Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

‘Compassionate’, ‘red’, ‘progressive’ – whichever adjective one applies to the conservatism which David Cameron espouses, his leader’s speech , at conference yesterday, reemphasised its key characteristics. The modern Conservative party’s credo has moved on since the 1980s and Thatcherism. It is socially aware, committed to addressing poverty and steeped in a ‘one nation’ tradition which Tories rather neglected in their overzealous embrace of free market liberalism. The Guardian is wrong , in this morning’s editorial, to imply that Cameron’s speech attempted an incongruous marriage of convenience between a pre crash message of compassion and a post crash discourse of state trimming. The twin principles of social responsibility and a less intrusive state have been inseparably wedded within the new Conservative philosophy since its inception. Cameron does not believe, and has never suggested, that big state solutions are the best means to tackle social problems. There is no inconsis...

When the Conservative party announced the contents of a green paper on local government reform in England, I welcomed the initiative rather ruefully, given that regional government is soundly entrenched in the rest of the United Kingdom courtesy of devolved institutions. Nurturing the grassroots of democracy, decentralising power, localising decision making – all intrinsically noble goals which aim to facilitate the type of participative society Cameron Conservatives are keen to encourage. To further these objectives, the Tories intend to remove a layer of regional assemblies in England. The party’s goals won’t be as readily achievable where emasculated local councils subsist under an expensive stratum of regional government, which, in order to justify its existence, must retain functions local government could perform. However, in April’s ‘Prospect’ Demos Director Richard Reeves emphasises (subs required for full article) that the sound theories of localist policy are not always ...

Burke’s Corner believes a consensus on ‘post liberal’ politics might be developing. He bases his assertion on Frank Field’s Prospect article , which proposes compulsory civic service for young people and suggests that prevailing political trends of social liberalism have allowed atomised individualism to prevail over the maintenance of a strong, coherent society. Field’s thesis is not so terribly far removed in its themes from an article written by ‘progressive conservative’ Philip Blond in the same magazine, which argues, “(t)he current political consensus is left-liberal in culture and right-liberal in economics. And this is precisely the wrong place to be.” Two further pieces, carried today by the Guardian and Telegraph websites respectively, come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, and both contemplate the best means to build the ‘good society’. Significantly both John Cruddas and Tim Montgomerie start from the premise that British communities have suffered the cons...

Over the past couple of days I have sifted through a quantity of the newsprint devoted to evaluating the impact of the Belfast Agreement 10 years on. Some accounts are thought provoking and some less so. Most acknowledge that Northern Ireland has benefited from the agreement as regards consolidating peace and facilitating a degree of economic recovery. The more thoughtful articles also contend that the way in which the agreement has been implemented and the peace process outworked, has actually compounded division in our society, as well as sending a deeply troubling message about the rewards which political violence can accrue. Yesterday Lord Trimble, who played such a pivotal role in leading unionism to acceptance of the agreement, wrote in the Daily Telegraph about the work still to be done in order to create a truly peaceful society and criticised the Labour government’s repeated concessions to republicans in their desperation to implement the deal. Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s arti...

Following on from yesterday’s post about the GFA - the extracts in the Guardian this week from the book ‘Great Hatred, Little Room’ make interesting enough reading, but should also be treated with caution. On Comment is Free, Mick Fealty points out the limitations of biography in explaining historical events. Jonathan Powell’s book provides a personal account of the Labour government’s role in the peace process, but it does not explore all the elements which made that process possible. Mick’s contention is that a substantial contributor to the British government’s confidence in dealing with republicans was the infiltration of that movement by intelligence operatives. The latest extracts reprise, from the government’s perspective, the much repeated story of the clinching stages of the Agreement and in particular Tony Blair’s letter assuring unionists that power-sharing would be collapsed if decommissioning was not forthcoming. More surprisingly another extract reveals that Marti...