Rifkind: The Portillo Moment Came Early

Posted on February 24, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister in 1990 and was replaced by the dull John Major. It seemed almost certain that the Tories would lose the 1992 General Election. In fact they held on narrowly, in no small measure due to the vicious media campaign against Labour Party Leader, Neil Kinnock. “It was the Sun Wot Won It”..

Yet on reflection, it was an election they would maybe have preferred to lose. John Major (1992-1997) presided over a Government that was mired in sleaze. And hopelessly divided. The British Electorate realised that they had made a massive mistake in 1992….and the Labour Party, now styling itself “New Labour” won a landslide under Tony Blair (later Tony B Liar) in 1997.

It is inevitable that in any election, big names lose seats but in a landslide….as the results came pouring in …..one Tory minister after another fell. It was not so much a simple declaration of results. It was the unrestrained glee of those watching the declarations. I half expected defeated Tory aristocrats to be put on tumbrils and led to the guillotine.

The most hated Tory was Michael Portillo, Thatcherite and ambitious and a plotter. He was MP for Enfield Southgate, in the North London suburbs. The only remarkable thing about Enfield-Southgate is that it was Portillo’s constituency. Most times that I am in London, I travel thru Southgate and impossible to do so without thinking of Election Night 1997.

The question, next day was “were you still awake for Portillo?”. Circa 4am on Election night, it was already clear that the Tories were losing heavily. But British Election Declarations are cruel. Some hours earlier it had been speculated that a Tory defeat would lead to Majors resignation as Leader of the Party and that Portillo was probably the successor.

But …he lost Enfield-Southgate and despite a short comeback as a MP, he is now out of politics…a political commentator and TV Presenter.

Actually I thought Portillo took his defeat rather well. I hate it when my enemies show dignity in defeat. I much prefer it when they rant and rave about the unfairness of it all. So I tend not to think about the Michael Portillo “moment”. I much prefer to think of the Election Declaration at Putney and the unseemly exchanges between defeated David Mellor and his nemisis “Sir” James Goldsmith.

So I am indebted to “Sir” Malcolm Rifkind, who has today resigned as a MP. He had actually intended to stand for re-election in May but being recorded saying unwise things like “I am self-employed” and offering himself to a Chinese lobby group….a fictional one….and referring himself to the Standards Committee and it unlikely to report before May….was the cause of his downfall.

He does not seem pleased. Indeed he “denies any wrongdoing” but there “may be some errors of judgement”. Just how often these two phrases have been used in the same sentence in recent years is amazing.

I am not a big fan of journalists “door stepping” . It all seems a bit tacky. G uy leaves his house. Microphones. Cameras. Provocative questions designed to get a response. Most victims seem to respond with a dignified “no comment” or an unseemly sprint down the street. Rifkind was churlish and boorish. More a Mellor moment than a Portillo moment.

Its always pleasing to see a Tory in the metaphorical gutter.

But Rifkind being there is a bit surprising.

He is after all a “Right Honourable”. A knight of  Mrs Windsors Realm. A member of the distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (I have no idea what that is but it says so on Wikipedia). And he is a “QC” (Queens Council….a senior barrister-lawyer). I dont know if his speciality is Criminal Law but I always thought that he deployed all the tools  of the lawyer trade when he was interviewed on TV News. Usually he was good in a bluffy kinda way….representing his client, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Michael Howard etc…..as if he was appearing in a Glasgow Court, pleading that his client Archie “Axe Man” MacTavish is a legitimate business man, who denies any wrong doing.

What happens next? Well Rifkind is now officially self-employed and will do ok using his parliamentary experience to serve on boards and lobby for clients. In a couple of years, he will be elevated to the “House of Lords”. Jack Straw, a certainty to have been given a peerage in May, will have to couple of years.

But overall, MPs zealously guard their reputations. No doubt he will be given glowing testimonials by colleagues on tonights News. But really his reputation is in tatters.

