UK Politics

Britain And The Church Of England Must File For Divorce

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Church v State

One of the aspects of British life that this blog finds hardest to tolerate and justify – aside from our lack of a written constitution, the complete absence of checks on Parliamentary power, our deference to government authority and the eternally unrealistic expectations heaped upon the England football team – is the fact that in the year 2014, our supposedly liberal democracy maintains the absurdity that is an established church (and de facto national religion).

The notion that Britain is a Christian nation has been a laughable, if ubiquitous proposition for many years now. To arrive at the conclusion that the UK is a Christian land, one has to redefine Christianity not as a religion, a set of beliefs, teachings or practices, but rather as some woolly abstract incorporating cherry-picked elements of history, patriotism, nationalism, whiteness, tradition, middle class anxiety and fear of change. The rather more trustworthy indicators such as weekly church attendance, changing census data and the public’s knowledge of basic Christian tenets point stubbornly and persistently in the opposite direction.

David Cameron, always more comfortable on the woollier side of a debate, naturally favoured the abstract markers of Britain as a “Christian” nation when he made his recent intervention, a rare instance of a senior politician addressing matters of faith which also conveniently eclipsed the ongoing media coverage of his incompetent handling of the Maria Miller expenses scandal.

First comes Cameron’s woolliness:

In an article in the Church Times ahead of Easter Sunday, Mr Cameron acknowledged that he is a “bit vague” on the “more difficult parts of faith” but said he has “deep respect” for the national role of the Church.

He said: “I am a member of the Church of England, and, I suspect, a rather classic one: not that regular in attendance, and a bit vague on some of the more difficult parts of the faith.

And then the pivot toward the bold assertion that despite the fact that Cameron is a religious zealot by today’s standards, “vague faith” such as this on the part of a dwindling segment of the population can be extrapolated to mean broad national consent for the primacy of one religion and denomination over all others:

He said: “I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives.

But the emphasis really is on the word ‘dwindling’. The Rt Rev Graham James, Bishop of Norwich, inadvertently gives the game away when he seeks to explain what he claims are “heartening” church attendance figures:

These figures are a welcome reminder of the work and service undertaken by the Church of England annually – 1,000 couples married, 2,600 baptisms celebrated and over 3,000 funerals conducted every week of the year.

The fact that there were 400 more departures than additions to the ranks of the faithful in his diocese may have failed to set off alarm bells in the head of the Bishop of Norwich, but for the more numerate reader it does illustrate rather starkly the problem faced by the wider church.

Once it has been explained that 2,600 minus 3,000 equals a net loss of 400, the Rt Rev Graham James (and the Church of England as a whole) must concede the fact that a higher number of Christian funerals than baptisms represents a real and existential threat, or else they are essentially admitting that the sacraments of the church are no real way to measure the faith of the people, and that they therefore no longer matter. An admission of the latter seems unlikely.

The response of many – both to the decline in church attendance and in attempts to loosen the Church of England’s disproportionate grip on the levers of power – has been to rail against the damage of that destructive group known as the “militant atheists”, those shadowy PC paramilitaries who fight the War On Christmas and dare to suggest that claiming religious objection does not exempt a person from their contract of employment or license to do business. The Daily Mail leads the charge from this side:

The truth is that there is a new breed of militant atheists who are capable of being as unreasoning as the most bone-headed creationist. Their intolerance is a strange mirror reflection of the bigotry of religious extremists.

‘Intolerance’ here is given the broad definition of the perpetual victim, an insult hurled by those who suddenly find themselves losing their ability to impose their values and lifestyle choices on everyone else.

According to this school of thought, it is bone-headedly ignorant to see anything wrong in the fact that our Head of State has a constitutional duty to defend one faith above all others, or that twenty-six members of that one faith alone are entitled to sit in the upper house of the British Parliament and participate in our lawmaking.

Neither do the traditionalist defenders agree on when, if at all, Britain might no longer be considered a Christian country. Would it be when more people regularly attend another faith or denomination’s services? If so, that ship has already sailed and Britain should once again be pledging fealty to Rome and the Holy See. Or perhaps the moment of severance can be declared when a majority of people no longer agree with Church teaching on matters such as gay marriage or equality for women? But again, that moment has been passed. More likely, their answer would be “never”, simply because they will it to be so.

