I’ve always wondered about the extent to which New Labourites actually believe in the tripe they talk about, and correspondingly the extent to which it is a self-serving attempt to ingratiate themselves with the thriving current amongst the Labour Party leaders. For David Blunkett at least I think that has now been answered, and it can be heard by anyone who likes on the Fabian Society website, through an interview released on July 24th.

Blunkett is complaining that there has not been enough progress made in reforming university access and admissions standards or in restructuring grants to local government in order to counteract poor take up of post-16 education and HE amongst the poorer sections of society. Amongst other things, Blunkett speaks up for private schools and finally he wanders off into the realms of debate on what class is and how it has changed.

Not unnoticed were his barbs about dragging the University of Oxford into the 21st Century, and therein lies a classic example of New Labour dissemblance. The reforms touted by the government and all but rammed down the throat of Congregation, not to mention bought hook-line and sinker by the effete wannabes of the Students Union, were basically an attempt to wrest control of the university from its own democratic procedures.

It was an attempt to legitimize the government’s continued under-funding of Higher Education. Rather than create a progressive tax or at-source charge aimed directly at the 50% of Oxford students who come from private school backgrounds for the purposes of redistribution via bursaries and replicate this across the “top five universities” which Blunkett was attacking, the government would prefer to portray the entire university as backward-looking, crotchety old men.

As for this ridiculous idea that take up of post-16 education will increase merely because more money is being spent in ways other than via local government LEAs, it’s really just more of the same: not “education, education, education” but “academies, academies, academies.” The preposterous contention implicitly stated in the idea that all private school kids are confident enough to achieve university places, even “the thick ones”, is that we must hand over state education to private initiatives.

It’s utter bollocks; try smaller classroom sizes, teachers who actually know and love their subject - attracted by a healthy working environment and sufficient remuneration as to justify seeking qualifications in the higher reaches of higher education. All of those are in short supply in the university courses and in the schools which I’ve had the chance to observe over the last year. A teacher can’t teach if they’re bluffing their way out of not knowing something, but neither can a teacher teach if their audience is thirty kids, half of which were up all night on a PlayStation.

Once we actually manage to achieve that, then working people might get a somewhat better deal when it comes to education. Yet we should also stop deluding ourselves about the wider ramifications of this; we might bemoan the slip of the sciences or other subjects such as economics (recently mentioned by the BBC) but we’re not going to get anywhere until the government gets serious about the creation of a highly skilled, high-value added manufacturing sector workforce - and gets the unions involved with such a plan.

Then you might see kids who can only envision themselves as beauticians, as its one of the few forms of stable employment they feel they can reach, changing their tune slightly. Mr Blunkett would probably have a coronary at such a suggestion; after all, this government loves any type of clunking-fisted centralization except economic. We’ll not be counting on the Conservatives for it either. Perhaps our methods of protecting ourselves from immigrants should be extended to include a sign at ports and airports: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

An American soldier friend let me listen to some of his pro-war music last night and one track that stuck in my head was Clint Black’s “I-raq and Roll,” the lyrics of which can be found here and which can be listened to here. Apart from being so ridiculously catchy that I’ve been singing it all day, possibly leading any listeners to think I’m the worst sort of social-patriot, the song is interesting by the context it provides to the debates on the Iraq war.

Whenever the cultural historians, that insipid half-breed of political opportunist and pretentious ideologue, are let loose upon American history of the present day one of the things they are bound to flag up is the masculine archetype portrayed by this song. Present in most of the films, books and music of any cultural worth from the USA is the vision of a man as aspiring to self-sufficiency and set in contrast to the highfalutin intellectual.

In everything from Stephen King’s novels, which invariably have some semi-damaged but ruggedly independent male figure in Maine, to the attitudes towards homosexuality amongst high society in Savannah, Georgia, there is a picture of what a male should be, regardless of class. It is startling by its very consistency across all these different forms of cultural expression, from “Salem’s Lot” to John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” to the lyrics of country and western songs.

Many of these expressions are also, perhaps unwittingly, self-contradictory. Some of Clint Black’s music focuses on the need for a man to go his own way, whether in love or whatever, but forming a context to this sentiment is talk about repossession by the banks, how hard a life it is to make a living from the ground and rising prices. The elements of the superstructure of capitalism are visible even when one tries to be walled off from it by constructing a world where the basis of causality is the character of the individual.

