Dave, be nice to Nick

Nick Clegg is in a strange position. As leader of the country's third political party he knows he has no chance of winning a general election and becoming Prime Minister, yet he also knows that a close result might leave neither of the major parties with a majority in Parliament so he could have considerable power by offering his MPs' support to one side or the other in return for a few policy concessions. As things stand today the prospect of a hung Parliament seems very unlikely, but you never know.

This week the Liberal Democrats are meeting and some interesting changes seem to be afoot. A party which has argued strenuously for higher taxation over the last decade now appears to be changing tack. It is hard to tell exactly what is going on because poor Mr Clegg is walking from one twisted knicker situation into another. One day he is going to reduce taxation, the next day there will be no overall reduction; one day he is going to cut government expenditure by £20bn a year, the next day he only thinking about it; one day income tax will be cut for the poor, the next day it is unaffordable. What one can discern as a distant vision through the dense yellow fog is that the general attitude at the top of the LibDem's is changing. Not long ago it was unthinkable for the leader even to hint at tax cuts and a reining-in of government spending, that we are getting confused hints now is a move in the right direction.

It is particularly interesting to see how this is being reported in the mainstream press because that has a significant effect on public perception. Generally the position is being put forward that the LibDems are proposing reductions in tax for those at the lowest end of the income scale and that it will be paid for by cutting unnecessary bureaucracy. It seems to me that this is part of a general realignment of all three parties in the light of the country going fast down the economic drain. Any realignment is likely to be very bad news for Labour, very good news for the Conservatives and could hit the LibDems either way.

The reason I am confident that it will be bad for Labour is that they can only move one way, back to their natural Marxist philosophical ground. For ten years Tony Blair was able to keep a lid on ranting lefty rhetoric. Of course the occasional dinosaur would surface from the bog, let out a large burp and then descend again, but on the whole the message he was able to send was that old-style interventionist economic management of the type that brought the country to its knees in the 1970s was a thing of the past. Many of us believe the tax and spend approach poor Gordon adopted when at Number 11 was little different from traditional old-Labour policy, especially when combined with the crippling red tape rolled out from Brussels and gleefully wrapped around the throats of British businesses by our government. But that was not the message being received by the public. The message was that Mr Blair's government was committed to the market economy. Now that opinion polls suggest Labour is facing annihilation in the ballot box it must show itself to be different from the alternatives in order to have any chance of saving its skin. The only path open to it is a move back to overt socialist economic management. In my view that is a recipe for a long spell in opposition.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, have spent the last three years projecting themselves as the new friendly and fluffy party. Just as Blair's smarmy charm worked so well electorally, so David Cameron's cheerful moderation and espousal of trendy do-gooding has hit a chord. No longer is his the nasty party, now it is just as cuddly and caring as Mr Blair's Labour. It is all a matter of image, of course. Because an election is approaching it is necessary for Mr Cameron to be much more specific about what he would actually do. He has played the "I'm a nice guy" card very well and, as part of that strategy, has adopted some curiously unconservative policy proposals in order to woo popular support. Any policy necessarily only woos popular support, however, while that policy is popular.

All the "vote blue go green" piffle of the local elections worked well while people thought man-made global warming to be both a reality and something they could change. Now that the theory behind it is facing increasingly strong challenges and the price of doing something about it would hit our way of life very hard, the game is changing. The game is changing in many other areas too because there is irritation at ever increasing taxes, disappointment at only marginally improving health care, despair at the inability of government to provide good education for all, disgust at snouts in the quango trough, frustration about increased official snooping and a realisation that the government has encouraged us all to live on a bubble of unaffordable credit. The default position has changed from even eighteen months ago. Instead of the government being seen to be credible and on our side it has become the architect of economic pain and social discomfort. How true the old perception was and how true the new perception is are beside the point because it is the prevailing perception which determines how new policy announcements will be received.

This time last year we witnessed a quite extraordinary event. The economy was already slowing, house prices were starting to fall and a little nervousness was in the air, yet still the government was holding up well in opinion polls even after ten years in power. Then George Osborne gave his speech at the Conservative Party conference promising a massive increase in the Inheritance Tax threshold and suddenly the mood changed. Almost immediately opinion polls swung heavily in favour of Mr Cameron and since then the floundering Prime Minister has been unable to say or do anything other than make matters worse for him and his party. But that does not mean that one speech could ever be enough to win an election. The question still remained whether the underlying public mood in favour of high government spending would surface again as the election approaches.

