Rob Newman

New blog

I'm now blogging over at A Weekend Revolution. Come and take a look.

Thanks for reading

Thanks to all those who have commented and read the blog over the years I've been writing it. I'll be starting up a new, separate blog shortly and hope to see you there.

Obama scorns Tory do-nothing approach

Although still silent on the matter of Gaza, Barack Obama has given his first major policy speech - before he even steps into the Oval Office. Speaking in Virginia, he echoed Gordon Brown's call for a fiscal stimulus and decried the notion of doing nothing to make the coming recession shorter and shallower.

In fact, Obama specifically singled out the Tory critique that adding to the national debt now to ensure that we help families and businesses was unacceptable. The Tories have set their face against further borrowing (once they made up their mind as to whether they were against borrowing or not). Obama's response?

"There is no doubt that the cost of [my] plan will be considerable. It will certainly add to the budget deficit in the short-term. But equally certain are the consequences of doing too little, or nothing at all, for that will lead to an even greater deficit of jobs, incomes and confidence in our economy. It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth, but at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe ... That is why we need to act boldly and act now ..."

Instead of adopting Obama's typical 'Yes we can' approach, the Tories have instead positioned themselves outside the international mainstream and are totally isolated in their views. Obama knows that, although "it is altogether likely that things may get worse before they get better", doing nothing now simply means abandoning those who will be hit hardest by the downturn. Just as in the Tory recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, they would be quite happy to walk by on the other side. Progressives on both sides of the Atlantic are not.

A tale of two leaders

Two stories today highlight the difference between having an ideological, thinking leader who understands the nature of the threat to democracy posed by extremism, and having a bandwagon-jumping leader who, if he can identify a war which will make his party popular if they oppose it, will do so in terms. Nick Clegg's comments today about the need to "unambiguously condemn" Israel (really? Unambiguously?) are an inglorious way to mark his first anniversary as Lib Dem leader, but are entirely what we've come to expect of that irrelevant and conflicted party since 2002.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair is, at long last, to accept the Congressional Medal of Honour he was awarded in July 2003, when he gave his thoughtful speech to both Houses of the American legislature. In these days of appeasement of terror, wilful refusal to understand the threat and anti-Americanism (the return of which when Obama-novelty wears off is sadly inevitable), it is worth returning to Blair's 2003 speech to remind ourselves of his clear-sighted analysis of the epochal conflict that we are faced with at the start of the 21st century:

"We were all reared on battles between great warriors, between great nations, between powerful forces and ideologies that dominated entire continents. And these were struggles for conquest, for land, or money, and the wars were fought by massed armies. And the leaders were openly acknowledged, the outcomes decisive. Today, none of us expect our soldiers to fight a war on our own territory. The immediate threat is not conflict between the world's most powerful nations. And why? Because we all have too much to lose. Because technology, communication, trade and travel are bringing us ever closer together. Because in the last 50 years, countries like yours and mine have tripled their growth and standard of living. Because even those powers like Russia or China or India can see the horizon, the future wealth, clearly and know they are on a steady road toward it. And because all nations that are free value that freedom, will defend it absolutely, but have no wish to trample on the freedom of others.

We are bound together as never before. And this coming together provides us with unprecedented opportunity but also makes us uniquely vulnerable. And the threat comes because in another part of our globe there is shadow and darkness, where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship, where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine, and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam. And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and deadly virus has emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology. [...]

The purpose of terrorism is not the single act of wanton destruction. It is the reaction it seeks to provoke: economic collapse, the backlash, the hatred, the division, the elimination of tolerance, until societies cease to reconcile their differences and become defined by them. Kashmir, the Middle East, Chechnya, Indonesia, Africa - barely a continent or nation is unscathed. [...]

[T]here is one cause terrorism rides upon, a cause they have no belief in but can manipulate. I want to be very plain: This terrorism will not be defeated without peace in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine. Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel, and to translate this moreover into a battle between East and West, Muslim, Jew and Christian. May this never compromise the security of the state of Israel. The state of Israel should be recognized by the entire Arab world, and the vile propaganda used to indoctrinate children, not just against Israel but against Jews, must cease. You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace. But neither can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and granting them hope.

