2013-05-26T00:07:51-04:00 Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=francis-hoar Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Francis Hoar Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3095955 2013-04-16T19:09:42-04:00 2013-04-17T05:53:39-04:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ Peter Obourne observed that Gordon Brown had been mistaken to approve plans for a grand ceremonial funeral for Lady Thatcher. Ceremonial occasions are reserved for Royalty for good reason: the country can rally round an ancient institution that stands above the daily hue and cry of Party politics and that is able to stand for all.

He is largely right. Only an institution so embedded in this country's historical memory has the ability to inspire loyalty over and above that owed to or earned by individuals on their own merits. With the rarest of exceptions, only the embodiment of that tradition has the ability to inspire such devotion and unity as that showed to the Queen last year.

And yet the grandeur and ceremony of monarchy has always offered more than the glorification of the symbol of the state - or even of the state itself. Throughout history, monarchs have used their position to honour individuals - even whole generations - for acts of great service. The tomb of the unknown warrior adapts the words of scripture: 'They buried him among kings because he had done good toward God and toward his House.' (2 Chronicles 24:16) As the God of Israel had recognised that frail men and women needed the institution of kingship to bind them together and lead them, so ceremony normally reserved for Royalty should, in turn, be used to glorify their greatest sons and daughters and to inspire their countrymen.

Margaret Thatcher was one such daughter. Born in an ordinary town to parents of little means, she rose to the highest position of the land through grit, determination, dedication to public service and sacrifice. The frailness of mind and body with which she was inflicted in her declining years was undoubtedly due to her deprivation from sleep throughout her premiership. As those closest to her have remarked, it wasn't that she could make do with four hours' sleep, it was that Mrs Thatcher so dedicated herself to her country that she sacrificed her health to its prosperity. Even at the height of the Falklands' War, one whose outcome was more uncertain than any since the 1950s, she would take the time at the end of each day to write personal and heartfelt letters to the families of all the fallen.

Mrs Thatcher had immense achievements: bringing harmony to industrial relations (reducing tenfold the number of days lost to strikes), liberating the Falklands, rejuvenating and modernising our manufacturing sector (and increasing its output), controlling inflation, almost halving unemployment in her time in office and, most significantly of all, preparing the way for the final decline and defeat of Soviet tyranny. But it is not for these alone that she is being honoured. She had great virtues: a care for those in the lowest of positions far greater than for her equals who could look after themselves, a deep Christian faith, dedication to public service and a simple patriotism. Nor are these enough to justify the great honour being done to her today. And she had outstanding courage: challenging Heath when no-one else dared, approving the Falklands' taskforce with the support of only a handful of her Cabinet, taking on an institution (the NUM) that had brought down two governments and seeing out her sunset years with dignity and resolution. Yet even this noblest of virtues is insufficient to justify her being singled out amongst all her contemporaries.

No, it is for the force of her personality, the imprint of her ideas, the depth and breadth of her influence and - above all - the everlasting impression she has left upon this country that Margaret Thatcher will forever be set apart from her fellow men and women. It is for this that she is honoured today; and for this that she will be remembered centuries after all of us are gone.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1470399 2012-05-02T08:56:40-04:00 2012-07-02T05:12:13-04:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ the Green Benches, is a poor man's version. Previous editions have included a blog (since removed, presumably out of embarrassment), complaining about the terrible quandary of choice in Starbucks and pilloried by Andrew Emmerson here. Emmerson also highlights the Eye's investigations into his hysteria over any attacks on Ed Milliband.

Predictably, Clarke now has another target in sight: Boris Johnson. In his latest offering, he starts grandiloquently:

"In this piece I wish to outline how Boris Johnson has spent the 21st Century mocking blacks, Muslims, Irish, women, AID victims [sic], Liverpool citizens, mourners of the death of Diana and environmentalists."

As others have remarked, he forgot homophobia. Even Clarke appears to recognise that Johnson's order to remove anti-gay propaganda from London buses and his favourable reception in the gay media have meant that that attack won't wash.

But Boris has, apparently, offended the whole phalanx of Londoners "Muslims, Blacks, Women, Irish, AIDS victims, mourners and countless other sections of society", he repeats unnecessarily (apart from the spelling correction). Significantly, Clarke says that "the man rarely apologises for any of his abuse, and shows no remorse."

Clarke takes particular exception to this 12 year old article about the 2000 fuel protests. Three of his eleven quotes are taken from it. It is a typical example of the Boris oeuvre: a rumbustious, alliterative fanfare of energy that explains why Boris Johnson's writing commands £250,000 a year where Eoin Clarke's po-faced offerings attract only ridicule and the admiration of a handful of Occupy activists. Clarke complains that, "reacting... to the institutional racism at the heart of the London Metropolitan Police after the way it handled the Stephen Lawrence murder, Boris Johnson called the police 'victims' of the MacPherson report." What Johnson actually said was this:

"Maybe I am alone in thinking this, but the police seem to have shown a studied lethargy in the first few days, a remarkable punctilio in their handling of the demonstrators. Some may be moved to speculate whether the drivers of the panda cars, and the victims of the Macpherson report, are themselves sympathetic to the first serious revolt that Blair has faced."

