CentreRight

As everyone is urgently posting their Christmas presents in the hope they arrive in time may I suggest for those in need of inspiration a book by my friend Madsen Pirie? It is entitled 101 Great Philosophers and is only just over 200 pages so can be read in a day. Afterwards youneed have no fear of finding yourself embarrassed at intellectual dinner parties. No longer need you worry if instructed to pick up Oliver Letwin from the station to attend your constituency annual dinner as to what to discuss on the car journey to the hotel.

Do any living philosophers feature?  Only one: Noam Chomsky, the US left-wing writer and linguistic philosopher. There was speculation during the book's preparation that by the time it emerged, even he might have "joined the great majority."  "But he's still alive," Pirie points out, with perhaps just a tinge of regret in his voice. The first to be included is Thales who lived from 624-527 BC. There is a bit of a gap between Saint Augustine of Hippo (AD354-430) and St Anselm (1033-1109). Did half a millennium really pass without anyone having any interesting ideas?

Pirie is President of the Adam Smith Institute so we know which team he is on. Naturally his team get plenty of entries (Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, John Stuart Mill, Frederic Bastiat, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, David Hume.) But the bad guys are there too - Karl Marx for instance. Pirie manages to provide a remarkably lucid and concise explanation of all their big ideas. he also includes anecdotes about them.

At lunch time I, along with about 300 others, went to lunch at the Chancery Court Hotel in Holborn to hear the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague give a speech to the Westminster Conservatives Two Cities Luncheon. I think it will have raised over £80,000 for Party coffers. Of course Hague spoke superbly. He always does. Part of his challenge was to convince the audience that the next General Election was not in the bag. That is a problem he would have been pleased to have to cope with when he was leader.

"We need to gain 116 constituencies in one go in order to win," he said. "That will be a Herculean effort. It is not something we take for granted." The substantial taxpayer funded Communications Allowances for incumbent MPs brought in by New Labour made the task more of a challenge. Furthermore Labour had £10 million funding a year guaranteed from the trade unions in return for the favours granted to them while the Conservatives have to start from scratch each year in their fund raising efforts.

Hague added that there were 900,000 more people employed in the public sector than 12 years ago. Yet while it was bloated it was also inefficient. He also said that the Bank of England should be given the power to "call time on debt." It had the judgment to do the job rather than leaving it to a "box ticking regulator." On state debt we are being saddled with an interest bill equivalent to the education budget for England or the UK Defence budget.

On the Lisbon Treaty he said: "Let nobody be in any doubt that if it is still unratified by a single one of the 27 nations in the EU by the time we come to power that there will be a British referendum."

So far as I can tell there is no solid evidence that Michael Jackson was involved in child abuse. He enjoyed the company of children and sought to compensate for having missed out on a normal childhood of his own. As he was rich others thought they could cash in on this eccentricity. Of course we will never know the truth for certain but surely there should be a presumption of innocence for the dead as well as the living.

The whiff of suspicion has been enough for politicians to exercise restraint in their tributes. But what was Michael Jackson political message, if any? He was honoured by President Ronald Reagan for allowing his song Beat It to be used in a campaign against drug and alcohol addiction.

But really Jackson was focused on providing entertainment. The Earth Song reflected a concern for animal welfare and the environment. There was Ben with emotional theme about a pet rat. Perhaps the most politically significant song was his number hit Black or White. It pounded out the lyrics: "It don't matter if you're black or white" and "I'm not going to spend my life being a colour." A laudable sentiment. Also a far better message for an integrated harmonious country where individual merit counts than the dreary sectional resentments peddled by both the BNP and the Diversity Officers.

I went to see a dog show at a local park yesterday and was chatting to a pleasant young man with glossy leaflets and clipboard who was there to sign up people to agree to give up smoking. He is one of eight people employed by the NHS in the London borough I live in to carry out this work. People ring up and pledge to give up smoking (usually on No Smoking Day.) His team ring them back to check on progress. Invite them to meetings to be told to keep it up.

How many people give up smoking who wouldn't have given up anyway? Pretty few I would guess. The endless nannying and indoctrination is probably pretty irrelevant. People have got to that stage will already know that smoking is bad for you. The cost is considerable. Perhaps equivalent to giving everybody in our borough who wanted one a free flu jab. Or of something that could make a real difference for a targeted group to give up smoking. Free hypnosis for pregnant women for instance.

