Brown in the Guardian
The Downing Street bully today lectures us on morality. The man who throughout his career unleashed vicious spin doctors to savage his enemies, writes in today’s Guardian of an “ethical code that should guide us in our daily lives.”
His article is a masterpiece of hypocrisy and delusion.
Having taxed and regulated us, Brown invokes Adam Smith. Having handed over £ billions to subsidise feckless bankers, he attacks markets as unjust.
It was Gordon Brown who put in place the regulatory financial framework that failed. It was his “independent” Bank of England that built the monetary pyramid - and who now devalue our currency by printing money to keep it propped up.
Brown sneers at “self interest” - as though having Ed Balls decide things for you was inherently better than doing what’s best for your own family and community.
Does he simply not notice that the biggest improvements in our lives since Labour came to power – the internet and email, digital technology, cheap flights and communication, vastly expanded consumer choice – were nothing to do with politicians, but the product of free enterprise?
Brown claims that “the expenses scandal has shown us is that those who enter public service with a view to pursuing the common good can become disconnected from those they serve”. Perhaps it also tells us to be wary those who invoke the common good in order to take control of our lives.
“I believe that the idea that each of us is our brothers' and sisters' keeper remains strong” he writes. Having you as our keeper, Mr Brown, is what got us into this mess.
Posted on 27 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
First digital election: PR Week
Article in PR Week
on possible effect of the internet on the coming election.
Not easy to say all one would like on this subject in 200 and something words ....
Posted on 27 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Tea Party in Brighton this Saturday
Had enough paying ever higher taxes? Fed up working for the taxman? Had enough of giving ever more of your pay packet to fund politicians' pet projects?
Then you are not alone.
Daniel Hannan and others launch the British Tea Party movement in protest against high taxes and wasteful government. If you are in Brighton this weekend, why not join them?
See details here.
Posted on 26 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Home education: proud to be booed
How they howled. How the enraged officials jeered at what I had to say.
Speaking to an audience in the Westminster bubble this morning, I told them I disagreed profoundly with the regulation of home education proposed in the Badman review.
The first murmurs of disapproval began with my introduction, when I said home education parents were overwhelmingly loving mums and dads, doing what was best for their child. "We should stop treating them as a public policy problem" I said to shaking heads.
These officials weren't happy to hear someone undermine the case for giving officials more power. They couldn't bear it when I suggested that perhaps compulsory state registration of home educators was not the answer.
Most home education parents do so because they don't like what their local authority has to offer. Doesn't that make it a bit rich to allow that authority to barge into their home?
I then dared suggest that the need to safeguard children's welfare was not the same thing as compulsory oversight of home education. The need to safeguard children does not mean compulsory registration.
Interestingly, the one actual home educating parent in the room who spoke up in agreement with me was met with cold, aggressive stares.
When I said that folk need more independence over their children's future and less state oversight, I was actually booed.
As I left, one official explained how "Independence is bad. Look at the academies in my area - we can't control education like we used to and parents want to send their children to them instead". Pesky things, people eh? It simply didn't occur to him that the answer might be to have less control over all education.
The unyeilding, arrogant, we-know-what's-best-for-your-child attitude I encountered today makes me realise that mums and dads who fear what these proposals could mean are right to be fearful.
Posted on 25 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Climate change: winning the argument
According to Ben Brogan in the Telegraph nowadays "just one in five accepts that global warming is caused by man pumping carbon into the atmosphere".
Well done Plimer, Delingpole, Lawson and co.
But that's still 20 per cent too many.
Posted on 25 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Google v the EU
First China had a pop at Google. Now it's the EU's turn to launch an attack on the world’s most successful internet information provider.
Why is it undemocratic governments have such an attitude against Google?
Ironic, isn't it? The EU launches an anti-trust investigation against Google, yet far more people in Europe will today freely "vote Google" with a mouse-click than ever had a say over Brussels.
While the Eurocrats achieved their position of prominence over our lives by stealth and deception, Google got there by providing what we want. Google operates in a fiercely competitive online environment. She may be ubiquitous, but even with a successful brand and strategy, the barriers to entry and competition online are low. Just ask Alta Vista or Yahoo.
I suspect that like Beijing officials, Brussels officials bully Google ultimately because they dislike what the business stands for. Google makes possible the free flow of information, the democratisation of knowledge, cutting out the middleman, niche everything, mass (individual) ownership of the means of production, free citizens deciding things for themselves .... The implications are mind boggling.
Good news for people. But terrible for officials.
