The Hysterical Left Don’t Know The Meaning Of Human Rights

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Human Rights - Disabled Protest 2

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In their rage against the Evil Tories, activists are in danger of expanding the definition of “human rights” so far that the term loses all meaning

Last month, a ruling was handed down by a High Court judge. It barely received a ripple of attention in the media at the time, but it has potentially profound implications for our country and the ability of our elected governments to make policy.

In a stunning act of judicial activism masquerading as enlightened compassion, Justice Collins held that by implementing the welfare cap pledged in their manifesto, the Conservative government is actively discriminating against disabled people who might rely on the help of carers – other people – hit by the benefit cap.

The Guardian reports:

The welfare secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, unlawfully discriminated against disabled people by failing to exempt their carers from the benefit cap, a high court judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Collins said the government’s decision to apply the cap to full-time carers for adult relatives had created serious financial hardship for them, forced many to give up caring for loved ones, and loaded extra costs on to the NHS and care services.

The benefit cap, which limits working-age unemployed people to £500 a week in benefits, was introduced by the government on the basis that it sent a strong message to so-called workless families that they had to try harder to get a job.

The court ruled that the two carers who brought the case – and who were caring for upwards of 35 hours a week – were effectively in work even though they were in receipt of benefits, and therefore should be exempt from the cap.

Clearly the government should not have used the word “workless” and referred instead to “families without employment”. Of course caring for someone with illness or disability is work, though not employment. But a failure of semantics is hardly sufficient reason to overturn a flagship government policy, as Justice Collins seems to advocate:

Collins ruled that by applying the cap to unpaid family carers the secretary of state had unlawfully discriminated against seriously disabled people, because it meant they would no longer receive care from a trusted family member or relation.

He said: “For many it matters deeply that they are cared for by a family member. Thus there is adverse treatment since, although care can be provided by others, the loss of a trusted carer can be devastating”.

This ruling is but one small part of a wider programme of judicial activism which has seen the government found by our own Supreme Court to be in breach of international human rights obligations, has seen Britain investigated by the United Nations on the ludicrous suspicion of institutional domestic human rights abuses, and which establishes a truly terrible precedent in law. With this ruling, the government can theoretically be held liable for violating the human rights of Person A simply by enacting a policy that adversely impacts Person B.

Thus our so-called human rights now extend to the people around us, and a harm inflicted on any one of them is a harm inflicted on us. Not only is every citizen already surrounded by an ever-expanding protective bubble of their own “human rights” (including such imaginary leaps as the right of foreign criminals to a “family life” while serving a prison sentence), now that bubble theoretically extends to anybody associated with them in a caring capacity.

Let’s be clear – making somebody worse off financially is not a breach of their human rights, let alone the human rights of somebody else for whom they act as carer. It may be bad policy. It may be mean spirited. It may be short sighted or have any number of other flaws as a piece of social policy. But to call it a breach of a person’s human rights is an extraordinary over-stepping of the mark. Discrimination means treating somebody differently because of an inherent characteristic, but activists are now crying “discrimination!” when the government fails to treat people sufficiently differently.

These attempts by the Left to weaponise the issue of human rights must be fiercely resisted. If human rights are to mean anything, they must be primal, sacrosanct and indivisible. It is hard to express those universal rights any better than the signatories of the US Declaration of Independence, who referred to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Life and liberty in particular are crystal clear, and the state should have no power to infringe upon these rights except in the gravest of circumstances (usually as punishment after being found guilty of committing a crime).

Human Rights - Life Liberty Pursuit of Happiness - 2

But the American founding fathers were also quite clear that there is no human right to be happy, or to live a carefree, comfortable life. There is only the right to pursue happiness. This properly reflects the fact that one person’s idea of happiness may be quite different to another’s, and that proper government becomes impossible when the state is continually forced to adjudicate between competing claims of infringement on happiness.

Indeed, the difficulty comes when activists and pandering politicians try to drill down from these lofty principles in a control-freakish attempt to ensure equality of outcome for all. We are all different, and require different social and environmental factors in order to be happy and free.

