Ukraine – Yulia Tymoshenko faces the Democracy Test

Yulia Tymoshenko, the defeated candidate, and Viktor Yanukovich, the winner, in the Ukrainian Presidential election

It seems that Viktor Yanukovich has won the Ukrainian general election. International observers have declared the election an “impressive display of democratic elections”.

The Western media will hail the election as “the end of the Orange Revolution”, as a step backward by Ukraine, as some kind of throwback to the Soviet past.

The BBC, for example, describes Mr Yanukovich as a “59-year-old former mechanic”. (I haven’t noticed them describing Mr Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a “former railway engineer”, although that is what he is!)

The BBC report goes on to say of Mr Yanukovich’s opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko:

“Mrs Tymoshenko’s impassioned leadership of the subsequent street protests that swept him from power – and thrust her to office, along with Viktor Yushchenko – made her an international celebrity.”

That may come as news to the real leader of those protests, who was Mr Yushchenko, the outgoing President, who lost in the first round this time.

It is also pretty condescending to the Ukrainian people, who have a right to elect their own leader, regardless of “international celebrity” status.

Viktor Yushchenko, the outgoing President, who was defeated in the first round

Mrs Tymoshenko has in fact been fighting Mr Yushchenko bitterly ever since that previous disputed election, and her defeat this time will have been in no small part due to those squabbles.

However, the main reason for the defeat will have been, as so often, “the economy, stupid”. The Ukrainian economy contracted by 15% last year – four times as much as the British economy did.

As I have said before on this blog, it is ridiculous to suggest that all of Ukrainian politics is simply a struggle between the heroic pro-Western Orange faction, and the stuffy old Soviet types who want closer links with Russia. Things are more complicated – but Western journalists are of course mostly too lazy to bother finding out what is really going on.

Mrs Tymoshenko has so far not conceded defeat, but it seems certain that she will be forced to do so. If a peaceful transition of power to the winner, Mr Yanukovich, can be achieved, then Ukraine will really have come of age as a democracy. Instead of defining itself purely as “not Russia”, it will have made a deliberate choice, for better or worse, of someone who favours closer links with Russia as its President.

Mrs Tymoshenko will not, of course, disappear. She has portrayed herself as a Ukrainian nationalist. Her love for Ukraine will now be tested, and measured. Will she become the head of a “loyal opposition” to the elected government? Or will she simply seek to have the election annulled and spend the next few years claiming that Mr Yanukovich has no right to govern?

If she has the guts and intelligence to seek to be the head of a “loyal opposition”, she will grow in stature herself as a democrat, and as a Ukrainian patriot. In that case she will certainly live to fight another day, when another election comes around, and Mr Yanukovich in his turn is defending his government’s handling of the difficult business of running a country.

If, on the other hand, she bickers from the sidelines, and denies Mr Yanukovich’s right to govern, then she will quite simply prove that she does not deserve a place in the democratic future of Ukraine.

Perhaps We Could Join the Euro for Free

Pounds to Euros – Expensive to Change?

A while back, I wrote a piece suggesting that the Right should rethink its attitude toward the European Union. I said then that the EU level was more likely to deliver sound policies than our local Westminster parliament.

Some have argued that European politics is corrupt. Probably so, but frankly, given the recent revelations about the shabby people who inhabit our parliament, European politics can’t be any worse than our own.

On a more practical note, there has been a great deal of debate about whether Britain should join the Euro.

The key debate has of course centred around the economic arguments. Opponents have pointed out that if we joined the Euro, Britain would lose control of its interest rates. Given the British government’s absolutely sorry and appalling record of getting rates wrong over many decades, that cannot be counted a disadvantage. Britain’s present difficulties are the result, in large part, of gross mistakes made by the Bank of England in its conduct of monetary policy over the last few years.

One other pretty big obstacle to Britain’s joining the Euro has been the cost of changing over. Clearly, computer systems would need to be changed to handle dual currencies, and so on. A Commons committee that investigated this put the total cost at £40 billion – although really this can only be a rough estimate, and there have been others that differed wildly from this in both directions.

