Here is a photo of something really disgusting at Silvio Berlusconi’s luxury villa.

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Italy is agog with the publication by El Pais in Spain of pictures of naked people during romps at Berlusconi’s villa. Personally, I find war criminals (and that is a photo of Blair on holiday in the villa) much more disgusting than naked girls. I think you would have to be pretty nuts not to realise that Berlusconi is living a dream playboy fantasy, but I don’t regard that aspect of Berlusconi as hugely harmful, except for the fact that he has been abusing state resources to subsidise it.

What is appalling is the man’s racism. He says things as Italian Prime Minister that even the BNP do not say in public. I watched him this morning on EuroNews making a European Election campaign speech. He said:

“How do I feel when I see all these non-Italians walking around Milan? When I look around Milan, I think I am in Africa!”

this kind of inflammatory racism is unacceptable from a European Union head of government, and if the EU cannot find some means of sanctioning such behaviour, then it is not an institution which brings the civilising benefits which its proponents claim.

Turnout at the EU elections has been abysmal throughout Europe, with 12% voting in Slovenia. Given that the European Parliament has – and this is a good thing – steadily increased its powers vis a vis the Commission and Council, particularly through co-decision and co-initiation, the lack of interest is alarming.

So too is the xenophobic turn of European politics. Sarkozy today effectively said “No” to Obama’s lobbying for Turkey to join the EU. Berlusconi’s racist rhetoric would not be unusual in many EU states, among parties who are going to win their national EU elections.

Still more alarming, even Berlusconi is not right wing enough for David Cameron’s Tories and they have allied themselves with some truly horrible nationalist parties from Eastern Europe.

I was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Warsaw heading the Embassy’s political and economic sections. I speak Polish. I can tell you definitively that the Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party – the British Conservative’s now main ally in the EU parliament – consists of a large number of anti-semitic and ultra-conservative Catholic crazies of the worst kind. I actually know these people, and they are miles to the right of the BNP.

Kaczynski continually condemns anti-semitism in public. You might ask yourself why he has to do that. One prominent member of his party (and of ther Sejm) once walked out of a lunch with me in Warsaw where a girl from the Adenauer Foundation was also present, because she was Jewish. I have heard casual anti-semitism from components of Law and Justice which you would not believe.

I cannot believe the Tories are not aware of this. Chris Patten, Ken Clarke and others have been ridiculed by Tory toadies like Iain Dale for warning strongly against the Conservatives’ new European Alliance. What does it tell you about Cameron’s Tories that they do not care?

Led by Lord Mandelson, whose titles now include “First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Council”, there are now seven members of the Cabinet in the House of Lords. Gordon Brown is bringing in his unelected cronies to rule us.

This is an incredible step back in time for British democracy. It is the most Cabinet Ministers from the unelected House of Lords for over a century.

My first thought was that it was the most ministers from the House of Lords since the government of Lord Salisbury was defeated by the Liberals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil,_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbury#Lord_Salisbury.27s_First_Government.2C_July_1885.E2.80.93February_1886

But incredibly, I am pretty sure that Gordon Brown’s government is less democratic than Lord Salisbury’s, because several of Salisbury’s ministers, like Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Hamilton, were sons of peers and actually elected to the house of Commons. I haven’t checked it, but my suspicion is that this is the most undemocratic Cabinet since the Liberal Unionists walked out on Gladstone in the 1870s.

This really does defy belief. This is the Labour Party?

This is not one of the many blogs that gives a regular critique of PMQs. But this is an exceptional week.

I thought that Cameron’s performance was weak – well below his normal form. Interestingly, the quotes read well enough when Sky flashed them on screen, but his delivery was peculiarly hollow. Cameron today eschewed humour, which he is good at and to which Brown reacts like a bear tormented by bees. Cameron instead seemed himself unusually ponderous and his points were all obvious party ones. Brown’s divided backbenchers therefore rallied around him with instinctive tribal loyalty.

Cameron really should have used one of his questions to recite the government’s manifest failings, particularly on the economy and civil liberties. It would have given some substance to his call for an election.

