Banning porn: the ins and outs

The European parliament is discussing a „ban on all forms of pornography”, in an attempt to reduce the stereotyping and ill-treatment of women. I dare say it will be unpopular around here, because if anything is likely to make the commenters underneath these blog posts hate the European Union even more, it would be an attempt to ban what’s open right now in your browser’s second tab.

I jest, of course. (Although one or two of you are probably blushing.) But it is going to provoke an almighty row, between the „pornography demeans women and damages men” side and the „a ban on pornography is a blow to free speech” side. Which is funny, because those two sides don’t necessarily disagree about anything: those two statements could both be true.

For a start, there really is a risk of pornography addiction, as my colleague Damian Thompson will tell you (because he’s written a book about addiction generally, The Fix [out now in paperback and available at all good bookstores], I should hastily add, not because he has any special insight into this addiction in particular). It really does lead to compulsive behaviour, for some people, and there has been a suggestion that overconsumption of porn damages sex lives. And I don’t think there’s any real argument that some of the stuff that is portrayed is demeaning, or indeed degrading, to women. Whether it damages men’s attitudes to women I don’t know: it makes intuitive sense, and commentators are quick to blame any sexual bad behaviour on the prevalence of internet porn, but there is an ongoing row over whether or not there is a causal relationship, into which I do not want to get.

But on the other side, the „it’s a blow to free speech” crowd are obviously right. Banning pornography means defining pornography, which when we remember this sorry episode we should realise is not as clear-cut as all that. Another colleague of mine, Willard Foxton, is writing a comical blog about dating, and he reports that every single major mobile provider rates it as „adult content”. Even were we to say those were simply stupid mistakes made by overzealous algorithms, there are going to be things that are borderline. An old friend of mine who did art at university did a whole exhibition of, basically, photos of body parts and rubber models of other body parts and, really, just lots of body parts. Is that art? Is it pornography? Whether you like it or not we’ve got a decision to make, and if the EU is banning porn, then presumably it’ll be the EU that decides what’s too porny for the Tate Modern.

The trouble is, as Daniel Kahneman says in Thinking, Fast and Slow and as I have probably said on here a few times before, we have a mental block when it comes to risks and benefits. Instinctively, if we think something has benefits, we decide it has no risks, and if we think something has risks, we assume it has no benefits. It’s been shown that people (Westerners, at least) who are told that something has more risks than they thought immediately and irrationally downgrade its benefits in their mind as well.

All of which means that people on the „porn causes harm” side will be unlikely to see the risks of a porn-ban, and people on the „free speech is vital” side will be unlikely to see the potential benefits. But for the debate to go anywhere, both sides need to acknowledge that „allowing porn” and „banning porn” both have risks and both have benefits. The question is: what value do we place on free speech as an ultimate good, and what value on protecting people from the potential damage of pornography? Until both sides start admitting the other side has a case, the debate is just pointless shouting.

(NB: I’m told by more techy colleagues that any complete porn ban is completely unworkable anyway, so it’s all academic. But still.)

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Hugo Chavez: Latin America has chosen rage over progress

We can already see the beginnings of an Eva Perón-style death cult. Latin Americans love a martyr, and Hugo Chávez’s early death has sparked bizarre conspiracy theories about CIA plots and biological weapons. Angry, histrionic and megalomaniac, the comandante was none the less popular to the end.

There is an old Venezuelan saying that there are no good nor bad presidents, only presidents when the oil price is high and when it is low. Chávez benefited from an extraordinary spike in the value of his country’s main export, but the wealth did not spill over into the villages and shanty towns. Instead, it was squandered in a series of boondoggles, with so many new ministries created that Venezuelans lost count. The only people who did well were the red-shirted party cadres, who grew rich on state contracts, known as “boligarchs”: a play on the Bolivarian revolution which Chávez had launched.

Why, then, was Chavism so electorally successful – not just in Venezuela but across the region? Chavism, by the way, is an especially apt word for the phenomenon: its exponents like to emphasise their anti-elitism by engaging in foul-mouthed tirades which are shockingly vulgar by the standards of Latin-American political discourse.

Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Bolivia’s Evo Morales followed the Bolivarian script to the letter, closing down their parliaments and supreme courts, scrapping their constitutions and “refounding” their states on socialist principles. In Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Paraguay and even traditionally staid and bourgeois Uruguay, the outward forms of constitutionalism were respected, but power shifted to bellicose Left-wing populists.

It would be going too far to call these leaders dictators: they are anti-parliamentary rather than anti-democratic. Having got themselves more or less legitimately elected, they dismantle the checks on their power: the judiciary, opposition parties, electoral commissions, private television stations.

In order to remain popular, they have to keep picking fights: with Washington, with the IMF, with “the rich” and, when all else fails, with each other. Chávez was forever threatening Colombia. Morales makes noises about Bolivian provinces lost to Chile in the 19th century. Kirchner stamps and shouts about the Falkland Islands.

It’s a form of displacement activity. The last thing these leaders want is to be judged on their economic record. Despite a commodity boom from which South America ought to have been a massive beneficiary, they have presided over corruption, inflation and shortages.

Why, then, do they keep winning? The answer owes a great deal to the failure of the centre-Right, which had an opportunity in the Nineties and squandered it. Only in Colombia and, to a certain extent, Chile, is there an electorally credible popular conservatism. Elsewhere, Rightist leaders have barely begun to understand the gravity of their predicament, nor to overcome their sense of entitlement. For a long time, politics in Latin America was the province of people with family wealth, white skins and foreign university degrees. Chavism is a 15-year-old reaction against that system. In the poor barrios, with corrugated iron roofs, people vote to punish the old elites.

Latin America’s tragedy is easily summarised. The state does too little and too much. Too little in the sense that it fails to operate a universal system of justice in which property rights are secure, disputes arbitrated by independent magistrates and redress available to individuals; too much in the sense that it runs massive public works schemes, owns large corporations, and buys electoral support by placing voters on the payroll. Such a system cannot fail to be corrupt. If you have a dispute with your neighbour, you don’t rely on the courts; you phone your friend who knows a general. If you want to get rich, you don’t make things or sell things; you secure a government contract. After years of misgovernment, Latin Americans have given up: they elect autocrats not in the hope of a better future, but as a howl of rage.

Is there any hope? Yes. One country that rears above the red tide is Colombia, whose former leader, Alvaro Uribe, achieved a level of popularity that the Bolivarians could only dream of. How? Partly by defeating the terrorist groups and disarming the militias, so that Colombia came back under the rule of law; and partly by a privatisation programme that reduced opportunities for nepotism.

Across most of the continent, though, politics remains a tussle between different statist factions, all seeking to get their hands on the government machine. Many voters have turned away in resignation.

But don’t imagine that it couldn’t happen closer to home. We need only look at the eurozone’s stricken Mediterranean members to see similar conditions forming. Representative democracy is still a relatively new phenomenon in some countries. It may prove more fragile than we think.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England

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Reality check for Left-wing opponents of Israel: Hamas bans women from participating in the Gaza marathon because it’s ‘un-Islamic’

There’s a wonderful moment in Radical Chic, Tom Wolfe’s essay about the party Leonard and Felicia Bernstein gave for the Black Panthers in their Park Avenue duplex, when Field Marshall John Cox, who’s addressing the assembled group of Upper East Side socialites, refers to „the merchants” who are „the exploiters of the black community”. He’s talking about the Jews, of course, and it strikes a discordant note because a majority of the rich, Left-wing sympathisers at the party are themselves Jewish. „For God’s sake, Cox, don’t open that can of worms,” writes Wolfe.

For those who aren’t sympathetic to fashionable, PC causes, there’s something particularly satisfying about moments like this. Suddenly, the romantic, Left-wing perception of a minority group, which invariably casts them as victims of oppression, runs up against an unwelcome reality, such as the fact that they’re all raving anti-Semites.

There’s a great example of this kind of reality check on the Guardian’s website today. It’s a Comment Is Free piece by a journalist called Nabila Ramdani with impeccable right-on credentials. As she says in her biog (referring to herself in the third person): „She was named a Young Global Leader 2012 by the World Economic Forum and was a winner of the inaugural European Muslim Woman of Influence Award in 2010. She has been named by DNA (Decide Now Act) as one of 101 most innovative individuals in the world for social good.”

