Jason Zadrozny was on Sunday Politics today

On Tuesay I blogged about the dropping of all charges of child sex abuse against Jason Zadrozny, who almost won Ashfield for the Liberal Democrats at the 2010 general election.

Jason was featured on the East Midlands section of Sunday Politics today. There was a short news report starting at 44:15, followed by a studio discussion.

The other participants were Lee Rowley, the new Conservative MP for North East Derbyshire, and Alan Simpson, a former Labour MP who is now an adviser to John McDonnell. The presenter is Marie Ashby.

Jeremy Corbyn and the Provisional IRA

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The Conservatives clearly believed that Jeremy Corbyn’s history of links with Irish Republican terrorists was their trump card against him.

For that reason they held off playing it before the general election and even before the final two weeks of the campaign.

It has not turned out quite like that, but that has far more to with the passage of time than it has to do with the virtues of Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the revelation of those links.

The point that commentators have missed is that such views were wholly commonplace, in fact almost obligatory, on the Trotskyite left and the hard Bennite left of Labour in the days when Jeremy Corbyn was making his name there.

At every Student Union meeting I attended at York there seemed to be a motion from those sources on Northern Ireland. It began by expressing concern about the judicial system and civil liberties in Northern Ireland – concerns good Liberals shared – and ended by calling for victory for the armed struggle.

You can see an authentic relic of those years in the Diane Abbott quotation that has been circulating recently:

"Ireland is our struggle. Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed."

Note that Northern Ireland was seen as only part of a wider struggle against the existing, capitalist order.

You can find plenty more such quotes from John McDonnell in another post on this blog, where I wrote:

Maybe the IRA bombing campaign on the mainland is too long ago to move voters. But I was working in London at the time shoppers and workers were being killed by it. 

The very least I expect from the party of the workers is that it condemns those who murder them. That was too much to ask of Mr McDonnell.

It was a long time ago and the Provisional IRA bombing campaign is history to younger voters. As Patrick Maguire says in the New Statesman:

For better or worse, the [Martin] McGuinness most people have seen the most of is the man who chuckled with Ian Paisley, governed Northern Ireland alongside his mortal enemies, shook hands with the Queen and was eulogised by Bill Clinton. 

The lay public’s memories of the Troubles have now softened to such an extent that he is now portrayed as a likeable, wisecracking wag in a Hollywood film about his relationship with Paisley. The same could well be said, to a lesser extent, of Adams's idiosyncratic tweets.

And to keep with the showbiz clichés, at least McGuinness had been on a journey. They had taken some personal risks to move the political process on and, you hope, learnt some wisdom.

You get no such feeling with Corbyn. Whenever I discuss his politics, I think of the comment by Peter Harrison:

"I knew him when we were 18 or 19, and his views have not changed. We are talking about the thick end of 50 years ago."

He has not been on any journey at all. Even Diane Abbott, in her clumsy way, admitted she had changed her views on Ireland.

Not only was Corbyn’s tolerance of Irish Republican terrorism obligatory in making his way on the far left when he was a young man, I suspect there was an element of electoral calculation about it too,

When he first stood in Islington, the arrival of the SDP was a serious challenge to Labour’s hegemony there. Being seen with Republican hardliners may have helped shore up his support among a section of Irish voters.

What that dalliance was not was a sort of peace process ahead of its time, as Corbyn now claims. The idea, as he suggested last night, that the commemoration for Provisional IRA fighters killed during an attempted terror attack in Loughgall he attended in 1987 was in reality staged to honour everyone who died in Northern Ireland during the conflict, is not believable.

Nor do his supporters attempts to equate Corbyn's grandstanding during the Provisional IRA bombing campaign with ministerial meetings after the peace agreement convince.

Let’s leave the last word to John McDonnell:

"An assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years…the settlement must be for a united Ireland."

John McDonnell: Labour is like Lord of the Flies

The Lib Dems should trumpet their opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, not talk about process issues

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When the government plan to put the building of a third runway at Heathrow to parliament was revealed after someone photographed it on the tube, John McDonnell appeared on Channel 4 News.

