As promised in the previous post, here's another comment on last week's Australian elections, this time by John Greenwell, a shrewd and experienced Australian observer, who, like the author of the earlier commentary, has seen Australian government from close up:
The Labor victory in the Australian elections at the weekend was not unexpected, but the scale of it was. Labor, under Kevin Rudd, gained 23 seats, the Liberals lost 27, the Nationals lost 10 with an overall swing to Labor of 6% — the Prime Minister, John Howard, lost his own seat in Bennelong.
Such a result requires explanation. The Australian economy is booming—indeed such problems as it has are those of excess rather than recession. Unemployment is at record lows. There is no foreseeable end to the minerals boom generated by the demand from China upon which the vibrancy of the economy has depended. No Australian government in recent times has been rejected electorally without previously presiding over a recession.
The following are my views—although I hasten to say that the result surprised me. Everybody knew there would be a substantial swing to Labor, but it seemed that it might not quite get the 16 seats it needed to capture government.
One general reason was the “It's Time” factor. Plainly after 11 years many in the community were simply tired of the same old government leaders. While this was a factor, it was very much less than self-sufficient. In 2004, after nine years in office, the Coalition was not merely re-elected but returned with an increased majority. It is clear, I think, that the decisive considerations must have occurred subsequently—although on top of the “It's Time” factor, which would not on its own have resulted in the government being ousted.
It does seem that two groups who had hitherto supported the government became disillusioned for different reasons.
(a) The first were the “Howard’s Battlers”, blue-collar workers, formerly automatic Labor supporters whom Howard captured in 1996 and held on to because of the economic prosperity which they enjoyed.
There are two reasons why this group turned against him: ‘Work Choices’ and interest rates. ‘Work Choices’ refers to legislation introduced in the last Parliament without having been mentioned at the election which preceded it, and to which Howard was ideologically committed . This legislation would – in its pristine form – have stripped workers of any kind of centralised controls or any Union bargaining power in industrial relations. This was fiercely opposed by the Unions and feared by many workers. Howard made certain minor retreats legislatively but not enough to modify worker concern.
The other reason was increasing interest rates, which have risen six times since the last election. Interest rates are fixed independently by the Reserve Bank, but Howard was foolish enough, at the last election, to promise that interest rates would be contained. The importance of this is that many of the ‘aspirational’ voters (Howard’s Battlers) who had benefited economically had borrowed heavily when interest rates were low. They were angry at having been misled.
(b) The second group are more amorphous – or at least the issues motivating them are, with one exception, diverse. This group who voted for Howard in the past were basically conservative and became increasingly concerned that that many old values were being dismantled by a government which seemed to be increasingly modelled on the American Republican Party: Iraq—the deception involved; David Hicks and Guantanamo Bay; detention centres for immigrants, and Immigration generally; the Tampa affair and the deception related to it ; the antiterrorist legislation; the Haneef case; government expenditure on Coalition political advertising; concealement of political donations and, above all, the abuse of Coalition power in the Senate — in one instance an Act of 500 pages was pushed through in 24 hours.
As you can see, this is a miscellany of issues which affected many conservatives who may have voted for the Coalition in the past. Perhaps the following quotations, the first from a letter in today’s Sydney Morning Herald and the second from the former ALP Prime Minister Paul Keating, may explain this attitude:
“… decency and the fair go have returned to Australian political life”
and
“this is not just a victory for Labor but also for Liberals like Malcolm Fraser, Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan who stood out against the pernicious erosion of decent standards in our public affairs.”
(c) But overarching these groups and the issues referred to above was climate change. Howard had dragged his feet for 11 years on this and along with the United States had refused to sign Kyoto. In the last few months he has tried to play ‘catch-up', but he never appeared to the electorate to have his heart in it. The very substantial ‘green’ vote – which benefited Labor with preferences – was an important factor in the Government’s loss.
The above only purports to be an analysis of why the Coalition lost the election. I have said nothing about the prospects of a Rudd government. That would be a separate exercise. I do not however react to the new Labor Government with a Wordsworthian ‘bliss was it in that dawn to be alive’; but, very much for the reasons mentioned in (b) above, it is a relief.
John Greeenwell
Canberra, 26 November 2007
________________________
John Greenwell has been Deputy President of the Australian Law Reform Commission; a senior officer in the Australian Attorney General's Department; head of Government and Legal Affairs in the decolonisation of Papua New Guinea; and barrister at the Victorian Bar. He is active in Amnesty International (see http://203.147.147.39/airesources/newsletterOctNov2002/worldnews.html
and
http://clearharmony.net/articles/200208/6199.html).
________________________
Further comments (especially by Australians) on this striking Australian election result are very welcome. In particular, who sees a parallel with 1 May 1997 in Britain, where do the two experiences differ, and will the eventual outcome be similar (heaven forbid!)?
Brian
This is the first of two commentaries by shrewd Australian observers of the political scene. It is by Professor John Langmore, former Australian Labor Party MP and international civil servant, now an academic and author (see more detailed biography below).
You may be interested in a quick reflection on the Australian election result. The evening of Saturday 24 November was spell-binding. The Labor Party won perhaps the greatest election victory in its history with a swing of close to six per cent to win at least 22 new seats or 85 out of the 150 in the House of Representatives. These figures may not seem particularly striking but as far as I can recall they are unprecedented during the 110 years of the Party’s history.
Two years ago political commentators were writing that Prime Minister Howard was invincible. He is an extremely wily, constantly energetic campaigner who normalises everything, presenting himself as a middle of the road, prosaic, low-key Australian who wants everyone to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’. A large minority have grown to despise him for his obsequiousness to Bush, participation in the invasion of Iraq, hostility to the UN, cruelty to asylum seekers, neglect of climate change, pandering to the rich and powerful, racism and opportunistic spinning of every situation, but many had despaired after his repeated capacity to seize victory despite this widespread criticism.
Eighteen months ago he led the introduction of WorkChoices legislation which dramatically increased the power of employers in the workplace and caused the rapid erosion of working conditions – loss of overtime pay, reduction of leave entitlements, removal of constraints on dismissal and so on. The Australian Council of Trade Unions led an effective national campaign of opposition. At the same time Australia reached a tipping point about climate change due to the drought, obviously rising average temperatures, the Stein report, ‘An Uncomfortable Truth’ and a quarter century of public education and advocacy by scientists and environmentalists. Howard’s scorn of the analysis and neglect of the issue was rapidly recognised as negligent.