In the article, Ramdani describes her disappointment that the Gaza marathon, which was due to take place on 10th April, has been cancelled. Ramdani, who’s of Algerian descent, had planned to compete in the marathon to express her solidarity with the poor, benighted victims of Israeli imperialist aggression. „Through spending a few agonising hours with the ordinary people of Gaza on their war-ravaged roads, we would not only be able to empathise with their despair, but publicise it to the world outside,” she writes.

Alas, she can no longer make this noble gesture. Why? Because the marathon has been cancelled following the decision of Hamas to ban women from participating. Turns out that the political party Ramdani describes as an „Islamic resistance movement” – in reality, a Holocaust-denying terrorist organisation hell bent on the destruction of Israel – isn’t particularly keen on equal rights for women. Women running in marathons – even if their bodies are covered from head to foot – is „un-Islamic”, apparently. Who would have thunk it?

Ramdani is understandably disappointed. Not because she’s finally woken up to the fact that her beloved Gaza is, in fact, a one-party state controlled by a bunch of Islamist thugs who have scant regard for the rights of women or, indeed, any other minorities. No, she’s disappointed because Hamas has thrown away an opportunity „to draw attention to what is arguably the most pressing political problem in the Middle East, if not the world, today”. That’s Israel’s „oppression” of Gaza and the West Bank, obviously, not the state-orchestrated genocide currently taking place in Syria.

That’s the problem with reality checks. You’d think a Left-wing feminist might be pulled up short by the discovery that the „Islamic resistance movement” she’s making common cause with turns out to be deeply misogynistic. But no. The important thing is to stay focused on the wickedness of Israel. As Albert Einstein said, „If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”

I would love to have been present at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza when Hamas dropped this bombshell. Though I couldn’t hope to produce something as brilliant as Tom Wolfe’s essay. Well worth a read, by the way. The whole piece, which was originally the cover story of the 8th June 1970 issue of New York magazine, can be read here.

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The obsession with sexual harassment is turning the 21st-century workplace into an emotional deadzone

This article in the Independent might just be the most dispiriting thing I have read so far this year. It is a long list of tips about “what is and isn’t acceptable in the modern workplace” and how one can avoid finding oneself in the same position as Lord Rennard – that is, accused of sexually harassing one’s colleagues. You might expect the advice to include stuff like “don’t pat anyone’s bum” or “don’t photocopy pictures of your privates and leave them on a colleague’s desk”, which are the kind of workplace codes I could get behind. But it goes much further than that. Apparently the best way to avoid being accused of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace is to turn yourself into an emotional cripple who never says anything nice or complimentary, far less cheeky, to your colleagues.

So, for example, if you’ve been thinking about complimenting a female colleague on her pretty dress or a male colleague on his spiffing new haircut, think again. The Independent advises that when it comes to compliments, “non-safe topics include hair, shoes and cleavages”, and “safe topics” include “work and… that’s it”. That is, you can tell a colleague that he or she is doing a good job, but not that they look cute or well-coiffured. If you are still determined to compliment colleagues on non-work things, apparently there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it: an etiquette expert tells the Indie that compliments must be relayed from a “respectable distance” rather than being whispered in someone’s ear. Perhaps people should carry metre-long rulers at work, which they might whip out whenever they want to say something nice to a colleague from a respectable, non-leering distance.

Older people must be especially careful in the workplace, because apparently their preferred terms of endearment – love, darling, sweetheart – are criminally archaic. The Independent says it is problematic to behave in an “avuncular manner” in the workplace. An expert tells the paper that older workers should not use old-fashioned terms like “love” unless they would be comfortable with being called “grandpa” or “village elder”. But isn’t this just the petty policing of the kind of lingo used largely by working-class people of a certain age? In one of my old workplaces, the older men uniformly referred to every young woman as “sweetheart” and every young man, including me, as “son”. It was nice. It made a rather stressful workplace environment feel more familial and pleasant. Little did I know that I and everyone else were actually being talked down to by patronising letches.

