What Does Dubai Have to Celebrate?

The United Arab Emirates celebrates its National Day today, though Dubai’s financial woes continue to dominate the headlines. As one British Sunday newspaper put it graphically, the World — the over-the-top real estate development on reclaimed land off Dubai’s coast, shaped like a map of the world — is slowly sinking back into the sea, as all work on it has stopped. So does the UAE’s glitziest emirate really have anything to celebrate? I remember several years ago officials in Abu Dhabi — the UAE’s capital and most oil-rich emirate — frowning at tne excesses of their brash little brother along the coast, so one shouldn’t be surprised if there is a little schadenfreude in the air there. And some of the Western media — having lauded Dubai to the skies, thanks to free press trips and a bit of Posh and Becks’ stardust — are now metaphorically trashing the place. Of course, the reality is somewhere in the middle. Dubai did over-extend itself and some of its most materialist edifices are too vulgar for words, but it is nonetheless one of the most significant multicultural cities in the world and displays a degreee of tolerance to other cultures and other faiths which even some countries in Europe would do well to emulate.

World AIDS Day

Like many people today, I’ll be wearing my red ribbon, to mark World AIDS Day. It was interesting to see the Daily Mail’s take on the event this morning: they asked whether wearing the ribbon for 1 December had become as obligatory as wearing a poppy for 11 November, because all the contestants on The X Factor were wearing one (reportedly because Simon Cowell insisted). Ah well, at least sometimes our celebrity-obsessed culture can have benefits. But what is impressive is that all round the world, AIDS awareness is growing and free treatment or at least testing is increasingly available. The rates of HIV infection are slowing, but they are still disturbing, especially in those countries where AIDS is likely to be fatal because of the lack of access to antiretrovirals. There are indeed some good things to celebrate, such as President Obama’s lifting of the US travel ban on HIV+ visitors. But there is no room for complacency. There is still huge prejudice against people living with HIV-AIDS and according to recent surveys in Britain, many teenagers are very blasé about the dangers of unsafe sex. So today, please wear your red ribbon with pride, not because Simon Cowell has told us to, but because the world is actively confronting one of the most serious health challenges of our age, even if much more remains to be done.

 

The Swiss Are So Wrong about Minarets

The building of minarets has been banned by law in Switzerland, following a 57-43 per cent vote by the public in a referendum on whether they should be forbidden. The far-right ‘Yes’ campaigners – who plastered billboards with provocative images of minarets ranged up like nuclear missiles and a woman in a niqab (an extremely rare form of ultra-modest dress among the predominantly Balkan Muslims who live in Switzerland) — used the familiar lies of their ilk, about how minarets on mosques are political, not religious, symbols and that they would inevitably lead to shariah or Islamic law being thrust on the Swiss as part of the Islamisation of Europe. All this would be laughable, if it were not so serious. There are at present precisely four minarets in the whole of the country. Muslims make up just five per cent of the Swiss population and most of them are well integrated. But they have now been unjustly portrayed as threatening aliens and their religion branded as dangerous. Similar foul things are being spouted in some other European countries, including the Netherlands and Denmark. Don’t people remember what happened when the Star of David was so maligned in the 1930s?

From the racists’ and Islamophobes’ point of view, it was of course o.k. for Europeans to build not hundreds but thousands of churches with steeples all over Asia and Africa — including in majority Muslim countries such as Kuwait and Iran — but this cannot be reciprocal, apparently. Are steeples not a danger to the Muslims of the rest of the world, then? Like most fascist and racist arguments, this one does not stand up to scrutiny. But the likely consequences are all too predictable. Muslims in Switzerland will feel in danger and there is bound to be an angry reaction in various parts of the Islamic world. Churches in countries such as Indonesia (already the target of Islamic zealots on some islands) are put at risk and Switzerland can expect to be subjected to various economic boycotts, as Denmark was after the disgraceful publication in a Danish newspaper of crude caricatures of the Propher Muhammad. Doubtless the perpetrators of the Swiss referendum will claim that they were defending Switzerland and European values, but in reality, they are likely to have achieved just the opposite.