I don't suppose that the NHS has given special treatment to Hammersmith and Fulham. So there are probably thousands of these people employed around the country. Leave aside the libertarian argument about smoking being a matter of choice. Leave aside the crude financial argument that smokers pay huge tax and as it happens are a smaller burden on the NHS because they die younger and so reduce the requirement for geriatric care. Even in terms of improving health, is it at all likely this great anti smoking army represent good value for money?

Among the articles in this weeks New Statesman, guest edited by Alastair Campbell, is a survey of whether newspaper editors use private health care and whether they send their children, if they have them, to fee-paying schools.

The whole thing was a bit of an own goal. For Conservatives there is no great difficulty. It would be a practical matter. Is there a good state school near where we live? Can we afford to go private? There is no question of hypocrisy as we don't claim there is anything wrong with using the independent sectors.

So, for instance, Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail, answered the questions. What does not seem to be on the website edition but was included in the print version were those editors who refused to answer. They include Richard Wallace, Editor of the Daily Mirror, Tina Weaver, Editor of the Sunday Mirror and Lloyd Embley, Editor of the People. All staunch titles backing Labour with plenty of class war rhetoric. There is also James Harding of The Times who doesn't reply. Campbell used to work for The Mirror and is now a regular contributor to The Times. But he seems to have meekly accepted their refusal to respond to his enquiries.

I've been reading Chris Mullin's diaries. He says of Clare Short, when she was International Development Secretary: "She was very critical of the EU, through which we are obliged to spend a third of our aid budget. 'very inefficient. Even when committed the money can't be spent and much of what is spent goes on political gestures rather than help to the poorest.' "

The last Conservative election manifesto declared that: "We believe that British aid programmes are among the best in the world so we will negotiate to increase British national control over our international aid spending." But we don't seem to be repeating the policy at the moment. Yet I suspect the case is as strong as ever.

Gordon Brown has said he won't apologise for the recession because it is a world recession. According to the IMF there won't technically be a world recession. This year world output will grow by 0.5%. Furthermore of the major economies that are in recession, Britain is expected to do the worst.

But what specifically should Brown apologise for. It seems to me at least three things.

Firstly, presiding over the explosion of state borrowing.

Secondly, for moving bank regulation from the Bank of England to the Financial Services Authority.

Most gratified to report that my one-year-old daughter Martha has become a Conservative. She has embraced property rights. Picking up a watch she prepared to put it in her mouth and chew in, hitherto her customary left wing practice. "Mama's watch," I told her. She paused and then handed it her mother. A great breakthrough. Not just in terms of child development but also of ideology.

I have a dream. That the President-elect of the United States should be judged not be the colour of his skin but by the content of his character. When Margaret Thatcher was first elected Prime Minister the initial focus was how interesting it was that she was a woman. In retrospect it was one of the less important aspects to her premiership. If President Obama is mainly remembered as the first black president that will mean he will have failed. (Aside from the point that he is no more black than he is white. He is mixed race. What would his mother have made of it all?) I see the symbolic value for black Americans suffering from what the current President has called "the soft bigotry of low expectations" of this election result. But tangible change (such as Education Vouchers) could mean more.

If I was an American I would have voted for McCain - partly out of enthusiasm for Sarah Palin. (Darn right, we need to cut tax for the Joe Sixpacks and Hockey Mums. You betcha.) I hope Palin stands for President in 2012. She did seem a bit plunged in at the deep end this time round. But will have plenty of time to swot up on the intricacies of foreign policy and supreme court verdicts in time for next time.

But let see what Obama does. His programme promises overall tax cuts. On the other hand his anti free trade proposals would be pretty damaging. If he is foolish enough to go ahead with them. Obama has been described as a left winger because of his views on health. Not in British terms. He wants to stick with private sector provision but make it more affordable: "On health care reform, the American people are too often offered two extremes - government-run health care with higher taxes or letting the insurance companies operate without rules. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe both of these extremes are wrong." Also I wonder if all the swooning Guardianistas realise Obama supports the death penalty.

David Lammy is pushing himself as Britain's Barack Obama. Lammy claims they are "friends." But what about Tory MP for Windsor Adam Afriyie like Obama a handsome 40-something who played basketball at college and is in his first term as a national legislator.

Both are bi-racial with a white mother and a foreign, black father. Both were brought up by their white mothers after their black fathers returned to their country of origin. Both have half siblings in their fathers' countries of origin, Kenya for Obama, Ghana for Afriyie.

Both have made good (Afriyie had a deprived upbringing in Peckham but is now very rich worth tens of millions having founded three companies providiong jobs for hundreds of people.)

Finally both were born on 4 August, though Obama is five years older.

