However, a peerage remains a significant public honour which reflects an important measure of esteem in our political community. (This is why some trouble is supposed to be taken to ensure that peerages go only to fit and proper personages).

A certain Mr Michael Ashcroft, who was in his own words “totally serious about my desire to be known as Lord Ashcroft of Belize”, failed to meet the obligations which were made a condition of his becoming a Lord and which his peers expected him to observe as a matter of personal honour. (Ludicrously, the Lords appointments commission believes it has no power to look again at a process overseen by its now abolished predecessor).

What a shambles.

Yet, as Mr David Cameron reminds us often, social responsibility is not only and always the duty of the state.

So, as a small and symbolic mark of disrespect, this blog will henceforth refer to the non-dom billionaire as Not-Lord Ashcroft.

May we commend the practice to the blogosphere.

It sounds as though it could be a major talking point at the LibDem spring conference in Birmingham this weekend, where it may not meet with universal acclaim among party members.

The LibDem leader is back in “savage cuts” territory, by arguing that the deficit should be dealt with only by spending cuts and no tax rises, which outflanks Cameron and Osborne on the right. (Nelson contrasts that with a Tory approach of 80% cuts to 20% tax rises ratio, and Labour 66% to 33%).

Age, he claims, has taught him the point of Maggie Thatcher. And, apparently, he now seems to see her as something of an inspiration, praising her for her victory over the trade unions.

Clegg may well be decisively outflanking the voters on their right too. (Left Foot Forward had an interesting discussion of this question of the tax/spending balance last Autumn; and this month showed public fear of spending cuts may outweigh fears of the deficit).

The timing of the high-profile interview suggests that the LibDem leader tends to seek sharper public definition through the Blairesque tactic of aggravating many of his own own activists.

It would also seem to signal that Clegg has his sights rather more on anti-Tory defence in the south-east and south-west than in taking the urban fight to Labour.

Last Autumn, Clegg retreated on the “savage cuts” language which horrified shadow cabinet colleagues, while Steve Webb swiftly dismissed the leader’s desire to means test child benefit.

I wonder if the oppose all tax rises line will survive.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said:

‘This is a momentous development in the long journey of empowering our women.

‘The bill that is going to be passed today is a historic step forward, a giant step forward in strengthening the process of emancipation (of women),

‘Our women faced discrimination at home, there is domestic violence, they face discrimination in equal access to education, healthcare, there are all these things. All these things have to end if India were to realise its full potential.’

‘What we are going to enact today is a small token of homage to the sacrifices our women have made in nation building, in the freedom struggle, in all other nation building activities.’

There are currently 59 members in the 545-member Lok Sabha. The new rules will set a floor of 181 women MPs. This method of a national quota will see all women constituency contests between the different political parties in chosen constituencies, which may rotate over time.

In the highly unlikely event that Britain were to adopt as radical a gender equality measure as India, the number of women in the House of Commons would rise from the current 126 to at least 216 women MPs.

More information here

Hannan makes a series of partisan points in his paean of praise to Eric Pickles, but he also offers a rare acknowledgement from the right that wanting lower spending and less government as a matter of principle is a minority pursuit, quietly admitting that “the country” can not be convinced on that basis.

If the Conservatives win the next election – and I remain convinced that they will – there will need to be drastic action to restore order and sanity to our public finances. In order to win that argument, ministers will need to convince the country, not just that large minority who want spending reductions on principle. It is perfectly possible to have voted Labour in 1997, wanting the government to spend more on public services, but to feel that things have gone too far. It is perfectly possible to have been satisifed with the level of taxation and borrowing as recently as 2008, but to be horrified by our Greek-level deficit today.

You could call this the ‘most taxpayers don’t agree with the taxpayers alliance’ insight.

It may be churlish to quibble with this tacitly centrist advocacy – but you could question “large minority” a bit too.

Findings depend on what question is put and how. But the longest established British Social Attitudes academic series, offered lower spending and lower taxes against either the status quo, or more spending with higher taxes, then even moderate moves in favour of the “populist” Taxpayers Alliance/Tea Party mission win the support of 8%.

With most of the party base believing the answer is more more Tory Red Meat, this apparent outbreak of centrist sensiblism from Daniel Hannan may come as some small measure of relief.