Against that background, reports that Mr Clegg's LibDems feel the need to cut taxes and government spending are highly significant. The significance is nothing to do with getting the LibDems into power, it is all to do with the mood of the country, because it helps to shape the underlying general perception of the right course to follow. Few will believe that cutting taxes and spending will ever be favoured by Labour, so if both opposition parties agree that it is the right course to follow it can only add to the anti-Labour sentiment. The more that sentiment becomes a prevailing opinion, the more people will wish to vote not just against Labour but for a possible alternative government. When a mood forms for change, protest votes get squeezed and practicalities take over.

Whatever one might think of the Liberal Democrats, they are a major party and received votes at the last election far greater than their representation in Parliament reflects (almost six million votes, 22% of those cast). This was by far their best result in a general election for many decades and included a large element of protest votes, people disenchanted with Labour but not persuaded by the Conservatives.

With Mr Clegg and his colleagues giving approval to a central Conservative Party principle they have, I believe, helped to tip the mood firmly in favour of the Conservatives as well as strengthening the anti-Labour sentiment. Time will tell whether continued economic upheaval will allow Mr Cameron to go as far as many of us would like, but I am fairly sure he will put both the green stuff and his promises to match Labour spending targets on the back burner and concentrate on creating clear water between his party and a thoroughly discredited government. He must remember to be polite and write a thank you letter to Mr Clegg.

Collapsing banks, what's the problem?

So another bank has gone to the great counting house in the sky, this time Lehman Brothers. The thrusting young men in red braces will draw fat bonuses no more. Does it matter?

The starting point must be to investigate why this bank went under. That is fairly simple, it had obligations to pay money but no money with which to pay them. Although it is dressed up as a mysterious business comprehensible only to the brilliant, investment banking is pretty straight forward. Customers hand over a lump of cash and and the bank invests it hither and yon in the hope that a profit will ensue. The customer receives some of the profit and the bank receives its cut. Everyone is happy and the world continues to turn. Of course they won't attract many customers by saying "hand over cash and we'll try to make it grow", so they offer incentives such as a minimum rate of return over a given period. The customer must leave his money with them for a minimum time. At the end of that period the banks must not only make sufficient profit to be able to pay the customer his guaranteed interest they also have to repay the capital sum if the customer demands it. Some do and others decide to leave it in place for another year or two.

When times are good there are always new investors so those who withdraw their lump sum can be repaid from the lump sums brought in from new business. This encourages the investment banks to take out some very long term investments with the money they manage. Having secured funds from customers who invest for one or two years, they lend that money to others over ten or fifteen years. Because there are always new customers to replace those who withdraw, it is safe for them to "borrow short and lend long". The problem comes when the economy takes a downturn. Instead of, say, one customer in every three withdrawing their money at the end of a one year deal, two in three demand repayment because they need it for other things, and replacement business does not come along to fill the void because potential customers are wary to tie-up funds when they know they might need them. Unless the bank can get its hands on cash it has nothing with which to repay its customers. Of course they do not only lend long they also take out short-term investments which can be cashed-in to provide money at relatively short notice, they hold some money in low interest rate accounts allowing very quick withdrawal and they can borrow from other banks; the key to remaining alive is to have sufficient ability to repay your customers when they demand it.

An investment bank which does not balance its investments correctly can be caught out by being unable to repay its customers. That is what happened to Northern Rock and it is what happened to Lehman Brothers. Too much long lending and an inability to borrow from other banks made them unable to repay their customers. Once there is a hint of this happening, other banks will not only be reluctant to lend to get them out of the hole but they will call-in outstanding loans if they can in order to protect their own businesses. Inevitably when people hear that a bank is in trouble they want to get their money out as quickly as possible and that is so for other banks just as it is for individuals. Those tied into fixed term deals cannot do so unless there is a get-out clause, which there often is at a price of so-many months interest and panicking customers are happy to pay £500 in lost interest where the alternative is losing far more.