Stephen King, too, in his books often mention how his characters don’t much like the anti-Vietnam war protesting types but never fails to suspect that the government is intent on screwing people over. With King there is always an added element of whimsy because his stories are often lifted straight out of the housewife’s equivalent of the Fortean Times. Even still, the dichotomy exists through most of King’s books that I have read and I can’t help but feel that it is at once caused by and the cause of major social issues in the USA.

The American working class has rarely been its own master; even in the days of the IWW, the great railway and cargo corporations largely controlled the lives of millions of American workers and could break whole communities by announcing decisions based on the irrefutable logic of their logistic needs. This dualism in American cultural expression is symptomatic of that: where even the rudiments of workers’ organisation has failed, there is a retreat into a powerful individualism.

This is cultivated for political purposes by the Republican Party, which preaches small government to feed the anxiety of the average worker, who is basically taught that big government means big taxes and that this will threaten jobs. When you’re living on a knife edge, when American corporations can bulldoze right through you and your colleagues with no consideration other than their profit margin, a claim by anyone that they’ll make the US more competitive is like a siren call.

Yet the cultural expressions of this trend in American society also bear some responsibility because they validate it. They espouse man as a free agent whilst disingenuously demonstrating that human agency is at times subject to the determinism of things outside the control of the individual; leaving that demonstration implicit makes it even worse because it justifies the replication of this unthinking dismissal by those who take country and western music or other popular media to heart.

Britain during the Great Depression had a stout working class movement that very occasionally showed its teeth, and the increasing tempo of industrial and political disputes during that era are clear signs that corporations and the government were finding it harder than ever to cope. As a result, despite high unemployment, strikes and the Jarrow march created a response amongst the cultural elite who were compelled in the direction of socialism.

J.B Priestley’s works are an excellent example, and further removed but definitely influenced by his growing up through those years was R.F. Delderfield’s “To Serve Them All My Days.” The inimitable Bernard Shaw and his Fabian contemporaries don’t even need to be mentioned. There is a stark contrast between Britain and the USA in those respective eras, but I think it is evident that the missing ingredient, so to speak, is a powerful working class movement in the USA.

Whereas a strong socialist movement kept the distance between intellectual and worker quite narrow, via the Marxist concept of praxis and the average workplace being more relaxed about political chat, in America the remoteness of the so-called ‘liberal elite’ makes it easy to distrust. In times of hardship, when there is no workable alternative from the left, distrust turns to scapegoating. The vagaries of the capitalist economic cycles mean that this attitude can face a backlash whenever the Republicans manage to screw up, but even such populist waves have to crest and break and finally recede.

Unfortunately I can’t magically generate a working class movement in the USA, nor even inspire one from behind this keyboard, but with the coming economic troubles all over the world, the economic and political forces at work in this country may attempt to speed their attacks on the organisations of the working class. This is something we need to guard against and to actively fight if we are not to find ourselves in the position of the people of the USA: our military effectively conquering the world while we’re too busy trying to stave off unemployment.

There’s not much else to be said, following the defeat of Labour in the Glasgow by-election: the SNP have traditionally performed better than is their usual in by-elections, but that won’t bring much comfort to Labour. It is a damning indictment of the current direction of the government that a seat which basically has Labour stamped on it has gone down to Scottish nationalists.

Of course the Conservatives have been there to turn the whole show into hyperbolic farce with such comments as, “Labour is mired in failure. Throughout the UK it is the Conservatives who are setting the political agenda.” One really has to ask when politicians will get a sense of perspective. The Conservatives came a distant third place. But they’re setting the agenda ‘throughout the UK”? Do piss off.

I wonder is anyone in Downing Street even listening though?

Ever since Have I Got News for You, upon hearing that Roy Hattersley had cancelled an appearance for the latest in a string of times, simply put a tub of lard where Hattersley would have sat if he had appeared on the show, I’ve been wondering whether or not the criticism was justified. Would the tub of lard show the same wit, the same avuncular charm? After reading this article, I found my answer; even suggesting Hattersley might be on a par with a tub of lard is an insult to tubs of lard everywhere.

