Brown Wins Progressive America

By Cernig

There's little doubt that Gordon Brown's visit to the US has been a success, with everyone except the most diehard rightwingers impressed by the new British PM's international performances to date.

Brent Budowsky, for instance, is positively glowing with praise in an article for The Hill today entitled "Gordon Brown For President".

Effective today, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the leader of the free world and the voice of hope and change that offers the first true answer of freedom to the heinous crimes of Sept. 11, 2001.

In his brilliant and comprehensive comments at Camp David, Brown spoke to the aspirations of overwhelming majorities of Americans, Britons and other men and women throughout the democratic world.

In Brown’s vision, Afghanistan, not Iraq, is the central military battleground in the fight against terrorism; and hope, not fear, is the central weapon in the great battle of ideas that will determine who prevails in the great conflict of our times.

In Gordon Brown’s world, for the first time since Sept. 11, world leaders would lead, with an all-out attempt to seek a comprehensive peace in the Middle East that offers young men and women the aspiration of a life free from endless war, hunger, injustice, corruption, despotism and disease that are terrorism’s greatest allies.

In Gordon Brown’s strategy, world leaders issue a global call to action to deal with poverty and AIDS, to protect the world from global warming and save the world from deadly dependence on oil, to take a moral and aggressive stand against genocide in Darfur and to mobilize what Thomas Jefferson would call the decent opinion of men and women everywhere.

What a powerful contrast with the world of George W. Bush, in which Iraq is treated as our 51st state, the only nation in the world, and an obsession that deforms the force structures of our military, bitterly divides our people and thoroughly dominates our national life.

Budowsky goes on to take Brown's success as a message of hope for progressives looking to the inaugeration of a Democratic president in 2009.

Imagine: an American president who would speak as Gordon Brown speaks, and do what Gordon Brown proposes to do!

November 2008 is coming and Americans will be astonished at the outpouring of idealism, optimism and excitement when the dead hand of the current course is removed, and a new government brings new life to our democracy and renewed
appeal as a beacon for the world.

Gordon Brown, a man who prepared to be prime minister for a decade, has spoken the words with eloquence, and offered the plan with depth, that is a gateway to the future and a forerunner to what is coming.

A new Democratic president, backed by a new Democratic Congress, working with a brilliant British prime minister, backed by a Labour Party majority in Parliament, would create a program that would rally support throughout the world, lifting two proud nations while lifting the aspirations of people everywhere.

Sounds good, doesn't it? And, at least right now, UK polls show Brown as likely to be around for several years.

So here's the question - out of all the Dem candidates, who is most likely to be a perfect partner to Brown?

The Real Gordon Brown Stands Up

By Cernig

After yesterday's careful diplomatic dance with Bush in front of the cameras, UK prime minister Gordon Brown continued his visit to the US with visits to Congress and then a private meeting with Bill Clinton.

Today he'll be meeting with the UN's secreatry general to push forward something that's always been a hallmark of Brown's democratic socilaist ideals - ending world poverty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will call for action on Tuesday to put the world back on track to meet U.N. goals to slash extreme poverty by 2015.

A day after his first talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, the new leader will give a speech at the United Nations to demonstrate his belief in international cooperation and his determination to improve the lot of the world's poor.

A report released this month on progress so far found most of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals were far from being met.

"Gordon Brown is going to focus on what we need to do to achieve these goals, to get back on track," a British government source said about Brown's speech on Tuesday which he will deliver after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Brown will call for companies and charities to get involved in the drive to meet the Millennium Development Goals, adopted at a U.N. summit in 2000.

The goals include halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, achieving universal primary education, reducing child and maternal mortality, stopping the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and halving the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation.

Ban said this month the world would struggle to meet the U.N. goals, but said it could be done if rich countries boosted their international aid budgets.

As Britain's long-serving Chancellor before succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister in June, Brown has long been an advocate for reducing poor countries' debt burden and fighting poverty and disease in the developing world.

And will also push for UN peacekeepers in Darfur. Neither cause is exactly on Dubya's "must-do" list, which points up Brown's main message from this visit - that Britain will no longer be Bush's lapdog but won't throw away an old friendship just because Bush is still in charge. As the Labour party's parliamentary chairman put it, commenting on his leader's visit: "Our relationship with the United States is not about one person in 10 Downing Street and one person in the White House, whether it's Tony Blair and George Bush or now Gordon Brown and George Bush,"..."We have an enduring, important relationship with the United States and no British prime minister is going to throw that away."

The Mirror, the UK newspaper which has always been Brown's biggest supporter and which has been rewarded with increased access to his thinking, goes even further in it's editorial today:

Our "special relationship" with the US has thankfully entered a new phase.

Gordon Brown and George Bush looked business-like yesterday, the suits and ties after their Camp David summit signalling a proper working relationship rather than a cosy one.

The Prime Minister is determined to avoid the error of his predecessor Tony Blair who, after hailing Democrat President Bill Clinton as a friend, seamlessly transferred his loyalty to Republican President George Bush.

The determination of this Premier and the President to seek co-operation, basing the future on shared values and strategic goals, is to be applauded.

Yet the carefully chosen diplomatic words by both men failed to hide what we believe are disagreements, particularly on Iraq.

The withdrawal of British troops should be a Downing Street priority rather than tied to the departure timetable of an ailing President not destined to leave the White House until January 2009.

Mr Brown's admission of a "full and frank" conversation and his failure to reciprocate personal praise showered on him by Mr Bush opened a new international era.

And Britain will be stronger if our leader is not a Yankee poodle.

Brown is undoubtably looking towards the next US president, and will keep his alliance with the US businesslike while Bush is still in charge.

You Know...Diplomacy?

By Cernig

"To act with doubleness towards a man whose own conduct was double, was so near an approach to virtue that it deserved to be called by no meaner name than diplomacy." George Elliot.

So, what to make of the new British prime minister's meeting with Dubya? It seems to be a tale of pundits seeing what they want to see. For instance, most non-UK writers are linking to a piece in the UK's Sun which says Brown intends sticking by Bush on Iraq.

But to really understand the what's going on here, you have to be aware that the Sun, Britain's most shallow and most influential tabloid, is a part of the Murdoch noise machine - and that the Sun has already written in an editorial that it will be hostile to Brown's every plan if he doesn't give the UK a referendum on European union (a union Murdoch and the Sun oppose). You have to know that the Sun, per Murdoch's wishes, supported Blair but wanted Brown to face a leadership challenge and then lose. You have to understand that the Sun's level of journalism makes even the Telegraph seem fair an balanced - not to mention accurate. And you have to understand that Murdoch is doing Dubya's work for him, spinning the story the way the Bush administration wants it.

The Guardian, an independently owned and non-conservative newspaper, puts a rather different spin on what exactly is going on:

Gordon Brown today used his first summit with the US president, George Bush, to hold out the prospect of withdrawing British troops from a combat role in the one remaining zone of Iraq they control.
The prime minister put no timescale on the move, which would see the UK troops pull back from combat to "overwatch" operations in Basra, the fourth and final Iraqi province in the hands of the British.

