Entangled Alliances

photo credit: srqpix

Last month Britain was swept up in a maelstrom of rage after it was revealed that Fred Goodwin, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was due to receive a generous pension to the tune of a staggering £703,000 a year. The problem? The Royal Bank of Scotland is now 70% owned by the British taxpayer. Cue outrage from all sides: while the tabloids and broadsheets alike foamed at the mouth, government ministers went a bit mental and promised to suspend the rule of law. The controversy over Goodwin’s pension wasn’t just a matter of one man’s greed, however; it was a focal point for the public feeling of  helplessness, disbelief and disgust brought on by the realisation that the mighty, all-knowing financial powers we entrusted with our money are actually just a load of out-of-their-depth greedy idiots who’ve gone and squandered the lot.

Well, now the United States is having their “Goodwin” moment – and who knows where the chips will fall?

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When domestic politics is getting you down, the international stage can prove a welcome diversion.  Just ask Bill Clinton.  But here in Britain we’re talking plummeting poll numbers, not impeachment, and the diversion of international economic policy, not cruise missile strikes.  Yes, what a breath of fresh air the international stage has been for Gordon Brown.  Far away from a seemingly insurmountable deficit in the polls, and rumblings in the Labour ranks, Brown has been reveling in a reputation as a far-sighted guru of economic policy, feted by the likes of Paul Krugman and fulfilling a boyhood dream (I’m with you Gordo) of addressing a Joint Session of Congress.  Next month, however, these two worlds will collide in a bold all-or-nothing attempt by Brown to merge the two currents of his premiership; an attempt to rescue his domestic political prospects and cement his role as a world leader in one fell swoop.  In April, the G20 is coming to town, and for Gordon Brown the stakes could not be higher.

photo credit: World Economic Forum

The London Summit, which will be held on one fateful day, April 2nd, is a follow-up to a session held last November in Washington D.C. – a session in which rather little was decided, except vague assurances about cutting taxes and increasing government spending.  The Prime Minister’s zeal was already clear at this stage.  He declared that the summit  was “the road to the new Bretton Woods. It is absolutely clear that we are trying to build new institutions for the future.”  For him, London is where the deal will be sealed.   His agenda is extraordinarily ambitious.  As the Economist sardonically put the issue:

The summit should not only stimulate the economy and renounce protectionism, but also bolster the IMF and other international financial outfits, revamp regulation, create an early-warning system for crises, and save the poor. It was as if Mr Brown thought the ailing economy would yield to an act of governmental will, if only it were colossal enough.

The Economist, ever pragmatic, argues that such overreach risks undermining the immediate necessities of global government stimulus and a united front against protectionism.  This pessimism seems to be borne out by the unenthusiastic noises coming from G20 capitals and an emerging transatlantic gulf in attitudes.  Below the fold, I look at the opposition to Gordon Brown’s plan for new financial institutions, and the implications for his domestic political fortunes.

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photo credit: PtM 1985

In recent UK news, Britain’s chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has put forward proposals to set minimum prices for alcohol, in an attempt to put a stop to ultra-cheap supermarket booze and the binge drinking that this allegedly encourages. Gordon Brown reacted today by rejecting such a proposal, pointing out quite rightly that we don’t want the “sensible majority of moderate drinkers to have to pay more or suffer as a result of the excesses of a small minority”.

But Donaldson’s proposal doesn’t just fail in terms of personal liberty, it fails on effectiveness grounds, too.  Now I’m about as much a sociologist as the next man (the next man being, in this case, the Chief Medical Officer) but it seems to me that price-fixing ideas like this only work if the people they’re aimed at have an alternative to buying their usual volume of alcohol. But, as we’re always being told, binge drinking is primarily a product of inadequate social circumstances – in other words the disaffected, urban youth of this country have nothing else better to do than get ridiculously wasted every night. Given the choice, therefore, between paying a couple of extra quid to continue getting wasted, or doing nothing and doing it a little more sober … well, it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it? In fact, if you want to make an analogy here (and do I love me a good analogy) then you can turn to the field of global politics, specifically International Relations. It’s a common place belief amongst IR scholars that economic sanctions on rogue countries rarely work, at least not by themselves; it’s far better to incentivise the country in question: engage them in dialogue, find out what they want and thus make co-operation an attractive option.  In the same way, scaring the urban yoof off drink by jacking up the prices just isn’t going to work- you have to give them a reason to not get absolutely battered every single night, or at least a better reason than the chance to have a couple of extra quid left in your pocket in the morning.

Of course I could be miles off there, but what this does tell us, if anything, is that there’s a real problem with the dialogue on these issues. It’s all well and good having a public tennis match between the doctors and the politicians – but where are all the social scientists? Where are the cunning strategies? Maybe we should just recall the experts on Iran and North Korea from their day job of figuring out dictators and tell them to get work on the binge drinkers of Britain instead . After all, when you’ve faced down Ahmajinidad, how hard can it be to tackle a sloshed fella with a can of carlsberg in his hand?

photo credit: martcatnoc

Last Monday The Times reported that the Lib Dems have started “scenario planning” for what they should do in the entirely plausible event of a hung parliament – which is what would occur if the Conservatives win the election but can’t form a majority government. According to the Times article, they plan to use a variety of scenario planning techniques including mind maps, game theory and, uh, writing on whiteboards – indeed, the article itself has pictures of some tantalising yet conveniently vague whiteboard scribblings in Vince Cable’s office, which I assume we are meant to think are incredibly clever what with Cable’s past experience as a professional scenario planner for Shell.