Though the shadow chancellor is a longstanding opponent of the idea, in that interview he spent most of his time rubbishing the idea that collective cabinet responsibility could be suspended for the Commons vote.

Similarly, Tim Farron's statement on the subject began:

The suggestion that there might be a free vote on Heathrow is farcical – this is a huge decision and the Conservative government has to make a collective decision and take full responsibility. If people disagree they can resign. 

But is the public greatly interested in the details of how the vote will be handled at Westminster?

I can imagine people being against a third runway because their lives will be affected by aircraft noise or because they think it will be bad for the environment more generally.

I can imagine them being in favour of it because they think it will be good for the economy.

I find it much harder to imagine people being much concerned by whether there is a free vote or not.

In fact to most voters the idea that politicians will vote in accord with what they believe rather than they way their party tells them will be rather attractive.

I am willing to believe a free vote in impractical, and opposing it might chime with the narrative that this is an incompetent government. But I can't see this line of attack moving many voters.

We Liberal Democrats would do better to emphasise the second paragraph of Tim's statement (which should have been the first):

Liberal Democrats are the only party consistently opposed to a third runway at Heathrow and we will fight any plans to allow it to be built.

That will interest many voters.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: I'll be damned if I'll pull out of Europe

The new issue of Liberator has arrived. We have had a snippet from Radical Bulletin. We have had my article on Charles Kennedy, Iraq and the Chilcot Report.

Which means there is nothing else for it: we have to spend some time with the old brute.

Close textual analysis suggests these pages from Lord Bonkers' Diary were written round about the 12th of July.

As they say in Rutland, a fortnight is a long time in politics. 


I'll be damned if I am going to pull out of Europe 

I write these words on the terrace of the Hotel Splendide, Antibes. The British people, egged on by liars, charlatans and a buffoon in an ill-fitting Donald Trump fright wig, may have voted to pull out of Europe, but I ‘ll be damned if I am going to. Judging by last Tuesday’s Manchester Guardian, which a fellow guest kindly passed on to me yesterday evening, the old country has not yet returned to its senses. In particular, a woman whom I swear I remember as a clerk at one of the Bank of Rutland’s less important branches looks set to be elected leader of the Conservative Party and thus our prime minister.

Meanwhile, the entire shadow cabinet (with the exception of ‘Semtex’ McDonnell and a fellow from Leicester called Ashworth) has resigned, only to find it cannot agree about who should be its unity candidate. The corridors of Westminster ring with their scuffles, curses and brawling, but no winner emerges. I have been known to say harsh things about the Scottish Nationalists, but I am forced to admit that they now appear a beacon of good sense in a naughty world. They are talking of holding a second referendum north of the border, and who can blame them? We are thinking of having one in Rutland ourselves.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Labour's problem is not just Corbyn: it's John McDonnell too

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It is not just Jeremy Corbyn's leadership that threatens disaster for Labour at the next election. It is also the presence in a senior position of John McDonnell.

If you doubt me, imagine the use the Conservatives will make of this quotation on their leaflets:

"It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA."

Those words were spoken by John McDonnell at In 2003, at a gathering in London to commemorate the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sand.

The New Statesman says that McDonnell later told the Sun:

The deaths of innocent civilians in IRA attacks is a real tragedy, but it was as a result of British occupation in Ireland. 

Because of the bravery of the IRA and people like Bobby Sands we now have a peace process.

It's true that, after McDonnell became shadow chancellor and these remarks received publicity, he apologised for them "from the bottom of my heart".

But I don't think the Tories will include that on their leaflets.

Besides, McDonnell defence that he said those words to encourage the Provisional IRA to participate in the peace process do not add up. It was securely in place by the time he said them.

And, as the Telegraph once laid bare, McDonnell had opposed that process:

Mr McDonnell told the IRA’s official newspaper that he opposed the peace process negotiations to create a power-sharing assembly in what became the Good Friday Agreement. 

