Mistaken Identity

I just went and looked at who has linked to this blog and was really thrilled when I saw that Reason Magazine had linked- oh but then I realised they attributed my article on jury trial and Twelve Angry Men to Matt Sinclair- its a good article, but I'm not sure its a Sinclair masterpiece!

Note to self, obviously too many discussions about the Archbishop of Canterbury are leading to people confusing me with Matt- time for another subject! :)

A fistful of Dollars

Often rightly described as the first of the Spaghetti westerns, a Fistful of Dollars began the careers of so many greats in modern cinema. From Clint Eastwood's mesmeric performance to Sergio Leone's debut as a Western director, this is a film where history runs red on the screen. Its influences were profound- whether on its participant's own careers or on the careers of film makers like Sam Peckinpah who took the operatic nature of violence and advanced it another level- and to some extent Eastwood's taciturn character in the film defines the Western drama for years to come. The man with no name (though the town gravedigger calls him Joe) has no family, no friends and never tells anyone about himself. He just strides across the screen infusing it with authority and making the other characters- desperadoes included- crouch in his charisma. Only in the scene where Eastwood is tortured is there any doubt that 'with the cavalry arriving in town, and the American so quick on the draw' Eastwood controls every scene he is in. Repeatedly refusing to tell others where they stand in the story that he creates- he forsees most conclusions and creates most of the plot.

The plot is simple- with themes going back to Shakespeare and beyond- it is largely derived from a Japanese film Yojimbo made by Akira Kurosawa. The town of San Miguel is split in two between two mafiosi like gangs (one even presided over by a formidable matriarch). The Baxters and the Rojas have been at each other's throats for years: they despise each other and have been at war. The plot goes on with the man with no name standing between them- attempting via a heist performed on the US army- to manipulate them to destroy each other. He has no particular reason to do this, no particular love or hatred for the town (at one point he shows some sympathy but its shortlived), the man with no name seeks destruction for its own sake and his character is a vacant canvass upon which we put the images that we would like to see. Gnarled features and a perpetual cigar hanging from lips, with a hand used to holding a pistol, the man with no name is a force of nature that blows everything off course.

So what is this film about. It is not about character- though Leone's closeups are incredible- it is about politics. The film is a fable about the creation of states and the creation of order within a community. At the beggining of the film one of the Desperadoes comments that he wants to create peace which is why he has hired the man with no name. Of course the point is that the man with no name works for noone- he has no loyalty accept to himself and ends up destroying every other kind of power in the land save for that of the self. He sends both of the mafiosi cliques to their deaths through their suspisions of each other and by the end of the film, the last shots show an emptied town. However its not quite an empty town. The last lines of the film 'you mean the Mexican government on one side, the American maybe on the other and me smack in the middle' parallel earlier lines that the man with no name says about the Rojas and the Baxters, but with one difference the new situation is 'too dangerous' even for the greatest psychopath of them all. Order has been created in the final frames because the power of the mafiosi has been destroyed and replaced with the power of the states.

Another way of looking at that is to look at the role of the modern in the film. Throughout it all the characters make indications that the modern world is here to stay. They use Winchester rifles and take target shots at the armour of Conquistadors. The state is here the ultimate in modernity: Winchester Rifles can be defeated with pistols and the armour of Conquistadors can repel bullets- but what Leone is saying here is something greater that the most powerful invention of modern life is not technological but political. The state can be defeated by neither a quick hand nor an armoured chest, the state has the power to control far in advance of any gang of mafiosi and a man with no name cannot exist save beyond the frontier. In that sense Leone creates a much more vicious and primitive West than some of his colleagues in direction at the time, and he also demonstrates how the power of the state, more than any technological force, changes society and creates the possibility of perpetual peace.

Business Reporting

Guido is entirely right in this post: he is right both as the substantive issue which is the way that Newsnight misreports the market results, and more importantly right on a broader issue which is the way that the media reports about economics and business. I am not an economist nor am I a mathemetician: but I'm underwhelmed by the way that I see reporting on economics done- I think it turns people off and doesn't help them understand and often perpetuates bad ideas. (There are obvious exceptions). Lets take some basic starting points. The media's reporting about economics is often jargon filled and explanation light. So for example at the moment we have had many reports about the Governor of the Bank of England's statements that interest rates may have to stay high in order to diffuse inflationary pressure. We have almost no explanation though of why it is neccessary to stop inflation rising too fast, no explanation of what interest rates do to inflation and why they do it. I've never seen a journalist really explain that inflation isn't a measure of the level of prices but a measure of the rise in prices: when we talk about inflation rising or falling, we are talking about the speed of the rise in prices quickening or slowing. And this permeates right across economics: for example, we seldom hear about the real debate over council tax which is between those who are capital rich and income poor (pensioners with houses) and those who are capital poor and income rich (new entrants to the labour market often), or about the principles which underlie the concept of free trade.

It strikes me that this is important. As politics becomes more technocratic, more coded in vocabulary, and less about class conflict as it has become over the last twenty or thirty years, its vital that to remain democratic, we still understand what's going on. I often think that the real problem with politicians and levels of public trust in them, is that often politicians of all parties seem to be speaking in code. And people only speak in code when they want to fool you. Or politicians speak in simplicities which everyone knows they don't really believe. Compare say the debate over Northern Rock with the debate over Iraq: whatever your views on both issues, I think that the public were much more informed about Iraq than about Northern Rock. And it wasn't just that they were more interested (for obvious reasons) in Iraq. Whatever you think of the debate, the debate was conducted in simple terms and using profound ideas. Economics strikes me as one of the areas in which governmental practice and what people imagine government does diverges radically. Take regulation, the Financial Services Authority which regulates banks (but not credit cards??????) applies a 'principles based approach'- there are good reasons why they do that- but its not what I think most people think a regulator does. The FSA doesn't walk around with a code, like a Banking parking inspector, pointing to yellow lines. It regulates in a different way but I doubt that many members of the public know that.