For some people, their inability to express certain outdated or bigoted views for fear of police harassment or prosecution is a gross infringement on their liberty to hold and express personal thoughts and beliefs. But for other sensitive souls, the mere possibility that they might encounter such unpalatable opinions in the real world – and the belief that unpleasant words heard are somehow comparable to physical harm inflicted – infringes on their own happiness and liberty.

This puts the government in the impossible situation of having to pick winners. Does one person’s human right to live life offence-free trump another’s right to freely express their own thoughts? Does the right of some people to enjoy new public infrastructure trump another’s right to peaceably enjoy their own property without having it seized, built over or spoiled? Does the right of a foreign criminal to maintain links with their UK-based family trump society’s right to deport foreign nationals convicted of a crime on the grounds of cost and public safety?

We live in an imperfect world and so long as we maintain our current expansionist view of human rights, such tough calls will always exist, regardless of who holds power. The best that any government can do – to avoid becoming bogged down in endless competing claims for favouritism – is to remain as neutral as possible and stick to enforcing only the most core human rights.

And let us remember that it is quite possible to establish various additional rights and principles to protect the vulnerable – enshrined either in law or through codes of practice – without elevating every single claim to the level of an “human right”.

For example, as a society, we may well want to establish a duty on large businesses or government departments to spare no expense in accommodating the accessibility requirements of the severely disabled. But if an organisation happens to fall short of the required standards, is it really right that they are sued according to the same laws that govern torture, detention without charge or war crimes?

Consider the London Underground, the world’s oldest underground metro system. Because of its age, the vast majority of the Tube network does not conform to modern accessibility standards, and could not quickly be brought up to standard without exorbitant, prohibitive cost. Of course this is hugely unfair to those with mobility impairments, as they are unable to avail themselves of the full range of London transport options. But to call it an infringement of their human rights is wildly excessive, and something of an insult to the millions of people living in more benighted parts of the world whose fundamental rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are routinely trampled.

In the information age, and with the growth of social media, it is easier than ever to identify businesses, organisations and government agencies which fall short of their responsibility to provide accessible services for all, and to apply pressure on them to raise their performance. One trending Twitter hashtag, coined in outrage at the insensitivity of an organisation, now has the potential to achieve more far-reaching change than any judgement handed down in Strasbourg.

Human Rights - Disability 2

But we absolutely can not continue to abide the corrosive idea that government policies should be struck down if they impact differently on different citizens. Because nearly every government policy will, by definition, impact different groups in different ways.

Spending more money on roads penalises those who walk or use public transport. Spending more money on pensions penalises those people of working age who will inevitably receive a less generous settlement when they retire. Spending more money on education penalises those currently in retirement. Enacting tougher prison sentences for criminals penalises people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds who are more likely to end up in court. Government funding of research into cures for disease A penalises sufferers of disease B.

Where does it end? By clinging to the notion that individual government policies must never be disadvantageous to anybody, ever, we render ourselves ungovernable. We descend from being a cohesive society into a splintered and warring coalition of special interest groups, each jealously guarding their own perks and privileges at the expense of all others.

Government spending disproportionately benefits those who are not economically self sufficient. That much is obvious and unavoidable – rich people either do not or cannot claim the benefits on which poor people rely. And the fact that wealthier citizens support their less fortunate compatriots with their taxes is part of the social compact we make in order to maintain our inclusive society.

But to suggest that cutting government spending infringes on the “human rights” of the recipients is utterly abhorrent, even immoral, because it effectively enshrines a formal, limitless claim on the labour and earnings of the economically productive by the non-productive. It says that by refusing to fund government services with ever increasing taxes until the wishes of every welfare recipient are fully satisfied is to violate their human rights, to effectively inhabit the same low category as torturers and dictators.

Human Rights - North Korea - Kim Jong Un

It’s hard to know who comes out of this whole sorry affair looking worse – the disability rights activists, who have somehow managed to turn what should be a principled and laudable campaign into a grubby and petulant sulk, or the United Nations, which once again debases and undermines itself by treating the United Kingdom – of all countries – like some kind of rogue state.

