Edward McMillan-Scott MEP may take legal action against the Conservative Party after an internal appeal panel upheld his expulsion from the party.

He says his treatment went beyond that of any Conservative MP involved in the Westminster expenses scandal, and that the five year ban contrasts with the two year expulsion of Den Dover, the former Tory MEP who was expelled for two years in 2008 when he refused to pay back “unduly” claimed expenses payments worth over £538,000.

This is not about me: it is about the values of the next British government … In the context of the Westminster expenses scandal, for which no Conservative was expelled, this will be seen by many as a serious case of double standards. The party seeks to prevent my candidacy in the next European election merely for taking a stand on matters of personal conscience. This raises very serious ethical, legal and political issues. [Telegraph]

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That is one of the questions we’re asking at Saturday’s ‘Causes to fight for‘ Fabian new year conference.

In a piece for the New Statesman’s Staggers blog yesterday, I looked at the particular challenges for Labour in reconnecting to disillusioned liberal-left voters as part of the task of rebuilding the broad electoral coalition which won it three election victories.

Here’s a snippet:

The focus of Labour’s campaign has been on ensuring the Conservatives face the scrutiny of a would-be government in waiting. That the Conservatives are ahead in framing the election year can be seen in how often Ministers seem forced to contest Tory narratives – a debt crisis, the broken society, or the (ludicrous) idea that Labour has declared ‘class war’.

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‘Big government’ is often attacked as political rhetoric. In the abstract, we all like to be agin it.

Yet, on every specific issue, from child protection to the collapse of the banks, most of the public calls are very often for government to do more.

Especially when it snows.

I would suppose that a ‘big government’ approach to heavy snowfall would place a good deal of emphasis on local Councils as having the taxpayer-financed responsibility for clearing the roads, and letting business and life carry on as far as possible, and paying particular attention to vital emergency services.

Mightn’t a ’social responsibility’ approach suggest we should rally around and sort it out for ourselves?
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Fabian Research Director Tim Horton’s proposal that the inheritance tax thresholds should be frozen was adopted by the government in November’s pre-budget report.

He has letters in The Guardian and (why only preach to the converted) The Telegraph pointing to just one of the glaringly obvious flaws in Phillip Hammond’s rather back of the envelope claim that 4 million people will now be liable for inheritance tax, put out by the shadow Treasury Secretary during the holiday period.

Here’s The Telegraph letter.

SIR – The Conservatives’ claim that four million face inheritance tax (report, December 29) is wrong.
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It seem to have worked out for the cerebral and shy Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, treading gingerly into the high profile area of the right to self-defence this week.

Perhaps a tiny amount of over-reach? Indeed Melanie Phillips thought Grayling had gone well over the top in ‘endorsing mob rule‘. David Blackburn of The Spectator thought it was populism at its worst, and The Times was equally unimpressed.

The Shadow Home Secretary may well have been angling for a Daily Mail headline. But Tories’ licence to kill a burglar may have been a little stark even for Grayling.

Rather predictably, all this meant that the Shadow Home Secretary in effect reversed his position within 24 hours.
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Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, who I have to admit has much better Tory connections than I do, writes that “I gather that Boris is highly unlikely to stand for a second term: he has his eyes on the No.10 prize and would need to get back into Parliament somehow”.

This will fuel speculation about whether it is part of a long softening up exercise, so that a final Boris decision not to run does not come as a political bombshell.

I looked at the case for Boris wanting to get out for Liberal Conspiracy at the time of the Standard interview. The fear is not only the damage that a political defeat in 2012 could do to brand Boris; it is also that being in City Hall until 2016, aged 52, would mean missing a return to the Commons at a 2014/15 General Election, and so a good chance of not being an MP during the next Tory leadership contest.

Boris no doubt relishes the image of a man willing to tear up the political rulebook.

But there are three reasons why I don’t think he will duck out of the 2012 race – and why not running again does not really seem to be as smart as those promoting the “one term strategy” may think.
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A victory for Carter-Ruck and Trafigura in the High Court as the BBC have offered this statement in open court with regard to Newsnight’s reporting of the dumping of toxic waste by Trafigura off the Ivory Coast.

That Trafigura illegally dumped 500 tons of hazardous waste in Abidjan in 2006, leading to a public health emergency where many thousands of people sought treatment, is not in dispute.

