Henry Porter makes an excellent point – neither of the Big Two major political parties in Britain is talking at all about civil liberties or human rights in the run-up to the general election the month after next. Remember this is the election where we can thoroughly repudiate this authoritarian government’s surveillance agenda, and refuse to vote for anyone who doesn’t guarantee to repeal it:
It is [also] a very dangerous government – it has attacked liberty and rights like no other administration in the past hundred years, and it will continue to do so unless stopped by the electorate in 70 days’ time, for the one area which requires absolutely no skill at all is the creation of new offences, the erosion of ancient liberties and filling our lives with endless checking, vetting and surveillance.
Cameron has spoken about these things in the past but this great issue is not apparently big enough to be one of the main themes of an election campaign in which so much is obviously at stake. The only conclusion to draw is that the Tories believe either this is not important, or that the public don’t think it is important. I am not sure which puts them in a worse light because the first displays shallowness, while the second a lack of leadership.
The Tories have rejected changing the voting system and they’re uninterested in talking seriously about civil liberties – this mustn’t be an election about personalities, nor must it be reduced to who can cut public services and how fast. It must be about repairing the social damage caused by New Labour, and proving to all the major parties that the trade-off between security and liberty is a false one.
I shall be voting Green, because they have a strong chance of removing the government minister who doesn’t represent me in any way, shape or form. You should be voting for parties which are against ID cards, think vetting the population for paedophilia before being allowed to work is unthinkably wrong, which don’t demonise asylum seekers (or lock up their children), and which couldn’t condone throwing people off the internet without a trial, or secretly banning websites they don’t like. If the Tories don’t start talking all of these abuses down (and more), you can’t vote for them merely to get Brown, Straw, Johnson, Balls et al out, because they clearly won’t have any intention to do any better. The database state and state surveillance culture must be stopped – this is your best chance to take a stand and make it happen.
The Tories would have you believe that they’re interested in change, but the biggest stumbling block to MPs behaving better and actually representing people better is the first-past-the-post electoral system. David Cameron really wants to be Prime Minister by convincing the electorate that the Tories can deliver Obama-style change (and look just how much change he’s really brought in), but leaving the voting system unchanged will just continue to mean the same false priorities being chased: accommodating the poll-based whims of floating voters in marginal seats. It’s caused the rise of the BNP, it’s been at the root of the expenses scandal and has allowed New Labour’s surveillance agenda to pass through the Commons with barely a murmur. So if you feel ‘Dave’ is a better choice than so-called ‘bully’ Brown, just think about what change is actually needed before anything else. Get the right people in first or you might as well just not bother.
So the man styling himself as our next Prime Minister thinks that modernising our voting system is ‘crazy’. I think it’s quite revealing that he believes that a system genuinely representative of the people’s wishes (or in AV+’s case more representative) is a bad thing. Apparently the people must ‘feel like this is their parliament’, but actually making it more their parliament is out of the question. Cheers Dave, but the only way it can worry about what I worry about is if it represents me better than it does now. My MP is Joan Ruddock, who because she controls a safe Labour (or in her case New Labour) seat doesn’t have to represent my wishes at all; first-past-the-post sees to that. I’ve even debated my wishes with her, and she didn’t want to know; why should she? There’s no constitutional mechanism to make her. Cameron is right when he champions select committees to increase accountability within parliament – no question – but that can only be part of wider constitutional reform which includes a more proportional voting system. And the Commons should have more control over its timetable – the legislature genuinely does need its powers ramped up against the now almighty executive, but if the legislature doesn’t represent the people’s wishes better than it already does, that’ll only do so much good. If the new parliament’s concerns go no further than continuing to placate swing voters in marginal seats, noone’ll notice much difference. Willie Sullivan from Vote for a Change said:
“Under our current system, a nation of 45 million voters will leave it to a quarter of a million in the marginals to decide the outcome of the next election.
“It’s the equivalent of letting only people who live in Brighton decide the government of the United Kingdom. The question of who runs Britain is all our business, and for that we need a vote that really counts.
“Polls have shown time and again that people are prepared to break with the past.
“MPs can stick their fingers in their ears and pretend its business as usual, or they can help make 2010 the last broken election.”
