Were the problems with the Iraq war just the basis on which we went to war, or inappropriate equipment necessitating lots of UORs ?

Do we just want to know that the whole enterprise was a bad idea, or do we want to see where and why things were done badly or well?

If we put aside the hysterical, the more reasoned problems come under three heads; timing, secrecy and outputs.

Timing

The ‘why now’ question is easily answered; British troops there have largely withdrawn. Conducting an honest inquiry would have been impossible if witnesses thought they were kicking the stool from underneath troops in the field.

The ‘how long’ question can only be answered in reference to other inquiries. If the Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly took six months to report and the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday has yet to report, why would we expect the Chilcot Inquiry to report in under a year?

This will of necessity be a painstaking process. Setting an artificial limit of twelve months will not help anyone. I would reply to anyone who says it is being put back till after the election for political reasons that desiring it to report early, half-cock, so that it can be used to hit the Labour party is also a political reason.

Secrecy

Much of the criticism has been on the issue of secrecy.

For one thing, I understand and agree with the logic of certain things being secret. Beyond the obvious issues of national security, I would make two points.

Firstly, we did not cover ourselves in glory. I’m guessing that there are plenty of people who will want to tell their part of the story but will not, for various reasons, want to do it in public. Their own conduct or that of ‘brother officers’ might have been wanting, or they might be concerned about leaving interpreters and other locally employed civilians in the lurch again.

Equally, an honest investigation will have to take information from people who we cannot compel to appear – from the USA, for instance – and who are unlikely to appear if they feel they would compromise confidences. Similarly, would (say) a representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government be likely to appear to discuss oil if their words were ferried direct to Washington and Baghdad?

Outputs

The inquiry has many issues to consider. Off the top of my head, they could include the lead up to the war, WMD, intelligence qua intelligence, use of intelligence, lack of embassy, use of intelligence from allies, the march on Baghdad, de-baathification, troop numbers, mission objectives in Basra, relations with civilians, the Awakening, civil-military co-operation, troop equipment and so on and so forth.

Quite beyond the simple questions of ‘were there WMD’ and ‘was the dodgy dossier sexed up’, there are questions about everything that happened in Iraq. There is a general understanding that we didn’t cover ourselves with glory, but after any operation of the size of Iraq, there is a need for a ‘lessons learned’ exercise. There are going to be two outputs, one public, one secret. As with the Dunblane inquiry, parts of the secret version may be declassified before the time limit to aid that process.

The ouput is not ‘Tony Blair was wrong’ but a whole range of comments, recommendations and criticisms. Those looking for an answer along the lines of ‘Tony Blair was wrong’ are missing the point and, ultimately, will make it harder for us to see where we went wrong, what lessons we can learn and how that affects and constrains future military conduct.

Ultimately, going to war in Iraq was a political decision. While an inquiry may do much, it cannot decide whether a policy was right or wrong. That is reserved for the electorate.

For the record, I opposed the Iraq war.

A longer version of this appears at davecole.org/blog

To: The Parliamentary Labour Party
Subject: Tonight’s PLP meeting

Comrades, colleagues and friends,

OK, the results are bad. The BNP won two seats, we’re down in the share of vote, the Tories took Wales and we’ve lost a lot of good councillors, not to mention some good MEPs.

However, the story isn’t that anyone has done particularly well; it is that Labour has done badly.

You’re getting together tonight to work out whether Gordon stays as our leader. The timings of the news cycle mean that Gordon’s continuing as leader and PM will start near the top of the news agenda and will move up. That debate will do us no good tomorrow.

We’d rather we were having a debate about not part-privatising the Post Office or scrapping the ID card. Instead, we have assorted rebels that will not declare themselves apparently hunting for someone to be a stalking horse. We know Alan Johnson won’t challenge Gordon and neither will Jon Cruddas. Charles Clarke? Alan Milburn? This debate does the party and the progressive cause no good whatsoever. Maybe you know something we don’t; maybe we would be better off with a different leader.

What is certain is that the debate over the leadership has stopped us having a proper debate about where we want the country and the party to go. What is certain is that the expenses scandal has damaged us; what is certain is that we will not be able to propose progressive reform of the expenses system while we’re talking about personnel.

