TRG Finds Favour With Students

Last night saw the annual Student TRG Parliamentary Party. For many of those attending, this was their first visit to Parliament and it is part of our ongoing efforts to help stimulate an interest in politics among young people. Some photos of the event, which was more social than serious, will no doubt appear in our Photo Album which you can browse by clicking here or in the box in the right hand bar on this page.

In recent years, the TRG has done particularly well among students, who make up more than half of our new members each year, representing a great cross-section of universities. I spoke to students from UCL, the LSE, Exeter, Durham, Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Bath, King’s College London and Queen Mary and I am sure there were others.

It was also great to see a good turn out by Members of Parliament who did an excellent job of meeting as many of the attendees as possible. Regular TRG friends such as Ken Clarke, Damian Green, Lord Hunt, Ian Taylor, Tim Boswell, John Bercow and Charles Hendry were there along with some newer faces at our events such as Andrew Mitchell and Dominic Grieve.

However, it was Iain Duncan Smith who proved to be the star attraction. As the evening came to an end, he made several attempts to leave that were interupted by gangs of students who wanted to be photographed with him and there were clearly more who didn’t get their chance.

Thanks to everyone who came and to Clare, Tim C and Chris H who made it such a successful event – well done!

Is There Something Different About Gay Couples?

It is fun to watch the cabinet hacking at each other once again, although only as a spectator sport. It must get in the way of effective government, but at least there appears to be a real debate and that is a good thing.

The subject in question is the question of a proposed new anti-discrimination law that will prevent, among other things, gay couples from being discriminated against when going to adoption agencies. The Catholic Church, which through the agencies it manages looks after many of the most desperate cases, has registered a protest and written to members of the Cabinet including Ruth Kelly, who is rumoured to be considering resigning if the law goes through.

So here we have a tricky dilemma: should liberal, post religious values be able to over ride sincere, religious beliefs?

The social liberal in me wants to back the rights of gay couples, but I am not sure that trampling over genuinely held convictions is not an abuse of the same intention. Which ever way around, someones rights will lose out.

While I am unhappy for the state to support any institution that discriminates against anyone who is a member of the society it represents, I am not sure that that should apply to voluntary organisations that supply additional support. If the state was the only provider of adoption services and the Catholic Church stepped in to say that they would take some of the most difficult to place children, we would all be rightfully pleased. So why should be limit their activity now?

But perhaps this is the wrong question. As I said on 18 Doughty Street on Thursday evening, MPs are allowed free votes on matters of conscience. Perhaps the general public should be allowed to do the same. Give the religious groups an exemption in these cases and see if public donations dry up or continue. The state could provide no-exclusion services as it does now. That way, everyone is able to exercise the same freedom of choice in matters of conscience that MPs enjoy and more children will be cared for – surely the most important criteria here.

Update – 29/1/07

The BBC has a story suggesting that David Cameron will back the new law if there is no compromise. I will be interested to see if he allows his backbenchers a free vote on the issue. This seems likely, with David Davis suggesting already that he will vote against the bill.

Ashdown is a Man to Listen To

Paddy Ashdown is not a figure that is widely loved by many Tories, particularly those that find themselves regularly fighting tooth and claw with local Lib Dems.

However, in the area of post-conflicy reconstruction there are few more authoratative figures and his observations deserve to be noted and acted upon. Writing in The Independent yesterday, he makes clear the extent to which the UK-US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq are under-scale and under-resourced. He notes the lessons of past situations, such as Kosovo, and highlights the lack of recognition Blair’s government pays to the history of such events.

His key point is the level of resources needed after a major conflict, often more than was needed in the war itself. Most starkly, he points out that:

“In Afghanistan, we have 1/25th the number of troops and 1/50th the amount of aid, per head of population, that we put into Kosovo. There is political short-sightedness: a combination of hubris, nemesis and amnesia.”

If that is an indication of what will be required to render anything close to a satisfactory outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan we must acknowledge this now, but we cannot act alone. Sadly, the situation remains as it ever was: without international support we cannot hope to redeem the situation and there is little to suggest that coming together.

