Grossly disproportionate

Today politics seemed all rather familiar. Chris Grayling, doing his best William Hague impression (c.1999), announced that a Conservative government would ensure that the law protected those who acted in self-defence when burgled, rather than the “criminals” themselves.

Grayling promised that rules defining appropriate self-defence in instances where one’s home is under attack would be changed. A Conservative government would ensure only “grossly disproportionate” acts are illegal, compared to “unreasonable” acts at present (it is unclear whether this is similar to scrapping NHS targets for “measurable outcomes”, or something more substantial).

The policy announcement was prompted by the case of Munir Hussain, whose acts of self-defence against robbers who tied his family up in their Buckinghamshire home were adjudged to have gone too far.

The danger with political posturing of Grayling’s sort is that it gives too much prominence to the court of public opinion, and relies too much on electoral calculus than on the cold, hard facts of the case. In the Hussain example, his act of self-defence involved chasing the robbers out of his home, down his street and leaving one of the robbers with permanent brain damage as a consequence of a beating with cricket bats.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Hussain, in the heat of the moment, took the law into his own hands. The court decided that, through his actions, Hussain too became a criminal. Arguing, as some have, that it is ridiculous to expect individuals to weigh up whether their acts of self-defence would be considered reasonable in a court of law misses the point of the criminal justice system.

The Judge in the Hussain case recognised that many in Hussain’s position would want to protect their families. But the Judge rightly described his subsequent actions as a “dreadful, violent attack”. Judge Reddihough said:

If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.

On this issue, the Conservatives must surely be wrong – our laws should only protect victims of crime to the extent they do not use that as an excuse to commit gross acts of violence themselves.

Judge and jury in this example had enough latitude to decide whether Hussain’s actions were reasonable. They thought not. The Judge had some discretion to decide what an appropriate sentence would be. He decided upon a 30-month jail term.

That some politicians disagree – for selfish reasons – with the way a law is interpreted and acted upon should not, of itself, be cause to rewrite it.

(The Times leader and Catherine Bennett in the Observer are worth reading on this.)

Poll watching – when do oddities stop being odd?

@tweetminster has decided to spread a little early Christmas cheer by highlighting a new poll out tomorrow. Labour activists who were cruelly led up the garden path by the chatter around last weekend’s Ipsos MORI poll should read Andrew Grice’s latest blog post on ComRes’s latest poll coming out in tomorrow’s paper.

9 points separate Labour from the Conservatives. A drop to a single digit Conservative poll lead is the kind of news that Labour supporters could use to keep them warm during the cold months ahead (it is a mark of our times that we seem to have to measure political hope by falling Conservative poll leads).

The political poll watching website, Politicalbetting.com is a treasure trove of information and analysis to put polls in their proper context. Yesterday they blogged on whether the Pre-Budget Report had really made a difference to voter intentions. Mike Smithson ended his analysis with:

Looking back over the past fortnight the polling oddities seem to have been the last Sunday YouGov poll in the Sunday Times and Tuesday’s ICM in the Guardian. Both showed the Labour share increasing and it looked as though the PBR had had little impact.

So it this poll something to be get really excited about? Polls can be misleading, especially when it is the media driving how they’re understood by the public at large. This might be just another ‘oddity’. But there’s something particularly interesting about this latest poll.

Whilst the other polls have fluctuated throughout, ComRes hasn’t had the Conservatives on less than double-digit leads since May. Whilst this latest poll doesn’t see the Conservatives drop away from the magic 40%, it does see Labour take all the gains in it’s share of the vote. So I’m looking out for the analysis of this poll which is likely to be key reading.

In the end polls are just polls but it’s clear that Cameron’s team are not as confident as they feel they should be at this point in the cycle. That’s good for politics as it’ll mean more political debate (we now know we’re going to get televised leader debates for the first time). But if people are still in two minds about who to vote for, then the kind of electoral pact the Party decides to offer the public will matter more than ever.

Update: ComRes has put up their research on their website. Interestingly their poll sees:

by a margin of 49 to 45 per cent, people disagree with the statement that “the Conservative Party offers an appealing alternative to the Labour Party.”
Meanwhile, by a margin of 52 to 44 per cent, the public agrees with the statement that: “a Conservative Government would mainly represent the interests of the well-off rather than ordinary people.”

