Donald Trump – Democracy & the Importance of Accepting Defeat

With anti-Trump protests sweeping several US cities, activists vowing to fight a Donald Trump presidency in the courts and Katy Perry calling for outright revolution, you could be forgiven for believing we are in the final death throes of liberal democracy. In a fit of unforgivable bigotry and stupidity, American voters had snuffed out the shining beacon of liberal democracy.

This reading of events is not only wrong, it is dangerous.

Democracy is founded on the fundamental principle that the voter is always right. Should you be on the losing side, either your message was wrong or you failed to communicate it effectively. The electorate is never to blame and both sides must accept the result.

A rejection of this basic principle is a rejection of the very core of our democratic system, undermining the very concept of liberal democracy that it purports to represent.

When conceding the election, Hillary Clinton made clear that she fully bought into this principle: “I still believe in America and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future.” This follows a long history of the losing presidential candidate publicly conceding the result and stands in marked contrast to Trump’s pre-election refusal to commit to doing so should he have lost the election.

Barack Obama echoed these words when he stressed that this was the nature of democracy, that “the path this country has taken has never been a straight line, we zig and zag. Sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back and that’s OK. [...] That’s the way politics works sometimes.”

Many parallels have been drawn to the recent EU Referendum which resulted in Britain voting to leave the European Union. Perhaps just as enlightening, however, is the comparison provided by the 1997 UK General Election. In that election, the ruling Conservative Party faced the end of 18 years in government with the loss of 178 MPs and the prospect of electoral oblivion. John Major, the defeated Prime Minister, accepted that “we have suffered a very bad defeat, let us not pretend to ourselves that it was anything other than what it was.” Politics, he noted, “is a rough old trade. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. But when you don’t, you just speak back, ask yourself why you didn’t, and put yourself in a position to make sure that next time you get it right, and you do win.” 13 years later the Conservatives were back in government and now command a majority in the House of Commons.

Opponents of Trump must ask what went wrong for them during this election and seek to learn what lessons they can from the experience. There is already much opinion on the subject but it will be up to them to face these lessons head on and to resist the temptation to return to their political comfort zones.

Very few things in politics are permanent and, as the experience of the Conservative Party shows, political fortunes have been known to change radically within a relatively short period of time.  

In 1997 Major praised his colleagues for losing “with a dignity which made me proud of this party.” Clinton showed similar poise when she congratulated Trump on his victory and hoped “he will be a successful President for all Americans.” Once emotions have calmed down, hopefully we will all able to do the same.

French arrogance: Britain should 'get out of Europe before you wreck it'

On Thursday 5 June former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard called for Britain to 'get out of Europe before you wreck it'. (The original French version can be found here).  

What he said was extraordinarily arrogant. 

In his view Britain has blocked every move to make the EU a functional and democratic body capable of tackling the problems of the modern world. Our opposition to a European superstate has been no more than a cynical attempt 'to capitalise on the disorder that [we] have helped to create'.  We should simply 'go before [we] wreck everything'. 

His argument shows a complete disregard for the views of his own people. In last May's EU elections 25% of the French people chose to vote for the anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Front National rather than back one of the euro-federalist parties of the political establishment. They couldn't have given a clearer rejection of 'more of the same' when it comes to the EU. 

It also reflects a belief held by many in the French political class that the rest of Europe is a mere extension of France, with French interests and those of the European continent being the same. The idea that any other European country should stand up for its own national interest is unthinkable - it's anti-European.

This belief becomes all the more perverse in light of of France's decision to push ahead with its sale of two warships to Russia. This is despite blatant Russian military aggression in eastern Europe in its attempts to destabilise Ukraine and annex Crimea. France chose French jobs over European solidarity and the shared ideals of freedom and democracy. 

France is the new sick man of Europe. Described by the Economist as 'the time-bomb at the heart of Europe', its inability to tackle record unemployment and a floundering economy must make finding a scapegoat tempting. Yet Britain is not to blame for France's troubles. The fault lies solely with France and its inability to face the painful economic reforms that Britain tackled head on. 

Britain is now the fastest growing economy in the G7 and unemployment is at a five year low. The head of the IMF even apologised for underestimating the UK's growth forecasts. Rather than bashing the UK, perhaps France should be looking to see what Britain did right.