He said: “An assembly is not what people have laid down their lives for over thirty years…the settlement must be for a united Ireland.”

Maybe the IRA bombing campaign on the mainland is too long ago to move voters. But I was working in London at the time shoppers and workers were being killed by it.

The very least I expect from the party of the workers is that it condemns those who murder them. That was too much to ask of Mr McDonnell.

Which is why I would put that quotation on every Liberal Democrat leaflet too.

The Labour leadership is split between Kennites and Corbynites

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The cool kids agree that this Labour Uncut article from the end of last year by Atul Hatwal got it about right:

At the heart of the split is a long-running tension between two factions of the hard left: Socialist Action and the Labour Representation Committee. 

In the corner on the left is Socialist Action – a Trotskyist group most closely associated with Ken Livingstone with several of his advisers from his time as Mayor, either members or supporters. 

As Livingstone himself said, “Almost all of my advisers had been involved in Socialist Action,” 

“It was the only rational left-wing group you could engage with. They used to produce my socialist economic policies. It was not a secret group.” ...

Prominent Livingstone City Hall alumni, Simon Fletcher and Neale Coleman, now occupy central roles in Jeremy Corbyn’s office as chief of staff and head of policy and rebuttal while the former Mayor is co-chair of Labour’s defence review.

And the other group?

In the corner even further to the left is the Labour Representation Committee. (LRC) Founded in 2004 (lifting the name of Labour’s original founding committee from 1900) by John McDonnell, the LRC has a more doctrinaire and unbending view of the path to socialism. 

Compromise is to be minimised – the frog needs to be dropped into boiling water with the lid clamped tightly shut to prevent escape. 

The majority of Jeremy Corbyn’s inner sanctum is drawn either from the LRC or sympathetic to its perspective. 

For example, John McDonnell MP remains the LRC chair, Corbyn adviser Andrew Fisher was until recently its Secretary, Jon Lansman, who runs Momentum, is on its national committee and Katy Clark, the former MP and now political secretary to Jeremy Corbyn is a long term supporter. 

Until his election as leader, Jeremy Corbyn was one of the most prominent MPs affiliated to the LRC.

The resignation of Neale Coleman suggests the Kennites are losing.

But whatever the truth of that, enjoy the picture of a young John McDonnell above.

John McDonnell explores new depths of incompetence

John McDonnell gave an interview to politics.co.uk which was posted on their site this morning.

He was asked about Labour's complaint to the BBC over Stephen Doughty's appearance on the Daily Politics:

"Remember, this is not an attack on the BBC and it's not an attack on Laura Kuenssberg either," he says. "There is a private company that makes the Politics programme which is commissioned by the BBC...The editor of the programme obviously decided to do maximum damage to Jeremy's standing."

Scroll down the page and you will find this note:

Update: 15:08 

Contrary to the comments made above by the shadow chancellor, Politics.co.uk can confirm that the Daily Politics is not produced by a private firm but in-house by the BBC.

John McDonnell: "Put that light out, Napoleon"

Thanks to whoever it was who pointed out the resemblance on Twitter a while back.

So far Corbyn has not forced the Lib Dems to be a centre party

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In August, as it was becoming clear that Jeremy Corbyn was going to win Labour's leadership election, I blogged about five consequences of that development.

It is early days, but the predictions I made there seem to be holding up reasonably well. One, however, needs to be revisited.

I wrote:

Whether the Liberal Democrats like it or not, they will be seen as a centre party.

But so far it hasn't turned out quite like that.

In part this is because the campaigns the Lib Dems have taken up under Tim Farron - cuts to tax credits, refugees, government surveillance - have taken up have a distinctly radical flavour. Perhaps that is inevitable when you are campaigning against the government and that government is run by the Conservatives.

But it has far more to do with the confusion that surrounds the Labour Party. So fuzzy has their image been under Corbyn that it hard to say what we would need to do to be to the left or right of them.

Yes, he has surrounded himself with Trots and Stalinists and John McDonnell, but that has not lead to clear left-wing policies.

McDonnell did reject George Osborne's 'fiscal chater', but only after he had first said the would support it.

