“Labour Slashed Crime!”

Labour didn’t cut crime. Labour slashed crime. But don’t take my word for it; take the word of Simon Reed, Vice Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, speaking at the Progress conference on Saturday.

It deserves repeating as the name of the event was “Crime, Law and Order: Can Labour win the argument again?” According to this official representative of our rank and file police officers, “You didn’t cut crime, you slashed crime. You have a proud record.”

My photo of Simon Reed and Yvette Cooper at the event

We are aware that we saw a fall in crime during our 13 year tenure of office. We’re also aware that our policies were responsible for that fall.

“Labour Slashed Crime!”

Labour didn’t cut crime. Labour slashed crime. But don’t take my word for it; take the word of Simon Reed, Vice Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, speaking at the Progress conference on Saturday.

It deserves repeating as the name of the event was “Crime, Law and Order: Can Labour win the argument again?” According to this official representative of our rank and file police officers, “You didn’t cut crime, you slashed crime. You have a proud record.”

My photo of Simon Reed and Yvette Cooper at the event

We are aware that we saw a fall in crime during our 13 year tenure of office. We’re also aware that our policies were responsible for that fall.

Nasty Dave and the Coalition Cracks

The penultimate scene of the film “Force 10 from Navarone” concerns the bombing of a dam in Yugoslavia. At first, the dynamite appears to have done no damage, but within a few minutes, cracks in the dam emerge, and then the sheer weight of the water smashes the structure down into the valley.

After David Cameron turned the No2AV campaign into a personal attack on Nick Clegg and then won, but the dynamite made no cracks in the coalition. People argued that the Lib Dems had nowhere to go; they are weakened. It now seems that they are more dangerous exactly where they remain.

Execution, Regime Change, The Arab Spring

One was defiant as the noose was tightened around his neck. The other was shot in the face while still in his pyjamas. Comparing the execution of Osama Bin Laden with that of Saddam Hussein, we learn something about ourselves, and our wider attitude towards the policy of regime change.

Credit: flickr.com/photos/farshadebrahimi

There’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein was one of the great monsters of history. However, he was a conventional enemy and was treated with the conventional respect to a captured leader. He was arrested without a bullet being fired, put on trial by an Iraqi court, then hung by an Iraqi rope.

Although legally in the custody of Iraq, he was held by American guards who allowed him to tend a small garden in detention, and to write a letter to the Iraqi people before his execution. There was never any doubt that he was a fearless man, and his anger as he was physically dragged to the noose demonstrates this well.

Credit: flickr.com/photos/swanksalot

Osama bin Laden on the other hand was in his pyjamas when he was shot in the face, leaving him so disfigured that the photo could not be released. He was unarmed. The crime of Sept 11th happened on American soil, so there is no legal reason why a trial couldn’t happen in America. But there was no need of a trial. It was a summary execution. They wanted it that way.

Cable hints at return to Labour

He speaks well, but he speaks rubbish. However, Vince Cable’s surprise appearance at Fabian Fightback made for the most entertaining speech of the day.

He reminded us that he worked for John Smith in the late 1970s, and went on to speak of the division of the “progressive left” over the balancing of the budget deficit, all those years ago. He then skipped forward to the modern day and stated that the time has come for the division of the left to end.

To me, this came across as a heavy hint that Vince intends to join Labour. At the Q&A, your correspondent fruitlessly held up his hand, in the hope of pinning Mr Cable down with the direct question: “Words not action, Vince. Do you intend to join the Labour Party?”

Tories push for permanent split of Lib Dems

Speaking on R4 this morning Michael Portillo spoke of his hope that the Coalition will stand together at the next election.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wizziebob - Michael Portillo

His comment follows a point made by Michael Heseltine that the coalition parties need each other’s votes and that they would be likely to lose if they went for an election in the short or medium term.
Portillo’s remark is the first time a senior Conservative spokesman has suggested that a permanent splitting of the Liberal Democrats, although that is inevitably what he proposes.

R4 Today, LINK

The Lib Dem MPs who are in traditional Labour seats, such as Simon Hughes in Bermondsey and Old Southwark, may be safe due to their personal popularity, but if they were standing as de facto Conservatives they would face electoral defeat.

It therefore would become inevitable that the Liberal Democrats would have to split into Conservative and Labour sections and ally themselves with the bigger parties. Presumably, this would, over time, make the Lib Dem MPs effective members of these bigger parties, rather like Co-Op MPs are equal members of Labour.

This raises the question of how the Labour Party should respond.

The Lib Dem Collapse Scenario

There is such a wide expectation that the Lib Dems are facing meltdown on Thursday that we can expect them to claim a great success in anything that avoids a complete wipe-out. But how will they respond to the worst case scenario? What will happen to the coalition if the Lib Dem vote collapses spectacularly at this week’s polling day?

A political party that gets slaughtered in a local election would have to be suicidal to want to repeat the experience in a general election. So are they are stuck with the coalition?

It depends on what motivates them. They say that they are motivated by principle, so they must be willing to fall on their sword, leave the coalition, cause a general election, apologise for their error, and fight for their parliamentary seats.

Analysis: The Execution of Bin Laden

The problem was that he had got away with it. The world’s most notorious terrorist had slipped happily into relaxed retirement, and by doing so, had demonstrated the weakness of the western world and their inability to achieve justice.

Abbottabad

It was overdue, since the Arab spring marks a new era to that of Jihad. In many ways, Al-Qaeda have already defeated themselves. Killing the inspiration will add little to a war on terror, that is mostly over and done with.

However, it matters to history. The western weakness that his freedom demonstrated lay in the inability of massive science and technology to win against a single Muslim, Insha’Allah.