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Liberal Conspiracy in association with New Statesman, Left Foot Forward and LabourList
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TV debate: no basis to pick a government
Five o’clock shadow cost Richard Nixon the 1960 presidential election, or so political folklore has it. Never mind the substantive differences with Kennedy over the missile gap or supply-side economics; the GOP blew it because their man performed badly in a televised debate. continue reading… »
Labour still has a problem with liberalism
I posted briefly yesterday on how Labour’s manifesto policies on crime (see chapter 5 of the manifesto) pose a massive obstacle to winning or retaining the votes of liberal centre-left voters.
Rather than trying to learn something from the growing criticism of its record on civil liberties, the party’s manifesto complacently reaffirms Labour’s approach and, with a nice touch of Orwellian ‘war is peace’ bluster, comments that, “We are proud of our record on civil liberties…”, as if there were really no criticism to answer.
According to Allegra Stratton and Patrick Wintour in yesterday’s Guardian, Nick Clegg has said “he was shocked by the lack of reference to civil liberties in the Labour manifesto.”
He is planning to ‘go to war’ with Labour on civil liberties, saying:
It’s a measure of the authoritarian streak of the Labour party that it didn’t refer once to liberty in its own manifesto…..It makes a complete mockery of the claim by Gordon Brown that he can speak for progressive voters in other parties when his own party has turned its back on one of the cornerstones of progressive politics.
I hope that in retrospect Labour will look back on chapter 5 of its 2010 manifesto as the final step in a rather dismal journey – to be promptly followed by a quick turn in the opposite direction.
Its not just that the indifference to civil liberties is objectionable on its own terms – which of course it is.
Its also that if you are trying to defend a seat from a Lib Dem challenger, or persuade Lib Dem voters to support you tactically against a Conservative, this kind of unreconstructed authoritarianism risks being the kiss of death.
—–
cross-posted from Next Left
Is it legal for Obama to have Awlaki assassinated?
contribution by Naadir Jeewa
Last week, Obama authorised the CIA to kill Anwar Al-Awlaki, though it seemed to have evaded the British blogs until this week.
Awlaki is not only an extremist, but has been an active recruiter for Al-Qaeda (AQAP), with evidence linking him with both Nidal Hasan and PantsBomber.
However, the Fifth Amendment confers the following rights to Awlaki as a US Citizen:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
However, this is not to say that infringement of rights during wartime has not happened before, and these have even been upheld by the Supreme Court, in the notorious example of the internment of Japanese Americans. This derives from the war powers conferred on the executive by Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution.
Obama’s one-time colleague at the University of Chicago Law School, Cass Sunstein, has argued that the justification of the use of war powers against individual liberty requires the following components:
A requirement of clear congressional authorization or executive action intruding on interests with a claim to constitutional protection; An insistence on fair hearings, including access to courts, for those deprived of liberty…
Spencer Ackerman finds that there’s only one possible clear congressional authorisation that may justify the use of lethal force against a US citizen right of due process, and that is the AUMF -Authorisation of Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (2001):
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
This specifically targets terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks, but the evidence is not clear with regards to Awlaki’s role in 9/11. Furthermore the Supreme Court overrid congressional authority in Boumediene v. Bush, where the court decided that Guantanomo detainees have a constitutional right to the writ of Habeaus Corpus that stands over and above procedures outlined in congressional legislation and executive orders.
Access to courts is within rights conferred by the Sixth Amendment requiring trial by jury, and by the Fourteenth Amendment requiring due process of law to deprive a citizen of life.
The major questions here involve the applicability of the constitution abroad. The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional rights of citizens abroad, notably in Reid v. Covert, as Julian Ku notes. However, the weight of the precedent then relies on the extent to which constitutional protection of Awlaki would be “impracticable and anomalous.” This pretty much seems the only justificatory manoeuvre at the current moment.
As a further blow to Harry’s Place/Keep America Afraid Safe types, any evidence that was used to authorise the use of lethal force against Awlaki came from the civilian arrest of Abdulmutallab. No torture was necessary. Likewise, area specialist Greg Johnsen argues that the killing of Awlaki is unlikely to bring significant enhancements to national security.