Syria & Chemical Weapons: Britain's shameful retreat

Since March 2011 the Syrian government, led by Bashar al-Assad, has brutally put down a popular uprising in which more than 100,000 people have died. 

Last night, on 29 August 2013, Parliament voted against a motion that Britain should in principle support military intervention in Syria. (You can find the full motion here).

The motion was put forward after the Syrian regime used chemical weapons to kill over 350 people on 21 August . This has to be wrong. It is a crime against humanity. Britain, the US and France have the capability to stop this and as a result we have a moral duty to do so.

Some have argued that military intervention would be illegal. This is not so. Following advice from the Attorney General (the legal adviser to the UK Government) the Government released a statement affirming that limited military strikes to deter future chemical weapons attacks would be legal under international law, even without the backing of the United Nations.

With the motion's failure ended any real prospect of Britain fulfilling this moral duty. In the words of the Prime Minister: 'It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the Government will act accordingly.'

Why did the motion fail? The blame surely lies with Ed Miliband who refused to call his party (Labour) to back the motion. His argument was that there must be 'compelling evidence' before any British involvement.

How much evidence does Miliband need? According to the Joint Intelligence Committee it is 'highly likely that the Syrian regime was responsible' for the use chemical weapons (CW) on 21 August and that '[t]here is no credible evidence that any opposition group has used CW'. The US has even gone so far as to call the regime's use of chemical weapons 'undeniable'.

There is further evidence to suggest that Assad's regime has used CW on a smaller scale at least 14 times since 2012. If we don't send Assad a clear message now he will continue in the knowledge he can use chemical weapons with impunity. 

Last year I argued that Britain has a moral duty to intervene in Syria to protect the lives of innocent civilians. Those views haven't changed.

Today our country turned its back on the slaughter of innocent men, women and children. We should be ashamed.

The Credit Crunch: What are interest rates and why do they matter?

Debt is a good thing. It might seem counterintuitive but debt allows people to own their own homes, businesses to grow and for all of us to live more happy, prosperous lives. Just as an example, a button maker who borrows £1,000 and uses it to buy a new machine which produces three times as many buttons will be able to pay back the £1,000 and make a healthy profit to boot. That's the theory anyway. 

Why would you ever lend someone money? Not only are you depriving yourself the opportunity to spend that money but there's the risk you might never get it back. Interest rates are the way people who lend money get something back for the trouble. If A lends B £100 at a rate of 1% then he can expect to be paid back £101. That is he receives the £100 he originally lent plus £1 as his reward for having done so.

Banks operate by borrowing money from people at one interest rate and then lending that money to other people at a higher rate. In other words, if I put £200 in the bank then they might pay me a 1% interest rate but then lend that money to you at 2%. I receive a £2 reward for having deposited my money with the bank whilst the bank receives £4 from you in return for lending the money on to you. 

If things were left like this the system would constantly seize up. Each time someone went to a bank to ask for a loan the bank would have to wait till someone else deposited an equal or greater amount in the bank with which it could make the loan. To stop this happening governments make continual short-term loans to banks to provide them with ready money to lend on to other people. They do so through central banks. In Britain this is the Bank of England, in America it's the Federal Reserve, whilst in the eurozone (those countries using the euro) it is the European Central Bank. 

The interest rate at which governments make these loans is the most important interest rate there is. This is because the interest rates banks charge people borrowing money from them will always be higher than the rate at which banks borrow from the central bank. If the central bank's rate is low then banks will charge borrowers lower interest rates and vice versa. At the moment the Bank of England's rate is 0.5%.

Why do we have such a low interest rate? At the moment banks simply aren't lending anyone any money. The idea is that if banks can borrow money more cheaply from the Bank of England then they will be able to lend that money on to everyone else at an affordable rate. The fact that this still isn't happening shows the limits of what interest rates can do. Low interests rates alone won't get us out of the economic mess we're in now. They will help though.

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Most of the ideas here were stolen from those far more intelligent than myself, chiefly John Lanchester's "Whoops!"

Syria: A moral duty to intervene

Since the Syrian uprising began in March 2011 President Bashar al-Assad's autocratic regime has killed over 20,000 people.

