This is rather curious

Naturally enough, I am aware of the fact that today is International Women's Day. I was also aware that it was founded nearly 100 years ago in Copenhagen by Klara Zetkin, a left-wing German socialist, who, as a Spartacist, subsequently became a leading member of the first KPD and one of the stars of the Communist International. What I did not realize was that she did escape to the Soviet Union in 1933 but, luckily for her, died soon afterwards in Archangel. I did know that her ashes were in the Kremlin wall.

What I cannot understand is why the House of Lords feels it necessary to celebrate such an obviously socialist entity. How else is one to explain the fact that all the Starred Questions today had to do with women's issues, that women peers were given obvious preference (not that I mind if it involves the Countess of Mar asking a sensible question but she does not need quotas) or that Lord Davies of Abersoch felt the need to say:

First, may I, on behalf of all the men, wish noble Baronesses a happy International Women’s Day, and suggest that we adopt the same practice as Russia and China, where the men give gifts of flowers and chocolates, maybe a year from now?

I trust the noble Lord knows about some other customs so common in China and Russia and that is the habit of making women do some of the hardest physical labour.

Sometimes I miss the old left

As a matter of fact, I do not feel even remotely sentimental about the death of Michael Foot. No, there was nothing fine about the man, despite that flying mane of hair, as people, even on the right, keep telling me. He was not particularly honest or honourable and, having spent decades telling all who would listen and many who would not that he would never accept a position on the front benches, would never be anything but a fiery radical, who opposed his own party’s leadership, if needs be, he jumped at the chance of becoming leader, scuppering the chances of the far more sensible and intelligent Peter Shore. The outcome is well known: Michael Foot led the party to oblivion; he made it unelectable; he allowed the widespread infiltration by Militant Tendency, which led to the prolonged and expensive struggle to root that organization out. Apart from that, Foot spoke at numerous Morning Star rallies (non-British readers: that was the in-house newspaper of the CPGB, funded by the Kremlin, until the CPGB existed) and supported every pro-Soviet cause that happened to be around.However, he and his like did have brain cells and these often interconnected. The new lot seems to have nothing. Or, as Eeyore would put it, just some grey fluff that blew in. I was convinced of this when I saw the demonstration of about a hundred people against Geert Wilders’s visit.

As we walked rather rapidly (he was bundled into a car by burly security men and was driven the fifty yards) I noted the group, corralled by the police who had arrived in vans with dogs, the latter being rather bored and pleading to be allowed to have some fun. Sternly, their handlers restrained them.

No, these were not the bearded, freedom-loving representatives of the religion of peace who were promising to put us all under Sharia law last time. None of them bothered to turn up this time. These were rent-a-mob with carefully printed identical signs that told us about the BNP and the EDL (English Defence League) being Nazi-Racist Thugs. Small problem: neither of those organizations was there. Geert Wilders has nothing to do with them and his party is a long way from being national socialist. He had been invited by Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Baroness Cox to show his film in the House of Lords and was on his way to give a press conference in another part of the House.

Did nobody tell these bozos, particularly the singularly unpleasant specimen, who was yelling “EDL are Scum” what they were supposed to be demonstrating against?

PS It has been pointed out to me that this was not a sign of stupidity merely but of a general parochialism in British politics that prevents activists on whatever side they happen to be from realizing that there is a big bad world outside their own petty considerations. Someone must have said that there was a “fascist racist” appearing somewhere in Westminster. D’uh! – they thought. Must be BNP and/or EDL. Let’s go for both of them, just in case.

Yet again, I miss the old left. Misguided and misinformed they may have been but they saw themselves as internationalists. At least, they would have heard of politicians from other countries and I don’t mean just Republican Presidents of the United States.

They've kept this one very quiet

I have no bone in this fight. Nothing on earth would induce me to go anywhere near the 2012 Olympics or to watch any of those events on TV or to listen to any accounts of it on the radio or on the computer. I am aware, however, that there is a certain amount of discontent about there being no preferential treatment, as far as the extremely expensive tickets are concerned, for the local population either in the immediate geographic vicinity or the country as a whole.

This came up during Starred Questions in the House of Lords on Thursday. Lord Addington asked a question about the Olympic Games and during the subsequent debate Lord Howard of Rising asked:

My Lords, could the Minister say what action has been taken to ensure that genuine sports fans can obtain tickets for the 2012 Olympics as they have been able to in Vancouver?

