Service personnel more likely to become criminals

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It appears that research carried out by the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPO) has just revealed that more than 8,000 military veterans are locked up in British prisons for one reason or another. This equates to 1 in 11 of all prisoners. What should we make of these findings? Do they represent another example of the broken military covenant?

It is difficult to find figures for the proportion of the British population that are military veterans but it is around the 2-3% mark so that 9% of the prison population is ex-military is, indeed, a worrying statistic.

So, why is this happening?

Well, it doesn't take a genius to work it out. Soldiers, especially those that have served more recently are trained to be violent, albeit in a controlled military environment, and they experience great trauma and stress when on operations. This has two effects. First, they take this trauma home with them and as is often the case for anyone experiencing such trauma, they are more likely to be violent themselves. But, second, this violence alienates them from normal society as they prepare for and experience things normal people just cannot understand.

This alienation is experienced by all Service personnel to one degree or another and most deal with it easily enough. But for those that have experienced more stressful operations, this sense of alienation, separation from normal life, is compounded. Often, the only way to respond is by violence or the solace of drink and drugs. And with attitudes to alcohol still largely in line with much of Britain's overall attitude, British soldiers may well be more susceptible than our continental friends.

This response is similar to how many soldiers responded to their WW2 experiences, as they returned home only to find something missing that had been torn out during the war. Violence and petty criminality followed for a significant number.

But if we say this is another example of where the military covenant has broken down, what do we actually mean? Should we spend more money on proper rehabilitation after operations? Should we spend more on resettlement after Service personnel leave? Should we consider everyone for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment whether they display symptoms or not?

The answer to these questions is probably yes but there will always be those that argue there is something intrinsically rotten in the Armed Forces itself that is the root cause. After all, they have always had a violent, arrogant, abusive and bullying ethos and this is just the physical manifestation of that bad culture.

But this view is usually reserved for those who have never served or for those of weak character. The Services do have a robust and 'ready to do violence' culture but this is essential if they are to survive on the battlefield. Maybe, it is just one more price they have to pay in service. Maybe, there is no alternative.

Whilst Service personnel will always be at higher risk of trauma than the remainder of the population, more can be done to help. We can recognise the unique nature of military service and spend a little more. We can control commitments better so people are not bounced from one operation to another before they have had time to recover properly and we can probably do more to help them make the transition from military to civilian life when they finally leave.

But more than that, we can look a little deeper at the problem and ask ourselves not if the Services need to change but if the nation needs to change, at least to meet them half way. As an ex-Army officer I know how it feels to return to the civilian world after a long time in service and it is often dispiriting as we are presented with the reality of what modern Britain has become and how little the public and politicians actually know about Service life.

Soldiers serve a nation but they find it harder to recognise that nation, therefore, they ask themselves why they gave so much in service. Many will have seen friends and colleagues killed or severely injured in the service of their country and quite understandably ask the question: was it worth it? It's a question I often ask myself.

A thought on patriotism

As we celebrate or cringe over recent Olympic successes, depending on whether we think collective action through the nation is a good thing or the source of all evil, we are reminded that the very notion of patriotism has had a difficult ride of late.

When the England rugby team won the World Cup in 2003 and the England cricket team won the Ashes in 2005 we were quite happy to express our collective joy at their success, but when soldiers come home from war we are reticent in showing such joy and thanks for their safe return.

In a way, Patriotism is out of fashion and only emerges on those safe occasions when we do well on the sporting field, but expressed in any other context and we are left with a sense that somehow we are doing wrong and should feel guilty rather than elated.

Many, against their better judgement, check their use and expression of the word, glancing around the room to see if they have offended anyone or become the object of ridicule. This moralising infringement of our freedom debilitates those it is inflicted upon.

The political and social left have done a pretty good job of transforming the word from a positive yet benign term of affection and regard for ones country to an altogether new meaning of aggression, xenophobia and general unpleasantness towards anyone who is not British. Such malicious idiocy has been a pervasive aspect of British society for many decades now and its destructive power is heart breaking.

