How convenient

This morning I was wondering why the Remainiacs have not come up with the great theory that it was really Mr Putin wot won the Brexit vote through some nefarious intervention. Right on cue, we have Ben Bradshaw MP coming up with that particular theory for which he admits having no evidence at all but it stands to reason, innit.

Mr Bradshaw seems to think that it has somehow been proven that Donald Trump won the election (through the electoral college, let it be noted, not the popular vote) because of some complicated behaviour on the part of the Russians in revealing e-mails that had probably been leaked. Nothing much has been proved yet though it might be in future. Incidentally, I can recall a time when journalists would have been asking why the CIA or, at least, some unknown and unnamed operatives of it were intervening in the electoral process and, apparently, trying to force a re-run. As to Brexit, this is what Mr Bradshaw said [scroll down in Hansard as the Huffpo quotations are wrong and semi-literate];

We have not even begun to wake up to Russia’s cyber-warfare. Its interference in the American presidential elections is now proven. It probably interfered in our own referendum—we do not have the evidence for that yet, but it is highly probable. It will certainly be involved in the French presidential election. There are already serious concerns in the German secret service that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming elections. We have to wake up to this, but when?

Hmm. Convenient. Even the American intervention is not actually fully proven and it is not clear what was achieved by any of the Russian actions, assuming they had taken place and the information had not simply been leaked. To say that it is highly probable that Russia interfered in the referendum though there is no evidence is, to put it mildly, irresponsible. And it will "certainly be involved in the French presidential election"? How does Mr Bradshaw know? Has Mr Putin consulted him?

Still, now we have a great story: when the people decide that they do not want to vote the way they are told by their betters, such as Labour MPs, they are not simply displaying signs of populism (my smelling salts, please); it is all arranged by the Russians because people would never act this way themselves. What it really echoes is Putin's own accusations against all the coloured revolutions on the Russian borders: none of them could have been carried out by the people, they were all organized, funded and carried out by the evil Americans. Mr Bradshaw and his ilk are merely echoing Vlad and his propagandists. Should we be listening to them?

FGM has been illegal for thirty years and no prosecutions

Actually, that is not quite correct. There was one prosecution of a case that was clearly not going to result in a conviction since the doctor in question was not exactly accused of female genital mutilation. We hear a great deal about various new initiatives in healthcare, in education, whatnot but what we do not hear about is people who carry out this ghastly torture of children being taken to court, tried and sentenced.

From the BBC news item I find out that we have a Minister for Safeguarding, Vulnerability and Countering Extremism and her name is Sarah Newton. Ms Newton, Minister for all the above said rather pompously:

This government is clear that FGM is a barbaric form of abuse that has absolutely no place whatsoever in a Britain that works for everyone, and the criminals who perpetrate it should be brought to justice.

That's why we are taking world-leading action to tackle FGM by strengthening the law to improve protection for those at risk and remove barriers to prosecution.

World leading action? What kind of world leading action? Ms Newton, Minister for all of the above was responding to a Report issued by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee that castigated the judicial system for not prosecuting successfully a single case in the UK. Not a single one. How is that world leading action?

I cannot quote all the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Report on p. 22 do I suggest readers of this blog turn to it (so to speak) themselves. They are hard hitting, I am glad to say. Here is the BBC's summary:

The committee said the poor record on prosecutions and convictions would "deter those brave enough to come forward" to report FGM and "result in the preventable mutilation of thousands of girls".

The scale of the problem remains unknown because of a lack of reliable data, but the government estimates 170,000 women and girls in the UK have undergone the procedure.

The first ever recorded figures for FGM, reported in July, showed that between April 2015 and March 2016 there were 5,702 new cases in England.

Most of the women and girls were born in Africa and underwent the procedure there, but at least 18 were subjected to FGM in the UK.

Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have not collected any figures on FGM.

Will anything come of this Report beyond more initiatives and more discussions? Oh yes, and yet more strengthening of the law, which was strengthened two years ago? Rather despairingly, I do not hold my breath.

We have a problem

It is one of the assumptions of most of the eurosceptic wing that as far as possible (allowing for international agreements and so on) legislation and regulation in this country should be carried out by our elected representatives within certain constitutional boundaries, which, in my opinion, includes a role for the House of Lords, chosen on a completely different basis and one for and independent judiciary. MPs must, in that system, be of huge importance.

Nothing wrong with that, you might say. After all, MPs can always be voted out (though many people who live in safe constituencies might disagree with that); they can be challenged while they are sitting though I dislike the idea of recall as we do vote for our MPs as members of parties and a recall can so easily degenerate into one particular group re-fighting a perfectly valid election. Anyway, there we are: MPs rather than the various levels of eurocracy.

Then we get the spectacle that is going on in the Commons right now: a debate on whether Donald Trump, an American businessman and a candidate for the Presidential nomination, should be excluded from the United Kingdom. Why? Well, he said a few things we do not like or some of us do not like and, in any way, his behaviour is boorish. Not only are those not reasons for excluding someone from this country but it is an obvious waste of time for MPs even to debate it.

Now admittedly, this is not happening in the Chamber but in Westminster Hall. It is, nevertheless, taking up a great deal of Parliamentary time. The debate is taking place at the instigation of the Petitions Committee, which has had to deal with two e-petitions, 114003, with 500,000 signatures that is in favour of the ban and 114907 with 40,000 signatures that is against it. In neither case are the numbers big enough to make it a matter for Parliamentary debate.

As it happens, the Home Secretary has the powers to exclude people from entering the country and this power has been exercised at various times - some of those we know about, many we do not but we must assume that the reasons had to be more than just unpleasant and boorish behaviour.

Let me just add that so far as anyone knows no UK variant of the US Magnitsky Act with its list of people who were responsible for the torture and death of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who had been employed by a British firm exists.