There has been a reaction , too, to the heightened acquisitiveness, commercialism and individualism which Howard’s market fundamentalism has caused. Though most Australians are better off, there has been growing antipathy to what is perceived as the erosion of traditional Australian values of mutual support, kindness and decency. Many people are repelled by the unrelenting emphasis on economic growth and efficiency and relegation of health care, education and infrastructure to the margin of public priorities.
The opinion polls started to put Labor ahead towards the end of 2006 but the trend became clear when Kevin Rudd won the leadership of the parliamentary party from Kim Beazley in December. Throughout 2007 the polls have estimated Labor’s lead at around 6 – 10 per cent. Yet initially few commentators had confidence in them because of Howard’s past capacity to stage election-winning distractions. The disintegration of Mark Latham, a previous Labor leader, three years ago, added to uncertainty about Rudd.
Kevin Rudd has been in parliament for only nine years. Though he is readily recognised as highly intelligent, there was uncertainty about the electoral appeal of his nerdish skills. Yet during the year of constant campaigning he has demonstrated high skill. He is principled, disciplined, works enormously hard – and expects his staff and colleagues to do so too, is on top of policy detail, has an attractive sense of humour, has demonstrated the odd human foible, has a highly successful wife who has built up a $200m business. His 25 years as a member of the Labor Party has grounded him in social democratic culture but he is a pragmatist and an evidence-based policy maker. Though linked with the right of the Party he does not engage in factional manoeuvring and has the sense to have a female deputy leader who rose through the left and has kept the national Party chairman, who is also from the left, with him throughout the campaign. His principled pragmatism will be a wonderful change from Howard’s extremism and the Thatcherite dogmatism and divisiveness of Paul Keating, the previous Labor prime minister.
Kevin’s victory speech emphasis on unity and determination to represent all Australians was expounded in detail and was not the normal victory cliché. He may well turn out to be too centralising and commanding: we’ll see. But after eleven and a half years in the electoral wilderness there is something approaching awe among Labor supporters at the demolition of the regressive, cruel, obsequious and amoral Howard regime. At last we can let our hopes for social justice, environmental responsibility and common decency and for an Australian contribution to international peace and justice to rise again. It was a moving and exciting night.
I hope your Christmas will be as full of hope as ours.
__________________________________
Professor John Langmore, President of the United Nations Association of Australia and author of To Firmer Ground: Restoring Hope in Australia, is a Professorial Fellow in the Political Science Department of the University of Melbourne. He is a former Lecturer in Economics and Assistant Director of the National Planning Office in Papua New Guinea; Economic Advisor to the Australian Treasurer; MP for the Australian Capital Territory seat of Fraser in the Australian House of Representatives; Director of the UN Division for Social Policy and Development; and Representative of the International Labour Organisation to the UN.
To Firmer Ground: Restoring Hope in Australia by John Langmore, University of New South Wales Press, September 2007, 272pp, PB , 234x153mm
ISBN 9780868408477 Price: AUD$32.95 (AUD$29.95 ex-tax)
To buy in the UK: Amazon UK: £21.49 Order here.
"In recent decades the quality of both personal and public life in Australia has been undermined by preoccupation with material prosperity and neglect of broader concerns. To Firmer Ground proposes an alternative vision for this country that prioritises the well-being of all Australians, the common good of our society and a national contribution to global peace and justice. It offers practical solutions to the issues confronting Australia that require immediate attention."
Read discussion with the author here and here (PDF).
Note: "Another view of the Australian election result — (2)": coming shortly to a blog near you. Watch this space.
Brian
The jackals of the media, drawn by the intoxicating scent of blood, are circling Gordon Brown, who looks and sounds increasingly like a wounded bull. The polls, some of them manipulated by clever wording of the questions asked, are dire for Labour. The commentariat, as always thinking, writing and talking in the clichés of current fashion, recite mantras involving a tipping point, a turning point, and a point of no return. At Prime Minister's Questions in the house of commons, David Cameron dances gleefully around the glowering prime minister and plants a series of banderillas in his back. Labour back-benchers are reportedly in a depression verging on panic. Today's Sunday newspapers and television tell us that in response to all this gloom, Brown has vowed to expand his little clique of close confidants and advisers (Alexander, Balls, Ed Miliband) — but only to include in future Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw, not a pair likely to inspire confidence in better things to come.
It's important to distinguish between the disasters which the government has brought upon itself and those which result from sheer bad luck; and between current criticisms of its performance which are justified and those which miss the point.
Gordon Brown clearly erred in allowing speculation about an early election, encouraged by some of his closest allies, to continue for so long when he could and should have scotched it much earlier than he did. I'm inclined to believe him when he says that he was strongly disinclined to call an election soon after taking office, even when the polls were strongly favourable, although most people scoff at this and assume that he changed his mind when the polls went bad on him, calling him a hypocrite for not admitting the fact. Either way it was a tactical error to allow everyone to expect an election even after he had decided against it. Perhaps it seemed a good idea at the time to panic the Tories into premature revelation of their unfinished policies by holding over them the threat of an early election: if so, it misfired badly when Brown announced that there'd be no election until 2009 at the earliest, making him seem both deceitful and indecisive. But these were relatively minor errors which would by now have been forgotten had they not been followed by much greater problems.
The government can't, I think, be blamed either for the crisis that engulfed Northern Rock, the north of England bank that ran out of credit and had to be bailed out by Bank of England loans and guarantees in order to head off a general crisis in the whole banking system, or for their handling of it so far. Northern Rock wasn't by any means the only previously reputable bank that succumbed to the temptation to make a quick buck from the American sub-prime mortgage market and the derivatives put together from it. The collapse of this market exposed poor judgement on the part of numerous American and British banks and financial institutions, but not on the part of government. Legitimate questions can be asked about the efficiency of the tripartite system of banking supervision and regulation constructed by Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it's as yet far from clear that the system itself was at fault as distinct from some of the individuals operating it. None of the current critics of the system seem to have found any fault with it before the Northern Rock débacle. Those who welcomed Bank of England independence, Gordon Brown's coup de théatre immediately on becoming Chancellor in 1997, are being inconsistent in trying to put the blame now for any failures of supervision on the government which had plainly transferred the relevant responsibilities to the Bank of England (and the Financial Services Authority), leaving only a limited residue of control to the Treasury. Nor has anyone so far been able to suggest a convincing alternative method of handling the crisis to that adopted by Alistair Darling, Brown's successor as Chancellor. The worst possible verdict on the government's record here must be 'not proven'.
