Here’s another email I received from the pro-democracy, open government organisation Open Britain. It’s another expose of the extreme right-wing thinktanks on Tufton Street. These want the privatisation of the NHS and other public services, the destruction of the welfare state, tax cuts for the rich and the very worst kind of Brexit, for ordinary people, a no-deal departure from the EU, These people have extensive connections to the Tory party, especially under Liz Truss, and to the aristocracy. The expose also notes that these thinktanks are given airtime and serious discussion while those holding left-wing policies, such as Proportional Representation, are shut out.
‘Dear David,
In our ‘long read’ email last week, we filled you in on our research into the UK’s failure to address illicitly funded political campaigns. Unfortunately, sketchy shell companies and untraceable political donations from Russian oligarchs are only one element of the dark money problem. Think tanks hold increasing sway in Number 10, and many do not reveal their donors.
Nowhere in the UK symbolises these kinds of organisations more than Tufton Street. The headquarters for hard-right libertarian lobbying groups, Tufton Street discreetly houses a network of different groups that generally oppose public services of all kinds, advocate tax cuts for the rich, and promote austerity. While not all these organisations are physically located on Tufton Street, the name has become a symbol for a particular brand of political lobbying – one that has all but taken over politics today.
In recent years, high-level think tank “experts” have found their way into increasingly influential positions, from Conservative Party conference to BBC Question Time to the corridors of Number 10. Nothing made this more evident than Kwasi Kwarteng’s ballistic mini-budget, which looked to implement unpopular trickle-down policies dreamt up in Tufton Street boardrooms. As former Johnson advisor, Tim Montgomerie stated with glee after the mini-budget: “Britain is now their laboratory”.
When was the last time the government listened to the constitutional experts who concluded that PR would improve representation, the electoral experts that said Voter ID would disenfranchise millions or the human rights lawyers that said the UK is violating international law? Clearly, it’s only a certain kind of expert that holds sway.
This week, we want to get into the think tanks on Tufton Street (and beyond) and the influences they’ve had on the last decade of Conservative rule. In another longer-than-usual email, we will demystify the deep-pocketed and enigmatic think tanks that exert so much power in this country.
Libertarian Nonsense:
These groups advocate for outdated and deeply unpopular policies which – instead of dealing with the UK’s growing income inequality – generally look to make it worse. They want to slash or eradicate public services, give tax benefits to the nation’s wealthiest, and crush unions. We don’t know who funds most of them, but it’s fair to say it’s probably people and companies with a vested interest in those policies. What we do know is that much of the money comes from hard-right American billionaires and multinational corporations.
Here’s a brief overview of the most prominent libertarian lobbying groups on Tufton Street:
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a libertarian think-tank masquerading as an educational charity. Closely allied to Liz Truss, the group lobbied at least 75 MPs before her leadership victory and practically hand-wrote her “trickle-down” policies. The group does not disclose details of its funding, but a general breakdown reveals the majority comes from large businesses and wealthy individuals – we still have no way of knowing who they are.
The Adam Smith Institute is another libertarian group that claims it seeks to “use free markets to create a richer, freer, happier world”. In reality, they also championed the mini-budget that imploded the UK economy and directly influenced Conservative MPs to advocate for trickle-down policies. Like the IEA, they believe “the privacy of their donors should be protected” and refuse to say who funds them. However, their breakdown also reveals a majority from businesses and wealthy individuals.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance has been around for years, claiming to be non-partisan and ostensibly advocating for more responsible use of our taxes. Like the two groups above, it gets a transparency rating of E on openDemocracy’s transparency index. In recent years, they’ve joined the culture wars, going after LGBT organisations like Stonewall and notably having their talking points immediately repeated across the right-wing press.
As we’ll see, these right-wing groups not only hold massive sway in government and advocate for radical trickle-down policies but also hugely influence the debates on Brexit and climate. Most of the organisations we mention in this email are members of the Atlas Network, a group of over 500 such think tanks operating globally and headquartered in the United States.
Brexit Zealotry:
How many times in recent years were we told that being a member of the EU called the UK’s sovereignty into question? But did anyone ever ask what effect dark money-funded think tanks controlling government policy was having on our sovereignty? In an incredible twist of irony, these groups worked hard to cement a no-deal Brexit aimed at regaining our sovereignty while actively undermining it by exerting influence over the nation’s future.
