The Crossed Pond

My dear merkin friends,

I know it has been some time since my last letter and I apologise for not corresponding regularly enough. However, my latest letter will be short and sweet because it is already written. You see, “Big Brother” in dear old Blighty wants to get get even bigger, but thankfully it will never work in the way he would like it too.

Should you be wondering what I am referring to, then may I take the opportunity to direct you to my Op-Ed piece that appears in The Times of London today.

Warmest regards

Dizzy

Yes yes yes, I know, it’s been so long since I wrote anything, but let’s be honest, this is England and I’ve been stuck on the train after there was the “wrong kind of snow” on the tracks. The political world in Westminster is a buzz though, and my letter today is even more poignant given the timing.

You see my dear merkin cousins, our very dour, and mildly odd Prime Minister is coming to visit you. Yes, he’s having lots of meetings about the credit crunch. These are not “crisis meetings” though. Downing Street has made that very clear.

There is no reason to panic at the fact that our housing market is 20% over-valued. There is no reason to be worrying that our budget deficit is one of the largest in the G7. There is no reason to panic that during a time of recession the Prime Minister’s last budget as Chancellor has just doubled income tax for 5 million of the lowest paid in society.

Everything is perfectly peachy in jolly ol’ England and don’t you let anyone tell you any different. You just listen to the Scot telling you how great he is, and how very “special” our relationship is with you. Were it not for the fear of libel I might even say it was so special that he wants to touch you…… there.

What’s the buzz though? The buzz is leadership challenges. Oh yes! You see, you probably won’t see this played out in the US press whilst the Supreme Leader visits, but over this side of the pond all anyone can talk about right now is “when will he go?”

This isn’t an Opposition thing either. It’s not like us Tories asking when Brown will sod off would make the news. That’s what our job is. No, this is his own side doing it. You see, in politics there is a cliche. Your opponents are in front of you, your enemies are behind you, and boy did the cliche come true over the past week.

We have had rumours that the Minister of Justice said he was ready to punch the Supreme Leader’s heir apparent in Cabinet, the Minister of Children, School and Families (we don’t mention “Education” anymore, get with the picture!). Then we had the “Olympics Minister” (yes we really have one) saying that the tax issue previously mentioned was a problem.

Then over the weekend we had lots of former ministers and Blairites whispering that it was all going to dogs and that fatalism had set in amongst a Government resigned to the fact that they would lose the next election. Rumours abound about a ’stalking horse’ leadership bid of the Labour Party too.

Everything boils down to May 1st when Gordon Brown faces his first big test. Local elections across the country and the Mayoralty of London election. The incumbent, Ken Livingstone is going against the Tory Boris Johnson, who I should add paid for lunch for me so I have to be nice to him (I’m not easily bought OK!).

If, as is expected, the Labour Party suffer serious defeats in a few weeks there are rumours that a push against Brown may occur. The meme that he is a ditherer who cannot make a decision other than to set up a “policy review” is gaining traction. A recent poll of 100 Westminster opinion formers showed that 90% thought he was an electoral liability.

Yes my dear dear merkin friends, there is a sea change going on in the home country right now. We have the highest tax burden per capita ever, the Government lurches from one crisis to the next, and throughout we are led by a man who has the decisiveness of a snail on acid.

Arguably, the only thing that he is decisive about is that he will be a fighter to the bitter end. The Mother of the Free (accept those unfree of course like proles, slaves, or americans) is in for an interesting 2008 in politics. Oh yes!

Warmest regards from your London correspondent

Dizzy

Yes yes, I know it’s meant to be a Letter from London, but, whilst I am in London, it’s really a Letter from Strasbourg, because, to be honest, that was where some significant political action was today. For today, the European Parliament of the European Union voted upon whether the Treaty of Lisbon (formally the EU Constitutional Treaty but the font was changed and they removed three lines after it was rejected in a referendum in France and tried again with a new name) should be allowed to go to the member states of the EU for ratification.

If you’re wondering why this is significant it’s because the Treaty of Lisbon is a monstrous document. Every EU country bar the one “controlled” in London accepts it is the Constitutional Treaty by another name you see. What does that mean? well unlike the sheer beauty and simplicity that is the US Constitution, the EU version runs to literally hundreds of pages (the new one is shorter because they changed the font size – that is not a joke, it really happened), it’s also unreadable to most, it confers rights upon us rather than layering out what the rights of the state are. Crucially though, and this is the killer, it is a self-amending treaty.

What does that mean? It means no more treaties. Once ratified the EU gains the power to strip power to an ever greater unaccountable and some might say almost Soviet centre without ever having to gain approval from all the members of the club. This might sound familiar to my Southern brothers, because, like the Civil War, opposition to this treaty is like the fight for state rights in a union of states. So now that you have the background to the treaty you can understand a little of what it is all about. The last time this issue rose (back when it was still called a Constitution) each political party promises a referendum on the issue as a manifesto promise. Now the Labour Government is reneging on that promise.

