Brian Barder's website

Some disconnected thoughts on the present discontents:

David Cameron’s merciless, if tiresomely and unnecessarily repetitive, dismembering of the prime minister in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) over the latter’s obstinate refusal to admit to Labour’s plans for stiff future cuts in government capital spending has been widely remarked on.  Gordon Brown’s apparent fixation with his favourite slogan, “Labour investment versus Tory cuts” has long ago ceased to cut any ice.  Everyone knows that whichever government is in office when Britain begins to come out of recession will have to act to reduce the huge volume of debt incurred as a result of the measures taken to deal with the financial and economic crisis.  Obviously even a gradual start to paying off this unprecedented and unsustainable amount of government debt will entail higher taxes and big reductions in government spending.  Why Brown should have persisted for so long in his claim that government capital spending under Labour would actually increase in the next three years, when the government’s own published figures show that it will fall, is a mystery.  Another recklessly conceded own goal!  Is there no-one in the prime minister’s entourage with the guts to tell him to stop telling porkies — if not in obedience to his much vaunted ‘moral compass’ as a ’son of the manse’, then at the very least because of the utter certainty that he will be instantly found out?  Hasn’t Peter Mandelson warned him of these elementary truths?  Perhaps he has, but the prime minister can only hoist in advice that he wants to hear.  A sure recipe for the kind of humiliating disaster that struck him on Wednesday.

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It’s doubly regrettable from Labour’s point of view that Gordon Brown should have handed the Tories such a weapon of mass destruction when he could easily have deployed an effective and truthful attack, pointing out that the Tories sneered from the sidelines at the radical measures taken by the government at an early stage of the crisis, both to prevent the collapse of the banking system and to provide a sharp fiscal stimulus to prevent the economy descending from recession into slump; and that the government’s measures have been widely praised as correct and courageous by international economists and governments.  Cameron and Osborne have throughout been loudly calling for immediate cuts in government spending, while the country is still in recession, which could only make the recession deeper and more prolonged. The recession itself forces any government to spend more (on social security for the increased number of unemployed and homeless) while seeing its tax revenues sharply reduced (because of the falls in profits, earnings and spending), thus increasing the deficit in a double whammy — the so-called ‘automatic stabilisers’, unintentionally ironical term.  Large-scale borrowing has thus been necessary and right if total calamity was to be avoided. Labour can credibly claim that that under a Labour government, when the time comes for cuts in spending, the most vulnerable and most heavily dependent on basic public services will be protected as far as possible, with the well-heeled bearing the heaviest burden in higher taxes.  The Tories, by contrast, are already committed to embarking on expenditure cuts far too soon, even before we have begun to emerge from the recession, and to applying them in a recklessly indiscriminate way, with flat rate cuts apparently to be imposed on almost all public services except the NHS and overseas aid.  But it’s probably too late now to launch that kind of offensive:  the prime minister’s credibility has been shot to pieces.

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Coming back (reluctantly) to Wednesday’s PMQs, I found it impossible to watch and listen to the proceedings without squirming in shame and embarrassment at the tribal baying, the pathetic planted questions (memorably called ‘Dorothy Dixers‘ by the caustic Australians) and their pre-paid replies, the feeble attempts at point-scoring, the ludicrously over-acted audience reactions — raucous laughter, theatrical groans, squeals of approval, frantic nodding like those toy dogs in the back windows of cars — and the almost universally contemptible level of the debate, if one can call it that.  This was the display of tantrums of the nursery, not even the quarrels of the primary school playground.  Will the new Speaker be able to do anything to restore PMQs to its place as a forum for MPs of all parties to seek information (including potentially embarrassing or revealing information as appropriate) from the head of the government? By my calculation PMQs were more than half-way through before the first such question was asked.

There were a few encouraging signs:  Speaker Bercow delivered one especially memorable appeal to an over-excited Member:  “Order. Mr. Fabricant, you must calm yourself. It is not good for your health. I call Paul Farrelly.”  He interrupted one interminable intervention in mid-flow and invited the PM to reply, even though no question had at that point been asked;  and he reminded another questioner that it was out of order to ask the prime minister questions about Conservative policies.  Perhaps in due course he will stop the practice of MPs delivering long speeches converted at the last moment into questions by the addition of “Does the prime minister agree?”.  He might even stop the prime minister answering every other question by lambasting the Opposition, reminding him that he is there to provide information about the government’s actions and policies, not anyone else’s.  Cameron is principally to blame for these weekly displays of bear-baiting, but Brown is almost as much to blame for unfailingly taking the bait;  and almost all MPs on both sides of the House are certainly to blame for the childish baying and general tribalism.  The expenses scandal isn’t the only reason for sensible people of all political persuasions to despair of both politics as currently practised, and all too many of the present crop of politicians.  And, like poor Mr Fabricant’s excitement, this disillusionment with politics and politicians isn’t good for our collective health.  It’s quite a short step from this to some form of populist fascism.

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One dimly encouraging sign is the new Speaker’s appearance in the Chair in an ordinary business suit and tie, in ordinary shoes, his special status marked only by a black academic-type gown of the kind worn by American judges.  OK, it might make him look like a rather diminutive schoolmaster, but better that than the absurd pantomime costume affected by his predecessors.  Some of the fake-medieval flummery attending his ritual procession through the lobby at the start of each day’s proceedings could helpfully be dispensed with, including his train-bearer, hardly necessary now that there’s no train to bear.  The exotic language used by MPs in debate to refer to each other could usefully be brought up to date.  Is it really necessary for every utterance to have to pretend to be addressed to the Chair?   Why on earth do members have to waste hours of everyone’s time by trooping through the lobbies to vote when quite simple electronic voting systems are used in most comparable assemblies and have been available for years?  Why is the order paper unintelligible to anyone who hasn’t studied the arcane mysteries of Commons procedures for at least ten years?  Why are the parliamentary ushers, who show visitors to their seats and shush them when they make a noise, dressed like warders on loan from the Tower of London, or possibly toast-masters?  Even more radically, what’s the benefit of a layout in the House of Commons that accentuates the adversarial element in our politics and actually encourages the sort of infantile tribal behaviour seen at its worst in PMQs?  Why not a horse-shoe-shaped seating arrangement that would reflect the nuances of members’ political positions instead of a Manichean in-versus-out, us-versus-them dichotomy?   There’s plenty to be done, Mr Speaker.

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Even the choice of John Bercow as the new Speaker was basically an act of political tribalism, estimable though he might be — certainly preferable to the majority of the other candidates.  But there’s no disguising the fact that although he is, or was until elected Speaker, a Conservative MP, the great majority of his fellow-Conservatives cordially dislike him (mainly apparently because his political views have shifted from far right to slightly left-of-centre since he very sensibly married a socialist).  Virtually the whole of his support, in an unprecedented secret ballot, came from Labour MPs who still of course have a comfortable majority (for the time being, anyway).  Were those hundreds of Labour votes cast for Bercow based on a sober assessment of his Speaker-like qualities of patience, courtesy, gravitas and natural authority, long experience in the House, and acceptability to a wide range of opinion on both sides?  One would like to think so, and that Bercow voters were behaving like grown-ups.  Or was this one last chance to cock a snook at anti-Bercow Tories, using their majority to impose him on his unwilling party colleagues before the Labour majority disappears from under them some time within the next eleven months?  If so, how will a likely Tory majority in the next parliament be tempted to get its revenge?  Business as usual, sadly:  all the brave talk of the need for change and reform was strictly for the birds, all along.

Brian

In his statement in the house of commons on 10 June 2009, the prime minister set out a 5-point programme of possible constitutional reform:

1.  Reform of the house of lords, with 80-100 per cent of the members elected.

2.  Consultation on a written constitution.

3.  Devolution of more power to local communities: e.g. local Government and city-regions.

4.  Review of the electoral system.

5. Increasing public engagement in politics:  how to get more people registered to vote, and interest young people in politics - including whether to lower the voting age.

The objectives of all these items are worthy and it’s too early in the promised consultation process to dismiss any of them out of hand.  But there are snags in each, and above all none is related to any overall vision of a better and more democratic society:

1. We can nearly all agree that the house of lords should be an elected body.  But should it be merely a “revising chamber” to tidy up loose ends left to it by the house of commons?  Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, each with its own parliament and government, has moved us (whether or not intentionally) into a semi-federal system, with the parliament and government at Westminster now trying to function as quasi-federal organs with limited powers in respect of those three devolved nations.  But federal systems around the world use their federal second chambers to protect the smaller units in the federation from domination by the larger ones.  That’s why tiny Vermont and North Dakota have the same number of representatives each in the US Senate as gigantic California and Texas: two Senators each, regardless of population or area.  Similarly little Tasmania has equal representation in the Australian Senate with big New South Wales and Victoria.  This prevents the big boys from being able to override the interests and wishes of the tiddlers in adopting legislation and approving policies. In the UK, with its huge discrepancy in size between England on the one hand and the other three nations on the other, the need for such protection is obvious: and it’s equally obvious that the place for that protection is the second chamber at Westminster.  We shall need to turn the house of lords into a federal Senate with the same number of Senators elected from each of the four nations.  But this can only be done as part of the process of completing devolution by moving to a full federal system.  This is going to be unavoidable sooner or later: it’s in the logic and DNA of devolution.  It will be a waste of time and energy “reforming” the house of lords now, while leaving its limited functions as they are, when a much more fundamental reform is going to be needed, perhaps within a decade, to give it a necessary and genuine role as part of a federal system.