Tuesday’s Times carried a letter in support of the reform, which saw current and former senior Anglican Bishops joining other voices who represent faith traditions which want to be able to register and celebrate civil partnerships. These included liberal Judaism, Quakers and Unitarians who believe the measure is required to uphold their own religious freedom and individual rights.

The Times also reported that “the government has yet to decide whether to back the amendment. It wants to avoid another confrontation with church leaders.”

However, the Bishop of Leicester, who convenes the 26 bishops in the House of Lords, is publicly supporting the amendment. The case that opponents of the amendment entirely contradict themselves on the principle of freedom of belief has been made powerfully by Iain McLean in an open letter to the Bishop of Winchester and by Stuart White.

I have sent this letter to Harriet Harman, as Minister for Equality, to urge that the government support the amendment.

—-

Harriet Harman
Minister for Equality

Dear Harriet

I am writing to urge that the government back Waheed Alli’s excellent reasoned amendment to the Equality Bill, which I understand is to be tabled in the House of Lords on March 2nd . This would make it legal for civil partnerships to be registered on the premises of religious associations who wish to do so, without creating any obligation on the part of those religious groups who do not wish to do that.

The introduction of civil partnerships has been one of the great achievements of this Labour government, bringing enormous personal happiness to many people and a broader pride for many across our country at the successful civilizing advance which this popular social change represents.

This relatively modest further change would once again mean a great deal in the lives of many people undertaking a civil partnership. I believe it would further strengthen the landmark Equality Bill which you have done a great deal to champion. In doing so, it would both protect and extend the principle of freedom of conscience in a way which ought to command a broad consensus.

You will have seen that an impressively broad coalition of voices – from a wide range of different faith and secular perspectives – have voiced their support for the measure, including senior current and former Bishops in the Church of England as well as from a range of other faith perspectives. It is certainly one which campaigners for equality across the Labour Party also support. The Times newspaper has also made a powerful argument in favour of the reform.

That breadth of support reflects the sensible way in which this has been proposed, demonstrating respect for differences over the principle of civil partnerships among faith groups. It also reflects the strength of the underlying principle to which the amendment appeals.

Those advocating that the principle of religious freedom means that no church or faith group should be coerced into having to register civil partnerships must surely extend that religious freedom to other faith groups, who should not be refused the opportunity to do so in accordance with their own conscience and belief. Otherwise, their own argument becomes an incoherent one.

Nobody has yet explained how the principle of freedom of belief and conscience could possibly be used to argue against the proposed amendment, since that is the core principle which it seeks to uphold.

Given how much you personally, and the government generally, have done to advance the cause of greater equality and fairness in Britain, I do hope that this reform is one which the government will support.

Best wishes

Sunder Katwala
General Secretary
Fabian Society
(writing in a personal capacity)

——

Anyone who wants to back the campaign is encouraged to e-mail Harriet Harman via enquiries@geo.gsi.gov.uk or to message her or Ben Bradshaw via Twitter.
You can also sign up to the campaign at http://equalitybill.com/the-campaign/

Its being organised by the Freedom Association, starring right wing Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

As we will no doubt hear again and again, its a good moment for an anti-tax revolt.

After all, the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey shows public support for tax cuts and spending cuts has doubled since 1997, from 4% to 8%.

Public support for increasing taxation and public spending is now at its lowest level since the early 1980s. 39% support this, down from 62% in 1997. Only 8% support cuts.

The most popular view, held by 50%, is that spending and taxation levels should stay as they are.

It will be a long hard road to Libertopia, even if those who gather on Saturday may understimate that, but perhaps the Tory revolutionaries do realise that their real battle will be with their own leadership.

And perhaps the launch of the tea party should also prompt fiscal conservatives on the right to take on the fiscally ludicrous “oppose all tax rises” fundamentalism of the Taxpayers’ Alliance and their allies.

The Dutch government collapsed early on Saturday morning, with the Dutch Labour party leaving the coalition over a disagreement with Christian Democrat Prime Minister Balkenende’s proposal to extend the country’s military commitment in Afghanistan, beyond the coalition’s earlier agreement to withdraw by the summer with all Dutch troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of the year.