Ackerman is correct in categorising the AUMF as an emergency power to be used only in war time, and should thus be rescinded. Especially as the DOD stopped referring to the Long War in its latest Defense Review.
My fear is not so much the targeting of a Muslim, in this instance at least, but the continual erosion of due process requirements that authorise a state to deprive an individual citizen of life, liberty or property.
PS: It’s not just the US Government that wants Awlaki dead. So do other terrorists…
PPS: Awlaki is not even Al-Qaeda’s top-spokesperson-who-is-also-a-us-citizen. That honour goes to Adam Gudahn.
Libdem fundraises online to unseat Nadine Dorries
A Libdem PPC has launched an online fundraising campaign against Nadine Dorries MP to unseat her from Mid Bedfordshire.
Candidate Linda Jack is using a new fundraising site called YouFund.Me.UK for her campaign.
The platform has also been used by other candidates in this election, including Tory candidate Antony Calvert in Morley & Outwood, and Lucy Powell, Labour PPC in Manchester Withington.
The campaign also involves reaching out via ads to people searching for Nadine Dorries on Google.
LibDem PPC Linda Jack said:
I am delighted with this great opportunity to raise funds for my campaign. The people of Mid Beds are fed up with a publicity seeking MP who cares more about appearing in the pages of the tabloid press and on reality TV shows than listening to the concerns of those who she is meant to represent in parliament.
YouFund.Me.UK’s Jag Singh says:
YouFundMe provides the technology platform for candidates to advertise themselves and raise money for their campaigns outside their party structures and outside their constituencies. To donors it provides an easy, secure way of immediately supporting candidates.
Linda Jack’s site: https://www.youfund.me.uk/linda-jack
Video ad
Will talking about immigration help the Tories win?
One of these days I’m going to have a mass-debate about immigration. Frank Field MP certainly wants one. In fact he wants one so badly he think there will be riots on the streets unless the conspiracy that is stopping everyone from talking about immigration is dealt with.
So anxious is he to talk about immigration that perhaps Mr Field will lob the first molotov cocktail himself.
The other person obsessed by immigration is Tim Montgomerie from ConHome, who said last week that for the Conservatives to not talk about immigration was “Like leaving Wayne Rooney on the bench“.
I mean its not like the newspapers have been talking about it, with front page screaming headlines from the wrong statistics, that feature swivel-eyed quotes by Tory MPs. Nope, they’ve all been very silent.
The wierd thing is that I thought Tim Montgomerie was a good political strategist. But he’s either terrible or he is obsessed by immigration so much that he’s happy to give his party the wrong advice.
Poll after poll shows that immigration is about the only issue the Tories have a massive lead on. People may not believe their rhetoric on the economy or the education but they certainly believe that immigration will fall if the Conservatives get in.
In contrast Labour has little to no credibility on the issue. All those who hate immigration will already be voting Tory or UKIP. There’s no point even trying to win them back, it’s too late.
Unfortunately for the Conservatives however, immigration is not as important an issue they’d like it to be. The economy always far outweighs concerns about immigration. The same happened in 2005 and the election before that but the Tories can’t seem to get it.
The Tories can talk up immigration as much as they like from now until the election, but the impact it will have on polling, given people already buy their rhetoric on the issue, is likely to be negligible.
And anyway, the Tories can’t go any further since they neither plan to pull out of the EU (source of most immigration) nor completely ban non-EU immigration. So what would they say?
I’m somewhat taken aback to think that Tories can be so myopic on the issue.
50 world economists sign letter backing Brown
More than 50 economists from around the world have signed a letter backing Gordon Brown’s economic plans, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The letter has been organised by Labour and claims that Tory plans to cut Government waste this year could lead to job losses. It warns that public sector cuts could “destabilise” the economic recovery.
Among the 58 academics who have signed the letter, leaked to this newspaper, are respected economists Lord Layard, Lord Skidelsky, Lord Peston and Sir David Hendry.
A total of 58 academics have signed the letter – including economists from Oxford, Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Harvard. There are also signatories from Austria, Canada, Germany, Australia, Spain and Denmark.
Could we have the biggest turnout in decades?
