ID CARDS, ID SCHMARDS

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 1 July 2005

I know columnists are supposed to have trenchant opinions about everything, but I just can’t get myself worked up over identity cards. After weeks of reading all the arguments and chewing them over, I’ve come to an unpalatable conclusion: frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

An outrageous assault on all the liberties the freeborn Englishman has held dear since Magna Carta, as the civil liberties lobby would have it? Give us a break. We’re already under potentially constant surveillance from the state and from various commercial interests whose records it can access and co-ordinate with ease — and ID cards wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

In the past week, I’ve filed my tax return online and been paid by an employer whose records are sent as a matter of course to the Inland Revenue and to whomsoever it is these days that deals with National Insurance and pension contributions. Direct debits have gone out of my bank account to pay my council tax, mortgage, various utility bills and trade union and Labour Party subs. I’ve used a debit card to buy groceries from Sainsbury’s, a carpet from the Co-op, rail tickets, books and CDs, several rounds of drinks and a couple of meals. (And when I ordered online at Sainsbury’s I was reminded what I bought when I shopped there in the last three months.)

I need a swipe card to get into work, though I’ve no idea whether the machine that lets me in records my arrival. The computer in the local library retains the information on my borrowings. And I’m recorded on countless closed-circuit television cameras whenever I leave the house or the office.

OK, I use a firewall on my computer at home and regularly sweep my system for spyware — but it would be a piece of cake for the state to monitor my email and web surfing. The same goes for my mobile phone usage, right down to tracking where I am whenever my phone is on. Next time I go abroad the chances are that my passport details will be logged by some official at some point on the journey. Thank the Lord I’m not a driver burdened with licence records and congestion charge fines . . .

Sometimes, it’s true, I find this all rather intrusive. For Sainsbury’s to remind me that my “usual” includes 20-odd beers and half-a-dozen Italian red wines is, well, sobering. I’m sick of junk mail and spam churned out by companies and campaigns that have my details on their databases. And in my nightmares I worry that if it came to the crunch and the BNP or Respect won state power, it would be all too easy for the bastards to track me down.

But the bastards aren’t in power, and for the most part I’m not that bothered by the fact that my movements and habits are constantly recorded and stored. It’s one of those things about modern life you put up with in return for the convenience of getting goods when you need them and avoiding queues and form-filling.

My real gripe is that the system doesn’t work properly. Three years ago I was the victim of a crude attempt at identity theft. Someone had picked up something addressed to me at a flat (in a shared block) I’d left a couple of years before, and had applied for several credit cards in my name. The credit card companies did not issue the cards and reported the attempted fraud to the police — who did nothing — and to the companies that list people’s credit ratings. They promptly put me on a blacklist. Result: an all-round pain in the butt that took the best part of two years to sort out.

A state ID card would have been a help in all that: it would have made it clear that I was not the person applying for credit cards in my name. I’d be quite happy to spend £93, or even £200, to make sure it didn’t happen again.

But I was unlucky, and no one who has not been the subject of an attempted identity sting can see the insurance value of an ID card. It just looks like a massive waste of money.

As for the other supposed benefits — security against international terrorists, benefit fraudsters, health service tourists and illegal workers — I just don’t buy them. Al-Qaida could handle ID cards, no problem. The only impact on illegal immigrants would be to depress their wages. And I don’t believe the Daily Mail on the level of health service tourism and benefit fraud.

So this is one where I cop out, lacking all conviction. ID cards are not worth a fight one way or the other. They are neither a key political priority nor the enemy of all we hold dear. The government has all sorts of other things it should be getting on with — and civil libertarians who want to pick a fight with it should be concentrating their efforts on its outrageous plans to ban smoking in pubs.

SUBMERGED BY MARKING

It's that time of year again.

MAKE PROTECTIONISM HISTORY

Has anyone come up yet with any position better than (genuine, aka no CAP or textile or steel protectionism) free trade? I only ask.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE - 8

I wouldn't quite endorse everything that Timothy Garton Ash has to say in the Guardian today, (read it here), but it's close to the truth:

Visions are invoked of Blair and Britain riding to the rescue of the European project, during our presidency of the union in the second half of this year, with a galvanising insistence that what Europe needs now, more than ever, is British-style economic and social reform. Only thus can we face up to the dragons of globalisation. The hour of London has come. Cry God for England, Tony and St George!

This analysis is both completely right and absolutely wrong. It's completely right to say that more reform is the only way the more developed countries in Europe will prevent jobs continuing to leach away, both to central and east European countries with cheap skilled labour and, on a larger scale, to Asia. With all its faults, Blairism - more accurately, Blair-Brown-ism - is the closest any European country has come to combining American-style enterprise with European-style solidarity . . .