If it matters, then why is economic literacy a problem? Firstly I do think that political literacy is a problem. I've said before that I'm not sure how far the population can run the country if they don't understand what it is that they are running. But I do think that there are bigger problems in economics. Partly its because in a broad sense the economic arguments are over: there aren't many communists left, and most unabashed capitalists at least pretend that they want a welfare state. The argument is over levels and degrees, its over principles but principles which are in some sense shared on both sides. Economics has a scientific aspect, as well as a normative underpinning. You can't have a good economic viewpoint unless you get the morality right: but once you have done that you do need to do mathematics, and particularly calculus (which is the study of the gradients of graphs) in order to turn that viewpoint into policy. Mathematics terrifies people in a way that most other subjects don't. And its a subject that has been particularly affected by jargon: partly because it is the abstract depiction of human beings rendered as integers. Economics aspires to be a kind of physics of humanity- seeing humans as particles and measuring their interraction.

I don't think that there is neccessarily a solution to this: but it opens up a political problem. Increasingly politics is becoming less democratic because the population doesn't understand the government: that's what I think distrust in politicians is really about. And that has damaging ramifications, take the rising protectionist sentiment in the United States or the absense of public discussion about pensions in Europe, we risk inventing problems and ignoring them and we risk the stability of our political system when we do that.

George Osborne's choice of schools

Apparantly George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, has got his kids into private schools. Mike Ion is not impressed, he thinks that this represents the abandonment of progressive politics by the Cameron conservatives, and that Osborne should have chosen a state school rather than becoming part of the problem by sending his kids to a private school.

I have always found such arguments unconvincing. Ultimately as far as I see it, every person in the UK has the right to send their kids to private school if they have the money. Yes they may be perpetuating inequality: but a variety of other choices also perpetuate inequality as well- buying houses in 'nice' neighbourhoods or having books available to your kids at home or even the type of food you buy for your children and yourself. Furthermore we are criticising Osbourne without knowing the reasons he wants to send his kids to private school: he may have really good reasons for choosing that private school over this state school for his children. It is not for us to second guess the choice of other people.

It is not my opinion that Osbourne needs to justify his choice of school for his children, anymore than he needs to justify his choice of supermarket. What he does need to do is provide an analysis of the state system and how to make it better for everyone else: that is his job as a politician but once his job is over and he goes back home and spends the money he has earnt, I don't think it is any of my business that he spends it one way or another (providing its legal). Focusing on where he sends his kids to school misses the issue- its what he wants to do to the system in which so many others send their kids to school that's the real issue. At the moment it seems to me our political system does not let politicians get away with poor personal decisions, but lets them get away with poor policy decisions.

That's the wrong way round: lets ask the Tories complicated policy questions and not about their personal lives.

Reasons to love Cricket

Stephen Fleming has just announced he will retire as New Zealand captain. On his resignation he has asked how he wanted to be remembered and he said he would want to be remembered as a thinker about the game, as someone who could bring together a team and make them more than the sum of their parts. If anyone needs a justification for watching sport, then the fascination of human psychology under pressure is a great one- cricket shows that often at its best. Its fiendishly complicated and incredibly thoughtful as the bowler, captain and fielders conspire to trap the batsman into playing a shot he doesn't want to play. I'm sure the Umpire will have something to say as will James Hamilton: but I think its interesting that the bit of cricket that Fleming declared he enjoyed was the thinking, the way the game could be shaped by leadership and tactics. Its one of the things I enjoy watching team sports- you can see the tactics being played out on the field.

Campaign Chaos

Hillary Clinton hasn't been doing as well as predicted since the New Year: she was expected by some to have the nomination sown up at that point, some even predicted that Super Tuesday would be a coronation. They were wrong and the result seems to have been widespread discontent in her campaign for the Presidency with her long term aid, Patti Solis, leaving Clinton this week. The Atlantic has a fine article covering Solis's resignation, rumours had been swirling even before Solis left about the disfunctional structure of 'Hillaryland' and journalists had picked up on those rumours. Hillary's team is obviously involved in mutual recrimination about how they have lost their frontrunner status.

Both of the articles I have quoted above suggest that what this demonstrates is how uniquely disfunctional Hillary's campaign has been. I don't think that's true. Seasoned observers of US Politics have commented to me before that Clinton has run an almost perfect campaign- obviously it hasn't worked but on the other hand, she hasn't self destructed and Obama has run a brilliant campaign. Furthermore any campaign faces downturns and moments of pressure: pressure produces internal stresses however tight the team of people put together by the candidate. It also produces a kind of focus that makes the inner circle unable to see the wider picture: hence the need to bring in new blood in order to give new advice to a candidate. What we are seeing with Clinton is really the effect of a long campaign.

What's interesting is not what this tells us about Clinton- but what this tells us about politics and campaigning. I think the articles and the events of the last few days capture the intense closeness of politics: the suffocating claustrophobia of living in a campaign where every leading article is a major event. Sometimes that can obscure the longer term issues or even policy discussions: it produces fierce rivalries as well. Understanding the lives that politicians live is indispensible to understanding the kind of decisions they will take: I think what the Clinton campaign illustrates is the way that politics is a very visceral experience, altering day by day. Politicians have to cope both with the intensity of living in a perpetual drama and complete alterations in fortune: their psychology has to contain the confidence to survive that and be brutal to their allies and friends.

That atmosphere determines exactly what kind of politicians and hence leaders that we get at the end of the process- the Clinton campaign's breakup is a useful indicator of the way that politics works in the United States and by implication in most of the West.

Two issues

There are two issues with Matt Sinclair's latest riposte to me on the subject of Rowan Williams- two issues that I think need to be dealt with in what is really a debating post and not an argument.