Parliament and the Church - divorce is needed to save both institutions
Parliament and the Church – divorce is needed to save both institutions

 

None of this means that Christianity has lost its place as the predominant religion in Britain – indeed, this is one thing clearly supported by the 2011 census data. It is certainly true that among people expressing a religious affiliation, the vast majority identify as Christians. But there is a huge gulf between acknowledging this fact and deciding that British laws and the British system of government itself should continue to be organised around and influenced by the teachings of a religion that most people only identify with on a nominal, cultural basis.

And it is on this this basis that the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, joined the debate with a proposal to disestablish the Church of England, in order to prevent any more unnecessary harm coming either to that church or to the rest of us.

The Guardian reports:

Nick Clegg has said the church and state should be separated, a view he has expressed before but one that is likely to gain fresh currency after David Cameron described Britain as a Christian country.

Clegg, an atheist, said he would like to see the disestablishment of the Church of England, which would lead to the Queen’s removal as the head of the church.

“In the long run it would be better for the church and better for people of faith, and better for Anglicans, if the church and the state were over time to stand on their own two separate feet,” the deputy prime minister said on his LBC radio phone-in show. He said he did not think this would happen overnight.

Heads will surely explode at The Daily Mail, and the likes of Cristina Odone will stay up late into the night to pen angry rebuttals, but in fact here is a very sensible proposal that would help to keep the church out of some of the more hot-button political and social debates affecting the country as a whole, while going a few steps toward establishing a more sane, comprehensible constitution for the United Kingdom.

Indeed, many of the reasons given by apologists for why the UK is a Christian country are symptoms of an established church, not justifications for continuing to tolerate one – artefacts such as the Queen’s role as the head of the church, or the presence of the Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords, for example. But this is akin to claiming that an Egyptian mummy is a living, breathing human being – sure, the body parts are in the right place (just as the constitutional elements are in place for a British theocracy) but the heart does not beat, the blood does not flow and the brain does not think like a living person.

Nick Clegg goes on to claim that the Church of England would “thrive” if disestablishment were to occur, and this may well be the case. At present, the Church has to walk a tightrope with doctrine on one side and popular opinion on the other, making it appear weak and indecisive, and pleasing to no one. Unshackled from the state, however, the church could continue to discriminate against gays and women (or more hopefully recognise their equality) without dragging the rest of the country into the debate.

Naturally, David Cameron disagrees:

Mr Cameron said: “I think our arrangements work well in this country. We are a Christian country, we have an established church,” adding that disestablishment was “a long term Liberal idea but it is not a Conservative one.” 

This is conservatism of the bad kind, the reflexive hanging on to tradition not because the alternative is untried and the status quo works well, but simply out of a reluctance to rock the boat, upset the party base or start a real, informed debate. Cameron believes that the current constitutional arrangement “works well”, but take this with a pinch of salt – he also believes that parliamentary oversight of the security services works very well indeed, though it transpired that they were undertaking far more extensive and intrusive surveillance than the public had ever been aware of or given their consent.

The New Statesman naturally comes down on the side of disestablishment, and they come armed with the words of the most recent former Archbishop of Canterbury:

Religious believers who oppose such a move should look to the US, where faith has flourished alongside the country’s secular constitution. Indeed, in an interview with the New Statesman in 2008, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, (who went on to famously guest-edit the magazine) suggested that the church might benefit from such a move: “I can see that it’s by no means the end of the world if the establishment disappears. The strength of it is that the last vestiges of state sanction disappeared, so when you took a vote at the Welsh synod, it didn’t have to be nodded through by parliament afterwards. There is a certain integrity to that.”

What Rowan Williams delicately calls a “certain integrity” is actually just plain old democracy, properly executed, with each citizen having a voice and no powerful interests able to sway policy based on their own narrow interests. Both church and state can make decisions in their own interests without running to each other for contentious debate or rubber-stamp approval.

The British people, usually so quick to voice their distaste for money in politics and big donations from wealthy individuals, corporations or trades union, should ponder this simple fact: of all the business moguls, special interest groups and union barons jostling to influence British government policy in their favour, only one organisation is powerful enough to boast twenty-six loyal, paid representatives ready to do its bidding in the upper house of the British Parliament. Britain’s 100 biggest employers, ten largest unions and her wealthiest people combined do not have the lobbying and legislative clout of the Church of England, an organisation that commands a weekly attendance of just 1.8% of the UK’s population.

