The Green Peril

Are the UKIP on the march? Not really. 1% of the electorate (even that number may have been rounded up) and some absolutely tiny numbers in recent electoral tests suggests the party has had its moment. The party may experience a revival with the next set of European elections. However, it clearly has utterly failed so far to convince the electorate it is anything but a single-issue, fringe party.

Now, that a party only appeals to 1% of the electorate doesn't mean that it is electorally unimportant. If those votes are in the right places they could cost a mainstream party seats.

I've been doing some activist work for the Conservatives in the run up to the May 3rd elections in the heart of right-wing Middle England. If the UKIP were to succeed I would expect it to start here. While the blogosphere assumes that the greatest threat to the Conservatives is the UKIP everyone I speak to seems far more worried by the Greens of all people. The UKIP generally has no organisation and its support has been drifting in the last few years. The BNP's presence is in rough areas where the Tories have little to lose. The Greens are increasingly active and are far more likely to pick up a protest vote.

You can see this difference in the breakdown of the Communicate poll on ConservativeHome yesterday. Leaving aside the Celtic nationalist parties the largest 'Others' are the UKIP on 1%, the BNP on 2% and the Greens on 3%. Of course, all of these parties pale in comparison with even the Lib Dems on 22% who are still the recipient of most protest votes. If Cameron worries about voters who dislike Labour drifting to other parties this suggests he should continue his efforts to woo the rather confused right-wing Lib Dems, strengthen his environmentalism and then promise hard action on immigration. Attempting to appease the UKIP follows a weak fourth.

None of this has any bearing, of course, on the question of whether taking a tougher line on Europe is the right thing to do. I don't think more misjudged environmentalism would be a good idea despite the fact that it might gain us important votes from Lib Dems and Greens. However, it does mean that those who couch their case for a tougher Conservative line on Europe in terms of electoral pragmatism are rather misguided.

"It's Your Time You're Wasting" by Frank Chalk

It's Your Time You're Wasting isn't as entertaining as PC David Copperfield's Wasting Police Time. There are some very, very funny moments but there is a cynicism borne of the fact that Chalk, unlike Copperfield, leaves his profession at the end. While you will enjoy reading this book if you just want to read an amusing account of public sector bumbling read Copperfield's.

Equally, it doesn't have the profundity of Dalrymple's Our Culture, What's Left of It. I am unaware of any that can match that the depth of that book's account of the cultural problem facing modern Britain. This is no condemnation of Chalk's work but advice for those seeking a 'primer' in modern social conservatism. This isn't the place to look. Chalk's book functions, like Copperfield's, as further, first-hand primary evidence of the problems Dalrymple discusses.

This book is important because education is, and should be, so central to any policy programme which seriously wishes to combat a host of social problems. "Education, education, education" may have come to nothing but Blair said it for a reason. It highlights the problems with modern education. Many of these stem from an unwillingness to properly sanction troublemakers. Other problems emerge from the ability of troubled students to stop the progress of students who behave. The most touching parts of this book are when Chalk discusses bright and pleasant students from poor homes being entirely let down by the system.

If you can cope with the understandable cynicism this book is well worth reading.

Mike Denham compares Tesco to the NHS

This is brilliant. It frustrates me when people target Tesco for their anti-capitalist fervour. Supermarkets are held responsible for social trends they are the symptom of. The fall in the numbers of families including a non-working partner who has the time to visit a half-dozen shops is what kills small shops not some misbehaviour by Tesco. While there aren't a lot of different supermarket chains they appear to be competing fiercely.

Mike Denham makes very sensible points about the efficiency of private enterprise like Tesco. He compares this to the NHS. He refrains from arguing that NHS inefficiencies are caused by particular policy mistakes. Instead he identifies the fundamental problems with public services being provided by a centralised state accountable to politicians rather than consumers.

18 Doughty Street need to get better at enabling embedding. Then bloggers can more effectively spread their citizens journalist clips about.

On 18 Doughty Street...

Last Friday I took part in Vox Politix. It is now archived here. I think I did alright. Evidently, I could have used some more sleep and exercise but never mind. Some interesting points in there if I say so myself.

UK Government to Issue Islamic Bond

Ed Balls announced today that "the Treasury and Debt Management Office would look into the cost and benefits of the government issuing Islamic financial products in the sterling market, and publish the results of the study by the end of the year."

The new Islamic bond pays on the establishment of Britain as an Islamic Republic. When asked about a likely date a Treasury official answered "some time next century". This makes it a long-term investment expected to appeal to investors interested in other long-term and risky debt such as pre-revolution Cuban bonds.

It is thought the bond could also be attractive to firms likely to suffer in the event of Britain's becoming a part of the Dar al-Islam. Allied Pork Products, Diageo and Richard Desmond have all expressed an interest in using the new product to hedge against the business risk posed by the implementation of Sharia Law.

Happy St. George's Day

Also, I think Andrew Rosindell's call to make St. George's Day a bank holiday, replacing May Day, is a fine idea. Might piss off the Socialists as an added bonus.

The Miliband Heuristic

Miliband has announced he won't be running for the leadership of the Labour party.

Look at the prospects for Miliband if Labour loses the next election. He'll be the clear favourite and still reasonably young and untainted. He may have thought he could improve Labour's prospects but that the next Labour leader was sure to fail. Better to lead a recovering new Labour Party than be the bookend of the Blair government.

By contrast, if Labour wins they'll limp on for a parliament under Brown. After that, they could lose heavily and a Conservative government could last more than one parliament. Even if Labour keep on winning that just means more years serving under Brown. However it plays out Miliband would have to wait at least eight years for his chance at the leadership, probably longer. By then he would no longer be the fresh candidate. He might also have become more closely connected to an unpopular government or suffer some other calamity.

It could be Miliband's nerve failed him, it could be he really thinks Brown is a better candidate than himself for the Labour leadership. I suspect he thinks Labour are going to lose.

Finally...

I have, at last, managed to move this blog to New Blogger. Very exciting.

Sorry there were no posts yesterday. A combination of being very tired and going on 18DoughtyStreet (combining the two is a bad idea). There probably won't be anything substantial today either as I'm off to the park, taking the train to Letchworth and then going drinking. Normal service should be resumed on Sunday.

Gracchi's further thoughts on Labrador Conservatism

Gracchi responded again to my arguments for a 'Labrador conservatism'.

His first argument is that I have only confronted the soft judgement of pronouncing immoral someone who does not look after their children properly rather than someone who does but is unmarried. He is right that I cited the case of a man who serially abandoned his children which is an easier case. Now, of course marriage does not trump all other moral concerns. I know parents who have done a perfectly good job despite not being married. They are certainly morally superior to the married couple who beat their children or each other.

However, on balance marriage is a morally superior choice. Even if people can do a good job raising their children without being married that is a rejection of genuine commitment. Marriage isn't just one more way to reach the ideal of a stable family unit. It is inseparable from the taboos and standards that ensure commitment to family and children in our society. Rejecting a social commitment when children are involved is, all else equal, an immoral choice.

Of course, a single parent may be unmarried through no fault of their own thanks to avoiding some abuse, being abandoned or facing serious, irreconcilable, differences that makes marriage cause more harm than good. They clearly deserve little criticism. However, this doesn't invalidate the wider moral judgement. I can't be a philanthropist like Bill Gates but that doesn't mean his choice of philanthropy can't be a morally good thing.

He is right that I am supporting marriage to some end. However, this is as true for religious conservatives who see marriage as fulfilling God's design for human relations as for me believing it is a fine social arrangement. Very few people think of marriage as a good genuinely in itself.

Second, Gracchi sets up an absurd dichotomy on the idea of financial incentives to marriage. He argues I have to either believe that fiscal policy can make no difference to the marriage decision or that it will trap people into abuse. I've already set out my view on the true effects of fiscal incentives:

"I would argue that marginal financial incentives are unlikely to either 'create' marriages or sustain them through serious abuse. It will affect those marginal cases of marriages which have gone a little stale or are going through a rocky patch. In these cases the huge social costs of divorce suggest we should want people to err on the side of staying married. At the moment, with a tax system which will often leave people better off if they divorce, we do the opposite and incentivise divorce."

Apply Gracchi's dichotomy to the labour market. Does he believe that the salary someone is offered makes no difference to the job they take or that if offered a pound an hour more we'd all readily become human guinea pigs?

