Friends Don't Threaten Each Other, Barack.

Friends Don’t Threaten Each Other, Barack.

Not in a healthy relationship, anyway.

Time and memory are precious commodities in politics, made so by the fact that they are in short supply. But I invite you back to 2013 and the occasion of the G20 summit in St Petersburg.

Britain had been branded “just a small island” by Vladmir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “No one pays any attention to them.”

David Cameron saw this as the perfect time to emulate the best, most foppish and lecherous Prime Minister Britain never had. This was his Hugh Grant moment. Britain, he said, was great. Sorry, is great. We beat fascism and slavery with Dick Francis and One Direction.

Absent from his sterling riposte (aside from any retort to the comments also reportedly made by Mr. Peskov about Russia owning Kensington and Chelsea) was a very important qualification.

The qualification is an inconsistency (I do not say paradox); one that never seems to be caught in the open but is detectable by its scent and the vague sense that something is happening just out of eye-line and ear-shot. It is a dog doggedly dogging in the dark; that unsettling thing that you seldom see as you stroll through the woods but that you are quite sure exists.  

And it is unique to the Better Together tribute act. The Brexit campaign has an alternative which is at least rhetorically cogent: Britain is great and therefore capable; it is great enough to, so-to-speak, stand alone. Moreover its greatness is served best by standing alone; it is only being held down by the burdens of a failing foreign power.

Cameron’s omission of this inconsistency is also one of Remain’s biggest flaws. It seems, at best superficially and at worst seriously, incongruous to speak of the boldness, patriotism, bravery and greatness of Britain if your argument tacitly acknowledges that we are reliant upon others for our status.

I make no secret of my own partisanship. Though I could hardly be accused of patriotism, I do not think that Britain is necessarily reliant upon Europe for its status.

But David Cameron undoubtedly is. George Osborne is, too. (Not for nothing does one cultivate a cosy relationship with Christine Lagarde.) The belated concession to those clamouring for a referendum forced them to gamble on that most important of currencies in politics: legacy.

So, whilst Mr. Peskov elicited such a quaint but firm response, Barack Obama was met not only with what we are obliged to call the red carpet treatment but also the personal and absolutely slavish devotion and indebtedness of the leader of a supposedly proud nation.

We should not kid ourselves on this: Barack Obama, speaking in the nauseatingly ‘candid’ tones of a dear ‘friend’, has left us with no room to doubt the depths of esteem in which he holds the junior partner in the special relationship; a real and valuable relationship disgraced by the monarchical attitude of the President and by a Prime Minister with an expression befitting only a sufferer from Stockholm Syndrome.

The conclusion we should draw from Obama’s speech is that Britain serves American interests by acting as its 51^st state lobbying within the borders of Europe; both a prostitute and a pimp. Out of Europe, Britain ceases to perform that useful function and is then, as Mr. Peskov stated, “just a small island.” No one will pay any attention to us, not least the United States, who will happily push us to “the back of the queue.”

A friendly reminder, apparently. Well, as the old saying goes: with friends like these, who needs enemies?

We are fortunate that the political scene in the United States suggests Mr. Obama was speaking not for any future administration and barely even for his own. Even Anne Applebaum, normally as astute as a tactical nuclear weapon, has noticed the almost perfectly bipartisan move away from exactly the type of trade deal (TPP and TTIP) that Obama has chosen to weaponize.

Whether Trump or Cruz, Clinton or Sanders, the next president is not likely to accelerate any free trade deal of the type for which he is an increasingly lonely advocate. And I know for a fact that I speak for many, on both sides of the Atlantic and of the supposed political divide, when I say that I would not be sorry to see daddy confiscate those particular toys. Let us continue to be the largest single foreign investor into the United States and still register a trade surplus without signing away the future of the NHS in a bid to appease any desire for ‘harmonization’.

But seldom is it that monarchs are concerned with reality, and Barack Obama is the most monarchical President of my living memory. He seems to have given no consideration whatever to the necessary trade-offs required by our continued membership of the European Union; democracy, accountability and sovereignty were not factored into his speech.

