David Cameron looks increasingly desperate as he turns to an old Tory favourite - immigration - to try to win ground back in the polls. Only, according to Iain Dale in the Telegraph, it's not a lurch to the right a la the 2001 and 2005 campaigns; it's simply a moderate, sensible position ("David Cameron wobbled, but didn't fall"). But the Tories can't have it both ways, and once again the policy implications of Cameron's statement are unclear. To simply say that immigration needs to be "controlled" is a non-policy, as we do not currently operate an open border policy. On the other hand, if the Tories are going to propose stricter controls than we have at present, they have to be prepared to defend the (right-wing) political logic behind that policy.

Unfortunately, the case for it is poor. Cameron's repeated comment that there are "too many" immigrants for us to deal with belies the fact that the numbers have not increased significantly over recent years. But even if they had, immigration brings far more economic benefits than problems, as argued eloquently by Philippe Legrain in a chapter of a forthcoming CentreForum publication on globalisation. And even there were economic problems - even if our resources were a pie being cut up between everyone in the country - the underlying logic of the Tory argument is that British citizens deserve rights and opportunities more than those from overseas. This is why many people do see a current of xenophobia or even racism in even the moderate Tory rhetoric, and why implicitly to make such an argument is to 'lurch to the right'.

Which leaves Cameron with only one potential argument. The Times reports that the newest prong of the attack, launched by Damian Green, is the claim that immigration harms social cohesion ("Tories step up campaign for immigration controls"). Admittedly, this touches on a genuine political issue, unlike the economic argument. But given that we unavoidably do have a multicultural society, and this isn't going to change any time soon, any solution to community tensions has to involve engaging and reconciling the existing groups within our society, not preventing new immigrants from arriving. The argument that " the perception is as important as the reality", or that we need to reduce immigration to prevent the really racist parties from making the issue their own, is a cover for appeasing and making concessions to racist sentiment. And that certainly isn't going to improve community relations.

Also in the news:

• Tory election hopes look bleak, with a YouGov poll announcing that the Tories are 8 points behind Labour, and Cameron a whopping 24 points behind Gordon Brown (Telegraph, "Tory blow in polls fuels election speculation")
• An autumn election may be looking more likely, with it being considered as a strategy to prevent a divise row over Europe within the Labour party (Independent, "Brown urged to call autumn poll to quell referendum calls")

Emotionally charged cheers and applause filled parliament square yesterday morning as the statue of Nelson ‘Madiba’ Mandela was unveiled by the man himself, together with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the Mayor of London and Lord Richard Attenborough.

Seven years on from the inception of the idea for a sculpture, a very British, low-key ceremony celebrated the incredible life and moral upstanding of Mr. Mandela. A hero of our time, Mr. Mandela fought for the fall of apartheid in South Africa throughout his life, and now ceaselessly campaigns for the eradication of world poverty at the age of 89. The PM said: "Nelson Mandela is one of the most courageous and best-loved men of all time. You will be here with us always.” (Independent:  Mandela statue 'a beacon of hope').

The previous evening, Mr. Mandela was reported to have passionately urged successful black men and women to become role models for British youths in an effort to tackle the increasing levels of violent crime and falling academic achievements in schools.  Yet, as Jonathan Brown reports for the Independent (Role models are hard to come by in Peckham) the opinions of black youths are mixed with regards to the great man, and there is a distinct lack of role models to challenge the downward levelling norms which permeate some youth sub-cultures.

Very much in-keeping with Mr. Mandela’s celebratory ceremony was the theme for last weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival was ‘Set All Free’, marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Ironic, as freedom from fear was not 100 per cent guaranteed for there were still incidents of violence, including two non-fatal shootings, although many said that the carnival had been safe.

At a time when freedom, equality and independence are being celebrated in London, it appears that particular minorities continue to be incapacitated, be it through affiliation with gangs, poor academic performance or lack of parental support or role models. Let’s hope that Gordon Brown’s declaration that Mr. Mandela’s statue will be a ‘beacon of hope’ carries some weight.

