Love listening to people chatting about Iowa caucuses, like watching a few episodes of The West Wing somehow makes them US political experts

— Steve (@OxfordSpring) January 3, 2012

But my friend Steve is right. I believe you can only offer authoritative comment if you have a very real stake in the election or if you have a deep understanding of the culture within which the politics are taking place. Now you have read the disclaimer please proceed through the rest of the blog…

Radical outsiders in the party machine

As I sit in London watching the GOP soap opera unfold I can’t help wondering whether Ron Paul is to the GOP what Tony Benn was to the British Labour Party in the late 70s/early 80s. Paul is an ideologically driven politician who has a strong base of enthusiastic supporters, but not enough to achieve his ultimate goal – to turn the movement he heads into a mainstream political force. ‘Radical’ is one of the most overused descriptions in politics but both Tony Benn and Ron Paul can rightly be described as such.   

In this analogy the Tea Partyers of today are the Trots of old Labour. A passionate grassroots movement who are attached to mainstream political party but are certainly not of it. Their mission is to change the old vessel so it sails a pure course.

There are obvious differences, most starkly on the contents of their political beliefs. And as Max Wind-Cowie points out:

@betapolitics difference is that Benn was a socialist pushing a socialist party Left while Paul a libertarian cuckoo in a conservative party

— Max Wind-Cowie (@MuscularLiberal) January 11, 2012

But there seems to be a lot of similarities in the energy and trajectory of both movements.

Benn had significant support within the Labour Party but not enough to capture it. The same is true of Paul. Benn and his supporters were unable to compromise with the other elements of the Party because to do so would be a betrayal of their whole philosophy. This nearly destroyed Labour. Can Paul and his supporters make the necessary compromises that are involved in party politics? The conclusion I draw from the Tony Benn experience is that without doing so you achieve nothing except strengthening those you oppose the most (Neo-liberal Conservatives). Some on the revolutionary Left became so disillusioned after their failure to control the party that they even ended up supporting Thatcher over Labour.  As Christopher Hitchin wrote in his memoir Hitch-22:

“A stringently Marxist conclusion from this would have been that if Labour and “the Left” could not or would not confront the ossification of the past, then the historic task would fall to a newly dynamic “Right”.”

What Ron Paul and those who support his platform do after Mitt Romney has sealed the GOP nomination be will fascinating to observe, but not as fascinating as what they will do during the debate about the future of the Republican Party post Obama’s re-election.

One of the things it should do better is to put in place policies that promote growth and prosperity (and one of the ways to do that would be, as I argued in November, to promote economic competition between its members).

So does the agreement reached on Thursday night between the 23 (or 24, 25 or 26) resolve the euro’s problems and promote growth? Actually, no. Which is – among other reasons – why David Cameron was right to say no to it. And furthermore, is why he is correct to refuse to allow those participants who have agreed to it to use the institutions of the EU to implement it.

So much for the facts of the agreement itself. I imagine we’ll be back here again in a few months, with various leaders trying to regulate the wrong things again, and failing to address the real issues of too much spending, too much debt and not enough dynamic wealth creation.

The real question of national interest is pivotal. Angela Merkel, who normally I rather like, said on Thursday evening that the members of the EU should put aside their national interest and act in the interest of the Union. I think that is completely the wrong way round to look at this. The EU should only EVER act for the long-term, national interest of all its members; why would any nation sign up to something that is against its national interest? All that happens is that such decisions breed resentment and enshrine policies which do damage.

Where agreement cannot be reached on something for the national interest of all member states, separate inter-governmental ones should be reached between those nations that do agree – outside the EU as an institution – exactly as had been done this weekend. Crucially, however, one of the reasons the EU can be a good thing is that sometimes the long-term national interests of its members are at odds with short-term political imperatives (climate change policy being the obvious area here); and in those circumstances that is where the EU comes into its own.

What about the politics? The switch in sentiment about David Cameron has been extraordinary. It seems that the only way he has been able to make people believe he means what he says has been to do this on the EU – none of the other things  he has delivered on seem to have made any difference. Apparently the only thing that matters to certain parts of political interest groups is your stance on the EU which is very discouraging when you think about all the other things that matter too.

This is not the start of our path to being Switzerland (lovely though Switzerland is). Nor is it the start of withdrawal from the EU unless various other things happen as well. Sadly we are still going to have to come back to the questions above about debt, spending and growth. Importantly, we are also still signed up to all the various Treaties that came before this weekend.