But, standing beside Mr Bush at Camp David, in Maryland, he said there was a "chance" that MPs could be informed of the step "when parliament returns". The House of Commons returns from recess on October 8.

And does a good job of explaining the background to Brown's words, something the Sun conveniently misses.

While still international development secretary, Hilary Benn said in New York that the concept of a war on terror had given strength to terrorists. The phrase was studiously avoided by Mr Brown after the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow airport. Then Mark Malloch Brown declared that Britain and the US would no longer be joined at the hip. Another Foreign Office minister and Brown associate, Douglas Alexander, argued in Washington that multilateral action and soft power would be more important this century than unilateral military action. The latest emissary, the foreign policy adviser Simon McDonald, left the impression that he was tapping US reaction for a British pullout from Iraq. Nor did Washington like the fact that Mr Brown's first foreign trip was to France and Germany. The comparison between Mr Brown's Atlanticism and Nicolas Sarkozy's is instructive. The French president appointed an Atlanticist foreign minister in Bernard Kouchner, whereas Mr Brown's foreign policy team is full of European and development policy specialists.

The obvious interpretation put on each ministerial speech has been vigorously denied by Downing Street. The relationship with the United States is our single most important bilateral relationship, the prime minister intoned before leaving. But the cumulative effect of these signals cannot have been accidental, even if not all of the speeches were pre-approved. Mr Brown has had years to prepare for office. If the task of the first month was to establish that a new government was in power, this was most needed in Britain's relationship with America.

Ironically, Mr Brown is instinctively more pro-American than Mr Blair. He has a Washington contacts book that a British ambassador would envy. But Mr Brown can only be looking over Mr Bush's shoulder to the special relationship he will form with the next - and possibly Democrat - president.

American conservative pundits in particular like to gloss over UK misgivings on Iraq, relegating them to purely the hated "left". However, the fact is that a wish to stop participating in Bush's Iraq misadventure is very much a bipartisan thing. Even the hardline Torygraph wants out.

And even the Torygraph can spot the rhetorical subtleties that the US right is deliberately blind to.

Mr Brown insisted that “our aim, like the United States is, step-by-step, to move control to the Iraqi authorities" and that this would be done “on the military advice of our commanders on the ground," echoing language often heard from Mr Bush.

He made clear, however, that Britain would follow its own timetable for withdrawal, based on the recommendation of British commanders and without being dictated to by Washington.

Much of their joint appearance was taken up with observations about what Mr Brown referred to as “the special relationship, call it, as Churchill did, the joint inheritance, call it, when we meet, as a form of homecoming, as President Reagan did.”

But while Mr Bush made frequent quips and lavished compliments on Mr Brown, the Prime Minister spoke of the transatlantic relationship in terms of history and values rather than the personality or policies of the current president.

...Mr Brown also said that “Afghanistan is the front line against terrorism”, whereas Mr Bush has often referred to Iraq as the front-line.

The words are careful, but they represent a world of difference between the two leaders.

Update Brown's op-ed in the Washington Post is more of the same careful and diplomatic wording we saw in his presser with Bush. Any more nuanced reader than most rightwing pundits appear to be to would parse Brown's statement that:

All of us must be vigilant in our determination to prevent attacks and defeat the forces of terrorism. And it is the values we share that make us best placed to succeed. For to achieve this we must mobilize all methods of diplomacy, all means of intelligence, all tools of law and policing, and all the bravery of our security and military forces as we isolate terrorist extremists from the peaceful majority.

As a slap in the face to the "bomb them all, let God sort them out" crusading zeal of the Cheneyites. Diplomacy, properly verified intelligence, the careful use of law and police methods - all these are "lefty" ideas for fighting terrorism, ideas that have been decried in the past by Republicans but have been watchwords for Democrats in the US as well as the British left.

The Brits understand what Gordon was doing, though - even the Murdoch-owned London Times - putting America on notice that while the US and UK are friends, that doesn't need to mean that the UK will jump when Bush says "jump".

Mr Brown chose to describe their talks as “full and frank”, a phrase which usually conceals disagreements.

He went on to suggest that Britain’s military was getting ready to hand control of Basra — the last province under its control in southern Iraq — to Iraqi authorities. “We intend to move to overwatch,” he said, describing how troops would withdraw to bases away from the immediate battlezones. He added that “whatever happens, we will make a full statement to Parliament when it returns”.

UK officials last night insisted that there was no change in policy but that Britain retained the right to withdraw its remaining 5,500 troops irrespective of any plea from Washington to continue operating alongside American troops.

And the Guardian leader says Gordon succeeded in fine style:

As presidential compliments rained down on Mr Brown's head, it began to emerge that the prime minister had got what he wanted. His ministerial frontrunners had established a useful sense of ambiguity, the possibility that a relationship that had been joined at the hip might eventually be severed. Mr Brown then arrives and secures a working relationship, free of sycophancy. The White House characterised the hints of a tougher British partner as "white noise", saying it was not what British ministers said that mattered, but what they did. But the overall effect of this carefully calibrated operation has been to pull the clothes over to Britain's side of the bed.

Brown gave Bush an object lesson in international diplomacy, that's all.

English Floods The Real Test For Brown

By Cernig

Thousands have been stranded and hundreds of thousands left without drinking water or power by massive floods across Central England and Wales over recent weeks. These floods, rather than recent incompetent terrorist activity, are set to be the first real test of the mettle of Britain's new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The abortive and incompetent nature of the car bombs in London and Glasgow meant that they were no real crisis no matter how much conservative media hype in the US and UK tried to make them one. However, the current situation, which has gathered almost no pundit attention in the US, is a far sterner test for Brown's abilities. The entire swing-voter region of England is under threat of flooding, and how Brown reacts - his leadership ability, his ability to generate effective responses, his ability to remain calm and decisive - will determine public opinion in the run-up to the next general election. It is no hyperbole to say it is a mini-Katrina for Brown and that his star will fall fast if his government emulates the failures of Bush's administration.

The BBC is probably the best place to get an overview of the extent of the crisis.

The flooding crisis in central and western England continues with thousands of homes losing water and electricity supplies.
Up to 350,000 people in Gloucestershire will be left without running water by Monday evening, as the Severn and Thames rivers threaten to overflow.

The Environment Agency said water levels on both rivers had exceeded those of devastating floods in 1947.

...Severe flood warnings are in place for the Midlands, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire. At their height, some rivers will be more than 20ft higher than normal. Environment Agency spokesman Anthony Perry said: "We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before. The benchmark was 1947 and this has already exceeded it."

...The Environment Agency has issued eight severe flood warnings and says the situation is "critical". There are four in the Midlands for the River Avon and River Severn between Worcester, Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

Three severe flood warnings are in place for Oxfordshire, from Eynsham to Abingdon, and one has been issued for the River Great Ouse from Turvey to Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire.

At one stage, thousands were trapped by rising water on the main M5 motorway near Birmingham, the UK's second largest city. Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed by water which is up to six feet deep. Both of Britain's largest rivers, the Thames and Severn, are in danger of bursting their banks in several places. Some areas have seen a month's rainfall in one day and there's more rain still to come.

