News values in question

Former Sun political editor George Pascoe-Watson told MediaGuardian yesterday he was "born with a Sun hat on ... I don't think you could really do politics for the Sun without instinctively feeling it in your gut".

But, as John Rentoul reports, Pascoe-Watson's gut instinct appears to be that The Sun's attack on the Prime Minister's over his letter of condolence to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan is unfair. He agreed with The Independent's editorial, and acknowledged that The Sun's sustained attack on the PM risks misreading the public mood.

That view is shared by many bloggers across the political spectrum: several on the right appear to agree with Letters from a Tory, while LibDem Mark Reckons questions the Sun's decision to report and publish online a recording of the phone call between the Prime Minister and the soldier's mother. (I have not listened to the recording and do not intend to do so).

The initial attack also seemed to overlook Brown's damaged eyesight, as Sue Arnold and many others have noted.

The general view appears to be that turning this story of the letter and the family's reaction to it into a sustained 24/7 media frenzy is distasteful, and also reflects poorly on the broadcast media who have promoted the issue to the top of their bulletins.

Nadine Dorries MP, usually among the most partisan of Tory backbenchers and who herself criticised an earlier Brown letter over the McBride-Draper affair, agrees, tweeting this morning that:

Just politely turned down i v with Jeremy Vine. Time to get over the letter me thinks and after all, I'm the worlds worst speller.

I think we might call that a very broad consensus in favour of an outbreak of common sense.

The case for libel reform

John Kampfner writes for Index on Censorship about today's publication of the Index on Censorship and English Pen inquiry into our libel laws: 'Free speech is not for sale'.

All civilised societies need libel laws. People are entitled to redress when maliciously and falsely impugned. But Britain’s laws are not equipped for 21st-century mass and immediate communication. Our laws pose a direct and deadly threat to free expression and the right to know.

The report's proposals are reported to include a £10,000 limit on libel damages, and that English courts should not hear cases unless 10% of a publication's circulation is in England to stop "libel tourism" taking advantage of Britain's relatively draconian laws.

(We will add a link to the report or a fuller summary when it is made available).

The Sunday Times yesterday reported that leading US newspaper publishers have written to the Commons Media Select Committee to say they are considering withdrawing print editions from sale in the UK due to the libel risk.

The Select Committee will report next month with its own recommendations.

Obama: I would go to Copenhagen to clinch deal

President Obama would attend December's Copenhagen summit if he believes his presence will make the difference in securing a meaningful agreeement. Reuters has this news tonight.

It is particularly good of the President to so quickly personally confirm Next Left's report on Saturday from our Global Change We Need conference on the possibility of a White House change of mind, following earlier White House statements that the President would not attend:

Obama said today:

"If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over edge then certainly that's something that I will do," Obama told Reuters in an interview.

Jennifer Palmieri of the influential Center for American Progress think-tank, speaking to Saturday's Fabian Global Change We Need conference, set out the case for the President attending and why she believed this remained an open issue within the administration.

It may yet not happen. The danger of returning empty handed twice from the Danish capital will worry the White House if a deal seems difficult to secure.

But this is the most positive statement yet. And the development will be welcomed by Gordon Brown, who has been advocating that heads of government do attend the summit.

Janet Daley redefines democracy

Let nobody underestimate what Janet Daley describes as her "visceral feelings" about the European Union. Yet, whether intentionally or not, she provides a marvellously honest encapsulation of the furious impotence of those who share what her "Euroscepticism of apocalyptic dimensions".

Am I satisfied with Mr Cameron's promise of a "referendum lock" on any future infringement of British sovereignty? No, I am not. It is hard to imagine, after Lisbon, what would count as a further substantive infringement of British sovereignty short of an army of Brussels Eurocrats staging a physical occupation of the Palace of Westminster. Am I convinced by his proposal to negotiate opt‑outs on the areas of EU law that materially damage Britain's economic and social life? No, I am not ...

So hadn't we better get out of this place, if its the last thing we ever do?

Erm, not quite.

... but nor do I believe that a referendum on leaving the EU altogether would be won by the "no" vote: the prospect of unilateral withdrawal would be too alarming to too many.

So it turns out that the fundamental block to Daley's argument of the need to recover our extinguished democracy is that she thinks most people disagree with her.