Protests first erupted in the southern city of Daraa after Syrian security services arrested and tortured a group of youths. Their crime: spray painting anti-regime slogans on a school wall calling for Assad to step down. Since then the county has descended into a civil war in which up to 25,000 people have died.

How did Syria get here? Assad himself came to power in the year 2000 on the death of his father, Hafiz al-Assad. The regime he inherited, however, has a much longer history. Syria's Ba'ath Party, sister organisation to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party in Iraq, arose out of the mid-twentieth century movement to unite the Arab people under a single pan-Arabian state. Following the failure of that movement, epitomised by the catastrophic 1948 Arab-Israeli  War, it degenerated into a vehicle of repression through which the minority Alawite clan, of which Assad's family is a part, could dominate the majority Sunni population in Syria. 

It sought to rely on the fears of Shias, Christians and other minorities as to what the Sunni majority would do if they seized power. Those fears, however legitimate, are now far outweighed by the threat Assad poses to the Syrian people as a whole.  At first greeted as a less autocratic, modernising face to the regime, his murderous actions over the past year have put to death any notion that this could be the case. When a regime resorts to the systematic slaughter of its own people it can in no way claim to represent their best hopes of safety. Sunni majority rule has to be worth a try.

The UK is the World's sixth largest economy and has a permanent spot on the UN Security Council. The World has treated us well. Despite being a nation of just 60 million we still hold a disproportionate share of the World's wealth and exert a degree of power far above what a small rainy island in the north of Europe could expect. As such we have a duty to act as responsible actors on the World stage.

A worrying complacency appears to have taken hold amongst the British people. People seem to think that since this conflict is thousands of miles away it doesn't matter. It does. A blood-thirsty tyrant is waging war against his own people. As fellow human beings we must do what we can to help. In 1940 the Blitz rained destruction down upon the British Isles and a Nazi invasion seemed imminent. We asked the World for help and it obliged. The World is now asking us to return the favour.

Britain has to show willing to help overthrow this barbaric regime. Seemingly intractable Russian opposition should not detract from efforts to obtain a UN Security Council resolution authorising international intervention to protect the Syrian people. At the very least we must continue to push for stronger action by the Arab League and regional powers to provide a united front against the Assad regime. 

Assad's regime is a foul stain on this Earth representing everything that is wrong with humanity. If we can play the smallest part in its eradication, we have a duty to do so.

The UKIP Threat: the Tories risk drifting to the unelectable right

Recently there has been a spate of articles identifying what they see as the growing threat UKIP poses to the Conservative Party. The Party, they argue, is haemorrhaging voters as traditional right wing voters, alienated by a Coalition Government more willing to please the Lib Dems than implement proper right-wing policies, jump ship to UKIP. Such views aren’t new. A vociferous minority have long claimed that we apparently lost the elections in 1997, 2001 and 2005 because we were somehow not right-wing enough.

This is a delusion. Elections are won on the centre-ground, not the die-hard fringes. In a country that has repeatedly elected centre-left governments it seems ridiculous to claim that what the people of Britain really want is hard-core conservatism. Tony Blair won three elections precisely because he seized the centre-ground, crowding the Tories out. Policies such as ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ outflanked the Tories from the right, forcing them to move to the unelectable fringes in a vain effort to provide a real alternative to Labour’s policy on law and order.

To allow UKIP to draw us to the right would do to the Conservative Party what the Tea Party movement did to the Republicans in America. The witch hunt that brought down so many moderates for being ‘un-conservative’ left the GOP so divorced from reality that its pig-headed refusal to compromise led to the world’s largest economy losing its triple-A credit rating. That was ludicrous: conservatism is meant to be about sound economic management.

Britain is still suffering from 13 years of dire economic management. The British people deserve better. We have a duty to present them with palatable centre-right policies they can trust to get the economy back on track. Don’t let UKIP distract us from that.

Ending the educational apartheid

Earlier this week four universities joined the Russell Group, a group of universities which attracts the vast majority of research funding in the UK. In doing so they illustrated the continuing inequality in the provision of higher education in Britain.

