Shaphan

Brownism of the Day

The prime minister’s accidental wit and wisdom. (Copyright Slate).

Contrary to the record in Hansard, Gordon Brown said this in PMQs yesterday, to general hilarity, in response to David Cameron’s fifth question, in which the Tory leader had cited Alistair Darling’s previous opposition to the introduction of identity cards.

First of all, I may say to him that comments made about identity cards in the past have got to take into account what is actually happening now.

Hansard kindly transcribed it as:

First, I may say to the right hon. Gentleman on comments made about identity cards in the past that we have got to take into account what is actually happening now.

The House used to laugh with the PM – now it laughs at him.  It was an inauspicious debut.

"The gay hotel boss who doesn't want to go straight"

Some gay hoteliers in Blackpool have just woken up to the predicament their community leaders have led them into.

A hotelier who runs a gays-only guesthouse fears the new anti-discrimination laws could put him out of business.  Mark Hurst, 47, says the legislation will force him to open his doors to heterosexual guests.  He believes this will put off his core customers, who may feel uneasy in a mixed group.

Mr Hurst, who runs Guyz hotel in Blackpool with his partner Steve, said: "We run a gay hotel exclusively for men. We feel if we were forced to a situation where we had to accept heterosexual people into our hotel, our gay clientele will not behave as naturally as they would now...

Mr Hurst’s fears that, by extension, it could force him not to discriminate against heterosexuals are shared by Steve Dobbin, 46, manager of the gay hotel Trades, also in Blackpool.

He said: "Many of our older guests don’t like to show affection to one another in front of a mixed group. I can see what the law is trying to do but I am not certain this is the right way to ensure gay rights."  [Daily Mail]

Without wishing to blow my own cornet, this blog was the only one I know of - though I'm sure there were others - that spoke up for the gay and lesbian B&B owners before they themselves twigged that the sexual orientation regulations of the Equality Act would apply to them as well.  But one of the Act's chief cheerleaders, Peter 'Outrage' Tatchell, is unsympathetic to their plight.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said, however: "I think it’s very unlikely there are going to be hundreds of heterosexuals banging on the doors of gay hotels demanding to be let in.

"I think their fears are misplaced.  Under the new laws they will still be able to make it clear to prospective guests that they primarily serve the gay community."

How can a 'gay rights' campaigner be supporting legislation that erodes the freedoms of gay and lesbian B&B owners to provide a service that both they and their customers can feel comfortable with?  Isn't that against to the interests of the gay-and-lesbian holiday industry?  Whilst the Act may not immediately decimate the UK's gay-and-lesbian B&B scene, surely it will discourage other gays and lesbians from opening new establishments?  Maybe Peter Tatchell goes abroad for his holidays, but I'm sure there are some old queens and dykes who like nothing better than to be beside the British seaside, sucking on sticks of rock or licking their candyfloss, in a B&B tailored exclusively to their needs.  There's no accounting for taste but that's surely no reason to drive the proprietors out of business.

As I've said before, it's an illiberal and indiscriminate law that didn't get proper parliamentary scrutiny.  I'm not suggesting that the gay-and-lesbian holiday industry gets an exemption from the Act, not if adoption agencies don't also.  But I do think the whole Act needs scrapping and redrafting, with greater reference to the real world.

Discrimination rules

There's an incredibly stupid piece of legislation, the Equality Act 2006, that's soon to be rolled out. 

The Equality Act 2006, which comes into force in April, bans discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexual orientation...

Lord Falconer told BBC television's Sunday AM programme: "We have introduced laws which prevent discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation; those laws should be given full effect.

"We do take the view in this country that you shouldn't be discriminated against on that basis and think that applies to everybody, whatever your religion." [Telegraph]

As I wrote in a comment on the Guardian blog, appended to a piss-poor article by faux philosopher AC Grayling, "discrimination is the beginning of wisdom, which is the object of philosophy".  Charlie Falconer, you don't speak for me - I believe a lesbian couple should be allowed to open a B&B 'for lesbians only', without fear of prosecution.  Their civil liberty, to discriminate against me and invite only single and coupled lesbians into their house, is being sacrificed on the altar of indiscrimination.  It's not the sort of Britain I want to live in.  And it shouldn't be left to the followers of religions to oppose it.