Innocent Israelis suffer. So do innocent Palestinians ... Iran and Syria, who give succor to the rejectionist men of violence, made to realize that the world will no longer countenance it, that the hand of friendship can only be offered them if they resile completely from this malice, but that if they do, that hand will be there for them and their people; the whole of region helped toward democracy. And to symbolize it all, the creation of an independent, viable and democratic Palestinian state side by side with the state of Israel. [...]

We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind - black or white, Christian or not, left, right or a million different - to be free, free to raise a family in love and hope, free to earn a living and be rewarded by your efforts, free not to bend your knee to any man in fear, free to be you so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others.

That's what we're fighting for. And it's a battle worth fighting."

This sick numbers game

As David Aaronovitch writes in another excellent article in the Times today, comparisons being drawn by the usual suspects (Ken Livingstone, George Galloway) between the situation in Gaza today and the Warsaw Ghetto abound. This kind of historical illiteracy — which conveniently omits to note that the Israelis aren't, as far as I know, forcibly deporting Palestinians to gas chambers — is offensive particularly to those survivors of the Holocaust who don't need the horror they suffered compared with others' in some bizarre game of oneupmanship. Having recently watched the masterful The Pianist, detailing the life in the ghetto of the pianist Władysław Szpilman, I can't help but feel that Galloway could do with a fresh viewing of it (if he's ever seen it at all).

Equations between different periods of history, and different times of war, are useless in situations such as these; but in our dismay at the violence, we reach for easy ways to quantify it — be it by invoking past atrocities, or playing the sick numbers game which says that "550 Palestinians have died; only 5 Israelis have died; that means that Israel is wrong and its actions are dispoportionate". Aaronovitch highlighted the absurdity of this approach when he asked in a previous column,

"To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate let us attempt to agree what “proportionate” would look like. Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City? There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not. Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending upon how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. Would you be happy then?"

Sadly, that macabre image of a rocket hitting a nursery very nearly came true on Monday when a rocket hit a kindergarten in Ashdod, nearly destroying it. Luckily, it was empty at the time; but would those who have been rightly lamenting the death of innocent Palestinians have been more willing to invoke proportionality if there had been Israeli children inside?

Of course, they wouldn't, not because they are biased, but because it would be perverse. Perversity, though, cuts both ways. We continue to operate on a kind of received wisdom, a view of the world that we have all picked up by osmosis, that Israel is in the wrong, that it has provoked Hamas. Sadly, an analysis of what has happened since Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005 tells a different story. That withdrawal — bitterly controversial among Israelis, and undertaken by Ariel Sharon in the teeth of opposition, not least from settlers whom the IDF frequently fights to remove — marked a key stage in Israel's acceptance of the need for the creation of a Palestinian state. But as Israel has come to accept the two-state solution, Palestine has divided between the moderates in Fatah willing to negotiate on the one hand, and the extremists in Hamas, with their founding charter to destroy Israel, on the other. And it is Hamas' very extremism that we never see — the anti-Semitic propaganda on Hamas TV; Khaled Meshal describing Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's Holocaust denial as "courageous" and arguing that "Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded"; and the news that the Iranian Security Council Secretary travelled to Lebanon to meet with Hezbollah and the leaders of Hamas in exile in Syria.

Grad rockets come to Gaza from Iran. Ordinary citizens in the Strip are the hostages of both those in their government who don't want to allow them to pursue their lives as they see fit, but are only intent on dealing "humiliation and degradation" to Jews, and of the regime in Tehran. As Iran is also killing British troops in the south of Iraq by supplying insurgents with weapons and equipment, the action which Israel is undertaking in Gaza is fundamental to our security, too and forms part of the wider conflict with terrorism of which I hoped and believed we were a part.

There is a solidarity demonstration at the Israeli Embassy tomorrow evening. I shall go not because I'm happy for ordinary Palestinians to suffer, and not because I'm uncaring about those who have lost family and friends. I'll go because I believe it is in the interests of free peoples everywhere that extremism, terrorism and theocracy are defeated. I blame Hamas and Iran for Palestinian suffering, I blame extremists who use the cloak of religion as an excuse for their hatred for exploiting Palestinians' just grievances, and I blame people here at home who will make specious comparisons with history for muddled thinking and wilful abuse of the free speech which the democracy they live in gives them.