Clegg was not a great deal better, though he should stick to the line that New Labour is finished and the choice is now between the Tories and Lib Dems. For the first time in a generation it sounds believable, even if greeted by yells of derision from New Labour in parliament. I strongly suspect it will seem still more believable on Monday.

Brown actually performed pretty well. It was the same old line about getting on with the job, and he was plainly uncomfortable over Darling, though he did manage to talk of him as though he were still alive. But he really gave very little impression of being under pressure and managed to put in a confident performance with no signs of ill temper. Cameron and Clegg really let him off the hook here very badly indeed.

But the overall effect of today’s PMQs was to make the theatre of parliament seem completely irrelevant to the real political drama happening at the moment.

Which is the lesson of the last month, and has to be changed if we are to be any kind of meaningful democracy.

When Ministers vote with their feet, we should be allowed to vote with our ballots.

Gordon Brown is plainly now devoid of all moral authority, and despite the volatility of public opinion and its ever increasing tendency to be caught in waves of emotion, the coming New Labour electoral massacre will only get worse the longer he hangs on.

Hazel Blears’ announcement today is the most stunning act of treachery. The treachery to Gordon Brown is vast. She timed the announcement for just before a Prime Minister’s Questions, where everybody was already anticipating there might be one of those great parliamentary moments when it becomes clear that he no longer has the confidence of the House – and the Commons could thus recover just a tiny bit of its reputation as a democratic forum.

All Cameron has to do today is point to the New Labour benches behind Brown and open with the insouciantly delivered “Are you quite sure it is wise to show your back to those people?” Gordon will return with his leaden pre-written line about working to save the economy for hard-working families, and be lost.

Indeed, it is hard to know at present whether the nation finds the meltdown of Susan Boyle or the meltdown of Gordon Brown more fascinating. Are they perhaps related?

But Hazel Blears’ treachery is far worse than to Gordon Brown. That can be forgiven, as he was about to sack her anyway.

To announce a political resignation from the Cabinet on the very eve of a national election, is an act of betrayal of her own party so extraordinary that I really can’t think of any precedent. Here, I think the hideously ambitious right wing populist Blears may have miscalculated. A lot of New Labour activists, not to mention MEPs and councillors, who lose their seats this week, will not easily forgive her.

Becoming leader of New Labour is hopefully going to become irrelevant to government, but nonetheless that is where Blears sees her future, as witness her campaign for deputy leader. She was the most enthusiastic propagandist in the government for the “war on terror”. I found her lies to parliament on the situation in Uzbekistan especially galling, but plenty of others have reason to dislike her.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/10/hazel_blears_ma.html

Blears continually talked up the BNP, and often seemed to argue that the way to combat them was to steal their rhetorical clothes.

I do not believe for one second that Blears wishes to return to grassroots politics as she claims. But happily, I think for the rest of her life she will get what she pretends to want.

Maybe she should give up on politics and take up property speculation. Now there’s something she’s good at.

Given her husband’s viewing habits, I do hope she washed it first…

UPDATE

No, that joke does not mean that I believe the porn claim was the most important bad thing about Jacqui Smith. It wasn’t even the worst thing about her expenses.

I have been working more or less full time for five years now against the systematic abuse of human rights and rollback of Civil Liberties in the UK. This ultra authoritarianism was by no means initiated by Jacqui Smith, and I fear it will not in the least be changed by her departure, unless by some miracle we get Bob Marshall Andrews or Andrew Mackinlay as Home Secretary (and they are about as likely to be appointed as me).

But this news does bring some light at the end of the tunnel, in that it is plainly a symptom of New Labour’s disintegration, which is proceeding in a remarkable fashion. I think a stong part of the public mood is indeed a dislike of the over-mighty state. I remain optimistic that I will not ultimately bequeath my children a country in which liberty is disappearing, despite this terrible ten years.

On the very rare occasions I see a copy of the Independent, I am always vaguely perplexed that it hasn’t gone out of business yet. Any paper that can employ Robert Fisk, but still be mind-numbingly dull, is doing everything wrong. Almost all of its journalists are third rate. Try to name off the top of your head something, not by Robert Fisk, that you first learnt of as sourced to the Independent?