It’s a great illustration of the representational failure at the heart of first-past-the-post. Intriguingly for the post-Brown era beginning in May, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said:
“We’ve still got a 19th century political system trying to address 20th century problems and in my book the whole system – the election to the Commons, the Lords, local government and how it’s organised, fixed terms parliaments – they should all be on a ballot.
“We should have what I would call a reset referendum that would reset the political system in a way that can actually address modern problems by getting power where it belongs, by checking power at the right places, by giving more rights and making sure rights of the individual are safe-guarded.”
Labour former minister Tom Harris, MP for Glasgow South, raised laughter as he asked Straw: “Do you attribute the stainless reputation of Italian politicians to the fact that they have proportional representation?”
Of course PR (which wrongly isn’t on the table for this referendum) hasn’t saved Italian politics from total dysfunction, but the reasons for that aren’t down to the voting system. Take a look at Germany, which is also governed by a PR system. Their system has been a model for the Western world since 1949 – fairly representing the people has allowed them successfully to absorb a failed state (the GDR), their 5% representational threshold for parliament has made it hard for extreme parties to get into the Bundestag in the first place, and even when they’ve made it that far they’ve always fizzled out. Coalition politics and a culture of compromise has brought about remarkable stability, not to mention the necessary diversity into Germany politics. Britain, with first-past-the-post, has descended into complete ambivalence, and why not, when our elected representatives do whatever it takes to retain power, not to fulfill their side of the political contract?
The House of Commons voted 365-187 for a referendum on AV+ after the election, but it remains unclear if the bill will get passed before the general election in May.
David Tennant has urged people not to vote Tory, warning that life under David Cameron would be a “terrifying prospect” for the future of Britain.
The Doctor Who star branded the Conservative leader a phoney who jumps on every bandwagon going and insists Gordon Brown is the man best placed to look after the interests of all Brits, not just a privileged few.
In an emotionally charged interview, Tennant said: “Clearly, the Labour Party is not without some issues right now and I do get frustrated. They need to sort some stuff out, but they’re still a better bet than the Tories.
“I would rather have Gordon Brown than David Cameron. I would rather have a Prime Minister who is the cleverest person in the room than a Prime Minister who looks good in a suit.
“I think David Cameron is a terrifying prospect. I think he’s a regional newsreader who will jump on whatever bandwagon flies past.
“I get quite panicked that people are buying his rhetoric, because it seems very manipulative.”
It’s a great line, and one which skillfully bypasses Brown’s numerous deficiencies. And it’s going to be a decisive issue in May. Whilst there are terrible things being done in the name of New Labour (Digital Economy Bill, ID cards, ISA, policing), the same would be true under the Tories but far worse. Gutting the BBC as well? Chumming up with the vilest racists and homophobes in the EU Parliament? Repealing the Human Rights Act? No thanks. I’m with The Doctor on this.
In case you can’t read it, the graffiti states: “I’ll cut the deficit, the NHS, the BBC, Ordnance Survey, Anything whatever in fact, We should not be allowed to govern again.”
David Cameron has long trailed his desire to repeal the Human Rights Act upon becoming Prime Minister. Conor Gearty reminds us how important human rights still are and how much of an impact the Act has yet to make:
In our bleak, post-1989 capitalist era they have become (for now) the only way of doing socialism.
When we talk about human rights these days we are often in fact discussing issues – the fight against poverty; the push for greater equality; a decent health system; greater support for developing nations – that were the common vernacular of that now largely extinct species, the international socialist. And when we see “communist” China apparently reject co-operation in Copenhagen, we cannot help but wonder whether the civil and political rights denied by the guns of Tiananmen might have made a difference.
In short, human rights are the answer to many of the seemingly intractable questions with which we are faced. The Human Rights Act has played a part in keeping the flame of universalism flickering, small for sure – but the Conservatives should not be allowed to snuff it out without a least a fight from everybody who thinks of themselves as of the left.
I don’t think the HRA has been responsible for holding the government to account on almost anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not vitally important. Jack Straw introduced the HRA to use as a prism through which government policy was to be formed; that abundantly clearly has never been the case. But it has provided access to redress under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) through British courts, and the importance of this can’t be overstated. Cameron bleats on about how the ECHR won’t be undone, should he repeal the HRA, that Britain will still be a signatory to it. But the fundamental purpose of the HRA was to enable access to European human rights law for those who couldn’t otherwise afford to get to Strasbourg. Repeal the HRA and a majority of those who need it will be cut off, only to have what will no doubt be an ultra-nationalistic British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities (or was that Straw’s newest authoritarian wheeze?) to fall back on. Will non-British nationals be able to use it? Will Cameron decide human rights are no longer universal, and make them contingent? The signs aren’t good.