To say all of these things does not imply a hostility of any kind to religion and faith-based organisations, despite the misleading accusations of the traditionalists; regular readers will know that this blogger is a practicing (if somewhat Cameron-vague) Catholic. Indeed, disestablishment of the Church of England, combined with a loosening of the government’s hand on all matters of faith, can only benefit religious organisations, schools, charities and initiatives through the plurality that would immediately be created.

But even if disestablishment would cause difficulty or a degree of harm to the church, that alone is not a sufficient reason to preserve the status quo. It is not the business of government to pick winners and losers, to favour some more than others, and institutions (corporate or otherwise) who rely on state aid of any kind tend to fail regardless in the longer term.

Christianity – and the Church of England – have formed a huge part of who we are as a country, influencing our laws, culture, art and traditions. We should be very grateful for this – just ask anyone who suffers or whose life prospects are narrowed or extinguished under a modern day Muslim theocracy. But we should not be content merely to be better than Iran or Saudi Arabia – the time has come to do away with an established state church entirely.

In the year 2014, it is time to finally remove the theological shackles from the British constitution, and to take the state church off life support so it may live and breathe unaided. Committed Christians and Church of England members should have the confidence in their faith and institutions to accept, if not actively welcome, this change.

Editor Willing To Publish Anything Doesn’t Think Public Deserve To Know About Government Surveillance

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Only honourable men wear poppies

 

The ongoing public debate about the Snowden NSA leaks and government surveillance was effectively settled once and for all today, as former News of The World editor Andy Coulson informed the world how he would have acted had Edward Snowden approached him – rather than The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald – with his cache of classified security documents.

The Guardian reports:

The former NoW editor Andy Coulson said he would have rejected the Edward Snowden story if it had been offered to him when he was editing the newspaper, the Old Bailey has heard.

Coulson told the phone hacking trial on Tuesday he felt the news story about US National Security Agency surveillance, based upon a cache of documents leaked by the whistleblower Snowden, would have endangered lives.

Andy Coulson – known by many of his peers as the Saint of Fleet Street – distinguished himself throughout his career by his unimpeachable journalistic ethics, frequently declining to run lucrative stories picked up by other newspapers because he could not be absolutely certain that the information had been gleaned from reputable sources or that its publication would serve the public interest.

Showing the steady, high-handed professional judgement which was the hallmark of his tenure as editor of the News of the World, The Guardian reports Coulson as saying:

“It’s a topical example, Edward Snowden. If they came to me at the News of the World, I think I would have turned them down,” he said, adding that the story on sweeping surveillance by the US government had “a potential for lives to be put at risk”.

The fact that Andy Coulson decided to weigh in on this contentious issue can only add further weight and moral credibility to the government’s argument that it has the unlimited right to take any action in the name of national security without either informing or seeking the consent of the public.

Coulson’s intervention is also a tremendous setback for The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, who only yesterday were boasting about their newly-won Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. Indeed, the judgement and reputation of the entire Pulitzer Prize committee must surely now be called into question for conferring an award on two newspapers who so egregiously violated what is already becoming known as the ‘Coulson Doctrine’ of fastidiously weighing the public interest before publishing sensational material.

Coulson could not be reached for further comment as he is currently standing trial at the Old Bailey on charges of phone hacking and committing perjury, absurd and hurtful accusations that were probably concocted by jealous rivals who can never live up to Coulson’s exemplary standards of professional and moral conduct.

Maria Miller Resigns, But Justice Prevails Too Late

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

maria miller resignation

After resigning from the Cabinet, her hands finally pried away from her grip on office, Maria Miller actually did something quite rare and notable, which deserves recognition and adoption by other outgoing ministers under similar circumstances. The Telegraph reports:

Mrs Miller said on Wednesday night she was giving her £17,000 ministerial severance payment to a charity in her constituency.

Unlike a number of her colleagues, Maria Miller was not trying to make a fortune at the expense of taxpayers. Her breach of the rules was significant and certainly warranted this outcome (which could have been achieved at much less stress had Miller shown the humility to realise and atone for her errors earlier rather than clinging on for as long as she did), but donating her ministerial severance payment in this way was quite a noble act, one that she was by no means compelled to take.

Miller did not have to do this, especially when there was nothing left to salvage of her ministerial career. For Miller, it seems, it was not so much about the money as it was an ugly manifestation of that right-to-serve mentality and scorn for public disapprobation that still infects so much of the political class.

In truth, the particulars of Maria Miller’s excessive expense claims are quite mild compared to some of the more well publicised excesses of other departed politicians – employing relatives to do fake jobs, claiming rent paid to themselves, expensive furniture, third homes, premium home electronics and moat cleaning – but this is no defence.