But the same poll has this too:

By a margin of 55 to 38 per cent, people support the Tory policy of raising the threshold for inheritance tax should be raised to £1 million.

Seems people are genuinely confused about the main parties at the moment.

Simon who?

Westminster’s online movers and shakers were left stymied when asked about Simon Cowell’s plans to X-Factorise politics last night.

There were blank faces all round as the panel of experts at Demos’s “Is the internet really changing politics?” event seemed to shrug “Simon Who?” in response to a question on Cowell’s widely publicised ideas to re-enfranchise the public.

Former Minister for Digital Engagement Tom Watson and the Tories’ Head of New Media Rishi Saha – both of whom have been tasked with getting more people involved in politics – hadn’t a clue about the planned programme, which would involve instant red-button reaction and text votes on a range of big issues with a hotline to number 10.

Outlining his proposals in an interview with the BBC, Cowell had said:

“If you went around the country now there would be five or six big big issues which i think are really really important in people’s lives.

There could be some kind of referendum-type TV show where you can speak on both sides and then open it up to the public to get an instant poll as to how they feel on the hot topics, that kind of show would interest me.

“It’s the sort of thing I’d like to watch beacuse now there are so many really, really, really hot topics and I think, well, for instance, should we or should we [sic] be in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you actually asked most people in the country why are we there, I, I couldn’t even tell you.

“I’m not sure why we’re there. I knew why we were in the falklands, I don’t know why we’re there.”

One might suggest that, if it ever came to pass, he’d probably have to amend a few of his famous put downs.

This article was originally published on Left Foot Forward; you can read my full report on the event in the next issue of Anticipations

Labour’s National Volunteering Taskforce – a West Midlands case study

50,000 marchers braved the rain to demand action on Climate Change as part of the Wave. But, surprising as it may seem, more exciting stuff was happening miles away in a Scout Hut in Halesowen and Rowley Regis.

That wet Saturday afternoon I travelled to the West Midlands to spend the afternoon with local Labour MP, a Government Minister, two members of the Youth Parliament and 30 local residents all eager to discuss what real difference to Climate Change they could affect locally here and now.

Best way to explain it is to watch what Mandy and Caroline, two residents who took part, and hear what they had to say about the event. This was intended to be different from the usual MP discussions that take place in constituencies across the country. The MP in this case, Sylvia Heal, said actually very little. The main point was to get local people talking about what they wanted to tackle Climate Change, what was holding them back and how the politicians in the room could help them. The difficulty is that local people are not used to being engaged with, they are used to “hearing what the Government are going to do” and being talked at. But they tend to forget that they can have an impact all of their own.

Unprompted, people were full of ideas about what they wanted to see happen in their area. Better local recycling services, more incentives for energy efficiency and microgeneration, and local businesses being more responsible about the energy they waste – these were all issues that people wanted to see action on. How we get people to take action is another challenge. In the same way that Labour’s Smarter Government initiative focuses a great deal on giving people greater control of public services, a similar focus is need to showing people how they can campaign and take action on the local issues that they care most about

One of the volunteers, Claire Spencer, has written about the event and building active communities on Labourlist. She’s right that it is just the beginning. The success will lie in getting people to take action.

Helping local MPs and candidates find new ways to engage with communities was exactly what Labour’s National Volunteers Taskforce was set up to do. Much of this has been influenced by the experience we, as Young Fabians, had when we went to Ohio last year to campaign for Obama (you can read our thoughts about the campaign here). If anything that trip showed us how powerful reaching out to communities could be, but also how difficult it is.

So was the second local discussion event in three months that we’ve helped Sylvia Heal organise. Both have been successful but now the focus will now be on building on the enthusiasm shown on that wet and windy Saturday by getting people to act in small but definite ways.

If you want to know more about the Taskforce, how you can get involved or if you are a Labour politician and want to know how the Taskforce can help you reach out to your community – then get in touch at vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk.

Give me a break

This week, Nestle has announced that KitKat will be going Fairtrade, following Cadbury’s lead last year. I’m glad I prefer Twix.

Those who know me well are more than aware of my objections to the Fairtrade scheme. In brief, these objections include:

1. Minimum price guarantees incentivise wasteful production by distorting market signals. Farmers no longer respond to consumer demand, adjusting production accordingly (or exiting an industry where overcapacity exists). This is exactly how the CAP works. I doubt many supporters of Fairtrade would argue that CAP is a good idea, so why be overjoyed at the creation of another, albeit smaller, protectionist system?