Then again, this is a President more at home in the company of our own queen than he would ever be in the House of Commons. His rhetoric is smooth and polished, his presentation superb, but this is a man whose tenure in high office only flourished after the Democrats lost both the House and the Senate. This is a man whose astonishing hubris (he claimed of his own election that it marked the moment the oceans ceased to rise) was only ever constrained by democracy and fit only to be enacted by decree. The leader of the free world has always preferred to act by executive order, often imposing policies less extreme than those he presented to his political opponents in the certain knowledge that they would be rejected. His lasting democratic achievement is the making of democracy redundant: rendering Republican speaker John Boehner’s position all but untenable and creating the very divide he has since used to justify his royal prerogative.

And this is a President whose promised “Change We Need” and “Change We Can Believe In” has been so remarkable by its absence that huge swathes of voters are now, apparently without self-critique, flocking to the candidate, Hillary Clinton, he once (and rightly) portrayed as the antithesis of that change. Millions more are so fed up with business as usual that they are helping to create the biggest protest movement since the Dixicrats walked out of the Democrats’ convention in ’48.

Barack Obama is popular. And, if popularity is a measure of success, then he is successful. His words and his warnings will probably resonate in the halls of the debate over Europe. But he will leave office with his legacy that of a commander by diktat; one whose actions demonstrate an absolute failure to work within the confines of democracy and to whom the notion of accountability and due process is seemingly alien. Little wonder, then, that he has many friends in the pro-EU establishment.

But, stripped (as he is soon to be) of the regalia of his esteemed office, his arguments for our continued membership are less convincing than those of even the least competent junior minister. That he used the privilege of his power to threaten the people of the United Kingdom is a repugnant abuse of his position, evidence of the vacuity of his cause, and an abuse of the friendship he affects to laud.           

Saudi Arabia is Going to Execute a Poet.

On the Perversions of our ‘Allies’ and a Defence of a Poet.

(This piece was originally written for The Heythrop Lion's 'THIS' Magazine

 

There are few occasions on which the United Nations is able to disgrace itself more effectively than when it comes to making appointments to committees and sinecures. Iraq, for example, was due to take the chairmanship of the special committee on disarmament in 2003; a move prohibited not by any common sense on the part of the U.N. but because the US-led intervention in that same year made such an appointment impossible. Iran has recently been re-elected to a seat on the U.N’s Commission on the Status of Women. Robert Mugabe, the subject of a wide-ranging travel ban, was asked to be an ambassador for tourism in 2012, and the Human Rights Council  - which counts amongst its membership such bastions of human rights as Pakistan and Uganda and the Holy See – is currently chaired by Saudi Arabia.

It should come as no surprise that the U.N., which makes no firm commitment to anything save the moral imperative to create ever more useless, ever more profligate committees, will express no opinion on the matter of Saudi Arabia’s chairmanship. Rather more depressing, though, is the silence on the part of our own government (which, by taking part in tactical vote-trading with Saudi Arabia, ensured that country’s elevation to its current lofty position) on the crimes against humans and human rights being committed almost every day by the head of the UNHRC.

The Kingdom’s recent history – and by recent I speak of the past few months – is a hideous collection of sundered heads and bloodied bodies. The execution of the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was at least granted some coverage in the Western media, though the Obama and Cameron administrations declined to condemn it in anything but uncertain terms. The sentencing of the human rights blogger Raif Badawi to 10 years in prison and one thousand lashes (a punishment that has had to be staggered given the very real chance that it might have killed him) has received less attention than that, possibly due to the fact that it did not cause embassies to be closed or burned, but it, too, has been covered.

But whilst the first example can be understood in the context of Saudi Arabia’s prosecution of its not-so-cold war with Iran, and both cases can be seen as the desperate actions of a regime seeking to re-establish sure-footing following the death of King Abdullah and the destabilizing effects of Islamic State (and how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!), it is the impending execution of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh which speaks most clearly to the character of the House of Saud.