By the way I am assured that as a good, sound, small government Conservative, Afriyie is rooting for John McCain. Since he was elected as the party’s first black MP, Afriyie has deliberately kept his head down and refused to be the party’s black card, preferring to be judged purely on merit. Bu if the media want to start pushing black role models and comparisons with Obama among British politicians, Afriyie has a better claim than Lammy.

I was interested to see that Gordon Brown has appointed the Labour MP Sion Simon as Skills Minister, in the recent reshuffle. While Brown is the author of a book called Courage, Simon is the author of an article in The Spectator in 1999 which said the following about Gordon Brown:

"Confronting Milosevic is a risky venture which, from the beginning, has looked prone to end in disaster. Such projects are not for Gordon Brown. He is a man often judged by his absences. In 1993, his was the stout hand which did not come to the aid of the modernising elements of the party, when John Smith was attempting to drag Labour towards One Member One Vote. During last autumn's brief period of global economic meltdown, the Chancellor was nowhere to be seen. Admittedly, the final crisis of capitalism turned out to be a hysterical fiction got up by the media, but that was not why Brown absented himself from the fray. At times of more personal controversy - such as the frequently embarrassing escapades of Mr Charlie Whelan and his eventual sacking by the PM - Brown disappears equally silkily into the sand."

The Institute of Economic Affairs have started their own blog. No praise can be high enough for the IEA, which was established over half a century ago. By consistently applying Hayekian truths to an array of subjects it has ended up having far more influence on events than power worshippers chasing political fashion.
Anyway their first posting is from their Director General John Blundell and proposes how a future Conservative Government could cut crime. He says: "Chief Constables would be urged to increase time on the beat from the current average (under 20%) to closer to 80%. And car patrols would be replaced by solo patrols on foot - to increase dramatically the level of contact with the public and thereby improve the flow of useful information."

He adds: "Change is also needed in the internal culture of the police. The beat should become central to officers’ careers and a route to promotion to the highest ranks. In the USA such measures have been an outstanding success. They enabled Chief Ed Davis, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to cut crime by 70%."

Good stuff. But why wait? Why doesn't the Mayor of London demand that Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair undertake this massive shift to beat policing now? If Sir Ian refuses then Boris Johnson should call on the Home Secretary to replace him. Over to you, Mayor Johnson.

Has anyone else noticed that collective responsibility among Ministers has been abandoned? It's not just the high profile cases of the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary clashing with the Prime Minister but junior ministers too. The new doctrine for Ministers seems to be to announce what they think should happen and then hope it be accepted as Government policy as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Or simply that they feel Gordon Brown is on the way out and they have nothing to fear.

We have already had Health Minister Ivan Lewis calling for "higher taxes for the highest earners", which he thinks would generate revenue to reduce tax for others. (Will someone please send the lad a Laffer Curve.)
Recently we had Schools Minister Lord Adonis calling for far more reform and announcing plans to extend City Technology Colleges.

But what's this? David Lammy, junior Minister at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills says: "For too long now, we have sounded like the party for public service reform."  He adds in his article for Progress that this is not to say "that public services should have been left unreformed."

Lammy says that "New Labour has arguably been too deferential" to the market. Unlike Adonis who thinks we have had enough public service reform. Who speaks for the Government?

I can well understand how British Conservatives feel at best equivocal about George W Bush. It is not so much Iraq. Certainly, it could have been handled better but the decision to remove Saddam was right, and as Tim Montgomerie details in a post earlier today, Bush has been vindicated on the troop surge. But what of other matters? The economy for instance. Alan Greenspan in his memoirs suggests Bill Clinton was more effective in keeping down Government spending than the current President.

Similarly, I can understand Dan Hannan's irritation with John McCain over McCain's support for European integration.

A more general point is it is true that there has long been an ideological overlap between the Republican and Democratic parties in the US.

Back in the 1970s the Conservative Research Department produced a booklet called "Words for Eating." Prominent would be quotes from the then Prime Minister James Callaghan and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey offering predictions of economic recovery subsequently proved to be false.

While Alistair Darling's interview for the Guardian was candid about the economy, his Budget speech in March was less so.

"We will do everything in our power to maintain stability – keeping inflation and interest rates low and maintaining our record of growth.

"While other countries have suffered recessions, the British economy has now been growing continuously for over a decade – the longest period of sustained growth in our history.

"Because of the changes made by this Government to entrench stability and increase the flexibility and resilience of our economy, I am able to report that the British economy will continue to grow through this year and beyond."

