Oh and then there’s black candidate Loanna Morrison, who declares on ConservativeHome that Nick Griffin “is right” on immigration. Where do you even start? Is it not possible for these fucking, thick people to say anything sensible on the issue without agreeing with fascists or believing in conspiracies?

Morrison is black – which incidentally does not make any charge of racist stupidity any less relevant.
[hat-tip @sedentarymonkey]

British blacks and Asians are just as likely to be racist on the issue of immigration, especially those who feel that they’ve done fine now, and screw the ones who are still trying to get into the country. Naturally, the BNP are ecstatic that a black woman says Nick Griffin “is right” on immigration.

It boggles my mind that when it comes to immigration, Tories just go nuts. It’s like a red rag to a bull – they can’t physically think of anything else. The froth just comes out automatically. And not only that, it doesn’t even make sense from a policy or strategic point of view.

Conservative Party policy on immigration is now pretty much the same as New Labour’s. Except that Tories pretend they’re somehow going to cut immigration by 75% even though all they can do is restrict non-EU immigrants… maybe by outright banning all marriages to overseas citizens. But most immigration into the UK isn’t even non-EU citizens so the chances of a 75% cut are near to zilch. Furthermore – I’ll happily bet money now that they’ll never manage to enact an absolute numbers cap on immigration because it’s simply unworkable. The business community would go ape-shit.

Even from a strategic point of view it doesn’t work. Tories have been banging on about immigration for years now, especially over the last few months as their poll rating has dropped.

As Lenin points out too, if you look at voter preferences – they’re perfectly aware of this policy.

In fact it’s the only policy a majority of voters trust the Tories on. And yet voters are still abandoning Cameron in droves. Does this not tell any of these idiot Tories anything??

Obviously, I want them to crash and burn and die. But I’d prefer that if they didn’t do that while being so bigoted about it.

But Warsi says the problem with 13 years of Labour government is that money has been pumped into deprived, mainly Labour, areas, with very little to show for it. As with previous Tory governments, she says, there will be a “retrenchment of the state”, but the difference under Cameron is that people will not be left entirely alone: voluntary groups, social entrepreneurs or individual activists will be paid to set up community projects. Warsi calls it a “franchise model”.

Surely the last thing deprived estates need is cuts. She replies: “Clearly, if the solution to all their problems was money, we would have solved it, wouldn’t we? That should send out a strong signal to say: actually, money is not always the answer.”

The MP Shadowing Scheme is looking for 25 BME individuals from across the country to gain an invaluable insight into the roles and responsibilities of an MP. MP Shadows will spend six months shadowing high level MPs from the three main political parties.

In their role as Parliamentary Ambassadors, participants will also play a vital role helping to raise awareness amongst Black and minority ethnic communities about our democratic institutions.
Check out: http://www.obv.org.uk

This weekend Catherine Bennett castigated me, along with others, for being part of a mob that had taken exception to the prospect of Rod Liddle being appointed editor of the Independent. She’s right – I refuse to buy the Indy ever again (or link to it) if Liddle is appointed editor. More than 4,000 people share my concern, and with good reason.

In all these cases the so-called “mob” has been accused of suppressing free speech. But what you can hear screaming isn’t the Twitter or Facebook mob, it’s newspaper columnists terrified at the idea that their critics could organise themselves and do damage to their reputations.
…
What the likes of Bennett, Cohen and others protesting about the “mob” don’t seem to understand is that these are real people, their own readers, trying to do something about the world around them. They join Facebook groups, retweet about court injunctions or state #welovetheNHS because, occasionally, they have the opportunity to be part of an spontaneous movement that can have a big impact. Not all lead somewhere, of course, but some do. And the more people realise the power of the collective the more they’ll join in.

Read the whole thing here

Since the Christmas Day attempted attack on an airliner bound for Detroit, no voice has been more vocal in support of profiling passengers than that of Khalid Mahmood MP. In a cringe-worthy display, he appeared on Monday night’s Newsnight against Maajid Nawaz of Quilliam to defend profiling.

Khalid’s performance starts off inauspiciously. His opening gambit is to argue that extremist recruiters themselves profile targets for radicalisation. [08:35]

They target people, they specifically look at people. They look at the weakness of the people, they draw them into that and then they suck ‘em off… [incomprehensible].