 

 

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Taking Voters For Granted

Posted on February 23, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

Austin Mitchell MP . I nearly typed “Austin Mitchell MP is a strange fish”, which would have been an accidental pun…and a very bad pun….because he is Labour MP for Great Grimsby, a fishing port. now in his late 70s, he retires from Parliament this year and is leaving amid some controversy. He is reported by “The Independent” newspapers as saying that Labour will not lose Grimsby “even if we select an alcoholic sex paedophile”. Mitchell denies using this phrase.

To some extent, we all know that there are constituencies where a Party cannot lose. The DUP will never lose North Antrim, even if draped an Orange sash round a passing chimpanzee. We know this. We know that Grimsby SHOULD be a safe Labour seat but it is being hyped as a target for UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party). The political wisdom is that Tory seats in Eastern England are the most vulnerable to UKIP and that there are comparatively few Labour seats that are vulnerable.

Austin Mitchell and Great Grimsby. They seem like a special case.

Mitchell…a gifted Historian is a 1960s and 1970s TV News Presenter. Mostly on Yorkshire TV. His loud “professional Yorkshireman” (albeit a happy one) never worked in London News studios.

Austin Mitchell is Euro-skeptic. Grimsby is anti-Europe. It is after all a once mighty fishing port and successive European legislation in Brussells and successive Westminster governments have accepted it. The British Fishing Industry has been sold down the river….I presume the River Humber.

So Mitchell is either a good constituency MP standing up for his constituents against prevailing Euro othodoxy or he is just another a chancer who said the things that his constituents liked to hear.

He retires is a couple of months and the new Labour candidate is more at ease with Europe. UKIP with its Europhobia will be making much of the decline of Fishing. Labour will be “looking to the future”. And this provides some interest. Can Grimsby fall to UKIP. Well, certainly TV News, profiling constituencies in Labours heartland of North of England, are reporting discontent that Labour strategy is about taking them for granted and pursuing the latest “demographic” identified by a Focus Group.

Mitchell’s reported choice of words…and he denies it….is of course, very bad.

Take for example …the Lancashire constituency of Rossendale and Darwin. My recollection is that it is fairly marginal. But it was actually Labour from 1992 to 2010 when it was lost to the Tories. The youngish Labour candidate, Will Straw, will be hoping to win it back in May. But as he will note, the Minimum Wage was one of the great Labour triumphs of the Blair-Brown years but bringing it up on the doorstep or in hustings might be problematic. Difficult to argue for a Minimum Wage when in the constituency next door the outgoing MP (and father Jack Straw) values one of his speeches at £5,000.

Actually, the old cotten mill towns like Blackburn and Burnley did have some problems with the British National Party (openly racist)…so I suspect Jack Straw’s indiscretion will have a knock on effect. So of course will Austin Mitchell’s indiscretion.

Yet taking its own voters for granted is not something that the British Labour Party leaves to individual indiscretion. It seems to be Party Policy. Especially in Scotland.

Ah Scotland….the gift that keeps on giving. It all seemed so simple. Granting Scotland Devolution two decades ago…or more precisely facilitating it was a major mistake by Labour. Being allied to the Tories and Lib Dems to vote down Scottish Independence in September 2014 was a bigger mistake.

The theory that “YES” voters would quickly forgive and forget the result and the way the campaign was waged is shown to be wrong. Labour NEEDS Scotland. The maths are there.

In 2010, Labour took 41 (of 59 Scottish seats)….Lib Dems 11, Scottish Nationalists 6, Conservative 1.

I do not go along with the opinion polls suggesting that SNP will get around 45 seats. Conservatively, Id be surprised if Labour got less than twenty seats and SNP got more than thirty five. But the point here is that on 2010 figures, Labour had a forty seat advantage over the Tories in Scotland alone. It is unrealistic to expect a Labour majority in Westminster if the Labour-Tory differential in Scotland is just (say) fifteen seats.

Whether on a personal or industrial scale, the British Labour Party takes its supporters for granted.

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The Mighty Quinn

Posted on February 23, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

The selection of yet another graduate from the SDLP Youth team to fight the Westminster Election is both welcome and interesting.