Perhaps it is time for a new edition of Words for Eating.

Although his brother Noel attended a Downing Street reception hosted by Tony Blair, Liam Gallagher has been expressing some Conservative sentiments in an interview for last Saturday's Times magazine. He discloses that he lives in Henley where he blends in well with the neighbours:

"This lady walked past, she said, 'You're the coolest person I've seen in Henley since George Harrison.' They're pretty much the same as us really, they get a bad rap."

Liam has taken up golf and sends his two sons to fee paying schools. ("They've got every right to be there as much as some banker's son. When I pick me kids up, I feel amazing.")

He spoke with pride of his marriage to Nicole Appleton: "I got married at Marylebone station, er, Marylebone registry office. In and out, no f****** about, it cost £18."

Extolling family values he says:  "Family's the most important thing. The kids are just the b******s, I enjoy their company more than some idiot in a band or some actor. That's how I've changed....once you get your missus pregnant, you've got to step up to the plate." He says he is strict with his children and doesn't allow them to swear.

Offering a trenchant critique of atheism he said:

"I don’t believe when you die, you die. All the beautiful people who have been and gone, Lennon, Hendrix, they’re somewhere else, man."

However David Cameron is unlikely to entice Liam onto the campaign trail. Liam says he watches Prime Minister's Question Time but only because: "I like the noises they make." He may have become a conservative but is yet to come out as a Conservative.

Buried deep in a supplement to last week's New Statesman is a round table discussion including the Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb. In this curiously obscure outlet Gibb offers a candid and passionate explanation of how the next Conservative Government will seek to dramatically improve the performance of our state schools. So I think it is worth quoting from his remarks at some length.

He tackles head on the ideology of the education establishment. He stresses the key role of education is for children to acquire "a body of knowledge." But he adds: "I keep hearing it repeated, more recently by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), the RSA and the Key Stage 3 Curriculum Review that what we should be doing in schools is only teaching children when they are developmentally ready; that they should not be stretched, pushed or tested or taught teacher to pupil in a didactic way. That the purpose of education is acquiring these life skills and not a body of knowledge."

Having been taught to read and the "rudiments of arithmetic" in primary school they should then acquire more and more knowledge. "As a consequence of acquisition of knowledge young people will learn how to think. You cannot teach a generic skill of teaching and learning."

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson budget proposals include savings of £12 million next year on City Hall's current £79 million spending - an impressive 15%. Achieving this target will be greatly assisted by the report of the Mayor's Forensic Audit Panel Unfortunately that doesn't mean the Council Tax precept will be going down as other areas within the Greater London Authority are due to rise - although the overall increase is planned to be below inflation at 1.25%.

It's fine spending more on the police provided value for money can be achieved. This is a point which will already have occurred to Boris's capable Deputy Mayor for policing Kit Malthouse.

But what would probably be of greater potential relief to Londoners - both as commuters and Council Taxpayers - would be for Transport for London to be run with greater efficiency. Proper asset management, tackling overmanning, a less craven approach to the unions. If TfL was run at a profit - which given the high fares it charges it should be - then the Council Tax precept could be cut.

What really matters is not the titles people hold or the location of their offices but what they actually achieve. What did Boris Johnson want from Ray Lewis? It was all set out very clearly in an Evening Standard article on May 6. Boris wanted to "replicate" his approach across London. Boris said: "Imagine what we could achieve with 100 Saturday schools like the East Side Young Leaders. Imagine if there were dozens of boxing clubs, rather than the handful that survive today."

The reason is that Boris wants to do something about gang violence, sometimes ending in teenagers being stabbed to death. He wants young black males to be offered a better alternative to the gangs. He wanted Ray Lewis to help.

The good news is that judging from comments made by Tim Parker, the Mayor's Chief of Staff, to the London Assembly yesterday ("We will be leaving the door open") a role for Ray Lewis is still possible. I suspect Londoners are less concerned with whether Ray Lewis is a magistrate, a priest or a Deputy Mayor than if he can help to solve this problem.

The Tory MP for Wellingborough Peter Bone has been asking in Parliament about Multi Purpose Driving Test Centres. He says: "The Minister has rightly confirmed that the Government are planning to spend £71 million because of a European Union directive. However, if the Government had applied for a derogation from the directive so that 50 kph was translated to 30 mph, no expenditure would have been necessary. Why did the Government waste £71 million rather than apply for a derogation?"

He gets a sort of non denial denial from the Minister Jim Fitzpatrick ("We do not see it as wasting £71 million...") Part of the game is that the Government always has to pretend that by sheer coincidence they are delighted to do whatever the EU happens to impose on them.