As with many of Hattersley’s wanderings into the field of British history, in this case Hattersley is trying to diagnose the failure of this Labour government through the timid personality of its leading figures, particularly Gordon Brown who ‘wants to lead a social democratic government,’ and their fear of upsetting middle England. It’s a theme familiar to other commentators such as the Toynbee yet it is a theme which has run out its course and is left, as Andrew Thorpe put it, ‘completely bankrupt.’

Like so many others, Hattersley is forced to pin his hopes on the personalities involved because he has failed at the game of trying to find the mythic sliver of social-democratic ground between outright attack on the welfare state and a Labour Left style retrenchment the likes of which Clement Attlee might have been proud to see. When Hattersley makes statements about how a below inflation wage rate for local government workers is ‘regrettably necessary’ one can see why.

With such dilettante sentiments being expressed in the guise of elder statesman wisdom, it’s tempting to see in Hattersley’s continuing capitulation to wage retardation the full expression of the failure of social-democracy to resolve the contradictions in itself without tilting now in a capitalist direction, now in a vaguely socialist direction. All the rhetoric about 1983 aside for the minute, as a here and now issue are we really comfortable keeping local government workers on these low wages as the cost of living rockets?

I’m not, though Hattersley, with his parliamentary pension and the amount he gets paid for shoddy history books and rather clichéd talks to middle class Waterstones customers, might find it easier to stomach. This hypocrisy has reached such a fever pitch that Hattersley can’t conceive that any of the back bench opposition to Brown is based on principle. It is all about ‘fleeting notoriety’ and a ‘lack of character’ - strong words from someone who cooperated in the emasculation of Labour Party democracy to ensure that the PLP was basically the leader’s whipped poodle.

Hattersley declares that he is ’still to be convinced’ that this incarnation of the Labour Party has fudged their chance for the 2010 election. It can only mean that Hattersley himself is so far removed from the experience of working class people in this country as to render his thoughts meaningless. Hattersley’s opinions are so obviously shaped by the accepted wisdom of Labour leaders after 1983; class politics are to be shied away from. It’s no accident then that this is exactly where they are failing so badly.

In 1983, the working class deserted Labour in droves - not necessarily because workers didn’t like trade unions or the Labour manifesto so much as Labour was divided by the emergence of the SDP, and was seen as incompetent and faithless following Callaghan and Foot’s decision to screw the unions with their 5% cap on wage rises. Today we’re replaying that situation: the government is screwing the unions and the average working person and it’s going to shelve chances of a Labour government for the next ten years or more.

Right up until 2020 and after, the generation growing into its own at the voting booth will be just those young people who burned so brightly with a desire to halt the war in Iraq and who will remember failure after failure by this government. These are the very people Labour has stuck two fingers up at with its arrogance as regards any form of respect for public opinion. All that will be tempered, no doubt, with the bad experience of living under the Conservatives - but when even the Greens have more active constituency parties than Labour, it’s time to take a long, hard look at ourselves.

Just about the only thing that can be said for Hattersley, as he stands amid the wreckage which he has in part helped to create, is that even though at times one wonders whether Hattersley is walking Buster or vice versa, at least he’s not Roy bloody Jenkins.

I’ve noticed the issue of so-called ‘cyber-squatting’ receiving a lot more attention recently, largely to due to the success so many companies and famous individuals have had in pursuing cases. According to the ever helpful Wikipedia, cyber-squatting is defined as ‘registering, trafficking in or using a domain name in bad faith’ i.e. with intent to profit from the fame achieved by a brand or individual you have no connection with.

The issue has been hitting headlines because there has been a marked increase in the number of cases being referred to the UN’s arbitration body, the World Intellectual Property Organisation. The cases in 2006 were up some 25% on the previous year. Since 1999, this body has overseen arbitration between contending parties - and some 84% of all cases are decided in favour of the complainant, the person or company alleging that his, her or their name or trademark is being used in bad faith.

Frankly, given some of the cases reported on by the BBC, it’s hard to believe that WIPO isn’t rather biased. The case of an Everton fan registering waynerooney.com when Rooney was 16 and playing for Everton might be believable because it is now years later and evidently the fan has re-subscribed to the domain name in order to keep it. The case of a little boy losing his favoured email address, which was based on the domain narnia.mobi, to the CS Lewis company is just downright piracy.