So how is Brown doing? Well, it's a mixed bag to be honest. He's come under a lot of criticism for the inability of what in many cases is Victorian infrastructure to cope with the rain. Spending should have been greater and better targeted, many say. Brown has to bear some blame for this - he's been in charge of Britain's purse strings for a very long time now - but also can point to decades long neglect all the way back to the Thatcher years and even beyond. The military and emergency services have done great work in the biggest civil rescue operation mounted in the UK since WW2 - but could have done even better if the military wasn't overstretched by commitement to Bush's adventure in Iraq. He's ordered a review into the response to the flooding and a 25% rise in spending on flood and coastal defenses - but that's after the horse has bolted and it seems true that his government could have been more ready if they had heeded weather experts warnings in the earliest stages of the flooding.

It's unclear as yet where public opinion will settle, but Brown's definitely learned from Bush's disaster. His government has been quick to say that the lessons needed will be learned and applied and has the support of the Conservative party in not playing a blame game (for now).

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said the floods were "not the government's fault" and "we are not interested in playing a blame game".

"They are a humbling reminder of the awesome power of nature.

"What matters is to be quite certain that everything feasible that could be done to respond both to the threat of the flooding and to the flooding events themselves was done, is being done and will continue to be done," he told MPs.

It also looks very like the floods will give new popular impetus to Brown's stance on global warming, as many experts are saying this kind of rainfall could become far more common in the UK.

"For the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the past century," researchers from Environment Canada said in a statement.

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature, found humans contributed significantly to these changes, which include more rain and snow in northern regions that include Canada, Russia and Europe, drier conditions in the northern tropics and more rainfall in the southern tropics.

So-called anthropogenic climate change has had a "detectable influence" on changes in average precipitation in these areas, and it cannot be explained by normal climate variations, they wrote.

Weather experts in Britain raised the possibility that the current rains there may be related to climate change.

"The global climate models indicate a future for the UK with drier summers and wetter winters, but storm events in the summer are predicted to be more frequent and more intense," David Butler of the University of Exeter said in a statement. "So it may well be the case that we will have to learn to live with more flooding.

Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in Britain, said, "Extreme events such as we have seen in recent weeks herald the spectre of climate change and it would be irresponsible to imagine that they won't become more frequent."

If the flooding now wins Middle England over to Brown's policies on climate change, then he'll certainly come out as having been far-sighted and any failures in response to the current floods can then be blamed on naysayers and past government's short-sightedness. For now, even the extreme-right Daily Telegraph is giving Brown a pass. he appears to have weathered his first real crisis well.

Ledeen To Brits: Hurry Up And Lose!

By Cernig

I suppose this comes as no surprise, but the level of callous indifference for others' fate inspired by simple hatred of "the left" is still shocking.

From Michael Ledeen at National Review, on new British leader Gordon Brown's actions after the recent abortive attacks in the UK:

The obvious intent is to reduce the whole unpleasantness to a policing problem, which is what they did with the I.R.A...I too admire the British security forces, but I don't think they are the best counterterrorist force in the world, that medal goes to the Israelis, surely. And Israel, not Britain, is the lab experiment for what we will face: enemies within and without, a big border to control, and real battles to fight, lest the enemy truly threaten our survival as a free nation.

Maybe the Gordon Brown government will come to be seen as a test case for the multiculti Left's approach to "the war (shhh)," and if it fails quickly enough, it might help us sort out the real choices for November '08. After all, British failures have often been inspirational for America, sigh. [Emphasis Mine - C]

I thought I'd seen every idiocy there was from the "war forever" faction of the American conservative movement, but this plumbs a new low.

Ledeen, under even a charitable reading of his words, is hoping Gordon Brown's government will fail to stem a multiple of attacks in the UK, with a catastrophic loss of life. All so that "the left" will be discredited and conservative candidates can use such a failure as a campaign talking point in the American presidential elections next year.

Amazing.

UK's Brown About To Spurn Pro-Iraq Stance

By Cernig

He's been in the job less than 24 hours, but already UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to give America's pro-Iraq-occupation neocons apoplexy.

All the pre-changeover statements from the Brown camp have been carefully understated, but The Guardian, in looking at his proposed cabinet changes, gives the game away.

It is expected that David Miliband, 41, the moderniser urged by some Labour MPs to challenge for the leadership, will be thrust into the Foreign Office - at three years older than the UK's youngest ever foreign secretary. If confirmed, it will be a bold move as he privately regards the intervention in Iraq as a great error.

...Mrs Beckett fought hard to keep her job as foreign secretary, but, in a difficult conversation, Mr Brown said he needed fresh faces. It is thought he may bring into government Mark Malloch Brown, the former deputy secretary general at the UN, who has been a fierce critic of the Iraq war.

Milband is definitely anti-occupation, although his appointment will be seen as a bone thrown to the younger generation of Blairite suits in the Labour Party. But its the name of Malloch Brown that will have the National Review's op-ed writers reaching for their medication!

Recall that the WSJ recently accused Malloch Brown of being a puppet for George Soros' attempt to discredit and destroy Paul Wolfowitz. (No, really. And other neocon cheerleader factories followed. As if Wolfowitz needed any help in destroying himself.) Malloch Brown has also been scathing on the Bush/Blair quagmire in Iraq and has tied it to credibility problems in Palestine, which is Blair's newest area of irresponsibility.

Yet his qualifications are undeniable except to the conspiratorially-challenged. Jeffrey Sachs, no limp liberal, described Malloch Brown in the 2005 Time Top 100 Leaders list as having overflowing "charm, toughness, sophistication, experience, vision."

Nice one Gordo! Giving Malloch Brown a top Foreign Office ministerial post to hold the inexperienced Miliband's hand would serve Tony right for hanging around like a bad poodle-fart behind the sofa for so long, instead of handing over the reins of power two years ago, and at the same time hopefully remove half of the world's most destabilizing voices by giving every neocon pundit an aneurism. Britain's new PM may have no charisma, but he knows how to knifefight.

Update Malloch Brown did indeed get a Foreign Office post.

Malloch-Brown, now a lord, had fierce spats at the U.N. with then U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, who accused the Briton of discrediting the world body with his criticisms of the White House.

As deputy to U.N. chief Kofi Annan, Malloch-Brown derided President Bush for what he called ``megaphone diplomacy'' on Darfur by trying to persuade Sudan's government to accept a U.N. peacekeeping in Darfur, but refusing to defend the organization to Americans.

Malloch-Brown's appointment to a junior role as minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations could be an attempt by Brown to distance Britain from the Bush administration, said analyst Alex Bingham at the Foreign Policy Center think tank.

It may be a junior ministerial post, under the actual Foreign Secretary, but Asia, Africa and the UN covers most of the powderkeg issues (North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, Islamists in the Horn of Africa etc.). That's pretty clearly a hand-holding brief for Malloch Brown and a definite snub to Blair and Bush's neocons.

Of Blair And Brown

By Cernig

I suppose I should say something, as the resident Brit, about the change in British leadership from Blair to Brown. It's a massive subject that can't honestly be tackled in a little blog post or even in the praiseful op-eds appearing in American media outlets. To get a real flavor, start with the Guardian's coverage of the stories. Their reporting on Brown's move next door to No.10 starts here and their stories about Blair's era, his legacy and what happens next starts here.

