Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesSingh doesn’t mean “lion” for nothing
Posted on August 10, 2011For 312 years, Singh has been the surname almost universally adopted by baptised male Sikhs. It means “lion” and judging by last night’s events it’s no exaggeration.
Like many others following the riots last night I discovered Sangat TV, a Birmingham-based, rather obscure Sky channel which apparently normally broadcasts recitals of religious texts. When rioting began in Birmingham, West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, though, they changed their content.
A presenter and several of his friends and colleagues piled into a car with a microphone and a camera to travel around the West Midlands reporting on the riots and the actions of many Sikh communities to defend temples, shops and houses from the rampaging thugs.
If it sounds a bit haphazard, it was – jumpy footage, live interviews out of the car window and the driver intermittently wandering across the shot during set-piece broadcasts – but it was quite remarkable for two reasons.
First, that it is now technologically and financially feasible for a couple of guys with a car and a camera to become frontline TV reporters apparently funded by advertising from a sofa shop and a ghee (butter) company. Thanks to the low costs of entry into the media market and the viral nature of Twitter, the channel, its presenter and his message were soon becoming famous in a way that would previously have become impossible.
Secondly it was remarkable for the scenes and messages Sangat TV was broadcasting. Time and again the car would pull up to hear from Sikhs who had left the safety of their homes to protect the religious sites, property and homes whole community, regardless of religion. These were people who felt a strong and deep responsibility to the communities they live in and a strong revulsion for crime, looting and carnage and were willing to risk their own safety to put those principles into action. They weren’t vigilantes – they message was overwhelmingly that their religion forbids striking the first blow, and the channel repeatedly broadcast safety messages and warnings not to carry weapons or provoke trouble. They were just brave, decent people.
Of course sadly we’ve seen the deaths of three men reportedly killed while trying to protect a mosque last night.The full facts will come out in due time but before anyone rushes to condemn them putting themselves in harm’s way, consider whether you would prefer people stood aside and did nothing to stop attacks on their community.
Where the police weren’t able to step in, I for one am glad and proud that others were willing to do so. The alternative of shrugging and doing nothing to help is the philosophy of the rioters, not the British public who are under attack.
In between these interview stops the presenter’s commentary was utterly opinionated and utterly inspiring, the highlight of the night for me being:
Whether you support Arsenal, Man United, Chelsea, there is only one team to support-the Three Lions, Great Britain.
He also made the point that this crisis is the latest in a series of occasions when Sikhs have shown their self-sacrificing nature for the national good – not least during their long and loyal service in our Armed Forces.
Having set out to commentate on the night’s events, the Sangat team even put their money where their mouth was, helping police officers catch up with and arrest some looters:
You couldn’t imagine a better way to refute the racist bile that’s been flowing from Nick Griffin and chums over the last few days. It’s inspiring to see true British heroes do the right thing in a just cause for their country. Lions indeed.
Five lessons from the AV referendum
Posted on May 09, 2011The dust has settled, the fog of war has dissipated, and every other introductory cliche in the book has been used. What have we really learned about British politics from the crushing victory of the No2AV campaign? There are five implications that I can see for the practice and principle of politics. Here they are, in no particular order:
1) Combat Campaigning is here to stay. For several years now there have been signs that the methods and style of political campaigning have been evolving in Britain.As the old party system has become weaker, there were two voices vying to be its heir: on one side there was combative, streetfighting campaigning built on the belief that a proper dust-up interests people and produces the best ideas; on the other side was a consensus model, founded on the idea that no-one liked a nasty argument and it was much better to build a cosy centrist consensus.
Not only did the two sides in the AV referendum employ these two competing models – with No going combative and Yes opting for cuddles and herbal tea – but their beliefs aligned with them as well. AV is a system founded on the idea that politicians should share body warmth smack in the centre, whilst First Past the Post is about the battle of ideas.
The fact that No won bears out both the model of campaigning they employed and the belief that they were fighting for – people are more interested in a boxing match than a singalong. While Yes tried to argue that real life is preferential and consensual, voters thought otherwise. The campaigning style espoused by No, and pioneered in the UK by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, is successful and on that basis it here to stay.
2) The “Progressive Majority” doesn’t exist…except in the minds of Islingtonians who can’t bear to imagine that anyone might disagree with them. Whether it’s LeftFootForward, Laurie Penny, Polly Toynbee or Liberal Conspiracy there’s an in-built smug sense of virtue to the new British Left – they think something, they know they’re the most compassionate and sensible people on the block, so therefore everyone must think the same, right? I mean, almost every TV comedian does, so obviously the rest of the population are on board too? Nope. It turns out that only Islington, Camden, Hackney, Cambridge, Oxford and part of Glasgow supported AV, the “Progressive Majority’s” new favourite child – and nationally on 6.1 million people even support AV, never mind the Progressives’ supposed vision of Britain. The referendum proved that those who shout loudest are not automatically the most numerous.
