So the British version of the ‘Tea Party’ movement was apparently launched in Brighton today.  Seemingly, most of that delightful seaside resort responded with indifference at this apparently ‘historic’ event.  Personally, I’m pretty alarmed that the most crankish part of an increasingly crankish Republican Party (see my post here about the rightward drift of an already right wing GOP) seems to want to replicate itself over here.  The last thing we need is a British version of the tea party movement.

The first reason I don’t like this idea is that it is an unwelcome and unnecessary distraction from the election campaign to come.  While we should be resolutely and absolutely focused on the election, some members of the Party  seem to think that their time is better spent on British ‘tea parties’.  It seems like a very curious sense of priorities on the part of the ‘tea party’ organisers to me.

Secondly, the entire ‘tea party’ movement in the States is driven by a near hysterical anti Government agenda.  There is no coherent theory of Government in the tea party movement.  There is no acceptance that Government is necessary and can be a force for good.  The American tea party movement is driven by a divisive, shrill, simplistic view of politics that is driving moderate Republicans like Charlie Crist out of the GOP.  This is just the kind of politics we do not need in the UK.

Thirdly, look at the nature of the tea party movement in the US.  They are driven by the hysterical and frankly at times delusional agenda of Fox News presenters like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, as well as various right wing shock-jocks.  The Times talks of a “dark underbelly” at the heart of the tea party movement, crystallised by the utterly offensive speech by Tom Tancredo at the start of the tea party convention in Nashville last month.  Conservative  journalist Jonathan Kay turned up at the tea party convention and was shocked by the “toxic fantasies being spewed from the podium”, including the thoroughly horrific and offensive ‘birther’ movement, which was well represented at the convention.

Kay argued that the US tea party is “dominated by people whose vision of the government is conspiratorial and dangerously detached from reality.”  Of course, any movement that looks to Sarah Palin as a potential President surely fits the definition of being “dangerously detached from reality.”

Fox News, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh et al can keep their right wing conspiracy theories.  The tea party movement is something that British politics can absolutely do without.

I have blogged a few times about the increasingly rightward drift of the US Republican Party.  Even I was surprised by this poll, by the Daily Kos and Research 2000 of 2000 self identified Republicans – showing how far to the ideological fringes the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt had moved.

Some of the key findings of the poll (with my italics) are:

• 39% say that Barack Obama should be impeached.  Correct me if I’m wrong but the US Constitution says that impeachment should be a punishment for high crimes and misdemeanours.  Seemingly, this sub-set of GOP supporters believe that Obama should be impeached for having the temerity to disagree with them and win an election.  Frightening.
• 42% believe that Obama was born outside of the United States.  The conspiracy theory, with some fairly offensive undertones, that Obama wasn’t born in the US has a shocking amount of credibility with GOP supporters.  Is that any surprise when the likes of Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, gave this absurd idea such airtime?
• 63% believe that Obama is a Socialist.  That is plain daft – although the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannitty seem to parrot this ridiculous line on a nightly basis.  Anybody who thinks that Obama is a socialist clearly doesn’t have the faintest idea about political philosophy or Obama’s platform.
• 21% believe that Acorn ‘stole’ the last election, with another 55% ‘not sure’.  Another absurd conspiracy theory given a silly amount of airtime by Fox News.  For Glenn Beck, Acorn is almost an obsession.
• 53% believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama. I find it hard to understand how anybody could hold this view.
• 23% believe that their state should secede from the USA, with a further 19% being not sure.  Speechless.
• 55% believe that openly gay men should not be allowed to serve in the military and 77% believe that openly gay men should not be allowed to teach in ‘public’ schools.    77% believe that creationism should be taught in schools.  31% believe that contraception should be outlawed and 76% consider abortion to be ‘murder’.  It is hard to understand how anybody with broadly socially liberal views could sympathise with a Party in which these views are so broadly held.

Despite recent electoral victories (largely due to the lingering level of unemployment), the Republican Party urgently needs to re-engage with the centre ground if it is to have any hope in 2012.  It needs to consider that the conspiracy theories and extreme social conservatism repeatedly parroted by Beck, Hannitty et al might motivate the base but they will not win elections.

On a side point, the Bill O’Reilly interview of Jon Stewart is a must watch.  I particularly like the lines that, “they [Fox News and the GOP right] have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao” and “you [Bill O’Reilly] are the voice of sanity at Fox News…that’s like being the thinnest kid at fat camp.”

Caitlin Moran’s article in this morning’s Times is (as always) hilarious but there’s an underlying suggestion in there that I think could be a great step forward in openness of government.

“But you know what would, in a single stroke, make tax-paying much more popular in this country? And might even keep my incredibly close friend Tracey here?

