Cicero's Songs

I am not quite sure what most irritates me about Harridan Harperson. Her anti-Liberal special pleading perhaps? That no one should achieve success by their own efforts, but should also match some Harman defined template for what is acceptable- this I find both patronising and insulting. A feminist that does not believe simply in the equality of women, but rather that women should be given extra "help" in order to make up for some Harman-defined long term "injustice against women". Several highly successful women friends of mine would regard this as humiliation and not a triumph. Her tone is such that when she- as usual- makes highly controversial statements, one can tell that to disagree with her is not just to hold a contending point of view, it is to be morally inferior. Only her vision is ethical and right, all others are so incorrect as to warrant persecution. It is largely this arrogance that has got the Labour party into its current mess, so it is with rather ...

Russell Johnston was a civilised man. He embodied a certain courtly Highlander tradition that is the antithesis of the provincial. His interests were many and each of these he pursued with a passion. Those who only knew his honeyed Highland cadences could be caught out, for Russell did not tolerate fools too well and his peppery comments could be as acerbic as they were funny- delivered in words of one syllable, yet still in his beautiful Skye accent. In many ways Russell was a visionary, famously well travelled, he could also be the source of surprising and detailed arcane knowledge. He was at his best, perhaps, in discussion after a good meal, clutching the inevitable glass of Scotland's wine. His passionate belief in the value of the European Union is not today a popular cause, but as the years passed he grew even more convinced of what he termed "the necessity of Europe". He grew yet more convinced of this after he became involved in the crisis surrounding the breakdo...

The previous piece I did on whether the UK might not survive until 2012 (see below), was greeted with some interesting reactions. Jonathan Calder makes a point that many have said to me: summarised as, " Yes, the UK might not survive, and No, we don't care ". Others, more sanguine, have suggested that Britain is not in immediate danger and -again to paraphrase- that "there is an awful lot of ruin in nation". I note that those most complacent about the future of our state are not Scottish. Just to make full disclosure: I am a multi-lingual European by culture, British by heritage, inclination and choice, and Scottish by descent, education and sporting support. I am also English by descent and -since I live in London- by current residence. I also have Welsh (and Dutch, French and probable Danish) descent too. I freely admit to being shocked by the indifference with which the prospect of the dissolution of Britain is being greeted. In my view, the end of the United...

Another by-election, another Labour humiliation- so far, so unsurprising. That this time it was the SNP, rather than the Conservatives or Liberal Democrats delivering the shock may seem of only passing significance. After all, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the SNP were riding high, winning the Hamilton by-election in 1967 before gaining 11 MPs in the October 1974 election. Yet in the end the Scotland Act of 1979 was defeated and the SNP fell back to only two seats in the subsequent 1979 general election. However, my fears for the very future of my country are growing. In 1979, the Conservatives held 22 seats. Now they hold only one. Instead of voters abandoning the party of government for the party of opposition, the Scottish voters are choosing the party of opposition to the Union . Even in their wildest dreams, the Scottish Conservatives can not hope to gain more than a handful of Westminster seats, even if their English and Welsh counterparts make dramatic gains. A future Prime...

So, the arrest of Dr. Radovan Karadzic finally happened. I find it hard to be joyful. The return of the mispronouncing newsreaders makes me wince slightly, but so does the knowledge that few things in the Balkans are entirely as they seem. Western leaders have gone onto the television praising "a genuine breakthrough", conveniently forgetting they role that their countries played in the savage unwinding of what had seemed to be a modern, European society. The hypocrisy of Douglas Hurd, the sanctimoniousness of David Owen, all were impotent in the face of defiance and -yes, not too strong a word- evil. The fertile plain of Slavonia and the high mountains of Krajina and Hercegovinia look very different, yet in both places I found the detritus of war. The smell of burning villages. The terrible noise. The terrible silence. The heartbreaking details: a dog's lead, fading photographs of families who would never come home again. The faces, taught with fear and pale with exhaust...

How often to those involved in British politics hear the words "you're all the same- just in it for yourselves"? The contempt for politics and politicians- never far away even under normal circumstances- seems to have become a mania of hatred- and is irrespective of political party. I can understand a certain scepticism about what politicians can actually achieve, in fact I think it is healthy, but the hatred of all things political is extremely corrosive and could undermine the very basis of our free society and way of life. What politicians might do to change perceptions is to inject some courtesy into the way that they interact with each other. If our politicians took each other a bit more seriously, then the yah -boo-shucks of the House of Commons at its worst would not be the fist image that people have of politics, but a rather more serious view. If we begin to think that politics is irrelevant , then the very fabric of our freedom becomes vulnerable to simple popu...

