Britain's expense cheats must try harder
One question remains obscured by the clouds of hysteria enveloping Westminster: just how bad are Britain's moat-clearing, mortgage-flipping MPs in the grand scheme of things? Last year, all 646 of them cost taxpayers £93m in expenses on top of their £40m worth of salaries. Put it another way, that's about £10m less than Obama's inauguration, or just enough to keep the NHS ticking over for eight hours. And for all the furore, MPs can't have thought they had much to hide: as Prospect went to press, only 23 parliamentarians had paid back anything at all, with one especially honourable member returning just £4.47 (for misclaimed dog food). Between them, the 23 are offering only £127,000—a princely 0.1 per cent of the total claims.
In any case, over half of that £93m total was for staff costs—and by the time you've subtracted essentials like travel, phones and stationery, you're left with just over £10m to tempt the crooked. Compared to the best of international excess, its frankly amateurish stuff. Take Italy, home to the highest number of parliamentarians in Europe, all of whom enjoy its most opaque remuneration systems. Italian senators take home an estimated £11,000 a month, including expenses—but tend to pay researchers and secretaries at low rates in cash, while their president enjoys a residence that costs four times as much as Buckingham Palace to run. In France, meanwhile, members of the national assembly are entitled to over £150,000 in annual allowances, plus a private system of social security.
If Westminster wants to take a leaf out of any book it could do worse than glancing north, where the Scottish parliament publishes MSPs' full expense details online on a quarterly basis. Better that model, certainly, than the "transparency" practiced by MEPs, who made their expenses available years ago—as long as anyone so minded went to Brussels in person, while agreeing not to photocopy or photograph the results, or to make the information available online. Truly a model of democracy in action.
The real new kids on the Westminster block
We all know that women have made great strides towards equality in politics since 1997, while ethnic minorities lag behind. Or do we? In fact, the opposite may soon be true, writes Sunder Katwala. Labour's all-women shortlists have certainly bumped up the number of female MPs. With no all-women shortlists in 2001, only 9 out of 92 new MPs outside of Northern Ireland were women. Yet women still win only a quarter of selections for the big parties. And the Labour shortlists look less worthwhile when Tories and Lib Dems manage to select just as many without quotas—and victories for Labour women in open selections for safe seats are rarer than 20 years ago.
Asian candidates, however, are now managing without shortlists to win more than 10 per cent of Labour selections, up from 2 per cent of the new intake in 1997. The Tories are making progress, too, from a nadir of 38 white men and one woman in their class of 2001. If Blair's babes challenged stereotypes in 1997, non-white candidates seem to have reaped the benefits. It may be that women are more put off by the time and money it costs to get elected? Perhaps parties should consider some sort of compensatory expenses system. On the other hand, perhaps not.
Mr Burns sneers at immigration wheeze
During June BBC listeners can tune in to hear Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel deliver the Reith lectures. It's a canny choice: Sandel's twin themes of the need for ethical limits on markets and the dangers of biotechnology seem in tune with the times. The renowned communitarian looked less than pleased, however, when presenter Sue Lawley introduced the lecture with reference to Sandel's dubious honour of being the inspiration behind The Simpsons villain Montgomery Burns, as revealed first in Prospect (April). Perhaps in an attempt to finally ditch his association with the amoral cartoon capitalist, Sandel used his first talk to pick a fight with market-friendly Chicago school economist Gary Becker, and in particular his ingenious scheme to solve the world's immigration crisis by selling off US green cards for upwards of $50,000. Predictably, Sandel's knockout quip that "not all goods are properly valued as commodities" easily won round the sympathetic audience. Becker remains to be convinced, telling Prospect from his home in Chicago that Sandel has "generally been hostile to the use of pricing to solve social problems" while ignoring the "problem of the alternative, namely the systems we have at the moment." Becker says he still likes the idea of immigration trading, although he admits he knows of no political leader in any country who has taken it seriously.
Crunch with a silver lining
One positive effect from America's biting recession: the death penalty is going out of fashion. Following the lead of Illinois, New Mexico banned the death penalty back in March, and now a further ten states are considering doing the same. Liberals can thank tight-fisted voters, who have finally realised that bumping off criminals is painfully expensive. Florida spends $24m per death row inmate, making 50 years in prison seem a snip at just $1.3m. In Kansas, just seeking the death penalty adds 70 per cent to the cost of a trial.