Floella Benjamin’s LibDem Playschool in Hackney

Keith Angus, LibDem PPC for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, played host this evening at a fundraising dinner for the borough party at the YumYum Thai restaurant in his constituency — a splendid venue occupying historic former Council offices. Made me think that the House of Commons could be turned into an excellent diner. Anyway, Floella Benjamin — hot from a weekend’s campaigning alongside her local LibDem PPC, Chris Nicholson, in Streatham — was the great draw of the evening. And drew she did, filling the private dining area and even eliciting a spontaneous ‘We love you, Floella!’ from one of the establishment’s regular young lady clients. Half of the men in the audience under the age of 50 turned into recycled infants, cooing as Floella gave us all an almost evangelical speech about how anyone, like her, can overcome the hurdles in life and how the LibDems must offer hope, honesty and trustworthiness at the upcoming general election. All grist to the mill for those of us in East London who have to talk to an electorate sickened by the disappointment (to put it mildly) of New Labour and the tinsel-like superficiality of Cameroonian Conservativism. The evening — with both an auction and raffle — made a tidy sum of the local party’s coffers, but more importantly inspired not only the Hackney footsoldiers, but those who had come from neighbouring Tower Hamlets, Islington and Camden as well.

Link: www.keithangus.com

Remembering Conrad with David Starkey

Like many Liberal Democrats, I was deeply fond of Conrad Russell (1937-2004). When his slightly shambolic figure, dressed in a grubby overcoat and carrying his papers in a plastic carrier bag, hove into view, one knew that one was in for an intellectual feast as soon as he opened his mouth. The Chamber of the House of Lords would fill up when the 5th Earl Russell rose to speak. He was an eminent historian, notably of the 17th century, but he had his feet firmly planted in the contemporary world as well. He cared deeply about injustice and poverty and social exclusion, lacing his erudition with compassion and wit. So it was fitting this evening that a goodly crowd gathered to remember him at a memorial dinner organised by his younger son, John (a LibDem Councillor in Lewisham), in the Lloyd George Room (‘Lloyd George jailed my father,’ quipped Conrad) in the National Liberal Club. The keynote speaker was the historian and TV ‘personality’ David Starkey, who gave a predictably bravura performance, basically arguing that Conrad marked the end of an age. Dr Starkey was not at all complimentary about the standard of the current membership of the Upper Chamber, despite the fact that Baroness (Sally) Hamwee was sitting by his side. I’m not sure that some of Conrad’s progeny would have welcomed David Starkey’s claim that Conrad would have been an incomprehensible phenomenon except as a noble, an aristocrat. But he deployed his arguments with such sly humour, rhetoric and trademark camp arrogance that one surrendered to the bohonmomie of the occasion, the good food and wine — and pondered how much Conrad would have savoured the prospect of the LibDems’ great surge in Lewisham in 2010.

Link: www.lewishamlibdems.org.uk

Taking on Poplar and Limehouse

This evening, at a packed AGM of Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats at Oxford House in Bethnal Green, I was adopted as the LibDem PPC for my home constituency of Poplar and Limehouse (new boundaries, having lost all the bits in Newham). It’s an extraodinary seat, illustrating both the huge diversity of London and also the yawning gap between rich and poor. It also looks like being a right royal battleground at the forthcoming general election, not only because the sitting Labour MP, Farming and Food Minister Jim Fitzpatrick, annoyed the large local Muslim community a while back by walking out of a Muslim wedding because he couldn’t sit next to his wife, but also because ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway (Respect) is trying to move over from his current perch in neighbouring Bethnal Green and Bow. So we can expect some vigorous campaigning and lots of media attention. Having first moved into the area in 1985, I have seen huge changes — some good, some bad – and whatever the result at the end of it, I am determined to enjoy the next six months or so and to be part of a LibDem renaissance in Tower Hamlets.