In theory there should not be a problem because the funds deposited by customers have been invested and those investments can be used as collateral for a loan from another bank. But, as we saw with Northern Rock, unless the long-term investments are sound they do not provide sufficiently strong collateral for another bank to be prepared to lend. This is why there was so much discussion about the "quality" of Northern Rock's investments. They had lent far too much to people who could not afford to repay them and the houses and flats against which mortgage loans were secured were starting to lose value. Negative equity for the householder is also negative equity for the bank holding a mortgage over the property. A combination of too many weak long-term investments, a general tightening of credit (so that other banks would only lend against very strong security) and a demand by customers for repayment results in the available cash running out and the business going under.

That is all pretty basic stuff, what is more difficult is the effect the collapse of one bank might have on the whole banking sector. It is inevitable that other banks will be affected because some customers will apply a no smoke without fire analysis and keep their cash under the bed instead, but that will not cause any real problems unless a vast number do it. What can cause a real problem is continuing unwillingness for banks to lend to each other. Banking is a very fluid business, the most enormous sums go in and out of banks every day. At the end of the trading day a bank which has received a lot will want to get a return on that money before it is placed in longer term investments so they lend it to other banks who need a bit more to meet liabilities before they, in turn, have a day giving them an overnight surplus. All banks are affected by this so they lend to each other, sometimes many millions of pounds for a very short time, but it needs to be done to ensure surplus funds provide a return and a shortfall can be financed by borrowing. A general lack of confidence between banks can upset this process with the result that all banks become excessively cautious and businesses find it difficult to borrow to fund progress. Almost overnight we can find commercial credit becoming scarce and major projects being delayed or cancelled because there is no way of funding them.

Is that a reason to bail out a bank like Northern Rock or Lehman Brothers? I cannot see why it should be. After all the problem with Northern Rock did not go away when it was nationalised, it still had a rotten investment portfolio and Lehman Brothers would not suddenly become a sound business simply on receipt of taxpayer subsidies. The problems leading to collapse are too deep seated to be solved quickly by a one-off injection of cash from the treasury; structural change is required, which takes time and, as we are seeing with Northern Rock, time used in that process is very expensive time indeed.

Banks must be treated like any other business. If they are run well they will make a profit, if they are run badly they will fold. Far better to let all banks know that their fate is in their own hands, only in that way will they have a proper incentive to lend wisely. After all, banking collapses are almost always caused by bad lending decisions.

It's President McCain (I think)

This year's Presidential election in America is warming up into a rather interesting contest. The primaries were keenly fought among a pretty good list of candidates and it became clear early on that John McCain was likely to win his party's nomination. The Democratic Party fight went to the wire and that, I believe, gives a strong clue to the likely winner in November. I will return to that point shortly, but first I want to explain what I see as the most important battle grounds over the next two months.

It is often said that the most important issue in a presidential election is the economy ("it's the economy, stupid", as Bill Clinton is reported to have said) but that is not to say that it is always crucial. An incumbent president seeking re-election will have difficulties if the economy is in tatters but neither McCain nor Obama is responsible for current problems. Indeed, America seems to be coping with the consequences of the credit crunch rather better than other countries and the sense of deep gloom across the UK is not matched on the other side of the pond. The candidates have a difference of emphasis in their economic policies but there is no stark difference of substance, so I do not see their positions on the economy as something of great importance. Far more significant, I believe, will be health care, McCain's age and Obama's pigmentation.

Health care is a major policy matter this year because it featured so prominently in the Democratic primary campaigns. It was all over the television, radio and newspaper coverage and featured highly in debates. Had it not done so it would probably be a peripheral issue as in almost all previous elections. Now that it has prominence it is the issue on which the main difference between the candidates' approaches can be judged. McCain is adamantly opposed to a national health service funded out of taxes because he knows such systems, as in the UK, are hopelessly inefficient and wasteful and far too open to short-term knee-jerk political interference. He proposes continuance of the insurance-based system but with greater availability at affordable premiums for the least wealthy. Obama has changed his position and has now adopted the Hillary Clinton NHS plan. I believe this will be a real weakness for Obama because what he is proposing will have to sit alongside the existing health insurance structure. It will be seen that, in effect, he is proposing a tax funded NHS only for the poor which will have to be paid for by those already paying their own insurance premiums. That is not a recipe of great appeal to the American mindset.