Whether 'victims', in this context, is an account of the 'lethargic' Met's perception of themselves or Johnson's considered view of the effect of the report, is not entirely clear. But Johnson had, in fact, written a Guardian article earlier that year in which he expanded upon his criticisms of the report. Among them is this paragraph, with which few supporters of free speech could disagree:

"Heaven knows why Macpherson made his weird recommendation, that the law might be changed so as to allow prosecution for racist language or behaviour 'other than in a public place'. I can't understand how this sober old buzzard was prevailed upon to say that a racist incident might be so defined in the view of the victim 'or any other person'. This is Orwellian stuff."

Johnson dealt, honestly, with the harmful effect of the culture of victimisation on society. One might disagree with his arguments. But they, or the 'victim' reference, are far from abusive or racist. Twelve years later Johnson welcomed Doreen Lawrence's call for an enquiry into allegations that police witnesses lied to the MacPhearson enquiry. But that is the real world, not an isolated word dredged out of an ancient newspaper article.

Clarke's other remarks about that article don't do anything to help the impression that the Left have a difficulty with humour. "You might be shocked to learn", he gasps, "that he also mocked the public's reaction to the death of Princess Diana as 'mass mania'". To think that the sight of grown men and women weeping and offering teddy bears to a woman they never met could ever be described as 'mania'. It is also abusive, apparently, to describe green taxes as "a bit of a joke".

The infamous Spectator editorial about Liverpudlians 'wallowing in grief' is predictably trotted out. That Johnson went on a tour of apology for an article written by another (Simon Heffer), without even naming him doesn't, of course, make Clarke's cut.

Bizarrely (and perhaps libelously), Clarke posts a link to an offensive poem that, he claims, was posted on Johnson's website. It is impossible to ascertain from that link for how long the poem remained or how and why it came to be removed. What is clear is that Johnson condemned it in strident terms and that the poem had also been posted on Adam Boulton's website. Not that you would know that from reading Clarke's blog.

This isn't the end of it. An article that describes Silvio Berlusconi as a 'sinister' and 'ruthless' leader who had "changed the law so that he cannot be prosecuted for his alleged corruption" is termed a eulogy. Johnson is accused of 'repeating a joke about AIDS suffers', notwithstanding that he described it as "tasteless in the extreme and politically incorrect to the point of insanity", that he could imagine "sensitive readers will be shuddering with amazement" and that it would ruin the career of any British politician saying it.

There are other supposed outrages, including a joke suggestion that "voting Tory will make your wife have bigger breasts", that apparently demonstrated 'wrath' towards women. Dr Clarke obviously spent a long time trawling through those old newspaper articles.

Clarke's only serious criticism is of Johnson's article about Tony Blair's visit to the Congo, in which he talked of 'flag waving piccininnies' and wondered whether "the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird". Johnson's language is, indeed, taken from another era and impossible to excuse. But it is used within an article replete with extravagant imagery, imagining a world leader who "like Zeus, back there in the Iliad.. has turned his shining eyes away, far over the lands of the Hippemolgoi, the drinkers of mares' milk." More important than the context, however, is that fact that Johnson has since said that "I feel sad that people have been offended by those words and I apologise for them." It is this remorse, entirely hidden from Clarke's article, that distinguishes a man who admits his mistakes from one who, to this day, considers his comparison of a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard to be a 'huge fuss about nothing'.

Context, content and apology are irrelevant in a character assassination so misleading it would be a worthy target for a writ. It is a sign of the desperation of Ken Livingstone's supporters that they can do no more than dredge out decade old newspaper articles, rather than addressing their own candidate's unrepentant support for suicide bombing propagandists, divisive ethnic politics, tax avoidance and dishonesty. They are the witterings of a campaign that knows it has failed. And that deserves to.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1423855 2012-04-15T19:00:00-04:00 2012-06-15T05:12:01-04:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/
Similar stories can be told about colleges and universities throughout this country. But the early examples of Cardinal Wolsey, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Sir George Downing and others had perhaps the greatest influence on the North American colonies and, latterly, the United States. The Carnegies, Vanderbilts and Rockefellers are not merely a part of 19th century American history. Their names are written into the bricks and mortar of New York and other great cities, forever associated with the creative arts, education, health and high finance.

The acts of individual philanthropy of these individuals and families may not always have been driven by the highest motives. Perhaps they were inspired by lust for eternal glory, with their college - bigger and better than the rest - guaranteeing their immortality (although poor Cardinal Wolsey will have been disappointed)? Perhaps they were motivated by eccentricity, funding only pet projects inspired by philosophy or theology of doubtful provenance?

What of it? By their acts, individual and collective, they have provided for the cultural enlightenment, the education, the health and the community identity of millions. They have truly benefited mankind.