Trafigura has paid $200 million to the government of the Ivory Coast and settled in London for £30 million a joint action made by 31,000 Ivorians.

Trafigura has insisted on the BBC accepting that the toxic waste dumped by the Probo Koala did not cause deaths, serious or long-term injuries, and withdrawing Newsnight’s report alleging that it did so. Trafigura’s victory today is that the BBC has agreed to do so.

Carter-Ruck told the court in the agreed statement that the multi-million pound compensation settlement involved a joint statement between Trafigura and those affected which “recorded that the experts instructed in that case had been unable to identify any link between exposure to the slops and the deaths, miscarriages and chronic and long-term injuries alleged”. The BBC now also accept this and withdraw their report to the contrary.

United Nations Special Rapporteur Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu had earlier concluded in a report published on 3 September 2009 that:

On the basis of the above considerations and taking into account the immediate impact on public health and the proximity of some of the dumping sites to areas where affected populations reside, the Special Rapporteur considers that there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping of the waste from the Probo Koala.

Does this not raise the question as to whether Trafigura or Carter-Ruck might not also want to attempt legal proceedings against the UN Special Rapporteur directly, rather than only taking action against media organisations attempting to report on the controversy caused by the dumping incident?

Critics have described this as creating an atmosphere of “libel chill” against legitimate public scrutiny.

The BBC’s concession has already fuelled calls for libel reform, as Left Foot Forward report.

English PEN and Index on Censorship have expressed dismay at the outcome.

Their joint statement says

We believe this is a case of such high public interest that it was incumbent upon a public sector broadcaster like the BBC to have held their ground in order to test in a Court of law the truth of the BBC’s report or determine whether a vindication of Trafigura was deserved. The deal is neither open nor transparent.

They believe that costs were a major factor behind the BBC’s decision. They cite the leading media lawyer, Mark Stephens of FSI, the cost of such a case would have been in excess of £3 million.

John Kampfner, CEO of Index on Censorship said today:

Sadly, the BBC has once again buckled in the face of authority or wealthy corporate interests. It has cut a secret deal. This is a black day for British journalism and once more strengthens our resolve to reform our unjust libel laws.

Carter-Ruck will no doubt differ – and may well consider their defence of Trafigura’s public reputation to have been another resounding success.

8000 people have signed the petition for libel reform bill at www.libelreform.org

Could you keep a £61 billion secret? Its not always easy, says Chancellor Alistair Darling in his interview with Mary Riddell for the forthcoming Fabian Review, extracted in today’s Telegraph.

He was, he says, “living on the edge for a while. There were many days when I knew that unless the Bank was making [covert] interventions [such as the secret loans of £61.6 billion to HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland], then literally banks would have had to shut their doors and cash machines would have been switched off.

People should be in no doubt that the world banking system was on the brink of collapse in October 2008 … It was [irksome] to have people sniping at the edges, saying: ‘You should have done this or that’ when I couldn’t disclose what I was doing. I couldn’t have said: ‘By the way, the banks are about to collapse, but I’m doing something about it’, because the very act of saying that would have been disastrous.

The interview was conducted just before the pre-budget repot. The newspaper finds enough significance in a passing comment on ID cards to make a ‘Darling signals death of ID cards‘ news story of it.

This is the entirety of Darling’s discussion of the issue.
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Why isn’t Dave a banker? The Times reports his City in my blood pride at his banking heritage:

David Cameron attempted the balancing act yesterday of wooing the world’s most powerful bankers while assuring Middle England that he would not give that most hated profession too easy a time.

Speaking to a gathering of top financiers, the Conservative leader told them: “My father was a stockbroker, my grandfather was a stockbroker, my great-grandfather was a stockbroker.” The City, he assured them, was in his blood. Those present, who included Bob Diamond, president of Barclays, and Richard Gnodde, the co-chief executive of Goldman Sachs in London, purred their approval.

The Times report suggests it was an exercise in characteristic Cameron ambiguity, and not one which did much to answer the same newspaper’s challenge yesterday – “David Cameron has yet to answer a basic question: what does he stand for?”
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Growing climate change scepticism on the political right has been one of the themes of a week in which David Davis gave voice to the Parliamentary dissenters to David Cameron’s (welcome) “hug a huskie” enthusiasm, while the Australian Liberals ditched a leader over his support for legislation to reduce carbon emissions.