Also, you should never discuss celebrities’ sex lives at work, because others might find it offensive. You should distance yourself from flirtatious workmates, even if that makes you seem like an “officious, stuck-in-the-mud, Billy no-mates”. And you must never, ever try to get into a sexual relationship with a workmate; in response to the question of how an office friendship might be taken to “a sexual level”, the Independent and its expert advisers basically say: “Don’t even think about it.” “It’s not illegal”, we’re told (which will be a relief to the hundreds of thousands of couples who met through work), “but it’s not a good idea, either”. So even asking a colleague out on a date, with an eye for, you know, sleeping with him/her, is a big no-no these days.

The problem with such stifling, emotion-squishing codes of conduct is that they turn the 21st-century workplace into an emotional deadzone, bereft of niceness and pleasantries and even compliments. I am not – repeat, not – saying, “Why shouldn’t old farts be allowed to manhandle female staff or bombard them with sexual jokes?” Of course male bosses, or any working man, should not behave like that. But I am saying: why shouldn’t we be able to talk to and engage with and maybe even flirt with our colleagues in a way that workers have been doing for donkey’s years? One of the things that makes work more bearable for millions of people is the camaraderie they build up with their colleagues, which they often do through speaking to each other in a free and relaxed manner that is not overseen by their boring managers or HR busybodies. In turning the workplace into a moral minefield where no one can ever truly chill out, we aren’t really combatting rare instances of serious sexual harassment – we’re just alienating workers from each other and turning the workplace into a more soul-destroying arena than it needs to be.

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Hugo Chavez and his friends are the axis of absurdity

Various dictators, killers and fruitcakes are fighting back manly tears today. If a leader can be judged by his friends, then the fact that the world’s most brutal regimes have paid fulsome tribute to Hugo Chavez reveals much about the late Commandante.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s regime praised Chavez for his „honourable” support of, well, Bashar al-Assad. Chavez had „stood on the side of the Arabs’ legitimate rights” and opposed “the conspiracy against Syria,” said the official news agency in Damascus. Let’s remember that last October, Chavez declared: “How can I not support Assad? He’s the legitimate leader.”

As it happens, Assad inherited the presidency of Syria from his father in the style of an absolute monarch. If Chavez considered him “legitimate”, then this great socialist must also have been a supporter of the hereditary principle.

You will not be surprised to read that the most quixotic tribute of all came from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Hailing Chavez’s human virtues was not quite enough; Ahmadinejad also praised the late president in quasi-religious terms.

Remember that Ahmadinejad thinks the 12th Imam of the Shia faith (known as the “perfect human”) will one day return to rule the world in peace and justice. The Imam will, according to his tradition, come back with Jesus Christ as his loyal lieutenant. But Ahmadinejad thinks the “perfect human” will need more help. To make his entourage even more distinguished, Hugo Chavez will apparently be along as well.

Thus Ahmadinejad hailed the „brave, strong” Commandante, adding: „I have no doubt that he will return, along with the righteous Jesus and the perfect human.”

Where does one begin with a statement like that? Forget the millenarian mysticism for a moment and remember that Ahmadinejad helps to run a militarised, repressive, ultra right-wing theocracy. Meanwhile, Assad is the besieged figurehead of a de facto monarchy.

No genuine, Left-wing progressive should have anything to do with them. Except that both are virulently anti-American. And that, in Chavez’s eyes, meant they should be forgiven any crime and praised to the skies. This is not the axis of evil, but the axis of absurdity.

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Children are having their imaginations destroyed by iPads and video games

Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s adviser on childhood, has made the headlines by criticising a „treadmill” culture in which parents pressurise children to achieve. In an interview with the Times, she said that “It’s usually the mother that is orchestrating all of that and doing all the driving. We have created rods for our own back. Children need time to be bored.” She is not wrong. But although this is certainly true of a certain kind of highly aspirational, affluent family, it is far from universal. The most insidious problem lies elsewhere.

Consider the case of Danny Kitchen, the five-year-old boy who ran up a bill for £1,710.43 on his parents’ iPad. Every parent knows how easy it is: children have a magnetic attraction to anything with a screen, and an uncanny way of squirrelling phones and iPads away when you’re back is turned. And they seem to have been hard-wired with all the skills they need to pick up any piece of technology and start playing a game on it. There but for the grace of God, eh, mums and dads?