1. When I mentioned the lecture on neo-scholastic art, or one could mention the archbishop's points about the inequity of economic life, I was responding to Matt who said that the Archbishop seldom or never made interesting points. I then said that I liked an intellectual who did make interesting points in public life. Matt can't have it both ways: sneering at someone for being stupid and then saying that when he is provided evidence that they aren't, that those who provide him with that evidence are intellectual snobs. That's just too typical- not of the unintelligent mass- but of the much more thick group of hacks at the top of politics today. Matt is too bright for this kind of rhetoric- if you want a debate, please don't use these cheap tactics.

2. Secondly Matt more forgivably misunderstands the point of my remarks and that may be because I skipped ahead a couple of stages in my argument. You see I think the real issue that the Archbishop was attempting to solve was not a multiculturalist one- though some of that muddled set of thoughts may have smoothed his path to that conclusion- but this set of thoughts.

a. in an increasingly secular society law becomes increasingly secular

b. that creates problems of conscience (and he mentions some with regard to doctors and abortion for example) which the religious people of all faiths face.

c. one way around that is to have supplementary or plural jurisdictions which don't annull or replace civil rights, but which are voluntarily accepted by people who beleive in order to avoid issues of conscience.

d. without that you undermine community cohesion- between those who live with a sincere belief in God and those who don't- the most important set of values for the former group being their commitment to theism.

Ok- that's it laid out simply and straightforwardly. I think its a repugnant political doctrine because I want no relation between the law and politics. As I have said before- and its worth recycling this I DISAGREE FUNDEMENTALLY AND PROFOUNDLY WITH THE ARCHBISHOP, I THINK HE IS WRONG TO ARGUE IN THE WAY THAT HE ARGUES. I also think that the speech could have bad effects in other countries and am quite happy to concede that the Archbishop has been bad at publicity.

But what he is trying to argue is that religious people ought to live under their own laws to a certain extent (with qualifiers) something I think that is a theologically valid statement and then to fit that into a context where all religious people should have the same right. I disagree with the premise for reasons based on political theory- the Archbishop's endpoint was a bad political place to get to- but he is willing to discount that based on a theological vision of man that sees the virtue of private law as being over and above the virtue of political peace.

This whole controversy illustrates to me a fundemental truth about the West at the moment- our political discourse is well formed for say discussing economics, but when we get near theology for instance we collapse into incoherence.

I hope that gets that across....

Returning to Canterbury

Matt Sinclair takes a view in his latest post on the Archbishop of Canterbury that the Archbishop should resign because he has affronted Matt's and my views on what sensible politics consists of. Matt is wrong in his response to my post and I want to open up some of the areas that we disagree upon. Firstly it is worth me stating I think here that when I said the Archbishop opened up interesting issues, I was not specifically talking about this. The Archbishop has a long record of making interesting speeches and statements- I don't need to defend him on this- but I have listened for instance to him lecture about the state of neo-scholastic art theory in the 1920s in France in a fascinating and illuminating lecture. It might seem a little odd but I still remember that lecture as one of the most exciting and inspiring I have ever been to. The Archbishop does talk about issues in ways which are generally more subtle and interesting than any of his critics seem ready to engage with: one of the things I lament frequently is the cheapening of our political discourse- something that say the populists in all the newspapers, on all the television shows etc are attempting to perpetuate. I like the fact that there is in the UK a figure in public life who is an intellectual and I find that comforting- I do think from comments on this blog and at other places that Williams is despised for being too clever by half and I'm afraid I want him to stay for that precise reason. I'm sick of politicians like David Cameron and Tony Blair whose cultural hinterland is a squalid swamp.

Ok rant over. My second and less personal reason for wanting Williams to stay in office is that I don't agree with Matt that he had an obligation to keep silent about this kind of issue. Matt assesses, as most of the blogosphere and media seem to do, whether someone should be sacked by the furore created. I'm actually quite sure that if anyone said this and it was picked up by the media then there would be a furore- especially in the way that the media quite frankly missreported the Archbishop's statements. Essentially the Archbishop was arguing for a private religious law for religious communities- he was arguing that the law of God should be recognised in the civil courts where all parties agreed it should be recognised. That seems to me a fairly uncontroversial idea to the religious. There is a set of people who are really upset with the Archbishop not so much for talking about inserting religious law into the law of England as inserting Sharia- that's essentially the Bishop of Rotchester's position and that's the position that I think the Archbishop's address really did undermine very well.

I disagree with that position- I don't think that religion should have anything to do with the law, for all sorts of reasons that I don't want to get into right now, right here. I think its a bad political argument- and would lead to various kinds of unhappiness within the realm. Now that may be true- but what is bad politics may well be good theology and ultimately the Archbishop of Canterbury's concern is not with good politics but with good theology. In that sense both in his defence of Islam and the possiblity of 'liberal' Islam and in his argument for theocracy (I use the word provocatively) he was doing what he should be doing: presenting a good understanding theology to the world in front of him. (Chris Dillow advances good liberal reasons for thinking that this defence of theocracy ought to have nothing to do with politics here- but taking for granted the intersection of law and commandment, we can see the Archbishop's argument has more validity). Any good Archbishop from that perspective ought to be causing furore, causing it by advocating theological arguments where they contradict political arguments. Many of his critics don't understand the theology of the issue- which is why they fail to understand what the Archbishop's role is. The contempt for instance for the Archbishop's penitent tone on the Spectator Coffee House reflects the fact that Matthew D'Ancona doesn't understand that the Archbishop isn't a politician, he is a theologian, his job is to get close to and understand the mind of God not that of man. Many of the criticisms made by D'Ancona and others relate to the legislative form that this policy might take- again that is an argument about the politics not about the theological argument about the source for law which is what the Archbishop was involved in.