There has also been a lot of concern that businesses would take the opportunity to round up prices, hitting consumers in their pockets.

With the current economic situation, however, an intriguing possibility has arisen.

Sterling has been battered of late. For most of 2007, there were more than 1.4 Euros to 1 Pound.

During 2008, the Pound drifted down against the Euro, from around 1.3 to around 1.2 Euros.

In December 2008, as the financial crisis began to take its toll, the Pound dropped to 1.1 Euros to 1 Pound.

Throughout 2009, it stayed at around that level, and it is still there today.

(You can have a look at historic exchange rates at x-rates.com.)

The continental European currencies are now coming out of recession. Britain, however, remains mired in the doldrums. It is entirely possible that we may this year see parity between Sterling and the Euro.

That could potentially give us a historic opportunity, which would probably not recur in a lifetime, to join the Euro at parity, thus avoiding almost all the costs of the changeover. All it would need is an agreement to go in at £1 = €1, together with a concession that on documents, till receipts and so on, for say 5 years, Britain was allowed to call the Euro a “pound”, and there would effectively be no changeover costs at all. And no opportunity for greedy retailers to round prices up and pocket the difference.

Now, our European partners might not like this at first sight. They might see it as Britain locking in a competitive advantage for its exporters. However, given our persistent trade deficit, and the fact that we have been living on borrowing for more than 10 years, the weakness of Sterling and the British economy is likely to be quite a long term affair. And the prize, from the European Union perspective, of getting Britain into the Euro, would be immense.

The potential economic benefits to Britain of joining the mighty Euro currency bloc would be enormous. It would put the first serious pressure for 50 years on our politicians to control government spending properly. It would lead to more stable interest rates (though not necessarily lower) and lower inflation. And to be completely frank, I no longer believe our political class are fit to run the British economy, so we should probably let the professionals at the European Central Bank (which is dominated by Germans) have a go.

Sterling’s weakness just might let us have our cake and eat it – membership of the Euro with no changeover costs.

Could the UK Face European Fines?

Under EU Rules, Britain Could be Fined

There has been much discussion lately in the newspapers about the government financial crisis in Greece. The government there is running a deficit of 12.7% of GDP. There have been negotiations between the Greek government and the European Commission about how Greece is going to get its deficit back under 3% of GDP.

Why 3%? The reason is that the Maastricht Treaty commits EU members to keep their deficits below that level.

There has been enormous confusion in the media over this, on two fronts.

First, there has been confusion over the difference between “debt” and “deficit”. Many newspaper articles talk about cutting the deficit as if it is the same thing as cutting the debt. It isn’t. The deficit is the rate of increase of the debt.

Countries that run a deficit of 3% of GDP are increasing their debt by 3% of GDP every year.

There is another limit under the Maastricht Treaty, about which the media hardly ever speak, of 60% of GDP for total debt.

A country with zero economic growth that starts with zero debt and runs a 3% deficit every year, will hit the 60% limit in just 20 years.

The second source of confusion has been which countries are subject to these limits. The media usually talk as if the limits apply to “eurozone countries”. They don’t. They apply to all the Maastricht Treaty signatories, including the UK.

There is a neat example of both these errors in this recent BBC article about the Greek problems, which says:

Greece’s deficit is, at 12.7%, more than four times higher than eurozone rules allow. Its debt is about 300bn euros ($419bn, £259bn).

All this confusion brings us to another issue. There is one other EU country that is running deficits at around the Greek level. That country is the UK. We too are running a deficit of four times the 3% level allowed in the Treaty.

And in terms of total debt, the UK is predicted to break through the 60% limit this year.

By the end of this year, the UK will be in breach of both the limits – and heavily so. In fact, the UK breached the 3% limit way back in 2003 – long before the credit crunch.

At the moment, talk of bringing the UK to book is subdued, mainly because the other EU countries, especially Germany, are also struggling with excessive deficits and a recession. However, their economies are now beginning to grow again. As their problems diminish, the spotlight is likely to fall on the UK, and on its breaching of its treaty obligations.

