison and so harshly treated that he died in the manner that Solzhenitsyn described in his novels on the communist Gulag.

Magnitsky was employed by the American-born Bill Browder, now a British citizen. His grandfather, Earl Browder, was leader of the US Communist Party in wartime years until he was fired by Stalin for failing to toe the Kremlin line. After getting his Stanford MBA, the grandson went to Russia in 1990 and developed one of the most successful investment funds operating in the country.

But making money in Russia requires political approval and Browder refused to enter the world of corruption that Putin's economic model demands. Instead, he hired a leading tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, to defend his interests in Moscow after Browder himself had prudently moved his office to London as he refused the pay-offs Russian officials demanded.

Magnitsky discovered that Russian police were involved in a $230m tax claim against Browder which they were diverting to bank accounts of corrupt officials. The lawyer had a name as an anti-corruption crusader but was not involved in politics or seeking to do anything except ensure Russian law was observed.

He was arrested in 2008, beaten in prison, denied medical treatment for pancreatitis and died in November 2009. Even Russia's Council for Human Rights, set up by President Dmitry Medvedev, has accused Russian Interior Ministry officials in connection with Magnitsky's death.

The Interior Ministry and the Kremlin have rejected demands for an investigation. But Magnitsky's widow and friends in Russia and his former boss in London have not given up. They have met opposition from government bureaucracy, especially in foreign ministries that dislike individual cases messing up diplomatic relations. The Democratic US Senator for Maryland, Ben Cardin, tried to enlist the State Department's help but was brushed aside. So he launched his own bill, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, and got Senator John McCain and 18 other senators to back it. Faced with the anger of the legislature, the US executive buckled and earlier this month Hillary Clinton listed 60 Russian officials linked to Magnitsky's death who now face a travel ban. The Dutch foreign minister refused to heed Dutch MPs when they asked for similar action. So the Dutch parliament voted by 150 to zero for a travel ban to be imposed. German and French MPs are looking at similar measures. FCO ministers in replies to me and other MPs have also pooh-poohed the idea of actually doing something to hold Russia to account over Magnitsky's death. So now there is a private member's bill which, alas, does not have the force of a US Senate's draft act, but which nonetheless signals parliamentary concern over FCO foot-dragging.

David Cameron could show leadership by agreeing the travel ban before he goes to the Kremlin so that Mr Putin understands that Britain does want to see the rule of law upheld and that employees of British firms should not be put to death. Putin's response to Britain's demand for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi in connection with Litvinenko's murder was to put Lugovoi in the Duma, which is an extension of the Kremlin, not an independent parliament. Mr Cameron will get no joy on the Litvinenko case. But he can and should take action on the Russians who put Sergei Magnitsky to death.

Thinking about a 21st-century European Union

This article was published in The Independent

Slash and burn: less Brussels, better Europe

7 September 2011

Has the word "leadership" been expunged from the dictionaries of Europe? It is not just David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel who are all on holiday. The crisis of the eurozone exposes a Europe whose institutions no longer work.

For Britain, George Osborne has had the boldest response to the crisis, when he welcomed the idea of joint economic governance and fiscal policies for the 17 eurozone nations – a startling change from previous British policy, which for centuries has been dedicated to preventing the formation of a hegemonic ideological, economic or religious continental puissance. The Osborne doctrine in favour of a single economic governance for 75 per cent of the EU is dramatic and new.

Can this open the way to changing the sterile, petty, point-scoring dialogue of the deaf between Europhiles and Europhobes, federalists against nationalists, that most voters treat with contempt?

Britain could take the lead in a new argument about changing the way the EU is run. The first priority is to stop the unending growth of the Commission. It now has 27 commissioners, with more in the Balkan waiting room. Most do overlapping jobs with an army of officials justifying their existence by producing ever-increasing minutiae of regulations that drive most European citizens mad with fury. Less Brussels will make better Europe.

Second, the European Parliament sees fewer and fewer voters electing barmier and barmier MEPs at each election. The near-10,000 national parliamentarians in the 27 EU member states feel completely excluded from all European decision-making. The answer is to connect national parliaments to Strasbourg, where the European Parliament should be elected in thirds every two years so that it is more in tune with national electorates. A second chamber consisting of national MPs should be set up to check legislation. The Commons committee system needs revision so that EU policy and laws are examined jointly by MPs and MEPs.

Third, the EU should see if direct democracy can play a role. Handling this is tricky. The Commons will have to debate and say no to hanging because most petitions and plebiscites bring out the worst atavistic and xenophobic instincts. Anyone can follow a mob. In Switzerland, referendums cannot challenge judicial rulings and there may be ways of consulting people to reduce the sense of the EU being run by elites and for elites.

Britain is neither going to fold into Europe nor quit the EU. In the middle ground, new politics and institutions are needed to shape a better 21st-century EU. Britain can opt out of the euro but we cannot opt out of being a European nation. A historic compromise is needed so that Britain can be inside the EU tent, and leading in Europe.