The Tufton Street lobbying groups that pushed a hard Brexit:
The Institute for Free Trade (IFT), formerly the Initiative for Free Trade (they were initially unable to meet the formal requirements to be an “institute”), was launched by Liam Fox and Boris Johnson in 2017. It was chaired by Daniel Hannan, one the leaders of Vote Leave and the right-wing Koch-funded Cato Institute. They were exposed for offering US donors direct access to UK politicians, claiming to be in the “Brexit-influencing game”.
In 2018, the IFT published a US-UK trade policy paper written in consultation with dozens of other libertarian groups. It called for a no-deal Brexit, a “bonfire” of EU regulations (which we would later see under Sunak), and an NHS open to US market competition.The whole thing was designed to advance Boris Johnson’s radical Brexit agenda with the veneer of “expert” advice.
Dominic Raab and Liz Truss were under fire in 2019 for meeting with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) off the books, with the think-tank bragging that it could “side-step” transparency requirements. At the time, the IEA was pushing hard for a no-deal Brexit that would see radical free-market trade reforms put in place between the US and the UK. The IEA’s lobbyist, Shanker Singham, also worked directly with the European Research Group (ERG), the ominous group of Euro-sceptic MPs that won’t reveal its list of members.
The Brexit project was partly made possible by mysteriously-funded think tanks that viewed a hard Brexit as an opportunity for their donors to make a killing in a deregulated UK market. It was a dirty, dirty game that – despite being fully exposed – is not talked about nearly enough.
It took Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s shambolic mini-budget to truly reveal the extent to which think tanks like the IEA, Adam Smith Institute, and others have massively disproportionate influence over British politics. In reality, it had been going on for far longer than that.
If Britain is the laboratory for a gang of dodgy think tanks, where does that leave ordinary people? It renders us powerless, left to be the guinea pigs of organisations that have no real connection to our lives, values, or communities. It’s the antithesis of democracy.
You’ll have noticed through our examples that Tufton Street operates as one giant network – bringing together staff and resources from across their global network. They also all seem to have backdoor access to Tory MPs, a nexus of corruption in the heart of politics aimed at undemocratically advancing the aims of a wealthy elite. In his new book Bullingdon Club Britain, Sam Bright (the journalist that broke the PPE contracts scandal) explains the Tufton Street network’s intrinsic connections to the British aristocracy in more detail than we have time for here.
It’s vital that the British public is aware of what’s going on behind the scenes and understands the impact these networks are having on politics. The next government needs to be under no illusion that the people of this country have had enough of this corruption of our system and want an end to the toxic impact of foreign billionaires and multinational companies. If we’re ever going to build a system that works for all of us, these kinds of actors need to be sidelined for good. They don’t have the country’s interests at heart.
It will always be difficult for ordinary people to take a stand against these insanely wealthy and highly organised forces, but we aren’t put off by the magnitude of the challenge. We know that those forces CAN be beaten through the collective efforts of the hundreds of thousands of us who care about this country’s future and who are prepared to take a stand to get our political system back on track.
Yeah, I know this ad hominem, but it is funny. Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani interviewed Tory iconoclast Peter Hitchens the other day. The two don’t really have much in common, but Bastani justified the interview saying that if you want to be certain in your political views, you should test them by talking to people who hold the opposite. Hitchen’s is very much a man of the right, and some of his views are odd, if not barking. He believes, for example, that we shouldn’t have gone to war with Germany as it was not in our interests. Perhaps it wasn’t, but we had signed the defence pacts with France and Poland, And if we hadn’t gone to war, I think we would have still lost the empire sooner or later. Plus we would have been excluded from a continent under Nazi domination. And this is not to mention the carnage that would have been perpetrated by the Nazis, with the Jews and Gypsies becoming extinct in Europe, followed by the Czechs and the Slav populations enslaved as peasant farmers supplying produce to their German overlords.
On the other hand, Hitchens has said that he never supported Thatcher’s sale of the council houses or the privatisation of the prison system, because justice, as a principle, should be in the hands of the state. He also states in one of his books that he was shocked into an awareness of how fragile civilisation was after visiting one of the failed African countries as a journalist in the 1980s. The country had descended into vicious gang violence, but walking through its capital Hitchens saw everywhere grand architecture and all the signs of modern corporate development. I think this gives an insight into the basis of his own Tory views. I remember reading in the Spectator years ago that the right-wing philosopher Roger Scruton abandoned the left when he witnessed the rioting in Paris during the 1968 student and workers’ protests. He was alarmed by their ‘anti-civilisational rage’.