David Cameron launched his general election campaign with a call to the 'Big Society'. This concept, though sometimes derided, has been at the heart of the coalition policies. It is inspired by the liberating message that society should never be mistaken for the state. That individuals and communities act most creatively and productively when they are free to decide their own fate and that of their communities; when allowed to make use of their resources, generosity - even their lust for glory - for the greater good. It is no new message. It is, in fact, the golden thread of conservatism; an idea going back well beyond Edmund Burke's 'little platoons' to Aristotle and his conception of the organic nature of communities.

It is against this background that the treasury has won its fight to tax charitable donations of more than £50,000. The rationale - that individuals somehow benefit from donations by reducing their tax liability - is flawed. While they indeed reduce their liability, philanthropists also significantly reduce their income through their generosity.

Suppose a businessman donates £100,000 of his income of £500,000 to charity. He would have paid tax on £400,000. At today's rates that will be around £177,000 (£8,000 at the lower rate (20 %) for the first £40,000 (for the sake of simplicity); £44,000 at the 40p rate; and £125,000 at the 50p rate). His net income (less the donation) would therefore stand at around £223,000. Under the reforms, half the donation would be tax free. The donor would therefore pay tax on £450,000, which at today's rates would amount to around £202,000 (£8,000 at the lower rate, £44,000 at the 40p rate and £150,000 at the top rate). His net income (less the donation) would amount to £198,000.

Significantly, were our donor to decide not to donate anything to charity, he would pay tax of £237,000 (£8,000 + £44,000 + £175,000 (50 % of £350,000). His net income, however, would be £263,000 - £40,000 more than it would have been had he donated and received tax relief on the whole of his donation. These figures would be starker still were our hypothetical businessman to earn and donate considerably more.

That has to be the worst tax dodge ever invented.

So if this isn't - cannot be - a true tax avoidance measure, what is it for? Some have suggested that individuals benefit from donating to foreign charities closely connected to their interests.

If this assertion is correct - and little evidence has been provided to support it - there is a simple answer: allow tax relief only on donations to UK registered charities. It is perhaps reasonable to assume that the Charity Commission is able to ensure that no charity is used as a vehicle to benefit an individual's life-style. But, surely, the real answer is that this measure has been imposed only to increase the revenues of the State. Whether this is achieved by reducing the income of the so-called one percent or that of charitable institutions appears to be of no object. HM Revenue and Customs will benefit; the treasury will be happy.

It is difficult to think of any measure more inimical to the Big Society message: that society is more than the state; that individuals and communities are best able to resolve their problems; and that individuals should be encouraged to take responsibility - and the initiative - for their own communities. Whether or not it actually achieves much of an increase in revenue, it is a measure that will distribute money directly from the charitable sector to the state, to spend as it knows best: wastefully, unproductively and at the worst possible value.

Rather than undermining a cornerstone of charitable giving, the government should be thinking of how it can reduce the tax burden on charities: for example by exempting air ambulance fuel from VAT (see this link for a petition to do this) or on other necessary purchases. To encourage charitable giving is to encourage care for the disadvantaged, cultural enlightenment, education and the enrichment of one's community. To give - and to encourage others to give - is one of the highest civic virtues. Those who do so should be cherished, not treated with contempt. And George Osborne should think again.
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Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ Tim Montgomery and George Eaton both advocated "English votes for English laws' in articles for the Guardian and New Statesman this week, a proposal first raised by William Hague in 1999.

The suggestion that only English, or English and Welsh, MPs should vote on matters that concern only their countries has obvious advantages. Much of the clamour for devolution was exacerbated not so much by nationalism as by the fact that the votes of English Conservative MPs were able to force legislation (such as the Poll Tax) on a Scotland in which left leaning parties predominated. This is a grievance that England is entitled to feel, in reverse, where English legislation is passed only because of the votes of Scottish MPs.

There is, though, little appetite for an English Parliament not located in Westminster, which would divorce the Parliament of England from its ancient home. Why the need for two sets of English MPs (at an English and a UK Parliament) when Westminster spends most of its time debating Bills affecting only England? It would not be difficult, on the other hand, for Parliament to set aside 'English days' for legislation not affecting Scotland and standing orders preventing Scottish MPs voting on English matters but, perhaps, allowing them to speak in such debates.

Yet such a settlement poses three critical questions. How would the Government operate where there was an English majority (or the absence thereof) in opposition to the UK majority in Parliament? How would Wales be affected? And what would be the role of the House of Lords in legislation affecting only England?

The UK Government would remain the Government of England and Wales where English and British majorities were aligned, when Britain would remain a 'Federacy', a country in which outlying nations have more devolution than the centre. Yet where a Party with a UK majority did not have an overall majority of English MPs, it would be impossible to avoid a devolved English government and First Minister. The UK government would otherwise simply not have the confidence of MPs qualified to vote on the majority of its legislative programme.

Some Cabinet positions and departments (for example Education and DEFRA) could be transferred to the English cabinet without the need for a ministerial equivalent in the UK Government. Others (Transport and Energy) have some 'federal' powers, but are mostly responsible only for England. Their UK responsibilities could either be devolved or put within one Federal Ministry.