Game theory aside, two things really struck me from the article’s fascinating discussion of what the Lib Dems are thinking vis-à-vis a hung parliament. One is their determination not to prop up Gordon Brown:

There is an assumption that should the Tories be the largest party in a minority Parliament, the Lib Dems will probably support them in some form. This seems unlikely, at this stage, to be a formal coalition. But they recognise it would be electoral “suicide” to do the reverse and prop up Gordon Brown to keep him in Number 10 if the Tories are the largest party.

Now it could be argued that this isn’t a very logical view to take.  If you agree that the Lib Dems and Labour are both centre-left, then the fact is that in every election since 1979 there has been a centre-left majority – yet in 18 out of the last 30 years we have been ruled by a centre-right party. Following this, it makes complete electoral sense for two centre-left parties – that together form a bigger majority than the centre-right one – to form a coalition. It is, technically, the best way to express the will of the voters. This is my view, at least. However, I concede that this arguably ignores two vital points. The first is the truism that though we have three main parties, we are in many ways rooted in a two-party mentality: if Labour is losing, then the Tories must win and vice versa. The idea that a ruling party could fail to get a plurality but still remain in power (albeit in a coalition) is one that might seem perfectly natural to the inhabitants of many proportional representation-using, coalition-loving countries out there but would seem entirely alien to us.

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There are two pro-Israel lobbies in America.

One is a modest group of think tanks, politicians and generally liberal media commentators who, though strongly supportive of Israel, are nevertheless extremely critical of its policies towards Palestine and of the opinion that these policies hurt not just the Palestinians but Israel itself.  They support Israel in the true sense – looking after its objective interests rather than instinctively supporting the illogical mania of its politicians.  They are not very powerful, nor are they that influential, especially in political circles.

The second group is the “pro-Israel” lobby, and if my use of quotation marks to distinguish them isn’t clear now, then I hope by the end of this post it will be.  The “pro-Israel” lobby is a vast network that includes numerous political and public committees,  right-wing media commentators and members of Congress – both Democratic and Republican.  They believe in the literal sense of supporting Israel – in other words America must back Israel in everything it does, even if it does something that is not only bad for the peace process but harmful to its own interests as well. If Israel does it, it must be right – this is their logic. Anyone who dares to criticise Israel’s policies, no matter how reasonably, is labelled as an anti-zionist or, worse, anti-semitic. This is regardless of the source of the criticism – you may be an Ivy League professor and respected expert on the Middle East, but dare to challenge Israel policy and you’ll become the victim of a ferocious campaign to discredit and smear you. Being Jewish won’t save you from these modern day McCarthyites either : you’ll simply be dismissed as a self-hater. The “pro-Israel” lobby has a stranglehold on U.S. Middle East policy and prevents any meaningful debate of the issue, at least any debate that involves criticism of Israel itself. Indeed, genuine political criticism rarely survives the co-ordinated assault of lobbyists and powerful “pro-Israel” Congressmen. This point cannot be emphasised enough. It is almost impossible for even-handed critics of Israel to play a political role in America’s handling of the issue, so powerful is this lobby and the politicians who serve it. As far as America’s crucial role in the Middle East goes, it is therefore one of the greatest threats to the peace process.

All of the above has been correct for a long time. But it is particularly relevant right now, as a recent victory by these modern day McCarthyites has cast into doubt whether Barack Obama can really change the tone of America towards the Israel/Palestine issue and whether the U.S. can escape from the grip of the “Pro Israel” lobby in time to rescue any hopes of a successful peace process.

I am talking about the withdrawal of Charles Freeman from his appointment as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, an issue which the traditional media largely ignored but which has been analysed in admirable detail across the blogosphere (choice highlights:   Glenn Greenwald’s detailed accounts here and here;  Stephen Walt’s eloquent, expert take here and here)

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Between June 4th and June 7th, Europeans from twenty-seven member states will go to the polls to elect a new European Parliament.  One man, however, is more likely to tip the balance of power in Strasbourg than the electorates of most individual countries.  That man is David Cameron.  In 2005, when campaigning for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Cameron sought to ingratiate himself to the Eurosceptic wing of his party by making a pledge.  Choose me, he assured them, and I’ll bring the Conservatives out of the mainstream centre-right political grouping in the European Parliament, the EPP (European People’s Party), after the next elections.  The icing on this isolation cake was the surreptitious deselection and suspicious retirements of old-style pro-European Tory MEPs, and the imposition of control from Central Office during the MEP corruption scandals of Summer 2008.

photo credit: loungerie

Why exactly did the Cameroonian plan tug on the heartstrings of the John Redwoods and William Hagues of this world?  Above all, it’s important to remember that the modern-day British correlation between Left and Right and Europhile and Eurosceptic is an anomaly in international terms as well as historically (Labour’s 1983 manifesto promised, for example, to pull Britain out of the then-EEC).  Your most ardent Superstaters are likely to be found, not in the Socialist bloc, but within Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats or Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP.  The Tories smell a federalist scent wafting around the hemicycle, and it gives them the jitters. For them, there’s nothing worse than the familiar refrain of common security, immigration and foreign policies.    And don’t get the anti-Maastricht veterans started on the Lisbon Treaty (no really, please don’t). 