Labour peers ducked the opportunity to reject Osborne's cuts to tax credits.

And Andy Burnham supported the government on new surveillance powers in spaniel-like terms:

It would help the future conduct of this important public debate if the House sent out the unified message today that this is neither a snooper’s charter, nor a plan for mass surveillance.

It is early days, but it may be that Corbyn's Labour Party will resemble the SNP. Its members will be convinced it is a radical, anti-austerity party even though an objective consideration to its polices paints a rather different picture.

Six of the Best 547

A 'progressive alliance' would suffocate the Liberal Democrats, says Tim Oliver.

Rafael Behr explains what is going on in the Labour Party: "To Corbyn and McDonnell, a commitment demanded by Hilary Benn that Labour campaign to stay in the EU, for example, is an easy concession to make. The bigger prize was the shadow foreign secretary’s seat on the national executive committee, snatched from under him and awarded to Rebecca Long Bailey, a Corbyn loyalist."

Whatever the House of Lords does on tax credits the Conservatives are unlikely to put reform of it back on the agenda, argues Richard Reid.

John Butcher on the squeezing out of part-time students from higher education: "Any diminution of part-time opportunity affects precisely those groups that policies aimed at increasing social mobility are meant to address."

In Odessa a statue of Lenin has been converted into one of Darth Vader reports Dumskaya.net.

William Boyd shows us why John le Carré is more than a spy novelist.

Michael Meacher and the Oldham West and Royton by-election

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Michael Meacher enjoyed a remarkable 45 year career as an MP. The most generous tribute to him was that by John Vidal in the Guardian:

Michael Meacher was a remarkable environment minister because for six years, at the start of the Blair government, he almost single-handedly fought to defend the natural world from road-building, the first generation of GM crops and rampant industrialisation. 

While junior environment ministers usually accept the Treasury or No 10 line without question, "the Meach", as he was widely known, stood up to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and possibly saved the administration from political embarrassment by urging caution at key moments.

Julia Langdon, in the same newspaper, was more measured:

He sat on Labour’s frontbench in government and opposition for a total of 29 years, but his misfortune was that he was never greatly favoured or particularly trusted by the six party leaders under whom he served.

At least he died under a leader with whom he was perfectly in tune.

Meacher was also known for losing a celebrated libel action against the journalist Alan Watkins, who had questioned his working class credentials.

In fact, Meacher had attended a public school - Berkhamsted. The late Robin Totten, who was the leader of Harborough District Council in the days when the Liberal Democrats ran it, once told me that Meacher had been his fag there.

I suggested to him that this is what had made Meacher a socialist, but I am sure it was not as Robin was a lovely man.

But politics, as Alan Watkins, used to observe, is a rough old game and already thoughts are turning to the forthcoming by-election in Oldham West and Royton.

On Lib Dem Voice Jonathan Fryer is absolutely right when he argues the Lib Dems must take it seriously:

During the Coalition government the Liberal Democrat powers that be took what I believed to be a misguided decision to virtually ignore northern parliamentary by-elections, with predictably disastrous results. In a couple of cases there was, however, a tremendous surge towards UKIP, almost causing shock Labour defeats. 

We lost our deposits spectacularly, despite the hard efforts of by-election candidates and mainly local party support. The impression given to the wider public, however, was that in the North of England the LibDems are rubbish, even irrelevant. We must not allow that to happen again.

By-elections campaigns are important for raising party morale, learning new campaigning techniques and making and renewing useful friendships.

But the strongest challenge to Labour in Oldham will almost certainly come from Ukip. Both Guido Fawkes and Sebastian Payne claim to have the inside on their likely candidate and campaign strategy.

After 45 years of Michael Meacher, who used to be called 'Tony Benn's representative on Earth, the Labour voters of Oldham are unlikely to be spooked by the leftward turn the party has taken by electing Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn should, however, be very worried about how they will react to a three weeks of being exposed to the views of his newly appointed lieutenants.