"It's everything, stupid"

Something tells me that that particular catchphrase won't enter the political lexicon with the same force as the Clintonian doctrine it parodies. Nevertheless, it's at the heart of David Cameron's Big Idea in his speech today. Everything, he says, is connected; what is wealth, he asks, without "the things that make life worth living" — a loving family, a safe neighbourhood and a good school? A legitimate question. Trouble is, the Tory idea of a "loving family" is one where it's a man and a woman; the "safe neighbourhood" Cameron wants would be put at risk by the cuts that he's suggested today to policing; and it's only Labour's investment that is rebuilding or refurbishing every school in the country — investment the Tories voted against.

I don't know whether he had a New Year hangover, but Cameron's speech today was a dog's breakfast. Heavy on the Obama-mania as ever ("Our argument for change ... Britain needs social change, environmental change, cultural change ... change in the way the country is governed ... I want to focus on just one part of the change we will bring"); but, to the point of absurdity, packed with cliché:

"So let me tell you my vision of a good future for our economy. It's an economy where government and its citizens live within their means, save for a rainy day, waste not and want not. It's an economy where everyone has the chance to own their own home with space to live and breathe - and where we work to live, not live to work."

I don't know whether the usual speechwriters were on holiday and so Dave had to crank up the old soundbite machine from when he worked in PR himself; but the policy wonks have certainly been at it. The Big Idea today was, it seemed, a good one: help the savers who have been hurt by the necessary cuts in interest rates. Cameron proposes to abolish income tax on savings for everyone on the basic rate of tax. Top rate taxpayers would continue to pay the same. How is this to be paid for?

"We would pay for this change by restricting the growth of public spending in the coming year 2009/10."

The words 'Tory' and 'cuts' spring immediately to mind. We are not disappointed. The proposal, Cameron says,

"would be more than paid for by maintaining the Government's spending plans for the NHS, schools, defence and international developing, but restricting other departments to a 1% increase in real terms. A culture of thrift at the heart of government ..."

This new euphemism for cuts attempts, and fails, to disguise the fact that this is an utterly empty offer to the electorate. You would think that Cameron would be telling us what the Tories would do if they won office. But this is a fantasy promise — because he proposes to pay for it using money which he will never get his hands on. If the election is in 2010, as seems likely, and Cameron were to win, then he would take office at the start of the financial year 2010-11. The money for 2009-10 will be long spent — in which case, this offer to help savers will never materialise. Fraser Nelson writes:

"If there's an election next year ... then the plan will not materialise because there won't be the money. All these headlines that he hopes to generate will be for nothing. The Tories don't say so in terms. But I asked Cameron afterwards if his tax cut offer is valid in 2010-11 when he's more likely to be in power — and he answered that he can't tell what the public finances will look like by then. That sounded like a 'no' to me."

Empty promises from the Tories, then; and the rest of Cameron's speech wasn't much better. For someone who criticises Gordon Brown's practice of setting up reviews to look into policy matters — and who had the cheek in his speech today to say that it was Labour at risk of being painted as the "do nothing party" — Cameron announced first the publication of

"reports — for consultation — on green tech incubators and the green environmental market",

and that

"the Conservative Party will undertake a full-scale review of the creative industries ... I know it will make a bold and challenging contribution to our plan to create a new economy fit for the 21st century."

Presumably this is an attempt to catch up with the fact that Stephen Carter is already undertaking a review, to be published shortly and announced back in October, on putting Britain at the forefront of investment and innovation in the digital and communications industries, as the bulk of Cameron's comments centred around fibre-optic broadband. It's all a brazen attempt to shake off the image which has stuck — of the do-nothing party which opposed the nationalisation of Northern Rock, who walked by on the other side during recessions past of their making, and who now come up with gimmicky, unfunded 'schemes' to make it look like they're credible on the economy.