If officials in Brussels or Bejing restrict Google, they will be doing what European and Chinese tyrants once did when they restricted the use of the printing press - holding back innovation and their own people.
Google means, to borrow Richard Cobden's phrase, "people have more to do with each other and governments less." No wonder Big Government, in Brussels and Beijing, hates that.
Carswell's Google Law; the more hostile a government to Google, the less accountable that government is to the people.
Posted on 24 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Bold ideas to fix our broken country
Eamonn Butler has done more than almost anyone to ensure that there are fresh and interesting ideas in politics. Whether politicians take up Eamonn’s suggestions, is, of course, another matter.
Eamonn's latest contribution is a new book out today, The Alternative Manifesto - a 12-step programme to remake Britain. Anyone concerned about the dire state of our country should read it.
Eamonn has a talent rarely found in Westminster - an ability to see the bigger picture and provide an overarching critique of the problem. He doesn't merely blame one particular party, but finds the machinery of the British state at fault; centralisation, unaccountable officials and quangos, an overbearing executive, politics and public services devoid of meaningful choice and competition.
The consequences? A bankrupt country, with unresponsive public services, bullying authority, economic sclerosis, and a public deeply dissatisfied with public policy and politicians.
Unlike many think tankers, Eamonn has a talent for using everyday language to explain complicated ideas. And he sets out his proposed remedies in terms that even folk in SW1 ought to be able to understand.
Eamonn’s solutions are to do to our politics and public services today what free-market thinkers so brilliantly advocated we do to our economy a generation ago; decentralise control, and allow in more choice and competition. Some of his proposals will be familar to readers of The Plan.
If our politicians were exposed to a little more choice and competition, I suspect more of them would be listening to Eamonn.
Think tankers are often told that their ideas are impractical. Eamonn has gone one better and shown how these changes can actually be implemented. Buy it here.
Posted on 24 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Commons talk
Sitting on the Commons benches as I write this, I hear a stream of jargonese from the Despatch Box.
Ministers use phrases like "Strategic effectiveness ... Secure the contract .... Proceed with caution .... Capability requirements .... Best practice .... Operational effectiveness".
Why don't ministers use straight forward English? I suspect it's to try to sound more knowledgeable and in control than they are.
Do you suppose Sir Humphrey trains them beforehand?
Posted on 23 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Corporatist balls and the BBC
I listened to a ludicrous interview on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. In microcosm, it was all that is wrong with our politics.
The minister was attempting to convince us how more interference in our schools was a good thing. Smug Ed Ball knows better than civic society, teachers, or mums and dads - apparently.
Yet amidst all the hot air and interruptions, I can't remember the presenter, at any point, asking Mr Balls why he should be trying to run our lives.
The debate was froth. The central premise – that politicians and officials should be deciding the values we teach our children - never challenged.
I
f SW1 people lacked the judgement to see that it's wrong to bill the taxpayer for their mortgages, how come they get to decide how our children are educated?
Perhaps the state-supported BBC just can’t see things that way?
The interview left me wondering if a big corporate media organisation, like the BBC, can ever articulate a non-corporatist world view.
Posted on 23 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
A Future Fare for All?
Is that fair, as in equal? Or fare, as in what you pay when taken for a ride?
When I first heard Labour's bland new slogan, I took it to mean the whooping great fee to be paid by each of us for having Gordo drive us all the way to wipe out.
Your future fare - over £20,000 extra national debt for your household. Too be paid by you, and your children, and your children's children. All for a one way journey to Greek-style economic oblivion.
In the word of another half-witted political slogan, "Not flash. Just Gordon."
Indeed.
Posted on 22 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Defence questions. Not bullying
As I said on the Radio 4's Westminster Hour last night, Gordon Brown has many shortcomings. His apparent boorishness to Downing street staff is not top of my list of reasons why he has to go.
We should be holding Brown to account for what he's got really wrong; ruining our economy. A Greek-style deficit. Debt that could cause us to stagnate for a generation. The relentless centralisation of public services. Ed Balls. Failure to equip our armed forces properly.
On which note, I will be taking his Defence minister to task this afternoon at 2:30pm.....
Posted on 22 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
The point of voting
If you want to know why voter turnout is so low, look no further than the story on the front page of today's Telegraph; Fortnightly bin collections are to be extended to every local council across Britain.
This decision to halve the frequency with which your bins are emptied didn't come about as a consequence of any local election contest. None of those you elected to your local council are likely to have been allowed any real say. Rather, like so many other decisions taken at every level of government, this decision was imposed - on this occasion by a combination of the Audit Commission and EU rules on landfill.
