Bluster Bombs
The Albanian flags
were out in force in central
London on Sunday
evening as the city’s Kosovar community
celebrated their declaration of independence.
Congratulations, then, and good luck, to Europe’s newest nation state. It’s been a long, hard road
for them.
Bringing
a breath of stale air to the proceedings is
Labour backbencher George Foulkes, who according
to the Daily Record is demanding apologies from
the SNP for tabling a motion congratulating
Kosova and for our previous scepticism about the
1999 NATO bombing campaign. Ah, George, and
there was me thinking that with the British
government having recognised Kosova, the SNP
falling in behind that decision might be
something you would welcome.
For what it’s worth,
I’ve never regarded George as particularly ‘old’
or ‘new’ Labour, but more as slavish Labour. And
on no topic has he been more slavish over the
past few years than on the subject of ‘screwing
up’ [his words] international affairs, with his
ludicrous and uncritical freelance defences of
the Iraq invasion and the dodgiest of
dossiers.
Many people, not
just in the SNP, pointed out in 1999 that
bombing Belgrade seemed an odd way of trying to protect
Kosovan civilians from the armed goons of
Slobodan Milosevic. We were right. We pointed
out that without ground troops, civilians
couldn’t be protected, and certainly not by
dropping unguided 40 year old cluster bombs from
30,000 feet. We were right. And what of those of
us who were rubbished for pointing out that
Kosovan independence, not just autonomy, would
follow any military intervention as surely as
night followed day? Once again, we were right.
I’d like to think
that some harder heads were at work behind the
scenes, but having struggled through a book
written by General Wesley Clark on the subject a
few years ago, I very much doubt that there
were. However, the ‘Janet and John’
justification offered for public consumption at
the time was that Kosovan independence wouldn’t
happen. The Serbs would be bombed into
submission, the bloodshed would stop, the Serbs
and Kosovars would all live together happily
ever after, and anyone who dared to harbour the
slightest doubt was an apologist for genocide.
What price some
humility then, George, from you and those like
you who were more interested in falling in
behind Tony Blair’s ill-conceived intervention
than in exercising even a modicum of critical
analysis? As a result, Blair got away with
presenting his Kosovan adventure as a triumph.
We were then entreated to the noxious,
retrospective self-justification that was his
doctorine of ‘liberal interventionism’, which in
turn helped lead us to the quagmire of Iraq.
Screwing up
international affairs was it George? There’s
none so blind…
Northern Crock
So.
We're about to Nationalise a bank. No idea how
much it's going to cost, no idea how long it's
for, no idea how much the assets are worth. And
now, flicking through the Draft Statutory
Instrument which accompanies the Banking
(Special Provisions) Bill, we find that it will
also be exempt from Freedom of Information
legislation for the duration of its ownership by
the Treasury!
One other thing. Some estimates put the
liability to the taxpayer at £55bn, others
closer to £100bn. Either way, once this
liability appears on the books, isn't this going
to blow to smithereens Gordon Brown's
self-imposed rules on government debt?
The Wheel Is Spinning, But...
It says much about
the state of Wendy Alexander's leadership of
Labour in the Scottish Parliament that the best
news she's had in months is that she's not going
to jail. Deck the halls, hosanna in exelsis, let
joy be unconfined etc ad nauseum... somehow,
though, a wiping of the brow and a sigh of
relief seem more appropriate than champagne in
the circumstances.
The Electoral
Commission has delivered what is probably the
right outcome, but by wholly inappropriate
means. Their role should have been to establish
if there had been a breach of the law (the Actus
Reus – which in this case was admitted freely)
and from there, to arrange the forfeiture of the
donation before reporting matters to the
Procurator Fiscal, who could then determine if
there was also the guilty mind, or Mens Rea,
which together are required for a criminal
offence to have taken place.
For
what it's worth, I don't reckon any Fiscal in
the land would have taken matters further, but
that's not really the point. Instead, we now
have the ridiculous sight of Wendy proclaiming
self-righteously that "My honesty and integrity
have been confirmed by this judgment." Er, no
they haven't, Wendy. The law was broken, but the
Commission didn't find “sufficient evidence” to
suggest an attempt to conceal the impermissible
donation. That's hardly the same thing.
The ruling offers no
certification as to the soundness of her
reputation, which as far as I'm concerned, is no
whiter or indeed sullied than it was before. I
really couldn't care less how she sees herself
in this regard. Rather, it's the attitude, the
hubris, the attempted blame-shifting and sheer
unadulterated insouciance towards the whole
thing which gets up my nose, and I suspect those
of a great many others. In this case, 'sorry'
really does seem to be the hardest word.
But to our tale. She
got creamed again yesterday at First Minister's
Questions and made a complete and utter sow's
ear of her party's approach to the budget,
laughably failing to vote for the motion which
her party had already amended successfully. If
there's only been 'not much' in the way of
backstabbing, it can only be because Labour is
so bereft of talent in Holyrood that there
really is no-one else who could take over at the
moment.
I'll go further.
Bluntly, I don't think that the next Labour
First Minister has even been elected yet to the
Scottish Parliament. As for Wendy, she now has
to get Labour acting like a sensible opposition
and make a show of getting people behind her
proposed reforms to the Labour Party – no mean
feat given the way she's managed to alienate the
party's MP's, Councilors and even the
cheerleaders over at Pravda the Daily Record.
In reality, I
suspect that no matter what she tries to do now,
she's going to get nowhere fast because quite
simply, she lacks the necessary clout and
respect both within and without her party. The
wheel might be spinning, but that hamster looks
dead to me...
Ms
Sturgeon said:
SNP
MP for Perth and North Perthshire,
Pete Wishart, has seized on
criticisms made by former Scottish
Labour Leader and First Minister,
Henry McLeish, on BBC Radio Scotland
this morning, in which he singles
out Westminster Labour MPs and
Ministers, including Scotland Office
Minister David Cairns, for ‘constant
sniping’ against Labour in the
Scottish Parliament – including Mr
Cairns’ reference to the
“McChattering classes”.