Yet again the colossal scale of city bonuses is back in the news, with the Guardian reporting that this year they have reached a mind-boggling £14 billion ("City bonuses hit record high with £14bn payout"). Immediately George Monbiot is on the case ("How the neoliberals stiched up the wealth of nations for themselves"), claiming that such inequality is part of a broader capitalist agenda blamed for everything from mass homelessness to the breakup of the welfare state.

In fact these issues may not be as related as Monbiot suggests. While huge bonuses do seem somewhat obscene, the media furore surrounding them obscures two more important points. The first is that in terms of social breakdown, the gap between the super-rich and the average is far less important than the gap between the average and the super-poor. The second is that, while huge bonuses do not in themselves take money away from the less well-off, the failure to tax them does.

Thus the more important issues may be those of tax evasion and, particularly topically, corporation tax. This is brought into sharp relief by today's FT's leader, "A third of UK's biggest businesses pay no tax ". Not only is corporation tax ineffectively enforced - it is spread out inequitably between companies, failing to incentivise or reward socially beneficial practise. Moreover, an oft-overlooked area in which greater international co-operation is needed is the fight against tax evasion, with tax havens draining money away from the countries in which the wealth is created. Admist all of this, the true obscenity looks like the Conservatives' recent plans to actually lessen corporation tax.

Thus social evils cannot all be put down to the simple existence of the capitalist system. To decry the high-earners from the sidelines for their moral depravity won't help anyone on the ground. We must accept that of course business and its high-earners will be self-seeking and profit-driven, but find more efficient ways to harness that profit for the public good by taxing it more effectively.

Also in today's news:

• Nick Clegg has been previewing the Lib Dems immigration debate to be held in Brighton this autumn. ("Call for selective amnesty for illegal migrants')
• Lembit Opik has been arguing that his appointment Shadow Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Secretary does not mean that the Lib Dems don't take the subject seriously. ("Opik says UK Lib Dems serious about business")
  

Daily Mail-type paranoia seems to be something of a theme this week, with David Cameron's ill-judged assaults on the Human Rights Act and on British youth in general featuring prominently.  The Conservative leader tried to use the deportation of Learco Chindamo to make a case for scrapping the Human Rights Act - but as the Economist pointed out ('A flawed fight-back'), his reasoning was pretty dubious:

The right to a family life guaranteed by Article 8 of the act was indeed interpreted in Mr Chindamo's favour (his mother and siblings are in Britain, where he has lived since he was six). Yet the act was a secondary factor in the tribunal's decision. More important was a directive in 2004 from the European Union (EU) on free movement, which prevents the deportation of EU citizens except on “imperative grounds of public security”.

Given that Chindamo himself only lived in Italy for three or four years and speaks no Italian, the logic which considers him purely 'foreign' and thus capable of being deported as a matter of course is indeed questionable.

Cameron's wider 'zero-tolerance' assault on youth crime was given a frosty reception by the Independent ('Moral panic and a return to gesture politics'):

David Cameron, in new zero-tolerance mode, proposed harsher minimum sentences for juvenile offenders and a ban – or delay – on driving. Given that the lack of a licence deters few teenagers from driving and that custody often provides a crime school for young offenders, both solutions look sadly like our old friend, gesture politics.

Giving more juvenile offenders criminal records and thus making it harder for them to find work is also a less than obvious way of encouraging their integration into society.  But Cameron wasn't finished:

His actual words were still less convincing. "With young people," he said, "you need to hit them where it hurts, in their lifestyle and their aspirations." If there is one point of agreement, it is that poverty of lifestyle and aspiration underlies much offending.

His comments certainly don't say much for Cameron's claim to be a 'liberal Conservative' on law and order, and they wouldn't do much for Britain's overcrowded jails either.

‘The Daily Mail Diet’ is due to air on Al Gore’s digital channel ‘Current TV’ tonight. 