The current UK government has promised to halve the deficit within four years. If they do so, the UK will still be left in substantial breach of both the treaty limits. On the deficit limit, after the promised four years of “austerity”, the UK deficit will still be more than twice the limit.

Countries that break these limits, are subject to legal action from the European Commission. They can be fined. There has already been much speculation that this may happen to Greece.

The UK faces public spending cuts, interest to be paid on the debt and potential difficulties finding lenders willing to finance the deficit. In a couple of years, billions of pounds of fines from the EU could be added to those woes.

And that makes it all the more critical that the deficit is reduced much faster than Labour are planning. As the Tories have said, we really can’t go on like this.

UKIP’s Transport Proposals Are Good for a Laugh

Transports of Delight from UKIP

I recently wrote about the sensible nature of UKIP’s proposals on welfare reform.

Mark Wadsworth (who had a hand in writing the UKIP Welfare Reform document) has now linked to UKIP’s new transport policies. I am sorry to say that they seem much less sensible. Well, actually, they seem extremely silly.

Here’s a flavour of some of their proposals:

“Give back a ‘Windfall Return’ on fuel duty above a set world oil price, where windfall Government receipts are returned to the motorist over time through fuel tax cuts.”

This would weaken price signals, and prevent the market matching supply and demand properly. If prices rise, that encourages people to save fuel. Do we really want to weaken that by offsetting the rise with a tax reduction?

“Crack down on ‘killer lorries’ (overladen or dangerous)”

and just three paragraphs later

“Repeal EU directives such as The Working Time Directive.”

So it’s OK if drivers are exhausted, as long as their lorries don’t exceed 40 tonnes?

“Require new insurance discs to also be displayed on windscreens to tackle over 1 million uninsured drivers.”

Since you already are required to produce evidence of insurance to buy a road fund licence disc, this seems like a pretty pointless bit of extra bureaucracy.

“Make speed cameras democratically accountable.”

I wonder what colour rosettes the cameras will wear as they campaign for election!

“Consult on raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph to suit modern reality.”

“Consult”? Is that a convenient “get out of jail” for later when they don’t do it? (“We only said we would consult.”) And who would they consult? “Stakeholders,” I suppose. And wouldn’t drivers who currently go at 80 mph, go at 90 mph if the limit was 80?

“Legislate to introduce a crime of Vehicular Manslaughter, where for those whose excessively dangerous driving makes death on the road a near certainty.”

I’m not really clear why this would be preferable to reviewing the penalties for existing dangerous driving offences.

“Oppose the metrification of British roads and speed limits”

which as far as I know none of the big parties is proposing. (The cost would be gigantic.)

“Introduce a simple form of ‘bus franchising’, particularly for local and rural buses, to deliver better value for the taxpayer and eliminate unfair competitive practices.”

So local councils really are the best people to control bus services after all?

“Support measures to improve motorcycle safety whilst supporting its freedoms. We will oppose EU proposals for daytime lights for all vehicles as dangerous.”

Dangerous? Volvo Cars would probably beg to differ.

“Support responsible pedal cycling but have zero tolerance on dangerous practices such as running red lights. We will consult on proposals for cyclists to display a cheap ‘Cycledisc’ to deter theft and give 3rd party insurance for car damage.”

Oh wow. “Zero tolerance”. Those red light runners must be quaking. And another “consult”. The bureaucrats must be salivating at that, as well as at the idea of that cycledisc. I wonder if my 3 year old son would need one on his tricycle. And by the way, beware when politicians propose something “cheap”.

“Reduce food air freight by promoting UK local produce, while supporting free trade and consumer choice.”

On the one hand, on the other…

“UKIP will give local councils control of local business rates and retain a share of a Local Sales Tax (LST) to replace the EU-imposed VAT”

Local Sales Tax? Are they kidding??? What if I buy a cooker over the internet from a company headquartered in Oxford, and it is delivered direct from the cooker manufacturer’s warehouse in Leeds by a transport company based in Peterborough? Who levies the sales tax? Expect a few weighty tomes of government regulation to explain the rules…

“UKIP believes the planning system must take proper regard of transport impacts of developments within such a finite and often crowded landmass”

NIMBY’s unite, eh Mark W?