Home Office Divorce

It is only the middle of the week and the idea of splitting the Home Office into two departments, launched by John Reid only on Sunday has already disappeared.

The suspicion is that the idea was a highly cynical ploy to get the story of a No 10 aide being arrested in the cash for honours scandal. Another staffer from No 10 has been questioned for a second time and this does not look good for the government. To play so frivolously with the Home Office when there are real issues there is pathetic and Reid should be ashamed of himself, if that is indeed what happened. He should divorce the Home Office before it divorces him.

For all of this, is it a good idea? It is hard to know. The Home Office is large and seemingly impossible for a series of ministers to manage. It may simply be too big. On the other hand, many of the problems it has seem to stem from one part of it not talking to the other (criminal records, prison releases, etc) and that would hardly be helped splitting it further.

What is clear is that it is in a truly awful state, something radical needs to happen and there are scant few ideas in the public domain.

Something Good From No 10 – A Way to Voice Dissent

The TRG would like to see itself, I am sure, as a group that is able to set aside partisan differences when the opposition does something that is truly welcome and there is a new(ish) example, launched in November, that demands just such openhandedness. No 10 has introduced a better way to complain about all the things you think it is doing wrong and, it seems, a lot of people are complaining about a lot of things!

The system is a “beta-test” of an online petition system.

At time of writing, the top petitions were:

• Scrap the planned vehicle tracking and road pricing policy (529869 signatures)
• repeal the Hunting Act 2004. (20718 signatures)
• scrap the proposed introduction of ID cards (12828 signatures)
• Proclaim St David’s Day as a national holiday in Wales. (8943 signatures)
• Delay the passing into Legislation of the Sexual Orientation Regulations for Northern Ireland (8802 signatures)

What a fascinating mix! Surprisingly, there is nothing about Iraq. But look at how many support stopping vehicle tracking – over half a million people! That is a serious number.
All of this is not to say that anyone in No 10 will listen to these cries in the online wilderness, but who has signed the petitions and their contents at least in the public domain. I hope that members of opposition parties and the media will keep an eye on this site and kick-up a stink if petition with wide support is ignored.

If you have a good idea for an online petition that the TRG should support, email us here.

Problems Managing the Tory in Your Life? Try ‘How to Live With a Politician’

A new book is shortly to hit the shelves, entitled, “How to Live with a Politician”. The author is Alicia Collinson, barrister, and wife of TRG VP Damien Green, MP for Ashford.

The book is available to order prior to publication from Politico’s website and contains hints and tips for how to manage the unruly politician in your life. I am told there are over 100 contributors of various types who have offered their wisdom and experience.

I haven’t seen a copy yet, although the TRG’s Director, Clare Whelan, has and she tells me it is more than a little funny! We’ll try and get hold of a copy and review it fully for Reformer, soon.

Update – 1/2/07

We have started looking at getting the TRG web store set up. Most of this will be through Amazon. As a starting point, we have put up a link to Alicia’s book in the bar on the right. If anyone is brave enough to try it and that would be great – but only if you were intending to buy the book, anyway! You may even be our first customer. ;0)

Brown is the One Undermining the Union

As Nick Robinson detailed in Newsnight, last night, “Just 16% of English people and 32% of Scots said they back the idea of Scottish independence.”

Yet Gordon Brown is taking the chance on the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union to say that the very Union is under threat and seeming to take seriously an idea that is shear lunacy in the eyes of most sensible people, including One Nation Conservatives.

So why do it? Sadly, once again, Brown is playing football with a truly explosive issue for his own personal benefit. In this case, to meet the charge that he is yet another Scot running the country. Brown does not understand that the problem is not with him being a Scot, but with him being him.

Unfortunately, the only reason there is any credible argument to these ideas at all is because of the unstable arrangements between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom that this government, of which Brown has always been a central figure, has put in place. Their inconsistency and political opportunism is best shown up by the simple fact that every new assembly (Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, Mayorial and others) put in place by this government is elected on a different basis chosen by the government to benefit Labour – not to follow what they believe is the best way to hold elections.