What I think it can be is a wake-up call and a reminder to all members of what the EU is actually for. It is not unfeasible to have an EU where different groupings decide to do different things because it is in their interests while not being in the interests of others (the euro and Schengen are two obvious precedents). It is not even undesirable. Quite the opposite in fact.

Sarkozy is using the summit to improve his previously beleaguered election chances. As De Gaulle might have told him, using the narrative that he has been fighting against evil Anglo-Saxon irresponsibility for the benefit of Europe (and in France the benefit of Europe translates as “benefit of the French”) will be immensely helpful to him. The only thing I can’t figure out is whether Sarkozy just wanted the argumentor ever expected Britain to give in. Every state has a couple of red-line issues. For example, France would never countenance serious reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. EU negotiations progress by respecting these. If you are serious about changing a country’s “red-line” issue then you need to give something in return and have them involved at the centre of the debate. Neither happened in this case.

Cameron was right to use the veto as the Tobin Tax would have disadvantaged Britain for no other gain. But this does not mean that we have done enough to reform the balance of industrial power within Britain or adequately reformed the finance industry. A lot of thinking still needs to be done over what Britain’s future should look like.

Bill Gates addresses the Conservatives Friends of International Development (photo: Andrew Parsons, www.parsonsmedia.net)

We don’t all need to be the one that does everything. We can all do a little bit, and that’s why Conservative Friends of International Development was set up. What is crucial is an understanding of the impact that development spending can have, and what it really is – for example, polio is 99 per cent eradicated. While the final 1 per cent is the most difficult, it will be eradicated in a very short space of time. When asked how much we spend on international development, the average response is around 17 per cent of the total government budget. People think it should be around 8 per cent. And in fact, it’s around 1 per cent.

There were two things that really struck me at the meeting – first, that, despite the fact that everyone in the room was supposedly a committed Conservative and properly interested in development, significant numbers of them had no idea how the UK’s aid budget is spent. That is shocking, but hopefully CfID will be doing some surprisingly basic education.

The second thing which was much more interesting and positive is this. When the Gates Foundation goes into a country with a vaccination programme, it requires the host nation to contribute what will be the eventual real cost of the vaccine. So, say the eventual cost of something that currently costs $20 is 25 cents (because of economies of scale, initial investment being recouped etc), the host government pays that 25 cents for every dose right from the start, while the Foundation tops up the rest – because it is vital that these programmes be sustainable. The Foundation funds and helps to implement the first – say – ten years, and the host government takes over from there.

Development spending is not just humanitarian aid. It’s not even mostly emergency aid. So much of what is needed is about building the capacity of governments to run their own countries properly, to be responsive and accountable to the needs and wishes of their people, and to grow their economies so that they can trade on equal terms with more developed nations.

As Tim Montgomerie so eloquently writes, so much of this is about how aid is spent and what it’s supposed to do. One of the very greatest successes of this government is the work that it did in Opposition in preparing to run the aid budget. Rightly, DfID has removed funding from programmes that do not work or which do not provide sufficient value for money. It is remarkable that for so many years, no-one made the connection between the best way to fight poverty being capitalism and the need for a competitive approach in deciding what works in development.

All development spending should be targeted on programmes that work towards self-sufficiency. As I’ve written before about domestic charities, NGOs and other organisations should aim to put themselves out of business. While it may not be wholly feasible they should want to not have to do this forever. Because if they DO have to do it forever, are they having a beneficial effect?

My thanks again to Andrew Parsons, of www.parsonsmedia.net, for the use of the photo

It was like being a teenager again early this week, for all the wrong reasons – newspaper splashes like this. Depressing and pointless:

Tories at war over EU - Observer

Nick wrote extensively on the vote itself last week. But there are some wider points. Firstly, the motion which was put down was not government policy – so of course the government was going to impose a three-line whip on it. In fact, I think this was short-sighted of them – in opposition, there was much talk of more free and one line votes on non-binding, committee stage or backbench motions. But allowing one for the first time on this would have sent a message (wrongly interpreted) to those who put it down.

Secondly, what did the motion actually seek to achieve? It was entirely non- specific – what do they want to renegotiate? Going into an argument without knowing what you want out of it is not going to get you far. Related to this is a point I’ve made before – simply complaining about the EU and principles of sovereignty will not make voters see it your way. Being specific, identifying a problem that actually bothers people and then  linking it to the EU if that is actually the problem (as Douglas Carswell often does very effectively) is much more likely to work. But then again, that would require those demanding the vote to be specific – which they can’t be…

Because of my third point. They can’t be specific because no-one actuallyknows what they want to change. There are loads of mutterings about the Human Rights Act (not actually related to the European Union), or health and safety, or straight bananas or whatever. But so much of the time, these are spasms of grumpiness based on Daily Mail headlines, and not on fact. You need to prepare before you start making demands.