“To rebalance true costs of flying, UK Independence would consider introducing a Local Sales Tax (which will replace VAT) on UK aviation fuel, which is currently untaxed – VAT on kerosene foregone is estimated at £0.58 billion p.a. and on new EU aircraft is equivalent to a European subsidy of £30 billion p.a..39 Aircraft operators landing in Britain would be encouraged to purchase UK aviation fuel.”

So let’s get this clear. They’re going to unilaterally introduce a new tax on aviation fuel, but somehow encourage aircraft operators to buy taxed UK fuel instead of untaxed French fuel. Clever, that.

And so it goes on. They have their go at playing trains with a proposal to

“Invest in 3 new 200 mph plus high-speed rail lines: London-Newcastle (with other sections e.g. Edinburgh-Glasgow, and to West Coast Main Line), London-Bristol (for Wales)- Exeter, and fast link Birmingham to Great Western Main Line.”

There is even an appendix about “new rail routes” that says:

“Where heritage railways are mentioned, the intention is to negotiate cooperative track access agreements for modern trains to run on heritage railway tracks, not to replace any existing operations.”

And these are the heritage railways they mention: Gloucester & Warwickshire Railway, West Somerset Steam Railway, Bodmin steam railway, Bluebell Railway, The Poppy Line, Llangollen steam railway, and the Caledonian steam railway. Under UKIP, these are Britain’s new diesel-belching branch lines.

Sorry, UKIP, no dice. These proposals are quite frankly ridiculous. Perhaps you should have got Mark Wadsworth to write the Transport document for you as well.

Let’s Kill IE6

Sign Up to the Petition – See Below

Anyone who has been involved in website development will know that one of the biggest issues they face is supporting Internet Explorer 6. It was introduced back in 2001, and is now completely obsolete. Microsoft have released two new versions of Internet Explorer since then, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8. And there are other modern browsers available, like the new versions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome.

However, IE6 is still heavily in use by major corporations and government departments. Their applications have been optimised to work with IE6, with all its quirks and non-standard behaviour. Because those users are still on IE6, developers of websites are forced to add support for IE6 to their websites. This is a significant additional effort, and therefore acts as a drag on website innovation and even on our economy.

There have also been questions about Internet Explorer 6’s security, although the latest patches for it should keep users reasonably well protected.

Microsoft are not phasing out support for IE6 until 2014. That is too long.

There is a petition on the Downing Street website, asking the government to stop using IE6. If the government did stop using it, it would be a massive step forward, removing that critical mass of IE6 users and driving the process of other users upgrading to a modern browser.

The petition says:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to encourage government departments to upgrade away from Internet Explorer 6.”

I do urge you to go and sign it. Your www needs you!

Click here to sign the petition.

If you are still using Internet Explorer 6, click here to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 for free.

Defence Promises – Lies or Fantasy?

Is He Lying or Does He Really Believe All This?

I normally hesitate to use the word “lie” in connection with politics. It tends to lower the tone of public discourse, and of course, with accusations of lying flying around, it can become impossible to have any sensible public debates.

However, it is becoming harder and harder to avoid that “L” word in connection with the shabby excuse for a government that is currently running our country.

The Times reports today that Labour will commit itself to billions of pounds extra for defence. The Prime Minister is apparently going to promise a new generation of warships and fast jets (including the two new aircraft carriers), £1.5 billion extra for the war in Afghanistan, and protection for defence from any cuts next year. He will promise to keep troop numbers above 100,000.

Apparently a government source said there would have to be “tough decisions elsewhere” to pay for these pledges. What tough decisions? And where? Answer came there none, of course.

The government have continuously promised to cut spending “as the recession ends”. They have not told us what they plan to cut, or when. There are two possibilities: either they really believe they don’t need to make cuts, or they do understand the need for the cuts and are lying about it.

Either way, here they are, still making commitments to additional spending.