But what I can give in a short blog post are some personal thoughts on the whole Blair era and the Brown era to come.

Blair was always an ambivalent figure for me, mostly because I knew too many of his fellow-travellers too well. I first met up with the Scottish wannabe-powerful who would one day become Blair's chosen cronies in Scotland while involved in student politics in the early eighties. McConnell, Connarty, Ritchie - the whole crowd- were part of a dynasty of "new labour" leaders of the student Labour party during my time at Stirling University.

The New Labour slick-willies could easily be told apart from the standard "old labour" folks - they dressed in suits and what Americans would call "preppy" style even when hanging around the student pub while the "old labour" folks would wear a two-week old T-Shirt to meet the Principal. They supported the administration against the cleaners and janitors in a pay dispute, then spoke sneeringly to local media of how it wouldn't solve anything when the students took the union's side and occupied the administration's offices in protest. (The cleaners got their pay rise after two weeks, when the professors were unable to get their own pay-checks processed in those occupied offices.) They clearly didn't, and never would, inhale. And they would change their polices in a heartbeat if they thought it would get them further along their chosen career track in politics.

Yet New Labour was organised and clean-cut and acceptable to the media in a way that Tony Benn, Roy Hattersley and the rest of the old guard simply weren't. It was Blair's careerists or more years of Thatcher's ideological children. So I, like droves of other voters, swallowed our unease and voted for Blair's promises. The Blair era began with a landslide and celebrations in Scottish streets that the hated Tories had finally been ousted. Many of us felt a frisson of returned unease when Tony's first act on winning was to visit Thatcher herself for a chat, but that was soon gone in the feelgood moment of victory over the Tories at last.

Blair had promised that he would listen to any idea, no matter the political source, as long as it was a good one. For years, he delivered. Employment rose, the deficit fell and was soon in the black, social programs got a kickstart but no-one was getting such an easy ride that it was easier just to stay on welfare. The health service began a slow pullback from the budget massacre it had suffered under the Tories (one it still hasn't completely recovered from). Racism and class bigotry dropped, Scotland and Wales got their devolved parliaments (headed by Blair stalwarts, of course), the UK's international standing was no longer of that "damn handbag woman". The killers in Northern Ireland stopped butchering innocents on the pretext of disagreeing how to bend the knee to their mutual God.

Even when the world was shocked by 9/11, Blair kept the nation focused. The terrorists would beat us if we changed our way of life for them, he said. He was right. We all supported intervention in Afghanistan, going after the terrorists and the rogue regime that had sheltered them. Even the hundreds of Muslims I knew in business were all for that. Still no sign of the surveillance state and trampling on civil liberties that were to come. the nation was still giving Blair its support. What could be done in Northern Ireland could surely be done elsewhere and Blair was someone who might just manage to do it.

Then came Iraq. Despite screams from many that the intelligence was being sexed up, the media got behind the invasion in a monolith and Blair got behind George Bush and stayed there. In time, leaks proved the screamers to be right and that intelligence had indeed been "fixed around the policy" of invasion but we were all told it was old news now and we had to "stay the course".

Iraq was the undoing of Blair. As I recall events, it wasn't until Iraq began to go South - in the quagmire that was unplanned and incompetently created by Bush's chosen handlers - that Blair showed the nation he was still (always) part of that old clique of "power for powers sake at any cost" that I had observed in my student days. It was only when Iraq dissolved into a fiasco that Blair trotted out surveillance of everyone as an aim, began his push for identity cards, began trampling on British concepts of freedom, liberty and justice for all. I submit that, no matter what he said, those measures were purely symptomatic of his desire to hold onto his power. It wasn't until those unpopular measures and his own lapdog status as Bush's crony in the quagmire became so negative that the Party bosses saw the labour party in danger of being vast into the wilderness for decades yet again that the pressure on him became too much for Blair to ignore. He would not have stepped down voluntarily, he was pushed. Now he's got himself a McJob carrying Bush's water again. Feh.

And so we now have Brown. He's my local MP back home and undeniably a bright bugger. More true to his working-class Labour ideals than Blair's suits ever were too, by all accounts I've had from local insiders. Most of Blair's successes were actually Brown's work - all the economic and poverty-reduction work, all the social safety-net rebuilding, the 13 years of a budget surplus. He's a taciturn Fifer who doesn't suffer fools gladly (watch out, Dubya) and has all the charisma in public forums of a lump of Kircaldy coal. But he's a workhorse and a thinker, he should do well - especially on domestic challenges.

Still, I've niggling worries about Gordon too. He and I differ on the path for Scotland - I think independence is the fair end-point of centuries of political process that began with a bribe-job and continued with wholesale ignoring of the terms of the deal. He doesn't. I worry that he might be just a better disguised version of Blair's power-hungry clones, when push comes to shove - after all, he's been quiet as a mouse on Bush's debacle so far. He says he will change things, though, and one of the things I hope he will change is to push for more effective hearts and minds policies in Afghanistan, where the paradigm of military counter-insurgency badly needs such a change of emphasis (forget Iraq, it's lost).

I guess we'll see soon enough.

Murdoch's Empire

By Cernig

The New York Times has it's awaited expose of Rupert Murdoch's business empire today - partly emasculated by Murdoch's pre-emptive leak of said expose recently. What it mainly shows is that Murdoch, as can possibly be expected from a man in his position, is ruthlessly bi-partisan in his "support" for political figures when it comes to preserving his business empire. Oh, and that he has a million ways to avoid paying taxes.

Most interesting of all is his ability to "co-incidentally" make big-money book deals just as legislation which would affect his empire comes up on the Hill. Robert Stein, a former publisher, is downright sceptical of those coincidences.

As Congress was preparing to redraw the media ownership rules, Murdoch’s book publishing arm, HarperCollins, gave House Speaker Newt Gingrich a $4.5 million contract. In the Senate, Trent Lott got a $250,000 advance for a memoir.

Other Senators came at bargain prices. Arlen Specter, received $24,506 for “Passion for Truth,” Kay Bailey Hutchison $141,666 for “American Heroines.” Chuck Hagel has a book deal for next year.

Unless things have changed drastically since my time as a publisher, books by politicians, unless they involve scandal, are not best-sellers. Trent Lott’s quarter-of-a-million-dollar tome sold 12,000 copies.

But Murdoch got his money’s worth, as he no doubt will from the $1 million advance to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Book publishing is an odd business that has never been just about money.

But where the NYT falls down, and could have done more with if they had troubled to send a reporter to the UK for some deeper digging, is in pointing out that, once he has bought those politicians' support, Murdoch uses his media power as a club to edge them towards his own conservative leanings.

Most overseas attention on Murdoch's holdings in Britain are aimed at the prestigeous London Times - but it is in his ownership of Britain's best-selling tabloid, The Sun, with a mind-boggling daily readership of around 7.8 million, and of his satellite news station which fills the same niche that cable news does in the U.S. that Murdoch's real clout lies. American's simply don't get the power of British tabloids - but imagine the New York Post being read every day by one in ten of the population of the entire nation.