We’d like you to make your minds up. Either find your stalking horse, or shut up. If a stalking horse is found, the procedure is laid down in the rulebook and, for better or for worse, we know what will happen. If there is no stalking horse, we’d like all the discontents and malcontents to shut up, at least until the day after the next general election, on the issue of the leadership.

If you don’t, all the focus will be on our internal problems and not on the policies we are implementing and we are proposing. The party is on the ropes. We don’t need a fight within the party as well. If you don’t sack him, you must back him.

———-
This article represents Dave Cole’s views – not that of LC.

It came to a head on Jon Stewart’s show in one of the most compelling pieces of television I’ve seen in a long time. You need to watch this. Now. (3 parts)

Part One

A few things come out of this. Firstly, news reporting in the USA is an abysmal state. Jon Stewart’s programme goes out on a network with the word ‘comedy’ in its name.

I actually feel sorry for Jim Cramer, who has unwittingly become the object of American catharsis over the poor state of the American economy and finances; he now personifies all that was wrong with news, particularly financial news, in its lack of detachment, blurring the lines with entertainment and unwillingness to say the uncomfortable.

Commercial media are always trapped between the desire to report the news ‘fairly’ and the need to make money through advertising. I’d hope that there was enough interest in ‘good’ reporting to avoid always going for the cheap and easy story; I wonder where the US media lost its sense of civic purpose and whether a liberal comedian is the best person to find it again.

While it appears he may have been in a technical breach of the rules, I would submit that the rules appear to be over strict and that their application in this case – to someone representing a political grouping – is inappropriate.

As it happens, I disagree with the sentiment expressed with Gawain Towler in the original post that caused him trouble. However,

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
~Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarising Voltaire’s attitude towards Helvétius.

Rather, it is that they are unchallenged in their position. My objection to the newspaper market in London is that it leaves great swathes of GLA and borough politics untouched.

Despite its attempts to move upmarket, ES’s news coverage is pretty poor. It doesn’t cover borough politics and only lightly covers the Mayor and GLA. There is room and need for competition for the broader (rather than just middle market tabloid) London news market. But the Evening Standard has singularly failed to capitalise on its online activities.

I believe that better news coverage and debate about London – effectively the fifth home nation – would be a good thing. The question is how.

In keeping with Guardian America and Guardian Weekly as successful sub-sets of the Guardian brand, I’d like to propose Guardian London

Its primary issues could be City Hall, including the Mayor, Assembly and executive arms; London beyond zones one and two; transport; the boroughs; the City; and informing people about the reality of London today. Over an eight-week cycle, there could be information on the council politics of the different boroughs, grouped as four at a time. To begin with, there could be a guide – one a week – to each of the boroughs. It should also look at what might be called the civil society of each borough.

The arrival of Crossrail is one particular issue that deserves attention that the existing media offer singularly fails to address. To take just one station as an example: Tottenham Court Road. Crossrail allows for the development of a better, larger, more accessible station but the Astoria and Sin will go and the Paolozzi murals on the platforms need to be maintained.

I’m sure there are similar issues at just about every station on the Crossrail line and will be in future on the Crossrail 2/Chelney line. All we will get will be a glitzy, CGI, double-page spread when it’s far too late to do anything about the changes as the station is about to open. Instead of the newspapers giving us news and comment to allow us to form opinions, they’re giving us re-cycled press releases.

It would do well to do profiles of the main people in London politics; the Mayor, various deputy Mayors, GLA members, people who run and are on the boards of the MPA, TfL, LDA, LFEPA and any future authorities for waste, recycling, education, skills, the environment and planning.

Initially, it could operate a purely online outfit. Journalists need not be retained but could be remunerated on the same basis as CiF. If successful, it could perhaps grow to a weekly supplement to the print edition in London, and perhaps the south-east, on Saturdays.

The trick would be to attract people to local goings-on – whether campaigns over a particular issue, calls for involvement, bouncing around ideas or just keeping people in the loop – by cross-pollinating from the main Guardian. There are all manner of local campaigns, organised on the internet, that act on different facets of the same issue that should be given greater, public exposure.