An earlier onslaught against patriotism, understandable in many ways, came after the exaggerated appeals to patriotism, employed during the First World War, became discredited by the unspeakable carnage of the trenches. Then followed a brief rally during the Second World War, considerably aided by the pen of George Orwell and the optimistic ambition of creating a ‘fit land for heroes to live in’, before it began to sink yet again.

Why is it that we have to accept the critics as they colonise the language of benign and galvanising patriotism? I hope that sporting success can left this oppressive constraint on natural feeling but I do fear that if the political class, desperate to right the damage their political cohort has done to the notion of the patriotic and coherent nation, get their hands on it, the collective support surrounding sport will develop an aggressive and nasty tinge. That is not my sort of patriotism.

Russia has no excuse but we are not so innocent ourselves

Philip Stephens takes a pretty robust position in his FT column against those that criticise the West in its dealings with Russia since the collapse of the USSR. But, for all the apposite comment, he takes the exact position designed to cause conflict and alienate Russia rather than bring her back into the international fold.

He says,

"We need to get this straight. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has invaded a neighbour, annexed territory and put in place a partial military occupation. It seeks to overthrow the president of Georgia and to overturn the global geopolitical
order."

Yes, of course, this is correct and it is deeply worrying, but he is wrong to say that highlighting Western culpability and double standards are to appease Putin.

He lambastes Russia for overturning the global geopolitical order but fails to mention that our invasion of a sovereign country, Iraq, in 2003 without UN authorisation did just as much damage to that order and the concept of national sovereignty. Whether it was the right thing to do or not, the invasion of Iraq did more to weaken the world paradigm than anything else in the last 17 years.

He also fails to recognise that over Kosovo, we failed to take note of Russia's opinion, a member of the G8 and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. If we want to accept the world order then we must surely work with these international institutions, not outside them in a unilateral fashion. Sure, Russia's unilateral action over Georgia and Abkhazia, is in my opinion far more inflammatory and aggressive, but it is following the same principles we followed over Kosovo.

As much as I dislike Russia's attitude today, I fail to see how we are so innocent. We are not, yet we continue to dress our foreign adventures up as necessary ventures in the interests of democracy, freedom, human rights and world stability.

We are truly entering a difficult stage of global politics and I would be the last to argue that we should blame ourselves for everything bad that happens in the world, but more importantly than that, we should recognise where we do make mistakes and try to engage other centres of power instead of excluding and antagonising them. That, Philip, is the art of diplomacy.

To be or not to be, Broken

As Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election in May of this year, I questioned here how the relationship between Cameron and Boris would work out. Some three months later it seems that nothing too contentious has happened except on the issue of whether Britain has a 'Broken Society' or not.

Cameron, apparently, is hitching his entire social policy on the assumption that Britain is, indeed, broken but Boris, in his Daily Telegraph Column recently, suggested that this notion was 'piffle'.

I'm glad the media boys are concentrating on such meaty issues but really, picking on this as a symbol of a Boris-Cameron split is pathetic. Who cares if all of Britain is broken or just a bit of it? There are sections of contemporary society that are a disgrace to this country and an indictment of present social policy.

So, stop quibbling over language and concentrate on how to put what is wrong, right.

Oh, and we still refer to Boris as Boris and Cameron as Cameron.

Empires are on the march again

We have been led to believe that Empires are a thing of the past and national sovereignty had won the day. But I am not so sure.

With Russia reasserting itself within the boundaries of its old soviet empire, the new Roman Empire of the EU pushing in all directions, especially East, the USA consolidating its dirty footprint over the Middle East and China establishing strong links in Africa, we can only deduce that the balance of power is once again the holy grail of foreign policy.

The only difficult part in this new world order developing before our eyes is that, despite our involvement in the EU, Iraq and Afghanistan, we are not a major player in any of these empires. We have reverted to our bit part player profile of the Middle Ages and are left to battle over the scraps as the big boys scoff at the table.

