The Joy of Six 1546

Toby Buckle argues that it's time for liberals to throw John Rawls under the bus. In his philosophy he guided the creed toward neutrality, but we can no longer afford that in the age of Trump .

"After huge reductions in first-time entrants and custodial sentences in the youth justice system in recent years, a smaller, more complex cohort of children remains. Their offending behaviours mask deep vulnerabilities including earlier childhood abuse and trauma, poor mental health, school exclusion and poverty. This cohort need stability and care to rehabilitate and change. Yet the custodial estate has seen an alarming deterioration in conditions in recent years, with two secure training centres, a young offender institution and the country's first secure school all closing on safety and quality grounds." Ann Graham on the need for reform in the treatment of children in custody.

Ekaterina Balabanova and Gemma Horton report research that finds the British press has undermined the European Convention on Human Rights over many years: "Arguably, the government’s current approach reflects some of this coverage: conceding ground on specific criticisms of the ECHR in order to salvage its overall legitimacy. But looking at the long history of press coverage, we suggest that this strategy will continue to erode legitimacy, rather than bolster it."

"On one level, perhaps, that is down to a regionally specific reluctance to seem overly expansive on certain topics ('No mysticism please, we’re British'). But I spend quite a lot of my time in a church context where talking about spiritual matters is normal, even encouraged – and, remarkably, even there very few are willing to open up; mundane matters swiftly return as the main subject of conversation whenever a spiritual matter comes up." Francis Young asks why we find it so difficult talk about numinous experiences.

"The football games we obsess over are the ones that tell a story." Natasha Chahal says this World Cup has been full of them.

Maysa Monção watches Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver: "More than the cab driver, the taxi is a character. It is the car that sees underground New York. It is the car that chases the scum of the earth: the pimps and hookers. From inside the taxi, there is a perspective of New York that must be eliminated. The marginalised inhabitants of New York don’t fit in Travis’s reactionary idea of a 'clean city'." 

Ed Davey flattens Nigel Farage on human rights

On 29 October last year, Nigel Farage put forward his European Convention on Human Rights (Withdrawal) Bill. You can read his speech in Hansard.

This, in full, was Ed Davey's reply:

The speech we just heard totally misrepresents the European convention, and the failure of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to mention the huge benefits and rights that the European convention has brought to millions of British people says it all. Let me give those attracted by the argument we have just heard one strong reason to think again. Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European convention on human rights. Maybe that is what attracts the hon. Member—after all, he said that Putin is the world leader he most admires.

Russia: a country where those who oppose the regime are mysteriously pushed off balconies, and where, if it is not enough to murder a political opponent like Alexei Navalny, Putin has even jailed lawyers who dared to represent him—things not allowed under the European convention. As we have seen Nathan Gill, a leading political ally of the hon. Member for Clacton, imprisoned for taking Russian bribes, perhaps we should not be surprised that the Reform party is so keen to follow Russia.

Besides Russia, where else are people’s hard-fought-for rights under attack? Trump’s America. Of course, the US is not part of the European convention, yet its citizens have benefited from something similar: the US constitution, which was designed to check the power of tyrants and protect the individual from the state. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton desires to remove people’s rights here, his hero Donald Trump is doing the same in America, attacking the courts and the rule of law, and even inciting a violent mob against the US Congress to overturn an election. But of course, the hon. Member has called President Trump “an inspiration”. If we want to know the hon. Member’s intentions for British people’s basic rights and freedoms, we only need to look at Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America. That is not patriotic. It is deeply un-British, and he should be ashamed.

Unlike the hon. Member for Clacton, I am proud of our country; I love our country. I am proud that Britain helped to create the European convention on human rights, championed by Winston Churchill himself. The convention protects the very people who need it most: our elderly and most vulnerable, so that they may live and grow old with dignity; and our children, so that those facing horrific abuse have better protection. It also upholds our freedom of speech so that the press and public can criticise those in power without fear, and it protects our right to peaceful protest.