I cannot see John McDonnell's take on the Provisional IRA or Seamus Milne's view of the death of Lee Rigby going down at all well.

Which is why, like Nick Tyrone, I believe Labour needs to take the Ukip challenge extremely seriously.

 Ukip's fortunes seem to be in decline at the moment, but we shall have a clearer idea of their future, and of how the Corbyn leadership will play with Labour voters, after this by-election.

Jeremy Corbyn did once welcome the prospect of an asteroid wiping out humanity

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Jeremy Corbyn began his first speech as leader to a Labour Party Conference like this:

You might have noticed in some of our newspapers they’ve taken a bit of an interest in me lately. Some of the things I’ve read are this. According to one headline: "Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the prospect of an asteroid ‘wiping out’ humanity.” 

Now, asteroids are pretty controversial. It’s not the kind of policy I’d want this party to adopt without a full debate in conference. So can we have the debate later in the week!

How the audience laughed!

Except that Jeremy Corbyn did once welcome the prospect of an asteroid wiping our humanity.

In May 2004 he put his name to Commons early day motion 1255, which is worth quoting in full:

That this House is appalled, but barely surprised, at the revelations in M15 files regarding the bizarre and inhumane proposals to use pigeons as flying bombs; recognises the important and live-saving role of carrier pigeons in two world wars and wonders at the lack of gratitude towards these gentle creatures; and believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again.

There were only three signatories: the late Tony Banks, Corbyn and his new shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

This a minor point, but it does point to important truths about Labour today.

The first is their seething hatred for the press. After more than 30 years in the wilderness, how does Corbyn begin a speech he can hardly of dreamt of making? By attacking the press.

He must also have been sure this would get the audience on his side from the start.

And the second truth is that many of the 'smears' that Corbyn supporters complain of are nothing of the sort. They are simply his own words being quoted back at him.

Whataboutery and the Corbynistas

World Wide Words is a great site for anyone interested in the English language.

In 2012 it discussed 'whataboutery':

It’s associated particularly with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Bitter arguments by one side about terrorism were often countered, not by reasoned argument, but by accusations of similar atrocities by the other. 

In 2000, The Scotsman attributed the coinage to the former West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt, and gave this example: “Aye, the IRA might be bad, but what about ...”. That makes clear it’s what about turned into a noun. 

The Belfast Telegraph used it on 29 September: “Both sides are steeped in historical ‘whataboutery’ and they cannot see the historical woods for the modern trees.”

I mention it because whataboutery is pretty much all that enthusiasts for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party have to offer.

When John McDonnell's comments on the Provisional IRA from 2003:

"It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. 

"It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table."

there were numerous tweets like this from Corbyn supporters.

Did Thatcher ever apologise for her open support of Pinochet, a military dictator who tortured & killed tens of thousands? Er, nope. #bbcqt

— Nicholas Pegg (@NicholasPegg) September 17, 2015

Thatcher's support for the Pinochet regime was an outrage, and if there had been blogs in the 1980s I would have said so.

But reasonable people are against both Pinochet and the IRA. And such people are precisely the ones Labour should be seeking to win over.

If you are one of Corbyn's keyboard warriors, however, such people do not exist. You are either in his tribe or you are a Tory.

Far from seeking to broaden Labour's appeal they seem more concerned with weeding out the Tories in their own ranks.

This is a more extreme version of the use all activists (yes, Liberal Democrats) tend to make of social media. We spend our time telling each other how noble we are and how wicked the other parties are. We resemble a tribe of monkeys grooming one another.

Another factor in whataboutery is a horror of hypocrisy. Our opponents accuse us of things but - look! - they do even worse things themselves.

There is something terribly adolescent about the idea that a charge of hypocrisy trumps all others. Those who make it sound as though they have not yet got over the discovery that their parents are not perfect.

Adult life sometimes involves telling other less than the truth (when they have given you a present you don't particularly like, for instance) and it sometimes means going along with things you don't particularly agree with for the sake of politeness.

A good example of this is that you sing the National Anthem if you choose to attend a Battle of Britain memorial service.