An example might be the Better 172 Now campaign to improve the 172 bus route; I’m sure there are similar issues that ‘citizen journalists’ could report that would be of interest to people who don’t live on the Brockley-St Paul’s route. At the moment, they are too fragmented.

Local papers often suffer from a lack of critical mass; the use of the Guardian’s existing online community and brand could help increase the traffic, as (dare I say it) could its more user-friendly website.

———————-
A fuller version of this article is at davecole.org/blog

As part of their bail conditions, they may not address any political or public gatherings until the conclusion of their case, effectively removing them from the election campaign. The ZCTU has been increasingly opposed to Mugabe since the 1990s and were involved in setting up the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC President, Morgan Tsvangarai, is a former general secretary of the ZCTU.
This is where you come in.

Lovemore and Wellington may be unable to campaign, but you can express your support for them. The ZCTU’s equivalent in the UK, the TUC, are making a giant photo mosaic of Lovemore and Wellington, using pictures of hundreds of their supporters from around the world. It will be printed up to be used as a large banner for the London demonstration on 23 June and the image will be made available to other international demonstrations and to the media.

Take a photo of yourself with your digital camera and email it to zim@tuc.org.uk or take a photo of yourself with your cameraphone and send it by MMS to 07546 229055 (0044 7546 229055 from outside the UK)

If you’re able, please take photos of your friends and colleagues as well, and send all of those to us in the same way – the more the merrier. Please just one person in each photo – not groups. If possible, make it just a head and shoulders shot, in the centre of the image (like a passport photo). Smaller photos are better if you’re emailing one in.

If you can avoid it, please don’t send large megapixel images. Of course, if you’re in doubt about how to do any of this, just send whatever you’re able to – it will all be very helpful. More information is available here.

One year ago yesterday, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was opened for signing. It has been signed by 126 states, including the UK, but only ratified by seventeen: Bangladesh, Croatia, Cuba, El Salvador, Gabon, Guinea, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, San Marino, South Africa and Spain.

What does the UNCRPD do?
Essentially, it builds on the Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities (1994) and the World Programme of Action on Disabled Persons (1982), neither of which are binding treaties.

In short, it says ‘nothing about us without us’; participating countries have to change laws and ban discriminatory customs and practices. Partly, these are promoting cultural changes, putting legal principles into place to support those changes, making physical and infrastructure changes and making funds available for those changes.

The BBC enumerates some of the key principles:

• Disabled people to have an equal right to life
• Equal rights for disabled women and girls
• Protection for children with disabilities
• A right to own and inherit property, to control financial affairs and have equal access to financial services
• Disabled people not to be deprived of their liberty “unlawfully or arbitrarily”
• Medical or scientific experiments without consent to be banned
• An end to enforced institutionalisation
• Freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse
• A right to privacy and access to medical records
• Countries to remove barriers to accessing the environment, transport, public facilities and communication
• A right to independent living
• Essential equipment to be made affordable
• A right to an adequate standard of living and social protection
• An end to discrimination relating to marriage, family and personal relationships
• Equal access to education
• An end to discrimination in the job market
• A right to equal participation in public life
• A right to participate in cultural life
• Developing countries to be assisted to put the convention into practice

So what?
If another three states ratify, the treaty will start to come into force. None of the above should be controversial; however, there is a concern that the UK government may not want to ratify the treaty because of the right not to live in an institution.

What do we do?
The disability charity, SCOPE, are asking us all to give the government a nudge and make sure that it is ratified without exemption or qualification by the end of the year. There is a petition at the Number Ten website that reads “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in full, without reservation or limitation, by December 2008”. Please take a moment to sign it. More information is available on the SCOPE webpage.

The big objection I have is that it makes the ISPs responsible for policing. This is a really bad idea. Spectacularly bad. I’m hoping that Tom Watson, as a minster responsible for this who was, as a backbencher, supportive of Tim Ireland et al during the Usmanov affair, will take note and make this point to his colleagues.

ISPs are businesses that run scared of legal threats. People like Schillings would act for the record companies and I suspect that a lot would quite happily make ISPs effectively block torrents or insist on high degrees of monitoring.