My sentiments harden even further when I had a look at this story about Microsoft and their ‘hundreds of lawsuits’ in the US on this very issue of cyber-squatting. A ‘corporate bullshit radar’ can’t help but be triggered by the following effluvia:

“These sites confuse visitors who are trying to reach genuine company websites, which can negatively affect corporate brands and reputations as well as impair the end-users’ experience online… With every ad hyperlink clicked, a registrant or ad network harvests vash at the trademark owners’ expense.”

You can just hear the wails of mental anguish as the clink of lost revenue is heard by all those poor, starving executives sitting behind their small desks in cramped cubbyhole offices, on threadbare chairs. Not to be terribly populist about the whole thing, but shouldn’t I be allowed to start a fan-site about whatever I want and perhaps try and make some money to recoup the inordinate amounts I’d likely spend on bandwidth?

Truthfully, ownership of trademarks and so forth should be more tricky than they are. After all, once it’s in the public domain and being enjoyed by millions of film-goers, book readers or game players, in some sense it should cease to be the property of whoever bankrolled the thing and owned the rights to it. They’ll make their millions one way or another: clamping down on the free use of the web - whether or not the intent is for this interlocutor to make money - is not a good thing.

One particularly important aspect of all this is that it acts to silence criticism or to at least make criticism less noticeable on Google searches by restricting the domain names on which such criticism can be based. In some of these cases, the fact that negative criticism exists on the site has represented evidence that the owner of the site is trying to prompt the original company to purchase the domain name.

When the company pulling such tricks is called the Dyslexic Domain Company, well it’s pretty obvious that they’re sailing pretty close to the wind - but when it comes down to individuals it is very much less of a clear cut issue. The articles I’ve linked to have demonstrated that the little guy can get pushed to the wayside and end up with gigantic legal bills - and this is something which we should put an end to.

A lot of barstool conversation has been devoted to the subject of whether or not Margaret Thatcher is likely to get a state funeral. Last year the tabloids hinted at it and the broadsheets repudiated such rumours; now it’s left to the Guardian and the Telegraph to report that actually Thatcher will be getting a state funeral. Official sources are still denying it of course - but no doubt no-one wants to rock the boat and upset people.

Regardless, people are upset. No few harsh words have been directed in Thatcher’s direction from among those people I frequently hear discussing any matters of the day - and these aren’t even people with whom I share political views. A lot of them are young and didn’t live through the days of Thatcher’s reign but the children of miners and other workers here in Kent have the memories of their parents.

Here, in the South-East of England, traditionally thought of as the heartlands of Conservatism, the memory of Thatcher casts a long shadow.

Whenever Ronald Reagan died, I was pleased and I said so in no uncertain terms. Whilst I am well aware that no individual can ever be held solely responsible for the crimes visited upon the global south or the Western working class, it’s hard to remember that whenever suddenly all around you go mawkish and sentimental about these people who were absolute bastards during their time in power.

The reaction I got from many adults was largely a moral reproach about how we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Of the Americans I talked to, it was a variation on a theme of “he may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard,” which generally included comments on how the President, whoever he is, deserves respect. I fear that when Thatcher actually dies, the reaction is going to be much the same; simplistic nostalgia for an era that brought misery to millions.

It makes me sick to think that the government might allow a witch like Thatcher a state funeral, providing a grotesque opportunity for the media to recount what her ‘achievements’ were. Yet it is a fitting indictment of Labour tribalism, in an obscene sort of way. If one of the claims which Labour can make on popular support is that at least they aren’t Tory, someone somewhere should probably remember that actually Labour today is Thatcherist in a way.

All the same core truths are accepted, particularly the one about ‘the enemy within.’

Our party, far from offering any sort of alternative, has renewed its free-market credentials and may as well be led by J.R. MacDonald himself. Following recent Labour announcements about getting 90% of people off benefits, one might very well wonder if there is any longer a difference between Labour and Tory with the exception that one side at least has a history to be proud of - and which it not infrequently lauds whenever the current press cycle doesn’t seem to be going its way.