2.  Much the same applies to the proposal for a written constitution, but with even more force.  The question should not be whether we need a written constitution, but what should be in it.  Our existing constitution is riddled with anomalies and injustices.  Despite limited devolution, our system is hopelessly over-centralised. We still await a suggested answer to the West Lothian Question — why should MPs at Westminster elected from Scottish constituencies vote on matters exclusively affecting England when English MPs can’t vote on the same subjects affecting Scotland if the subject has been devolved to the Scottish parliament?  What constitutional reforms does the prime minister propose to meet the challenge posed by pressure for Scottish independence, a secession that would mean the disintegration of the United Kingdom?   Why should the Westminster parliament and government try to  combine two utterly separate and incompatible functions — as quasi-federal organs for the whole UK on subjects not devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and simultaneously as a parliament and government for England, for which their composition is wholly unsuitable?  What justification can there be for denying to England the devolved powers transferred to Scotland and the other two nations?  (I have referred earlier to the need for a more radical reform of the house of lords than merely making it an elected chamber.)

It would be utter madness to set all these defects, challenges and anomalies in concrete by embedding them in a written constitution now, when our constitutional arrangements are in transition: that could only make it much more difficult to address the problems they create and gradually to make the constitutional changes they demand.  Once a federal system is in place, it will inevitably require a written constitution, justiciable in the Supreme Court, defining the powers and relationships of the constituent parts of the federation.  But to try to produce a written constitution now would be hopelessly premature: and, worse than premature, actually damaging to any hope of future reform.

3.  Decentralising power by pushing it further down to the people is certainly necessary, but merely increasing the powers of county and borough councils won’t go nearly far enough.  What’s needed in the first place is devolution of virtually all powers, with the major exceptions of foreign affairs and defence (which would remain the responsibility of the Westminster parliament and government), to the governments and parliaments of the four nations, including England — as in every functioning federation throughout the western world.  It would then be for the four nations’ governments and parliaments to push power still further down to local and regional level, according to the wishes of the people in each nation (which won’t necessarily be the same in all of them).

4.  My comments on the proposed ‘reform’ of the electoral system are here.  Before we decide whether, and if so how, to change the electoral system for the house of commons, it would surely be desirable to look at the future role, functions and (drastically reduced) responsibilities of the commons as a federal organ (which in many respects it already is), producing a federal government, in the brave new world of full devolution: subsidiarity made flesh.  Let’s agree on what we’ll be voting for, before we decide what kind of vote we want for it.

5.  The way to get more people, including young people, engaged in politics is to give each of the four nations real power over ordinary people’s lives at a much more local level, by completing the half-finished devolution process and moving to a full federal system.  Anything less will be purely cosmetic and ineffective.  The idea of giving votes to children (i.e. anyone under 18) is such obvious nonsense that it doesn’t need to be discussed.

The point, then, is that all Gordon Brown’s five points are premature.  They would saddle us with a permanently unsatisfactory and anomalous constitution when what’s plainly needed is first to sort out the anomalies in a coherent, long-term process, so that each of the five points falls into place as parts of an overall and radical reform.  To tackle each item piece-meal is doomed to failure.  Without vision, the people perish.  Power to the people!

Brian

In a major Commons statement today (10 June 2009) introducing a national debate on constitutional reform, the prime minister included the system of elections to the House of Commons in his five constitutional topics for debate and possible reform:

[L]ast year we published our review of the electoral system and there is a long-standing debate on this issue. I still believe the link between the MP and constituency is essential and that it is the constituency that is best able to hold MPs to account. We should only be prepared to propose change if there is a broad consensus in the country that it would strengthen our democracy and our politics by improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of both Government and Parliament; and by enhancing the level and quality of public representation and engagement. Mr Speaker, we will set out proposals for taking this debate forward.

The Alternative Vote

The new system beginning to emerge as front runner for Commons elections is AV — the Alternative Vote.  Under AV the voter ranks all the candidates in a single-member constituency — or as many or as few of them as he wishes — in order of preference: 1, 2, 3, etc.  If no candidate receives 51% of the first preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first preference votes is eliminated and his second preference votes are distributed to the rest.  This process continues until one candidate has received 51% or more of the votes — his own first preference votes plus eliminated candidates’ second and third etc preference votes allocated to him.  That candidate is then declared elected.  It’s important to remember that AV is not a form of proportional representation (PR).  There’s some dispute among the experts over whether AV is likely to produce a more proportional result than First Past the Post (FPTP) — i.e. whether the proportion of seats won under AV will be closer to the proportion of votes cast for each party. In some circumstances it’s argued that AV might actually produce a less proportional result.

In a post today (10 June 09) on Labour List, the General Secretary of the Fabian Society, Sunder Katwala, has written a persuasive case for a combination of AV for the House of Commons and some kind of PR for the House of Lords, or whatever an eventually reformed second chamber turns out to be called.  Katwala includes extremely useful links to a number of other online documents describing and assessing the various systems available, including Katwala’s own Fabian Essay of autumn 2007 which argues the case for AV in greater detail.  He regards it as less than ideal but the change most likely to command wide acceptance.

I can’t myself see a lot of point in AV.  A candidate who fails to win 51% of the first preference votes in his constituency can’t credibly pretend that after transfers of some (not all) preference votes from other candidates he has somehow magically acquired more than 50% support when in sober fact he hasn’t — the majority of the voters actually voted for someone else.  Second preference votes are manifestly not the same as first preference votes and there’s something slightly absurd about pretending that they are, by adding both kinds together in order to produce a desired result.  Anyway, why transfer to the candidate with the most first preferences only the second preferences of other candidates who have been eliminated, who by definition will always be those with the least support of all?   Why give special treatment and effectiveness to all the least supported candidates’ second preferences and ignore the second preferences of, say, the candidates who came second and third in the first count, were never eliminated, but failed to get elected?  (At the time of the London mayoral elections, held under a simplified form of AV, I had great difficulty in convincing several friends, none of them politically illiterate, that if they were casting their first preference votes for either Livingstone or Boris Johnson, it was a waste of time recording a second preference vote for anyone else, such as the LibDem policeman, because obviously neither Ken’s nor Boris’s second preferences would ever get redistributed.)

There’s a lot to be said, at both constituency and national level, for a straightforward system under which most of the time the winner is the candidate (or the party) which has won more votes (or seats) than any other — as FPTP does.  There have only been two elections since the second world war when a party winning the most votes nationally has not also won a majority of the seats in the house of commons, once benefiting the Tories and the other Labour (so swings and roundabouts…).  There’s nothing especially significant about 50% in either context. Is 48% unfair but 51% somehow fine?  Since 1935, not a single party has ever won 50% or more of the national vote.  It can be said of every single government since the war that more people voted against it than for it.  So what?  Almost invariably the government won more votes than any other party and that should be good enough — and vastly preferable to any form of PR, under which the LibDems (or Labour, if it becomes the third party!) become permanent ex officio king-makers with the power to decide, by demands and threats in a private horse-trading session, which of the two biggest parties gets the keys to No. 10, along with a messy compromise policy programme forced on it by the minority party in negotiations after the polls have closed as the price for their support, a programme for which not a single voter can have voted.  Katwala’s Fabian essay puts the case against PR in a nutshell:  the advantage of FPTP or AV “is accountability: voters choose governments, rather than minority party leaders in some smoke-filled room having disproportionate power to decide who governs.” [Emphasis added]

The Jenkins Commission recommendations for PR

In October 1998 Lord (Roy) Jenkins, former Labour home secretary and later breakaway Social Democrat, and his colleagues, published their report and recommendations on possible changes to the electoral system for elections to the House of Commons.  They proposed a complex scheme under which voters would have two votes: one under AV for a constituency MP, and another for a party top-up list that would produce an overall result of seats more nearly in proportion to votes cast.  You can read the full Jenkins report here (if you have the time and the intestinal fortitude;  it’s quite hard work).

Among the voices currently calling for “electoral reform” as the centrepiece of a series of mostly disconnected proposals for constitutional change, there have been suggestions that we should go back to the Jenkins report and adopt his suggested system.  In my view this would be a mistake.  I spelled out my reasons for this view a month after the report was published, in a commentary on my website (here).  Among the principal objections to Jenkins are two, each in my view decisive: first, that it would almost always produce unstable coalition or minority governments with unpredictable compromise policy programmes for which no-one could have voted in the election; and second, that it would entail two classes of MP, one class elected in and accountable to individual constituencies and the other in effect appointed by the party machines on the basis of wider areas, different from the AV constituencies.

As I said in my commentary on Jenkins, all electoral systems have their defects and injustices: none is perfect. Any system involves a trade-off between ‘fairness‘ — ensuring that the distribution of votes is accurately (or reasonably accurately) reflected in the number of Commons seats: and pragmatism – ensuring as far as possible that most elections produce a stable government with a sufficient overall majority to put its election manifesto into effect without having to negotiate deals with other parties in order to get into and stay in office. Whether you attach more weight to stable and accountable government than to theoretical fairness in the make-up of the House of Commons, or vice versa, will always be a subjective decision.  It’s common ground, even with Jenkins, that the principal function of the Commons, that which most heavily influences most individual votes at election time, is to generate and sustain a government.  Personally I dislike the idea of endless coalitions in which a government which has received more electoral support than any other party is permanently at the mercy of potentially fickle and wayward minority parties (look at Israel, to quote an extreme example): not a recipe for sound (or radical) government. So I remain convinced that the alternatives to FPTP (or AV) for a government-generating chamber are worse.  PR is fine for a debating chamber that doesn’t create governments, like the House of Lords.

One member of the Jenkins team, Lord Alexander, disagreed with the majority recommendation for AV, giving his reasons in a minority report, still available here.  His arguments against AV seem to me a lot more persuasive than those in the majority report in favour of it.  Among other things he makes the cogent point that under FPTP, whether or not a candidate gets 50% + of the votes, once elected he serves all his constituents, regardless of party — a valuable convention that would be destroyed by an STV system involving multi-member constituencies,  inevitably resulting in MPs regarding themselves as serving only their own party supporters and being answerable only to them.  That would surely be very retrograde.  Unfortunately Lord Alexander does, however, support the Jenkins proposals for a second top-up vote to produce a form of PR.