The greatest disaster to hit the government (so far!) has been the loss of the personal records, including banking details, of around half of the population when HM Revenue and Customs department (HMRC) put its whole child benefit database on two compact disks and sent them by the government's internal courier service addressed to the National Audit Office (NAO) — which never received them. This has exposed a series of alarming malpractices, although only one of them — entrusting the disks to what is widely and inaccurately referred to as "the post", as if they had been dropped into a letter-box — has caught the attention of most of the commentariat. These malpractices can be briefly listed. (1) It's far from clear that the NAO should have been among those allowed access to this sensitive database or why they needed to see it in order to 'audit' the performance of HMRC. The range of authorities with access to sensitive government databases needs to be radically pruned. (2) The NAO asked for only some of the information on the database, explicitly excluding the bank details of individuals. HMRC responded that it would be too expensive to strip out the bank details and other parts of the database not requested by the NAO, and that they would therefore send the whole thing. But it's a key feature of privacy laws that those allowed to access government databases should be allowed to see only the information strictly relevant to their own duties: and this limitation becomes impossible if the databases can't be disaggregated to avoid passing to users information which they have no need for and no entitlement to see. This must be the most important of the lessons to be learned from this episode. (3) If any part of the database — and certainly if the whole of it — really had to be transmitted to the NAO, as distinct from being accessed by NAO officials in HMRC premises under supervision, it should have been (a) encrypted, and (b) transmitted electronically from HMRC to NAO computers. Copying the whole thing unencrypted onto CDs was a fantastically crude, primitive and insecure way to do it, as the simplest private computer-user surely knows. And (4) entrusting the CDs to TNT, the government's internal communications courier, was only marginally less irresponsible than pushing them through a nearby letter-box.
The obvious and principal lesson from all this is that all government databases containing private information about citizens or any other sensitive material should be as small and limited in scope as is consistent with their efficient and secure use; that only those with a genuine need to know should be allowed access to them, and even then only to that information which is specifically needed; that all categories of information in a single database should be easily detached from the rest so that other categories are not needlessly exposed to those with no need for them; that copying the data and transmitting them from one place to another should be the rare exception, not general practice; and that when the data do need to be transmitted, they must be securely encrypted and transmitted electronically, not copied onto intrinsically insecure physical media such as disks for physical transport from place to place. All this is pretty elementary. IT specialists advising government departments must know it almost by instinct. It's legitimate to ask whether they have communicated concerns about current practices to ministers and if so what if any action ministers have tried to take to correct them. But the over-simplified nature of the criticisms made by politicians and the media suggests that the breadth of the problem is still not widely understood. The one political figure who both understands it all and articulates the problem clearly and repeatedly is David Davis, the increasingly impressive (and surprisingly liberal) Conservative shadow home secretary. The government should have the humility to listen to him and give the system a real shake-up accordingly. Among other things, ministers should recognise that the giant national identity 'register' or database planned as back-up to future compulsory ID cards, containing a huge mass of disparate information about everyone in the UK from birth to death, is simply irreconcilable with the most basic principles of privacy and security in handling personal information, and should be abandoned by easy stages as fast as possible consistent with the least possible loss of face.
The savage attacks on the government generally and Gordon Brown in particular by a gaggle of retired generals and admirals in the house of lords are but the latest in the government's recent string of woes. Ministers are certainly open to criticism for their failure to provide adequate living conditions and equipment to our armed forces at a time when they have sent them off to risk death in not one but two unwinnable and unnecessary wars, failing also to provide the wounded and disabled in action with proper medical care, conditions and compensation. But a large share of the blame for these failures must rest with the heads of the three services and their other senior officers, who have a major say in decisions about the allocation of the resources provided for defence by the Treasury. Generals and admirals (and air marshals) always want more money than they are given for ever more sophisticated and expensive equipment ranging from aircraft carriers to night vision goggles; always make a convincing case for what they demand; and almost always have to be partially disappointed. When they complain about poor provision for soldiers' living quarters and medical care, it's legitimate to ask them whether, when in office, they were among those pressing for new aircraft carriers, new and yet more sophisticated aircraft to fly from them, and the renewal of the Trident submarine nuclear weapon delivery system, each costing many billions of pounds, collectively raising major questions about the real need for any of them. The sacrifice of any of these colossal items would release more than enough funds for more humdrum purposes that most closely affect our fighting soldiers, seamen and airmen, those who work to support them, and their families. Money available for defence, although consistently increased year by year and although the highest amount of any western defence budget apart from that of the US, can never be unlimited, so allocation and priorities must always be the name of the game. Ministers must certainly take their share of the blame for recently exposed and shameful shortcomings; but military chiefs of staff past and present should accept their share of it, too.
There remain puzzling questions about why Gordon Brown and his colleagues persist in their attachment to policies which become more obviously indefensible by the day: the most obvious examples being the renewal of Trident, ID cards (especially including their accompanying national identity register) and the further extension of the already grossly excessive 28-day maximum time in which terrorist suspects may be imprisoned without even being charged, still less tried or convicted of any specified offence. The varying justifications advanced for these discredited policies have repeatedly been exposed as invalid. Refusal to drop them (if necessary by easy stages, to minimise humiliation) looks increasingly like personal obstinacy verging on the perverse. If the government continues to try to put them into effect, the consequences seem all too likely to be calamitous. In that case, the Brown administration will deserve all it gets. So far, however, the evidence doesn't really support the shrill accusations of incompetence and irresponsibility now being thrown around by the media and the opposition parties. There's still time and opportunity to put things right, given the requisite degree of humility and flexibility in reacting to the government's and others' mistakes, misjudgements and misfortunes. Good luck, so far mainly absent, needs to be earned.
Brian
Those who assumed that the NATO aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 over Kosovo had somehow solved that latest Balkan problem and removed it from a crowded international agenda have another think coming. We are now threatened not only with an imminent illegal and unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia by the Kosovo Albanians, but also with the prospect that it will promptly be recognised by the United States and some other western governments, perhaps even including that of the UK, with potentially disastrous consequences throughout the Balkans and beyond.