Gracchi's final argument is a mish-mash of returning to the question of whether I am willing to make a moral judgement about marriage and a consideration of the relationship between politics and policy. He has completely missed the point on the distinction between politics and policy. I'm not suggesting politicians should ignore the detailed impacts of policy. The debate we're having above is clearly crucial prior to putting in place fiscal incentives to marriage.

However, politics isn't just about policy. Politics should, and I'll quote myself again here, "embrace a broader debate over how our society should be ordered rather than treating every problem as a policy brain teaser." If David Cameron's talk of marriage results in no policy at all he will still have done the nation an enormous service if he can effectively make the case that we should not "treat criminals like victims, parents like children and moral judgement like some kind of plague." While good policies can make a difference changing social attitudes is the more crucial objective.

Obama should learn when to keep quiet

In trying to sound terribly profound Obama actually equates hearing the words of Don Imus and losing your job to outsourcing with being murdered in the Virginia Tech shootings:

"As you all know 33 people lost their lives today, this morning. Most of them were of the age of many of the young people in this audience, they were going to class, they had their lives in front of them, their parents were proud of them and looking forward to having them home for summer or visiting them on campus and their lives were cut short in a tragic and random fashion.

[...]

There's also another kind of violence though that we're gonna have to think about. It's not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughter. I spend, along with my wife, a lot of time making sure that my two young daughters, who are gorgeous and tall and I hope will get basketball scholarships, that they feel good about who they are and that they understand they can do whatever they can dream might be possible. And for them to be degraded, or to see someone who looks like them degraded, that's a form of violence - it may be quiet, it may not surface to the same level of the tragedy we read about today and we mourn, but it is violence nonethesame.

We [inaudible].... There's the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under 'em because their job has moved to another country. They've lost their job, they've lost their pension benefits, and they've lost their health care and they're having to compete against their teenage children for jobs at the local fast food place paying $7 an hour."

Brown's Air Passenger Duty Rise Increases Emissions

The Sun is terribly impressed by "Stormin' Gordon" pointing out that "the Tories have NO plans to reinstate the pensions dividend he axed in 1997". Given that the Tories have made clear they plan to put alternate arrangements in place to reverse the damage (ending stamp duty on shares has been suggested) this is a pretty lame rebuttal.

Barely a day goes by when evidence doesn't come to light of some new Brown incompetence. Now this research by Mayor and Tol (who was cited by the BBC protesting at Stern's misrepresentation of his work) for the Economic and Social Research Unit in Dublin suggests that Brown's increase in Air Passenger Duty was a shoddy idea even without applying it retroactively like a crazy person:

"We use a model of domestic and international tourist numbers and flows to estimate the impact of the recent and proposed changes in the Air Passenger Duty (APD) of the United Kingdom. We find that the recent doubling of the APD has the perverse effect of increasing carbon dioxide emissions, albeit only slightly, because it reduces the relative price difference between near and far holidays."

That's right. He's doubled the tax on flights and succeeded in slightly increasing carbon dioxide emissions from air travel. Brilliant.

Apparently the Tory plans, which only tax flights beyond a certain number of miles per person, are better. The allowance for short range flights mitigates the Air Passenger Duty distortion. However, the Conservative proposal would have roughly the same effect as abolishing Air Passenger Duty. Why can't we just do that!

This is almost a textbook example of unintended consequences. A poorly worked out policy which will have the opposite effect to that intended. At the same time it places an increased burden on ordinary Britons taking well-earned holidays. Yet more evidence that Brown should be in mortal fear of losing his current job rather than expecting promotion.

Labour's attack on the SNP

I've been looking for this advert. Good old fashioned negative advertising.



The SNP attacked this ad on the grounds one of the 'ordinary people' talking about the impact the SNP could have on their lives used to be a senior Labour official. While I'm no fan of the Labour Party this argument doesn't hold much water. Former Labour officials will pay, just like everyone else, if the SNP is elected and the Labour party right about the consequences.

In the end, the families are there to illustrate how ordinary families will be affected. Even if they were all actors they could still convey that message. The advert is honest if it gives an accurate portrayal of how ordinary people's lives would be changed by an SNP victory. Whether those in front of the camera are actually 'ordinary' is unimportant.

Don't mention the war...

I almost feel dirty for rebutting this idiocy. Hillary Benn is trying to stop people using the term 'War on Terror'.

The whole concept of making a decision to remove a term from common usage disturbs me. First, it betrays a complete failure to prioritise properly. Call the war on terror what you like. The Labour party should be thinking about how we win it and the idea the name is in any way central to that is an admission of a lack of serious ideas. Second, it is very Orwellian. Worried that your popularity has been hurt by the poor conduct of a war. There's a simple solution. Stop talking about it, diminish its existence and you can pretend those failures are far less important.

"Downing Street distanced itself yesterday from an attack by Hilary Benn on theBush administration's strategy for the "war on terror", in which he claimed military force alone would not defeat al-Qa'ida."

Of course military force alone won't defeat Al Qaeda. How many wars have been won by military force alone?

Even those wars fought againt well defined enemies and with the objective of unconditional surrender, such as the World Wars, are not entirely military. Diplomacy is important. Rallying your population such that your country does not drop out is important. Industrial capacity is, historically, more important than military brilliance.

In most counter-insurgency wars such as Malaya the importance of non-military actions to winning the war increases. Hearts and minds, the broader political struggle, is often the crucial battlefield with military action focussed on enabling this process to take place.

The Cold War was an ideological struggle as much as anything. Does that mean the term 'war' was innapropriate in that case as well?

Of course, the modern usage of the term 'war' doesn't necessarily imply any military struggle at all. We have a 'war on poverty', 'war on drugs' and 'price wars'. The headline in the Telegraph article I cited the other day when discussing the Euro was "Super-euro may spark a currency war while French battle the ECB". Does this mean that the French are planning on sending special forces to assassinate Mr. Trichet? Does this mean we'll see an ECB militia fighting French troops in the streets of Brussels? Probably not.

"The International Development Secretary called, during a visit to New York, for the strategy to be redirected at winning the trust and support of communities where the terrorists prospered. He said he would not use the phrase "war on terror" - a favourite expression of President George Bush - because it helped to unite fragmented terrorist groups under one banner."

There's little sign that 'terrorists' in general are uniting under one banner. The LTTE in Sri Lanka and Al Qaeda still have little to do with each other. Of course, we have seen the IRA and the FARC working together in Columbia but neither is traditionally labelled as a target of the War on Terror. If the problem were really that the 'War on Terror' united terrorists we would expect a general unity between terrorists which clearly isn't forming.

If our enemies do seek to unite why does Benn think they will rely upon our rhetoric? Al Qaeda has its own language of the Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb which is far more convenient to its objectives as it describes a united Islam against the rest. The War on Terror, by contrast, could only ever unite terrorists under one banner. It is a far less effective tool to recruit the greater body of the malcontented who you seek to turn into terrorists.

"Mr Benn risked a diplomatic rift by lecturing the White House about the need to develop a more intelligent response to the challenges posed by terrorism. He said relying entirely on "hard power" - military force or economic measures - would not work. What was needed, he said, was "soft power" - listening and finding common ground on values and ideas."

There is a good case that there does need to be a change in how the War on Terror is conducted but it is important to be rather careful about what you mean when you say "listening and finding common ground on values and ideas". Who are we finding common ground with? Do they want to find common ground with us? Benn is probably referring to non-terrorist Muslims but this can hardly act as a substitute for action against terrorists, can it? It would have to be a complement unless one wishes to just take whatever the terrorists throw at us.

"Mr Benn said: "In the UK, we do not use the phrase 'war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone and because this isn't us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives. It is the vast majority of the people in the world ... against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world. By letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength." He said later: "Words do count and that is why, since this is not something we can overcome by military means alone, we need to find other ways of describing what the challenge is.""

Again, the idea that 'war' must mean a purely military project.

Any action taken by terrorists or against them will make them feel a part of something bigger. 9/11 must have made Al Qaeda members feel a part of something rather epic. Being hunted through Tora Bora by the coalition militaries might have given them a similar feeling although they might not have enjoyed it in that case. Terrorists are a part of something rather big when they kill scores of people. We're not going to convince them otherwise by controlling our language.

Hillary Benn's intervention is supposed to be a call for subtlety and nuance. Instead, it betrays a complete lack of serious thinking.

Green Party Conference 2100

This cartoon captures the absurdity at the heart of the really hair-shirt 'Contraction and Convergence', hippy brigade.