Incidentally, we should all be campaigning against the vicious system of party lists foisted on us for European elections — more control freakery from Westminster.

It’s going to be a long and difficult national conversation!

Brian

With the agreement of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, I have put on my website the text of a confidential despatch that I sent to the then Conservative Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary in early 1991, at the end of the last of my African and Africa-related postings, going back to 1957. The full text of the despatch is now at http://www.barder.com/ephems/1772.  The senior official in the FCO then responsible for our relations with Africa had invited me to write some valedictory reflections on that continent before I finally moved on elsewhere (to Australia and then into retirement).

It’s interesting to compare attitudes to Africa and development aid as reflected in and prompting my despatch in 1991, with attitudes now, in 2009.  In 1991 a Conservative government was actively engaged in one of its rounds of severe cuts in government expenditure.   Africa had largely ceased to command the attention of senior ministers following the completion of British decolonisation, the end of our responsibilities in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1980 and the recently initiated dismantling of apartheid (in which we had been internationally seen as complicit).  So aid to Africa, and the maintenance of embassies or high commissions in a wide range of African countries, seemed obvious targets for spending cuts.  In the mid 1980s, famine in Ethiopia, forced into public awareness and concern by Michael Buerk, Bob Geldof, and others, had created an awareness of poverty and suffering in Africa and a constituency for humanitarian aid to relieve it.  But there was at that time little public pressure for longer-term development aid, and as the Ethiopian famine subsided, so Africa again slipped down the media’s agenda.

For these and other reasons, in 1991 Britain’s development aid record was lamentable — apart from Austria’s, the lowest in the whole European Economic Community; and there was little or no pressure for increasing it substantially, if at all. Africa was anyway being radically down-graded in the British government’s system of priorities.  It was alarm and concern over this dismal situation that prompted my despatch.

The despatch, perhaps predictably, was frigidly received in Whitehall.  It was given a far more strictly limited domestic and global distribution than was then customary for this kind of document.  The sentiments it expressed seemed controversial, even provocative, in the climate of the time;  there was some suggestion (as I learned later on the grapevine) that when I wrote it I must have forgotten that there was no longer a Labour government in office at home.

Fast-forward to 2009.  Africa’s poverty and pressing development needs have been deep personal concerns of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both of whom have translated their commitments into positive action.  Problems aired in my despatch such as the mountain of African debt to rich western countries, and the shortcomings of IMF structural adjustment programmes, have been tackled and largely resolved.  Others, such as restrictions on African exports imposed by the CAP and other aspects of EU and global trade policy, while not resolved, are widely acknowledged and there is pressure to address them. Britain now has widely respected aid and development policies and an enviable record of growing and increasingly effective development aid, especially in Africa.  Almost nothing in that 1991 despatch would now be regarded as controversial.

However, there are two alarming features of the current scene which echo the concerns in the despatch.  First, there is currently a campaign of active scepticism about the efficacy of all western aid to Africa.  Dead Aid, a widely read and much praised book by a young African woman economist, Dembisa Moyo, not only asserts that aid to Africa does more harm than good: Ms Moyo actually calls for a decision to terminate all such aid in five years’ time.  The book and Ms Moyo’s campaign have incurred damaging criticisms from informed development economists who have demonstrated on the basis of numerous studies, ignored in Dead Aid, that development aid has made a substantial contribution to economic growth and social welfare in Africa and that aid is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for accelerated development.  Yet Ms Moyo’s campaign has achieved considerable traction: it obviously resonates with those who would indolently write off Africa (and almost a billion people who live there) as a basket case, and who assert that aid to Africa simply sends good money after bad — preferring to dismiss an abundance of research studies that demonstrate the contrary.  The case for aid as one part of a sustained campaign against poverty in Africa, the case which I tried to make in 1991, now, sadly, needs to be made once more.

Secondly, the global recession and the huge levels of government debt being incurred in bailing out collapsed banks and in Keynesian fiscal stimuli of deflating economies will soon force western governments, including Britain’s, to reduce their expenditures and increase taxes in order to reduce unsustainable debt and to preserve creditworthiness.  Debt reduction should begin only after it has become clear that we are beginning to emerge from recession:  but the UK Conservative opposition, almost universally expected to win a general election within the next 12 months, strongly advocates cutting government spending immediately.  Mounting (even though ill-informed) scepticism about the usefulness of development aid to Africa, combined with an incoming Conservative government committed to immediate swingeing cuts in government spending, looks set fair to reproduce in 2010 some of the conditions and attitudes denounced in my 1991 despatch.  Fortunately the current Tory shadow international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has publicly declared that a Conservative government will spare development aid from cuts, and committed himself to continued bipartisan approval for the good work of the UK Department for International Development.  Let’s hope that my despatch won’t need to be set as compulsory reading for Mr Cameron or Mr Osborne if and when they move across to the government benches in the house of commons some time next year.

Brian

Note: This is the text of a despatch to the then Foreign & Commonwealth Secretary, Douglas Hurd, which I sent in January 1991 shortly before the end of my posting as British High Commissioner to Nigeria, my last African posting and the end of my involvement in African affairs which had begun in London in 1957.  The despatch was classified CONFIDENTIAL.  It has been declassified by the FCO and released to me under the Freedom of Information Act.  I have put some comments on the despatch and on the contrast between the policies and attitudes in 1991 which it describes and those now, in 2009, on my blog: please see http://www.barder.com/ephems/1784.

______________________

BRITISH HIGH COMMISSION

LAGOS

7 January 1991

The Rt Hon Douglas Hurd CBE MP

LONDON

Sir,

DOES AFRICA MATTER?

1. Next month I leave Lagos and complete 17 years’ involvement in African affairs, 10 of them dealing with west Africa or southern Africa in London, and 7 as head of mission in the two most populous countries of black Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. Tidily, I end where I began, with Nigeria, whose constitutional and political problems I first tried to grapple with as a new entrant in the Colonial Office In Great Smith Street a third of a century ago. I leave Nigeria with many of the same problems unresolved - not, I think, for any lack of effort by ourselves as the colonial power or by the Nigerians themselves, but chiefly because of the inherent difficulties we bequeathed when we gummed together such a big, unwieldy entity in such a casual manner 90 years ago.

2. As I leave the continent, Africa ranks at Its lowest in any British Government’s scale of global priorities for 100 years or more. There are intense pressures, from Ministers downwards, for sharp cuts in the resources we devote to Africa in money and manpower; and for some reduction in our commitments in Africa (although, illogically and characteristically, these are unlikely to be as sharp as the cuts in resources). As I shake the African dust from willing feet, it is natural to wonder why this down-grading of Africa is taking place; whether it Is politically and economically justified; and what might be the implications for British interests.

Why at we demoting Africa in our priorities?

3. There seem to be 5 main factors:

(a) Decolonisation fatigue. Shedding our colonial responsibilities In Africa has been a long, wearing process, bringing us more obloquy than ovation and often yielding more disappointments than evident successes. For 3 decades, completing this process - especially in Kenya and then Rhodesia - and ridding ourselves of the international incubus of our involvement in apartheid South Africa have been our overriding aims in the continent.  Now that they are achieved (or, in the case of South Africa, within sight of being achieved), it is natural to feel that we are entitled to turn our attention elsewhere.  To recognise, define and substitute new needs and objectives requires an effort of imagination and will that does not come easily to the exhausted.

(b) Humanitarian fatigue. For decades we have given aid to Africa - sometimes generously, sometimes not. We have responded to famines with humanitarian relief aid, although often without the development aid needed to avert renewed famine in the future; and to poverty (in countries where we have recognised special responsibilities) with development aid. Yet we see a situation in Africa where poverty and need are as great as ever: in some places, greater than ever. It is understandable enough that some should begin to see Africa as a bottomless pit, and resources directed to Africa as wasted - understandable, but profoundly misguided. It is a short step from this to the conviction that Africa’s failure to make better use of the aid it has received is Africa’s fault: a notion with a big enough germ of truth to be all too plausible, especially in the eyes of those who are charged with cutting public expenditure in all directions. (It is remarkable, though, that despite the widespread acceptance of the sentiments described, Britain’s aid to Africa has not so far gone under the knife, and indeed is if anything growing. But, at a time when the staff resources to manage the programme are being cut, this may not be durable; and recently where new aid resources have been provided they have been for eastern Europe or the victims of the Gulf crisis rather than for Africa.)

(c) The end of the cold war. As long as the Soviet Union and its erstwhile allies were competing for third world hearts and minds, the west perceived the penalties of turning its back on the more western-oriented of the developing countries as unacceptably high. That constraint has gone.

(d) The lack of an obvious economic role for Africa.  Until relatively recently, Africa has been regarded as a useful — even necessary — source of cheap raw materials, and a worthwhile market for the developed world’s finished products. But as cheaper artificial substitutes for Africa’s raw materials have become available, as well as for other reasons, the terms of trade have turned against Africa, with disastrous consequences for the continent’s earning power; and thus for its value as a market for the west’s exports. The process has been further aggravated by corrupt and incompetent management of production processes, leading to falls in the quality and reliability of African traded goods. Africans well understand the need for them to diversify their economies into new areas where world demand will rebuild export earnings. But they lack the resources (or the credit-worthiness required to borrow them) which they need if they are to undertake such a massive transformation of the economic systems inherited from their colonial masters. Meanwhile Africa seems - is - of declining economic relevance to the rest of the world.

(e) Perceived mismanagement by Africans of their own affairs. Again, undeniably true, although some at least of Africa’s most pressing problems are not in fact attributable to the short-comings of African leaders. However, the issue is not who is to blame for the African mess, but whether we can safely and cheaply afford to ignore it.

It is evident that all 5 factors have substance. But the striking thing which they have in common is that they explain growing indifference to Africa: they do not justify it, nor do they demonstrate that indifference is necessarily our own interests.