It is perfectly possible to disagree with this Conservative government calmly and rationally. It is perfectly possible to advance the case that government spending restraint, the “bedroom tax” and welfare reforms are bad policy. But to claim that they infringe anyone’s human rights is a grotesque exaggeration that should be laughed out of town, not treated seriously and earnestly investigated by the UN.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness: these inalienable, indivisible rights have served us well for centuries – and not only in the United States of America. Generations of campaigners before us were able to argue for (and win) the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage and civil rights protection with reference to these noble aims. And they would be appalled at the modern-day assertion that we should obsess over whether each and every government spending decision has been carefully calibrated to benefit us personally, rightly viewing this as a condescending attack on our liberty and autonomy as free citizens.

If human rights are to mean anything at all, we must stop trying to invoke them every time the government does something with which we disagree, or whenever we have a less than wholly successful interaction with a business or government agency. Human rights violations are real. Even today, while puffed up social justice warriors in the UK write furious screeds accusing Iain Duncan Smith of human rights abuses, people in other countries are being imprisoned, tortured, spied upon, maimed and executed. Babies with entirely survivable conditions and disabilities are being killed, or aborted before they are even born.

If we really cannot find a way to discuss the human consequences of shrinking the state without resorting to shrieking about supposed human rights abuses then truly, we are suffering from a grievous failure of empathy and imagination as a country.

And that’s the real crime.

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David Cameron’s Abominable Plan To Neuter The House of Lords

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

House of Lords reform - chamber

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Britain’s unwritten constitution is not David Cameron’s plaything, or a convenient omission to be taken advantage of by opportunistic politicians who want to sidestep proper scrutiny

What do do when the British system of democracy fails to ensure a smooth and easy ride for each and every government bill or personal initiative of the prime minister?

Why, simply change the rules of the game, and meddle with the constitution so the only answer that anyone can give is an enthusiastic “yes!”.

This is essentially what David Cameron is now proposing to do, with some of the most nakedly autocratic changes to our legislature in recent memory.

The FT reports:

David Cameron has been secretly drawing up a plan to bypass an increasingly hostile anti-Tory majority in the House of Lords, which is threatening to wreak havoc with his legislative plans.

The UK prime minister will use the recent bust-up with the Lords on tax-credit reform as a chance to neuter the powers of the upper house.

Lord Strathclyde, the Tory grandee charged by Mr Cameron with reviewing the role of peers, is set to propose this month that the Lords should lose its veto over delegated or “secondary” legislation, such as the measure implementing tax-credit cuts.

Once that veto is removed, Mr Cameron is expected to step up his government’s increasing use of delegated legislation — also known as statutory instruments — to ram contentious measures through the upper house.

A typically arrogant move, as befits our current prime minister. But the worst comes in the form of this sneering, boastful threat from an unnamed senior Tory:

“If the House of Commons insisted, that would be it,” said one senior Tory.

“The House of Lords has to tread carefully,” he added. “If they don’t accept this proposal, we could stop them having any say at all on secondary legislation. That’s a big bazooka.”

In other words, the upper chamber of our national legislature should exist only to serve as an ermine-clad rubber stamp to the will of the prime minister. Sure, Cameron is happy to let the Lords poke around and pontificate on minor legislation of no real importance, just to give the appearance of a well-functioning and accountable system. But when it comes to the big ticket items involving finance, foreign or military affairs, the House of Lords should remain about as weak and toothless as its average, septuagenarian member.

In their outrage at being thwarted on tax credits and defied with regard to the voting age in the EU referendum, the government appears to have forgotten that scrutinising hasty legislation, thinking independently of the House of Commons and checking the “elected dictatorship” of the executive is exactly what an upper legislative chamber is supposed to do. If the composition of the upper house exactly mirrored that of the lower house, and voted in exactly the same way, there would be no point to its existence. This friction and tension between the two institutions forms one of the key checks and balances in our democracy – it is not something to be casually tossed aside whenever the government of the day finds its preferred pathway blocked.

There’s a dangerous chicken and egg dynamic at play when it comes to the House of Lords. The fact that the Lords are not democratically elected effectively gives cover to authoritarian governments who want to impose their will on the country unchecked. “None of these people were elected, while we just won the last general election”, governments can say. “Therefore we should be allowed to overrule or bypass the Lords in order to do the will of the people”.

But this also creates a powerful incentive to delay attempts to make the Lords more democratic, because to do so would add legitimacy to the body and make it much harder to steamroller ill-considered legislation past reasonable scrutiny and on to the statute books. The last attempt at positive House of Lords reform stalled early on during the coalition government of 2010-2015, after the Liberal Democrat initiative was blocked by a group of recalcitrant Tory MPs, and there will certainly be no further attempt now that the Conservatives govern alone.