Serving as a Member of Parliament and representing your constituents at Westminster is a privilege, not a right. And with that privilege comes the obligation to behave in a manner that is entirely above reproach in all areas related to the carrying out of those parliamentary duties. These obligations, and the commensurate scrutiny, should only increase if the MP is also a minister of state.

Serving in the people’s house is not just another career path where mistakes and transgressions should be overlooked in light of someone being a nice guy, or having had an impeccable record thus far, or having a family to feed. All other considerations are secondary to adherence to a strict code of behaviour and an unwavering following of the spirit – not just the letter – of the rules.

Maria Miller’s expenses intrigue was a remnant from the original expenses scandal, and as such theoretically could not have taken place under the news rules. This much is a far, if mealy-mouthed defence – one cannot retroactively try someone for committing an act that was not illegal at the time. But there, all sympathy for Miller must end. The former Culture Secretary was obstructive and threatening in tone and action, both to the parliamentary expenses commissioner and to the press who were seeking more information. Anything less than full co-operation with such an investigation is unpardonable. These actions alone warranted her resignation from the Cabinet.

Even now, however, it seems as though David Cameron is firmly stuck in denial that Maria Miller had to go and that is unequivocal support of her was wrong and hugely damaging to the public trust. The Telegraph reports:

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Cameron defended his decision to support Mrs Miller. He said: “If people clear themselves of a serious offence, you let them get on with their job. That is actually the right thing to do.”

There was widespread public anger after the standards committee overruled Kathryn Hudson, the independent standards Commissioner, who called for Mrs Miller to repay more that £40,000.

Once again, David Cameron’s blind loyalty prevents him from correctly reading either his moral compass or the public mood, thus helping to reinforce everyone’s worst thoughts and convictions about the political class.

How long will it now take to undo this setback, to repair this damage that could have been almost entirely prevented with a swift and honourable resignation?

Maria Miller And The Government’s Contempt For The People

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

maria miller david cameron

According to the prime minister of the United Kingdom, it is both professionally and ethically acceptable for a Member of Parliament to use taxpayer money to house their parents and contribute toward the purchase of a property which is later sold having appreciated in value, the profits accruing to the lucky politician.

Furthermore, when questioned by the parliamentary expenses authority and by the media it is appropriate for an MP – in this case Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary – to obstuct, bully and harass those investigating the questionable expenses claims at every turn. There is nothing more to see here, the issue is closed and we should all stop fussing and just move on.

We know this because David Cameron tells us so.

The Telegraph summarises the tawdry scandal briefly enough to inform without entirely sapping the will to live:

[Culture Secretary Maria Miller] had to repay £5,800 in mortgage interest payments and also apologise for failing to cooperate with the parliamentary inquiry into her expenses. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Hudson, had recommended that she pay back £44,000, an amount reduced by the MP-dominated Commons Committee on Standards.

But having housed her parents at the taxpayers’ expense, and made a capital gain in the process, Mrs Miller could be presented by the Tories’ opponents ahead of May’s European elections as the personification of alleged Westminster sleaze which so infuriates voters.

If any one image will come to symbolise this latest expenses scandal in British politics, it will be this – the picture of a haughty, self-entitled, unrepentant Maria Miller making her perfunctory, insincere and lightning-fast pseudo-apology to Parliament after having successfully reduced the amount which she was ordered to repay from the original £45,000 to an astonishingly low £4,500:

maria miller 1

Here, Maria Miller is flanked by a number of faces not commonly seen sitting on the back benches by virtue of their position – Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Chief Whip Sir George Young. This is no accident. They were ordered to sit with Miller to show the leadership’s determination to stand by the scandal-plagued politician no matter the public outcry.

The picture (from The Times) is essentially a freeze-frame image of Parliament once again conspiring to do right for themselves and act in the interests of the Old Boys (or, in this case, Girls) Club and against the interests of every single voter in the United Kingdom.

Iain Martin correctly surmises that the biggest beneficiary of this tawdry, self-inflicted crisis will be Nigel Farage and the UK Independence Party:

In such circumstances, the survival of the Culture Secretary is a dream for Ukip, as those Tory MPs observed. Having exploited the expenses system and made a sum most voters can only dream about, Miller then had her punishment watered down by a committee of MPs stuffed with the representatives of the mainstream parties. Farage can present Miller as a totem of all that he claims is wrong with the ruling elite.