Seventy years ago, Britain became the first country to ratify the convention, as a leading voice on the global stage for human rights and the rule of law. That is our history. That is who we are. That is Britain at our best. Yet the hon. Member for Clacton wants us to forget our history, dump British values, undermine the rule of law and row back on people’s hard-won rights. I say no.

To help get across how wrong the hon. Member, the Reform party and the Conservatives are on this, let me give some examples. When people died because of poor care at Stafford hospital, their families secured change—because of these laws. When British troops died in Iraq because of poor equipment, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government were accountable—because of these laws. After 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough disaster and the victims themselves were blamed, their families finally got to the truth—because of these laws. When the Metropolitan police failed to properly investigate the horrific assaults of John Worboys, his victims were able to take the police to court—because of these laws.

Time and again, the European convention and its British twin, the Human Rights Act, have brought justice for our people, and protected them from gross misconduct and unfair treatment. These laws help individuals hold the powerful to account—to hold Governments to account. These laws can get justice when the elite and powerful cover up and abuse their power. So it is clear, is it not, that the hon. Member for Clacton is not about standing up for the individual—for the ordinary person, for the people with no voice—but that he is the friend of the elite and the powerful?

If we do not defend our human rights here at home, how can we possibly persuade other countries of the importance of human rights for their own people? If we do what Reform wants, the biggest cheers will come from the Kremlin, from Beijing, from Tehran, from Pyongyang, and from dictators and authoritarian regimes the world over. That would be a betrayal of everything our country stands for. The hon. Member’s plan would damage our country’s ability to shape our world.

Leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power. We have so often influenced world events for the better by being part of international agreements, by upholding international law and by leading. Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton has made his career by damaging our country and our influence. Remember how he led the campaign for Brexit with his Conservative friends? We know what a total mess that has turned out to be. He and his friends argued that Brexit would cut immigration, but immigration has gone up. Just look at how badly he has betrayed the people he claims to speak for. Brexit made the small boats crisis possible.

Before Brexit, we effectively had a returns agreement with every EU country: the Dublin system—a deterrent that worked. Now, undocumented migrants are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. Thanks to the hon. Member, his Brexit ripped up Britain’s rights to return people with no right to be here and people who should have claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout—they caused it!

Let us look at one of our closest allies, the Republic of Ireland, and a vital part of our country, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement references the European convention seven times. The guarantee of basic rights and freedoms in the convention was fundamental to securing the Good Friday agreement, to ending the conflict, to stopping the bombs and to getting peace, yet the hon. Member for Clacton stands here today prepared to risk peace in our country—how utterly shameful.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, let us never forget the sacrifices made for our freedoms today, and let us never forget the lessons that that greatest generation of British people learned and passed on to us— Interruption.] I think the veterans will notice this barracking. Our greatest generation showed us that we needed these laws to protect people from state abuse, to stop authoritarian Governments and tyrants, and to defend people’s rights. The post-war generation knew how costly far right-wing populism had been for our country and our people, so for our greatest generation, for British people today and for our democracy, I urge Members to vote against this Bill.

If the Liberal Democrats could talk about the economy with the same clarity and passion we display when talking about foreign policy and civil liberties, we would sweep the country.

The Joy of Six 1385

Sam Bright looks at new research that suggests effective attack lines to use against Reform UK: "Farage’s shtick is to pose as a champion of the working man, fighting against out-of-touch elites and corrupt institutions. But this new research shows the importance of exposing Farage’s foundational myth: namely, that Reform isn’t a grassroots rebellion; it’s a vehicle bankrolled by the financiers who crashed the economy in 2008 and the austerity-obsessed corporate vandals who have profited ever since."

Like it or not, Britain's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights is going to be an issue at the next general election, and we're going to need better arguments than we were able to come up with during the European Union referendum. Here, George Peretz makes a social democrat case for Britain's continued membership of the ECHR.

Dan Friedman counsels Democrats against getting entangled in conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein as there are more than enough real Trump scandals to expose.