Back to the interview, Hitchens described Blair’s spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, as being frightening intelligent. He mentioned people, who really thought for the first few months of Blair’s regime that it was Campbell running the country. He joked that it was probably because of Campbell’s mighty intellect that he was kept away from voters, as he would probably frighten them all away.
But Blair, on the other hand, wasn’t terribly bright and Hitchens doubted that he could have run the country without Campbell. To illustrate his point, he told the story of how he briefly met Blair just before the 1997 election. Blair was in Oxford, travelling in his motorcade. Hitchens was following him by bike, but as the traffic was bad, he got to Blair’s destination before him. After Blair had arrived, he was immediately surrounded by a crowd taking pictures. Hitchens wanted to talk to Blair, and so, after the crowd had finished and dispersed, he walked up to the future Prime Minister. He decided to open the conversation by asking who the crowd were. Blair replied, ‘They’re Brazilians. I’m very popular down there.’
‘Oh, you should learn Portuguese then,’ replied Hitch.
‘What?’
It turned out that Blair thought they spoke Brazilian in Brazil. Hitchens concluded that what Blair really wanted to be was a pop star, and you didn’t need to ascribe any deep ideological motives to him.
There was, nevertheless, an ideological basis to his policies. He was a product of BAP, the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, which was set up by Reagan to influence the rising generation of British politicians from both the Conservatives and Labour. Blair had started out as a supporter of nuclear disarmament, but after going on a BAP-sponsored trip to America and hearing the views of various right-wing think tanks, he came back as an opponent. He was fervently Thatcherite, believing in the superiority of private industry and strongly influenced by the American political system. Private Eye ran several pieces about the American private healthcare and prison companies lining up to donate to New Labour in the hope of getting some of that nationalised action. He took over advisers and staff from private healthcare companies as well as other businesses, and pushed the privatisation of the NHS further than the Tories would have dared. As stupid as he may have been, he set the course for right-wing Labour, and Starmer shows every indication of returning to it.
This is another very interesting piece from RT America’s Lee Camp. Camp is a comedian and the presenter of Redacted Tonight, a satirical show that uses comedy to take a deep, critical look at American politics and current affairs. In this piece, Camp shows the double standards behind the recent decision to force RT America to register as a foreign agent under FARA, while the real foreign lobbying groups of the type the Act was set up to regulate, AIPAC and John Podesta’s lobbying organisation, are allowed to get away free.
FARA was set up in the 1930s to force lobbyists working for Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and imperial Japan to register with the American treasury, so they could have their government sponsors identified, and would have to reveal their sources of incomes.
Camp then states that AIPAC is Israel’s foreign lobby arm in the US. This shouldn’t be controversial: it’s exactly how AIPAC describes itself, as Camp shows with the masthead from their webpage. It says ‘America’s Pro-Israel lobby’. He then produces a quote about how AIPAC is the most powerful lobbying organisation in America, or at least, more powerful than other very well-organised and funded groups like the gun lobby.
He also plays a piece from former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, describing how, before she had even taken up her seat in Congress, AIPAC sent her a document they wanted her to sign pledging her support. She replied that before she would, she’d have to read about the issues first. She then states that she learned that the operatives for the Israel lobby control women’s organisations, environmental organisations, peace organisations. Every aspect of the political process is controlled by people associated with the Israel lobby.
Camp then goes on to describe how $705 million was given to Israel by America in the latest military budget. And AIPAC has solidly been behind, and indeed urging America on in its wars in the Middle East. AIPAC pushed for the Iraq invasion. They pushed for the war in Syria. They also met with a Democrat party thinktank, the Centre for American Progress, to suppress rumours by their own journalists that AIPAC is pushing for war with Iran.
AIPAC also flexes its clout at the UN. Here there’s a clip of US ambassador Nicky Haley, speaking at an AIPAC gathering, talking about how they got the UN to withdraw a report that made the ‘outrageous’ – but entirely correct claim – that Israel is an apartheid state. And then the UN Secretary General resigned. She also shows how she’s absolutely fine with people wanting to impose sanctions on North Korea and Syria, but really doesn’t see why they should be imposed on Israel.
Camp then points out that AIPAC are actively trying to make it illegal to promote the boycott of Israel, a move that is supported by around 50 senators.