To which Lord Davies of Oldham replied:

That is a very important point. We are concerned about the affordability of tickets in order that all can participate in the Games and not just thowe who can afford the sometimes very high prices at certain major events. We will not be able to do exactly what the South Africans did because the World Cup allows the country to dictate its own terms for the sale fo tickets. We are governmed by Olympic rules - the International Olympic Committee - and we cannot give favours to British people over Europeans because of our membership of the European Community.

Well might noble Lords say "Oh!", the strongest expression of shock allowed to them in the Chamber. Lord Davies then tried to shift his ground:

And therefore we are concerned to have a large number of tickets at a low prices, as it was quite clear from the planning for the Games that that will encourage the fullest participation of our people.

The damage was done; he had admitted the truth. Whether HMG can or cannot encourage the availability of tickets at a low price there is no reason to suppose that it will encourage "the fullest participation of our people" since there can be no discrimination in favour of "our people".

Well now you know.

Patriotism Act passed in Slovakia

Yesterday I took part in a discussion about patriotism and what it means on the BBC Russian Service, where they invite me either to be an attack dog or for my cynicism, depending on who is talking. The trigger for the discussion was this slightly odd piece of legislation in Slovakia, a fully paid up member of the European Union and of the euro, something that has caused the odd economic problem or three.

The Act, passed by 77 out of 122 MPs and yet to be signed by the President, specifies that the Slovak national anthem is to be played mandatorily at the beginning of every session of all public events as well as sessions of the national and regional Parliaments. It will be played in every school at the beginning of every school day and by state broadcasting companies at the beginning and the end of programmes.

The Act also imposes the duty of patriotic education in all schools and the prominent display of all patriotic symbols in schools, regional parliaments and other public institutions.

In many ways, this is an odd piece of legislation. Slovakia was very anxious to get into the European Union, whose purpose it is to supercede existing national symbols with its own. Will the EU flag be displayed next to the Slovak one? Will the EU anthem be played after the Slovak one? How will this patriotic teaching explain that those Slovak Parliaments have to implement EU legislation and regulation?

There appears to be some resistance to the law in the country, which is not surprising when one considers its history in the last century when one form of "patriotism" after another was forced on the people. Yet none of the discussions mention the peculiarity of the situation in which a country that has voluntarily given up its right to legislate for itself and decided to participate in the European project of integration (however unsuccessful it might turn out to be) making such an issue of patriotic symbols.

The real tea party movement

Sorry to be harping on the subject but I am not a little fed up with the way the nascent (if that) Tea Party Movement in this country has already been co-opted by the Conservative Party, by the way so many commentators here seem unable to understand that and by the way American well wishers rejoice in developments that they would not countenance for one moment in their own country and their own Tea Party Movement.

This is what it should really be like as we hear from Arizona:

The organizers of the four largest Arizona Tea Party organizations – including the Tucson Tea Party, Greater Phoenix Tea Party, Flagstaff Tea Party, and Mohave County Tea Party – issued a joint press release regarding their unified decision to decline endorsing a candidate in the Arizona Senate primary race between John McCain, J.D. Hayworth, and Jim Deakin.

“The Tea Party is a non-partisan, grassroots movement that stands for limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. Both McCain and Hayworth’s records during their many years in Washington leave much to be desired on these issues,” said Robert Mayer, co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party. “It is their job to hold themselves up to these values and fight for our votes.”

Other tea party organizers across the state agreed that the local organizations should not endorse so early if at all.

“It is not appropriate to make an endorsement in this race at the drop of a hat, as some other groups are doing,” said Kelly Townsend, organizer of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party. “The movement must stand for ideas, and do everything possible to provide information to people so that they can make the best personal decisions.”

Non-partisan, grassroots movement. Got that? Not let us support the Conservative Party and if they do not deliver or promise to deliver what we want, let us just accept that they are better than what we have.

Maybe I should restart the Red Lion Talks with a different slant.

Well, diddums!

Baroness Ashton, the erstwhile CND treasurer, now the EU's High Representative on foreign affairs, is not having a good time according to this article by Bruno Waterfield.