Without descending into puerility and delving into his rather strange closing remark (do radicalisers really “suck off” their recruits?), this is still a remarkably rubbish argument. If terrorist recruiters are able to focus their radicalising efforts then they are just as able to make sure that they are focusing on people whose ethnicity, age and gender would suggest that they are less likely to match the “profile” of a terrorist. To profile is to institutionalise security services always being a step behind terrorists’ recruitment efforts.

And what does this have to do with people’s “weaknesses” – please Khalid, I hope you’re not suggesting that brown people are “weaker” than their non-brown compatriots. Right? And you are not suggesting that people from Nigeria, for example, are any weaker than people from Saudi Arabia? Because that is what profiling means; the US is now choosing to make Syrians undergo more intense security searches than Saudis, Germans or Britons.

Then Nawaz makes a series of points about major terrorists (Muriel Degauque, for example) that profiling would have been unlikely to identify. Khalid’s only response is to blather about the Quilliam Foundation being apologists for terrorism [09:42 onwards]. Even Paxo steps in to defend Nawaz against this astonishing attack which Khalid launches, it seems, to disguise a complete incomprehension of what profiling is.

Khalid is unable to answer Nawaz’s simple question about what profilers should be looking for and what should be done differently in the future to identify potential terrorists. Instead he just lists things that are already being done, like studying passenger behaviour. Profiling is about identifying people of a certain race, sex, age or geographical origin as being more likely to be a terrorist – Khalid doesn’t seem to understand this.

Even more astonishing is that Khalid Mahmood MP’s accusation that Nawaz is an apologist for terrorism is not the stupidest thing he says during the debate. At 09:29 he appears to say “Muslims are across all races and in all religions, we accept that.”

I’ve listened to it a few times and checked with a couple of friends too – that really does seem to be what he says.

What an embarrassing display from Khalid Mahmood MP. His only redeeming feature seems to be a willingness to speak out for Labour “as a Muslim” on issues too controversial for his more high flying colleagues to touch.

Perhaps they’ll re-think that too after this performance, and send him back to Brum to prepare for life after taxpayer funded lovenests. A time when he will no longer be able to embarrass himself and his party on flagship news programmes.

These coups are brilliant for two reasons: (1) they’ve flushed out and killed off the most annoying Blairites: Purnell (though he may come back under D Miliband), Hazel Blears, Charles Clarke, Hoon etc. I doubt many in the party will shed tears for them, and the stench of betrayal is all around them.

(2) They make it more likely that a coup will happen still (have to agree with John Rentoul) and a new leader will try some semblance of making a clean break from Brown & Blair (there’s no other way) in order to make the electorate listen, very briefly, to why people should vote Labour. Brown isn’t doing a good enough job.

The big story of yesterday was how long it actually took the cabinet’s big beasts to come out in support of Brown. If they were all planning to keep their powder dry until the election then I think they’d sound much more supportive.

Ipso facto, another coup attempt between now and the election is likely.

It’s worth noting, for a start, that Dale’s blogpost is just one in a long line of rubbish he has published about global warming (including a recent punt on the ‘Global Cooling’ myth). It’s a subject he clearly knows little about. But it has become de rigeur for global warming deniers to publish a continuous stream of bad science and rubbish claims, and obfuscate the debate while saying it is there just to further discussion and ‘challenge the consensus‘.

On his own thread Iain Dale replies to commenter, saying:

As far as I can see Victor has calculated the figures very well. I have now been on the site to check myself. Not sure how a “professional” could have done it differently to him. But feel free to try!

Well that illustrates how seriously one should take him, given that Unity isn’t even a professional and he ripped apart the whole thing very quickly.

Once lots of people started Tweeting Unity’s blogpost and mentioning what the mistake Dale had made, he states sanctimoniously:

I find it hugely amusing that the lefty twitterati are obsessing about my views on climate change. Haven’t they got better things to do? No?

Funny that. Dale is very quick to jump on people when others make mistakes or do things he doesn’t like. Doesn’t he have better things to do?

When @psbook points him to Unity’s post and asks him his views on it, he squeals:

@psbook because i havent got 5 hours to spare reading his epistle. Am sure it’s fab though.

Later, when the backlash gets too loud to ignore Dale goes off on one of his classic rants to play the victim. He updates his blog post to say:

Watching the Church of Climateology react to this post has been a joy to behold. Clearly the left, stung by the post about Kerry McCarthy seem to think they can get back at me through this post. Well, hey, good luck to them. The insults flying around on Twitter have to be seen to be believed.