Take their 'National Loan Guarantee Scheme' — Cameron banged on about it several times today. A £50 billion scheme which George Osborne claims "does not add to public expenditure", and yet would require government spending if any participating firm defaulted and the bank called in the guarantee. Since 1981, the default rate for firms involved in schemes like the Tory proposal has averaged 28% — yet the Tories have said that they don't support further borrowing and spending to help people through the recession.

Too many empty promises; too many contortions on policy. It's credibility, stupid.

We need to focus on the real enemy in 2009

Complaining about reality TV and its dubious qualities is all very well, but the single most ill-judged piece to come from the direction of the goggle box in 2008 must have been Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's "alternative Christmas message", as brought to us by Channel 4.

Despite the fact that he risks undermining the force of his own argument by bracketing this odious lunatic with Tony Blair and George W. Bush, Peter Tatchell wrote a terrific article at Comment is Free denouncing Channel 4's decision to give an unchallenged platform to this virulent anti-Semite and human rights abuser. He notes the 700 people awaiting execution in Sistan and Baluchistan province, many of them political prisoners; student leaders executed on false charges of being gang members; 'morality' laws such as that which led to a 16-year-old girl being hanged for 'crimes against chastity' (she was systematically raped and abused for years); labour activists such as Mansour Osanloo, the leader of Tehran's bus workers syndicate, being jailed for defending workers' rights; and the export of terror abroad through Iran's support for Hezbollah and Hamas. To allow this man to deliver a message of any sort to the British people, be it on Christmas Day or any other day, is surely equivalent to having given Hitler a slot in 1938.

The comparison with the year before World War II began is deliberate. Iran has been the unambiguous winner from events in the Middle East since 9/11. Strengthened by the Iraq War, to the point where its weapons and trainees openly kill British soldiers on the roadsides of Basra and the surrounding area; fortified in its anti-Semitism and wish to see Israel "wiped off the map" by the miscalculations of the Jewish State in the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah; and now feeding Hamas' desire for destruction by supplying the group with Fajr rockets which are fired directly into Israeli towns and villages, while all the while developing its nuclear capability - Iran represents the single greatest menace to international peace and security as we enter 2009.

Commentary in recent days has tended to separate out the conflict currently underway in Gaza from the Iranian 'problem' - as in, "Barack Obama has to find a way to solve the Middle East crisis, and that's before he even turns his attention to Iran". The two are interchangeable. Progress in restoring security to Iraq - the tipping point for which was reached when Iraqis themselves rejected extremism and foreign fighters' interference - has helped to arrest some of the difficulties in the south of that country; but that represents only a minor setback to Iran's efforts to maintain what Tony Blair called an "arc of extremism" which stretches across the region. Obama pledged during the election campaign that he would talk to Iran without preconditions. Fair enough - but those talks cannot begin without a blunt recognition of where we stand at the moment. Iran is encouraging terror and positioning itself as the key power in the region, while attempting to buttress its position by seeking weapons of mass destruction. It has to be stopped if people across the Middle East - including moderates and democrats in Iran, who have no love for their erratic and reactionary president - are to enjoy peace and security themselves. That way lies greater security for us, as well.

It may be that Obama brings a new willingness to confront what is a growing threat to all of us. In truth, it's an outrage that we have been stymied at an international level by countries such as China and Russia - no defenders of peace and stability, they - from taking action against a country which has been killing our troops and threatening our interests. Iran represents a gathering storm in international affairs - and unless something is done to arrest its activities, I confidently predict that Gaza won't be the only place that the IDF is in action this year. Iran's nuclear facilities will be high on Israel's list of targets - just as Iraq's Osirak reactor was in 1981. The fact that I was born the year that facility was destroyed, and nearly 30 years later Israel is still having to take action in the region to eliminate threats which the international community should have acted to prevent, is salutory.

UPDATE (Sat 3 Jan): The Times leader sums up how Israel's action in Gaza has strengthened Ahmedinejad's hand:

"Beset by rising unemployment, stagnating living standards and anger among the urban poor at his failure to deliver promised improvements, the Iranian President's chances of re-election in June looked bleak. Now he can again rail at Islam's enemies, call for suicide bombing volunteers, mobilise support for Hamas and Hezbollah and invoke revolutionary clichés to reassert his power at home and Iran's radical leadership overseas.

