Category: Politicae Britannicae

Conserving and progressing

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Donal Blaney writes about a sort of division within the Conservative Party. In short, Mr Blaney objects to a large part of David Cameron’s repositioning of his party as progressive conservatives. The bulk of his argument is that liberalism and fascism both descend from progressivism, and so are alike. I may well pick up a copy of the “searing tome” he mentions, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, by Jonah Goldberg.

The idea that the descendant must be fundamentally the same as the ancestor philosophy, or other descendants, is flat wrong. Aristotle studied under Plato, but said “so good riddance to Plato and his forms, for they make no more sense than singing la la la”. The Young Hegelians were at odds with the Old Hegelians, and neither would have agreed with Marx. Even amongst followers of Marx, you have to account for the likes of Georges Sorel.

To say, then, that Tony Blair is in hock to the thinking of Lenin is about as fair as to say that all conservatives would have supported slavery.

The specific example – that liberalism and fascism descend from progressivism – is similarly a load of rot. Progressivism is an ill-defined word, but starts to come into play in the late nineteenth century. Liberalism in one sense dates from rather earlier – Locke’s Two Treatises date from 1689 – while the ‘other’ form of liberalism (in the American sense of the state supporting the unfortunate) could, after a fashion, be said to date from the 1597 Act for the Relief of the Poor. If that is too much, the Corn Law Rhymer, Ebenezer Elliott, was able to write in the mid nineteenth century

What is a communist? One who hath yearnings
For equal division of unequal earnings:
Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing
To fork out his penny, and pocket your shilling.

If that is too abstract, Thomas Paine was arguing for a welfare state and progressive taxation to prevent the creation of a hereditary aristocracy in The Rights of Man of 1791.

Fascism is a similarly piebald term, but it is, I would argue, the third to emerge as it is only possible, as I understand it, in a modern, industrial society. In short, his analysis is conceptually and factually wrong.

In any case, Progressive Conservatism is nothing new. John Diefenbaker was elected Prime Minister of Canada in 1957 as a Progressive Conservative, while Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican and then a Progressive.

Blaney continues:

Progressivism is diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives believe in

The Conservative Party has always been a coalition of interests; at the moment, it has one-nation, traditionalist and Thatcherite1 wings. This is true of the other parties (the LibDems have the Orange Bookers and social democrats, while Labour has Campaign Group, Compass and Progress). What’s interesting is the source of Blaney’s rights:

‘God-given or natural, fundamental freedoms inherent in my being a free-born Englishman’

It would be fascinating to hear an enumeration of those rights; I suspect that they would be neither natural nor fundamental, but contingent on the existence of a state. Unless the almighty gives different rights to those born English and Ethiopian, they cannot be natural; unless the creator brands at birth the slave and lets the yeoman go free, they cannot be fundamental.

In other words, the source of Donal’s rights is verbiage. The question is whether he speaks just for the Thatcherite part of his party, or the others.

Much of Donal’s paean to conservativism is then a roll call of people and quotes. I would simply answer: what of Havel, Walesa, Dubcek and Horn?

I have a quote, too:

O Liberty, liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!

– Mme Roland.

Blaney sets up a dichotomy between conservatism and progressivism and tries to say that the latter is tantamount to fascism, thus coming awfully close to an invocation of Godwin’s Law. As I hope I’ve shown, this is bunk as descent does not mean what he thinks it means and, in any case, isn’t there. From Donal’s point of view, Cameron’s positions mean he cannot be a conservative; I think it’s rather more likely that the positions advocated by Blaney are pretty far from the mainstream of conservatism. I hope so, as if I’m wrong, the zeitgeist of the British Conservative party is similar to the GOP in the US.

xD.

1 – I deliberately say ‘Thatcherite’ rather than ‘neo-liberal’ as the emphasis on liberty in neo-liberalism is at odds with the social conservatism of Thatcher.

When points mean passports

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I’ve become a bit enured to being called a war-mongering baby-eater when I knock on a door to ask someone to vote for Labour. Usually, people listen politely and occasionally offer you a cup of tea, but you do get the odd snipe.