Demos: no longer leaning to the left?
Gordon Brown recently called left-leaning think tankers into No 10 for a brainstorm. The result? Precious few career-saving wheezes, but at least one minor spat among the wonks. The new director of Demos (and Prospect columnist) Richard Reeves spoke about what the left could learn from liberalism. This did not go down well with other comrades, especially as Brown left the room quickly after Reeves had spoken. A second, smaller gathering of the clans was called, held at the offices of the more reliably lefty IPPR, and attended by the Fabians and Policy Network. Demos was pointedly not invited. The snub reflects growing resentment among centre-left wonks at attempts by Demos and other tanks to move onto more Cameron-friendly territory. Still, IPPR has been suffering splits of its own. Its high profile commission on the future of Britain's national security, lead by Paddy Ashdown and George Robertson, lost three of its female members when Liberty chief Shami Chakrabarti, LSE professor Mary Kaldor and human rights academic Francesca Klug walked out together a few weeks ago. Their complaint? IPPR's ideas were, um, too right wing.
The Turkish trial of the century
Turkish justice has never known anything quite like it, writes Nicholas Birch. The indictment sheet includes so many coup codenames it reads like a Grand National line-up—Blondie, Moonshine, Sea Glitter, and even Velvet Glove. Behind them lies a twisted plot, traced in part to 86 suspects charged with belonging to a gang that, prosecutors say, ordered the shooting of a secular High Court judge in 2006. This killing triggered a backlash against Turkey's religiously-minded government. And yet the main event will only arrive late this June, when 56 other men (and one women) are due to be charged with related crimes.
"Ergenekon," as the massive criminal investigation behind all this is known, has gripped and polarised Turkey. Between them, the two indictments include a cast that would tax the imagination of even the most inspired thriller writer. There's a baby-faced spy from a Muslim village masquerading as an assistant rabbi in Canada; mafiosi with names like "Tall" Ali; a corrupt cop who holds back crime dossiers for blackmail; and conspiratorial meetings held in an Istanbul church that hasn't had a congregation for a year. Some say the whole thing is a mirage, dreamed up by Turkey's government to discredit its secular rivals, or even that it's part of a counter-revolution, aimed at ushering in a Turkish Ayatollah Khamenei. Either way, it's essential viewing; and I'll be following all the action for Prospect as it plays out.
Amazon advances into publishing
News of a company buying the rights to a fantasy novel by a 14-year-old American teenager wouldn't normally cause panic in publishing land. But this time it has, largely because the book in question, Legacy, has been snapped up by online retailer Amazon. Its a bizarre debut, but then the e-commerce giant is playing a rather different game to its rivals, and one it seems set to escalate. Legacy will appear later his year first as an audiobook (on Amazon-owned Audible.com), then as an e-book for Amazon's own Kindle and a normal hardback. The book itself was originally self-published; Amazon chose it on the basis of good reviews online (and, doubtless, because of the sensation a 14-year-old author could cause). But with a selection process based on online reviews of books published at the authors' expense, Amazon has a ready-made Pop Idol system for finding saleable books, while keeping the option of publishing big-name authors too. Competitors used to fear the world's biggest online bookshop, and its half a billion visitors. But now, with the added worry of Amazon's ability to gather useful data on customers, and snap up fresh new talent, the future for old world book houses begins to look bleak indeed.
Crunch cliché watch
Writing about the global crisis has triggered a deluge of "seismic shifts" and moving "tectonic plates." To try to stamp out these clichés we intend to name and shame the worst offenders each month. This issue's chief offender is Paul Kennedy for a Herald Tribune piece of 3rd April which had no less than three "tectonics." Report culprits to us at info@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Swedish politics gets invaded by pirates
Election watchers are predicting a boom for Britain's minor parties, as grumpy voters punish the big boys for their lavish expenses. Yet even as they stand to make minor breakthroughs, the likes of UKIP and the BNP may still have cause to gaze jealously across the North Sea, where a rather different upstart is threatening to take over the ship of state. In Sweden, a force known as the Pirate party had (at the time of writing) grown to become the country's third largest political organisation by membership. Its inspiration? The successful prosecution of file-sharing site Pirate Bay, for the illegal distribution of millions of films, albums and television programmes. With 45,000 members and counting, the Pirate party are campaigning on a simple platform: "to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected." They seem likely to win at least one seat in the European parliament—provided, Pirate party leader Rick Falkvinge notes, "we get our ballot papers out." As a non-established political force, they must supply all 7,000 polling stations in Sweden with their own ballots by hand. It's typical. We Brits get unsavoury types like Nick Griffin trying to repel boarders, while Scandinavia gets its timbers shivered by freedom-loving campaigners for citizens' rights. It must be something in the water.