He then goes on to describe the origins of AIPAC. It was set up by a former member of the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, who then worked for the American Zionist Council. In 1962 the AZC was ordered by Robert Kennedy to register under FARA and open up their financial records. In December the AZC’s president, Rabbi Irving Miller, asked for a delay. In January the following year, 1963, AIPAC was founded. Then in March the AZC’s lawyers claimed that the Council should not have to register. They then continued to delay and stonewall sending in the required paperwork. The efforts to force AIPAC to register seem to have ended with the deaths of JFK and Robert Kennedy. Basically, AIPAC never got round to registering. In 1967 AIPAC applied for federal tax exemption. This was granted and backdated to 1953. In 1986 the lobbyist then began creating political action groups, in direct contravention of its tax-exempt status.
Camp explains that AIPAC’s purpose is pro-Israeli propaganda, termed ‘hasbara’, a word which literally means ‘explanation’. This is to get America to ignore Israel’s war crimes. Which, as Camp points out, doesn’t mean that all Israelis are terrible people. America commits war crimes, and he likes some Americans. AIPAC is responsible for trying smear those who criticise and protest against Israel as anti-Semites. But despite their best efforts, a growing number of young and older people around the world are standing up for the Palestinians. For the first time a bill for Palestinian human rights has been introduced into Congress. It was introduced by Representative Betty McCollum, and seeks to prevent the US from funding the detention and prosecution of children in Israel’s military courts. And of course, AIPAC are trying to crush it.
Camp makes the obvious point that if FARA was set up to control and regulate foreign lobbyists, then AIPAC is precisely the type of foreign lobbyist it is set up to regulate.
He then moves on to talk about John Podesta and the lobbying organisation he set up with his brother, Tony. John Podesta was one of Hillary Clinton’s aides. It should have registered with FARA, but didn’t, when it was lobbying on behalf of the Russian-owned company, Uranium One, from whom it collected $180,000 in fees in 2012, 2014, and 2015.
Camp then goes on to point out that this all shows that the decision to force RT to register as a foreign agent is entirely political. It’s a way to further suppress and marginalise dissenting voices like Chris Hedges and Jesse Ventura, and reinforce the stories about Russian interference. This is a story concocted by the Democratic National Convention so that it doesn’t have to look at its own corruption. The oligarchy running the country know that they don’t have the solutions to working peoples’ problems, and so are forced to resort to trying to push dissent further to the margins, and force people into an even smaller space of acceptable opinion.
Camp then points out that RT has not broadcast Russian propaganda. It has covered the Dakota pipeline, police brutality and Camp himself covered electoral fraud last year. It has even won an Emmy award for its coverage of the Occupy movement. He ends by stating that it looks like propaganda only if you buy into the corporate bullsh*t coming from CNN.
I’m not sure, but I wonder if Cynthia McKinnon was the Black, Green party politico, who lost her seat because she wouldn’t kowtow to AIPAC. When she refused to follow their line, they smeared her as an anti-Semite, and poured their funding into her political rivals, so that she would lose the election.
AIPAC are a nasty, bullying organisation that is utterly ruthless in trying to shut down any criticism or dissent about Israel. But it certainly does not speak for the majority of Jewish Americans. According to polls, American Jews tend to be politically liberal, and traditionally have been utterly indifferent to Israel. They were always far more keen to build lives for themselves as equal and respected citizens of the US. Just as they have been in Britain and very many other countries. Hence the determination of Zionist groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to give the false impression that hatred of Jews in Europe is at the same level as Germany just before the Nazi seizure of power. And that all Muslims, or nearly all Muslims, are also bitter anti-Semites and a threat to western democracy.
However, as Camp points out, an increasing number of people are becoming more critical of Israel, including young Jewish Americans. Many of them have become even more hostile to the country after going there on the ‘heritage’ tours that the country sponsors amongst American Jews to gain their allegiance and goodwill. The Jews, who have been so alienated from Israel, include those, who have been victims of anti-Semitism. Clearly the experience of being a victim of prejudice and abuse is not leading Jewish American young people to wish to support the abusive Israeli state.
Hat tip to Michelle, one of the great commenters on this blog, for letting me know about this article.
Priti Patel has finally done the decent thing, and resigned following the revelation of her highly secretive visit to Israel, where she met met leading politicians, while telling everyone she was just on a holiday. Part of the reason behind Patel’s little trip seems to have been to get the British government to divert some of the money it gives for international aid to Israel, so it can spend it on the IDF’s continuing occupation of the Golan Heights. This is territory which Israel nicked from the Syrians during the Six Day War.
