Why our politicians don’t want to discuss foreign policy
contribution by Ben Six
In the twilight of 2009, Afghan investigators accused the International forces of “kill[ing] 10 youths, eight of them school students inside two rooms in a house, without encountering any armed resistance.”
NATO dismissed these claims, saying that “non-military Americans” had “fired in self-defence after being shot at by villagers”.
A source told Jerome Starkey of the Times that it had been “a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time”.
An ISAF statement added that “several assault rifles, ammunition, and ammonium nitrate used in bomb-making [had been] discovered”.
Nevertheless, as Afghanistan united in condemnation, it called for “an immediate joint investigation”.
For weeks, though, nothing more was heard. Dave Lindorff of Counterpunch phoned up the Pentagon who, limply, claimed that the ISAF were pursuing their inquiries.
So little was cared about the incident, it seemed, that when he dropped a line to the House Armed Services Committee, they asked him to send them details.
Finally, in late February, Starkey reported a NATO official’s admission that “knowing what we know now, it would probably not have been a justifiable attack…we don’t now believe that we busted a major ring”.
“Ultimately,” he went on, “[W]e did determine this to be a civilian casualty incident“. “Incidents such as this“, the Times was told, “Do not reflect any conduct that ISAF would condone and it is not the way ISAF trains any of our Afghan partners”.
That, it seems, is all that their “investigation“‘s come to. Strange, really, as their knowledge just after the killings was so rich. The “assault rifles” they claimed to discover have vanished without trace, and the only “ammunition” we’re sure exists was fired into the poor, dead students.
We still don’t know who the killers were. Several officials have admitted to the presence of American forces, but “US [troops] based in Kunar denied any knowledge of the raid” and “Nato insists that the troops were not part of the International Security Assistance Force”.
No one has been willing to identify – let alone accept responsibility for – the “non-military Americans”, or the Afghan troops that it’s claimed were with them.
All we have are the memories of the poor, petrified Afghan villagers who offered accounts to Jerome Starkey. The men and children, some of them as young as twelve, were killed without the slightest sign of aggression towards the fierce, night-goggled troops.
“Most were shot at close range where they slept”, we’re told, while another was dragged from his marital room, to be executed along with his three nephews. The families have seen no justice, nor received any closure; just “$2,000 compensation for each person killed”.
The killers, we must guess, walk free: safe and unnamed, without even a half-hearted slap on the wrist. Their organisation, whatever it is, has escaped embarrassment, let alone censure. The ISAF haven’t explained their many false accounts: the mystery gunfight, the “IED” reports or the non-existent “discovered” armoury.
The media is asking no questions. When Brown, Clegg and Cameron walk out for the “defence” debate, their smug assurance won’t be troubled.
It’s under the mat, with just a hint of red seeping from up beneath.
Could Clegg turn the tables on the Tory press?
If it was inevitable that Clegg would face a backlash in the Tory press after his strong performance in the first leaders’ debate, what may have surprised some is the clear sense of panic and desperation evident in the attacks mounted byboth the Sun and The Daily Mail, even with CCHQ seemingly pulling the strings.
Reputations are clearly on the line, and nowhere more so than at News International which faces the prospect of being seen to have backed a loser for the first time since the mid 1970′s.
Unless Cameron chokes next week, the one thing we can be sure of is that the Tory press will all dutifully line up and declare him the winner of the debate.
With that firmly in mind, I think there’s something to be said for the idea of Clegg using next week’s debate, the last chance he’ll have to address the electorate on an even footing with the other parties, to go for broke and treat the Tory press to a bit of Soprano’s style politics.
I would, in fact, go a bit further and suggest that there are three thing that Clegg could do, during next week’s debate, to turn the table on the Tory press and use the attacks he’s been subjected to, this week, to his own to his own advantage.
1. Back the BBC and put Cameron on the spot over Murdoch
Okay, so this the obvious one to go for in a debate televised by the BBC and I fully expect that the Beeb will find some way of handing both Brown and Clegg an opportunity to get after Cameron and his relationship with the Murdoch press.