Maybe. But the question that’s bothering me is the one that nobody seems to be asking. What was a five-year-old doing playing a game called Zombies vs Ninjas in the first place? The fact that this hasn’t raised a single eyebrow is a depressingly accurate sign of the times. While a small demographic of parents may drive their children to breaking point, the majority tend to stick a screen in their hands and tell them to get on with it. This should cause Mrs Perry – and the rest of us – far greater concern.

I have written recently about the mystifying way in which schools have embraced screen technology without giving it the slightest thought, working on the unexamined assumption that the more digitised the classroom the better. Many parents are just as bad. It is, of course, very tempting for a harassed mum to give her child an iPad to keep him quiet. But this is a Faustian pact. Such a short term fix can have nasty results in the long term, if children lose the ability to play imaginary games and entertain themselves when boredom strikes.

A child who can only be content with a screen in hand is an accident waiting to happen. With their capacity for creative and multisensory play stunted by a blaring gadget, they will develop into a different and terrifying breed of adult. (Especially when that screen is used for horrible games like Zombies vs Ninjas.) This parenting style has become hugely dominant in recent years, to the extent that it is rarely challenged. We’re looking at evolutionary backsliding, people.

And that is not all. When not exposed to screens, many children are simply thrust into one commercially designed environment after another, all of which seem intended to deaden the imagination. On the weekend I found myself in the particular circle of hell that is a „soft play centre”. If you don’t know what that means, count yourself lucky. In a side-room, a little girl was having a sixth birthday party for about fifteen other girls. Every single one was wearing a „princess dress”, gaudy pieces of nylon often produced by Disney that make children look like so many Easter eggs. Or Barbie Dolls. Every single one was wearing plastic jewellery and make-up, and stuffing brightly-coloured sweets into their mouths. The birthday girl was sitting on a bulbous plastic throne. This was the second party to be held there that day; as soon as their time was up they were shepherded out, and the stage was re-set for another group of girls in pink nylon. As the first group left, many of them were already playing on iPads and phones. It was like a battery farm producing the cretins of the future.

Of course, television and video games have a place. For older children, certain games in particular can be immensely creative and stimulating, if played in moderation. The problem is that many parents have little concept of moderation, and even less insight into the basic necessities of childhood. Britain’s children are growing up swamped in a toxic combination of endless screentime, tacky and tedious toys, sexualised clothing, gender stereotyping and unhealthy foods. This is the real problem, not the mothers who panic if their baby gets an A minus in Greek.

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This week’s Brussels lesson for the UK: as Germany goes, so goes Europe

David Cameron and his allies have just agreed a historic cut to the EU’s long-term budget (as I predicted yesterday).

But forget the figures and maths for one second – after all the cut to the EU budget is only the equivalent of 0.0003 per cent of EU 2011 GNI – the most interesting part of this summit is political:

  • The UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, formed an alliance around a real-terms cut, outflanking France and Italy (though both countries are likely to get their own sweeteners in the end). The UK Government should be given credit for pulling this one off – it isn’t permanently isolated as some commentators would have us believe.
  • Contrary to reports in the French media yesterday, François Hollande and Angela Merkel did not reach a common position going into the talks – the only time I can remember a major deal being struck without this happening. This was another step towards a more self-confident Germany, which doesn’t simply write blank cheques – and another spanner in the Franco-German engine.
  • As expected, Angela Merkel acted as the lynchpin, conducting smaller meetings with Cameron and the ‘Northern bloc’ on the one hand, and Hollande and the ‘Southern bloc’ on the other.

But, when the dust has settled, there may be some valuable political lessons for the UK to consider.

First, its two staunchest allies in these talks, Sweden and the Netherlands, deliberately positioned themselves beyond the UK , to avoid London being seen as the outlier. The UK should show some gratitude and sensitivity to this – particularly as the two countries may see their rebates cut.

Second, Paris might want to get even down the road, including in UK-EU negotiations. This shouldn’t be over-stated though. Anglo-Franco relations are bound to be at their most tense during budget talks, since the rebate and CAP are directly linked and political red-lines for both.

