I wrote this as an after thought to my article on Corbyn’s letter to May on Labour’s new Red Lines because it fascinates me; the European Arrest warrant is only available to full members of the EU, and in order to join or use it, it is necessary to comply with the CJEU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights to have access to it. Frankly the Good Friday Agreement needs that too. This would seem to be a trojan horse to put the Court and Charter of Rights back on the table. I wonder if they realise? … …
Labour’s new Red Lines
Here’s Labour’s new Brexit Red Lines on Brexit, which includes the text, and here is Paul Mason, Stephen Bush and Paul Cotterill.
Mason and Cotterill think it’s a move towards remain or a final say, and this is especially true if the Tories reject the offer. Mason feels that it puts the Tories in a difficult position but if they reject the offer, it puts Labour’s parliamentary Brexiters in very difficult position. Cotterill feels it’s the on ramp to a 2nd referendum and is especially excited by the requirement that the commitments to be made in the political declaration are to be backed by legislation. Bush considers it to be move towards soft brexit which maybe very attractive to the Labour sponsors of Common Market 2.0. He also says, that with the exception of free movement, it is specific and achievable and so, is on the Brexit off-ramp in a way that the six tests were not. He also notes that the new Red Lines are silent on free movement, which he argues is a better position than that previously held.
Is this good or bad?
I think I am with those who think it’s clever and resets the question in Parliament, which needed to be done. It interrupts May’s attempts to run down the clock and offer the Parliament or even the people a choice between her deal and no deal. It increases the odds of a final say between, May’s deal and Remain. In terms of an outcome, it’s nearly acceptable, although it now moves into the pointless end of the spectrum.
My one true fear is that it means Labour accepts the withdrawal agreement which will throws those Brit’s living in the EU under the bus, and the will permit the Tory government to implement another Windrush by placing EU citizens in the UK, having lived here for months or years under the same hostile environment applied to other alien immigrants and subject to uncertainty about their rights to remain. For me this might be a price too high!
There’s more below/overleaf … …
Venezuela: what does Amnesty say?
For those that think the UK Government has the right to tell Venezuela how it should run itself, here are Amnesty International’s reports on Venezuela and the UK.
They make an interesting read, criticising Venezuela on the grounds of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, excessive use of force, arbitrary arrest & detention, human rights defenders, independent justice system, prisoners of conscience, international scrutiny, enforced disappearances, impunity, detention, right to food and health, women’s rights and refugees.
The UK report picks out Legal, Constitutional & Institutional affairs, the Justice System, Counter-terror & security, Torture and other ill-treatment, Surveillance, Northern Ireland – legacy issues, Sexual and reproductive rights, Discrimination, Right to life, Refugees’ and migrants’ rights, violence against women and girls and the arms trade.
Neither list is pretty but the freedom of speech and international scrutiny/legal, constitutional & institutional affairs are surprisingly equivalent and the Amnesty report on the UK raises several vulnerabilities of the UK people as a result of austerity, so its questionable that the Tories questioning the legitimacy of Maduro on the grounds that he’s oppressing his people.
The Venezuela presidential election is conducted, it would seem by one of the best e-voting systems in the world, with what IT security experts require, paper receipts and control audits. The opposition conceded.
It is quite bizarre that the leader of the opposition declares himself the acting president and that this is recognised by other states, not to mention foolhardy, there’s a
Maduro may be a shit, but he is not the only Head of State to be so, and the poverty of its people has as much to do with the illegal sanctions employed by the USA as it does to the any kleptocratic, corrupt instincts in the Venezuelan ruling party and he was elected in free and fair elections.
ooOOOoo
The Amnesty report on the UK does not mention Philip Alston’s, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights report on the UK, covered by me on this blog here… .
I posted this with a spelling mistake in the title, bother! Here is the wp SURL https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1Jz and here is a bit.ly SURL http://bit.ly/2WYtBN8 …
Sovereignty
While I suspect that Labour’s Democracy Review team changed the sovereignty relationship between CLP ECs and GC/AMMs for good reasons, the number of stories of ECs suppressing the membership’s ability to make policy and run their parties being legion and in some places it seems not to have stopped but making it work will be difficult as the amount of time required to hold the new officers and committee to account is significant. My last EC spent hours discussing the Facebook usage policy 🤔, and since everything is factional, stuff gets discussed at detail twice.
I almost wonder if it was deliberate; the GC/AMMs will spend so long discussing administration that they won’t have time to discuss policy or hold the leadership and the PLP to account. …
Member’s Rights (in the Labour Party)
Fabulous, I found this in the new Rules, the new C2.II Individual Membership Rights
7. Members have the right to dignity and respect, and to be treated fairly by the Labour Party. Party officers at every level shall exercise their powers in good faith and use their best endeavours to ensure procedural fairness for members.