Martin goes on to suggest that any benefit felt by UKIP would be the result of “scary populist politics”, which rather make one wonder whose side he is on – that of corrupt politicians or that of the people. But tactically speaking, he is quite right – the Maria Miller scandal can only redound to UKIP’s advantage because all of the other major British political parties are represented at Westminster and are consequently tainted by association.

Polly Toynbee, writing in The Guardian and no ideological soulmate of this blog, agrees that Cameron’s refusal to sack Miller – a case of misapplied loyalty at the worst possible time – will come back to haunt MPs from each and every political party and re-open the wounds from a parliamentary expenses scandal that had scarely been given time to heal since the original revelations:

The harm done to politics by the expenses scandal is felt by every MP in the blowback on the doorstep. Even the cleanest get the blame. Miller’s behaviour confirms the worst people think of politicians. How a £1.2m London property housing her husband, children and parents could be called a “second home” defeats most reasonable people. All those “second” bedrooms strike a wicked contrast with the bedroom tax. If her MP colleagues cutting a £45,000 payback to £5,800 was astounding, her 32-second stroppy teenager non-apology took the biscuit. Cameron should have sacked her that day, not for his government’s sake but to salvage a crumb of respect for the politician’s trade.

This really sums up the problem, a rather glaring one left conspicuously untackled since the expenses scandal blew up under the premiership of Gordon Brown – namely, the fact that the spirit of the rules governing expenses continue to be repeatedly violated and mocked, even if they are followed to the literal letter.

In the public mind, expenses exist to cover the necessary costs of performing a job, costs that can or should not be reasonably borne out of the employee’s own pocket. People tend to be reasonable and do not object to the idea of MPs being compensated for expenses incurred while conducting parliamentary or constituency business, just as they would never begrudge a business person legitimately claiming travel and accommodation costs when sent to visit a faraway client.

This blog advocates the introduction of a monitored charge card as the sole method of allowing MPs to pay for purchases to be expensed. Such a system – successfully deployed by many companies with vastly more employees than Westminster’s 650 serving MPs – would provide instant transparency and ease of auditing. In the twenty-first century, there is really no excuse for anything less.

Whenever talk of cracking down on expenses reaches a certain point, the counter-claim is often made that for our politics to work we must continue to attract the “brightest and best” talent to Westminster, and that frozen parliamentary salaries and stricter expenses policies will act as a grave disincentive. This is a self-serving and overblown threat, reliant on the assumption that the best statesmen and policymakers are motivated by cold hard cash. And while the 2015 general election will be the first to take place now that the new rules on expenses have bedded down, there seems little cause to worry that the next intake of MPs will be vastly different in composition to the bland automaton freshmen from 2010.

It is a popular conceit among MPs to believe that they are precious and irreplaceable altruists, but in reality there are many capable people willing and able to serve their country in parliament without also expecting the taxpayer to pick up the tab for their mortgage or second home as some kind of sick golden handshake deal-sweetener. Maria Miller belongs to a political generation that stubbornly refuses to acknowledge this new reality.

The longer that Miller’s petulant non-apology and the image of stony-faced Tory ministers supporting and flanking her on the backbenches remains forefront in the general consciousness, the more damage is done to what remains of public trust and engagement in the British political process.

It may be too late to claim any moral high ground for doing the right thing, but David Cameron needs to end the damage and guide the spirit of Maria Miller’s dying, unmourned political career towards the light.

Spot The Bully – Journalism or Government?

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

SPS Polis 2014 journalism conference

The POLIS 2014 Journalism Conference, held on the campus of the London School of Economics, played host to a number of luminaries from the British media establishment and debated some important issues. But among the various items on the agenda – including riveting discussions on the methods and ethics of investigative journalism, an interview with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and a forum on the use of social media in the newsroom – was a slightly incongruous, strangely titled session.

In the second session of the day, the panel – comprised of chair Anne McElvoy (BBC and The Economist), Annette Dittert (German broadcaster ARD), Michael Crick (Channel 4 News) and Ed Lucas (The Economist) debated the following topic:

Journalism after Snowden: Watchdog or thug?

In the wake of the Snowden story and the Leveson Inquiry into the press, we ask whether British journalism is to supine or too aggressive? Was the publication of state secrets justified?