Imagine the scene when an aspirant British citizen knocks on a door to canvass for their party of choice. Not only will they be associating themselves with politics, they will be opening up their motives to criticism. “You’re only doing this to get a passport”.

Phil Woolas wants a points-based system for awarding passports, with points available, inter alia, for canvassing for political parties. That would only add to the scepticism over the motives of those involved in politics.

If we say that Britishness is behaving like people in Britain, the problem is that being a member of a political party, let alone door-knocking for one, is an increasingly un-British thing to do.

There is also, apparently, no limitation to which parties, present or future, are allowed. maybe taking part in our civic life does include campaigning for the Official Monster Raving Looney Party or the Church of the Militant Elvis, but I don’t think that’s what Woolas had in mind. I might set up the ‘immigrants campaigning to get rid of this stupid immigration points system, but only in a thoroughly British way’ party.

It’s not obvious what British values means, either. I would rather not have a hereditary monarchy. Were I an aspirant citizen, would that be sufficiently un-British? Would campaigning for Scottish independence be un-British? Are Sinn Fein kosher?

There will be also be points for going to live in areas of depopulation. Yes, you too can be British by living where the British don’t.

Of course, Woolas might be trying to make immigrants be model Brits, in which case I would advise him to look at the plank in his own eye before the speck in his brother’s. I know plenty of non-citizens resident in the UK who are model citizens, fully engaged with community and civic life. I just don’t want their motives to be quesioned.

Posted by Wordmobi

The BNP Language and Concepts Discipline Manual goes down the memory hole

Posted on by David Landon Cole

I wrote here, in passing, about the BNP’s Language and Concepts Discipline Manual which included

Rule #15. BNP activists and writers should never refer to ‘black Britons’ or ‘Asian Britons’ etc, for the simple reason that such persons do not exist. These people are ‘black residents’ of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese. Collectively, foreign residents of other races should be referred to as ‘racial foreigners’, a non-pejorative term that makes clear the distinction needing to be drawn. The key in such matters is above all to maintain necessary distinctions while avoiding provocation and insult.

and

it is best to simply never speak or write of Jews at all [emphasis in original]

It would appear that this document was changed on or about April 27th 2009 to remove these and other sections. The new version is here and Wikileaks still has a copy of the original at http://www.wikileaks.com/leak/bnp-language-discipline-2005.pdf.

xD.

Labour can win a fourth term

Posted on by David Landon Cole

‘Governing party does badly in midterm election’ is hardly a shocking story. We are familiar with the arguments about local & Euro polls being second-order elections. We know that the Guardian advocated a vote for the Lib Dems or Greens1. We know that Labour’s fratricidal tendency has come to the fore.

And yet, the share of the vote won by the Conservatives was 38%. That translates into a Commons majority of perhaps 45 seats that could be easily turned into a hung parliament if Labour voters who stayed at home on Thursday can be coaxed into voting. It could even be, with a following wind, a historic fourth term.

How?

The first part of winning a fourth term must be a simple message to all the plotters: put up or shut up. There is a debate to be had about whether we’d fare better under Gordon Brown or another, as yet unnamed, leader. There is no debate that another year of rumour and intrigue under gothic arches will be worse than either. If Brown is still in place on Tuesday – after the PLP meeting – he must stay in place, unopposed, until the election. The discontent about Gordon has been rumbling on for some time. This is the most recent, and most self-destructive, manifestation of that discontent. If senior members of the party continue to undermine our leader, calls for an election will grow louder and louder and our ability to articulate an effective policy platform will grow weaker and weaker.

The reason the Tories want an election now is that they know a year of Labour policies that appeal to people in these nervous economic times could deprive them of government. A good year of governance and progress, with the economy improving – it would appear that the green shoots of economic recovery are poking through – might bring us our fourth term.

