The other day I went to a dinner raising money for an African charity. I am torn between hating these events for their sub-Band Aid kitsch, and admiring the people who devote themselves to trying to help others. My wife and I came away significantly poorer, but clutching a case of venerable Bordeaux which some kind soul had donated to the auction.
Significant pressure was applied for diners to sponsor a child's education. Would we pay a modest monthly sum to put a wide eyed child through school?
I wrote on here the other day about the strange pathology of the Left - the desire at all costs to be nicer than the Right. There's nothing inherently wrong with that (although it doesn't always form the best basis for dealing with the truly horrible), but it does have a tendency to inhibit the desire to examine all the facts rather than just the ones which provide personal validation.
Take the migrants currently trying to cross the Mediterranean to Italy. The ones Ed Miliband thinks are coming because the Tories failed to help sort things out in Libya. The ones Katy Hopkins described as "cockroaches". They are rightly objects of pity, and we should try and help them. What form should that help take?
There was outrage a few months ago when the Italians announced that search and rescue operations in the Med were going to be scaled down because, apparently, the knowledge that Europeans would be actively out looking for them just encouraged migrants to risk the dangerous crossing.
Cue outrage in the liberal press. How dare we abandon these refugees to the vagaries of storm, dehydration and brutal traffickers? People fleeing from persecution deserved better.
Well hold hard. Africa is such a mess that the numbers of people legitimately seeking asylum in Britain and elsewhere must vastly outnumber our capacity to accommodate them. Our asylum policy acknowledges this. It says you can't claim asylum until get to the UK. But the reality is that most people are too poor to apply for a visa or afford the travel costs. In other words our policy deliberately filters out the overwhelming majority of potential asylum seekers by limiting application to those affluent enough or strong enough - or lucky enough - to withstand the immense hardships inherent in working your way across a hostile continent.
This isn't a moral policy. It's a pragmatic policy. Very much like the policy decision to scale back search and rescue in the Mediterranean. If you asked Libyans, "Hands up who wants to come and live in Europe?" a very significant proportion of the population, perhaps even a majority, would want to come. Any policy short of welcoming them with open arms is, judged by the standards of the self-righteous, immoral.
Asked to choose between the just and the practical, the Left will always choose the former. Usually without examining the implications of the latter.
But a policy which leaves Africans to drown is not of a different order of evil from one which leaves them to starvation, persecution, rape, murder or torture at home. The outrage is thoughtless and synthetic.
The best way of deterring North Africa's migrants is to focus on the reasons they want to leave in the first place. Only a fool would say that none of Africa's problems arise from the legacy of colonialism; but the overwhelming majority of them are cultural and political. Lack of democracy, lack of education, corruption, the culture of the strong man and religious intolerance are surely the prime movers.
All the West's efforts should be focused on helping Africans sort this stuff out for themselves. It's arguable that well-intentioned mediation merely prolongs the agony. It puts off the day when Africans stand up and say, "We don't want to live like this any more".
When will that happen? Probably not soon. And helping Africans to leave probably won't make it happen any sooner. The philosopher Alan Wolfe wrote, "Behind every citizen lies a graveyard". I suspect that in many African countries the people have not yet been born who will fill those graveyards.
We are now sponsoring a Kenyan child's education. It's probably wrong. I have left liberalism sufficiently far behind to feel slightly bad about having done it; but I'm close enough to the desire to do the right thing that it was impossible to turn away. And a lot cheaper than a case of Claret.
Tuesday 28 April 2015
Friday 24 April 2015
Dan Hodges, Ed Miliband and the pathology of self-righteousness
It's a sign of how politics and the media works that a political storm has erupted today (and it's only 9 a.m.) about a speech Ed Miliband hasn't even given. Later on the campaign trail he's due to say, journalists have been briefed, that "The refugee crisis and tragic scenes in the Mediterranean are in part a direct result of failure of post conflict planning for Libya". The Tories have seized on this as a criticism of their role in the bombing which helped remove Colonel Gaddafi from power. There is much angry frothing of the mouth in the Tory campaign, some of it possibly even genuine.
