Well he did warn you!

Aslef leader warns of union rift

16th April

Aslef trio suspended over 'brawl'

25th May

A remarkable achievment

Blair's announcement today that the provisional Iraqi government can, if it wants, tell the coalition troops to go home is a remarkable achievement for the prospective provisional government.

For that weak, divided and under-strain authority has achieved a level of control it is believed no British government has ever managed with respect to US forces in Britain.

Which of these is more embarassing?

Mark Kleiman asks about the Ahmed Chabali affair.

Some old Den Beste madness

Via Crooked Timber I was reminded of this wonderful Den Beste moment from last year.

Just how far are [the French] willing to take their opposition to us? They've reached the point where it seems as if they're willing to make any sacrifice. Do they see the stakes as being high enough so that they might actually threaten to nuke us?

This is only slightly more bizarre than his post today in which he says when stood next to a girl in a "tube-top" sometimes an inner voice tells him to 'yank' it down to expose her "treasures" but he's moral, because he doesn't.

I suppose at least it stops him making jokes about September 11th.

It's the left's fault

Christopher Hitchens' column comes out in Slate tomorrow, and the question we need to ask is how will he manage to write a column blaming the left for the stories coming out about Ahmed Chabali.

Back in 2003 Hitchens was a supporter of Chabali's. However in his column three weeks' ago he back-tracked somewhat, with the ingenious technique of saying 'at least he proves he's not a American puppet' and criticising Colin Powell (for reportedly saying that much of the problems in Iraq were his fault) and the CIA (for having a vendetta against him).

So what tomorrow? I suspect we'll get more of the 'well the fact he was spying for Iraq shows he's definitely not an American puppet', muddled in with some criticism of a CIA vendetta, followed with a reminder that spying for the Iranians is not shredding your opponents to death, concluding with a 'you want Saddam back' and 'It's the left's fault'. However you never know, Hitchens may surprise us -- unlike many on the right he at least realised what a disaster the torture images were.

UK politics

Two stories that don't seem to have got much blog coverage are the UKIP being ahead of the Liberal Democrats in a poll on voting intention for the European elections (in today's Telegraph), and Oliver Letwin's admission that he wants government spending to be reduced to 30% of GDP, from a projected 42% by the time of the next election.

First, the UKIP beating the Lib Dems. As usual, Anthony Wells does the hard work and tells us what it means. And it looks like it means the UKIP are ahead of the Lib Dems.

The reasons for this seem quite clear. First turnout is going to be absymal. The lower the turnout the higher the UKIP (and Tories') share of the vote. The reasons for this aren't hard to fathom, and if they are say the word 'head bangers' a few times, which should make it clear, if perhaps unfairly. Second and related, about 10% of the electorate seem prepared to vote for the UKIP in a European election, but not in a general election. Thus it's a protest vote too.

So the Lib Dems could come fourth. This is not historically unheard of - in 1989 the Green Party took 15% of the vote with the Libs (then called the Social & LD) on only 6.3%.

Second, Letwin's "gaffe" as it is being called. Basically in a private meeting he is said to have said that his aim is to reduce public spending to 30% of GDP, but at the moment electoral considerations don't allow it. I should note that he denies this, saying that he was literally just saying that electoral considerations wouldn't allow it, without giving an opinion, and in any case philosophically the Conservatives wish to increase spending on the NHS and education.

Taking his denial and ignoring it, it is interesting to note how 30% of GDP could be achieved as opposed to 40% (say). First internationally it's worth remembering that this would be a very low total, in fact basically the lowest, below the US & Japan (once you add regional spending in). Second, historically it's a very low figure too. It has never been anywhere near 30% post World War II. Third, in terms of actual pounds we're talking a cut of just under a third, or about £167bn (spending in 2005/2006 planned to be £500bn).

The obvious targets are the largest. They were (forecast) on the department expenditure side, £77bn for the NHS, £46bn for local government, £33bn for defence, £31bn for education, £22bn for Scotland and £12bn for transport, On the annually managed expenditure (demand-based, not fixed) then social security is the largest by far at £121bn, with £15bn for income support/jobseekers allowance, £22bn for debt service.

Starting with the largest then, almost half of this is pensions, with Income support, Housing benefit, Child benefit and Incapacity benefit making up a similar amount together. Housing benefit could probably be cut a bit, but at £13bn even a 50% cut wouldn't get very far towards your total of £167bn. A better option might be to privatise the state pension, and make large contributions to private pensions compulsory, which you could then use to pretend it was no longer public spending. However it's not clear the public would accept compulsory private pensions where individiuals contributions didn't go solely to their future pension.

On the spending side the obvious target is the NHS, but along with education the Conservatives have said they won't cut this for the time being. Even after that time it would be hard to imagine huge cuts. However again the most likely option seems a semi-privatisation, which would allow spending to be shifted to the private sector whilst maintaining it in the NHS.

More American news

As usual all the best coverage of the insurgencies in Iraq and Washington can be found on other sites.

Kevin Drum has loads of good stuff. A prominent international relations expert Democrat says the mood in Washington is the worst for 30 years:

Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the private Council on Foreign Relations — and a top Pentagon strategist during the Vietnam War — said he had never seen confidence sink as quickly in Washington as it has in recent weeks.