The “Mid-Lothian” quesion, which describes how Scotland is over represented at Westminster and the unequal way in which they excise powers over England and Wales that are not present in reverse, is another nettle Brown’s cabinet colleagues have failed to tackle.

It seems to me that the Union is not really under threat and that this is a shabby attempt by Brown to score a political point. If I am wrong, and that does happen from time-to-time, then Brown will be as responsible as anyone else in the last 300 years. He should address the issues, and not the media, as soon as possible.

More Brown Meddling Will Lead to Norfolk Floods

The Government has cut the budget for flood defences on the Norfolk Coast from £38m to £33m. Part of the Norfolk Broads are now under threat as the sand banks that protect them will not be replenished along parts of the coastline. This is contrary to the advice of the Environment Agency – the government’s official body in this area – whose opinions are being over-ruled by the Treasury on cost grounds.

Now parts of the Norfolk Broads will almost certainly be lost. All of this under the direction of the Chancellor, who had been attempting to claim new environmental credentials and has been shown, yet again, to be a fraud who cannot resist meddling when he think he knows better than the real experts who are paid to take decisions.

Tyranny of the Treasury and the BBC

The Treasury’s tentacles are everywhere and they poison much of what they touch with their micro-managed venom. Take the BBC for example.

The BBC has made clear that as the license fee is effectively going to be cut in real terms, further cuts in services and costs will have to take place. This has happened at the insistence of the Treasury who pushed Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell to be much tougher than she thought appropriate.

The BBC’s situation is made worse because the Treasury holds the right to cap the BBC’s level of borrowing so any cut in the license fee has to lead to a cut in services immediately without any ability to borrow when capital costs need to be covered.

As if that was not enough, the BBC is being forced to move large amounts of their production from London to Sale in a political move to shore up support in the Labour heartlands despite the cost of moving, estimated at some £600m, and the increased running costs that will result from adding a further major production site. It is not certain what will happen to the new BBC premises in West London that was designed to meet the corporation’s complete needs for years to come. The government is forcing much of the facilities onto a scrap heap when it had decades of useful life in it. Some of it may be rented out – much will be wasted.

These three points, all insisted on by the Treasury, in spite of experienced voices voicing concern from the BBC, external experts and even other government departments, have combined to ensure that the BBC’s output will lessen, the costs will increase and the license fee payers will get a worse deal than ever. We all have the meddlesome Chancellor to thank for that. He insists he always knows better than everyone else.

What new areas will he find to meddle in once he becomes Prime Minister? It is a frightening prospect.

Ruth Kelly and School Selection

Ruth Kelly has faced several days of coverage now about her decision to send her son, who has learning difficulties, to a private school. She has been called a hypocrite and worse. I find it hard to do the same. I am swayed by the argument that all parents should have the right to do what they believe is right for their children and not have to slavishly follow the entrenched paths of dogma.

But that is where my sympathy ends. What Ms Kelly’s decision does tell us is that 10 years of Labout managing schools has not brought them up to a level that Ms Kelly thinks is appropriate. This, of course, includes the time she spent as Secretary of State for Education, and thus in charge of reforming all schools. Since 1997, many special needs schools have closed with the policy from Ms Kelly’s former department being to integrate special-needs pupils within mainstream schools. She now thinks this will not serve her son.

Sadly, this realisation has come too late for her to implement a change and reverse the policy. She may not be a hypocrite but that does make her a bad minister.

What is even more damning is the revelation in The Guardian, today,  Ms Kelly’s husband is Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the school from which she is removing her son! So if a former Secretary of State for Education cannot make the state system work from above and a school governor cannot make it work at ground level, what hope do the vast majority of parents have of securing the best education for their sons and daughters?

I think this is a tricky problem that I would rather see David Willets trying to tackle. As One Nation Conservatives, we cannot allow a system that fails so many in this way and must move towards a system that is better able to cope with all of those that prove to be exceptions to the norm. More choice is needed here as it is in so many aspects of the public services and I am looking forward to the forthcoming Conservative Party policy proposals to see the latest thinking on how we will provide it.