Without The Sun, there would never have been a Prime Minister Thatcher or a Prime Minister Blair. Without The Sun and Murdoch's gleeful participation in and incitement for strike-breaking, journalism in the UK would still be a union job and Thatcher would never have managed to break the Miners and other unions. Without The Sun it's unlikely that Blair would have been quite such a faithful lapdog to Bush.

Gordon Brown is known to prefer contacts and support from the second-largest tabloid, The Mirror, which is glowing in its praise. His policies and personnel preferences, especially over Europe, are already under attack on the Sun's editorial page and the threat is clear.

we hope he will reconsider the decision NOT to hold a referendum on Europe’s latest power grab.

Especially, as we reveal today, he wants a General Election in the next twelve months and will not want the Europe issue dominating it.

If Brown doesn't give in to Murdoch on this Euro-referendum - so that the Sun can then ensure it gives wall-to-wall coverage of why its readers should vote NO - he won't win the next election. It's as simple as that for the Mirror is a voice alone out of many conservative tabloids. The Times may be a flagship, but The Sun is the workhorse of the fleet.

Now Murdoch wants the Wall Street Journal, the only U.S. broadsheet with a rising circulation, to partner the New York Post's own rising readreship. It's clear to me he want's to create a similiar trifecta, along with FOX News, to that which exists in the UK. The WSJ would be reasoned but tilted, the news station more so and the tabloid feeds raw sewage direct to the public - but all would take their direction from Murdoch and their slant from the tabloid lowest common denominator.

Fred! Shares Stage With Writer For Racist Website

By Cernig

So Fred Thompson thinks he can burnish his foreign policy and presidential credentials by flying to London to give a speech and to seek the endorsement of Maggie Thatcher on his claim to be the avatar of Ronnie Reincarnated.

Oops.

The speech itself was full of the usual platitudes, as James Joyner explains.

Seeking the blessing of Handbag Maggie is about the worst thing Fred! could do if he wants to repeair the international alliance so damaged by Blair's poodle act for Bush. Neither Gordon Brown nor David Cameron the conservative leader cleave to her version of stark raving mad hawkishness.

And standing on a platform with bigots like Anthony Browne, who makes at least part of his wages writing for the American racist website V-DARE, won't go un-noticed in Gordon Brown's circle either.

Both Brown and Cameron are likely to conclude that US/UK co-operation, especially in the Iraqi quagmire, is better dead than Fred!

Totalitarian Tony The Thatcherite

By Cernig

Tony Blair used to pretend that he and his Blairites were the new and rational face of the British Left. It got them into power, which was the one thing they always wanted. When Blair took office his first action was to visit Thatcher and many of us experienced what was to become commonplace - that "we've been conned" feeling. Fairly quickly, the Blairites abandoned their pretense and revealed themselves as totalitarian big-government rightwingers in the old Thatcherite mold. The war in Iraq and a poodle-like following of the warmongering Republican across the pond in so many things, the new ID card, the surveillance society, new nuclear weapons, complicity in illegal renditions. Today, even the Conservative Party is to the Left of the hardcore Blairites in their dying spasms.

Here comes the latest political atrocity, right out of the Thatcherite "stop and search" playbook.

NEW anti-terrorism laws are to be pushed through before Tony Blair leaves office giving “wartime” powers to the police to stop and question people. John Reid, the home secretary, who is also quitting next month, intends to extend Northern Ireland’s draconian police powers to interrogate individuals about who they are, where they have been and where they are going.

Under the new laws, police will not need to suspect that a crime has taken place and can use the power to gain information about “matters relevant” to terror investigations. If suspects fail to stop or refuse to answer questions, they could be charged with a criminal offence and fined up to £5,000. Police already have the power to stop and search people but they have no right to ask for their identity and movements.

No general police power to stop and question has ever been introduced in mainland Britain except during wartime. Civil liberties campaigners last night branded the proposed measures “one of the most significant moves on civil liberties since the second world war”.

Ironically, the stop and question power is soon to be repealed in Northern Ireland as part of the peace agreement. Home Office officials admitted, however, that the final wording of the new power to stop and question in the rest of the UK might have to include a requirement for reasonable suspicion.

As we Brits all know, "reasonable suspicion" in Thatcher-speak doesn't have to be reasonable suspicion of anything. There was no requirement under the old "reasonable suspicion" laws, introduced by Thatcher to be used against smelly hippy "travellers" and striking miners, that the police say what they were suspicious of, only that there be "suspicion" of commission of a crime - any crime. That was enough in the UK already for a 24 hour detention. Now Blair wants to extend that so that it's just general suspicion, without even a requirement that a crime have been committed or that the intent exists to commit one. If ever there was a police power ripe for abuse, this is it.

And as usual, the rationale for this is the, by now old and convenient, excuse that "the terrorists hate our freedoms". Blair, in an op-ed for the London Times, writes:

Over the past five or six years, we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.

Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgment. This extremism, operating the world over, is not like anything we have faced before. It needs to be confronted with every means at our disposal. Tougher laws in themselves help, but just as crucial is the signal they send out: that Britain is an inhospitable place to practise this extremism.

For "their right to civil liberties" read OUR right, because the law has no way to tell in advance whether the subject is guilty or innocent. That's the whole point of "innocent until proven guilty" and Blair is planning an end-run on that basic principle. If Blair gets his way, then he will have managed to roll back the efforts of the greatest generation, for it will be "Papiere, Bitte" at every turn. As Tim Worstall, a non-Thatcherite conservative, points out after reading the BBC's explanation of the proposed new powers:

There you are, amiably wandering down the street, and if a policeman so wishes, he can not only stop and search you, he can insist that you divulge where you have been and where you are going. If you have more than £1,000 in cash on you it can be confiscated, you having to prove where you got it from and what you were going to do with it: for the assumption is that such cash amounts are the proceeds or enablers of crime and so the burden of proof reverses. Finally, if you keep silent John Reid wants this to be taken as proof of your guilt.

A free, happy and liberal land now, isn't it?

Thankfully, my guess is that this legislation won't be passed. There isn't enough time left in Blair's reign to push it through and most civil liberties groups, Labour politicians and the general public seem to be opposed to it. As a hole card for freedom, the House of Lords can be expected to do all it can to block any such draconian measures too.

Then there's the next leader, Gordon Brown, who - it has been "officially leaked" - would like a written British constitution to set out "the respective roles of Parliament, the judiciary and the Government, as well as setting out basic rights, responsibilities and opportunities for all citizens [and] resolve potential conflicts between the Human Rights Act and Britain's ability to introduce its own anti-terrorist, asylum and immigration laws." In December, Brown told listeners at a lecture:

"In each generation, we have found it necessary to renew the settlement between individual, community and state and I cannot see how the long-term credibility of our institutions or our policies can be secured unless our constitutional, social and economic reforms are explicitly founded on these British ideas of liberty."

Brown may have ridden the coat-tails of the Tony Thatcherites into power, but he's a far different kind of political animal. For that, at least, we should probably be thankful.

Blair For World Bank?