An English Cabinet would need an English First Minister with an administrative headquarters distinct from Downing Street; and we would become familiar with the Treasury bench filled with alternating Ministers. An eccentric arrangement perhaps, but a constitution pragmatic enough to house its supreme court in Parliament until 2009 is probably flexible enough to cope. It is also worth noting that rarely will there be an English Conservative First Minister and a British Labour Premier: there has not been a Conservative majority in England and a Labour majority in the United Kingdom for thirty years, though there would now be a majority Conservative Government in England had such reforms been introduced before 2010.

Wales's legislative responsibilities do not mirror those of Scotland; although the only notable difference is in Home Affairs, where the English and Welsh legal system demands a department responsible for both countries. In reality, a Party with an English majority would almost always have a majority in Wales and England combined (this has easily been the case for well over thirty years). If it did not, a pragmatic solution would be forced upon the two governments were only English and Welsh MPs able to vote on these matters: the Minister would be unable to act without the confidence of English and Welsh MPs and the English Government's policies would have to be tailored accordingly.

The final issue that appears to have been given little thought is the position of the House of Lords. Anyone who has taken a close interest in the legislative process at Westminster will understand why there is such little appetite for a unicameral system. The House of Lords gets into the limelight only where there is a confrontation with the Commons. What is less publicised is its day influence on legislation. (A good account of this influence in the last Parliament can be found here.) A revising chamber, prepared to use its rich well of knowledge and experience in the Lords to ask the democratic house to stop and thing, is a great asset of the British constitutional settlement. Given that the Upper House has no veto over legislation and abides by the Salisbury Convention, there is no reason why English legislation could not continue to be subject to the revising chamber.

A more radical settlement - for example a Federal Parliament in what is now the House of Lords and an English Parliament in the House of Commons - might benefit from the neatness of a proper federal solution. Yet such a system would be far more likely to result in tension between England and the Federal Parliament than one in which one Chamber was responsible for both English and British affairs.

Interest in a solution to the West Lothian question is long overdue. The increasing English disenchantment with the Union makes it is more important than ever that it is addressed. English votes for English laws would be no panacea, but it is a pragmatic, organic change that might represent the best means of dealing with an English democratic deficit whose danger has been overlooked for too long.
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Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/
For the Acts of Union did not merely create a political entity. They affirmed the existence of an over-arching nation: Great Britain. 'Affirmed' because the idea of the nation of Britain was one whose origins are lost in the dawn of recorded history. This island was first recorded as 'Pritain' before the Roman invasion. An earlier name for the island - Albany - is itself the root of the 'Alba' used by the first Gaelic Kings as the name of a unified Caledonia in the 10th century, a recognition that the three ethnicities that first made up the kingdom - Gaelic (Scots), Pictish and (Strathclyde) British - were united more by the land than by immediate common bonds of kinship.

The last ethnic group to join the late-medieval Kingdom of Scotland was actually English. Edinburgh was itself an English town (more precisely, an Angle town), a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria from the seventh to the 10th centuries, when the eastern Borders were settled by this Anglo-Saxon tribe. It was this form of Old-English that developed into Scots before Modern English largely replaced it from the 18th century.

This linguistic unity has been the corner stone of England's and Scotland's gradual but resoundingly successful pooling of their identities into a greater whole. Through a common language were ties between the nations able to grow: the common adoption of Protestantism, the adoption of one English language bible (first the Geneva Bible supported by John Knox before the Authorised Version was introduced across Britain) and the shared experience of the civil wars all brought together two kingdoms united in a personal union from 1603. The great trading and pooling of ideas, assisted by the printed word, that marked first Renaissance and then Enlightenment accelerated a process that led to what really was a shared British culture by the 18th century.

And it is this shared understanding, this common linguistic, cultural and religious heritage, that was the foundation of the common enterprise - the commonwealth - of Britain. Though Empire has had its part to play - the disproportionate role of Scots and Irish in the military and trading opportunities of Empire was particularly notable - the kingdom was able to grow in its unity because of a mutual loyalty able to rise above admittedly ancient divisions. This is not to deny the terrible legacy of Glencoe, Culloden and the Highland clearances; nor that those acts hindered the integration of Gaelic Scotland into a commonwealth of Britain. But history has, mercifully, been more prone to forgive and forget in Scotland than it has in Ireland; and the dynamic celebration of Highland culture - indeed, its adoption by the rest of Scotland as a common national heritage - has complemented, rather than competed with, a fundamental sense of loyalty to the notion of Britain as a unifying, political expression.

Our political parties are as much Scottish as English. Labour's founding father, Keir Hardie, and first Premier, McDonald, were Scots, as was the greatest Liberal Prime Minister, Gladstone, and Conservative Premiers such as Balfour and Douglas-Home. The thinkers Adam Smith and David Hume, whilst figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, were some of the most important contributors to the developing broad liberalism that was to define the English speaking world. (Their contemporary, Burke, was himself an Irishman.)

