BoJo pretends to be a liberal Conservative. He’s transparently not; first, he banned alcohol on public transport, and now he wants to restrict access by under-21s to it. Thus:

Young adults will be banned from buying alcohol in shops under a scheme being backed by Mayor Boris Johnson.

Off-licence owners are to be asked to stop selling drink to under-21s, even though they are legally entitled to buy it at 18.

The voluntary scheme will start in Croydon and is likely to be rolled out across London.

Mr Johnson said that it was the type of solution that Londoners would welcome to the “huge problem” of binge-drinking by the young.

Let’s explore what this actually means. BoJo wants the state to encourage shops to actively discriminate against a group of adults on the basis of a factor beyond their control. That group has the legal rights of every other age-group - and potentially has done for three years.

And, of course, it won’t work. 18-21 year olds have been drinking for as long as can be remembered, and show no desire to stop. They’ve quite possibly been drinking since before their 18th birthday, and most will know how to get alcohol without the state’s consent. So, it won’t eliminate drinking; it’ll simply drive it underground, beyond any reasonable hope of regulation.

So - discriminatory, ineffective and generally illiberal. 18-21 year old are adults with full legal rights and who pay taxes - and yet BoJo wants to treat them like children. He’s not a liberal. He’s a disgusting paternalist willing to sacrifice the rights of a minority for populism’s sake.

From an account of anti-racist festival Rise. Apparently, some discontent:

Did you know Boris Johnson actually got rid of the anti-racism message of the Rise festival this year? Every single thing he’s done since he became mayor I despise, and I was pleased to see a conga of people at the festival singing “Boris is a cunt, Boris is a cunt, na na na na, na na na na”. Only in London.

Quite right.

(Via Dave Hill)

Brown suggests we waste less food and money. Eminently sensible, if a rather obvious point. So, presumably, he’ll be the first to tighten the belt? It’d be totally hypocritical to go on a long, entirely unnecessary trip to Japan (via Russia) to conduct a meeting which rarely achieves much beyond irritating a few anarchists. And, of course, while under protection from those anarchists by 21,000 police, he wouldn’t dine luxuriously on a menu like this.

Oh. Wait. Perhaps he will.

Time for some “militant secularism”; another shredding of faith schools, I feel. Observe the latest obscurantist wail from their defenders:

Selective, divisive, a law unto themselves: faith schools have been depicted by Ed Balls, secretary of state for schools, families and children, as a danger to Britain’s 9.8 million school-age children. Balls made his allegations last March, and has commissioned Sir Philip Hunter, the chief schools adjudicator, to investigate the 7000 faith schools in England and Wales. Hunter’s report is scheduled to reach ministers in September – and will, once again, stir up the row over faith schools.

Ball’s charges against faith schools can be dismissed one by one.

Really? They seem justified to me. Faith schools ground pupils in a seperate religious community, and so are divisive; they virtually require pupils to hold that faith, and so are selective; and raise hell (hah…) whenever the state which funds them imposes the same controls as it does on other schools it funds. Selective, divisive and a law unto themselves? Just a bit.

But, let’s hear what Ms. Odone has to say:

The schools do not select middle-class pupils or reject troubled ones. The intake of Christian schools reflects a broader ethnic range than comprehensive schools in the same area.

Class and race are synonymous? Look, we all enjoy a decent non-sequitur now and then, but to cite one phenomena and cite evidence (strangely without validated statistics) from another defeats itself. Balls’ point isn’t even addressed, save with unsupported assertion - so it isn’t addressed.

Moving on:

The schools are not divisive. Fully 76 of the 77 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a secular state school; the exception was home-schooled.

And this is meant to be serious journalism? When an author manages two complete non-sequiturs in 6 sentences, they need to be denied the oxygen of publicity. It doesn’t matter how many citizens arrested under the Terrorism Act attended secular schools; that’s simply not the point.

Faith schools are inherently divisive. They encourage pupils to conform to the tenets of a certain religion and inculcate a sense of community with others of that religion; they thus perpetuate faith communities. These faith communities are seperate and frequently opposed to each other. In a word, they’re divided - and faith schools perpetuate this. So, actually, it’s got nothing to do with arrests under the Terrorism Act of 2000 and more to do with the socio-cultural implications of telling a child they’re different to other children because of what’s written in an ancient tome.

But there’s more:

Faith schools do not charge parents for places. Although some schools did ask for voluntary contributions from parents even before admission, these pay for extra teaching for religious studies and, in the case of Jewish schools, for protection.

So, what you’re saying is that they do charge parents money and so exclude low-income families? A “voluntary contribution” before admissions sounds suspiciously like one on which admission could hang. Nothing would need said; the very fact that the charge comes before admission would simply worry parents, who then pay out just in case something goes wrong with the application goes through.

Not that those charges would be necessary in a secular school anyway; surely, “protection” money is required because of the school’s very insularity? The group seperates itself off from the community; that community is left in ignorance of that group’s traditions and finds it harder to challenge prejudices; the prejudiced, meanwhile, have an easy target in the isolated group. They’re not asking for it - but they’re hardly making the problem better.

