The Politics of Dancing

If LBC the London based radio station is to be believed, and it is indeed very insistent, the most important news item last week was the debate on its own radio station between the leader of the right wing United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP], Nigel Farage and the leader of the Liberal Democrats [Lib Dems] Nick Clegg. The item led its own news bulletins and phone in programmes, one of the most preposterous items being the claim that the debate was the talk of Berlin! I very much doubt that it was even the talk of Balham! Nigel Farage However leaving aside the exaggerated claims for the debate it was useful from one perspective since it subjected Mr Farage, a man with some pretty extreme opinions,  to the rigours of open debate. It was a shame that the debate was restricted to the topic of Britain’s membership of the EU, since this was Mr Farage’s home ground, his strong suite if you will, albeit in his inimitable little Englander fashion. Since UKIP now claims that it is ...

POLITICIANS AND POWER  Chris Grayling  Politicians are rarely as dishonest as when they speak of devolving power. ‘Power to the people,’ ‘localism,’ ‘decentralisation,’ ‘local decisions made by local people,’ the slogans and promises come out at election time like daffodils in spring and last just about as long. As to giving away power this is the one thing politicians resist with a fervour and passion worthy of the great causes of any age. For a politician power is the very stuff of life, it is the one thing that gets them up in the morning, it’s what turns them on, it is there very raison d’être. Now of course there have been instances of politicians surrendering power; two recent instances in particular involved substantial surrender of power and control, Freedom of Information and devolution to Scotland and Wales . Both instances came from the left and were born of real idealism, particularly the former; however the latter also contained strong elements of pra...

Listening to Danny Alexander or Nick Clegg speaking, the content and tone is now indistinguishable from the Tories.  ‘Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’ Animal Farm Chapter 10 With apologies to pigs which I understand to be intelligent and sensitive animals. Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

The extraordinarily weak initial response by the EU to the Russian annexation of Ukraine has it seems created some considerable amusement in Moscow * along the lines, ‘so this is the best that they can throw at us. Of course they know that the EU is hopelessly split, with both London and Berlin in particular loath to damage their commercial interests by moving to full blown sanctions. William Hague talks tough but if you want to see why you should take some of this posturing with a pinch of salt you should read this article in the Moscow Times. www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/wealthy-russians-prefer-british-visas-despite-possible-sanctions/496215.html Sanctions against Serbia during the wars in former Yugoslavia were much more severe, though in that case the cost was not born by the big players in Europe but by the smaller countries in South Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria , then seeking to join the club. Bulgaria faithfully implemented sanctions at considerable...

Putin History and The Ukraine 'A state whose policymakers nurse grudges against both its enemies and its friends is a dangerous animal, ready to pounce at the first fright or whiff of opportunity. Russia [in 1914] was a country with much to loose, but for which the risks of inaction seemed...to be as great and possibly greater, than those of action. It was a country in other words that would not shrink from going to war to improve her precarious position in a hostile international environment.' From 'The Russian Origins of the First World War,' Sean McMeekin. ‘ The president of ex-Soviet Moldova has warned Russia against any attempt to annex his country’s separatist Transdniestria region in the same way that it has taken control of Crimea in Ukraine. During a trip to Moscow, the speaker of Transdniestria’s separatist parliament, Mikhail Burla, yesterday urged Russia to incorporate his mainly Russian-speaking region, which split away from Moldova in 1990…President...

The best advice to any writer seeking universally good reviews would be to die. Our culture now has decreed that no sooner does someone in the public eye depart this Earth than, Thatcher being the exception proving the rule, even their bitterest enemies are expected to declare what fine individuals they were. Thus this week we had the spectacle of Bob Crow being lauded in of all places The Spectator and his virtues being sung by none other than Tory attack dog Ian Dale. So it has been with the death of Tony Benn yesterday. It is perhaps as well then that I warn readers at this point that those expecting another eulogy should stop reading now. If you want to read something in that vein you should look elsewhere, you will be spoilt for choice. I have a good memory, strong on chronology and politically tuned to the few victories and many defeats of the political causes I espoused. I became fully politically aware in 1972, aged 16, at the time of the National Union of Mineworkers ...

37 Days BBC 2  6 th -8 th March 2014 The BBC has promised to “explain why the First World War happened”. Consequently over three nights last week it gave us this docudrama, a reconstruction of the diplomacy leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. And if you wanted a presentation of the classic British historical position, that it was all the fault of, well in this presentation some , beastly Germans, this was that case. Scriptwriters of this sort of serious docudrama seem to find it impossible to resist the temptation to introduce an element of the comic, and ‘37 Days’ proved no exception. In the first episode this took the form of the Austrian ambassador to Germany who came on like a cross between Larry Grayson [1] and Salvador Dali. He being just the most preposterous of a host of excitable foreigners, including a scattering of pantomime villains. In comparison the British, particularly the foreign secretary Edward Grey, came across as calm and mea...

I remember as a child once hearing my father say that something was worse than useless. I remember thinking ‘how could something be worse than useless, surely if it was useless that was the end of the story? As they say we live and we learn. I was never fully swept up by the Obama mania that preceded his first election victory and inauguration in 2009. I have heard too much overblown sonorous rhetoric in my time to be captured by all that “yes we can” stuff. Still I was impressed, here was an articulate, well read and able man, certainly a liberal possibly even a radical entering the White House. The fact that he was a black man felt truly significant, here was evidence that the United States was finally moving on from the dreadful days of segregation, discrimination and overt racism. I remember though cautioning some more enthusiastic individuals that far too much was expected of him, people would be disappointed. Talk about an understatement. When you look back over th...

Please note these posts are best viewed in Google Chrome. For reasons best known to itself IE cannot reproduce footnotes clearly when the original has been posted in Chrome.   ‘ The Sleepwalkers’ Christopher Clark Penguin Books 2013 It is an extraordinary fact that 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War the origins of the conflict are still the matter of extremely heated debate. Indeed in the week just gone Max Hastings and Nial Ferguson have presented television programmes arguing from different perspectives about the reasons Britain entered the war; whilst, as Clark states in his introduction to 'The Sleepwalkers' the debate ‘…has spawned an historical literature of unparalleled size, sophistication and moral intensity.’ Clark’s book, and it is something of a doorstep at just under 700 pages, dissects the events leading up to the point the fighting commenced with immense forensic intelligence. He places, and as you read his account you feel rightly so, the...

I write against the background of the unfolding events in Russia and the Ukraine . At the same time reading Christopher Clark’s excellent book about the origins of the First World War, ‘The Sleepwalkers.’ The juxtaposition is extraordinary in that at the same time as I am reading about diplomatic arrogance, obfuscation, misrepresentation and confusion, the misreading of events and the peddling of myths and propaganda, I am witnessing the diplomatic disaster of the Ukrainian crisis. Putin’s recklessness certainly has parallels in the Russia of 1914 and also follows a pattern established since the war in Chechnya and the later invasion of Georgia . Putin gambles on the west being, as we used to say when I was young , all mouth and no trousers . I fear he may be right. The current lack of cohesion between the US and EU does not augur well. However whilst Putin is able to carry out audacious short term actions he has no long term strategic vision other than a vague wish to see the ...