[A-List] UK state: safety first

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Further to yesterday's screed, two pieces of supporting evidence. Hastings
is a good, objective source of insight into how the upper echelons of UK
state and capital think, and his abject resignation, despite his intended
protest, captures the mood very well, imho. Meanwhile, something I forgot to
add to Robert Jackson's defection is the egregious article by the egregious
William Shawcross, someone who has spent the rest of his career trying
desperately to undo the good accomplished at its beginning. His salvo
underlines just how much, for the time being, Blair is the only game in town
for the permanent government.

------

Our anger won't count

Voters may be fed up with Tony Blair - but not nearly enough to elect
Howard's Tories

Max Hastings
Wednesday January 26, 2005
The Guardian

Among politically active and media folk, distrust or even hatred of Tony
Blair has become the norm. At the next election I shall vote Tory for the
first time since 1992, to protest against the collective arrogance of this
government. For me, and for many people I know, the failure of
accountability following the WMD fiasco was a turning point in our view of
Blair, as decisive as was the collapse of ERM policy in 1993 in defining
attitudes towards John Major.

Yet how many of us feel this strongly? And how much difference will we make?
I submit: not many and not much. I believe that voters' hostility towards
Blair is nothing like as potent outside the metropolitan world as his foes
would like to suppose.

The self-belief of the opposition, Tories' confidence in their own claim to
rule, is painfully low. Labour may well be returned to power at the next
general election with a very substantial majority, albeit on a low turnout.
This hunch is based less upon the polls - we will return to them later -
than upon the mood one encounters when travelling around Britain.

There is certainly plenty of moaning. It is not about Iraq. It is about the
usual suspects: transport, immigration, bureaucracy, education. What seems
absent, however, is anger - anger on the scale that ejects or even
critically wounds governments.

A large part of the British people feel remarkably comfortable. It bears
stating again and again that this country today enjoys a level of prosperity
and success that seemed unthinkable 30 years ago. An incumbent government
profits hugely from this reality, whether or not it can justly claim credit.

Somewhere downstream, a bitter reckoning probably awaits us all for Gordon
Brown's public-spending commitments, if the economy flattens and the tax
take falls. But such a reckoning has not yet come. Right now, much of the
business community seems remarkably upbeat. Last week I attended the annual
dinner of a northern chamber of commerce. Most of its guests were buoyant.
If they do not much care for Tony Blair, they are certainly not gagging for
Michael Howard.

Likewise, at a big farming conference a fortnight ago, all the conversation
was about the poor impression that Howard's speech made. I thought: if a
Tory leader cannot wow 500 delegates from the farming community at this
stage in Labour's fortunes (and when there is deep countryside anger about
the hunting ban), he has a problem.

Lack of interest in politics among the young is self-evident. Few of this
intensely self-interested generation care for any party except the alcoholic
kind, or even grow passionate about Iraq. Many will not trouble to vote, and
this is probably to the Tories' advantage. But demographics have turned the
electoral geography of Britain very strongly against the Conservatives in
the past decade. A lot of Labour MPs can win back their seats with a
remarkably small number of votes.

The Tory leadership claims that the current situation resembles 1970. Their
party is lagging only three points behind Labour in some polls - much less
than it did in 1991, before they achieved victory a year later. They are
throwing enormous effort into targeting swing voters in vulnerable
constituencies. If they can get their own vote out - and they suggest that
lots of wet Tories like me, who did not vote for them in 2001, will do so
this time - then anything is possible. Conservatives say that there is much
more public wrath out there than people like me recognise - especially about
taxation, and especially among people in the £30,000-£45,000 income bracket.

They argue that national opinion polls are even less reliable than usual
when the Liberal Democrats' impact in key constituencies is likely to be
substantial. Above all, of course, they point to polling evidence that many
traditional Labour supporters will stay at home, rather than endorse Tony
Blair again.

Tory frontbenchers say that if only the media were not reflexively
determined to write them off (as our trade wrote off Ted Heath before the
1970 election), we would see that the election outcome is still wide open.