How the KGB really did take over America
His name might have become a byword for intolerant witch hunting, but a new book suggests Senator Joseph McCarthy was, at least in part, right. It turns out that America really was riddled with KGB informants during the cold war—according to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which comes out in Britain in July. By teaming up with KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, the authors were able for the first time to draw directly on Soviet records of covert activities within the US. Among other things, they found that IF Stone, an influential investigative journalist, was also an active Soviet source between 1936 and 1938 (under the pseudonym "Pancake"). They also confirmed that lawyer Alger Hiss, once seen as an innocent victim of McCarthyism, was engaged in long-term espionage—and that Robert Oppenheimer remained loyal, despite strenuous attempts by Soviet intelligence to recruit him. Needless to say, the fallout in the American press has been titanic, with left-wing mag the Nation mustering a 6,000 word defence of Stone, and the staunchly conservative Commentary publishing a lengthy excerpt from the book saying exactly the opposite. On a lighter note, readers may be interested to learn that Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was himself something of a "dilettante spy"—who equipped a fishing boat with light weapons and sailed around Cuba with a few pals while rejoicing in the codename "Argo," after the legendary Greek ship. Needless to say, he proved so unreliable that the KGB soon gave up in despair.
What's coming up
1st-4th June UN conference on the economic crisis 4th June UK local elections and 20 years since the Tiananmen massacre 4th to 7th June European parliament election 12th June Iranian presidential election 10th to 12th June Africa world economic forum, Cape Town 16th June Royal Ascot 22nd June-5th July Wimbledon lawn tennis championships 28th June 90 years since the treaty of Versailles
One question remains obscured by the clouds of hysteria enveloping Westminster: just how bad are Britain's moat-clearing, mortgage-flipping MPs in the grand scheme of things? Last year, all 646 of them cost taxpayers £93m in expenses on top of their £40m worth of salaries. Put it another way, that's about £10m less than Obama's inauguration, or just enough to keep the NHS ticking over for eight hours. And for all the furore, MPs can't have thought they had much to hide: as Prospect went to press, only 23 parliamentarians had paid back anything at all, with one especially honourable member returning just £4.47 (for misclaimed dog food). Between them, the 23 are offering only £127,000—a princely 0.1 per cent of the total claims.
In any case, over half of that £93m total was for staff costs—and by the time you've subtracted essentials like travel, phones and stationery, you're left with just over £10m to tempt the crooked. Compared to the best of international excess, its frankly amateurish stuff. Take Italy, home to the highest number of parliamentarians in Europe, all of whom enjoy its most opaque remuneration systems. Italian senators take home an estimated £11,000 a month, including expenses—but tend to pay researchers and secretaries at low rates in cash, while their president enjoys a residence that costs four times as much as Buckingham Palace to run. In France, meanwhile, members of the national assembly are entitled to over £150,000 in annual allowances, plus a private system of social security.
If Westminster wants to take a leaf out of any book it could do worse than glancing north, where the Scottish parliament publishes MSPs' full expense details online on a quarterly basis. Better that model, certainly, than the "transparency" practiced by MEPs, who made their expenses available years ago—as long as anyone so minded went to Brussels in person, while agreeing not to photocopy or photograph the results, or to make the information available online. Truly a model of democracy in action.
The real new kids on the Westminster block
We all know that women have made great strides towards equality in politics since 1997, while ethnic minorities lag behind. Or do we? In fact, the opposite may soon be true, writes Sunder Katwala. Labour's all-women shortlists have certainly bumped up the number of female MPs. With no all-women shortlists in 2001, only 9 out of 92 new MPs outside of Northern Ireland were women. Yet women still win only a quarter of selections for the big parties. And the Labour shortlists look less worthwhile when Tories and Lib Dems manage to select just as many without quotas—and victories for Labour women in open selections for safe seats are rarer than 20 years ago.