It serves no purpose as an act of geo-realpolitik. Nor is it part of a wider attempt at suppressing political dissent. The sentence of death in this case, for the related but distinct crimes of apostasy and ‘spreading blasphemous ideas’ in his art (charges he denies), are symptoms of a deep-rooted loathing of art and music and freedom of thought and expression; a loathing which is a necessary consequence of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi or Salafist iteration of Sharia. It should be of great concern to all of us that that is the iteration which we in the West are made to import into our own countries, often through Saudi-printed and Saudi-approved copies of the Quran with which we stock our prison libraries, and also in the form of ‘generous’ donations to mosques and madrassas made by the Saudi state. The exporting of evangelization and religious coercion, often in radicalizing forms, is one of the largest and least spoken-of facets of Saudi trade policy.  

(And it is no coincidence that the same aversion to aesthetics and thought can also be found in wide swathes of Pakistan, in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and in the territories in Iraq and Syria governed by Islamic State. But, of course, it has nothing to do with Islam.)

I cannot attest to the quality or beauty or insightfulness of Ashraf Fayadh’s poetry. I cannot read his works in the language in which they were written and I am increasingly of the opinion that poetry can never be properly translated without suffering some essential loss. I cannot even support Ashraf’s claim that he is innocent of the charges levelled against him. Fortunately, I do not need to. For it should go without saying that apostasy and blasphemy are not considered crimes under any sane system of justice, and the decisions by the Saudi authorities to deny Ashraf anything like a fair trial, not to mention access to a lawyer, are so obviously in contravention of international law and of human rights as enshrined by the UNHRC – yes, again, the very body now chaired from Riyadh – that there really is, on our side, no case to defend.

But there is undoubtedly a case to be prosecuted, and every passing day on which the wider international community remains silent is one in which our supposed commitment to support human rights and values is side-lined by spreadsheet morality; by concerns over arms deals and oil exports. Remember when, following the attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the streets of Paris were treated to a parade of world leaders, all of whom voiced their commitment to uphold the rights of freedom of thought and expression? Well, where are they now? Where is their support now?!

It should be beholden upon all of us, and not just those who claim to speak for us, to combat the forces who prefer and who act in the hopes of achieving an unfeeling, unthinking, beauty-less world. But it should be particularly important for us, we subjects of this disunited kingdom, to speak more loudly and with an especially firm commitment to purpose in matters such as this. For we have known its antithesis, and it has cost us dearly in the past.

The case of Ashraf Fayadh bears the hallmarks of the affairs of both Salman Rushdie and Oscar Wilde. The facts of the former should be so well-known that they need no restating here – the sentencing to death of a writer for the crime of writing is abhorrent to us, isn’t it? Laws against blasphemy and ‘offensiveness’ are loathsome and infantile, are they not?

But the second might perhaps require something more by way of explanation. Indeed, its inclusion here caused me to think and think again, but I have concluded that it is right to include it and the point it makes is more than salient. For the ruin of Oscar Wilde, like the attack on Mr. Fayadh, are both proofs that can be used against W.H. Auden’s fatuous claim that ‘poetry makes nothing happen.’ And both are examples of individuals sent down by forms of love. To quote from Alfred Douglas’s fateful poem: a love ‘that dare not speak its name.’

The ‘Shame’ spoken of and felt (and, yes, acted upon) by the likes of Wilde and Bosie, which was a crime (and remains a crime in places like Saudi Arabia), is just as natural and vital to us as the ‘crime’ for which Ashraf Fayadh has been condemned. It is natural to us because it is of our nature! The dignity of our species, in other words, demands that we use and are able to use, free from fear of punishment, our ability to think and to write what we think, and to portray beauty, and to practice it and feel it with all the pain and reverence and hard work befitting any fundamental Love. To deny the freedom to think is to deny the freedom to love. They are, in that sense, two forms of the same virtue. And it allows one to accuse the House of Saud, and religion, as being opposed to love. Which it is; which they both are.

I have penned a poem – The Ballad of Burning - which shares its sentiment with that expressed within this piece.  I had thought to close with it. But as there is a place set aside in this august journal – a poets’ corner, of a kind - for works of rhyme and rhythm and metre (and sometimes those that lack the same, but that is an argument for another time), I have decided instead to close with the words of another.