It is hard to imagine the British Army - an institution younger than the personal union - shorn of the Black Watch; the Royal Navy denied Rosythe and Scapa Flow; or the RAF unable to operate from our northernmost shores. It is for good reason that the Prime Minister today outlines the advantages we all derive from the security we build together. Those narrow English nationalists might want to consider how effective a nation we would be without the immense Scottish contribution to our national security. (As an aside, it is difficult to see many Scottish soldiers - the hardiest of all - being particularly enchanted with the non-NATO peacekeeping role Mr Salmond has in store for them.)

Yet, as David Cameron argues, this is so much more than an actuarial calculation of relative advantage and disadvantage. It is a question that speaks to our hearts: a question of home. However fierce our rivalry, how would we really feel to be leaving our country at Gretna Green or Carlisle? How many of us would be faced with an agonising conflict of loyalties when forced to make a choice that we thought would never be necessary.

As an Englishman and an Irishman - but a Briton first - I look upon this debate with the despondency of one who wishes the United Kingdom could have remained wider still. The sadness of division in Ireland, both within and without, is nothing to envy. We, the British people, are greater than the sum of our parts. Let us fight, wherever we are, for our shared national home.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1145504 2011-12-13T08:33:28-05:00 2012-02-12T05:12:01-05:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ October, 2012, two days before the third EU summit that year, called in response to Ireland rejecting by referendum the Treaty of Brussels eventually signed by
23 European Union member states, and weeks after Greece finally
reintroduced the Drachma, David Cameron outlines the position
of the British Government in a speech in Krakow


Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to address you in this great city, situated in the geographical heart of Europe. It reminds us, as my predecessor so memorably remarked a generation ago, just a year before Poland finally won its freedom, that '[W]e must never forget that east of the Iron Curtain, people who once enjoyed a full share of European culture, freedom and identity have been cut off from their roots. We shall always look on Warsaw, Prague and Budapest as great European cities.' As Mrs Thatcher emphasized, Europe is more than any one political manifestation. European civilization is perhaps the greatest expression of the human spirit. Europe is Chopin, Leonardo, Velázquez, Beethoven, Shakespeare and Goethe. Europe is Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hayek and Isaiah Berlin. But Europe is also Richelieu, Ferenc Rakoczi, Garibaldi and Marshall Pilsudski: heroes and nation builders who helped forge the political expression of our continent.

And it is on that European identity that I wish to address you today. For European culture is not only expressed through painting, music, architecture, poetry and the language of ideas, magnificent though they are. Europe's culture is defined by its Nations. It is a continent of Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards and Poles: a patchwork of nations, some ancient, some modern, some revived from linguistic and cultural roots almost lost; but all holding the loyalty and affinity of their peoples. This is no new invention of the Enlightenment, as Eric Hobsbawn and others would have it. Pope Pius II (Piccolomini) spoke in 1458 of the national traits of Germans, Italians, Hungarians, Danes and Swedes.* The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, was an expression of the emerging unified sense of national identity in England; the Declaration of Abroath of 1320, that of Scotland. As an Anglo-Scot, I [David Cameron] well appreciate the complex relationship between nationhood and statehood within, as well as without, the United Kingdom. We are perhaps uniquely placed to warn our neighbours of the slow, gradual and difficult process of forging a nation even on one island with such close ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious ties.

Nowhere is this ancient legacy of nationhood seen more starkly than in the Parliamentary assemblies of Europe. The Cortes of Leon, the earliest predecessor of the Cortes of Spain before its unification in the 15th century, dates from 1180 - a century before Simon de Montfort established the first Parliament of England. The Althing of Iceland was founded in 930 - almost a thousand years before that nation finally achieved its independence. Across Europe, Diets, Estates General, Sejms and Parliaments were called by Monarchs to express the will of their peoples. The cry of the Founding Fathers of the United States could not have been made by a people derived from any other continent: the ultimate achievement of democracy may be recent but the principle of 'no taxation without representation' is one that strikes at the heart of European identity.

The context of this link between taxation and representation is particularly important, demonstrating as it does the third element necessary in a democratic settlement: that of belonging. Ultimately, the Americans decided that they no longer belonged to the British nation and established their own. Representation in Westminster would not have been good enough: without feeling a shared sense of nationhood with Britain the presence of their representatives in Parliament would not have made its decisions legitimate in America. This is why the European Parliament can never be an adequate expression of the democratic will. There is apathy across Europe in elections to this forum not because it is seen to be powerless but because it is not the body at which any nation of Europe wishes decisions to be made. If the French or Germans considered themselves part of a European nation, there would be as much enthusiasm in European elections as in elections for the Assemblée Nationale or the Bundestag. There isn't because they never have.

For across Europe, its peoples have been speaking, desperate to be heard. Wherever any nation already within the EU has been asked in a referendum whether it supports further European integration, its answer has always been no. It is deeply sad that I must add that the exception to this rule is where that nation's democratic will is ignored and it is required to vote again - as Ireland and Denmark have both found to their cost. Yet, and it saddens me to say this, it would appear that the will of the people matters little to the architects of European integration. The idea of integration is one hatched at the heart of Europe that takes little account of the will of its peoples.