Meanwhile, back on the home front

The EU Referendum Bill is still making its way through Parliament. As expected the House of Commons reversed the Amendment that would have given 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in it (unlike the right to buy tobacco or alcohol or decide whether they want to stop being part of the education system) and agreed to all the government Amendments. (See columns 881 to 885 for the vote.)

So the Bill returns to the Lords in what has become known as "ping-pong" and from 3 pm on the proceedings can be watched here. It will be interesting to see how the Lords will deal with a problem that seems to have been added to the procedure quite gratuitously.

At the beginning of that debate in the Commons on December 8, the Speaker said:

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that Lords amendment 1 engages financial privilege. Lords amendment 1 is the first amendment to be taken, and to move the Government motion to disagree I call the Minister, eager and expectant.

Financial privilege attached to the amendment implies that the Lords will not be able to reinstate it. It is hard to see why this amendment should have financial privilege attached to it while other matters should not.

Naturally, an extension of the electorate even temporarily carries a price but then all legislation carries a price. Is the Speaker saying that the Lords will now not be able to amend any legislation, in case that amendment might have some financial implication. If so, it introduces an important constitutional change, which should be discussed widely and not simply announced in a somewhat off-hand fashion by the Speaker.

This is all part and parcel of the government's intention to do away with any kind of check on its power. Given our system that check is not going to come from the House of Commons, though its members might be elected; it can come only from the courts (another theme altogether) or the Lords. Readers of this blog know that it is greatly in favour of the Lords providing that check even when the blog disagrees with their decision, as it does in this case.

Interestingly, support for that point of view has come from the Adam Smith Institute. Dr Eamonn Butler writes on their blot that An unelected check is better than no check on the House of Commons.

Who says politicians are useless and inefficient? They are superbly efficient at one thing, at least – curbing any restraints on their own power.

Thus Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative grandee charged by Prime Minister David Cameron with reviewing the role of peers in the governance of the United Kingdom, is set to propose that the Lords lose their veto over delegated or ‘secondary’ legislation. It all stems from the Prime Minister’s (and the Chancellor’s) agitation at the House of Lords blocking plans to cut tax credits. And that was not the first time that the Lords has irritated the House of Commons by questioning its legislative plans.

The argument is that the Commons is elected and the Lords (mostly) isn’t. So the Lords have no right to block Commons legislation. But even the most slavering MP these days would not suggest simply abolishing the Lords and giving the House of Commons absolute power. That would lead to riots. But they figure they can get rid of the ‘problem’ a bit at a time. The Lords have already lost their powers to block financial legislation; they can delay but not veto other measures; and the Parliament Act, designed to be used in dire emergencies, is now deployed with dazzling frequency, to push through measures that the Lords feel queasy about.

Lord Strathclyde’s proposals are just the latest sortie in these one-sided air-strikes. Secondary legislation is the detailed regulatory stuff that MPs can’t be bothered with, and delegate to officials: so (runs the argument) why do we need the Lords to worry about that?

Well, we should all worry about it, as we can at least get rid of MPs and even overturn laws, but we can’t vote out regulators. Scrapping regulations ain’t so easy, either. So it is good that such proposals are properly scrutinised before they get going. Give it a year or three, though, and there will be some other issue, and the Lords’ powers will be trimmed again. And again.

I find this obsession with elections completely baffling, especially as so often the people who insist on it also complain about the electoral system and about the people who get elected. Surely, having another House that is chosen in a different way is a good idea.

There are many problems with the House of Lords as it stands. Lord Pearson's repeated complaint that the Lib-Dims are over-represented in it while UKIP is under-represented is fair; the packing of the House by the previous Labour and Coalition as well as the present Conservative governments is part and parcel of their intention to control its activity and ought to be stopped. A moratorium on any further peerages should be introduced immediately until we sort out the mess that has been created by the packing.

But let us not forget that the argument for nobody being appointed and everybody being elected leads to the next one, which is the one about elected politicians not being elected by all that large a proportion of the electorate. A discussion of whom MPs represent and what their position is or ought to be in the political world is something for another blog in which Edmund Burke will be quoted correctly but let us quickly look at the logical conclusion of that argument: it is surely that unless about 90 per cent or more vote for the government it has no legitimacy. Well there are and have been for many years political systems based on that. Do the critics of our system really want to live like that?

Hansard links

For those readers who want to know what was actually said in those debates yesterday here are the links to the Commons and the Lords.

While we are on the subject, here is the link to the Third Reading of the EU Referendum Bill, which is now through the House of Lords and has gone back, in an amended form, to the Commons where it will be debated on December 8. As I have mentioned earlier, most of the amendments are government ones (another one or two have been passed in the Third Reading) and will be passed in the Commons. The one amendment that will cause problems is Baroness Morgan's that extends the electorate for the referendum to those who will be 16 and 17 by the time it is taking place. Presumably, the Commons will hold out on that and repeal the amendment, sending the Bill back to the Lords again. There is a strong possibility that there will be no Royal Assent before Christmas.

Well, that's that

We are going to send the RAF to Syria and strike ISIS territory. The House of Commons debated the issue for most of the day and voted 397 to 223 to authorize those airstrikes. The majority was bigger than many expected. The House of Lords also debated it but, as in 2013, did not divide, merely expressed its mood, which was supportive of the government.

I find myself in a quandary. As I made it clear yesterday, I do not think this is a very good idea. There is no need to go through the arguments again as they are all here. At the moment I prefer not to think about what will happen when the first pictures, helpfully produced by ISIS, of children killed by allied bombs are published.