Though we often hear politicians talk about the need to tackle inequality in our nation's schooling, very little focus is given to addressing it in higher education. When inequality is raised at all, it concerns quantity rather than quality. Pledges like Tony Blair's target of sending 50% of school leavers to university show an admirable desire to increase the number of people who benefit from a university education but do little to ensure that education is of an adequate standard.

This is a real problem. In an increasingly globalised world, the only hope for industrialised economies like Britain to remain competitive is to develop their skills base. For that to be achieved a decent higher education system is essential. A system that excludes the majority of people from top-tier jobs clearly fails on that count.

Surely everyone should have access to the best education that resources allow. Of course it would be wrong to attack the quality of the best institutions, but how is it wrong to want to raise the standard of the average? In an age when grammar schools have been all but abolished it seems ridiculous to retain such a system for higher education.

A complete change in the way people perceive higher education is needed. Snobbish attitudes that a degree is a waste of time for some people have to go. It is true, there are some Mickey Mouse degrees out there. But that's the fault of an unequal education system, not young people aspiring for a better future.

The current system is an anachronism, not fit for the twenty-first century. If we're ever going to tackle inequality in this country, politicians need to acknowledge this.

The Act of Union 1707: Why Scotland joined Britain

In 2014 Scotland will most likely vote on her independence. Over the past few weeks a great deal has been said on the potential break-up of the United Kingdom. Very little has been said about why the Union exists in the first place. 

As with most things British, the Union between Scotland and England can be traced back hundreds of years. A key date must be 1603 when James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England.  However, despite now sharing a king the two nations remained very much distinct. Scotland retained her own Parliament, legal system and state religion. It wasn't until the Act of Union of 1707 that the two countries were bound together into a single nation. 

The background to the 1707 Act was certainly eventful. The previous half a century had seen civil war, the execution of a king, the restoration of the monarchy and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The latter event is one of the most important events in British constitutional history. It put to rest any notion of the divine right of monarchs and ensured Protestantism was here to stay. What's more, the Bill of Rights of 1689 established the basis for the civil liberties we rely on today. 

It is against this backdrop that the Act of Union was passed in 1707. It can be seen as the culmination of half a century of radical constitutional change. However, to understand the reasons behind its enactment, one must look abroad.

In 1707 Europe was embroiled in the War of the Spanish Succession. England had joined forces with Holland and Austria to take on the might of Louis XIV's France and, after the Battle of Blenheim in 1704, England was winning. The way had been paved for a new English dominance that would see her become the World's leading trading-power. The success of her colonies in the New World, already a source of steady income, would see her wealth increase even further. 

The success of England stood in stark contrast with Scotland's international woes. England's Navigation Laws had made illegal all Scottish trade with England's colonial possessions.  Excluded from the new-found wealth of her southern neighbour, Scotland embarked on her first and last colonial venture. The Darien scheme failed so catastrophically that it virtually bankrupted the entire nation. Scotland was left isolated and poor, a tiny country on the periphery of Europe.

In 1705 England made Scotland an offer she could not refuse: either England would cut off all trade with Scotland or the two nations could form a Union. Scotland would gain free access to England's colonial markets in return for the surrender of her independence. To say no would mean financial ruin. To say yes would bring wealth and prosperity. Unsurprisingly, the Scots said yes.

Scotland never looked back. At least until now. The British Empire is now long gone and the free market reigns supreme. Is there still an economic case for Union? Scottish independence rests on that simple question.

Are public sector pensions so easy to understand?

Last week disruption swept Britain as tens of thousands in the public sector went out on strike. The issue: reform to public sector pensions.

I remember commenting to someone that I had trouble fully understanding the public sector pensions debate. The response was a look of pity normally reserved only for Miss USA contestants when they try to sound intelligent. Am I alone? How many of us really do understand the pensions debate?

The art of politics is being able to present complex issues in a simple way. Pithy slogans are the bread and butter of the politician but they do little to enlighten us as to the real debate. To say the question is no more complex than the right to a fair pension seems ludicrous.

So what is the pensions debate really about?

With people living longer we have to work longer and pay more if our pensions are to remain affordable. These reforms are meant to bring this about. Public sector workers are faced with a later retirement, larger contributions and at the end of it a smaller payout for their troubles. This is all on top of a wage decrease in real terms. It's understandable they might be a bit upset.

Two key issues are at stake here: fairness and affordability.