But, finally, it is the role played by Merkel that is by the far the most significant. If anyone was in any doubt, it should now be abundantly clear that as Germany goes, so goes Europe. Hollande missing the meeting between Merkel and Cameron, for example, did cost him.

There will be a temptation in Westminster to see this as a green light for the UK government to go all in – and that Cameron’s strategy to negotiate a new deal in Europe followed by a referendum will get the unwavering blessing of the German Chancellor. But this would be premature.

Both at home and abroad, Angela Merkel thrives on her role as a broker, constantly playing different alternatives against each other depending on the issue at hand. This time Merkel tended towards the Northern bloc, in large part because she agreed with them, and because the UK had marshalled a group of allies, Germany could still lay claim to the political centre of gravity. Looking at it from Germany, of course, the UK provided a valuable counterweight which meant Merkel could come at as the dealmaker and get more or less what she wanted. This is also why she needs the UK in the EU.

But the lesson for  David Cameron has to be this: win enough support for your position among like-minded member states and Germany will back you.

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The Tea Party can survive Karl Rove’s wrath, but being purged from Fox News could help kill it

According to Politico, “a political colonoscopy is going on before our eyes.” Yuck. Karl Rove has set up a Super PAC to keep controversial conservatives from winning Republican primaries and the Senate leadership has established a “buddy system” to keep Tea Party congressmen in line (“buddy” as in “you should probably vote the way we tell you to, buddy…”). But the most important changes are taking place at Fox where heavyweights Sarah Palin and Dick Morris are out as contributors. A lot of this is post-election house clearing (CNN has moved staff around, too) but it also suggests that the GOP establishment is blaming the 2012 election loss on the Tea Party and the impolite Right.

Is its assessment correct? Yes and no. “Yes” in the sense that the outspoken weirdness of some Tea Party candidates shifted the balance of the Senate in the Democratic Party’s favour and “yes” in that they allowed Obama to play the culture war card so brilliantly against Mitt Romney. The margin of the 2012 election was decided by gender, race and age – and while the GOP did well with its old white guy base, Tea Party radicalism helped Obama to build a winning advantage among “everyone else”. And so moderates are now conspiring to silence the conservatives.

But, in defence of conservatives, the Republican Party did not actually run a Tea Party candidate in 2012. It ran a moderate from Massachusetts with a record of inventing Obamacare and supporting legalised abortion. Romney might have u-turned on all those positions, but the idea that the Tea Party hijacked the GOP nomination in 2012 is simply absurd. Its candidates were beaten in the primaries and it was denied a significant role at the convention. Not a single primetime convention speech included the words “Tea Party.” During the election, Akin and Mourdock might’ve stumbled on to abortion but Romney declined to make it an issue at all. He ducked away from Benghazi and Fast and Furious. In his focus on trimming the budget and bringing competence to government, Mitt Romney was about as radical (and exciting) as Cliff Richard.

Therefore, Tea Partiers are likely to argue that the GOP lost in 2012 not because it emulated them but because it ignored them. That’s partly why they’re fighting Karl Rove’s attempt to purge them – why should they take the punishment when they didn’t commit the crime? On his radio show, Mark Levin asked the question that we’re all thinking – “Who the hell died and made Karl Rove queen for the day?” – and went on to point out that Rove was the guy who helped put Bush in to the White House, who spent all the money that pushed America further in to debt and so put the USA where it is today. Why should the Tea Party defer to an establishment that a) loses elections and b) governs like Democrats? To quote Levin,

These people need a hard, swift kick in the ass off the public stage because they’re making it much more difficult to persuade more and more Americans that we have to win some elections quickly. These people are getting rich off of this federal leviathan. They go on T.V. and talk about how awful Obama is, but they attack us. They really don’t think Obama is that awful. What bothers them about Obama is that their not running things, that’s what really bothers them.