The (London) Times today (23 November) published this letter from me, written in the forlorn hope of getting at least a few readers to question some of the dangerous myths and misconceptions about what really happened in 1999 when NATO, of all supposedly defensive alliances, committed an unconcealed act of aggression against the then sovereign state of Yugoslavia:
From The Times, November 23, 2007
Kosovo crisis
We should remember NATO's mistakes when dealing with Serbia
Sir, As another crisis looms (“Fears grow for Kosovo as poll victor demands independence”, Nov 20), we should remember the blunders and myths that led to this impasse.
In 1998-99 violence in Kosovo, then as now legally part of Serbia, stemmed from Serbian repression of the Kosovo Albanians, but also from the Albanian terrorist “Kosovo Liberation Army”, to whose attacks the Serbs reacted with inexcusable brutality. The pretext for the three-month Nato bombing of Yugoslavia was Serbian rejection of the ultimatum deliberately crafted at Rambouillet by Madeleine Albright (then US Secretary of State) to ensure Serbian rejection and Albanian acceptance.
To secure the latter, Ms Albright, without Nato, UN or legal authority, promised the Albanians what amounted to independence. Nato bombing did not halt the Serbs’ expulsion of thousands of Albanians from Kosovo: it precipitated it. Nato bombing never achieved the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo: American, Russian and Finnish diplomacy negotiated a settlement differing radically from Nato’s demands. Everyone knew that NATO would never agree to a costly and dangerous land invasion.
Nato’s misguided attempt to exclude Russia and the UN from the eventual settlement failed completely, and the illegal use of force without UN authority created a catastrophic precedent for the Iraq fiasco four years later. Subsequent Serbian elections, not Nato bombing, ridded Serbia of Milosevic.
Now Russia, Serbia and most of its neighbours understandably fear that a unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovo Albanians would have disastrous regional consequences, inevitably aggravated by recognition by America and others. A solution short of full independence, with safeguards for the beleaguered Serbian minority in Kosovo, should remain the objective, even if it takes another eight years for the Kosovo Albanians to accept it. Otherwise “Balkanisation” may take on a new and yet more tragic connotation.
Sir Brian Barder
HM Diplomatic Service, 1965-94
London SW18
I mentally gave four loud cheers for Simon Jenkins's column on Kosovo in Wednesday's Guardian (21 November), which deftly disposed of several deep-rooted fallacies, apart from one that he actually seemed to endorse. He wrote:
While most countries, including America, tut-tutted and for three months dropped bombs, probably hastening the carnage in Kosovo, Tony Blair rightly divined that only a ground invasion could reverse a humanitarian outrage. In this he was successful. [Emphasis added.]
This seems to imply that a NATO ground invasion took place at Blair's instigation and that it succeeded in forcing the Serbs to surrender and to accept the extraordinary demands made by NATO at the Rambouillet conference. In fact of course there was no such land invasion and indeed, as Milosevic (like everyone else except Blair) must have known, there was never the smallest possibility of one, since it would have required unanimous NATO agreement (and Greece among others was adamantly opposed), and approval by the US Congress, which would never have given it. Clinton had previously given an assurance to the Congress that he would not ask for authority to use ground troops in a combat role in Kosovo and this was a necessary condition of Congressional approval for the NATO bombing. It's true that in response to constant nagging by Blair for a ground invasion, Clinton eventually said publicly that all options were open, and that this was widely interpreted as an American green light for sending in ground troops, but this was obvious bluff and the Serbs must have known it.
As Simon Jenkins rightly said, the bombing actually worsened the carnage in Kosovo, and indeed precipitated the mass expulsion of Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo (which began only after the start of the bombing campaign and was advertised as a response to it), causing extensive human suffering and creating a terrible refugee problem in neighbouring countries. Growing numbers of NATO countries were becoming increasingly anxious about the continued bombing, which was achieving nothing in terms of Serbian willingness to bow to NATO's extraordinarily extreme demands: predictably, it was actually helping to solidify Serbian support for Milosevic.
What did eventually bring about the Serbs' acceptance of a settlement (shorn of its most extreme and obviously unacceptable features), under which they withdrew their forces from Kosovo and handed the province over to an international (but now not exclusively NATO) force and administration, was quiet diplomacy, presumably conducted behind Blair's back, by Strobe Talbot as Clinton's representative, Viktor Chernomyrdin as Yeltsin's, and Martti Ahtisaari, then President of Finland and experienced UN mediator. Serbian acceptance of a radically amended settlement plan was achieved by flexible diplomacy, not by bombing, not by land invasion and not by any credible threat of land invasion. Tony Blair had no part in it. The whole thing could probably have been achieved at Rambouillet without a single bomb being dropped if the Americans, apparently supported by Robin Cook and Tony Blair (at any rate certainly not opposed or exposed by them), had not been determined (a) to find a pretext for bombing the Serbs as atonement for western failure in Bosnia, and (b) to exclude Russia and the UN from any eventual settlement. Clinton eventually admitted to Yeltsin that Russian involvement was essential for any settlement, and so it proved. Now we and the Americans seem to be poised to make that same mistake again.
There's a good piece about all this by a former US diplomat who seems to know the area, here. Some of the evidence for my assertions in this post is here.
As long as so many fallacies about what happened in Kosovo and Yugoslavia in 1999 persist, western policy in the Balkans is going to continue to be built on sand. All credit to Simon Jenkins for laying some of them to rest. I hope he will find an early opportunity to slay the ground war threat fallacy to rest, too. Meanwhile the top priority must be to try to head off the reckless folly of an illegal and unilateral declaration of independence by the Kosovo Albanians, followed by United States government 'recognition' which will simply make matters worse. If the worst happens, the UK should on no account tamely follow the Americans into unconditional recognition either of Kosovo as an independent state, or of whatever government the Albanians may set up in it. We should stick to our established policy of recognising states, not governments: of bestowing recognition on states by reference to objective criteria: and eschewing the use of recognition as a political act which could be seen as bestowing some sort of approval. One such criterion in the case of Kosovo should surely be a successful application for membership of the UN. We should also seek to encourage a common EU position on recognition before rushing into action unilaterally. And we should avoid being influenced by any hard feelings about past misbehaviour by previous Serbian régimes. Best of all would be a common EU-US-UN-Russian effort to impose further delay in which to get the Kosovo Albanian majority to see that full sovereign independence is not an option for the foreseeable future and that they can achieve everything they want in practical terms by accepting virtually full internal autonomy under UN or EU supervision, with internationally recognised guarantees for the safety of the Serbian minority in Kosovo and with measures to protect the Kosovo Serbs (those who have survived systematic ethnic cleansing by the Albanians during the period of international administration) against unfair discrimination. As I said in my letter in the Times, if it takes another eight years to persuade them to accept this, so be it. We shouldn't encourage a rush to disaster.