Yet most of us feel a gut instinct that the Conservative party is failing
abjectly to persuade the British people that it is relevant to their needs
and aspirations in the 21st century. I think about New Britain every time I
ride a London underground train and gaze upon a sea of faces of every
colour. They have little in common with my own old-Britain life, yet they
represent the future.

Everyone who works is conscious of the huge role of women in New Britain.
Yet what have the Tories to say to modern women? The Tory benches in the
Commons are filled by a sea of men. Ah, that will be rectified when some of
those who now make up 25% of our list of candidates win seats in the new
parliament, say Conservatives.

Quite so. Meanwhile, however, the Tories are obliged to go into the general
election with the frontbench they have. Several of its members are clever,
articulate men I respect, who handle themselves well on television. Yet they
do not touch New Britain, to whom they are Martians, nor even much inspire
old Britain. Many Conservative MPs have lost that desperate hunger for power
that alone can save a party in the wilderness, as it enabled Labour to save
itself more than a decade ago.

Tony Blair remains by far the most effective public performer in British
politics. I suggested on these pages a few months ago that if I was a Labour
MP for a marginal constituency I would be eager to see him replaced. He has
forfeited the trust of a great many people, and this will cost seats.

But I am not persuaded that dislike for Blair is so great that it will cause
the British people to dump, or even come near to dumping, this Labour
government. If most voters were moved by principle they could see many
reasons to opt for change. They are not, however. They are motivated by how
they feel about their own lives on polling day.

The Tories have so far failed to present a vision of an alternative future
that carries conviction, not least because the public does not trust them
with public services. The Lib Dems are a key force in local government.
Charles Kennedy possesses much greater personal appeal than Michael Howard.
The Lib Dem vote will obviously increase. But it is hard to believe that
Kennedy will decisively change the map of British politics, at this election
anyway.

Offered moderate odds, I would bet on Labour retaining a majority close to
100. This would be bad for British democracy, but would be represented as a
personal triumph for Blair. In truth, it would reflect a disastrous
Conservative failure, rather than a vote of confidence in the status quo.

But that seems the way matters will go, because the Tories will face at
least as many difficulties as Labour in getting out what they used to be
able to regard as "their" vote. An absence of fundamental discontent,
together with the collapse of traditional deep-rooted party allegiances,
seem likely to serve Tony Blair better than Michael Howard on polling day.

------

The Iraqi people will defy the Ba'athists and Islamofascists

Blair is right. Why aren't more democrats backing these elections?

William Shawcross
Monday January 24, 2005
The Guardian

Just look at who is trying to stop Iraqis voting and by what methods. That
alone shows how important this week's elections are to Iraq.

The horrific war against the Iraqi people is being run by the same people
who oppressed and tortured them for decades - Saddam's henchmen and gaolers.
They are more than ably abetted by the Islamofascist jihadists led by Osama
bin Laden's Heydrich in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Elections really do matter to people - especially to people who have been
denied them. We saw that in 1993 when millions of Cambodians braved threats
from the Khmer Rouge. We saw it in Algeria in 1995, when the government,
almost overcome by years of Islamist terrorist assault, called elections and
the silent majority defied the terrorists' threats and voted en masse.

We saw it much more recently in Afghanistan, where the people confounded the
western critics and scoffers and, despite Taliban threats, voted
overwhelmingly to put the curse of the Taliban's Islamic extremism behind
them.

And we are seeing it most brutally and clearly in Iraq today, where everyone
associated with the attempt to give the Iraqi people a decent future risks
being murdered.

One of the foreign heroes of the Iraqi election process is Carlos
Valenzuela, the Colombian who is the chief UN election official in Baghdad.
He has been asked constantly if legitimate elections can take place despite
the non-stop violence, the car bombs, the suicide bombers, the multiple
murders. He has replied yes. "Look," he has said, "in my country we have
elections that are not perfect, that have been marred by violence and
terrible intimidation. But still people go to the polls. And still the
results are accepted as legitimate."