If your local council cannot even decide for itself how to empty the bins, what is the point in local democracy? Indeed, if the ballot box no longer decides something as basic as municipal refuse collections, what areas of public policy are still determined democratically these days?
What public policy does the House of Commons really decide, as oppose to rubber stamp? So supine and spivish and spineless has our Commons become, it doesn't - despite all the noise - actually determine much at all.
We need radical localism and direct democracy in order to make voting more worthwhile. As long as key decisions are left to remote officials and quangos, more and more people simply won't vote ....
Posted on 20 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Economic experts
Our economy grows because of ordinary folk, doing what is best for themselves and their families. It doesn't grown because of expert economists.
Today I see that some economic experts are giving advice on the need to maintain the spending stimulus.
Interestingly some of these experts were the very same bunch sitting on the Bank of England's monetary policy committee. The one that kept interest rates ruinously low for years. The one that favours government devaluing the worth of our currency and transferring wealth from us to them ....
Posted on 19 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Slow erosion of English justice
And so it goes on. Another attack on the jury system, this time from the Department of Justice itself.
Their report today suggests that ordinary folk are simply not expert enough. The citizenry can't even follow the instructions they're handed by judges, complain the report's authors. If only justice was left to the experts, they seem to imply ...
There was once a time when our English system of justice was remarkably democratic. Unlike our continental neighbours, we did not leave the administration of justice to a remote elite. Slowly, but surely, the nature of our justice system has changed. To use the dreadful management-speak of the day, it is increasingly "top down", rather than "bottom up".
Grand juries, once used to determine if a suspect should face charges, have long since been abolished. It's now up to a remote quango - the Crown Prosecution Service - who decides if the evidence merits a public prosecution. Given that the CPS rarely bring charges unless certain of a conviction ("the evidential test"), this means that it is officials at the CPS - rather than juries in courts - in effect determining guilt.
Bringing a private prosecution, an ancient right that empowered the common man against the powerful, now requires the approval of a quangocrat - the DPP.
Lay magistrates find they have to comply with rules, rather than exercise judgement.
Trial by jury has been suspended in certain instances altogether. Yet even where it has not, the scope for juries to use discretion has been steadily undermined. And as we know from the MoJ report, even then the experts don't think they're up to the job of following instructions.
Of course experts at the Ministry of Justice will think that experts at the Ministry of Justice are better at administering justice than the people. Officials at the Department of Trade and Industry once thought much the same about trade and industry.
Instead of undermining the jury system, we should be looking at new ways to democratise control over justice; elected police commissioners and public prosecutors, democratising judicial appointments, removing the barriers that prevent ordinary folk accessing the courts, opening up the closed-shop legal professions.
Posted on 17 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Vince is wrong about Barclays
Fifteen months ago, Vince Cable was laying into Barclays bank because they had the temerity not to accept state handouts.
Today he's having a pop at them because, having rejected a bailout, they're a net contributor to our dwindling taxbase - unlike so many other banks.
Vince's position makes no sense.
Why did Barclays reject government offers of money to recapitalise, instead preferring to raise the money privately? Contrary to what Vince wants us to think, it had nothing to do with
bonuses.
Rather, as I noted at the time,
"if Barclays takes the government shilling, it'll only be a matter of weeks before officials start to tell the bank who it should lend to and on what terms."
And they'll be less profitable as a result.
You doubt me? Just take a look at all those state-owned zombie banks to see what I mean....
Now Vince is back on the airwaves laying into Barclays precisely because they have managed to turn things round. We should welcome the fact that Barclays are now net contributors to the national exchequer, rather than a drain.
Would Vince seriously prefer it if Barclays had taken the bailout cash on offer, and was now a loss-maker?
There are plenty of bankers drawing unjustified bonuses. Those we should be criticising are the ones that socialised their losses, and privatised the profits. Barclays, having rejected state-handouts to recapitalise, should not be top of the hit list ....
Posted on 16 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Dubai needs no debt lessons from UK
I see that Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham has been giving the Dubai government a lecture about debt.
Dubai
must restructure its repayments - or face serious consequences, Lord M tells them.
Pot. Kettle. Black?
Listening to Mandelson, you'd almost forget he was one of the principal architects of what turns out to be the most fiscally feckless government in our history. You could overlook his role organising a banking bailout, which privatised profits by socialising bankers' losses. And which added £ billions to the national debt.