By Cernig

Now that Paul Wolfowitz has finally quit his World Bank sinecure, the White House is keen to appoint a successor quickly.

Amanda at Think Progress has a list of names that are coming up - and at the head of that list is one Tony Blair, the Stan to Dubya's Ollie.

It would be an astute move politically. Europe would get a European as Wold Bank head, which would go a long way to mollifying those across the pond who were so angered by Wolfowitz' adoption of the U.S. hard right's agenda at the Bank. At the same time, Bush could be assured of having a yes-man on many issues even if Blair might restore the Wold Bank's former direction on climate change and Third World aid.

As an economic thinker Blair would make a great poodle for Bush's administration. It's no secret that Gordon Brown has always done his financial thinking for him and without Brown to hold his hand Blair couldn't balance his own checkbook. According to UPI, Blair's agent told the UK's press that Tony was ready to consider quitting Parliament if "a big international" job came up.

Other rumored candidates include Bill Frist, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Update The UK's Guardian reports that British betting giant Ladbrokes has Blair as a 25/1 outsider for the World bank job. Even John Bolton (16/1) shows better. But the favorites are Ashraf Ghani, chairman of Kabul University and former World bank economist (4/5) and Nigeria's foreign minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (5/2). Before taking up her current position, Okonjo-Iweala was was vice-president and corporate secretary of the World Bank.

The Americans who shows best under ladbrokes' current odds are ex Condi aide Robert Zoellick (7/2) and current deputy treasury secretary Robert Kimmitt (5/1).

Rumsfield is the 100-1 rank outsider.

Brown Certain To Become Prime Minister

By Cernig

It is now certain that Gordon Brown will be the next leader of the UK's Labour party and thus the next British prime minister when Blair steps down in June.

His only challenger has withdrawn from the leadership race citing lack of support.

So my hometown MP back in the "auld country" is to be PM...and I voted for the other guy.

UK's Brown - Afghanistan, Not Iraq, Is Central Front

By Cernig

The Sunday Times reports that British diplomats and soldiers are getting increasingly frustrated by U.S. airstrikes and clumsy tactics which they say are undermining "hearts and minds" efforts in Afghanistan.

BRITAIN will step up its presence in Afghanistan this week with the deployment of a high-profile new ambassador as concern mounts that the toll of civilians killed in the war is setting back the coalition’s efforts to win Afghan “hearts and minds”.

There is growing alarm over a wave of US bombing raids in which 110 civilians have died in the past two weeks. Twenty-one people were killed last week after US special forces called in airstrikes on the town of Sangin in Helmand province. “Sometimes you wonder whose side the Americans are on,” said a British official.

US officials claimed that Taliban militants had sheltered in villagers’ homes, using women and children as shields. But local anger was so strong that the Afghan Senate passed a draft law calling for a halt to military offensives by international forces unless they were under attack or had consulted with the Afghan government.

“One mishandled bombing raid wipes out the benefits of months of development work,” said Matt Waldman, head of Afghanistan policy for Oxfam.

When Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, one of the Foreign Office’s top diplomats and former ambassador to Tel Aviv and Riyadh, flies into Kabul this week to become the new ambassador, one of his first tasks will be to defuse the outcry. He will also need to examine how Britain’s aid contributions have become bogged down in controversy.

In a sign that there is a great deal of catching up to do, the Foreign Office is sending 33 extra diplomats to Afghanistan. A senior official yesterday described the shake-up as an “upgrading” and denied that it was an admission of failure. “Things have moved in a way people didn’t expect in Afghanistan,” he said. “There’s a sense that we need to do more and to do that we need more people.”

Expectations in London remain high that Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, is a “winnable” war. “The Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office have . . . written off Iraq and all attention is now on Afghanistan,” said a senior diplomat, pointing out that within months Afghanistan will be Britain’s biggest overseas deployment. Gordon Brown emphasised the point yesterday when he said: “Afghanistan is the front line of the war on terrorism.”

How refreshing it is to hear a senior political leader who gets that last point.

The Times also notes that Brown is reviewing British strategy on Iraq and is likely to accelerate Britain's withdrawal from that quagmire.

And the New York Times reports on the same Afghan situation but with a different emphasis.

Scores of civilian deaths over the past months from heavy American and allied reliance on airstrikes to battle Taliban insurgents are threatening popular support for the Afghan government and creating severe strains within the NATO alliance.

Afghan, American and other foreign officials say they worry about the political toll the civilian deaths are exacting on President Hamid Karzai, who last week issued another harsh condemnation of the American and NATO tactics, and even of the entire international effort here.

What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war. Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

...The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials — and suggested just how badly things could go astray in an unfamiliar land where cultural misunderstandings quickly turn violent.

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned. “If they come again, we will stand against them, and we will raise the whole area against them,” he warned. Or in the words of one foreign official in Afghanistan, the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more.

The entire article plays down disagreements between the US and its NATO allies over events in Afghanistan. When the great and good of the American press, such as David Sanger who co-wrote the NYT piece, can't even tell their readers about the deep levels of anger and mistrust that allies like the Brits are feeling over US tactics and motives, then you have a Fourth Estate that isn't doing its job anymore.

Blair Sets Date For Departure - June 27

By Cernig

On June 27th, the Blair Years of British politics will officially come to an end - mourned by damn few. His own party feel largely betrayed by his involving the UK in Iraq, by his pursuit of a surveilance state and by his cozying up to rich rightwingers across the globe. Yet conservatives were never happy about his reluctance to go all the way in becoming Thatcher-Lite and are also against his war for Bush.

If anything positive, his legacy will be that he moved the Left to the right and the Right to the left in a way which will take decades to change, if ever. British politics isn't as polarized as it once was, and that's a healthy thing. But he did it in a selfish search for power rather than from any altruistic motive.

In the meantime, his remaining months are going to be beyond lame-duck, well into what conservative leader David Cameron today called “a Government of the living dead”.

His almost certain successor is Gordon Brown, the uncharismatic Chancellor who has always been the economic brain behind Blair's policies. Dull he may be, but he's effective. The UK has seen more years in the black under Brown than from any other Chancellor since WW2. Reuters has a summary of what may change in UK policy and what will stay the same.

Economics - Brown was already in charge of economic policy - no change.

Iraq - Brown is likely to back US Democrat calls for a faster troop reduction in the expectation the Democrats will take over the White House in 18 months.

The US - cooler but not hostile. Brown isn't anti-American but will find more common ground with Dems than with Bush and the GOP.

Europe - again, cooler than Blair was, mostly for economic reasons.

Executive power - Brown has said parliament should have a say on big decisions such as going to war. He has also said there should be greater consultation, with the executive being held to account not just by parliament but also by the country at large.

Global warming - is in favor of incentives to curb carbon emmissions rather than taxes to discourage pollution. But also thinks tackling climate change is something that is gloabl in nature and wants a n international agreement rather than seeing each nation go its own way.

Blair To Resign Tomorrow

By Cernig

News is just breaking in the UK that Tony Blair is expected to announce his resignation tomorrow, setting a date in July to hand over over power to his successor - most likely the slightly more lefty Gordon Brown.

AP reports, via The Guardian, that he will make the announcement to his cabinet first before travelling to his own Sedgefield constituency to make a public announcement.

Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister would set out his intentions to Cabinet colleagues on Thursday morning. He is then expected to travel to his Sedgefield constituency in northern England to make a public announcement.

Speculation about Blair's resignation date intensified after he celebrated a decade in power on May 1.

In British parliamentary tradition, the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons serves as prime minister. Blair's announcement that he is stepping down as Labour leader will trigger a leadership contest that would see him replaced as party leader, and prime minister, within about seven weeks.

Treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair's longtime friend and rival, is the favorite to succeed him, although two backbench Labour lawmakers also have announced their intention to run.

Blair's announcement has been awaited since Sept. 30, 2004, when he said in a television interview that he would serve only one more term - his third - as prime minister.

The announcement, made when he was facing a surgical procedure to correct a heart problem, was one he came to regret, as opponents, party rivals and the media pressed him to set a date for his departure.

The Daily Mail has more details about the specifics of the handover:

Mr Blair's expected announcement tomorrow will not trigger his immediate departure as Prime Minister, but will kick off a process expected to result in the handover of the reins of power to Mr Brown around the start of July.

...Labour's ruling National Executive Committee has laid down a seven-week process to elect successors to Mr Blair and his deputy John Prescott, who has said he will step down at the same time.

This will culminate in a special party conference, probably on the weekend of June 30, at which a new leader and deputy leader will be named.

Mr Blair will then be driven to the Palace, probably on Monday July 2, to resign as Prime Minister and hand over the Seals of Office to the Queen. He will be followed by the new leader - almost certainly Mr Brown - who will be invited by Her Majesty to form a new Government.

The majority guess is that Blairwill continue to serve the rest of his elected term as an MP.

His legacy, now, will be of a leader who came in like a lion and went out like a rather sleazy lamb - tainted by the "cash for peerages" scandal among others and with his party battered in the polls by his support for the Iraq war which most of the rank-and-file opposed.

Post-Blair Rethink For UK Strategy Will Isolate Bush Further

By Cernig

The Guardian reports that Gordon Brown, the heir apparent to Tony Blair, is looking for guidance for a new direction in British foreign policy thinking on Iraq.

Proposals for a fundamental post-Blairite rethink of government policy towards Iraq are being prepared involving Lord Ashdown, the former UN high representative to Bosnia, and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British envoy to Baghdad.

The aim is to produce a report drawing on thinking in the British military and diplomatic establishment which is intended to be of comparable importance to that of the American Iraq Study Group, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, which called for a fundamental rethink of US policy, including a diplomatic re-engagement with countries such as Syria and Iran. Many of its proposals were rejected by George Bush.

I predicted over a year ago that Bush wasn't going to get another poodle in No.10. But by now, Brown has to know that being seen as too much in the US' foreign policy shadow will sink any chance he has at the next general election faster than any other issue. So the choice of advisors is highly significant. The Guardian continues by quoting the former envoy to Iraq.

In a speech, Sir Jeremy, broadly loyal to the government's original Iraq policy, said the coalition forces on their own could no longer make Iraq better. Lord Ashdown said yesterday: "We need to find a new way forward, drawing on the foreign policy and military expertise available, as happened with the Iraq Study Group in the US, and some kind of conference of the regional powers." Sir Jeremy has also called for a new regional diplomatic initiative, leading to a peace conference of the kind staged by the Americans at Dayton on Bosnia. In a speech in Australia this week, he also warned that violence is likely to continue for as long as five years, and the coalition troops on their own could no longer bring peace to the country.

"In the short term you have an irredeemable mix of violence amongst a number of different factions, deep sectarian divisions and divisions within Sunni and Shia parts of Iraq. This mix means it will make it very difficult for any outsider to put this back together again". He added: "It has to done by Iraqis. It needs three things. It needs law and order - a huge challenge now that we have got to this depth of violence. It also needs wise and collective political leadership, which we have not had so far in Iraq. And third, we need the willing and positive help of the neighbours, because to my mind Iraq cannot now do this on its own. The coalition can only help to stop it getting worse; the coalition cannot make Iraq better. Iraqis have to do that."

Iran, the most influential neighbour, "is not capable of taking over Iraq or even the Shia south-east of Iraq. Iran does not want to do that ... The government of Iran has got enough problems with its own ethnic makeup to enlarge its country. Nevertheless it is capable of creating a lot of nuisance to make things as difficult as possible for the US.

"If Iran and indeed the other neighbours realised that the coalition is now going to leave before too long and they became responsible for the security of the region then that is a different set of conditions for the region.

Two things.

Firstly, Greenstock's view that Iran "is not capable of taking over Iraq" or any portion of it flies in the face of conventional wisdom in the US from both Republicans and many Democrats. It is, however, a view I agree with. As Greenstock says, Iran has more than enough problems right now. It would be a fatal overstretch to try.

Secondly, Brown's study is going to give political cover for US Democrats if this is the way the thinking will go. It will present the pro-occupation lobby with an international "coalition of the willing to leave" which will also gain solid support from regional Arab states if they can be convinced of Greenstock's belief that Iran won't be able to expand its influence thereby. Nor will American hawks be able to look to the British political Right for support. The UK's conservative party are, if anything, even keener than Brown to be done with Iraq.

It's Time To Debate Unfettered Capitalism

According to William Keegan's op-ed in the UK's Observer newspaper today, "It isn't wrong to attack unfettered capitalism - it's time someone did." Keegan is mostly talking about the coming UK premiership of Gordon Brown - a moderate leftwinger by UK standards who has kept capitalists happy while pioneering some distinctly socialist programs such as the forgiving of Third World debt. However, the last part of his column is more general and the whole thing is worth a read as a stimulant to thinking.

Keegan cites the new book Capitalism Unleashed: Finance, Globalisation and Welfare, by Oxford economist Andrew Glyn:

Glyn was one of the first economists to identify the collapse of profits in the 1970s and provides a highly readable account of what followed. Among his many wry observations is: 'The possibility of replacing the instability of the 1960s and 1970s, which derived in good part from conflict between bosses and workers, with instability deriving from bubbles and crashes in unfettered financial markets, was not one that was contemplated in advance.'

Glyn's is not 'knee-jerk' scepticism about capitalism. For him and the rest of us, communism and a certain version of socialism have gone outside and may be some time. It is the extremes of unfettered capitalism that should concern social democrats and the moderate left, who can reasonably ask themselves whether they have been too accommodating to the extreme market version of globalisation and the 'tax cuts at any price lobby' represented by Rupert Murdoch's representative on earth, Dr Irwin ('Alka') Stelzer.

The US and UK, for all their obeisance to free markets and theoretical meritocracy, 'enjoy' the greatest inequalities of income and the least social mobility among the major industrial countries. Sweden, one of the countries least enthusiastic about the liberal economic model, had a better hourly productivity record in manufacturing from 1990 to 2003 than the US or the UK. For all the current obsession with Britain's so-called crippling tax burden, one only has to walk out in the streets to see how much work still has to be done to make this a decent society. You get what you pay for in public as well as private services.