2. Minimum price guarantees disincentivise technological innovation*. Why waste resources on new equipment when you’re guaranteed money for old rope?

3. Minimum price guarantees disincentivise improvements in quality of the product*. Actually, they incentivise the reverse – as a farmer, I can make a higher margin by allowing the quality of my product to degrade in the knowledge that I will continue to receive a minimum price.

4. The Fairtrade scheme creates an insider/outsider problem, which increases the living standards of some of the world’s poorest farm workers at the expense of those outside of the scheme, who become relatively less well off.

5. The Fairtrade scheme erodes entrepreneurialism. The scheme design creates a framework in which producers are incentivised to maximise their returns within the confines of the scheme, rather than what would be optimal within the economy as a whole.

Of course, some of these problems could be overcome if all participants within a market were part of the Fairtrade scheme – then competition between suppliers for contracts may at least partially reverse the effect on incentives the minimum price guarantee has. But in this scenario, the fair-trade foundation would set market prices, which is akin to command and control communism and thus not particularly attractive – resources are inefficiently allocated.

My biggest concern though relates to the implications of wholesale switching to fair-trade inputs by manufacturers. When multi-national organisations believe it is in their interest to switch to fair-trade inputs, they have obviously calculated that this will be commercially beneficial to them in the long run. In turn, this implies sufficient demand in the marketplace.

But increased demand amongst consumers implies they would rather pay more for the same product (and in some cases an inferior product) – the “guilt premium” – in order to alleviate the consequences of a fault with protectionist trade regimes, rather than put pressure on governments to dismantle the source of the problem (barriers to trade).

At the extreme, fair-trade consumerism absolves elected officials of the responsibilities to solve these problems at source. Surely this is a bad thing?

*I’m aware that the Fairtrade premium **could** be used for these ends, although it is not always the case that they are.

The BNP – closer than we think?

The news that Nick Griffin (infamous leader of the British National Party, UK MEP for the North-West and now parliamentary candidate for the constituency of Barking) will be part of the European Parliament delegation to Copenhagen will no doubt have further knocked the public’s faith in European institutions.

Nick is not the greatest believer climate change, in fact he has regularly calls it:

“…a global Marxist mantra that is going to be used to beat people around the head, tax us to the hilt, smash nations and impose a one-world government.”

So his attendance at the summit is an unwelcome distraction and is unlikely to be of any help to the UK’s efforts to reach a deal in Copenhagen. Only Griffin will benefit from his attendance as the BNP draws out more political notoriety from the event.

More than embarrasing, BNP’s new spin on the European stage this week is another worrying sign of the rise of the BNP. Their appearance on Question Time last October caused uproar but most are resigned to the fact that it is unlikely to be the last time we see them on our TV screens.

So are we just getting used to the BNP?

The results of the European Elections earlier this year with their two seats gain, their Greater London Assembly seat last year and  57 local BNP councillors across the country, all point to a growing belief amongst some quarters of society that they are a legitimate political force.

So the question is “does the left have any plan that can stop the BNP?”.

Last week members of London Young Labour met to debate the ‘No Platform’ policy against the BNP, the mainstay of the left’s strategy to deal with the far right. Yet it has not beaten back the BNP. Putting aside the deomcratic questions of free speech, they lack of media coverage is not stopping them out there in the streets. In the debate Frank Dobson talked about John Smith asking lead a campaign to deal with the BNP council threat in Millwall in the mid 90s.

The Prime Minister has not done anything similar, although politicians like John Cruddas have made fighting the BNP a personal political aim. In the wider movement organisations like Searchlight and Unite Against Fascism have done sterling work creating campaigns like Hope Not Hate and Love Music Hate Racism to raise awareness and mobilizing support against the BNP.  Now more than ever they need our help.

But with the Labour Party focused on understanding the needs of working class communities, worried by reports that BNP supporters are actually old Labour voters who don’t see the party as relevant to them anymore, it is unclear what the overall strategy really is.  If the Party is serious about breaking the stranglehold of the BNP they may yet have to show that they can take a proper fight to them, as well as woo their followers back to proper mainstream Labour values.

Vincenzo