Are we politically or economically justified in reducing our commitment to Africa?

5. Africa certainly has little commercial significance.  In 1988 it accounted for a mere 2.61% of world trade (but nearly 12% of the world’s population).  Central and south America were responsible for almost half as much again as Africa (3.5%): Japan alone for 7.7%.  As already noted, Africa’s importance and reliability as a source of traditional raw materials have declined. However, the African countries which produce and export oil (and gas, now or soon), while relatively few in number, include Nigeria, which alone contains almost a quarter of the population of black Africa; and energy supplies from an area which is not subject to the stresses and conflicts of the Middle East are not to be sneezed at.  Already Nigerian oil is important to the United States and some western European importers. Western oil companies have very large and growing investments in Africa.  Southern Africa will also remain, for the foreseeable future, a major source of vital metals and minerals. Of course this is as much of concern to other western countries as it is to Britain. But our investments in oil and minerals are great and our own reserves of oil are already declining.

6. Politically, the end of the great confrontation between international Leninism and western liberal values makes Africa more, not less, relevant to the kind of world we and our children are going to live in. The remaining global fault-line is that which separates the rich white (and, increasingly, brown or honorary white) section of humanity from the poor and mainly black. It is this division more than any other which now threatens future conflict, insecurity, violence and destruction. How this explosive incongruity comes to be resolved - bloodily or peacefully - will depend significantly on events in Africa. The escalating clash between western values and radical Islam, which is in part a function of the rich/poor, white/black divide, will also play itself out in Africa among other areas: the seeds of that conflict have already been planted, the first shoots manifestly appearing. It is difficult to see how a western country which aspires to a global role can contemplate even partial withdrawal of interest from one of the two or three most pressing issues of our generation; disclaim its responsibility for carrying its share of the burden; or seek to reduce its ability to play a part in bringing about a resolution of the next act in the drama.

7. Finally, we have to consider the potential for a wide-spread economic and social collapse in Africa. Recent events in Ethiopia, the Sudan, Somalia and (especially) Liberia are a grim warning. The west, through the IMF and World Bank, has proved unexpectedly successful in coaxing and threatening a string of African governments into adopting programmes of structural adjustment, designed to remedy the most glaring deficiencies of economic management and distortion. But as experience of structural adjustment in Africa grows, it becomes increasingly apparent that without some early and perceptible benefits for ordinary people, these programmes rapidly become politically unsustainable: and that early and perceptible benefits can be produced only with extensive outside assistance. Our admirable policies of encouraging responsible and democratic government in Africa actually reduce the chances of African governments having the necessary tenacity or political backing to sustain painful austerity programmes over the length of time required for them to succeed. There is at last in Africa an almost universal realisation of the calamitous mistakes and

mismanagement of the decades since independence and a willingness to put things right. But it becomes more and more evident that Africa’s problems simply cannot be solved by Africa’s own unaided efforts. Structural adjustment (as I have argued in an earlier despatch) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of economic recovery. A very large-scale transfer of real resources to the poor countries of Africa is an absolute necessity if Africa is to stand any chance of overcoming the enormous problems of declining demand for its raw materials and agricultural products;  foreign indebtedness;  environmental degradation;  and population growth at rates which outstrip the increase in both national income and labour productivity. All these problems can be overcome, but not without western help on an unprecedented scale.

8. If that help is not forthcoming, the prospect of a general collapse, although still only a worst case scenario, is bound to become much more real. We cannot always base our plans on the gloomiest assumptions, but we need to be clear about the possible consequences of the policies we adopt. Increasing impoverishment and unemployment in the towns, spreading break-down of basic services (including health, communications, food distribution networks), failure of the security forces to contain violence and theft, growing inter-tribal and inter-regional conflicts - all this can already be seen in embryo in many parts of Africa; and if it becomes general, it will cause a swift descent into massive starvation, disease, violence and collapse. These will in turn prompt significant movements of populations in search of food, safety and a future for their children. A disaster on such a scale could not be quarantined inside Africa. The rest of the world could not turn its back while more than half a billion people were exposed to an experience of this character. But once the collapse begins, the cost of arresting it will rapidly become immense. Prevention is cheaper as well as better than cure.

Implications for British Interests

9. These may be considered in the context of our national domestic interests, our interests as a member of the European Community and our global interests.

Domestic

10. The Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 demonstrated that public opinion in Britain is capable of being aroused by the spectacle - especially on television - of human starvation and poverty. The effect was to compel government to be seen to be responding on a scale which went a fair way towards satisfying what the electorate clearly demanded. Similar constraints on the freedom of action of governments have been imposed through television in the past by the Biafran conflict (in Britain) and Vietnam (in the United States). It is true that efforts to arouse public opinion again over subsequent famine in Ethiopia have largely failed, but there are several factors at work here which would not apply to a general spread of hunger and starvation over much of Africa. Even if economic failure in Africa were to fall short of a spectacular collapse, and took the form of a gradual increase in poverty, disease and hunger, it seems unlikely that British public opinion would acquiesce indefinitely in the apparent indifference of its government. The fact that we have a substantial community of black (not to mention Muslim) compatriots, and a slowly growing number of black MPs, would tend to raise the political cost of inaction, or of a merely token response, by government.

11. Even if public opinion failed to compel a response, the reality of mounting poverty and degradation in Africa will force itself on the attention of the west. Failure of employment possibilities and of secure food supplies will compel large numbers of Africans to migrate in order to escape from the growing nightmare. There might well be a wave of economic refugees which will make the boat people seem like tourists. Because of Britain’s historic connections with so much of Africa, the pressure on Britain to open its doors to African immigrants on a very large scale would be intense.

12. Meanwhile in Africa itself large parts of the continent face the prospect of gradually degenerating into festering slums, breeding international drug trafficking, terrorism and disease, accompanied by inter-tribal warfare and endemic violence of all kinds. AIDS is already a multiplying plague. it will be impossible to screen Britain, given its intimate connections with so many of the most populous African countries, from the effects of these highly infectious conditions.

13. The cost of retrieving a situation of this kind in Africa would be exorbitant; certainly incomparably greater than that of acting now to arrest the decline and to bring current problems into the realm of the manageable. In the eyes of much of the world, modern Africa is more the creation of Britain than of any other single country. Britain could not hope to escape the obligation to contribute a significant share of the global cost of either a rescue operation after a disaster, or remedial action to forestall it. There is an overwhelming case on financial grounds alone for acting sooner rather than later, collectively, to provide the resources required for removing most of the debt burden from African countries (provided that they are committed to active economic reform), for arresting environmental degradation, and for restoring the physical and human infrastructure sufficiently to permit diversification of economic effort and its re-direction into areas that will eventually become self-financing - as well, incidentally, as making a more positive contribution to world economic activity.

European Community

14. In a post-communist world increasingly divided into continental trading blocks, Africa has no developed area to turn to as trading partner, aid donor and protector, other than western Europe.  Latin America and the Caribbean are natural elements in the North American sphere of influence.  Asia and the Pacific Rim are rapidly becoming an economic force in their own right, powered by Japan and the other newly developing economies, and also closely linked to the United States.  Africa, almost entirely made up of former European colonies and still condemned to live within the borders drawn by Europeans, is bound to be the protégé of western Europe. In some respects this seems to have been more readily accepted by our EC partners than by ourselves, even though it is Britain and France, followed at some distance by Italy, Germany and Belgium, which have had much the closest historical connections with Africa and still maintain the greatest interests and influence in the continent. The aid performance of the 17 major donors, including the Twelve, in 1987 tells, from our point of view, a sorry story.  Britain’s aid as a percentage of GDP was the lowest of any of the 17 apart from Austria (an anyway embarrassing analogue) and the United States (whose total aid programme was more than 4 times as big as ours). Although a healthy share of the aid which we do give is allocated to Africa, the size of our aid in total is not something to be proud of. The promise of some increase is welcome, but nothing so far envisaged comes near to matching the scale of the need or the extent of our responsibilities as Europeans.

15. Any move by Britain to reduce the scale of its representation in Africa by any significant amount would be seen by our European partners as further evidence of our refusal to accept the implications of our own and Europe’s history. Without an adequate and effective diplomatic presence in each of the main countries of this diverse and splintered continent, we could not hope to manage an adequate aid programme; nor to exercise the influence over the policies of African governments which is an inescapable condition of our ability to ensure that the aid we give is put to optimum use. Since Africa of all continents (with the possible exception of Europe and the Middle East) is the home of the world’s most intractable and menacing problems, we would be doing ourselves a powerful disservice - not least in the eyes of our fellow- Europeans - if we deliberately deprived ourselves of the eyes and ears we need to monitor events, to assess them in terms of British interests, and to manage our response to them. We cannot rely on others who have far less knowledge and understanding of Africa than we to do this for us, without serious damage to our status as a significant world power and to our ability to behave like one.

16. These are not questions of guilt or compensation for past wrongs, real or imaginary. They relate to real, practical problems in an area with which we have special connections that imply special responsibilities. It seems inconceivable that the Community as a whole would be prepared to turn its back on a human tragedy in Africa. If we are serious about our determination to play an active part in Europe, we must face the consequence for our contribution to a European effort in Africa, which indeed we are uniquely well qualified to inspire and lead (as anyone who has participated in the EC’s Africa Working Group, or in discussion of African affairs in an EC Heads of Mission meeting, can testify).

Global Interests

17. In 1987, national income per head was £6,537 in Britain, £10,056 in the United States and £15,058 in Switzerland.  In Nigeria - by no means the poorest country in Africa, but much the most populous - it was £170: 2.6% of that in Britain, 1.13% of that in Switzerland.  The charts in Annexes A-C, attached, tell a vivid story.

18. This cannot be a sustainable situation, even in the medium term. Such grotesque disparities in the human condition are an inevitable source of conflict and instability. It is a century since British people ceased to be willing to tolerate massive inequality of wealth and income within their own society.  The time has surely come when we should tackle an even more offensive situation in the global village.