Ed Balls’s attack fed, and amplified, the strident secularist stereotyping of faith schools as ghettoes that teach a backward mentality.

Let’s check a popular definition of the term, “Ghetto”: “a part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group.” Substitute, “education system,” for, “city, especially a slum area,” and, actually, that’s about right. A faith school sets itself up as a seperate entity within the state education system justifying its existence by its religious status - an educational ghetto.

In fact, Labour’s own Commission on Integration and Cohesion found that faith schools support local communities in terms of sharing their resources, and generating social capital.

Note the strange jargon to confuse the uninitiated; “social capital,” is an evasive non-phrase straight out of a sociology textbook. The author again misses the point; the schools might support their own, local communities, but their perpetuation of an insular, religious mentality seperates them from the national community (such as it is) and so is divisive.

Moreover, faith schools are crucial in the emancipation of Muslim girls: those who attend Muslim schools are more than twice as likely to go on to higher education than those who attend secular state or independent schools.

Perhaps more importantly, they’re more than twice as likely to have the doctrines of a religion elements of which treat women as second-class citizens forced on them. As they would do with a Christian or Jewish school; the patriarchal elements of Abrahamic faiths are inescapable.

Very emancipating.

As for the urban myth that faith schools teach creationism in science classes, this is precisely indeed a myth.

Now this just needs editting; “precisely indeed”? Ugh…

Faith schools have an excellent academic record, serve their local communities, and ground their students in a religious as well as national identity. Why squander this force for good?

Because they ground their students in a religious identity, and because that grounding is tax-funded. Parents have the right to educate their children as they wish, so long as that doesn’t harm the child; but they don’t have the right to do so on other taxpayers. All parents fund the education system. That system should thus be open to the children of any parent at any point, regardless of faith. That requires universally secular state schools; that requires an end to state funding for faith schools. Simple, really.

Oh - and since when was a religious and national identity a force for good? Division is the word she’s looking for.

For Ed Balls – and Gordon Brown – the answer is obvious: to woo the “old Labour” rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education.

Or maybe it’s because they believe in an open and fair education for all children?

With an eye to the No 10 succession, Balls is setting himself up as the old Labour candidate by bashing faith schools.

This is just laughable. Balls is setting himself up as Old Labour - by bashing faith schools? Odone could at least do the scaremongering properly and realise that the Labour left aren’t very well disposed to Balls because of City Academies and more. They care about socialism as well as secularism.

He deserves to fail.

Oh, look, another unsubstantiated point. Typical, no?

Rather infuriatingly it has happened again. Hari has written a fine article on a topic which needs more attention, yet crippled it with minor but endlessly infuriating selections of wording that act like the grit within an oyster save without the generation of any pearls.

Witness this attempt at a stirring call to arms:

And yet, for all the evidence, it still seems like an implausible story. Can a powder mix of misogyny and unregulated corporate power really induce women against their will to harm their own children? It does, baby, every day. These are still shockingly powerful forces. Now suck on that – or fight back.

What on Earth or beyond it possessed him to include that bizarre, “baby,”? Why did he think that a poor pun was an appropriate ending for an article in which he dealt with an entirely serious issue of corporate deception resulting in massive amounts of death?

Indeed his idiosyncratic writing style also means that we endure an unsettling account of his mother’s treatment of him, breast-wise, that I could have done without reading and seems solely to serve as a lead up for him to reference how fat he is. I am aware that Johann Hari is fat. I do not care. His apparent fascination with his weight is seemingly shared by only the most crude and infantile of his critics so why precisely he feels the need to reference it so persistently in columns that his by-line picture will usually appear in anyway is entirely beyond me.

I trust that this will not be perceived as mere bitchiness. I simply consider a man who makes so many fine arguments as to be hindered in a fashion I find displeasing and one which could be easily enough amended. All it would take would be a few strokes of the editor’s key or perhaps a few moments of consideration and deliberation over tone by Mr. Hari himself.

With substance so fine being hamstrung by style is a damn shame.

City Hall’s counter-propaganda over Rise found its way into Comment is Free today. BoJo’s cultural underling, Munira Mirza, claims that removing the anti-racist message means they’re now “Doing anti-racism for real.”

Really, Comrade Mirza? Let’s have a look at her argument:

To give some background: in 1996 the Trades Union Congress and various political groups organised Respect (later renamed Rise), intended as a festival against racism. One of the organisations involved was the National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR). In 2000, the then newly-elected Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, effectively nationalised the event by giving it large sums of public money. Several of Ken’s key aides at City Hall had links to NAAR, including Lee Jasper.

Do I detect the none-too-subtle presence of a strawman or five? Apparently, heavy state funding equals nationalisation. Which is strange, given that nationalisation is usually taken to mean state-ownership and direction of an event - not funding. The NHS is nationalised. The railway network, which receives heavy state subsidisation but is directed by private companies, is not. You’d hope that someone who held public office might know the difference, lest they attempt something risky like allowing vicious asset-strippers into the GLA for a period of public service (Oh. Wait…)

Or could it just possibly be that Mirza wants to associate Rise with nationalisation, and consequently with us bastard socialists? Nothing selective about her use of language, not at all…

Oh - and the same goes for her mention of Lee Jasper. The clear intent is to associate NAAR with Lee Jasper and thus with corruption, despite the rather glaring fact that NAAR isn’t under investigation for such.