The European chessboard has grown complicated. The hostile regime in Moscow is exploiting any opportunity to damage the cohesion of both the European Union and NATO. The Kremlin continues to spread black propaganda against any state that annoys it in some way . Indeed the perceived enemies of the Putin regime have often come under attack- whether in the realms of cyberspace, as Russian hackers launch attacks designed to shut down most of the apparatus of the modern state, or quite literally, with state sponsored assassination and physical intimidation of diplomats. The straight theft of foreign owned assets in Russia is also routine- as the latest twists in the campaign against BP in Russia makes quite plain. It is not a surprise that polls in the UK now show that Putin's Russia is considered the greatest threat to the country after Al-Qaida and Iran. After all, Russia- unlike Iran- has actually used a nuclear weapon on the streets of London. Other states are much more sanguine a...

Blogging has been sparse- I have been changing my job and sorting out a new -at least part time- base in Tallinn. It has meant that I have been rather remiss in keeping up the blog.

Sometimes I wonder whether Mary Dejevsky is not actually in the pay of the Kremlin lie factory. Pieces like her latest in The Independent leave me open mouthed. The idea that Britain is in some way responsible for Kremlin sanctioned murders in London, "because we give asylum to the Kremlin's enemies" is simply despicable. The special pleading she makes for the Kremlin is reminiscent of the most lick spittle Communist fellow traveller. The fact is that Russian agents were sent from Moscow to kill in broad daylight, and with scant regard for the well-being of any innocents who might have got in the way. Then again, she actually supports authoritarianism- her piece in January was nothing short of disgraceful.

On March 4th 1933 President Roosevelt made his inaugural address at the east portico of the US Capitol Building. In the face of a catastrophic failure of the financial system and almost total economic meltdown he began his leadership on note of optimism: "This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." His speech, which is well worth reading fully , stands out as the point when the United States accepted the need for radical measures. Though classical Liberals, with the benefit of much hindsight, criticise many of his most interventionist measures, at the time they seemed entirely justified- the scale of the economic collapse was simply so gigantic. More to the point, Roosevelt with a combination of practical measures and optimistic determinati...

What has happened in Zimbabwe is hateful... the regime that swore it would fight for freedom ended up being the enemy of freedom. The price has been, instead of the country being a benchmark for freedom, it has ended up being a benchmark for tyranny. President Mbeki, has revealed himself as indecisive at best- and a man in deep denial about the nature of the regime in Harare. He does not think that the "winners" need account for themselves. However, the agenda remains how to eliminate the political crime, rather than acknowledge "what happened" - and those gathering at Sharm-El-Sheik need only decide how to ostracise the tyrant. In the end the AU -and South Africa in particular- will need to commit troops to police the ruined country. The question now is whether they have the political courage to prevent the final lurch into collapse. After the bitter words from the Gabonese President, the answer is clearly that they do not. It is not the duty of the West to interve...

Much has been made of why the Irish voted No to the Lisbon treaty. However few have pointed out some of the fundamental changes in the Irish economy over the past five years. Ireland was historically a country where land ownership bestowed particular power, and it was on that root that the economic dominance of the Protestant ascendancy rested. Despite the gradual reduction in the power of the agricultural lobby which was the mainstay of the Republic until the 1980's, land and property has retained a talismanic role in the Irish psyche. It is one reason why property ownership in Ireland has assumed a far greater role than virtually any other place in Europe. More to the point, Irish property investment has straddled borders. The Irish property millionaires have invested heavily across Europe, ans especially in the markets of Central and Eastern Europe. Yet investing for rent, rather than to create added value carries with it particular risks, and sure enough, many Irish investors h...

The institutional inertia of the EU is strong, but there is no doubt that there are better solutions to the Irish NO vote to the Lisbon treaty than hoping it will go away or trying to ignore it. If there had been a referendum in every member state and only Ireland had rejected the treaty, then there might be some ground to suggest that some way round the situation might be sought. In fact, of course Ireland was the only state to submit the treaty to a vote. It is pretty clear that several other states, if a vote had been called, might well have rejected the treaty too. Some reforms are needed: democratic oversight in the EU needs to be increased, and more powers returned to the national Parliaments. The internal voting system should be made fairer and the confusion over the legal personality of the Union and the way it handles its external relations needs to be improved. However it does not automatically need the Lisbon treaty to undertake these reforms. For the time being the systems ...