Part of the title of this piece is taken (and then reworked) from Percy Bysshe-Shelley’s polemic, published posthumously, entitled ‘A defence of Poetry.’  It is amongst the most eloquent cases ever made for art and for the meaning and the importance of art. I encourage the reader to peruse it in its entirety, but it closes as follows:

“Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

The point, if I have done my job, is clear. And I hope that you will join with me, and with the good people at PEN International, and Amnesty International, and the innumerable poets and writers and musicians and ordinary human beings in doing what our government is too cowardly to do on our behalf: condemn this sentence, condemn this crime, and work for the freedom of Mr. Ashraf Fayadh.

Tory Peer in Call for 'Practical' SRE in Primary Schools.

Conservative peer in call for ‘practical’ sex ed lessons.

The Conservative peer Lord Sleaze is to push ahead with his controversial SRE campaign despite widespread criticism of his proposals. In a speech tomorrow, Lord Sleaze is expected to call for ‘practical instruction’ to be included as part of a scheme entailing mandatory SRE education for primary school pupils.

TNN contacted Mr. Sleaze, who had this to say on the subject.

“Now look. I know this proposal has its critics, but I tell you: I went to a private school; one that was free to pursue its own agenda as regards sex education. They accepted the need for practical lessons as a matter of course. And, clearly, it’s done me no harm. Look at me now!”

Mr. Sleaze, who attended the Bernard Law Catholic School for Boys in Boston, Massachusetts,  before pursuing his political career in the United Kingdom, added that “though the Conservative party is obviously not in favour of lowering the age of consent, or encouraging that kind of thing in general, it is undeniably true that young people are not sufficiently educated in these matters. Education is vital if one is to hold a sensible, informed opinion on anything.”

Mr. Sleaze was unwilling to comment on the reluctance of parliamentarians to introduce compulsory politics, ethics and citizenship classes into the national curriculum.

Critics of his proposal have claimed that primary school children are too young to be educated in matters relating to sex, let alone involved in practical demonstrations. However, the notoriously outspoken peer has been unrepentant. 

“Most of my critics have mothers and fathers who were fourteen or fifteen at the time of conception. So, yes, I suppose I should declare an interest in this matter, as many of these thoughtless cretins wouldn’t have been born had my proposals been enforced two or three decades ago.”

Lord Sleaze has made the news in recent weeks after being linked with the loss of a Home Office dossier containing information of suspected paedophiles within the political system. However, he does not look kindly on those who accuse him of wrongdoing.

“This is exactly why [Home Secretary] Theresa May’s proposed reforms on free speech and the human rights act are necessary,” he said. “This nonsense. This lurid speculation. Of course I wasn’t involved in Operation Cover—err, in this matter. The loss of this document is tragic, to be sure, but to suggest that I had anything to do with it?! Nonsense. Sedition. Seditious nonsense. I’m as fervent an advocate for free speech as anyone you’ll meet, but free speech comes with responsibility. Namely the responsibility not to slander me.”

Lord Sleaze’s speech to UKMBLA UK will be broadcast live on TNNTV from 13:00 tomorrow.

Mirror Mirror

Mirror Mirror

Mirror mirror in my hand, who is the fairest in the land?

InstaTwitter and teenagers are reality’s attempt to fill the void occupied in Disneyworld by the magic mirror of fairytales. As is its fashion, reality’s attempt at emulation hasn’t been entirely successful, causing self-esteem to soar to the top of the list of first world problems. And the move has led to a movement, with some online communities taking on the ambitious challenge of affixing the word ‘shaming’ to every noun and adjective in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The evil queen in Snow White didn’t have to deal with this. She occupied a sparsely populated world in which beauty was objectively objective. As such, her magic mirror could, when asked, give her a definitive answer. It could, and did, tell the truth.

Ed Miliband owns a mirror. Nick Robinson was on good form when he interviewed Mr Miliband earlier this week, closing with this very silly question: “When you look in a mirror in the morning, do you see a prime minister?”

Mr Miliband’s response was predictable. “Absolutely!”

This caused me to wonder aloud and to myself for a few minutes. Was he the victim of some fratricidal prank? Had his brother replaced the mirror with a picture of Tony Blair, or even of himself? But I’m prepared to take him at his word, and accept that his mirror is, quite probably, lying to him.