My only wish is that we extract ourselves from all these empires and once again forge our own way in the world. Any chance of that or are we once again caught up in the continental struggle for empire? We had the Roman, the Carolingian, the Holy Roman, the Napoleonic, the Nazi and the Soviet empires. We suffered at the hands of all these attempts at continental dominance and I see no difference in the EU empire. As it pushes East can we guarantee that it will not take us into a hot, let alone cold, war with Russia? I really don't want to find out.

Definitions of race are confusing

Why is it that a person with one white parent and one black parent is automatically classed as being black?

I cannot think of any high profile mixed race individual that is not classed as of the minority race or colour: Barack Obama, Kelly Holmes, Rio Ferdinand. This might seem like a mean point to make but all it does is entrench that difference based on race. Why not just call them British and be done with it? Their colour, surely, should have nothing to do with it and if it did, surely it is more accurate to call them mixed race. But then, in our world we have to avoid the race zealots. To call someone of mixed race, like Helen Grant, white would be deemed as a slight on her black heritage and to call her mixed-race is too direct. But, to call her black is to accord her special, moral status in our country that she could not receive if she was plain old bigoted white.

Just saying is all.

Helen Grant is reported in the Guardian as the Conservative candidate for Anne Widecombe's seat at the next general election and jolly well done to her. But it is also perplexing how someone can be Labour one year and Conservative the next. This suggests to me a person bending in the wind too much and lacking in even a basic knowledge of political philosophy. And for someone in their mid forties, one would have thought they had worked out the fundamental political differences between Labour and Conservative to know that they are like chalk and cheese: one is socialist, the other is economically liberal; one is statist, the other prefers individual freedom; one is supra-nationalist, the other is inter-nationalist; the list goes on. But then perhaps the conservative drift to the 'soft centre' has blurred the distinction? Well, at least she repented after a fairly short flirtation with the Left.

And, why are there women only short lists as this article suggests? It seems that Helen Grant would have got nominated anyway, so why give her the stigma of being a token black female that she will never be able to shake off. Madness.

How to make defence manning figures look good when they are bad.

To read the latest Armed Forces manning figures released today by the MOD, we could be forgiven for thinking that there was no significant problem. After all, to be at 96.8% of their full time trained strength requirement doesn't seem too bad, does it?

But let's take a closer look at the figures, specifically for the Army, the Service that is bearing the brunt of operational exposure.

In July 2008, the Army had a manning requirement of 101,790 but only held 98,290 on trained strength. That is a deficit of 3,500, exactly (strange this is such a rounded figure, don't you think).

The Army is, therefore, at 96.6% of their full time trained strength requirement which suggests an even spread of pain across the Services. Again, this does not seem too bad but let's take a closer look:

A 96.6% manning rate does not seem half as bad as reporting a shortfall of 3,500 personnel. This is a simple way to present the same data in a way that does not appear so bad to the casual observer. But the really annoying bit is that it masks the true implication of undermanning and the resultant pain it causes units and personnel spread ever thinner across operational commitments.

The figure of 3,500 personnel equates to approximately five and a half infantry battalions unavailable to the orbat. At a time when units are deploying on operations at 1 year intervals instead of the planned for 2 years, this is significant indeed. And remember that only a couple of years ago, we axed 3 infantry battalions and re-tasked another for an SF support role because they were deemed unnecessary against defence assumptions.

The choice of emphasis of the press release is also telling in its attempt to hide the true situation. Read the passage on how numbers joining are on the increase and the numbers leaving are on the decrease and you would have thought that the recent improvements underline the general trend. We are being let to believe that there is no problem and things will be back to normal in just a while.

Not mentioned in the press release is the statistic that in only April 2005, we had a manning strength of 102,444 which is a clear 4,154 above the current strength. So where have these 4,154 gone in the last three years? This is a significant hemorrhage of manpower and one we should be worried about. This reduction equates to a reduction in strength of more than 100 personnel every month.