The real argument which I think does endanger the Archbishop is the argument that the Political Umpire made here- the Umpire pointed out that the Archbishop's role is political as well as theological. But I think here too there are subtle distinctions to be made: the Archbishop is not a minister for religion, rather he is the appointed head from religion to the wider community. Consequently his role is theologico political, not politico theological. In that sense the priority that he has is to represent those who take their religion seriously- not those that don't. Again here I think the fact that his argument was firstly theological makes sense- and the fact that his critics miss this means that they miss in reality what his job is. There might be problems with having someone with that kind of job- but if someone is to have that job, then the Archbishop is doing the right thing. He is making a theological argument about the nature of civil authority and how it relates to issues of conscience- rather than a political argument which prioritises peace and stability over eschatology. The Archbishop is making the case for the religious to be able to live according to conscience and thus save themselves from hellfire- in comparison with that no war or civil strife is important- his argument is wrong but its wrong for political reasons- many of which have to do with the toxic way that theology interacts with politics.

Consequently I don't see a case for the Archbishop to resign- he has fulfilled the duties of his role. There might have been cleverer ways for him to perform those duties- he might have made a more moderate form of the argument, presented it more attractively and clearly (as say Dave Cole has done here) and there is plenty that I think the Archbishop could learn from this episode. Whether its media presentation or syntactical clarity, my Lord of Canterbury has some way to go. But I do not think he has to resign for presenting a good theological argument about law to an audience of lawyers and theologians- I still think he was wrong- but I don't think he should resign.

3.10 to Yuma: Kant amongst the Cowboys

3.10 to Yuma was one of the last year's more interesting films- it has just come out on DVD hence my effort to review it. A revival of the Western genre which mostly consisted of morality plays about the fate of particular men in particular communities is sorely needed: the West performed for Americans as a metaphor about human nature, about what men would do in a society without laws, bound only by violence. Great Westerns from the Man from Laramie right up to Unforgiven sketched out the ways in which men would react in such times of anarchy- they sketched out the basic limits of what human nature was when the state was a distant and often powerless presence over the vast horizons of the West. Accompanied by amazing photography and great acting, those canonical Westerns turned the genre into one of the most subtle artforms produced by America and indigenous to the United States. 3.10 to Yuma fits into that tradition- though it has to be said compared with the classics it has its limitations.

The story is simple. A rancher, Dan Evans (played by Christian Bale, one of Hollywood's most versatile and adept actors) is down on his luck and lives on parched land. By pure chance at the same time as his affairs come to a crisis, a notorious bandit Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) holds up a wagon. Wade though stays in town to seduce the local barmaid and Evans finds him and gives him to the sherrif. It is then Evans's responsibility to take Wade across country to the only train with a prison carriage- the 3.10 to Yuma- from which Wade can be transported away to be hung in Yuma. Following swiftly behind are Wade's gang, dangerous and psychopathic men, who are willing to kill and laugh as they do so. And in front is the jail at Yuma, from which Wade tells Evans near the end of the film he has escaped twice already. Evans's motivation is established early on by the reward offered to get Wade to the train- 200 dollars of American money, but as the film goes on, we begin to realise that Evans could get the reward without transporting Wade to the station. By releasing Wade or even just by protecting his fellows on the escort he could get that money- he chooses not to though. He chooses to take Wade to the train.

Its a fascinating issue. Why does he do that? Afterall there is every chance that Wade will escape quickly- furthermore there is every chance that Evans will be killed in the attempt and rather than coming back rich, will leave his wife without a husband and his sons without a father. Part of the reason you suspect is that he feels his older son will disrespect him unless he does this: unless he demonstrates his bravery and manliness in some way. Part of the reason is that he feels humiliated in his son's eyes by the presence of Wade, the kind of man who is a hero to other men and desirable to women. But that is not all: because such considerations, almost suicidal considerations, don't really work because they would not attract praise and yet there are reasons to praise Evans's conduct. He really does set his heart on something that is right- transporting a criminal to prison- even though it will bring him no benefit but death and inevitable pain.

So why is it admirable? It isn't religious- religion is referred to in the movie and yet God's presence like the government's is distant. Evans doesn't mention heaven- it doesn't perform much of a role in his motivation. The real reason that he does what he does is because he knows it is right to do what he does. He obeys the law because it is right, not because he receives advantage. In a sense he is Jobian, screaming at God that he does not receive any luck in life (indeed the rain he seeks for arrives just as, by a grim irony, he faces his final test) but he continues to do the right thing. Immanuel Kant would have recognised what he was going through- which is why I've titled this review the way I have- for Kant morality was a matter of willing a law which was universally applied irrespective of interest. The point for Kant was that morality was something that you followed especially when nothing good for you could flow from it. That is the situation that Evans finds himself in, nothing good will flow from his actions but still he continues to perform them, still he continues to get Wade to the train.

Too many reviews of the film focus on Wade: but in truth he isn't as interesting as Evans. What Evans represents is an attitude to morality and to law which is strictly anti-utilitarian. Evans simply obeys because the law is the law, morality is morality and irrespective of consequence you must continue to behave in a certain way. The film illustrates the Kantian option- and provides an argument as to why it is moral and other options are not. All other options promise a reward: and yet by the end of the film we admire none of those who use their conduct as an instrument to profit, power or heaven, its the man who knows that morality will create disaster for him but still persists in being moral that we admire. And all he has in the end is not a tangible reward, no choir of angels or earthly reward, but the admiration of the audience and our surrogate- his son.

Ironic Politics

When two inciteful commentators say something, its worth thinking about it. That happened this week when both the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley and the Economist's Bagehot column devoted themselves to examining the influence of Tony Blair on his successor's government. Both argued that Gordon Brown is not merely unable to escape the legacy of Blair, he is significantly unwilling to escape it. The former Prime Minister's policy prescriptions were inevitable for someone who accepted his analysis of the way that Britain and the Labour Party had to move. In particular both articles suggested that Blairism- a devotion to the principle of mixed provision of public services- was a policy that Brown as well as Blair and even Cameron and Clegg would have to follow given what they had said. I think that both Rawnsley and Bagehot are entirely right- and it opens up what is the really major question about Gordon Brown and the reason that his Premiership has yet to inspire many.