On the other hand, there is the opposition to the air strikes: the Stop The War Coalition, the people who earnestly assure me that war has never solved anything (I usually suggest that they have a word with people who remember being liberated from the Nazis), the dopy academics one of whom shared a programme on the BBC Russian Service earlier today and whose idea was to try to get a global consensus through the UN, and the screaming, ullulating mob outside Parliament today. As I was leaving the Palace of Westminster about half an hour before the vote was due I saw resigned looks on the faces of the police officers. Whichever way the vote goes, one of them said, there will be trouble. Added to that we have the stories published in various media outlets, even left-wing ones of threats against Labour MPs who had voiced their intentions to vote with the government on the subject and abuse against their staff (a particularly despicable kind of behaviour) and one's convictions begin to waver.

For what it is worth, I still think that we are making a mistake but I can understand that we have placed ourselves in an almost impossible position - we need to solve the Syrian crisis if for no other reason than to stem the flood of migrants but we have no idea how to do it. Getting rid of ISIS, if we can do it, may be the first step towards a solution but my doubts remains.

Perversely though, I am glad that the holier-than-thou rabble did not win.

Back to the question of intervention in Syria

We have been here before, only last time the question was about intervening in order to overthrow Assad. This time the discussion is about intervening against ISIL from which Assad may benefit. The debate is set for tomorrow and it would be a foolhardy person who could predict its outcome. To me these debates show the futility of running a foreign policy according to popular opinion, which tends to change in response to media stories and pictures, something I discussed on the blog not so long ago.

Back at the time of people demanding that we go in to unseat Assad, who has remained considerably more tenacious in his grasp on some power than people predicted and who is still responsible for more deaths than ISIL (though that is probably merely because he has been there for much longer), I wrote this:

However, ladies and gentlemen who demand that we intervene in Syria, could you answer at least some of the following questions?

When you say you want us to intervene what kind of intervention do you have in mind and who, do you think, should carry it out? What precisely is a limited military intervention, as suggested by Senator McCain?

What sort of timetable do you have in mind? Weeks? Months? Years? A long occupation with no foreseeable end and if so, who would be doing it?

What would be the agreed aim of the intervention? Simply no more pictures of dead bodies? How can we ensure that? Regime change? I have no problems with that in principle (think Germany, Japan and Italy in 1945) but what sort of regime should we install and how long will it survive?

Do we have any identifiable allies?

And last but very much not least: what is the exit strategy?

With a few changes those questions are still relevant. Obviously, if we are talking only about extended bombing (people seem not to have noticed that we are already involved in it to some extent) then the urgency of those questions is not so great. Even bombing, as was carried out in Libya, now a completely dysfunctional state, carries with it certain consequences. What if we actually put boots on the ground in a civil war, which has many sides, all of them nasty and few potential allies?

Something to ponder over

We now have a Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer who not only expressed great sympathy and admiration for the IRA, on which he was called out by Nigel Dodds, DUP MP for Belfast North yesterday after the slightly idiotic attempt by the new Leader of the Opposition to turn PMQs into a phone-in, but he has expressed the view that he loathes capitalism and spends his time fomenting opposition to it and planning to destroy it.

So, I think it is time to look at a description of what that entails. But, first, Mr Dodds [you have to scroll down to read the different contributions]:

The plaques at the entrance door to this Chamber in memory of Airey Neave, Robert Bradford, Ian Gow and Sir Anthony Berry—serving Members of this House who were murdered by terrorists as they stood up for democracy and the British way of life—are a reminder of the savagery and brutality of terrorism, as are the gravestones and the headstones in Northern Ireland and right across this land. The Opposition Leader has appointed a shadow Chancellor who believes that terrorists should be honoured for their bravery. Will the Prime Minister join all of us, from all parts of this House, in denouncing that sentiment and standing with us on behalf of the innocent victims and for the bravery of our armed forces who stood against the terrorists?

Honourable Members and the Prime Minister, I am glad to say, did join him but as I did not watch PMQs I do not know whether the Labour Front Bench did. Still, as they say, never forget.

On to that hatred of capitalism. I happen to be reading a recent biography of Stalin (yes, yes, I know, a masochist of the first order) by Oleg Khlevniuk, translated by Nora Seligman Favora and published earlier this year by Yale University Press.

In his introductory chapter, Khlevniuk writes:

Underpinning Stalin's worldview was an extreme anti-capitalism. His hostility towards this system was unequivocal, and he rejected even the limited concessions that Lenin made in instituting the New Economic Plan (NEP). Stalin grudgingly allowed a few capitalist economic vehicles within the Soviet system, such as money, limited market relations, and personal properly.

After millions had died during the famine of 1932 - 1933, he agreed to allow peasants limited freedom to produce and sell outside the collective and state farm system. But to the end he believed that the concessions that had been forced on him by hard circumstances would soon be reversed and the socialist economy would be transformed into a money-free powerhouse where people would work as ordered by the state and receive in exchange the natural goods that the state decided they needed.

That, ladies and gentlemen, readers of this blog is what a man who is vehemently anti-capitalist really believes and wants to achieve.

More on that Bill

First things first: we have had the Second Committee Day of the EU Referendum Bill on Thursday and you can read the debate here. The date for the Report is to be announced but, meanwhile, here is the amended Bill as it is to go forward to the next stage.

Before that, however, Derek Thomas (also here), MP for St Ives asked:

If the Electoral Commission will commission a lay-person’s guide to the costs and benefits of UK membership of the EU before the EU referendum.

Not precisely the Electoral Commission's job, as the Minister pointed out, but then whose job is it, given that HMG, singly and collectively, has refused to provide such an analysis over a number of decades?

We do have a volunteer in the person of the Wellingborough MP, Peter Bone (also here):

If they [the Electoral Commission] are not the people to do it, I am quite happy to take on that task. It would be pointless having such a document because it will have pages and pages and pages of costs; I doubt that we would find a page on the benefits.

Mr Streeter's response was dry:

I will certainly put that offer back to the Electoral Commission. I am sure that it will be as enthusiastic as I am.