Conclusions

19.  Nothing that is likely to occur in the foreseeable future in central or south America, in Asia or the Pacific, is likely to impinge half as directly on British and western interests as the danger of degeneration or outright collapse in Africa.  Only events in Europe itself, and arguably in the Middle East, should be rated as of obviously higher priority for Britain; and whereas in the rest of Europe and in the Middle East Britain is not the principal player, in most of Africa we are;  no other country has the close links, historical ties and depth of understanding with Africa that Britain has built up in the past 100 years and continues to enjoy (if that is the right word).  Our influence in Africa and capacity for understanding its dynamics are important elements in our international standing. This is a national asset which, once thrown away in a fit of instant cheese-paring, could never be retrieved,

20. Against this background, for Britain to start a process of disengagement from Africa, principally for reasons of’ financial stringency, would be widely and justifiably seen as implying at best a sad failure to understand and accept our own history; and at worst as a betrayal of that history which others in the world, and many among our own compatriots, will neither understand nor forgive.

21. I am sending copies of this despatch to the Minister for Overseas Development and to HM Representatives or High Commissioners at Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Pretoria, Accra., UKMIS New York and UKREP Brussels.

I am

Sir

Yours faithfully

[Brian Barder]

ANNEXES:

_______________________________

SUMMARY

1. As the High Commissioner ends 17 years’ involvement in African affairs, he wonders whether HMG is right to relegate Africa to the bottom of its priorities and reduce its commitment: is this in Britain’s interests? (paras 1-2)

2. Reasons for demotion: decolonisatlon and humanitarian fatigue, end of the cold war, lack of an economic role for Africa, African mis-management. Reasons but not necessarily justifications (paras 3-4).

3. Political and economic pros and cons of reducing our African commitments. Africa commercially unimportant, but significant as oil producer. Africa’s place in the rich/poor, white/black divide. Risk of widespread economic decline or collapse in Africa and its serious implications for Britain and the west. Cheaper to avert than to rescue (paras 5-8).

4. British domestic interests: public opinion in face of sharp decline or collapse in Africa. Risk of mass migration, with UK as prime target. Effects on Britain of Africa as slum: drugs, terrorism, disease, violence, instability. Implications for Britain’s standing In the EC of our disengagement from an area where we have assets of historical connection, influence and understanding. In new world of continental trading blocks, Africa clearly a western European responsibility. Britain’s poor aid record compared with EC partners: as chief protagonist in Africa, we should remain equipped to play an active part. Not a question of guilt (paras 9-16).

5. Global interests: gross disparities of wealth and income between Africa and the developed world a main source of future conflict and instability: not sustainable in medium term. Britain qualified to act as a principal player in Africa more than in any other major global issue. To reduce our diplomatic presence, cut resources allocated to Africa and significantly to disengage would betray our history and throw away an irretrievable national asset

(paras 17-21).

______________________________________________

I had been almost persuaded by the relentless drum-beat of Guardian editorials and columns that Gordon Brown is finished and should step down now, if only so as not to prolong the party’s and the country’s agony — well, embarrassment, if not agony.  Almost persuaded, but not quite.  Following recent traumatic events — the resignations, the largely involuntary reshuffle, the defiant press conference, the county council election results, the sure prospect of even worse to come in the European parliament elections — I have come to the reluctant conclusion that Gordon should stay on until a general election next year.

I say this out of absolutely no admiration for Brown’s style of government and politics.  The widely reported briefing by the attack dogs working out of No. 10 Downing Street against fellow Labour parliamentarians, including ministers, is scandalous: loyalty should be a two-way street.  The over-reliance for advice on a small coterie of personal and political cronies — Ed Balls prominently among them — is harmful and undemocratic, especially when the prime minister has a huge range of ministers, back-benchers, and above all experienced and savvy civil servants to sound out and listen to.  He sticks doggedly to policies which are heartedly disliked by a large section of the party at the grass roots and probably even in parliament.  He looks and sounds terrible on television and seems unable to present his ideas and policies in a convincing or attractive way.  He allows himself to take the bait at PMQs when Cameron insults and taunts him, losing his temper instead of acting the serious statesman above the party political fray.  I don’t believe that Labour under Brown can win an election, whenever it is held.

In spite of all these negatives, I believe that the balance of advantage for the country, and therefore also for the Labour party, lies in rallying round Gordon Brown and supporting him right up to the spring or early summer of 2010 — even though I don’t believe he can win it for Labour then either.  Here are seven good reasons:

1.  If the party elects a new leader and prime minister now (or very soon), there will be intense pressure for a general election almost immediately.  The country can’t be expected to tolerate a second prime minister who has never led his party to an election victory, or even gone into an election as party leader, but who seems set on occupying Downing Street for nearly another year.

2.  It is neither in the country’s nor in Labour’s interests to have a general election — and a change of government — before there has been a chance to see signs of success for Gordon Brown’s bold and far-sighted measures to minimise the effects of the recession, to help stimulate the economy so that recovery may begin earlier rather than later, and to lead and coordinate corresponding action by much of the rest of the world.  It’s unrealistic to expect that there will be convincing evidence that these measures are succeeding until the end of this year or early next year, at the earliest.  To hold an election before Labour can demonstrate that the government’s anti-recession policies are succeeding is to hand the Tories a golden opportunity to denounce them as financial profligacy, doomed to failure, in contrast to Conservative promises of tough measures to cut “wasteful” government spending (details not specified) and to bring other expenditures back “under control”.

3.  A Tory victory at an early election would mean the new government immediately embarking on savage cuts to government spending even before we begin to recover from the effects of a deflationary recession.  Quite apart from the effects of such cuts on essential public services such as health and education, and on benefits introduced by Labour to help shield the most vulnerable people in society from the effects of the recession, general cuts in government spending while we’re still in the depths of the recession would inevitably delay recovery from it, further aggravate unemployment, prolong the collapse in government revenues caused by the recession and thus bring forward the need for increased taxation — which in turn would further prolong the recession.  Millions would suffer unnecessarily as a result.  Cuts in government spending and increases in taxation are going to be unavoidable sooner or later, whichever party is in power:  the really significant difference between the parties is over the timing.  Labour rightly wants to defer these essentially deflationary measures until we have started to recover from the worst of the recession;  the Tories want to start them immediately — in part, probably, because of their instinctive liking for cuts in spending on public services which the better-off rarely use, and for cutting taxes on the rich.  Economic illiteracy may also play its part.  Anyway, for all our sakes, the measures already taken by the Brown government need and deserve time to work.  The Tories would reverse some and scrap the rest.

4.  An election held before the late autumn (and a change of leader now would probably entail an election in the summer or very early autumn of this year) would almost certainly be won by the Tories, who would accordingly come into power before the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty and therefore before the treaty will have been brought into effect following ratification by all 27 EU governments.  The Tories are firmly committed to holding a referendum on the treaty immediately after winning a general election if the treaty has not yet come into force, and they would undoubtedly act accordingly. Since Britain has already legally ratified the treaty, it’s difficult to see what options could usefully be offered in the referendum except a very vague and general question such as “Do you approve or disapprove of the Lisbon treaty?”  Indeed, the temptation for the Tories to misrepresent the treaty as “the new EU constitution” in the referendum might prove irresistible.  Either way, many voters, perhaps a majority, encouraged by both the government and most of the print and television media, would treat such a referendum as an opportunity to register a vote for or against UK membership of the EU, rather than on the much narrower question of the Lisbon treaty, whatever the precise wording on the ballot papers:  and the outcome could well set in train a series of events culminating in our forced departure from the European Union (as I have argued elsewhere, e.g. here).   The key point is that an unnecessary and divisive referendum on the EU would do even more harm to British interests, and represent an even graver threat to our continuing interests and role in Europe, than a demand by a Tory government, after the Lisbon treaty has been brought into effect, that the treaty should be re-opened and re-negotiated.  Such a demand would win little if any support from our EU partners and with luck would be drowned out by their contemptuous laughter.  This would be humiliating, but not necessarily seriously damaging.  This is a weighty argument for deferring a UK general election until after the second Irish referendum, ratification by the few remaining governments that have not yet completed their ratification processes, and the coming into effect of the treaty.   And deferring the election means not changing the party and national leadership now.

5.  To plunge the Labour party into the all-absorbing arguments and personality competitions of a leadership election, and thus inflict on the country a period of several months of government inactivity and distraction, all at a time of almost unprecedentedly grave national crisis in the worst economic recession for three generations, would both be, and be seen to be, an act of grossly self-indulgent irresponsibility.  There is still a vast amount of day-to-day work to be done in further protecting the poorest from the effects of the recession and speeding up our recovery from it.  This is no time for the government to take time off for a huge internal wrangle over the succession to Gordon Brown.

6.  There is no evidence that Alan Johnson, or any other credible candidate for the succession to Brown, would change existing government policies in any significant way:  no-one who’s in with a chance is offering to scrap part-privatisation of the post office, ID cards, Trident, control orders or the other assaults on our freedoms introduced by successive Labour home secretaries under cover of the “war on terrorism”, so-called;  no-one promises to withdraw from an unwinnable and misconceived conflict in Afghanistan;  no-one has any idea how to answer the West Lothian question or to complete the process of devolution of all domestic powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland or to remedy the glaring inconsistency whereby England alone has no parliament or government of its own or to give the second chamber a useful democratic function or to head off the threat of Scottish secession from the United Kingdom or to reverse the poisonous centralising tendencies of all governments for the last 20 years or to revive local government.  Moreover, it’s not as if Alan Johnson, or any other likely candidate to succeed Gordon Brown, appears to possess such magnetic charisma and personal popular electoral appeal as might hold out a hope of reversing the precipitate decline in Labour’s fortunes.  How many UK voters, shown a photograph of Alan Johnson, would be able to put a name to it or him?  A change of leader now would risk being no real change at all either in policies or even of personalities.

