Blunkett Wants To Sue

I see that David "civil-liberties-just-get-in-the-way-of-me-locking-everyone-up" Blunkett, wants to sue over the scrapped ID card scheme. Aside from the fact he clearly doesn't understand the concept of democracy and that changes of Government can do this, this quote was amusing:

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I have got a card and it's very useful and I don't believe anyone has surveilled anything about me."

He either has a short memory or is very complacent, this from 2003:

A BBC reporter has "stolen" Home Secretary David Blunkett's identity as part of an investigation into Britain's fastest growing crime - ID fraud.

Paul Kenyon, of BBC One's Kenyon Confronts programme, set out to prove how easy it is to snatch other people's identities and shows that basic checks are not made when official documents are issued.

Good riddance to both him and the ID card scheme.

Not Long Now...

...until prisoners will be granted the right to vote. As predicted here and here, the government was always likely to cave in rather quickly after the election, the question as ever is timing. My bet of it happening around the time of the emergency budget, which is on June 22nd, still looks good.

Completely unrelated, the nation will be distracted from the gloomy economic news certain to be in the budget, because England are playing Slovenia in the World Cup the day after, on the 23rd.

Shurley some coincidence. Jo Moore would be proud.

Wembley

Politics will be taking a back seat until Monday as I will be at the 'value-for-money-built-on-the-cheap' stadium, otherwise know as Wembley, tomorrow.

Bugger Off

Just caught a quick listen to BBC Radio 2 just now - The Jeremy Vine show - discussing the proposed hike in Capital Gains Tax to 40% which is being hotly debated within the coalition. All well reasoned arguments on both sides, then there's a voice that sounds all too familiar to me putting the case forward for the Lib Dems: Evan Harris!

Erm how do I put this? You lost your seat (with not much dignity I hasten to add), you're now no longer a MP, why oh why have you been clogging up the tv and radio airwaves since?

Still at least he's in good company.

Masters And Servants

The Evening Standard has a quote from David Cameron:

"In everything we do...............we must remember that we are not masters but servants."

Hmm now that seems strangely familiar. Here's what Tony Blair had to say in 1997 just after the Labour landslide:

"We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people. We will never forget that."

He was also overheard saying to Cameron recently:

"You have learned well my young Padawan..."

(Note: I might have made that last bit up).

hattip: Witterings From Witney

Nuances

I promise I won't keep harping on about the lack of clear water between the three main UK parties on the EU, but I've stumbled across this article in the Economist by Charlemagne. Titled; "Are Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats really so Europhile? Are the Tories so Eurosceptic?", here are some choice quotes:

"NUANCES". That is the word that William Hague, Britain's new foreign secretary and a supposedly ferocious Eurosceptic, uses to describe foreign policy differences between the Conservatives and their new coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats (and, for that matter, the outgoing Labour government).

"Quite easy": that is another Hague phrase, to describe the work of forging a common policy on the EU with the LibDems, supposedly the one true Europhile party in Britain.

I must admit that as a foreign hack myself, out of Britain for some 13 years now, the central message that Mr Hague had to send strikes me as accurate: that the differences between the big three British political parties on foreign policy are not very big, and that what counts most of all is the fact that they are British.

Mr Hague basically sounded like a Democrat: ie, like every other European politician who comes to Washington. In fact, scepticism towards the euro was about the only area where Mr Hague showed some teeth, it seems, appearing to have said of the euro crisis that his party had always thought the single currency a foolish idea.

The article is well worth reading in full. It's very clear that nothing has changed in terms of policy detail on the EU, and on other issues as well, by the election apart from the colour of the shirts.

Quote Of The Day

"In a few years, I wonder if [Lord Mandelson] will be firmly established as a national treasure, a faintly menacing version of Stephen Fry."

James Kirkup in the Telegraph on what lies in store for Lord Mandelson now he's resigned from the Labour front bench.

More Of The Same

Iain Dale reports tonight that:

No one likes to be bounced. But that's exactly how Conservative MPs are feeling this evening. At a hastily arranged meeting of the 1922 Committee this afternoon, David Cameron suggested that the 1992 Committee should in future be made up of the whole parliamentary party, and not just backbenchers. This is interpreted as being a power grab by the party leadership. MPs are currently voting on whether to make the change or not.

Not content with making fundamental changes to our constitution on a whim, reneging on a crucial manifesto promise within 2 weeks of taking office, Cameron is now trying to make an audacious assault on the power of his own backbenches; one which would hugely limit the power of Conservative backbenches to hold the government to account.

Naturally this will probably mean it will be harder for the more EU sceptical Tory MPs to hold Cameron to account over his pro-EU policies.

Nevermind, at least most Tories were happy to get rid of Labour whatever the cost.

Well That Didn't Last Long.

...so called Tory Euro-scepticism. Of course we all knew that the Tories were never truly sceptical of the EU project but the revealing of their true colours since the election has happened sooner than I thought.

EUReferendum points me to an article by Mary Ellen Synon in the Daily Mail regarding the case of Abid Naseer:

The leader of a terrorist cell planning an attack on Easter shoppers in Manchester cannot be deported back to Pakistan in case he is tortured, a tribunal has ruled.

Why not? Because of the European Convention on Human Rights. So what do the Tories propose to do about it? Scrap the Act as per their manifesto commitment on page 90?

....we will replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.

Of course not, they will 'review' it instead. Mary Ellen Synon is not impressed:

The most revolting thing about the way Cameron and Hague have sold out the British to the European Union isn't that they've done it; though that is revolting enough.

No, the thing which is really sick-making is the eagerness, the enthusiasm with which they've done it. What has been revolting is the speed with which they have grabbed any excuse to dump every Conservative policy of resistance to ever-greater control of Britain by the EU institutions.

It has become clear that every word of scepticism ever uttered by Cameron and Hague about the dangers posed to Britain by the EU was fake. They never meant any of it. The coalition negotiations with the loser-Lib-Dems didn't force them to surrender any of these policies -- it is clear now the Tory leadership couldn't hand them over fast enough.

One policy they've dumped with shameless speed is the commitment that a new Tory-led government would repatriate the powers that were handed over to Brussels by Labour in the areas of social and employment laws, and criminal justice.

Now all Cameron and Hague say they will do is 'examine the balance' of such powers Brussels now holds in these crucial areas. Which means nothing. Or rather, what it means is that they will fight to repatriate nothing.

The fact that the Cameron promises on the EU were just complete bollocks comes as no surprise, what does come as a surprise is that many Tory activists appear to have been taken in by them. See the anger and frustration here, here, here and here as they claim that the Tories are the only party to win power who will fight the EU, and that a vote for UKIP is indirectly a vote for more Brussels by keeping Brown in.

But it was perfectly obvious that Cameron loves the EU project as much as Clegg and now we have real proof.

Short Break

Now that the election is over, I'm busy getting back to work, I took just over 3 weeks off for my campaign so I've a lot to catch up on. So this blog will be quiet for a bit, but it will return.

In the meantime it seems, despite Operation Ostrich (the Tory strategy on Europe) that the EU will give Cameron a few headaches this year. The Lisbon Treaty is due up for re-ratification this year, only 'a technical adjustment' according to the Foreign Office. Enough leeway for Cameron to renege once again on his cast-iron promise.

There are plenty of reasons why I think the coalition will be short-lived, primarily amongst them with be differences on the EU between the Lib Dems and Tory backbenches. It cannot be ignored forever, however hard they try.