It is certainly hard to argue that today’s House of Lords – made up of unelected grandees, failed MPs, influential party donors and the intolerable Lords Spiritual – should have the right to delay or veto government legislation. The current system is by definition undemocratic. But shamefully, David Cameron’s answer is not to make the House of Lords a powerful and democratically legitimate upper chamber, as he should, but rather to use the current state of the Lords as a convenient argument to help his government avoid much-needed scrutiny.

As this blog has been arguing for three years now, Britain urgently needs a full constitutional convention so that the weighty questions of how we govern ourselves and where power resides can be tackled, resolved and formalised in a document.

Equality for the four home nations in terms of devolved power. A fresh look at pushing power down to the lowest possible level, preferably the individual. Empowering cities, counties and regions (building on George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse, but going much further). More elected mayors. Term limits for politicians and ministers. A pre-determined order of prime ministerial succession, so that the leader of our country is not chosen behind closed doors in the event that the unthinkable happens. House of Lords reform. House of Commons reform. Electronic voting in parliament to save vast amounts of valuable time. Perhaps splitting the executive from the legislature, so that MPs can concentrate on their jobs without being distracted by attempts to climb the greasy pole. All of these ideas and more should be on the table, with a view to fixing ancient democratic deficits while preserving all of the best of that which makes Britain great.

But what we have at the moment is piecemeal constitutional reform on demand – not with a view to promoting democracy or ensuring a well governed country, but simply in order to solve whatever problem happens to be confronting the government of the day. This is no way for politicians to govern, and it is no way to run a modern nation state.

Unfortunately, issues of governance and constitutional reform rarely bring people out onto the streets in protest, despite being of far more long term consequence to us all than relatively trifling matters like NHS junior doctors pay, HS2 or tax credits. But all concerned citizens should fight David Cameron’s latest lazy attempt at constitutional reform on the fly with every weapon at their disposal.

First we must stop the damage already being done. But that is not enough. It is not enough to stop David Cameron’s government from inflicting further vandalism on Britain’s constitution. The time has come to take a more holistic view of these matters, instead of the myopic, short-termist approach which thinks only in terms of immediate political advantage.

Serving MPs and ministers are obviously the last people who can be expected to give fair and impartial input to these decisions, though there is obviously a wealth of experience and knowledge held by current parliamentarians which must absolutely be harnessed. So we need to go directly to the people, however much the elites may recoil at the thought.

No more piecemeal reform. Britain doesn’t need any more opportunistic constitutional tricks. There may be little appetite for it – particularly when other current issues seem to loom larger, and when any discussion about who we are as a country provokes more awkward silences than expressions of patriotism – but we need real reform, through a full constitutional convention of the United Kingdom.

The longer we wait to drag Britain’s patchwork constitutional settlement half way to meeting the people, the less democratic – and more ungovernable – our country will become.

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The Daily Smackdown: David Cameron’s Transparent EU Posturing

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David Cameron - Angela Merkel - Francois Hollande - EU Renegotiation - Brexit

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David Cameron has no respect for our intelligence if he thinks we will be fooled by claims that he is seriously considering campaigning for Brexit

Like this blog, the Times instantly saw through the prime minister’s latest desperate, amateurish attempt at brinksmanship and the dissemination of information by an often credulous media.

When David Cameron’s allies leaked that the prime minister was seriously considering recommending a Leave vote in the referendum if his renegotiation continues to be “theatrically spurned” by his EU partners, the story seemed too transparently false to be true. And it is.

The Times commented:

“It is patently clear that [David Cameron] cannot and will not become the man who tossed aside Britain’s EU membership. The hints from his allies that he might do so were a desperate negotiating tactic that has rightly backfired. This sort of melodrama is more likely to make negotiating partners giggle than give way.”

Absolutely. Every one of Cameron’s actions since he reluctantly promised the referendum as a too-little-too-late anti-UKIP defence has reeked of his desperate desire to keep Britain in the European Union at all costs.