Over the years, Rise was proclaimed by Ken & Co as a key weapon in the fight against racism and fascism. In reality, it became an annual jamboree for Ken’s favourite political activist groups, many with no clear link to anti-racism. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign, Socialist Workers Party and CND, among others, brought in their armies of volunteers to man stalls, hand out leaflets, sell newspapers and rattle donation buckets. The “community” area of the festival looked more like Sussex University freshers’ fair circa 1970. Not without good reason did Rise become known as “Kenstock“.

So, Mirza objects to the presence of political groups? Fine. Never mind the fact that those groups weren’t there because Ken asked them (perhaps she should ask the SWP for their views on Ken…), but because they wanted to be. Or that they’ve stalls at a host of other, entirely apolitical events, for much the same reason.

Oh, and the fact that most people simply ignore the stalls and wander straight off to the music - and have the choice to do so.

No, it’s clear that because Ken was a socialist, he allowed these groups in to peddle their pinko-peacenik ideologies on his behalf. Perhaps Mirza’s bitter because the RCP didn’t have a stall?

But, apparently, these bearded commies are a serious problem:

The deterrent effect of this highly politicised atmosphere should not be underestimated. Although the event was supposed to be inclusive and attract people from ethnic minorities, the GLA’s own research (conducted while Ken was mayor) shows that 65%-70% of attendees in the last two years were white. That is disproportionately whiter than the population of London.

Yes, very true. Unfortunately, Mirza then leaps to:

It seems reasonable to conclude that the political baggage and relentless sloganeering was actually putting people off. And no doubt many individuals and families who did come on the day were there primarily for the music or a nice day out.

No, it’s not reasonable to conclude that a few ill-attended stalls on the fringe of an event should drive down attendence by ethnic minorities. Where’s the evidence to suggest that? None. The GLA’s research did not report that potential concert-goers were put off because a few deranged Trotskyites might waggle their beards at them. There’s no evidence for that, or any other hypothesis as to why attendence isn’t very mixed - because the GLA didn’t ask.

It could easily be the previous choice of artists, or the weather in different part of London, or any number of factors. We can’t know, as we haven’t got anything to base our assertions off. But that hasn’t stopped Mirza…

Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don’t need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero. We don’t have anti-racist fireworks on New Year’s Eve and we don’t need to organise an anti-paedophile concert to prove our moral credentials on the issue.

Who mentioned paedophiles? Mirza looks to be playing games with language to make false associations again. Perhaps to compensate for her inability to make a consistent or logical argument. She’s entirely missed the point, here; Rise is, and always has been, about anti-racism. That’s why it exists. The concert is a means to communicate that message. The other groups that fund the event - particularly Unison and the TUC - know that and are committed to it.

If Mirza wants Londoners to have another free concert, then that’s great. But when she wants to cut the anti-racist elements out of an anti-racist festival with music attached - that’s not.

Sectarian political festivals are not the way Londoners want their money to be spent.

Anti-racism’s sectarian? The last person I heard make that argument was Richard Barnbrook.

Most of us, I suspect, just want to be trusted to get on with other people and not be instructed by activists about the dangers of racism.

Tell that to Barnbrook, and all of the 128 609 fascists who voted for him.

That’s why the GLA has decided to go ahead with Rise this summer, but to change the emphasis. We are stressing the cultural aspects of the festival and keeping the vibe positive. We are also bringing in grassroots ethnic and community organisations that have not previously been involved. Above all we are making Rise fun. As a result, the festival will hopefully attract a more diverse audience.

Let me translate that “keeping the vibe positive”: We’re going to ignore racism in public from now on. That’s what she means, as borne out by the total excision of Rise’s original purpose. And it won’t work. I hope Vamp won’t mind me quoting his original comment on this, but he has it exactly right:

Defeating racism is not purely a matter of dissuading those with such views but also mobilising those in opposition to it. I would refer you also to my write-up of Love Music Hate Racism: there is nothing more disastrous for the far-right than a gathering which loses them any of the young and I reckon that the sight, for instance, of Skream and Benga annihilating any notion of cross-racial incompatibility during their collaboration could well have such an impact. If you know of a better way to get a horde of youths together than a free music concert then be sure to let me know, as well as Richard Barnbrook who seems to have been struggling lately.

Mirza is absolutely correct that a concert is a great way of getting everyone together; that’s the original organisaers chose a concert in the first place. What she misses is that many are unaware of just how pervasive the problem is, and the fact that it needs challenged. Not everyone will come to the concert itself, mix with each other and solve the problem magically, as she wants - simply because not everyone will make it to the gig. It won’t have the desired effect.

But a festival combined with an anti-racist message will. Those who turn up will hopefully wake up to the danger of racism; they might become involved, and will certainly tell their friends. And so people become aware of racism, and something actually gets done.