Nick Angel, a documentary film-maker and freelance journalist, has taken it upon himself to immerse his whole life into the world of The Daily Mail for 28 days, in a similar style to that of the Supersize Me documentary which consisted of a young chap solely gorging on McDonald fast food morning, noon and night.

Angel described his time in the Daily Mail bubble in his Guardian commentary, “Life on Daily Mail Island” as:

“A month spent reading the nation's leading mid-market newspaper [that] took me into a terrifying, depressing world, filled with suspicion”

His blog amusingly describes a world paralysed by paranoia, scare-mongering and fear, if that can be at all funny. He abstained from any other source of news, including radio and TV. “The Daily Mail Watch” website is perhaps shares the sentiments of Mr. Angel. Most unsettling is perhaps the clear and concise manner in which Peter Cole’s Guardian article, “Why middle England gets the Mail”  articulates the ideology of the Daily Mail:

“Mail views can be characterised thus: for Britain and against Europe; against welfare (and what it describes as welfare scroungers) and for standing on your own feet; more concerned with punishment than the causes of crime; against public ownership and for the private sector; against liberal values and for traditional values, particularly marriage and family life. It puts achievement above equality of opportunity and self-reliance above dependence.”

Readership figures, however, are perhaps the nail in the coffin for the hope of a nation which celebrates diversity and civil engagement. The Mail is now the second largest selling daily in the country behind the Sun; and after the News of the World, the Mail on Sunday is the second largest selling Sunday. The extent to which this mid-market paper exercises its influence should not be underestimated.

Rafael Baer's piece in Sunday's Observer ("Enough of the big conversations. Let's have a fight") is an entertaining and provocative critique of the notion of 'consensus' in British politics. It also finds immediate application in the week's news: the Independent's "Liberal Democrats launch attack on Brown's surveillance society" claims that such plans "threaten to wreck Gordon Brown's hopes of a cross-party consensus to tackle the threat of terrorism". But as Baer points out,

"Everyone can agree that blowing people up is bad. Once that is settled, the tricky issues haven't gone away. Either you think draconian measures are justified by the threat or you don't...I'd like parties to represent conflicting positions and defend them in public so I can make up my mind."

Meanwhile, the Guardian reports that Labour pressure group Compass, in its new dossier attacking Conservative mayoral hopeful Boris Johnson, claims that Johnson "threatens the very large progressive consensus in the capital" ("Forget the buffoonery, Johnson is really Tebbit in clown's clothing, says Compass").

But again, whatever one thinks of Boris Johnson's ideas, does the objectionability lie in the fact that they break up a 'consensus'? Shouldn't these ideas (which presumably find some public support) be fought over through the democratic process rather than excluded as an illegitimate part of the debate? There is a danger that, as Baer says,

"The consensualist takes his own view, uses it to frame the terms of a debate (claiming with bogus humility to be consulting the public) and then assumes that opinion outside those terms is beyond the pale."

Yet Baer's conclusion, that Gordon Brown should "forget 'national conversations'...just make the decisions and I'll send you my views in a ballot box", is puzzling. It is the very flaws of the majoritarian approach that Baer attacks - a lack of inclusion for minorities; the infrequency of elections; inability to voice one's opinion on specific issues at the ballot box - that necessitate a widening and extension of the democratic process. The 'big conversation' may be a sham, but that doesn't mean that liberals should give up on public consultation just yet. 

The recent 'teenage terror' stories leave one with an overwhelming sense of despair.

In yesterday's Telegraph Jan Moir expressed the collective outrage we all feel ("I've never felt less like hugging a hoodie").  After outlining the closely knit family that has been destroyed in Warrington she writes:

To be frank, I don't care how difficult the life of the average hoodie has been, or how much any of these callous youths have suffered at the unseen hands of an absent parent, or general, festering resentment that stems from their troubled home situations.