However, he did not produce an alternative suggestion. Incidentally, the Member for South-West Devon was replying to questions on the subject of the referendum because he was representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission

First Day of Committee

The Referendum Bill has reached Committee stage (yes, I fear, there are a number of stages in this process) and it can be watched directly here. Not a particularly well attended House but then Committee stages rarely are, since debates are about various, often minutely detailed amendments.

Some of today's (unedited) record can be read here. The edited version will be published tomorrow morning.

Second Reading

The Second Reading of the Referendum Bill is going on at this moment and it can be watched here. I spent a few minutes doing so but the discussion seemed to be about 16 and 17 year-olds voting with nobody bothering to make any substantial points. So, I stopped watching and shall read Hansard tomorrow. But anyone who has time to dip in and out of what will prove to be a long debate is welcome to do so.

First Reading of the Bill

Well, HM was not kidding when she made it clear that "early legislation will be introduced to provide for an in-out referendum on membership of the European Union before the end of 2017". The Bill had its First Reading in the Commons today and will have its Second Reading on June 9.

The text of it is available on line and will be available together with whatever notes HMG thinks desirable in print tomorrow.

The Referendum will be called some time before December 31, 2017 (but we knew that). As far as I can see, the later it is, the better for us as the chances of us winning are slender in any case and are next to zero in the next year or so.

The question on the ballot paper will be: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?” and I understand the UKIP Leader-for-Life-and-in-Perpetuity has already been making negative noises about that.

Farage, who is likely to play a leading role in the 'out' campaign, said the wording showed a pro-EU bias. "It is a simple straightforward, unambiguous question. That much is clear. However that Cameron is opting to give the pro-EU side the positive 'Yes' suggests strongly that his negotiations are so much fudge. He has already decided which way he wants the answer to be given, without a single power repatriated," he said.

Many of us sincerely hope that Mr Farage will not be playing a particularly leading role in the campaign and might even consider taking a back seat together with a few other politicians. On the whole, Mr Farage's credibility outside his cult is not particularly high and that is bound to reflect on the campaign.

As to the wording of the question, has Mr Farage forgotten the Scottish referendum, in which the NO side won decisively? However you phrase the question the pro-EU side will be defending the status quo and that is always a better position to have.

The other person who has been making stupid statements is the incoming First Minister of Scotland, one Nicola Sturgeon.

Describing the prospect of being taken out of the European Union against Scotland’s will as “democratically indefensible”, Sturgeon, who will succeed Alex Salmond as leader of the SNP next month, says that her party will table an amendment to any bill on an in/out referendum requiring that all four nations of the UK have to agree to withdrawal.

There has to be a limit to the SNP's refusal to acknowledge basic facts. The people of Scotland voted in a referendum to stay in the United Kingdom and they did so in the full knowledge that a forthcoming IN/OUT referendum on the EU will be taken on a national British level. There is no point in pretending that it was otherwise unless Ms Sturgeon wants to argue that the people of Scotland are, as a nation, uniquely stupid, something history does not bear her out on.

What will she do if in the UK referendum Scotland as a whole votes to leave the EU?

Moving along to other important issues, this is the definition of who will be entitled to vote:

Those entitled to vote in the referendum are —

(a) the persons who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote as electors at a parliamentary election in any constituency,

(b) the persons who, on that date, are disqualified by reason of being peers from voting as electors at parliamentary elections but —

(i) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local government election in any electoral area in Great Britain,

(ii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a local election in any district electoral area in Northern Ireland, or

(iii) would be entitled to vote as electors at a European Parliamentary election in any electoral region by virtue of section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1985 (peers resident outside the United Kingdom), and

(c) Commonwealth citizens who, on the date of the referendum, would be entitled to vote in Gibraltar as electors at a European Parliamentary election in the combined electoral region in which Gibraltar is comprised.

For the time being that should reassure those people who were desperately worried that EU citizens would be able to vote as they are entitled to vote in local elections, thanks to the Maastricht Treaty, though there is no particular evidence that many or even any of them do exercise that right.

The only people who will be allowed to vote in the referendum though they are disqualified from voting in the General Election are peers of the realm and, surely, nobody is against that. However, I have no doubt that there will be an attempt to bring in amendments to include other categories who are disqualified from voting in the GE but are allowed to vote in local and European elections.

There is a good deal of discussion about funding and expenses but, so far as I can see, no definite figures are mentioned, presumably because a sum designated now might not seem to be adequate in two years' time. There will, however, be some government money (well, all right, taxpayers' money) allocated to both sides of the campaign with the Electoral Commission deciding who is in the lead and who should be awarded that sum.

Other expenses will have to be raised and punctiliously accounted for. Well, fairly punctiliously. Past experience tells us that neither individuals nor organizations that are funded by the EU in some form or another, such as our many large NGOs, will see any need to inform the public of that fact or to add their expenses to that of the YES campaign. That will be our task and it will not be an easy one.

A crucial day in British politics?

To some extent, we can argue that if Douglas Carswell manages to hold Clacton this will be of some importance as he will be the first elected UKIP MP in the House of Commons. There is a little too much hyperbole around with Carswell himself quoting Henry V and urging "team Clacton" to defeat the "Westminster machine". That, I presume, would be the Westminster machine that he was a fairly successful part of until about two months ago and the one that helped him to win Clacton in the first place and to hold it in 2010 with a very good majority. The Westminster machine that, in short, helped to place him into the position he is in now: a man who may well become the first elected UKIP MP.

Nothing wrong with that, one might say. All is fair in love, war and politics, which is war by any other name. He used the machine then when he decided for whatever reason that he wanted to go beyond it he did so and continued to use the benefits he had been given by that machine. Hardly the first politician to do so in the long history of British politics. Most of them, one has to admit, ended badly though not as badly as losers have done in other political structures.