He has also, quite rightly, praised the Iraqi election workers. If you need
one image to remind you what this election is about, remember the horrific
photograph from December of three Iraqi election workers dragged from their
car in Baghdad and murdered, on camera, in the street.

The Iraqi elections are at one level a brutal theocratic struggle between
Sunni and Shia, between Bin Laden and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Sistani, the principal leader of the Shias, who constitute 60% of the Iraqi
population, has told his followers that it is their duty to vote. But in a
video aired on al-Jazeera, Bin Laden declared that "Anyone who participates
in these elections... has committed apostasy against Allah". He endorsed
killing of security people in the new government - "Their blood is
permitted. They are apostates whose deaths should not be prayed over."

Zarqawi describes the Shias as "the lurking snakes and the crafty scorpions,
the spying enemy and the penetrating venom, the most evil of mankind". Every
day he murders more. Last Friday a car bomber murdered 14 people, including
children, as they left their mosque in Baghdad. He murdered Ayatollah
Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council of the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, one of the principal Shia parties, and he recently tried
to murder Hakim's brother and successor. In that attack 13 other Iraqis were
killed and 66 wounded.

Allied to the Islamist groups are Ba'athist groups who want to restore Sunni
Ba'athist dictatorship. Several of their military leaders were arrested in
Falluja in November.

One was Colonel Muayed al-Nasseri, who said that Saddam had set up his
group, Muhammad's Army, after the fall of Baghdad. Under interrogation he
said that his group had been receiving aid from both Iran and Syria, neither
of which wish to see a democracy in Iraq. He said Iran had given them "one
million dollars... cars, weapons... even car bombs". He said that Saddam had
sent him to Syria to liaise with Syrian intelligence, which was proving
especially helpful with money. Other Saddamite officials are working with
impunity from Damascus. Washington has protested about this, but the US has
not yet put any really strong pressure on Syria.

The impact of terrorism on the election has already been huge. Many of the
political parties have not dared name their candidates for fear they will be
murdered. Public meetings are virtually impossible. The risks of going to
the polling stations are real everywhere, huge in some places. Many
candidates have been murdered; those who are elected will face real dangers.

What is astonishing is that people still seem determined to vote for a new
Iraq. A recent poll by the London-based paper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat found that
66% of those asked supported the elections on schedule. Iraqi women, who due
to past bloodshed constitute a majority of the Iraqi population, are
particularly interested.

According to the latest poll conducted in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra by Women
for Women International, "94% of women surveyed want to secure legal rights
for women; 84% of women want the right to vote on the final constitution;
[and] nearly 80% of women believe that their participation in local and
national councils should not be limited... despite increasing violence,
particularly against women, 90.6% of Iraqi women reported that they are
hopeful about their future".

Although al-Jazeera broadcasts poison, Iraqi domestic television is now
among the freest in the region. There are more than 20 licensed local TV
stations, and 65% of the population are thought to have satellite dishes,
banned until the fall of Saddam.

People are being extremely brave in flouting the demands of the killers.
Both Kurds and Shias are resisting the horrific provocations from Sunni
terrorists. The election will not end the crisis in Iraq. But Iraqis, like
the Algerians and Afghans, clearly wish to defy those who seek to murder,
mutilate and incarcerate them.

Tony Blair said in Baghdad in December: "On the one side you have people who
desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want the same type
of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side
people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better
future for Iraq. Our response should be to stand alongside the democrats."

Blair is absolutely right. It is shocking that so few democratic governments
support the Iraqi people. Where are French and German and Spanish protests
against the terror being inflicted on voters in Iraq? And it is shocking
that around the world there is not wider admiration of, assistance to and
moral support (and more) for the Iraqi people. The choice is clear: movement
towards democracy in Iraq or a new nihilism akin to fascism - Islamist
fascism.

· William Shawcross's most recent book is Allies: the United States,
Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq