04 September 2008
Deadly degree of double standards

IAN COLLINS

While consistency may be an over-rated virtue, the degree of double standards now operating in politics on local, national and international levels really is a vice.

In a Britain beset with New Labour messages and targets we are no longer equal under the law. A blind-drunk woman is deemed free of all responsibility for any subsequent rape. A blind drunk man is held partly to blame for any later mugging.

There is nothing more hateful than murder, but we now have the pernicious concept of "hate" crimes against particular groups. If you're black, gay or disabled your life is deemed more valuable than that of a white, able-bodied heterosexual. What a travesty of true equality.

We now have an Equality Commission whose key task should be to counter the inequalities insisted upon by religious and ethnic minorities - most especially between men and women. This is precisely what it will not do.

The New Labour decade and a bit has been characterised by a zeal for reform coupled with at best a fuzzy idea of the desired destination. This haziness is often masked by the clear slogan "the status quo is not an option" - adding all the clarity of arrogance and ignorance.

Take the latest loopy ideas about overhauling local government in East Anglia, driven by a few old Labour apparatchiks yearning for the unitary Greater Norwich favoured by almost no one else. The threat to our ancient counties was then deepened by what I call the Lowmouth option, of lumping together Lowestoft and Yarmouth (again ignoring local opinion).

The Boundary Committee for England, which itself seems to have crossed the border into insanity, now comes in with plans for a Greater Norfolk via the nabbing of Lowestoft. The price of this bizarre bit of gerrymandering would be the smashing of the rest of Suffolk into a Greater Ipswich and a ragbag of all the remainder.

Why not grab Yarmouth for Suffolk and smash up Norfolk? That would be no sillier.

Actually Suffolk does have a deeply felt historic split - along East-West lines. But identity validated over centuries must be obliterated.

And in truth, the loopier the reform proposals become the better I like them. They prove that the status quo may be the only option.

If the differing (mis)treatment of our counties demonstrates double standards, just look at the contrasting ways in which other countries are treated.

The illegal US-UK invasion of the sovereign state that was Iraq followed a false claim that Saddam Hussein threatened regional and global peace. In fact, he'd used up all the weapons of mass destruction we'd sold him.

The European Union provoked carnage in the Balkans by rushing to recognise Catholic Croatia's break from Yugoslavia (ditto the province of Indonesia that is now the corrupt and chaotic mini-state of East Timor). Atrocities were then committed by all sides - and not by Serbs alone.

Given hugely differing birth rates between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, the argument of democratic determinism was then used to allow the cradle of Serb civilisation that is Kosovo to be torn from its roots. What has to be hidden, for now at least, is the fact that a fully free vote by so-called Kosovans would back union with Albania.

But at this rate, Tower Hamlets might yet vote to merge with Bangladesh. Ealing could plump for Poland, while Earls Court opted for Australia.

And certainly the precedents our leaders have set would suggest that the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia have every right to break with Georgia, especially given the present adventurist and aggressive regime in Tiblisi.

Ah but no. The double standards of Us and Them suddenly apply.

We get all uppity about territorial integrity in defence of one of our dodgiest allies, ignoring the democratic aspect. Fury at the Russian advance also forgets all the recent occasions when we have invaded sovereign countries or just pulled them apart by more subtle means.

I fear the mighty armaments industry - in which the present US vice president has been such a major player - requires the creation of enemies. Hence the demonisation of a Russia whose leaders, colossal thieves though they may be, are neither Cold War warriors nor religious fanatics.

I'd thought David Miliband might prove a decent alternative to Dave 'Tory Blair' Cameron. But in his first major test as foreign secretary he has spouted the claptrap of deadly double standards as readily as any old stooge.