Damn that democracy!

So what's left?

even if your Euroscepticism is, like mine, of apocalyptic dimensions, I would seek to persuade you that voting Conservative is the only conceivable option in the next general election. Partly because Mr Cameron and William Hague genuinely agree with you and will actually dedicate themselves to unravelling what can be unravelled in the great European conspiracy against the people, but also because (dare I say it?) there are other important matters to be considered.

If, as Daley claims, all substantive sovereignty and power has now been extinguished, how on earth could there be? (And if cufflinks Cameron does agree with those who hate the EU, he is planning to have a funny, non-fight picking, way of showing it).

So I wonder if those who lived behind the Iron Curtain two decades ago might just find the conclusion offensive:

On Europe, our hope can only be that the peoples of the EU will one day walk out from under their oppressors, just as the people of the Warsaw Pact walked out from under theirs.

And, if you ever win that argument Janet, there is nothing whatsoever to stop us.

Let's not talk about progress

This is a guest post about today's Global Change We Need conference, from Paul Sagar, cross-posted from his Bad Conscience blog.

***

Today I attended the Fabian Society’s The Global Change We Need conference. With an impressive performance from David Miliband kicking things off and two excellent debates, it was a day well spent.

However, during the exchanges one thing kept coming up again and again: the issue of what progressives want to bring about, of how to encourage the wider population to accept progressive goals. The final debate was even called “Progressive Economy: How to get there”.

This P word. We need to talk about it.

First off some etymology. The word “progressive” entered the leftist vocabulary of self-definition when the American right did a successful hatchet job on the word “liberal”. It’s an American import, and the product of a very American political history.

That “progressive” is a response to a hatchet job is instructive about the way the word is now used: as a fluff term which is warm, cuddly, nice-sounding and most importantly, vague. After all, nobody’s against “progress”, or in favour of regression are they? You can’t be attacked for wanting “progress” because surely everyone agrees that – the world being the nasty place it is – making progress is a good thing. That’s what progress means, right?

Well perhaps it is, though the philosophers out there are likely to be pretty sceptical. But let’s ignore the philosophical deep waters, and worry about this instead. When we’re all talking in fluff-terms about “progress”, we’re not talking about these things: redistribution, equality, fairness, tax justice, the role of the state in correcting the market, gender and race rights, and all those other issues which were central to what used to go by the name of “the left”.

Instead, we talk about being “progressives” and our wonderful “progressive” goals, shying away from stating what those goals might actually be or how they might be brought about. In turn, we don’t argue for them, but rather leave the traditional goals of the left as implied by what “progressivism” is vaguely gestured to involve, for fear of making the horses bolt.

Except here’s the catch. Because “progress” is a fluff term which itself doesn’t mean anything, anyone can use it. And they do. That’s why David Cameron has claimed that the Conservatives are not only compassionate but progressive. It’s why Nick Clegg declared that the Lib Dems are now the true home of British progressives. Because nobody is against progress, and because it doesn’t mean anything and simply invokes vague feelings of warm fussiness, the term is co-opted by opponents, and can’t carry any meaning for those in favour of the ideals listed above.

Perhaps even worse, use of the term may not just hollow out the left and hand useful rhetorical ploys to opponents, it may also be self-destructive. Barack Obama campaigned under vague terms like “Change”, “Hope” and “Yes we can!”, driven forth by the enthusiastic masses of American “progressives”. But a year down the line, he finds himself with an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, a broken economy, and healthcare reforms that teeter on the edge of disaster. If Obama’s presidency fails to live up to the (unrealistic) hopes it raised, what will become of the concept of being a “progressive” in (American) politics? Without any sort of stated ideology to fall back on – egalitarianism, collectivism, social justice or whatever – the whole thing will look like the vague fluff it arguably always was. No prizes for guessing which party will suddenly find itself easing back into power.

So, The Global Change We Need? To stop using the damn P word, and have the courage of our convictions to actually say what we believe, and say why we’re right. If that means long, difficult and complex thinking about what equality, justice, fairness and the rest mean in the 21st Century, then good, let’s have that debate. Better that than the vacuous fluff of “progress”.