I shall be seeking to amend this to include a mandate to abide by the Nolan Principals. …
Nothing to see here
This came through earlier in the month, despite the Tory Party being fined, it seems that Craig McKinley, the Tory candidate for Thanet South, in 2015 is not guilty of electoral fraud, it was all down to his local campaign official. I didn’t think that was how the law worked; I didn’t think it was possible to find an Agent guilty and a candidate innocent but hey ho, we live and learn. Of course, they can’t order the election to take place again because it already has. The Secret Barrister wrote about the decision not to prosecute, the Tory’s candidates and agents over their “Battlebus” expenditure, he or she states, the CPS chose not to prosecute because evidence of corruption was likely to be too hard to prove, but,
… In relation to the lesser offence of failing to deliver a true return, the CPS concluded, perhaps charitably, that for for the same reason it was not in the public interest to charge any of the agents or candidates with that offence.
They made an exception for the Thanet South election where they decided to prosecute. … …
Venezuela’s Sovereignty
The US seems to have launched a coup in Venezuela, the firing pistol has been fired by Venezuela’s Juan Guaidó, the President of the National Assembly who announced himself President in effect seeking to usurp the elected President, Chavista, Nicolás Maduro. The US issued Maduro with an ultimatum to hold new elections within 8 days. This ultimatum has been echoed by the US’s useful idiots in Europe, Germany, France and Spain joined belatedly by the UK.
Maduro’s record on human rights and economic policy management is not good, but then neither is May’s; and we need to review the threshold at which foreign intervention can be authorised. The rule book on this is the UN Charter which forbids aggressive war, we should honour these rules. The UN Human Rights Council condemns the sanctions against Venezuela and the US and Russia are looking at how to get their way in the Security Council.
The BBC reports that
Britain has issued the embattled Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a stark ultimatum, warning him it would throw its weight behind the country’s self-declared interim leader unless he called an election within the next eight days – as the US government called on the world to “pick a side” in the crisis.
I can’t find the witty riposte that the Venezuela Government has reciprocated by stating that unless May calls a General Election in 8 days, they will recognise Jeremy Corbyn as the Government of the UK.
The Venezuela Solidarity Campaign will be central vehicle for expressing solidarity with the people of Venezuela and they have launched a petition.
…We, the undersigned, condemn the open support of the US administration for ‘regime change’ in Venezuela, which is illegal under international law.
Alongside harsh sanctions which have hit the people of Venezuela hard, comments from Trump himself, VP Pence, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo amongst others have included threats of military action, threatened to put Venezuela on the state sponsors of terrorism list and invoked the possibility of a right-wing military coup.
We stand for peace and dialogue, not Trump’s war and ‘regime change’ agenda.
What is to be done, with Lewisham Council?
Finally I have submitted my thoughts on Lewishams’ Democracy Review. Lewisham Democracy Review by Dave Levy V1_1. My initial thoughts were published in this article on this blog. Three things,
- I am shocked at the true legal position, we elect a dictator, with no recall, & no term limits. Executive Mayor’s are not just a first-amongst-equals “Leaders” with a different mandate, it’s an alien form of government, lifted from the US & France and designed to reduce the accountability of the decisions from voters and their political parties. I am equally shocked at the extent to which the Mayor’s power’s are delegated to full time staff.
- I have recommended that they abolish the Mayoral system, and in the expectation that this will be rejected,
- I recommend a series of reforms to improve the accountability and transparency of the Mayor, Council and senior officials including a recall mechanism, term limits and much improved monitoring of personnel, decisions and programmes.
The deadline is Sunday.
A URL for the document is http://bit.ly/2DA5aho, a SURL for this article is https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1IN …
More on the Copyright Directive
I need to thank the Register for publishing this article, “Looming EU copyright rules – tackling Google news article scraping, installing upload filters – under fire from all sides“. It’s written from their seemingly normal editorial line of, how shall we put it, “Copyleft Scepticism”. I am usually on the other side of this debate, but the language in this article is less offensive than usual. Actually it reminded me of a couple of issues which to me have dropped below the horizon, partly because whenever new tech. competes with old media the people who get lost and forgotten are citizens and users. In this article, below/overleaf I write about some of the less obvious side effects of the Link Tax, the cost of Licensing content for small users, question why we permit copyright protection for news, the corollary of weak fair use laws, the corollary of the economics of upload filters, and the impact of the growing unpopularity of Google. I published my diatribe on the bad economics and moral vacancy of the copyright business in on this blog in a post entitled, “A failure to serve Fans”. This article is meant to be a bit more targeted and a bit off-piste. … …
History today
Last night, the House of Commons voted to reject the Theresa May’s EU withdrawal agreement by a historic margin. The press reaction is summarised in the Guardian.
Labour have tabled a motion of No-Confidence in the Government, which the Tory/DUP are likely to win but if it weren’t for the Fixed Term Parliament Act, May would be gone. I may still happen, but the so-called “Men in Grey Suits” seem to be scarce and taking to ground however, I think that she’ll resign as Prime Minister.
The debate on Brexit now moves to No Deal, New Deal or Revoke Article 50 notice. The first is unacceptable and catastrophic, the second requires a new Prime Minister and time i.e. an extension of the Article 50 time period and the latter needs to be genuine. It may be past the time for a referendum. …