At the same time, the analysis is absolutely wrong. For the surest way to ensure that Europe does not adopt this necessary programme is for the British prime minister to advocate it, in missionary mode, at this particular juncture. The French, and now also the Dutch, have just delivered a resounding no, both to the treaty and to what they see as a British Europe. The perfect moment, then, for a British prime minister to say: "So, mes amis, you have spoken, and I conclude that what you really need is a British Europe!"

BEAT THIS . . .

Bob Woodward tells loads we didn't know about the Watergate story – the greatest scoop of the past century – in the Washington Post here.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE - 7

The Dutch have voted "no" too, which makes it pretty much inconceivable that the Brits will hold a referendum, which means that the European constitutional treaty is dead. Cue sighs of relief all round for Tony Blair and his government, crowing from Eurosceptic chumps et cetera – but what now for Europe's institutional arrangements?

It's clear that the French and Dutch referendum results were rejections of the institutional status quo as well as of the treaty's proposals (even if they were also about other things). And the key point that everyone sensible in the "no" camp was making was that the EU was insufficiently democratic and open.

So something needs to be done soon – if not tomorrow – to establish the EU's democratic legitimacy. Part of that must include opening up its workings more to the scrutiny of national parliaments. But in the end I can't see any solution other than increasing the credibility of the European Parliament. And that means massively augmenting its powers over the Commission and the Council of Ministers as well as clamping down ruthlessly on expenses scams.

In other words, the French and Dutch votes make the case for a democratic federal European polity stronger not weaker.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE – 6

And another thing . . . The French “no” shows that self-indulgence remains a powerful force on the left in France.

In 2002, left protest-voting for hopeless fringe-left candidates against Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential election ensured that he came third behind the obnoxious fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen and was eliminated, leaving Jacques Chirac to walk the second round.

Yesterday, left voters convinced that “Another Europe is possible” joined Le Pen and the far right to vote “no”. The French Communist Party, the Trots and Laurent Fabius – the Mitterrand-era Socialist prime minister who revived his political career by coming out against the treaty – are congratulating themselves on a grand victory. But who will benefit? Not Chirac, whose star is now definitely on the wane. But not the left either. The crass opportunism of the left “no” camp severely damages the chances that the left will be able to find a candidate at the next presidential election who commands widespread support. Idiots utiles.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE – 5

The “no” victory in the French referendum on the EU constitution cannot have come as much of a surprise to anyone, although the margin was rather bigger than I expected because I thought there would be a last-minute swing to “yes” that did not happen.

It’s hardly the end of civilisation as we know it, but it is depressing. The constitutional treaty is a long way short of perfect: it is for the most part aimed at making the existing intergovernmentalist EU structures work more efficiently and contains little to address the union’s democratic deficit. But if implemented it would create an institutional settlement that could be improved over time.

Now, however, it looks as if it won’t be implemented: it is difficult to see how the treaty can survive the French “no”, and it will be dead and buried if the Dutch reject it too.

It is even more difficult, however, to see how a better constitutional treaty can be negotiated, at least in the short term. Of course, it is possible that the European political class responds to the setback with the imagination, dynamism, flexibility and commitment to democratic principle that were so conspicuous by their absence in the horse-trading that created the constitutional treaty. But that’s rather unlikely. All the major players are in weak positions domestically. Jacques Chirac has been seriously damaged by yesterday’s vote. Germany faces a general election in autumn that is likely to lead to a change of government. Tony Blair in Britain has announced he will retire during this term. Silvio Berlusconi in Italy looks to be on the way out.

So the most plausible scenario is that the EU’s institutions muddle through for the next few years, adopting some of the measures in the constitutional treaty but failing to do anything to stem popular criticism of their democratic illegitimacy.

If Peter Mandelson’s take on the French referendum is anything to go by, the Blairites in Britain think that the solution is to change the subject from the EU’s institutional arrangements to economic reform, but my hunch is that this would only make matters worse. The French “no” was at least in part a protest against what many voters perceived as the threat to the welfare state and to working conditions from “Anglo-Saxon” “neo-liberalism” and globalisation – epitomised by French companies relocating in east-central Europe, Polish plumbers coming to work in France, Chinese white goods flooding the shops and so on.

I’ll accept that there is a case for market-oriented reform both of certain EU policies – not least the Common Agricultural Policy – and of certain aspects of the (national) labour-market and welfare-state regimes of “old Europe”. But telling continental Europe that the solution to all its ills is to become more like Britain is idiotic. It’s not only guaranteed to put backs up, it’s also at odds with key facts on the ground. Compare the West Coast main line with the TGV. Remember Germany’s remarkable export performance even with 12 per cent unemployment. And don’t forget Britain’s housing bubble and pensions crisis . . .

The comrades from Socialism in an Age of Waiting have a good post here.