The unions argue the current set-up is affordable. They cite the Hutton Report as evidence of this, but that report assumes changes will be made. So reform does have to take place.

So is the proposed reform fair? Those opposed to reform claim they are fighting for a 'fair pension'. They argue quite persuasively that just because private sector workers get poor pension provision doesn't mean public sector workers should. They believe it unfair that benefits they were promised are now being taken away. They provide services like the NHS and schooling that we all depend on. Often they do jobs that are not pleasant, such as refuse collection. Surely they deserve proper reward?

The response of the reformers is blunt but true: Life isn't fair. It's unfair that public sector workers must now accept a worse deal than they were promised. But why should a worker receive preferential treatment just because he's in the public sector? Private sector workers provide services just as essential as those provided by the state. They often do work just as distasteful as their public sector counterparts.  How then can it be justified that private sector workers should subsidise public sector benefits of which they can only dream?

Can I now say I understand public sector pensions? No, of course not. They still confuse me. Something so complex always will. I'm fine with the basic issues though, or at least I think I am. That's enough for me.

PMQs: Punch & Judy politics

A common criticism of British politics regards its adversarial nature. The ethos of the House of Commons Chamber is often derided as being more suited to a schoolroom of boys from St Custard's than the birthplace of modern Western democracy.

Described by the Economist as a 'gladiatorial spectacle' that 'reeks of conflict', the epitome of this exchange is Prime Minister's Questions. As each side cheers on its champion and jeers at his opponent, the cries of 'Order, Order!' from the Speaker are the only thing that can return the Chamber to, well, order. 

Last Wednesday's PMQs special of the Daily Politics saw Nick Robinson stress just how loud the roar of noise can get. Labour MP Chuka Umunna agreed, identifying it as a major source of disquiet amongst the public at a time of such economic uncertainty. Presumably he would prefer PMQs to be conducted more along the lines of America's Congress. Debates would be carried out with the genteel decorum that proper political discourse deserves.

Yet this is a system so prone to deadlock that it routinely hurts America's interests. Congress's inability to reach an agreement caused the Word's largest economy to lose its triple A credit rating earlier this year. Failure to deal with this intransigence means US politicians still can't agree how to deal with the America's deficit.

The British system might be unseemly but it works. When David Cameron first became Conservative Party leader he vowed to end Punch & Judy politics. He failed. I for one won't judge him too harshly for that.

Racism & freedom of speech: My Tram Experience

At the time of writing 800,000 people have seen a woman send a tirade of vile racist abuse at a tram full of people. Thankfully, the almost universal reaction has been one of abhorrence. A woman has subsequently been arrested in connection with the incident.

My initial reaction was dismay at such an authoritarian response. We find this woman so repulsive because the views she espouses are anathema to an open liberal democracy. If we cease to tolerate such minority viewpoints, however horrible, and abandon freedom of speech then surely we are abandoning the very value-system we are seeking to protect.

On further reflection I realised I was wrong. We place limits on our freedoms all of the time. People aren't allowed to have sex in the streets merely because we believe in sexual liberty. If we didn't have limits on our behaviour there would be anarchy.

Rousseau believed one should distinguish 'natural freedom, which is limited only by the strength of the individual, from civil freedom, which is limited by the general will.' If we are to have true 'moral liberty' we must look to civil freedom, 'for to be driven by our appetites alone is slavery, while to obey a law that we have imposed on ourselves is freedom.'1.

If we are to protect freedom we can't allow this woman freedom of speech.

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762).

Starbucks democracy

I thought I'd take a quick break from my dissertation to write a short piece on the aftermath of yesterday's EU referendum vote. In that vote, 81 Conservative MPs rebelled against the Government. 

In true McCarthy style, the rebels were described by their supporters as 'patriots'. I'm not sure when it became un-British to want to stay in the EU but there it is.

Perhaps more interesting was the claim that a vote against a referendum was 'undemocratic'. This reflects the modern phenomenon described by the Economist as 'Starbucks politics'. In a world where people have become used to personalised treatment in other areas of life, they demand the right to pick and choose government policies.