Presidential elections in Abkhazia draw attention to the complicated question of finding an independent voice for this small Balkan region

This article was published on the openDemocracy website

Abkhazian Elections: Russia's Pawn in Georgian Election Game?

1 September 2011

During the Soviet emporium, Stalin and his epigones imposed to run Russian colonies set great store by the forms of democracy. An unverified aphorism has Stalin saying: “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.” Elections were held and each leader claimed a voters' mandate. Opposition parties nominally existed but without freedom of media or assembly were pale instruments. Later this month, like a new production of Anton Chekhov play, the world will see the same process in Abkhazia with an “election” fixed for tomorrow, 26th August. Only certain residents of Abkhazia are allowed to take part in the vote. The ethnic Georgians who bravely remain in situ on their own land in their own country are forbidden to take part. The thousands of residents expelled from Upper Abkhazia during the August 2008 war are not allowed a say. Nor are the almost four hundred thousand removed in previous conflicts. During the 2009 vote, the EU rightly argued that “elections in this region of Georgia can only be valid after all refugees and internally displaced persons are given the right to a safe, secure and dignified return to their homes”. The same applies to this election.

Prior to 1992, the ethnic composition of Abkhazia was 46% Georgian, 18% Abkhaz, 15% Armenian and 14% Russian, with other minorities making up the rest. Since then, nearly all the Georgians have been forced out, their homes burned and destroyed, and their land dished out to new Russian residents. Those displaced have been looked after by the Georgian authorities the best they can, but understandably they long to return to their homes.

Some 47,000 Georgians have tried to return home to the Gali District of Abkhazia. In a report just out from Human Rights Watch (Living in Limbo. The Rights of Ethnic Georgian Returnees to the Gali District of Abkhazia 8 August 2011) HRW lists the humiliation and discrimination the Russian-controlled Abkhazi authorities visit on the Georgian returnees. They are required to obtain Abkhazi passports to work, obtain benefits, or get high school diplomas. Russian is being imposed as a language of education in schools as the Kremlin seeks to eliminate Georgia culture and history in the region of the country under their control. HRW insists that even though Abkhazia has no status other than as a region within the international borders of Georgia, the authorities there “have obligations under international law to respect human rights. Under international law, all human rights applicable within the territory of Georgia also apply to Abkhazia.”

As in Transnistria, Russia is content to create a no man’s land without freedom or democracy. Georgia’s President Saakashvili has pledged not to use force to take back the territory and so Tbilisi is trying a different strategy of opening up Georgian healthcare and educational facilities to residents of Abkhazia, rebuilding transport links, and facilitating greater connections between communities ripped apart by conflict.

Abkhazia is next door to Sochi where Russia plans to hold the 2014 winter Olympics. This month’s electoral charade will not solve anything and international attentions will focus on this frozen conflict. There is no future for Abkhazia as an international pariah and Russian puppet. Abkhazia is a beautiful area with great potential. Georgia offers full autonomy akin with other areas of Europe like South Tyrol or Swiss cantons which have a considerable degree of self-government within an overall state structure.

But as in the imbroglio over Kosovo where Russia backs Serb intransigence in preventing a final settlement in the western Balkans, the Kremlin prefers to keep its sores festering on the edge of its former imperium rather than seek cures and partnership with the new nations that have re-entered history after 1989.

Like Alsace-Lorraine after 1870, the 175,000 strong Abkhazia is firmly under foreign occupation and control. While Mr Putin organises photo-shoots on a bizarre three-wheeler granny’s bike alongside proper Harley-Davidsons, the old Russian election machine will produce the result the Kremlin wants. Despite promises made to President Sarkozy after the August 2008 war, thousands of soldiers remain based in Abkhazia, including one base with 4,500 men. Missile battalions, including S-300 surface to air missiles, have been stationed by the Russian army. Russian authorities have been handing out Russian passports to the remaining population. New Russian settlers are moving into local communities.

Russia has already organised one election in Abkhazia in 2009 which was "won" by Moscow's man, Sergei Bagapsch. The European Union stated at the time that “it does not recognise the constitutional and legal framework within which these elections have taken place”. Turkey, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia, Norway, Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan all refused to recognise the validity of these elections.

The Russian campaign to encourage recognition of Abkhazian “independence” has been a failure. Only Venezuela, Nicaragua and the Pacific island of Nauru have signed up. It is notable that no member of the Commonwealth of Independent States has endorsed the campaign, even Russia’s closest allies.

In reality it is irrelevant who wins the election, whether it is Alexander Ankvab, Sergei Shamba, or Raul Khajimba as the winner will be a puppet of his Russian masters. The victor will not only lack legitimacy because he will lead a proxy state, but even on its own terms the election is a sham.