Reading the Grauniad’s interview with David Cameron and the accompanying article, it’s very difficult not to become depressed that after 10 years of Blair, within a couple of years we’re going to be under the thumb of his very real heir, and with not just the Labour party but the entirety of the left raising barely a whimper of defiance.

Cameron’s broken society gambit is almost certainly the one detail that makes me despair the most. He knows it’s not true, we know it isn’t true, the government knows it isn’t true, even the Times, whose sister paper has done the most to perpetuate the notion knows it isn’t true, and yet I don’t think I can recall a single politician, whether they be Labour or Liberal Democrat who has directly challenged Cameron to provide some real evidence that British society is any sense broken.

Here’s Cameron’s incredibly weak case for it:

He denies he is giving a false picture of Britain by talking of a broken society, saying: “There is a general incivility that people have to put up with, people shouting at you on the bus or abusing you on the street, or road rage. There is a lot of casual violence; and I think it is important to draw attention to it.”

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The extreme decision of an employment tribunal in the case of Ladele vs Islington (pdf), that of the registrar who claimed to have discriminated against on religious ground for refusing to officiate in civil partnership ceremonies, has naturally drawn a considerable amount of attention.

Thus far, the general consensus amongt legal bloggers is that the tribunal’s ruling is, at best, extreme, if not bordering on perverse and in the days since the ruling it transpires that Ms Ladele, whose views on marriage were described in the judgement as follows…
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Sunder Katwala recent article on the BBC raises two issues: editorial bias and funding. Many of us have encountered what we regard as examples of BBC lack of impartiality.

Anthony Barnett on Our Kingdom lambasted the BBC’s coverage of the David Davis campaign. I have spent nearly six years trying to persuade the BBC to acknowledge, let alone make amends for, the worst breach of impartiality in its history (a documentary on the Mau Mau rebellion purporting to be objective but actually presenting a lone scholar’s highly tendentious - and subsequently widely discredited - opinions).

In truth, these concerns regularly arise, and for the most part the BBC is aware of its obligations, especially under the new governance structure, which was responsible for a recent report by John Bridcut on the whole question of alleged liberal bias in the BBC. For me, funding is a much more important long term issue.

There are those who would die in a ditch to defend on principle the present licence fee - what former BBC DG Greg Dyke regularly calls an unfair poll tax. I would have much less of a problem with the licence fee if it were equitably levied: on those who can afford to pay tax, in proportion to their taxable income. A BBC charge of 0.75% of taxable income, collected with each individual’s tax payments, would leave the BBC with roughly its present income, but excuse those too poor to pay tax.
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I nearly choked on my cereal yesterday when Tim sent a link to this story at the Mail on Sunday stating Margaret Thatcher was to be honoured with a state funeral.

It has not yet been decided whether the 82-year-old former Conservative leader will lie in state in Westminster Hall. To date the only Prime Minister in the 20th and 21st centuries to be given this honour was Churchill.

There were four non-Royal State funerals in the 19th century – Nelson, Wellington, Palmerston and Gladstone.

I accept that it’s incredibly discourteous to speculate about someone’s death and I want to state I don’t wish anything terrible to befall Magaret Thatcher.

But c’mon, a state funeral? For such an incredibly divisive PM? For someone who decimated entire industries? For a Prime Minister who went out there to destroy the trade union movement? For someone who supported South Africa’s racist apartheid regime and branded Nelson Mandela a terrorist? And that’s just the start.
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“It’s a total waste of bloody money!”; “I have not made my mind up yet”; “I’ve voted for him already” (one of 10,000 postal ballots requested, 59 per cent sent them in); “I just don’t know about politics, I don’t vote.

A lady somewhere will be turning in her grave” (clearly meaning her mother); “I never thought I’d vote Tory, but this time I will” (an enthusiastic Lib-Dem); “Look at all these leaflets!”; Definitely I’m voting for Mr Davis … I don’t need a car thank you, my son will walk me there”.

I canvassed for David Davis on the eve of the by-election. The uncertain did not want to discuss. We had a single conversation with a man who did raise 42 days - he was for locking them up, but not, on consideration, if they were innocent. Davis’s core team is very competent. But it is hard for them. Many voters are puzzled about why David Davis has done it, especially Conservative voters. I’ll come back to this, his core problem at the moment. But also party activists who worked especially hard to ensure he won the constituency in 2005 to frustrate the Lib-Dem’s “decapitation strategy”. They backed a leader. They wanted him to be Home Secretary.

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Good. Bad. Right. Wrong. In a speech in Glasgow on Tuesday, Tory leader David Cameron inveighed against ‘moral neutrality’, and evinced a desire to reinstate categories as basic as these in British political discourse.

Nor will this performance a one off; spindoctors confirm that this theme will be central to Conservative agitation and propaganda over the summer months.
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When John McDonnell, hero of the working class, ran for the Labour leadership, one of the most convincing arguments in his arsenal was the demand to repeal the battery of repressive legislation aimed at the Trade Unions, which the Tories fielded and then Labour compounded.

Recently this has again come to the fore, with speculation that Labour is ‘in hoc to its paymasters’ following union bailouts of Labour’s massive debts.

Gordon Brown, while at the G8 summit in Japan has attempted to put paid to this sort of accusation:
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Imagine a left-of-centre political party without much electoral support, chided for not having enough bold ideas, facing a grumbling bunch of institutional backers that accuse it of betraying its ideological roots. Sound like New Labour? You may not be surprised to hear the same being said of the Democratic Party in the United States.