As this blog pointed out yesterday:

Anybody with even one foot rooted in reality should be able to tell that this latest court gossip is nothing but spin. Having (unsurprisingly) gotten nowhere with his renegotiation efforts thus far, David Cameron needs to appear tough and resolute for the home audience. After all, it is pretty embarrassing that the leader of a global power and the world’s fifth largest economy has achieved precisely nothing, despite having embarked on a well-publicised begging tour of Europe. When begging and pleading with the Czechs for permission to change UK welfare rules yields no fruit, some kind of strong public stance is essential to preserve any kind of dignity.

The prime minister has never been able to force the words “Brexit” or any other specific phrase about Britain leaving the EU from his lips, and only on rare occasions has he even alluded to the fact that “nothing is off the table” if he judges the results of his renegotiation to be unsatisfactory.

Of course, since Cameron went into the British renegotiation carrying no demands at all – a point worth emphasising, and well made by Richard North at eureferendum.com – he is hardly likely to find his own efforts wanting. Who, given the chance to mark their own homework, would give themselves an F?

And when it comes to nothing being off the table in the event of failure, it remains easier to imagine the prime minister succumbing to a tearful, foot-stamping tantrum on live television than it is to picture David Cameron addressing the nation and declaring that Britain’s national interest would be better served by being outside the European Union.

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Just Build The Damn Runway

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

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This article was first published at Conservatives for Liberty

Build the third runway at Heathrow airport. And a fourth. Build new runways at London’s Gatwick and Stansted airports too. And then build a helipad directly on top of the homes and gardens of all the selfish, hand-wringing, growth-averse NIMBY naysayers who think that their decision to live by an airport gives them veto rights over Britain’s economic future

Chicago’s O’Hare international airport has seven runways. Count ’em. Seven. Five of these runways run east-west and the other two run diagonally. So long as your aircraft possesses an engine and wheels, there is almost certainly a runway at O’Hare suitable for landing without the need to circle in a never-ending holding pattern before eventually lining up for approach and touching down an hour after actually arriving above the city.

You can fly in and out of Chicago quickly, efficiently and cheaply because generations of local political leaders – for all their many other faults – have understood that aviation provides a huge boost to the economy, and that a city which makes access and connection quick and convenient for all types of traveller will surely reap the economic rewards.

Nine hours away in London, this common-sense attitude is sorely lacking. Despite the fact that no new full-length runway has been constructed in London or the south-east of England since the 1940s – when we were still digging ourselves out of the rubble of the Blitz – Britain is wasting time, energy and precious economic opportunities debating whether or not to increase airport capacity at any one of several implausible choices in south-eastern England beside the obvious option of committing to London’s Heathrow Airport, the largest and most popular.

Anyone thinking that the release of the Airports Commission report by Sir Howard Davies (summary: we should probably expand Heathrow, but Gatwick will do in a pinch) would bring this debate to a timely end were deluding themselves. David Cameron’s shrewd political radar is matched only by his lack of political courage – the Tories are terrified of angering neighbouring voters by giving the green light for more noise pollution and traffic congestion around Heathrow.

Worse still, although the Tories are hardly seen as a party of tree-hugging eco warriors their likely candidate to replace Boris “Island” Johnson as Mayor of London, Zac Goldsmith, is also dead set against the idea of expanding Heathrow despite the overwhelming logic behind committing to the major hub airport.

The never-ending question of whether or not to do the obvious and expand Heathrow airport is typical of Britain’s ridiculous approach to important decisions about critical national infrastructure. First we deny the existence of a problem or need. Then we delude ourselves that we have plenty of time to consider the issue from all angles, while better governed countries leapfrog us left, right and centre. Then we establish a time-wasting commission which seeks – in that peculiarly British way – to avoid angering anyone, while actually enraging everyone with its equivocation. And finally, twenty years later, we come to a tortuous decision – at which point anything we reluctantly build is woefully inadequate to current demand.

Not content with fighting the expansion of Heathrow airport tooth and nail, others are opening a new front in the war on aviation with a sanctimonious new attack on frequent fliers, who many left-wingers see not as vital contributors to global business and tourism but rather as parasitic city-hoppers guilty of overconsumption and leaving deadly trails of CO2 in their wake.