3) There is no such thing as Progressive. Not only is there no majority in favour of it, there is actually no such thing as Progressivism. In effect it could be defined accurately as: Progressive, noun, Someone nice, ie in agreement with me.
The really notable thing about this referendum is the way that it split the Left. The Lib Dems and the self-declared “Progressive Majority” – a broadly young rump of Labour, the NUS and the SWP’s twitterati and commentariat – divided from the mass base that they normally assume they can ignore and still gain funding from.
I’m only an outsider looking in on the Left, but if you viewed yourself as “Progressive” before the referendum, only to be told that if you voted No then you weren’t in the club any more, you’d now be reassessing whether you’re a “Progressive” any more.
4) No-one likes a whinger. Someone – I can’t remember who – once said that “It isn’t fair” is the most powerful message in British politics.
They were right, but the Yes camp ably demonstrated that this is only true when your situation genuinely isn’t fair. It’s not fair that if you join the Army you end up buying your own kit. It’s not fair that if you save all your life and provide for your kids you get hammered with extra taxes while others get a subsidy at your expense. It’s not fair that the Gurkhas risked their lives for this nation then told them to do a running jump.
When your opponents in a referendum campaign starting hitting you hard by digging up quotes that prove you’ve done an about-face or talking about Nick Clegg, that certainly is fair. You’re not going to gain any fans by trying to get judges to enforce Marquess of Queensberry Rules – in fact, you’re going to make people think you’re a bit of a wet blanket and don’t deserve their vote. So don’t moan, fight back.
5) People want more power. In the run-up to the referendum, everyone was saying that turnout would be apocalyptically low, threatening the idea that people wanted to be allowed to vote on important matters. It’s understandable why they thought people might not turnout – AV was a proposal hardly anyone had heard of previously and even fewer people actually liked (including most of the Yes campaign).
But that’s not how it turned out. Even on a boring proposal which had been brought forward as a result of political shenanigans in Whitehall back-offices, more than 40% turned out. That’s not bad given the topic. Imagine how many would turn out to vote in a referendum on, say, EU membership?
The sad truth about the “peace” in Northern Ireland
Posted on April 06, 2011Northern Ireland has been transformed in the last decade. When I last visited Belfast, just over a year ago, I was struck by how much the city centre resembled the newly revived post-industrial city centres of Newcastle, Sheffield and Manchester. But despite all the spin, the glossy veneer still conceals some uncomfortable truths.
We on the UK mainland were shocked when PC Ronan Kerr of the PSNI was killed by a bomb in his car in Omagh on Saturday. Rightly so – it was a shocking and sickening act of murder perpetrated by truly evil people.
The character of much of the shock expressed was very much along the lines of “how could this happen now that we have peace in Northern Ireland?” The simple and sad truth is that those of us outside Ulster are routinely misled by politicians and the media about what the situation is really like. It is true that things are far better than they were when the Troubles were at their height, and that the Peace Process, with its attendant ceasefire by the Provos, UVF etc has made people much safer.
But – and it is a massive but – terrorism has never stopped. Shootings, bombings and beatings have remained a regular occurrence, as have failed attacks.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland publishes regular statistics on what they call the “Security Situation”. The latest data release shows that from 1st April 2010 up until the end of February 2011 there were:
68 shooting incidents (this includes when the security forces open fire)
30 casualties caused by paramilitary-style shootings
96 bombing incidents, involving 98 bombs (which includes defusings, but not hoaxes)
48 casualties caused by “paramilitary-style assaults” (ie beatings)
85 firearms found
Over 2.72 kg of explosives found
Call it what you like, but that is far from a state of “peace”. If a situation like this arose from nothing in, say, Manchester, then we would view it as a serious and active terrorist movement.
Of course, by contrast to what went before things are a lot better. The reasons for the cheery consensus that Northern Irish terrorism is a solved problem are understandable – everyone wants it to be solved for good, but just pretending that it is helps nobody.
PC Ronan Kerr’s murder should be a wake-up call that this issue demands all our attention, and cannot be swept under the carpet.
Votes for prisoners shows the future of Euroscepticism
Posted on February 11, 2011At first glance, the Commons deciding to maintain the status quo on a 19th Century law seems like a highly conservative thing to do. But in reality, yesterday’s vote to reject giving prisoners the vote was nothing short of a revolutionary act. This is the first time that I can remember that British politicians have chosen to openly defy a European authority.
Of course, the usual suspects have trotted out to say that the European Convention of Human Rights and the court that enforces it has nothing to do with the EU, but this is garbage in two respects. First, obedience to the ECHR is a membership requirement of the European Union – they are so closely entwined as to be arms of the same creature. Second, and arguably more importantly, the public perception is that there is little difference between the two.