We will all have to fight tooth and nail to retain the Human Rights Act, and I hope every right-thinking person I know or who knows me will do so.
Stephen Fry has suggested the letter he and other celebrities have signed, condemning the Conservative Party’s EU Parliament alliance with the Polish Law and Order Party and Latvia’s Freedom and Fatherland Party, offers David Cameron an opportunity to walk away from them:
there was a time when no self-respecting British politician would have gone anywhere near such people. Kaminski began his career in the National Rebirth of Poland movement, inspired by a 1930s fascist ideology that dreamed of a racially pure nation. Even today, the PiS slogan is “Poland for Poles”, understood to be a door slammed in the face of non-Catholics. In 2001 he upbraided the president for daring to apologise for a 1941 pogrom in the town of Jedwabne which left hundreds of Jews dead. Kaminski said there was nothing to apologise for – at least not until Jews apologised for what he alleged was the role Jewish partisans and Jewish communists had played alongside the Red Army in Poland.
Incredibly, Kaminski’s Polish party is not the most unsavoury of the Tories’ new partners. That honour goes to the Latvian grouping whose members have played a leading part in the annual parade honouring veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS. Lest we forget, the SS were the crack troops of Nazi genocide; the Latvian Legion included conscripts, but at least a third were volunteers, among them men with the blood of tens of thousands of Jews on their hands. It is in honour of those killers that Cameron’s new buddies march through the streets of Riga.
Fry told Channel 4 News he fears there will be a nationalistic and homophobic reaction to the current recession, unless groups across Europe take action.
He told Channel 4 News: “This is a problem that is not going to get smaller because, as we start to pay for the financial disaster of the last year, a kind of great pimple of nationalism, homophobia and racism is going to erupt around Europe because there is going to be trouble with unemployment.
“The problem with the 30s was not that period. It was the end of the 30s when you start to pay the price – and that’s why it matters now to make a stand because things will get worse.
“It is not just that your new Polish allies oppose gay marriage and adoption but that their vile rhetoric – branding homosexuality as a ‘pathology’, gays as ‘perverts’, and describing ‘the affirmation of homosexuality’ as ‘the downfall of civilisation’ – was used to whip up hate during their election campaign.
“Your party’s decision to host an LGBT event at conference is a good step in the right direction.
“But it will seem empty – a two faced gesture – if in the same week you fawn over allies whose homophobia has no place in modern Manchester, in modern Britain, or in Europe.”
Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill has pulled out of tonight’s gay pride event at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester:
Ben Summerskill, head of the equality group Stonewall, has pulled out of a new Pride event at the Conservative party conference after the party hosted ’extreme’ European politicians.
“There is no doubt the progress that has been made in the last couple of years has genuinely been historic. It would churlish of anyone not to welcome the apology a couple of months ago over Section 28,” said Summerskill.
“But the event tonight has been overshadowed by the presence, not just at conference but on the same platform as some senior members of the party, of people of such extreme and offensive views.
I’m going to go all contrary on this one and say Summerskill was wrong to pull out. If he’s right about Michal Kaminski (as I’m quite sure he is) I’m not sure what purpose a boycott serves, but more importantly what purpose playing into a homophobe’s hands serves. Yes it’s rather likely that the Tories will be the governing party once more next spring, yes Stonewall are probably pretty peeved about that, given their successes under New Labour (although it should be remembered that most of them were despite New Labour). But say there really is a seething undercurrent of homophobia amongst the Tories, and even that David Cameron’s prepared to do deals with homophobes in the EU Parliament, how are the gay rights lobbying group’s interests best served by being outsiders?
This boycott comes across as ill-timed and ill-considered sabotage. I’ll never be a fan of the Tory Party as long as I live, but I don’t see how a Chief Executive of a human rights group can behave in such a partisan manner when many of the people whose interests he claims to represent are entirely happy with Cameron’s Conservatives.
