Craig Murray's Blog, page 142

Total Bollocks From MI5

In the last decade, now 7/7 has dropped out of this statistic, only one person has been killed in the UK by an Islamic terrorist attack. Let me repeat that. In the last decade, one person has been killed in the UK by an Islamic terrorist attack. That unfortunate death was Lee Rigby.

Rigby’s tragic murder illustrated how easy it is for terrorists to commit an outrage. Two very disorganised Nigerian nutters murdered him with knives. Unfortunately, if a couple of nutters decide to go at someone on the street, they have a high chance of success.

Which is why you would have to be a lunatic actually to believe MI5’s repeated claims during the last decade that there are thousands of dedicated terrorists out there, fanatical determined and organised, but in a decade of constant effort they have succeeded in killing nobody else. There were, MI5 claim, six actual terrorist plots this year but fortunately MI5 saved all of us.

If you believe MI5’s stories, there are two possibilities. The first is that we have security services of a quite incredible efficiency, able to foil random terrorism, generally regarded as near impossible. The second is that we have thousands of dedicated terrorists of such incredible ineptitude that they can’t manage to kill anybody, even when they could choose any random undefended target in the entire UK and any method from knives to poison to hit and run to shooting to bombs, and don’t mind losing their own lives in the attempt. We have rubbish terrorists.

There is of course a third possibility – that these thousands of dedicated terrorists and these scores of foiled plots in the last decade were inventions, or at least the grossest exaggerations, by the security services. A number of fantasists have indeed been convicted and jailed. But the only, single, potential attacker in recent years who actually possessed a viable bomb was a British army soldier with a hatred of Muslims. And naturally he was not counted as nor convicted as a terrorist. Terrorists are Muslims.

The famous “liquid bomb plot”, in which it eventually transpired, unreported by mainstream media, that there were in fact no bombs and no plane tickets and the suspicious chemical found in baby bottles was Milton sterilising solution for baby bottles, is perhaps the best example.

But of course, lots of people are convicted of terrorism. Indeed law after law has stretched the definition of terrorism so far that I am almost certainly guilty of it just by publishing this blogpost. Meanwhile the Government is concentrating on bullying universities and students to ban speakers who say exactly the kind of thing I am writing here, speakers who protest against the detention and harassment of Muslims, and the continued policy of bombing Muslim countries and killing civilians.

Because there is almost no Islamic terrorism in the UK. It is virtually non-existent. It is not the true reason the corporate state wants ever more surveillance power, ever more restriction on freedom of speech and even, in universities, freedom of thought. Do not be fooled. Fight back.

Rifkind and Straw: Guilty as Hell but Broke No Rules

It is evidence of what a sewer Westminster is, that the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has ruled that Straw and Rifkind broke no rules. The BBC and Sky are full of smug reporters telling us the two are “vindicated”.

They are not vindicated, they are disgusting.

What is revealed is that it is absolutely the norm for Tory and Blairite MPs to be firmly in the pockets of corporations, looking after corporate interests and receiving huge slabs of cash. Straw and Rifkind were just behaving like greedy grasping unprincipled bastards within the rules. How is that a vindication?

SNP, Labour and Internal Democracy

Not even Turkmenistan, where the Glorious Leader renamed the days of the week after his family and bequeathed the Presidency to his dentist (who remains President) do they have a national anthem as ludicrously obsequious as the British. Furthermore, even North Korea’s anthem makes no mention of the ruling dynasty. I haven’t sung the British hymn to arse-licking since I was old enough to understand what it meant (about 13). As a British diplomat and Ambassador I used to do exactly what Corbyn did – stand silently. And I have done that while in the Queen’s company.

I was musing on the choices Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn made in the same circumstance, though it is more difficult when you are actually with the Queen, as Sturgeon was. Nobody wants to insult an old lady. And it led me to muse on a problem each has with party democracy, where again the approaches are different.

The SNP recently does not seem over-concerned with party democracy. Or to put it another way, it does not seem to have much party democracy. I have attended two party conferences, one in Perth and one in Glasgow, where there was absolutely no debate on policy issues. Leadership addresses dominated the agenda and almost every speaker called was a member of a parliament or an approved candidate. It does not seem the forthcoming Aberdeen conference will be much better. There will be no debate on the really interesting issues – NATO, the monarchy, currency post-independence, the single police force, privatisation of CALMAC. Remember, 90% of the party membership were not members when there was last a debate on any of these.