Lord M has been one of the chief cheerleaders for the Euro - also known as European monetary debt union. And which allowed entire nations to borrow beyond the point of recovery.
Lehmans? You ain't seen nothing yet.
The rising cost of debt may well bring Dubai down with a bump. But thanks to Mandelson and his cronies, Britain isn't exactly going to escape unhurt .....
Posted on 15 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
End of the Euro? If only ....
Liam Halligan is the most underrated economic commentator in Britain. Like Jeff Randall, he cuts through the froth - and has a habit of being consistently right.
"This current Greek saga" he writes in today’s Sunday Telegraph "won't end the eurozone – but future historians will identify it, perhaps, as the beginning of the end." Political reality, Liam suggests, is about to collide with the Euro-fantasies of the Brussels elite. "Faced with a choice between seriously annoying their own voters .... [even] the most ardently "pro-European" lawmakers, with years of Brussels trough-nuzzling under their belt, will always side with their own."
Perhaps. If only it were so …
Euro-politicians do indeed "side with their own" - but "their own" tend to be other Euro-politicians, rather than their own electorates. Critics of the Euro-project have consistently under estimated the degree to which its architects are insulated from the views of their voters. Thanks to the party list voting system and state-funded politics, so what if most Germans or Greeks dislike any bailout bid to stave off reality? It's not as if the people in any country got to have much of a say over the introduction of the Euro in the first place.
What is to stop "tough-nuzzling" Eurocrats simply ignoring the people. They have form - remember Lisbon, or Maastricht?
The Euro will fail. Eventually. But eventually can be an awfully long time.
Europe 's share of global output has collapsed from 40% in the 1970s to less than 25% today. Why? Precisely because of her high tax / high regulation economic model, imposed by Brussels. While the US has retained its share of global output despite the rise of China and India, Europe's failure to do so is stark. Just because something is economic insanity, that doesn’t seem to stop our smug, insular Euro elite from persisting with it.
Posted on 14 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
The future is conservative
I've just taken part in a Question Time-style debate at Harwich school sixth form.
The young audience was sharp and inquisitive. They had clearly put a lot of thought into their questions - which ranged from the NHS to Afghanistan, from cleaning up Westminster to tuition fees.
What was so striking is how receptive they were to the arguments in favour of direct democracy and radical localism. The ideas of popular initiative (so we all have a say in what MPs vote on), or see-through government (with disclosure of how our money is spent), were understood immediately.
They seemed to agree, too, with the key idea I was trying to put across; that the things that work best in Britain tend to be those things that aren't run by remote officials.
It was that fact, rather than the formal vote at the end (Conservatives 28, Lab 14, Green 14, LD 12, UKIP 9) that makes me think that the next generation is going to be much more conservative (and Conservative) than the one before.
Most encouraging, perhaps, was the way two members of the young audience came forward at the end to ask if they could help with my election campaign.
Posted on 13 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
MI5 v the judges
What to make of the splat between MI5 and the judiciary?
I'm instinctively suspicious of secretive, unaccountable state institutions. Without proper accountability, we all know how branches of the state end up doing the wrong thing.
But does that mean one should be sceptical of MI5 or of the judiciary? The latter is no more answerable to the rest of us than the former.
I'm very familiar with all the civil liberties arguments. Readers of this blog will know I'm pretty suspicious of overbearing state power. But is it the judiciary or the intelligence services that are weilding power without accountability here?
Is it really wise for the judiciary to ham-string the ability of the British state to act against terror?
Remember how, entirely seperately from this recent row, the judges ruled that the state could not detain terror suspects - even one's who had entered Britain illegally? They did so despite the fact that the suspects were entirely free to leave the country. Indeed, their detention came as a last resort precisely because they refused to leave the country.
Lord Hoffman ruled then that there is no "state of public emergency threatening the life of the nation" and that "The real threat to the life of the nation .... comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these."
That was a few months before the July 7th bombs went off.
Who is he to decide if there is a threat? Who is he to determine public policy in response to it?
Posted on 12 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Will UK taxpayers bail out Greece?
That's the question I put to Gordon Brown at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday.
He didn't give a straight answer. But he seemed to leave open the possibility that we will.
At a time our nation debt is rising by £zillions each day, how much will we be forced to fork out to prop up the Euro?
Monetary union is starting to look like a giant system of beggar thy neighbour. Which, incidentally, was precisely the accusation levelled against the old system of independent currencies, capable of fluctuating freely....