The 16 hour long Cabinet meeting had led Labour leader and deputy PM Wouter Bos had pulled out of Friday’s progressive governance conference in London, at which British PM Gordon Brown was joined by centre-left premiers and party leaders from around Europe.

Labour’s withdrawal from the Cabinet leave the government without a majority coalition, and will lead to new elections within three months. The parties face local elections on March 3rd. Dutch public opinion backs the Labour stance on withdrawal, though is equally divided over whether the issue ought to end the government.

The Netherlands has had the most volatile politics in western Europe in the last decade.

Geert Wilders’ populist anti-immigration Freedom Party (PVV) hopes to make significant gains, having won 9 seats as the fifth largest party in the last elections in 2006.

Wilder’s PVV finished second in the European elections, ahead of Labour, and Reuters reports that the most recent national opinion polls now have the PVV in second place.

A Feb. 14 Maurice de Hond poll put the [Christian Democrat] CDA on 27 seats, followed by the anti-immigrant Freedom Party (PVV) on 25 seats and the centre-right Liberal Party VVD on 22 seats. A Feb. 18 Politieke Barometer poll put the CDA on 32 seats, the PVV on 24 and Labour third with 21.

There are likely to be major political developments ahead of the campaign.

It has been widely anticipated in the Netherlands that Balkenende to be replaced by the Christian Democrats as party leader before the election, with Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen likely to take over.

That change may well prompt a change in the Labour Party leadership too, with Wouter Bos having twice led the party into elections against Balkenende.

Bos’ modernising campaign achieved a significant Labour recovery in the 2003 elections, reversing much of the damage of the heavy defeat in 2002 in a campaign which saw the rise and assassination of the populist Pym Fortuyn. But Bos’ Labour Party then had a disappointing result in 2006, as it lost seats and failed to emerge as the largest party. It is much less clear who the next Labour leader might be, with an open field of several potential candidates if there was to be a leadership change.

One outcome of the political crisis will be to make any future Christian Democrat-Labour alliance a very unlikely outcome.

The Christian Democrats have not ruled out forming a coalition including Gert Wilders, and nor has one other centre-right party, the economically liberal VVD, of which Wilders was a member until 2004.

However, the third party in the outgoing coalition, the moderate conservative Christian Union has done so, joining the social democratic, liberal, socialist and green parties in forming a “cordon sanitaire” in which the parties have said they have “unbridgeable differences” which mean that they could not join a government with the Freedom Party.

—————
cross-posted from Next Left

Here he is, looking quite incredibly glum on losing the Tory-held seat of Stafford to make him one of the less well remembered victims of 1997’s Labour landslide. It was an image turned up by Peter Hitchens’s investigation into the enigma who would be PM.

Which I mention in order to wonder what young Dave would make of the latest command and control edicts from his older self, the self-styled great decentraliser of British politics.

The Mail on Sunday reports Tory MPs fury at Cameron’s “control freak” approach whereby which all candidate communications with the voters must be signed off as on message b CCHQ.

Sitting MPs standing for re-election have always had the right to say what they want without any prior checks. But now we have to get everything vetted first. These Big Brother tactics are going down badly. MPs should be trusted to write their own literature in their own way without diktats from party bosses.

The Conservatives tried to laugh off the “Tory twitter police” report a week ago, noting that it would be impractical to pre-vet any tweet. Yet the substance of the story as reported in the Mail was correct. As ConservativeHome also reported, (producing a direct quote from the relevant email which did not appear in the Mail), candidates had indeed been told to pre-approve any communication or blogpost addressing a national policy issue, whether major or minor.

All candidates were instructed to “check all newspaper articles and press releases, videos or blogposts about national issues with the relevant Press Officer.”

But what would young Dave have done?

And can he, in all honesty, make these demands of his candidates if he would clearly have ignored them himself?

The biggest national policy issue for the party in the 1997 campaign was Europe.

The deep Tory rift led to the unprecedented dramatic mid-campaign spectacle of John Major pleading with his own candidates not to “send the British Prime Minister naked into that conference chamber with nothing to negotiate, with nothing to wring the best deal out of our partners”.