General anxiety

The new head of the British Army, General Dannatt, has got plaudits and stick for his honesty about the strain the military is under in Iraq and elsewhere.  He's intruded where he should not go, into British politics, but has done so from a position of strength.  If Blair gets uppity, the general could send the tanks into Whitehall.  I've sometimes fantasized, since 9/11, of the benefits or otherwise of a non-violent military coup.  Having read Dannatt's interview with the Daily Mail, I'm worried by his interest in domestic British affairs and in modern-day values and ideologies.

The General is a practising Christian and this informs his views on the Army's role and place in society.  He believes our weak values have allowed the predatory Islamist vision to take hold.

"We can't wish the Islamist challenge to our society away and I believe that the Army, both in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably wherever we go next, is fighting the foreign dimension of the challenge to our accepted way of life.

"We need to face up to the Islamist threat, to those who act in the name of Islam and in a perverted way try to impose Islam by force on societies that do not wish it.  In the Cold War, the threats to this country were about armies rolling in.  Threats now are not territorial but to the values of our country.

"In the Army we place a lot of store by the values we espouse.  What I would hate is for the Army to be maintaining a set of values that were not reflected in our society at large — courage, loyalty, integrity, respect for others;  these are critical things.

"I think it is important as an Army entrusted with using lethal force that we do maintain high values and that there is a moral dimension to that and a spiritual dimension.

"When I see the Islamist threat I hope it doesn't make undue progress because there is a moral and spiritual vacuum in this country.  Our society has always been embedded in Christian values; once you have pulled the anchor up there is a danger that our society moves with the prevailing wind.  There is an element of the moral compass spinning.  I am responsible for the Army, to make sure that its moral compass is well aligned and that we live by what we believe in.

"It is said we live in a post-Christian society.  I think that is a great shame.  The Judaic-Christian tradition has underpinned British society.  It underpins the British Army."   I ask what this means for Muslim soldiers and their allegiance.

"These are British Muslims who are also British soldiers.  If they are prepared to take the Queen’s shilling they will go wherever the mission requires them to go."

He continued upon this theme on the Today programme this morning, suggesting that Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur ("probably wherever we go next") were not separate conflicts but part of a larger West vs Jihadist war.   And he kept coming back to the alleged internal threat from 'negative forces', by which he meant Islamism.  I wondered if he envisaged a time when the Army might play a role domestically combating these 'negative forces'.  And then I remembered Iain Dale's post the other day, about Met. Police chief  'Sir' Ian Blair threatening to bring back internment for radical Muslims.  It seemed as if there were dark forces gathering in our realm and that not all of them were Islamists.

Brownian motion

The BBC's website described Gordon Brown's statement today as "G.B. publicly gives Mr Blair his support".  That's not how I heard it.  These were the substantive parts of his statement [my transcription and emphases]:

I want to make it absolutely, er, clear today that, when I met the prime minister yesterday, I said to him, as I've said on many occasions to him and I repeat today, er, that it is for him to make the decision.  I said also to him, and I make clear again today, that I will support him in the decisions he makes; that this cannot, and should not, be about private arrangements, but what is in the best interests of our party and, most of all, the best interests of our country; and I will support him in doing exactly that. (..)

And I am determined that in the months and years to come, we continue to do our duty, er, by the people of, er, Britain - and it is my determination, and his, to do that, that will influence everything that happens in the times to come. 

Translation: provided the decisions Blair makes exactly accord with the best interests of the party and the country, Brown will support those decisions.  If not, there will be an unstoppable rebellion.  And obviously, in Brown's eyes, it's in the party's and the nation's interest that he become the next leader.  That's deeply conditional support. 