But are we to assume that the MOD intends to find the 3,500 in extra manpower to return to full manning? No. This shortfall is entirely consistent with previous shortfalls. Not more than a year before April 2005, the requirement was for about 108,000 trained soldiers and there was a deficit of about 3,500 then, just as there is now. This is to save money on wages and other manpower costs. We do not have full manning because we cannot afford full manning. So, when a minister speaks of a new welfare initiative, or operational allowance think where that money comes from. It comes from the existing budget and so is paid for by holding less people on the trained strength.

And finally, full manning is defined as 1% above the manning requirement or 2% below that requirement. As the Army is 3.4% below the requirement or 1.4% points below the fudge factor of 2%, we see that there is a problem. Will we get into the acceptable spread? I'm not too sure. I suspect that the requirement will simply be brought down again to make it appear that we are fully manned. And why is the strength, technically allowed to fall 2% below but only 1% above the requirement. Money, that is why. But when we routinely have about 10% of personnel unable to deploy for health and fitness reasons, perhaps we should define full manning as to be at least 10% above the requirement.

Cost that one, Darling.

Cameron in Georgia has constitutional implications

It is an electoral axiom that a prospective Prime Minister, or even President, must cut a figure on the international stage. Barrack Obama, the Democratic nomination for the 2008 US presidential race, toured the world earlier this year to prove he was worthy of holding the President's office, so too is David Cameron flexing his diplomatic muscles to stake his own claim to the Prime Minster's office.

James Forsyth, in the Spectator this week, thinks we are witnessing "the final phase of preparing the country for Prime Minister Cameron". But as the Conservatives use the Georgia situation as an opportunity for "introducing the country to Statesman Cameron", we are presented with a constitutional problem, a significant problem that the MSM has so far failed to notice.

And the problem is this: what business is it of an opposition politician to unilaterally represent Britain's diplomatic position? As he uses the opportunity to "convey Britain's solidarity with Georgia", he, unconstitutionally, lays claim to ministerial rights. He is neither the Prime Minister nor the Foreign Secretary nor even a minister of any sort. He is an opposition party leader and so has no legitimacy in conducting British foreign policy.

Before this point is dismissed, we and all those who take a patriotic view of the British nation, should recognise that we have a constitutional settlement that British foreign policy is conducted by democratically accountable and appointed ministers of state, Foreign Office officials and duly appointed representatives. It might be churlish to criticise Cameron on showing solidarity with Georgia, but what if he had an opposing view and thought that Russia was more worthy of British support? Sure, it is unlikely that politicians today would ignore the opportunity to find the simplistic bogeyman in all this but if he had gone to Russia, or even South Ossetia under the protection of Russia and stood up and said he wanted to show Britain's solidarity, the Foreign Office might have been a little miffed.

I have seen no evidence that Cameron went to Georgia as part of a synchronised diplomatic effort by the government, so, despite the fact that his position seems to chime with the official position, we should take note that he has taken it upon himself to send a diplomatic message, from an unconstitutional position, that he has no business making. He is not a private individual, he is not even the leader of an NGO that has its own legitimacy in getting involved in what happens in other countries. He is a leading politician in Britain and his words can quite easily be taken to represent the official British position to the conflict. How would he like it if David Miliband, as the leader of the Opposition in a few years time, decided to meddle in diplomatic relations where he took a contrary view to Prime Minister Cameron's own position? Quite.

Disclaimer: this post neither supports nor condemns Russia or Georgia, but queries the constitutional rights of a leader of the Opposition when it comes to foreign affairs.

Why don't we eradicate the national debt?

The Conservative slogan to share the proceeds of economic growth seems more and more idiotic as we head further into recession. How exactly do we share the losses of recession? Looking at the track record, probably by more and more debt, but with between £500 billion and £1.3 trillion of national debt, depending on which measurement you use, one would have thought we had enough of that already.

In the pursuit of a new slogan, how about this one: "Eradicate the
national debt over the course of the next economic cycle".

