Tony Blair has announced that there will be no opt-out for Catholic adoption agencies, but that there will be a 21 month delay in the introduction of the law to give them time to adjust.
In an ideal world, clashes of the kind we have witnessed between the government and the Catholic church could be resolved without violence to the law or to conscience. Let us accept that we do not live in an ideal world.
But even in this non-ideal world, the furore and its conclusion have been a shoddy episode that did nobody any credit.
(more…)
Drug traffickers passport blunder - BBC news.
There’s something very un-New Labour about John Reid. Not just something, everything, in fact. It’s not that he lacks the smooth sophistication of Blair, Mandelson and Campbell (remember them?). After all, we’ve put up with John Prescott. It’s that he makes a positive virtue out of telling it like it is, with no thought for collective cabinet responsibility, protecting his predecessors, preparing a position for the future. “The home office is not fit for purpose” he tells us. Well, yes. It should be split into two departments, he says. Sounds reasonable. Heads will roll, he indicates.
All this has the sound of a man walking into a new department at the start of a new government, ready to expose mercilessly every fault, failing and foible of his predecessors. Except, of course, as everyone knows, he came in nine years after Labour swept to power. Private Eye, in a naturally scurillous fashion, has suggested that this is because nobody has yet told him he is the Home Secretary. Indeed, his antics do more resemble an opposition Shadow Home-Secretary homing in on an incompetent cabinet minister. (more…)
Conservative peer defects to UKIP, 20 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6281423.stm
Tory donors ‘may vote for UKIP’, 15 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6262325.stm
Conservative peers defect to UKIP, 09 Jan 07, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6243807.stm
Things are looking up for the Conservative party. They reached their strongest poll position for 14 years on December 20, according to the Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/polls/story/0,,1975783,00.html What’s more, David Cameron seems to have that which John Major, William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard all missed: appeal with the voters. But there are rather darker clouds on the horizon. At the back end of 2006 Cameron felt forced to put out a strong ‘back me or sack me’ message. At the time nobody felt like taking him up, but it was eerily reminiscent of John Major’s final months.
(more…)
Gordon Brown lacks a “full-throated mandate” to become prime minister and there should be an election soon after Tony Blair resigns, David Cameron says.
Should Gordon Brown be prime minister after Tony Blair? Will he? Is anyone even still interested in the question? With every potential contender ducking for cover and touting for the position of deputy-leader (ie, leader after Gordon Brown loses a General Election), this particular hot potato is now as cold as last year’s summer salad.
Except for David Cameron. Mr Cameron seems to think there’s still lots of mileage in this one.
But there’s the thing. When challenged on the question of why this is different from John Major, Mr Cameron says: “I think there’s a difference this time in that Tony Blair uniquely said before the last election that ‘I’m not going to fight another election but I’m going to do a full term’. People elected him for a full term, so we are in a different situation.”
That would be because people didn’t elect Margaret Thatcher for a full time, would it, David?
(more…)
Nobody can now claim that any part of the war in Iraq has been anything but a disaster. The invasion based on faulty intelligence, the hundreds of thousands of dead, the inability of Western powers to extricate themselves militarily. The one bright star — for war apologists — was the capture and trial of Saddam Hussein. Echoing Nuremberg, the trial was to demonstrate the absolute justice in Hussein’s removal from power, and, by extension, the rightness of the American cause.
The jury may well still be (paradoxically) out on the quality of justice during the trial. We should not forget the lawyers who were murdered for defending him. Saddam Hussein was certainly an utterly despicable man. This does not justify flawed justice.
However, the manner of his execution, and the subsequent attack by Mr Maliki on Westerners who have dared to question it, has demonstrated that, in the removal of Saddam, we have not advanced Iraq. Rather, we have handed over power from one ethnic group to another. True, Mr Maliki is no Saddam Hussain. But, equally, he has now publicly stated that he does not want to continue in his job, and that he would stop early if he could.
Even in Mr Malki, though, there is a chilling tone of totalitarianism: “The decision was implemented after a just trial which the dictator did not deserve as the crimes he committed against the people, the country and its institutions were disgraceful,” he said. As soon as we deem one class of criminal to ‘not deserve a fair trial’, we have abandoned the most fundamental principle of modern jurisprudence: that all are equal under the law.