McCain's age is an issue because he has suffered medical problems and might be unable to see through a full four-year term. Therefore the light is on his running mate to a far greater extent than would normally be the case. Remember that George Bush senior won the race in 1988 despite having the hopeless Dan Quayle on the ticket. In that election the great strengths of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Loyd Benson, could not rescue the inadequacies of Michael Dukakis for the top job. McCain's choice of Sarah Palin will prove to be either inspired or disastrous, it is too early yet to say which. What can be said is that Obama opting for Joe Biden was almost certainly a serious error of judgment. In a year when the vice-presidency is of special importance the last person to be chosen should be someone with a long history of foot-in-mouth disease. On the evidence so far Palin is likely to stick to the script, Biden is unlikely to do so.

The other respect in which McCain's age is relevant is simply by way of contrast to Obama's youth. Neither has ever run anything significant, Senators do not run things, they are like backbench MPs. However, McCain has been in national politics for a long time and has had plenty of opportunities to make serious gaffes. Because he has not made any serious enough to prevent his party nominating him he is seen as a safe pair of hands whereas Obama is a very new boy indeed. No one knows how he will react under pressure.

Kennedy got away with youth and inexperience through a combination of ostensible charm and a father who bought votes in sufficient number to sway swing States his son's way. It should not be forgotten that the questions about the legitimacy of Kennedy's win in 1960 were far greater than the dispute about hanging chads in 2000. His opponent, Richard Nixon (you might have heard of him) was urged by many in his party to challenge the result but he had the good sense not to do so for fear that it would suggest he wanted Washington rather than the people to decide the outcome of the election. Eight years later Nixon was in the White House. By contrast Al Gore was completely broken as a national politician by his failed challenge to the outcome in key states in 2000 because he knew he would forever be haunted by his sulking speech of concession.

Unlike Kennedy, Obama does not have a quasi mafia to manipulate votes. Also unlike Kennedy, Obama is not the first white-toothed, youthful charmer to stand. Kennedy had that privilege and turned out to be a disaster as President. When the chips were down his lack of experience and untested judgment combined to cause a series of decisions which blighted his country for years, the intervension in Vietnam being by far the worst. People have long memories and many will see too much of Kennedy in Obama. Interestingly, the oldest man to win a presidential election is also within memory of many, Ronald Reagan; now revered as one of the greatest presidents. I can see a lot of votes being influenced by the negative for Obama of being too Kennedyesque and the positive for McCain of being somewhat Reaganlike.

The final issue I consider of particular importance is Obama's skin colour. It will not be referred to by McCain except as an irrelevance but his words will not change the entrenched views of millions of Americans. Like it or not, America is a deeply conservative country, built with huge success by white settlers a very large number of whose descendants consider it important to have a white president. The question is often asked "is America ready for a black president?". Much of America is, but the rest also have votes.

In America, seemingly more so that in the UK, electioneering is as much about getting your dedicated supporters into the voting booth as it is about pulling undecideds into your camp. As the campaign proceeds over the next seven weeks scrutiny of the candidates will increase in intensity to a level far beyond anything that has been seen so far. In this age of 24-hour television everything they said during their push for nomination has been recorded and each side has a full library of these recordings. In addition, the things their opponents said during the primaries are stored, and ready for use. Many snippets will be brought out and given wide publicity.

This is where I believe the long and bitter contest between Obama and Clinton will be of greatest influence. While McCain was keeping his head down and travelling quietly round the country shaking hands and making generalised speeches, Obama was in the spotlight changing his position on issues to combat a good Clinton speech and being accused of every degree of incompetence and duplicity by a former First Lady. We can be in no doubt that his changes of policy and her strident criticisms will be aired by the McCain team with ruthless efficiency. They will also bring up Obama's tour of Europe which was played-out like a victory celebration. That sort of thing does not go down well in America, just as Neil Kinnock's victory rally in Sheffield in 1992 tipped the election in favour of John Major's Conservatives. Presuming to tell the electorate how they will vote is an expensive ploy.

Once it was clear that Obama and Clinton would be fighting for months while McCain was engaging in the rubber chicken circuit I predicted a McCain victory. Nothing that has happened since then has changed my mind and the clips of Obama flip-flopping and Clinton saying he is an incompetent and a liar will, I believe, seal his fate.

The "Paralympics". This has to be said ...

No one else has the guts, so I will say it: the Paralympics are a grotesque and patronising freak show.