Pre-leaking a speech gives the Labour leader the chance to amend it before actually making it. The latest I can find is that Miliband will say "since the action, the failure of post conflict planning has become obvious. David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya's political culture and institutions could be left to evolve and transform on their own".
I'm not going to waste time deconstructing the differences, if any, between these two utterances, still less mulling over the wisdom or otherwise of the Libyan intervention or the effect it might have had on the thousands of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to a better life in Europe. The thrust of the intervention is that David Cameron got it wrong, and that he abandoned the people of Libya to their fate.
Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is a man who in those circumstances would do the right thing.
This is where reality steps up and bashes you in the face in the manner of a carelessly discarded garden rake. Ed Miliband? A man who won't abandon the people of the Middle East when they are in trouble? Does Miliband think no-one remembers the way Labour blocked the Government's plans to help the Syrian rebels against President Assad's regime in the summer of 2013? No post conflict planning was needed there because Miliband's action helped ensure that, nearly two years later, the conflict is still going on. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, a vacuum of power into which ISIS has swaggered with its decapitations, burnings, defenestrations and cultural genocide.
It would be wrong of course to lay all this at the door of a man whose Hampstead liberalism is characterised much more by its utter ineffectualness rather than brutality. But by preventing Britain from acting, Miliband helped to make it easier for Obama to step aside, and to create a political atmosphere across the western world in which it was possible for leaders afraid of commitment to draw back.
Ah, I hear you say, but Miliband's action was tough and principled. He stopped Cameron doing anything because he knew the result would be to make things even worse in Syria.
Now this is clearly balls - how could things possibly get any worse than they eventually turned out to be? - but nevertheless some people will believe it and so, not surprisingly, does Miliband himself.
In fact Miliband is so proud of his blocking vote that he has been boasting about it on TV. I know this because the (Labour-sympathising) journalist Dan Hodges wrote a terrific article about it in the Torygraph a month ago. You can read it here.
On Newsnight Miliband told Jeremy Paxman that he was tough enough to be British PM because he had "stood up to the leader of the free world" over Syria. "I made up my mind, and we said no, right? I think standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness I would say".
But even if you think Miliband made the right decision, Hodges shows in damning detail that it was not one made as a matter of principle. He accuses Miliband of lying.
Hodges - who is not, one imagines, on the Labour leader's Christmas card list - says Miliband told Cameron that he would be prepared to support military action, but the Labour party would need some persuading. He would need some concessions. The first of these was merely that Cameron would need to publish legal advice showing the action was legal. Then he said that Cameron would need to publish the intelligence showing the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Then Cameron would need to show the action had UN approval. Then Miliband said a vote would have to await the publication of the UN weapons inspectors report into the attacks. Then he said there would have to be two Commons votes before action could be authorised.
These conditions were made over several days. Cameron agreed to all of them.
Hodges claims contact with sources on both the Labour and Coalition sides to back up his story. Labour whips, he says, had been told there would be "a significant backbench rebellion" if Miliband supported military action. Miliband was being warned that he "risked a reaction from Labour supporters, in particular, former Lib Dems who had recently switched allegiance".
Hodges concludes that "It was on that basis, and that basis alone, that Ed Miliband decided to vote against the Government. It was not an act of principle. It was not an act of strength. It was an act of political calculation and opportunism born out of political weakness". Remember that at the time there was significant disquiet in Labour circles about the quality of Miliband's leadership.
"Stand up to Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?", Hodges asks cattily. "Ed Miliband wouldn't stand up to Diane Abbott".
I depart from Hodges in only one respect. I do think Ed Miliband is tough. You don't get to be Labour leader without being tough. But it depends what you mean by tough, and perhaps it might be better to describe Miliband as ruthless.