Secondly, we must recognise who deeply unattractive this looks to people outside politics. I ask: what are the policy differences between Brown & Purnell? Between Brown & Blears? Between Brown & Flint? It does seem as if these are indeed the first ministers to resign solely on issues of style.

Thirdly, the party as a whole must use the summer recess to regroup and to articulate a set of coherent policies to take us forward into the next election. They must focus on the economy and constitutional reform, but we must keep talking about our successes in the NHS, education and building a fairer society.

xD.

1 – in fairness, they also said vote Labour if your local councillor is a good one. I wonder how many Guardianistas can name their local councillors.

Cross-posted at Common Endeavour

The nine nations of North America by Joel Garreau

Posted on by David Landon Cole

The thesis of Garreau’s 1981 book, The nine nations of North America, is deceptively simple. Not only, he argues, are the borders between the states of the USA and between that country and Mexico & Canada are artificial constructions – they clearly are – but that they are irrelevant. There are commonly recognised regions with the USA, but they don’t work either. Consider, within the Mid-west, the differences between Missouri and Michigan! This all became increasingly obvious to Garreau, a journalist, and colleagues of his as they travelled around North America. If they wanted to work out what actions in what localities would effect which people in which places, they needed a different set of tools to explain how the USA works.

This gives rise to the titular nine nations. They are the Foundry, New England, Quebec, Dixie, MexAmerica, Ecotopia, the Empty Quarter, the Islands and the Breadbasket. They each have a capital (Detroit, Boston, Denver, Quebec, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and Kansas City respectively). Some are historic regions – New England, Quebec, Dixie – others are characterised by their ethnic makeup – the Islands and MexAmerica – but, in Garreau’s book, they are all cogently described by looking at where different social, economic and geographic factors cause dividing lines with greater relevance to the quotidiarian than the accidental lines of history. The book goes through each ‘nation’ and looks at its extent, its borders and so on.

There is a problem with the term ‘nation’ as, if we accept Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations as imagined communities then these entities so not qualify as, not being widely recognised, people cannot, for the most part, imagine themselves to be members. There are exceptions. Quebec is a clear, full exception; MexAmerica and the Islands might be partial exceptions.

I don’t think Garreau had it quite right in ’81. There was still considerable variation within his nine nations; consider, for instance, Appalachia, which crosses two and possibly three of the nine. I would argue that its cultural and economic histories and situation make a good argument for it to ‘exist’ in some way; the existence of the Appalachian Regional Commission would suggest that I have at least some weight to my argument.

However, that very example shows the strength of Garreau’s argument. If Appalachia exists in any meaningful sense, it crosses state lines. From there, it is not far to crossing country borders. As anyone who has travelled across Texas will know, the Lone Star State is a varied place; that is not to say that people there do not identify both as Texans and Americans, but that, in terms of reality, someone from Texarkana might have more in common with a Sooner than someone from El Paso.

This idea has all sorts of implications.

First, identity, interest and reality are really, really complicated. Secondly, effective public policy needs to look at crossing international boundaries. Thirdly, given that in some cases, particularly MexAmerica and the Islands, the Anglo (Garreau’s term, not mine) policy establishment will need to be, ahem, a little more reasonable towards non-Anglo, and particularly those who don’t speak ‘Anglo’ as a first language, people.

The book was published in 81 and refers back over Garreau’s experiences in the previous decade. Things have changed greatly since then; the mentions of the possibilities of computers seem quaint now, the worsening economics of the Foundry have continued and the Hispanic population of the US has grown significantly. Nevertheless, the general thrust of the book holds true; polity, nation and economy do not necessarily overlap.

An interesting question would be how much this applies to Europe (is Saar-Lor-Lux more relevant than Benelux? Does Jutland make more sense tied to Northern Germany than Scandinavia? How well does Northern Italy sit with the rest of the Republic?) and the UK; England exists, in some sense, as a nation. Does it exist as a polity or an oiconome?

I do recommend the book.

xD.

Unionstogether: why we matter

Posted on by David Landon Cole

David Cameron wants the UK to withdraw from the social chapter.

David Cameron wants to scrap the legal guarantee that gives us four weeks paid holiday.

David Cameron wants to scrap the right to be consulted about changes at work.

David Cameron wants to scrap our entitlement to parental leave – denying the legal right for parents to spend time with their newborn babies in the critical first few weeks

Sign the petition at unionstogether.org.uk/yourrights.

xD.

Barclays and parliamentary privilege

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Lord Oakeshott, a LibDem peer, has used parliamentary privilege to say what everyone knew: the seven Barclays memos about tax avoidance schemes are available on Wikileaks. Those are the memos that Barclays had removed by an injunction – aka gagging order – at half past two in the morning on the seventeenth of March.

From today’s Lords (link here; it may stop working tomorrow morning when Hansard is posted):

Lord Oakeshott: […] Documents leaked to the Liberal Democrats, which appear to detail systematic tax avoidance on a grand scale by Barclays, were injuncted last week. The Sunday Times and the Guardian had already made them front-page news and these documents are widely available on the internet from sites such as Twitter, wikileaks.org, docstoc.com and gabbr.com. Yet the Guardian had to remove them from its website and cannot tell its readers where to find them. These documents describe deals worth billions of pounds set up by the bank in order to make money out of depriving the UK and foreign exchequers of revenue. Barclays would not last for one minute without the British taxpayer standing behind it, yet it is holding out one hand for taxpayers’ money while it picks taxpayers’ pockets with tax avoidance activities on the other. […]

I think congratulations are in order to Lord Oakeshott. Aside from that, it does suggest that any other banks who have unfortunate leaks are going to have to think twice about injunctions in the small hours if parliamentary privilege is going to be used to tell people where those memos can be found. I am not sure of my ground, but I think I’m right in saying that the actual text of the memoranda is still covered by the injunction; it is only the fact that “these documents are widely available on the internet from sites such as Twitter, wikileaks.org, docstoc.com and gabbr.com” which may be repeated.

xD.

George Monbiot gives whinging lefties a bad name

Posted on by David Landon Cole

In an open letter in yesterday’s Guardian, George Monbiot attacks Hazel Blears for being, well, Hazel Blears. I have no objection to whinging lefties. Indeed, I often whinge and (definitional objections notwithstanding) have been called a leftie. Monbiot gives us a bad name. Not only that, he makes what he wants to achieve and what I think I want to achieve less likely.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my “cynical and corrosive commentary”. You asserted your political courage, maintaining that “you don’t get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table”. By contrast, you suggested, I contribute “to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics” that I make my living writing about. You accused me of making claims without supporting evidence and of “wielding great influence without accountability”. “We need more people standing for office and serving their communities,” you wrote, “more people debating, engaging and voting; not more people waving placards on the sidelines.”
Quite so. But being the placard-waving sort, I have a cynical and corrosive tendency to mistrust the claims ministers make about themselves. Like you, I believe opinions should be based on evidence. So I have decided to test your statements against the record.
Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles.

Ah, using a metric with an emotion. Interesting line of attack…

The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted “very strongly for the Iraq war”, “very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war” and “very strongly for replacing Trident” (“very strongly” means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There’s certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Blears’ stance, they would be in support of the Iraq war, concluding British deployment there before having a post mortem, in support of Trident and in support of a particular view of the security situation in the UK. Just because you don’t share the principles doesn’t mean they’re not principles.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords.

Here is the first problem with Monbiot’s argument. People’s opinions can, legitimately, change over time. In 2003 and 2007, Blears also voted to scrap the Lords entirely  and, presumably, was convinced in the intervening period that, if a unicameral system was not an option, a fifty-fifty split was the best option.

You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don’t possess any.