STALIN’S PROPAGANDIST

Patrick Cockburn has a fascinating account of MI5’s surveillance of his father Claud in the Independent today, extracted from his memoir of his childhood, The Broken Boy. The extract makes much of the sheer scale of the spooks’ surveillance – but I wonder whether it really is so surprising. As editor of his newsletter The Week and in various roles on the Daily Worker during the 1930s and 1940s, Cockburn senior was the most prominent Stalinist journalist in the Anglophone world and a close associate of Otto Katz, a notorious fixer for the Soviet Union’s international propaganda network. If there was anyone MI5 had a prima facie case for watching, it was Claud Cockburn.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE - 4

Glyn Morgan has an excellent piece in the Independent on Sunday here saying what I thought had become the unsayable: what's wrong with the intergovernmentalist EU settlement on which France is voting today is precisely that it doesn't create a European super-state.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE - 3

With characteristic clarity, John Palmer puts the left case for a yes vote in the French and Dutch referendums on the European constitution in the Guardian here. And the paper's first leader reinforces the point here:

It defies logic to claim, as many in France have, to be pro-European and argue that a no will produce a better outcome.

Quite so.

NO TO THE ACADEMIC BOYCOTT– 4

The emergency conference of the Association of University Teachers today voted by a large-ish majority – it wasn't a card vote, so no numbers – to reverse the policy of boycotting Israeli universities that its annual council had adopted earlier in the year. I was there throughout as a delegate and voted against the boycott, so I had something to do with the decision. But my attempt to make a telling intervention in the debate was utter crap: I got stage-fright big-time, froze and then gibbered incoherently. Complete panic. I need help.

DEFINING MOMENTS

Blimey. Ann Clwyd has been narrowly elected chair of the parliamentary Labour Party (click here) – I thought she'd lose. Which goes to show that, er, I was wrong and (beyond that) that, er, anti-war sentiment isn't quite as big in the PLP as I thought, though it's pretty big, maybe? So could this be the point at which it became clear that, er . . . ?

SCHROEDER’S PREDICAMENT

The German Social Democrats’ defeat in the North Rhine-Westphalia Land election on Sunday was not unexpected, but its scale was – and now Germany is gearing up for an early general election after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder decided that the only way out is to appeal for a new mandate.

Schroeder’s problem is the unpopularity of his liberalising economic reform programme among the SPD’s core supporters, who stayed away from the polls on Sunday in droves. The workers don’t see cutting welfare benefits, reducing workers’ rights at work and championing free trade as the way to reduce German unemployment, currently running at nearly five million (12 per cent of the workforce).

On the other hand, disillusioned working-class former-SPD supporters didn’t on the whole vote for the much-hyped leftist WASG (Electoral Alternative: Work and Social Justice) list. So Schroeder has flung down the gauntlet: it’s either vote for the SPD and get a managed transition to a less-generous welfare state or vote CDU/CSU and have much nastier market medicine forced down your throat.

So we’re going to witness the bizarre spectacle of an SPD campaign fought on hard class-solidarity rhetoric (there will be very little holding hands with the SPD’s Green coalition partners, on which click here) with the key message that it’s better to have your own lot being mean bastards than the conservatives.

But at risk of alienating all my German comrades, I’m afraid Schroeder is right. Martin Kettle’s piece in the Guardian today is seriously flawed in that it seems to claim that the choice between preserving a generous welfare state in western Europe and competing economically with the US and the far east is a zero-sum game. But Kettle's basic point is sound. Germany has to compete economically, and to do that it needs to change.

NO TO THE ACADEMIC BOYCOTT – 3

Time has passed since my last post on this (here) but I've not changed my mind, and now I'm going to the university lecturers' special conference as a delegate – not because my colleagues voted enthusiastically for my principled stance but because no one could be bothered too much.

At City University we had a big argument on email – but then came an inquorate Association of University Teachers' meeting, leaving the local AUT committee to decide what to do. Because the existing branch delegates couldn't make the special AUT council and because opinion among members was divided, the branch committee agreed (I think very sensibly) to appoint one pro-boycott delegate and one anti. I'm the anti.

THE BATTLE FOR EUROPE - 2

The Independent has an excellent interview with Dany Cohn-Bendit here in which the now 60-year-old former student revolutionary makes some telling points about the French European constitution referendum:

A French "no" will be the beginning of a period of confusion, or recrimination, of gradual unwinding of what we have already achieved in Europe. I fear that, for once, the right-wing press in Britain is right. A French "no" would be the prelude to an attempt to impose a purely economic vision of Europe, a market vision. Murdoch would jump for joy.

On the French left's no campaign he is withering:

No one has dared to tell them that we live in a world of market forces. That does not mean that you have to accept the extreme religion of Thatcherism or even Blairism. Market forces can be married with social responsibility, a social market. That's still not an argument that you can make with a large part of the left in France. They believe that you can still run France as if it were the 1960s.