I see him as a ruthless man who will say or do anything to secure his own political advantage. That's why he will criticise David Cameron over Libya today. That's why he blocked Cameron's Syrian action, and that's why he lied about it on Newsnight. None of these things mean that Miliband would be a bad Prime Minister, or for that matter that he is markedly different from other politicians.
They do however make rather baffling the claim made by Labour supporters that Ed Miliband is a man of principle, a claim comprehensible only on the basis that the Left suffers from a pathology of self-righteousness and, being sure of occupying the moral high ground itself, cannot bear to imagine its luminaries in any other terms.
PS A few days after writing the above paragraph I learned that the New Statesman had done a survey to find out about the tolerance of political groups towards each other. It found out that people on the Left were twice as likely as the Right to drop a friend or acquaintance because they had different political allegiances. This mirrors work done by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who found that Republicans were much better at explaining the views of Democrats than vice versa. Haidt put this down to lack of empathy. Whatever, as I said, it's a pathology.
Pre-leaking a speech gives the Labour leader the chance to amend it before actually making it. The latest I can find is that Miliband will say "since the action, the failure of post conflict planning has become obvious. David Cameron was wrong to assume that Libya's political culture and institutions could be left to evolve and transform on their own".
I'm not going to waste time deconstructing the differences, if any, between these two utterances, still less mulling over the wisdom or otherwise of the Libyan intervention or the effect it might have had on the thousands of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to a better life in Europe. The thrust of the intervention is that David Cameron got it wrong, and that he abandoned the people of Libya to their fate.
Ed Miliband, on the other hand, is a man who in those circumstances would do the right thing.
This is where reality steps up and bashes you in the face in the manner of a carelessly discarded garden rake. Ed Miliband? A man who won't abandon the people of the Middle East when they are in trouble? Does Miliband think no-one remembers the way Labour blocked the Government's plans to help the Syrian rebels against President Assad's regime in the summer of 2013? No post conflict planning was needed there because Miliband's action helped ensure that, nearly two years later, the conflict is still going on. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, a vacuum of power into which ISIS has swaggered with its decapitations, burnings, defenestrations and cultural genocide.
It would be wrong of course to lay all this at the door of a man whose Hampstead liberalism is characterised much more by its utter ineffectualness rather than brutality. But by preventing Britain from acting, Miliband helped to make it easier for Obama to step aside, and to create a political atmosphere across the western world in which it was possible for leaders afraid of commitment to draw back.
Ah, I hear you say, but Miliband's action was tough and principled. He stopped Cameron doing anything because he knew the result would be to make things even worse in Syria.
Now this is clearly balls - how could things possibly get any worse than they eventually turned out to be? - but nevertheless some people will believe it and so, not surprisingly, does Miliband himself.
In fact Miliband is so proud of his blocking vote that he has been boasting about it on TV. I know this because the (Labour-sympathising) journalist Dan Hodges wrote a terrific article about it in the Torygraph a month ago. You can read it here.
On Newsnight Miliband told Jeremy Paxman that he was tough enough to be British PM because he had "stood up to the leader of the free world" over Syria. "I made up my mind, and we said no, right? I think standing up to the leader of the free world shows a certain toughness I would say".
But even if you think Miliband made the right decision, Hodges shows in damning detail that it was not one made as a matter of principle. He accuses Miliband of lying.
Hodges - who is not, one imagines, on the Labour leader's Christmas card list - says Miliband told Cameron that he would be prepared to support military action, but the Labour party would need some persuading. He would need some concessions. The first of these was merely that Cameron would need to publish legal advice showing the action was legal. Then he said that Cameron would need to publish the intelligence showing the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Then Cameron would need to show the action had UN approval. Then Miliband said a vote would have to await the publication of the UN weapons inspectors report into the attacks. Then he said there would have to be two Commons votes before action could be authorised.
These conditions were made over several days. Cameron agreed to all of them.
