Damian Green MP, Shadow Minister for Immigration TRG Vice-President, has been arrested this evening at his home in Ashford.
There is not much information in the public domain, but the current BBC report has some details. It appears he has been held for ”conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office”. It is understood that this relates to an accusation that he received information from a Home Office source that should not have been available to him. Whether the political leadership was informed prior to his arrest remains open, but it would seem unlikely that the Home Secretary or other senior figure would not have been consulted in this case.
Members of Parliament, particularly those that serve as shadow ministers, are supposed to be able to hold the government of the day to account. If it transpires that Damian has been arrested as a result of doing his job and doing it well, it will be right that others are held to account for their inappropriate actions.
David Cameron and the TRG stand firmly behind Damian and he has our complete support, as does his family. We believe that whatever actions he has taken, he has done so with the public interest first and foremost in his mind.
The Republican Party needs to share as much responsibility for their man losing than Obama and his formidable machine.
McCain was never supported by the right of his party. He pulled in Palin because of a need to secure that wing and because of the money that would flow as a result. In so doing, the right forced McCain to make a move that went some way to cost him the election by alienating the very middle ground that he could have attracted – more so than any other Republican, at least.
Why they did so is not easy to explain. There is a little of the “rather dead than red” about it all. The Tory party hashed itself to pieces in the early-90’s in precisely the same ideologue-led civil war.
However, this little piece from the BBC blog puts much of it into perspective. It is worth reading for many reasons, but one is the explanation of how Europe has spent most of the last century pursuing social rights (broadly available healthcare, good education) while America has concentrated on civil ones (abortion, racial equality). It is worth pondering on and leads to another question: If Obama’s election seals the end of the debate on the possibilities for racial minorities and underscores that the American Dream is still alive, will that allow him to look at the social issues, too?
Amid the clamour and adulation that Barack Obama has met following last night’s victory, there is little room for pessimism and much for the power of dreams.
This is a victory for the West Wing generation. A quick look through the Facebook associations of many members of the TRG and other political groups, will lead to an understanding of just how far the reach of that drama series went, in the UK as well as the US. Now, sadly, no longer on our TV screens, what was described by one US TV pundit as a “liberal wet dream” has led an entire generation to cry with pride and passion in front of their TVs and to dare to hope that politics can be about ideals, doing what is right just because it is so and that good people can make it for good reasons alone. Obama is seen as the personification of that belief regardless of the facts of his life or character.
An ardent West Wing fan myself, I have still held doubts about Obama. His lack of experience on the Hill or in life beyond politics has left him with a CV that is a little short for a man about to take on the most important political job in the world and is in contrast to Jed Bartlett’s Nobel in Economics. Maybe it is enough that he embodies change by just being who he is, rather than what he has done. I hope so. Even if he is in need of some more time on the front line, he will have that in spades soon.
Obama’s acceptance speech drew on Martin Luther King and Winston Churchill and he is compared to Roosevelt and Kennedy. There is no doubt that he is a talented orator. If he can inspire through being who he is and his words alone, then that will be an awesome sight to behold. The drama of the West Wing may be repeated in the real White House and if it does, there will not be a dry eye anywhere.