I don't expect Bone's protest will make much impact. What's £71 million? What's new about the EU telling the Government what to do and the Government just giving in straight away? But this example  shows that rebuking Eurosceptics for "banging on about Europe" instead of other subjects misses the point. A more robust approach to the EU impacts of so many issues - not least the prospects of reducing wasteful public spending to allow for tax cuts.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell has made a rousing  speech to a New Labour outfit called Progress which strays well beyond his brief and some regard as part of his effort to challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership.
Maybe. But he includes the entirely untrue claim that Conservative run Hammersmith and Fulham  "are cutting voluntary capacity across the borough." In fact funding the voluntary sector is over £4.2 million and a 2% increase on last year. Details here.
Hazel Blears has already made the same false allegation. Is it plausible that Purnell just made a mistake? Or was he lying?

When Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London there were a staggering 265 press officers employed altogether in the Greater London Authority. Boris Johnson has pledged to cut their numbers but progress appears to be slow. Staff in the Mayor of London's core press office have been reduced from 16 to 15, while the London Assembly press office has been cut back from 10 to eight.

The armies of press officers for TfL, the police and assorted agencies remain intact. "The Mayor has asked for a close examination of the GLA group to suggest where savings may be made without undermining the efficiency of the various organisations," a spokesman told me after a rather inefficient two week delay in responding.

"The First Deputy Mayor, Tim Parker, will take a close look at the findings when he takes up his position in July." Among those currently still at their posts is the head of the "Strategy" press office Joe Derrett who used to be the London Regional Press Officer for the Labour Party before going to spin for Ken Livingstone.

When talking to Conservative friends who (unlike me) think it was wrong to go to war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq I usually ask if they believe military action to remove Mugabe would be justified. I am interested by how often they agree that such action would be both moral and practical.

But would it be necessary? Peter Oborne was correctly identified earlier today by Cameron Watt as a hero, presented a Channel 4 documentary from Zimbabwe in 2003. It was filmed, of course, undercover showing Oborne to be a man of some courage and the subsequent interviews he undertook with Government Ministers in Whitehall showed really anger. Hitherto I had just thought of him as one of those genial but cynical drunken hacks you come across at the lobby of the Imperial Hotel during Party Conferences in Blackpool.

Oborne's key point, repeated in a Centre for Policy Studies pamphlet is that we allow South Africa to allow Mugabe to stay in power.

"There is an almost exact parallel between Mbeki's situation today and President Vorster's in the 1970s," he wrote. "For more than a decade Ian Smith's illegitimate Rhodesian Government was able to survive thanks to South African collusion. But the moment Henry Kissinger persuaded Vorster to pull the plug Rhodesia fell. Zimbabwe is a land-locked state, and dependent on South Africa for trading links, and above all, for oil."

I hope that by the time William Hague becomes our Foreign Secretary after the next election that Mugabe will already have gone. If not I hope Hague reads Oborne's CPS pamphlet.

Interviewed on Capital Radio this morning the Mayor of London Boris Johnson proposed restoring the public drinking fountains of the 19th century. "I think we should have a new era of public drinking fountains," he told listeners.

This is typical of the instinctive feel that Boris has for modest but tangible improvement to the public space and for offering Londoners practical, mundane, improvements as we tootle about our daily lives. It is critical to his appeal. Faced with impenetrable reports thudding on to his desk with proposals to spend millions of pounds to no very tangible effect, he gives the report to someone else to read, scratches his head and says: "Let's plant more trees." Or: "Let's bring back the drinking fountains."

Politicians like to have a monument to give a physical manifestation of their legacy. That great Eurosceptic Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher left us with the Channel Tunnel. Tony Blair left us with the Dome. My contribution has been a drinking fountain at Wendell Park, just to the north of the ward I represent in Hammersmith and Fulham. In a way I was reinstating someone else's legacy. Apparently there was a drinking fountain there years ago so the pipes were still in place and it was just a matter of getting it going again and sticking a new fountain on top.

It was all going so well. The Evening Standard today reports that Boris Johnson has abondoned his pledge for a statue of New Zealander Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

A written answer, in the name of Boris Johnson but plainly not written by him, says of the fourth plinth:  "I recognise that this revolving programme has proved very popular and I welcome the important contribution it has made in shaping public debate about contemporary art."

Very popular with whom? Not with Londoners who have just voted for a man who said he was going to replace it with a statue of Sir Keith Park.