George on Wednesday made a point that hadn’t really articulated itself in my head before. In opposition, it’s very easy to rail simplistically against this or that. In government you have the chance to actually do something about it. But you need to be strategic. Beating the government on one vote (while it didn’t happen) wouldn’t have changed anything. There would still need to be all the preparation, investigation, drafting and strategising.

I confess that I find the whole EU debate deadly dull. But there are some principles I think we should apply to it. If we are serious about our free-market values, we should encourage a multi-speed Europe. By that, I mean that, beyond some fundamentals, if some countries want to sign up to some things but others don’t, then let them. For example, one area which is often mentioned for repatriation of powers is employment law. One attendee was horrified that Germany would have to maintain the EU regulations when we wouldn’t, and Germany would therefore feel that we had an unfair advantage. But surely the point is that if Germany felt that their implementation of the EU regulations was bad for Germany, they too could choose to withdraw from some of them.

Strangely, many of the EU’s principles externally are about competition. Internally however, it often seems to want to create a sort of collectivist blur of standardisation. Surely it should encourage political as well as economic competition?

My final point is this. The change to the rules of succession which was announced yesterday is not before time, but despite the dire warnings of trench warfare within the Commonwealth, it has been agreed swiftly, neatly and without much fuss. Because it was sensible, it was timely, and the participants were prepared. Lessons should be learnt.

That all sounds quite fluffy, but it’s important for two reasons. The first is that when people achieve for themselves, they grow in confidence and in capacity, which means they can go on to achieve more. The second is that there is a new focus on how the aim of foreign aid should be to make itself largely redundant, and replaced by domestic governance, institutions, growth and resilience.

It’s not going to happen overnight, and there will always be a place for emergency aid and humanitarian intervention because unfortunately natural disasters and wars will always be with us. Of course, every nation is different, but the building blocks of secure, prosperous countries are clear – democratic governance, peaceful borders, effective and accountable institutions, cohesive communities, and a strong civil society.

I am currently working on a campaign for free and fair elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo (www.freefairdrc.com) – because as outsiders, we have a duty to help young democracies on their way. It’s not enough to have the first election seen to be free and fair and then leave them to it. Young democracies need our help – to make their democracy work for them, to build strong and accountable institutions, and to grow into secure, responsible trading partners.

Democracy obviously has to come from within a nation – it cannot, to coin a phrase, be dropped from 40,000 feet, and for democracy to have a chance, a nation must first of all have peace and purpose from within. Sometimes, however, as we’ve seen withIraq,Afghanistan,Libya,Ivory CoastorRwanda, that has to be in some way boosted from outside.  If the last 15 years have taught us anything, though, it’s that the international community can and must do more before we get to the point of needing military intervention to enable democracy to flourish.

There are many organisations around the world which do significant work with domestic institutions and civil society organisations. I am proud to have helped, in an almost infinitesimal way, a human rights organisation inRwandato raise funds and communicate more effectively, and to plan and deliver the work it is doing, right now, with victims of violence in the East of the country. It also works with the government ofRwandaon such vital reforms as land and property rights, women’s rights and legal process to instil universal democratic values within the country. We all know that no nation is a perfect democracy, every single one of us could do better, but democracy is an evolving process and it’s a moral requirement, particularly for us in theUK, to do everything we can to enable other nations to make their democracies a success.

Maintaining supportive links, a watchful eye and help where it’s needed are vital to building capacity within new democracies. That’s why I went to Rwanda. That’s why I’m working with the FreeFair DRC campaign. That’s why we all – as fortunate citizens of a rich nation – have a duty to press our government to support and challenge developing democracies around the world to deliver the best they can for their people.

One of the (many) things we did was a Q&A with Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development who as I’ve said before is one of my favourite ministers. Part of what he was talking about was the new DfID Global Poverty Action Fund, which aims to fulfil the UN’s Millennium Development Goals in specific countries, through work on supporting service delivery, empowerment and accountability, and conflict, security and justice.

One of the areas our partners were concerned about was a reduction in direct funding to NGOs, as 65 per cent of DfID funding is now delivered to the Rwandan Government in Budget Support. This means that the government spends the money (with agreed accountability to DfID) to deliver services rather than individual and independent organisations.