We live in a parliamentary democracy. In the words of the Economist:

The basic deal of parliamentary democracy is, or used to be, that on polling day voters make an overall choice among the packages on offer. They can turf out the government at the next election, but until then they have to live with compromise, frequent disappointment and occasional coercion.

It is based on an acceptance that government, with all its conflicting priorities, cannot be done on a single-issue basis. That reasoning no longer seems to convince a large number of people. They want their say on individual issues and accuse any government which refuses them of being undemocratic.

As California shows, direct democracy is not such a great idea. It is not practical for each and every government decision to go to a plebiscite. It causes chaos as governments lose the ability to govern.  Referenda should be reserved for those rare occasions when they are truly necessary. Otherwise they undermine the very democracy they are meant to serve.

Rebellious Tories: What is it about Europe?

On Monday Parliament will vote on whether there should be a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Even though the motion is likely to fail, more than 60 Conservative MPs might vote against the thee-line whip imposed by the Government. This has caused me quite a bit of irritation.

Anyone who has talked with me probably knows that I am (relatively) pro-Europe. It wasn't always so, but I've now seen the light. I want Britain to be the driving force behind this unprecedented project in international co-operation, one which has brought democracy and prosperity to millions. There are aspects I'm not happy with (think CAP) but, overall, I think it's a good idea.

However, it's not for this reason I'm annoyed. I can cope with the fact that many people inexplicably believe you can remain a part of the Common Market without applying EU regulations. I don't understand them, but then again there's a lot in this World I don't understand.

No, what annoys me is the way the Conservative Party reacts when presented with the issue of Europe. Britain's most pragmatic party throws reason to the wind and goes into suicide mode. The issue tore apart John Major's government in 1997 whilst failure to deal with the issue resulted in pathetic electoral performances in 2001 and 2005.

Now in 2011, Britain's economic recovery is anaemic. Meanwhile, Europe's economy hangs on the brink of collapse whilst the Continent's leaders are locked in talks on how to bring it back. If there is a defining characteristic of the Conservative Party it should be economic competence. It is the issue which defines the Coalition Government, bringing the Lib Dems into an otherwise inconceivable pact with the Tories.  

It thus seems ludicrous that  over 60 Conservative MPs could even consider supporting such a diversion of time and energy whilst the key issue of the day remains unaddressed. You can repatriate powers any time. You can only prevent economic collapse once. The contempt they are showing Britain's economic travails risks serious damage to both the Coalition and the Conservative Party. Even if they don't worry about the Coalition, they should care about the Party.

I understand that you can't ignore the calls of 100,000 voters. To ignore the petition and not hold a vote would be undemocratic. Nonetheless, there is a huge difference between supporting a vote on a proposition and supporting the proposition itself.

David Cameron should impose a three-line whip. For those who ignore it, I hope he throws the book at them.

Why pictures of Gaddafi's corpse were necessary

Shortly after Muammar Gaddafi's death, images of his corpse were broadcast worldwide. The front page of the Sun was probably one of the most brutal. There were calls from some that such a grotesque practice was completely out of place in the twenty-first century. Suffice it to say, I wasn't one of them.

In the words of one prolific Twitterer: 'Sticking a photo of a bloodied corpse on the front page of every newspaper is the modern equivalent of sticking heads on spikes'. Is that such a bad thing? Through its very barbarity, that gruesome custom sought to deter others from following a similar path. Dictators otherwise happy to wage war against their own people will see what a humiliating fate awaits them on their fall. 

Bashar Assad should take note. Syria might not be the pariah state that was Gaddafi's Libya and he might be able to rely on the support of other regional powers. However, Egypt was very strongly connected internationally and Mubarak still fell. 

Not all the effects were so negative: broadcast of those images also brought transparency. The world now knows Gaddafi was executed extra-judicially. With no prospect of a cover-up, the National Transitional Council will now investigate his death. Under such close scrutiny, Libya's new ruling body will find itself held to the highest standards. This can only help the country move towards the liberal democracy for which its people fought so hard.

It's hard to feel sorry for Gaddafi. I'm not going to try. He had the blood of thousands on his hands. He sponsored terrorism and waged war against his own people. He should have stood trial for his crimes. Failing that, humiliation was the least he deserved.