7.  The result of an early election — before the autumn, say — would almost certainly be a catastrophic defeat for Labour.  A spring or early summer election in 2010, when with luck the first green shoots of recovery from recession might be starting to show, demonstrating a decent prospect of success for Brown’s economic management of the recession, and when (with even more luck) memories of the MPs’ expenses scandal may have begun to recede with the allowances rules having been drastically reformed, might hold out the prospect of a reasonable performance by Labour, even if the Tories (as seems likely) still won it.  The more Labour MPs and candidates manage to survive the next election, the greater the chances of a reasonably early recovery by the party in opposition.  And that means an election later rather than sooner.

Seven powerful reasons for letting Gordon soldier on until towards the middle of next year, and closing ranks now to give him united support in the meantime, whatever one’s private reservations about some of his policy intentions and personality traits.  Not everyone will agree with all seven.  But it’s hard, surely, to dismiss them all.  Can anyone really suggest seven cogent reasons for plunging into a leadership contest now without risking any of the harmful consequences described above?

Brian

It’s difficult to explain the sudden flowering of interest in constitutional reform.  It apparently arises out of the general panic in the Westminster village about public anger and contempt over the abuse of (some) MPs’ expense allowances. This has reinforced already existing disillusionment with our parliament, our parliamentary system, even politics itself.  There’s no obvious logical link between an MP dipping his hand in the public purse for money to clear out the moat surrounding his house, on the one hand, and the upsurge of demand in some quarters for proportional representation in elections to the house of commons (euphemistically referred to by its fans as “electoral reform”) on the other.  But there it is:  one thing seems to have led to another.  Some say it’s displacement therapy: playing around with ideas for reforming the constitution to take our minds off the squalid saga of the crooked MPs and the incomprehensible recession.  Others say it’s a deliberate attempt to distract attention from MPs’ misdeeds and the recession, which comes to the same thing.  Or perhaps the idea of reform is contagious:  the system of MPs’ allowances obviously needs to be radically changed, so while we’re at it, we might as well abolish the house of lords as well.

Anyway, constitutional change is now all the rage.  The prime minister is seriously considering setting up a new Council to work up some ideas, which sounds like a poor man’s Royal Commission until he explains that its members will all be government ministers.  Whatever proposals these sages come up with will figure, says Mr Brown, in the Labour Party manifesto for the forthcoming general election;  but since it seems increasingly unlikely that after the election there will be a Labour government to implement them, they might not arouse the passionate enthusiasm which they may well deserve (depending, of course, on what they turn out to be).  Mr Cameron, Tory prime minister in waiting, tells us that there’s going to be a huge transfer of real power from himself and his fellow MPs and putative future ministers to The People:  no doubt he’ll let us know before the election how this is to be achieved, and after the election we shall all be riveted to see whether Dave is just as anxious to get rid of power when he has achieved it as he seems to be when he hasn’t got any.  Mr Clegg, for the LibDems, is actually demanding the abolition of the House of Lords (and various other major changes, inevitably including “electoral reform” — he would, wouldn’t he?) before the general election, starting NOW.  It can all be done, he has calculated, in 100 days.  Ho, hum.  How liberating to run no risk of having to lead a government!

Meanwhile all sorts of fancy ideas are being trotted out for our edification:  votes for children (no, seriously);  open-door primaries for the selection of parliamentary candidates, so that Tories can make sure that only no-hopers are selected as Labour candidates, and vice versa;  ‘recall’ of MPs whose performance displeases a given number of their constituents — a field-day for the glassy-eyed environmentalists, anti-abortionists, vegans, English flag-waggers, pacifists, single fathers, flat-earthers and other fanatics (does no-one read Edmund Burke’s address to the electors of Bristol in 1774 any more?);  numerous versions of proportional, semi-proportional,  and non-proportional electoral systems, many of them with incomprehensible names (what exactly would be the implications of adopting AV-Plus?  Is it an anti-virus program? What about d’Hondt?);  a wholly elected house of lords, an 80 per cent elected house of lords, a house of hereditary peers only (again), no house of lords at all;  fixed-term parliaments (so that governments which no longer enjoy the support of a majority in the house of commons will just have to soldier on and manage as best they can); and so on.

Then there are the minutiae of possible changes in the house of commons itself:  clipping the tails of the Whips, or abolishing them;  letting MPs choose select committee chairs (hold on, don’t let’s get carried away); giving vast but undefined powers to the select committees; requiring senior official appointments — ambassadors, that sort of thing — to be approved by parliament;  letting MPs vote according to their own views in the Committee stage of Bills, not necessarily as ordered by the Whips (but not on Second or Third Reading, naturally);  paying MPs more; paying MPs less; reducing the price of drinks in Annie’s Bar;  closing (or re-opening) Annie’s Bar.  Bolder MPs are not flinching at the prospect of such revolutionary change.  (Dozens of others are reportedly enquiring about post-election seats in the house of lords, although the prime minister says he hasn’t heard about that yet.)

What all these disjointed ideas lack is a coherent analysis of the root causes of our present discontents, and ways of tackling them according to an overall strategic plan.  I have yet to hear of any proposals, credible or otherwise, for tackling, still less resolving, such fundamental problems as the West Lothian question, devolution for England, or a distinctive function for a second chamber.  I put some thoughts on these and other matters in a letter to the Times a few days ago.  Since the Times has unaccountably not seen fit to publish it, I’ll have to do it myself.  Here it is:

Any worth-while constitutional reform (letters, May 20) needs to address the anomalies caused by incomplete devolution, including the West Lothian question: incomplete reform of the Lords: gross over-centralisation of power at Westminster and Whitehall, distancing politics from ordinary people: and the threat of Scottish secession.

The Westminster parliament currently tries to play two mutually incompatible roles: legislating for England on all subjects, and for the whole of the UK on subjects not devolved to the other three nations. Its composition, like the government’s, is manifestly unsuitable for the first of these; the situation is unsustainable.

The sole solution to all these problems is to complete devolution with a parliament and government for England and the transfer of all domestic subjects to the four nations of the UK, leaving Westminster responsible for little more than foreign affairs and defence under a written constitution — in other words, a fully federal UK similar to the federations in Australia, Germany, the US, Canada and many other comparable countries. We also need maximum devolution of power within the four self-governing nations under the principle of subsidiarity which we demand for Europe.

Such a wide-ranging reform would require inspired leadership and years of preparation, including development of a cross-party, all-UK consensus in its favour and gradual phasing in of the new institutions. But the goal and vision should be set now and a constructive debate begun. Anything less, failing to tackle these momentous issues, will be mere tinkering: a shocking waste of time and opportunity. In Danton’s words: De l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace!

Alas, what we are now seeing and hearing is precisely “mere tinkering”, devoid of vision, largely designed to serve sectional interests or to assuage a temporary fit of public anger:  a failure to think big, or even to attempt to answer any of those basic questions that I had hoped to put to readers of the Times (who they? I hear you cry).  But it’s now too late for Labour, which ought to be the natural party of radical reform, to embark on such an epic journey;  and there’s precious little sign that Mr Cameron understands the questions, still less that he knows the answers.  So we’ll just have to go on muddling through as best we can.  That’s what we’re supposed to be good at, isn’t it?

Brian

I have expressed earlier my conviction that it will turn out to be a disaster for Britain if the Tories, having won the general election in a few months’ time, carry out their threat either to hold a referendum on ratification of the Lisbon Treaty if it has not yet been brought into effect at that time, or, if it has, to demand that it be re-opened and re-negotiated.

In discussion of the issues raised by this Conservative Party commitment, not enough attention has perhaps been given to the fact that Britain has completed ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and has lodged the instrument of ratification (as required by EU law) with the Italian government in Rome.  Britain has given its formal legal approval to the treaty and will thus be bound by its terms if and when it is brought into effect, probably after a positive vote in the second Irish referendum, at which point the Czechs, Poles and Germans are expected to complete their ratification processes too (none of them requiring a referendum).  The treaty would then have been formally approved unanimously by all EU member states and would come into force.

There is a convention in international affairs that after a change of government, the new government continues to observe its obligations under existing treaties, which indeed form part of international law.  When there is a coup d’état in (for example) a developing country, the first message passed to the new ruler by anxious western governments is a reminder that he — rarely she — must abide by his country’s existing treaty obligations.  The reason is obvious: international law would be a constantly shifting, indefinable muddle — even more incoherent and inchoate[1] than many think it is already — if every new government felt itself free to cherry-pick which treaty obligations to respect, and which to repudiate and “re-negotiate”.  Britain has ratified Lisbon, in common with 22 out of the other 26 EU governments, and that should be that.

Of course if Ireland votes No again, or the Czechs, Poles or (improbably) the Germans decline to ratify, the treaty can’t be brought into effect and all bets are off.  But that’s not the scenario envisaged in the Conservative Party’s policy commitment.

The convention of respect for existing treaty obligations is not legally binding (as far as I know — perhaps some helpful lawyer will correct me if I’m wrong?) and it’s open to governments under the terms of some treaties to withdraw from them them if they include provision for doing so, or if the circumstances obtaining at the time of the coming into effect of a treaty change so radically that the treaty is clearly no longer applicable.  As Wikipedia sagely puts it, -

In public international law, clausula rebus sic stantibus (Latin for “things thus standing”) is the legal doctrine allowing for treaties to become inapplicable because of a fundamental change of circumstances. It is essentially an “escape clause” that makes an exception to the general rule of pacta sunt servanda (promises must be kept).