The same is true of the British Labour anti-Europeans who have signed up for the no campaign here, who are without exception sentimentalist nationalists who believe in the better yesterday of social democracy in one country, Tony Benn, Peter Shore and the Alternative Economic Strategy.

GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE

Mark Seddon, my illustrious successor as Tribune editor, has a piece in the Guardian today headlined "Eighteen months to save Labour" – a cause so urgent that he is about to decamp to New York as UN correspondent of al-Jazeera's English-language service.

I'M FED UP – BUT I'LL SURVIVE

Yeah, I know there's lots of stuff going on, but I can't be bothered today. One reason only . . .



As we used to sing in the 1970s:

We can't read, we can't write –
But that don't really matter
We come down from Ipswich Town
Riding on our tractors

But these days we can't even beat the bloody Hammers.

THIS SHOW WILL RUN AND RUN

Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 20 May 2005

Sure, it was great theatre, with a bravado performance from the leading actor. You certainly have to salute George Galloway’s courage, his strength and his indefategability after his appearance at the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on Tuesday. But did it actually change anything?

People who believe Galloway when he says he knew nothing of the business dealings of Fawaz Zureikat — a Jordanian businessman who was a major donor to and the chairman of Galloway’s campaign against sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Mariam Appeal — still reckon that Galloway has no case to answer over the allegations that he was the beneficiary of money obtained from the UN oil-for-food scheme.

And people who believe that Galloway knew a lot about the nature of Zureikat’s business — which included making substantial sums from oil-for-food — still think that Galloway’s claims that he is the victim of politically motivated forgery are no more than hot air and bluster.

In other words, this one is set to run and run until clear evidence emerges either for or against the Senate subcommittee’s conclusion that the documents it has retreived from Iraq (supplemented by various interviews) show Galloway or his campaign to have received oil-for-food vouchers.

Galloway’s supporters are pinning their hopes on proving that the documents are fake. The latest issue of Socialist Worker, the paper of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party that forms the core of Galloway’s Respect Unity Coalition, tries to do just that with one of them — albeit not very convincingly. If the Senate subcommittee’s allegations are to be taken seriously, it needs to demonstrate that the documents are genuine.

But even if it manages to do this, the show will be far from over. Just because a genuine document shows that someone was allocated oil-for-food vouchers does not mean he or she necessarily received them. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios in which corrupt officials siphoned them off.

Most importantly, though, suspicion of Galloway will not be laid to rest until he opens the books of the Mariam Appeal. He says that the Mariam Appeal was investigated by the Charity Commission in 2003-04 and completely cleared of any wrong-doing, but it’s a bit more complex than that (click here for original inquiry).

In fact, the Charity Commission didn’t have access to the Mariam Appeal’s books, which had been taken in 2001 to Jordan, where Zureikat lived.

As the commission put it in a press release this week: “By 2003, the appeal had been closed and the books and records had been sent to Jordan . . . Our inquiry therefore had to rely on details we were able to obtain from the appeal's bank accounts . . . We did not undertake a detailed review of sources of income to the appeal because the original concern prompting our inquiry was about the use to which funds had been put.”

Surely Galloway can prevail on Zureikat to put all the Mariam Appeal’s records in the public domain so that a “detailed review of sources of income to the appeal” can now take place? And if not, why not?

***

On a different matter entirely, I was amazed to read in The Times last week that the supposedly left-leaning Centre for a Social Europe, which is backed by several left-wing Labour MPs, has decided to throw in its lot with the xenophobes of the free-market right in a single campaign for a “no” vote in the forthcoming referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty.

It’s not just that I can’t see why these chumps think the EU constitutional treaty is so dreadful from their own point of view. Largely as a result of Britain's insistence during the protracted drafting negotiations, it is the nearest thing there could be to a plan for a European institutional settlement acceptable to sceptical opinion. It is intergovernmentalist rather than federalist in essence, with very little in the way of increased powers for the European Parliament. As an out-and-out federalist, I’m going to have to hold my nose to vote for it.

What I really can’t get my head around, however, is the sheer idiocy of left-wingers deciding to become a tiny, swamped minority in a campaign that will be (a) overwhelmingly dominated by the Tories and far-right loons who want to destroy the welfare state, reduce workers’ rights, send immigrants home and tell the frogs to hop off; and (b), if successful, a massive boost for the Tories’ next election campaign. What on earth is going through the left Europhobes’ minds?

THE BIG LIE? - 8

Very busy, so considered thoughts on the Galloway hearing will have to wait until later. For now, though, I'm amazed that in this day and age the complete transcript of the hearing (including the bits where Galloway evades questions on Fawaz Zureikat) does not appear to be online. Please email me if you know where to find it!