Adam Smith believed that the three preserves of government should always be defense, education and the care of the poorer of society. Somehow, his free-market descendants have lost sight of that in their search of profit for profits sake.

There is another current of thought which gains far more currency in Europe than in the US that profits should serve actual people rather than vice versa. Even many European conservatives see the point of this way of thinking. It is often termed "positive freedom" in contrast to the freedoms of unfettered capitalism - which are all "negative" freedoms, the freedoms to be left alone by government to sink or swim on your own and the freedom to starve, go cold or go without shelter.

Positive freedom posits that it is the duty of civilized government to ensure that all the people have boots so that they can then lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It recognizes that freedom only becomes real if people are empowered to make choices for themselves, and they may need the help of others to do so.

The chaos that has arisen from a lack of reconstruction in Iraq, and the Bush administrations own admission that such reconstruction must take place before stability can occur, is an excellent case in point.

With the Dem primaries growing ever nearer, it's definitely time to have this debate anew. A couple of the front-runners can be seen as too much in the pocket of the "unfettered capitalist" lobby and we should be holding their feet to the fire about their domestic agenda and how they might change the current supremacy of that lobby.

UK Economy To Outstrip Other G7 Nations

I don't agree with some of Gordon Brown's actions and prospective policies - I'm expecially not impressed by his complacency over Blair lying the UK into the Iraq war, where second-in-command Brown was clearly sidelined but equally as clearly decided to put power before principle and not resign in protest.

Still, he's done pretty well for a guy from my hometown back in the UK. He's now presided over more years of economic growth than any other British chancellor.

From the London Times:

Britain will be the fastest-growing major advanced economy in the world this year, according to draft forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) leaked last night.

In a boost to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, as he puts the finishing touches to next week’s Budget, the IMF predicted that Britain’s GDP would grow 2.9 per cent this year, faster than any other country in the Group of Seven advanced economies. Separately, the CBI, the business group, also upgraded its forecast to predict 2.9 per cent growth this year.

Britain’s economy will slow to 2.7 per cent next year, the IMF data showed. The figures were obtained by Reuters ahead of the publication of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook in April. The IMF declined to comment.

The figures reinforced the picture painted earlier this week by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development of a world economy whose growth would slow but remain robust this year, as Europe and Japan pick up the slack from a US slow-down. World growth was tipped to slow to 4.9 per cent in 2007 and 2008 after its strong 5.3 per cent growth last year.

The IMF cut its forecast for US growth this year to 2.6 per cent, from 2.9 per cent in September, but said that growth would pick up to 3 per cent next year.

It revised up its projection for growth in the eurozone, to 2.3 per cent this year and next. China’s GDP was seen as expanding by 10 per cent this year and 9.5 per cent in 2008.

The Chancellor received a second positive forecast yesterday from the CBI, which predicted that consumer spending would pick up this year and that business investment would also grow strongly. It forecast that interest rates would have to rise one more time, to 5.5 per cent, in the coming months and were then likely to stay on hold until the end of 2008.

Not bad at all Gordon, and imagine the American shock when they figure out you're a socialist!

Here's the thing - European democratic socialism put Marx on the bookshelf of history a few decades back, but because American politicians have always managed to make voting hay out of a McCarthyist throwback fear of the dreaded reds, it went mostly unnoticed in the US. Truth is, socialists are just fine with capitalism nowadays, they just want money to serve the people rather than vice versa.

If the US could only get up to date, it could actually have the best man for the job as President, but unfortunately because of this out-dated, irrational and incorrect view of socialists he would be unelectable right now.

One Photo Speaking Volumes

A single black and white picture is taking the UK by storm today. Have a look.

The Daily Mail writes:

The extraordinary picture ...lays bare just how much Tony Blair's Cabinet was kept in the dark as Britain went to war in Iraq.

Rather than being told by the Prime Minister that the country was at war, they had been roused from their beds by policemen or phoned by journalists with news of the first American strikes. But at this moment, 7.55am on March 20, 2003, they know no more about the final decision to launch the attack than the rest of the British public tuned in to the early-morning news.

Standing around an ante-chamber in Downing Street, drinking tea and coffee from china cups, they wait while in a locked room behind them the real War Cabinet meeting is already in progress.

Mr Blair is being briefed by military and intelligence chiefs about the attack, launched surprisingly soon by President Bush, a few hours earlier. But outside of this inner circle, the rest of the Prime Minister's War Cabinet wait for news, the strain and lack of sleep appears etched on their faces.

The picture includes three men who, instead of being kept out in the cold, should have been an intimate part of Britian's democratic process in action as Tony Blair followed George Bush into the Iraqi quagmire in pursuit of a policy around which the intelligence had been fixed.

The former editor of the London Times, who was present when the photo was taken, explains:

"In retrospect, there are only three men in this picture who could have kept Britain out of the conflict. The face of the first, Lord Goldsmith, does not suggest a man exhilarated by his long and agonised judgment that the war is legal, a view shared by uncomfortably few of his learned friends.

"The lowered eyes of the second, Gordon Brown, look thunderously at the camera. Five days before I had listened to the Chancellor while he put it to the Prime Minister, "What people ask me is why is there not just a little more delay". He had received only crackle and snap for an answer - and was now on War Cabinet call to discuss "resource allocation".

"Jack Straw is the Minister who has been most entwined in the negotiations about how long a delay there could have been. As the Minister responsible for MI6 he has responsibility, too, for the promise from its boss, Richard Dearlove, that weapons of mass destruction were assuredly there, in Iraq, and would assuredly be found.

That only one of those men, Jack Straw, had the courage to resign after being sidelined by Tony Blair, a neoconservative despot in socialist clothing, speaks volumes for the moral integrity of those Blair has surrounded himself with. They valued their own power more highly than the principles to which the claimed to hold allegiance.

One thing. On the strength of this one photograph, Gordon Brown, Blair's heir apparent and someone I've written favorably about in the past, should never, ever become Prime Minister. Brown is the MP for my hometown too. From this moment, he is dead to me. If he doesn't have the guts in such a situation to uphold what he should hold dear and resign, then he doesn't have what it takes to command my loyalty.

Update, In comments a reader points out that Jack Straw did not resign, but was re-assigned in a cabinet reshuffle last year. Many speculated it was because of his diverging views with Washington and the quote that Britain going to war with Iran was "inconceivable". The reader with the wonderfully wry handle "Caligula would have blushed" is correct. My mistake and I apologise for the misinformation.

Blair Grows A Pair

Or: The Poodle Bites Back, or: Tony Won't Buy George A Pony.

Britain's Daily Mail:

Tony Blair will make clear this week that Britain is not going to send more troops to Iraq even if the US pushes ahead with a "surge" of 20,000 extra soldiers.

The Prime Minister will insist that the UK will stick to its own strategy of gradually handing over to the Iraqi army, as it has been doing with success in Basra and the south.

...Mr Blair, in a rare distancing from White House policy, has been keen for Britain to be seen to be acting under its own initiative.

Chancellor Gordon Brown said yesterday that as Prime Minister he would conduct a foreign policy based firmly on British interests.

It looks like George is going to have to rely on his other pet, Barney, for support of his latest Iraq victory plan.