In short, the Tea Party revolution will continue because Tea Partiers see no need for it to end – and they even have the Senate Majority Leader in their sites. Given this, what are the establishment’s chances for beating them down? At first glance, poor. Thanks to the primary system there’s no reason why conservative candidates shouldn’t continue to run and do well in Republican contests. And the party machine might actually do itself harm by campaigning against them. As Kellyanne Conway points out, “Ironically, the establishment wizards tried to stop the two most prominent Hispanic Republicans in Washington from winning the U.S. Senate seats they now hold” – Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Variety and ideological competition can actually help the GOP in the long run. The Tea Party hasn’t been a complete disaster for the GOP.

But the establishment may yet succeed in silencing the Right if Fox turns decisively against the Tea Party. For that would starve them of the oxygen of national publicity and contribute to a national pivot to the centre. It’s interesting to read that Fox is now both America’s “most trusted” and “least trusted” news service, which suggests that audiences are tiring of its partisanship. It looks like Roger Ailes has decided that 2012 really did mark a historic shift in politics and that his product has to adapt to survive. If this means excluding maverick voices from Fox shows, the Tea Party could end up losing its stake in the national conversation. It will continue to make news, but its opportunity to speak for itself without hostile editorialising will be lost. Then it’ll be reduced to a handful of movement media outlets without a wider audience. As I’ve written a lot recently, the greatest threat facing the Tea Party is ghettoisation. You can’t speak “truth to power” if no one’s listening.

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Guy Verhofstadt calls David Cameron ‘a madman’. Britain should not have to listen to sneering Eurofederalists

Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, arch-Eurofederalist, and leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, has penned a piece for The Huffington Post railing against the idea of a British exit from the EU. He doesn’t mince his words with his views of David Cameron’s impending call for Britain to renegotiate its relationship with the European Union:

Cameron will not succeed if he attempts to hold his European partners to ransom, exchanging acquiescence to EU treaty change over the eurozone for a unilateral repatriation of powers. Moreover, the rest of the EU knows that stability and economic recovery in the eurozone is vital to the UK’s own economic interests. Some have said Cameron is not going to get his way by pointing a gun at everyone else’s head. I believe a more apt metaphor would be that of a madman, threatening to blow himself up unless he gets his own way.

Verhofstadt represents a deeply closed mindset in Brussels that still supports the notion of ever closer union despite the myriad problems afflicting the European Project. For Verhofstadt and his colleagues the very idea of EU member states carving opt-outs on various policies is absolute anathema. Any challenge to the established order, to the dream of a federal European superstate, is sheer heresy.

Verhofstadt’s rigid views are not just representative of his own group in the European Parliament. They are the dominant sentiments held by a significant majority of Europe’s political elite, from the upper echelons of the European Commission to the halls of the German Chancellery. (See also this YouTube video posted by Dan Hannan earlier this week, where Verhofstadt openly mocks the UK in a speech to the European Parliament.)

As Verhofstadt’s comments show, the idea that London will be able to successfully renegotiate its relationship with the EU and re-shape the Union in Britain’s image is a fantasy. If David Cameron is serious about defending British sovereignty there can be only one option – supporting a British exit from the EU, and pledging to hold a referendum before, not after, the next general election. Britain is a great nation with a proud history, whose soldiers liberated Brussels in 1944. It does not need to take any lessons from a pompous Belgian politician who can barely disguise his contempt for the country that selflessly freed his own people from tyranny just two generations ago.

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‘Would Britain react like Israel has to a few rockets?’ Yes we would. And we have before

The furious debate surrounding Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza was given a surreal twist this morning when Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ambushed himself on the Today programme. Having concluded his rather mundane Thought for the Day, Sacks was asked the presenter Evan Davis whether he had any views on the violence. Clearly believing he was off air, Sacks began by wearily responding “I think it’s got to do with Iran, actually”, before he was suddenly made aware his words were being broadcast live, and hurriedly fell back on the more pious “a continued prayer for peace”. Cue much frothing and excitement on Twitter.

But then Twitter hardly needs much encouragement where Israel and the Palestinians are concerned. Watching this centuries old conflict played out in 140 characters isn’t the most edifying experience. But a couple of interventions did catch my eye yesterday, primarily because they were advancing a case that is gaining wide currency. I didn’t save any copies, but the gist was essentially: “If the IRA were firing a few rockets or mortars at us, would we start bombing the Falls Road?”