I can just about understand the wheelchair races, they are no more absurd than someone throwing himself down a steep ice channel on a tea tray in the Winter Olympics. It takes physical strength and skill to wheel a sawn-off supermarket trolley while sitting in it, so I'll give them that one, that is a fair sport. What is not fair is that the competition is only open to those with no, stunted, withered, deformed or otherwise seriously defective legs. If they really are supreme athletes, let them prove it in open competition. They need have nothing to fear, after all most of the competitors have an advantage over the able bodied in that such legs as they may have are considerably lighter than those of someone who can walk. If they always win we will know the absence of pins gives an unfair advantage and we can introduce weight categories or handicapping with lead weights. If they do not win despite their apparent advantage, we will see that they are not top athletes after all.

As for the other sports, most are just an excuse for do-gooders to look on and say "didn't he do well, it's wonderful what he can do when he tries, bless his heart." To watch sufferers of Downs Syndrome racing on a track or in water is no different from gawking at the deformed in a Victorian side show, it is disgusting, patronising voyeurism.

Then we have blind runners. The more astute reader will identify the principal difficulty for a blind runner on an oval track, but the organisers of this absurdity are not stupid, they have thought of that. Blind runners go round strapped by the wrist to an able-bodied athlete charged with preventing collisions and keeping their competitor on the track. By definition this requires the able-bodied companion to be at least as fast a runner as his charge. In what sense is it an achievement worthy of an Olympic gold medal to run no faster than than someone you are attached to by a cord and substantially slower than most who were eliminated in the first heat of the same event in the real Olympics?

Most absurd of all is that it is called elite sport. These are, no doubt, the best limbless, sightless and mentally defective participants but that has nothing to do with elite sport. Elite sport is about absolute achievements, being the fastest on the day over 400 metres, throwing the javelin the furthest, riding a horse over high obstacles with fewest errors and so on. You can be a bit dim and still run fast, as is proved when most of our athletes give interviews, but it does not matter whether you are Einstein's lost identical twin or a complete retard, what matters is that in open competition you proved yourself to be the fastest or strongest. That is the measure. No if ands or buts, did you beat everyone else? If you are missing a leg you are not going to be the fastest or even in the top thousand fastest and, therefore, you are not an elite sportsman.

I enjoy playing golf but such is my limited skill that a score in the low nineties on a par seventy is an achievement for me. We don't see the PGA laying on special major tournaments for those missing the essential ingredients required to be a great player. What we do see is golf clubs all over the world welcoming me and my fellow hackers because we enjoy playing and are prepared to pay to do so. It is a recreational activity because we do not have what it takes to be the best. We also see sports clubs welcoming those with physical or mental handicaps for exactly the same reason. Lacking a limb or a large chunk of normal brainpower is no different from not having the physical coordination or the ability to concentrate required to be a top sportsman. By all means take part, enter competitions if you wish and enjoy it, but don't try to kid us into thinking it is real high-level sport. It is not. It is an excuse for the professionally sanctimonious to wallow in a pool of their own smugness and say how well they are treating the mongs and the cripples. A grotesque and patronising freak show.

Airlines and overreaction

So, another travel company has gone bust. No surprise there. They operate on tight margins and everything has been against them - rising dollar fuel prices and a collapsing pound, hotels booked in euros and paid for at the end of the season when the pound has lost 30% or so, lower than expected bookings because of the tumble into recession, no get-out clauses for block bookings of unfilled hotels, banks unwilling to extend credit, airports unwilling to extend credit for landing fees and a general tightening of private finance preventing the raising of cash from non-bank sources. MaxJet, Silverjet, Eos and Zoom couldn't take it and now a big package holiday concern, XL, has also gone to the great bucket shop in the sky.

What bemuses me is the extraordinary overreaction of newspaper, telly and radio coverage; anyone would think all the planes had crashed rather than stayed on the ground. Of course it is very unfortunate for those stranded overseas who might need to find a few hundred pounds each to get home but there is no reason why individual customers need suffer any great hardship. Everyone with half a brain takes out travel insurance giving cover against exactly such a risk, those who do not always seem to find a way to get home without having to sell granny into slavery. When they get home they often have the right to recover either the additional airfare they have had to incur or all or part of the price they originally paid.

As for those who have not flown yet the position is very simple, only those who paid the travel company directly in cash will have no remedy and I doubt there is anyone in that position. For both those on holiday who paid more to get home and those yet to travel there are various ways of minimising or eliminating the financial loss.

