Foreign Policy Debate chat #3
Fat vicious Australian bigot talking now about how good Cameron is
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Foreign Policy Debate chat #2
7.42 Alistair Campbell giving us his “Gordon will win” spin. Unemployed war criminal predicts…
Foreign Policy Debate chat #1
Cameron says we need Trident to nuke benefit scroungers, immigrants and the Chinese. Sorry, practising liveblogging.
Liveblogging The Foreign Policy Debate
For an irreverent liveblog of the great SkyNews foreign policy debate, from a man who has forgotten more about foreign policy than they will ever know, I will be liveblogging here with my mate Haward.
Opening observation. The bookies including SkyBet, PaddyPower and Ladbrokes, are offering odds on words which will be used. Here are some of the odds from Ladbrokes:
Trident 1/20
Obama 1/5
Helicopters 1/5
Hung Parliament 1/4
Volcanic Ash 4/7
Ahmadinejad evens
Chilcot 5/4
http://sports.ladbrokes.com/en-gb/Politics-c110000037
There are dozens of these keywords you can bet on between the various bookies. Nowhere in the betting is the word “Palestine” being even considered. Says it all, really.
Mike Whellans – A Really Stylish Protest
There are few recent protest songs that you would listen to for the sheer musical pleasure of it. But here is one from bluesman Mike Whellans – and that’s the great piper Mike Katz on guitar.
For more of both Mikes:
Tory Whistling in the Dark
As the Tories get more shrill and more desperate, they veer wildly between nasty and deluded.
The worst of all the poll news for them was this poll of marginal seats from Ipsos Mori. In 57 marginal New Labour constituencies which the Tories have to take to get a majority, voting intention is New Labour 36, Conservative 32 and Lib Dem 23.
Tory support is down 6, New Labour support down 5 and Lib Dem support up 12.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE63L1OM20100422?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
Remember, this is a poll only of New Lab held marginals – so the New Lab lead is not a sign of general trend. Lib Dem vote is lowest in New Lab/Tory marginals, so for them to be at 23% in this poll is remarkable.
But these are seats which Tories must win to be in government. Not only are they not winning, they are falling further behind. Especially galling for them, when these are precisely the seats in which under their national strategy, Lord Ashcroft’s millions of campaign funds have been concentrated.
Now we come to the sensational delusion. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Toby Young, complete deluded arsehole. His spin on this poll, in which the Tory vote is down 6 per cent in a week?
“Reuters/Ipsos MORI marginals poll: Conservative Party support remains firm”
Young’s brilliant argument to support this – there are still the same number of Tory voters, it is just that a lot more people are now going to vote for other parties.
Toby Young. What a wanker.
Light in the Darkness
I hope that I have been able to tell people quite a lot of truth about the deeply unpleasant workings of government. It cheers me up a lot when I stumble across something like this, part of a reader’s review of Andrew Rawnsley’s hagiography of the Blairites, Servants of the People:
This book is fairly authoritative. The reader is fairly convinced that he is getting an accurate picture. It is of course only one view. If you compare Rawnsley’s account of the Arms for Africa affair with that of high-ranking civil servant Craig Murray in his ‘The Catholic Orangemen of Togo’, you see how a ‘Blair rides to the rescue’ story conceals another narrative of corruption and mass-murder in Africa with Britain unwilling to look under the headlines and uncaring about the consequences as long as they get their boys out of the swamp.
http://www.books2read.co.uk/blog/general/servants-of-the-people-the-inside-story-of-new-labour/
The Really Nasty Party
As unemployment hits 2.5 million, the Tories are blaming the unemployed on benefit for our economic woes, rather than the bankers at Goldman Sachs who have an average salary of £520,000 per year. The Tories are going back to their nastiest base instincts to try to pull off an election win.
The sad thing, of course, is that you could replace Cameron in that photo with James Purnell, Hazell Blears or Tessa Jowell without having to change the slogan.