Someone might remind Messrs Hague and Cameron of the “general rule”:  promises must be kept, even if they were originally made by the other side.  They are made on behalf of the whole country, not just for one party or for the duration of a particular government.  The reaction to any demand for re-negotiation of such a recently ratified treaty by a new British government, or for the withdrawal of our ratification of it, on the part of the majority of our EU partners might well be that if we are no longer satisfied with an essential building-block of the new expanded European Union, approved by every single EU government, then we must exercise our right under the treaty to withdraw from the Union.  A more devastating example of the law of unintended consequences (if the Tories mean it when they say they favour continued EU membership) would be hard to find.

This is one more reason for looking askance at this particular element in Conservative Party policy, on top of the likely malign practical consequences for Britain, politically and diplomatically, if the Tories, once elected, go ahead and carry out their threat — see my earlier post on this.  Caveat emptor!

Update (30 May 09): Gratifyingly, today’s front-page lead story in the Guardian (”Tragic, unwise: grandees turn on Cameron over plans for EU“) reports that the Conservative party’s EU policies are to be attacked today by a group of senior Tory figures and senior former diplomats:

A group of Tory grandees and former ­senior diplomats will tomorrow launch a devastating attack on David Cameron’s flagship Eurosceptic policies, warning that they pose a threat to British influence in the European Union.

The group includes Lord (Leon) Brittan (a former Tory home secretary and EU Commissioner), Lord (Christopher) Tugendhat (former Tory MP and EU Commissioner), Lord (Chris) Patten (former Tory MP, Chairman of the Conservative Party and EU Commissioner), Lord (Patrick) Wright (former British ambassador and Head of the Diplomatic Service), and Lord (John) Kerr (former British ambassador to the EU and former Head of the Diplomatic Service).  These are all men with direct experience of the EU:  they know whereof they speak.  As Nicholas Watt’s Guardian article says, –

Retired diplomats are careful about speaking in public. However, the strength of their language reflects Foreign Office concern that Cameron will trigger the worst crisis yet in Britain’s relations with the EU.

Well, I’m not sure that the first part of that is universally true; the second part certainly is.  What’s more (no pun intended), this is not simply a question of British “influence” in Europe (easily derided concept):  it’s a question of a British government’s ability effectively to defend and promote Britain’s interests in the formulation of EU policies and laws which directly affect the lives of all of us.  If we join up with the barmy fringe parties of east and central Europe and thereby alienate the big players and natural allies such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and if we obsessively pursue demands (such as re-opening and re-negotiating a treaty that Britain has formally ratified and which has near-universal support among our partner governments) which stand no chance of gaining majority support in the EU, British interests, not just influence, will be damaged — perhaps terminally.

I’m glad that this issue is now earning banner headlines.  I hope my Guardian letter on the subject on 22 May, if not my previous blog post spelling the arguments out at greater length, may have contributed to a growing public awareness of the dangers posed by Mr Cameron’s and Mr Hague’s obstinate commitment to diplomatic suicide.

[1] Inchoate: unfinished, only partially formed (not a pedantic synonym for ‘chaotic’ or ‘incoherent’).

Brian

Unlike most media commentators, with their vested interest in encouraging leaks by civil servants who betray their duty of confidentiality and loyalty to the elected ministers for whom they work, I have very little time for Mr Damian Green, the Conservative MP and shadow minister.  Over a period of about two years Mr Green received more than 20 official documents stolen by the home office mole whom he encouraged, at best implicitly, in this nefarious and probably criminal activity. (In deciding not to prosecute either Mr Green or his mole, the Director of Public Prosecutions made it clear that the decision did not imply that no offence had been committed — only that there was insufficient prospect of getting convictions.)

I have written before about this case (e.g. here, here and here) and responded to others’ comments, so I shan’t go over all that ground again. My excuse for returning to the subject now is a remarkable, and little noticed, interview with the mole, Christopher Galley, published in The Times on 19 May under the heading, “‘I did their dirty work and then Tories dumped me’” (heading slightly changed in the online version). The article starts:

For more than a year Christopher Galley, a civil servant, had put his job on the line for the man who had become his political mentor, Damian Green, the Shadow Immigration Minister. Mr Galley, 27, the most prolific Tory mole of modern times, had taken huge risks to smuggle sensitive documents out of the Home Office. But now he had been caught, threatened with imprisonment and fired from his job. It was time, he thought, to call in a few favours.

During one meeting with Mr Green, Mr Galley remembered the MP telling him: “If you are fired, we will look after you.” So, last month, Mr Galley e-mailed him for help. It took four days for the reply to come and when it did it was as cold as ice…

It was an astonishing brush-off for a man whose leaks to the Tories on crime and immigration had repeatedly embarrassed the Government. That ended on November 19 last year when Mr Galley was arrested. Eight days later, police also arrested Mr Green and carried out a raid on his Parliamentary office.  Last month, both Mr Galley and Mr Green were relieved to be told by Keir Starmer, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, that they would not face charges over the leaks.

But for Mr Galley there was little reason to celebrate. In an interview with The Times this week, he said that he now felt betrayed by the Conservatives and claimed that he was cynically cultivated as a mole. “I think I have been terribly naive,” Mr Galley said. “I feel as though I have been dumped and they are treating me as political poison, as if they don’t want to touch me now that I have done their dirty work.”

On April 24, the day that his brief Civil Service career ended, Mr Galley wrote to all 193 Conservative MPs in the House of Commons explaining his predicament and asking if any might give him some work. To date, none has been offered.  He received no help with the £3,400 legal bill he racked up as a consequence of his arrest and he expects to have to give up his home in Feltham, West London, and move in with his parents. He says his life is in ruins.

“I find it very painful to see the way my leaks have boosted Damian Green’s career while leaving me jobless, broke and with limited prospects,” he said. “Frankly, I feel the Tories have hung me out to dry.”

Remember that the hapless Mr Galley was not a classic whistle-blower in the sense of an insider so angered by knowledge of government wrong-doing that he thought it should be exposed, and risked his career to expose it. For such often worthy people there’s anyway a confidential procedure to be followed within the civil servant’s department, and ultimately in an approach to the head of the civil service, to bring to the attention of the highest official authority the evidence of alleged wrong-doing, before resorting to the ultimate sanction of passing the information to the media, directly or indirectly, without authority. Galley followed no such procedure and it seems quite clear that as a Conservative Party supporter he was mainly concerned to give political ammunition to a front-bench Tory shadow minister for use in embarrassing the government, not primarily publicly to expose wrong-doing.

A key question in assessing the possible criminality of both Mr Galley’s and Mr Green’s activities is whether Damian Green actually asked or encouraged Galley to steal and pass over official home office documents, or whether Galley acted spontaneously, without encouragement, with Damian Green purely a passive recipient. The Times interview casts valuable new light on this:

Mr Galley’s painful foray into the world of political dirty tricks began with an astonishing meeting with David Davis, then the Shadow Home Secretary, and ended unceremoniously with a dawn raid by anti-terror police.  Mr Galley … had been a civil servant for only three months when he was invited to Mr Davis’s office at the Commons in May 2006. …  Mr Galley was working at the Border and Immigration Agency, now the UK Border Agency, in Hounslow, West London, helping to process applications from asylum seekers.  He had read an article on immigration posted by Mr Davis on the Conservative Party website and left a message on the site agreeing with the article and making a few suggestions. To his amazement, he received an e-mail asking him to meet the Shadow Home Secretary. “The invitation was to Davis’s Commons office,” said Mr Galley, who was then aged 24 and in the lowest rank of the Civil Service. [...]

“In the invitation it said, ‘Our immigration spokesman wants to be there as well’,” Mr Galley went on. “At the time I didn’t have a clue who he was. So this balding bloke turns up at the meeting. It was Damian Green.  I felt pretty intimidated. You had two senior politicians and a researcher sitting in a room and you have all this imposing architecture around you. And you have one of them sitting at one side and another at the other side and you’ve got questions coming from one and then the other.

“David Davis started off with the introductions and he basically wanted an explanation of what my role actually was. I told him I was only an admin assistant and I explained what I felt was wrong with the reporting centre where I worked. Damian Green then spoke about how he wanted to improve immigration and he said to keep in touch in the future.”  Asked whether he was ever explicitly asked to leak items by Mr Green, Mr Galley said: “He didn’t say that. I said that I could send some ideas in on how things could be improved. He said he would like that.”

In the following months, Mr Galley says, he wrote about seven letters to Mr Green with ideas and suggestions, and the MP wrote back encouragingly. “I got replies throughout the year,” said Mr Galley. “He sent two or three letters saying, ‘Keep up the good work’ and there was a letter at Christmas.”

In July 2007, Mr Galley was promoted to administration officer at the Home Office and told Mr Green of his progress. He was responsible for administration in the private office of Tony McNulty, then the minister responsible for policing and crime, and Vernon Coaker, an under-secretary of state and government whip.  “One day, I was sitting in Vernon’s office and . . . a private secretary to Vernon and one of the assistant private secretaries were dealing with a matter relating to the Security Industry Authority [which licenses workers in the security industry],” he said. “They were looking at this document to do with how licences had been granted to asylum seekers to work in the SIA. But rather than trying to put a stop to that, these two people were actually trying to co-ordinate . . . a damage limitation exercise on how to keep it quiet, which I didn’t think was right.  I got my hands on that document . . . copied it to my hard drive, then saved it and copied it to my Hotmail address and sent it to Damian Green. A day later it was published in a newspaper. I was pretty shocked. Damian telephoned me and said, ‘Well done. This is pretty explosive stuff’’.”

Buoyed by the encouragement, Mr Galley continued to leak.

This is only one side’s version of events:  Damian Green denies parts of it.  But the general pattern seems clear enough.

Some conclusions can be drawn, I think, from all this.

First, good and coherent government, which depends among other things on a relationship of mutual trust between ministers and their officials, would be impossible if all, or a significant number of, civil servants felt free to steal official information and pass it to opposition MPs for party political purposes, claiming the right to substitute their own political opinions for the judgement of elected ministers as to what information should be released and when.