It’s one I’ve heard before, and provides quite a compelling frame for the proposition that Israel’s response is wholly – some would say murderously – disproportionate. Except there’s one small flaw in the argument. If London and mainland Britain were facing the sort of assault Tel Aviv and Israel are currently facing then we would be bombing the Falls Road, and several other parts of Northern, and southern, Ireland as well.

According to the Israeli government, since January, 563 missiles and rockets, and 204 mortars have been fired into Israel. By my rough calculation that’s more than two random attacks every day. Now, imagine if such a bombardment was currently being launched at London. Two or three times each day, as we were all going about our business, an air raid siren would sound. Most of the time nothing would happen; the incoming barrage would fall harmlessly into an empty field in Surrey or Kent; perhaps disturbing some livestock, but doing minimal damage. But every so often one would find its mark. A rocket would detonate in Leicester Square. Regent’s Street. The grounds of St Thomas’s Hospital. The playground of your child’s school.

What would our reaction be? Would we just sit back, shrug, and say “Well, there’s nothing we can really do. Remember, international law and all that”?

I’m not sure we would. In fact, I know I wouldn’t. I would be frantically tapping away on here, demanding an urgent, massive – and if necessary – disproportionate response. And I suspect I wouldn’t be alone.

But we don’t need to look into the crystal ball. We can just look back at what our reaction actually was, when we were the subject of our own, much more limited, assault from Irish Republican and Loyalist terrorism.

We didn’t give our military response a cool – if sinister – name like Operation Cast Lead, the last major Israeli incursion into Gaza. Ours was the more prosaic Operation Banner. Operation Banner lasted 38 years, and represented the longest unbroken deployment in the history of the British Army. At its peak 21,000 troops were on active service, including the Army, Navy Air Force, special forces and intelligence services.

Over 700 British military personnel lost their lives during the course of the operation. 150 civilians were also killed.

Britain’s proportionate response to the terrorist threat also involved the introduction of internment, the suspension of trial by jury, exclusion of UK citizens from the British mainland, unprecedented broadcasting restrictions, alleged collusion between the military and civilian authorities and paramilitary death squads, and several well documented miscarriages of justice.

And that was when Britain was confronted with terrorists whose relatively limited aim was a united – or divided – Ireland. Imagine if the daily rocket and mortar attacks we faced were from, say, Abu Qatada and his friends. Fanatics, whose objective wasn’t just a separate state for themselves, but our total annihilation. What if their rocket attacks were backed up by suicide attacks, and the threat of dirty bombs and indiscriminate casualties on an unimaginable scale?

Well again, we have no need of the crystal ball. When our close ally, the United States, was subject to just such an attack on 9/11, our response was swift. We launched a full scale invasion of Afghanistan. Thousands of troops. The RAF Tornado force. A Royal Navy carrier task force.

Britain and her allies lost over 3,000 service personnel, with a further 20,000 wounded. Over 14,000 civilians were killed. That was our proportionate response to the threat realised by 9/11. And that was an attack perpetrated by guys armed with box cutters, boarding passes and a few hours on a flight simulator.

Israel is currently under attack from Qassam rockets, which can propel a 20lb warhead up to 11 miles. Katyusha rockets, which can deliver a 35lb warhead over a distance of 13 miles. And the upgraded Grad rocket, which carries a 100lb warhead, and has a range of almost 30 miles.

I remember being told Britain was potentially in range of weapons like that. Actually, it wasn’t Britain itself, but “British interests”.

On 24 September, 2002, Tony Blair’s government published a dossier “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government” which asserted Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime had “constructed a new engine test stand for the development of missiles capable of reaching the UK Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus”. Our proportionate response to that rocket threat was the invasion of Iraq, resulting in the deaths of almost 5,000 US and British troops, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians and the destabilisation of the entire region.

Some may debate the wisdom of Israel’s response; others the legality. But please, let’s not get all self-righteous and pretend that if it was British cities currently under rocket bombardment our own response would be a virtuous turn of the other cheek.

“If the IRA were firing a few rockets or mortars at us, would we start bombing the Falls Road?” Yes. We would.

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