YouGov’s figures for tonight are out (fieldwork 13th – 14th April):
· Conservative 41%
· Labour 32%
· Liberal Democrat 18%
· Others 9%
The swing from yesterday’s 5pt difference is within the margin of error if you assume the Tory lead is about 6-7pts.
But here is the interesting bit – could this be the election of high turnout? If yes, that would benefit Labour.
The general election will be held on May 6. On a scale of 0 (certain NOT to vote) to 10 (absolutely certain to vote), how likely are you to vote in the general election?
0 – Certain NOT to vote: 4%
1: 1%
2: 1%
3: 1%
4: 1%
5: 3%
6: 1%
7: 4%
8: 6%
9: 9%
10 – Absolutely certain to vote: 65%
Don’t know: 2%
And some questions about voter connection to the parties….
1) For better or worse, only two of the political parties — the Conservatives and Labour — have any real chance of forming a Government after this election. Irrespective of how you intend to vote (or have already voted by post), which of the following statements do you think apply more to the Conservative Party and which apply more to the Labour Party?
The kind of society it wants is broadly the kind of society I want
Applies more to the Conservatives: 36%
Applies more to Labour: 30%
Applies to both parties: 6%
Applies to neither of them: 17%
Don’t know: 10%
It is led by people of real ability
Applies more to the Conservatives: 27%
Applies more to Labour: 22%
Applies to both parties: 8%
Applies to neither of them: 31%
Don’t know: 13%
Its leaders are prepared to take tough and unpopular decisions
Applies more to the Conservatives: 27%
Applies more to Labour: 25%
Applies to both parties: 17%
Applies to neither of them: 18%
Don’t know: 12%
It seems to chop and change all the time: you can never be quite sure what it stands for
Applies more to the Conservatives: 25%
Applies more to Labour: 26%
Applies to both parties: 30%
Applies to neither of them: 9%
Don’t know: 10%
2) Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have now published their election manifestoes. From what you have seen, and putting aide your own party preferences, which manifesto …
Contains the best policies for people like you?
Conservatives: 30%
Labour: 23%
Liberal Democrats: 21%
Don’t know: 27%
Is most honest about the problems facing Britain?
Conservatives: 30%
Labour: 24%
Liberal Democrats: 20%
Don’t know: 27%
Is best for Britain as a whole?
Conservatives: 33%
Labour: 24%
Liberal Democrats: 14%
Don’t know: 30%
Founder of Tory LGBT group defects to Labour
Last week, The Independent ran this rather embarrassing story…
The founder of the Conservative Party’s biggest group campaigning for gay rights has said she will now vote Labour at the general election after David Cameron failed to reprimand a Shadow Cabinet member for questioning gay rights.
Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, the first chairman of the LGBTory group, said she felt guilty for having told gay voters to back the Tories in the past after Chris Grayling, the shadow Home Secretary, said he believed bed and breakfast owners should have the right to ban gay couples from staying in their property. She called on the Tory leader to dismiss Mr Grayling. So far, Mr Cameron has refused to take any action against him.
Today, according to Sky News, things have escalated further…
Two former Tories have joined the Labour party after criticising the Conservatives’ approach to gay policy.
Anastasia Beaumont-Bott, who was previously head of the Tory’s gay campaign, accused the party of an “elaborately executed deception” on gay rights.
She said the party had not changed its approach to gay people and had no mention of new rights in its manifesto.
David Heathcote has also joined Labour after being a Tory supporter for 20 years and becoming an approved parliamentary candidate.
He said he felt “tremendously let down” by shadow home secretary Chris Grayling’s comments that Christian bed and breakfast owners should have the right to turn gay people away.
Having crossed the floor, Anastasia had a few choice comments to make about Cameron’s own commitment to LGBT rights.
Her statement was first reported by Left Foot Forward
A leopard does not change its spots, and neither has the Conservative Party. Once upon a time, I made the massive mistake of believing that they had. And I‘m here to tell you how wrong I got them.
Mr Cameron, I believed in you and your party, and you let me down. I thought your party was progressive and would stand up for the great ignored.”, but your party ignored my complaints about discrimination and smears…
Mr Cameron, you have not only lost my vote. You have lost my respect.