What Clegg would need to do, in order to set up the rest of his attack is talk up the Beeb’s repuation as a global news broadcaster and fire off a couple of shots at Murdoch’s Fox News, where the obvious target is its misrepresentation of the NHS during the ‘Obamacare’ debate.
That may mean agreeing with Brown, who’d be a fool not to try and get in a jibe about the whole ‘dealth panels’ business but that’s a price worth paying in order to set up the rest of the attack
2. Play the Libel Reform card
Okay, so this isn’t a ‘doorstep issue’ and it’s unlikely to win the Lib Dems many votes but, used properly – and succinctly – is has a a fair amount of tactical value when it come to setting up the press for the sucker punch that’s waiting in the wings.
What matters here is not so much the Lib Dem’s strong support for libel reform – although it won’t hurt Clegg to put that over – but the background to the current libel reform campaign, which stems from opposition to the misuse of English libel law as a means of suppressing legitimate debate on matters in which there is a clear and overriding public interest.
If Clegg can get that point across, establishing his support for the legitimate use of press freedom in the process, then he would be ideally placed to blindside the media establishment, press home the attack and…
3. Link reforming the political system to the need for a free and honest press
Get the set-up right and this is where Clegg could easily go to town on both his opponents – and on the Tory press as well.
Let’s not forget, after all, that both The Sun and The Daily Mail have spent much of the last decade or so backing New Labour. That, plus the The Sun’s very public shift behind Cameron, should give him plenty to material to work with here.
It was, after all, The Sun that put the most effort into selling the now-wholly discredited notion that Saddam Hussein could not only deploy WMD’s within 45 minutes but also had missiles that were capable ot raining his non-existent WMDs down in British forces based in Cyprus, while the Daily Mail’s track record of supporting many of the most unflinchingly illiberal pieces of criminal justice legislation introduced by New Labour in the last 13 years, should provide ample scope for dragging Dacre into the frame.
Okay, so an open attack on the Tory press would need a take a bit of deft handling and Clegg would need to exercise a fair degree of care in drawing a clear distinction between the kind of investigative reporting that was undertaken by the Telegraph during the expenses scandal and the febrile ravings of the tabloids, which serve only to poison the democratic well.
It is, however, an attack that could be carried off and one that would resonate with the electorate.
Missing the point on booze marketing, again
So there’s yet another alcohol-bashing study out. This one says [*] that sports stars’ drunk behaviour has no impact on young adults’ drinking behaviour (that’s ‘over 18s’, or ‘legally responsible adults’), but that alcohol marketing does.
This isn’t surprising. Of course alcohol marketing makes people drink more of the brand being marketed, otherwise people wouldn’t do it. But we need people to research things that seem obvious from time to time, because sometimes we find out that what we think we know is wrong. So, decent study, worth funding, all good.
But:
There’s always been a link made between alcohol and sport… the detrimental effects of that, in the same way as there was previously between cigarettes and sport,” Professor Kolt said.
Err, no. The difference is that smoking, full stop, is harmful. Alcohol consumption below 30 units (300ml of alcohol; 15 pints of bitter) a week has not been demonstrated to do harm, even compared to not drinking at all, and you need to get up to 50+ units before the risks of morbidity or mortality are substantially higher than for non-drinkers.
Unless the study shows that the impact of alcohol marketing is to encourage people aged 18-22 to drink more than 30 units a week, then it’s only of interest to alcohol marketers, and not to policymakers. And if they had found that, they’d most certainly have put it in the press release…
The problem with this kind of alcohol research (i.e. social science on consumption behaviour, rather than epidemiological science on health outcomes) is that nearly all the work commissioned and published by public bodies is carried out by miserable puritans who hate the concept of anyone ever having any kind of fun. This is because researchers who don’t hate the concept of anyone ever having any kind of fun work for drinks companies instead: they pay better, you get a free bar after work, and you don’t have to hang out with people from the first group.