Posted on 11 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Monetary policy: we can't go on like this
A key vote took place last week. It determined how many £billions are to be spent, and what the public debt will be for years to come. Your children's children will be paying for last week's decision.
You don't remember the debate? The coverage of it passed you by?
That's because it wasn't a vote taken by your elected representatives in the Commons. The vote took place within the quango that decides monetary policy - the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).
The MPC decides whether to continue converting private debt into a taxpayer owned debt - a process known as quantitative easing. They also set interest rates, and ultimately decide how quickly the £ in your pocket loses its value. Yet how many MPC members can you name, without looking it up? Did you, or anyone you know, decide who gets to make these choices?
Leave it to these anonymous experts, I hear you say. This is too important an issue for politics.
But it was precisely these "experts" who got us into this mess, with a decade of ruinously low interest rates. It's their sea of debt into which HMS Britain now sinks. And if those we elect have no say over decisions of gargantuan magnitude, what's the purpose of Parliament?
Having passed the buck to quangos, politicians have no one to blame but themselves if the voter starts to see SW1 as parasitical.
Posted on 11 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Shallots arrive!
The rhubarb went in last week. Shallots, which arrive in the post this week, will be planted out next.
I love it as we start to come out of winter. Brighter mornings. Spring no longer seeming quite so impossible. What to sow and when ....
Posted on 10 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Inflation is back
Government has been conjuring up more money. Unimaginably vast new quantities of the stuff.
And now guess what? Inflation is rising fast.
With all those additional pounds out there, the ones that you own or earn are starting to be worth less.
This is almost a kind of robbery. By printing money, the government is not making wealth, but rather transferring it from you to the state.
This is just one more instance of you - and every other British citizen - having to pay the price for a decade of disastrous monetary policy, which caused the credit crunch.
Over the past decade, interest rates were set with one eye on the government's inflation target, and the other on building up a sea of debt-fuelled consumption. Today, inflation starts to take off precisely because we had a decade of targeted, mega-low rates.
If you try to buck the market, the market bucks you....
Posted on 10 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Prime Ministers Question Time
I'm due to ask Gordon Brown a question tomorrow.
Any suggestions?
The comment thread is yours ....
UPDATE: Thanks for all your suggestions. Especially to David Cooper, who suggested the topic I went with.
Was that the first crowd sourced PMQs?
Posted on 9 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Time to democratise banking?
How should the centre right respond to the ongoing financial crisis? If it is the case that the day of reckoning has merely been postponed, rather than averted, perhaps the conventional wisdom is wrong?
Free marketeers were put on the back foot by the easily made, yet difficult-to-refute explanation that the credit crunch was market failure. It took longer to point to the more subtle truth; markets didn’t cause the credit crunch. Rather they called time on the folly of central banks, which set interest rates too low for too long.
Then we saw private businesses (which we are supposed to support) being given £ billion bailouts (which we are supposed to abhor). Banks have been nationalised. Our opponents talk of a new economic model, with a switch away from free markets towards corporatism.
To resist this, perhaps free market liberals need a convincing critique of what has gone wrong - one that allows an entirely different, market-based public policy response.
The Cobden Centre claims to have one.
According to the Cobdenites, the answer to the banking crisis is not more bailouts for bankers. Nor is it about giving more power to the kind of officials whose management of interest rates got us into this mess in the first place. Instead, they propose honest money and democratized banking.
Today, when you deposit £100 in the bank, you no longer own that money. That allows the bank to lend £97 of your £100 (they still have to hang on to 3%), meaning in effect that £197 of money now exists where there was initially only £100. The person or bank lent the £97 can then in turn lend it on. And so on – the credit cascading through the financial system.
This is the basis of modern banking, and it is known as fractional reserve banking.
But it meant that at the time of the banking crisis, for every £1 of “real money”, there was X33 that amount of credit. Or put another way, there were 33 people in Britain who thought that the £1 of actual money in the banking system was theirs. You can see why queues form outside banks when customers suspect trouble….
Without fractional reserve banking we are told, there would not be credit. And without credit, the entire capitalist system would not work.
Except it is not true, say the Cobden Centre. If one were to amend the 1844 Bank Charter Act and insist that people depositing money had legal ownership of that money, banks would only lend money on if the depositor agreed. There would, in effect, be demand accounts (with no interest) and savings accounts (with interest, normally without instant access).
Banks would still be able to lend credit. But not unless they were pretty confident that they could meet their obligations. Unaccountable bankers could not generate candy floss credit with your money unchecked. All credit would be backed by savings, and 2 + 2 would equal 4. The catastrophically ruinous debt pyramid that seems to spring up each generation or so, wouldn’t keep rising again and again.