Hodges claims contact with sources on both the Labour and Coalition sides to back up his story. Labour whips, he says, had been told there would be "a significant backbench rebellion" if Miliband supported military action. Miliband was being warned that he "risked a reaction from Labour supporters, in particular, former Lib Dems who had recently switched allegiance".
Hodges concludes that "It was on that basis, and that basis alone, that Ed Miliband decided to vote against the Government. It was not an act of principle. It was not an act of strength. It was an act of political calculation and opportunism born out of political weakness". Remember that at the time there was significant disquiet in Labour circles about the quality of Miliband's leadership.
"Stand up to Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin?", Hodges asks cattily. "Ed Miliband wouldn't stand up to Diane Abbott".
I depart from Hodges in only one respect. I do think Ed Miliband is tough. You don't get to be Labour leader without being tough. But it depends what you mean by tough, and perhaps it might be better to describe Miliband as ruthless.
I see him as a ruthless man who will say or do anything to secure his own political advantage. That's why he will criticise David Cameron over Libya today. That's why he blocked Cameron's Syrian action, and that's why he lied about it on Newsnight. None of these things mean that Miliband would be a bad Prime Minister, or for that matter that he is markedly different from other politicians.
They do however make rather baffling the claim made by Labour supporters that Ed Miliband is a man of principle, a claim comprehensible only on the basis that the Left suffers from a pathology of self-righteousness and, being sure of occupying the moral high ground itself, cannot bear to imagine its luminaries in any other terms.
PS A few days after writing the above paragraph I learned that the New Statesman had done a survey to find out about the tolerance of political groups towards each other. It found out that people on the Left were twice as likely as the Right to drop a friend or acquaintance because they had different political allegiances. This mirrors work done by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who found that Republicans were much better at explaining the views of Democrats than vice versa. Haidt put this down to lack of empathy. Whatever, as I said, it's a pathology.
Wednesday 22 April 2015
Tax, honesty and the General Election
The General Election is just over a fortnight away, excuse enough surely for a brief return to the political blogging that considerations of life's shortness brought to an end some time ago.
Last night I went to the hustings in a church where our local candidates were on display. I managed an hour of it. The Labour candidate was a fanatically intense dark-eyed Scot whose accent caused a perceptible chilling of the atmosphere (thanks to the SNP for this new development in Anglo-Scottish relationships). An Independent had a Shoreditch beard and top knot, bringing hipster style to the suburbs; hats off to him for having a go, but his pitch - no cuts are necessary and we just need to tax the rich more - was predictably utopian and lazy. It was still widely applauded, mind. The Lib Dem incumbent was a mousy little man, bland of utterance until he was heckled from the floor about tuition fees. His Tory challenger wore the defiant blue of a Thatcher twin-set and spoke perhaps more than was necessary about her business experience. The UKIP man was surprisingly cuddly and nice, although totally inept: truly the quality of its candidates peaks at Mr Farage and then goes sharply downhill. Lastly another Independent with an anti European stance floundered through an opening statement but then proved surprisingly capable in argument.
I left early partly because I always feel uneasy in this Church. The hustings were chaired by the vicar: if you're reading, Rob the Rector, welcoming electors with a snide remark about their non-attendance at other times of the year is not the way to fill pews. But I was also struck by the futility of the exercise. The candidates I liked most personally - the UKIP man and the Independent woman - were not remotely credible as MPs or as recipients of the discerning vote. But more bleakly, neither are the two main political parties.
This is the most dishonest general election I can remember. Labour overspent during its glory years, telling us that it had put an end to boom and bust; it then decried the need for any cuts (remember "Labour investment versus Tory cuts"?) saying that there would never be any growth under Tory austerity; then when there was growth they said it was the wrong sort; then when this turned out to be wrong as well they said they would cut more slowly and fairly than the Tories; finally, abruptly, they now claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Shameless.