But drinks companies tend to keep their studies private, because they don’t want their rivals to see them…
Therefore, the general pattern in the public arena is that some people will create a report which actually shows mildly interesting things about how people like to consume alcohol – but because of the prejudices of the people who’re writing it, the abstract and the PR make groundless accusations about negative impacts on disorder and health. And then the media reports the groundless accusations as “a study has concluded that”, and the public debate is ratcheted slightly further towards miserable puritanism.
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[*] I have no idea what the study says. The above is what the press release says; the press release features quotes from and has been approved by the study’s main authors, and is what will shape the public debate.
Indy tweaks ‘Truth’ vid after Murdoch blitzkrieg
What is it about this election? It’s shining a light on more and more of the Powers-That-Be and their magic circle.
The media are abuzz with the story of how James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks/Wade stormed The Independent‘s offices uninvited after a meeting at the Daily Mail, berating editor Simon Kelner for taking on the Murdoch empire’s unaccountable political influence.
Today the Indy blares of its own new proprietor, “Lebedev won’t decide these elections. You will”. And without announcing it, they’ve also changed their relaunch video – “The truth about the general election” – in one very significant way since the Murdoch-Kelner showdown. Here’s the new version:
Spot the difference?
That’s right – they’ve added a criticism of the Liberal Democrats (for taking money from an arms dealer) to their earlier challenges to Murdoch, Ashcroft, Unite and the City.
(UPDATE: Looking at the vids side by side, it’s clear they’ve also changed the default image, funnily enough to highlight the phrase “Rupert Murdoch controls 40% of the press in Britain”.)
What’s it all about? Like anyone smart, the Indy are thinking on the hop as the wave of change grows right now. People have been speculating about where precisely their aggressive relaunch fits into the landscape of the Citizens’ Campaign stirring in the country. Some thought they would openly endorse the Lib Dems. Perhaps the odds on that weakened after Murdoch’s henchmen stormed Indy HQ.
But they’re not laying down their own arms in surrender to the establishment. Today the Indy calls out The Sun for suppressing its own poll showing more public support for the Lib Dems in government.
I predict more fireworks in the normally-cosy Fleet Street. The proprietors’ non-aggression pact has concealed their murky influence for too long.
Could The Independent tap the mood of the country, challenge the Tory tabloid press and endorse a reforming parliament with no overall majority? If so, that and their free paper strategy could catapault them into a newly interesting – and influential – position.
In any event, their focus on the unaccountable Powers-that-Be, rather than simply on the parties, is fresh, clarifying and important.
I for one am delighted about these shenanigans. Which doesn’t mean we should give Lebedev and Kelner a free pass. From now on, accountability for all.
(Here is the old version of the Indy video, sans Lib Dem arms dealer:)
2/3rds of voters want an English parliament
Two thirds of voters (68%) in England believe England should have its own Parliament with similar powers to those of the Scottish Parliament.
The figures are revealed in a new ICM poll for the Rowntree-backed democracy campaign group Power2010, published today on St George’s Day.
A huge guerrilla-style projection of the St George’s flag with the words ‘Home Rule’ onto the Palace of Westminster will take place today too.
The ICM poll shows a large majority (70%) of voters say that laws for England should be made by the House of Commons but only MPs representing English constituencies should be able to vote on them.
English Votes on English Laws (EVoEL) is one of the five changes to fix politics backed by over 100,000 votes which now forms the POWER Pledge being put to all candidates standing in the General Election.
The poll of 1033 people across England also shows that less than a quarter (23%) of people in England feels either “more English than British” or “English not British”.
Almost half – or 46% – of those questioned in the poll say they feel “equally British and English”.
24% of those questioned said they feel either “British not English” or “more British than English”, according to the poll. POWER2010 says this means that the fairness of decision-making matters more to people than Englishness.
Director of Power2010, Pam Giddy, said today:
The question of English government has not featured in this election campaign so far – and certainly not in the leaders’ debates. Yet we now know people want a fairer way of making decisions that affect England.
It suddenly feels like we are on the cusp of seismic changes to the way our politics is done. But so long as the unfair system we have at the moment persists it can only play into the hands of undemocratic voices like the BNP. With all the talk of reform in the air politicians should not duck the English question, but use the opportunity of St George’s day to say where they stand.