Rogue Chancellor: 2.4 Nick Leesons

Nick Leeson collapsed the Barings Bank by losing £827 million. He lost his job, went to prison for four years in Singapore and won't be managing other people's money any time soon.

By contrast, Gordon Brown has lost over twice as much, £2 billion and he's going to be promoted to Prime Minister. Given more authority. The difference is that Leeson only had an old and important bank's capital to lose. He didn't have recourse to extorting ever money from the taxpayer to cover his losses.

Brown has destroyed one of the world's best funded pension systems and lost £2 billion going against advice from the Bank of England. He should be under pressure to resign. Why on Earth is he still entrusted with taxpayers' money? How is he still the favourite to be the next Prime Minister?

I'll be judgemental if I want to...

I disagree with a lot of Gracchi's response to my Labrador Conservatism piece. I've had to cut a fair bit as he had some very long paragraphs. Hopefully he'll correct me if I've lost any of the meaning:

"Matt's argument is much more non-judgemental than the traditional social conservative line."

I hope not. My argument was for separating social conservatism's moral judgement from a particular religious code. I think this is both a politically sensible move for social conservatives and is more persuasive to me because I'm not religious. However, to separate social conservatism from moral judgement altogether would be to kill it.

Take this section from Dalrymple's The Frivolity of Evil:

"The men in these situations also know perfectly well the meaning and consequences of what they are doing. The same day that I saw the patient I have just described, a man aged 25 came into our ward, in need of an operation to remove foil-wrapped packets of cocaine that he had swallowed in order to evade being caught by the police in possession of them. (Had a packet burst, he would have died immediately.) As it happened, he had just left his latest girlfriend—one week after she had given birth to their child. They weren't getting along, he said; he needed his space. Of the child, he thought not for an instant.

I asked him whether he had any other children.

"Four," he replied.

"How many mothers?"

"Three."

"Do you see any of your children?"

He shook his head. It is supposedly the duty of the doctor not to pass judgment on how his patients have elected to live, but I think I may have raised my eyebrows slightly. At any rate, the patient caught a whiff of my disapproval.

"I know," he said. "I know. Don't tell me."

These words were a complete confession of guilt. I have had hundreds of conversations with men who have abandoned their children in this fashion, and they all know perfectly well what the consequences are for the mother and, more important, for the children. They all know that they are condemning their children to lives of brutality, poverty, abuse, and hopelessness. They tell me so themselves. And yet they do it over and over again, to such an extent that I should guess that nearly a quarter of British children are now brought up this way."

If being non-judgemental is really such a virtue, as Gracchi suggests and the British left enshrines, does that extend to this man's behaviour? Is he a victim of some tragic circumstance or irresponsibly, frivolously evil?

Gracchi, with a mind trained by academia into almost fractal subtlety, is far too attracted to any doctrine which promises to be calm, understanding and non-judgemental. However, in chasing the fools gold of being 'non-judgemental' we have created a culture unwilling to condemn the barbaric.

Gracchi may respond that he is quite willing to judge someone who repeatedly abandons his children. However, I think that when he judges even a call for social conservatism like my article through the prism of how 'judgemental' it is he has become a part of the problem. A subscriber to an intellectual perspective which regards moral judgement as passé. The result is social decay as the standards which civilisation depends upon are undermined.

"Instinctively there is a lot of good in these attitudes- but there are problems too about Matt's article. He launches into what I think is an ill advised attack on Harriet Harman's recent critique of David Cameron's marriage policies in the Guardian."

Wrong Harriet Harman piece. This is what I was responding to (I'll respond to the Guardian article later as Gracchi seems to like it).

"By endeavouring to promote marriage by building up its fortifications- by say making it tax advantageous to be married or stiffening divorce law- you may make it difficult for people to escape from relationships that are harming them and harming their children (children who are brought up by parents that loathe each other are often damaged in the long term by that- their ideas of how you behave in a relationship can often be adversarial and manipulatory). Furthermore if Matt like me deems it more difficult to bring up a child on your own than with someone else- if we make it more difficult through tax breaks and like measures to do that then probably the kids who are left, through no fault of their own, with parents who may, for no fault of their own, be alone will be penalised even more than they already are."

A little perspective will make it clear that that a fiscal incentive to marriage doesn't mean trapping people in abusive relationships. You can't have it both ways and argue that "few people will marry because of an extra hundred quid of benefit" but that, for the same benefit, they will take "domestic violence of all kinds, affairs and [...] emotional abuse".

I would argue that marginal financial incentives are unlikely to either 'create' marriages or sustain them through serious abuse. It will affect those marginal cases of marriages which have gone a little stale or are going through a rocky patch. In these cases the huge social costs of divorce suggest we should want people to err on the side of staying married. At the moment, with a tax system which will often leave people better off if they divorce, we do the opposite and incentivise divorce.

Gracchi then talks about a lot of possible counselling the state could offer. I'll respond to Harman's idea for divorce support in my response to her Guardian article but all this talk of other things we could do to help marriage seems largely tangential. I'll leave it out.

"But it is upon the policies that we should judge labrador conservatism."

Actually, it isn't.

I've criticised Gracchi in another thread for treating politics as some kind of machine with policy as levers which you pull for certain effects. For neglecting the importance of the debate around values and ideals. Politics is bigger than policy and should be concerned with our collective values.

When we as a society treat criminals like victims, parents like children and moral judgement like some kind of plague the results are truly dismal. Changing the state's behaviour, new policy, matters. However, changing social attitudes is the most important function of a renewed social conservatism. Just as education board disciplinary procedures can't defend free inquiry the state can't save the family. Politics needs to embrace a broader debate over how our society should be ordered rather than treating every problem as a policy brain teaser.

The Euro continues to tank

At first it was too weak; now it's too strong.

This problem was obvious. Setting interest rates that are suitable for both the manufacturing North of England and Southern house prices is a challenge for the Bank of England. Setting a single rate for the rapidly growing new EU entrants, Ireland's celtic tiger and the soporific Western European economies is a nightmare for the ECB. Now the politicians, particularly the French, want a greater say in Central Bank policy.

Central bank independence is important as it makes it credible that the bank will act to curb inflation, which can be politically costly. This credibility makes it much easier to keep inflation down without high interest rates. If the market believes the central bank will act to curb inflation then pay deals, for example, to secure the desired pay increase and expected inflation will result in a much lower inflationary pressure.

If the French succeed in making the ECB subject to political control then the Euro will become even more of a liability than it is right now.

David Cameron's Labrador Conservatism, Or: Alex Deane was Right

For quite some time I've been of the opinion that Labradors play a special role in the formation and training of the British middle class. Other dogs can clearly fulfil the same function although to my mind the patience of a Labrador makes it the best suited to the job. A dog offers a child an early taste of authority. It also accustoms them to connecting authority with responsibility. The dog is dependent upon their care. Parents can monitor their child's interaction with the dog and attempt to teach them to treat it with a combination of patience, firmness and affection. This means that, while a child is still within the reach and control of their parents, they can learn the basics of the art of wielding authority and power. They can learn from the mistakes which can blight lives if made later with children, spouses, friends or colleagues. Mistakes can quickly be corrected by parents, who will not be present later on when the child first tastes real power, and the tolerant personality that characterises most dogs will leave little harm done.

Parents probably do not understand that they are doing this. They probably get the dog for companionship or to encourage themselves to take more walks. Equally, they probably only mean to encourage their child to treat the pet well and do not see the long-term benefits. I’ve met some quite pleasant people who grew up without pets or even with cats. They are socialised into healthy behaviours in other ways. I’m not advocating that one can improve families simply by distributing Labradors. A dog in an abusive family will be abused and this will teach the child nothing that should be learned.

Labradors are a part of a broad range of means by which healthy values are transmitted from one generation to the next. Others include regular meals as a family and parents directly talking to their children about what makes up good behaviour. Most important is simply that the parents maintain their own standards and set a good example. If children grow up seeing responsible adults then, all else being equal, they are likely to follow that example.

This isn’t purely a middle class phenomenon of course. The old working class were much poorer than those at the lower end of the income scale today. However, most were quite capable of training their children in the habits that ensured stable and healthy family lives. Many, probably still a majority, families on low incomes today continue to raise solid children.