A declaration of interest here. I know and like Malachy Quinn. I first met him during the 2011 Assembly Campaign (a hustings event). And in July 2011, he was a contributor in a SDLP-UUP Debate on the GAA and Orange Order. Indeed after that event in East Belfast UUP building, he drove me to to the train station. So I have always been impressed that he was one of the leading figures within the SDLP Youth Group. I suppose the real test of a young politician is that you forget they are young. If you listen to a speech and think “that was good” instead of “that  was good…for a youngster” then the politician has a certain talent that needs to be nurtured.

image I wrote last week that this was the moment that the SDLP Youth needed to be given its head and take a leading role in the Westminster Campaign. I am therefore delighted that Malachy was chosen last night to represent the SDLP in Mid Ulster. It is a great choice.

Malachy is already a councillor, elected last year for theTorrent (Coalisland) DEA to the new Mid Ulster “Super Council”. He was on the SDLP platform that read thru the Collusion Report (of the Pat Finnucane Centre)….two Coalisland SDLP members, Mr and Mrs Devlin were murdered by rogue UDR elements. And already pioneered Living Wage acceptance thru the new Mid Ulster District Council.

There is however a lazy narrative that SDLP is male and elderly. Last years Council Elections went some way to disproving it with around forty per cent of elected SDLP councillors being women.

Sinn Féin, of course dont go to Westminster if elected but it increasingly looks like a retirement home for SF MLAs who are being sidelined.

So Malachy Quinn is I guess about 28 years old. But in Mid Ulster, he takes on Francie Molloy (Sinn Fein 64). In Armagh-Newry, Justin McNulty (39) takes on Mickey Brady (Sinn Féin 63) and in West Tyrone, Daniel Wray McCrossan (26) takes on Pat Doherty (Sinn Féin 70).

So I wish my friend well in Mid Ulster. Malachy has only one flaw….he supports ….Liverpool.

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A Straw Man

Posted on February 23, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

I never liked Jack Straw, who along with another ex-British Foreign Secretary has been “stung” by the Daily Telegraph. Straw is standing down as a Member of Parliament and is looking for a new career. Meeting fake lobbyists (undercover reporters) he tells them he will make speeches….he gets £5,000 a speech. Thats considerably more than minimum wage levels and echoes the post-Parliament career of his former boss, Tony B Liar.

Of course it was a double sting. Patrician Tory grandee, Malcolm Rifkind, tells the undercover reporters that he is “self employed”.

But I am not really bothered by Malcolm Rifkind. He is a Conservative. I expect nothing from them.

Labour politicians…well I expect something. Of course Jack Straw was up to his neck in deceiving the British public over the Iraq War. Yet there is something uncomfortably careerist about Jack Straw. He first appeared on the News in early 1970s as a student firebrand.

Then disappeared from public view until he succeeded Barbara Castle as Labour MP for Blackburn. It was unlikely on two levels ….Blackburn is “grim up north”, Coronation Street territory and Straw is an Essex Boy. Also, the firebrand had settled. How did the good folks in the Blackburn Labour Party select him? Well, I daresay Barbara Castle helped. Straw worked for her as a Special Advisor.

Since becoming MP for Blackburn, Straw has re-invented himself as a gritty northerner. His “beloved” Blackburn Rovers often gets mentioned. I wonder if he owns a whippet.

But Jack Straw made it all the way to the British Cabinet table. As Home Secretary AND Foreign Secretary. The journey from Student Leader to Establishment was complete…except of course “firebrands” rarely become Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary. MI5 and MI6 have files. Safe to assume Straw passed the vetting.

So Jack Straw…it would have been bad enough if his legacy was Iraq. But appearing on a hidden camera talking about his lobbyinbg skills is appropriate.

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Do The Greeks Have Words For “Irony” And “Hubris”?

Posted on February 21, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

Is it ironic that “Irony” and “Hubris” are Greek words?

A mere ten years ago, the “European Union” was congratulating itselff on expanding from fifteen nationa to twenty five nations. Mostly by moving East, which really annoyed the Russians, who consider Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania….not to mention, Poland to be within its “sphere of influence”, the awful term that imperialists use to justify military intervention. How can Russia react? Well maybe a few nervous people in the Baltic where ethnic Russians do not have full citizenship rights. Meanwhile in Ukraine…..