All of these problems with perception though are nothing compared to the woolly thinking of those who claim that Thatcher actually did something positive for the nation. I remember reading in one of Tom Clancy’s books that in Thatcher’s Britain it was common to wear Union Jack underwear and love your country, but even in more intelligent people, the idea that Thatcher did something for ‘the nation’ is persistent.

I was confronted with this just last week, at a garden party down here in Kent; one chap of about sixty years old commented that Thatcher might deserve a state funeral because she had done good things for ‘the nation.’ My rather caustic response was to query what this ‘nation’ might be and whether or not several million unemployed workers or the victims of a fast-rising crime rate were part of it?

Of course to that there is no answer; there is no such thing as ‘the nation’ because it consists of wildly disparate parts which have contradictory interests. Regardless of what branch of sociology one comes from, that idea is pretty much universally accepted outside of woolly thinking circles. From the point of view of a Marxist of course, ‘the nation’ consists of classes and whatever benefits the ruling class is unlikely to benefit the working classes who often have to suffer as a result.

I will be pleased when Thatcher dies and if Class War keep to their promise of a party in Trafalgar Square, I’ll be there to partake of it (in a responsible fashion of course). The image of that woman is instantly recognizable to millions as the enemy of working people - and at least by celebrating her death, we’ll expunge some of the shame that our generation, though it set out with such high hopes, has not been able to create the better world we hoped for.

David Davis has won the by-election and been returned to parliament. Hardly an achievement in his constituency, the temper of which was demonstrated by the third-place showing of the English Democrats - a bunch of nationalist twerps who seem to be everywhere these days, and the fourth place showing of the National Front. So not only has Davis’ re-election changed nothing, it has also brought out the very worst in British politics.

All the best statistics have been posted by Sunny over at Liberal Conspiracy along with a few good comparisons between H&H and other by-elections.

For me, Davis’ speech upon re-election was largely the Entr’acte between the last vote in the Commons and the next vote in the Lords on the issue, in October. Some have already come forward to suggest that actually David Davis’ re-election in a backwater Tory constituency has little enough to do with a change of heart amongst the Lords and that Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s maiden speech there bears more responsibility.

I must confess that I find a lot of strength in that argument. Say what you like about the Lords but many of those chosen to sit in that House are not so narrowly partisan and self-interested as many of the leadership lackeys of any Party in the Commons. It is entirely conceivable that Dame Eliza, with her expertise on MI5, has changed the votes of many Lords, and I can testify from firsthand experience that she’s a very good speaker.

Whatever the actual effects of Davis’ re-election, and I can’t seem to stress how little they shall be, from an altogether different point of view, they represent Act Five of a play. The plot of the play in question is the apotheosis of the film Taking Liberties into broadly held principle: work with Tories like Boris Johnson (or David Davis) and the consequences for every other issue be damned.

Yesterday a friend on the Socialist Youth Network email lists sent around a newsflash that all the amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act were being postponed until after the recess. I wonder how all these Civil Liberties, single issue campaigners feel that should his vote be required, Davis will absolutely be there to vote against the extension of abortion rights to Northern Ireland or any of a dozen beneficial moves?

I’m not happy about his re-election, not even a little - and it shows how utterly pathetic both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are that they couldn’t get together with the Greens and every other remotely progressive Party and choose a candidate with equal claim to libertarian credentials to stand against David Davis and actually highlight Tory hypocrisy for what it is.

Maybe when it becomes clear after Anthony Barnett’s “ten year fight” that actually Davis’ “knight’s move” changed sod all, we’ll be sorry for co-operating with the arch-reactionaries of the political field. Somehow I doubt it; somehow I think it more likely that issues like these will be used for defections across the floor whenever the Tories mop up in 2010.

One of the advantages to having a blog, or being a political pundit, or writing an op-ed pieces in a newspaper is that one can pontificate on whatever subject one desires. Those who read my blog will know that there is a regular staple of subjects which are likely to get me fired up: religion, philosophical currents in history and politics, the reflection and relevance which the literary arts often have for real life.

On the other hand, there has to be a line somewhere between simply talking a good show and being active for the benefit of society. This is where I think the vast majority of the media completely loses relevance and interest. It fails to draw such a line and drops into the abyss beyond, the land of Paris Hilton and celebrity gossip columns, of shallow condescension at the misfits produced by contradictory elements in our society.