Perhaps a nation of debtors and consumers would become savers and producers once again?
Giving people legal ownership of the money in their own bank accounts is hardly extreme or anti-capitalist. In fact, it’s rooted in a pretty conservative idea of property rights. Yet it would have a profound effect controlling monetary policy.
It would also end the conspiracy against the taxpayer that sees government borrow too much, but then use inflation to erode away its debt on the back of our savings.
By allowing money to devalue each year, the state ensures that it is the prime beneficiary of rising economic productivity – poorer families being literally priced out of the market for goods and services they might otherwise have been able to afford.
If you think that the Cobden Centre’s ideas sound kooky, remember that the idea that the state would nationalise the banks would have sounded off-the- wall a couple of years ago. Perhaps when all other solutions have been exhausted, we could do worse than try to democratise banking?
Read more about the Codben Centre's proposal here.
Posted on 9 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Cameron's plan
It's uncanny. Every time David Cameron starts reading from The Plan, sales pick up.
This morning, he almost seemed to quote from it, saying "we will push power down not just from the government to Parliament but from Whitehall to communities; from the state to citizens; from Brussels to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy.”
He then goes on to outline ideas we first mooted, such as popular initiative, opening up politics, recall, localism, referendums and proposals to clean up Westminster.
I then take a glance at on-line sales, and see they've spiked upwards once again.
Posted on 8 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Lobbying - the next big scandal?
David Cameron warned today that corporate lobbying in Parliament was "the next big scandal waiting to happen" [hattip Paul Waugh].
I agree.
On August 13th last year, I wrote in PR Week of my "hunch that sooner or later we'll see a big Westminster story about the way that some lobbyists seek to buy influence." I went on the mention "the revolving door between Whitehall and business" specifically.
The digital revolution smashes hierarchy, opening up the cosy Commons to scrutiny. It is about to do the same to the world of back-room deals cut between big government and big corporations, of corporatist conspiracies against the taxpayer.
Posted on 8 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Revolting SW1
When an opposition spokesman, Damian Green, exposed the government's incompetence over immigration, he was arrested. If ever Parliamentary privilege, as set out in the 1689 Bill of Rights should apply, surely it ought to have protected Green from an overbearing, bullying executive?
As we all know, those running our rotten, indolent Commons lacked the character to ensure that members of the legislature could do their job unhindered.
Now we see Parliamentary privilege apparently invoked by MPs seeking immunity from corruption charges.
It is not just the government we need to change. We must transform the way we are governed.
The need to make government accountable to Parliament, and Parliament answer to the people, has become urgent …..
Posted on 8 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Speaking in Norfolk
I was the after dinner entertainment at South West Norfolk Conservative Association last night. Liz Truss is our brilliant candidate there, and she will make a great MP.
My talk was not about all that is wrong with the country (I thought that would merely depress). Rather I talked about what we must do to fix it.
Posted on 6 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
The Left is bankrupt
It's not just the nation's coffers they've laid bare. The current generation of Labour leaders are in danger of leaving their own party intellectually bankrupt.
To get a sense of how dire things are, have a read of Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander's article "We will defend the State" in today's Guardian.
Miliband and Alexander make the interesting observation that "as constituency MPs, we see people facing daily frustrations in their interactions with government: disempowered not empowered."
Indeed. You'd have to be a pretty dim-witted MP from a one-party fiefdom constituency to think otherwise.
In the real world beyond the SW1 fantasy-land, government is not some kind of enabling, empowering force for good. It is petty, officious, restrictive, bossy - and, above all, incompetent.
But what do Brown's back room boys propose to do about it? Miliband and Alexander talk about "strengthening the power of people in their interaction with the state". But to do so, they then propose more government.
Instead of allowing local or individual initiative, their remedies are all about official initiative. Rather than letting go, or allowing choice and competition, or an end to state monopoly, they simply offer to ratchet up the levers of state control; more Whitehall diktat, more national standards and decrees, more we-know-what's-best-for-you. They write of "neighbourhood policing" in the full knowledge that their own government specifically ruled out direct, local democratic oversight of policing.
That people like Miliband and Alexander can identify the problem, yet not offer a credible solution is beginning to trouble some of the more honest thinkers on the left - as I discovered speaking at a Fabian conference the other week.