Mr Miliband can perhaps be forgiven for seeking solace by imaginatively augmenting his own reflection. But the mirror is not the polls, and the mirror is not the papers, and the mirror is not his party. Those are the things that matter whether we like it or not, and those are the areas in which Miliband is failing; falling with no style whatsoever.

Let’s proceed in order, and take the polls and papers first:

From the Evening Standard and reported in The Guardian: “The Ipsos Mori research for the Evening Standard found the Conservatives on 32%, Labour on 29%, the Liberal Democrats on 9% and Ukip on 14%. Asked about Miliband as leader, the poll found just 13% of the public think he is ready to be prime minister and his approval rating was lower than that of the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg.

Among Labour supporters, 58% said they were dissatisfied with his performance as leader... Miliband now has the highest level of dissatisfaction among leaders of his or her own party since records began 20 years ago.”

From The Telegraph: “Only one in 10 women believes that Mr Miliband would be “more respected around the world” than Mr Cameron... Mr Miliband is also failing to convince Labour voters that he is capable of being an effective global statesman.

Only 31 per cent of people who voted Labour in 2010 believe he would be more respected than Mr Cameron, with 20 per cent of Labour voters saying the Conservative leader would be better.

Mr Cameron also beats Mr Miliband by a ratio of two to one on perceptions of his ability to make the right decisions “when the going gets tough”.

The findings suggest that the Labour leader’s personal style is likely to be a drag on his party’s fortunes. By contrast, Mr Cameron still appears to be more popular as a leader than his party.”

And, from The New Statesman: “The picture for Labour in Scotland is looking bleak. Latest polling from Ipsos Mori has found that 52 per cent of Scots will be voting for the SNP in next year’s general election, with only 23% intending to back Labour.” What does this mean for Labour’s chances at the next election? “[In the last week of October] it was estimated that Labour would lose 15 seats to the SNP. Now it could be as many as 36 of their 41 seats – a historic moment of major catastrophe in British politics.”

Granted, most opinion polls are junk. But they do influence public perception, and that, in turn, influences a large number of journalists. Narrative is possibly the closest we are ever likely to get to perpetual motion.

Speaking of journalists – Look at the names of the papers reporting these polls! People who write for The Guardian, The Observer and The New Statesman tend to sympathise with Labour. One expects a good deal of gloating from the likes of the Mail, the Express and The Sun, but support for Mr Miliband in the left-leaning newspapers is lukewarm at best.

Miliband and his team have drawn criticism from the likes of Guardian contributor Roy Greenslade, who had this to say on the Labour leader’s flirtation with The Sun: “The electorate can see through his attempt to find some kind of accommodation with anti-Labour publishers and editors: it reeks of hypocrisy.

There is nothing to be gained from the exercise. Indeed, it's much worse than that. It could cost valuable votes by suggesting that Miliband wants to be all things to all people. It lacks principle.

He goes on to mention criticism of the party leadership from Labour MP Jon Cruddas, which was leaked to The Sunday Times: “[The article] does not, however, mention the crucial argument advanced by Cruddas: the failing of Labour's leadership has been to create "cynical nuggets of policy to chime with our focus groups and press strategy".

“That's a good point, is it not? Miliband's press strategy is informed by a desire to appease anti-Labour newspapers. It is a barren and ultimately flawed strategy.”

Jason Cowley, writing in The New Statesman, is perhaps a little generous when he says that Miliband’s problems are not a result of policy (they are, at least in part) but does acknowledge that the Labour leader has problems with “tone” and that “increasingly he seems trapped.” George Eaton, of the same paper, tows a similar line: Miliband “needs to work on his personal brand.” And Dan Hodges, who professes to be a lifelong Labour supporter, writes in the Telegraph under a headline that includes the sentence “Labour has left itself on the wrong side of every debate.”

It’s not just a handful of disgruntled journalists, either. (The Left has good reason to be disgruntled, but more on that later.) The amount of dirty laundry flying around Victoria Street should come as a surprise to those who remember the hyper-efficient spin machine created and employed to good effect by New Labour.