Israel is already massively supported by Britain, the US and the EU, where it is treated almost as a member, despite not having formal membership. The IDF is one of the main instruments of the country’s brutal repression and ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arab people, the Palestinians. During its independence campaign in 1948, the Israeli armed forces were responsible for a series of massacres, rapes and beatings against the Palestinians. The most notorious of these was Deir Yassin. But that was only one massacre out of many. Very many. Israeli soldiers killed people sheltering in a mosque, shot and threw handgrenades at women and children, and in one horrendous incident killed a group of Palestinians, who were coming towards them to offer them rice in the hope of getting some mercy. The IDF today enforces the brutal apartheid regime against the Palestinians, including the fouling of cisterns and wells to make the water undrinkable, and the demolition of houses and seizure of property by Israeli colonists.
I have no desire whatsoever to see my government give aid money to the IDF. And I very much doubt I’m alone.
This isn’t about anti-Semitism. I am very much aware that there is and always has been a very strong Jewish opposition to the ethnic cleansing and terror, which not only includes American and European Jews, but also Israelis such Ilan Pappe and human rights organisations such as BT’salem. Anyone, who dares to criticise Israel, is smeared and abused as an anti-Semite. But many anti-Zionist Jews, or simply Jews critical of the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, feel that they are particularly singled out for abuse and vilification. Tony Greenstein, a veteran anti-Zionist and anti-Fascist campaigner, has quoted in his blog the left-wing comedian, Alexei Sayle. Sayle, the son of Jewish Communists, has said that it seems to him that the majority of people smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour Party were Jews.
Returning to Patel, an article by Adam Ramsay on the Open Democracy site, reveals that she has very extensive links to some very shady right-wing lobbying groups and thinktanks.
Before she was elected MP in 2010, Patel worked for the PR form Weber Shandwick, whose clients included British American Tobacco. Not only does the company produce a highly addictive and lethal drug, it also has links to the dictatorship in Myanmar and child labour. The article notes that some of the PR company’s employees were uncomfortable dealing with BAT. Not so Patel. She was perfectly relaxed.
BAT in their turn fund the right-wing think tanks the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs. In 2002, while Patel was working there, Weber Shandwick merged with the Israeli lobbyists Rimon Cohen, whose clients include the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the illegal Migron settlement on the West Bank, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Whom Patel coincidentally met on her jaunt.
Weber Shandwick’s clients also included Bahrein, and just months after her election, the Bahreini’s flew her there to meet some of their ministers. This is a Gulf kingdom widely criticised for human rights abuses. In 2012 she went on another trip, this time to the United Arab Emirates, as part of the All Party Group, which went there. She made two return trips in 2013 and 2014. The first time she went with the World Consulting and Research Corporation, based in New Delhi. This outfit describe themselves as a brand equity and management organisation. The second trip was courtesy of Sun Mark Ltd., who are regular donors to her office. Weber Shandwick also added the Dubai firm Promoseven to its list of clients about the same time it merged with Rimon Cohen.
In 2014 she also attended a meeting in Washington, courtesy of the right-wing, and highly secretive British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. The meeting was organised by AIPAC, the very powerful Israeli lobbying organisation in the US, about security in the Middle East. As for the Henry Jackson Society, they are so secretive about the source of their funds that they withdrew it from two parliamentary groups, rather than reveal where it comes from. Earlier this year the Charity Commission announced they were investigating it following allegations that it was being paid by the Japanese government to spread anti-Chinese propaganda.
Patel’s holiday to Israel also seems to have been sponsored by Stuart Polak, the former head and honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In 2009 Peter Oborne wrote a piece about the extensive influence the CFI has in the Tory party. Ramsay also notes that trips to Israel funded by the CFI and similar groups are the most consistent entry in the MPs’ and MSPs’ register of foreign interests.
The article concludes
Much has been written about the weakness of the current Conservative government, as exhibited by this scandal, Boris Johnson’s blunders, and last week’s resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But here is the problem. When governments are falling apart, special interest groups run riot. Flagrant abuses usually happen at times when minor abuses are normalised. What other powerful lobby groups are pushing ministers around? How did it get to the point that Patel thought she’d get away with this?