Andrew Grice reflects in his Independent column, quoting the well informed Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home claiming that the dominance of climate scepticism around the Tory blogosphere, documented here on Next Left is not simply an internet phenomenon buzt reflects majority sentiment among Tory MPs, candidates and activists.

Tempting though it may be to dismiss this as leftist stirring, that seems a good right-wing source.

If Montgomerie is right about the strength of scepticism at all levels, then it is not at all surprising that Grice reports that there are ’sleeper’ allies at the top table.

So, who are they? Tips, educated guesses and/or evidence from previous statements very welcome! I don’t think any member of the Shadow Cabinet will think the balance of risk would make it worth a showing a bit of leg to grassroots sentiment, not this side of a General Election anyway.
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Congratulations to Lord Pearson, newly elected leader of the UK Independence Party. He has already hit the headlines this morning by revealing that the party offered to disband, or stand down for this General Election at least, if David Cameron had pledged a retrospective referendum on Lisbon, which is quite an interesting day one secret plot revelation for a leader just elected by his members.

Though little known on the left, Pearson is admired and liked by several Tory Eurosceptics, as Iain Dale and Tim Montgomerie testify.

The most interesting profile of Pearson that I have seen was an admiring profile God’s Eurosceptic, published in the Sunday Telegraph back in 1997 when he was first promoting a private members’ Bill to get Britain out of Europe.

Lord Pearson certainly does “do God” – and claims a personal connection with the Almighty which is more direct than any political leader, certainly since Gladstone, after a religious experience in which he believes a messenger from God appeared to him while he was being operated on to have varicose veins removed in 1977.

Pearson says that the experience has led him to dedicate his life to the fight against evil – represented by the European Union, bureaucracy, socialism and Islamism.

Pearson believes that Ukip should highlight Islamic fundamentalism as just as important a threat to the British way of life as the European Union. (Did the forthcoming UKIP result on Friday influence David Cameron’s unexpected decision to raise Islamism and Hizb-ut-Tahir’s alleged involvement in schools at PMQs on Wednesday?)

Pearson has already sought to give a high profile to the issue, bringing Geert Wilders to Parliament. But Pearson has seemed somewhat confused in insisting he makes a distinction between Muslims and Islamists, which was certainly not easy to discern in his recent comments about comparative birthrates which are very much of the ‘Enoch was right’ school, evoking very directly Powell’s fear of an alien element having ‘the whip hand’ in Britain.

Lord Pearson’s own outspoken views about Islam were recorded in Washington DC last month. Asked how much time Britain had before losing control of its cultural identity he said: “What is going to decide the answer to that is the birthrate. The fact that Muslims are breeding ten times faster than us. I do not know at what point they reach such a number that we are no longer able to resist the rest of their demands . . . but if we do not do something now within the next year or two we have in effect lost.”

He later insisted that his remark was directed at Islamists. “One is talking about the violent end of the spectrum,” he said.

Friends and foes might agree that we may be hearing a lot more from Lord Pearson.

Almost nobody outside the political classes has yet heard of Chris Grayling, the populist, telly-themed soundbite obsessed shadow Home Secretary.

But while his colleagues attempt a liberal love-bombing strategy by posing as progressive, Grayling is already gearing up for what could prove a very successful bid to achieve Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe levels of notoreity.

Here’s his latest headline-grabbing wheeze.

Tories to demand: are you married? reports The Sunday Times.

Official forms will routinely demand to know whether a person is married under Conservative plans to promote stable families.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, claimed that, under Labour, marriage had become a “non official institution”. In an interview with The Sunday Times, he pledged that a future Tory government would make it a priority to raise the status of married life. “Marriage has almost disappeared from official forms, from official documents,” he said. “I think that needs to change.”

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I am not a fan of the political ventriloquism of how the Queen’s speech works.

It is a good thing to have some pomp, ceremony and history associated with the opening of Parliament. But a better approach would be for the Queen to be able to speak as Head of State about the value of Parliament and the democratic process, with her government’s substantive programme of legislation then set out by the Prime Minister and government ministers whose words these are.

The opening line today “my government’s overriding priority is to ensure sustained growth to deliver a fair and prosperous economy for families and businesses” – captures how the speech is inevitably caught awkwardly between jarring effects if it gets any closer to the language of a political manifesto (”my government will govern for the many not, the few”) and being unable to say anything at all about why the measures are being introduced, so that the Queen must simply read out a staccato shopping list of legislation.