My expectation that Brown will never be PM is being challenged by this week's events.  He looked confident today, as well he might - he's as close to it now as he's ever been.   But I wonder whether it's as close as he'll ever get. 

On Peter Hain

The whole Sean Kelly issue is an invitation to conspiracy theory crackpots, starting with Adams himself and his daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent.  [Comment on post @ Slugger O'Toole, 2005.06.28]

If it is true that Gerry Adams holds to the daft notion that Peter Hain is an MI5 agent, he's not alone in his daftness.  I came to the same tentative conclusion before finding the above comment on Slugger O'Toole.  According to my crackpot theory, Hain would have become an MI5 stooge around 1975.  Which would entail that the Anti-Nazi League was co-founded and co-led ('77-'82) by an MI5 informant, which, if one thinks about it, makes some sense.  Because of John Prescott's on-going troubles, and with Peter Hain being talked of as a possible replacement, I think it's time to air my suspicions in public. 

When I were still a lad in shorts at prep. school, Peter Hain was Britain's 'public enemy number one' (said the Telegraph).  The Wilson Cabinet considered charging him with 'seditious conspiracy'.  Right-wingnut Gerald Howarth founded the 'Hain Prosecution Fund' to battle him.  All because Hain, who had come to the UK in '66 when his family fled from the South African secret police, was in '69 leading the direct action campaign against South African sports teams touring Britain.  Called the 'Stop The Seventy Tour' (STST), it attracted widespread grassroots support.

"Direct action" took hold as copycat protests followed the Springbok rugby team around the country - Gordon Brown signed on as Hain's Edinburgh organiser - and a secret inner STST group of activists was formed.

The Establishment was shaken by the STST campaign.   It affected relations with South Africa and the Commonwealth, and it threatened law and order at home.  MI5 infiltrated STST, using multiple so-called 'Hairies', and one of them, 'Mike Ferguson', rose to become Peter Hain's number two.  (It would follow from this that MI5 probably opened a file on Gordon Brown around 1970.)

The STST was largely successful, which meant Peter Hain also became South Africa's public enemy number one (PENO).  To be considered PENO in one country, and to have MI5 after you, is quite an achievement; to be considered PENO in two countries, and to have both MI5 and BOSS (SA's fearsome Bureau of State Security) on your case, is to be in deep do-do.

In 1972 someone sent Peter Hain a letter-bomb, which was opened by his sister and which failed to detonate.  Hain believed that it was sent by BOSS.  It may have been BOSS, and it may not, and it may have been intended to scare but not explode, but it may not.  Whatever, when someone like Peter Hain receives a letter-bomb, some plods from Special Branch come calling with advice on security.  It's possible, I think, that thereafter all of Hain's family's mail was first checked for devices by SB, who'd then deliver them to him.  SB officers are the footsoldiers of MI5.  From being PENO in '69, Hain (and his family) may thus have started receiving SB/MI5 protection from '72 onwards.

Then, in 1974/5(?), Peter Hain was falsely accused and charged with bank robbery from a Barclays in Putney. The case went to the Old Bailey, and he was acquitted in 1976.   As with the bomb, Hain believed that BOSS was behind it.  Again, it may have been BOSS, and it may not - if the effect was to push Hain even further towards SB/MI5, then the latter agency may have been involved.  It could even have been an MI5-BOSS co-production.  Whatever - if Hain really believed that BOSS was trying to maim and/or destroy him, his dependence upon the British secrurity services would have grown.  If he was also concerned, say, by the influence of the Trotskyists and Stalinists on the British Left, such as in the anti-apartheid movement in which he was active, it would have been an easy step for him to make, from receiving SB/MI5's on-going protection to passing on information about extremists, quid pro quo.  Hain was also, and still is, a CND member, another group of then interest to MI5.  Considering the likely effect on Hain of receiving the letter-bomb, and then being framed for robbery, and given that the Security Service had had him under surveillance for some time before that, is it entirely too outlandish to raise the possibility that MI5, and not BOSS, was behind both the dud letter-bomb and the Barclays frame-up?   Anyway, I think the bank-robbery experience may have completed his transition from national security threat to potentially valuable asset. 