The benefit system already is onerous and humiliating to those who want to work and feel, wrongly, ashamed to be unemployed. Many entitled and unemployed, normally hard working, people drop out of benefits, and into terrible trouble, because of the routine degradation heaped on them by the New Labour “New Deal” system, which Cameron seeks to reinforce.
Strangely the brass-necked benefit cheats, who do exist, are the ones who are not discouraged by the endless appointments, interrogations and form filling and continue to thrive on the counter-productive system.
But if anyone doubts the real nastiness of the Tories, or that the Lib Dems are seen as a real threat to the established order by the corporate media and their paymasters, should look at the absolutely vicious anti-Clegg headlines on the front pages of every single Tory newspaper today. I have not seen anything like this concerted a Tory media campaign since the Falklands War. The only parallel at election time was the vilification of Kinnock, but even that did not have every other front page vying with the Sun in extremity.
http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/04/22/tabloids-cover-lib-dems-sensation/
The Mail’s Clegg Nazi front page headline wins first prize for tenedentiousness, The Telegraph “expenses scandal” is not about taxpayers’ money but private and declared donations (and has been saved up for nine months for this moment), the Financial Times warns the City won’t accept anything but a clear Tory win, the Sun is apoplectic at the idea that for once Murdoch may not be able to nominate his Prime Minister, and the Daily Express warns that Clegg will flood the country with black people.
The Tories are truly vicious when rattled. This has become a campaign about who democracy is for – the people or the press barons. Anybody who opposes corporate and City power and its ownership of democracy through the mass media, needs now to fall in line behind the Liberal Democrats to resist this.
UPDATE
I take my hat off to Iain Dale for his excellent article on the subject.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2010/04/these-shameful-attacks-on-clegg-will.html
I attack Iain from time to time because it is part of the blogosphere game; but I have always had a high opinion of him. He seems to have wandered into the wrong political party by mistake – if you look at the typical Tory commenter on the political betting first link above, Iain has nothing in common with these vicious people.
Home Again
Back home again after a trip to Glasgow and York. The flu seems to have left me but I feel pretty knackered. Enjoying the election campaign, for the first time really since 1974. I’ll tell you the story of my involvement in that sometime in the next week or two.
Speaking in Manchester on Saturday but not sure if it is a public meeting – will let you know. Open meeting for Amnesty in Swansea next Wednesday.
Ummmm, I was right
I am in Glasgow, having a very pleasant time, but it would be superhuman of me not to point out that I was right and the closure of UK airspace was indeed a weird fearmongering over-reaction. There is no diminution in ash currently in UK airspace, but its danger to aircraft has now been “reassessed”, and the health and safety morons have had to admit that there is no overwhelming risk..
Volcanic Ash – Crying Wolf Again or Real Threat?
There is a danger that the stage has been reached when we automatically disbelieve the government when it warns of a great danger. I believe, for example, that climate change is a great danger. Quite a lot of my friends, however, are dubious partly because the government is pushing it.
Consider the really major government scares of the last few years – things which were supposed to result in the death of millions – which proved to be nothing like the threat alleged. SARS, avian flu and swine flu all come instantly to mind. And what about the most ramped threat of all, the War of Terror, said by Tony Blair to be an “existential threat” and by John Reid to be a threat “On the scale of World War 2”.
There is an absolutely clear history of governmental over-exaggeration of threat, but also that governments have no difficulty in finding backing for this fear-mongering from government scientists and both techincal and inter-governmental international bodies. There are always virologists, vulcanologists and security experts willing to go on TV and tell us we are all doomed (oh, and can they get a bigger research grant to combat the threat).
So when the government promotes a big threat, I am conditioned to scepticism, even before British Airways flew a jumbo jet around for hours yesterday with the Chief Exec on board (after similar incident free test flights by other European airlines).
It turns out that the repeatedly quoted occasion when a BA flight lost power in all four engines due to volcanic dust, was a case of flying right through the plume close to the volcano in Indonesia. When you think about it, the fact that you can do something as extreme as that and nobody be hurt, is comforting rather than worrying.
As for widely dispersed ash, I have been wondering how Indonesia and Hawaii and Sicily ever manage flights. Why was there not a massive whole continent air lockdown after the vastly greater ash flown out by Mount St Helens?