Miliband has been criticised in public by Lord Prescott of the Working Class for his “timid” strategy and “underwhelming” conference performance. Ed Balls – the shadow chancellor, no less – expressed his “surprise” when Miliband forgot to mention the deficit in that same speech. Margaret Hodge, Tessa Jowell and Diane Abbott have all voiced doubts about Miliband’s proposed mansion tax. (All three are considering running for Mayor of London, but the issue, as far as leadership is concerned, is not that these people are being disingenuous but that they are doing it in public.) As if that weren’t enough, an article in the Observer on November 9^th claimed that the magazine had been approached by three “senior Labour MPs.” They spoke under condition of anonymity, and their claims should be treated with scepticism, but the article states that “at least 20” shadow ministers are “on the brink of calling for him to stand down.”

“There is a significant number of frontbenchers who are concerned about Ed’s leadership – or lack of leadership – and would be ready to support someone who is a viable candidate.” Their preferred candidate is the lovable Alan Johnson, though he has attempted to distance himself from the rebel alliance.

Those attempting to defend Miliband have contributed to his troubles. The likes of Neil Kinnock seem to think that the most effective strategy is to tell the dissenters to “shut up and deal with it.” Hardly a ringing endorsement, and the attention it has drawn seems to have hindered the loyalists’ case.

Meanwhile, the award for the most incompetent defense goes to Tristram Hunt for this remarkable effort: “I never believed the answer to Labour’s problems was to show people more of Ed Miliband. It was a ridiculous idea dreamed up by his advisers who have served him badly... It has been a complete failure. It is making things worse, not better. Ed has excellent qualities but that is not the way to show them. It is absurd.” (He then took to Twitter to claim that he’d been misrepresented. He wasn’t misrepresented, he was careless. Either he wants Miliband to be an invisible leader or he does not.)

Politics should be about substance, not image or personality. I know. It’s a well-worn phrase. Miliband has said it himself. "David Cameron is a very sophisticated and successful exponent of a politics based purely on image... I am not going to be able to compete with that and I don't intend to... I am not from central casting. You can find people who are more square-jawed, more chiselled. Look less like Wallace.”

Nothing to disagree with there.

I also know that it is far too easy to make cheap jokes at his expense. We can all do it. He has the smile of a serial killer, or the distant relative you’ve heard all those stories about. His face wouldn’t look out of place in a Dali exhibition, and so on.

But this is a man who still insists on making a mess of the very thing he claims to be against. This is the man who flirts with the Sun, who is physically incapable of eating a sandwich, who can give the same answer to four different questions in one interview, who makes giving money to the homeless look bad, and who is so obsessed with style that he thinks a good speech is one given without notes. (That particular stunt drew criticism from Len McCluskey, of all people.) This is a man who can’t even demonstrate hypocrisy properly!

He cannot lead his own party. He has alienated his supporters. He cannot handle the press. He will not challenge austerity. He will not debate Europe. He will not challenge the TTIP. He cannot challenge an unpopular Tory party. He offers nothing to the working class. He offers no Left alternative. He offers no alternative.

His magic mirror may lie to him, but it seems reality will not. If Labour win the next election, it will be in spite of their leader, not because of him. Some people warrant their ‘shaming’.

On the Consequences of the Election, and A Brief List of Our Ills.

When considering this supposed earthquake, we should be mindful of the fact that nobody can confidently predict its order of magnitude. George Eaton, at The New Statesman, reminds us that the European contest should not be seen as a reliable forecast of the general election. We will see, in the intervening period, no small amount of fanciful conjecture offered up by analysts in the media, but it is only after the general election that the true force of this earthquake, and any subsequent aftershocks, will be known. 

Friends, colleagues, and comrades (such as Joshua White, whose excellent blog can be found here), are wont to point out that, for all the flashing purple on Jeremy Vine's grandiose re-imagining of Risk, UKIP failed to gain overall control of a single council. They also point out that turnout in the UK fell slightly, resting at a measly 33.8%. (To put this in context, turnout for the 2010 general election was  65.1%.)

They are right to do so. But I caution against the desire to read too much into either statistic, and, more generally, against the desire to downplay the performance of Nigel Farage and his lackeys. It will have far reaching effects. (I speak in terms of domestic politics, but the rise of UKIP must be put into an international context, too. These elections have seen notable victories for Marine le Pen's Front National, the Danish People's Party, and Hungary's vile Jobbik movement. We have reason to be thankful for the presence of Alexis Tsipras and Syriza from Greece, but any Leftist jubilation should be tempered by the knowledge that Golden Dawn will be sending at least two MEPs to Brussels.)