“A receipt. After all, whenever I’ve just blown £227 in Waitrose and feel a bit alarmed by it, it’s oddly comforting to read through the receipt and say to myself, “but at least I have a lot of yoghurt now”. Similar comfort would be experienced by the taxpayer if, in exchange for a large cheque, one was simply issued with a print-out of what you’d just bought yourself: £2,000 for the NHS, £600 for streetlights, £2 for Prince Andrew, etc.”

Moran ends with “And of course, once you’ve got a receipt, it’s much easier to claim a refund . . .” This, I believe, goes to the heart of the accountability question. I’ve previously argued that as we don’t have any idea of how much tax we really pay, that’s the first thing that should be made clear.

The second thing we need to know is what it’s being spent on. That’s where current Conservative proposals for publishing all government spending over £25,000 per item come in (though I do wonder if that’s the right amount… the Missouri Accountability Panel, on which this plan is based, publishes everything).

And then the third thing we need to know is if that spending is value for money or indeed worth it at all – hence the focus for a potential Cameron government on outcomes not process.

Particularly in light of the ongoing expenses saga and today’s Legg letters, I think that the idea of being able to hold our politicians to account properly is more important than ever. We have an unspoken social contract in the UK between representatives and electorate. I wonder if it’s not time for a more formal arrangement.

And yes, we should be able to ask for a refund if the service is rubbish.

The American hard right seems to have worked itself into a frenzy about the prospect about a Palin run for the Presidency in 2012.  Even the normally steady Bill Kristol is getting excited at the Weekly Standard blog.  Doubtless the crazed voices at Fox News, from Beck to the increasingly delusional Hannity, when not deluding themselves about Obama’s “Socialism”, will be pumping themselves up about this prospect.

Like a large number of PPCs, I’m a self confessed ‘Obamacon’.  I have made the progressive Conservative case for Obama here, here and here.  His Presidency so far has made an excellent start in sweeping up the economic, social and ‘American global image’ problems left behind from eight years of right wing Republican rule. 

Obama’s election, while not a landslide, was convincing enough in once Republican heartlands such as Colorado and Virginia to show that the GOP need to fundamentally re think their electoral strategy if they are to remain an electoral force in the short term. 

The demographics of conventional red states have changed (younger, professional, less religious voters are moving in quickly) and the electoral mathematics in those states have changed.  The Republicans can no longer rely on extreme social Conservatism in an attempt to shore up the base.  Altered electoral mathematics means that the base is no longer big enough to win.  The electoral coalition put together by Nixon and Reagan (using, in both cases, fairly underhand tactics) was smashed into pieces by W and can not be put together again.

Talk of a Palin candidacy blithely ignores this fact.  Palin would be the ultimate ‘base’ candidate.  The ultimate ‘no compromise with modern America’ pick for the GOP.  Indeed, let’s not forget that Palin was probably the least suitable candidate for national high office for any Party since Spiro Agnew was jettisoned by Nixon.  Don’t forget that exit polls showed that waverers swung hard behind Obama in large part because of Sarah Palin’s perceived unsuitability for high office.  The vast majority of voters said that Palin made them less likely to support McCain.  The longer the campaign went on the more detrimental Palin was to the McCain campaign.

So, the GOP could ignore all polling evidence and ignore the realities of a changing electoral map.  If they do, it would be an emotional spasm.  A pick taken in spite of and not because of the facts and all available evidence.  If they do, they might well wake up on election morning looking at a map that looks something like this:

  

On Monday, President Obama is going to sign into law permission for federal funding to go to stem cell research.  Virtually no federal funds have been allowed to be spent on stem cell research since 2001 when George Bush banned it and twice vetoed attempts to overturn the ban. 

Admittedly, private research funds have always been permitted but examples such as the experience of JFK and his declaration that by the end of the 1960s there would be a man on the moon and the (ok, ok, fictional) experience of President Bartlett in the West Wing when he discusses cancer funding with his wife’s colleagues demonstrate the necessity for focus and effort, and for serious public money to be spent on things we consider to be public ‘goods’.

I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of stem cell research here (happy to another time though).  What I do want to say is this:  this is another example of governments being able to act where individuals cannot. 

There is an argument to be had about how to oversee and award public money.  Creating quangos all over the place probably isn’t the right way to do it – the example of NICE and their ridiculous approval process tells us that.  There needs to be a way to reliably assess what has a chance of success – I can’t think of many governments that would be able to do that (see how difficult it’s been for IT projects…).  There needs to be an acceptance that lots of the research isn’t going to succeed – think of the claims made for AIDS vaccines in the mid-1980s, and today’s complete lack of anything remotely likely to work.

But overall, I believe that these big public works projects can and must be funded by the people who it will benefit – us.  And if private companies fund and develop something themselves that is hugely beneficial and is in demand, good luck to them and their profits.