One elected MP, at least until May, is not going to make that much difference: Westminster has managed to survive individual rebels before and even new parties (the highly successful Labour Party, which by the stage of its history that UKIP has reached was forming its first government, springs to mind). Nor has it been unknown for MPs to change parties and fight seats under different banners. If Churchill could go from Conservative to Liberal and back again, I see no reason why Douglas Carswell should not be able to.

What I find slightly disconcerting is the hysteria around this particular by-election. Admittedly, UKIP has not been particularly successful in Westminster politics, having had one MP in the past who had not bothered to call a by-election and lost his seat in the General when he stood under his new banner and having three Peers. Nevertheless, the idea that today will be as important in British politics as Agincourt was in the Hundred Years' War between England and France is more than a little fatuous.

My own prediction for what it's worth is that Carswell will keep Clacton until the General Election and will lose it then; UKIP will do fairly well in the other by-election today though the seat will remain Labour; and Reckless, when his turn comes, will lose his seat. That will be of greater import, as the likelihood is that he will split the vote and let in a Labour MP, which event will concentrate Conservative minds and even the minds of those who think having an IN/OUT referendum is the aim of our fight.

Too much emotion

There are times when emotion is appropriate. I am certain that I shall feel very emotional when I attend Professor Minogue's Memorial Service towards the end of September and so will everybody else there. In fact, I shall fill my bag and pockets with tissues just in case I tear up more than once. But that is what funerals and memorial services are for. Politics, on the other hand, ought to dispense with emotionalism as far as possible. Yet it was clear on Thursday,  in the wake of the Parliamentary debates about possible military intervention in Syria and the close vote [scroll down for Main Question] in the House of Commons against it that there is just too much emotion about the whole subject on both sides and for reasons I cannot quite understand. (Here is the full text of the debate in the House of Commons and here of the one in the House of Lords, where no vote was taken but the sense of the House was very clear.)

Almost immediately after the result was announced one started seeing and hearing weeping and gnashing of teeth among those who thought we should intervene though they were still unable to specify how and for what purpose we should do so and equally insane rejoicing among those who were against it, not to mention those who thought that this would signal the end of Cameron's leadership for reasons I fail to understand. I am, of course, glad that we are not going to be engaged in this open-ended, badly defined, ill-thought out military adventure but I see no particular reason for jumping up and down with joy. (A reminder of what I wrote about it a couple of days ago.)

A couple of days ago Brendan O'Neill put up a piece on Spiked in which he argued that

War used to be the pursuit of politics by other means. Today, if the statements made by the Western politicos and observers who want to bomb Syria are anything to go by, it’s the pursuit of therapy by other means. The most startling and unsettling thing about the clamour among some Westerners for a quick, violent punishment of the Assad regime is its nakedly narcissistic nature. Gone is realpolitik and geostrategy, gone is the PC gloss that was smeared over other recent disastrous Western interventions to make them seem substantial, from claims about spreading human rights to declarations about facing down terrorism, and all we’re left with is the essence of modern-day Western interventionism: a desire to offset moral disarray at home by staging a fleeting, bombastic moral showdown with ‘evil’ in a far-off field.

I could not help agreeing with him and thought of the article again as I waded through the acres of sticky emotionalism last night and today or tried to engage in some rational discussion. The reasons as to why the MPs betrayed us all, betrayed the people of Syria and of every other country you could name and created a world-wide desolation were various but all displayed a "nakedly narcissistic nature". All arguments about the nature of the rebels, the lack of British interest, the lack of clear understanding as to what is going on or what we might achieve were swept aside in a general cry of "Assad is such a terrible man" or, in one case (I kid you not) "MPs can now watch the Syrian children suffer". (I did say rather coolly that if it was about the children we should go in against both sides since there is good evidence of children being maltreated by the rebels. There was no response.)

The whole discussion reminds me of the endless arguments about foreign aid in which all rational objections of any kind are brushed aside with an highly emotional and at the same time self-centred cry of "but we cannot just sit back". It is all about us not about them.

So where are we now? First of all, that vote was not, in my opinion, catastrophic for David Cameron. Intervention in Syria is not core government policy and there is no particular reason why a government should not be defeated from time to time. It used to happen in the past and can happen again. In fact, it has just happened. The defeat was not exactly surprising (and neither were the arguments expressed in the House of Lords). It does not take a great deal of political nous to realize that the proposed military adventure is highly unpopular in the country and the arguments for it have not been presented at all cogently.

Then again, wars are never popular but until recently, declaration of them had not needed parliamentary approval (and Blair had it in full over Iraq) because it is issued, as this article explains, under a Royal Prerogative that is now effectively vested in the government of the day. David Cameron did not have to go to Parliament over the Syrian adventure but he could not really avoid it for political reasons. He can now, with some justification, proclaim himself to be a true parliamentarian who does not act in a high-handed fashion but listens to the people and to Parliament. Indeed, he has already done so and the chances are he will play on it in future.

The Opposition could now call for a vote of no confidence but I doubt if they will as they might win, in which case there will be an election, which they have not a chance of winning at the moment. Actually, the government would win that vote. Governments usually do.

The Lib-Dims came out rather poorly. Having consistently opposed the war in Iraq they (like a number of leftie luvvies in this country and in the US) have suddenly become bellicose and anxious to see a nasty tyrant punished though, presumably, not toppled. Nick Clegg is now of even less importance than he has been until now.

The other losers are UKIP and, for once, it is not their fault. Nigel Farage has made it clear that their policy was strong and absolute opposition to any intervention in Syria. A number of UKIPers then produced the usual statist, socialist mantra about the money spent on any foreign adventure and how it is needed to build more hospitals, schools and so on. Even the Labour Party stopped saying that.