As a society we have become risk averse to an unrealistic degree. We seem to spend our lives in a permanent state of cringe. Perhaps the ash really is too dangerous: but I see no reason to automatically believe the government on the subject.
In Conversation in Glasgow Tuesday 20 April
I am appearing on Tuesday in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s “In Conversation” series.
http://www.glasgowconcerthalls.com/whatson/event/97590-Conversation-Pieces-Spring-2010-Craig-Murray
Do come along if you live in the area, as I shall look silly if nobody turns up. Having said that, it is a curious fact that when people have to pay to hear me, the audiences have always been bigger than when it is free. I remember some 450 paid for Amnesty in Malvern, and twice selling out the Edinburgh Book Festival, for example.
Brown Plan For Youth Unemployment
I wonder if they have been taught to make that Star Trek door opening noise?
Thanks to Subrosa.
YouGov/Murdoch Distort Poll To Stop Lib Dem Momentum
YouGov produce a daily poll for the Sun and Sunday Times. Today’s YouGov was the only post-debate poll to show the LibDems in third place.
At comment 268 on the thread linked below, we hear about their next poll:
268.
Just done a YouGov, Mostly about Clegg & LD
Here was one of the question
“Nick Cleggs says the other parties are to blame for the MP scandals, he has taken money from a criminal on the run, many of his MPs have been found guilty of breaking the rules and his own party issued guidance on how to fiddle the expenses system?”
I’d say that was fairly direct!
There were some 17 other questions re the LD
by sealo0 April 18th, 2010 at 10:33 am
I asked on the thread whether YouGov asked that before asking about voting intention. Sealo replied that indeed this was the first question, and others attacking the Lib Dems in the same vein followed. Only then did they ask about voting intention.
The proposition above is, obviously to anyone, not really a question but a set of dubious propaganda statements designed to influence the interviewee.
Plainly this is a deliberate attempt to produce a poll which shows the Lib Dem surge as a blip, and thus discourages potential Lib Dems voters. That the Murdoch press pull such a stunt should surprise nobody. But even though they are getting huge money from Murdoch for these daily polls, YouGov must realise that this abrogates all professional methodology and breaches the ethics of the polling industry. The senior management of YouGov must resign.
STOP PRESS
Anthony Wells of YouGov (known henceforth as YouGove) admits YouGov asking these “questions, but claims the voting intention question ought to have been asked first. He also points out that the antiLib Dem questions were “Not for publication”.
I bet they bloody weren’t.
See 14.15 on this thread. Hat tip Roger Mexico.
http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/2611
YouGove – Rupert Murdoch’s Pollster of Choice
Debate Lost on Playing Fields of Eton
There was a reason for Cameron’s pisspoor performance in the first debate, and that reason will be repeated in the second. Cameron is being coached for the debates by the Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox, son of Lord Sir (sic) Nicholas Charles Gordon-Lennox, grandson of the Duke of Richmond. The Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox is the Tories’ communications guru. Tax dodger in chief Lord Ashcroft presumably thinks the Hon. Anthony is worth the £322,196 pa the Tories pay him.
The Hon. Anthony is, naturally, an old Etonian. This is no laughing matter. Cameron evidently has a visceral need to be surrounded only by people of precisely his own caste. Do we really need an 18th century government? Hence his obsession with tax breaks for the ultra rich. Hence also his inability to communicate anything to anyone who doesn’t think yes is pronounced yaaah.
Thatcher, Major, Tebbit and Clarke actually knew what everyday life for ordinary people was, whatever their peculiar political beliefs. Today Cameron. Osborne and Gordon-Lennox will be knitting their noble brows to work out why forelocks are not being tugged.
They are about to get a pitchfork up the arse.