The all but total annihilation of the Liberal Democrats hints at widespread public disaffection with the traditional third wheel of British politics. Whilst Nick Clegg (the skirting board of the establishment which so riles UKIP's supporters) performed abysmally in his ill-advised debates with Nigel Farage, I find it hard to accept the suggestion that the Liberal Democrat stance on Europe is the sole cause of their demise. Local council elections appear to support this thesis. There is a groundswell of anger and bitterness, directed at the Liberal Democrats, and, with only a year until the general election, they will be hard-pressed to win back those whose trust they betrayed when last they were given it. 

Clegg still has the support of Mr Ashdown, but there is a faction, somewhat nebulous in nature, which would gladly see him resign. (What better demonstration of his fall from grace than the suggestion that he may now be more popular with the Conservatives than with members of his own party!) Already we have seen John Pugh, Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, advocate a "Cable succession" during a BBC interview.  

I do not intend to make a habit of citing opinion polls. Fraudulent pseudo-science rarely makes for a decent source (and you can often guess at the findings of the poll by the name of the think tank or newspaper that commissioned it). But, for the sake of argument, let us take as gospel, or as at least a vision of truth, the figures from UK Polling Report. 

Further, let us assume that, in the absence of any defining, opinion shifting events between this moment and the day polls close next year, Labour will go into the election with a projected lead of no more than three or four points. The BBC published the findings of its own poll on the 24th of this month, predicting a Labour victory on 31%, with the Conservatives trailing on 29%, UKIP in third place and with a 17% share of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats in fourth with 13%. 

Based on these (admittedly ambitious) assumptions, or assuming that the figures are very close to the eventual truth, we can predict (and here I have used the 'swing calculator' from the UK Polling Report) the number of seats won and lost by each party. In this case, we that find Labour (with 320 seats to the Conservative's 246) are 6 seats short of the number required to form a majority government. 

I should mention another disruptive variable: we have no way of knowing how many people who have voted UKIP in the European elections will stand by the party in a general election. I know of many, some in my own family, who have voted UKIP in these elections but do not plan on repeating that act next year. Tom Clark, in The Guardian, claims to have collated evidence which suggests that 50% of UKIP voters intend to make that description of themselves a lasting one. If we accept that figure (and we have reason to doubt it, as we have reason to doubt every figure I have quoted in this section), we assume that UKIP maintains a share of the vote amounting to around 14%; still enough, Mr Clark suggests, for another 'earthquake'.

Now, allowing that all of this transpires to be true, we enter into the complicated business of negotiations, with the aim of forming a coalition government. And this is one of the two principal reasons for which I have warned against downplaying or understating UKIP's performance thus far. They might well replace the Liberal Democrats as the third largest Westminster party. In that event, it is they who will hold the most valuable cards; it is they who may make or break a prospective coalition government. 

Already we see some amongst the Conservative back benches who are advocating if not a coalition than an electoral pact with UKIP, to be drawn up in advance of the election in 2015. Now, a decent argument is presented in The Times, in the dubiously named column UKIPWatch, which suggests that such a pact is unlikely. As is so typical of reactionaries, those who advocate this pact operate under a false and naive assumption: that UKIP is a breakaway wing of the Conservative Party. In fact, if we look at those who have voted for UKIP, and those who are likely to do so again, we find that UKIP is as appealing to the 'grassroots' of the Labour party as it is to the same tier of the Conservatives. (This fact was picked up and reported in the press some time ago, but appears to have escaped the attention of some concerned Tories.) The column claims that almost as many UKIP voters are in favour of a pact or coalition with Labour as are in favour of a pact or coalition with the Conservatives. (The bipolar nature of its support base may well do more damage to UKIP's future prospects than the weighty and mostly justified political and social media campaigns did in the run-up to the European elections.)