"I've never heard the kind of dark defeatism I'm hearing now, both in and out of government, including the worst days of the Vietnam War," said Gelb, a Democrat. "Support for this war is plummeting. In Vietnam, that happened much more slowly, and only after much higher casualties.

Also it seems that much of the US's pre-war intelligence may have been faked by defectors from Ahmed Chalabi's organisation (itself funded by the Pentagon). The old saying that neo-cons were 'liberals mugged by reality' should perhaps be amended to noting that they are 'right-wingers mugged by the Iranian spy agency'.

Anyway, the National Review stands by their man, and elsewhere allegations are flying that it's all a CIA put-up job to discredit him.

I guess in these dark days we should all be thankful that the Bush white house is run so much more competently and efficiently than the Clinton one.

ps Incidentally though I disagreed with the suggestion from Martin Kettle (seen on Harry's Place) that Blair should publicly disagree with Bush (even to commenting on Rumsfeld's position) merely to bolster his own support, it is a little weird that Michael Howard gets criticised for saying what he said, whilst in Washington most of the Administration is in open warfare.

US strategy in Iraq

To most of us it's often hard to work out what the US game plan in Iraq is, or even if they have one at all. For the Administration's cheerleaders of course it's always obvious. The terrorists attacks bedevilling the coalition troops to us are a disaster of planning; to them it's actually Rummy's brilliant "flypaper" strategy to attack terrorists to where the US army can defeat them.


Even so, it's hard to see how they'll spin today's news news(via Nick Barlow) that neo-con favourite Ahmed Chabali appears -- essentially - to have been an Iranian spy, and much of the intelligence fed to the US about Iraq was fed to them by Iranian intelligence. Even more confusingly Chabali was paid about £200,000 a month by the Americans to do this.

Perhaps this was a Wolfowitz master plan, paying a man to give American secrets to the Iranians in order to increase Iranian control in the region thus overstretching them causing their inevitable collapse? Or was this another Rummy grand idea, using US taxpayers money to give Iran secrets in return for increased oil? Or maybe this one was Bush's? Who knows.

A defining moment

We now know what it must have been like to hear the news that Everest had been conquered, or the 4 minute mile had been broken. Yes, today a generation-defining moment happened.

The world record for the number of people riding naked on a rollcoaster has been broken...er set. It stands at 28, because that is the capacity of the rollcoaster where this remarkable feat was set.

Will the world ever be the same again?

Petrol tax

Clearly given the impact it will have on the population of this country one cannot look forward to a petrol station blockade, but at least it will see whether the current Tory party believes in law and order.

In the meantime the question of petrol tax has cropped up. Michael Howard has said that the government should defer tax increases, or even lower taxes, if the world market price is rising. The government made a similar argument last year.

In practical terms this has some merit. A high petrol tax cushions us against swings in the oil price, and changing it does so more. However one must be careful. If we were to lower the petrol tax when the oil price rose, and raise it (as practically one would have to in order to protect revenue) when the oil price fell, we are essentially (currency changes aside) giving OPEC a free ride. They can increase the price of oil without concern about demand falling. Oil would have no price elasticity. Thus prices would rise.

Too good to refer to as a blogger

As one of the bloggers in the sidebar once said to me, 'I don't like to call Talking Points Memo a blog as it rather denigrates it to put it in the same category as X and Y' [insert blogs you dislike].

Indeed it's true. Talking Points Memo is the best political blog out there. Indeed it's one of the best sources of political information out there.

I'll link to some good bits from today, but really read it all.

On liberals being blamed for the current mess:

"Let's be a little more clear about what's going on here. Having led the country perilously close to humiliation and defeat, the architects of the war want to shift the blame for what's happened to their opponents who either said the whole thing was a mistake in the first place or criticized the incompetence of its execution as it unfolded. They take the blame, the moral accountability, by 'wishing' for a bad result. That at least is [their] reasoning."

On Chalabi:

"Chalabi's dwindling number of Washington supporters have awkwardly claimed that his efforts to ally himself with Shia Islamist groups in Iraq is an evidence of their man's 'pragmatism', recognizing the political realities of the country and adjusting accordingly. This is an echo of their pre-invasion efforts to explain the copious funding Chalabi received from the government of Iran, which, in case you hadn't noticed, is not supposed to be a great friend of ours.

If you're looking for any entertainment, any silver lining to this mess, watch the faces of the hardest core Chalabistas and watch the less and less subtle ripples of chagrin on their faces as their man more and more publicly shows how much he played them for fools."

Howard says tell the world you and Bush disagree

I have blogged before that I think the Conservatives should take a more anti-war stance, and would reap some electoral benefit from doing so.

Thus it is interesting to see Michael Howard's statement today suggesting that a British PM should publicly announce the disagreements he has with an American President.

A week ago I noted here (second comment) when a similar idea was floated by Martin Kettle and Harry, this seems a sure-fire way to end what is left of the special relationship.

The suggestion there was Blair should directly intervene in whether one of President Bush's cabinet ministers -- the best in that position ever, we are told -- should be fired, and to do so for electoral gain. Howard's suggestion is somewhat more nuanced.

But still in the end it's not going to fly. Even Howard seems rather confused, saying, 'Of course I don't want him [Mr Blair] to speak against America". These things are best kept private.