Asian candidates, however, are now managing without shortlists to win more than 10 per cent of Labour selections, up from 2 per cent of the new intake in 1997. The Tories are making progress, too, from a nadir of 38 white men and one woman in their class of 2001. If Blair's babes challenged stereotypes in 1997, non-white candidates seem to have reaped the benefits. It may be that women are more put off by the time and money it costs to get elected? Perhaps parties should consider some sort of compensatory expenses system. On the other hand, perhaps not.
Mr Burns sneers at immigration wheeze
During June BBC listeners can tune in to hear Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel deliver the Reith lectures. It's a canny choice: Sandel's twin themes of the need for ethical limits on markets and the dangers of biotechnology seem in tune with the times. The renowned communitarian looked less than pleased, however, when presenter Sue Lawley introduced the lecture with reference to Sandel's dubious honour of being the inspiration behind The Simpsons villain Montgomery Burns, as revealed first in Prospect (April). Perhaps in an attempt to finally ditch his association with the amoral cartoon capitalist, Sandel used his first talk to pick a fight with market-friendly Chicago school economist Gary Becker, and in particular his ingenious scheme to solve the world's immigration crisis by selling off US green cards for upwards of $50,000. Predictably, Sandel's knockout quip that "not all goods are properly valued as commodities" easily won round the sympathetic audience. Becker remains to be convinced, telling Prospect from his home in Chicago that Sandel has "generally been hostile to the use of pricing to solve social problems" while ignoring the "problem of the alternative, namely the systems we have at the moment." Becker says he still likes the idea of immigration trading, although he admits he knows of no political leader in any country who has taken it seriously.
Crunch with a silver lining
One positive effect from America's biting recession: the death penalty is going out of fashion. Following the lead of Illinois, New Mexico banned the death penalty back in March, and now a further ten states are considering doing the same. Liberals can thank tight-fisted voters, who have finally realised that bumping off criminals is painfully expensive. Florida spends $24m per death row inmate, making 50 years in prison seem a snip at just $1.3m. In Kansas, just seeking the death penalty adds 70 per cent to the cost of a trial.
Demos: no longer leaning to the left?
Gordon Brown recently called left-leaning think tankers into No 10 for a brainstorm. The result? Precious few career-saving wheezes, but at least one minor spat among the wonks. The new director of Demos (and Prospect columnist) Richard Reeves spoke about what the left could learn from liberalism. This did not go down well with other comrades, especially as Brown left the room quickly after Reeves had spoken. A second, smaller gathering of the clans was called, held at the offices of the more reliably lefty IPPR, and attended by the Fabians and Policy Network. Demos was pointedly not invited. The snub reflects growing resentment among centre-left wonks at attempts by Demos and other tanks to move onto more Cameron-friendly territory. Still, IPPR has been suffering splits of its own. Its high profile commission on the future of Britain's national security, lead by Paddy Ashdown and George Robertson, lost three of its female members when Liberty chief Shami Chakrabarti, LSE professor Mary Kaldor and human rights academic Francesca Klug walked out together a few weeks ago. Their complaint? IPPR's ideas were, um, too right wing.
The Turkish trial of the century
Turkish justice has never known anything quite like it, writes Nicholas Birch. The indictment sheet includes so many coup codenames it reads like a Grand National line-up—Blondie, Moonshine, Sea Glitter, and even Velvet Glove. Behind them lies a twisted plot, traced in part to 86 suspects charged with belonging to a gang that, prosecutors say, ordered the shooting of a secular High Court judge in 2006. This killing triggered a backlash against Turkey's religiously-minded government. And yet the main event will only arrive late this June, when 56 other men (and one women) are due to be charged with related crimes.
"Ergenekon," as the massive criminal investigation behind all this is known, has gripped and polarised Turkey. Between them, the two indictments include a cast that would tax the imagination of even the most inspired thriller writer. There's a baby-faced spy from a Muslim village masquerading as an assistant rabbi in Canada; mafiosi with names like "Tall" Ali; a corrupt cop who holds back crime dossiers for blackmail; and conspiratorial meetings held in an Istanbul church that hasn't had a congregation for a year. Some say the whole thing is a mirage, dreamed up by Turkey's government to discredit its secular rivals, or even that it's part of a counter-revolution, aimed at ushering in a Turkish Ayatollah Khamenei. Either way, it's essential viewing; and I'll be following all the action for Prospect as it plays out.
