Tuesday, 23 February 2010

The Tragic desperation of Brown reveals the missing ingedient for Cameron


Now that we have had a week to analyse Gordon Brown’s desperate interview with Piers Morgan, it has been confirmed that this rather sad attempt to improve his standing has had no discernible effect on the polls. The Prime Minister of the country should not have done a base interview to improve his popularity, rather he should be (as he ironically used to keep telling us) ‘getting on with the business of running the country’. Regarding the death of his child, of course this was incredibly tragic, but it has absolutely nothing to do with his role as Prime Minister. It is simply a private tragedy that should have remained so. His willingness to discuss it on television reduces that tragedy and makes his efforts all the more lamentable.

The often-cited defence for Brown appearing on the Morgan show is that one has to do that sort of thing nowadays to be successful. People want to know the kind of person you are; they like to know the nitty-gritty. I am not convinced at all that this is the case, and the fact that Brown has faired no better since the interview would support such a view. Is it not on the media’s insistence that we know the deeply personal, not professional, details of our politicians? Yes, the public plays its role; we buy the newspapers and the magazines that detail all the personal titillation of the famous. But it is the media that provides the fuel for the fire.

Yet, just as Brown does not improve in the polls, neither does David Cameron. There are many reasons why the Tories are not improving on their position, but in part it is because of their willingness to submit to the argument I mentioned above. That is, that one has to do something (a particular interview) or act in a certain way (a sequence of photographs with celebrities) to have success in the election. In other words, there is too much analysis and time spent on trying to work out what the people want and then trying to act accordingly.

The new brand of Conservatives of which Cameron is a figurehead have built a significant proportion of their strategy around this premise. Of course, there must be a balance between practical and principle politics, but there is not enough of ‘this is who I am and what I stand for, vote for me if you want it, or if you do not, then don’t’. Instead we have ‘tell me what you would like and I’ll say that I believe that too and stand up for it’.

Piers Morgan is right: we do want to know what kind of person we are voting for, but we want to know their deeply held convictions and principles, not their very personal family tragedies or the trivial details of their everyday lives. David Cameron might do well to remind himself of this.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

The Euro’s plight proves the fallacy of the European project


The news over recent weeks that the Euro is crumbling comes as a great relief to our island nation. Thank goodness we did not enter the Euro when we were under extreme pressure to do so just a few years ago. Poor old Greece has had to suffer the embarrassment and indecency of being bossed around by its European neighbours. Given our budget deficit is just as bad as Greece’s, there is no doubt that had we been in the Euro we would have faced the same indignity. It would do well to remember such things in the future, when we may face similar pressure to join the monetary union (if it lasts long enough) once the in-the-moment-obsessed media forget.

But the Greek crisis (and perhaps Ireland, Spain and Italy to follow) also provides a lesson as to the wider European project. One of the reasons why the Euro is doomed to failure is that its premise is ‘one size fits all’. We clearly know now (if we didn’t before) that this premise is flawed. The individual economic requirements from setting interest rates, maintaining growth, and controlling inflation are evidently very different from country to country. The only way that such an illogical union could work is if some countries compromise for the benefit of others. This is what has been happening since the Euro’s inception, but there comes a point when a compromise becomes too much. In a crisis, you find out who your friends are, or to put it another way, you find out how strong your friendships are. Last week’s statement that the other Euro nations would stand behind Greece has yet to be translated into real support. Even if there is some genuine support in the future, this will only represent another compromise. Ultimately the same problem exists with the wider political union.

The reason why we talk in terms of compromise is that every state in the European Union is self-interested. They will only act if it is in their interest to act. There is no true strength of friendship; there is no real union at all. The only way a union can come about is to dilute the independence of the individuals within the union so that the individuals do not have the capacity to make their own decisions. The masters of the European project understand this and that is why they have been slowly chipping away at each country’s independence to realise a true union- when the union’s interests become more important than those of the independent states that constitute it. Such an example would be the United States of America.

The Greek crisis shows us that no matter their efforts to emulate the USA, when it comes down to it, we are all interested in our own.

Long may it continue.

My hope is that Europe experiences further crises until we have a final climax that proves what the people want- the independence of their respective nations and the dignity that this provides.

Tuesday, 16 February 2010

The earth is flat after all!




A number of times over the last few years, I have been ridiculed with the familiar jibe of the environmental zealots, that the equivalent of holding my position on climate change was to deny the earth was round. It remains to be seen whether my scepticism will be vindicated, but how encouraging it is that the climate change debate is finally heading back to just that- a debate. It is no longer acceptable to dismiss ‘the sceptics’, such as myself, as simply round earth deniers. I say this with some emphasis, because the tide only began to change very recently.

Only two years ago, Nigel Lawson struggled to find anyone who would publish his excellent book on climate change, ‘An Appeal to Reason’. I recall the Question Time audience (see below for my thoughts on this bunch) uniting in a collective gasp when Peter Hitchons so much as dared to suggest that the case for climate change had not yet been proven. Indeed, if you were a sceptic back then, you could be forgiven for having moments of doubt as to your position- such was the strength of ridicule and incredulity being directed against you.

Well done for holding firm.

At the end of last year, two polls were carried out in The Times and the Daily Telegraph showing that a near majority of people in this country did not accept the consensus on climate change. It is with some regret that following this, the climate change scientists discredited themselves with a succession of embarrassments, not least the latest not-so-quickly-disappearing Himalayan glaciers which went to the top of the IPCC. (Secretly, I mean regret for them and absolute smugness for me.)

But smugness aside, let me try to achieve what Nigel Lawson implored us all to do- to have a cool look at global warming. For me, there seems to be some fundamental problems with the climate change consensus at every stage of the argument.

Firstly, is the globe actually getting warmer? The answer is not certain, yet the IPCC insists on telling us that it is. If one takes the time to have a look at the evidence (not least that from the Hadley Centre, which works with the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia) the forecast is far from clear. Even if it does point to a slight rise in temperature, can we be sure that it will rise to the extent that the IPCC has predicted?

Let us jump this hurdle for a moment and accept that the planet is getting warmer. Is this warming solely created by the activity of humans? The answer again is not conclusive. Indeed, on this point, a wealth of scientific studies and theories have concluded that humans are not responsible at all; that natural variations or the effect of water vapour from clouds are the more likely culprits.

But let us jump this hurdle too and accept that global warming is not only taking place, but that we alone are causing it. Can we actually do anything about it? It seems to me that there is foolish arrogance in those who believe that humans themselves can control the temperature of the planet, as if turning up the thermostat in their homes. Correspondingly, there has been absolute failure in trying to do anything significant about it, as Copenhagen proves. More importantly for me, however, is a moral question: Were we to act in the way that some of the greenists expect in trying to reverse climate change, would we be denying millions of people in the developing world the industrial revolution- the chance to escape poverty- that we in the developed world have already had the fortune of?

Further still, even if we were to grant the environmentalists this hurdle also, (by now completing almost enough to make up the 110 meters sprint event) would their response necessarily be the right one? If global warming is happening and it is caused by humans, I am afraid the right way to respond is not by assuming we can irrevocably change our way of life and the development of our people. The correct response is to do what every other human community has done in the tens of thousands of years that we have roamed the planet- adapt! We should be investing a significant amount of time, energy and resources (or at least a proportion that is currently being thrown at global warming scientists) into adaptation through technology.

There is a definite breakthrough in this debate and I hope that the opportunity that this provides is grasped by the eminent sceptics that have previously been ridiculed and silenced. It seems the earth may be flat after all!