However, a problem with this transmission of values is being identified by the new social conservatism which I discussed in my review of Dalrymple and Copperfield’s books. It is breaking down in large sections of the population and the costs are dire. Young women with multiple children by different partners searching in vain for a man who will prove responsible and often finding only the abusive. Huge numbers who believe that they are owed a living and the responsibility for looking after their children belongs to the state (which is not able to take their place properly).

Of course, this is somewhat different to traditional social conservatism. It is still socially conservative in that it supports traditional values and personal morality but there is no direct link to traditional social conservative themes like gay marriage and abortion. Social conservatives may argue that gay marriage, for example, undermines the tradition of marriage. It seems equally plausible that a new group’s desire for marriage validates marriage in general as a desirable thing. Any effect of gay marriage on heterosexual marriage is likely to be pretty minor compared to the effects of the vast number of failed and unhappy heterosexual marriages. These can clearly be considered as separate issues.

Almost a year ago Alex Deane wrote an article for the conservative journal the Salisbury Review*. In it he argued, to a deeply socially conservative audience, that accepting Cameron might require a hard compromise but would make conservatism more politically practical. Using his fuzzy, centrist image he could undermine the public’s belief that conservative ideas were necessarily to be distrusted. After that he could, as Nixon in China, be trusted that his motives were pure in selling socially conservative policies. I think that this prediction has proven more accurate than Deane could have hoped.

Traditional social conservative priorities such as Section 28 and opposing abortion and gay marriage are unlikely to be successful any time soon. They are too dependent upon religious values which are not widely held in today’s Britain. The problem is not just the, still small, number of atheists but the huge number of, largely non-practicing, Christians who see their religions as a vague command to ‘do good’ rather than an imperative to follow a particular, Christian, code of ethics. I am not going to argue that religious conservatives should drop these issues, telling someone who thinks children are being murdered to drop the issue is usually unhelpful, but that they should accept that the project of converting people like me to their cause will be a long-term one. The public has sympathy for many religious conservative causes but regards anyone who advances them in public as distinctly weird. No party leader can change this.

However, with accounts like that from PC David Copperfield and their everyday experience voters can see the need for the new social conservatism I have described. So many other political priorities are dependent upon a revival of a culture of responsibility. Shrinking the state when there is such huge demand from those who expect it to look after them and their children will be a political nightmare. Social mobility will continue to decline so long as it is only the middle classes who are bringing up their children responsibly. Effective public services are contingent upon a public which will not abuse them (I haven’t read Frank Chalk’s book yet but from conversations with a teacher I know what to expect). Cameron’s great service to social conservatism is to separate this from the less popular elements of the social conservative programme. This will mean that progress can be made on turning Labrador conservatism into a practical reality while social conservatives continue to attempt to advance their other, more long-term, goals.

Fiscal support for marriage, as Cameron has advanced, is important not just for its direct effect. It is more important to send the signal that marriage and stable families are valued and not just a relic of another age. Other ideas being floated, some of which Deane was already mentioning last Summer, such as a new, probably non-military, national service or freedoms at a younger age for those who demonstrate their trustworthiness are also clearly aimed at being part of a ‘Labrador Conservatism’. However, the policies themselves are not the test of Cameron’s commitment to the new social conservatism. Misconceived ideas can be improved or discarded, no policy mix will be a panacea to such a severe problem.

Cameron’s role is to be a persuasive and decontaminated spokesperson for the importance of restoring the British family. Harriet Harman’s attack on this new conservatism as ‘blaming parents’ and likely to go the way of Major’s ill-fated Back to Basics is an early indication that the British left will not give up lightly on the idea that yet more state support is what the family needs. The public goodwill towards Cameron causes Harman’s attack to ring hollow. Separating the desire for stronger communities and families from the fight against gay marriage and abortion allows for a new, broader, alliance that can start really fighting the left’s creation and embedding of a welfare class. For social conservatives to reject this as an unwanted compromise is to reject a possible alliance with other elements of the right and many in the centre. If social conservatives reject Cameron they could be rejecting their first chance at progress in decades.


*’In Defence of Cameron’, Salisbury Review, Vol. 24, No. 4. This is only available online to subscribers. I found it in the LSE Library.

The Curse of the Golden Flower

I saw the Curse of the Golden Flower earlier this evening with Gracchi and Vino.

It had the thorough visual splendour of all the recent Zhang Yimou films. Not since Barry Lyndon has there been film-making so thoroughly visually amazing. Within the palace the screen is full of colour. Battles are clashes between colours. For all the film's other flaws Yimou's sense for the visual will make it a part of cinematic history.

The first problem is the pacing. The plot doesn't advance at a steady pace but lulls with details being released sporadically. At times you feel it losing your interest in a way that never happens with Hero or House of Flying Daggers. This film fails the most important test; it doesn't tell its story well.

The second problem is the battles. This film really illustrates that an ability to film action does not mean that a director can create a cinematic war. This film falls into the classic trap of having the armies spend far too long looking like a mob instead of an army. King Arthur's Saxons behaved the same way. The Orcs in the Lord of the Rings were masters of strategy by comparison. When armies behave like mobs there isn't the sense of drama, of decisiveness, that can make cinematic battles thrilling.

These flaws are critical to the film because they make the plot development ponderous and the climax dissapointing. Some superb moments, a ninja assault from the cliffs particularly stands out, cannot rescue things. This was dissapointing although possibly still worth watching just to see such an amazing spectacle.

The Daily Show on the Hostages

I missed this at the time. Now everyone's going to be wanting British hostages. We're so nice, love our new suits and if you want to try some rough stuff you don't need to get your hands dirty. We consider Mr. Bean jokes psychological torture:

"Our Culture, What's Left of It" by Theodore Dalrymple and "Wasting Police Time" by PC David Copperfield

I spent the weekend reading books that are compilations of articles that I could have obtained freely from the Internet. Wasting Police Time is the book of The Policeman's Blog and Theodore Dalrymple's articles can be found at his City Journal archive.

If enough people are like me and enjoy spending time reading books instead of putting in yet more hours in front of a computer then the blog book is quite a good business model. A fair amount of promotion can be done for free through the blogosphere, the popularity of the blog gives some indication that there are people who want to read what the author is saying and the book can be prepared quickly as most of the content is already written. The idea also has something of a precedent. Collections of work by prominent academics (think Friedman's Essays in Positive Economics) usually sell plenty of copies to university audiences who can get the original pieces from journals. Books are convenient and pleasant and plenty of people will pay for that convenience even if they can obtain the content elsewhere.

The two authors have very different styles. Dalrymple is a good candidate for best essayist of the modern era and his writing is impeccable. It has that magical ability to be both easy to read and thoroughly serious. Copperfield's style is colloquial which works well for an account from the front-line. They are also rather different books as one is a broad collection of very structured essays while the other is a selection from a blog.

Wasting Police Time is the funnier book. While few outside of certain public services like the police have had such sustained contact with the madness of the modern British poor all of us have suffered them at one point or other. Even at twenty three, having lived in well off, Conservative-voting areas my entire life and just emerging from university I have already, through a comprehensive education, seen more than enough to recognise the traits of many of the awful inhabitants of Newtown. These personalities have such an effect on the communities around them and exert such a pressure on beleaguered social services they demand so much of. The middle class need to be able to laugh or we’ll have a collective aneurism.

Copperfield’s book highlights the problem of monitoring bias. If we monitor the rates different police forces ‘solve crimes’ we encourage them to focus on crimes easily solved, often those that will not end in any action. Any attempt to improve police performance by more thorough monitoring of specific targets will likely just increase this bureaucracy. Direct democratic accountability for police forces seems the mechanism most likely to keep the police focussed upon genuine local priorities.

However, these and other inefficiencies are not sufficient to explain Copperfield’s account of what is going wrong with modern policing. Clearly a large part of the problem is a social decline which creates many families who are such a massively disproportionate drain on all elements of the state, as well as the police. Copperfield’s attempt to work out where families with these problems come from is limited although his fulsome praise for old people suggests that they have not been around forever.

Dalrymple’s book also has a lot of first hand evidence. Some of the stories he recounts from a life spent as a doctor in troubled communities are shocking and he sets them in the context of cultural collapse in large sections of Britain. However, his work also contains a deeper analysis of the root of Britain’s cultural problem. He asks the question of what has gone wrong to create the breakdown in so many families. His answer is that there has been a massive cultural decline in social standards as morality was written off, intellectually, as judgemental. This intellectual position rose to dominance and became accepted throughout society since the sixties. The physical and emotional cost of this decline has been felt most by the poor. Without a culture of self-reliance, hard work and committed families they fall into dreadful lifestyles. The welfare state prevents financial ruin but this may decrease the likelihood of people tackling the root of their problems. Collapsing families condemn the poor, and their children, to unhappiness and abuse.