It’s a good question, though you’d have to work extremely hard to find out. The Labour MP Colin Challen wrote a piece years ago in Lobster reporting that half of Tory funding remains mysterious. As for the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, they’re extreme right-wing think tanks that provided much of the ideology of the New Right during Thatcher’s grotty rise to power and period in office. They want to privatise everything, including the NHS and schools, as well as social security. I know. I’ve got the IEA’s pamphlets about the last two. The IEA also produced another pamphlet addressing a question vital to today’s women: Liberating Women – From Feminism. Which has been the line the Daily Mail’s taken almost since it was founded.
Mike yesterday put up a piece commenting on the strange verbiage of Patel’s resignation letter, and the reply from Theresa May. Both contained passages stressing that Patel was usually open and transparent about her business. Mike commented that neither of these letters actually looked like they’d been written by the two.
Mike comments that neither May nor Patel have acted transparently and openly, and we still don’t know what Downing Street’s role in this whole affair may have been. The Jewish Chronicle suggests it’s rather more than May and Patel are telling.
He concludes
This matter has demonstrated that Theresa May’s government has no interest in transparency and openness. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The minority Prime Minister will be hoping that it will go away, following the resignation of the offending minister.
It won’t.
We need to know exactly what happened, when it was arranged, with whom, who knew about it, who was there at the time, what was said about it afterwards and to whom, and whether all the information has been made public. My guess that it hasn’t.
Recent events involving Boris Johnson have shown that ministers cannot expect to be able to lie to us and expect us to accept it. We need the facts.
And if Theresa May can’t provide the answers, it won’t be one of her ministers who’ll need to resign.
This week, Trump decertified the nuclear deal with Iran, limiting that country’s development of nuclear technology. The orange maniac did so claiming that the country had broken the spirit of the agreement, by continuing to fund anti-American militant groups along with other policies. He did not, however, take any further action against Iran, pushing this back to Congress.
In this piece from RT America, their reporter interviews the investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, who states that Trump made the decision very much against the wishes of his own foreign policy advisors. They’re also very strongly against Iran, but realise that decertifying the agreement will strengthen the hand of the hardliners within the country, which will make negotiations with them much more difficult.
Instead of his own foreign policy people, Trump is listening instead to a group of neocons, some of whom were responsible for the 2003 Iraq invasion. These have the same goals towards Iran. They want to overthrow its government, and those of other nations that defy American policies. Chief amongst these neocons are Nikki ‘Pancake Queen’ Haley, his UN ambassador and John ‘Bombs Away’ Bolton. These neocons are in turn funded by three billionaires – Sheldon Adelson, who runs a chain of casinos, Bernard Markus and Peter Singer, who are not only viciously anti-Iran, but stand very close to Israel’s far right Likud party. Haley was the author, or rather ostensible author, of Trump’s policy paper on Iran. Blumenthal states that it’s a stretch describing her as the author of anything. She has no foreign policy experience, and he calls her the ‘Pancake Queen’ as her knowledge of foreign policy comes from eating at the same pancake restaurant as various diplomats and foreign affairs politicians while she was governor of Georgia. She is so determinedly against Iran that she has openly called for regime change. Blumenthal himself is so underwhelmed by her intellectual powers that he says that neocons have simply taken over her mind and rented space in her head. As for ‘Bombs Away’ Bolton, he was responsible for wrecking Bush’s negotiations with North Korea. he has even gone so far as to call for the country’s bombing.
Adelson himself has given $40 million to Trump’s election campaign. In 2012 Adelson spent $100 million through his super-pacs (political funding organisations) promoting Mitt Romney in order to wreck the nuclear deal then being negotiated by Obama. This was all on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli premier, whom Adelson has been promoting through his various funding organisations and think tanks for ten years. He is another one so bitterly opposed to Israel, that in a secret meeting he declared that he wanted a nuclear bomb to be dropped on the country.
Bernard Markus is the billionaire behind the American firm, Home Depot. He has funded numerous necon thinktanks, including the Foundation for the Defence of Democracy, which was responsible for crafting Trump’s speech. Markus has denounced Iran as ‘the Devil’.
Blumenthal concludes by stating that these three are not looking at international politics in any rational way. They are putting Israel’s interests above America’s, and the interests of an extreme right-wing party, Likud, above what many Israelis would want. This is an extremely dangerous time.