Rather the motions selected by the party gatekeepers range from the self-congratulatory to the anodyne, with only a small proportion selected which originated with constituency grassroots. The management is heavy-handed. Most notably, the party members will not be permitted to discuss the key question dominating Scottish politics – the second referendum.

Nicola Sturgeon has briefed the media that the SNP manifesto will set out the circumstances in which a second referendum may be held. In coordinated briefing, Blair Jenkins and others have been floating 2021. What is being made plain is that the leadership will decide, not the membership. That seems to me disrespectful to the 100,000 members of the Yes campaign who joined up and may be presumed to have an opinion.

I consider myself a party loyalist. Actually I am especially loyal because I keep supporting the SNP no matter how plain the SNP makes it that it does not want me. I believe the SNP is the necessary vehicle for independence. But there is a difference between a party loyalist and a leadership loyalist. Leadership loyalists reply that you cannot argue with success, and the SNP achieved massive victory at the Westminster elections, and is set to achieve massive victory at the Holyrood elections.

To which my response is, that I do not deny that autocracy can be a most effective means of gaining and maintaining power. But that does not make autocracy desirable. Some very bad people have been extremely good at gaining and holding power. It is not a proper measure of success.

It has become accepted within the SNP that the criterion for a second referendum is that there must be a “material change” in circumstances. But why is that the criterion? Apparently because Nicola Sturgeon said so. We didn’t vote on that. Now the argument becomes about defining that material change. I gather we still don’t know what it will be exactly, but we kind of know it will come about in six years time.

Apart from “material change” the other hackneyed phrase defining what passes for “debate” on the issue – and there is almost no debate on the issue in which ordinary SNP members are permitted to participate – is “when the Scottish people decide”. When I called a couple of months ago for a referendum in 2018, the internet was filled with leadership loyalists parroting no, it would be “when the Scottish people decide”. The problem with that concept is that it is unclear how the Scottish people are to express their decision. What is the mechanism for that? Is it psychic? What people really meant was “When Nicola decides the Scottish people have decided.”

I still want a second referendum in 2018. I believe we can win it. I am very confident the SNP will sweep the coming Holyrood elections. I am not so confident about the Holyrood election after that; it would be a brave prediction that the SNP trajectory will be ever upward. Stuff happens in politics.

Therefore we must go for a second referendum on the back of these forthcoming Holyrood elections; we might not have another chance after 2020. Besides which the unpopularity of the Etonian government in London continues to work in our favour. I don’t give a stuff about “material change”, but if you want to point to one, the SNP sweeping two elections is a “material change”. 2018 should be it.

There are people who I respect as genuine supporters of Scottish independence who would prefer to delay beyond 2020 or until they are “sure of winning”. Listen. You are never sure of winning. Politics can overturn orthodoxies. Jeremy Corbyn was a 200 to 1 shot. We will never have a better chance than now. Let’s go for it.

People can argue that I am wrong about the timing. But why can’t we do that? Argue? Debate? At conference? And have a democratic vote on the timing? Why is the SNP not a democracy?

Rather more worryingly, the degree of democratic space permitted within the SNP appears to vary according to which side you are on. Readers will recall that I have been twice refused vetting as an SNP parliamentary candidate, on the grounds that I refuse to accept I will tow the party line at all times. I was told very directly it is completely unacceptable for an MP or prospective MP to argue against the party line.

Yet here is an example of an MP – Angus Robertson – arguing directly against the democratically agreed party policy. In 2012 Angus Robertson gave many media interviews advocating membership of NATO, at a time when party policy was firmly against membership of NATO. I raised this precise example at my latest vetting refusal and was told that this was different; the party leadership was entitled to argue against party policy because they had a leadership role, and Angus Robertson had succeeded in winning a vote subsequently to overturn the policy at conference.

It seems to me self-evidently pernicious to develop a doctrine that the party leadership may ignore agreed policy, but nobody else may. Another interpretation may be, of course, that you can attack party policy from the right, but not from the left.

Back in January I argued that the SNP appeared to be a democratic centralist party, where policy was centrally decided but then everybody was forced rigidly to stick to it. I said strict democratic centralism was generally not accepted as part of mainstream political tradition in this country, but was generally considered as Stalinism.