I don't hold out much hope that the Conservatives will take this one up, but if they did, it would provide an additional reason to vote for them. As China and India steam ahead, it is clear that our indulgent economic model must change. As our currency continues to fall (as it will fall further when China is finally forced to appreciate their currency), the debt will turn from a barely manageable weight around our shoulders to a dead weight taking us to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Georgia shows the importance of culture to security

The Georgian conflict with Russia - or is it the Russian conflict with Georgia, I am not sure - has not yet become the apocalyptic disaster many predicted but it will surely reverberate through the coming decades as it reminds us that history is still being made and the world is a lot more complex than we might like it to be.

After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact a decade and a half ago, we blithely believed that we in the West could determine, uninhibited, what went into the history books from then on, but we have since been reminded that the world has not become uni-polar but reverted to its pre-Cold War multi-polarity.

Samuel Huntingdon, famously spoke of the clash of civilisations, but rather than predicting an apocalyptic clash he was merely highlighting the power of culture and civilisation to determine the balance of global power and the alignment of general loyalties and ties. How can anyone that looks at history doubt that there are more subtle and deep rooted factors that determine what we do and how we see ourselves in the world than mere economics.

One might have thought that with the final collapse of economic Marxism, we would have recognised that money and wealth is not the only driver of history. The growth of Islamism over recent decades suggests that culture, especially religious culture, is just as, if not more so, significant as resources. And the resurgence of China in the world, determined to resist the Western ideology of liberty in favour of a more statist form of capital liberty, should also remind us that governments are still able to follow their own ideology in shaping their region and the world.

So, we are left with three broad influences on history: resources, ideology and culture.

I highlight these three things with respect to what is going on in Georgia to link in with an earlier post that suggested the nation was built on more than values (read ideology). The underlying reason for Russian involvement in Georgia is that the Ossetians, majority being of the Russian state do not see themselves as being part of the Georgian state and nation. Whilst they number about 70k in South Ossetia, there are about 500k in the rest of Russia. This clash between two groups that define themselves by their cultural difference should be a lesson to us all.

Where states incorporate different national groups, they tend towards conflict. We see this in the Former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Iraq and also the Caucasus. It even explains the historical enmity found within Northern Ireland. If history is so convincing, why do we in the West ignore it so arrogantly? We try to build a rainbow world but all we do is sow the seeds of future conflict. It is, I am afraid, all a matter of time.

Why belittle the religious to advance the secular?

Every so often, an article appears that sends a chill of foreboding through the body. Professor Grayling, a philosophy academic from the University of London has just written such an article on the merits of having an atheist Prime Minister.

Now, there is nothing wrong with wishing for an atheist Prime Minister and, as the gist of the article goes, there are good arguments for the full separation of church and state, especially within education and political representation.

The Labour campaign to establish New Britain has now fully brought about the disparate, plural society where we no longer share our culture and inheritance, so, to avoid communal conflict we can see that, maybe, it would be better to banish religion to the private sphere, completely. However, I do wonder where this logic takes us? If difference creates communal conflict, what should we do about all those other differences: color, political ideology, race, language and other customs?

Despite this, the problem with the article, is that it goes further, much further. In echoes of Dawkins’ God Delusion, or Dawkins Conceit as I would prefer to put it, the secular and the atheist is elevated, almost, to deified proportions, as if it alone can deliver us to the Promised Land. And, although heavily disguised with moderate and accommodating language, it portrays religion as some bigoted, infantile, slightly insane and even to be pitied idea.

In a list of things atheist leaders are, apparently, immune from, he goes on to explain why the alternative of a religious leader is nothing but a destiny with despair.

So, apparently, religious leaders get “messages from Beyond telling them to go to war” and they “cloak themselves in supernatural justifications”. Just because Blair had something of the Messianic about him, does not mean that all religious people do. In fact, my experience of most (although by no means all) religious people is that they are anything but slaves to that little voice of God in their heads but reliant on their own sense of morality that just happens to be informed by the Christian message of forgiveness, charity, discipline and love.