Reading the White House – from Iraq to Polar Bears

With White House counsel Harriet Miers resignation last week, I just wonder if there is evidence of a new realism in the Bush administration about what is possible and the need for friends, that is leading to a new White House direction based on a simple strategy:

Give ground on every issue to buy political capital and expend that on Iraq.

Today, that capital is being spent on extending military operations to Somalia, for example, and the much trailed plans to increase the number of US troops in Iraq. Bush has seen that he will be remembered for Iraq and intends to do everything he can to make it work.

[As a side note, Blair has chosen the opposite path. Play up all other areas in the hope that Iraq is forgotten. As with his timing on comments about Saddam's execution (see previous post) that shows another unusual error by Blair - is he losing his touch?]

What effect will this change of heart by Bush (if there really has been one) have on us in the UK? Well, Iraq itself will remain an issue, but in the long run, perhaps the change with the biggest impact comes from one of the other fronts on which Bush has now given up. Over Christmas, there was an admission of guilt hidden in a statement on polar bears.

Essentially, the White House now admits that the global environment is changing for the worst as a result of man’s activities. This is the first time they have acknowledged such a basic step. The principle that led to them refusing to co-operate with almost every major global initiative on climate change has now gone. That can only lead to movement in some of the most difficult international negotiations of them all. And we have the failure of Iraq to thank.

While that is not much of a consolation, at least it proves the old adage that every cloud has a silver lining.

Blair and the Great Dictator

The row over the execution of Saddam roles on. Blair has waited a week to condem the unsavoury behaviour of Saddam’s executioners – a rare political gaff by him as his failure to comment earlier has meant that his recent comments have prolonged its life and added ever more dirt to the pile on top of his political coffin.

Before the execution the Labour Government, in the form of Margaret Beckett for one, continued to restate that the Labour government is against the death penalty but that it would not voice opposition to the execution of Saddam Hussein; that was a matter for the Iraqi people.

Oh, what a thing is hindsight. I wonder if they are questioning that particular moral dilema once again. In my view they should have done so earlier. If you believe that the death penalty is wrong, as I expect most One Nation Tories do these days, you can voice those concerns and even suggest alternatives.

And it just so happened that the UK was in a position to offer an alternative. The island of St Helena, where we imprissoned Napolean, is a very log way from Iraq, can be made completely secure and has vacancies. It would also give a role to the island and its 5,000 or so inhabitants who are the most heavily subsidised community in the World.

Why did the government not stick to its principles and make an offer that would have been appreciated by all sides including the Iraqi President who was not willing to sign the death warrant himself?

Party Conference Venues – Poll Results!

With the news reported in the press over the weekend that Conservative Party Chairman Francis Maude has written a 20-page letter to the Chief Constable of Dorset police haranguing him for the debacle of pass allocations at the party conference last year, we can be fairly certain it will be a long time before we meet again in Bournemouth.

Fortunately, the TRG saw this coming. Not least because, as TRG Chairman, mine was one of the passes that was held up meaning that I managed to miss our own TRG-Mainstream reception on the first night!

So, we have had a poll running for a couple of months now on where TRG supporters would like to see us gather in future. We are now going to close the poll and announce the results, as follows:

The preferred venues for the 2008 and 2009 conferences, are:

1= Birmingham and Manchester (26% each)

3 Brighton (16%)

4= Blackpool and Newcastle (12%)

6 London (9%)

7 Bournemouth – in spite of everything! (2%)

So, the TRG calls upon the Party leadership to be brave and pull us away from the seaside and give Birmingham a try (seeing as we did go to Manchester for the Spring Forum this year)!

New Party, New Candidates?

A story that made it out in the dead of New Year, was that three prominent Lib Dem candidates have defected to the Tories. The most prominent of these is arguably Richard Porter, “who wrote the Liberal Democrat manifesto for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community [ghastly phrase] in the 2005 general election.”