Brian
An interesting series of short essays under the general heading "What England Means to Me" is appearing — I suppose that I should be trendy and say "is being rolled out" — over at a website of that name, ambitiously subtitled "A Domesday Book of the Mind". The most recent to appear, still on the home page, is my own contribution, which I reproduce below to save you having to click on the link to read it. But the site is well worth a visit for some of the other contributions, including pieces by John Redwood MP and Stephen Ladyman MP among others, with more (I'm told) in the queue.
Here's my offering:
England’s my home, it’s where I was born and have lived most of my long life, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. But—perhaps because I spent most of 30 years overseas trying to represent the whole of the UK, not just England—I think of myself as British first and only secondarily as English; and since England to me is meaningless except as part of the union of the four UK nations, I can’t separate my feelings about and hopes for England from my feelings about and hopes for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; for Britain.
I’m not an English nationalist and wouldn’t dream of painting a St George’s cross on my face or anywhere else on my anatomy. But there are many things about England that make me proud and affectionate and which I think are worth preserving and building on: our success in absorbing successive waves of immigrants (including many of my own forebears) with phenomenally little violence or discrimination; our generally stoical and courageous reactions to anarchists’ and (later) German bombs, the privations of six years of all-out war, and the barbarisms of the IRA, without giving up our precious civil liberties—until Tony Blair, Blunkett, Straw and the rest came along with their ignorance of our history and panic over-reaction to Islamic terrorism. I’m proud of other things: our restraint, until Thatcher, in managing our crucial relationships with Scotland and Wales (less so with Ireland!) usually without exploiting our relative size and wealth to their disadvantage; our global world-view, benign by-product of empire, contrasted with the blinkered ignorance of the outside world of most Americans and the narrow Eurocentrism of many of our European partners (not including the French); our humorous common-sense scepticism or indifference in the face of the weird claims of the priests, rabbis and mullahs; our relaxed attitudes to varying sexual and other unusual orientations; our gift to the world of the ideas of freedom of expression, the right to trial by one’s peers, and – again until New Labour began to chip it away – the notion that no-one should be detained without trial; the English idea that what matters is what people do, not what they think or why they do what they do; our tradition that we can do what we like provided that it doesn’t harm anyone else, is not prohibited by law, and doesn’t frighten the horses. I’m proud of our other huge contribution to civilisation, our incomparably rich and subtle language with its life-enhancing literature. Altogether it’s not a bad record.
England, though, means other things to me of which I’m less proud: our tenacious and pernicious class system which divides us and generates so much injustice, underlying all our most obdurate problems; our assumption, often mistaken, of our national superiority in the arts of politics and constitution management; our crass identification of democratic socialism, egalitarianism, and the idea of a less class-ridden society with Leninist communism, whose brutality and failure are fatuously deemed to have discredited quite different, nobler and more practical ideologies; the rapacious and unprincipled behaviour of much of our private sector and the way it systematically rips us off, with no means of redress; the surrender of our main party of the left to big business and Rupert Murdoch; the Conservative party; our philistinism. Our weather is mostly terrible and internal travel gets more and more expensive and disagreeable. Our mainly illiterate lumpenproletariat, through no fault of its own, gets daily uglier and represents a sad waste of human talent. But it’s still a terrific place, and living here is still the greatest fun.
Last Thursday on the BBC's Question Time programme the two candidates for leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, spent the hour ducking and weaving to avoid answering the key question for anyone considering a vote for the third party: what will the LibDems do if there's a hung parliament after the next general election?
The LibDems, as a party which struggles to win one-fifth of the votes at general elections, and has no hope of forming a government itself, are potentially important and interesting only in that situation: a hung parliament, with neither Labour nor the Conservatives having won an overall majority of the seats in the house of commons. Some pundits predict that this is quite a likely outcome of the next election, probably in 2009. If it happens, the LibDems will probably hold the balance of power, and thus the power to determine whether Gordon Brown or David Cameron will be installed (or re-installed) in No 10 Downing Street as head of a Labour or Conservative government. Even if the LibDems decline any offer to join a formal coalition with one or other of the major parties, or if no such offer is made to them, they will still be in a position to lay down their conditions for giving general support to either a Labour or a Conservative government and thus enabling one or the other to govern without the immediate risk of losing a vote of confidence in the house of commons.
So every British voter has an obvious interest in knowing, before he or she casts a vote, what are the likely consequences of voting LibDem: which of the two major parties the LibDem leader would be likely to support in a hung parliament, and what are the conditions that the LibDems would lay down for awarding their support to either Labour or the Tories. The answers to these questions, after all, might well determine whether we have a Labour government under Gordon Brown or a Tory government under David Cameron for five years after the next election. Yet neither Clegg nor Huhne, one of whom will presumably be the party's leader at the next election, would even consent to discuss the matter, still less to indicate which way they would be likely to jump.
The LibDems in parliament sound, look and behave pretty much as a left-of-centre party. Their most recent leader has often confirmed that this is how he saw it. Before the 1997 election, Menzies Campbell made no secret of his urgent wish to turn out the Conservative government and see it replaced by Labour:
In 1983, and again in 1987 – indeed, to some extent in 1992, we were arguing about equidistance. But, the truth is no one ever expected us to allow Mrs Thatcher to go back into Number Ten Downing Street or to shore up the fractured aspirations of Mr Major in 1992. So abandoning equidistance was simply an acceptance of reality. … there's no doubt whatsoever that if the people of the United Kingdom decide they don't want one Party to have an overall majority in the House of Commons, they will not look very kindly on the politicians of this country if they find themselves catapulted into a second General Election within a matter of a few months becauses parties who may have some common objectives are unable to find a way of running with each other… I do not rule out the prospect, and I never have of an arrangement between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party to bring about these objectives which I've already outlined to you. Europe, Education, Health and Constitutional Change.