Scottish Conservatism (it does exist)

Murdo Fraser is the frontrunner in the election for leader of the Scottish Conservatives. He has caused quite a stir by pledging, if he wins, to split from the UK Conservative Party. The new party would have its own identity and policies but still sit with the Tories in Westminster. The idea is to create a centre-right party which is 'much more attractive to ... people in Scotland'.

This idea isn't as revolutionary as it might sound. As Fraser points out, the Scottish party had a separate identity before 1965 as the Unionist Party. A similar set-up exists in Germany today. There, the centre-right CSU (Christian Social Union) acts as the Bavarian sister-party to the national CDU (Christian Democrat Union). This arrangement has existed since the War and has been so successful that the CSU has not lost power in Bavaria for half a century. 

The independent Unionists experienced similar (if not quite as total) success in the years before 1965. Indeed, there seems no reason to believe the Scottish are intrinsically left-wing. Nonetheless, the fortunes of the Scottish Conservative Party has inexorably declined over the past 50 years. By 1997, they had no MPs left in the Commons. Today, they have just one.

The Scottish Conservative Party has lost its connection with centre-right voters north of the border. That has not just been bad for the party. It has denied those voters a voice in Scottish politics. That is bad for democracy.

A drastic change is needed. The creation of a separate party, with its own identity and policies, seems the best hope yet for relaunching progressive right-wing politics in Scotland. In the absence of a credible alternative, it's at least worth a shot.

The Conservative Party has always been at its best when acting as the radical force of British politics. It is at its worst when defending a rotten status quo. It happened in 1997 and the Party was decimated. In Scotland it never recovered. Unless it grasps the nettle and makes itself relevant to a modern Scotland, it seems hard to see why it ever should.

Fraud in the blogosphere

There are many reasons why I am not a successful journalist. One of them is my ability to remain oblivious to key events. Almost a week ago Lord Credo, the prolific blogger and Twitterer, was outed as a fraud. He had claimed to be at the heart of government, even to have David Cameron's ear. All of that was a lie.

In my defence, this news hardly broke the front pages. In fact, if this story shows anything it is that people care very little about the blogosphere. For all the talk about individual empowerment and grassroots journalism, the fact that not one person bothered to double-check a man 4,400 people thought to be genuine is indicative. He even managed to fool the Huffington Post.

It is tempting to blame the times we live in. In Agatha Christie's 'A Murder Is Announced', Miss Marple laments that 'no one knows any longer who's who'. The problem is 'people just come - and all you know about them is what they say of themselves'. No longer can we rely on a strongly integrated community to provide us with the necessary information on newcomers. 

This view is bunk. Over 100 years earlier people were able to accept the concept of a man being incarcerated, escaping, and returning home as a fictitious Count of Monte Cristo. Countless generations have claimed that when they were young they knew everyone on their street and that there was less crime. This claim becomes rather astounding when one considers that one in five women in 18th century London were prostitutes.

In fact, one could argue the confidence trick has become harder nowadays. In a Big Brother age of bureaucratic oversight in which we must all have qualifications from a universally accepted institution, it almost seems refreshing that a man was able to walk into the top echelons of society purely on the back of his personality.

That said, this man's actions were deplorable. He abused his friends' trust and defrauded them. If there is a lesson to learn from this sorry affair, it is that even in a modern world of instant communication and social media, you can't trust anyone to be who they say they are. You don't trust spam e-mails. Don't trust a Twitter profile.

Rescuing the working class: the need to rebalance our economy

Written for & originally posted by Conservative Way Forward (Yorkshire) on 18/08/11.

The recent UK riots sparked a frenzied media debate about a worrying phenomenon: an underclass which feels it has so little stake in society that it can happily destroy the community in which it lives. What is the cause of this deplorable development and what can be done?

One has to start with the disintegration of the working class. After the collapse of the manufacturing industry the working class split. Those who were able to moved to jobs in an increasingly dominant finance and services sector. In doing so they joined the middle class. Those left behind lacked the necessary education and skills to find employment in a modern economy. Wanting to avoid soaring unemployment figures, the Government ensured many of these unemployables ended up hidden on disability benefit. 20 years on and only now are moves being made to get these people back into work. In short, we relied on the success of the financial sector to paper over the cracks of a rotten system.