Poor Iain Dale – what a brave warrior against the evil lefties pointing out silly things like ‘facts’ and ‘figures’ to him. How dare they? Clearly they must be rattled because he flew off the handle when a Labour politician blocked him! And then he finishes with:

Most people on the left on Twitter haven’t really bothered engaging in an argument – all they have done is hurl insults. That’s fine. I expect it from them. They’re the internet equivalent of pond life. At least Will Straw attempts to argue the toss without descending into the gutter. Unlike his friends at Liberal Conspiracy who I won’t even grace with a link. Until they grow up.

Unity’s argument was well laid out and clearly argued. Plenty of deniers admitted Dale had gotten it wrong too. But the ‘Top Tory blogger’ had put his fingers in his ears and kept claiming his ‘abusers’ hadn’t really bothered engaging in an argument at all!

Bloody brilliant. That kind of language is something Comical Ali would have used if he blogged.

Will Straw posted on Left Foot Forward, asking: Will Iain Dale acknowledge his climate error? – the answer should be obvious: of course not. Dale wouldn’t do that!

Iain Dale is trying to get selected as a candidate for the Conservative Party. But his behaviour in this instance illustrates how dishonest he can be when confronted with uncomfortable facts and challenged on them. I hope people doing selections or voting on his political future take this into account. Dale’s record speaks for itself.

More:
Big boy bloggers must be big enough to admit when they get it wrong

In contrast the Republicans are toeing a tight line, making sure not one Senator crosses over. The result? Obama is in deep shit. If healthcare reform fails then his administration will be labelled as a failure. And all because of one Senator who doesn’t want to give easy access to abortion (Nelson) and the other because he wants to see Democrats fail (Lieberman). And that, in many ways, is why I have a problem with agreeing that allowing politicians plenty of independence is a good thing: you end up with an American system that can’t get much done at all unless discipline is imposed.

There’s a point of clarification here. I generally don’t have problems with independent MPs who attack to defend the base, as people like Howard Dean are doing. I abhor independents who betray the people who turn out to campaign and vote for them and the party that represents a certain set of values.

A man has been arrested over an attack on Conservative peer Baroness Warsi during a visit to Luton. The shadow minister for community cohesion, named Britain’s most powerful Muslim woman, was visiting the Bury Park area of the town on 30 November. She was in the middle of a walkabout of the area when she was pelted with eggs.

A 24-year-old local man has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and a public order offence. He is currently being questioned. A Bedfordshire Police officer saw the man in the street and arrested him, a spokeswoman said.

Can’t say I have any sympathy for al-Muhajiroun idiots.

For a man being pitched as a potential leader for Europe, Mr Blair has spent little time in the continent since leaving Downing Street. He pops up in the most disparate of places: posing with an eco-friendly kung fu star in China; addressing star-struck businessmen in a Florida hotel; promoting tourism on the beaches of Sierra Leone; stepping out of a jet to the strut of a Kazakh honour guard.

This year alone, he has touched down in more than 20 countries, from east Asia to central Africa, often more than once. But if there is one region that best reflects his life as a public figure, fundraiser and businessman in the 28 months since leaving office, it is the Middle East.

You have to read the whole thing… makes me feel sorry for Cherie Blair I think. The Guardian is trying to crowd-source sifting through his finances.
[via Jamie K]

Most people recognise that the Conservatives are ahead for two reasons. First is the anti-Labour vote (anyone but…) and second is the successful detoxification of the Conservative brand by David Cameron (people feel able to vote Conservative again). The second of these reasons would be under threat in a Conservative government, as the more hardline elements of the party would push for measures that would put off some moderates/independents. This is where the Liberal Democrats come in.

A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government would have David Cameron as prime minister, and would have a Conservative home secretary. This would allow the government to reassure voters that they will be tough on crime and so forth. Vince Cable would probably be chancellor, because he is both popular and relatively fiscally conservative. Yet where the Liberal Democrats would demand most control would be over issues like the environment, which are precisely the sort of issues that Mr. Cameron needs to keep away from the more hardline members of his party. Thus the Lib Dems would act as a natural moderating influencing on an incoming Conservative government, leaving Mr. Cameron to complain (in public) about his hands being tied over certain issues.

Europe would be interesting though.

Politicians and pundits share the idea that people are constantly re-evaluating their position. But not at all. At a few big moments they might pause and think again; the rest of the time they let events float by, or at best reinterpret them to fit with their existing views. In 1997 Tories thought perhaps Robin Cook’s affair would shake Labour’s goody-goody image. Instead focus group respondents just assumed he must be a Tory because he had had an affair.