Fine. We can dismiss the prospect of a pre-election pact as being unlikely. However, it hints at something which is potentially more troubling, and which is certainly more realistic: a reaction, expressed through unwelcome policy changes. It may well be the case that, if they are able to complete the apparently difficult task of getting their act together, Labour will not need or seek to depart drastically from its centrist position. A simple but effective step toward winning back disaffected Labour voters might be to signal an end to the party's absence from the debate over Europe and, at the very least, mimic David Cameron's pledge to push for reform. (That said, the promise of a referendum would carry more weight.)

However, for the Conservatives, the instinctive reaction is likely to be a slip to the right. It is, after all, a common criticism of David Cameron's version of the party (put with trademark wit and uncomfortable accuracy by Peter Hitchens in his blog for the Mail Online); they are too centrist. Too Blairite. 

A fear of this sort of reaction is my second argument in favour of caution. It does not require a pact or a coalition, and it does not require UKIP to maintain or increase its support between now and the general election. All it requires is fear, on the part of the Tories, that UKIP will scupper their chances at reelection, and sufficient pressure from within the party to prompt David Cameron to do what critics on his right believe him to be incapable of: to try and look like a Conservative prime minister. 

Except, of course, that he quite obviously is a Conservative prime minister. And this leads me to the conclusion of this post. Originally from a conversation held over Facebook, I have repurposed my reply, and given it a title of its own.

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A Brief List of Our Ills.

The current government is overseeing the clandestine privatisation of the NHS.

 It has orchestrated the selling off of Royal Mail under the advice and to the benefit of certain select investors (including the sovereign wealth funds of Kuwait and Singapore), none of whom could be described as standing for or representing the people.

 It has pumped billions into bank subsidies and bailouts with one hand, and pushed working people to take jobs on exploitative contracts with the other, whilst refusing to levy any meaningful tax or place any meaningful limit on the bonuses and salaries paid at the top of those institutions; paid to those whose reckless gambling with the money we earn (in an attempt to generate substantially more with which to polish their own accounts) is largely responsible for the collapse of the economy that they, and their allies in government, would have us worship.

The government has been reluctant to take any step toward the closure of the tax loopholes, through which £35 billion disappears every year.

 It is scrapping hardware and cutting jobs in the military in order to finance a renewal of a nuclear deterrent which may well cost us up to £130 billion over its lifespan.

It is also presiding over a simmering housing crisis, with homes now costing upwards of 5.5 times average earnings, to the benefit of wealthy landlords and at the expense of working and lower-middle class individuals and families.

 It prefers to award bloated contracts to companies who overcharge for awful service on the railways than to nationalise them, and it prefers the prestige of HS2 to investment in our otherwise ancient and deficient rail systems. 

It has done nothing to break up the monopoly of the energy companies, or to prevent them profiting from the fraudulent practice of raising energy bills when the price of oil and gas rises, fixing the price even when the price of oil and gas falls, and raising it again when the price of oil and gas increases. It would rather listen to lobbyists from those same companies than the people crippled, by the hand of the monopolies, by the prices of basic commodities. It would rather, at the behest of these companies, wreck the environment and peoples' quality of life by pummelling more gas out of the ground than by making any meaningful investment in renewable energy.

If these are the actions of a Left Wing Conservative, I shudder to think what will happen if the Right get the prime minister they wish for.

I could go on. But this is all made particularly relevant to the question of Europe because the government's own rhetoric has fuelled the rise of UKIP.

To the people suffering under the combined weight of these (and innumerable other) injustices, they say: Yes, isn't it terrible, and by the way, it's someone else's fault. Blame the homeless, blame the disadvantaged, blame those unable to work because they have been failed by the education system, and those left to rot with the refuse of modernity, and modernisation. But, most of all, blame Them. The Foreigners. Blame the rest of the world; it's their fault, after all.

And the funny thing is: this seems to be the message coming from all across Europe. The problems in France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Denmark: it's all somebody else's fault. It begs the question: how can it be the fault of foreigners when the foreigners think it's the fault of foreigners. Who exactly are these foreigners?

So, you see, whilst I hope you're right, that this will be a one-off (though I fear you might be wrong), it doesn't make any difference. This one vote demonstrates how effective the politics of blame can be. The true cause of our problems continues to be ignored.