The strange thing about the first manifestation of the Common Market (1957-1972), Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany) was that it looked a little like the Holy Roman Empire of previous centuries. The expansions into southern Europe (Greece, Spain and Portugal) were to embrace the new democracies, getting over the Military Junta, Franco and Salazar. The move to the South looks as stupid as the later move to the East. “Europe” is now at odds with the Greek Government, recently elected and will soon be at odds with a new Spanish anti-austerity government.

And isnt “Democracy” a Greek word?

“Hubris” is basically the consequence of misplaced self-confidence. And surely the Greek Gods who used it in Mythology have seen it in Brussels in recent years. The experiment of uniting Europe is in tatters.

Having over-reached themselves, the Eurocrats is Brussells find themselves at diplomatic war with Greece. The main player is Chancellor Merkel of the German Fourth Reich. Ok …”fourth reich” is just an insult…Germany is a democracy also. It merely wants to protect its citizens as much as the Greeks do.

But when a “big” nation takes on a “small” nation, there is only one result. When a “big” democracy takes on a “small” democracy, there is only one result.

For nearly five decades now, we have been sold the incremental notion of “one Europe”. It nas been united politically but never emotionally by Stealth.

There are Europhobes, Euroskeptics and Europhiles.

But even, the Europhiles fall back on economic arguments. Is there really a significant number of people in Europe, who love “Europe” more than they love being a citizen of Portugal, Germany, Finland, Poland, Ireland or Greece? I doubt it.

Asking Greece…or more accurately DEMANDING that Greece takes an unrealistic proportion of pain so that Europe ….or more accurately its banks dont have to….is both undemocratic and unlikely. Almost sixty per cent of Greeks under thirty are unemployed. This means it will be generations before there is any real improvement in Greek living standards. Greece have already negotiated a four month delay in financial support being withdrawn. But the Spanish electorate is watching.

And the Irish electorate go back to the polls within a year. By common consent, Europe has patted the Irish Government on the head and congratulated it for implementing austerity which means Ireland has quickly regained a measure of economic sovreignty. The nightmare is nearly over. Yet a dilemna remains. More austerity so that Greece gets more relief. Or the realisation that at least some of the austerity of the previous five years could have been mitigated.

So the question is not “is the European Dream over?”. That question is settled. The question is now whether its a hard or soft landing.

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Three Girls Go To Islamic State

Posted on February 21, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

It is surely a bizarre story that two sixteen year old girls and one fifteen year old from London, travel to Gatwick, board a plane to Turkey and are apparently making their way to Syria to become brides of ISIL fighters.

Seemingly these are three ordinary Muslim girls, “straight A students” at a decent school. Ordinary families and ordinary homes. Poster families for Multiculturalism.

Typically…such as the case last month of “home grown” French jihadists killing cartoonists in Paris…it is the “disenfranchised” youth in deprived areas in Europe, who are regarded as being at risk.

So these girls are intelligent girls but obviously lacking in common sense. Groomed on the Internet? Social Media always gets the blame. But it cant actually hypnotise people. More likely it seems like good old misplaced “hero worship” . Good Girls love Bad Boys. But ISIL is not the guys who chew gum at the back of the class. ISIL are not even a motor cycle gang with cool leather jackets. These are cold blooded killers.

Disturbingly, it appears these girls will become “brides of ISIL”…as the tabloids are putting it. ISIL has already shown that it uses Rape as a weapon of war. And of course the extreme Islamists advocate that women are subservient to men. This is depressing…it seems absurd that three intelligent young women (one below the legal age of consent) from London would fly off to ISIL Land.

It is of course a criminal offence to support or fight for ISIL. There is a window of opportunity before they become “criminals”. Muslim parents told to look for signs that their children are being indoctrinated report to the police. They might have reasonably expected courts to be more sympathetic to their good citizenship.

Yet everything seems a contradiction. Britain celebrates Diversity while being at war with aspects of Muslim culture. And Britain tiptoes round issues like female genital mutilation in the name of Multi-Culturalism. They seek to have it both ways.