But it is the truly abysmal quality of its columnists which I find positively enraging. They seem to be a collection of people the editor might have met at a social function at a minor public school in Surrey.

Bruce Anderson is the worst kind of saloon bar bore, convinced of his own authority. I am not a violent man. If Tony Blair were to walk into the room now, I would merely harangue him vigorously. But something about Anderson’s immense air of self-satisfaction leads me to wish to know just how spongey it would feel to dri ekistans-notorious-dictator-and-married-into-one-of-the-nations-wealthiest-families-but-her-bitter-divorce-could-derail-americas-war-on-terror-now-she-tells-her-story-for-the-first-time-578321.html”>http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/she-is-the-jetsetting-daughter-of-uzbekistans-notorious-dictator-and-married-into-one-of-the-nations-wealthiest-families-but-her-bitter-divorce-could-derail-americas-war-on-terror-now-she-tells-her-story-for-the-first-time-578321.html

That was just disgusting, and Dejevsky and the editor should have been sacked. What next:

” At home with Eva Braun. Is she just a misunderstood girl who bakes pretzels for the man who loves her?”

But for sheer empty-headed uselessness I give you Sarah Sands. This column is quite possibly the worst bit of writing anybody has ever actually paid for:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/sarah-sands/sarah-sands-when-the-going-gets-tough-the-cheap-get-going-1693505.html

Who would think that worth publishing? Who is she shagging, or related to? What a column:

“Graduate employment is very high this year. The thing my wealthy friends do is to work for nothing for a few years, to worm their way into the company. But that might be hard for the poor. Poor dears, whay do they do? Another of my friends – did I mention he was very wealthy – hadn’t got a job, so he used some of his money to set up a language college and employ poor people as tutors. Clever him!”

“We’ve got pots of money, so my teenage son and his friends can afford villa holidays all by themselves! But villa owners won’t hire out to teenagers! That is a major social problem”.

I don’t blame Sands – she plainly can’t help being an unpleasant drivelling arsehole. But what fuckwit of an Editor thinks that is worth commissioning? Absolutely anybody can immediately find literally thousands of more interesting and apposite articles, for free, on blogs.

Finally I bring you the creepy Dominic Lawson, full time propagandist for the Security Services. This family failure had so many advantages in life, that had he the slightest hint of talent he would have been doing something more high-powered that feeding the MI6 line to a failing newspaper.

A great man of the people, our Dominic. He thinks that what people want to read about today is jolly anecdote concerning Lord Lamont quoting Winnie the Pooh at the Garrick Club:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-politics-should-be-more-like-a-gentlemens-club-not-less-1694538.html

I appeared on a Radio progamme with Lawson a few years ago. He said that he was reliably informed by government sources that I was not telling the truth and that the UK did not receive intelligence from torture. He also said that I had no evidence that the intelligence from Uzbekistan came from torture, or that the CIA was employing torture.

The British government have finally admitted they use intelligence from torture, as shown in Phillippe Sands’ and my own evidence sessions before parliament. The US government has admitted the CIA was employing torture.

It is also thus proved that Dominic Lawson is just a paid liar for the establishment.

With its clear editorial line against the Iraq War – and I should mention Joan Smith as a decent columnist – the Independent had a chance to make it. But employing a gang of rambling nutters as columnists, apparently in the interests of political balance, has destined it for the bin. I do hope that other editors will learn the lesson from the fate of the Indie, and not employ any of these idiots.

The current convulsion in our politics, and the meltdown in support for New Labour, will throw into sharp focus the risible unfairness of our electoral system. As a mechanism for representing the views of the British people, it plainly fails.

That is true in “Normal” times, where just 42% of the vote can hand a large majority in parliament to a Thatcher or a Blair. On the basis of this “Mandate” of a minority, they rule with breathtaking arrogance and utter disregard for the views of the majority who voted.