As Major told the nation, and the candidates carrying his Tory standard in the General Election:

“No one at this moment, no one whatever they say, whatever their predilections may be, wherever their instincts may lie, no one can be absolutely certain in what way it would affect us, or what the outcome will be, whether we joined the single currency, or whether we stayed out …

Whether you agree with me or disagree with me; like me or loathe me, don’t bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British nation.”

200 of his candidates ignored the Prime Minister’s entreaties, and issued their own personal communications to their voters, pledging they would “never” support euro entry.

Among those Tory rebels, refusing to follow his Prime Minister’s insistent line to break ranks with his own message, was the ambitious, young candidate in Stafford, Mr David Cameron.

So tweets Tory prospective parliamentary candidate Joanne Cash, who resigned on a Monday and un-resigned on Tuesday from the Westminster North candidacy, explaining that:

I did resign. Assoc did not accept. CCHQ has resolved specific issue so I am not leaving. It’s official DC has changed the party!!!!!!!!

Paul Waugh has a very full account of “the farcical scenes at the plush Commander gastropub” in a little local difficulty in which party chairman Eric Pickles, the hereditary deputy leader of the Tory peers Lord Strathclyde, David Cameron himself, Michael Gove and several other party luminaries were heavily involved.

The upshot appears to be that Cash’s one-day resignation has succeeded in removing her enemy in the local party – who was constituency chair and, ever so fleetingly, elected constituency president by the members.

Which raises the question: does the episode show how “DC has changed the party!!!!!!!!”?

Perhaps Cash is intending to say that Cameron stands up for his A-listers. She is a smart libel lawyer of liberal views. As more or less the only candidate to speak out publicly for Cameron on all women shortlists, may have a good claim to the mantle of the leading Cameron loyalist on the candidate list.

Yet many observers will think the scale of the leadership intervention not unconnected to the web of connections linking Cash to Tory high command: her husband is a close friend of the leader since they were at Eton together; Michael Gove gave the main speech at their wedding.

Here, the Cameron “change” agenda might be thought to be restoring the leadership traditions of Tory patronage which stretch back to Lord “Bob’s your uncle” Salisbury’s penchant for including his relatives in government, while Cameron appears much more willing to challenge and overturn the strong traditions of Tory local association autonomy than any recent predecessor has been.

Andrew Pierce of the Daily Mail reports:

Mrs Sayers, to the dismay of Miss Cash and her supporters, was seeking an unprecedented fourth term as chairman of the association. So Miss Cash – who it is believed decided she could not work with Mrs Sayers – mobilised the big guns and privately enlisted the support of Eric Pickles, the Conservative Party Chairman, to help ensure she was toppled.

Matthew Carrington, a former Tory MP and party apparatchik, duly announced in the meeting that it had been agreed by ‘Mr Cameron, Mr Pickles, and Mr Coulson [the Tory spindoctor]‘ that Mrs Sayers had to go.

Party members reacted in fury to this interference from on high. Then, in an astonishing move, Mr Pickles arrived at the meeting and, admitting it was ‘unprecedented’ for the national chairman to be involved in such a seemingly minor dispute, reiterated the wish of the leadership for Mrs Sayers to be ousted.

With the meeting in uproar, Mrs Sayers agreed to quit – and Mr Pickles departed content that he had done his master’s bidding …

Then it all got a bit messier, before Cash, Cameron and CCHQ secured a happy ending with perhaps a little more publicity than they had envisaged.

So how has David Cameron changed the party?

The Conservative leader talks rather a lot about decentralising power, though with a characteristic vagueness as to the means.

At the same time, it is surely increasingly obvious that, for good or ill, he has believed in the tightest possible centralisation within the Tory party itself.

———–
Cross-posted from Next Left

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]

The MEP had been a party member for 43 years and represented the Conservatives in the European Parliament for 25 years from 1984-2009. But he was stripped of the Tory whip last year, sitting as an Independent, and later expelled from the party after his fellow MEPs voted him Vice-President of the European Parliament, when McMillan-Scott stood against Michal Kaminski, the Polish Law and Justice politician.

McMillan-Scott challenged Kaminski for the Parliament’s Vice-Presidency after he had warned David Cameron about Kaminski’s extremist past. However, Kaminski’s defeat in the EP vote led to Tory Timothy Kirkhope standing aside so that Kaminski could instead become the controversial leader of the Tories’ new European parliamentary grouping.