As you must be aware, I am very much a localist, Big Societal kind of Tory. In the UK, the government does all sorts of things that it should not. But – of course – Rwanda is not the UK and until fairly recently the government did not do all sorts of things that it should have done. Building the capacity of a government to deliver effective, impartial and improving services is hugely important in helping poorer nations to grow and develop. In Rwanda, about five per cent of the UK’s aid total will be spent on increasing accountability of the government to its citizens.

I had various discussions about the rights and wrongs of the principle of this over the last two weeks. I remain of the view that it is a vital component of why we have an aid budget in the first place – to build the capacity of states to operate on their own eventually. Having accountable, responsive and responsible governments is absolutely key in ensuring that nations can fulfill their potential. All over Kigali, there are big indicators of government presence – signs on schools, on government buildings, public education adverts (including those warning against the infamous Sugar Daddies/Mummies), new roads, traffic police… And this is a good thing, particularly in an area which has historically seen chaos and instability, and which has suffered particularly from a lack of effective and cohesive governance.

So those local charities and NGOs which we’ve been working with (along with all the others) have to ensure that they work with their government’s intentions – Vision 2020 is the Rwandan government’s strategic plan, and every organisation was aware of it. They need to ensure that they deliver effectively – there’s no point in just handing over cash to make the same mistakes or fail to change anything. And they need to ensure that governance, accountability, development and growth are part of how they operate every day.

As this very interesting article (via @IanBirrell) points out, in many failed/ing states, the government has effectively withdrawn from most of the things it should do. I don’t wholly buy into the author’s support for the Crisis Caravan, but the idea that incoherent, uncoordinated, ad hoc interventions are less effective than good, responsive governance certainly makes sense.

I  follow the historian Eric Hobsbawm in considering that the high point of European Civilisation was reached in the nineteenth century, based on peace, free trade and prosperity. This civilisation was destroyed by the carnage of the First World War which was caused by rival state nationalisms. For three decades Europe descended into barbarity; nations sought refuge behind protective trade barriers and the result was economic stagnation.

After the Second World War, thanks to the European Coal and Steel Community ( which removed from national control the two elements necessary to make weapons of war) and the European Common Market ,peace, free trade and prosperity returned to Europe. This was a virtual rebirth of civilisation which has continued up to today.  However, civilisation is always vulnerable; the break-up of Yugoslavia showed that the cancer of xenophobic nationalism is still a threat and ready to spread should the EU and the euro fail.

The adoption of the euro by the Maastricht Treaty (1992) was a decisive step on the road to European integration.  It had two implications: first that countries who had agreed to use the same currency were thereby committing themselves to support each other and, second , that since no currency in history has been able to function without being the instrument of a single government, the countries of the eurozone would have to evolve towards a single government with a single economic policy.

The present crisis has come about because a succession of European leaders have chosen to ignore these implications; weaker economies became isolated dominoes ready to fall on each other when pushed by market speculation.  There was nothing inevitable about this. It came about through a lack of vision and courage on the part of the same politicians who preferred to contract enormous national debts rather than present their electorates with the choice between increased taxes or reduced expenditure.

The agreement reached at last Thursday’s summit is important because it shows that governments have now been obliged to recognise the implications of Maastricht.  It is encouraging that the agreement goes beyond resolving the problem of Greece.  The greater involvement of the European Central Bank and the powers granted to the European Financial Stability Facility to provide credit to member states point the way towards what would prove to be a real solution, namely the creation of a European federal  budget with its own public debt. The EU at present has the immense advantage over nation states of having no debt. It can therefore borrow sums of money sufficiently large to protect member states from the attacks of the market and at the same time this money can be invested in economic development and research.   The British know well that not all debts are bad news; it was our invention of the national debt which laid the foundations of our empire in the eighteenth century.

The European economy is potentially the most powerful economy in the world but it needs economic and political integration to realise its full potential.  Once this process begins, however, the economic benefits could be so great that the process itself could accelerate. In a globalised world of competing continental power blocks, we really have no choice but progress down this road.  The survival of our civilisation is at stake.

In an ideal world, sure. Why not? But this is not an ideal world. This is a shaky world trying to contain the symptoms of a crumbling Europe. The only place Britain should occupy in this landscape is high atop the cliffs of Dover, rationing the life rings and looking smug.

The age of the Euro-sceptics is over, for they have been proved right. The “sceptic” suffix can now shift across to the anti climate-change lobby, and Euro-realist should become the new label for those of us who question the EU’s economic self-destruction or gratuitous political power-grabs.