When Britain refused to be a signatory to the Treaty of Brussels last year, I was accused of isolating Britain; of cutting it adrift from its neighbours and trading partners. Believe me, I had no intention of doing so. Indeed, until that point I thought that Britain perhaps still could persuade the European Union not to embark upon a project designed to defend the indefensible: the idea that a currency, monetary and fiscal union of economies as diverse as Greece and Germany could ever be maintained by the interference of the centre in national budgets. The Fiscal Union is not merely unsustainable - as the events of September [2012] have shown. It is a deeply undemocratic exercise aimed at bending the will of the nations of Europe to its governors at its centre. It is the wrong answer to the devastation that has been caused - as we in Britain and others had warned again and again - by a failed experiment in binding divergent economies and nations together. It is a reaction of pride, not humility; a failure to recognise the impossibility of creating a United States of Europe without leading the nations at the margins of Europe into penury - as Greece has found to its cost.

We in the United Kingdom have learnt since 1992 that fixed currencies were not a means of imposing financial discipline but a straightjacket imposing currency valuations and interest rates unsuited to a country's particular economic conditions. Our experience is by no means unique. In the five years after the Argentinian Pesso floated against the dollar in 2001, its economy grew by 50 percent, making it the fastest growing economy in the western hemisphere. The comparison with the experience of Greece and Ireland, weighed down by over-valued currencies and interest rates wholly unsuited to their economic conditions, is particularly striking.

Ireland's latest attempt to put a break on deeper integration gives Europe - yet again - an opportunity to reflect on the fact that its attempts to create one European economy are doomed to failure; not merely because of the hugely divergent economic conditions across the continent, but because the nations of Europe refuse to be made one. Europe should learn from its history that the failure to respect national identity, far from leading to a united Europe, leads to bitterness and division. It is time that the leaders of European nations spoke for their people. It is time for a different Europe. A Europe that respects its peoples' wills.

A Europe of Nations.


* Hastings, Adrian: 'The Construction of Nationhood', Cambridge, 1997, p 119

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Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/
The need for this figure - adviser, intermediary, representative - is at the heart of any fair justice system. An individual in the legal process is likely to be overwhelmed: cast in unfamiliar surroundings, made to deal with laws over which he has no understanding and facing a powerful, richer adversary.

The youth, with little education, charged with a serious criminal offence; the mother whose child may be taken into care; the employee sacked by a big corporation; or the victim of catastrophic injuries suing the hospital that caused them. For these vulnerable people must the advocate speak; for them must he challenge the state or the powerful to present and investigate fairly all the evidence; and for them, most importantly of all, must he challenge the case against them and ensure that their voice is heard.

Any fair society should thus be judged by the quality of representation it provides to the most vulnerable. There are many in the developed world that don't: the State of Mississipi, for example, restricts to $1,000 the amount of public funds that can be spent on the defence in a Capital charge, providing sub-standard justice by overworked, poorly qualified and inexperienced lawyers leading to miscarriages of justice and defendants languishing in prison for years before trial. This is a practise all too typical throughout the United States (it isn't restricted to the Deep South - North Dakota spends even less per head on indigent defendants than Mississippi); and scars the county's ability to call itself a member of the civilised world.

England and Scotland's legal aid systems, on the other hand, are predicated on the principle that the quality and seniority of the publicly funded lawyer is determined not by ability to pay but by the gravity or complexity of the case. This is hardly an unfamiliar principle: few would question that a heart transplant on the NHS should only be undertaken by the most experienced cardio-vascular surgeon. Yet it is somehow less recognised by the public at large. Perhaps this is due in large part to an old prejudice: most can see that the risk of ill-health is universal but few recognise that all are at risk of being accused of a crime we did not commit, of being at risk of homelessness or of losing our child to the state. Few, in fact, appreciate the immense power of the state until it is ranged against them. Another version of the dangerous old canard 'if you've nothing to fear, you've nothing to hide'.

This principle of legal aid is maintained in two ways. Firstly, the Legal Services Commission pays higher fees for the gravest and most complex cases, ensuring that the best advocates will accept instructions in those cases. Secondly, and no less importantly, the existence of a referral profession of specialist barristers allows any solicitors' firm, wherever it is based and however general its practice, to instruct (in those most serious cases) practitioners at the forefront of the profession to guarantee their clients the best representation and a fair trial.

It is with these principles in mind that we should judge the government's proposals to 'reform' legal aid. Will distinguished Queen's Counsel still be available to defend in the most serious criminal cases? Will legal aid protect the poorest families when going through the heart-ache of custody battles? Or will ever declining fees drive many of the best advocates away from the publicly funded Bar, damaging not those barristers (who will be well able to rely on private work elsewhere) but the poorest and the most vulnerable?