But out of all this, surprisingly, something heartening emerges. And that’s where the Queen’s Speech comes in. Because people don’t know, aren’t following and don’t believe politicians and their promises, they can only judge them on one thing. Whether what politicians do works.

Add to this the fact that voters rarely sit there and evaluate policies of each of the parties and make a rational decision at voting time (which is why most of the daily speculation over at Political Betting is a waste of time).

Voters not only pay little attention to politics in the news, they also forget that news very quickly. However they do end up internalising that little bit of emotion (negative or positive) they felt at the time. Over time that builds up and polls shift slowly in a direction. This is why you rarely see big jumps or falls in polls over big news: people rarely pay that much attention. But it also means that if you’re trying to stem a decline in your ratings then you have a much bigger mountain to climb: once people start associating negative emotions with a politician or public figure it’s very hard to shake them off that feeling.

This brings me to the Labour leadership. Labour activists are deluding themselves in thinking they have a chance of winning the election and that the queen’s speech will actually make a difference. It won’t, as Danny Fink points out.

At the Labour party conference I was in a discussion with a Labour MP and three other activists and I said Brown had to go if Labour had any chance of holding on to power.

This was because the public had already characterised him (negatively) in their minds and had turned off from listening to his message. Plus G Brown is an incredibly bad communicator. I said the only hope was to have a quick change of leader, which would make the public sit up and notice for about a month. Within that month the new Labour leader would have to lay out a good agenda for the next term and call for an election (which people would clamour for anyway). But a change of leadership was the only way to make people listen to a new Labour agenda. Right now they’ve internalised the view that re-electing Brown would continue this tired administration and they don’t want it. Which is why the polls have remained static.

My audience disagreed vehemently, obviously. But they disagreed because they thought the public would pay attention or actually cared about changes in policy. They don’t. Messaging and framing is a long slog and takes months, sometimes years, to hammer through the public conciousness. That is if you win the debate on your own term (another problem this govt has – it keeps losing public debates to the Tories).

I also find it amusing that readers think by saying this, on a public blog, somehow that will diminish Labour’s chances even more. They’re not even paying that much attention to the Sun let along PP or LibCon. These spaces are then best served by discussion political strategy in a way that many American blogs do, I think. But that is a different discussion. Right now – that article is a must read for anyone who wants anything to do with politics.

They are an illegally constituted party..you may like to [re]consider your invitation to next week’s Question Time. It is a foul and despicable party and however they change their constitution they will remain foul and despicable.

There isn’t a constitutional obligation to appear on Question Time. That gives them a legitimacy that they do not deserve. These people believe in the things that the fascists believed in in the Second World War, they believe in what the National Front believe in. They believe in the purity of the Aryan race.

That said: I’m not going to oppose Griffin’s appearance on the programme – after all, BBC journalists have been trying to their best to ‘explain’ the BNP’s policies elsewhere. I also think the UAF protest against Griffin’s appearance is a bad idea and will be a public relations disaster. They will come across as a bunch of censorious nutters like the people who opposed the BBC showing Jerry Springer: The Opera.
via Paul Waugh

Now there are in fact structural reasons why the left tends to have a semi-hostile attitude to each other, these are threefold fold; i) the traditional First past the Post elelctoral system has encouraged the Labour Party to be a big coalition, and therefore all effective electoral politics has gone through Labour, and those outside it have been regarded as not-serious; ii) the legacy of the divide in the labour movement over the USSR which has led many in the Labour Party to be deeply suspicious of non-members with opinions; iii) the legacy of toy-town “Leninism” that has led the British far-left to splinter into a mosaic of tiny sects, and to have a sectarian and stupid hostility to the Labour Party. These legacies need to be overcome.
…
The legacy of competing tiny groups of true believers splitting hairs and arguing over the finest details of programmes that they would never have the social weight to implement also needs to be overcome, because it is utterly irrelevant to British politics.

Blogs have an important role to play, not only in providing a space for journalism and commentary outside the control of the mainstream media, but also in providing a space for debate and exchange of views, providing a nertwork of mutual support, and devloping new ideas. The left needs to get better at both of those tasks if we are to fight back to prevent a Tory win at the next election, or failing that to wage a determined and effective opposition to a Tory government.