[Menzies Campbell, BBC interview, 22 Sept 96]
The LibDem leader at the time, Paddy Ashdown, was secretly negotiating an agreement with Tony Blair under which LibDems would be given a few seats in a Labour cabinet in return for backing Labour in the event of a hung parliament at the 1997 general election or a narrow Labour victory without a working majority. LibDems didn't bother to conceal the obvious reality that they were politically and ideologically much closer to Labour than to the Tories and that any kind of deal with the Tories to keep them in power was inconceivable.
Now, a little more than ten years later, Clegg and Huhne refuse to say which way they would lean — and Polly Toynbee, always sympathetic to the LibDems from a left of centre position and obsessive campaigner for proportional representation, writes in the Guardian that the sole criterion for the LibDem decision in a hung parliament on which of the two main parties to put into government should be which of the two is willing to promise proportional representation for house of commons elections, thus holding out a clear prospect of hung parliaments at all foreseeable elections and so guaranteeing the LibDems a role as king-makers and junior but indispensable partners in every foreseeable British government:
If, at the election, the Tories get most votes but Labour most seats, the electoral system is thoroughly bust. Both would bargain for support from the Lib Dems, who need to be willing to bargain with both, demanding not only a PR referendum but that the party in power back it themselves in a referendum campaign. [Emphasis added.]
There we have it. The LibDems have no political or philosophical preferences as between Labour and the Tories. All they are interested in is which of the two serious parties will grant them a role as maker and breaker of governments for as far ahead as it's possible to see. Of course it's true that the Labour Party under Blair and now, apparently, Brown, has moved far to the right, occupying considerable territory once the preserve of the Tories, while Cameron is sporadically trying to drag the Conservatives kicking and screaming towards some limited areas once occupied by Labour; but that doesn't make them indistinguishable, and it's an indolent cop-out to pretend that there's now nothing to choose between the main party of the left and the main party of the right. It's still true, as always, that in general, and despite multiple backslidings, the left stands for maximum equality of outcomes and not just of opportunity: for a positive and proactive role for the state in promoting social justice and prosperity and not for laissez-faire individualism: for protecting the weakest and most vulnerable against the interests of big business, privilege and property: for putting reform and change ahead of continuity, stability, or preservation of the status quo: for internationalism rather than narrow nationalism: for human rights and liberty even at some cost to security. And in general the right stands for the opposite of all those things. Yet the LibDems refuse to say on which side of that great ideological divide they stand. They will if necessary throw their potentially decisive weight behind the party of reform or the party of privilege, depending solely on which will trade proportional representation for a few years in office. Will no LibDem in parliament summon the courage to denounce this political flabbiness and demand that his or her party tell us where they stand, before they claim the right to invite us to vote for them?
Footnote: I hope that comments on this post won't be diverted into yet another sterile argument about the rights and wrongs of proportional representation, on which I recognise that many otherwise sensible and right-minded people disagree with me. Whatever one's view of PR, it should still be possible, and must be desirable, to try to extract from the LibDems a firm or even a conditional indication of what they will do in a hung parliament. If their position in the political spectrum is where most of them say it is, they shouldn't find it unduly difficult to choose.
Brian
A few observations on this and that don't quite warrant an essay each, but they all seem worth airing.
1. I wonder if Jack Straw realised what lethal symbolism he was projecting when he decided to revive the feudal practice of walking backwards down the steps from the throne after delivering the Queen's Speech to HM, in his capacity as Lord Chancellor, one of his current roles; and doing it again after HM had read out the speech and he had retrieved it? Walking backwards was so apt for this rusty weathervane of a politician, always ready to go in any direction so long as he stays in office — any office. And how tactless of plain Mr Straw, commoner playing at Lord Chancellor (not quite the first ever, but almost), to dress himself up in the Tudor period robes of a real Lord Chancellor to perform his obsequious duties! As he prudently gathered up the skirts of his voluminous floor-length dress to avoid tripping over them as he nervously shuffled backwards down those steps, he afforded the cameras a brief view of his socks. Perfect.
2. It's Mr Straw, in another of his roles (Secretary of State for Justice), along with Gordon Brown, who has been promising us constitutional reform in the shape of a written constitution. It's somehow emblematic of New Labour, and one fears also of New New Labour, to present as a great reform the promise of a document without any indication of what will be in it. It's one of a piece with the promise of a reform of the house of lords that will apparently be entirely separate from the parallel promise of reform of the constitution, as if the one needn't bear any relationship to the other. The danger is that such constitutional reform as might eventually be granted to us will prove to be so trivial as to be almost imperceptible — and it will then be frozen for a generation in a written constitution so difficult to amend that genuine progress, for example towards a fully-fledged federal system, durably and democratically uniting the four nations of the United Kingdom, will become virtually impossible. Thank goodness this written constitution with its blank pages wasn't pledged in this week's Queen's Speech. It should be nicknamed the cart in search of a horse.
3. One should not, I suppose, speak ill of the dead, so I shall not utter the smallest hint of scepticism about the skills and achievements of a prominent exorcist, faith healer and communicator with the dead who himself died last month. The Rev. Martin Israel's obituaries in the Times and the Daily Telegraph (especially the former) should be made compulsory reading in school divinity lessons, if such things still exist (hat-tip: David Tothill, once again):
An Anglican priest, mystic, author and exorcist who was formerly a pathologist, Martin Israel was a mystic and healer before he was an Anglican priest. He became well known through his writing and lecturing, and was for a time perhaps the most sought-after spiritual director in Britain. He produced many books on the spiritual life, which tackled themes such as mystical experience, Eastern religion, and even the paranormal. … Martin Spencer Israel was born in 1927, to Jewish South African parents. He claimed to have experienced his first mystical vision at the age of 3. He was a lonely, introverted only child. His father, a leading eye-surgeon, showed him little affection, and his mother was overprotective… When he became a university lecturer he found that he was unable to raise his voice in the lecture-hall. A speech-therapist identified the problem as psychological, and Israel discovered the liberating potential of psychotherapy. His extended dark night of the soul began to lift… He discovered in himself intense psychic sensitivity and the power to heal. Seeing his gifts as an expression of the Holy Spirit, he sought to put them at the service of the Christian Church. …He was an adviser on exorcism to the Bishop of London, and a confident practitioner of the art. He performed exorcisms in the old-fashioned way, commanding demons to leave troubled souls in the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He also crossed exorcism with spiritualism, by communing with the tormented souls of dead war criminals. He was president of the Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies from 1983 to 1998.