This will annoy nearly every woman and also a very large number of men. Looking round one of the charity bookshops in Cheltenham yesterday with a friend, I found a whole load of pamphlets from the Institute of Economic Affairs. They’re a right-wing, free market thinktank connected with the Tory party. I think they were also trying to promote themselves as non-party political when Tony Blair was in power, as I think he was also very sympathetic to their message. Put simply, their pro-privatisation, anti-welfare, anti-poor – one of the pamphlet’s was Alexis de Tocqueville’s Pauperism, anti-Socialist – another was Von Hayek’s Socialism and the Intellectuals. And anti-feminist. Two of the pamphlets were anti-feminist screeds, intended to encourage women to forget any notions of equality, independence and a career, and return to their traditional roles as wives and mothers.
The two pamphlets were entitled Liberating Modern Women…From Feminism and Equal Opportunities – A Feminist Fallacy. They were collections of essays on individual subjects within the overall theme of rebutting feminism. The contributors seemed to be an equal number of men and women. Among the policies they recommended were measures to preserve the family from break up and end ‘no fault’ divorces. They claimed that men and women pursue different goals because of innate biological differences. And rather than being a patriarchal institution, the family was actually a matriarchy. They also attacked women working, because it meant that the household economy was now based on two people having an income, whereas before it was only the husband’s wage that was important. And, almost inevitably, there was an attack on single mothers. Left-wing welfare policies were attacked for taking them out of the jobs market and placing them into ‘welfare dependency’.
My friend decided to buy them to see how extreme, shocking and bonkers they actually were. Though he insisted that I tell the woman on the desk when paying for them that we we’re buying them because we agreed with them, which raised a smile from her. While walking round town afterwards he said he would have felt less embarrassed holding these pamphlets if he’d had something less offensive to put them in, to disguise the fact that he had them. Like one of the porno mags. I didn’t recognise most of the contributors to the pamphlets, but one name stood out: Mary Kenny. She had been a journalist for the Guardian or Observer, but moved to the Torygraph. My friend was also shocked, as the Institute of Economic Affairs has been on Channel 4 News several times. It’s one of the organisations they’ve gone to for ‘balance’ discussing particular issues. My friend’s point is that they’re policies are so extreme, they really aren’t providing any kind of reasoned balance at all, just more far-right opinion.
There’s an attitude amongst some Republicans in America that feminism really is a terrible Marxist plot to destroy Western civilisation, despite the fact that it existed before Marxism, and its campaigns for votes for women and equal opportunities cross party-political boundaries. Despite the institute’s arguments, there really isn’t one of their views that isn’t vulnerable to disproof. For example, it’s true that men and women tend to perform different jobs, and have different personal goals and attitudes. But it’s very debatable how far this is due to biological differences. A few years ago, back in the 1990s there was a lot of interest and noise about supposed sex differences in the organisation of the brain. Men’s and women’s brains were made differently, and this was why men were better at maths and parking cars, and women were better at language and communication, but couldn’t read maps. Since then, the situation has reversed slightly. One female neuroscientist, Cordelia – , wrote a book a few years ago arguing that any psychological differences and intellectual aptitudes that differed between the sexes weren’t due to physical differences in the brain. With the exception of individuals at the extreme ends of the scale – very ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ brains, brains are just brains, and you can’t tell their former owner’s sex simply by looking at them.
As for feminism itself, it’s probably fair to say that many women do feel caught between their careers and their families, and would like more time to spend raising or attending to their children. But their entry into the workforce, and pursuing jobs, hobbies and interests previously reserved for men are the product of profound needs and desires on their behalf. It isn’t a case that they have been somehow brainwashed or indoctrinated by some kind of feminist ‘false consciousness’. For example, you can hear from older women how they felt when they were young, when they wanted to play with boy’s toys, like train or construction sets, like Meccano, but were forbidden by their parents. Or wanted to try their hand at ‘boy’s’ subjects at school, like woodwork. Or join in with boy’s games like footie or rugby. This doesn’t mean that all women wanted to do all of the above, only that a sizable number did want to do some of those, and felt frustrated at the social conventions that forbade them to. When the feminists in the 1960s argued that women had a right to do traditionally male jobs and pursuits, they were articulating the desires of very many women. They weren’t just abstract theorists speaking only for themselves.
As for the statement that the entry of women into the workforce has made family finances more difficult, because mortgages are now based on a double income, that’s also very open to query. It might be that the change to women working has had an effect, but I’ve also seen the argument that women had to go out to work, because the income from the husband’s wages alone wasn’t enough to pay the bills.