Michaela James and Mayara Silveira Bianchim find that it's not so much activity as feeling confident and in control when they’re active that boosts children’s wellbeing: "autonomy, confidence and competence – were stronger predictors of wellbeing than more traditional measures like deprivation (normally we’d expect deprivation to positively or negatively affect wellbeing) or even total time spent being active."

"Nowadays, it’s hard to believe that Durrell was once ranked among the best prose stylists of the postwar period. Such is the fickle nature of literary legacies that the main charge made against his writing – its luscious language and bewildering structure – was originally considered its unique achievement." Guy Stagg on the decline of Lawrence Durrell's literary reputation.

"I contend that The Rising of the Moon is Gladys Mitchell's greatest stylistic achievement: she sets out to create a world filtered through the eyes of her thirteen-year old narrator, Simon Innes, and to that end she succeeds on every page. It's not just a perspective, it's an entire ideology that Miss Mitchell offers in her young protagonist. Simon and Keith have scruples; they are cunning and resourceful, in the best meaning of those words; they have their own particular code of honor. They also have a thorough understanding of how their world operates (parental laws; omissions which are not the same as lies), and Simon's subdued narrative prose bolsters this point." The Stone House celebrates an extraordinary book.

The Joy of Six 1373

"Weaponising food deprivation has been Israeli policy for decades. As a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it in 2006, the government’s aim, in strictly restricting the entrance of foodstuffs into Gaza, was to 'put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' Now, Israel seems to have committed fully to the latter goal." Jennifer Zacharia details the sufferings of the Palestinians.

Roland Smith weighs the objections to the European Convention on Human Rights and says we'll need good arguments against them if we're to resist the coming campaign for Britain to withdraw from it. 

"I moved to the city eight years ago to study neuroscience at University College London. Since then, rents have nearly doubled but the square footage of my digs has stayed the same. As I grow up in age and out in size, I begin to see that the hoped-for upgrade that should come with time now looks impossible. My generation is running but we’re not moving." Rose Dodd reports on life as a private tenant in London.

Michael Rosen proves that educational research did not begin with Michael Gove.

Londonopia tells the story of a unique London store: "Arthur Liberty wasn’t just flogging  fabrics. He was hawking a vision - a sensual rebellion against the stiff moral corsetry of Victorian Britain. Where others sold sensible serge, Liberty offered peacock-feather glamour, hand-painted decadence, and the vague but thrilling possibility that you might run away with an artist and spend your life eating figs in an atelier."

"War is a dreadful thing, amongst all of the horrific things that human inflicts upon other human in the name of 'war' there are some events that stand out as atrocities: one such atrocity took place in the aftermath of the battle of Naseby." Keep Your Powder Dry tries to pin down the exact location of The Farndon Massacre in the villages just south of Market Harborough.

Moderate Tory MPs are talking to Lib Dems MPs about joining us

Some Conservative MPs could be tempted to defect to the Liberal Democrats over their leadership's opposition to the European Convention on Human Rights, says a story on Politics Home this morning:

Several Lib Dem figures told PoliticsHome that there have been informal discussions with Tory MPs on the 'left' of their party who are uneasy with shifting further to the right to combat the threat of Nigel Farage's Reform UK. 

One Lib Dem MP involved in talks said: “Doors are not being slammed in our faces."

Another told PoliticsHome they have spoken to at least two Conservative MPs who are also unhappy about the party’s stance on net zero, claiming that they are "looking" at the Lib Dems as a potential new "home".

There are no Conservative sources quoted, so I suspect this is a case of Lib Dem MPs love-bombing their Conservative neighbours. Or to put it another way:

PoliticsHome understands Lib Dems are targeting constituency neighbours with whom they have already formed relationships.

The silence of liberal Conservatives as their party is taken over by far-right Nationalists has been deafening. It may be that they have concluded that their party is beyond saving.

To give them encouragement here's a guest post on this blog by Harborough's own Buddy Anderson: Many liberal Conservatives are becoming conservative Liberals.