SPS_Polis2014_01

Semi-Partisan Sam, attending the POLIS Journalism Conference for the first time, took the opportunity to ask the following question of the panel:

QUESTION – Given the facts: that Reporters Without Borders downgraded the UK from 29th to 33rd in the World Press Freedoms rankings for 2014;  that the British government now assumes the right to stop and detain partners and relatives of journalists at Heathrow airport under grossly misapplied anti-terror laws; that the Prime Minister last year saw fit to dispatch his Cabinet Secretary to the offices of a major national newspaper in order to threaten it with closure unless they desisted with the publication of materials embarrassing to the government; and that the government forced that same newspaper to destroy their privately owned computers and hard drives under the watchful presence of intelligence and GCHQ officers – why are we sitting here having an introspective debate about whether or not journalists are behaving like thugs when the real thug is clearly the bullying, heavy-handed British government?

The question was extremely well received among the attendees in the hall, prompting a significant round of applause from delegates. Sadly, this did not translate into a a full or robust answer from the panel, who at times had been happier to wander off-topic and waste time debating side issues such as America’s merits as a country and the proper role of the intelligence services.

The panel’s complete answer – such as it was – to the question can be seen in the video below (Semi-Partisan Sam is “the gentleman” referred to by Anne McElvoy):

The Economist’s Ed Lucas, an enthusiastic apologist for anything and everything that the government decides to do in the name of ‘security’, was obviously unsympathetic to the idea that the British government has displayed thuggish behaviour. But since even Lucas was unable to justify what the government has been caught doing without public knowledge or consent, he instead diverted attention by building up and then destroying a straw-man argument of his own creation – namely that those who speak out against government persecution of journalists who expose overreach by the security services are somehow naive pacifists who want to abolish the military and the intelligence services entirely.

Lucas said: “If you want to have a country which has no intelligence and security services, where there are no state secrets or no penalty for stealing state secrets, then fine – I guess that may be the world that the Green Party would like. I suspect it’s a minority point of view.”

This is a patently false and absurd proposition. No serious critic of the British or American governments as pertaining to their secretly allowing their security services to infringe on citizen privacy is suggestion that GCHQ, MI6, the CIA or NSA be disbanded, and Lucas insults our intelligence to cast this aspersion. The issue is not whether we have security and intelligence services, but the lengths to which we as a society are prepared to let them act in our interest.

The other fatuous argument sometimes made by apologists – and indeed by Ed Lucas himself during this same session – goes along the lines of: “Why are people so surprised that we have spies, and that they are involved in acts of spying?” Again, this is a deliberate and misleading attempt to change the terms of the debate. Citizens fully understand the need for foreign and domestic intelligence, but they also have the right to expect that the technology and bureaucracy of surveillance will not be turned inwards upon themselves. While no one expects (or demands) a list of current surveillance targets to be posted and regularly updated on the  internet, the public should have input as to the criteria for targeting through the democratic process.

It is a rather sad statement on the current status of British journalism that the only panellist to seriously engage with the question and agree that it is government – not the press – who have been acting the bully, was Annette Dittert from German broadcaster ARD.

Even the panel chair, Anne McElvoy, felt the need to reframe the question and make the unsubstantiated claim that Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, had been carrying “shedloads of secrets with him” when he was detained at Heathrow airport, and that rather than being an outrage, this was just one of the “more difficult areas” where the public “might begin to have some doubts” and feel that the government has a case to answer.

In her response, Dittert correctly identified the apathy of the British people as being partly responsible for the lack of public outcry at the Edward Snowden revelations, saying that Britain has an “almost romantic relationship with the security services” – our experiences of the fictional James Bond being somewhat different to the German experience of the Stasi.

Responding to the question, Dittert said: “I thought it was really concerning – the Prime Minister threatening in the House of Commons a newspaper and journalists … in case they go on publishing is something that shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

Dittert then went on to describe the way that The Guardian newspaper was treated as being “entirely wrong”.

It is profoundly worrying that even at a prestigious journalism conference such as POLIS 2014, so few of the attendees (and only one of the panellists – a German television correspondent) felt able to push back against the notion that it is the journalistic profession that has become the bully and the thug rather than the British government, whose track record on secrecy, paranoia and intimidation speaks for itself.

And while the POLIS 2014 conference was excellent, the fact that the whole day passed with virtually no observance or mention of the harrassment and intimidation of the British press by the goverment will only reinforce the belief that the establishment media with their well-connected sources and comfortable positions within the Westminster bubble are, at times, quite incapable of holding to account the government that they simultaneously both depend on and fear.