The more perceptive on the left recognise that our ipod society is used to choice in a way no previous generation has been. They realise that the internet - which creates enormous choice, new niches and breaks monopolies - will shift the relationship between the individual and the state. Or put another way, if Spotify allows us complete choice over the music we listen to, why can we not have choice over even more important things, like how our children are educated?
Miliband and Alexander are analogue thinkers in a digital age.
Posted on 5 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Energy crisis and BBC bias
Last night's 10 O'clock News saw another classic illustration of BBC bias.
Reporting on the looming energy crisis Britain faces, the BBC kept referring to the "failure of the markets" to provide energy. The idea that we are not producing enough energy because of "the markets" is absurd.
The energy sector is one of the most heavily regulated parts of our economy. Energy producers need the permission of officials at almost every turn. Suppliers are unable to supply enough energy precisely because of the rules that force them to shut down power plant, purchase renewables, and jump through all manner of regulatory hurdles.
At no point did the BBC mention that one of the reasons energy bills are rising is because householders are being forced to pay hidden levies - which are then put on to the balance sheets of big corporations.
It is not the free market that is failing to supply us with energy, but a corporatist con trick.
The BBC invited a comment from the regulator OFGEM - who called for more regulation. The BBC invited comment from a government minister - who called for more government. At no point did the BBC consider the view that perhaps it is the regulator and the government that have got us into the sorry mess - and they are the last people we should be depending on to get us out of it.
Listening to the BBC presenter last night, I was reminded of how the BBC covered the Stern Report on climate change. Opinion reported as fact. Assertions made without caveats. No opposing view or doubt allowed. The BBC seems to have learnt nothing from its blanket failure to ask the right questions about global warming.
No doubt the producer of last night's BBC News is unaware that they were even being biased. That is what is so disturbing.
Posted on 4 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Fraser Nelson gives the Keith Joseph lecture
Just been listening to Fraser Nelson giving the Keith Joseph memorial lecture.
He said that the choice in government is between radicalism and failure. Interestingly, he sees the great tide of anti-politics as an opportunity for the Conservatives. If we're prepared to be bold ....
Posted on 3 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Defence debate is bankrupt
Just listened to Defence Minister, Bob Ainsworth, outline plans for the Strategic Defence Review.
It's all very well, but unless government is prepared to ask why we're spending £27 million on a helicopter we could have had for £8 million, we will only experience defeat and retreat.
Until we scrap the protectionist scam at the heart of the defence acquisition process, it will always be a question of what to cut and where the axe should fall. Proposals for 10-year spending cycles and partnerships etc merely blur the lines between customer and supplier, which we should in fact be reinforcing.
The price of defence protectionism is that our armed forces can do less. It is depressing that so few of those who fancy themselves as "experts" in the field are unable to see it.
UK defence suffers not just from a bankrupt Treasury, but a poverty of ideas amongst SW1 people who ought to provide leadership.
Having to do defence deals with the French is the price we pay for defence protectionism.
Posted on 3 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
More defence doh!
Apparently Sikorsky is about to launch a pilotless version of the Black Hawk helicopter.
Do you suppose the Future Lynx helicopters, which we're buying for £27 million each, will ever be able to do that?
Defence protectionism means missing out on such innovation.
It's always the same pattern; bogus arguments about sovereign supply mean we try building it ourselves (see Blowpipe, SA80, Phoenix et al). We do so at vastly inflated cost, and being in a technological cul de sac, miss out on innovative refinements.
Then we end up buying off the peg, but at tailor-made prices.
Doh.
Posted on 3 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Internet and money
On a recent trip back to Uganda, I was fascinated to see that almost everyone has a mobile phone. When I was growing up in Kampala twenty years ago, there weren't even many landlines.
Technology hasn't merely democratised communication, it has given almost every Ugandan a system of instant, electronic banking. One of the great, unforeseen consequences of mass mobile phone ownership has been the evolution of a system of mobile phone-based banking. By transferring mobile phone credits from phone to phone, Ugandans are able to pay for things securely, and bank in a way that was previously impossible.
It got me thinking....
What if one day a mobile phone company in such a country was to start selling phone credits that were decoupled from the value of the local currency? Rather than having X number of shillings worth of credits on your mobile, you would have a certain number of credits - which could be worth one amount one day, and a different amount another day.
If there was also inflation (the shilling losing value), folk would pretty soon transfer their wealth into phone credits. Bingo! You would have not merely micro electronic banking, but in effect a private currency operating alongside the "official" unit of exchange.