These books are part of a revival in British social conservatism. Iain Duncan Smith has, since the end of his time as Conservative leader, been the political face of this revival. In my opinion, before this the social conservatives were far too reliant upon a religious agenda. They spent far too much of their time fighting increasing tolerance of minority activities such as homosexuality or representing religious views in the political discourse. This was always a case which was going to have a hard time in an increasingly irreligious society. It also had little appeal for someone, like me, without such a religious perspective. However, Dalrymple’s conservatism focuses on broader social and cultural concerns. It makes the case for the importance of family and taboo to the maintenance of civilised society.

It is hard, after reading Dalyrmple and Copperfield’s accounts to deny that something has gone seriously wrong in Britain’s culture. Many causes, from the libertarian desire to reduce dependence on the state to the objective of increasing social mobility, will not be achievable without addressing the problems the social conservatives identify. Tackling family breakdown is the key to reducing demand for the state. Solid families produce children capable of climbing the social ladder. This is why, I think, the new social conservative programme is likely to prove politically influential.

Both books are well worth your time if you wish to understand the degree of the problem British society faces. I do not think any political movement can point to a greater challenge to our future as a nation. They should be a wake-up call.

Neill Harvey-Smith's Scheme for Reforming Tax Credits

Neill Harvey-Smith has a plan for reforming the tax credit system. Creating such a plan is noble work as the scheme is an absolute travesty at present and more and more is being asked of it. Essentially he argues that we should use an abolition of parts of the tax credit, principally those not involving children, to pay for a reduction in business taxes. We should then raise the minimum wage. By these means business pays the money we currently pay as tax credits as wages instead of through corporate taxation which is used to pay for tax credits. His argument is that this improves simplicity, is better for a worker's feeling of self-actualisation as it shows up as money they have earned and creates fewer discincentives for a worker to endeavour to improve their condition. I don't think he has properly analysed the costs of the minimum wage and he has also aggregated 'business' in a way which glosses over his proposal's true business harms.

In discussing the efficiency of his new system Neill considers all of the costs of a tax credit system but none of the inefficiencies associated with the minimum wage. There are a number of ways the minimum wage can be avoided by businesses who do not wish to face increased costs. Undocumented immigrants who do not need to be paid this wage yield an increased return which will outweigh the costs of possible legal sanction in more and more cases. Applying the minimum wage to piece work is fraught with difficulty as there is not a clear hourly rate. This can be exploited. Finally, many businesses can simply fire a portion of their workers to keep costs the same. Workers pay for the minimum wage in the greater effort that is necessary to complete the same workload with fewer people.

Like most prohibitions of a mutually consenting activity the minimum wage is hard to enforce. Any business that wishes to remain honest and pay the new, higher than market, wages risks being put out of business by less law-abiding or foreign rivals. Restrictions like the minimum wage pervert market mechanisms. Creative destruction turns from an imperative to increase efficiency into an imperative to become a criminal. Every penny added to the minimum wage increases this effect as the advantage accorded to the criminal increases. Despite all these problems a rise in the minimum wage could still be worthwhile if it has particularly massive benefits. However, Neill has not made this case as his analysis is based upon considering the costs and failures of the tax credit system but not the costs and failures of the minimum wage. Without a proper cost-benefit analysis he cannot claim that his system is the less costly means of distributing benefits to the low paid.

His other big problem is that he aggregates 'business' in a very misleading way. A minimum wage means that businesses pay increased wages if they employ the poor. The more people you employ on the minimum wage right now the more you will pay with any increase in the minimum wage. By contrast, a cut in corporation tax will go to all businesses. This means that some firms are going to be taking a kicking from this measure while others take close to a pure tax cut.

Some employers of low-wage workers, particularly those in less competitive markets, will internalise the new costs or find that higher wages are actually better for them but the number of these cases will be limited in a relatively open economy like the UK's. Many other firms will try one of the tactics described above to avoid paying the new wages. However, a great many firms will prove unable to pay the new wages and will not have the nous or moral 'flexibility' to avoid paying. These firms will exit through bankruptcy or outsourcing. Their workers will be made unemployed. This is the classic problem created by the minimum wage.

We have an obvious objective. Put more money in the hands of those working but whose low productivity justifies only low wages. We can pay for this in a way which spreads the cost across the economy, either tax credits or something else like a citizens basic income, or we can pay for it through a minimum wage. By focussing the costs onto companies that employ the poor we would distort our economy. We would hurt our competitive position in any business that employs the low skilled. This would increase the pace of the shift in our comparative advantage towards high-skilled work. With the weaknesses in our education system this is likely to feed into further increases in income inequality.

Neill's idea addresses a serious problem but I am unconvinced he has found the first question to which 'increase the minimum wage' is the answer.

A ramble about a ramble...

I was back in Letchworth, my family home, this weekend. Lacking anything interesting to do I took a long walk. Starting at 7.30 I finished at 9.30 in the dark. It was terribly relaxing and I stopped every so often to continue reading Wasting Police Time (which I'll review this evening hopefully).


The phone camera dealt pretty well with the low light which is impressive. My phone is a Nokia N73 and I'm pretty pleased with it so far. It doesn't have the irritating little failures of design or reliability that have plagued every Sony Ericsson or Motorola phone I've used. The camera has the same resolution as my aging digital camera and is more than good enough for my purposes. This is the first time I've actually experienced convergence and not having to worry about bringing a camera with me is pleasant. The only alternative course of action I was really considering was getting a music phone but as the need for an MP3 player is more predictable (I don't just see things and think "I want to listen to that now") a music phone wouldn't add much value.

Here's a picture in good light which better demonstrates the camera's ability. Its subject is the new installation in the Royal Society courtyard:


I quite like the reliance of the installation on its surroundings. Alone it would just look like an Imperial War Museum mock-up of Stalingrad. In the distinctly eternal surroundings of the Royal Society courtyard it becomes a lot more interesting. It highlights just how remarkable the security and peace of the Royal Society is. This suggests to me the conservative message that the stability and civility of our society is rare and special. We should be careful of change that might, inadvertently or otherwise, endanger that achievement. I'm sure the artist himself is a dreadful socialist but undermining paradigms by interpreting art in a right-wing manner is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a thoughtful conservative.

Anyway, this post does actually have a point. Something about self-indulgent bloggers writing about their uninteresting personal lives. As I'm guilty of self-promotion I only need to become a little more self-centred and I'll have the full set.

No. The point is that in urbanised societies many do not regularly visit even semi-rural, suburban areas like Letchworth and its surroundings. There has long been a contention that cutting yourself off from the natural world in this way is a bad idea. That the human experience is inextricably linked to elements of the natural world and cutting ourselves off from them is psychologically risky. I've always been a bit dubious of this logic as it sounds like the kind of vaguely hippyish analysis that lacks data and is used as an excuse for other problems such as family breakdown. Humans, after all, adapt pretty well to new circumstances and the British countryside of today is little like the countryside we evolved in. Little chance of being eaten by a wolf for a start.

However, whenever I actually take the time to take a long walk among trees and fields it does relax me in a way the city rarely can. I think that the countryside provides perspective. In the city everyone is rushing around attending to their own obsessions. By contrast, disinterested Nature possesses an infectious calm. This view is close to the opposite of the Gaia thesis which seeks to anthropomorphize nature and turn it into one more concerned consciousness. Perhaps I'm safe from hippy status after all.

This understanding of nature's importance is my explanation for why my favourite artist is Salvator Rosa (the logo at the top-right of this blog is text superimposed on a painting of his). They aren't pure landscapes which relegate humans to being 'behind the camera'. Instead the landscapes loom over the protagonists. The background constantly draws the eye from the foreground to scenes of powerful but uncaring nature. This sends an almost Stoic message, Rosa thought of himself as a part of that school although his personal conduct was deeply unStoic, about the shallowness of our manias.

John Nott

Gracchi is very impressed by John Nott but I'm not so sure. His position on Afghanistan seems to be "hasn't gone well in the past". He argues that the Russians failed, but they were fighting a far more united body of the Afghan population. He argues Britain failed but it was both facing a united Afghanistan and had none of the logistical capabilities of a modern army. All of Nott's logic relies upon the Afghans necessarily rallying to defeat the foreigners. That may happen in the future but is not happening now and assuming it necessarily will is facile.