Today, many more commentators address the issue and the associated comments of Cheshire's Chief Constable about the UK's teenage alcohol culture.  ("Our national drinking problem" in The Independent, "Last Orders" in The Times)

Everyone agrees that raising the drinking age is a bad idea that would fail to resolve the real issue.

Decca Aitkenhead's The Guardian does a much better job at identifying root causes ("This kind of drinking is not hedonism, its nihilism"):

"The teenagers who live next door to me are sweet lads - but they literally do not even know how to introduce themselves to someone they don't know. The simple mechanics of making eye contact, shaking hands and saying their own name is completely beyond them - making their world a scary and quite threatening place to be."

It's an insightful piece, but it doesn't offer solutions to the problems she identifies.

David Green, the director of socially-conservative Civitas, is bolder and maps out his remedy in 'Alcohol ban is no answer, good policing is' in The Telegraph.  The headline is slightly misleading; he sees the main solution to be the restoration of the universal two-parent family:

"there is no getting away from the fact that children are more likely to stay away from crime and to lead fuller lives if both their biological parents are committed to their well-being during the two decades it takes to grow up."

The holes is his one-size-fits-all argument are plain to any liberal.

Far more nuanced is Carlo Sarler in The Times ("Don't just blame the parents; blame us too")  He picks up on the same themes as Decca Aitkenhead, but develops them further:

"as every sitcom cast a character to remind us, neighbour came to mean nosy and nosy to mean bad. We became fearful of the accusation of interfering in other people’s lives, let alone in other people’s children and – as that made us unknown to the children and they to us – we became fearful of the children themselves."

If you read nothing else this week, read Carlo Sarler.

The Scots command the column inches today.

Deboroah Orr writes entertainingly comparing and contrasting Brown and Salmond's first 100 days in power ("These two canny Scots, as they celebrate 100 days in power, have much in common")

The Guardian leader praises Salmond for his first few months in power ("Nervous steps of a nation") before suggesting that things might not be so easy in the future.

On the same pages, a former SNP advisor suggests that Salmond has the talents to weather the future well too ("Governing well is worth a hundred freedom slogans")

Both he and Magnus Linklater in The Times pick up on the implications of a General Election date of the 'Holyrood honeymoon' ("Why England must heed the skirl of the pipes")

"Mr Brown needs most, if not all, of those 39 Labour-held seats at Westminster if he is to win. On present evidence he might not get them."

It looks like we might see out the year without a General Election after all.

President Bush's closest strategist and deputy chief of staff Karl Rove resigned yesterday, prompting an outpouring of editorials and comment.  Rove is variously regarded as the 'boy genius' behind Bush's two successive presidential victories and congressional victories in 2002 and 2004, and by democrats as something close to the devil incarnate - the machiavellian string puller behind everything from the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame to the smearing of of Senators John Kerry, Max Cleland, and John McCain.

All of which is perhaps a little hysterical.  The truth is almost certainly more mundane.  If Rove was such a genius, why did he fail so completely to do what he sought above all else - to build a permanent republican majority? The Republican party, after all, failed to win a single Senate or House seat, or governorship held by a democrat in 2006. And why, even when gifted with one of the most unifying events in American history - 9/11 - was he forced to rely on a strategy of firing up the base and visceral partisanship in order to win Bush a narrow re-election in 2004?

Nor was he the all powerful brain of the White House.  His area of expertise was in elections, and by most accounts, following Bush's re-election, his influence on policy waned. 

Nonetheless, he was undoubtedly a highly influential aide, who played a key role in getting Bush elected, and re-elected.  Ultimately, how history judges Rove will depend on how it judges Bush.

Today's newspapers provide an interesting studies of two ways to take on Labour.

In the blue corner - back from its short-lived incarnation as the blue-green corner - stands David Cameron, and, not for the first time in recent weeks, the commentators are unimpressed. In the Telegraph, former Tory MP George Walden suggests that today's Conservatives regard opposition as "a bit of a wheeze", which is much more fun than all the dreary work that would follow an election victory ('The Conservatives don't want power, it seems'). Ironically, Walden is guest-writing for the Telegraph because "Boris Johnson is away". It's hard to imagine the MP for Henley penning a piece like this.