If that's right, then Hain would have been in MI5's pocket when the Anti-Nazi League was formed in 1977.  To me this is quite plausible.  I think it's even possible that the whole ANL project was started by MI5, for two purposes - it could use surveillance and informants to keep watch of leftist extremists drawn to the ANL, and it could use the ANL and its supporters to quell the growing popularity of the right-wing National Front.  For MI5, the Anti-Nazi League operation could have been counted a great success.

Also in 1977, Hain switched from the Liberals to Labour, and in 1991 he was elected an MP.  By the end of that decade, he was a Foreign Office minister.  Among other posts, he's been Leader of the Commons and Northern Ireland Secretary.   At the FCO, he would have been briefed by MI6 and have read secret reports.  As Commons Leader, he liased closely with the SS on trying to protect parliament from terrorist attacks.  In the occupied six counties, he has political responsibility for the workings of PSNI Special Branch, MI5 and MI6. 

Hain's come a long way, from being a target of MI5, to overseeing that agency, Special Branch and MI6;  from being plotted against by a Labour Cabinet to becoming a Labour Cabinet minister.  Jung called such turnarounds enantiodromias, the going from one extreme to another.   I think Hain's extraordinary transformation from public enemy number one to intelligence insider is best explained by the terrorist campaign conducted against him and his family, by unknown intelligence agencies, between 1972 and '75.

So, that's my 'crackpot conspiracy theory', which Gerry Adams maybe also shares.  Lots of ifs and buts and maybes but no hard and fast evidence.  It's supposition based solely on the events, and the unusual trajectory, of Peter Hain's career.  But, given that he's now going for Labour's deputy leadership, his record of mixing it with various spooks, domestic and foreign, is a valid topic for comment, I believe.   

[See also: Is Tony Blair an MI5 agent?]

A good crisis for John Reid

Sometimes, the timings of terrorist plots and contemporaneous political events appear to be more than just coincidental, even when they might not be.  For example, when 9/11 happened, one of my first thoughts, like many other people,  was, "F--k, this gives Cheney and Rumsfeld (et al.) everything that they wanted", and that thought became, rightly or wrongly, a reason to question the version of events presented by the US government, because the attacks coincided with the aims of the recently elected US government.  London's July 7 bombings became in my mind 'the G8 bombings', for they appeared to be timed to coincide with the start of the UK-hosted G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland.

And now there's this alleged Bojinka-type plot to blow up multiple airliners over the Atlantic.  It's a good crisis for John Reid (who seems to have again dropped the 'Dr').  This blogger has been suggesting for a while that John Reid was the one whom Tony Blair and the security and intel services wanted to be the next prime minister.  The events of the past couple of days have not modified that opinion.  But that would be to suggest that the timing of this high-profile, counter-terrorist operation was, to some extent, manoeuvred by MI5, in part to promote John Reid as a capable leader in troubled times, which might be symptomatic of paranoid conspiracitis. 

The newspapers have given Reidy glowing reviews for his performance.  The Times, for example, wrote:

Mr Reid has evinced a presidential air in his public appearances.  Although Gordon Brown is the overwhelming candidate to succeed Mr Blair, Mr Reid is the only other real contender, and his performance this week has strengthened his position.  While few believe that he would defeat Mr Brown, he may well have made it harder for the Chancellor, when he takes over, to dispense with Mr Reid’s services.

Personally, I think Brown hasn't a hope in hell of succeeding Blair, and he should look for a job outside of politics.   Air crashes happen to US, not British, politicians but I wouldn't want to share a flight to Scotland with the chancellor for a while.  When powerful elements within the permanent government strongly favour one candidate, and oppose another, for the leadership of a political party in parliament and, from there, of the elected government, only the naive, the brave or the foolish would stand in their way. 