Francis Maude has endorsed all of them, it appears, and it will be interesting to see if they make it onto the “A” list. It is always a good sign of the mood on the doorstep when candidates start moving party to increase their electoral chances.

North Korea, Iran and the Nuclear Question

While most of us were wolfing down our Christmas turkey and slurping our way through bottles or our favourite tipple, hard-bitten diplomats representing the US, China, Japan, South Korea and North Korea were sitting in China discussing nuclear weapons. The North Koreans have threatened to declare they are a nuclear power. The US has jumped the gun (so to speak) and have already stated that they will refuse to recognise them as such what ever happens.

Meanwhile, the last country to declare unilaterally itself to be a nuclear power, India in 1998, signed an agreement with the US on nuclear technology transfer; a reward for defying the wishes of the global community 20 years ago now that it is a global economic power. India may be a democracy, albeit a flawed one, but does that justify the double standard? Is that the same lower standard that applies to Israel? Afterall, Israel’s Prime Minister recently appeared to admit that his country had the nuclear weapons that have been known of for years. The problem is that there is a clause in the Isreal aid bill, placed there at the insistence of Congress, that if Israel is ever “declared” a nuclear power, the $billions it receives each year from the US will be cancelled, all but bankrupting the country. So the US can offer rewards and threaten its friends in a way it cannot do so towards its enemies.

So should the global community act against North Korea if it presses ahead or allow it to happen in the face of little more than protests and motions of condemnation by the UN?

Either way, there are implications for future policy towards Iran against which similar UN motions have been passed. Iran, which, unlike North Korea really does have local ambitions to expand influence (mainly in the ’stans) and the ability to do so now that Lebanon has shown Israel to be less dominate than it was thought to be and America ever more wary and weary while caught in Iraq.

What can be done to stop North Korea?

Not a lot. It is already about as cut-off as it is possible for a country to be so sanctions will not make much difference. Military action, even if the US had all of its resources to hand rather than being tied up in Iraq, Afghanistan and with threats across Central Asia to worry about, could still not seriously contemplate invasion and there would be no international legal basis for it at present.

One of the things that sets One Nation Conservatives apart from other strands of political thought is its optimism and preparedness to strive for more ambitious goals and not to always default to a minimalist approach of looking for the least that we can get away with. However, here the optimism has to be tempered by the reality of the situation. It is sad to say, but I am not sure there is much leverage that can be applied by the US and the others who, wisely and correctly, want to stop North Korea from developing weapons of mass destruction. One Nation Conservatives tend to base foreign policy objectives on the requirements of the British national interest – whether acting alone or in partnership with other nations – and while the objective is obvious in this case, the means to achieve it are not.

North Korea and Iran want nuclear weapons and only invasion will stop them. India, Pakistan and Israel have already defied the threats and set a precedent for getting away with it. The international community has few tools to combat the actions of rogue states and has shown double standards towards its “friends”. And, clearly, if North Korea, one of the most technologically-backward countries in the World can do it, cannot any country with the will?

We have to face the reality that more and more countries are going to gain nuclear arsenals. The British nation interest now demands a shift in emphasis. Prevention is not possible. Limiting the effect of them, making them impossible to use must now be the focus, and other means of limiting the impact of the spread must be pursued.

So where does that leave us?

We don’t want more nations to have nuclear weapons. There are no sanctions that will stop those that are determined, though, and military options are not viable. On top of that, the international legal basis for stopping them has been blighted by letting some countries get away with it. Finally, there are going to be a lot more countries that want to go nuclear in the near future. All of this adds up to the need for a new strategy.

Where might that new strategy come from? It is important to remember that nuclear capabilities can be given up, too. South Africa developed them in the 1980’s and the ANC government dismantled them when they reached office. Perhaps then, the best idea is not to threaten North Korea when we have no real means to harm them, but to work for regime change in any and every way by supporting civil leaders in opposition, with the model being more like the economic and civil carrots offered to the former communist states of Eastern Europe than the direct means of Iraq.

Are there alternatives? Answers on a postcard, please. Or in the comments.