Amazon advances into publishing
News of a company buying the rights to a fantasy novel by a 14-year-old American teenager wouldn't normally cause panic in publishing land. But this time it has, largely because the book in question, Legacy, has been snapped up by online retailer Amazon. Its a bizarre debut, but then the e-commerce giant is playing a rather different game to its rivals, and one it seems set to escalate. Legacy will appear later his year first as an audiobook (on Amazon-owned Audible.com), then as an e-book for Amazon's own Kindle and a normal hardback. The book itself was originally self-published; Amazon chose it on the basis of good reviews online (and, doubtless, because of the sensation a 14-year-old author could cause). But with a selection process based on online reviews of books published at the authors' expense, Amazon has a ready-made Pop Idol system for finding saleable books, while keeping the option of publishing big-name authors too. Competitors used to fear the world's biggest online bookshop, and its half a billion visitors. But now, with the added worry of Amazon's ability to gather useful data on customers, and snap up fresh new talent, the future for old world book houses begins to look bleak indeed.
Crunch cliché watch
Writing about the global crisis has triggered a deluge of "seismic shifts" and moving "tectonic plates." To try to stamp out these clichés we intend to name and shame the worst offenders each month. This issue's chief offender is Paul Kennedy for a Herald Tribune piece of 3rd April which had no less than three "tectonics." Report culprits to us at info@prospect-magazine.co.uk
Swedish politics gets invaded by pirates
Election watchers are predicting a boom for Britain's minor parties, as grumpy voters punish the big boys for their lavish expenses. Yet even as they stand to make minor breakthroughs, the likes of UKIP and the BNP may still have cause to gaze jealously across the North Sea, where a rather different upstart is threatening to take over the ship of state. In Sweden, a force known as the Pirate party had (at the time of writing) grown to become the country's third largest political organisation by membership. Its inspiration? The successful prosecution of file-sharing site Pirate Bay, for the illegal distribution of millions of films, albums and television programmes. With 45,000 members and counting, the Pirate party are campaigning on a simple platform: "to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected." They seem likely to win at least one seat in the European parliament—provided, Pirate party leader Rick Falkvinge notes, "we get our ballot papers out." As a non-established political force, they must supply all 7,000 polling stations in Sweden with their own ballots by hand. It's typical. We Brits get unsavoury types like Nick Griffin trying to repel boarders, while Scandinavia gets its timbers shivered by freedom-loving campaigners for citizens' rights. It must be something in the water.
How the KGB really did take over America
His name might have become a byword for intolerant witch hunting, but a new book suggests Senator Joseph McCarthy was, at least in part, right. It turns out that America really was riddled with KGB informants during the cold war—according to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, which comes out in Britain in July. By teaming up with KGB officer Alexander Vassiliev, the authors were able for the first time to draw directly on Soviet records of covert activities within the US. Among other things, they found that IF Stone, an influential investigative journalist, was also an active Soviet source between 1936 and 1938 (under the pseudonym "Pancake"). They also confirmed that lawyer Alger Hiss, once seen as an innocent victim of McCarthyism, was engaged in long-term espionage—and that Robert Oppenheimer remained loyal, despite strenuous attempts by Soviet intelligence to recruit him. Needless to say, the fallout in the American press has been titanic, with left-wing mag the Nation mustering a 6,000 word defence of Stone, and the staunchly conservative Commentary publishing a lengthy excerpt from the book saying exactly the opposite. On a lighter note, readers may be interested to learn that Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was himself something of a "dilettante spy"—who equipped a fishing boat with light weapons and sailed around Cuba with a few pals while rejoicing in the codename "Argo," after the legendary Greek ship. Needless to say, he proved so unreliable that the KGB soon gave up in despair.
What's coming up
1st-4th June UN conference on the economic crisis 4th June UK local elections and 20 years since the Tiananmen massacre 4th to 7th June European parliament election 12th June Iranian presidential election 10th to 12th June Africa world economic forum, Cape Town 16th June Royal Ascot 22nd June-5th July Wimbledon lawn tennis championships 28th June 90 years since the treaty of Versailles