Israel remained a very private man. He was a good friend and spiritual adviser to many, but seemed to others rather unapproachable and mysterious.
If you'll forgive a terrible cliché, you couldn't make it up. To be serious for a moment, though, it seems clear that poor old Martin was a pretty unhappy sort of fellow. You have to feel sorry for him. I wonder if he'll be now able to put his powers into reverse and communicate with the living?
4. Another South African, this time someone for whom I had great affection, also died the other day: Margaret Legum, widow of Colin Legum, the former Commonwealth correspondent of the Observer and a journalist of great distinction. Margaret, the epitome of a South African liberal, got her degree at Cambridge at a time when women undergraduates by the Cam were as rare as snakes' legs, in the process winning the fervent admiration of her fellow undergraduate, the poet Sylvia Plath (whom Margaret herself, years later, couldn't remember at all). Margaret fiercely espoused all the standard liberal causes, including especially the fight against apartheid: after some hairy adventures helping fellow anti-apartheid campaigners to escape from South Africa, she and Colin were forced into exile in England, returning only years later after the apartheid régime collapsed. She then became an enthusiastic supporter of the ANC and President Mbeki, whom she advised on racism questions among other things. She wrote extensively in books and newspaper columns, mostly preaching her own brand of economics — anti-globalisation, anti-free marketism (anyway for South Africa), anti-racism, but also writing touching poems in free verse. She wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but her amazing energy (even as a grandmother well into her 70s), the passion of her commitment to good (and sometimes less good) causes, her pride in her prolific family, her hospitality and the lively debates that took place around her dining room table, and the immense devotion that she inspired in countless friends from Richmond, Surrey, to Cape Town — all these will be irreplaceable. Goodbye, Margaret: we'll even forgive you your desertion of the Labour Party for the LibDems.
5. In a recent e-mail J. reminded some friends of my occasional insistence that Camilla, mysteriously known as the Duchess of Cornwall, is actually the Princess of Wales, parliament having carelessly omitted to pass a law preventing the wife of the Prince of Wales from holding that title. Either Camilla or her husband, conceivably both, evidently fear that for her to use her title would stir up the wrath of the citizenry, most of whom no doubt believe that there has only ever been one Princess of Wales and that for anyone else to usurp that sacred title would be blasphemous. By the same token, if and when Camilla's husband becomes King, Camilla will become Queen, whether the monarchical couple like the idea of her being so recognised or not. Again, it would take an Act of Parliament to prevent the wife of the King being the Queen — and indeed even an Act of the UK Parliament would probably not be enough to rob the old lady of her rightful title, since the other 15 countries of which the UK's King or Queen is also the head of state would also have to agree, some having to pass their own parallel legislation. Here the problem is not only the fear of popular resentment of anyone else assuming the role and title once expected to pass to an earlier Princess of Wales: there's also the confusion between a queen regnant, like our present head of state, and a queen consort, whose queenliness springs from being married to a king. Some people are less than keen on the idea of Camilla succeeding Queen Elizabeth II and performing her functions in her place, which of course she won't, whatever title she is made to content herself with. Meanwhile our media commentators continue to refer to the wives of our successive male prime ministers as Britain's 'First Lady', apparently forgetting that the lady down the other end of the Mall comes First. We're all supposed to be enthusiastic monarchists, so it's strange that there are so many misconceptions about the institution and its numerous members.
6. Talking of the royal family, there's been much speculation in this country about the identity of the minor royal allegedly blackmailed by alleged rascals allegedly threatening to expose his (or her?) alleged sexual peccadilloes unless the royal victim paid up. As is usual in blackmail cases in Britain, the court has forbidden the media to name the alleged victim of the alleged attempted blackmail. The media overseas, however, have not felt bound by the same constraints. Hands up those of you who have resorted to Google to solve the mystery — and failed! But a relative in the US apparently found the name via Google within two minutes. Has Google UK, unlike its American parent, decided to obey the court's injunction not to reveal the name by suppressing links to, for example, the relevant stories in the Sydney Morning Herald which had no such inhibitions? Happily, Technorati, being (I assume) US-based, also had no inhibitions, although most of Technorati's hits on blogs purporting to reveal the royal name got it comically wrong. (Ooops!)
7 (and last, you'll be relieved to know). The (London) Sunday Times is still, despite its precipitous decline since being bought by Richard — sorry, Rupert – Murdoch, a newspaper with some claim to seriousness. Anyway, presumably there are still serious people who continue to read it, if only out of habit. And some outstanding columnists continue to write for it. A lurid light is however cast on the once-great newspaper by its accompanying glossy magazine, Style, which is clearly aimed at women, and well-heeled women at that. Every week, Style magazine devotes a page to advice on so-called 'alternative' medicine, a dangerous enough description of a brand of quackery apparently purporting to be an alternative to the real thing, and thus tempting the credulous to think they can safely ignore conventional treatment for what may be serious illnesses. Almost as bizarrely, Style magazine also has a weekly page of astrology. Can anyone with sufficient gumption to read the Sunday Times at all really believe all that pseudo-scientific rubbish about the alignment of the stars and their supposed effects on our lives? It would slander the editors of the Sunday Times to suggest that they provide the serious parts of the newspaper for the men and Style magazine for their feather-brained wives and daughters, but what other explanation can there be? The awful thing is that presumably the presence of all this nonsense in the magazine is justified by scientific market research. Or perhaps Mr Murdoch is an avid consumer of alternative medicines and a devout believer in astrology. He believes plenty of other things that are scarcely less far-fetched, so perhaps that's the explanation.
Brian
This is an open letter to my MP, Sadiq Khan (Labour, Tooting).