The UK Government’s line you see is that it’s a totally different document altogether and there are now multiple campaigns to have a referendum. The problem is they’re too scared of what the answer will be. You see, when a population says “No” it slows things down and they have to come back again and again asking the question until they get a “Yes”. Far easier to just deny the opportunity. Today in Strasbourg the Independent and Democracy Group of MEPs tried to deny it, and some rather odd scenes occurred.

For a start, there were three people dressed as chicken and many people wearing t-shirt saying “to chicken to have a referendum?” on them. What did the European Parliament do? Sent the security guards that’s what. Over ten of them to deal with party political staff protesting in chicken suits and wearing yellow jumpers. The lovely Trixy was told she couldn’t go through the building unless she removed her jumper. When she said she had nothing on underneath they let her go.

European Parliament security staff also said that it was explicitly in the rules that you could not be in the Parliament buildings whilst dressed as a chicken. Honestly, they really did. No joke. They rowed back from it when they were asked to show where the rule said that. It gets worse though, one journalist allegedly was told that the filming of dissent was forbidden in the European Parliament. Yes that’s right, you’re not allowed to film dissent. That’s what the Politburo decreed. Sorry, did I say Politburo? Sorry, strike that from the record.

Of course, you lovely Atlantic cousins may wonder why you cannot see this on the BBC website. Well that is because the dear old Beeb’s flagship news agenda setting programme of the day made an editorial decision that reporting the work of the European Parliament on a treaty that some might say is the beginning of the end of democracy in Europe is not important enough.

Kindly yours,

Dizzy

Dear Merkins,

I’m ever so sorry that it has taken so long for me to write this letter but unfortunately politics has run away with itself in the UK. Once upon a time a Conservative Prime Minister called Harold Macmillan, when pressed about why his best intentions had been thwarted uttered the now timeless words, “EVENTS DEAR BOY! – EVENTS!”. For it is events that will get you in politics not necessarily your policy.

This is a lesson that the current Prime Minister Gordon Brown is now learning to his cost. When he rowed back from the General Eleection fever and said he wanted to set out his “vision” a month or so ago it was a bad moment for him, but the next six weeks were key to his future. If events went his way then he would be alright, if they didn’t he would be…. well he would be screwed.

And ‘Lo, it came to pass. Six weeks of plague upon the House of Labour and the House of Brown. It began with the news that the Government’s figures on the number of immigrants entering the country were below reality by hundreds of thousands. They corrected them. Then it transpired that their correction was still wrong. They corrected it again.

Then last week it was revealed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Finance Minister and considered Number Two) that Her Majestys Revenue and Customs (the IRS) had copied 25 million records from a database onto a cd, including names, addresses, childrens names and bank details and popped it in the post. The cd never arrived. A strike at the heart of the very competence of Government at a time when identity theft and fraud is ever increasing.

Could it get any worse? Well it did this last weekend. A stroy broke saying that the Labour Party of which the Prime Minister leads had accepted over $1 million dollars in donations from a businessman through secret intermediaries. This action is a criminal offence under the very law created by the Labour Government a few years previously. The General Secretary of the Labour party resigned when he admitted he knew about it, and they hoped that was the end of it.

But in the last few days the plot thickened ever so slighty. It transpired that the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman had accepted money from the same intermediary for her deputy leadership election campaign. Last night she made a statement saying that Downing Street aides from the Prime Minister’s personal campaign pointed her in the direction of the intermediary – the “if I’m going down I’m taking others with me” strategy for all to see.

A few hours earlier to her statement the Evening Standard newspaper ran a story implicating the Prime Minister’s chief fundraiser as someone involved in a cover-up of secert donations even though he had publicly said the opposite. Legal threats were made and the paper stood by its story saying its source was good.

Who could the source be? Well late yesterday afternoon I learned that a prominent Parliamentary supporter of the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party was seen dining withthe journalist that wrote the story in a very expensive restaurant in Westminster the previous night. The briefing circus had clearly come alight and the knives were not only being sharpened but stabbed in the backs of colleagues in the hope of taking some other out at the same time.

As the evening progressed, the Electoral Commission (who monitor donations) said that they had passed the matter to the Police. The Police then made a statement that a full-scale investigation into Downing Street and the Labour Party would begin. Less than a few months since the Police were knocking on the door of Downing Street to interview Blair about the possible sales of seats in the Upper House they would be knocking again about dodgy donation in what is now becoming known as “Donorgate”.

The crisis for the Government is now unrolling at a pace that even experienced journalists as saying is extraordinary. New revelations are appearing thick and fast. Late last night another deputy leadership contender and member of the Cabinet, Peter Hain, admitted that he received a donation from the man from Downing Street implicated in a cover-up and failed to register it. The Government is quite simply falling apart.

I shall bring you more news soon.

Yours excited and amused,

Dizzy