Brussels is at war with itself and Baroness Ashton of Upholland is losing on every front. It is just three months into her job as the EU's first ever foreign minister and Lady Ashton has "travelled the distance from being the nobody, that everybody loved to mock, to becoming the mediocrity, that everybody loves to hate".

That acid assessment, made by an official from a rival Brussels camp, is hostile but expresses a widely held belief that Lady Ashton has become the "fall guy" in unprecedented bureaucratic warfare unleashed by the Lisbon Treaty.

Europe teeters on the brink of a sovereign debt, Greek default, or worse, crisis and is struggling to assert itself in a G2 world dominated by the US and China. But rather than facing outwards, Brussels is gloomily gazing inwards and increasingly blaming Lady Ashton for the EU's marginalisation on the global stage.

"We have fought tooth and nail for nine years to get the Lisbon Treaty, or some form of EU Constitution. Can this really be what it is about?" said a French official.

Yes, it probably is. Quel dommage!

It seems that the lady is not competent enough to understand when she is being set up to be the fall guy (or dame) for other people's incompetence - she missed an important meeting with defence ministers that was also attended by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Nato chief, in Majorca.

In fact, as her officials and British diplomats have since observed, Lady Ashton had changed her plans, switching from Spain to visit Ukraine for the inauguration of President Yanukovych in Ukraine, on the explicit instruction of EU foreign ministers on Monday. Setting her up for the fall, both Herman Van Rompuy, the EU President and Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission President, who would usually carry out such duties, had declined to travel to Kiev.

Ironically, Mr Van Rompuy's excuse was a Thursday night speech on EU foreign policy to the eurocrat training university, the College of Bruges. Mr Barroso begged off because he had a Brussels lunch date with Kenneth Clarke, the pro-EU shadow Business Secretary. Mr Morin, the Frenchman who led the criticism, had himself only turned up for a few hours of the two day defence meeting because he was trying to avoid an angry backlash from Eastern European countries furious at the French sale of a high-technology Mistral class warship to Russia, their old enemy.

It is so good to see that European friendship and cordiality is thriving.

They are all asking it

The big question in the British political world (apart from what will happen to the so-called Tea Party Movement if the Conservatives actually win that election) is why are those Conservatives doing so badly.

James Forsyth thinks that they are over the worst wobble or will be if the YouGov track tonight shows them at being back to six points ahead of Labour. As he acknowledges himself, that is clutching at straws. Six points is almost statistical parity and does not indicate that they will win that election in two months' time. Unless they pull themselves together, work out what they are doing wrong (something they are showing no sign of doing) and turn it all round, they might not even get the largest number of seats. Actually, I still think they probably will but the majority is becoming questionable.

In his long article in the latest Spectator magazine [not on line yet though his other articles show his weary attitude to the Tories] James Forsyth writes about all the things Cameron and his immediate entourage have got wrong. At least he partially answers that question: just how can the opposition to a failed and unpopular government not be able to pull ahead.

It would appear from Mr Forsyth's article that in a somewhat panicky mode, the Boy-King and his able lieutenants, Georgie-Porgie Osborne, wonderboy Steve Hilton, Andy Coulson (ex-News of the World editor) and one other, whose name I have forgotten, are resorting to desperate measures. They are talking to their backbench MPs; during last week's Shadow Cabinet meeting, everyone spoke or was allowed to speak, which was so astonishing the journos had to be told.

Well, it's a start. Now all the Boy-King has to do is stop telling the electorate that they are really stupid and do not understand the wonders of Conservative .... errrm .... policies. He has two months.

One of the innovations, according to Mr Forsyth is a greater role allotted to Michael Gove in the management of the campaign. Mr Gove is an able and attractive politician who often talks sense. He is also Shadow Secretary for Children, Schools and Families, what used to be known as Education. Hmmm. I wonder how he sees his future.

UPDATE: Those new polls do, indeed, show a 5 per cent and a 7 per cent lead. In other words, teh 2 per cent poll was a rogue one but the situation is not much better. Opinion polls have a 3 or 4 per cent error margin so these results are not far off statistical parity. The comments agonize over the fact that the Boy-King's Brighton speech has had no effect and what effect will the Ashcroft story (whose details I have forgotten but it is something to do with non-dorm tax payer and contributions to the Conservative or any other party) will have. Answer, very little. Most people do not follow the minutiae and were probably not aware of that speech. That's what comes from having too many conferences.