I will be the first to admit that the Labour government has made some grievous errors. However, there are two fundamental problems with the arguments Monbiot puts in those paragraphs. Firstly, although I and Monbiot might disagree, there is no necessary contradiction between minimum wage & temporary agency workers’ rights or between fiscal prudence & financial deregulation1. Monbiot forgets that the government gestalt considered the war on Iraq not only a good idea but a moral imperative. There is hence no contradiction. The situation with the third runway is more tenuous, but not fatally so if you assume that the carbon emissions are maintained.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: “Never rebels against their party in this parliament.” Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

And your article is a ‘tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / signifying nothing2‘. Voting against the government means leaving the government in the system we have in place at the moment. It is entirely possible that Blears has opposed particular decisions but has been in agreement with the bulk of them and therefore felt it worthwhile to stay within government. This could be called the Short defence or, if you’re not being cynical, pragmatism. After all, The Guardian runs adverts from travel companies and yet Monbiot takes, albeit indirectly, the thirty pieces of carbon.

Let me remind you just how far your political “guts” have carried you. You are temporarily protected by the fact that the United Kingdom, unlike other states, has not yet incorporated the Nuremberg principles into national law. If a future government does so, you and all those who remained in the cabinet on 20 March 2003 will be at risk of prosecution for what the Nuremberg tribunal called “the supreme international crime”. This is defined as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression”. Robin Cook, a man of genuine political courage, put his conscience ahead of his career and resigned. What did you do?

Will you be issuing a writ against Clare Short? I would add that the legality of the war is contested, not that presence of legality affects its being a good or bad idea.

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

Actually, I’d have said it was either “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”3 or the cumulative effect of a lack of political education and the mendacity of the tabloids leading to poor decision-making because of the over-importance of certain totemic issues and the lack of appreciation of the complexity of government.

You demanded evidence that consultations and citizens’ juries have been rigged. You’ve got it. In 2007, the high court ruled that the government’s first consultation on nuclear power was “seriously flawed” and “unlawful”. It also ruled that the government must commission an opinion poll. The poll the government launched was reviewed by the Market Research Standards Board. It found that “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer”.
As freedom of information requests made by Greenpeace reveal, the consultation over the third runway at Heathrow used faked noise and pollution figures. It was repeatedly pre-empted by ministers announcing that the runway would be built. Nor did the government leave anything to chance when it wanted to set up giant health centres, or polyclinics, run by GPs. As Dr Tony Stanton of the Londonwide Local Medical Committees has pointed out, “a week before a £1m consultation on polyclinics and hospitals by NHS London closed, London’s 31 primary care trusts were issued with instructions on setting up polyclinic pilots and GP-led health centres”. Consultations elsewhere claimed that there was no need to discuss whether or not new health centres were required, as the principle had already been established through “extensive national level consultation exercises”. But no such exercises had taken place; just a handful of citizens’ juries engaging a total of a thousand selected people and steered by government ministers. Those who weren’t chosen had no say.

So your problem is with citizens’ juries? I can see that, to be honest. Unfortunately, the corrosive effect of the media (tabloids rather than broadsheets) gives people a biased set of facts, making it hard to do surveys; equally, surveys can be rather self-selecting as people with a bone to pick will be represented disproportionately.

Fixes like this might give you some clues about why more people are not taking part in politics. I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don’t engage in politics.

There is a problem with our polity. It’s caused by a mix of factors. Politicians of all sides are riding on the tiger’s back in that attacking the system will end up reducing their ability to change it and, I’m afraid, Paul Flynn is not going to change things by himself. By over-simplifying the problems and making it pretty abundantly clear that whatever people from the government say will be met by unwarranted skepticism, articles like Monbiot’s open letter make reform harder.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.” You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

I’ll put you down as a ‘don’t know’, shall I?

Edit 1623: Tom Harris and Hopi Sen weigh in.

xD.

1 – PFI would have been a better line of attack
2 – Hamlet V v
3 – Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

The succession to the British monarchy

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Seeing as everyone’s talking about the monarchy in general and Prince Harry in particular, it’s worth pointing out that history only gives William slightly better than even odds of ascending the throne and acquiring all sorts of other fun titles.