Walden's argument that Cameron lacks the seriousness to govern is backed up by another Tory, Michael Brown, in his Independent column ('I am a Tory, but I must admit I find myself seduced by the cut of Gordon Brown's jib'). At times Brown is almost fulsome in his praise for his namesake:

Middle aged, dark suited, (occasionally crumpled) crisp white shirt, always wearing a tie - Brown appears every inch a politician from the Tory era of the 1950s. By cancelling his holiday and striding around deepest "true blue" Tory Surrey with farmers on Monday, he subconsciously reached the very parts of the Tory Party Mr Cameron seems determined to reject or insult...

And then come the critique of the Tory leader:

So first, Mr Cameron, ditch the Lycra shorts and the cycling nonsense. Put the tie and jacket back on. Since image is supposed to be your thing it shouldn't be too difficult to start at least looking like a Prime Minister.

Ouch!

In the tartan corner, Alex Salmond shows another way of taking on the Labour government. Mr Salmond has advantages over Mr Cameron, of course, not least the pulpit of the first ministership, from which he can harangue Labour one minute for selling out Scotland and assume his most statesmanlike pose the next. Yesterday, Mr Salmond's target was the broadcast media, which he accused of neglecting Scottish society and demanded more powers (from Westminster) to regulate in Scotland's interest; Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph gives an entertaining account of what he seems to have regarded as a consummate performance ('Men With No Ties are putty in Salmond's hands'). What surely impresses most is the way that Salmond combines ease of manner with seriousness of purpose in a way that either Mr Brown or Mr Cameron would give anything for.

Also in today's news

The Times reports that tackling a "culture of low aspiration" among black boys and teenagers could boost the British economy by £24 billion over the next forty years ('Helping black youths to achieve may bring £24bn boost').

In today’s Guardian, Roy Hattersley takes John Stuart Mill and the Liberal Democrats to task (‘Liberty is not what it was’) and claims that their philosophy is outmoded in the modern age.

He’s arguing with something of a caricature of Mill, though – in saying that “He would have rejected outright a more positive view of liberty since it required the freedoms of the few to be constrained in order to protect the freedoms of the many,” he ignores Mill’s willingness to support the requirement for children to be education, for example.  Mill actually extended the idea of harm to others to neglecting to develop a child’s mental faculties!  The very idea of the ‘harm principle’ implies that the only reason freedoms (of the few or the many) can be constrained is precisely to protect the freedoms of others.

Hattersley is correct that specific judgments (disputes over tobacco smoke are probably a reasonable example) made on particular issues may be different in 2007 from the nineteenth century, but this does not necessarily invalidate the broader framework of Mill’s thinking.

An attachment to liberty remains profoundly relevant today – when the Times has David Davis calling for the banning of Hizb-ut-Tahrir primarily on the basis of their opinions (‘The wrong voice for Muslim Britain’), for instance, people who can advocate freedom of expression from a principled position are sorely needed – and they’re likely to know their John Stuart Mill.  Liberalism has drawn on other strands of thought, as Hattersley acknowledges to some extent – but broader notions of freedom enhance and build upon the original insight rather than contradict it.

The Freethink blog is going across the pond today, and in the process, going rather meta: blogging about american blogs.  

American political blogs are larger and more influential than in the UK, and are more integrated into the political process.  

The reasons are clear.  When the Daily Kos, one of the most influential left-wing blogs, gets more than half a million hits per day from committed democratic voters, and does much to set the political agenda, the benefits for politicians in engaging with that forum are clear.  Every democratic presidential candidate is currently at the blog's YearlyKos convention with the exception of Sen. Joe Biden will be there (and even his campaign posted a diary on Daily Kos explaining his absence).