This is only one objection. The next – the big one – is privacy. For this to work, an awful lot of data would have to be scrutinised; that data would not only be the actual files being shared, but websites visited and searches made. There has been a lot of good work done by the government on data protection that could be undone at a stroke; as HMG knows, information does go missing.

This is rather different to, for instance, child pornography as the scale, both in terms of volume of data and number of users, is far greater. Honeytraps can be used in that instance, but would be impractical when six million people in the UK alone share files.

There is another problem; the technology is used to legally share files. The BBC’s iPlayer uses peer-to-peer technology; some free computer programmes are distributed over peer-to-peer networks as it saves on bandwidth. The government has announced this plan as a means to encourage the arts and culture – something of which I am supportive – in the UK. The government will be aware that people like Lily Allen came to prominence, in part, because of file-sharing and the like.

Finally, if I go to another country – let’s call it Ruritania – and create something that is legal to have in the UK but by a method that is illegal in the UK and transport it back to the UK by legal means, no law has been broken. Given that, for instance, the legal status of the Pirate Bay is very much under debate in Sweden, it seems unreasonable to prevent us from having lives overseas. This is, admittedly, a double-edged sword, as it is the mechanism that allows for tax havens and caused the Nat West Three to be extradited for wire fraud.

Nevertheless, there are implications here that the government must consider before bringing in a potentially sweeping change. I presume the government will be seeking to protect intellectual property here; it should remember that it is not the only thing that needs protecting.

————————-
This is a guest post. Dave Cole blogs here.

It is my opinion that Dr Williams’ suggestions deserve reasoned consideration; that they do not require a change in the nature of the law; and that much of the opposition to them, implicitly, requires a very grave change in the law from defining what is illegal to defining what is legal.

I think it’s important to work out exactly what the most reverend Primate is saying. It has generally been reported as ’sharia law is unavoidable’ along with cries of Londonistan and dhimmitude.

According to this transcript of an interview between the Archbishop and Jonathan Landau, what Dr Williams believes is that

“the application of Sharia in certain circumstances if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion seems unavoidable”

What I intend to do in this post is briefly to sum up Dr Williams’ argument before giving my reasons for supporting it. I will then seek to show not only that the arguments used to oppose his comments are based on misconceptions, accidental or otherwise, of his opinions and that they, in fact, to a great deal to damage community relations in the UK. Finally, I will reflect on the implications of Dr Williams’ comments and the reaction they have provoked.

1. Dr Williams’ argument.
I am basing this section on the aforementioned transcript and the text of his lecture that can be found here.

Dr Williams can probably cast his eye towards Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, declining attendances and growing secularism and realise that, one day, the Church of England will be disestablished. He is, in essence, preparing the groundwork for the Church of England to retain some of its privilege and position when that occurs. Within that framework, I think that sharia is being used a shorthand for the principle of providing a statutory framework for the implementation of religious law, within bounds set by civil law, where all parties concerned consent.

The first things that Dr Williams says are; that sharia is misunderstood; that there is no single conception of sharia; and that he does not advocate the extreme interpretations of sharia that exist.

“far from being a monolithic system of detailed enactments, sharia designates primarily – to quote [Tariq] Ramadan again – ‘the expression of the universal principles of Islam {and} the framework and the thinking that makes for their actualization in human history’”

and

“what most people think they know of sharia is that it is repressive towards women and wedded to archaic and brutal physical punishments”

He is also at pains to point out that acceptance of sharia law categorically does not mean rejection of civil law. Indeed, the examples he gives are:

in modern times, the clearest articulation of this was in the foundation of the Pakistani state under Jinnah; but other examples (Morocco, Jordan) could be cited of societies where there is a concept of citizenship that is not identical with belonging to the umma

The implication of this is that someone can choose to submit themselves to religious law but (from the point of view of the Weberian state) has no choice but to submit themselves to civil law.

Williams goes onto identify three, specific implications of the concept. They are, in short, greater attachment to law based on personal belief than state-membership; effective persecution of the most vulnerable members of society being facilitated; and the lack of necessity of exercising legal rights to any or their full degree.