Londoners voted for change on May 1 and the new Rise is part of that change. Out will go the political sloganeering and heavy-handed propaganda but by bringing Londoners from different backgrounds together to share their love of music Rise will be doing anti-racism for real.

She’s spelled those last two words wrong. What she means is we’re “doing anti-racism to death.” The original concerts brought people together and achieved the soft-power affect desired; the overt anti-racist message capitalised on that and actually drove the message home. The new festival will lack that extra impact, and so may well simply be wasted as an opportunity to challenge division and hate.

Perhaps turnout may be higher or more diverse this year. But that won’t be because the political message died, as Mirza suggests. Her assertion that this put people off was just that; an assertions with no reasonable basis. It’ll probably have more to do with the presence of truly excellent artists like CSS - or maybe just a decent weather forecast.

One thing’s for certain, though: it just won’t be the same.

EDIT: And, oh look! Barnbrook welcomes the move.

MadNad Dorries excelled herself in the drivel stakes today. Observe this post. The tone is set by the opening line, informing us that “it has not been a nice weekend.” Now, jump on board for the “Help! I’m under attack by hordes of bitter lefties, and couldn’t possibly be wrong” express which became so familiar over the course of the HFE debates…

The frenzied attack against Conservative MPs and MEPs, orchestrated by and emanating from the left wing BBC and press has equalled that of an animal in its death throes. The more terminal the position looks for Labour, the more desperate the BBC and the left wing press become.

It’s an achievement to parody oneself in an opening statement, I think. It takes true skill to take your earlier ravings about a grand conspiracy against you and twist them into something even more laughable. Apparently, the BBC, in the very act of reporting important allegations of political corruption, become biased.

And it is reportage, rather than story-breaking: Guido was the first to dish the dirt on the MEPs. And he so typifies the “left-wing bias” of the press and media, doesn’t he? Not that he doesn’t spend half of his time railing against it, not at all…

Onwards, though:

Are we all to believe that Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs and MEPs don’t make mistakes or are so different as human beings? I do not condone any misuse of allowance, however what we saw over the weekend was the equivalent of a McCarthy style witch hunt.

Again with the victim-complex, eh? You’d almost think she feared attack herself, and had something to hide…

No-one is pretending that Labour or LibDem MPs haven’t made mistakes - or lied - before. And, guess what? The media reported that too. Let’s have a look at the BBC reports on Peter Hain from earlier in the year: here and here and here and here and here and elsewhere too. That was just the coverage of his resignation, let alone the lead-up to it.

And the BBC reported other Labour funding scandals earlier this year too! Can you imagine that? They even broke their liberal programming (clearly they’re commie robots, you see…) to report on allegations of corruption against Alan Johnson, Wendy Alexander and Harriet Harman. And then there was Lord Levy - and so another story they reported of corruption in the Labour Party.

So - all clear evidence of a dastardly leftist campaign to bring down the Conservatives, by focusing for a weekend on corrupt Tories rather than Lord Levy’s memoirs? No? Well, I’m sure if you wait, Dorries will find the logic for you…

(or not…)

And it’s funny that she should mention Senator McCarthy, while we’re there. The ravingly paranoid, conservative anti-abortion Senator McCarthy, that is…

The attack against Caroline Spelman was particularly sickening.

Surely, her lying in the first place was the sickening part?

To take an MP, who ten years previously sought a meeting with the Chief Whip to query whether or not her arrangements were within the rules, which they obviously were, and then to be vilified before any inquiry has been held in the way the National Press, TV and bloggers have, has been appalling.

So - the arrangements were perfectly within the rules, which was naturally why Spelman ended them shortly after the meeting. Yes. No contradictions there. Not at all…

I note a distinct lack of counter-evidence provided by Ms. Dorries. The arrangements were “obviously” within the rules - and yet Spelman lied about them in her expenses. She hired the woman as a nanny and employed her as such. Occasionally, she answered the phone as she was around the house - so Spelman, rather than legitimately petitioning for nannies to be counted on expenses, took the short cut and put her down as a secretary instead.

So, she lied about who the nanny was. And that’s “obviously” within the rules for Dorries.

Perhaps someone should check her expenses after all…

But wait! First, Dorries wants to provide us with some top-notch, well researched evidence against the claims of her own:

As my postman said, “Ten years ago? Is this news?”

Yes, comrades. Anecdotal evidence is the correct way to respond to allegations of corruption, and not at all unreliable or possibly made up.

Am I pushing the pseudo-naive (attempts at) sarcasm a little too far, do you think?

I hope that when this is sorted, her innocence will be declared by the BBC all day long just as it declared her guilty without proof or substantial investigation on Saturday.

Wait - the testimony of the nanny doesn’t count as proof anymore? Funny, because that’s what sparked this all off…

And now it’s time for some more vague anecdotes:

The week before the vote on abortion, I was contacted by my local press to inform me that that the Labour spokesman for the area had made a complaint about my expenses to the Commissioner for standards.

The complaint was entirely inaccurate, without foundation and thrown out by the Commissioner, but that wasn’t the point. It was made in an attempt to destabilise me during the most important week of my career. Desperate left wing tactics.