Any Europhile who finds comfort in an artificial distinction between the two is deluding themselves if they think yesterday wasn’t a victory for eurosceptics over the European project. If the eurosceptic movement builds on this episode in the right way and learns the right lesson, then this could become the first of many victories.
What is the lesson that must be learned? It is this: retail politics beats theoretical politics every time.
The ECHR ruling that Britain should be forced to give prisoners the vote split the debate into two sides. On one side were the eurosceptics, who built an alliance of common sense around themselves to say to the public “We oppose giving the vote to criminals”. On the other side were a rump of euro-enthusiasts and self-proclaimed penal reformers speaking legalese about charters and stuck in the awkward position of trying to promote the empowerment of muggers and burglars. The outcome was pretty clear for a long time.
We must fight the EU on battlefields of our choosing, where we have the high ground and they have the sun in their eyes. We must pick issues that affect the real lives of millions of voters, that are easily communicated and where we are obviously in the right.
By definition, that means resisting and rejecting the temptation to indulge in high-falutin’ geeky technicalities or poe-faced philosophy.
Of course our campaign should be underpinned by a strong structure of principle and theory, but we must take a retail approach to selling our ideas to the people and the media – not betraying our principles but promoting them.
For example, a couple of years ago I was involved in a series of focus groups to test different messages and issues on the EU. In one exercise, every group was given a bit of paper with the word “Sovereignty” on it and asked to write down what the idea meant to them. Every single time, without fail, the sheets came back filled not with words about self-determination, democratic deficits and unaccountable EU commissioners, but with things about the royal family.
We asked the same groups about what the Government should do in response to votes for prisoners, and they unanimously said we should tell the Court where they could stick their ruling and we should do what want in our own country. It’s not that people don’t care about sovereignty, but they simply don’t engage much with overly complex technical language. Give people a practical example and they are big fans of self-determination.
Tony Hancock summed this up sublimely when he proclaimed “Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?” At the time that was funny because most people knew what Magna Carta was – now Hancock’s line is a cautionary message to anyone who would focus their messaging highbrow rather than real life. If you aim your campaign at the intelligentsia, they may back you to a man but you will likely lose.
The EU is bad for this country because of the democratic deficit, its protectionist economics, its commitment to corpus juris and its statist philosophy – but it will fall because it messes with peoples bin collections, it closes their post office, it bans their normal lightbulbs or because it gives a burglar the vote.
The Sword and the Shield: how to deliver growth
Posted on January 25, 2011Bad headlines have a way of colliding at the same time. So it is on the economy this week – first the CBI’s Richard Lambert alleged that the Government don’t have a coherent growth strategy across Whitehall, now the growth (or rather, not growth) figures for the last quarter have come out.
Things may well not be as bad as they seem – indeed, Fraser Nelson has a good post warning the Left against undue glee and the Right against undue gloom as a result of the new economic figures. However in economics as much as politics perception is hugely important and cannot be ignored.
So what to do?
Figures are figures, and they’re rather hard to change. It’s natural that the Government should talk about the impact of the snow, but overdoing that is quite dangerous. Politically it opens the door to stinging rebuttals from the Opposition, in media terms there’s a risk it looks like gimmickry and economically the markets have become bored of numerous companies using this as an excuse for their own poor results announcements in recent weeks.
Nelson’s argument that previous recessions have seen a jittery recovery is much more powerful. It’s based in sound fact and it communicates economic understanding. It’s notable that Ed Balls has chosen a relatively complex argument in criticising the Government today, saying that the shrinkage is due to people reducing spending in advance of cuts due to fear, so Downing Street shouldn’t be scared of using a little bit of economic complexity themselves.
More can be done to address the allegations about a lack of a clear strategy. Understandably there’s confusion – in Whitehall, Westminster and business – about how the roles of the Treasury and BIS divide when it comes to responsibility for encouraging growth.
A clear statement of these responsibilities would be a good start, identifying the Treasury and BIS as the sword and the shield of economic growth.
The Treasury holds the purse strings, so it has the most pro-active role – the sword.
It should set promoting growth as a priority, to be implemented by lowering taxes (or, depending on your ideological and economic bent, spending wildly). As a direct result, consumers, investors and businesses should find more money in their pockets.
BIS should be the shield, acting as a guardian of business around the cabinet table – monitoring the activities of other departments to make sure they aren’t introducing regulation that hobbles enterprise, weighing in against anti-growth policies from other arms of government and pursuing an aggressive purge of the bad regulation that it currently oversees.
If both Departments are simply given a blurred role of sharing the aim of delivering growth then at best they will duplicate activity and trip over each other, or at worst neither will do the job and they’ll end up blaming each other. Dividing responsibilites and encouraging specialisms is the best and clearest way to get the job done.