Going off to fight for ISIL….in February 2015….is criminal. Doing it a year ago, when ISIL was at war with Assad’s Syria was positively encouraged. Ex-British soldiers now fighting with Assad against ISIL are celebrated as heroes.

Is any action taken against young men from North London and Manchester, who consider it a duty to serve with the Israeli Army. Well….thats “different”. Israel is after all a nation and an ally of Britain. Israel are the good guys…apparently.

ISIL on the other hand is not a nation and only occasional allies of Britain. And obviously bad guys.

Should leaving Britain to fight for another nation be regarded in the same way as leaving Britain to fight for Islamic jihadists? A matter for the British of course and as an Irish citizen, it would be improper of me to have an opinion.

What sort of nation would allow foreigners into its Army? Well….Britain would. All those Ghurkas from Nepal….fighting….and dying and killing for Britain….surely they are foreign.

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“Selma”: LetsGetAlongerist Porn?

Posted on February 20, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

A new movie “Selma” tells the story of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement. Although it is fair to say that the scale in the Old South was greater than in the North of Ireland, it is worth pointing out that there was a civil rights issue in Norn Iron and that the civil rights movement of the late 1960s was formed partly in response to what people say on their TV News screens.

There was always LetsGetAlongerism. There was always something called “liberal unionism”.

The modern generation of people, who purport to live in the “middle ground” (ground that they believe to be a higher moral ground than the ground where the rest of us live) cannot be blamed for the failings of previous generations of LetsGetAlongerists. But there are parallels.

A sectarian/racist police force. Discrimination. Supremacist politicians who tried to sell a line that civil rights was a communist or republican plot. Orange Order. Ku Klux Klan. …underpinned by violence of course. We even had our share of Uncle Toms …Catholics like GB Newe who served in a Faulkner Government as a token Taig. And Oliver Napier who was one of the founders of the Alliance Party.

But I wonder how many LetsGetAlongerists wringing their hands in angst as they watch footage of deaths of black people in Alabama even know the names “John Scullion” and “Peter Ward”, the first of the Troubles victims in 1966.

Thats the nature of LetsGetAlongerism. A committment to social justice globally while being apathetic to the social injustices in Norn Iron. Injustices suffered by Irish people, only one mile from the Belfast cinema showing “Selma”.

Voyeurism is taking pleasure in an activity but not taking part.

LetsGetAlongerim is Voyeurism ….watching people struggle for social justice without actually doing something meaningful.

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Those Russian Planes

Posted on February 20, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

Will Russian planes flying around British air space have any effect? Well yes….all those unionists and loyalists will become nationalists overnight.

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Malachi O’Doherty And The Royal “We”

Posted on February 19, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

What exactly is the Good Friday Agreement and Parity of Esteem? We were told that nobody won and nobody lost. We are all entitled to our Identity….British, Irish and I understand those terms….and “Northern Irish” (no I dont know what it means either but in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, I have to accept some people identify with that concept)

We were told there would be an Irish Language Act. There isnt one. Unionists have scuppered it. Sinn Féin pay lip service to the notion but wont do anything principled like walk away from the duopoly with the DUP.

So the District Council down in Newry…nationalist obviously….would like signage in Irish and English ….seems reasonable enough. But Malachi O’Doherty, LetsgetAlongerist and journalist, writing in the Belfast Telegraph does not think this is good at all.

“Why are we encouraging people to amplify their sense of identity? We should be encouraging them to tone it down, to reconcile and interact rather than to draw boundaries between each other.”

To be honest, I dont get it. Malachi is a serial LetsGetAlongerist. But what is all this “we” business. “We” is obviously a plural so Malachi his referring to himself and at least one other person. Surely Malachi would not presume to speak for “Society”.

Clearly he doesnt speak for me. I am not part of his “we” in the sense of “you and I”.

This really is the problem with LetsGetAlongerists. They feel that the middle ground is the moral high ground. The Good Friday Agreement said that it is not. It is just another position of equal status with unionists and nationalists.

