More on Iran's role in Iraq

11:01pm

Many of those who advocate for an early withdrawal from Iraq argue that Iran can be persuaded to play a constructive role there. But all of Iran’s actions suggest that it wishes to keep peace from breaking out in its neighbouring state. As General Petraeus told the BBC today:  

“The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example... were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said, adding that the groups that fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force.

"All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts." 

Iran is a state with hegemonic ambitions that is happy to use terrorist proxies to achieve its aims. A premature withdrawal from Iraq would be an invitation to it to expand its sphere of influence. 

 

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The world must not forget Tibet

2:41pm

The New York Times has a great tick-tock on the riots in Tibet, it is the best thing I’ve read yet on what has gone on there these past few days. Intriguingly, the police initially backed away from confrontation with the protesters perhaps because of a desire to avoid reminding the world just what kind of regime China is ruled by so close to the Olympics.

However, this Chinese passivity did not last long:

“The Chinese authorities have also confirmed that army troops had arrived in Lhasa by March 15, saying their role was limited to traffic control and securing military property. But many people question if some of those troops were involved in the crackdown. Several armored vehicles had their license plates removed or covered in white paper.

Mr. Miles noticed that many of the People’s Armed Police officers actually appeared to be wearing irregular uniforms. One military analyst who studied photographs of the scene concluded that some armored vehicles belonged to an elite military unit. Witnesses reported hearing the sounds of gunshots throughout that Saturday afternoon.”

The press blackout the Chinese have imposed means that we are unsure of what the current situation in Tibet is and without information or pictures interest in the story could rapidly dwindle. But it is essential that we do not forget Tibet. The relative restraint that China has shown demonstrates that it is not impervious to international pressure, especially with the Olympics close at hand. Continuing interest in the story will, hopefully, act as a check on Chinese actions in Tibet as well as offering some protection to those Chinese intellectuals brave enough to question the Beijing government’s version of events.  

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The cost of living under Brown

11:46am

The Conservatives have today published one of the best pieces of research I have seen them do in some time – a “cost of living” report to coincide with David Cameron campaigning in London today. Following on from a spread in The Sun last week, it focuses on what inflationary pressure means to families. Butter: up 37%. Eggs: up 34%. Bread: up 28%. Milk: up 17%. All since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. Can we blame Brown for such high inflation? Not really. But this blows a hole in his risible claims to be providing record low inflation.
 
With this research the Tories are brilliantly exploiting Del Brown’s addiction to statistical chicanery. We explain his various inflation tricks in Brownie no1. He gets away with his “Brownies” when the public is none the wider (i.e., extent of national debt etc). But when he claims to have achieved low inflation while the cost of groceries is soaring the public starts to smell a large, whiskered rat. The wider Tory point is this: you’re suffering, we understand, yet Brown claims you’ve never had it so good so he can’t be trusted. For as long as the PM is addicted to fake figures which jar with people’s experience, he is wide open to this powerful charge.

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Is the new Brown team compatible with the old one?

6:34pm

Gordon Brown’s new team at Number Ten have received rave reviews. Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer today points out how cabinet ministers who were in despair before Christmas have been given hope by the new Downing Street operation while Fraser has—in these pages—warned the Conservatives not to underestimate the new Brown machine. But this new Brown team can only work if it can come to an accommodation with the old Brown crew; something which Gaby Hinsliff’s masterful piece in today’s Observer suggests is some way off.

If any of Brown’s new hires walk away before the election it will be seen as a sign that Brown is done for. As one senior government source told Hinsliff, 'Gordon can't allow Stephen to walk away, it would reflect on him. People would say he was impossible to work with'. Equally, the old Brownites are unlikely to take kindly to being squeezed out now that they have reached the summit: Douglas Alexander must have been seething to read his political obituary in The Observer this morning while those who have been with Brown for years won’t be thrilled by the new boy Stephen Carter moving into the office of the recently departed Spencer Livermore, the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing the marriage table never goes down well.  

So, the nightmare for Brown is that his old guard start briefing against and trying to force out his new recruits. After all, the original Brownites spent a decade honing their skills at fighting their own side and it is hard to believe that the PR execs and ad men who Brown has hired would be any match for them once the back stabbing starts. Labour people are already thinking along these lines, with one former minister telling Hinsliff, 'I am not sure [Carter is] going to last'.

The challenge for Brown is to persuade his old loyalists not to seen the new recruits as a threat and to get the new hires to appreciate that they can’t start things from scratch however much they may want to. If Brown can’t do this, these much heralded changes will accelerate his fall rather than giving him a second chance. 

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Brain dead liberals

2:26pm

 The reaction from the liberal-left to David Mamet's confession that he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal" has been strangely muted -- and often hilariously ludicrous. The most priceless piece of bien pensant thinking comes, naturally, from Michael Billington, the Guardian's tedious, right-on theatre critic.
 