Lib Dem Surge Not Just The Debate
The morning of the “Prime Ministers” debate, YouGov already had a poll showing a 4% increase in the Lib Dem share on their previous daily poll, Now we have a new ICM for the Sunday Telegraph showing a massive 7% boost for the Lib Dems at 27%, over their previous poll four days earlier. The key point is, this poll was taken the day before and the day of the debate, with only a small part of the fieldwork done after the debate.
http://www6.politicalbetting.com/
So all the evidence shows that a spectacular LibDem surge started before the debate – in fact immediately following the launch of the LibDem manifesto. So the notions with which the Tories are trying to comfort themselves. that this is a bubble based on a single “X factor” type television performance, are simply untrue.
The rise in Lib Dem support is because they are being given a fairer chance to present themselves to the electorate, on a much broader front and involving many more people than just Nick Clegg. Clegg’s debate triumph boosted an already rolling bandwagon. It has much more substance to it than just one TV show, and is fed by a broad current of social opinion.
The sovereign power of the British people is no longer a private bagatelle of New Labour and the Tories. In this election they are toast. I am going to enjoy the blogosphere, where the nauseating triumphalism of Guido, Dale, DizzySpeaks and Tory Bear is about to meet a smash. Momentum hurts when it crashes into you.
Gordon Brown Does Hypocrisy
I just watched Gordon Brown talking about international development in Milton Keynes, broadcast live across all the breaking news channels.
If you switched off your critical faculties, it was a heartfelt plea for internationalism. I was jogged harshly out of semi-attention when he talked of the need to “Do something about torture”.
Well, New Labour did something about torture. They promoted it, they institutionalised a policy of employing torture to get confessions for their “War on Terror”, they co-operated with the extraordinary rendition system. Oh, and while they were at it they sacked me and tried to frame me for opposing torture.
Brown’s heartrending photos of third world destitution strangely did not include any of the many tens of thousands of children’s bodies mangled in Iraq, or victims of bombings in Afghanistan. Nor did he talk about his nice ally President Karimov.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/britain_boosts.html#comments
Today was a play for the bleeding heart vote. The problem is the hearts New Labour made bleed quite literally.
Tories Caught in Lib Dem Headlights
I have always been fascinated by psephology, and one of my favourite websites is http://www2.politicalbetting.com, where Mike Smithson dispenses much wisdom.
Like most UK political websites, the bulk of his commenters have a right wing slant. The comments were dismissive of all the opinion polls saying that Nick Clegg had won the leaders’ debate. Wait until the first regular YouGov voting intentions poll, they opined, and we would see the Tories are romping it.
Well, the YouGov poll came out last night and is in itself now driving the news agenda. Tory 33, Lib Dem 30, New Labour 28 is a revolution in British politics so close to an election. The entire dynamics of this election have now changed.
The polling question “Would you vote Lib Dem if you thought they could win” has almost always, since 1973, given the Lib Dems a hypothetical largest share of the vote. Well, the proposition is about to be tested for real.
This is a huge blow to the Tories. The silver spooned Eton generation were expecting to breeze to a coronation by acclamation, and looking forward to redistributing wealth to the wealthy.
Now Cameron has been revealed as an empty vessel, they really don’t know what to do. Cameron’s immediate reaction perhaps goes down as the worst timed and most implausible political lie in British electoral history. The Daily Telegraph headline on his interview screamed in full banner across page 1 of the print editions “It Is Still A Two Horse Race Says Cameron”.
This was patently untrue and embarassingly crass. What does it amount to? “You’ve got to vote for me because…you’ve got to. You’ve just got to. There is no other choice” (blubs). Not exactly brilliant politics by Cameron. In fact the Daily Telegraph is so embarassed by it they have actually changed this main headline online this morning.
But the content of the interview is still as weak. The Tories appear to be coming round – spearheaded by the odious weaselly second home flipping neo-con Michael Gove – to an emergency ditching of the whole Cameron project to end the “Nasty party” tag. Gove is going for right wing populism.
MORE PEOPLE IN PRISON!
MORE NUKES TO TAKE ON CHINA!
LESS BLACK PEOPLE IN BRITAIN!
SAVE THE POUND!
Problem is they have tried that before, I seem to remember. The Tories are well and truly mesmerised by the Lib Dem headlights.
And about to be squished!