He also argued there is a “double standard” in the Conservative failure to take any similar action against MEPs Daniel Hannan and Roger Helmer, noting that they also actively oppose party policy on Europe by campaigning for British withdrawal from the European Union as members of the ‘Better Off Out’ group.

McMillan-Scott has described Hannan as “Dog-whistle Dan”.

I stood against Kaminski because he represented the rise of disguised extremism at a key moment in European politics – the start of a new European Parliament which saw gains by the far right in 13 out of 27 EU countries, including the BNP in Britain. [Independent]

Criticism of Law and Justice’s populist and xenophobic authoritarianism is not confined to the left. A Daily Telegraph editorial argued that the party’s heavy defeat in the Polish General Election in October 2007 were the result of “their willingness to pander to xenophobia, their use of state institutions to persecute political opponents and their diplomatic ineptitude repelled many younger voters”, with 80 per cent of young Polish voters telling pollsters they felt “ashamed” of the Law and Justice government.

Donald Tusk’s liberal centre-right Civic Forum party now governs Poland, though Law and Justice retain the Presidency ahead of Presidential elections this year.

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’.

The related charge that Labour has a ‘core vote’ strategy does not stack up: the party was rather more vocal in its condemnation of ‘fat cat’ support for a windfall tax over ‘rewards for failure’ under Blair in 1997 as it has been over banker bonuses now.

The intention is to intimidate Labour into muting its positive argument. This should be framed around the idea that “fairness doesn’t happen by chance”, and is a question of policy choices not political language, with substantive tests – in who we tax, and where we spend – of what a politics of fair chances and fair rewards means as distributional choices get tougher.

More here…

Keep up with The Staggers here. Launched not long before Christmas, the new rolling blog has quickly established itself as an essential bookmark.

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?

So you wouldn’t expect local candidates and councillors whose political parties rail against big government to be pushing for more to be done on the side roads and pavements, though this seems to have been a common theme from local Labour, LibDem and Tory and non-partisan voices.

Similarly, at a national level, the severity of sustained conditions have led to worries about a grit shortage. The Conservative opposition is among those calling for more planning, to try to ensure resources are available and are rationally distributed, reflected in the Cabinet Office-led civil contingencies approach to looking at where salt needs to go most.

A similar instinct has been shown in Tory concerns over gas supplies and energy security.

It would be strange if a bit of bad weather were to trump the laissez-faire instincts of the libertarians.

So I am sure Hannanites of the Adam Smith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Taxpayers Alliance will shortly point out how all of these problems are caused, yet again, by too much regulation rather than too little. (Though we seem to hear so much less about Iceland from them these days).

Still, don’t forget that big government is always the route of all of our problems.

Except when it isn’t

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.

For most households, the value of wealth owned at death will be less than the value they currently hold. Many people use some of their wealth in older age – whether to pay for care or to do things in retirement. So, you cannot use the current distribution of wealth across all households to calculate who will face an inheritance tax liability in future.

The reality is that only the richest two per cent will pay inheritance tax this year. Even in the boom years, only around five per cent of estates paid the tax.

So Labour should stick to its guns on this issue. The Conservative plan to cut inheritance tax is no more than a billion-pound giveaway to the very wealthiest estates in Britain.

At a time when David Cameron is also promising deep cuts to public services for middle-income households, most voters will think he has the wrong priorities.
Tim Horton
Research Director, The Fabian Society

This is far from the first time that the Conservatives have deliberately misled as to who would benefit from this policy.

George Osborne absurdly told The Guardian in July that the policy was designed to help those who took up the right to buy, though he knows that his proposal does absolutely nothing for those whose estates are worth less than £325,000, or £650,000 for couples.

“We’re very clear that millionaires should pay inheritance tax. But people who have worked hard, bought their own home, sometimes it’s a council house that they’ve bought … The proposal … includes all sorts of people with inheritances of less than a million pounds.”

The claim to want millionaires to pay is equally bogus, given that Osborne has devised a policy where couples with estates of £2 million will pay nothing. (It took almost a year for the Conservatives to disclose the £2 million policy publicly, then telling The Telegraph that “”This has always been our position; it’s just that we haven’t shouted about it”).