Mysteriously, she hasn’t provided any solid proof for this claim. Not, of course, that it constitutes hypocrisy in the light of her demanding solid proof of the allegations against Spelman…

If the left think this kind of behaviour endears them to the public, then I think it simply serves to epitomise how out of touch they are.

If MadNad think this kind of behaviour endears her to the public, then I think it simply serves to epitomise how out of touch she is. Shallow defences of the indefensible rammed home by hypocrisy and ad hominem are just what they expect from politicians these days - along, of course, with the corruption she fails to defend.

The public can see right through this witch hunt, in a way they couldn’t see through cash for peerages.

Wait, was that an admission that the cash for peerages investigation was a witch hunt which tricked the public? I must have misread something…

The incoming Conservative government has many big dragons to slay, the BBC has to be the biggest.

No, Nadine. You’re a greater danger to the Conservative Party than the BBC. You present a challenge to the Nu-Con agitprop which paints the party as a new, socially liberal force. The BBC has never quite managed that. So, if anyone needs to be slain…

EDIT: Just seen this. Maybe she does have something to hide after all…

It seems that Sunny Hundal disagrees with my article on the likely nastiness of the presidential campaign ahead. I cannot help but be amused by the aforelinked article. In response to my claims that this should be a far more calm and pleasant race than the downright grisly 2004 contest Sunny states “No. This is going to be by far the nastiest presidential race you have ever seen and will ever see.” I think that the error made here is in presuming that anyone in America or elsewhere has the capacity to make a more effectively nasty campaign than Karl Rove. I am uncertain if Sunny is aware of this but McCain himself actually received far worse treatment during primary contests against Bush of 2000 than Gore later would in the true presidential one. There was racism used in reference to their adopted daughter and it was stated baldly that McCain’s wife was a drug addict.

Then Sunny’s post strays into the realm of parody:

McCain may give the impression of being intelligent, calm and reasonable but there’s one problem - he is a Republican. Most Republicans are scum of the earth. They are fantastic strategists but nevertheless they are scum.

Yes, those dreaded Republicans, a pack of bigots to a man, aren’t they? The problem here is that Sunny has effectively performed the crime the party criticised are most commonly guilty of. It is true that the Republicans have resulted in a bunch of truly foul policies but what is excluded from this rather feeble attempt at analysis is that McCain has actually opposed a considerable amount of the most reactionary evil generated by his own party, to the extent that he has frequently been dubbed a RINO {Republican In Name Only}.

Now this doesn’t matter too much as far as I’m concerned because he still supports Bush’s foreign policy perhaps even more fiercely than Bush does. But there are a plethora of other issues over which McCain has enraged the left; such as his creation of a bill outlawing torture, his strikingly liberal policy upon immigration, his commitment to ending global warming and drafting of legislation that prevents campaign finance being even closer to the plaything of corporate and personal interests than it is today. This has been toned down for his campaign, but still resulted in some moments that have caused apoplexy on the far-right, as I have documented.

Yet Sunny states that:

McCain himself may not say much but his surrogates and the wing-nut wing of the Republican party - the Ann Coulters, Bill O’Reillys, Sean Hannitys, Michelle Malkins of this world - are going to do anything to ensure he doesn’t become president.

Sunn is correct insofar as all of the people listed are indeed wing-nuts and would indeed love nothing more than Obama be defeated. What this does not mean is that they want to see McCain win. He is, in fact, a hate figure for Republicans for the reasons aforementioned. He is largely considered a traitor and a villain, perhaps sent mad by his treatment by the Viet Cong or senility. The racist right see him as proposing a “Shamnesty” that would allow criminals to become innocent and reckon that would allow America to be flooded with the foreign and racially impure. The neo-conservative establishment are shocked at his opposition to torture, which they have spent much of Bush’s second term defending, applying endless diminutives towards and deriding all opponents. The global warming denialists see him as a dupe. The loyalists consider him the epitome of all that is disloyal, a poster boy for treachery.

I can understand that Sunny dislikes reading the content of such writers but if this had happened even briefly the disdain which all the aforementioned authors display towards McCain would have been immediately evident.

I might direct her towards Hugh Hewitt, who at one stage called McCain amongst the most inadequate senators ever to have served. This was part of a wider campaign of thorough savaging. Lately he has toned this down but is clearly still highly uncomfortable with the set-up, spending most of his time attacking Obama and trying to avoid mention of McCain where possible. Make no mistake about this: McCain has no surrogates within the Republican establishment. Even those who he attempts to appease with his pro-life positioning consider him warily and tend to view him as the “Least worst” candidate, rather than pledging active support.

This means that although these groups may well oppose Obama {although I note that Matt Drudge, previously the impeccable rightist has been joined by Rupert Murdoch in throwing weight behind Obama, with the former even lampooning McCain along with Clinton on his highly influential site} they are by no means supporters of McCain, who’s centrism is utterly unacceptable and seemingly impossible to comprehend given their monochrome, Us & Them outlook. As it was McCain was simply filed under “Them” but at present they are mainly attacking the greater other rather than embracing the one they have been spitting about for many more years than Mr. Obama.

