Though Brown is not English, some 85% of the voters he will face in next year’s UK general election are. Though he is not from Brighton & Hove the city returns three Members to the UK Parliament.  Like Brown, all are members of the Labour Party, and all will face tough fights in next year’s election. Perhaps this is why he was so keen to align himself with these sporting successes.

But it leaves an important question open.  If Brown can take time from his busy schedule to comment on uncontroversial but ultimately inconsequential matters, why do we still not know his views on the release from a Scottish prison of the largest mass murderer in UK history? Even considering the British deaths alone – 52 of them – the Lockerbie bombing claimed more lives than all the serial killers held in British jails combined.

Perhaps Brown thinks that Americans would be confused by the subtleties of the British constitution, and unable to understand why he could not prevent the release of al-Megrahi. But such a suggestion is ridiculous. Most Americans may be unable to explain the difference between a Duke and an Earl, or be puzzled as to why the husband of our Queen is not a king, but Americans do understand federalism. Your President does not control the actions of the various state governors any more than Brown can give orders to the government of Scotland.

            He cannot give orders, but he can say whether or not he thinks the Scottish decision was a good one. Barack Obama had no hesitation in distancing himself from his own state governor earlier this year, when the man was impeached. I am sure Bill Clinton did the same, when his hand-picked successor as governor of Arkansas was sent to jail.

            The problem is, what would Brown say? He has let it be known that he thinks the hero’s welcome accorded to al-Megrahi was ‘repulsive’. But what of the decision to release him? He could say he supported the decision, but that would offend the US.  He could say he opposed it, but there is documentary evidence that British government ministers favored releasing al-Megrahi two years ago, for purely commercial reasons. They wanted to facilitate an oil deal for BP.

            If UK ministers wanted to release al-Megrahi in 2007, why did it take until 2009 for it to happen? Well, in 2007, the Labour Party, which controls the British government, lost control of the Scottish Parliament and Executive. The administration in Edinburgh is controlled by the Scottish National Party. A pliant Labour administration there would probably have released al-Megrahi two years ago.

            So, let’s give the SNP credit for one thing. They kept al-Megrahi incarcerated for longer than Labour would have. The evidence that shows this also reveals why Prime Minister Brown maintains his right to silence.

For all that, though, the suggestion that Megrahi’s release was the culmination of Blair’s talks about a deal, falls at the first hurdle of analysis.  The idea of some grand conspiracy embracing Blair, Brown, Ghadafi, and Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond, is preposterous.  Sadly, I do not say this because I think that either the Labour government in Westminster or the SNP administration in Edinburgh is morally above getting into bed with a rogue regime such as Libya’s.  The reasoning is purely partisan.  I can believe that Brown or Salmond would make a deal with Ghadafi.  I cannot believe they would make a deal with each other.

So, we can conclude, that somewhere along the lines Blair’s proposed deal with Ghadafi fell apart.  There may have been some moral qualms in Westminster.  I do not rule this possibility out.  There may have been pressure from Washington, or a concern that, politically, a deal would be unsellable at home.  Most likely it fell on constitutional questions.  It is unclear that a UK administration has the power to release a prisoner held in a Scottish jail.  Probably, acting under the Royal Prerogative, it does.  But if the British and Scottish governments are divided over the use of the Royal Prerogative with regard to a prisoner held in Scotland, it could provoke a constitutional crisis.  Until 2007, there was a tame Labour administration in Scotland, which would have been pliant, but with the SNP winning the 2007 elections a deal would have become too controversial and difficult.

It is possible, therefore, that Ghadafi turned his attention to negotiating with Edinburgh because his proposed deal with London fell apart.  Formally speaking, the Scottish government cannot enter into any such deal.  It has no role in foreign policy or in foreign trade negotiations.  But deals such as this are typically informal.  They comprise nods and winks.  And any commercial opening up of Libya’s oil industry to British interests would disproportionately benefit Scotland, where much of the oil industry, and its attendant technical expertise is based.

Any such agreement with Edinburgh would, necessarily, have excluded Westminster.  There is a by-election (special election) due in Glasgow, at which the SNP is expected to be the main challenger to Labour.  (The psephology is complicated by the fact that the seat was previously held by the non-partisan Speaker of the House. Labour [the Speaker’s former party], the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats did not contest the seat against the Speaker.  The last time there was a partisan election in that constituency there were different boundaries).  Labour has held four of the eight by-elections it has defended in this Parliament, but lost three of the last four, including a Glasgow seat to the SNP.  There will be a general election within the next year.  While the Conservatives will make major gains in England, and probably Wales, the SNP seems well-placed to take seats from Labour in Scotland.  It is even possible, if the Liberal Democrats do badly, and Labour does better than I currently expect, that the SNP could hold the balance of power in Westminster.

In current circumstances, therefore, a deal between the SNP and Labour is extraordinarily unlikely.

How credible is the notion that the Scottish government made a deal – albeit an informal one – with Libya?  To determine that we need to consider the other possibilities.  Could it simply be that to thumb Scotland’s collective nose at America was thought to be a vote-winner?  If so, it was an ill-conceived idea, even apart from the moral implications.  The majority of the victims of Pan Am 103 were Americans, but there were more than 50 British citizens killed, including 11 on the ground in the small town of Lockerbie.  The reaction of the families is a key part of media coverage in stories such as this and is, inherently, unpredictable.  There must be safer ways of irritating America, with fewer risks of a political backlash at home.