But actually it seems it is worse than that. Policy is not democratically decided. Rather a leader is democratically elected, but then that leader makes up the policy, and everybody has to follow it. That is an even worse political system than democratic centralism, and is known as the Leadership Principle. I could have put that in German.

That is the SNP, of which I remain a loyal but long-suffering member.

In Labour, Jeremy Corbyn faces related problems of party governance and internal democracy, but of a rather different kind. Corbyn has the backing of a large majority of his members, but he has a right wing parliamentary party – in some instances quite astonishingly right wing – which is entirely out of step with both Corbyn and the membership.

We therefore had shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith saying today that Labour supported the benefits cap, and going on to say that Labour supported overall benefits cuts, and could not oppose benefits cuts when the public supported them. Smith appears not to have noticed that the debate in the leadership election had happened, or that he was putting forward precisely the argument that got Liz Kendall a humiliating 4.9% of the votes of party members.

After three days of the parliamentary party doing everything conceivable to undermine him, what I believe is Corbyn’s strategy is to institute reforms to party democracy whereby the members decide policy. He can then obtain clear party policies which he supports and demand the PLP support them. That includes on Trident, where the SNP continue to twist the knife as Corbyn is hamstrung by a parliamentary party absolutely owned by the corporatist agenda.

In the longer term, I just do not see how it can work. The only conceivable strategy for Corbyn to succeed is mass deselection of the right wing shills who constitute 70% of his MPs. But that process is incompatible with a working party at Westminster. I genuinely wish Jeremy, whom I know and respect, well. But I very much fear the Blairites have put the Labour Party as an institution well beyond saving.

The Trade Union Bill

A government which claims the right to kill its own citizens with no judicial process on the basis of the vote of 24.4% of the qualified electorate, legislates that workers cannot strike without the support of 40% of their qualified electorate because strikes can inconvenience people. Not as inconvenient as being sliced to pulp by flying metal, I should have thought.

David Davis, a decent Tory, said that some of the provisions of the Trade Union bill are Francoist, and he was not exaggerating. You can read the dispassionate official analysis of the bill by Parliament staff here. One of least publicised yet appalling aspects of the bill is the arbitrary power given to an anti-strike witchfinder, the Certification Officer. He is specifically given the powers of the High Court to compel individuals to give evidence or produce documents, and to make arbitrary judgements.

That extreme authoritarian stance is reflected throughout the bill. It is more publicised that notice must be given of picketing, with names reported to the police and identifying armbands worn, with letters of authority from the union to be there which the Bill states must be produced not only to the Police but to anybody who asks on request. This gives employers a whole new avenue of harassment of strikers.

The provision that 14 days notice must be given of any strike is obviously designed to reduce the effectiveness of strike action. The right to bring in agency staff to replace agency workers is not in the Bill, but the parliamentary staff analysis indicates it is intended to bring that in under secondary legislation – power delegated to the Secretary of State. That obviously is designed to combine with the 14 day notice to make strikes ineffective. The regulation of what individuals say about the industrial dispute on social media is so repressive as to verge on the incredible.

It is obvious the Tory government serve the agenda of corporatism, pure and simple. But it is perhaps surprising they are so entirely open about it. If you do not have the chance to withdraw your Labour, you are a slave. In the days of real slavery in Jamaica, foremen or gangmasters were generally slaves themselves (as opposed to the southern United States where they were generally poor whites). Very often the black gangmasters were extremely brutal to the slaves under them, imparting floggings with gusto to the slaves under them to try to cement themselves in the favour of their white masters.

That is the function that token Muslim Sajid Javid plays in this Conservative government, flogging the workers with more gusto than his Old Etonian masters would dare to do. Plus they wouldn’t want to get blood on their trousers. Javid is a most enthusiastic Uncle Tom determined to tick all the establishment boxes. He certified the Trade Union Bill as compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, when it is plainly in contravention of Article 11. But his most spectacular effort to fit in with his Tory masters came at the Conservative Friends of Israel where ignoring completely the terrible suffering, humiliation and repression of the Palestinian people, he declared

“Mr Javid, who described himself as a “proud British-born Muslim”, announced that if he had to leave Britain to live in the Middle East, then he would choose Israel as home. Only there, he said, would his children feel the “warm embrace of freedom and liberty”. For him, only Israel shared the democratic values of the UK.”