A number of analysts (not all of them UKIP members) said before the debate that if the Commons vote for military action, UKIP's popularity would go up. That would not necessarily be true as the Lib-Dims had not benefited from their opposition to the Iraq war even when that became unpopular. As it happens, the vote went against military intervention and UKIP is once again on the sidelines, calling for a confidence vote, resignations and assuring anyone who will listen that they were the ones who achieved this result.

While Mr Cameron is reported to be contemplating a few enforced resignations in his Cabinet and a general reshuffle, we are getting an emotional chorus of people in and around politics, led by the Lord Ashdown, about Britain's diminished role in the world and the death of the special relationship with the United States. All absolute piffle. If Britain has any sort of a role to play in international politics it is not likely to be enhanced by a Pavlovian need to get embroiled in any war and civil war that happens to have good photographers around.

At the height of Britain's power and influence it managed to keep out of numerous wars and even more civil wars, not considering it necessary to become embroiled unless there was some interest in doing so. The man who is generally thought of being the strongest imperialist among political leaders and one who always had his eye on promoting Britain's role and interests, Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield, can be said to have had his finest hour when he refused to involve the country  in a Balkan war but negotiated a peace to its advantage. When Bismarck was congratulated on achieving agreement after days of difficult negotiations in 1878 in Berlin, he insisted that the achievement was Disraeli's, famously and admiringly saying: "Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann."

In fact, all those rather over-wrought individuals who are comparing Assad with Hitler and saying that we should go to war as we did in 1939 as well as those who displaying fears that this might another 1914, should study the events of 1876 to 1878 when, in the wake of atrocious behaviour by the Turks in response to an uprising in the Balkans Mr Gladstone, the Leader of the Opposition, published his highly influential Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. Even then there were pictures and reports from some parts of the world and many people became angry.

However, the situation was different. For one thing, those massacred were Christians and Gladstone, himself a devout man, could appeal to feelings of solidarity for co-religionists. If there is any of that around in the discussions about Syria, they cannot be on the side that is calling for the punishment of Assad as it is the far more Islamist rebels who seem to have attacked, murdered and generally abused the Syrian Christians.

Secondly, Gladstone could point to the British government as being partially at fault. Disraeli was determined to retain the alliance with the Ottoman Empire against the Russians and Gladstone, whose campaign was considerably more popular than any calls for intervention in Syria are now, called for a change in policy. He did not call for direct military intervention (which Russia was supplying in any case) but for a change in foreign policy. Even in 1876, at the height of Britain's strength and power, it was not considered to be necessary to become militarily involved in every war going, not even for a good cause. In the end, as we have seen, Disraeli won and the Treaty of Berlin stabilized the region but did not precisely punish any wrongdoers.

In the meantime, President Obama, unlike his much maligned predecessor seems unable to build a coalition of the willing and may decide to go it alone, largely because he, foolishly in most people's opinion, drew those lines in the sand or red lines or whatever lines and can now either bomb Syria with no-one to back him or climb down on his threats. Neither is a good option for him or for the United States.

To be fair, it looks like France is ready to support any action and even become involved in it though not for the purpose of overthrowing Assad, merely to punish him (and to ensure that some Raffaele Rafale planes are bought by somebody in the regions).

Secretary of State John Kerry, who, in the not too distant past voted for the Iraqi war before he voted against it, made a speech in which he called France America's oldest ally, which is technically correct, as France helped the winning side in the War of Independence. Not sure it means anything really as the special relationship whose death is once again proclaimed by all and sundry is a somewhat more complicated affair and exists on many more levels than politicians can grasp. If it survived Harold Wilson's government, it will survive President Obama's posturing.

John Kerry's speech (analyzed here and published in full here) appears to be using language and arguments that are very familiar. I was not the only one who was transported back to 2003 when similar arguments were given by President Bush and Secretary of State Powell for an attack on Iraq (which I still think was the right thing to do but that is for another time) and which was later furiously attacked by Democrats and their left-wing supporters, some of whom are now finding time to attack Parliament for that vote. Well, if you lost Mia Farrow, you have really lost your position in the world. Or so she thinks, I have no doubt.

Could John Kerry suddenly be against the military adventure (it is hard to know what to call it after all the chopping and changing) after he is for it?

Tomorrow will bring new developments, I've no doubt. At least, I hope so as I am due to discuss them on the BBC Russian Service in the afternoon. But as things stand, President Obama has not built his coalition of the willing and has found himself in a pickle as a result of his more than confused policy in the Middle East. Britain is not going to be bombing Syria and that is not a bad thing as open-ended, ill-defined military adventures whose purpose is unclear and which are likely to help someone equally nasty are a bad idea. This does not mean that Britain's position in the world will change or that the special relationship with the US is over. Maybe it will mean that there will be an effort to define what that position might be but I do not have high hopes of that. However, the rather emotional rejoicing about the vote is equally insane. The situation in Syria and the Middle East is not such as to bring joy to anyone. In fact, it has become considerably worse than it was in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected and promised to sort out all the nasty problems that his predecessor had allegedly created. And the moral of that story is that no politician should ever believe the hype produced by the media.

Today in the House of Commons

Fridays are when Private Members' Bills get their Second Reading and today we see three of them on parade. The first is the one that is causing all the excitement, James Wharton's European Union (Referendum Bill). The way the media is going on about it, one would think that today's debate will pass the Bill into legislation; the way some eurosceptics are going on about it, one would think that not only will today's debate pass the legislation but it will actually get us out of the European Union by some magical procedure.

Today's debate will do neither; it will merely push matters on to the next stage, which is Committee and then Report and Third Reading in the House of Commons, after which the Bill will go to the House of Lords. It does have a very fair wind from the government, which is always helpful to a Private Member's Bill and David Cameron together with his side-kick, William Hague, appear to be benefiting from the implication that, somehow, this is all their idea. In a way it is. As this blog has pointed out before, the sequence of events was interesting: Mr Cameron makes a speech, which promises a referendum in 2016 or 2017, assuming there is a Conservative-led government in place; there is a mild rebellion of Conservative MPs who want legislation for a referendum; in a ballot for Private Members' Bills one of the rebels comes top and promptly introduces a Bill that reflects faithfully what the Prime Minister said. Some people think this is a defeat for the Boy-King. Not so but far from it - this is yet another victory for him over his party and its not very bright members.