Oh dear, it’s all coming unglued…
Decoding the Tory cancer policy
Healthcare provision NHS is, naturally enough, one of the more important battlegrounds on which the upcoming election is being fought – after the economy, of course.
Its area that has already thrown up its fair share of controversy, particular in regards to cancer services. Labour have been pilloried by the right-wing press over an unsubstantiated allegation that it specifically targeted some cancer sufferers with a leaflet attacking Tory plans to remove targets for providing access to cancer services, a media-generated furore that conveniently deflected attention away from a much more serious issue:
Only last week, the Tory’s putative Health Minister, Andrew Lansley, was torn off a strip by the Sir Andrew Dillon, the Chief Executive of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) for misleading patients over current policy on authorising new drug treatments for use by the NHS.
Unlike the cancer leaflets issue, this is no mere storm in a teacup but an issue that goes right to heart of the Tory’s manifesto plans and, in particular, to this statement from the Tory manifesto:
NHS patients rightly expect to be among the first in the world to access effective treatments, but under Labour they are among the last.
The key phrase here is ‘effective treatments’ – in fact it is precisely because the NHS (through NICE) is one of the few healthcare providers in the world that actually examines the evidence for the efficacy of new treatments, relative to existing treatments for the same condition/patient group, before approving them for use that we have to wait a little longer to access some new drugs than is typically the case in, for example, the United States.
Although the FDA does evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs, what it doesn’t do is assess their performance relative to the efficacy of existing treatments, an essential feature of the kind of cost-benefit analyses that form part of NICE’s evaluation protocols. That has a clear knock on effect on the work that NICE undertakes for the NHS. Because comparative studies aren’t required by the FDA in order to obtain a license in what is by far the largest and most important pharmaceuticals market in the world, the drug companies do not include their in the standard trial protocols. What NICE typically get to work with are hypothetical comparative models derived from combining trial data for the data for the new drug with data from separate trials of the current best available treatment. These models, which are initially provided by the drug manufacturers, are a constant source of dispute as, naturally enough, manufacturers are prone to cherry picking the data for their models to create the most favourable impression possible, all of which can easily lead to several weeks and even months of wrangling over the validity of these models, delaying the evaluation process as a whole.
This is the real choice that the two parties are offering cancer patients and it one that best illustrated with a case study of new drug, Dronedarone, which NICE is expected to approve for use by the NHS later this year.
Dronedarone, which is marketed under the brand name Multaq, is new drug treatment for atrial fibrillation, a common from of cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), a condition for which there have been no significant advances in drug treatment for around 25 years.
Only 18 months ago, Dronedarone was being touted as the ‘next big thing’ for patients with atrial fibrillation and attracted glowing coverage in the Daily Telegraph, in a typically uncritical article which suggested that more than 300,000 patients in the UK could receive the drug, when it was licensed for use, and that it could prevent up to 10,000 stokes in that patient group every year.
In January this year, the drug hit the headlines again, on this occasion because an initial technical appraisal of the drug, which was licensed in the US in July 2008, recommended against approving it for use by the NHS. Inevitably, this was picked up by the media who ran the story in line with their usual narrative, under which NICE were accused of refusing the sanction of the use of the drug for bureaucratic reasons relating to its cost relative to existing treatments.
What’s much more interesting, and revealing, about these two stories, which were published only 16 month apart, it the very different estimate the later story gives for the number of patients who were thought likely to benefit from Dronedarone. From an initial 300,000+ cited in September 2008, this figure has now fallen to a mere 40,000, a drop of around 87%.
Clearly, something else was going on in the background – something that the Daily Express chose not to disclose to its readers.
What the Express didn’t mention
What has in fact happened was that, even before it was licensed, the trial results for Dronedarone had failed to live up to early expectations. In fact what the manufacturers own data showed was that, for the vast majority of patients with atrial fibrillation, Dronedarone was only half as effective as existing drug treatments for this condition, all of which are considerably cheaper because their patents expired several years ago, allowing them to be produced as generics.