As for the family being a ‘matriarchal’ institution, the status of women has changed over time. But in the Middle Ages, women were basically their husband’s chattels. And in the West, women didn’t automatically have a right to hold their property independently of their husbands until the Married Women’s Property Act in the late 19th century. One of the early feminist tracts from 19th century Germany was a polemic attacking the way women’s property automatically became their husband’s on marriage.
I’m alarmed by the break down of the traditional family, rising divorces and absent fathers. I always have been, ever since we did ‘relationships’ as part of the RE course at school, when the news was full of it. But part of the problem isn’t the ease of divorce, although it became more difficult and expensive when Blair was in power. It’s the fact that many people do find themselves trapped in unhappy relationships. Some idea how much of a problem this was can be seen in some of the jokes about how awful marriage was and quarrelling spouses. At a far more serious level, you can also see it in accounts of men, who walked out on their families, and took up bigamous marriages elsewhere in the days when divorce was difficult and all but impossible unless you were very wealthy.
The two pamphlets were published a little time ago. One dated from 1992 – twenty-four years ago -, and the other from 2005, about eleven. But they represent an attitude that’s still very present in the Conservatives, and especially in right-wing newspapers like the Daily Heil. A week ago the Tories elected Theresa May as their leader, and will no doubt be presenting themselves as the ‘pro-woman’ party. This shows the other side to them, the one that’s beyond and underneath Cameron’s rhetoric of flexible-working hours, and the Tories’ embrace of female leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.
Michael Gove considering which other schools to wreck through privatisation.
This is from Private Eye’s issue for the 30th November – 13 December 2012.
Revolving Doors
Back to School
The revolving door that propels education officials into the trusts and companies lobbying for government cash to run schools is hastening the move of education away from the control of local education authorities (LEAs) towards that of unelected private organisations.
Earlier this year John Coles, former director-general of the Department for Education’s Standards Directorate, became chief executive of the United Learning Trust, the UK’s largest academy chain with 31 schools. Though the rules say Coles cannot lobby government until December next year, there is no real mechanism to enforce the ban.
In September, Miriam Rosen, former chief inspector of schools, became a consultant to ARK Schools, which operates 18 academies and aims to bring hedge fund values to education. ARK stands for Absolute Return for Kids – “absolute return” being a hedge fund phrase about making returns (profits) even when an economy is going down the pan. ARK also employs Tony Blair’s former aide, Sally Morgan.
David Cameron’s former special adviser James O’Shaughnessy is in the academy business now too. In January he left the prime minister and became group strategy director of his old public school, Wellington College, which sponsors a state academy, Wiltshire’s Wellington Academy. O’Shaughnessy recently argued in a pamphlet for the policy Exchange thinktank that only academies can change the “scandal” of “coasting” schools which only achieve “satisfactory” grades rather than “good” or “excellent” marks. Wellington Academy’s most recent Ofsted grade was, er, “satisfactory”.
Currently only non-profit organisations like United Learning, Ark and Wellington can run chains of academy schools. But O’Shaughnessy’s pamphlet proposed bringing profit-making firms into state schools too. He argued that the charitable trusts can’t cope with the thousands of schools education secretary Michael Gove has “freed” from LEAs to become academies; and that academy chains in partnership with non-profit groups. This could be good news for O’Shaughnessy who has set up a firm, Mayforth Consulting, to act as an “educational entrepreneur”.
It could also help the biggest pro-academy voice of all, former Labour education minister Lo0rd Adonis, whose pro-academy stance is widely admired by the current government. Adonis is employed as an adviser by schools firm GEMS. Because GEMs is profit-making, it cannot run academies in the UK; and Adonis says his work for GEMS is “international only”. But under O’Shaughnessy’s plan, firms like GEMS could get into the British academy business after all.
This report shows the institutional corruption, which sees ministers, government officials and senior civil servants join the companies they are supposed to be supervising and regulating, to demand even more state functions should be privatised and handed over to those same companies. This was the ‘sleaze’ surrounding John Major’s administration, and it has continued through subsequent governments into David Cameron’s. The article clearly demonstrates how many ministers and education companies are actively campaigning for our schools to be privatised, just as David Cameron’s party is full of ministers, who stand to benefit from his desire to privatise the health service, including Iain Duncan Smith. As for the companies themselves, their record of providing education in schools is poor. A month ago the government issued a list of 30 academy chains which were banned from acquiring any more schools because of their poor performance. Education should not be in the hands of private companies, and should remain firmly part of the state sector.
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