Almost worse than all this as a symptom of the descent into tabloid gossip mongering is the use of supposed experts to give their opinion on matters so utterly trifling as to be unworthy of comment in the first place. This fortnights Private Eye contained the example of Dr Raj Persaud, made notorious for his plagiarism, commenting back in the Nineties on the tendency of men with beautiful girlfriends to seek out ugly prostitutes.

I should forgive any reader if they thought that by that stage, journalism had reached the abyssal plain - and indeed its what we expect from the Daily Express (in which these speculations were originally contained I think). Yet surpassing even this is the recent and multi-article commentary by the BBC on the likeness between Gordon Brown and the character Heathcliffe from Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

Not only has Brown’s admission, in a New Statesman interview, that he doesn’t mind the comparison received several articles of comment, the BBC has wheeled out a psychologist from Westminster Business School to make some glib comments about what the whole thing really means deep down in the head of the Prime Minister. And what would my own commentary be without a quote to illuminate this execrable practice:

“It seems as if he is floundering and is grabbing onto a strong, granite-jawed character that someone’s suggested to him…People like to identify themselves with a character when they lack a sense of their core identity. This is happening more and more as we give too much away about ourselves and try too hard to please others.”

I would be the first to admit that I’m not a psychologist, but this sounds like so much waffle. This woman who has not been spending long periods talking to the Prime Minister is basing what seems to be a fairly damaging judgment of the Brown psyche on a flippant comment made to a Labour-affiliated political magazine. The loss of perspective evident in whatever BBC flunky made the decision to include this is shocking.

Most of us, I suspect, at one time or another enjoy likening ourselves to our political heroes, or the characters in our favourite books - not from a loss of core identity but rather because of whatever affinities we share with them that made them our favourite in the first place. For me, reading Deutscher’s biographies of Trotsky, I’ve always flattered myself that I share something of the great man’s character and principles.

Certainly I’d like to think that despite overwhelming opposition, I’d cling to the principles I currently hold rather than abandon them for position or influence. Whether or not any of that is true is unknowable for a variety of reasons, but I would hope it doesn’t reflect an uncertainty about my ‘inner core.’ That psychologist seems to be conflating news of Brown’s depression with the perfect storm in his political fortunes with this one comment.

Such commentary is fine for a rather insipid dinner party amongst wealthy professionals in London but hardly for the country’s flagship news service. It’s even more pointless than the American networks getting retired Generals onto their payroll so that come a major battle or war they can be wheeled out to speculate on matters that anyone with a decent brain could work out for themselves.

I’m tired of this intellectually toned-down media. Setting aside academic matters for a moment, this country is full of normal people who have a brain, though it’s not often they get treated like they do. Sure, half of them are in a stupor induced by the soporific nature of ‘entertainment’ or news or any of the other narcotics with which we drug ourselves but a wake up call doesn’t have to be an economic recession.

It could simply be the reports of a News at Ten anchor who might report the news plus a few concise, trenchant observations rather than all the graphical gimmickry they indulge in. I feel like the modern equivalent of a Luddite sometimes: down with TV, smash the digital networks, away with 24-hour rolling news. Maybe in the peace and quiet that resulted we might actually be able to concentrate on what matters.

In the aftermath of the Irish referendum rebuff, the EU elites were put on to the back foot. All decisions were remanded to a conference of ministers the following week - but over a month later no decision has been reached and EU leaders are still petrified of the potential ramifications. Their rhetoric has become all the more uncompromising since the Polish president rejected the treaty, putting another nail into its wounded carcass.

Fears are now rampant that Italy may be about to go the way of Ireland since Berlusconi’s coalition partners, the Northern League, are demanding a referendum. The Czech problems with ratification are well-documented. Now the Germans have to face a decision of their constitutional court and the ratification by their President before the Lisbon treaty will be formally approved. The EU leaders do not have things so completely in their grasp as their rhetoric would like to claim.

Sarkozy is using the French occupancy of the rotating presidency to railroad the debate; “There will not be any new treaty. It’s either Lisbon, or it’s Nice.” According to the BBC this achieved loud applause when Sarkozy brought it forth before an audience of MEPs. By its stridency it shows the fear of the cheerleaders for the European free market and capitalist integration that things may be slipping away from them.