There is, as it happens, another Bill going through that has its Second Reading this morning and that is Christopher Chope's EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits). There have been several attempts to pass a Bill of this kind, notably by Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and some of them went some way. Sadly, none of the Bills ever became law and, I suspect, Mr Chope's will not either. Under no circumstances will HMG allow an audit of costs and benefits of our membership of the European project to be carried out, except on its own, rather dubious, terms.

UPDATE: Second Reading is agreed to by 304 to 0. It would appear that opponents of the Bill stayed away or abstained. There is much rejoicing in some eurosceptic circles, particularly among the ones I would call faux-eurosceptic, the organizations that are concentrating on the referendum at the expense of discussions that matter: how do we get out and what do we do after that. They (and we all know who they are, though every time I turn round there is at least one more) can rest easy - those funds are not about to dry up.

Referendum Bill presented

James Whalley, who, astonishingly, drew first place in the ballot for Private Members' Bills presented his European Union (Referendum) Bill 2013 -2014 yesterday to the House for its First Reading, which is really just a formality. Second Reading is scheduled for July 5, a Friday as Private Members' Bills are debated on that day.

In the meantime there has been a certain amount of displacement activity going on. As ever it relies on the stupendous ignorance most eurosceptics display about the British Constitution. Benedict Brogan talks portentously about what will happen next but only the very ignorant will be surprised by his article. What happens next is exactly what happens with all Bills.

The Express thinks that this takes us closer to "free Britain", which is nonsensical. It takes closer, possibly, to having a referendum some time in the future, assuming nothing much of importance happens in the meantime in the European Union but, as we know or ought to know, having a referendum is not the same as voting to get out or even knowing how we get out. The present state of popular opinion would indicate that the stayers-in will win with no great difficulty.

The biggest of all attempts at displacement activity is the invitation by "Grant Shapps and/or some clever boffin at CCHQ" to invite you, me and everyone else to co-sponsor the Bill. The way to do it is to click on to the right page on Facebook and put your signature to the Bill. There is just one minor problem with this. Oh, a very unimportant problem but I do think someone needs to mention it. A Bill is sponsored by members of the House of Commons or the House of Lords, depending on where it starts. This one is starting in the Lower House and has been co-sponsored by a number of MPs, not all of whom can be called eurosceptic. Members of the public do not sponsor Bills. Putting your name on that page may give you a warm fuzzy feeling of doing something but it is a pointless exercise. 

Will this solve our problems?

The most recent story of MPs and, possibly, Peers (who are denying the accusations) asking questions after some money had been promised or even handed over (the stories are somewhat muddled) with Parliamentary passes being withdrawn from lobbyists by the Speaker is even more bizarre than its predecessors.

As Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute put it in his e-mail to all subscribers this morning:

Journalists trapped parliamentarians in a cash-for-influence sting. So now we're going to have a clampdown on lobbying. (Although no lobbyists were involved. Now you know how laws are made in this country.)

Quite so. This was not an example of our courageous boys and girls of the press investigating the wrong doings of our legislators but a case of said hacks and hackettes setting up a sting operation or, if you prefer, being agents provocateurs. Naturally, those being provoked by the agents should not yield to temptation but the whole story has more than a whiff of fishiness.

The government has been wanting to regulate lobbyists for some time though nobody has yet been able to demonstrate that any sort of a register or regulatory body would make the system more honest or acceptable.

The Adam Smith Institute blog summed matters up:

We have seen the result in the United States. Think-tanks carry on as before, but they have to set up a separate 'lobbyist' body comprising any of their personnel who have frequent discussions with folk on Capitol Hill. The effect is to politicise think-tanks and put a wall between their independent policy experts and the politicians. An issue comes up, a think-tank expert has important things to say, but cannot say them directly to the policymakers.

But it does give an opening to yet more bureaucratic meddling with the political process.

The government has experienced certain difficulties in passing legislation that would create new rules through Parliament. Now, if you please, we have a synthetically manufactured scandal that does not involve lobbyists but is being presented, very conveniently for the government, as an excellent reason for passing new legislation. The timing raises some questions.

Back in the Commons

A lowering of tone, I know, but we really do need to have a look at the shenanigans proceedings in the House of Commons. As everyone knows there was an Amendment tabled during the debate on the Gracious Speech (as it used to be called in the days we had Members of Parliament and journalists who knew history) that "respectfully regret[ted] that an EU referendum bill was not included in the Gracious Speech". It was defeated [scroll down for voting list] but a respectable 114 Tory MPs voted for it, instantly earning the soubriquet rebels. Of course, one could argue that a rebellion that simply echoes what the Prime Minister and Leader of your party has announced is not a particularly significant one as the presence of such non-rebels as Ms Pritti Patel and Mr Simon Hart in the list shows. Never mind, a rebellion it was and a glorious time was had by one and all.

In my posting on the Draft Referendum Bill I wrote that, as the Bill is to be introduced as a Private Member's one,

Presumably, whoever wins the ballot (unless it is fixed) will be pressured into putting forward the Referendum Bill and government time will be found for it some time in the coming session.

What do you know? One of the "rebels", James Wharton, has won the ballot and is going to be introducing the Referendum Bill, over which the leadership of his party is nodding approvingly. How very convenient for all concerned. The Conservative Party, give or take Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine (yes, please, do take them) has been united on the "European issue".

Douglas Carswell MP, apparently tweeted that "God must be a Eurosceptic". That is one way of looking at the whole story.