There is no money left. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare, after a decade of Gordon Brown’s mismanagement. Just to repeat yet again that awful fact – the government is borrowing around £200 billion this year – more than a quarter of everything it spends. It is borrowing more this year than it is spending on the entire National Health Service. No commitments to additional spending are credible or possible. In fact, massive cuts are needed, and the sooner the better.

Therefore those promises on defence are worth…nothing at all. Either they are lies – or what might be even worse, perhaps Mr Brown really believes them and is completely lost in his fantasy world.

Either way, Gordon Brown and his mates are unfit for public office, let alone to run a government. Whatever faults David Cameron and the Tories may have on this subject, they are paragons of virtue compared to Mr Brown’s dodgy crew.

Labour Lite Isn’t the Way to Win

Or Will He?

David Cameron has been telling the BBC that a Conservative government would not make swingeing cuts in its first year in office.

“We’re not talking about swingeing cuts. We’re talking about making a start in reducing our deficit.”

He went on to describe the reasons why they would be making some little cuts, just painless ones you understand, to “make a start”.

“And those who say you’re taking money out of the economy, I would say, if you don’t do this, even more money could be taken out of the economy in two ways. One, because interest rates could go up as they have done in Greece. Secondly, money gets taken out of the economy because there isn’t the confidence there and it’s confidence we need so badly.”

Is that the best he can come up with for reasons why making cuts is not a bad idea? Does he really understand the scale of the crisis in Greece? It appears not.

How about that most basic of reasons for cutting the borrowing – that you have to pay interest on it? The government is already spending more on interest on the national debt than it does on tax credits – and that is with interest rates at historically low levels.

Even that might be something we could accept, if that borrowing truly was sustaining the economy and helping us avoid a much deeper recession. But is it?

Consider this. Almost every British government since the war has run a deficit. Whenever there has been a recession, the response of government has usually been to spend and borrow more. The result has usually been a weak recovery, weaker than our competitors. Over the whole period of almost continuous deficits, our economy has lagged behind our competitors, and our people are poorer as a result.

Spend and borrow. The standard British government policy. And it has failed us for 60 years. Why would this time be any different?

And it’s not different, is it? This government is running a humungous public sector deficit. It is the largest in our history. It is much larger than most of our competitors. And those competitors are coming out of recession faster and more strongly than Britain is.

“Commentators” were “surprised” by the weakness of our last quarter growth figures, at just 0.1%. The spend and borrow policy is clearly not working. It is failing. Just like it failed all those other times in the past.

And when was this policy not followed during a recession? One example springs to mind. In 1981, the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher cut borrowing during a recession. Those same commentators were aghast. Indeed, 364 economists famously wrote to The Times denouncing the policy, and predicting it would lead to disaster.

Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe held their nerve, and the result was a strong recovery, a decade of strong economic growth and a transformation of Britain from the sick man of Europe to a credible force on the world stage. Those 364 economists were simply wrong, about the fundamentals of their trade.

They have learned nothing at all. Those same siren voices are still now arguing for more government spending. “It would be so dangerous to cut during a recession,” they say. “It would damage the recovery.”

The Japanese government has been trying to stimulate the Japanese economy for more than a decade with enormous deficits and public spending. It hasn’t worked. The Japanese economy has sputtered along and refused to recover.

How many lessons of history does it take before our politicians and economists will understand that government borrowing and spending does not stimulate the economy? That is utterly discredited Keynesian drivel.

It seems that Mr Cameron has been deceived by this drivel. But then of course in 1981 he was still in his school sixth form, and with little interest in politics. So it is perhaps not surprising that the lessons of that year and the ones that followed passed him by.

The British government deficit is heading for £200 billion this year. At 5% interest, that borrowing, that extra government debt, will cost us £10 billion a year in perpetuity, roughly what we spend on child benefit. Next year, the year after that, 50 years from now, £10 billion a year. Unless, of course, some gutsy future government actually has the nerve to run a surplus and pay it back.

We absolutely need to start cutting back, and seriously, right now. This Labour government has brought Britain to the brink of ruin. The government is running a deficit of crisis proportions. If we don’t get this sorted out, the future for all of us will be bleak indeed.