Even Sarkozy’s comments supporting the right to debate attempt to predetermine the terms of that debate:

“If we, the political leaders, do not have the courage to debate - what’s the right economic strategy, what’s the right monetary strategy, or the right exchange rate… no-one has the right to prevent a useful debate.”

Monetary strategies, exchange rates, economic strategies - with each of these terms Sarkozy attempts to re-write the objections to the European Union as objections with merely the decisions taken by the European Central Bank or the other organs of fiscal and monetary administration. It ignores the wider debate as to what the point of European integration, what the point of all this economic growth is. Any socialist alternative is just scripted out of the debate between the different wings of capitalist Europe.

It’s not that I expected anything else, it’s just fun to poke holes where the inconsistencies lie in the arguments of these people. They said they couldn’t ignore the Irish referendum, now they’re ignoring the Irish referendum and positing alternatives which the Irish people wouldn’t recognise as genuine alternatives. In truth Sarkozy has found a lever upon which others will hit in due course: a referendum not as a democratic registering of opinion, but as the constrained choice between Nice and Lisbon.

So much for enhanced EU democracy!

Twenty-six candidates are today contesting the Haltemprice and Howden by-election: Christian independents, the National Front, hang ‘em and flog ‘em candidates and the usual assortment of Raving Loonies, Militant Elvises and even a Miss Great Britain. Yet Martin Bell curses them all for daring to take some attention away from David Davis’ precious, principled, non-partisan stand on civil liberties - because god forbid that every corner of the spectrum be fairly treated by the media.

“[Davis] has made real headway despite the travesty of the Representation of the People Act, which requires journalists, and especially broadcasters, to treat an established and serious politician more or less on a par with the candidates of the Monster Raving Loony party and the Church of the Militant Elvis.”

I’ve actually been looking in to some of the policies of the fringe groups - like the Miss Great Britain Party for example. I’d be unlikely to support them as they represent the worst half of Tory demagoguery (abolish stamp tax, exemptions from inheritance tax) though they have some pretty good ideas (an increase in basic income tax for the exceptionally well off). Regardless of this, they deserve to have their views aired. Unlike most people, they’ve bothered to get active in politics.

Martin Bell’s snobbery is therefore rather unjustified. As for the groups he specifically mentions, such as the Monster Raving Loony Party and the Church of the Militant Elvis, well who can forget the Loonies embarrassing the SDP back in the 1980s? These joke political parties may not be something we can get on board with - nevertheless they show more civic engagement than the average Labour, Tory or Lib Dem voter - and the chance for a harmless protest vote is always there.

Personally I’m supporting the Socialist Equality Party in Haltemprice and Howden. Horrible little Trotskyist sectarians they may be (the SEP is the British section of the International Committee of the Fourth International), with a totally tendentious take on the facts of Labour Left opposition to the government, but at least they’re prepared to slate Davis for his hypocritical denunciation of anti-terror laws whilst having never bothered to vote on many of them.

As has been well discussed, that particular trick, of large swathes of the Conservative Party not bothering to show up for votes on terror laws, is a tactic to make the Conservatives seem more liberal than they actually are whilst simultaneously allowing Labour to pass laws which the Tories would normally support. I don’t see Labour and the Liberal Democrats pointing that out - so the media should absolutely have to report on those parties which are prepared to, regardless of how fringe they are.

The only exception, as any of my normal readers will appreciate, is where fascist political groups are concerned. Speaking of which, the recent by-election seems to be showing up the internal divisions of the BNP. Nationalist websites are thrumming with rumours that  in the absence or weakness of Nick Griffin, Simon Darby may be running the party. The BNP are thought to be neglecting the H&H by-election so as not to highlight the splits between members in the north of England and the leadership.

None of which takes away from the narrow-mindedness of people like Martin Bell who think there is no place for minority parties in British politics and who think that British journalists should escape actually having to be open and honest in their reporting. It doesn’t always work out that way, whatever the Representation of the People Act might say, but at least groups like the various fringe socialist parties should be reported on. They represent ideas, however splintered and bastardised - and a discussion of ideas is what democracy is supposed to be about.

Martin Bell’s icon in this election, David Davis, would probably agree - after all, isn’t that discussion of ideas the whole reason he triggered this by-election in the first place?