Williams openly accepts that some people claim religion as a defence for all sorts of odd actions:

A recent example might be the reported refusal of a Muslim woman employed by Marks and Spencer to handle a book of Bible stories.

His answer, simply, is to say that this is a cultural trait, not a religious trait. By the terms of Williams argument, this is a non-issue. While there is a debate as to what extent some things are cultural or religious and while there are primitivist interpretations of Islam , the general principle is that people cannot claim religion to explain their actions or lack of actions without reason behind it.

The second implication is that supplementary legal opinion-givers could be used to compel weaker people to accept their judgements. This is essentially a question about social pressure. Williams’ solution is prior consent. For what its worth, I find that unsatisfactory. I would prefer prior consent to the system and consent before each individual binding judgement; it is not a problem if it is in an advisory capacity.

The third point, here, is key. Under English law, I am entitled to file for divorce from any spouse I may have. That does not mean that I have to file for divorce at any given time, or at all. If I file for divorce, a (properly constructed) pre-nuptial agreement or parting on good terms may make things all pretty easy to decide. If not, arbitration can be used without the intervention of the state. All Williams suggests is that Islamic jurisprudence should be considered as a possible source of reasonable arbitration.

Unfortunately, Williams, in a somewhat academic fashion, comes round to his point by a circuitous route. He is essentially saying not just that people should be able to choose, where the choice is freely made, an arbiter in certain legal processes but that an Islamic arbiter could have an official recognition that makes it the source of arbitration of choice, increasing the extent to which its judgements are exposed to critical assessment.

At all times, civil law would retain its absolute, unqualified primacy; any body giving opinions under sharia would not be able to go beyond what is prescribed by law.

2. The weakness of the opposition
The opposition to Dr Williams’ comments comes, to my mind, in three forms. They are wilful misinterpretation, Christian traditionalism and republican culturalism.
To deal with the wilful misinterpretation, I turn to the great organ of the state, The Sun, which asks:

YOU THE JURY
SHOULD the Archbishop of Canterbury be sacked for his comments on Sharia law?

The Archbishop of Canterbury serves at the pleasure of the Queen; I would have thought that The Sun would not want to encroach on HM’s remit.
Earlier, The Sun says

FOR many, Sharia law will forever be linked to the grainy images smuggled out of Saudi Arabia or Iran of people being beheaded or even stoned to death.

It is Rowan Williams’ belief (and it is one I share) that there is no one, singular, authoritative sharia. To conflate the extremes of Wahhabism with Dr Williams’ proposals is intellectually cheap and, to be honest, morally bankrupt.

Melanie Phillips’ has a slightly different misinterpretation. To be fair, I think that it is less deliberate; Phillips, while I disagree with her profoundly, is intellectually honest. Quoth the raven:

Either way, his proposal would also mean that Britain would simply abandon its female Muslim citizens whose parlous position in respect of forced marriages, honour killings and all the other horrors that follow from their second-class religious status would be institutionalised by giving sharia law official recognition. Dr Williams says such women should still retain the right of appeal to the English courts if their human rights were breached under sharia. What absurdity is this? It is the cultural assumptions which flow from sharia which lead to the oppression of Muslim women. How is the right of appeal to human rights law going to help women who are beaten and killed by men who do it in the name of religion? In order to protect our female Muslim citizens, we need to remove from them the yoke of sharia law, not institutionalise it with the seal of official approval.

Dr Williams does not merely say that there would be a right of appeal, but that there would have to be prior consent. Equally, there is a feminist current within sharia that Williams, I think, seeks to encourage. Certainly, I know a couple of observant, Muslim women who cannot be characterised as other than feminist in the Western tradition. They happen to bolt on to this the wearing of a veil based on a practical suggestion from the Koran – that men ogle women.

The next current of opposition is Christian traditionalism, for I which will turn to Danny Finkelstein.

As I argued in my column yesterday, this is a Christian country, even if (unbelievably) the Archbishop himself wishes it were not so. Everyone is entitled to worship any religion or none but this under British law and with due respect for the way that British traditions hold in public space.

Fortunately these traditions include remarkable tolerance for others, a welcome and interest in the practice of others and great generosity of spirit. But such values are not abstract one, conjured out of nowhere. They are rooted in this country’s history and practice as a Christian nation.