Unfortunately Sunny is seemingly blinded by bias:

He is Republican and I would need to change my genetic code to support or embrace a Republican…The Republicans are scum and should never be supported under any circumstance.

I would never advocate supporting McCain owing to his apparent inability to break himself from the thrall of the neo-conservatives. But to suggest that his party affiliation {which is seemingly nominal at times and he has certainly proven no loyalist to} means that this campaign will be littered with the sort of noisy nonsense that Karl Rove, the nemesis of McCain, would execute is a leap of utter irrationality.

But seemingly Sunny is wrong about everything when it comes to the state of American politics! The follow praise is heaped upon the “Netroots”:

So they have taken upon themselves to fight in the way Republicans have for decades.

when it is exactly Obama’s refusal to stoop to such lows {whatever happened to “Rise above”, Sunny?} that has characterised his campaign. He is entirely opposed to the cultural war approach favoured by the right and due to this has created his own grassroots following, that seems to operate in a far more effective fashion to Move-On et al. He uses a higher strain of politics that does not depend upon personal attack and emphasises the importance of the American people in making any progress.

Contrast, for instance, Obama’s “Yes we can” to Clinton’s “Yes she can” and you will see the superficially minor but fundamentally divisive breach between a movement initiating progressive and a top-down technocrat.

Yet Sunny states that

I continue to admire Clinton.

Clinton! She who executed the purest of Rovian, Republican tactics through a network of surrogates against a member of her own party. This is simply preposterous and I would suggest that Sunny compare McCain’s conduct to Clinton’s. Clinton & Co asked if Obama had once been a drugs dealer, suggested that the views of “White Americans” {read: racists} be considered as distinct from the rest of the working classes, implied that black primary voters somehow do not count and states with many of them are of less significance than those filled with mainly whites, compared Obama to Jesse Jackson seemingly purely on the grounds that both are black and won South Carolina, suggested that Obama was far less experienced than McCain or Clinton and had only given “One speech in 2002″, argued that he was inadequate over matters of national security as he was incapable of picking up a phone at 3AM, capitalised on the Reverend Wright scandal subtly but as effectively as possible, kept the “Obama is a Muslim” meme alive by suggesting that Obama was not a Muslim but only “As far as I know” and basically used everything you would expect of the party Sunny deems “scum”.

Meanwhile McCain has so far made a few crude attacks but unleashed no Rovian onslaught and, as I referenced in the article in question written to Obama in a tone which is so gentle and courteous that I would never have expected to witness it from a presidential frontrunner after the carnage of 2004.

This may change, of course, and it is true that the opposition from the far-right media will be partisan and vicious as ever. But McCain presents a massive challenge to these extremists, not least through being a visible victim of the methods they act as ranting apologists for. In failing to recognise this Sunny has made a truly botched analysis of American politics, supporting the elements of the Democratic Party which would lead it to further ruin and failing to realise that even a Party with as poor a history as the Republicans are not a pack of blood-thirsty demons.

Ali suggested yesterday that Labour might privatise itself to avoid bankruptcy. The very possibility of such constitutes an affont to democracy - as it would for any parliamentary party. The danger is summed up well in a paragrph late on in Ali’s piece:

This would only work if assets were available. None currently are, but the party is in government so policy is its biggest asset. Policy could be bid over so, for example, Murdoch might pay £10m to have the abolition of the licence fee in the manifesto. MPs and party members would doubtless object to many proposals, but the alternative is the NEC members becoming collectively bankrupt and party accounts being shut. There goes any election campaign.

The threat is very real. From the New Statesman comes this enlightening admission:

Quite how those who are courting this rapidly declining asset stand to benefit is unclear. Another businessman who is part of the “Syndicate”, as he puts it, is less guarded. If new Labour became a “limited liability party”, it might be possible, he says - not entirely jokingly - to “sell non-core policies, from a customer perspective, as three-to five-year options on implementation in office”. These could include policy sales to the nuclear industry or to the green lobby. “This,” he points out, “could help ensure that national policies achieve the highest returns. And that could only benefit the shareholders - or, as they used to be known, the party members.”

The part is in government. They can therefore hand policy over to whoever will pay. They become shareholders, and run effectively decide what the government does - much as shareholders do to businesses on the market. The NEC is saved from financial doom, the shareholders have their interests seen to, and the voters are forgotten.

It would, after all, be the voters who lose out here. They’re the ones who are meant to pass judgement on government policy, at election time. Whatever NS’ source says on core and non-core policies - already vague, given that at present “core” adds up to a washy commitment to equality for Labour - this system means that manifesto policies voted on at election could simply fly out the window. And with them, the very point of representative government.

“How is this any different to the current system?” you might ask. “Organisations already buy policy from parties, in practise if not theory. The unions and the tycoons for Labour, the tycoons and business for the Tories. It happens.”

And yes, it does happen. But nothing now could be as direct or as forceful as a shareholder system in subverting democracy. There’s at least a semblence of internal democracy in the political parties: members vote on major positions and changes. If a politician has taken cash from a donor and made a decision they oppose, they’ve the opportunity to pressure them and reverse the policy. And it’s relatively fair and equal: one member, one vote.