Karimov is Totalitarian
A good article by Sonia Zilberman in yesterday’s Guardian cif about the Karimov regime’s destruction of Uzbekistan’s cultural base.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/uzbekistan-cultural-legacy-threatened
This is greatly detailed in Murder in Samarkand. She rather understates the case, not mentioning for example the banning of books (actually in practice all books are banned – that is the default position. A small number are on an allowed list). She also doesn’t mention the murder of the country’s leading theatre director, Mark Weill.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/09/murder_in_tashk.html
But what she does say is perfectly true, and needs airing. It is rather saddening that there are very few comments, and these are dominated by mainly US pro-Karimov supporters, putting forward the entirely false argument that the only alternative to Karimov’s dictatorship is a Taliban governmnent. They also claim Karimov is not totalitarian. If he is not, then the word cannot be applied to any government anywhere.
Clegg Must Stand Firm on Scrapping Trident
For my taste there was much too much prepared soundbite and especially anecdote in last night’s Prime Ministerial candidates’ debate. I was feeling rotten with flu, which made concentration difficult, but found it pretty dull. The exclusion of the more challenging viewpoints of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and even UKIP made the ground of debate pretty boggy.
But I was of course very pleased with Nick Clegg’s performance, which was much more sparky than I had dared to hope. Having raised the Lib Dem profile as real contenders by winning this first debate, he does not have to win the other two.
The desperate spinning by New Labour and Tories after the event showed that they are now going to have to attack the Lib Dems, and will do so from the position of right wing populism. Alan Johnstone disgracefully was shouting over other post debate interviewees “What about Trident? Trident! Trident!”
It says much about the demise of the Labour Party that it is basing its desperate pleas for continued support on the “need” for a bankrupted country to mortgage its entire future to raise the colossal funding to be able independently to destroy over half the population of the world.
The very proposition is ludicrous. But the “independent” British nuclear deterrent – which may only be fired with US permission – is so much an article of Establishment faith, that they cannot conceive any politician could be voted for who did not wish to maintain and expand it.
All the signs last night, and from Lab-Con parties this morning (Michael Gove having just done it on Sky), are that Trident will be the focus of their attack on the Lib Dems in the next few days, leading up to the next leaders’ debate, which is of course conveniently for them on foreign policy.
Yet there is no sign that the electorate share their unquestioning desire for a massive submarine based nuclear annihilation system, and no evidence that Clegg’s stand on it yesterday damaged his popularity. Clegg should stick to his guns, to use an unfortunate metaphor. Personally I do not like either the policy or morality of his arguing that ditching Trident would free up money needed for Afghanistan, but if asked which is the more important issue, I would unhesitatingly say getting rid of Trident.
Clegg’s problem is that his policy is unclear. No like for like replacement of Trident is a good intention, but what it means is deliberately fudged in order to accommodate the Lib Dems’ crazed militarist wing led by bomber Ming. They will be pressing Clegg to prepare for the next debate by fleshing out ideas for an alternative nuclear deterrent, possibly shared with the French.
Clegg needs to avoid being pushed in that direction. His line on Cold War systems no longer being appropriate is a good one. He should go on the offensive. Cameron twice stated that China is the nuclear power against whom we now have to arm ourselves massively. Clegg should call Cameron out on wanting to start a new cold war against China.
Clegg should also point out, in response to the al-Qaida dirty bomb argument, that Trident is no defence against that scenario and Mutually Assured Destruction is in fact what a suicide bomber wants.
Take my word for it, Trident will be the main focus in the run up to the next debate and in the debate itself. Clegg should go on the offensive in the foreign policy debate, and attack the government for its support of dictatorships abroad, including Uzbekistan.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/britain_boosts.html#comments
Clegg should also have a go over extraordinary rendition and torture, and the loss of the UK’s moral standing in the world – including the cover-up over the BAE corruption scandal. He has to get the debate onto his ground. The big two will be looking to steer it on to nuclear weapons and examples of EU excess.
But a good start, which left me still more comfortable with my decision to rejoin and campaign for the Lib Dems.