The problem is that it is difficult to provide any account of what has changed since Tony Blair left office. The deckchairs round the cabinet table have been switched- some figures have left politics and newer men and women have been promoted (often it has to be said as in the switch of Jacqui Smith for John Reid to the detriment of the cabinet's ability to make a public impact) but little of substance has actually changed. Partly that is because the current Prime Minister was of course Chancellor before his elevation- everything done from 1997 to now has his paws all over it and he can't really deny that. Despite the fact that of the leading members of his cabinet only Jack Straw and Alistair Darling can claim as long service in cabinet, its hard to avoid the impression that to row back say on the independence of the Bank of England or the structure of the welfare system would cause the Prime Minister personal embarassment.

But there is also another factor and that's that the animating spirit of the government has not really changed. New Labour was an effort to marry Tory efficiency to Labour compassion- and avoid the moral complacency of the conservatives whilst adopting their judgemental approach to crime. It was a fusion of concepts- derived from the experience of the battles of the 1970s and 1980s which left the Labour party pulverised. Politicians like the young Blair and Brown saw that the Tories would win election after election unless Labour changed. They also appreciated that not all of the Tory reforms were awful- that the Tories won for a reason and that Labour had to behave differently in government to how it had behaved before. Those attitudes worked for a while and set Labour up for its three election victories- 1997, 2001 and 2005 but the magic began to wear off. In part because of Iraq: if Britain learnt anything from Iraq it was that we fell out of love collectively with Tony Blair. But more crucially the underlying source of discontent lay in the public sector: with the management of the great public monopolies of health and education. The hope was money plus reform would bring improvement: to be honest we haven't yet seen the timescales neccessary (more money into training doctors means more doctors not today but in seven years time for example, reforms take time to bed in and for people to become accustomed to them and start altering behaviour).

All of those prescriptions sound solid but two things lead me to suspect that they are not going to provide Labour with the reassurance of majorities in the future. Firstly the economic situation is getting worse globally and locally within the UK. All forecasters and professional economists seem to agree that the US could slip into recession, it might already be there, and that the UK may follow. This happens at a time when the Governor of the Bank of England is worried about inflation and consequently may be reluctant to cut interest rates further. Secondly the problem is that we have now heard everything we can hear about modernisation from Gordon Brown and his team: the public are losing faith in Labour's ability to modernise and are willing to give Cameron a try. If politics is just management, then why not change the managers and see how the Tories do for a while. What is important here is that the government doesn't really have a new vision, a new way of seeing the problems or a new way of explaining them to us the people. They seem, to paraphrase Disreali, to ressemble a series of exhausted volcanoes not a lively group of people filled with fresh ideas- and in part that comes back to the Prime Minister.

Its not that the Prime Minister should go: but that increasingly his term feels like the end of a government not the beggining. In part that isn't his fault- he was always more likely to be Blair 2 than to be a new kind of Prime Minister. He has the same ideological background, the same mentors- indeed he was basically Blair's political twin from the moment they met. Its no surprise therefore that his administration looks so much like that of his predecessor's. The only thing that distinguished them was that Blair had the job he wanted: the problem for Brown is that he may have got it when the moment for this kind of politics, for New Labour, had ebbed away. We shall see what the next couple of years bring- but at the moment the Labour party looks tired- its hard to see any ideological alternative from the right or the left emerging (Cameron's Tories don't seem to offer much than more extreme Blairism) but that may be the question for another day. The situation at the moment seems filled with a kind of tragic irony- one that both Bagehot and Rawnsley with typical acuteness have understood.

Rowan Williams should not resign

There are calls coming in from various places for Rowan Williams to resign over yesterday's comments. I don't think he should resign at all.

Firstly what Williams has done is fly a kite about a particular issue- he has mused in public. He has got it wrong and yes he has been naive: but the speech is intelligent and thoughtful and furthermore it is part of a real debate (not a politician's debate which means a debate with only one answer). I think if more public thinkers actually made some speeches reflecting actual ideas even unpopular ones in public that would be better for everyone. I don't agree with Williams's view- but I don't think its a resignation matter and I think if it was made such it would reflect a lamentable real decline in the way that free speech is practised in the UK. The Archbishop of Canterbury's job is partly to think about religion- that means he will get it wrong sometimes- but he should be allowed to as should his bishops: if we demand they are sacked everytime they get it wrong, we won't have public discussion, merely public discussion as governed by the Daily Mail! (Incidentally I'm particularly disappointed by the reaction on the right- normally rightwingers are so fond of free speech- but in this case they seem to think that people ought to lose their jobs if they disagree with a particular line which doesn't have any relevance for their job (Williams isn't in charge of any courts).)

Secondly I actually do admire Williams as a person. I think he is an exceptionally clever and intelligent person. He was appointed because he was a semi-academic who understands theology perhaps better than any other senior cleric of our day. Furthermore he says interesting things, provocative, yes but interesting. In that sense he is a pastor to the nation because he actually talks about our concerns- and though he may not do it in the perfect way he does do it. This can't be undervalued- the other archbishop I've known was George Carey whose ponderous pomposity was a very different kind of rule from Williams's intelligent questioning.

Yes Williams was wrong, yes Williams should probably not have said what he said- but there is no case for resignation here.

Civil and Religious Law in England: Contra Canterbury!

I have heard Rowan Williams speak and unlike some am fairly well disposed to him- he gave a fascinating talk on art and philosophy at Cambridge in 2005. I suppose that makes me a perfect advocate of the argument that today the Archbishop has made a complete idiot of himself. Partly he has made an idiot of himself through the fact that whatever Rowan Williams does understand, the media isn’t one of the things that he gets. Partly though he has made an idiot of himself because he has advocated a concept of law which I think is dangerous and creates a special privilege for established Churches in this country which they should not have.