Secondly, Mr Galley doesn’t seem to have initiated the relationship with David Davis and Damian Green, who began it with their surprise invitation to Galley to go and meet them.  The two Tory MPs seem to have been careful not to ask Galley explicitly to send them documents without authority, presumably knowing that to do so would risk laying them open to criminal charges.  But the distinction between an explicit request and implicit encouragement is surely rather blurred — as the DPP implied by stressing that the decision not to prosecute didn’t necessarily mean that no offence had been committed.

Thirdly, against the background of systematic leaking from a minister’s private office in the home office to an opposition MP and thence into the public domain, a police investigation was absolutely inevitable — as the DPP himself also said.  A police investigation into the possibility of an offence by Damian Green was bound to involve questioning him and searching his computers and papers in a way which denied him or his staff any opportunity to hide or destroy potentially incriminating evidence beforehand, as any other questioning of a possible suspect must do.  Criticism of the Speaker and other House of Commons authorities for permitting this (one of the charges laid against Mr Speaker Martin) is seriously misplaced.  They would have been open to the charge of obstructing the police in their enquiries, or obstructing the course of justice, had they sought to prevent the police from doing their duty.  It’s true that the police didn’t have an ordinary search warrant, but explicit permission to conduct the search given by a high parliamentary official responsible for security, probably given after consulting the Speaker, was surely even better than a magistrate’s search warrant.

Fourthly, Mr Green is a lucky man to have got away with acting as he did, systematically and over a period of at least two years, with complete impunity, indeed emerging at the end of the process with the wholly undeserved status of both hero and victim of allegedly improper treatment at the hands of the police, when the police self-evidently couldn’t have acted otherwise than as they did.

Fifthly, Mr Galley, who took such personal risks on behalf of the party which he supported, with what sounds like encouragement from two of its senior leaders, has turned out to be a lot less lucky than Mr Green, his mentor.  He obviously behaved badly vis-à-vis his employers over an extended period, inevitably thereby damaging his chances of finding another job after being dismissed from the civil service;  but it’s impossible not to feel just a tiny bit sorry for him.

And lastly, if and when Mr Green and perhaps Mr Davis are appointed ministers in a Conservative government under David Cameron, probably some time next year, it will be extremely interesting to see whether they take the same relaxed view if one of their trusted civil servants turns out to be a committed Labour Party supporter who starts leaking official documents to the Labour opposition front bench, for use against them.

Brian

One of the strongest of many reasons for not voting Conservative in the European Parliament elections on 4 June or, especially, in the impending general election is the Tory threat to hold a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, something that’s not only weirdly irrelevant (Britain has already ratified the treaty) but also potentially disastrous for Britain in its likely consequences.

Today’s Guardian (22 May 09) publishes my letter on this subject (text here) from which I hope the main points emerge clearly enough.  I make no complaint about the usual editorial abbreviations of the letter as originally submitted, although inevitably they have ironed out some significant nuances.  Here is the full text as sent to the Guardian:

Sir,

You’re clearly right to warn against voting for a Conservative Party hell-bent on deserting the centre-right mainstream group in the European parliament in favour of a new rag-tag far-right grouping (Conservatives: continental drift, editorial, May 20).  But another even more cogent reason not to vote Conservative is David Cameron’s reckless pledge to hold a referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty if it hasn’t yet come into effect when (or if) he becomes prime minister. Every single government in the EU supports the treaty as an essential reform following the recent expansion of the EU, and in the light of guarantees now being negotiated there’s a good chance that Ireland will vote to ratify it in a second referendum, followed by the handful of other countries which have not completed ratification pending Ireland’s decision.  Britain however, unlike Ireland, has already ratified the treaty and formally lodged the ratification instrument with Rome: it’s not a law and can’t simply be repealed or otherwise reversed, so a referendum would probably have no legal effect although its political impact could be devastating.

With the right-wing tabloids and much of the rest of the media psychotically Europhobic, and the Tories officially campaigning against the treaty, the result of a UK referendum would be almost a foregone conclusion.  This act of wanton and quite unnecessary sabotage would wreck Britain’s standing in Europe.  Few of our partners would accept the demise of an essential reform treaty solely because of a UK veto.  The end result could well be Britain’s de facto expulsion from the European Union — something that even the Tory leadership claims not to want.

Every vote for the Conservatives, indeed every abstention from voting, either on 4 June or at next year’s general election, risks helping to precipitate this potential disaster.

Yours sincerely
Brian Barder

I’m grateful once again to Peter Harvey for bringing me up to date on the current position regarding ratifications of the Lisbon Treaty and progress towards a second referendum in Ireland:

The UK has indeed lodged the [instrument of ratification of the] treaty, in Rome. I think that was because it all started with the Treaty of Rome. Anyway,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7511281.stm
There is no way, apart from renegotiation, that the UK can get out of it.

The Lisbon Treaty has been ratified by all countries except the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, as well as Ireland. In the first two of those countries it has been passed by parliament but is awaiting the presidential signature, and both presidents are Eurosceptics. In fact, they are waiting for the result of the Irish referendum. If that is for the treaty, they will really have no choice but to sign. In Germany the Constitutional Court has yet to pronounce on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8037441.stm

[....]

There is also the British view that anything can be repealed, which
stems from the UK having no constitutional mechanism providing for things that can’t be, or indeed things that need a qualified majority. Brits don’t like the idea of binding commitments.

It’s boringly predictable that among the comments on my letter on the Guardian’s website, and probably on this post here, will be the charge of arrogance and contempt for democracy in seeking to deprive the British people of their right to express their views on an allegedly controversial treaty which its critics claim will transfer yet more power from Britain to Brussels.  But there’s no substance to any such complaint.  The decision not to hold a referendum did not, as alleged, break the Labour Party’s promise to allow a referendum on the proposed new EU Constitution treaty: the Lisbon version is self-evidently a different document and not a constitution, whatever else it might be.  The ratification procedure for Lisbon — approval of ratification by both houses of parliament — was the same as that used for the much more far-reaching Maastricht treaty, and other EU treaties which have collectively shaped the EU as it is today.  Britain has legally ratified Lisbon, and that should be that:  no possible need for a referendum on a decision already taken, and no point in holding one.

But the clinching argument is the likely consequences of holding a referendum, which (as argued in my Guardian letter) would be potentially disastrous for Britain.  Political leaders must be held responsible for assessing the probable consequences of their actions and policies, just as the rest of us are.  The Tories’ persistence in demanding and promising a procedurally irrelevant referendum on the Lisbon treaty, despite its appalling risks, is bound to arouse the suspicion that it represents a limp surrender by Cameron to the serious Europhobes in his party, probably led by the shadow (and presumably future) foreign secretary, William Hague:  people whose real aim is to end UK membership of the European Union.  That suspicion is greatly aggravated by the Tories’ parallel (and almost equally damaging) promise to leave the mainstream centre-right group in the European parliament and to form a new far-right and essentially anti-EU group with some pretty unsavoury allies, especially from east and central Europe.  The Guardian’s editorial on that subject, referred to in my letter, makes an unanswerable case against the Tories on those grounds too.

Update (24 May 09): Over on the always interesting Labour List blog, this post (reproduced there) has attracted  a sizeable volume of comments, all of them hostile, many savagely so.  Even when you put aside those which are merely hysterical or scurrilous, there’s still a sizeable body of opinion (represented in a blog designed for “Labour minded people” to debate issues and exchange views) which is viscerally hostile to the European enterprise of which Britain is a part, which wilfully blinds itself to the likely consequences for our country and for the rest of Europe of a British referendum on the Lisbon treaty resulting in its rejection, and which has persuaded itself that if Britain alone is out of step with the rest of the EU on the procedural reforms made necessary by EU expansion, the rest of Europe will just have to come round to the British point of view — and will meekly do so.  How adults can indulge themselves with this kind of fantasy is a rather worrying mystery, but there it is.  Anyway, it’s easy enough to dismiss my views (as some comments on Labour List do) as ignorant, arrogant, riddled with error, sad, and just cause for having me strung up.  Labour bloggers in Labour territory need thick skins!  The authors of such comments might, however, care to spend five minutes reading Will Hutton’s sobering article in today’s Observer, which (dare I say?) reproduces many of my own points but in even starker language.  Extracts:

Europe remains the Tory modernisers’ blind spot. David Cameron and William Hague must know the risk they are running. They know, or should know, that a referendum on the EU constitutional treaty once every member state has signed it, as is likely this autumn if the Irish vote yes in a second referendum, is a European suicide note; 26 other countries are not going to spend another three years ratifying another treaty amended to meet David Cameron’s and his party’s prejudices. They are condemned to tell Britain that while some cosmetic concessions may be made, essentially the body of the treaty must stand.

If the British hold a referendum and there is a no vote, then the consequence will be that Britain must withdraw from the EU. So either this is a one-off stunt which the party leadership knows it must retreat from once the treaty is signed off or a ploy it knows will lead to a yes or no vote on de-facto European Union membership within two years of winning next year’s election. Either way, it hardly inspires much confidence.

So these European parliamentary elections really matter. … Along with the BNP, the opinion polls suggest that more than 50% of the vote will go to anti-EU parties. I’m not sure the British know the consequence of their vote, but a dynamic is in train that will lead to our exit from the EU.

As a pro-European, I don’t want this to happen, but I’ve begun to wonder whether it wouldn’t be better for Europe. Only living outside the EU as the sceptics want - creating a politically diminished Britain fit for hedge funds, tax-avoiders and asset-strippers - is likely to convince the British majority that the option is a disaster.

Meanwhile, the Europeans can deepen the EU, along the way empowering the European Parliament. When a Tory government leads an impoverished, embittered Britain back into the EU in 25 years’ time, reality will have imposed political maturity. And elections for the European Parliament will be much more serious.  [Emphasis added]

“Sad”?  Well, yes.  Sometimes the truth is sad.

Brian