By Paul Sagar

Why Obama may yet go to Copenhagen

Barack Obama could yet decide to attend the Copenhagen climate summit, Jennifer Palmieri of the Center for American Progress told the Fabian Change We Need conference in London.

The Center for American Progress is an independent progressive think-tank, which is seen as probably the most influential with the Obama administration.

Asked from the audience whether Obama should attend, Palmieri was sympathetic to the call and said she was surprised that the White House said he did not plan to attend: her view was that the possibility remained an open debate within the administration, which remained strongly committed to progress being made at the summit.

Palmieri stressed that there was an awareness of the importance of progress at Copenhagen for winning a central US domestic political argument about the importance of climate change, as well as to promote an international deal.

"If people see Copenhagen as a failure, that will really set us back politically", she said.

"But last time he went, it didn't turn out so good", she noted, referring to Chicago's failed bid for the Olympic Games decided in the same city.

Shifting opinion on climate change and healthcare needed to be seen as part of a much broader task shared by the Obama administration and the broader US progressive movement:

"We just came out of a conservative era. It ended with Hurricane Katrina and with the reaction to the Iraq war. But this was a thirty year arc. It started with Nixon. Clinton was a brief respite. There is a really big argument about how progressives start a new progressive era, not eight years of

That means engaging the American people in a totally different frame of reference - and that is how we need to embark on a long-term change".

David Miliband: Can't yet tell whether Cameron EU policy is meaningless or dangerous

There are two possible criticisms which pro-European political opponents might make of David Cameron's new European Union policy - one that it is meaningless; the other that it is dangerous. Which will the Labour government argue?

I wanted to find out which way the Foreign Secretary would jump on this choice, when chairing his keynote session to the Fabian Change We Need conference.

And Miliband won laughter from his audience for saying:

"Its either meaningless or dangerous and we don't know which. Neither of those is a good policy. So we need the Conservatives to come clean on whether it is a meaningless or a dangerous policy. But, until you do, you can expect your opponents to attack it as both - which is what we plan to do".

If the Sovereignty Act was simply a symbolic bill, then it could be seen as meaningless. On the other hand, if it was substantive, it could threaten the basis of British membership of the EU.

"Because of the 1972 Act, Parliament has decided that European law has supremacy. On the single market, thank goodness for that, because you can't have a single market where everybody picks and chooses their own rules. But Parliament can change that, by choosing to leave the European Union. We have Parliamentary Sovereignty in this country. So if the Bill is just to restate that, then it may well be meaningless. But if it is meant to make it possible for Parliament to overturn European Law then it is dangerous, because it would be incompatible with the membership of a club with rules which you can't rewrite on your own".

Similarly, Miliband argued that the policy of seeking to open a new round of intergovernmental conferences to rewrite the Treaties could prove meaningless, since it depended on an agreement from other countries both to begin the talks and for all 27 countries to agree the results of a new policy.

But there was also a danger in such a policy, he argued, because there would be a loss of British influence on central issues in the EU:

"If that is how we choose to focus British engagement, then we are not focusing on issues of enlargement, of the budget, and of climate".

I tend mainly towards the 'meaningless' camp. David Cameron's main objective seems to have been the 'long grass' approach of winning five years breathing space from a deeply Eurosceptic party. Ken Clarke seems to be content that it will be a 'meaningless' version of the Sovereignty Act. Beyond sceptical symbolism at home, it seems likely the meat of the policy is being content with living with Lisbon, while attempting to negotiate for changes at the margin, while not picking any 'big European fight'.

But a meaningless policy may contain little political threat. So will the Conservatives' opponents instead stress the dangers of marginalising British influence in Europe be the central message? Their new EU alliances, with almost no west European allies, marginalising the Conservatives from the Merkel-Sarkozy mainstream of the European right provides evidence for this side of the argument.

Miliband does make a strong argument that there is a major opportunity cost to making these politically-led "renegotiations" the focus of Britain's engagement with its EU partners. (Is the balance or content of British/EU employment and social policy the central issue? Should a 'repatriated' British policy should be enormously different in terms of the content of employment rights? If you thought so, you might think Cameron had the right priority).

That seems to me a correct analysis - and the substantive cost of a meaningless policy - but it may prove harder to turn that 'opportunity cost' policy and diplomatic, even if valid, into a clear public political message.