PS  According to the US's Cox News Service,

WASHINGTON - When Vice President Cheney went out of his way Wednesday to blast Democrats as weak on terrorism, he knew something that few Americans knew: Another stark reminder of the dangers of terrorism was about to hit the headlines.  The White House confirmed Thursday that senior administration officials have been aware since at least last weekend that British authorities were moving toward arrests in an alleged terrorism plot. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

'Since at least last weekend'.  What a coincidence - TB jets off to Barbados, and John Reid gets the platform to appear prime-ministerly, with at least several days notice to prepare. 

I reckon it's quite possible that, if TB hadn't delayed his holiday to work on the UN resolution on Lebanon, Thursday's operation would have happened earlier in the week or last weekend.  Which means that, by Thursday, the plot would have been slightly more advanced than they had anticipated.

UPDATE [2006.08.15]:  Recent reports have suggested that the British authorities wanted to wait longer until the plot was more advanced before moving, that it was the Americans who dictated the timing.  Whatever the truth of it is, it occurs to me that John Reid would be the Bush administration's choice to succeed Tony Blair.  The wee one has powerful friends indeed.

Government policy on blogs

From today's Downing Street press briefing [from Downing Street Says]:

Blogs

Asked if the Prime Minister or the Government thought that the content of blogs should be controlled, the PMOS replied that he was not aware of nay proposals for a change of policy regarding blogs.

If 'nay' isn't a typo, that's a half-Scottish double negative, meaning the PMOS knows the policy's about to change.  If it is a typo (for 'any'), it means that, as a commentator on DSS says, the government has a policy but they haven't yet told us what it is.  Maybe it's their policy to read them, or to ignore them, or to draft legislation to outlaw them - whatever, I think we should be told.

Scottish play

The Tories are having fun with the West Lothian question, with Alan Duncan, among others, claiming that an MP from a Scottish constituency - e.g., Gordon Brown and John Reid - should never again become prime minister of the UK, for devolved constitutional reasons (see Tory Diary).  There are so many reasons that this idea is funny but wrong, and here are two.

Several weeks ago, someone pointed out (I wish I could remember whom) that the WLQ is basically misconceived because substantive legislation passed on English (or English and Welsh) affairs soon migrates northward and westward.  Thus, it's in the interests of the Scottish people that legislation passed in England is properly scrutinized by their MPs.  There's some truth in this argument, but I also think it points to a greater truth about being a parliamentarian.

When I were a lad, the Tories revered Edmund Burke.  When the good people of Bristol elected him their MP in 1774, he gave them a speech and finished it with these words:

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider.  But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, -- these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.  You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament...

So, John Reid isn't a delegate from the Airdrie and Shotts constituency but a member of the British parliament.    Despite devolution, that principle remains sound.  Have the Tories ditched Unionism, then?

Miami vice

I hadn't been paying much attention to the Miami arrests of seven young men accused of planning a 9/11-type incident, until seeing this post at veiled4allah.  The arrested were not Sunni Muslims.  Nevertheless, a federal agent-provocateur was able, after six months of trying, to get them to swear alllegiance to al-Qaeda.  He also got them to fantasize about committing a terrorist attack on US hotspots.  But they're Moors, from the Moorish Science Temple of America [wikipedia].  The MSTA was the forerunner of the Nation of Islam (and also of the extremely dyfunctional Nuwaubian cult of Dwight York [wiki]).  It's a synthetic, syncretic, eclectic religion, whose followers, without the FBI's interference, would be unlikely candidates to join al-Qaeda's jihad.   So, when they, or one of them, were quoted by Alberto Gonzales as wanting to "kill all the devils we can", that's the language of Black Muslims when referring to whites, not of an Islamic jihadist talking about infidels.  And the FBI and DOJ would have known that.

So why all the publicity about them?  I can think of two possibilities:  the US government wanted to make a big deal about 'homegrown terrorists', to justify its continuing post-9/11 power grab, so decided to grow seven of its own;  or the story was released in order to distract attention from some other bit of news it didn't want the media to cover.  If it was the latter, I wonder what it was.  (The Suskind book?) (The snooping on bank transactions?) (Both?)