Ambrose Evans Pritchard , the business columnist of the Daily Telegraph has an agenda: he does not support the Euro. Fair enough. He writes a lot about the problems he sees with the currency Also, fair enough. His latest story on the subject is that Germans are now no longer accepting Euro notes with serial numbers that show that they are printed in Latin countries like Spain (prefix letter V) or Italy (prefix letter S), and are swapping these for notes with the German prefix X. If true, then this is extremely serious, since it implies that German consumers might refuse to accept non-German notes and that would effectively end the currency union. The trouble is, I can find no other reference to this behaviour anywhere. Wherever I have looked, the single reference for the story is the story itself and nothing else. Has Evans Pritchard just printed a story that he would like to be true? If so he has committed the cardinal crime of any journalist. He must give a source for this story, ...

David Cameron is reported to be "delighted" at the result of the Irish referendum. In which case, he has now added Sinn Fein to the list of rather unsavoury European parties that the Conservatives are prepared to form expedient alliances with. SF joins Putin's United Russia (already allied with the Tories in the Council of Europe) and the Italian Fascist Party (potential allies in the European Parliament, after the Conservatives leave the EPP) in the Blue corner. The problem, it seems to me, is that the Conservative party remains very unclear about what it wants from the European Union. It makes angry denunciations of the organisation, addressing its many shortcomings in almost apocalyptic language, but when you ask Conservatives whether they actually want to leave the EU, they usually pause and then say "No". In that sense, the scorn that UKIP and others on the right pour on the Tories is justified- the only logical stance that one can take if you agree with t...

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety " Ben Franklin That a citizen should not be held unjustly is a fundamental principle of democratic freedom. It is the root of our entire system of law and justice. It is why a suspect must face charges quickly after being taken into custody. From the Magna Carta of 1215, we derive the law of Habeas Corpus - the fundamental principle that the state may not imprison the individual unlawfully. The United Kingdom is a country rooted on these democratic principles, and in its history it has faced many extreme challenges: external ones like war and internal challenges, like the IRA terror campaign. Sometimes under the pressure of these challenges the country has abandoned elements of due process- internment in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, for example- but when it has done so, it has always been counter-productive. When Gordon Brown proposed arrest without charges ...

For those of us that (just about) remember the early 1970s, the headlines over the past few months are acquiring a dismally familiar look. Although much has changed in nearly forty years, the fact is that despite the two oil shocks of the 1970s, the industrialised world did not take the opportunity to wean itself from unsustainable dependence on oil. All through the 1970s there was much discussion concerning energy efficiency and conservation. In the end though, as the oil price began to fall, not only were conservation measures blunted, there was even a return to extravagance and profligacy- how else to explain the advent of the Hummer? Oil prices have been rising steadily for some years now, as the market began to factor in the dramatic increase in demand from newly emergent economies of China and India. In a sense, the transfer of manufacturing production from America and Europe to Asia has brought a slightly unforeseen consequence- these economies are dramatically less energy effic...

Europe is a poisonous issue in British politics. The debate touches some of the most visceral points in the British body politic. In the end the debate about British membership of the European Union is, at its most basic level, a debate about identity. Those who are most opposed to the EU regard it as a threat to the very idea of Britain and to British identity. Those most in favour sometimes support the EU for precisely the same reasons. The debate is conducted through megaphones, with both sides predicting apocalypse should the other side prevail. The debate has been growing more urgent since the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany. Up until that time, the key relationship was between West Germany and France. After the reunification of Germany the balance of power changed substantially. Haunted by the fear that a united Germany would be more assertive, France hoped to create a European Union that would align the interests of the members more closely. The result was...

The continuing travails of the financial markets, and the developing problems in the real economy is confusing political thinkers across the spectrum. In particular, there is a real sense of concern in Britain over the financial politics of the Euro. Many economists argue that the creation of the currency union has already brought about substantial convergence, and there is certainly substantial evidence that many countries using the single currency are moving their cycles into alignment. However, it is also true to say that within the bloc there are also several significant divergences, and the single interest rate has proven very problematic- too high at times for the core economies, but so low that it has created a credit boom in Ireland, Spain and other so-called Club-Med states. The key question is whether the economies in the Euro-Zone are sufficiently convergent to avoid a breakdown in the system. Many, such as Liam Halligan, in this article for the Daily Telegraph , argue that ...

The OECD - the club of relatively rich states has spoken unusually forthrightly about British government finances. In particular it highlight "unique risks' that the government now faces: unable to cut taxes in the face of the gathering downturn. After the early years of Brown-Blairism, most of us got pretty sick of the endless mantra of "prudence", "prudence with a purpose", and "an end to boom-bust". We saw it for the flannel that it was, and understood that much of the so-called prudent margins for error were simply accounting tricks. Meanwhile, by dint of such "off balance sheet" tricks as the PFI and the PPP, the overall level of government obligations (as opposed to recorded government debt) has grown explosively. Debt is up, but guarantees and other obligations are now truly enormous- just the contracts related to defence are now rather larger than the annual defence budget. It is also difficult to see how contracts are being po...