Naturally, the Evening Standard thinks that the "Coalition is set for clash over Europe". Again.

We have a free media now?

Before I get on to the disgraceful behaviour by most of our legislators in adding an amendment during the Third Reading of the Crime and Courts Bill (which will now go back to the Lords for consideration of that and other amendments), which would allow them to license and regulate all (and I mean all) media outlets, let me just make a waspish comment.

So we have a free media? What about libel laws and anti-hate laws? What of the EU's framework directive on combating racism and xenophobia?

The right to vote

Readers of this blog have noticed, no doubt, that I have not commented on the vote in the House of Commons yesterday. The main reason for that is that as far as I am concerned the only important news in this country of the last several days was the definite identification of Richard III's skeleton. Chris Huhne? Vicky Price? Who on earth cares or will remember them in a month's time let alone five and half centuries later?

Still, it is time to turn to matters nearer in time. Well, sort of, as I intend to go back to the seventeenth century in a minute.

I shall not discuss the rights and wrongs of same-sex marriage, being more interested in some of the other issues around it. Firstly, I should like to point out that the Bill has not been passed. It has merely had its Second Reading in the House of Commons and because of that MPs, as the Boss said,"MPs allowed (nay, encouraged) to vote". They usually vote on Second Reading but not necessarily in a general non-legislative debate. (Before we go any further, I should like to point out that the Lords very rarely divide on Second Reading, preferring to do so at the later stages. I have no doubt, that, too will be wrongly reported.)

The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is now going to Committee stage. It will not be debated by the Committee of the Whole House but the Public Bill Committee, which has been instructed to present a report by March 12 or before. So far neither composition of the Committee nor the date of the sittings have been announced but there has hardly been time for such matters.

If you scroll about half-way down this page you will read the future programme for the Bill. It comes almost immediately below the vote on the substantive issue.

Why bother to go into these picky little details that are of little interest? Why not spend time roaming through the emotional and other arguments that surround this whole question? Why not follow up the hint given by the Boss in the same posting that this Bill is merely fulfilling obligations to our real government in Brussels? The last of these I shall follow up at some later stage but the other questions answer themselves. It is because people do not know or understand these picky details of parliamentary procedure that it is so easy for those who wish to undermine the process to do so. I am extremely weary of people who whoop with joy or dissolve into tragic tears because some controversial piece of legislation "has been passed" when it has had its Second Reading in one House or another.

This brings me rather neatly to the seventeenth century and an article in History Today by Philip Baker, co-editor of The Agreements of the People, the Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution about the Levellers, possibly the first political organization in England that called for political rights and, particularly, the vote for all men.

There is a tendency among some political groups to claim the Levellers as their predecessors, often inappropriately. In particular the various Occupy movements whose main slogan seemed to be more control by the government which is the exact opposite of what the Levellers wanted, a move away from the gathering of power centrally that had been happening in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

The Levellers were what we might call on the Left of Cromwell's New Model Army and had a good deal of civilian support. They were, men and officers, well educated and could speak and write clearly and cogently. The Putney Debates of 1647 - 49 that followed the First Agreement of the People, that is the first attempt of a more or less democratic constitution are a pleasure to read. The fact that these took place at a time when the English language was at its most glorious heights, helps.

Among other matters under discussion was the question of universal male suffrage. The Levellers were not radical enough to extend this to women despite the relatively high level of education and political involvement among women of those groups.

Philip Baker quotes one of the best known officers of the group, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, a vehement opponent of any deal with the King:

For really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first, by his own consent, to put himself under that government.

That raises a number of issues, with which we are more familiar than the constitutional theoreticians of the seventeenth century were, quite apart from the question of women giving consent. What of the men who, having been given the right to consent to the government, that is to vote, refuse to do so or cannot quite be bothered? What of those who, having voted and whose candidate lost, then announce that the elected ones do not represent him? Does the mere voting indicate consent to the government? What of those, no doubt unthinkable individuals for Colonel Rainsborough, who vote not according to their conscience but according to what benefits they might receive?

In a way, Philip Baker shows the problems that lie within the admirable views of the Levellers, problems that we, some centuries later, have to face and are, apparently, unable to deal with.

Although the Agreements have long been lauded for their influence on modern constitutionalist debate, recent research has sought to relocate them within their immediate historical context. The result has been to shed important new light on their origins and influences, such as the way in which the everyday contemporary practice of oath swearing provided an important model for the attempt to reformulate the social contract through a literal agreement of the entire adult population. Meanwhile, the common perception of the Agreements as, in some sense, ‘forward-looking’ has been challenged on the grounds that it ignores the extent to which their authors were arguing for constitutional reformation and the restoration of historic, native birthright.

Closer study of the documents themselves also has much to tell us about contemporary perceptions of political life. For example, their desire to ensure greater political accountability can be related to the new freedom surrounding the reporting of parliamentary debates and investigative journalism and their revealing of corruption and factionalism. Similarly, their demand for the devolution of power to local communities was a clear reaction against the increasing centralisation and growth of ‘big government’ that was an intrinsic feature of the Civil War period but can be traced back to earlier decades, too. The corollary of decentralisation was the notion of political participation and active citizenship that lay at the heart of the Agreements. This was clearly seen as being central to political life, both in terms of the duty incumbent on the individual to serve in local office and the need for the collective and continuous oversight of those holding public positions of trust. In this fashion the Agreements combined successfully the language of civic responsibilities and duties with that of popular rights and liberties.

Our problem is (and this was foreseen by a number of post-Leveller political thinkers) that while we persist in using the language we have long ago lost the meaning; what might have worked for the few people Colonel Rainsborough really had in mind (would he really have accepted a freely voted in pro-Stuart government?) does not seem to work when spread across the many who find it difficult even to understand the very simple facts of Parliamentary procedure.