Sajid Javid promotes measures rightly called Francoist because he is a person it is perfectly reasonable to call a fascist.

Sajid Javid Hankers After “Israel’s Warm Embrace”

Selective Indignation

For his first nine years as Prime Minister, Tony Blair appointed NO women to any of the “Great offices of state” over which Corbyn is under such concerted media fire. And he had many less women in his shadow cabinet and cabinet. Yet there was virtually no media comment at all, and none of this line of right wing “feminists” lambasting him.

Explain.

Guest Post by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg

Project Corbyn, that astonishing tidal wave movement of a tiny minority of hard left activists and other entryists which swept Labour into the ocean of unrealistic economic policy and unelectable beliefs, has run aground within 48 hours on the issue of alphabetical discrimination.

Many senior Labour sources have, within the last hour, told me that Corbyn had proved he was out of touch and a complete throwback to the 1930’s by his appointment of a shadow cabinet consisting of “old people from the start of the alphabet.”

Most people believe it has been a terrific mistake to appoint a shadow cabinet dominated overwhelmingly by people whose names begin with just the first few letters of the alphabet. Is Corbyn totally unaware of the identity politics of the modern media, many are asking. One very senior former Labour Cabinet Minister told me “Look at the key figures here. Abbott, Benn, Burnham, Corbyn. That is four of the most important posts and it doesn’t take you past the first three letters of the alphabet. This is disgusting and Labour MPs simply may not put up with it. Eagle does not take us much further and her first name is Angela. Why was there no space for Umunna?”

This kind of whispering from his own benches has the ability to undermine the completely unelectable Corbyn. A great many anonymous people have told me they were hopeful that Watson would provide balance, but these hopes were dashed by the appointment of Abbott.

Significantly I tried to query John MacDonnell on this but the aged terrorist supporter kept talking about income inequality and seeking completely to avoid the genuine issues which are worrying so many formerly very important Labour MPs, and so many in the media, today.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior former Labour Prime Minister told me “I predicted the Labour Party would fall off a cliff and they ignored me. Corbyn will be out by Christmas.” It does seem that the unelectable Corbyn, who refused to answer questions on alphabet balance, has no answers to these key questions.

Laura Kuenssberg, BBC

Decoding New Labour

The odious Charles Clarke states on Radio 4 that Labour MPs will develop “their own alternative” to the economic policy of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. What he means is that Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, Lord Sainsbury and the private healthcare firms will continue to push their interest through bought and paid for New Labour MPs.

Just thought I would decode that one for you.

The BBC is Irredeemable

As I get older and I see the institutions of British society twisted and distorted to fit the extreme neo-liberal agenda, I find myself advocating all kinds of responses which I would have found anathema even a decade below. One f these is that I definitely believe that the BBC should be abolished as a public funded institution, and the BBC poll tax (aka license fee) abolished.

The extent of BBC bias during the referendum campaign was breathtaking. I have worked, and specifically reported on the media, in dictatorships which had a less insidious and complete bias than the BBC has against Scottish independence. The relentless anti-Corbyn propaganda shows that the BBC exists to reinforce the neo-liberal narrative at all costs, both at home and abroad. Laura Kuenssberg achieved levels of disdain and ridicule in her report on Shadow Cabinet appointments this evening that ought to disqualify her forever from employment anywhere but Fox News. This was followed by “Reporting Scotland” and a long propaganda piece against the idea of a second referendum, replete with lies about pledges of “once in a lifetime”.

I do not think in the 21st Century we need a state broadcaster. If you want right wing propaganda, you can watch it on Murdoch, without paying a compulsory tax for it. I don’t want to watch baking, “celebrities” I have never heard of dancing, or people abseiling to win a holiday in Jamaica. If I did, I am sure I could find someone to provide it commercially.

The more worthwhile parts of the BBC’s output could be maintained or commissioned as arts spending and broadcast on commercial or internet platforms. You do not actually need a state broadcaster to have symphony orchestras and just a minute.

Even the Tories are occasionally right about something, and they are right that the BBC is a hugely bloated organisation, with 107 bureaucrats who earn over 100,000 and 23 who earn over 200,000. Forget all the ideas about reform. Just chuck the worthless bunch out on the street.