Queen Anne succeeded William III (who sort of succeeded himself, as he’d previously been coregnant with Mary II); however, Anne’s father, James II had previously been King. The next monarch was George I; he was the closest Protestant relation to Anne. Not, though, particularly close; counting Catholics, he was fifty-first in line to the throne. George II was actually George I’s son. George II’s son, Frederick, predeceased him, and his grandson, George III ascended the throne. George III was succeeded by his son, George IV. George IV passed the throne to his brother, William IV, who in turn passed it onto his niece, Victoria. Victoria was succeeded by her son, Edward VII, who was succeeded by his son, George V. George V was succeeded by his son, George VI, and then his son, Edward VIII, who promptly abdicated in favour of George VI. On his death, the throne passed to his daughter, Elizabeth II.

In other words, since the Acts of Union of 1707 that created Great Britain, the heir apparent has become monarch only six out of eleven occasions. Of course, things are rather less turbulent at court (and, for the most part, less important) than in the past. However, this is as much accident of history and Elizabeth II’s longevity as anything else. If, say, we had a series of general elections where there was no clear winner, the monarch, having perhaps to successively choose between the party with most seats and the party with most votes, could become really quite important. I would hope that people are considering this already; I would prefer to have a definite arrangement rather than leaving it to whim and caprice. Now, even if Prince Harry doesn’t become king, he may go for a role as Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, as Prince Andrew does at the moment. It may be a little hard for him to go to Israel, Pakistan or the Arabian world given his taste in fancy dress and nicknames.

xD.

Continue reading “The succession to the British monarchy” →

Why we should take non-Brits from Guantanamo

Posted on by David Landon Cole

Iain Dale asks why we should accept people who aren’t connected with Britain from Guantánamo Bay. These are my reasons why we should.

Firstly, it is in our strategic interest for two reasons. I will look at the morality and legality later, but it is enough to say that many states and people, friendly, neutral and hostile, regard both Guantánamo as immoral and the UK as very close to the United States. By acting to expedite the closing of Guantánamo, we are acting to right a perceived wrong. It also improves our standing within the EU and NATO if we can demonstrate an ability to act as an effective link or broker between the western and eastern sides of the Atlantic. I would add that there might well be (although I do not know this for a fact) people who would be repatriated to, say, Bosnia-Herzegovina. While I do not wish to impugn Bosnia-Herzegovina and am using it just as an example, I do not believe that it, or many other states, have the state-capacity to effectively monitor these people. If we look slightly more widely around the Balkans, the apparent ease with which people evaded the ICTY, I believe the point is proven. In the long-term, taking in detainees here is more secure than leaving them in limbo or Ruritania.

Secondly, it is expeditious. Whether Mr Dale likes it or not, President-Elect Obama has made it clear that Guantanamo is to be closed. As I mentioned, we are seen as close to the US in foreign policy terms. One of the big problems with Guantánamo was the lack of clarity as to what was going to happen to people held there. We now have a resolution; however, we will have to accept people who do not have an immediate connection to the US for a few reasons. One is that some states will not accept people who have a prior or stronger connection to them. We can exert more moral pressure on them to accept people from Guantánamo if we show how much we are doing; in any case, it will not work for everyone. There are some states that it would be wrong to ‘export’ these people to; they are those states that would torture them. They would go from a frying pan to a rather hotter fire and many of the problems we face because of Guantánamo would be reinforced.

Thirdly, it is morally right. Guantánamo was an abrogation of rights, poorly implemented and conceived, that took away some of our moral high ground and constitutes a serious threat to habeas corpus in the USA. Its closure rectifies at least some of those issues. Moreover, the USA is our friend and ally; if it seeks our support on this, given that the costs are minimal and the benefits great, I would have hoped it would have been a no-brainer.

If I may refer to the title of Iain’s post – “Guantánamo is a problem made in America” – I would contend that the problem may have been made there, but that does not relieve of us our obligations to justice and due process, or to our ally, or the effects its existence and the method of its closure may have on us.

In short, it is both morally right and in our strategic interest.

xD.