Still, it is very good to hear the Queen set out that her government will push on to “enshrine in law its commitment to abolish child poverty by 2020”.

That is a reminder too that the legislative ambitions set out in the Queen’s speech need to be combined with choices on priorities for spending and taxation in the pre-budget report and budget to show how to values of fairness can best combine continued commitments to tackle poverty and reduce inequality with the commitment to halve the current budget deficit across the next Parliament.
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Stuart White, Next Left blogger and director of the Public Policy Unit at Oxford University, had previously offered readers a fair and factual critique of the successes and failures of Labour’s record of poverty and inequality, scrutinising David Cameron’s claims that the Conservatives should be considered the party of the poor.

Now Channel 4 news have also done their own detailed fact-check on David Cameron’s claim about Labour’s record on poverty and inequality that

Poverty and inequality have got worse, despite Labour’s massive expansion of the state.”

On a scale of 0-5, where 5 means “absolutely no basis in fact”, Cameron’s speech scores a 4 on poverty, at the top end of the scale which suggests “misrepresentation, exaggeration, a massaging of statistics and/or language”.

That is because he claims that poverty has risen under Labour when any reasonable account would report that poverty has fallen.

Fact check find that his inequality claim stands up better – scoring him at 2 out of 5.

That may seem fair given that the Gini coefficient measure of inequality has risen slightly, as Labour’s efforts to ‘run up the down escalator’ slowed down sharp rises in inequality but did not reverse them.

However, the rise in the Gini is caused by runaway inequality in the top 1% and particularly the top 0.2% – while the 90:10 gap between those 10% from the top and 10% from the bottom has narrowed under Labour.

And David Cameron’s speech offered a (somewhat Blairite) critique in arguing that this is not the inequality that matters.

That doesn’t mean we should be fixated only on a mechanistic objective like reducing the Gini co-efficient, the traditional financial measure of inequality or on closing the gap between the top and the bottom. Instead, we should focus on the causes of poverty as well as the symptoms because that is the best way to reduce it in the long term.

And we should focus on closing the gap between the bottom and the middle, not because that is the easy thing to do, but because focusing on those who do not have the chance of a good life is the most important thing to do.

Labour can stake a reasonable claim to have reduced inequality between the bottom and the middle, which is the inequality which Cameron thinks matters.

In challenging that, David Cameron does also rely on some statistics about severe poverty which Channel 4 note “are not thought to be reliable another to get the quality stamp of being published as official statistics”.

C4 Fact Check here.

A more detailed rebuttal also by James Graham: David Cameron’s vision of a McSociety

The Conservatives may not complete the repeal of the Human Rights Act and the introduction of a new British Bill of Rights in their first term in office if they were elected to government. And it is also becoming increasingly difficult to work out what substantive difference the policy would be intended to make.

“I would like to think we could do it in the course of a parliament”, shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve tells Joshua Rosenberg in an interview for his Standpoint magazine column.

Perhaps the more important part of the policy is that Britain will not pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights – so British citizens will keep the right to appeal to Strasbourg. (Tory Eurosceptics like to grumble about this, but in doing so they are usually appealing to the public’s inability to tell the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union apart).

More broadly, he makes it perfectly clear that Britain will not pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. We will not be able to send people to countries where they will be tortured, he promises. Whatever else happens, individuals alleging breaches of their human rights will still be able to take the British government to the European Court in Strasbourg

And so the new “British Bill of Rights” will seek to protect the convention’s rights British law, to prevent British citizens having to go to Strasbourg to protect those rights. Rather as the Human Rights Act has sought to do, it seems to me.
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David Cameron yesterday said of the man the Conservatives have chosen to lead their new European grouping, Michal Kaminski:

“I see this as a totally politically-driven campaign and particular nonsense.

“In terms of Michal Kaminski, who I have met, he is not a homophobe, he’s not a racist, he’s not an anti-semite. When he came to the Conservative conference the one event I know of he had lunch with the Israeli ambassador.

But there remain many serious and contested questions about Kaminski.

Does David Cameron think Michal Kaminski told the truth about his political history when questioned about it before and after becoming leader of the ECR? If not, why not?

