No competition - by Richard... Saturday, March 12, 2011

No competition - by Richard... Saturday, March 12, 2011

This is one time and one area where the blogs cannot compete ... the global news system provides the coverage and there is very little, sensibly, that we can add – other than our profound sympathies and admiration for how the ever-resourceful Japanese are already getting to grips with their new crisis.

Further comment might be inappropriate, but a thread is open on the comments to monitor further developments. However, we need to be aware of the Jo Moore effect - not least with the Lib-Dim springfest - and the financial effects also bear watching.

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A positive object - by Richard... Friday, March 11, 2011

In the latter stages of the book-writing, the conclusion I am coming to is that the Battle of Britain was as much, if not more, a political event than it was a "shoot 'em up" battle. One tends to think that, when a war breaks out, the focus is then on fighting and winning the war, and that normal politics is suspended.

In 1940, this was very far from the case. Political issues – such as European political integration – were being widely discussed, all in the more general context of defining British "war aims". It was not simply enough to fight and win, we had to have a reason for fighting, or so the argument went.

This was discussed in a parliamentary debate on 15 October 1940. As the wreckage of London lay around them, MPs gathered to call find out whether the Government was prepared to make a definitive statement on war aims. But Churchill refused, point blank. He was guardian of the status quo, suppressing any debate on the issue.

Churchill's Information Minister Duff Cooper, very much supported the idea, and had been speaking secretly for it in Cabinet. On this day, he expressed his support as far as he could, but had been brought up sharply by Richard Stokes. He was the Labour MP for Ipswich, a Military Cross winner in the First World War (and bar) and soon to become an arch critic of the area bombing policy.

Cooper, said Stokes, had enunciated what we were fighting against, but not what we were fighting for. "[It] is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one, and the sooner that [is] stated the better".

That brings us right up to date and is the thinking behind my piece on a new "ism". It lies at the heart of my long-running dispute with UKIP and my frustration with the Eurosceptic cause. Both are very good at telling us what we are fighting against. But, as Stokes said, it is no use fighting for a negative object. You must have a positive one.

It is all very well wanting to get out of the EU – the "negative object". But what would we do with our new-found freedom? Where is our "positive object"? Until we have one, we are going nowhere. We emerged from the war without one, and that is why we lost the peace.

The one "positive object" to emerge intact was the idea of European integration. When we failed to maintain Churchill's status quo, with the end of Empire, intellectually, we in Britain had nowhere to go. Looking with envy at an apparently resurgent Europe, our ruling classes therefore rushed to join in - their bid to fill the intellectual void. Now, it still is the "only game in town", which is why we are still losing the battle.

We will continue to lose that battle until we are able to deal with the issues put by Richard Stokes, back on that awful day of 15 October 1940. We need a positive object ... a new "ism".

COMMENT: NEW "ISM" THREAD

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Terminal decay - by Richard...

Discussions with people close to the centre yesterday brought an observation that it has taken the Cleggerons less than a year to get into the kind of predicament that took Labour at least six years.

Already, they are in a situation where accumulated broken promises and the resulting breakdown of trust, the sense that they are out of touch, their internal party management problems, and the classic tendency to blame the media for their woes, all combine to give the impression of a political group in terminal decay.

To that, you can add to that the news that the Lib-Dims have gone into the red for first time in history and are having to quit their historic Cowley Street HQ – although it does not stop there.

In what should be his hour of glory as he is about to address his spring conference, Eurotrash Cleggis having to tell his party to "hold your nerve".

This is against "the humiliating backdrop" of sixth place in last week's Barnsley Central by-election, and a YouGov survey that puts the Lib-Dims on just 9 percent, trailing well behind their Conservative coalition partners on 34 percent and Labour on 45 percent.

Given just how low Labour's stock had fallen last year, and the lacklustre performance of the Miliband Bros, it is absolutely incredible that Labour is actually showing an 11-point lead, the largest YouGov result since the election.

Just add a tiny but important detail on the Tories – that Ruth Lea has decided not to renew her membership – and you get another facet that goes towards the bigger picture.

On this, I think it can be said with confidence that you would have to go a very long way back before you found an administration with less of a popular mandate, with less electoral support and enjoying less public confidence – and with less grass-roots backing.

This coincides with a period of acute tension, where the Cleggerons are having to implement a programme for which they have no mandate, precious little media support and which would be, even in the best of times, unpopular, having at the same time alienated some of the core interest groups.

If one were now to attempt a prediction on where this is all going, one might be tempted to say that the Cleggerons have the one advantage – their direction of travel is very clear and certain. The trouble for them is that the picture tells you what that direction is – all the way down, without stopping.

How interesting it is that the imagery came from here, just as I was about to look for a Titanic representation – a report on electoral meltdown in a Salford local council by-election. As the Lib-Dims plummet to the bottom, it will come as no surprise to anyone here that we will be applauding it on its way down – even if we are then left in a rather cold and draughty lifeboat.

But what this does tell us is that a political rescue plan is now beginning to take on a degree of considerable urgency, as the traditional political merry-go-round is no longer providing any answers to our predicament. We need some serious answers, or we as a society will be following the Lib-Dims to their watery grave.

COMMENT: "GENTLEMAN" THREAD