From a press release
Related: A new tactical voting widget has been launched by the Vote For a Change campaign
A night of convenient questions for Dave
So, last night’s leaders debate was pretty dull – much less fun than last week.
However, I’m sure many people were surprised to hear Sky News allow a question on immigration – indeed, almost an identical question to one posed last week.
Yet there was no question on foreign development aid – something that the Tories slashed in half but Labour has made big advanced on. Nor, shockingly, a direct question about electoral reform, just some vague fluff about potential coalitions.
Now why might this be?
I don’t want to sound, y’know, paranoid – but what’s the deal with Murdoch-owned Sky News’ questions? It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that last week the only questions that Cameron scored highly on (according to the BBC’s “worm”) were…immigration and crime?
Or that PR is a topic that public discussion of which would benefit the Lib Dems? Or that foreign development aid is something Labour can be proud of?
Either way, that looked like another clear win for Clegg. And Brown was worse this week – but so was Cameron.
BBC News’ “worm” tracker of Ipsos Mori-selected focus group response just recorded a big popularity boost for Cameron when he talked about immigration. Again.
How convenient for Dave that he could repeat last week’s successful mantra. Thanks Rupert.
Three quick predictions about tonight’s debate (updated)
1. The audience figures will be low – possibly around 3 million rather than the 10million last week.
2. Clegg won’t be declared the clear winner like last time by the press or the public (don’t think he did that well)
3. Clegg’s ratings and the Libdem figures will slightly fall, but this won’t be due to the debate but rather my expectations that some initial support will wear off by about 2%.
Insta-polls:
YouGov / Sun: Cameron: 36%, Clegg 33%, Brown 29%
Com Res / ITV: Nick Clegg: 33, Gordon Brown: 30%, Cameron: 30%.
Angus Reid: Nick Clegg: 35% Cameron: 32%, Gordon Brown: 23%
Populus/Times: Cameron 37%, Clegg 36%, Brown 26%
Guardian/ICM: Clegg: 33%, Brown: 29%, Cameron: 29%
Even Mail readers ‘angry’ with Nazi slur on Clegg
I was invited this morning on to BBC Radio 5 Live’s Victoria Derbyshire programme (listen from 40 min in), along with The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh and former media editor of the Times journalist Dan Sabbagh.
You can hear an intro to the programme, and then it cuts to the specific clip. A listener calls in….
If you can’t see the media player, then you’re using Internet Explorer and you’ll have to click the Mp3 file directly in order to listen to it.
[Or get yourself a browser from a company that doesn't screw with its competitors - Unity.]
Transcript: (from 21 secs in)
Tom: The way media interpret these things is really important. I contacted you because of the reaction my parents had given what was published this morning. They are Daily Mail readers. They are Telegraph readers. They voted Tory since Thatcher. They voted Tory in 1997. They, like me, do not want a Labour government.
They felt uncomfortable with Cameron, particularly with his Inheritance Tax policy. They’re ordinary middle-class people and they do not have anything like the kind of wealth to see them benefiting from that.
And, erm, I think it has been incredibly important that, or rather the way the papers have reacted today have been important in solidifying their opinion that they are not going to vote for the Conservative.
Vic Derbyshire: Right. So they are blaming the Conservative supporting newspapers they read for these attacks on Clegg and it is making them not to vote Conservative?
Tom: No, no. I think they moved from their position. They wanted an anti-Brown vote… (“right”) I think they moved in that position already.
I think the influence of the papers…erm, they wanted a debate, and particularly with the Nazi slur on Clegg, they are very angry about that. (“are they”).. [inaudible] both of the papers they buy, to have an open, honest debate, and they are not seeing that.
Did Dacre meet Murdoch to discuss Cleggmania?
It’s now open knowledge in Fleet Street that this morning James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, nee Wade, burst into the Independent editor Simon Kellner’s office.
