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

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, 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

‘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!

The deluded voters of North West England who sent BNP leader Nick Griffin to Brussels as one of their MEPs in June must be disappointed that he has chosen to express his deep commitment to the area by putting forward his candidacy for the Westminister parliamentary seat of Barking in East London just five months later. Talk about carpet-bagging. The absurd thing is that the BNP is the official opposition to Labour on Barking and Dagenham borough council. They got in there not just because they capitalised on Labour’s failure to tackle some of the real problems in the area, but also because they shamelessly borrowed Liberal Democrat tactics of presenting themselves as community politicians, knocking on doors, seemingly caring about bread-and-butter issues, while keeping some of their more scary members and supporters of the streets. Could they really not find someone local to fight this parliamentary seat for them? Instead, they are going to parachute in their Great Leader, presumably in the hope that they will get lots of media attention. Probably they will, though it may not be helpful to their cause. Along with millions of other people, I watched Nick Griffin on Question Time the other week and was surprised, not by his deviousness and inconsistency, but that he came across as such a plonker.

When Oswald Mosley tried to woo the East End for his crypto-fascists he got the rough reception he deserved, and Nick Griffin deserves the same. It is also essential that all of the other parties, including the Liberal Democrats, choose strong candidates to fight this seat, not just to show the BNP leader up in hustings but also to give the disillusioned voters of Barking someone worthwhile to support.

London Liberal Democras gathered at City University in Islington today for the last autumn regional conference before next year’s elections. Most pundits believe that the general and local polls will be held on the same day (first Thursday in May, 2010), which is something much of the rest of the country often has to cope with but is a distinct rarity in the capital. The prospect is viewed with mixed feelings, as was clear from contributions from several speakers at the conference, including councillors who may have to garner twice as many votes (on an increased turnout) this time round than they did last time, in order to to retain their seats. However, the mood was nonetheless upbeat. True, few shared Simon Hughes’s rosy forecast that the LibDems might almost double their number of London MPs — from eight to 15 — next year. But even the most theoretically vulnerable sitting MP — Susan Kramer in Richmond Park — was surprisingly confident because of positive feedback she’s been getting on the doorsteps. Ed Fordham (Hampstead and Kilburn) spoke on behalf of target seat candidates who are increasingly making their voices heard among the electorate. And both Ashley Lumsden (Lambeth) and John Macklin (Waltham Forest) were hopeful that there could be strong gains in several London borough councils as well. I am looking forward to being part of the regional support team for all this forthcming activity, having today been elected to be the next Chairman of London Region LibDems (taking office on 1 January), as well as working with colleagues to improve dramatically the party’s performance in London list elections.

Given all that there is going on in the world at the moment, it is astonishing and depressing that the British media — including the BBC — have gone totally over the top on the story of Gordon Brown’s handwritten note to Jacqui Janes, the mother of one of Britain’s latest Afghanistan casualties. Let us remind ourselves that the reason this is ‘a story’ is because the Sun newspaper, that most reptilian of organs, has tried to smear Mr Brown by concentrating on his bad handwriting, spelling mistakes etc, while trying to spin that the Prime Minister has insulted the bereaved parent, though I have no doubt that he (having lost one child himself) was being sincere. The Sun, of course, recently announced that it was switching from supporting Labour to the Conservative in its editorial policy, but this whole episode is a shoddy way to underline that point. What is even more disgraceful, though, is that the BBC, in particular, should allow its agenda to be set by a highly partisan piece in the Sun, therefore itself putting Gordon Brown in the pillory. There have been repeated, extended TV news items on the story over the past day or so. Rightly, this evening, the BBC report did acknowledged that the Corporation had received an unprecendented number of emails protesting that the Prime Minister was being treated unfairly on this issue. It would have been interesting for viewers also to have been told how many emails arrived saying that the BBC seemed to have lost its sense of news values, along with most of the rest of the British media.

I suppose technically any town that boasts a cathedral qualifies as a city, but few can be as small or as exquisite as the hilltop former capital of Malta, Mdina. The city houses only a few hundred inhabitants, but a whole series of beautiful baroque palaces and churches (including the Cathedral of St Paul) are gathered within its Norman walls. A notice at Mdina’s entrance boasts that its origins date back to 4000 BC, which is maybe pushing ita bit, but certainly underneath what we see today are Punic remains and other classical vestiges. The Romans called the place Melita, and the Arabs Medina, whereas the Knights of St John lauded it as the Citta Notabile. Tradition has it that the Apostle Paul lodged in the city after his shipwreck off the Maltese islands.

Mdina is spotlessly clean and only a very restricted number of vehicles (including bridal cars) are allowed in. The drivers of horse-drawn vehicles are also sternly warned at the gate that ‘Horses’ hooves and wheels are to be rubber lined.’ I travelled up this afternoon from Valletta on the No 84 bus, a splendid 1950s curved contraption that could have come out of an Ealing comedy, only painted yellow and white rather than the green livery of many of post-War Brtitain’s rural transport. A day ticket that gets one round the island is a snip at 3 euros 49 cents. Malta is so small that one can see a great deal in a day, but one of the pleasures of lecturing on cruise ships is calling in at repeat ports like this and going off in one’s spare hours from lecturing and researching to discover places or buildings one has never been to before.

I spent most of today up in the Jebel Nafusa or western mountains of Libya, one of the few regions of the country I have never visited before, or at least the eastern part of the region (having camped in Ghadames some years ago). Just an hour or so’s drive west from Tripoli, one enters a totally different land: Berber territory, where Arabic is no longer the default language and olive trees canter over the high plateau, watered by deliveries from tankers that disgorge their load into underground cisterns. The main purpose of my visit was to get to Tarmeisa, a superlative mountain-top settlement whose old town (or village, one should say) has been evacuated so that the inhabitants can now live in more spacious, modern homes right next door (as indeed is the case at Ghadames). Old Tarmeisa is only semi-derelict, however, as there have been attempts to preserve at least some of the houses, a bridal suite and even a tiny little farm, to give visitors an idea of what it was once like. The views from some of the windows and ledges are phenomenal, the vertiginous drops heart-stopping. And although the climate was perfect on this sunny autumn afternoon, one knows how burning hot and freezing cold the place is in the more extreme seasons.

By inclination, I am much more interested in modern history than in antiquity, yet each time I come to Leptis Magna, on the outskirts of Al Khoms in Libya, I am moved by the place. The setting alone, on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, gives the site a certain romance. Not only is it the largest Roman settlement in North Africa, it is also the best preserved. One can walk down paved streets, or sit in the vast communal public loo, or wander through the Hadrianic baths and really imagine what it was like when Leptis Magna was a thriving commercial and administrative centre. The fact that still today there are relatively few tourists means that is easy to go off down a side street and be completely on one’s own.

Though the settlement’s origins date back at least to the time of Phoenician dominance in the southern Mediterranean, it really came into its own during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus, after Roman immigrants had moved in. It became a model for integrated town planning, as well as a showcase for ornate craftsmanship. It is clear that the upper classes, at least, lived extremely well there, especially from the time of Hadrian. Leptis also produced the one and only Libyan-born Roman Emperor — Lucius Septimius Severus, or the ‘Grim African’ — who was a brilliant military leader who inspired such devotion in his troops that they proclaimed him Emperor. He marched on Rome where he was able to vanquish resistance and was duly installed there in AD145. Even more magnificent public works were then carried out in his home town, including a basilica and a modern port, though Setimius Severus was not able to spend much time there once he assumed the highest office. He died in Eboracum (York) in AD211 after his last campaign in Caledonia (Scotland).