Which is, frankly, bizarre. It was Christianity that led to the expulsion of the Jews, for starters. It is Christianity that led to blasphemy being a crime that is still on the statute book. It is a subset of Christians who are trying to keep it there and keep it used. It was Christianity that led to persecution of Catholics because they were the wrong sort of Christian. It is true that Christianity also motivated (say) William Wilberforce or countless other doers of good works. To say that there is such a thing as monolithic Christianity in the UK is, frankly, ignoring several hundred years of inconvenient truths; indeed, there is a decent argument to be made that the strength of the Liberal Democrats in the far South West of England is due in no small part to arguments between Church and Chapel.
Finkelstein says:

“There are any number of places in the world where people can live under Sharia law. This isn’t one of them.
Nor should it be.”

In other words, he is saying that people cannot have a moral code different to the minimum enforced by the State so long as it does not go beyond the bounds laid out by the State.
This Christian traditionalism goes as far as to invent for itself a mythology. Ruth Gledhill’s article in the Times is accompanied by some pictures. Do please take a look at them; they represent one aspect of Islam out of many and I will say no more than that I do not believe that they help the debate.

Gledhill says that:

The Church of England was born out of an express desire to rid Britain of a foreign, ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Article 37 of the 39 says: ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.’ Queen Elizabeth I early in her reign decreed that the Crown had restored to it ‘the ancient jurisdiction over the state ecclesiastical and spiritual, abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same’.

Which is an almighty assumption. The Church of England was not born out of any one desire, but a combination of the spiritual and political desires of certain, militant clergymen with the financial wherewithal to visit parishes across the country, the King’s coveting of the monasteries’ wealth and the desire of Elizabeth I, in choosing the Via Media, to keep the country together. Equally, Henry VIII was not motivated solely by spiritual concerns but very temporal concerns, including, for instance, cosying up to the German Lutheran states in case of actions by the Holy Roman Empire in the form of Charles V.

Article Thirty-Seven of the Thirty-Nine articles does indeed refer to the Bishop of Rome. Sadly, Gledhill doesn’t quote the full article, which runs:

“The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions, unto whom the chief government of all estates of this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not nor ought to be subject to any foreign jurisdiction“Where we attribute to the Queen’s Majesty the chief government, by which titles we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended, we give not to our princes the ministering either of God’s word or of sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen doth most plainly testify: but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all godly princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself, that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil-doers. The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.

“The Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences.

“It is lawful for Christian men at the commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and serve in the wars.”

It is not my belief that the Queen is ordained by God, as article XXXVII suggests; equally, it is as much about saying that the singular Catholic authority had no power, as it claimed, in either the temporal or spiritual affairs of England. Firstly, that is a fiat. Secondly, it was written in 1563 and as such may not be completely adequate for today’s world. Thirdly, they have never been universally accepted; indeed, the Archbishop of Armagh said, as long ago as 1643, that

Some of them are the very same thing that are contained in the Creed; some others of them are practical truths, which come not within the proper list of points or articles to be believed; lastly, some of them are pious opinions or inferior truths, which are proposed by the Church of England to all her sons, as not to be opposed; not as essentials of Faith necessary to be believed by all Christians ‘necessitate medii’, under pain of damnation.

The argument I have most often heard for maintaining the position of the Bishops in the House of Lords is that they can do the detailed thinking on moral issues for a predominantly Christian country. The debate on the issue has been reduced to hectoring and invalid heuristic by not just the gutter press but by papers like The Times, the newspaper of record, with a heavy dose of wilful ignorance of and outright hostility to Islam because it is the fashion of the day.

We then have what I term republican culturalism. That is to say, the promotion of an official state culture with what are, essentially, republican goals on the French model. The most succinct example I have found of that so far is on Donal Blaney’s blog:

The maxim “when in Rome, do as the Romans” springs to mind. If muslims want to live under sharia law or a caliphate they are of course free to do so – outside Britain. Our country is based on the rule of law and equality before the law. If these extremists who so hate Britain want to leave, maybe we ought to offer to pay their airfares. For if we truly want social cohesion, the adoption of sharia law is the worst thing we can do.