Things are hard in Afghanistan. To generalise: things went well initially, poorly last year thanks to poor planning, a shortage of troops and a lack of proper pressure for improvement in Pakistan's border region. This year we have more troops and more resources in general. We face a great many challenges and if we get things wrong and, in particular, if a shortage of troops forces us to do too much harm to civilians things could go badly wrong. However, apart from a bizarre historical determinism there is no reason to think that a positive outcome in Afghanistan is impossible.

His opinions on other issues were equally confused. He seemed to want us to retreat from a global role but also wanted more soldiers (in case the French invade?). A retreat from a global, power projection role is a big issue that I won't address comprehensively right now but his argument for it was unconvincing. He argued that the Americans were the only ones capable of playing the 'global policeman' role.

That implies that we can't replace America, that we will usually be acting with the US. It doesn't imply any diminishment of our global role which has been based on acting as an ally of the US for quite some time. Assuming that as the US has carriers ours are useless would also imply that as America has soldiers we needed none of those. To combine his position on the carriers with a desire to keep Trident is utterly contradictory. The question is whether additional carriers are useful to the US-British alliance. Given how central carrier-based firepower has been to recent deployments abroad it seems pretty clear that additional carriers could be helpful. Whether they are more helpful than alternative ways of spending the money is a matter that requires detailed enquiry Nott does not undertake.

He argues that we should prioritise our own local security services. This implies free-riding off the US in terms of global stability. This is a coherent position although morally and, in the long term, practically a bad idea. Given that Nott was an ardent Cold Warrior, he should look to that conflict and why we made the decision not to free-ride then.

I should finally note on the carriers that last time Nott argued for getting rid of our naval power, and carriers, the Falklands were invaded. As he thinks our victory in the Falklands was a great triumph surely he should be admitting that naval power has at least some important uses to us still.

DK sticks up for the Bloggers

This defence of blogging by DK is absolutely brilliant. He defends political blogging as the beautiful, varied mess that it is and should be. In particular, he is right to note the importance of links to sustaining a proper debate. I really can't think of much to add. Well, one thing:

"Fuck them: it's their loss. The rest of us will carry on commentating, linking to our sources, researching, analysing, hassling our elected representatives for answers, and attempting to tell the truth (from whatever political perspective that might come)."

Not only will we carry on. We'll win. Particularly for the young, the Internet is fast becoming one of the most important sources the public uses to get the news. As people become more comfortable with reading the news on the Internet they will then expect to complement reporting with analysis, comment and the like. The diversity and debate which can be found in the blogosphere will be very attractive.

UK political blogging is still in its infancy. The final shape of the blogosphere will probably be quite different to its form today. However, blogs are here to stay and are only going to become more important. DK has described why that is a very good thing.

Where have we gone wrong?

I recently spent the best part of three thousand words fisking a particular view of what has gone wrong with our society put forward by Tom Paine. Recently there was a similar effort from James Higham. I'll address two key issues; the rise of widespread private borrowing and infringements on civil liberties.

First civil liberties, a theme Paine also spent some time discussing. Fretting that our liberties may not survive our fear is a noble activity. There are certainly some alarming changes which could wind up creating a serious problem but, for the moment, I think a certain sense of perspective is needed. Some oscillation in our priorities between liberty and security is to be expected and I see no reason that this particular attack on civil liberties should be the end of freedom in Britain where so many others have proved transient.

Where Paine worried about government debt Higham is concerned by the growth of private borrowing. He notes that a relatively short time ago people might borrow for a car or a house but would rely on debt for little else. I think that his perspective is too narrow. It is not so long ago that the credit which allowed the masses to make those large scale purchases would have been thought impossible. Expanding the availability of credit is an emphatically good thing. It gives a huge number of people flexibility in their consumption. This is a good thing whether that flexibility is used to 'smooth out' occasional large purchases or to take advantage of a large expected future income.

This does, as Higham says, make many people more vulnerable to grand economic trends. Borrowing is a risky business. However, the system is not as fragile as he suggests. In order to make the expansion of credit possible a range of new checks and sources of information and security have been put in place. While there is risk and people can go bankrupt we are sufficiently able to ensure that this is rare and contained enough that these risks are well worth taking.

Does all this defending the status quo mean that I am contented, happy about where our society is going? No. However, if I were to choose one part of our current society which is really in shoddy shape, where the problems look genuinely intractable, I know where I'd look. The problem is in our culture. While culture is affected by politics and economics I think that it is important culture is understood to be the central issue. The seemingly inexorable death, among large chunks of the population, of the culture of honesty and hard work and the understanding that you should be the first person responsible for looking after yourself and your family is alarming. Certainly the death of those values would make it close to impossible to defend civil liberties, build a state good at what it does or maintain trustworthy politics.

Theodore Dalrymple is, to my mind, the most the most persuasive writer on this subject. His archive at City Journal is well worth perusing but, if forced to choose a single post, read The Frivolity of Evil from 2004. Despite his brilliance I'm not convinced Dalrymple really has a coherent programme to answer the issues he identifies; his contribution is to identify what is going wrong.

Fixing this problem is likely to be hard, complex and politically risky. The solutions to really serious problems invariably are. It will probably take time and a series of changes to our social and economic policy. However, the absence of easy answers should not be taken as a reason to focus only upon problems which are simpler and, hence, more conducive to getting angry.

Carnival of Cinema

A new Carnival of Cinema is up. Lots of good posts and it's nice to see I'm not alone in my opinion of Children of Men. Sinclair's Musings is represented by my post on The Blue Kite.

Video Blogging, Podcasting and other Sins

Video blogging, podcasting and any other means of blogging that doesn't involve text written into a web page makes me angry. It seems fair to make an exception for those with a genuine reason for a different medium. However, I think that most video blogs or podcasts are just a medium for the blogger to communicate their deep love for their own voice.

Reasons video blogging/podcasting is a bad idea:

1) It makes links impossible. Links are crucially important to making blogging an interactive forum for discussion. They allow the writer to introduce new writers, reference arguments and cite facts. Without them blogging is just a soapbox.

2) Most bloggers are bad at it. Either they're ugly or poor speakers who stutter, get lost and generally make a mess of their time in the 'spotlight'. To see a professional journalist juxtaposed with a blogger watch Guido's crushing encounter with Michael White and Jeremy Paxman.



3) It is creepy. When I'm reading and thinking about politics at three in the morning I already feel more than enough self-loathing for being a nerd. I don't need to feel like a voyeur as well. This is why the long monologue format is rarely used by TV or radio and why I read at night.

4) It forces me to turn off my music.

The Meaning in Children of Men

I’ve described Children of Men as, by some distance, the best film of last year. I’ve described V for Vendetta as a vapid apology for terrorism. Now, one of the best US blogs - the American Scene - endorses the view, expressed by Daniel Larison, that they are distinctly similar. The reviews they cite may not dislike V for Vendetta quite as much as I did but they see both films as being intellectually and spiritually empty (requires free registration). Children of Men is thought to have come off better only thanks to director Alfonse Cuaron’s consummate cinematic talent. I won’t bother rehashing my attack on V for Vendetta as it seems unnecessary but it seems important to leap to Children of Men’s defence.

A large part of my disagreement with the reviewers is that I actually think that the film’s portrayal of the government is somewhat sympathetic. The government in this film is compromised and commits some truly evil acts but, in the end, there was something heroic in their desperate but probably vain attempt to hold a dying society together. It portrays their crimes frequently and certainly does not seek to absolve them of guilt but this is only one element of their treatment. During the scenes where Theo meets his cousin, the Arts Minister, the effort to defend humanity’s greatest creations from our collapse might come across as futile to some. To me it seemed a heroic defiance of fate in the name of our higher instincts. Similarly, during the climactic fighting it is the rebels who restart the battle after it has been stopped by the child’s crying. This is a portrait of a society dying and a government doing all it can to defend the best in the society it stewards.

In this light the government’s deplorable actions come across somewhat differently. An anti-immigration stance may not make good economic sense with a rapidly declining population but if you are fighting a hopeless battle for stability is probably sensible. Sid and the other really unpleasant characters on the government side are those brutal men who do well out of brutal times requiring brutal measures. Their failure is not of being on the wrong side but of being uncaring and inhuman. The allusions to Abu Ghraib point to the same problem in Iraq. The coalition labours at the near impossible task of holding the Iraqi state together despite huge internal pressures and, in the process, succumbs to evil.