Michael White wrote about it here this morning:
What seems to have upset them are ads that the Indy has been running along the lines of “Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election – you will.” Brooks apparently rang Simon Kelner, the editor-in-chief and now chief executive of the Indy to complain that dog does not eat dog in Fleet Street.
That means that editors and owners do not attack each other in person – not their politics, their finances or their private lives. Remember the running battle, later patched up, between the Daily Mail and the once-mighty Daily Express over the former’s habit of referring (correctly) to Express owner Richard Desmond as a pornographer? That sort of thing.
You’d think it was pretty outrageous that the Murdochs can’t even stand being pointed as big influencers in this election.
But here’s the question not many seem to be asking: how did they get into the building?
The Independent and the Daily Mail share the same building. Perhaps Murdoch and Brooks didn’t barge in straight to see Kellner at all. Perhaps they were already in the building.
Here is Channel 4′s Gary Gibbons:
You can very easily get into the Indy’s offices if you are already paying a visit to the Daily Mail offices that share the block. I haven’t managed to stand up that there was a meeting between Paul Dacre and the Murdoch delegation yesterday but it would be intriguing and very unusual if there was.
Unusual, but surprising? Probably not. The right-wing press are not only pissed off that their prize is slipping, but they are very, very angry.
Did Paul Dacre meet with News International executives to talk about strategy? It’s a very real possibility isn’t it…?
Update - related piece by Michael Wolff
Later in the afternoon, in a coming-apart-at-the-seams scenario, Rebekah Wade/Brooks and Murdoch’s son, James—who will both face the wrath of Murdoch senior if they don’t produce a winner—stormed over to the Independent, breached its security systems, barged into the offices of the Independent’s editor-in-chief and top executive, Simon Kelner, and commenced, in Brit-speak, a giant row. Their point was that newspaper publishers don’t slag off other newspaper publishers in polite Britain, but also the point was to remind Kelner that he wasn’t just slagging off another publisher, he was slagging off the Murdochs, damn it. Indeed, the high point of the screaming match was Wade/Brooks, in a fit of apoplexy and high drama, neck muscles straining, saying to Kelner: “And I invited you to Blenheim in the first place!” Blenheim being the Murdoch family retreat and the highest social destination for all Murdoch loyalists and ambitious Brits in the media.
This is one way for empires to end.
Ouch!
Mail on Clegg: pot calls kettle Blackshirt
‘HURRAH for the Blackshirts’ is probably the most famous headline in Daily Mail history. But today’s ‘Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain’ will one day surely rank right up there with its well-known predecessor.
Let us not forget that the middle market tabloid was openly sympathetic to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, and repeatedly eulogised Hitler and Mussolini in editorials throughout the 1930s. It is, in short, the last newspaper that should be in the business of accusing people of ‘Nazi slurs’.
On the off chance that you are not a Mail reader, here are the offending quotes from Nick Clegg that are said to constitute an ‘astonishing attack on our national pride’:
All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still.
A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. We need to be put back in our place.
Such remarks are neither original nor particularly profound. It is observably true that sections of the British ruling class mistakenly cling to the idea that Britain plays a leading role in world affairs.
This is encapsulated in the notion of ‘punching above our weight’, a concept popularised by John Major’s foreign secretary Douglas Hurd during a briefing at Chatham House.
The reality – as everyone who has ever picked up an international relations textbook will be well aware – is that the Suez crisis pretty much put paid to that. For well over 50 years, British foreign policy has taken its direction from Washington.
I am currently reading Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘The End of the Party’, a detailed account of the 2001 and 2005 New Labour administrations. The early chapters centre on the process whereby Blair committed this country to participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
The notion that he was at all times subservient to Bush, seeking only such concessions as would enable him to market the war to the electorate, is hardly a new one to me. Even so, Rawnsley’s documentation of the sheer extent of the prostration is enough to take even a hardened Stopper like yours truly by surprise.
I am not by any means an admirer of Clegg or his party, and would not seek to deflect even the most savagely-worded legitimate attack on their policies. But today’s flimsily-concocted, mean-spirited and totally disproportionate broadside is, even by the standards of Paul Dacre, something of a low.
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