"I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right," says the poor dear. "What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position."
 
Let's just unravel the massive self-regarding hypocrisy behind that statement. As long as Mamet was writing plays from Billington's liberal-left perspective, he was a beacon of free-thinking insight and judgement. Now that he's thrown off his liberal-left ideological blinkers, he's "locking himself into a rigid ideological position".
 
With that sort of logic you wonder why Billington has survived for three decades as a theatre critic -- but then you remember it is The Guardian he writes for. His remarks are all the more absurd because, if you read Mamet's Damascene conversion in The Village Voice it is clear that he's not swapping his left-wing ideological straitjacket for a right-wing one -- he's just moved more to the free-thinking centre.
 
But for Billington et al, that constitutes a "rigid ideological position". Consider this from The Independent (yes, it still exists, though nobody much notices): it worries that "so complex and profound and gifted playwright should now seek to reduce his own work and his own politics to simple concepts". It's another Billingtonism: write from a left-wing perspective and you're profound, complex, gifted. Move to the centre or centre-right and you're the village idiot.
 
It is only one more sign of the solipsistic bankruptcy of today's pseudo-intellectual Left, in which ego has replaced brain. But we knew that already. What Mamet is about the find out the hard way is that when you renege on the Left, they hate you with all the venom and fury of an Islamist chasing an apostate. He should expect some very, very bad reviews from now on.

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If Cameron isn't careful, Brown will outflank him on education reform

11:53am

The Spectator recently ran a letter from Lord Adonis saying the Swedish schools revolution which I said David Cameron would bring to Britain was in fact being delivered under Labour. Huh, I thought, keep telling yourself that - if it makes this whole Brown thing better for you. But today I picked up my local newspaper to find a striking splash: two City Academies run by Kunskapsskolan, the Swedish company I interviewed for my cover piece, are coming to my borough.
 
Things move quickly. Just last month Per Ledin, the head of Kunskapsskolan, was in his office asking me: “City Academies? What kind of a beast are those?” Now he’s saying “I’ll take two, please”. Under the new Brown system, the “sponsor” doesn’t have to stump up the £2m cash so it’s an easily-arranged, basic management contract. Weirdly, Labour doesn’t mind companies making a profit from managing schools – just as long as someone else is making a loss from owning them. Kunskapsskolan is putting its toe in the market.
 
So if Cameron ever gets around to selling what I regard as the best policy he has (he remains unconvinced there is much political capital in it), then Labour has a ready response. Swedish schools, mate? Catch up. We’re already there. It wouldn’t surprise me if as Cameron umms and aahs, Labour starts to use this schools policy as an election weapon.
 
Of course, the Tory policy remains superior. There is no new school opening in my area, just an old one under the old management. The City Academy scheme does little to open up the supply side and give parents choice – without it there will be no market, and today’s scandalous system where schools choose pupils rather than vice versa will continue. There are only something like 82 Academies out of 3,500 secondaries: I’ll be one of the lucky parents.
 
Also, millions are being spent on these new schools as per the Brown-Balls cash fixation. They remain wedded to the 1970s Grange Hill model of education, where schools are standalone buildings of about 1,000 pupils, for administrative convenience. The Swedish model is a true social market system, which allocates cash according to the priorities of parents. So its new schools usually occupy office buildings (and on average have fewer than 200 pupils). Parents don’t care how grand the building is, and would rather the money was spent on teachers and education. In this way, new schools can open in a jiffy. It will take years for the rebuilding of the two City Academies outlined in my newspaper.
 
Kunskapsskolan, Edutrust, Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) and other education providers are now ideally positioned to take advantage of the new Tory system that would allow them to expand rapidly. But as the new Tory system remains pretty much a secret shared by Spectator readers and a few Westminster villagers, it will be quite easy for Brown to claim he is the real reformer.

Brown now has in No10 people like Jennifer Moses, an evangelist for supply-side education reform and an ARK trustee. She had clashed previously with Balls over the speed at which City Academies should be rolled out. Now she’s in the No10 Policy Unit and thus far better-able to make her case.
 
Like many parents, I spend an absurd amount of time thinking about how my son will be educated. My prospects have today become brighter, thanks to Labour placing one of my local schools in the hands of a respected international education provider.  Until now, I have been unable to name anything this government has done for me. Now, I can. It would be churlish of me to deny it. On the way out of interviewing Per Ludin I joked with him “please come open a school in Richmond.” He has: under Labour.
 
At a time when party loyalties have never been weaker, the election will come down to a basic question of retail politics: “what will Party X do for me.” I would say to Cameron that schools policy is an answer. If he plants the seed in the head of people now they will think “Under a Tory government, my local church will open a new primary” or some such. He could talk to schools groups and say “Here’s the Dutch education provider, it would open three schools in York.” Parents would have a hard reason to vote Tory. Yet as I say in my News of the World column today, radical ideas take at least two years to gestate. They need to be sold, with force and with focus. Adonis has plenty of both. As Brown becomes more Blairite, his instinct for political survival may tell him that Adonis’ proposal will win votes. With a new, improved machine in No10, Brown may yet claim the “Swedish schools” agenda for himself.