Following our earlier post, here is a recap on just some of the claims made since becoming leader of the ECR which have fallen apart.
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291 women and 4559 men have been elected to the House of Commons since women were enfranchised in 1918. So those shouting “not in my name” and “meritocracy” to argue against the possible means of all women shortlists do have a prima facie case to answer.

David Cameron’s claims that his party gets it enough to continue if he fell under a bus is rather challenged by the ferocity of the response from the Tory netroots. Aspiring candidate Iain Dale declares not in my name while the Isaby/Montgomerie co-premiership at ConservativeHome seems to think the sky might fall in. (Tory ppc Joanne Cash has offered a rare pro-leadership view).

By definition, meritocrats must share the goal of “fair chances and no unfair barriers”.

The simple question: what is the cause of the scale of under-representation? And what is the solution to deliver fair chances and equal representation?

2001 was the last General Election in which no party used an all women shortlist measure. How did we do on gender equity? Most noticed a small drop from 120 to 118 women in the Commons. The real story was missed. Just 9 out of 92 MPs elected in mainland Britain were women. Not quite 10%. The Conservative class of 2001 – 38 white men and 1 women (2.5%)- was well below the post-1918 historic Commons average.

So whose meritocracy is it anyway?
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It is a happy thought that the finest legal minds at Carter-Ruck solicitors will have spent most of today explaining to the equally well-renumerated suits at Trafigura why their tried and tested writ happy playbook has overnight caused the firm even more reputational damage even than dumping that waste off the Ivory Coast and trying to avoid making any settlement for ages did.

And given how blogosphere versus mainstream media debates so often go around in circles while missing the point, it is good to see us all working together on the side of the angels this time.

So I not sure whether it is Carter-Ruck 0 Guardian 1 (own goal; blogosphere assist) or Blogosphere 1 Trafigura 0 but its pretty clear that they are lucky to get nil.

Now, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger tweets:

Now support BBC Newsnight which is being sued by #Trafigura and #carterRuck over toxic waste expose.

Good thinking! Let’s get those writs flying again. But at least we’re all watching closely now. But, more broadly, wouldn’t it be a good idea to use this enjoyable moment of consciousness-raising to think about how we might sustain our attention and sort out a few deeper issues out too. Others may have a range of ideas. Here are three modest proposals of my own:
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Gordon Brown’s speech seemed to me very effective in rallying the Labour party to fight the election like their lives depended on it. I imagine its core themes would resonate with a broader public too (though one can not judge from inside the bubble).

The speech showed how the challenges of presenting a sharper electoral choice and entrenching a Labour policy can be linked. The last 200 days of government ahead of the General Election and certainly going to be busy.

I think the symbolic aspects of this agenda are a good idea. Putting the UN 0.7% target for aid into law is a good way to ask the Conservatives to ‘ratify’ Labour’s enormous achievements in international development. And there was also good electoral sense in the moves on social care, on cancer (with a Jed Bartlett West Wing influence), on prioritising education, on free childcare for 250,000 2 year olds, and commitments to protect and increase the minimum wage and child benefit. There is good electoral segmentation. One experienced campaigner told me “there are a lot of issues here which, with a bit more detail, we can turn into good leaflets to campaign on.”
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I enjoyed reading the Alan Clark diaries back in the 1990s. They merit their classic status, in capturing a political age, while the dramatic descriptions of the plotting in the final days of the Thatcher premiership mean they are a historical document which will endure.

As Robert Harris writes in his Sunday Times review, “the universal acclaim for the high literary quality of his diaries, transformed Clark’s reputation. From sinister, adulterous crypto-fascist he morphed into lovable, roguish national treasure”.

And yet Ion Trewin’s authorised biography may be becoming the occasion for a reversal in reputations, with several reviewers focusing less on the personal infidelities for which Clark became renowned as on the extent of his fascist sympathies.

Dominic Lawson led the way, putting Clark bang to rights in a devastating Independent column last week. But this is also a theme followed up by Edwina Currie in The Times, and in Robert Harris’ Sunday Times review too.

This is the Alan Clark conundrum: how were literary talent, and a reputation as an entertaining and incorrigible rogue, enough to make a national treasure of a man who made little effort to hide his pro-fascist views? After all, Clark gained Ministerial Office, and was even able to return triumphantly to the House of Commons in 1997 before his death.
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