Link: http://tower-hamlets-libdems.org.uk

Electoral Reform, Democracy and the World

This evening, Electoral Reform International Services (ERIS) hosted what they hope will be the first of many annual receptions, in the Brunei Gallery at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). As I was lecturing at SOAS immediately before, the event could not have been more convenient. But far more important that that serendipity was the quality of the people present, including a clutch of Commonwealth High Commissioners, my old BBC World Service colleagues Elizabeth Smith and Mike Wooldridge, Electoral Reform types such as Ken Ritchie, Eric Siddique, Michael Steed et al, and of course our host for the evening. former Tory MP Keith Best, who still holds the flame aloft for fair voting (and humane immigration policies) within the Conservative Party. It was also good to see various people from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD, for whom I have done assignments in various parts of the world, including Ethiopia, where the British Ambassador at the time was Myles Wickstead, now one of the big cheeses in WFD and of course present this evening. I was heavily lobbied by a group of Iraqis who attended and who were urging that the West (including Britain) do more to foster genuine democracy and an end to corruption in that benighted land, which Tony Blair and Co ‘liberated’ only to create a political vacuum. We learn by our mistakes, I suppose — though personally I have long argued that the one thing we learn from history is that leaders learn nothing from history. Anyway, ERIS is doing great work and if it had some more financial backing, could be doing so much more!

Link: www.eris.org.uk

North Africa’s Football War

Football matches can be a tribal affair and in several parts of the world the ‘beautiful game’ can turn into a battlefield. In Lebanon, so I am told, many games are played without crowds of supporters in case they break out into sectarian fighting and restart the civil war. In case you think that sounds far-fetched, remember that the Central American states of Honduras and El Salvador did indeed go to war in 1969 in a conflict triggered by their qualifying match for the 1970 FIFA World Cup (though of course there were political issues at stake as well). In an alarming development over the past few days a similar stand-off has been brewing between Algeria and Egypt following their recent 2010 World Cup qualifier replay in Khartoum, Sudan. The Algerians say some Egyptians threw stones at them, while the Egyptians claim Algerian fans set on them. Whatever the truth of the matter, there have been angry demonstrations in both Cairo and Algiers and many injuries. Ambassadors from the two countries have been called in by their respective host governments for a dressing down and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, has waded into the affair, basically saying that it is normal for people to hit someone who insults their country. All this is a useful distraction for him, of course, to turn people’s minds away from Egypt’s own internal problems and the big question about what will happen when he dies or retires. Meanwhile, the new ’football war is a depressing reminder not only of how tribal soccer can become, but more seriously of how disunited the Arab world is, even within North Africa.

European Liberal Democrats Back Turkey’s EU Accession

European Liberal Democrats, meeting at the annual congress of the ELDR in Barcelona, this morning passed a resolution (which I proposed) stating clearly our support for Turkish accession to the European Union, providing Ankara fulfils all of the so-called Copenhagen criteria for membership. This is in sharp contrast to the negative comments about Turkey´s EU vocation made recently by conservative leaders such as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, as well as the newly appointed President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy.

The resolution noted the progress that Turkey has been making with regard to the Copenhagen criteria — as acknowledged in last month’s report from the European Commission – while pointing out that more needs to be achieved in areas such as freedom of expression and the media. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s initiatives towards resolving Turkey’s longstanding Kurdish question were welcomed.

The resolution — which was finalised in consultation with the German Liberal FDP (now in charge of the Federal Republic’s Foreign Ministry) – also called on the European Union to do more to facilitate a settlement of the Cyprus dispute and to end the isolation of Turkish Cypriots.

Link: www.eldr.org

Lord Mayor of London’s Warning to Euro-sceptic Tories

‘Scepticism about Europe — or even disengagement — is yesterday’s game,’ the Lord Mayor of London declared last night at his banquet speech at the Guildhall in the heart of the City of London, the financial district. ‘We need to be at the table shaping the future or others will,’ he added. His remarks, which were a scarcely veiled attack on David Cameron’s Conservatives and their persistent Euro-scepticism, was warmly applauded by the City figures present, many of whom would normally be natural Tories, but who are horrified at the way an incoming Conservative government might further distance Britain from the European mainstream. That could have a catastrophic effect on jobs and investment in London, as well as giving a boost to rival financial and business centres on the continent. Labour was not spared some of the Lord Mayor’s advice either, as he urged the Goverment to engage more enthusiastically with Brussels, to stop European rivals from choking off the City. But with the wind apparently blowing into the Tories’ sails in the run-up to the general election, we can be sure that it will be David Cameron’s office that will get more heavily lobbied by the City. And quite right too!