Looking wistfully back at the time when an Icelandic volcano eruption grounded flights between Europe and America, the Guardian opines:

The loss of the global economy’s airborne arteries could have been a death knell for business. But, the world didn’t end and people adapted astonishingly quickly in ways that had other environmental benefits.

There was an upward spike in the use of video-conferencing facilities saving business travellers time, money and fatigue […]

What’s more, stranded people turned to each other for help. The Swedish carpool movement spread its horizons, setting up a new Facebook group called Carpool Europe to share cars and rides. Twitter came into its own with hashtags like #putmeup and #getmehome.

You know when else the British people came together to make the best of a bad situation and relied on the kindness of strangers to get by? The Blitz. But no-one is proposing that we invite the Luftwaffe back for a second crack at carpet-bombing our major cities, because although disruptive and traumatic events do force us to come up with inventive ways to survive and keep the wheels turning, it would usually be far better if the negative situation occurred at all.

This is especially true of self-inflicted economic wounds like the proposed frequent flyer tax or the stubborn failure to expand and upgrade key national infrastructure out of genuine (or cynical) concern for the environment. If we continue to starve London of connections to the expanding markets of countries like China, the world will not end. But we will be overtaken by other, better governed European countries and we will all be immeasurably poorer in the long term.

There are times when we absolutely should put the conservation of our planet and natural environment at the forefront of government decision making and planning. But there are also times when our commitment to human progress and building a more prosperous society full of material abundance should be our single-minded goal. The tedious, seemingly never-ending debate about whether or not to build one solitary new runway in Britain falls firmly into the second category.

When formulating government policy or making critical decisions about our national infrastructure, we should subject our thought processes to one key test: does the proposal look to the past or the future? And if the proposal looks to the past – making use of outdated technology, serving a saturated market or simply mollifying people who are scared of progress and change – we should kill it in the crib.

For example, we should not be rushing to build new coal-fired power stations to meet our future energy needs, no matter what spurious claims ‘clean coal’ may make for itself. Rather, we should invest heavily in nuclear power and renewables (home grown where possible) to ensure Britain’s long-term energy independence and national security interests.

Local interests and feelings are important, but there are times when we must think and act as one country, with important national needs and challenges to be faced together. And yes, sometimes this will mean bulldozing over the objections of those blinkered, parsimonious campaigners who seem to find an objection to just about any form of pleasure or economic activity.

Air travel is great. It takes rich tourists from wealthy countries and brings them to poorer countries where they boost the local economy with their money. It keeps the wheels of business turning, from the CEO flying from New York to London for a meeting, the office worker commuting to Berlin every week for a project, to doctors and scientists gathering for international conferences.

Air travel bridges the distance between our towns and cities and helps knit the planet together through a web of far-flung family members, friendships and business relationships. And in doing so, the aviation industry helps to foster trust and understanding, bridging cultural divides and doing more to affirm our common humanity than any third-sector institution or political movement.

And yet we seem intent on attacking aviation, thwarting its growth and choking the life out of the industry with punishing airport taxes and insurmountable barriers to expansion. And for what? So that human beings can creep meekly across the surface of the planet, apologising for our very existence and ostentatiously offsetting the carbon dioxide we emit whenever we open our mouths?

When it comes to coal, by all means let Britain keep it in the ground and in the twentieth century, where it belongs. Regulate the life out of the fracking industry too, if you must, so long as you are willing to explain to the unemployed man why your environmentalist convictions should trump his right to work.

But for heaven’s sake, let’s not continue to suppress Britain’s aviation industry – which is so important and contributes so much – just to burnish our green credentials.

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Credulous Media Swallow David Cameron’s EU Renegotiation Myths

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

David Cameron - Donald Tusk - EU Renegotiation - European Union - Brexit

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Nobody in their right mind seriously believes that David Cameron will campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. But that didn’t stop the media from earnestly reporting Number 10’s Brexit bluster

David Cameron is about as far from being a eurosceptic as a Conservative prime minister could possibly be. Sure, he was forced by the rise of UKIP into pledging a referendum on Britain’s EU membership – despite having previously stated that he didn’t think a referendum was appropriate – but this was only ever a matter of political expediency, not heartfelt desire for Brexit or deep conviction that the people should have the right to decide their own destiny.