There is a geographic dimension too. Based in the City of London, the boom in the financial sector only created jobs in the south-east. The Government reacted by taking the money the south-east generated and throwing it at the rest of the country. How else could one explain why the public sector is the dominant employer in so many areas north of the Watford Gap?

When anyone challenges this system, there is uproar. If anyone tries to reduce the North's dependency on the public sector, the Left accuses them of targeting the poor. Similarly, whenever people try to ensure only those in need of disability benefit receive it, and that those able to work do so, they are accused of attacking the meagre protection provided to the genuinely handicapped. Meanwhile, whenever someone talks of rebalancing the economy in favour of other sectors which would benefit those areas outside the south-east, the Right accuses them of wanting to return Britain to the 1970s.

This is fraud, plain and simple. We can wring our hands about the decline of our nation all we want but nothing will change until we accept there is something fundamentally wrong with our dependence on finance. Otherwise, Britain will remain 'Great' only in name.

David Starkey & race: a short opinion

I tried but couldn't resist touching on David Starkey's rather disastrous appearance on Newsnight last Friday. Since so many have already opined on the subject far more eloquently than I could ever manage, I'll try to keep it short.

Many have argued that Starkey's comments have been pounced on by the PC brigade with the result being to shut down a much needed debate on race. Indeed, we do need to have that debate. It goes to the very heart of our understanding of our identity, both as individuals and a nation. It would seem strange to ignore something so fundamental when examining why society collapsed catastrophically last week.

But that's the point: this incredibly sensitive and personal debate is crucial if this country is to address the vast problems it faces today. Charging headlong at the issue, wild-eyed and foaming at the mouth like a bull to a red cloth, does nothing to aid that debate. Rather, it offends people to such a degree that it forces them into an ideological corner. Don't blame the PC brigade for shutting down the debate. Blame people like David Starkey.

Cracking rioters' skulls

One of the many videos that has gone viral in the past couple of days shows police stop, and then beat to the ground, alleged teenage rioters. You can even see one of them being kicked whilst on the ground.

If you haven't seen the video, you can find it here.

One must remember this video is completely out of context. We don't know what events led up to it, nor do we know what happened after. The police deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Rather, what is concerning is people's reaction. Comments on the original Youtube posting are all massively in favour of giving rioters a taste of their own medicine. The most popular comment at the time of writing reads: 'Good. I'm glad the nasty little f***ers got a hiding!!'.

There has to be something wrong when our first reaction to seeing a policeman take a truncheon to a teenager's face is one of satisfaction. I'm not denying these kids might be horrible pieces of work. They might have provoked the police. However, they don't appear to have been doing anything particularly wrong at the time of filming and they didn't appear to put up any resistance at all.

Just because a group of thugs act like sub-standard human beings doesn't mean the police should. The police are meant to protect us from thugs, not become thugs themselves. The police have, by and large, shown remarkable restraint in dealing with what are essentially scum of the earth. We shouldn't go about encouraging them to become thugs now.

#mediablackout

For anyone who regularly uses Twitter, #tottenham, #enfield and #londonriots will all be familiar trends from the past couple of days. On Sunday night, as the nation's capital once again erupted into riots, social media buzzed. There was, however, another trend which signified something quite troubling: #mediablackout. Why indeed was there so little live coverage from the traditional media?

The Met claimed it hadn't requested a blackout, and it might be too much to expect Sky News and the BBC to provide live television coverage from the word go. Logistics and limited resources mean cameramen can't be instantly on the scene. However, many like myself often rely on the live news feeds the BBC and others provide on their websites. They incorporate a wide range of sources, including social media such as Twitter, and can hardly be that difficult or expensive to set up. It was strange to see nothing of the sort from any major news agency.

Assuming the claims of a media blackout are true, how was it in the public interest? Whilst the traditional media remained silent Twitter was ablaze with people's reactions. Troublemakers continued to communicate through BlackBerry Messenger whilst the general public were kept in the dark about a genuine security issue. If there was a media blackout last night it was appallingly managed.

I hate conspiracy theories. They tend to be the half-baked product of someone with far too much time on their hands and too much faith in people's ability to cover things up. But either there was a ban on live coverage or our national media is so incompetent it can't report riots in the streets of our capital. Neither is an enticing prospect.