If they booked through an ABTA bonded travel agent they will get their money back. If they paid by credit card they can get their money back because they have a right to claim against their credit card company. If they booked using a debit card they can get their bank to recall the payment under a (little-advertised) interbank agreement. There might be some foolish enough to have paid cash to a non-ABTA travel agency but even they can usually claim the money back from the travel agent because in the vast majority of cases their contract is with the travel agent not the travel company.

In all but a very few instances the only thing lost is a week on the Costa Del Beercan. Unfortunate and disappointing though that is for them, it is hardly worth all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes on every time this sort of thing happens. I do wish the meeja would get a grip.

Is "Gordon" criminal damage?

I always read comments about criminal trials through varifocal spectacles. Today's acquittal of a bunch of arrogant vandals charged with criminal damage for painting the Prime Minister's first name on a power station was no surprise. Had they engaged in criminal damage? The mere fact that they admitted daubing paint on private property would seem to prove the case. Is that enough to gain a conviction? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Why not, why is it that a jury can acquit those who freely admit the allegation made against them? The answer is partly legal and partly political.

The legal part is fairly simple and is this - the law is complicated and contradictory. We are all entitled to engage in peaceful protest if that is the course we choose to follow in putting forward our views. An act that might be criminal if done in another context can be rendered lawful if it is part of a peaceful protest. This might seem contradictory, but there is no difficulty in marrying the two legal concepts and there are many examples of it every year.

A demonstration might obstruct the highway, but there is a right to demonstrate (subject, sometimes, to obtaining permission). The offence of obstructing the highway can be outweighed by the right to demonstrate. If the demonstration becomes disorderly, the right to demonstrate can be outweighed by the need to keep the peace. A balance must be struck between the conflicting laws. That balance must first be struck by the police who have to deal with the matter on the ground and if it ends up in court it is then passed to the magistrates, judge or jury who hear the case.

Context is also important. A threatening letter sent to an individual might be construed as an assault, a letter in identical terms to an MP is likely to be viewed as part of the rough-and-tumble of political debate. It is, I suggest, right to draw a distinction between ten burly men marching on Joe Miggin's house and shouting "Death to Joe Miggins" and the same ten men marching to the Labour Party Conference and shouting "Death to Gordon Brown". One is a threat against an individual where there is no public interest in allowing the threat to be made, the other is a political demonstration.

The protest made by painting "Gordon" on a power plant involved both a clash of laws and an issue of context. It was for the jury to decide whether the law against slopping paint on someone else's property was outweighed by the right to demonstrate and it was for the jury to decide whether the context in which it was done was such that it should not be viewed as an unlawful act.

In addition there is a defence of "lawful excuse". This allows damage to be done if it prevents a greater threat from manifesting itself. It is a favourite defence of extremist nutters who perceive a fanciful risk of some catastrophe and vandalise the property of those they claim to be responsible for it. I do not know whether it was used in this case but it would not surprise me if it was.

I asked myself what I would have done had I been on the jury. Obviously I did not hear the evidence so my decision could be based only on what I have read and heard about the case. Part of me would want the Defendants to be sectioned under the Mental Health Acts for believing in the absurd theory of man-made global warming, part of me would want them imprisoned for the same dangerous idiocy. Part of me would want them acquitted because they did minimal damage while expressing views they probably hold deeply, part of me would want them convicted for going too far in making their point. Part of me would want them convicted because the act complained of added nothing to the debate, part of me would want them acquitted because it is not for me to judge whether it added anything to the debate.

And so we arrive at the political answer to the question I posed. Jury trials are not about applying the law strictly. Jury trials are part of our inefficient, deeply flawed and even more deeply ingrained system of democracy. Once every four or five years we can vote in a general election but that is not the only part we little people play in the governance of our country. We can vote also in local elections, we can lobby politicians, write articles on issues that interest us and engage in many forms of debate, all of which have the potential of affecting decisions made by those with power. We can also express our views if selected for jury service. There are very few cases each year which throw up matters of political interest but that was not always so.

Many years ago sheep rustling was a capital offence. The penalty was so out of proportion to the crime that juries regularly acquitted no matter how strong the prosecution's case. They exercised a political judgment, they decided that the law was unjust and rendered verdicts accordingly. Some argue that they had no right to do so but I disagree. The juror's oath is to "reach a true verdict according to the evidence". That phrase is not defined for the jurors, it is for them to construe it according to their consciences and judgment. If the jury thinks the law is unjust the true verdict might be "not guilty".