It is argued that this provides “Decisive” government. That is a misnomer. It provides domineering government with an inflated self-regard. It provides corrupt, inefficient, over-centralised and irresponsive government. For God’s sake, it provides the kind of crap governments I have suffered my entire life.

As New Labour goes into well-deserved meltdown, the inanities of our electoral system will become more apparent. You can find various swingometer predictive engines all over the web, but none of them copes too well with the effects of a three party system. Trust the back of my envelope instead.

New Labour benefits hugely from the concentration of its support into urban constituencies. A hundred of these rotten boroughs are virtually impervious to challenge. For the Tories to get a parliamentary plurality – more seats than New Labour – they need to get about 3 per cent more votes than New Labour.

But should the Liberal Democrats beat New Labour into third place at the General Election, New Labour will still on most scenarios get many more seats than the Lib Dems. If New Labour and the Lib Dems each polled 23%, at a general election, then New Labour would get approximately 80 more seats than the Lib Dems.

Get this – if the Lib Dems were to get 27% to New Labour’s 21%, astonishingly New Labour would still have around 40 more seats than the Lib Dems. In Parliament New Labour would still be the “Official Opposition”. with all the enormous privileges that postion brings over the third party.

In fact, you need a result which goes something like Conservative 41, Lib Dem 29 and New Labour 18 before the Lib Dems overtake New Labour in parliament and can become the official opposition.

Convinced of the case for reform?

There then comes the thorny question of which system should be adopted. I completely reject the AV+ system recommended by Roy Jenkins’ report, produced when Blair was pretending to be interested in constitutional reform. Any system which lets political parties decide the order of candidates on the “Party list”, and does not allow voters to choose between them, is Stalinist. We have this appalling party list nonsense in Scotland now, and the quality of list MSPs is abysmal.

I strongly favour Single Transferable Vote, as giving the most complete choice to the voter and much the best opportunity for Independents and small parties. Here, you have multi-member constituencies and a list of all the candidates. You rank them in order – 1,2,3,4,5etc, as far as you wish to go. So you can give your first prefence to an Independent, then a couple of Tories, then a Green, if they happen to be the candidates you like.

I support the Vote For A Change campaign, while having strong views on the direction I wish it to go. I rather liked this sentence from their launch statement:

Too many MPs seem more interested in changing their homes than changing the world.

http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/

Do sign up.

Political Scotland is a small place. You can’t be a part of it without knowing people from the places in Alistair Darling’s life – Kirkcaldy, Loretto’s, Aberdeen University, Edinburgh City Council.

Exactly like his contemporary Tony Blair, Darling comes from of a wealthy Edinburgh family prominent in Conservative politics in the City. Like Blair, Darling went to one of Edinburgh’s most exclusive private schools.

I take the view that all members of the New Labour cabinet share guilt for the war crimes of aggressive war, torture, apropriation of economic resources, breach of the Geneva Conventions and many others. I detest New Labour with a vengeance for that, and for their assault on civil liberties in the UK. Darling is also much implicated as Brown’s No 2 in the deregulation of the Ponzi banking sector of the economy, which has caused such huge misery now.

But all that said, Darling’s reputation among those who know him, is of a very pleasant, even kind, man. He has other interests in life besides work and politics. He stands out for that in a governrnent full of truly unpleasant, thrusting careerists. Darling has served Gordon Brown with complete loyalty, and never given any hint that Brown was anything to do with the economic disaster that followed Brown’s lengthy Chancellorship.

Brown has several times today refused point blank to confirm that Darling will still have his job next week. If Brown has no intention of moving him, it would do no harm to say so. What purpose would be served by building suspense?

It would wrong to presume that this means Brown will sack Darling. Brown’s habit of intrigue is so ingrained he almost never answers any question openly. Bully Brown may enjoy the feeling of power from making people sweat over the reshuffle, in fear or in expectation.

Nobody believes Darling has had the slightest autonomy from Brown in running the economy. If Brown does indeed stab Darling, in a hopeless effort to save his owm political skin, it will be an act of treachery and monumental ingratitude, particularly as there is less than a year to the election anyway.

But then, nobody in Edinburgh is saying what a nice man Gordon is.