But there’s a very different semblence of democracy in shareholder-based organisations. Shareholders too can hold their appointees to account, with one, important difference. Where political parties give a vote per membership, and only allow you one membership, shaeholder systems allocate votes per share.

And you can own more than one share. So if you’re rich and interested and buy a majority holding, you can in effect force whatever you want through. One share, one vote - and lots of shares if you can afford it.

Rich shareholders would thus force policies on a party far more reliably than rich donors do at present. The Statesman’s source’s example of the nuclear lobby and the green lobby is a good example. The nuclear lobby tends to be far better funded than its opposition - energy companies versus concerned citizens. They could buy up a large quantity of shares and swamp the smaller, but more numerous, bulk of members. It potentially wouldn’t matter if there was a massive grassroots movement in the party against nuclear development - if the nuclear lobby had enough shares, they could outvote them. And we’d have nuclear power, whether we’d voted for it or not.

Major national decisions would end up in the hand of those that can pay. Very democratic.

If you want a taste of what this might lead to, see this chilling statement from another interested party:

“We have been watching how Silvio Berlusconi created Forza Italia in parallel to his business interests, and we believe that our idea offers a fascinating adaptation to British conditions.”

Silvio Berlusconi is a massive media tycoon who bought into politics with his wallet and his right wing populism. Look at where he is now, and what he’s done.

Rupert Murdoch is a massive media tycoon. Look at what he could do if he bought into politics…

It could happen. And democracy would be dead.

This is, at first sight, and then throughout, an article of clichés.

It fails to surprise me that Peter Hitchens {a man not to be confused with his better known and far more intelligent but equally controversial brother under any circumstances} recently wrote a piece on Chavez that consisted of the crude hack-job which has proven ubiquitous on the right. His wielding of the machete is more elegant than most but still presents moments of jaw-dropping idiocy, for instance:

Revenge is already being prepared. Chavez is now demanding that the universities drop their entrance examinations so that he can pack them with young half-educated supporters who can elbow aside Geraldine and her liberty-loving friends.

he alleges, as if there is no other reason at all for such a policy being brought into place in a developing country. He does have some valid points, chiefly the worrying treatment of anti-Chavez protesters by the police. But to connect these instantly with the man himself seems unwise given that in our own nation there was an innocent man gunned down for boarding an underground train. By raising this I intend not to indicate that there are no grounds for Hitchens raising the point but rather that overly brutal policing is seemingly ubiquitous through the world {as also demonstrated by the tendency of American police to use pepper spray upon peaceful protesters until this was outlawed by court} rather than something which is a feature of any “autocracy”.

Indeed the liberal usage of the word “autocratic” is another hackneyed feature of his criticism. As ever though, evidence is thin on the ground. Hitchens, like all in his position, attempts to raise the removal of a programme highly critical of Chavez from terrestrial airwaves. Given the support that the aforesaid channel gave a violent coup staged by militant rightist forces to depose Chavez and then no coverage to the simply immense protests in the wake and in absolute action to this move I should perhaps make another comparison to Britain, this one a conjecture of fantasy. If Channel 4 had, as I personally suspect it might, given full and vocal support to a Marxist coup against Gordon Brown and then had pretended that no dissent in the country over the issue had occurred would Hitchens really imagine Brown to be acting out of bounds if he forced it to function solely as a satellite, cable and digital channel from then onwards?

Indeed, if anything it is remarkable that the network was permitted to remain on publically accessible airwaves from 2002 until over half a decade later.

Unfortunately the unoriginality is seemingly fathomless, entirely in disregard of the faded nature of over-used cards never worth much to start with. He accuses Chavez of

Plotting what was effectively a coup on the constitution

yet if it truly was one Chavez surely has learnt from past experience {both while he was planning them and when victim}. This time around rather than making a military effort to seize control he staged a referendum. Truly dastardly, isn’t it? Now if Hitchens considers the Venezuelan people to be inadequate judges of the conditions their nation faces then he should say so, but as it is he has used a highly intellectually dishonest tactic by associated the forced seizure of power to an attempt by a democratically elected president to obtain a democratic mandate upon the conditions under which Venezuela would function as a democracy.

There is an argument against this, one which does not rely upon distortion and spin. Instead Peter writes in a fashion that he is aware his American audience will respond to with a vigorous knee-jerk {despite the fact that it is highly likely a substantial number of the readers supported Bush’s attempts to amend the American one over gay marriage in what would have amounted to a far less democratic manner, had he had the 2/3s of both houses of Congress required}. What makes his failure especially galling is that in the country he tends to operate there is no written constitution at all. If he truly considers a constitution to be worthwhile and worth adhering to rigidly and making no efforts to amend I consider it peculiar that I have no recollection of him writing an article advocating we create a written document outlining the rights inalienable to us as Queen’s subjects.