Peter Oborne argues Cameron’s Tories, instead of repealing New Labour’s signature piece of legislation, should embrace it because it fits in with their traditions and ethos:
The rights set out in the act are taken directly from the European convention on human rights, which was signed by the UK in 1951. They were inspired by a Conservative politician, Sir Winston Churchill, and drafted under the guidance of another one, David Maxwell-Fyfe (later Lord Chancellor Kilmuir) in the face of considerable opposition from the Attlee government. The act should thus be regarded as the creation not of New Labour, but of the Conservative party.
Moreover, Conservative critics are wrong to say that the rights of the act are in general socioeconomic entitlements. In fact, they are absolutely fundamental to the British common law tradition. They include the right to life; the prohibition of torture, first enacted by the Long Parliament in 1640; rights to liberty and security of person; the right to a fair trial, which dates back to Magna Carta; the right to respect for private and family life; rights to freedom of expression and religion; and the right to freedom of association. These rights are not radical: they are deeply Conservative.
And finally, the act itself operates in a peculiarly Conservative way. It confers no new right that has not already been long recognised in common law, or to which parliament has not already long committed the UK. Its rights are not inviolable, but can be set aside at will. Where there is an inconsistency of law, it leaves it to parliament to decide how to resolve that inconsistency, and only if it chooses. A more Conservative approach could hardly be conceived.
Jack Straw may have tacked rightwards since the 1998 Act, but the fact remains that the European Convention on Human Rights is enshrined in British law. Repealing it wouldn’t end the ECHR, nor would it end Britain’s human rights obligations under the Convention, but it would mean countless people once again being unable to afford to access their rights. There is no need to repeal the act; the only point of creating a British-only document to replace it would be to restrict human rights on nationalistic grounds. We should all be terrified of the prospect.
It may not be a foregone conclusion that David Cameron will be Prime Minister by this time next year, but the odds are pretty good. And should we move from an authoritarian New Labour government into a Tory one, the issues of privacy, civil liberties and constitutional reform will be pushed from half-hearted (and belated) support from Brown to severe mistrust from Cameron. His latest plan however sounds promising:
William Hague will tomorrow announce that the Conservatives will introduce a new stage for parliamentary bills, known as the public reading stage, that will allow voters to reject and rewrite clauses.
The scheme will be based on the US mixedink website, used by Obama last year. Under the Tory plans, a parliamentary bill would be introduced in the way it is now. The first and main debate – the second reading stage, in which the broad principles of the proposed new laws are debated on the floor of the Commons – would be held in the normal way.
But once MPs have held this debate, the bill would be thrown open to voters before it is considered line by line at the committee stage. A website would allow voters to comment on and rewrite the broad principles of the bill, and individual clauses.
Err hang on. We’d get a say in legislation while it’s being debated? Isn’t that what we elect representatives for? How are we supposed to have elected representatives and then have a mechanism for sidestepping their decisions unless…do you see where I’m coming from? It’s either a recipe for gridlock or it’s a sop to the now ever-present clamour for parliamentary reform, which they could easily ignore in practice. Surely the only solution in getting the decisions you want from your elected representatives is to have an electoral system which actually delivers people who closely represent your wishes. And surely the only way in which the select committee stage (where the real scrutiny for bad legislation comes in) can actually work is if party whips stop determining their composition. These aren’t options being talked about by the Tory party, and until they are I wouldn’t trust Hague’s new proposal for a heartbeat.
The government, dissatisfied with public indifference to ID cards has decided to patronising us into allowing our identities to be privatised:
The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will unveil animated fingerprint characters this week to promote the scheme to businesses, ahead of a consumer campaign in early 2010. The first wave of activity aims to build recognition among those businesses that will be regularly presented with cards by consumers. These include those in the retail, finance and education sectors.
‘The government is wasting vast sums of taxpayers’ money on the scheme,’ said shadow home secretary Chris Grayling. ‘Instead of marketing the scheme, it should be scrapping it.’ The Conservative Party has pledged to axe the cards if it wins the next general election.
It’s really shocking that a government which a) doesn’t have money to spend on needless projects and b) needs a big idea which works to catapult it into the next general election to give it a snowball’s chance in hell of winning should be continuing with its ID cards adventure. But it’s also not surprising. Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s committed the Home Office to a wholesale redefinition of identity for the 21st century (one defined by government, surprisingly enough), so despite his attempts to have us believe ID cards are dead, we still have a fight on our hands.
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