This is the problem with Conflict Resolution. Thankfully the Peace Process and the Good Friday Agreement ended bloodshed here. But it did so on the basis of Nobody Won, Nobody Lost. We are all Winners. Hooray! But this is not good enough for Conflict Resolutionists who need to go to the next level and impose Victory and Defeat on two tribes. Frankly, they have no right to do it because the Good Friday Agreement is unfinished business. Where is the Bill of Rights? What happened to Victims? What happened to the Irish Language Act?

Yet the use of the word “we” intrigues me. The “Royal We” where Mrs Windsor always apeaks in the plural? Is Malachi turning into Margaret Thatcher who announced to her subjects “we are a grandmother”?

Is it LetsGetAlongerist plural?

Is it merely the arrogance of the newspaper columnist?

Or is it The Lone Ranger use of the word “we”…..as in “Sioux to the North of us , Apache to the South of us Pawnee to the West of us and Cheyenne to the East of us…..Tonto we are in trouble”. As Tonto said “what do you mean WE are in trouble?”

 

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Ashes To Ashes

Posted on February 18, 2015 by fitzjameshorse

So Ash Wednesday.

Back in the 1960s, we all marched from the Primary School to the Catholic Church and we all lined up at the altar and the Priest used his thumb to imprint a sooty, black “ash” on our foreheads.

We actually liked this. We felt disappointed if the “ash” was a little grey mark. We felt elated when it was a big, yukky black mark. GOD knows what the Protestant neighbours thought…something vaguely Catholic like worshipping the Pope and burning Presbyterians at the stake.

Of course the 1970s were different. Groups of Catholics would leave the office at lunch time, walk the short distance to the city centre church (St Marys) and get the “ash”. It was as much a statement “screw you!” to the boss who was an Orangeman or Freemason as it was some kinda identification with the whole “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” philosophy. Indeed I am pretty certain that some Catholic colleagues never went near a church from one Ash Wednesday to the next.

For me ….getting an “ash” in the 1970s was an interesting social experiment. Returning to the office, some Protestant colleagues thought it quaint, even politely asking what it signifies. To be honest, few Catholics could give a straight answer. Some politely pretended not to notice the black mark. Some rudely pointed out “do you know there is a big dirty mark on your forehead?” And some had that “look” that only the sectarian bigots can give.

See….from a very early age in Norn Iron, we were expert at sussing out our Protestant colleagues. The nice people and the bigots. And we were particuarly good at sussing out the people who pretended to be nice.

Of course, it wasnt always a good idea to identify openly with being a Catholic. A lot of people, including very devout people never bothered getting an “ash” (it is more to do with ritual and tradition than actual doctrine). And some merely went to Church in the evening.

I am not really good with overt displays of Religion. And in the 1970s, many Catholics considered it advisable to remove “pioneer pins”. And no point in having an “ash” in the middle of your forehead. Its not exactly that I feared making an easy target for non-existent loyalist snipers on the dome of the City Hall….it was just a matter of staying under the radar.

But a thought strikes me.

For about a month before Remembrance Sunday, BBC and UTV require their on screen presenters to wear a poppy. Of course Poppy Apologists will say that is completely different. The Poppy is after all not a religious symbol. And they would go further and say that it is not a political symbol. All it does is honour those who have served in the British Armed Forces….and all the usual fig leaves about “lost generation” blah, blah blah, “lions led by donkeys” blah, blah, blah, “shared history” blah, blah, blah. But this is Norn Iron and everything is political.

Of course, it might well be the case that BBC and UTV presenters are just taking the easy option. The Troubles are over after all. No big deal. Take the BBC and UTV cheque and say nothing.

But is BBC and UTV really diverse? I dont ever recall a BBC or UTV presenter wearing an “ash”. Totally different of course. …as the Poppy Apologists would say. Yet on BBC World Service, I have seen young local reporters wearing indicators of religion…indeed I have seen young British Asian reporters do the same. And I have seen “western” CNN, CBS, BBC reporters honour local custom by wearing dress that is not traditional for them.

It surely cant be a problem. Northern Catholics seem to have the worst of both worlds. It is politically correct to wear a poppy. In a religious sense, we cant wear ashes on screen but people of other faiths can wear symbols of their faith.

Seems a bit of a double-standard. Something to think about while BBCNI and UTV are broadcasting from the Twelfth “Festival” in July.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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