But this has not stopped the media from willingly and credulously lapping up the latest spin emanating from Number 10 Downing Street – the risible idea that if David Cameron’s EU partners continue to treat him like the pesky kid at the adult’s table, he might seriously campaign for Brexit.

From the Telegraph:

David Cameron has privately conceded he will have to campaign to leave the European Union if he continues to be “completely ignored” by Brussels, the Daily Telegraph has learned.

[..] It has now emerged that Mr Cameron is telling senior figures in his party that he will be willing to campaign for a British exit if EU leaders do not back down over his key reform plans.

“He has said that if he is completely ignored or if they give him nothing he will campaign to leave,” the source said. “He has made that clear.”

Anybody with even one foot rooted in reality should be able to tell that this latest court gossip is nothing but spin. Having (unsurprisingly) gotten nowhere with his renegotiation efforts thus far, David Cameron needs to appear tough and resolute for the home audience. After all, it is pretty embarrassing that the leader of a global power and the world’s fifth largest economy has achieved precisely nothing, despite having embarked on a well-publicised begging tour of Europe. When begging and pleading with the Czechs for permission to change UK welfare rules yields no fruit, some kind of strong public stance is essential to preserve any kind of dignity.

And let’s be frank – the Telegraph didn’t so much “learn” that Cameron is considering campaigning for Brexit through canny investigative journalism, but rather they probably received a tip-off authorised by the Conservative Party hierarchy to place that narrative into the news cycle.

And what a successful stunt it has been. Now we are duly talking about how the prime minister feels so frustrated with the progress of his renegotiation that he is considering this drastic step, when deep down they (and most of us) know that David Cameron would sooner leave his daughter unattended in Nigel Farage’s local pub than recommend to the British people that they vote to leave the EU.

The truth, of course, is that this was always a sham renegotiation. David Cameron didn’t even bother to consult with the British people as to what they wanted out of any new settlement with Europe before jetting off to Brussels to set out his puny demands, so how could he claim to be representing the public’s real concerns?

This whole exercise has been about starting with the outcome of a “Remain” vote and then working backwards to determine the least possible number of concessions required from the EU to deliver that goal, rather than starting with a hard-headed assessment of Britain’s own national interest or public sentiment. And such a back-to-front renegotiation was never going to bear fruit.

As Mark Wallace points out in Conservative Home:

The conventional wisdom is that the Prime Minister has cut back his list of renegotiation demands in order to reach a swift agreement, in which he can claim victory and then hold an early referendum. That probably was his hope; it would certainly make political sense. Unfortunately for him, each aspect of that plan is foundering while the clock ticks down.

With every day that this supposed renegotiation goes on, Britain looks more and more like the weak supplicant nation asking its superiors for scraps from the table – and being rebuffed. This would be humiliating enough, but it is also self-reinforcing. The fact that our EU partners have already seen Cameron going cap-in-hand around the capitals of Europe begging for concessions (rather than boldly stating the UK’s national interest or presenting a radically different vision of EU membership) means that they are emboldened to give away fewer concessions when he comes knocking again.

Right now, the EU has bigger fish to fry than the Brexit question. And with immigration and terrorism top of the agenda, EU leaders feel confident in pushing our renegotiation way down the list of priorities because they know – even if our credulous media claims not to know – that David Cameron will campaign for a “Remain” vote, come what may.

France and Germany are both diplomatically canny countries. If they suspected for a moment that their treatment of David Cameron might seriously cause him to snap and embrace the Brexit cause then they would immediately start making more conciliatory noises. Secretly they might be glad to be rid of Britain, but they know that Brexit would be a stunning, unacceptable repudiation of their vision for Europe. Thus the fact that there is no diplomatic panic in Berlin or Paris is proof that Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande know that their British counterpart remains utterly pliable and sickeningly eager to please.

David Cameron can continue to authorise leaks suggesting that he is contemplating campaigning for Brexit, if it makes him feel better when he is politely ignored by the leaders of other countries a fraction of our size and power. He can promise all the table-thumping rows in the world, too.

But the one thing he cannot do is convince those of us who see through his cheap tricks that he is a real eurosceptic, or that he would ever allow his name to go down in the history books as the man who led Britain out of the European Union.

David Cameron - Angela Merkel - Francois Hollande - EU Renegotiation - Brexit

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