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Renewing participatory democracy Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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Week 26 Al-Istair Al-Tikriti  You
will no doubt want my reaction to the pusillanimous performance last
Wednesday by the Commons Select Committee. The episode still
reverberates. They failed, because
they picked the wrong target. Campbell is merely the solicitors' clerk, preparing the brief
and carrying the bags without
having the responsibility
of making the case. As a Barrister, I say that
the responsibility for the presentation - zealous, subjectively honest but
ill-judged and profoundly misleading -
lay with the Barrister.
Weak play by Hain 
This was a sorry, but telling, episode. Telling, in that I have no doubt that Peter Hain was making a play for the Labour leadership, and I hope he persists. But he must do better - there is nothing radical about suggesting high top-earner income-tax rates! Socialism is about how we deploy our collective resources, not how the Government collects its taxes! Tony Blair's astonishing outburst in Greece was also telling, because it demonstrated his current loss of self-confidence, loss of political perspective.
 But hear this! Blair's underlying judgment is, in my
view,
correct.
Peter Hain was simply wrong on this point, and the subsequent "tax debate" is
misconceived. Taxation levels must certainly increase, and that is a
political assignment which Labour should not shirk.
But there is no political mileage
in raising income-tax - indeed, I favour an eventual low universal flat-rate, perhaps
20%, with a high starting-point. We should be collecting our taxes in other
ways.
I share Blair's annoyance, even though he should have handled it with greater aplomb. Income Tax is a useless way of achieving social justice, income redistribution. It is symbolic, populist, but toothless. If the top income-tax rates rise, Top Corporate People merely re-arrange remuneration systems so that the Top 3% earn the same as they did before - after paying the higher tax! Those Top Cadres are, after all, in untrammelled control of the corporations they exploit, and they fix the "take", for themselves and their acolytes (principally the financial community, and the legal and accountancy professions and their families).
Let me admit.. When it comes to reading "literature", I am a mere observer. I do
not read novels.
I simply cannot understand "Pottermania". The only novel I have read in the last 20 years
is
Credo, the marvellous historical novel by Melvyn Bragg
- read when for a few days I was invalided in Cyprus by a motor accident, on
holiday.
My reading is (I feel guilty to report) entirely functional - news,
politics, current affairs. Do you think this is a fault-line in my
character?
Sorry, carfuffle.. .. or kerfuffle. I do not really understand why there was such a feeding frenzy over Blair's post-Milburn re-shuffle. I suspect that, having been debarred from attacking the PM over Iraq (by the courtesies and inhibitions of war), both media and political opponents piled in - when the occasion offered. I was saddened by the re-shuffle, but because no new talent emerged, no political imagination, no glimmer of new leadership.
Rise of the I believe that our society is becoming more dicastocratic. The modern citizen seems to prefer the appointment of neutral adjudicators or regulators of some kind, to the imposition of other forms of authority. “ Dicastocracy” simply means rule by judges. As the authority of the professional political salariat continues to wane, I predict a new dicastocratic phase of the UK Constitution.New International Court The power of dicastocracy is affirmed by the adoption by ninety states (but not the USA) of the jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court, at the Hague. And this week the Court appointed its first Chief Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo of Argentina - watch out for the name Ocampo! He earned his spurs, as a high-profile prosecutor, during the trials of Argentine’s military junta, in the 1980s. In international affairs, the courtroom generates its own lingua franca, the common institution where all cultures, all races, all parties can meet.Beyond Blair A friendly reader has chided me for being too negative with my piece on Shelter for the Labour Homeless last week. I am indeed critical of Tony Blair for being so timid, for getting stuck halfway through the reform process – for not being radical, for not going far enough, for failing to seek a new socialist deal with the corporate sector, capable of achieving traditional socialist objectives. And I bemoan the lack of new thinking on the Old Left, now re-forming in the political wings.But I hope I am not negative. Let me remind you (in my defence) that I have already spelt out precisely what the outlines of that New Deal…
Laxey sound the Retreat Last July, the UK venture capitalist Laxey Partners laid siege to the venerable property company British Land. I used the incident to lecture y’all on fault-lines in the corporate sector – remember? They considered that British Land should return funds to its shareholders (because the company had no good use for the money). They were simply trying to make money by fishing in troubled waters, as “active shareholders”. This week,
Laxey
Partners
withdrew, sold their shares, and called off the dogs of war. Their
objective had not been achieved, and the Board had kept all its reserves
within the company.
But for me, a “First” was achieved. Working away from home, I had to find the Laxey Partners report, within my own website, by using Google! Google took me straight to my own Laxey Partners report, first published on 18 July 2002. Try it for yourself. Milburn Mystery
Why did Milburn go? He suffered ambition burnout - that's my theory. As young politicians reach the top of the pole earlier and earlier, and as families are formed later and later, we are witnessing a new motivational cocktail - the side-effects of which blew Milburn away. Locus Pocus
back to top My diary Now up to date! I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking back, throughout the year Special Footnote I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share them with me - click through to their Homepages from here - Follow my August 2002 Russian Tour Diary, now unfolding in splendid technicolor - capacity problems have so far limited the scale of how much I can E-publish, but there is still plenty to read - St Petersburg Novgorod Moscow Tallinn (2) |
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Mumbles Milestone
David Hare, writing in Monday's Guardian, comes closer than anyone so far to expressing my sense of personal despair about Tony Blair, and the evaporating morale of the Labour Party. Iraq broke our spirit, and it will not be easily regained.. Don’t waste
your All reports suggest that the German salariat, of the Left and the Right, is panicking at the continuing weakness of the German economy. Politicians of the Christian Democrat Right are preparing to support the Socialists in approving swingeing tax cuts, in a desperate attempt to stimulate national economic growth.Roger regrets he's unable to dine today...