Williams’s speech has usefully been put up on the Guardian website. Reading it one notices a couple of things. Williams is not really talking about Sharia- the discussion of Sharia is just a bridge into a much more important theoretical issue which is the attitude of the law to the citizens who live under it. What Williams wants the law to do is to distinguish between citizens based on what they believe: he tells us that

there is a risk of assuming that ‘mainstream’ jurisprudence should routinely and unquestioningly bypass the variety of ways in which actions are as a matter of fact understood by agents in the light of the diverse sorts of communal belonging they are involved in.

Williams of course over emphasizes the communal (and Matt Sinclair has criticised the Archbishop adequately on those grounds here): but he also mistakes what the law is about.

The law is the instrument by which we maintain peace and mark out civil goods and bads: it delineates that which the country considers private and inoffensive and that which the country considers public and dangerous. The law insofar as it does that cannot respect the will of the particular agents who operate under it, even if they have a sense of ‘communal belonging’ which say excuses murder: the question before lawyers is what did they do and what is the punishment. In some situations the law also arbitrates and here you could argue that the intentions of the agents matter- but that is only in the sense that the law intends to respect both of the agents. The sense of the agents is not what governs the process of arbitration but its a factor in it. For example, say I am someone who believes that animals are equivalent to children: the fact that I believe that is a factor in the decisions the court might make, but it does not govern those decisions. Williams is right that the law should not be blind to the intentions of agents as factors in any decision, but it should not be governed by those intentions (and he knows it shouldn’t- at one key moment he qualifies his own position to exclude the religious courts ever destroying someone’s rights- quite how he would do that when almost all law concerns questions of right is a different and interesting matter). Ultimately the standerd to which the law aspires is not Muslim, Christian or Jewish justice or Mormon or Scientologist justice but its justice as defined by statute and precedent within Parliament- justice as it applies to everyone who is any of those five religions and to anyone who isn’t from the Sikh to the Satanist, from the atheist to the polytheist.

The problem with Rowan Williams is in part that he is deceived by his own subtlety- go and read the lecture it is an example of encasing yourself in sentences like a mummy in wallpaper and then trying to walk through a crowded tube platform. But its more than that. As a theologian Williams wants us to think about revelation all the time: but revelation doesn’t have that much to do with politics. In a democratic secular state, revelation is a factor in any decision but it doesn’t govern what the government should or shouldn’t do. Ultimately people who believe owe just as much as people who don’t to the state because the state is not a religious formation- it is on its Western model a secular foundation which exists to perpetuate the well being of its members. The point isn’t that religious people can’t be religious, or can’t be members of society, but that the state isn’t interested in their religion. They can use religious justifications for their political actions if they like- but those justifications will only appeal to those that share the same religion and will irritate those that don’t- they will produce communities struggling against each other. The state is a minimalistic project in the sense that it talks a minimalistic language of politics- the problem with Dr Williams is that for him that just isn’t enough.

Its a common problem that you can see here and across the Atlantic- the current Pope is another person guilty of demanding accomodation on his own terms alone. But what people need to realise is that as soon as you create a legally privileged religion or argue that all argument has to take place in religious terms: you do abandon the whole idea of a secular state- a meeting place between people of different religions and none which does not proscribe any faith but tolerates almost all. There is a lot of modern work been done on these questions- Mark Lilla has just published an interesting book I mean to write about here in the future on the philosophy of this area. But ultimately it all comes down to the reasoning of the earliest modern philosopher of secularism, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes had a dark vision of where arguments like the Archbishop’s could lead us: towards a hell of civil strife and communal violence, towards religious tyranny and massive unhappiness.

Despite my admiration for Rowan Williams, who is a very intelligent and thoughtful person, this time I’m with Thomas Hobbes.

Crossposted at Liberal Conspiracy.

Tell No One

This French Thriller from last year is a sophisticated effort and it asks some interesting questions- particularly about the nature of love. A man's wife died in a horrific murder eight years before the action of the film, he has barely been able to recover since from the incident, still traumatised he throws himself into his work, until that is he gets an email from her. There she is standing in the entrance to a building in a foreign country- the film then winds itself round the question of her return and what actually happened in to her and to her murderers in a wood long ago in rural France. Our hero is by turns bemused and confused, he seems to have lacked any real sense or purpose to his life and now he finds one in the returned wife that he thought he had lost. The film's denoument is a little trite- too much is brought together- but that's not the purpose of the film, rather its a study of the effect of loneliness and obsession upon the life of one man.

There are some fantastic sequences here- especially as the hero runs through the motorway traffic at one point. But its the psychological dimensions that are most interesting. The man, Dr Alexandre Peck, is played wonderfully in particular. One gets in his face the image of an unending loneliness- a solitariness that he cannot relieve in the absense of his life. Its particularly well crafted as early on in the film we see him before his wife's murder, sitting together with friends and enjoying a beer on a perfect summer night. By the time we make his acquaintance again he has become haunted and lonely, withered amidst the storms of life and sent sprawling backwards upon his own solitude. When his wife intones to him the words 'Tell No One' on the video she sends him, its an instruction he is almost perfectly capable of fulfilling- there is noone almost that he can tell.

That almost is there as a qualifier becuase he does have two friends. A Lesbian friend of his wife and himself who becomes his confidante. Her relationship too is threatened by the whole unfolding drama and she too is a victim in her own way eventually of the events in the wood. His other friend is a wonderfully played Parisian thug- who assists him in escaping from the police and in avoiding capture. You see by this time the police themselves are beggining to suspect whether Alexandre had anything himself to do with his wife's death or the deaths of others- the corpses do begin to mount up in this drama in the true style of a Hitchcock thriller. What is interesting therefore is the way that the loss of his wife has rendered this man a deeply sad but brilliant man- it drained him of his core and placed him in the position of maintaining a facade of a successful doctor whilst actually being vacant inside.

This is a really interesting thriller- its well worth seeing- its exciting and clever in equal measure and should delight anyone who likes cinema on any level.