Indeed the powers of Parliament are entirely unrestrained owing to the potency of Parliamentary Sovereignty, which states that no government in power may make laws incapable of being over-ridden by those that follow. Given that the executive has a vigorous grasp over self-interest {the quantity of MPs willing to oppose important bills that will lose them their current jobs in government or/and deny them any chance at future positions is not negligible but generally insubstantial} and the First Past the Post electoral system tends to ensure that there are no minority governments in parliament we are effectively left with an executive capable of doing as it pleases, with Blair only prevented from exerting his will over the country once in his ten year tenure. By no means does this mean that Hitchens’ definition of autocracy is rationally bankrupt, but I would suggest that he start raging about the shoddy state of our means of government a little more at home given how abhorrent he appears to find democratic governments having excessive power abroad.

Presumably Peter Hitchens’ concern for the liberty of the Venezuelan people and longing to protect them from themselves is greater than for his own countryman.

His intellectually insubstantial rant is in places unintentionally hilarious:

If there were any justice, Chavez would long ago have been forced from office by bankruptcy. His economic management is wasteful and sloppy and involves a great deal of expensive largesse to the poor in return for their votes,

In my piece on Pragmatic Socialism I suggested that the simple fact that it works justifies its usage where perhaps some more intellectual considerations of it do not. I think that upon some levels Hitchens accepts that Venezuela has made great progress but unfortunately he has shied away from this. He rails that it is unjust for somebody who performs the largesse of offering the basic facilities such as a solid education and healthcare along with less than extreme redistribution of wealth remain in office. This is perhaps acceptable on some ideological levels but the reality of the matter is that Chavez remains immensely and nearly overwhelmingly popular amongst the impoverished masses that make up the vast majority of Venezuela.

This is for the simple reason that he, for the first time, was a man pursuing their interests. He, for the first time, helped.

Of course, this should come with a cost. According to the doctrine of the New Right the state’s intervention into the private sector’s affairs ought to cause calamity. There is no way that it is conceivable that statist policies could improve the economic situation of a nation and even by the inadequate basis of GDP per capita {which, of course, fails to asses how much each person is worth and assumes that everyone is of equal value and thus deserves and equal amount of cash} it will bring more woe overall as the state strangles business and this throttling results in the economy falling to pieces.

Alas, for Hitchens at least, “the proportion of Venezuela’s GDP in the private sector has actually increased.”

Compounding his error Hitchens references the state of Venezuela’s

And here is the usual trite contrast, long common in the Third World and rapidly spreading to the First World—gross wealth on display next to rancid squalor. Yes, there really are hovels a few hundred feet from a freeway crammed with new SUV’s. How obvious. How stupid.

In the aforelinked article by Johann Hari it is exposed exactly how foolish this point being raised is. In South America it would be a struggle to find a government that has done more to bridge this gap than that of Chavez. The damage done by this dichotomy of wealthy and poor has been reduced considerably and how exactly the lazy claim of Chavez being “The Next Fidel” {which, to Hitchen’s defence, was a headline and thus he may well not have written} is reconciled with his claims here is beyond me. For any earnest socialist intending to “Revive socialist Marxism” would not have done so in the fashion chosen by Chavez. Firstly they would have began by executing the wealthy once they seized power, or at least enslaving them, and secondly they would certainly have seized power rather than it being politely given them by the people of Venezuela acting in a democratic fashion through what Marx considered “A committee for the organisation of the bourgeoisie”. Reformist Marxists moved away from such talk while Revolutionary Marxists most certainly did not.

Which rather brings us to our next point:

Many believe he wanted to ignore the result—he is widely accused of constant, highly scientific ballot-rigging of the kind that is very hard to prove—and was only dissuaded from doing so by a phone call from his friend Fidel Castro.

The emphasise for “Many believe” was my addition, for this form of statement permeates Hitchens’ essay. In Wikipedian terms this pattern of writing is referred to as “Weasel Words” and I consider Hitchens to be a man who would do well writing a few articles for Wikinews and seeing how they were received. Effectively he uses this phrase and its variants to avoid explaining exactly who he is talking about.

Furthermore his allegations concerning vote-rigging fall foul of what his brother Christopher considers amongst “The elementary rules of logic”, to wit: “that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” I am tempted to invoke this, but would also point out that the testament of various independent election observers {every one that has observed, in fact} combined with the fact that when it came to the referendum Chavez lost suggest against such a claim.

If he is intelligent enough to make things “Very hard to prove” he surely should be capable of making sure it works.

Venezuela ought to be an advanced and free country under the rule of law. It has plenty of educated, articulate people. It has wealth. It has most of the constituents of a serious civil society, including strong public opinion.

To conclude Hitchens is educated and articulate. He has wealth. He observes the problems facing Venezuela to which there are no short-cut solutions. But in his failure to realise that Chavez could not have established himself without the popular approval and repeated mandates given to him by the vast majority of Venezuelans he also fails to make any proper assessment of the man. Constantly seeking out negatives and seeking a totalitarian iron fist where none exists he transforms the narrative of a man offering the poor a slice of the national wealth that no other would give to them into one of a vicious autocrat scheming his way into office.

Doubtless this article was highly pleasing to its readers, who wanted their suspicions of a leftist loved by his people and doing much to help them besmirched as thoroughly as possible in order to avoid their preconceptions being challenged. I have little suspicion that it failed at this but these predictable, tiresome smears do nothing to tarnish the true success of Chavez.