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photo credit: AComment

When Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package passed into law last month, it was mostly greeted by economists as a much needed influx of government spending that should help to get the economy back on track . But among the plaudits were concerns about the effectiveness of the stimulus: specifically, it should’ve been bigger.

Now you might well question whether an $800 billion package could be described as “not big enough”. But it’s important to remember that around $300 billion of it was in the form of tax cuts – helpful to the families they were aimed at, no doubt, but not particularly useful in terms of job creation. Therefore, only $500 billion was actually in the form of direct government spending, and so when considering how much is needed to create enough jobs to get the economy back on track, only two thirds of the stimulus is actually “stimulus”. But even so, surely $500 billion is enough to get the job done?

Well, uh, no actually. It isn’t. The inadequacy of the stimulus, however huge it was, is made clearer every week as increasingly disastrous figures about the economy continue to be released. In his Monday New York Times column, nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman, calling for a second stimulus, points out that:

The administration’s budget proposals, released less than two weeks ago, assumed an average unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for the whole of this year. In reality, unemployment hit that level in February — and it’s rising fast.

But isn’t Obama’s stimulus meant to make 3.5 million new jobs by the end of 2010?

3.5 million jobs almost two years from now isn’t enough in the face of an economy that has already lost 4.4 million jobs, and is losing 600,000 more each month.

Oh. Bummer. Okay, so the situation’s really bad, but do we really need another stimulus package? Martin Feldstein, professor of economics at Harvard, has looked at the numbers and concluded that yes, we do. His article’s worth a read but I am nothing if not a prolific summariser, so here’s the cliff notes version, which includes the “things Feldstein doesn’t say because he forgets we’re not all economists”:

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Check it out

Here’s a snippet:

According to White House security documents, Sasha told Secret Service agents that the ghostly twins spoke to her in unison and repeatedly beckoned her by chanting the phrases “come play with us,” “come play with us, forever,” and “Daddy’s making fajitas.”

That said, I can’t hide my disappointment that Cheney isn’t mentioned.

photo credit: Matthew Fang

The first Climate change legislation this year,is  from Connecticut Representative John B Larson.That the US will pass Climate Change legislation is guaranteed, there are easily enough votes for it, and the US should pass it this year. Really? I hear you ask incredulously, the stimulus didn’t work out so well and that had a strong public backing, what makes you so sure?

Firstly the House,  a strong Democratic majority wielded by Nancy Pelosi ensures a largely easy ride for the Obama administration. This was further underpinned by the success of Waxman over Dingell for the Chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce committee, marking the changing winds in Washington with regards to Climate Change. Waxman has been vocal in his support for more aggressive approaches to tackling Climate Change issues and will be be a key ally for the administration when it hopes to tackle Climate Change this year.

Second and more critically is the potential in the Senate.  Last year a Climate Change bill gained only 48 votes, with 6 supporters absent, this year we ought to be more confident. Last year, was slightly moot, since Bush would probably have vetoed it anyway. However, President Obama has spoke consistently throughout his campaign of the need for Climate Change legislation, yet it was his opponent Senator McCain who could have the final say. As a Presidential candidate, Senator McCain was candid in his support for cap and trade,  and it could be his support that brings in the votes. His prominence in the media will break the potential unaninmatyamong Senate Republican ranks in opposing legislation and would then need only one other Republican or a seated Franken to avoid a filibuster and pass legislation.

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photo credit: Alain Bachellier

Yesterday UK business secretary Peter Mandelson was approached by a woman named Leila Deen who proceeded to pour a cup of green custard over his head.  You can see the video here.  Deen, a campaigner against airport expansion, was protesting about the Government’s decision to give Heathrow a third runway, one which Mandelson allegedly had a large role in. After “sliming” Mandelson, she proceeded to give an interview to the press nearby and then calmly left the scene, the police briefly stopping her merely to ensure she wasn’t travelling to Parliament and to wish her a lovely day.

Mandelson’s reaction was to note “Whilst I’m prepared to take my fair share of the green revolution on to my shoulders, I’m less keen on having it on my face”.   Deen herself remarked “the only thing green about Peter Mandelson is the slime coursing through his veins”. Finally Gordon Brown pitched in: “If anybody doubted the greening of Peter Mandelson and his willingness to take the green agenda on his shoulders, we’ve seen it in practice this morning.”

So it was a bad day for puns. But, according to an article written shortly afterwards, it was a good day for liberty. Martin Kettle, writing in The Guardian, seems to think this was one in the eye for civil liberties campaigners:

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