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The Embryology Bill, cui bono?

5:46pm

A guest blog from Nadine Dorries, MP. 

The Human Tissue and Embryology Bill will be the show of the year in Parliament.

The amendments I and others will lay down to reduce the upper limit at which abortion takes place from 24 weeks will be controversial and explosive. I had been concerned that this debate would overshadow other serious issues in the Bill, such as animal-human embryo hybrids, but then I hadn't counted on Cardinal Keith O'Brien. 

Cardinal O’Brien has not always been my favourite Cardinal; I have disagreed with him in the past. However, his typically forthright views have successfully grabbed the media’s attention at a time when we needed it most—immediately prior to the introduction of the Bill.

The Cardinal will say in his Easter Sunday sermon that the Bill "represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life."He is absolutely right, but what is really monstrous is that the Bill ever saw the light of day in the first place.

It is a complete mystery to those who know that other methods of research are now available to develop treatments for those diseases which will supposedly benefit from cloning embryos. Take umbilical cord cell collection, which was recently highlighted by David Burrowes MP. The science has moved on in a way which is far less invasive and controversial.

Like most things which pop up in Parliament and appear to have no rhyme or reason to them, just follow the money and all becomes clear: the Bill is a win for the biotechnology industry and lobby groups. Let's hope reason and belief triumph by third reading.

Nadine Dorries is a Conservative MP.

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Merci beaucoup, Msr. Sarkozy

1:14pm

Next week, Gordon Brown will meet with Nicolas Sarkozy at the home of French football. And, according to early reports, Sarkozy will come bearing a few petits cadeaux – among which will be an Anglo-French agreement to construct a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Why should we regard a mutual agreement as a gift from the French? Because we have so much more to gain from it than they have. After all, whilst our Government has spent the past decade pumping money into ineffectual wind power, the French have steamed ahead with nuclear energy. Around 79% of France's electricity comes from nuclear power; and they have some of the most advanced technology and expert technicians in the world. By contrast, Britain's nuclear power plants are out-of-date and dilapidated, and our best technicians have departed for more nuclear-friendly shores. An injection of French expertise is exactly what Brown needs to meet his nuclear power ambitions.

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The funding muddle

11:48am

The issue of party funding is going to run and run with the parties still nowhere near an agreement on it. In an interview with the Telegraph today, Francis Maude makes an astonishing charge about the opaqueness of trade union funding for Labour:

"It's a racket, there are two unions which declare more members paying the political levy than they have members."

If Maude is right, then this is a huge scandal.

The Tories, however, will never be on firm political ground on party funding while Lord Ashcroft’s tax status remains unclear. Maude tells the Telegraph he has “no idea” whether Ashcroft does pay tax in the UK and that Ashcroft’s tax status is a “matter for him.” But the public clearly has a right to know whether a member of the House of Lords and a deputy chairman of the Conservative party is paying UK tax in full or not.

If the Tories want to be able to go after Labour for its excessive dependence on the unions, then they will have to resolve the Ashcroft question first.

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Iran's role in Iraq

6:34pm

This week’s Time has an important piece on Iran’s role in training, funding and arming the insurgency in Iraq. What one Shiite fighter told Time illustrates just how much Iran is responsible for the levels of violence in Iraq:

“Ali's own training in Iran came in late 2005, when he says he and a group of roughly 14 other Iraqis drove to the southern city of Amarah, near the Iranian border. Everything had been arranged through contacts in Syria and Lebanon, where he and his group had fled for a time trying to avoid capture by American forces. According to Ali, a convoy of new sport utility vehicles with drivers speaking only broken Arabic was waiting for them in Amarah. Soon the group was on the road east for a five-hour drive. The destination was an Iranian training facility, where instructors told the recruits not to speak to anyone but them. "We saw a lot of really strange people, a lot of men wearing very long beards," Ali says.

Ali and four others were given training in advance explosives with both lectures and hands-on practice. The course was done in 45 days. At the end, a handler talked to each of them separately and gave them a phone number to call in Iraq. Ali was given $10,000 in cash, he said, with a handler telling him the money was meant to support his efforts.

"I was shocked," says Ali, who sat for an interview with TIME on the southern outskirts of Baghdad. "I never dreamed I would hold $10,000 in my hands." The starter money, however, was only a "drop in the sea." Ali says he continues to phone for funds with the contacts he made in Iran and that his group has conducted two successful roadside bomb attacks against American forces operating north of Baghdad.”

This should give pause to those who argue that the Iran problem is the Bush administration not Iran. Tehran’s willingness to hand-off weapons to terrorists despite the risk of them being traced back to Iran shows just why Iran can not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. 

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