I agree with all of that. There are two structural problems we need to overcome ASAP:
1) too much in-fighting among lefties
2) lack of campaigning orgs and capacity other than unions (which are too pro-Labour)

Forget all the ‘new ideas’ shtick for now – it needs to be resolved but right-wingers aren’t bubbling with them either. The two problems above are more problematic. Part of that is about moving past the legacy that Andy mentions above. However, to me that doesn’t mean setting up alternative political parties for now, as AVPS says here. The danger for lefties is that we focus too much on political parties that offer a home.

Instead, we need to focus first on building cohesiveness and organisational capacity. We need to think about building a non-party infrastructure that can then be used to influence politics regardless of party. The main reason why Tony Blair was able to ignore the left was because there wasn’t any effective pressure put on him from the left. So rather than just thinking outside the confines of the Labour party I’d go further and say we need to start thinking outside the political party structures too.

[For more on "infrastructure", I suggest reading this article in the New York Times, which was my inspiration for setting up Liberal Conspiracy.]

Anyway. It’s important to understand why the pro-EU crowd lost the debate in the UK (not Ireland clearly). This is through what I call ‘interventions’. Say you have a political goal: whether that be to convince the public to turn against immigration, the EU, the BBC, the Monarchy, government spending, against religion, Muslims – whatever it is. Pick your opponent.

What lefties do is they just keep stating their case repeatedly, or pointing out how wrong the the arguments are of their opponents. Unfortunately, this relies on a complete misunderstanding of how the media works and how people consume information.

Right-wingers instead churn out a constant stream of ‘interventions’ that turn public opinion in their direction. Take some examples: Migration Watch, TaxPayers Alliance, Open Europe (and other Eurosceptics), the Daily Mail, Biased BBC etc. They all have specific agendas to turn public opinion in favour of their positions.

But the media is news driven and is much more likely to latch on to stories than repeatedly stated positions. And so each of these groups do ‘research’ that helps drive home their point. Obviously the right-wing media champion their case, but it helps that these groups keep churning out ‘interventions’ that keep them in the news.

Furthermore, when people consume news they are more likely to respond to headlines than actual articles. This is why you’ll frequently see Daily Mail headlines that end up contradicting the actual content of the story. The Daily Mail doesn’t deliver news – it delivers a set of agendas.

And so once the Tories come into power, the question for lefties should be: what agendas do we want to push? What’s the clear unflinching line? And then you figure out how to make continual ‘interventions’ in support of that cause. About the few groups on the left that have succeeded in this regard are environmental groups and civil liberty groups (I class them as left-leaning, not Labour leaning). On economic issues there has been some serious retreating.

The Labour Party especially has run away from so many issues that it’s allowed the right to define and frame those debates (Europe, immigration, redistribution, trade-unionism etc). And so you have a left that became electorally popular only by junking most of their beliefs.

Lefties – if you have an agenda, then think of ‘interventions’ that will make news stories. That would be my advice. Stop complaining, do some news creation.

1. Labour’s reliance on multiculturalism has failed Britain
2. The state’s continued suspicion of faith is wrong
3. And the threat of terrorism is no excuse for demonising a whole community.
Plus, she equates the al-Muhajiroun lot with the English Defence League.

A few points worth mentioning here. She specifically focuses on ’state multiculturalism’ and makes a distinction by saying:

Firstly, when we as Conservatives talk about multiculturalism we are not talking about the building of temples, or synagogues or mosques in any neighbourhood. For us that is religious pluralism and it is a defining British characteristic that began with the non-conformists.

For me, state multiculturalism, as I like to define it is forcing Britain’s diverse communities to still define themselves as different, patronisingly special and tempting them to compete against each other for public funds.

Pretty agreeable stuff. In fact I’m pretty sure I was the first to use “state multiculturalism” (as distinct from lived multiculturalism, which Sayeeda defines first) and criticise it here on the New Gen manifesto.

It’s unfair to blame New Labour because it was the Tories in 1997, just before Labour took over, who first encouraged Muslims groups to band together and speak in one voice. The Labour party took that further no doubt, but once our manifesto was published the whole edifice fell apart pretty quickly.

No doubt New Labour made a lot of mistakes – in both directions. It went for draconian attacks on civil liberties, while hoping that chucking money at religious groups would curb terrorism or encourage ‘community cohesion’. It has now retreated from both positions – but I did say earlier that the party realised its mistakes and changed policy.