And just which religious groups claim “to be more important than other civil society organisations in doing good”? Of course, they are not but the implication of this statement is clearly to suggest they have a conceited sense of their own infallibility and superiority. The reality is far removed from this. Doubt and humility are characteristics I more associate with the religious – the Christian, certainly.

Religion has apparently “ghettoized” children and risks “social divisiveness and possible future conflict”. The first is a preposterous assertion but as mentioned earlier, the latter has more validity. But in a gross oversimplification, this argument peddles the Northern Irish problem as purely a religious problem. Any observer not prejudiced towards religion would have realised that the IRA were not fighting a war about religion but the very secular idea of a united political Ireland. It is sad that such lazy arguments come from a Professor. And does he not realise that the real growing conflict over religion is not between Catholic and Protestant Irish but secular Britons and Islamist immigrants. To banish Christianity from the public sphere in the face of Islamic advances is to throw the baby out with the bath water.

A further assertion is that “atheist leaders are more likely to take a literally down-to-earth view of the needs, interests and circumstances of people in the here and now, and will not be influenced by the belief that present sufferings and inequalities will be compensated in some posthumous dispensation.” If this is the case then how does he explain the vast charitable efforts of the Christian church to alleviate the problems of the here and now? And he himself mentions that the C of E is responsible for 80% of the Primary School system: fairly here and now if you ask me.

And most staggeringly of all, he argues that “Atheist leaders will not be tempted to think they are the messenger of any good news from above, or the agent of any higher purpose on earth.” Does he not recollect the names of Stalin and Hitler? These two uber-secularists and ardent atheists were responsible for the greatest acts of barbarity in the 20th Century, all in the name of their "higher purpose on earth: communism and fascism". Please remind me of the Christian leader that did what they did? Oh, that’s right, there are none.

Those that reject the religious dimension to life, also reject religious morality that, especially under its Protestant form, paved the way for those things the secular state holds so dear: human rights, equality under the law, strong institutions and plain old compassion and decency. The atheists and the philosophers that dismiss this connection out of hand fail to see that they undermine that which they advocate: the decent, law abiding society.

Professor Grayling is right to say that religion is “a matter of choice” and therefore something to be discussed, thought over and even modified as we develop as a society, but for all the good reasons to strengthen secular society, to indulge in a simplistic and, to be frank, illogical and inaccurate, assault on our religious experience does nothing but undermine his argument.

And finally, if he still thinks religion thinks of little else than how to subjugate the secular to their ways, take a note of Jesus when he said “render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's”. No, the Christian Church fully understands that the political and religious dimensions are different and in most ways separate, but to indulge in poor argument, especially from a Professor of Philosophy, is to do the damage he himself accuses religion of causing.

Perhaps we should be asking ourselves a better question: compare and contrast the relative effects on society of religion and political ideology, both good and bad.

Statecraft and the West's deficiency

The partial war between Russia and Georgia over the separatist provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have exercised the pens of many a journalist and commentator, already, but it is the politicians that are required to navigate a steady and statesmanlike course through the rocky waters of Caucasus politics.

For all the words, full of indignant and naive argument, it is these from David Remnick in the New Yorker that are of most poignancy:

"To deal with him [Putin] will require statecraft of a kind that has proved well beyond the capacities of our current practitioners."

So far it seems that our public response has been a mixture of listlessness from Brown, worrying recklessness from Cameron and schoolboy assumption from the MSM.

• Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, seems to be proving that he has no interest in foreign and defence affairs and little aptitude, perhaps because they both represent aspects of old Britain and require him to meet other people and get on with them.
• David Cameron has taken it on himself to masquerade as an official representative of the United Kingdom. In visiting Georgia he has aligned the UK with their cause which he might agree with but is not the effective execution of statecraft we need. He is not a minister and he is not a diplomat. One gets the impression that he is only there in an attempt to appear statesmanlike, much like Obama did several weeks ago, and fit for for the office of Prime Minister. I suppose one can understand this but when it sends diplomatic messages he has no business sending, it risks inflaming the situation rather than easing it.
• Commentators have all too easily fallen back on the old stereotype of the Russian Bear. Whilst Putin's Russia is certainly flexing its muscles in an undesirable way, we seem to have taken no account of Russian sensibilities as we push the EU and NATO eastwards.
• MSM commentators also seem to have ignored the statecraft mistakes of the West: The recognition of the unilateral declaration of independence from Kosovo against the wishes of the sovereign state of Serbia whilst ignoring the same wishes of the South Ossetians; The relentless undermining of the doctrine of the sovereign nation state that, if extended to Russia, would see it dismantled against the wishes of the sovereign state of Russia. We might also ask ourselves of the implication of this action on the Basque Country, Wales, Scotland and even the growing nations of Bradford and Birmingham. If this seems far fetched then please note that the South Ossetians were migrants from North of the Caucasus mountains.
• We lecture Russia on the use of force to achieve its ambitions but refuse to recognise this approach in what we do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is easy to criticise Russia and I am inclined to do the same as I do not want countries playing power politics with the force of arms, but if we want to contain their ambitions we must learn a little more humility and recognise the hypocrisy and insensitivity of much of our foreign policy today. We need statesmen, not Question Time ranters.

We have a choice between freedom and subservience

The ongoing plight of the Labour government and Gordon Brown in particular is, indeed, a tragedy, of sorts. Having spent his entire student and adult life aspiring, planning and conspiring to acquire the position of Prime Minister, the extent of his trauma cannot be underestimated. Everyday he sees not only the polls but the man on the street telling him what he cannot comprehend: that the public do not want him and seem to like him even less. Even having Tony Blair back would be better. How can this have happened? He was so certain. He was so thorough in his preparation.

As the aura of his leadership, so admired just last summer as he resolutely dealt with terrorist attack and flood, fades out of sight, the Labour Party is left with a hole to fill, not just in its leadership but in its very political philosophy. They are all at it, trying to define their vision for a better Britain. Many, like David Miliband, believe it lies in a resurgent Blairism, but others believe it lies in yet more fiscal Brownian motion, just with more energy.

But in this enforced period of re-analysis, Labour and their progressive acolytes must hope that from the wreckage of this tragedy can be found some sort of meaning that makes it all worthwhile. New Leader, New Party. New Party, New Britain. There. That sounds like something that nice fellow used to say. Everything’s going to be all right, especially my job and pension.

Amid such drama, we are reminded of the precarious, if determined, hold politicians can have on their ministerial positions, but we are also reminded that political parties are faced with many and diverse challenges whether in power or opposition. If they are not trying to explain why a new initiative has failed to deliver us to the Promised Land then they are selling us some new scheme, funded by our taxes of course, that, this time, will solve all our troubles. Honest, just one more push lads.

But whilst the Labour government realises that there are sometimes no answers that will satisfy the public and a ravenous media, the Conservatives are grappling with the longer term problem of being in opposition, and establishing themselves in the minds of the electorate as a worthy government. That the negative polls are likely to do the job of getting them elected is of no matter, they still strive to convince as a government in waiting.

Those in opposition might operate under a softer spotlight, but politicians in opposition are like fish out of water. What they crave more than anything is the oxygen of power that enables them to breathe life into their policies as they test their pet theories on the public.

Therefore, the great challenge of being in opposition is not just to undermine the government but find a narrative that brings them, their party and their policies back into harmony with the electorate’s heartbeat. The question is how to couch this narrative in a way that both shores up their own core support yet entices wavering voters not sure which way to swing on polling day?

This conundrum has tested and baffled the Conservative Party in equal measure for a decade now but what must have made it doubly hard for successive leaderships under Hague, Duncan-Smith and Howard to take, was the realisation that the very voters that were keeping them out of office were the same people that had kept them in power for eighteen years. Only now can they take heart that the same phenomenon is likely to do for Labour what it did to them in 1997.