Labour claim they will get started on the problem some time in the future, but not now. They won’t tell you when, or what they intend to do to get the deficit down.

But the deficit is holding back our recovery now. The reason our economy is coming out of recession so much more weakly than our competitors is that our government is getting in the way. The government deficit is the problem. It is not any part of the solution.

By conceding this point to the Labour Party, by accepting that government spending is somehow preventing economic collapse, Mr Cameron is tearing up the strongest card in his hand.

Meanwhile, polls are showing the Tory lead shrinking. The way to combat that is not to trim, to concede the high ground to Labour, and to accept the case for government spending curing economic ills. If Mr Cameron tries to be “Labour Lite” the public will wonder why they shouldn’t vote full strength Labour.

Let’s Hear It for Bill

One of These is Saving the World. Bill Gates and Gordon Brown

The World Economic Forum in Davos has in many ways been an irrelevance. One by one the great and the not-so-good have taken their turn to try and look important. Much nonsense has been talked. The Prime Minister of Greece, the country with the crisis deficit, even apparently spent a couple of hours watching clips from Avatar.

But the show has been stolen by Bill Gates’ promise to spend $10 billion over the next decade on developing and delivering new vaccines to children in poorer countries.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will spend the money combatting diseases like tuberculosis and malaria.

Mr Gates’ announcement rather put in perspective the self-serving waffle emanating from the politicians at Davos.

That’s the politicians who, according to Socialists, can be trusted to have the best of intentions so much more than those nasty business people.

Oh What a Tangled Web…

Protestors Greet Tony Blair as He Gives Evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry

Tony Blair has been giving evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War. He was unrepentant about his decision to take Britain to war. However, his testimony was fatally weakened by the contradictions in his government’s position on the war.

As I said on this blog before, I personally opposed the war from the start, and I believe there were good reasons for doing so.

However, there were also good reasons to go into the war. It was a defensible decision. Having the unstable regime of Saddam Hussein so close the West’s vital oil supplies put our security at risk. Regardless of whether Saddam actually had his “weapons of mass destruction” ready, it was pretty clear that he had in the past pursued a programme to produce them. It was also clear that he was ruthless enough to use them, if he had ever been able to develop them.

From the British point of view, there is also the argument, which Mr Bair did use, that our relationship with the USA is central to our foreign policy, and therefore it was in our national interest to support the Americans once they had made the decision to go to war.

The aim of the war was to remove Saddam. The Americans were quite open about that. But Mr Blair couldn’t be. You see, he’s a Socialist. He has to believe in “International Law”, and international law doesn’t allow invasion of a foreign country to remove its government.

Mr Bair ended up struggling with questions like whether he should have had a further UN resolution to back the war. He pretended that there was no aim to get rid of Saddam, that the war was all about those “WMDs”. Why did he pretend this? Simply because of that “International Law”, which says you can’t invade a country to remove its government.

Talking about an interview he gave recently in which he appeared to suggest that the Allies did indeed want to get rid of Saddam, regardless of the WMDs, he said:

“I didn’t use the words ‘regime change’ in that interview and I didn’t mean in any sense to change the basis.”

Come on, Tony, do you really think anyone believes that?

He was also forced to claim that somehow 9/11 affected the decision about the war. The Allied position on this has always been muddled. Saddam’s relations with the Islamic fundamentalists who carried out that attack were extremely cool. Almost every country in the Middle East would have been more likely to back those terrorists than Saddam’s Iraq. Therefore it is nonsense to claim that Saddam was somehow involved in the attacks. Mr Blair knows that.

However, the government have previously tried to link the 9/11 attacks with the Iraq war. Therefore he was forced into a nonsensical position:

“The primary consideration for me was to send an absolutely powerful, clear and unremitting message that, after September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD, you had to stop.”

Whilst those attacks were devastating, they used civilian airliners, which are hardly WMDs. So what on earth do the 9/11 attacks have to do with regimes being engaged in WMDs?