But I had no stomach for the occasion. My reason? Blair's misjudgments over Iraq - about Bush, America, and Europe. In Iraq, he was guilty of unprovoked aggression, a wrongful, unnecessary and illegal war, and there should be some way of indicting that wrong. So far, international treaty attempts to encompass this crime have remained a dead letter. Over domestic policy, my criticism is more conventional - it goes principally to his timidity, his lack of vision, his unwillingness to tackle the great socialist issues of our time - pensions, unemployment, systemic poverty, the assertion of the common humanity of all - including refugees and drug "addicts". But his errors of judgment over Iraq were, for me, pivotal - I could not sip with him the tepid sparkling wine, and pretend that nothing had happened.
Planning for US failure With the US military budget soaring, with Iran now in the Bush gun-sights, a falling dollar and a weakening US economy, we must start thinking about Plan B. Don’t just shut your eyes – because the global risks will not go away. Europe must start practising the ways of peaceful prosperity Exaggerating Jobs Dishonest machinations
My time as Swansea Economic Development Officer (1979/85) came back to haunt me this week. The National Audit Office has taken a close and critical look at the claims made for job creation grants (“Regional Selective Assistance” in the jargon of the trade). The NAO found that the claims were frequently fragile and unsubstantiated, even plainly inaccurate. I felt a real twinge of conscience. Because everyone within the system, both on the private and public side of the equation, has always known the system to be defective, often dishonest. But as with so many bureaucratic wrongs, it is quite simply in nobody’s interests…. Watch for Basel II Does “Basel II” mean anything to you? It should. It is the working-title of new global negotiations, all about the regulation of banks. The international negotiations have been going on for years – and Governments are now targeting the installation of a new control system…
Defeat for
I have encouraged you to back the cause of Annette Carson, the 62-year-old British pensioner who emigrated to South Africa and lost the right to have her Old Age Pension indexed, in line with payments to UK resident pensioners, after the date of her emigration. Some 500,000 UK pensioners find themselves in the same position - she is fighting for them all. But Annette Carson lost again, last week. Last year, she lost in the High Court - last week, in the Court of Appeal. There was a depressing inevitability about the legal logic, which denied her the victory she morally and politically deserved. I hope she will not be forced to try again, traipsing through the House of Lords and the Strasbourg Court.
Try BBC News, the public service website for the best and quickest access to the news, as well as a huge political data resource, the BBC is unbeatable
Memo to Gordon
Gordon, I wrote, you should remove all statutory rent controls for newly-built property, give the property investment industry a free hand to build anew, granting them juicy tax privileges for as long as they remained residential landlords. That is what General De Gaulle did, in 1958.
Barefoot Advocates
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New
I visited 10 Downing Street
last week, for the first time in my life. The occasion was the launch of a new
communitarian Fabian leaflet, Communities in
Control, by a rising Blairite Minister Hazel Blears. Further
thoughts on her pamphlet, later this week. There is no doubt
that Government Ministers would like to make "localism" (in health, in
policing, in education, in childcare, in care for the elderly) the
distinctive theme of Labour's Third Term. 
He
may be Rowan Cantab to some,
but he is Rowan Mumbles to
us. The magical Rowan Williams was with us last Saturday. This is
a BBC shot of him, in Oystermouth Church on Saturday morning. I
discussed with him the expressive, symbolic role of communal
institutions - we shared a common despair at the categorisation of
local institutions as "service providers" - for they are much, much
more than that. The sun shone, the crowds came out to see him,
and it was a truly magical day.
By rights,
I should have been listening to
Tony Blair when he delivered, last Tuesday, the first Fabian annual celebrity
lecture. As a member of the Fabian EC, I should have been nodding wisely, in
the Reserved Seats down at the front. 
I
have written to Gordon Brown to
tell him about the successes of De Gaulle, in revolutionising the French
housing market in 1958. I have not met Gordon since the heady pre-1997
days of the Labour Finance & Industry Group, when the Group worked closely
with Labour's Opposition Front Bench, targeting an Election victory.
I am sure
you will want to
keep in touch with what Steve Bell is drawing, in
Royalty should stay firmly on the postage
stamps,
and be brought out for ritual occasions. But don't knock it. I do believe that public
"ritual" is important, as a means of expressing very broad inchoate issues
of loyalty and identity.
My first choice of profession was that of
advocate. Yet both Barristers and Solicitors, have now been priced out
of the market, for ordinary people.
I advocate the creation of a
third
profession, that of public advocate.