Similarly, if this film were really all about the evils of our tyrannical government the rebels would be portrayed as heroes fighting the good fight. Instead many are shown to be unrealistic, unfeeling and fractious. The morally best among them are forced out or killed by the bad. Neither the government nor the rebels have a ‘right’ answer of how to respond to the death of humanity because there is no right answer. The desperation that this creates as neither side can offer a solution turns the good intentions of many on both sides to evil.

The hero’s defining quality is, therefore, not that he is on the right side but that he avoids the moral failings present in both sides. Although his back story is that he used to be a rebel his first instinct on finding that the girl he is safeguarding is pregnant is to argue that she should be sent to the government as they can provide proper care. The claim from some of the rebels that this would result in the government removing the child from its mother is never substantiated. He is not the hero because he is on the right side, because he is particularly strong or otherwise able. He is a hero because he is caring and trustworthy. This is shown in one of the film’s more wonderful little details as dogs and cats sense that he can be trusted and take to him. In Children of Men evil doesn’t pass through political factions but through human hearts. That is why this film is so much more convincing and real than V for Vendetta. This is also a conservative understanding of humanity which, although this is a completely secular film, the religious should appreciate.

One of the charges laid against the film version is that it is rather small minded as it does not have a clear idea of what the meaning of a world without children is and the advent of a new child is largely a personal affair rather than socially important. However, I think that the importance of the lack of children is spelt out beautifully. Without children the world loses purpose. The loss of that hope for the future is what makes existence in Children of Men’s world so dismal. As such, while P. D. James’ book may have been about the loss of God this film offers a secular replacement; hope. That a new child is not expected to prove a panacea is an inspired change to the story from the original. What the new child offers is not a solution to all society’s problems but a new hope that there can be a purpose and meaning to our labours. This film is, perhaps, an important lesson in how terrible the fate of being the Last Man really is. This seems timely.

I can’t claim any special insight into Cuaron’s intentions in making Children of Men. It is possible that he meant to make a hackneyed moral opera like V for Vendetta but his cinematic instinct and source material got the better of him. If so I would be disappointed but it wouldn’t change anything. Cuaron has committed his film to the ages and it is indelibly marked with a far more noble understanding of morality than the false simplicities of V. This is a film about the qualities of real heroes. It is a film about the importance of purpose. A great film.

The Blue Kite

"Hero" was one of the most beautiful films ever made but its politics are a little suspect. It treats the First Emperor, idol of Mao and most other Chinese tyrants, far too sympathetically. Its political content is a case for accepting the brutalities of your leaders in the name of unity and stability. Most Chinese films are not as obviously political and most have less sinister messages. Consider a couple of Zhang Yimou's other efforts: "House of Flying Daggers" is a story about a yearning to be free although it is never really drawn in political terms. "Not One Less" is a realist drama about the value of education. There is politics in these films if you wish to find it but they hardly constitute a defiance of the regime. Zhang Yimou's art is no challenge to the CCP.

Of course, his not challenging the regime is hardly a crime. Chinese people have been under the CCP's rule for some time and have to come to some kind of accomodation while direct pressure for change faces such poor odds. Resistance is a noble thing but not for everyone.

However, there is at least one really brave Chinese political film which provides a glimpse into the reality of China's troubled 20th century under Communism. "The Blue Kite", directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, was banned and got its director barred from film-making for six years. It is rather hard to get hold of, you can get a VHS copy of an ICA edition via Amazon but that's it. It is about the sufferings of a family during the Anti-Rightist campaigns, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. The story revolves around a mother and child and how their family is torn apart by political currents beyond their control. The Blue Kite of the title is an allusion to this. Dragged hopelessly to its destruction on a tree. It is a similar story to Jung Chang's "Wild Swans".

The difference is that this story is told from the point of view of a child. This reduces the amount of historical detail which makes the film more manageable and heightens the emotional impact. There is a genuinely wrenching feel to the family's suffering and the betrayal of innocence involved. Accounts of the suffering of China in the twentieth century are, and might remain if the CCP remains in power beyond the death of most of those involved, very rare. This is a priceless insight into the emotional story of those times.

The acting is unpretentious and effective. Visually the film is largely realist but sometimes lets itself go and attains a real beauty. In particular, the iconic images of the blue kite itself or the children running with their toys. There is a beauty to this film which turns the emotional feel of the travails of the family from horror to real tragedy.

If you can find it do watch this film.

Hostages Freed

It has been announced that as a "gift" to Britain the 15 sailors captured by Iran will be freed. This is great news and some confirmation that a diplomatic approach was worth persevering with.

One interesting side effect of this crisis is that a lot of people have done a lot of thinking about how we can influence Iran without direct military action and even with limited multilateral support. Attacking export credit guarantees or attempting to cut off their gasoline supply through a blockade and attack on their one refinery were the most recent suggestions. Isn't it worth considering those as responses to the Iranian nuclear programme?

Another interesting side effect is a lot of questions about British power, the British military and the British spirit. A lot of questions have been raised but very few answers offered. Those answers are clearly a key project for the coming months and years. The importance of addressing these questions has been thrown into sharp relief by this crisis.

Some New Perspectives on Iran

First, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, writing for ConservativeHome, has a refined version of the policy put forward by EU Referendum. Instead of blanket trade sanctions he wants the EU to stop export credit guarantees to Iran. This is rather more consistent from Rifkind as he has some faith in the EU than it is coming from an EU nihilist. However, the problems seem similar. Firstly, the EU moves slowly particularly on issues like this where there is no real national interest for countries like Germany in favour of tough action against Iran. As the EU moves so slowly it would be very easy for the Iranians to use brinksmanship to undermine any ultimatum. Rifkind suspects that direct talks may be part of just such a strategy to delay and divide international opinion by appearing reasonable. The EU has a poor record in maintaining its unity in the face of calls for talks and other such delaying strategies.

Second, Newt Gingrich proposes the first thought out hardcore reaction I've heard:

"HH: Now let's get to the first major issue of the day, which is Iran. Mr. Speaker, if the United Kingdom feels obliged to use force, if diplomacy fails to get their people back, will you applaud?

NG: I think there are two very simple steps that should be taken. The first is to use a covert operation, or a special forces operation, to knock out the only gasoline producing refinery in Iran. There's only one. And the second is to simply intercede by naval force, and block any tankers from bringing gasoline to Iran ...

HH: Would you do? Would you urge them ...

NG: And say to the Iranians, you know, you can keep the sailors as long as you want, but in about 30 days, everybody in your country will be walking.

HH: So how long would you give them, to give them that ultimatum, the Iranians?

NG: I would literally do that. I would say to them, I would right now say to them privately, within the next week, your refinery will no longer work. And within the following week, there will be no tankers arriving. Now if you would like to avoid being humiliated publicly, we recommend you calmly and quietly give them back now. But frankly, if you'd prefer to show the planet that you're tiny and we're not, we're prepared to simply cut off your economy, and allow you to go back to walking and using oxen to pull carts, because you will have no gasoline left.

HH: I agree with that 100 percent. Would your recommendation to the United States president be the same if Iran seized our forces?

NG: Absolutely. I mean, the reason I say that, it is the least violent, least direct thing you can do. It uses our greatest strength ... you know, the mismatch in naval power is absolute. And so you don't have to send troops into Iran. Everybody on the left is waiting for conservatives to say things that allow them to run amok and parade in San Francisco, and claim that we're warmongers. I want to avoid war by intelligently using our power to eliminate the option of sustaining an economy, so that the Iranian dictatorship will be shown to be the hollow dictatorship it is, so the people of Iran decide they'd like to have a decent government with real electricity and real gasoline, so they overthrow it. And I want to do that without risking a single American life, or being engaged in a single direct confrontation. And naval power lets you do that."

There are a few questions I would raise over this proposal.

Firstly, this policy would almost certainly require US support. It seems plausible, although not certain, that the US would regard a possible backlash in Iraq as too big a risk to take over the hostages. Without US support our underfunding of the Navy would be exposed and we might suffer another Suez, forced to climb down in embarassing fashion. The only way around this would seem to be to make the hostages a package along with an end to the Iranian nuclear programme. Such a combination would involve a national interest sufficient to justify the expense and risks of a blockade.