You do also have to ask, in passing, what right the ex Prime Minister of Britain has to complain about WMDs. After all, Britain possesses four nuclear submarines, with Trident nuclear missiles, and the government’s current policy is to replace them over the next few years with an even more powerful nuclear deterrent.

Mr Blair was unable to make that entirely defensible case for the war, based on Britain’s national interest, and ended up looking foolish. As a Socialist, he’s not allowed to talk about “national interest”. He has to be a touchy-feely internationalist.

Watching him squirm and wriggle to try and defend his contradictory assertions on the war should have made me feel sympathetic to the man. I have to admit that it didn’t.

War in Iraq “Illegal”? According to Whose Law?

International Court or Kangaroo Court?

The Chilcot Inquiry has been hearing about the doubts from government legal advisors about whether the invasion of Iraq was “legal”.

Sir Michael Wood, who was chief legal advisor at the Foreign Office at the time, told the inquiry that he and his team had repeatedly warned the government that the invasion would be illegal without a UN resolution.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who was Sir Michael’s deputy at the time, even resigned over the matter. And she has been telling the inquiry that the process of debating the legality of the war was “lamentable”.

All this talk about whether the war was “legal” leaves me feeling queasy. Who decides what is “legal” and what is “illegal” in terms of international law? And by what right? And what is international law anyway?

In the case of our own British law, we know, at least in theory, how it is made. The people elect representatives to parliament. Those representatives decide what the statutory framework for the law should be, and their power to do so comes from the people.

In turn, the courts judge people’s innocence or guilt against those laws, and that judgement is made by a jury of the peers of the accused. (Of course, a lesser offence might be tried in a magistrate’s court. But it is a fundamental principle that the accused should always have a right to demand trial by jury if he wishes.)

These principles are under assault from two sides.

On the one side, the government has tried to whittle away people’s right to trial by jury. Their arguments are always about practicality, but the effect is to weaken this fundamental principle, that the power to make laws and the power to judge people against those laws, comes from the people and not from their rulers.

On the other side, our rulers make continual appeals to “international law”. This law has no democratic basis.

Ultimately it is said to be enforced under the aegis of the United Nations. It would be difficult to find a body with less democratic legitimacy than the UN. It is composed of representatives of some of the world’s most authoritarian countries, given the same respect and rights as the representatives of democratic states. And this “international law” is not, in any case, actually made by the UN. It seems to have emerged from thin air, from the thoughts of very Important People gathering after the Second World War and determining that it Must Not be Allowed to Happen Again.

Labour politicians who want to weaken the right to trial by jury are mounting an assault on the democratic principles upon which our country is governed. And chattering class types who become exercised by “international law” and by trying to constrain the actions of the British government according to that utterly undemocratic principle, are assaulting our democracy in no less a manner.

I have consistently opposed the invasion of Iraq. But my reasons for doing so are that it is against our national interest, that it is likely to be, and has been, counter-productive in terms of fighting terrorism, and that more suffering has been caused in Iraq than has been avoided by the war. These are legitimate reasons, I believe, for opposing the war.

I can also accept that Tony Blair and others who supported the invasion have a legitimate case. I believe they are wrong, but their arguments are at least on solid ground.

In contrast, the position of those who want to create a spurious “international law” and judge the actions of the British government according to that law, is untenable. Their international law has no democratic mandate. It is not sound. It is judged by the representatives of countries many of which are dictatorships.

The United Nations is not a parliament. It was created to enable countries to resolve their differences by means other than war. It does not have any legitimate authority to make laws binding on anybody. Those “international laws” are in any case not its laws. They are instead merely the laws of the lawyers who drew them up, and then presume to judge legality by reference to those “laws”.

And the security council of the UN is a completely arbitrary assortment of country representatives – indeed it seems that the main qualification for being on it is to have possessed nuclear weapons in about 1960.

It is very tempting for a Conservative to use this debate about the legality of the war to bash Labour politicians. But if we do so, we are falling into a trap that is increasingly undermining our democratic freedoms. There are enough reasons to oppose the Iraq war, without resorting to such cavorting with the devil.