As a result, although the drug was licensed by the FDA in July 2009 it was awarded only a restricted licence, one that limited it use to a specific subset of patients for the purpose of reducing the risk of heart-related hospitalisation where those patients also had one or more other significant cardiac risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, a prior stroke or advanced age (i.e. over 70). This was, and still is, the only patient group for which there was clear evidence that the drug performs better than existing treatments.
Dronedarone is also required, in the US, to carry a ‘black label warning’ prohibiting its use with patients with two specific types of heart condition, both of which cause give rise to atrial fibrillation, after a trial that included patients with those conditions had to be stopped before it was completed because preliminary data showed that the drug doubled the mortality rate in those patients. That’s another minor detail that the Express chose not to mention.
This is precisely what NICE also found when it published its initial technical appraisal of Dronedarone in December 2009 and it explains why that appraisal came out against approving the drug for use in the NHS on the basis for which its initial application had been submitted. That is the other crucial omission from the Daily Express’s overheated article. Dronedarone was put forward for evaluation by NICE in November 2008, eight months before the drug was awarded it restricted license in the US and some four month before the FDA published its technical appraisal of the drug, in March 2009. Although the drug had been granted a limited license in the US in July 2009, a year after it was put forward for evaluation by the FDA, NICE were still in the position of having to evaluate Dronedarone as a potential treatment for patients that the FDA had already ruled out in the review, because that was what was on the application submitted by the drug’s manufacturer, Sanofi-Aventis.
After reviewing the technical appraisal and consulting with the manufacturer and range of other stakeholders (i.e. charities, patient support groups, etc.) NICE has now decided to recommend that Dronedarone should be approved for use by the NHS on broadly similar terms to that for which it is licensed in the US. This has been described by the Telegraph as a ‘U-turn’ – it isn’t. The post appraisal consultation that NICE undertook is a standard element in its review process and the higher cost of the drug, relative to existing drugs, was a fairly insignificant factor in the technical panels initial assessment – what actually matters was the fact that, for most patients, Dronedarone is less effective than existing treatments.
There is, however, one very important difference between NICE’s revised recommendation and the license terms set out by the FDA. Based on its evaluation of the research evidence NICE is proposing to approve the drug for use only as second-line treatment, i.e. one that will prescribed only to patients that meet the relevant criteria if existing treatment prove to ineffective or if the patient experiences any significant side-effect from those drugs.
(The FDA made no such recommendation)
This view is supported by a newly published review in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology which calls into question the value of the data quality and relevance to clinical practices from one of the key trials included in the evidence submitted to the FDA (and NICE) and cautions against the indiscriminate use of the drug in the face of efforts by its manufacturer to actively promote it for use ‘off-label’, i.e. outside the terms specified by the FDA license.
This is side to whole debate about patient access to new drugs that the public rarely sees, although if you are interested there’s a pretty good article here (may require registration) that does a fair job of explaining the controversy that this particular study has sparked off and the complexity of the issues it raises. Typically, disputes over the value of the evidence base for, and efficacy of, new drugs are played out well away from the public’s gaze on the pages of medical journals and other specialist publications. Only if something goes badly wrong, as happened with thalidomide, or if long-term follow-up studies emerge that raise significant questions about the effectiveness of particular drugs, as has happened relatively recently in the case of SSRI antidepressants (e.g. Prozac), does the public ever get wind of the kind of uncertainties and risks that remain in place, even after a new drug has been licensed for use.
For that reason, it’s actually very easy for the Tories to mislead the electorate by promising that cancer patients will receive faster access to ‘effective treatments’ even though what their policy actually amounts to is, for the most part, simply that of giving NHS doctors more scope to bypass the recommendations issued by NICE and prescribe new drugs off-label. That may give some cancer patients the drugs they want, but it in no sense offers them any guarantee that the treatment they get as a result will actually prove to be effective. Some may benefit, others may not – it’s even possible that some cancer patients may have their lives shortened or experience severe side-effects as a result of being prescribed new drugs either off off-label or under conditions in which their efficacy has not been adequately verified.
While the Tories may be able to promise faster access to new treatments, what they cannot legitimately promise is that those treatments will be effective, and that is the real debate that we should be having here, not to mention the challenge that Labour and other parties should be putting to them in response to this part of their manifesto.
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