What is perhaps more significant is that politicians now have a stake in the blogosphere to the extent that it is in their political interest to defend it.  Sen. Chris Dodd, a democratic candidate for President, appeared on the Fox News channel's 'O Reilly Factor', very much enemy territory for democratic candidates, to take Bill O'Reilly to task for his attacks on the Daily Kos as a 'hate site'.  He acquitted himself well, given that O'Reilly has something of a temper.

Having begun in a serious way in the 2004 presidential primaries, the use of the internet for campaigns, fundraising, raising awareness is now very much the norm in the US. It will be interesting at the next general election to see how much the UK has caught up.

The columnists are sticking with tried and tested issues.  So much so that when you see the list of topics (poor schooling, poor prisons, poor planning) you wonder if the pieces themselves will be derivative. 

One such piece is Steve Richard's in The Independent ('How the bloggers are making politics more febrile, more fun - and more challenging') In it, he rehearses the rather patronising  political-blogs-are-quite-interesting observation. So do today's columnists put up a reasonable fight?

Education

• Johann Hari in The Independent blends the true life events of Big Brother with the failings of the education system. ('Big Brother and the failed generation')

Prisons

• Camilla Cavendish in The Times uses the news that indefinite detention was attacked by the courts yesterday to launch a full frontal on the lack of direction or vision for prisoners. ('This is your prison scandal, Prime Minister')

• Ross Clark, also in The Times, refreshes the ongoing planning debates with a series of challenges to policy makers ('We've got lots of Countryside. Lets start building')

• Peter Riddell, in the last piece for today from The Times, suggests that it might not be a good thing for the Tories to descend into leadership introspection and civil war ('Get rid of Cameron? Tory mutineers are bonkers')
  

• Lib Dem members are often exasperated by the fact that other people just don't get them.  No doubt eyes will therefore roll when seeing the headline to Alan Cochrane's piece for The Telegraph -  'What are the Scottish Lib Dems for?'.  However, the question is worth while asking following the news that the Lib Dems have sunk to just 4% in the polls since May's elections (see the piece for various caveats on the poll itself)

Steve Richards argue that newspapers are still more influential than blogs.  Given today's interesting crop of opinion (especially the Prisons and Planning stories) the dead tree press is still very much in the ring.

Start booking those poster sites now!

If, as the Times and the Guardian would have us believe, Gordon Brown is giving serious consideration to an October general election, then all three parties have work to do to prepare for the imminent poll. The Times quotes Labour vice-chairman and Reading West MP Martin Salter as saying that the PM has put the Labour Party organization, and especially its fundraising apparatus, on standby for an October campaign ('Brown drums up funding for snap autumn poll'), whilst a Guardian piece suggests that Brown's visit to the US - and especially his successful initiative on Darfur - will do him no harm at all with would-be Labour voters ('Brown returns home amid election speculation'). An FT leader warns that tough foreign policy decisions lie ahead, but nonetheless predicts that the PM's "businesslike" approach will give him leverage in dealing with President Bush that his predecessor never enjoyed ('Memo to Bush: No more "Yo Blair"') Brown's careful distancing from Bush, and his statesmanlike performance at the UN, could prove to be the substance that solidifies the Brown bounce, especially when set against the backdrop of David Cameron's difficulties with the Tory party.

On the other hand, Peter Riddell in the Times invokes Brown's legendary caution and the large number of vulnerable Labour seats as good reasons to bet against an early poll ('It's a temptation, but one that is likely to be resisted'). A Times leader adds that an October poll which pre-empted the Tory party conference would most likely be seen as a "cheap, sly and essentially unfair scam" by many voters, and argues instead for an election on November 1 or 8 ('November surprise?').  And on foreign policy, John Bolton in the FT ('Britain can't have two best friends') and a Telegraph leader ('The PM is playing to the wrong gallery') suggest that, whilst electorally popular, the PM's emphasis on the EU and the UN will come back to haunt him in the long run.