Guido vs Gracchi the Counterpunch

I give this article a more confrontational title than I want it to have, because having read Guido's response at Samizdata I have to say that I think he has something right and that some of my critique of him was not as plausibly phrased as it should have been. Lets isolate I think three points- one on which we agree, one on which I think I am going to move a little backwards and one where I think we can also establish a point of contact. This is an interesting debate: it has forced me to be much more positive about the kind of blogging that Guido does.

Guido and I agree that perceived self interest is much more important to politicians than self interest- we agree that politicians have a world view in which they do things and that they operate in their own interests. I am interested in what degree politicians are a different species from the general population in this: I'm still thinking about this one.

Where I concede is that Paul Staines is right: there is a separation between Paul and Guido, between the person and the blog persona. Perhaps because this blog is so much the creation of my personal whim and not of any attempt to create a persona, that means that I underestimated that. I should apologise that criticisms of Guido were meant to address the persona and not the person lying behind that persona. I accept the assurances offered that Paul has a long record of thinking about policy- I am sure that he does- most libertarians afterall get to their position after a lot of thinking. Throughout this post therefore I'm going to be quite precise- when I say Paul, I mean the individual behind the blog, when I say Guido I mean the persona in front of the blog so to speak. I hope that is a distinction that we can all agree on.

Lastly he is possibly right that the 'struggle' so far as it is one is going on on his blog and not this one. For the sake of this one I don't care- were the struggle going on here, I couldn't write so many film posts for a start I'd have to be disciplined and stick to politics. That isn't my style. But the real issue I suppose is dual: firstly its about what Paul says is Guido's anti politics. I can see as a libertarian why anti-politics works- in a sense the libertarian answer to the dilemma is to abolish politics itself. Remove stuff from the politicians and things will be fine- I am personally not so sure, as I have written elsewhere I don't think coercive power is simply the same as state power. Nor do I accept that political power is not exercised in other ways in a libertarian society: the people might be different and wear different hats but underlying my suspicion of politicians (something I share with Guido) is a suspicion of people- and ultimately I'm not sure about an anti-political approach to dealing with that. We need to work out systems for constraining and checking individual power and though libertarianism has a lot to contribute to that, I'm not sure that it has the answers.

The second point is about where the struggle is. Paul is right- I shouldn't care about Guido and I don't really care about millions of other blogs like Guido, but I do care about Guido. Thinking about it, its not Guido that I care about, so much as the fact that a gossip blog sits atop the blogging heirarchy in the UK. Its not envy precisely- I don't want this blog to be at the top of the blogging heirarchy- its a sense that Guido's blog doesn't allow his readers to understand what they should understand about the political world. Simply put I think that Guido should exist, but I wonder about the state of the political landscape if its the biggest in the country. That turns me I suppose to a bigger issue which is what blogs do and why people read them: I often wonder whether people's readership of blogs is simply to get a quick fix and whether we bloggers over analyse our output.Whether what people want is just to go over to Guido or Iain Dale and quickly read the latest on there as they take a break from work.

In the end Paul is right when he says that everyone is free to blog as they like- and then popularity comes. I suppose what I'm more interested in is what blogs tells us about politics and whether the story that they tell helps us understand politics. I'm not sure Guido is helpful there- because I think he makes us think that politics is about scandal only. Ultimately though I wonder whether we are still in the Drudge stage of the political cycle and whether as in America we shall see the slow growth of a wonkosphere eventually alongside the blogosphere. It does strike me that the problem with Guido as a blog is that it presents a naive view of politics- even if its writer doesn't hold that view of politics. That so many people read it says either one of two things- firstly that most people reading blogs read them for entertainment not enlightenment, and secondly that most people don't really understand politics that much and turn to sites like say Chris Dillow's or Matt Sinclair's which explain the thinking behind policy much better. I think its a mixture- my real issue is that its hard to find really good political commentary around about ideas and policy at the moment, you don't get it in the newspapers and you don't get it on many blogs. Its hard I think to know about the world of thinktanks and policy making (that world extends far beyond think tanks into the civil service and the business world as well) unless you are in the midst of it. Policy discussions go on over and above the general population who just get the gossip. In that sense Dale and Guido are just extreme versions of the MSM,

and what Britain needs is a stronger Wonkosphere- someone like Matt Yglesias to appear from somewhere!

The Republican Race

Waking up this morning, the immediate big story is the American Primary. There is an interesting discussion to be had about the Democratic race which pitches different kinds of characters against each other- but ideologically the Republican race is much more fascinating. In 2000 the Republicans decided that John McCain the Arizona senator was too moderate for them: many Republicans still think that that is the case. In that sense many may interperate the result as a massive defeat for conservatism in the Republican party: I think they are right but probably not in the way that those pundits confidently predicting think that they are right.

Apart from in the North East, this hasn't been a crushing McCain victory. A typical result is that in Oklahoma where with 100% of the precincts reporting, McCain got 37%, Huckabee 33% and Romney 25%. Admittedly these are early results- but even so it looks as though McCain has only got above 50% in three primaries, all in the North East. In most other places the results look slightly higher than what he got in Oklahoma but not that much higher. Percentage wise, John McCain has not captured over half the Republican party primary voters: and that's with the fact that he is much more popular with independents than either Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. And yet despite that there can be no question that McCain seems to have gained the nomination- he has at the moment 487 delegates whilst his nearest challengers Romney and Huckabee both have under 200.

So what went wrong for conservatives tonight? Looking at the numbers, I would argue that it wasn't that they lacked voting strength. Put it this way in the majority of states, the not-McCain candidate won the majority of the votes. The reason why that doesn't come out in the delegate numbers is that the Republican party has a first past the post Primary system- you get past the winning post and you get rewarded. Now the point is that if this was the Democratic primary, which is PR, Romney and Huckabee combined might have equal numbers of delegates to McCain and be plausible challengers. They don't and aren't. The key thing about the conservative primary vote here is not that it didn't exist: but that it split. The Conservatives in the Republican party haven't gone away, they have divided neatly down the middle.