The days of suspicion must surely have passed. Those who advance a pro-federalist vision of Europe may as well claim that the earth is flat; the evidence is simply not in their favour any more. We are not talking about ideals and visions any more. When we were, it was easy for the soft-left to take the position that EU integration meant peace and prosperity – and if you were against that, what sort of person were you?

Well, it’s fair to say that the great European project is coming off the rails. Isn’t there a wonderful irony here? Whenever the people of Europe were consulted on this plan they tended to say No. But not even tens of millions of voters shouting NO at the same time could put the brakes on this. The only thing that looks likely to rip this train from its tracks is the obstinate, delusional decision makers at the heart of Europe who would rather die than fail.

No amount of money, spin or head-in-sand-burying can rescue the European Union from the disaster it has created. The evidence is so overwhelming that it’s hardly even a fair fight. Who would have thought, even a few years ago, that the grand socio-economic-political experiment could actually end up ripping Europe apart? That may sound a little dramatic, but it’s no longer that absurd to suggest that we could be spending those old Francs on a booze cruise in the not too distant future.

Why? Why has this project so turned the stomachs of our nations? The fact of the matter is that there is nothing to defend. Those who still proclaim the virtues of a European super-state are clinging to a vision no less attainable than it was 10 years ago, or 30 years ago.

The UK is but one country of many in the European project. And what do we have to show for it? A fisheries policy that penalises fishing. A farming policy that throws farmers on the bonfire if they can’t keep up with ruinous EU rules. University campuses that get hit with fines for a failure to show sufficient appreciation for EU ideals. World class sports teams that must redesign their kits to include the symbol of the Motherland. A political process that has been neutered by unaccountable decision making processes. I could go on….

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the British public favour withdrawal from this ghastly experiment, and who can blame them? Is it xenophobic to seek control of our own employment law? Is it small-minded to want to draft our own security policies, relevant to our own people? Is it backward-looking to be thankful that we didn’t join the Euro? And is it really so bad that, having witnessed the disastrous fate of the countries that lapped all this up, we should be more sceptical than ever? Actually, strike that. I don’t mean “sceptical” – I mean realistic. The British people have a remarkably well-informed and realistic view of the EU project, and it is high time that the people had their say on the matter.

One may justifiably infer from this tweet that this man wanted to be seen as a lone crusader, fighting against the ‘evils’ he saw in Norwegian culture and politics. Yet before this man’s identity was released the mass voice of the pitchfork wielding twitter united to condemn ‘Islamists’ terrorists who would attack any nation with boots on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Despite there being no proof or evidence, certain conclusions were jumped to with almost frightening ease.

This man’s actions are abhorrent and utterly wrong. All our sympathy and thoughts go to the families of the innocent victims.

This blog is not about the horror of the act, which is adhorrent in every way, it is about our automatic assumption that abhorrent and utterly wrong attacks committed in Western countries are the work of extremist Muslim factions. The term ‘Islamist’ implies an attachment to Islam, a belief in Allah and a worship of the Quran; however anyone who has ever read this Holy Book can categorically tell you that Islam is a faith that contains a high level of tolerance and much love, similar to Christianity. Of course we will find acts of war and aggression within the Quran but, just as the Old Testament’s aggressions are often considered poetry with lessons of morality to be learnt, this is the same with the Quran.

These automatic assumptions were not just the reaction of casual tweeters; it was the reaction of Members of Parliament and terrorist experts who were called in to television studios to dissect an ever changing story.

We live in a world of fast moving opinion where the desire for rolling media and commentary means that quality is often sidelined for quantity. With attention spans short, and memories even shorter, we assign the term terrorist to a single group, identifiable by race and language, forgetting that terrorism is not a new phenomenon; it is a tool that has been used over centuries by many nations and certainly in the name of most faiths.

By using the term Islamist we inherently and incorrectly link terrorist acts to a faith that condones no such action. In allowing these flippant assumptions to be made we allow individuals to be stereotyped and persecuted. You may not necessarily notice this in metropolitan cities such as London but travel further afield and the repercussions are tangible. When people are attacked in their hometown because they are wearing a headscarf or the English Defence League is allowed to march through our high streets we provide the food upon which the extremists feed. Automatically assigning terrorist acts to groups such as Al- Qaeda on our televisions- rather than on banners – is merely the intellectual and acceptable equivalent face of racism. To hear that a bomber is white and blonde was a notable and newsworthy aspect of the story. It shouldn’t be.