As for the Tories, when their lacklustre campaign based on the premise that the choice is between chaos and competence appears to be faltering, they promise £8 billion of uncosted extra health spending in a vain attempt to hijack Labour's pro-NHS reputation. Pathetic.
Voting on the basis of what the parties say they're going to do is pointless. You may think this particularly applies to the Lib Dems, after their volte face on tuition fees (although ironically, the system which replaced Labour's was fairer and has encouraged people from poorer families to go to university). Take a clothes peg in the ballot box, take a deep breath and vote for what you think the parties are actually going to do.
In this morning's Times the IFS's Paul Johnson complains of the "narrative that there is a magic money tree that we can pluck at will. There isn't. . . Tax and welfare changes since the recession have left middle Britain largely unscathed, while hitting the rich hardest and taking benefits from the poorest. This can't go on. If we want to reduce the deficit, or maintain plublic services, we will have to pay. Not someone else. Or we'll pay in the end by both chasing away wealth creation and increasing poverty".
I think this is the debate we're going to end up having. It's just a shame that seven years after the crash we're still not grown up enough to have it.
Last night I went to the hustings in a church where our local candidates were on display. I managed an hour of it. The Labour candidate was a fanatically intense dark-eyed Scot whose accent caused a perceptible chilling of the atmosphere (thanks to the SNP for this new development in Anglo-Scottish relationships). An Independent had a Shoreditch beard and top knot, bringing hipster style to the suburbs; hats off to him for having a go, but his pitch - no cuts are necessary and we just need to tax the rich more - was predictably utopian and lazy. It was still widely applauded, mind. The Lib Dem incumbent was a mousy little man, bland of utterance until he was heckled from the floor about tuition fees. His Tory challenger wore the defiant blue of a Thatcher twin-set and spoke perhaps more than was necessary about her business experience. The UKIP man was surprisingly cuddly and nice, although totally inept: truly the quality of its candidates peaks at Mr Farage and then goes sharply downhill. Lastly another Independent with an anti European stance floundered through an opening statement but then proved surprisingly capable in argument.
I left early partly because I always feel uneasy in this Church. The hustings were chaired by the vicar: if you're reading, Rob the Rector, welcoming electors with a snide remark about their non-attendance at other times of the year is not the way to fill pews. But I was also struck by the futility of the exercise. The candidates I liked most personally - the UKIP man and the Independent woman - were not remotely credible as MPs or as recipients of the discerning vote. But more bleakly, neither are the two main political parties.
This is the most dishonest general election I can remember. Labour overspent during its glory years, telling us that it had put an end to boom and bust; it then decried the need for any cuts (remember "Labour investment versus Tory cuts"?) saying that there would never be any growth under Tory austerity; then when there was growth they said it was the wrong sort; then when this turned out to be wrong as well they said they would cut more slowly and fairly than the Tories; finally, abruptly, they now claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Shameless.
As for the Tories, when their lacklustre campaign based on the premise that the choice is between chaos and competence appears to be faltering, they promise £8 billion of uncosted extra health spending in a vain attempt to hijack Labour's pro-NHS reputation. Pathetic.
Voting on the basis of what the parties say they're going to do is pointless. You may think this particularly applies to the Lib Dems, after their volte face on tuition fees (although ironically, the system which replaced Labour's was fairer and has encouraged people from poorer families to go to university). Take a clothes peg in the ballot box, take a deep breath and vote for what you think the parties are actually going to do.
In this morning's Times the IFS's Paul Johnson complains of the "narrative that there is a magic money tree that we can pluck at will. There isn't. . . Tax and welfare changes since the recession have left middle Britain largely unscathed, while hitting the rich hardest and taking benefits from the poorest. This can't go on. If we want to reduce the deficit, or maintain plublic services, we will have to pay. Not someone else. Or we'll pay in the end by both chasing away wealth creation and increasing poverty".
I think this is the debate we're going to end up having. It's just a shame that seven years after the crash we're still not grown up enough to have it.
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