The Green Ribbon

A Westminster election: The Irish dimension

In my OurKingdom piece last week, I suggested that an early Westminster election would be highly inconvenient for the Stormont Assembly, with the new executive still bedding down and major issues still unresolved.

Malachi O'Doherty points to a more cynical aspect of this in his latest Hearts and Minds spot. All of the local parties have chosen ministers with one eye on building up candidates for marginal Westminster seats, and an early election may frustrate those calculations.

Ian Paisley Senior came out of the Labour Party conference confident that there will be no October election. Well, our local concerns will not weigh in the decision; they never do.

But if our parties are going to treat the executive primarily as a runway for the take off of political careers into Westminster, voters here might feel a little used and have something to say about that themselves. (BBC Northern Ireland)

Perhaps the most interesting question is how a Westminster election would affect the various realignments currently underway within both political traditions.

The Party of the Union

Gareth Young points us to the Daily Telegraph, where Jack Straw has some advice for the Conservative Party:   

In the 1955 general election the Conservative party not only won a majority of seats in Scotland but a majority of the votes – the only time that has been achieved by any political party since the war.

Today it is impossible to imagine such an outcome. The Conservative party is in danger of becoming a party of narrow English nationalism.

it prepares for its annual conference in Blackpool next week, it must come to terms with a stark reality: it is no longer the party of the Union. (Telegraph)

There are a couple of elements to this, one is the familiar Brownite theme of Britishness, which is partly sincere, but also partly a calculated attempt to ward off any challenge to Brown's legitimacy based on the West Lothian Question.

The other is the attempt to stake out traditionally Tory territory that dominated the Labour Party conference.

US responds to Iraqi contractor legislation

It seems there is a genuine power-struggle developing over security contractors in Iraq in the wake of the Blackwater shootings:

A draft law that would place American private security companies under government supervision and make their personnel accountable for their actions has been submitted to a state legal committee for review, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said Tuesday. (New York Times)

This proposal was the main subject of a very interesting briefing yesterday by Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell:

  Q     What's the Pentagon's position on the draft Iraqi law that would strip security contractors of their immunity?

 

            MR. MORRELL: You know, I don't know. I read that today, but I'm not so sure the Pentagon has a position on it. You know, obviously this is a sovereign government, and they have -- if this is one of the laws that they wish to pass, it would be sort of ironic in the sense that it would certainly show their ability to work together and pass laws. But I'm not so sure it would be something that we necessarily want to weigh-in on. (Defenselink News)

The Pentagon may be more concerned than this jibe would suggest, given the actions Mr Morell went on to outline:

I think I mentioned to you last week, that the secretary had some questions about -- in the wake of the Blackwater incident with regards to the Department of State, he had some questions that he wanted answered about our exposure, our reliance on contractors in Iraq. And those questions have -- they've provided some answers to those questions which have led to still more questions.

Tim Pat Coogan in Iraq

Blood and Treasure points us to this interesting nugget:

About six months ago Abu Muqawama was talking with Ahmed Hashim, and through his time spent interviewing insurgents in Iraq, Ahmed noticed the insurgents had taken to reading about Michael Collins and the IRA. (Tim Pat Coogan's books were particularly popular.) What were they studying? They were studying the way in which Irish Republicans targeted the infrastructure and institutions of the British occupation -- everything from the post office to police officers -- in an effort to collapse the institutions the occupation needed to survive and keep Ireland from falling into a chaos. Hashim called this tactic "infrastructural takedown." (abu muqawama)

Gordon's speech

I have a short reaction piece over at OurKingdom, and Mick Fealty has a round-up his new Telegraph blog Brassneck, but perhaps it's Richard Thomson who sums it up best over at Scots and Independent.

Publish and be damned:Cut the middleman out of the libel laws

Sunny Hundal on More 4 News on Friday:

The Usmanov-Murray dispute illustrates a problem with Britain's libel laws that is not unique to the internet. By targeting Murray's hosting providers, Usmanov's solicitors have effectively tried to suppress his allegations before Murray has had the chance to defend them in court.

The print media have faced similar problems in the past. In 1993, when the New Statesman referred to allegations that John Major was having an affair with Clare Latimer, Major sued the printers, wholesalers and distributors as well as the magazine.

Will Gordon leave conference waiting at the Church?

Martin Kettle may be right that there's no real reason of principle why Britain needs an early election, but Gordon Brown's failure to dampen speculation means we may be reaching the point where he can't back out without the Jim Callaghan comparisons becoming inescapable.

One suggestion is that Brown is trying to keep the Tories off-balance. That of course is exactly what Callaghan was up to.

Given the Labour poll lead and the uncertain economic outlook, there may well be a partisan case for going to the country.

Iain Dale's top 20 Irish blogs

I'm delighted to discover that the Green Ribbon has made the list of 20 top Irish blogs compiled by Mick Fealty for Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging. Many of my own favourites are also included in the list, which is well worth a look.

Crunch time for Scotland?

Interesting suggestion from Christopher Harvie earlier this week, that the credit crunch crisis might deepen the political tensions between Westminster and Scotland.

Brown's highly political approach to this situation is likely to have echoes of Thatcher's rude but effective tactic in the early 1980s: namely, using his control over much government expenditure in Scotland by (in the fortcoming central spending review) fomenting discord between Scots spending ministers - and refusing to show any flexibility over oil policy, which remains a mainstay of the Scottish economy.    

Such political calculations, however, raise the fundamental question of the divergence of interest between the Scottish and British economies, in circumstances where the accumulating problems created or facilitated by a generation of London-centric economic policies are starting to bite. (openDemocracy)

This divergence seemed to be creating tension between the unionist parties this week even as they were meeting to agree a common strategy:

Muzzling Britain's bloggers

There's no doubt about the big story on the British blogosphere at the moment. A whole tranche of websites have disappeared in response to legal threats by Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

Craig Murray and Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads have had the plug pulled by their hosting company. In the process a number of blogs hosted on Ireland's server have also gone down, including Boris Johnson and Bob Piper.

There is something of a debate on Pickled Politics over whether US hosting is a defence against this kind of thing. In one comment, Thomas Dunsmore of Pitchinvasion.net reports that he was approached by Usmanov's lawyers despite having US hosting. It's not clear, however, if his hosts were approached directly or whether they took any action as a result.