We will never know the reasons each individual juror had for voting for an acquittal in the case of painting Gordon. Perhaps one of them felt the right to demonstrate outweighed the property rights of the owners of the power station, maybe another thought the property in question was sufficiently public to justify its use for a political slogan, one might have considered man-made global warming to be such an important matter that any act done ostensibly in its prevention is justified, another might have felt it wrong for these protesters to be prosecuted when others who commit serious crimes are let off, yet another might have viewed the demonstrators as pathetic inadequates who deserve pity, and another again might have felt it best not to make martyrs of the haplessly selfish. There could have been a hundred or more reasons for the acquittals.

You can call it a perverse verdict if you wish. I am inclined to the view that it was an example of jurors doing what they do every day, returning what they considered to be "a true verdict". And let all commentators about the case realise one thing - the decision was not in the hands of experts with a special interest to promote, nor was it in the hands of politicians with an electorate to woo, nor was it in the hands of technocrats who look only at black-letter law, it was in the hands of a random dozen picked from the electoral roll. Only those twelve people had the right to decide the case. You might think they were wrong, but they were not wrong because they were the only people in the world with the right and duty to decide the case.

What is gesture politics?

Somewhere, in a house full of computer keyboards on which he types 24 hours a day, lives a man called Mr Anonymous. He leaves comments on blogs from Land's End to John O'Wherever. His comments produce reactions over the whole range, from "how did this person ever learn to type a word" to "I think I might end my blog now, he's too good for me." Yesterday I received a comment from Mr Anonymous which required me to think of the difference between gesture politics and power politics.

It is an interesting point. Like all interesting points it is a matter of how one approaches it. To an extent we are all like Humpty Dumpty when we choose to use a phrase without a clearly defined meaning, for Mr Dumpty words mean what he wants them to mean and when we use an ambiguous term or phrase we act in the same way. "Gesture politics" has no fixed meaning.

I opined yesterday on equality and inequality, and suggested that those engaged in the equality rights business by complaining about financial inequality and suggesting tax-based solutions were engaged in gesture politics. Mr Anonymous questioned whether they are in fact engaged in power politics rather than gesture politics. His question made me think of what I meant when I used the term "gesture politics".

To some extent we all have power. Parents have power over their children, teachers have power over their pupils, a landlord has power over his tenants, a team captain has power over the other players and the list goes on. These aspects of power are non-political because they are confined within a narrow scope and only involve the poweror(s) and the poweree(s) (I think I might have invented two new words, for which I apologise). No one is affected other than the powerors and thw powerees in the particular personal relationship. When parents exercise power over their children or teachers exercise power over their pupils no third parties are affected directly, no third party becomes obliged to do or desist from doing anything.

Political power is different, political power affects third parties who have no direct contact with those who exercise power over them. When I use the term "gesture politics" I mean acts of politicians which have no substantive benefit but which they believe will make the electorate view them more favourably; in other words, gestures which they hope will lead to future political power. The politicians in question might already have political power, but power today is only part of the equation because they also want power tomorrow. Today's policies might turn to dust but those who are convinced by their promises for tomorrow will vote for them anyway.

If you promote a policy which persuades people to be on your side you build up a reserve of goodwill. Whether in government or in opposition politicians need goodwill in the bank. They do not want to fight an election where every vote is up for grabs, they want a good chunk to be banked already so only the floating depositors need to be persuaded. Gesture politics is all about putting money in the bank.

There is an inevitable risk in trying to gain votes by empty gestures. Those who see empty gestures as empty gestures might be inclined to vote against those who promote them, that is likely to be no risk at all because those people would probably have voted against them anyway. Equally those who think the gesture to be a matter of huge substance are likely to be committed to the cause already. Gestures are not about making long-term converts of those on the other side of the political fence. They are about solidifying existing support by cementing the views of the converted and enticing some marginals into your camp. By definition a gesture has no substance, so those tipped into supporting one party because of a gesture cannot be expected to remain loyal through that gesture alone.

Gesture politics is not about doing anything substantive it is all about atmosphere, setting the tone, tilting the mood, changing attitudes. It is political musak. Of itself it might be nothing, but it adds to what has gone before and it adds to the background of what comes after. Is it about power? Of course it is, but not in a direct way. The real question with every act of gesture politics is whether it does substantive harm while enticing votes by pretending to do good.


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