I can’t say I disagree with the main points of this speech. There are issues the Tories will duck – like funding ethnic focused groups such as Southall Black Sisters. And in those cases they’ll have to be pragmatic too and realise sometimes its best to help people than become ideologically rigid.

————–

Sayeeda Warise speech
“Project Maja reminded me that Bosnia-Herzegovina as a country in the heart of Europe, is still delicately balanced between its past and its future.

“A past where much blood has flowed down the River Drina where the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand led to the First World War, and where differences in ethnicity and faith were cruelly exploited in 1995, leading to the worst genocide to have taken place in Europe since the Second World War.

“Conference, despite the progress made in the last 14 years, without further sustained international attention Bosnia could easily slip back.

“And after the failures on the part of the international community during the Balkan war.
We have a duty to support Bosnia and its future as a united multi-ethnic, multi-faith country in the heart of Europe. We must not fail Bosnia again.

“Conference, let me now turn to issues closer to home. No one needs reminding of the tragic consequences when communities fragment, as they did in Northern Ireland, and how those consequences were felt throughout Britain, including the tragedies during the 1990’s right here in Manchester.

“We as a nation throughout our history have had to deal with extremism in all its guises, with groups that promote both hatred and violence.

“And this summer, we were reminded again why that fight continues.

“The protests against our troops led by Anjem Chowdhury and Al-Muhajiroun in Luton were truly disgusting and quite rightly condemned by us all.

“And we also rightly condemned recent violent demonstrations led by the English Defence League, and their nasty friends in the BNP.

“These groups of extremists represent two ugly faces of the same coin, and for them, hatred of the ‘other’ isn’t just a scourge, it is a political philosophy.

“They have a simple, yet dangerous goal – to drive a wedge, to spread hatred and to sow the seeds of division.

“Conference, during the Second World War, British and Commonwealth soldiers, including my two grandfathers, fought side by side to defeat fascism in Europe.

“So over 65 years later we are NOT going to tolerate fascism on our soil.

“Conference let me say this loud and clear. There is nothing Muslim about Anjem Chowdhury and Al-Muhajiroun.

“There is nothing English about the English Defence League. And there is certainly nothing British about the BNP.

“Conference, there are three key messages I would like you to take away from my speech today…

1. Labour’s reliance on multiculturalism has failed Britain

2. The state’s continued suspicion of faith is wrong

3. And the threat of terrorism is no excuse for demonising a whole community.

“Firstly, when we as Conservatives talk about multiculturalism we are not talking about the building of temples, or synagogues or mosques in any neighbourhood. For us that is religious pluralism and it is a defining British characteristic that began with the non-conformists.

“For me, state multiculturalism, as I like to define it is forcing Britain’s diverse communities to still define themselves as different, patronisingly special and tempting them to compete against each other for public funds.

“It’s the madness of political correctness which fails to teach our children British history in case it offends, and is the madness of translating documents into a multitude of languages instead of actually teaching people English.

“State multiculturalism is not integration, is not unifying and is not the British way.

“Secondly, Conference under Labour, the State has become increasingly sceptical of an individuals religious belief.

“We’ve all seen the stories, how appalling that in Labour’s Britain a community nurse can be suspended for offering to pray for a patient’s recovery.

“Or a school receptionist could face disciplinary action for sending an email to friends asking them to pray for her daughter.

“At the heart of these cases lies a growing intolerance and illiberal attitude towards those who believe in God. The scepticism of senior Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris driving this secular agenda has now grown to become an ideology permeating through many parts of the public sector.

“It’s an agenda driven by the political-elite, who have hijacked the pursuit of ‘equality’ by demanding a dumbing down of faith.

“It’s no wonder that this leads to accusations in the media that our Country’s Christian culture is being downgraded.

“For many their faith brings them closer to their neighbour, it’s the driver for their voluntary work, their social action. And for many, faith is the basis for some of the best schools in our Country.

“This scepticism against faith communities and in some case outright hostility, is both wrong and dangerous.

“Strong societies are built on cherishing their heritage.

“So when some misguided lliberal tries to downgrade Christmas…

“Or a school tries to ban the nativity play, or a child is not taught about the empire in case it offends.

“It’s no wonder we lose track of who we are Conference, I am not for one minute suggesting that faith communities should get a special deal, but, I do believe they should get a fair deal

– one that doesn’t discriminate,

– one that isn’t intolerant

– and one that truly understands and appreciates religious communities… and their contribution

“Forced secularism in not progressive, it is not Conservative and it certainly is not the British way.