My bet is that this is going to happen someplace pretty soon. Technology hasn't merely smashed the state monopoly on providing telecommunications. It could break the state monopoly on currency.
What about Britain? What if in a few years time most Britons did their grocery shopping on-line? What if we each had an account with, say Tescos or Morrisons or Lidl, denominated not just in £ sterling, but in the supermarket's own system of credits - similar to mobile phone credits.
If inflation was to pick up, and a household knew that they had to spend a certain sum on groceries that year, it is not impossible that folk would buy supermarket credits, and spend them over the course of the year. They would be more likely to retain value. Would that not also be a system of private currency?
What if you could transfer your holding of supermarket credits over to someone else, in payment not just for supermarket bake beans, but for anything you like?
Fantasy? Not as fantastic as the idea of mobile phones seemed in Uganda two decades ago. As governments debauch the currency, I suspect that we will see the evolution of new, non-state controlled means of exchange.
Posted on 2 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Charles Walker is a great man
A great piece by Charles Walker on ConHome.
He puts his finger on it when he writes of how "Parliament has meekly ceded its legislative powers to the Executive, rendering it an increasingly toothless debating chamber - easily derided and bypassed on the big issues of the day."
It's what happens when 7 out of 10 Members in the Commons come from "safe seats". They end up answering inward to Westminster and the executive, rather than outward to the electorate.
Time to complete the unfinished English revolution ?....
Posted on 2 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
The case for electoral reform
There is a strong case for electoral reform. There are simply too many "safe seats", and not enough choice and competition in the political process. The Commons has become supine, spineless and self-serving as a direct consequence.
But the government's latest wheeze to try to change the electoral system is not the answer. As perhaps the only Conservative MP in Westminster prepared to advocate a change to the system, I simply cannot support this desperate, last-minute attempt to re-write the election rules.
Any electoral reform must make politicians more directly accountable to the voter, rather than less. The AV system that the government seems to be toying would insulate politicians from the people. Instead of having 7 out of 10 MPs from "safe seats", we'd end up with even more "safe seats".
Reform must start with open primaries and recall. Then we should consider multi member seats - with the additional choice and competition that that would entail.
Once again, Gordo manages to draw out the worst in something.
Posted on 1 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Debt default?
Since 2001, our government has let public expenditure rip. Tax revenues from the financial service / property bubble were treated as permanent additions to the tax base. The result today is a massive budget deficit.
Government has tried to finance this £200 billion-or-so gap between annual income and expenditure by writing out IOUs. Or issuing gilts, to use the parlance. The amount of IOU gilts issued next year is likely to be about the same as this year.
But - as the smarter investors have noticed - there many well be fewer takers. Why? For a start, with an end to QE, state-controlled banks won't be there to mop up government debt.
I fear that over the coming months either the gilt market fails, with no more takers for government IOUs. Or, even worse, we begin to move towards index linked gilts.
The former means the state is unable to cope with its debt levels. The later means that catastrophic levels of debt will be with us for a generation - with no realistic prospect of solving it.
Posted on 1 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
EU: a choice of "in or out"
"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?" - that is the referendum question posed in my Private Members Bill published today, and which comes before the Commons at the end of this month.
Some say it can't be done. Read my Bill here. It could be achieved in the space of a single afternoon.
For a generation it's been left to the political elite and professional diplomats to decide our relations with Europe. Now it is time to give the people a direct say.
Rather than advocate reforms that never actually materialise, why not make it a choice between in or out?
After 30 years of supposed "influence", CAP lies unreformed. A corporatist market exists where we were promised a common market. Red tape and regulation stiffle free enterprise. External tariffs prevent free trade. Europe hasn't come our way - and never will. It's time for out.
Surely the only argument against such a referendum is fear of the outcome?
Posted on 1 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell
Another blow against MoD protectionism
One of the most impressive people seeking to become a Conservative MP at the next election is Antonia Cox. She has a clarity of thought desperately needed in Westminster.
Her latest pamphlet
out today on defence contains more common sense than I've heard from many a minister in four years in the Commons.
Military procurement, she recognises, is a mess. Rather than tinkering with the process (as advocated by many supposed "experts"), Antonia suggests radical change to get Britain out of the £35 billion procurement blackhole we're now in.
Collaborative European procurement is no answer, she argues. In fact, it is a big part of the problem (see Eurofighter, Type 45, A400M).
The real answer, she says, is off-the-shelf procurement.
Other than those paid or lobbied to say so, does anyone still think defence protectionism works?
Posted on 1 February 2010 by Douglas Carswell