People’s Quantitive Easing

The media is astonishing today in its barrage against Jeremy Corbyn. Presenters repeatedly state that to oppose nuclear weapons and foreign wars is “weak”, as though that were undeniable. Spending quantitive easing on public infrastructure is “inflationary” and “irresponsible” – and these are the presenters not the guests. Why simply handing quantitive easing money to the bankers is not inflationary or irresponsible is not explained.

I would claim to have got there on “people’s quantitive easing” before hearing that phrase. 42 months ago I published

It is beyond doubt true that the effect of creation of new money is to reduce the value of currency already in circulation. The effects will show through in inflation and the exchange rate. Of course, those will continue to be affected by other factors as well, which is why there are better and worse times to do it. But in effect Q.E. is still a transfer of wealth from those who hold any of the currency to those given the new stuff. In other words, more cash from you to the bankers.

Actually if QE had been used genuinely to stimulate the economy it would have been a marvellous thing. With £350 billion we could have built an enormous amount of social housing on brownfield sites, converted derelict high streets into housing, built the Severn barrage and a high speed rail link from London to Aberdeen and still have had change. We could have reopened the steel industry to do it. a thousand manufacturing firms could have been re-tooled. Millions could have been employed. The entire logic of economic depression could have been turned around.

Instead we gave more cash to the bankers.

Progressive opinion catches up with me eventually. In another decade or more likely two, mainstream journalists might catch up as well.

Congratulations to Jeremy Corbyn

I am unreservedly delighted at Jeremy Corbyn’s election. He made a quite excellent speech, specifically rejecting an attack on Syria, marketization in the NHS and the new anti-union legislation. Hopefully the scale of his victory will give pause to the Blairites who will realise they are not as all-important as they thought.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the vast majority of the Labour establishment, as represented by the people in that hall, are hostile to Corbyn. The question now is whether Corbyn can overhaul party mechanisms in such a way as to bring the opinions of the membership to bear on policy and override that right wing “elite” who have been in charge of the party.

The first few weeks are key. Most Blairites are above all careerists. If they think Corbyn can carry through his personal dominance into control of policy and party mechanisms, then many of the Blairites will look at their constituency members and suddenly discover they had left-wing principles after all. If the Blairites think that a resistance and undermining campaign against Corbyn will succeed (and there will certainly be one), they will go for that. In short, most “Blairites” are out for themselves and will join what they perceive will be the winning side Corbyn’s winning margin, and the fact he won overwhelmingly among full members, gives him a very strong base.

I have shared anti-war and pro-Palestinian platforms with Jeremy, and have the greatest respect for him. I also expect that he will have the strength to stand against both the smothering blandishments and the attacks of the neo-con establishment. The “Corbyn’s election is a disaster” narrative is being pushed by the BBC relentlessly in every question and comment – for example they just asked Ed Miliband “In retrospect was it a mistake for you to resign the day after the election?”, the clear sub-text being that Corbyn’s election was undesirable.

Ever since I realised that Blair’s New Labour was entirely subservient to the neo-con agenda I have regarded Labour as the enemy, as a fake opposition so close to the Tories as to make no difference. I viewed its leadership as utterly unscrupulous careerists fully signed up to a vicious pro-wealthy agenda at home and completely subservient to US/Israeli foreign policy abroad. This new careerism tied in very nicely with a pre-existing rotten borough corruption in Scotland and Northern England. I utterly detested the Labour Party.

So it is difficult for me to find the Labour Party led by a man whom I know, nuch respect, and with whom I disagree on almost nothing except Scottish independence. I also continue to believe that once consolidated, Jeremy will make it clear he has no hostility to Scottish independence and will support a second referendum whenever the Scottish government wants it.

But the problem is that the Labour Party hierarchy, and particularly their parliamentary party, is still full of people who are neo-cons, Red Tories, appallingly corrupt, careerists and in several cases war criminals. To know what attitude to adopt to the Labour Party must depend on how the battle for control of the party pans out. The scale of Corbyn’s victory, and the total rejection of the direct interference of Tony Blair, give Corbyn a great start. Those Blairite bastions – the Guardian and the BBC – are spluttering incoherently.

Jeremy Corbyn has just won the battle for party leadership. But the battle for control of the Labour Party just started.