“Thirdly, Conference, I am sure you will forgive me if I say a little about my own faith.

“As a British born Muslim, I believe that my faith makes me a better person.

“I disagree with those who believe that in the present climate, to say one is a Muslim is more a political “act than simply a matter of faith.

“British Muslims are found in every walk of life, as doctors, nurses , teachers, as soldiers in the British “armed forces, as parliamentary candidates and dare I say members of the House of Lords.

“But reading some newspapers or some blogs today you could easily believe that such Muslims are in the minority.

“Since the 7/7 attacks in Britain, the fear of terrorism has fuelled the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment.

“Leading journalist Peter Oborne in his Daily Mail column said that anti-Muslim hatred “is Britain’s last remaining socially acceptable form of bigotry”.

“Recent months have seen several arson attacks targeting mosques around the country.

“In September, a spate of attacks against Muslims culminated in the death of a sixty-seven year old man in Tooting.

“And last week, here in Manchester, 20 Muslim gravestones were desecrated.

“Conference, the fight against extremism cannot succeed if all communities do not feel they belong and have an equal stake in Britain’s future.

“As I have said earlier I am not for one minute suggesting that the Muslim community or any other community should get a special deal.

“But, I do believe racism and religious intolerance is unacceptable, and just because you belong to the Islamic faith – you are no less a British citizen deserving of our country’s protection.

“Like all-forms of bigotry, like anti-Semitism and homophobia, anti-Muslim hatred should rightly be recognised as an evil and noxious creed.

“Discrimination against any community has no part in a liberal democracy, it is not Conservative and it certainly is not the British way.

“Some of you may know, I have sometimes been my press officer’s worst nightmare.

“I put it down to the fact, that I am from the North, proud to be from the North and proud to say it… like it actually is.

“And in these difficult times, more straight talking and honesty is what is needed

“After 12 years of socially divisive politics,

“After 12 years of Labour playing fast and loose with our heritage.

“And after 12 years of Labour tip toeing around the difficult issues.

“As a nation.

“We now need to be clear.

“We now need to be honest.

“And above all we now need to be brave.

“We need to mend the broken ties that should bind us.

“End the politics of us and them.

“Put integration at the heart of our policy.

“And proudly, once more, make the case for today’s Britain.”

The Passport you hold is not British, but European. You are a European citizen. British Embassies are European Embassies – as they already show by flying the EU’s meaningless and tasteless blue and yellow dishcloth. Shouldn’t somebody have pointed out that in the recent history of the Continent, yellow stars call up only one dismal image, the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.

What, you’re surprised a man so odious could use the Holocaust as a stick to beat the Lisbon treaty? I’m not. I’ll let the excellent Left Outside blogger say the rest:

The jaw dropping ignorance of the man is palpable. The coy manipulation of history is truly sickening. The holocaust still matters. It is as impossible to understate the horror as it is to visualise the scale of what occurred. And Peter “in fact, just shorten that to Cunt” Hitchens wants to use it to attack the fucking EU?

JCM has more under the appropriately titled ‘Why it’s hard to take eurosceptics seriously‘

Tom Harris MP – then unable to make any economic or political arguments, thought he’d be clever and wrote this blog post saying I was hypocritical because I’d earlier signed ‘a statement of ethical blogging’. But I hadn’t, making him look even more idiotic. (Clearly Iain Dale is still smarting over the fact I called him out when he libelled Tom Watson (I posted this on Tom Harris’ blog but he didn’t let that comment through – didn’t want to offend his mate obviously).

So why am I posting all this? It’s a bit of background to the argument I want to make. On Tom Harris MP’s blog, Sunder Katwala of the Fabian society says:

On Sunny representing “Labour” views, my friend Sunny Hundal is not (for sure) and has never been (as far as I know) a member of the Labour Party. He has blogged that he intends to vote Green.
He is anti-Tory, he is somewhat sympathetic to Labour (in that he often argues about what the party should do to connect to disillusioned liberal-lefties like himself and others at Liberal Conspiracy). For that reason, some people (esp LibDems) say that LC is somehow a ‘Labour front’ but anybody who comments there in any way supportively of Labour will know this is nonsense.
…
But I don’t think Sunny is well placed to tell Labour MPs and members that they are not really Labour in his view, even if his argument is that he would join if other people left. This is the factionalism and in-fighting which LC is theoretically against, and ‘no factionalism except for those New Labour bastards’ falls a little way short for me.