Look at the places where Romney and Huckabee won. Romney took states like Utah- the midwestern states. Huckabee won in the south- Alabama, West Virginia, etc. Most people would suggest that Huckabee won the evangelical vote- as he did earlier in Iowa, whereas Romney won the traditional conservative vote, coming second in California for example. This isn't because the two eliminated each other though: it is because both were deeply unsatisfactory candidates on their own. Look for instance at this Gallup poll, which demonstrates that if Huckabee had dropped out by a vast number his supporters would have gone to John McCain and not to Mitt Romney. Huckabee has been accused of socialism by Romney's supporters and Romney's Mormonism was a real problem for many of Huckabee's guys. The ultimate thing about the conservatives in this primary is that without George Allen or Bill Frist, they simply didn't have a good candidate (or perhaps their only good candidate, Fred Thompson, was fast asleep when the possibility came calling). The weakness for the conservative movement lay not so much in its base and motivating voters as in its leadership.

Part of that is just accident- had Allen not had his Maccaca moment or not faced Jim Webb in Virginia he might be the presumptive Republican nominee now. Whether there is something deeper I'm not sure- it might be that the conservative movement, naturally an oppositionalist movement has found government over the last eight years a fissaporous experience and will find renewed unity in 2012 against say a McCain Presidency or a Democratic Presidency. Or we could be seeing the effect of a quick primary season- given another two or three months the conservatives might have found their guy. The quick Primary season did not leave enough time for Conservatives to unite behind an anti McCain guy having decided which of their men they liked the most. All could be true. But what I think is definitely true is that the conservatives in the US in this election didn't lack for the troops and footsoldiers, they lacked for a plausible general to follow. In the South they marched for Huckabee, everywhere else for Romney and thanks to the East and West General McCain stormed to victory!

Britblog

I apologise for not doing this yesterday- other things drove it out of my mind! Anyway here we are today with a more limited and yet still illustrious list of posts from the UK blogosphere. We cover a whole range of experience here from the 17th to the 20th Century. Anyway to kick off how about reading James Hamilton's views on Capello's managment style- interesting and thoughtful as ever. Capello may be adopting a distant style to his players, but as Dave Cole points out the Tories are adopting a much more nannying style to the country. Freemania suspects though that the Tories themselves may need some nannying: is Cameron really only just about as good as Kinnock? Who cares anyway? From the desk of George Galloway we have the greatest attack on Imperialist scum ever delivered- may they die in their own individual Trotskyite, Zinovievist, Bukharanist, revisionist running dog hells!

But if they don't it doesn't matter, as they'll start blogging and end up in a legal fight: Mr Eugenides seeks to adjudicate in the latest battle betwixt Tim Ireland and Guido Fawkes. Calm down lads, the real idiocy is about the issues (as I said yesterday), Matt Sinclair's got a bee in his bonnet about the latest paper from the Social Market foundation on climate change- he isn't too impressed. Incidentally happy birthday Matt- for a two year old you are quite articulate. Don Paskini is another articulate lad concerned with issues, this week its sharing the proceeds of growth and how the Tories don't even understand their own policies! And that's good as it means that you don't have to attend SOAS, where the Iranians are putting on conferences funded with our public money- go to Harry's Place and see what you can do about it. Or rather don't, because society is going to pot anyway and its all religion's fault: we've been having the argument over at Liberal Conspiracy, go and start with Kate Belgravia's provocative and well written post on why Jesus Christ should dominate our politics less. Thing is that Kate should calm down, afterall look at what all those Muslims gave us in the Middle Ages: modern science and all- not convinced- well time to bring on the historians!

And here they come, leaping like a herd of wilderbeast through some savannah forest. First up is that classic civil war debate between Pepper and Puddle the two dogs- canine confusion becomes a metaphor for other debates. On a more illustrious subject, the Early Modern Whale circles around the Old Cheapside Cross and finds out what he can about its history. Some of us though are only too depressed by the present, its hard to avoid when you here that the bulbs are coming up even earlier than usual in Kew Gardens. But not everything is depressing- and ending on a high note- just consider the Political Umpire's tale of these two human beings whose bodies are joined together.

So long till next time I host the carnival- sorry for a short one- but I hope there is something there to savour!

Anne Coulter's Endorsement

Anne Coulter, American Conservative extraordinaire, endorses Hillary as the next President of the United States should McCain win the Republican Nomination- she even commits to campaign for her if McCain is the candidate....

Robert Fisk's review of Fisk's biography of Saddam Hussein

You read the title right: here is Robert Fisk's review of his own biography of Saddam Hussein. Well not quite his own. Though Fisk has a biography of Saddam Hussein published in Egypt, it isn't actually by him, its a forgery, published by an enterprising journalist who had heard of Fisk's leftwing reputation and thought he should have written a biography of Saddam Hussein. Fisk's article is hilarious as he traces this man across Cairio but it brings up for me something even more interesting which is this. We often presume on the internet that we have our identities set in stone and the real danger is that people will snoop on what we write from afar and find out that we are secret conservatives or something. I think that's the wrong danger- though it exists- I wonder whether one of the more interesting internet problems over the next couple of years as blogging matures will be identity theft. Tim Ireland has drawn attention to the problem of sock puppetting on the internet- but I think there are more egregious things to come. Take Iain Dale, the reason I advance Iain is because of his electoral ambitions, it would be perfectly possible for someone to fake an identity as Iain Dale on the internet and start commenting on various blogs in his guise giving electorally embarrassing posts- the same goes for any politician blogging from Paul Flynn and Harry Barnes to Nadine Dorries and John Redwood. Trademark theft on the internet is an interesting issue: I'll be fascinated to see how it develops- especially given what Fisk rightly says about the difficulties of enforcing trademarks in various countries.

Guido

I know its a hackneyed subject- but Guido posted his own manifesto for the reasons for his blogging and I thought I'd reply and I have here.

McCain a Democrat?

Not all Republicans are happy with John McCain. Some even compare him to Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, and call him a populist hawk.