Sadly, the government appears to have failed even to recognise the danger of reducing the availability of legal aid (including in child custody cases, which the Chairman of the WI has argued persuasively would affect many vulnerable women; and medical negligence cases, which Lord Justice Jackson has attacked stridently) and of reducing fees for the most complex cases. As the Criminal Bar Association has argued, members of the Bar are leaving the publicly funded profession in droves. Every criminal Chambers is doing all it can to move into privately funded areas of quasi-criminal law and fewer top graduates are entering - or can afford to enter - the publicly funded side of the profession. While the Bar remains large, it can only survive for so long the torture of death by a thousand cuts.

Indeed, one of the government's proposals directly undermines the provision of top advocates for the most serious cases: a decision to stop paying a premium to QCs and leading barristers in murder and manslaughter cases. The CBA is right to argue that this appears to be an attempt to reduce the number of QCs representing those accused of the gravest crimes; something that accords with the experience of barristers and judges dealing with these cases.

Together with the increasing numbers of solicitors conducting their own advocacy (often without advising clients of the right they have to instruct independent barristers), the English criminal justice system is, slowly but surely, moving towards a US model: where the poor will be limited to local representatives for all cases, even the gravest, while the best in the profession represent only those with the fattest wallets. Is this really what we want? The man on the Clapham Omnibus may enjoy ridiculing the fat cat barrister; but he will miss his profession when it is gone.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.935038 2011-08-24T19:00:00-04:00 2011-10-24T05:12:01-04:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ John Wight's article on these pages this week.

After making one cursory remark indicating his disapproval of Gaddafi, Wight launched into a vituperative tirade against the West, capitalism, imperialism, 'the White House and its European satraps'.

The retired satrap Jacques Chiraq would be amused (as would his supposed suzerain George W Bush). The war on Libya was apparently symptomatic of the illusory nature of state sovereignty, the West adept at 'exerting control over the resource rich developing world'.

Most bizarrely of all (in a responsive comment he made) the US's objective - notwithstanding Wight's admission that its oil comes mostly from elsewhere - is to break OPEC's 'control over production and global prices' in order to 'act as a bulwark against China'. His great insight obviously goes back no further than 1980, as he ignores the 1970s oil crisis in which Saudi Arabia held the west to ransom, causing an inflationary economic crisis to boot.

Wight's analysis is particularly flawed when he describes the Arab Spring, as an 'unravelling' symptomatic of the 'global crisis of capitalism'. The evidence is far from supportive of this bare assertion. As Andrey Korotayev notes in an authoritative exploration of the statistics, Egypt had been experiencing consistently high levels of growth throughout the Mubarak era, it had an unemployment rate lower than the US (a rate decreasing in 2010) as its GDP per capita continue to expand. Indeed, its level of extreme poverty was lower than Turkey's. Amar Maleki, making the same point in respect of Tunisia, points, rather, to indicators suggesting a deficit of democracy in each of the Magrebian and Levantine states affected by the revolutions.

While it may seem unfair to focus on yet one journalistic reaction, the flawed nature of this analysis of the context of the Libyan intervention is significant as it obscures the facts whilst revealing a prejudice that lies behind much of the opposition to Liberal interventionism.

Wight dubs the mission 'imperialistic'. Yet, quite apart from the fact that the No Fly Zone was authorised by UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on 17th March, the Coalition acted at the invitation of a revolutionary movement that had, in February, taken control of the second city of Libya and much of the east of the country. Conventional international law establishes that forces in such a position should be declared 'belligerent' (a status recognised by states including France early in the conflict). Thus, what would otherwise have been an internal rebellion was raised to the status of an international conflict, requiring that the forces of both parties respect the Geneva Convention. Where either force acts in contravention of these basic standards of international law, for example by murdering civilians indiscriminately and practising a scorched earth policy, foreign powers arguably have the right to intervene in defence of rebel forces even without an express UNSC Resolution (see Article 51 of the UN Charter). Indeed, members of the international community have a positive duty to 'prevent and punish' genocide under the UN Charter.

So, far from acting in an imperialistic manner, NATO and the Arab League, acting with UN approval, have done no more than to protect the Libyan people from war crimes.

This begs the question of what naysayers such as John Wight, happy breast beating their horror at the iniquities of the West, would have done in February. The only possible answer - being the only possible alternative - would have been to allow Gaddafi to finish the job. Considering the regime's ability, in late February, to push the rebels back from their early gains and the rebel forces' difficulty in securing Misrata, there is every prospect that that is exactly what he would have done. Those who support this mission are not squeamish enough to deny the inevitable casualties it has caused. But, had it never happened, those now laying claim to the moral high ground would have had blood on their hands; the same blood from which the West will never be cleansed after the horrors of Rwanda and Srebrenica.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.897993 2011-07-14T19:00:00-04:00 2011-09-13T05:12:02-04:00

Francis Hoar http://www.huffingtonpost.com/francis-hoar/ named James Murdoch as having authorised a cover-up of the hacking scandal. The fact that this was done under Parliamentary privilege surely doesn't detract from the bravery of such paragons of virtue as Tom Watson, whilst his old master sits back and blames his civil servants.