Let me explain this properly. I see myself on the political left and therefore I’m loyal to the left and to lefties. I have stated loads of times I don’t like factionalism and in-fighting on the left. But I’m not a Labour Party tribalist and not a member of any political party. I see Labour, the Libdems and Greens as broadly progressive parties and roughly left of centre. But I’m not attracted to anyone very specifically right now enough to join them.

So while I’m not a party political tribalist, I am a leftie and proud of being one. The reason why I attack Tom Harris is because he’s not of the left. He may be within the Labour Party but that doesn’t make him left-wing. He can’t even make a political argument, let alone an economic one on why he doesn’t a High Pay Commission (and there’s plenty of valid criticisms to be made), and the only thing he can do is accuse others of ‘politics of envy’ or play these cheap shots.

And there are lots of others precedents for this. Look across the pond and there are plenty of progressives who will support the liberal wing of the Democratic party but will not come anywhere near traitors like Joe Lieberman. They will actively campaign against the right-wing elements of the Democrats (the ‘Blue Dogs’) and I’d happily approve of that strategy.

I’m not interested in supporting or defending right-wing elements within the Labour party just because of their political affiliation. This is a political war and they are on the wrong side. Once the left-wing blogosphere starts campaigning and fundraising, we should be supporting left-wing and progressive elements of Labour, Libdems and the Greens – while actively rejecting people like Harris who like adulation from the Tories.

First: go completely overboard. Sarah Palin is a brilliant example and her ‘death panel’ meme isn’t the only one. Obama is being called a socialist, a marxist, a communist, fascist and everything else under the sun despite being more right-wing than we would in the UK. There’s a book out by Michelle Malkin on how is administration is completely corrupt – and it’s only been six months since he took power. There Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to put out these books under the genuinely corrupt Bush administration.

The point about going completely overboard is that it moves the territory somewhat in your direction. Of course most people won’t believe that Obama will create Death Panels, but they might believe there is no smoke without fire. They’ll start thinking the big fuss is there for a reason. That automatically moves the centre of debate in your favour.

Second: have complete discipline. Moderate Republicans rarely criticise their wingnut counterparts. Sure they might argue about which direction the party should go in, but when it comes to opposing a policy they’re united. And when they have a common enemy (the Democrats) the moderates will never ever ever ever criticise the loony-fringe for saying absurd things. Why? Because of the first point. It gives the moderates more of a license to push the boat out, and it makes them sound sane. Discipline also ensures you spend less time fighting each other and more time fighting the enemy.

Third: exploit the media. The media has to try and remain somewhat non-partisan and it’s driven by the chatter and whatever else everyone is talking about. Which means that if everyone is talking about Sarah Palin’s ‘death panels’ because it sounds so absurd – then it becomes part of legitimate conversation on Cable TV and then people start expounding other crazy theories. This means Democrats are constantly on the defensive and end up losing the battle. You never win on the defensive – only on the offensive.

The second part to exploiting the media is to constantly accuse it of misrepresenting you and being biased against you. It doesn’t matter what the truth is – the aim here is to build a siege / victim mentality so your followers get even more angry and take action. If they think their views are being represented in the media then they won’t do anything further.

But…. You may argue that this culture-war business is what drove the Republicans to become so small. Not exactly – there are demographic reasons for that. But the point is that for a small southern party the Republicans are still completely punching above their weight and outmaneuvering the Democrats on all fronts. If Obama makes one big mis-step then Healthcare is doomed and maybe his presidency.

These Republicans are vicious. But it’s worth learning tactics from them otherwise lefties will keep losing.

So a Labour MP praises a wartime axis leader because he was, er, Indian, and prior to the war had supported Indian independence. Mr Sharma is a disgrace. Those of his constituents in Ealing Southall who had fathers and grandfathers who fought in the Far East should be informed of this act of treachery by their local MP.

He says. Oh no! The constituents of Southall will be so pissed off that Sharma praised someone agitating for Indian independence! It’s an act of “treachery” and any other similar words you can find!

For a start, Dale’s headline: “Labour MP Praises Indian Wartime Fascist Leader” – is libellous to Sharma. Bose was never a fascist, though he did want to work with the Japanese and/or Germans to get rid of the British. But he wasn’t a race supremacist. Meanwhile, Dale makes excuses for MEP Roger Helmer despite him saying homophobia doesn’t exist. No outrage there – only solidarity. Pathetic partisan grandstanding at its best.