I reject, in the very strongest possible terms, the maxim that Blaney cites for two reasons. There are many things about our polity that I dislike and I do what I can to change them; I consider it to be an obligation on a citizen. Sadly, most people do not, and I would not like people to let their beliefs slide and not try to enter into debate around them; that is moral cowardice. Secondly, the Muslims in question are British. They are, at any rate, at least as British as George III was. Although he said, in his first speech to Parliament, that

born and bred in this country I glory in the name of Briton

he was the son of immigrants, the first Hanoverian to be actually born in England and was also a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire and latterly King of Hanover. I reject the territorial assertion of nationality; it is a much more complex, nuanced matter.

It may well be that some people who confess the Islamic faith wish to do live under a caliphate. I do not; however, I believe that they have a right to argue for Britain to become a caliphate. I believe that if they want to use the provisions of English law in new, innovative and legal ways, they should be congratulated on their ingenuity, wished the best and made it clear that I won’t stop saying that I disagree with their choices.

These are not people who hate Britain; they can, quite easily, go to other countries. However, the many advantages of living in Britain mean that they would rather stay here. All that Dr Williams has suggested is that we might, within the existing spirit of the laws, make some accommodations. I will return to this theme in my closing remarks.

3. Effects on social cohesion
As I have said, I believe that some people have deliberately misconstrued Dr Williams’ words. The effect is to suggest to the readers of, inter alia, The Sun that there is a realistic possibility of Saudi-style sharia becoming the primary source of law in the United Kingdom and that the Primate of All England supports the idea. That raises a hostility that becomes misdirected from its misbegotten birth.

What Dr Williams has suggested is that the strict delineation that some seek between ‘Western’ or ‘Christian’ sources of law and ‘Eastern’ or ‘Islamic’ sources of law is not in any way helpful as it leads to unnecessary tensions between culture, religion and citizenship. His argument is that these can be ameliorated by, as occurs with the battei din, accommodations within the existing legal framework. This goes on an informal basis, but formalising it could improve the situation by increasing transparency, visibility and accountability.

Let me turn to the comments of one of my favourite bloggers, Iain Dale:

I don’t want any form of Sharia Law in this country at all. Ever. That is not being Islamaphobic. It’s my opinion and it’s one shared by 99 per cent of the British people, as well as, I suspect, by the majority of British Muslims.. Sharia Law has nothing in common with British values and parts of it could fairly be desribed as downright evil. Anyone who believes that women and men are equal in the eyes of society and the law could not countenance it.

Let us replace sharia law with Jewish law, and see how that sounds. The battei din exist and get on with life without the approval or otherwise of Mr Dale. Even Nye Bevan, who declared in no uncertain terms his views on Tories:

No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party

did not seek to ban Tory rule. I would have hoped that Iain – as someone broadly within the liberal tradition – would have recognised that I can live my life as I see fit and, so long as I remain within the law, his opinions matter not a hoot. What is being proposed by Dr Williams is the same.

It suggests to me that a great deal of the problems around Islam in the UK at the moment is due to the rampant paranoia expressed by some commentators, aided and abetted by a general anti-religionism (and no, I don’t mean anti-clericism) of the Dawkins variety.

I turn to the effects of Dr Williams’ proposal by looking at one particular aspect, mutah. I do not present myself as expert, so let me explain that I understand mutah to be a concept within the Shia interpretation of Islam that provides for temporary marriages which, for the duration of the marriage, lay certain obligations on both parties analogous to a ‘full’ marriage and whereby any offspring cannot be disowned by either party after the expiration of the body of the arrangement. It is, in fact, a contract, as is marriage. Making an allowance for a contract of this nature would (it can be contended)

4. Implications
If I have a contract with someone and we wish to renegotiate that contract, there is no obligation for that renegotiation to have any recourse to the state. English law says what is illegal, not what is legal; there is no prescription of the ‘good’ life. Therefore, I can conduct myself, within the law, in any manner I see fit. If someone has a problem with that, they are welcome to polemicise and to remonstrate, as am I. From this principle, we have arbitration. In (say) a labour dispute, parties can accept the binding judgement of a third party as to what is ‘fair’. If we change that, we are fundamentally changing the nature of liberty in the UK.