For the last century, one sure characteristic of our bi-polar political system has been that the opposition was once the government and the government will one day become the opposition. That this transition is usually accompanied by a sobering blow to the windpipe as the electorate rejects them merely makes it worse.

The significant factor in Labour’s victory in 1997 was not the collapse of the Tories but the rehabilitation of socialism under the acceptable banner of the New Labour narrative. Tony Blair had merely added the final flourish, admittedly with much skill and plausibility, in the perception battle first fought by Neil Kinnock’s generation of Labour politicians fed up with opposition and exasperated by the crackpot image they had developed under Michael Foot.

This new narrative brought Labour rightwards along the well understood, if a little trite, spectrum of Left-Right politics. They had embraced, if tentatively, the market as the favourable means to allocate resources, they seemed happy with private home ownership and they did little to reverse Thatcher’s swinging Union reforms. Many would argue that they took these market reforms even further than any Conservative government would have dared.

And in this superficial convergence of the two main parties lies the so called charge that there is no longer any choice at election time, except between one incompetent lot that screwed up the country and another incompetent lot that screwed up the country a generation before that. Both parties, it is claimed, are indistinguishable from each other on the really big issues. Just like Labour did in 1997, the Conservatives pledge to follow Labour spending plans this time around.
But what real choice was there when it was a clear fight between Thatcher’s liberal market conservatives and the red red socialists of the 70s and 80s? Faced with that alternative, what right, excuse the pun, thinking person would have voted the Conservatives out?

But, there is an upside to this apparent convergence. As it becomes harder, at a superficial level, to see daylight between the two main parties, the electorate is forced to think a lot deeper about what is being served up and the Conservatives are forced to try a lot harder to explain why their political philosophy is so different to and better than Labour’s. If the Conservatives cannot rise to the challenge and present an identifiable and viable alternative to Labour then the next election might be a lot closer than many think it could possibly be.

So, what is this difference that the Conservatives must weave into their narrative for the country? What is the choice laid before us as we prepare to make support Conservatives, Liberals or apathy at the next election?

There are a number of differences between the two main political philosophies but it is the age old choice found in the Left-Right paradigm of Western politics between the person and the state that must be rammed home with the electorate. Whilst the Left has a natural inclination to fashion the country through the prism of state organisation the Right prefers to let people find their own solutions, only stepping in if things go seriously wrong.

This is why Labour governments, no matter how far they have come to the right in adopting market economics, have always had a tendency to grow the public and shrink the private spheres. And this government is no different. It is also why left wing claims that the fascist ideology is from the same stable as the conservative Right are mendacious. After all, the Nazi Party followed the National Socialist model of government in the tradition of all left wing governments. What defined and still defines them both is not their attitude to national or international movements but their dependence on state solutions to society’s problems.

It is time that Conservatives got to grips with the philosophy of the Right and showed the public that they are on their side against the growing incompetent ubiquity of the state whether it dances to a socialist, fascist or Labour tune. Make no mistake, the Left is eviscerating the personal and private worlds we fought two world wars to defend and the Right still cannot make its case for all to understand.

With every new bit of legislation and every new state sponsored initiative the Left is winning. ID cards, tax-devouring agencies, extra tiers of government, the EU, welfare dependence, increasing regulation, state monopoly of education, the nationalisation of child rearing and many more things are slowly creating what George Orwell, a socialist himself, railed against: the totalitarian state.

The state is slowly, but relentlessly, becoming our master as we receive our freedoms and handouts like a grateful beggar. We need to turn this relationship on its head and rediscover our status as subjects in command of the state rather than subservient clients of the state.

The Conservatives are probably going to win the next election, but only when they have the confidence to expound their philosophy that guards personal freedom against unnecessary state imposition will we, the public, be shown why being of the conservative Right is not to be at worst a Nazi and at best plain old ‘nasty’, but the champion of freedom for ourselves, our neighbours and our country.