Dear Sadiq,
You may have seen my letter in the Guardian of yesterday, 1 November 2007, about the Tories' flawed proposals for a Grand Committee of English MPs to deal with matters affecting only England — ie to stop Scottish MPs, such as the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer, speaking or voting on purely English matters in Parliament. This is the Tory answer to the West Lothian Question ("why can Scottish MPs vote on matters affecting England when English MPs can't vote on Scottish affairs that have been devolved to the Scottish parliament?"). To refresh your memory, here is my Guardian letter:
Better answers to West Lothian
The Guardian, Thursday November 1, 2007The Tories are about to propose an English grand committee in the House of Commons, a variant on their earlier idea of banning Scottish MPs from voting on English matters (Salmond's solid start, October 29). This is riddled with practical difficulties and fails either to provide England with an executive like that of the other three nations of the UK, or to address the underlying problem, just as the old Scottish grand committee failed. The Westminster parliament currently has two mutually incompatible roles, as a federal parliament for the whole of the UK on non-devolved subjects such as foreign affairs, and simultaneously as a parliament for England on everything. The UK government has the same contradictory double role. There is only one solution: a parliament and government for England, the only one of the UK's four nations still without either, and (eventually) full devolution of all domestic affairs to the four parliaments and governments, making Westminster a fully fledged federal parliament and government dealing with all non-devolved and shared subjects.
Here is Gordon Brown's golden opportunity to outflank the Tories, resolve the West Lothian question, make sense of the second chamber (a federal senate), satisfy Scottish aspirations for more devolution, rescue the union of the four nations by putting them in a durable democratic relationship, and push power further down to local people, as well as build a national consensus on a new long-term constitutional settlement for Britain.
Brian Barder
London
Many congratulations on your appointment as a government Whip with special responsibility for Jack Straw's Ministry of Justice. As that department has responsibility for 'constitutional renewal', I earnestly hope that you will try to make sure that my Guardian letter is brought to the attention not only of Mr Straw but also of Gordon Brown, who I believe is seriously committed to constitutional reform and wants to leave his mark on a new constitutional dispensation for Scotland and England (and Wales and Northern Ireland).
The suggestion of a fully fledged federation of the four UK nations may strike ministers as too radical for a naturally conservative British electorate to swallow. Please emphasise to them that it should be regarded as very much a long-term project, requiring perhaps 20 years or more to complete. It would entail in due course at least one Royal Commission, a national Constitutional Convention for the whole UK and another for England, and at least two referendums. It would fall at the first fence unless a cross-party national consensus had been developed in favour of the eventual federal outcome, and it would probably take years of strong leadership and persuasion to develop that consensus — but I believe Gordon Brown, if himself convinced, has the qualities to provide that leadership and to undertake that persuasion. It would be essential not to let the project become a party political football. In fact it offers real benefits to all political parties, something that would need to be demonstrated.
The strange truth is that we have already stumbled three-quarters of the way into a federal system, now that three of the four nations have their own legislatures and executives (i.e. governments): only England is now without either. So we have a largely federal system without any truly federal organs, and the biggest unit of the federation has none at all. Hence the serious anomalies that have arisen from devolution, prompting not just the West Lothian Question but also, even more seriously, the mounting threat of Scottish secession from the United Kingdom, which would be a disaster for all of us, whatever our national identities within our Britishness. The problem is not that devolution has gone too far, but that it has not yet gone far enough: Gordon Brown's slogan should be taken from Mastermind — "We've started, so we'll finish".
Tinkering with the present inchoate arrangements, for example with the English Grand Committee that Sir Malcolm Rifkind has persuaded the Conservative Party to propose, will solve nothing, as long as the fundamental anomaly remains unresolved: it's simply not sustainable to continue much longer trying to reconcile the dual role of the Westminster parliament as both a federal legislature for the whole UK on non-devolved subjects, and a legislature for England on everything. Membership of the House of Commons is suitable for the first but completely inappropriate for the second: hence West Lothian. Growing demands in England for our own parliament and executive like those of the other three nations, and growing demands in Scotland for far more power to manage Scotland's own domestic affairs (with the growing conviction that the only way to achieve this may be by Scotland becoming fully independent) increasingly threaten to tear the United Kingdom apart. That would be a sad legacy for the Gordon Brown administration of which you, Sadiq, are now a member.
So the first, cautious, step should be to announce that the government wishes to initiate a great national consultation on the possibility of completing the project, already in practice begun, of uniting the four UK nations in a full democratic federal system over a period of several decades, with the full devolution of all domestic affairs to each of the four nations. There would need to be early consultations with the opposition parties and the elected leaders in the three devolved legislatures about the form and timing of this national consultation, with recognition that it would need to proceed by stages over a period of many years, but that the ultimate objective should be a full federation of the four nations, drawing on (for example) the models of other federal systems in the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany and elsewhere.
Once the eventual objective is proclaimed, so many other things will fall into place: not only the West Lothian Question, but also the role of the second chamber at Westminster, the need for and content of a written constitution and a Bill of Rights, the offer of complete devolution to Scotland which should undermine the case for Scottish independence, the creation of a parliament and government for England (not in response to any right-wing nationalistic flag-of-St.-George-waving clamour but as part of a great British constitutional reform), the chance for so-called electoral reform in England, if the English electorate so wishes, as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland which have already adopted it, and above all the real decentralisation of power away from Westminster and Whitehall which the prime minister has eloquently advocated. It also offers a golden opportunity to move away from petty party squabbling of the kind so many of us regard as puerile and unworthy, with all the major parties collaborating critically but constructively in promoting a common national purpose.
It will take real political courage even to take that first essential step of announcing the objective and launching the great consultation. But what a magnificent mark on British history Gordon Brown and all the members of his government, including yourself, would be making!
I am sending a copy of this to your colleague Derek Wyatt MP, whose letter in the same issue of the Guardian yesterday put forward a proposal remarkably similar to the one in mine; to Kenneth Clarke MP, as Chair of the Conservative Party "democracy task force"; and to David Heath MP as Lib Dem shadow Justice Minister. I am also copying it to Sir Simon Jenkins, eloquent exponent of the principle of subsidiarity for Britain, with reference to his recent Guardian column "While Labour howls, the union is busy disintegrating", in the hope that he might unsheathe his sword in future columns in the Guardian, the Sunday Times and elsewhere in the cause of federalism for the UK.
Yours ever
Your constituent
Brian Barder
PS: I am putting a copy of this open letter on my blog, at http://www.barder.com/ephems/723. I expect that there will be many comments on it there, some for and no doubt many against. I believe there are good answers to all the objections that will predictably be made. So please keep an eye on this blog and on any comments that may be appended to it: watch this space!