I find it deeply worrying; people who set themselves up as defenders of liberty are, in fact, falling on half-understood interpretations of religious texts from some centuries past in what is, in effect, the result of the fear of the unknown.

These are sensitive issues; sobriety is needed. The reaction of many sections of the press – to put words into the Archbishop’s mouth that are quite different from what he said – inflames tensions in the name of money. God and mammon, indeed. The assertion of Christianity, tradition, history and cultural norms I find repugnant as it is an appeal to the dead and not to reason. Equally, the assertions are based on misinterpretations, which makes me think that they are phobic of Islam; they have an unreasonable, pathological fear. There are, for instance, sections of Islam that would shut themselves off from all who don’t agree with their interpretation of the world. Making any generalisation about contemporary Islamic practice on the basis of such a group is like comparing the Church of England to the Exclusive Brethren. I would add that the official Christian tradition in England is, at least since the first Elizabeth, that of the Via Media. It is a tradition of accommodation and delaying unnecessary conflict in the hope that it dissipates.

I state the point again, because it is important. The right to arbitration exists already; formalising it could actually improve some of the problems with extremists in British Islam at the moment.

If people want to go to arbitration, they can choose whichever arbiters they like, whether I’m happy about it or not. Equally, to suggest that looking at alternate sources of law is totally unreasonable – particularly when the call comes from a religious figure who presumably wants some sort of Christian law – and not even worthy of debate is a little strange; after all, we have a mix of sources of law in the UK already, statute and precedent.

I suppose you could say if Mohammed will not come to the magistrate, the magistrate will have to come to Mohammed.

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This is a guest post. Dave blogs at: DaveCole.org

According to the Observer, it would cost ‘at least £150m a year’. I think a closer figure is £212m per year* (my workings are at the end of this post). Whether or not it survives, I think the Conservatives – and I mean this genuinely – are to be congratulated on putting forward an ambitious, policy proposal. I hope that full, detailed costings and implementations are brought forward.

The advantages, to my mind, are obvious. It may be that the money could be better spent elsewhere or could be targeted within this area or somesuch but the basic principle – that intervention by the state in the earliest parts of life can have a profound, positive impact on later life – is sound.

This applies to education and what might be called ‘good citizenship’ as well as health. What will be interesting is its effects on the parties. The traditionalist part of the Conservatives (’old Tory paternalists’) might like something that ’supports the family’ while the small government side will probably scream in pain. On the other side of the gangway, Labour’s front bench will oppose it on grounds of cost, being a gimmick and because you can’t concede anything while in government. I will be very interested to see what the CPAG say and how Labour reacts to it.

It is possible that the policy is a gimmick; if it is, it will be forgotten in short order, slightly damage the perception of politics and occasionally be brought out by Labour to hit the Conservatives. I hope not as the policy is, at least, worth discussing. Labour have nothing to lose by entering into a debate about it.

To do so is statesmanlike; if the idea is sound, it can be implemented in a bipartisan manner with input from both sides; if it is not, it can be used in argument against the Tories.

Does anyone know if the Lib Dems have said anything about it?

*[According to the National Statistical Office (FM1 no. 35 pp1, PDF), there were 669,601 live births in England and Wales in 2006. If each of those received six hours’ nursing care a day for, say, five days after leaving hospital, we would have a total number of working hours of 20,088,030 per year. If we assume that a maternity nurse (or full-time equivalent) works forty hours a week and have the statutory amount of holiday, each nurse would work for 1,888 hours per year. Assuming that there is currently no slack in the system (ie no nurses can be redeployed) and that there is no slack in the future system (ie it will be possible to provide perfect coverage with no illness, absence etc.), we would need to recruit 10,640 nurses. Outside London, the annual pay for a general nurse with three years’ experience is £19,935, giving a total gross salary bill of £212,108,400 per year. That’s before you add in administration, medicines, liability insurance, training, retraining, mileage and so on.]

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This is a guest post. Dave blogs at DaveCole.org