This is the picture painted by New York Times journalist Matt Bai in The Argument. Away from the day-to-day concerns of most Democrat politicians and voters, Bai delves into three tightly-knit and politically-charged worlds seeking to influence the Party and its agenda: billionaire donors, radical bloggers and activist groups such as MoveOn.
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[Editor's note: It has barely been two full months and Boris Johnson has already been involved in a long list of gaffes and controversies. Below, we want to keep an updated list of of mis-steps so far and record his flip-flops because we can guarantee you certain newspapers won’t.]

This list will be updated regularly. (Last updated 8/7/08, 22.45.)

Help us build it up into a comprehensive Gaffopædia by submitting suggestions for additions and improvements in the comments below (or by e-mail).

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The government has now published the text of its emergency Criminal Evidence (Anonymity Bill) in response to a recent ruling by the Law Lords that the use of anonymous witnesses under existing common law provisions is prejudicial and breaches the defendent’s right to a fair trial. Continue reading…

Firstly, on the cleaner’s strike across London. I got this today:

The second round of strikes are about to come to an end. They have been well-supported across the London Underground network.

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The image on the right is a good example of modern xenophobia. Its not racist in the traditional sense, with a picture of some black guy running off with a white woman for example.

It’s part of a narrative that says: the Muslims are not only here, but they’ll take over by multiplying and destroying us. The bomb is the womb… etc. I don’t even have to deconstruct it too much - its obvious what the message is.

Stuff like this has a long tradition. Decades ago the narrative was that the world was controlled by a “Jewish copnspiracy”, and you can still this prevalent on far-right websites where they talk of the ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government).
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It’s time to stop the bullshit, we’ve now been sitting around for about a week and a half doing little more than bicker about the integrity of a single person while standing around gawking.

The question now should be: what can we do, and can we do it, in a way that can unite those that support and loathe David Davis’ stance?

I’ll be heading on the journey over to London today for the Liberal Conspiracy gathering and hope that this subject can be explored in more depth by those that attend.
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There can be only one high tech manufacturing sector in which a substantially deindustrialised Britain still claims world leadership in export terms, and here’s a clue; it isn’t advanced medical equipment.

It is rather – as the government proudly revealed yesterday – production of the means of destruction, as the FT reports:

Britain became the world’s largest arms exporter last year, according to government figures released yesterday, overtaking the US which normally occupies the top slot.

The UK won £10bn of new defence orders in 2007 from overseas, giving it a 33 per cent share of the world export market, according to figures released yesterday by the Defence and Security Organisation, set up to promote Britain’s defence exports. Export orders totalled £5.5bn in 2006 …

Lord Jones, trade and investment minister, said: “As demonstrated by this outstanding export performance, the UK has a first class defence industry with some of the world’s most technologically sophisticated companies.”

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Jon Trickett MP has resigned as spokesperson for the group Compass following criticism over the 42 days vote. He admitted to having lost “the support of a significant number of active colleagues” within Compass in a statement.

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, today dramatically and unexpectedly announced that he is to resign as an MP and force a byelection over the government’s 42-day terror detention plan. Continue reading…

Some years ago now the former BBC journalist and Liberal Democrat activist Mike Smithson decided to start a blog for pleasure and profit. The story of Political Betting is undoubtedly one of the successes of the British blogosphere - but it also provides a cautionary tale for those who suppose that the internet itself is politically neutral.

Yuri Andropov, briefly boss of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and before that its chief ideologist, believed that the personal computer represented a definitive break, or step-change, in the means of production whose effect would be to destroy socialism. And there can be no doubt that, at least in Britain, the energy of political blogging is with the political Right.

It’s easy and comfortable to think that this is simply because we have an exhausted Labour government - once Labour’s back in its natural home of opposition, left blogging will bloom and the internet become the capillary system of a new progressive politics. For me, Political Betting suggests otherwise.
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It’s difficult to say anything new about Gordon Brown’s attempts to extend pre-detention charge to 42 days, though if you want to read two accounts made recently, Anthony Barnett at OurKingdom and Martin O’Neill at New Statesman are a great start.

There are those who see the-Muslim-terrorist-threat-that-may-wipe-out-western-civilisation as so big that locking up British (Muslim) citizens for 90 days without charging them is not far enough. I’m not going to bother repudiating them. I’m not even going to bother answering those apparently on the left who are strenuously defending this stupid piece of legislation that, for once, has the entire left-wing and right-wing press united in opposition. Oh, apart from The Sun and the Daily Express, just so you know.

So why is Gordon Brown still stubbornly going ahead with it?
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Even with New Labour now in urgent need of a major bail-out from the unions simply to stay solvent, Gordon Brown has apparently decided that he has better things to do than attend next week’s GMB conference.

Most delegates will privately be relieved not to have to sit through the inert expanse of boilerplate, platitudes and waffle that passes for a prime ministerial speech on these occasions. But the arrogance of the snub is both palpable and somewhat distasteful.

Perhaps one of the reasons for Brown’s no show is that a call for disaffiliation from the Labour Party is on the GMB’s agenda. Meanwhile, the Communications Workers Union will discuss the issue at its annual get-together, also planned for next week. Smaller unions such as RMT and FBU are already out of the fold, of course.
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Now that Obama is the nominee, the real election fight starts. In many ways McCain is different from previous Republican candidates in that he has intentionally tried to stop political attacks becoming too personal. For example, he intervened and criticised a right-wing talk show host who, in an introduction, repeatedly emphasised Barack Hussein Obama to make obvious connotations.

Nastiness
On Scribo Ergo Sum, one writer says:

Regardless, this is shaping up to be a deeply thrilling race, yet also one of far more calm and maturity than the whirlwind of hallow nonsense which raged around the last one. That the repeat of 2004 which would surely have been triggered by the {not so long ago seemingly entirely ineluctable} contest of Giuliani-Clinton has been entirely averted is something that we must be immensely thankful for.

No. This is going to be by far the nastiest presidential race you have ever seen and will ever see.
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