The Labour narrative is that Cameron's act in appointing Andy Coulson was just the most egregious example of the Conservative Party's lack of judgment - and worse - in its dealings with the Murdoch empire; and that it demonstrates the inability of the Government to act as a fair arbiter in determining News International's application to obtain a majority interest in BSkyB. That this narrative is propounded so unstintingly may not be surprising in an Opposition; but it should not blind us to the background of Labour's relationship, not just with Murdoch but with the tabloid press in general.

Tony Blair appointed Alastair Campbell before his election in 1997 with a specific remit to revolutionise Labour's relationship with the press. What ensued was not directly corrupt, but it emphatically influenced Labour's entire approach to politics. Sometimes it was merely a question of presentation. We might forgive Tony Blair's tribute to a fictitious dead character on Eastenders, or even his mawkish speech after Diana's death. But this association with the tabloid press was deeper and more insidious. Campbell's unprecedented attendance at cabinet meetings and, more importantly, at the meetings preceding cabinet, had a direct and dangerous effect not merely on government policy but upon the manner in which democratic debate was conducted. It was notable how often, both in the House and in the television studios so beloved of the Blair administration, that difficult, complex and important questions of policy were reduced to attacking the motives of those arguing against the populist roar of the tabloids.

Perhaps the worst example of this - and one that demonstrates most clearly the effect of Blair and Campbell's tabloid policy - was the Labour Government's home affairs policy.
Labour has a proud history of standing up for civil liberties, however unpopular that may be. Neil Kinnock and John Smith consistently refused to back the annual extension of the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1991 and its predecessors, which allowed executive detention in extreme circumstances in Northern Ireland. Indeed, it is deeply ironic to read Kevin McNamara's speech in 1994 attacking the principle of executive detention in the light of the Blair and Brown administrations' attempts to introduce detention without trial of up to ninety days. Chris Mullen's long and often thankless campaign against the injustice of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four detentions was laudable. This was, after all, the Party that abolished the death penalty.

Yet, watching Labour Home Secretaries in the 1990s and 2000s, you would think they were from a different world. It wasn't just that their policies changed. There were good arguments against McNamara's opposition to executive detention in the years of unremitting terrorism in Northern Ireland (which, let us not forget, cost more lives each year than even the 7/7 enormity) and there were respectable cases for introducing a DNA database and reforming the laws of criminal evidence. Those were not the cases put forward. Instead, we saw the government embrace a series of emotional and mawkish tabloid campaigns that used victims of crime as a Trojan Horse to encourage and promote a government agenda more hostile to common law rights than any throughout the twentieth century.

Rebecca Wade herself demonstrated the dangerous nature of the misuse of tabloid power with her 2001 campaign to name paedophiles, which led directly to mob violence and attacks on those the press called 'innocent' (as though it would be quite justifiable to attack guilty men without recourse to due process). But it continued throughout the last decade and could be seen, yet again, in last month's disgusting attacks on Levi Bellfield's counsel for doing his job cross-examining witnesses and putting his client's case (a campaign brilliantly exposed in the blog 'Beneath the Wig').

These campaigns directly influenced government policy. The appointment of the foul mouthed quango queen Louise Casey as Victims' Commissioner, one of the last acts of the Brown Government, was the culmination of a joint government and tabloid campaign that used victims of crime as a weapon to damage the common law rights of defendants.

One of the worst examples of the nature of these tabloid campaigns was the Brown Government's reaction to a House of Lords judicial decision refusing to allow witnesses to give evidence anonymously. The government reaction showed the danger of allowing understandable sympathy for victims of crime to influence decisions at the expense of cool headed judgment that takes proper accounts of the need for due process; something representative democracy is supposed to provide in a government of laws. Legislation was passed within days with no opportunity for proper scrutiny. The tabloid outrage was such that no major political party held the government to account for the enormously dangerous step of allowing anonymous witnesses - witnesses whom the defence could not hope to scrutinise without even being allowed to know their connection to the defendant (as I have written elsewhere). Yet those basic rights count for nothing when a government wallows in the mire of its tabloid bedfellows.

This is but one, perhaps not the most egregious, example of the effect of tabloid campaigns on government, but it demonstrates well the use by both tabloids and government of emotive arguments to propagate policy and undermine those who dare stand against them. Almost as damaging to political discourse has been the tactic used by Labour Home Secretaries, in particular, to fail to engage with argument but merely attack their opponents. Blair, too, was particularly adept at tabloid friendly jibes whenever anyone dared question his policies on most subjects. Engaging, arguing and persuading were replaced by personal attack, aunt sallies and populist jibes.

Truly, this relationship has damaged our governance. It has infected every Party and made it ever more difficult to make complex but essential arguments on behalf of those unable to defend themselves against the mob. The tabloid press, its campaigns, its lack of ethics, its use of emotive rhetoric to advance its causes and its influence on government has changed our democracy for the worse. It is the responsibility of all political Parties, not just the government of the day, to turn their back on cheap tabloid headlines and act, for once, in the public interest.
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