Secondly, I'm honestly unsure as to the extent that Iran could avoid such a blockade by importing over land. Finally, if diplomacy can prove successful in securing the release of the hostages then this probably isn't the time we would choose for a serious confrontation with Iran. Our militaries are too stretched and insufficient time has been given to properly prepare the ground with our allies. Frum's argument that this crisis can be seen as a part of that process if handled well is convincing. Given that we are putting no serious obstacles in the way of their nuclear weapons programme at present a judgement has clearly been made that now is not the time for taking action against Iran. This caution is not going to be abandoned thanks to a small number of hostages.

A Nation of Monarchists

It shouldn't come as a surprise that, as a nation, we're staunchly supportive of the Queen but still these figures, via the Dude, are amazing:

"Q Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way the Queen is doing her job as Monarch?

Satisfied Dissatisfied Net satisfied
% % ±%
Dec 1992 75 17 +58
Feb 1996 74 16 +58
Dec 1997 72 21 +51
Mar 1998 66 20 +46
Aug 1998 73 18 +55
29-30 June 2000 71 17 +54
24-26 May 2002 82 12 +70
20-22 Apr 2006 85 8 +78"

These numbers might be thought to indicate that the monarchy will be vulnerable when the Queen is succeeded. Prince Charles is probably less popular but the monarchy as a whole should be fine. The public feels a lot of affection for the two princes thanks to the combination of their choosing to serve in the Army and sympathy for the loss of their late mother. Support for them will keep the monarchy just as popular as ever. Even without their popularity the monarchy does not seem vulnerable to the cynicism directed at other institutions. Britons are deeply attached to the Crown.

This could be an indication of a deep-seated patriotism which is failing to find expression. Rallying around the monarchy would seem to be a very British response to uncertainty about our place in the world. Until our political class can better articulate what our nation is about the monarchy will be an island of certainty and tradition in a sea of confusion and change.

The EU is investigating Apple

A little while ago the French came pretty close to ruling the tying of iTunes and iPods anti-competitive but backed down. In Microsoft's case it was ruled, in the US and Europe, to be acting unfairly by merely packaging Media Player in with Windows. Users could still delete or replace Media Player and the replacement would function with Windows. By comparison, iTunes and an iPod only work with each other and no other hardware or software. The difference in treatment can only really be explained as a delayed reaction on the part of the authorities or Apple's hippyish, anti-establishment brand allowing it to sneak under the radar. Part of the reason the French are thought to have backed off is that Apple threatened to withdraw the service from France on the grounds tying is essential to their licensing system.

I'm not convinced the case against Microsoft was ever that strong. There are plenty of alternatives to Windows and if being given Media Player was really such a hassle I expect PC suppliers and customers would move pretty quickly. In reality Microsoft were just adding functionality and if competitors were good enough their software would be added by users or PC manufacturers in addition to the Microsoft software. In much the same way, while Apple's lead in hard-disk MP3 players may look formidable right now there is no reason to suspect that customer ill-will cannot kill this pretty quickly. There are alternatives which mean people could avoid buying iPods.

Now the FT reports that the European Commission is investigating Apple but not in an investigation of tying. The EU Commission is actually sticking to its brief for once and ensuring that the common market functions properly. Apple is being investigated for not allowing EU customers to shop from any EU store. This came up after Which magazine found that British customers were being charged significantly more than customers in other EU countries. Apple's defence, that this was insisted upon in licensing negotiations, just raises more questions as that means the problem is a broader one in the music industry.

The hypothetical of the commission taking antitrust action against Apple over the same issue as the French would have been very interesting. It would have offered quite a test of the power of pooled sovereingty.

The Political Right's Separation Anxiety on TCS Daily

TCS Daily carries a piece I have written which argues that we need to renew the classical liberal-conservative alliance. Here's the blurb:

"The libertarian-conservative alliance is undergoing significant strain of late. But conservatism can strengthen classical liberalism by defending its gains in times of plenty. In return, classical liberals can give direction to conservatism and offer it prescriptions in hard times."

Go read.

Where is China headed?

This morning I read “Mr. China”, Tim Clissold’s account of the travails of a fund he was involved with investing in China between 1995 and 2002. He describes how Western investors lost their investment to incompetent or evasive managers and politics. It is a cautionary tale of optimism coming to grief in the face of a culture that the investors could not understand. Despite this I am not convinced that Westerners are the ones who should be most concerned by this book. Losing even staggering amounts of capital like the amount sunk into China is mostly a concern for those who lost it and has little lasting effect on our way of life. By contrast, the effects that the culture of venality which the book exposes will be having on China will already be huge and could become catastrophic.

The best account I’ve read of the origins of the Asian Financial Crisis is that provided by John Shuhe Li. He argues that it was the result of a move from relation-based to rules-based governance. Relation-based governance offers a sensible way to overcome transaction and information costs in a lesser developed economy as businesspeople gain a first hand knowledge of those they transact with. This allows them to trade and invest even when contracts are hard to specify and enforce and information on different supplies is scarce. Rules-based governance is more transparent and offer lower transactions costs later on as the advantages of more dispersed trading increase and information costs fall. The problem is with the transition where a business culture used to relation-based governance misuses the possibilities created by financial liberalisation. It was this transition going wrong that caused the Asian Financial Crisis.

Relation-based governance was smeared as “crony capitalism” by Krugman which did not give the system credit for what it did well. However, in China, where in much of the country “the hills are high and the emperor far away” as one character in Mr. China opines, it is closer to the truth. Unaccountable local officials still wield huge amounts of power in the economy. This will increase the misallocation of resources that, through a lack of transparency, is the major cost to relation-based governance. This, in turn will make the transition to a more liberal system still more risky.

I think that this source of crisis is the most plausible for China. However, even if this is not the final cause we can be sure that it can’t maintain its current rate of growth indefinitely. It could be a severe slowdown elsewhere in the global economy reducing demand, spikes in commodity prices or any one of a host of other factors. When this happens the political trade off in China with the Chinese accepting severe restrictions on their freedoms in return for a promise of high growth will be placed under severe stress. There will be political pressure and the government will be able to respond in one of three ways:

1. Crack down. Given their success in the past it might well be that the Party leadership will believe they can maintain order by force indefinitely. This is the tried and tested option but risks doing further damage to the economy or provoking a backlash and revolution.

2. The Galtieri strategy. Take an aggressive foreign policy stance and stoke up nationalistic fervour. This could actually be quite a sensible option from their point of view if it was thought that the West would not intervene to protect the target, probably Taiwan. If America is looking weak and it appears likely that it will not choose to bear the cost of war with the PRC to protect Taiwan then the prospect of reuniting Taiwan with the mainland and securing enormous popularity might be worth the risk. To prevent this option looking enticing the US needs to find some way of making a credible commitment to defend Taiwan. One way might be to station some fighter planes on the island in hardened bunkers. The US lead in that technology is so strong that even a small force would be significant and it would not need to be as vulnerable as the trigger forces in South Korea.

3. Liberalise. In particular, even if elections were limited to local officials that would make them accountable to the populace and might reduce petty abuse and corruption. These local officials and their misdemeanours are responsible for so many of the worst problems in China. However, this strategy or any other further liberalisation would probably be discredited by a crash and the Party are very wary of the trap Gorbachev fell into.

It is far from certain that China will experience a crash but it will experience a slowdown and this will cause an upsurge in the, already widespread, restlessness in large parts of China. I’d say that the chances of a Galtieri-style foreign policy adventure are quite low but the possibility is very real and the consequences could be truly dire. Good old fashioned deterrence is the way for the US to stop this happening. There isn’t a lot that the West can do to affect the chances that a liberal response will be preferred to an authoritarian one.

In the long-term I’m hopeful. The impression that I took away from my brief time in China was that there was no good reason that we should not get along. Clissold chose to end his book with the same message. There is no advantage to a confrontation for either side and the logic that great powers should necessarily clash seems small minded. We should not let the Chinese leadership imagine that we will allow them to abuse their new power but equally we should not treat a showdown with China as a foregone conclusion. Adding so many millions to the population of the rich, stable and free world is such an opportunity.

An Idea I Had

During a rather bizarre argument about foreign policy I had a brainwave. One of the major harms that could result from global warming is rising sea levels. This means our problem is too much water where we don't want it. We can either try to reduce the total amount of water so that levels don't rise, i.e. stop warming and ice-cap melting, or we can channel it somewhere else.

I.e. if we were to dig a really big hole at the bottom of the ocean all the water would drain there.

Can anyone give me a good reason why that wouldn't work?