And only couples with estates worth over £2 million will benefit from the maximum (half a million pound plus) tax break on offer.

—————-
cross-posted from Next Left

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.

The Times reported:

Chris Grayling said that prosecuting people only where their defensive actions were judged to be “grossly disproportionate” was a serious option but said that it may not necessarily be adopted when the Conservatives reviewed the law on burglary.

He appeared to soften his position after questioners suggested that the term “grossly disproportionate” would condone the use of disproportionate force against burglars. Mr Grayling told The Times: “I am not in any way suggesting that a Conservative government would create a licence to kill. But I am saying that, at the moment, the law does assume that householders who are under threat can look at things in the cold light of day. The world does not work like that and who knows how any of us would react when confronted by a knife-wielding burglar.”

Yet the terms of that climbdown would appear to confirm that the Shadow Home Secretary hasn’t read the law he is talking about, as those pesky Guardianistas had pointed out the previous day, public spiritedly offering him a handy crib.

“what should give him pause for thought, if he only took the time to read it, is the letter of the current law. Section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 codifies the traditional common law, and it squarely gives the benefit of the doubt to people defending themselves and their homes.

Self-defence pleas are presumed to be valid until prosecutors prove otherwise. Force can be lawfully deployed in response to real fears, even if these are not borne out in the end, and even if they arise unreasonably. The boundaries of “reasonable” are defined commonsensically. The law is explicit: those called on to defend themselves “may not be able to weigh to a nicety the exact measure of necessary action”, which is legalise for saying that decent people can lose control in the heat of the moment.

These safeguards are so tough that it is tricky to go beyond them without licensing extra-judicial executions.

Perhaps this was not Chris Graylng’s finest hour. (Let us leave to another day the conundrum as to what his finest hour was).

—————
A longer version is at Next Left

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.

1. I can’t quite see BoJo walking away from a decent shot at the global spotlight of the London 2012 Olympics, just months after the election.

It is not just a once-in-a-lifetime moment. It might also offer a tempting opportunity to compete on both the global and domestic political stage with whoever might then be PM. If he could get himself re-elected, this would be easily the most effective springboard for a leadership bid. (George Osborne would be rather happier if Boris wasn’t Mayor in 2012).

2. If not running is part of his “Boris for PM” strategy, it seems quite likely to backfire and prove counter-productive for Boris’ personal ambitions.

2012 could prove a tough contest for Boris himself. But most Tories think he would have a shot. And they are pretty sure they would be toast without him, as Nelson indicates. But if the party thinks Boris has thrown away the Mayoralty, looking rather like he has put personal ambition before party interests, won’t that harm him with the voters he would need in a future leadership election?

3. To avoid that, Boris would have to find a convincing public excuse for not running for re-election. But what might that be?

It will lack credibility if it does not seem stronger than the three plausible motivations already being publicly discussed, none of which seem to help his further ambitions.

(i) Bottling out of a contest which he fears he could lose, thus damaging his future trajectory.

(ii) Being worried about being out of Parliament when the Tories next elect a leader;

(iii) Not much enjoying the responsibility of exercising executive power. (That may well seem to be the case but it is probably not going to be central to a future pitch for the party leadership and premiership).

——–
A longer version of the article is at Next Left

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

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.

Most of the expenditure is on biometric passports which you and I are going to require shortly to get into the US. Do we need to go further than that? Well, probably not.

This would be good news if true. The Treasury say that did not go beyond restating existing government policy, so I am rather less convinced that it was intended as a particularly significant policy intervention by the Chancellor in the run-up to his PBR.

The comment does seem go with the grain of the recent direction of travel, which we have chronicled from time to time over on Next Left.

Compulsory ID cards for all seem to have been dying a slow and lingering death: one could even stretch a point and trace ebbing support inside government back four years, given Tony McNulty’s widely reported comments to the Fabians in 2005, though Home Secretary Blunkett strongly took a strongly different view at that time.

There might have been both good policy reasons and some political sense, a year or two ago, in putting them out of their misery more swiftly.

Perhaps there might still be. But I expect that would be more likely to be news from AJ than AD.