More importantly, he can use the conflict to exacerbate relations with America - stepping up the supply of arms and missiles to Hamas fighters, undermining Western-aligned Arab governments and repeating crude calls for the destruction of Israel."

Obama's strategy, it says, must unfold quickly but carefully:

"First, Washington should return American diplomats to Tehran. None has been based there since the 444-day siege of the embassy ended in 1981, with Washington having to rely on Swiss intermediaries. Second, the US should begin technical discussions, probably in international financial forums, on releasing frozen Iranian assets and easing some of the trade embargoes. Third, Washington should continue and expand low-level talks on guaranteeing stability in Iraq. And fourth, Mr Obama should simultaneously entertain overtures to Syria with the aim of breaking the Iranian axis."

These are some serious times

While you could never countenance agreeing with some top Tories' claims that the recession can be "good for us", it's also the case that the new year may mark a turning point and - we can but hope - encourage us to put some of the ephemera that have characterised not just 2008, but the last decade, behind us.

Futurist Richard Watson, writing in the Times on New Year's Eve, labelled some of our obsessions of the past period of time as "ridiculous diversions", including among them pretentious job titles, plastic surgery and overblown things and past-times from owning expensive sports cars to dress-down Fridays. Essentially, his thesis is that a new age of 'seriousness' is upon us - anything which reeks of being spun and of being an extravagance will be looked down upon, while unvarnished, home-made, honest behaviour and approaches to life will be feted. This should bring comfort to Gordon Brown (Watson writes: "you will lust after an original, if battered, Edwardian fireplace, things that show their age and character. Shabby chic will be back") and the Labour Party generally (he points to the rise of IMBYS - 'In My Back Yard' people who "want things to happen locally ... they ... will support a small family business or a village shop rather than a national or global brand" - good news for communitarians).

Looking again at what we as a society value is worthwhile. People losing their jobs can never be good; and nor can people being forced to change their behaviour by virtue of suffering through a downturn. But considering what kind of things we hold dear as we come out the other side of the recession is a proper endeavour; and if it means less worshipping of the instant in favour of what endures then I'm all for it. As it broadcast its interminable "new year live" programme last night (complete with "Happy New Year" wishes from football commentators and soap stars - gee, thanks), the BBC ran through the TV highlights of 2008 which included, in swift succession, the winners of The X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and some other reality programme too. Usain Bolt's incredible 100m victory at the Olympics came somewhere down the line; it would have been worth missing off those who are about to have their 15 minutes of fame before going the way of Leon Jackson in favour of showing the whole 9-and-a-fraction seconds of Bolt's immortal bid for glory.

Ephemera can hold sway in the way in which we talk about politics, too; can we really take the measure of Barack Obama thanks to the way in which he hits a golf ball, for instance? How many stories about politicians' body language will we have to suffer this year? And how much discussion of actual policy, and the challenges facing the nation, will there be, rather than people believing their own hype? It's all wishful thinking, of course - like the ongoing fretting about the need to end Punch and Judy politics - but it might be nice to think that, with the situation facing so many families being so grave, we might find a more grown-up way to discuss government and politics.

Our leaders have got it all to do and not long to do it in. Let's hope they get it right.

PALINdrome

Create your own Sarah Palin speech, and hear the woman herself read it back to you! Here's my effort.

The 'Brown bounce' is real

All the recent polls have shown a narrowing of the Tory lead in the polls to single digits, and the Brown/Darling team pulling ahead of Cameron/Osborne on economic competence. What they haven't shown is that the electorate, while trusting the PM to lead the country through the financial crisis, is willing to send him back to Downing Street come the next General Election.

However, a Channel 4/YouGov poll reported at ConservativeHome has some telling results: the Tory lead in marginal seats, 13% at the last survey (a 150 seat majority if uniformly translated), is now down to 5%. This would still translate as a healthy Tory majority of 54 — but it's real turnaround. As one commentator puts in the accompanying thread at ConHome:

So a swing of four per cent. To Labour. In the seats the Tories must win. In a month. [...]

The truth is, we simply don't know how things are going to pan out. Just goes to prove how perilous it can be to forget Harold Wilson's age-old adage[.]

Indeed it does.