Some are suggesting that doubts about Megrahi’s guilt may have influenced the decision.  I haven’t reviewed the evidence and cannot pronounce on that. Certainly the trial was a unique affair, conducted in Holland according to Scottish law.  It was necessarily limited to the evidence available, and there may have been – and probably was – additional evidence retained by the Libyans.  Almost certainly there were others involved in the plot, though if Megrahi was one of several conspirators, it does not dilute his guilt.  But such an argument does not stand up.  There is, in Scottish law, an appeals process, which Megrahi was using.  He dropped his appeal only because he was being released.  The Justice Secretary, Kenny Macaskill, could have released Megrahi on the grounds that he found the conviction to be unsafe, but he was very explicit in saying that Megrahi was guilty and that he was releasing him on compassionate grounds.  If further evidence were to cast doubt on Megrahi’s conviction, it would put the release into a different light.  But the decision to release him was made wholly on other grounds, and would be unaffected by any such considerations.

Is it possible that Macaskill was simply being sincere when he claimed the decision was made on compassionate grounds?  That seems unlikely.  The “compassion” involved seems restricted to a man dying of cancer, a not uncommon scenario, and ignoring the feelings of more than 200 still-grieving families.  Even Macaskill’s statement, which seems to vacillate back and forth, almost deliberately keeping us in suspense as to his final decision, seems to have been constructed with cruelty to the families in mind.  Remember, the sheer numbers involved mean it would have been impossible to warn the families in advance that this announcement was coming.  Many of them would have learnt the news from the media and from Macaskill’s own words.  Judge for yourselves, but, to me, this is not a man of compassion, it is a man trying to spin a decision of which he is justly ashamed.

My conclusion is that there most likely was a deal made, and for purely commercial reasons.  Gordon Brown is not in a position to order an investigation, much as he would like to embarrass the SNP, because Labour would probably have made the deal two years ago if it had had the power to deliver what Ghadafi wanted.

<object width=”560″ height=”340″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYoQRl_kW3M&hl=en&fs=1&”></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/kYoQRl_kW3M&hl=en&fs=1&” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”560″ height=”340″></embed></object>

The only real test for the stability of a constitution is not how it copes with consensus, but how it stands up to the stresses of division.  Iran’s complicated constitutional structure is about to face that test.

Some have suggested that all power lies with the Supreme Leader.  Some media have even described the position of Supreme Leader as one chosen for life.  This is not so.  On paper, the real power lies with the Assembly of Experts.  Whether that is so in practice, remains to be seen.  The Assembly of Experts chooses, supervises, and can dismiss the Supreme Leader.  There have, of course, only been two Supreme Leaders, and the first died in office, without ever having been challenged.  But the constitution of Iran does not require that the role be a job for life, not does it require that the Assembly remain supine.

There is no evidence that the Assembly of Experts has ever challenged any opinion or position of the Supreme Leader - though since it meets only in secret, no such evidence would be likely to come to light, even if it had been a very boisterous organisation.  But this crisis is one that has no precedent.  At the very summit of the state, revolutionary loyalists who served with Khomeini are deeply divided.

The authority of the Supreme Leader has been challenged.  He called for the demonstrations to stop, and they did not stop.  The Assembly of Experts can hold him to account in his hour of weakness.  The Assembly could summon him and ask him questions.  Why, for example, did he declare that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected without waiting for the constitutionally mandated period in which candidates could challenge the conduct of the election?  Why has he prejudged the enquiry into the election by the Council of Guardians, an enquiry which he himself requested?

Constitutionally, the Assembly of Experts can replace the Supreme Leader, and a new Supreme Leader could replace half of the members of the Council of Guardians.  In law, it is with the Assembly that real authority lies.

The problem for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is that his greatest political foe - Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - chairs the Assembly of Experts.  Candidates linked to Rafsanjani won 65 of the 86 places in the last election.  So when the government - presumably with Ahmadinejad’s blessing - arrested members of Rafsanjani’s family, it was probably a tactical error.  He may have threatened his own position, and that of his main protector, the Supreme Leader.

The fact that Rafsanjani’s list won the last elections does not mean that any of the things I have described are inevitable or even likely.  That members of the Assembly of Experts were aligned with Rafsanjani at the time of the election does not mean they are under his control or necessarily agree with him on this issue.  Many may be cautious of flexing the Assembly’s muscles, for fear of breaking the system entirely.

Can the Assembly of Experts assert the powers which the constitution gives it, but which have never been used?  No-one knows.  Could the constitution survive any attempt to assert those powers?   No-one knows the answer to that either.  If the Assembly were to dismiss the Supreme Leader, would the Revolutionary Guard or the army recognise the change?  We live in interesting times.

This is good for a number of reasons:

1.  The BJP is a Hindu supremacist party - something which is obviously unsustainable in a country with substantial Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and Christian minorities.

2.  L K Advani, the BJP leader, who is particularly awful even by the BJP’s standards, has probably missed his last chance to become Prime Minister.  A younger generation of BJP leaders is now likely to emerge.

3.  With substantial gains by Congress and its core allies the coalition is likely to be much less dependent on the left to maintain power.  The reforms which Congress introduced in the 1990s can now be resumed.

4.  Manmohan Singh, the PM is 76 and unlikely to stay PM throughout the Parliament.  One of the rising stars of the Party is the Chief Minister of the Dehli region, and her name is likely to be in the western media more often.  This is good news because her name is Sheila Dikshit (tee hee!).

It is worth mentioning that one other rising star is likely to be Rahul Gandhi - son of former PM Rajiv Gandhi and current Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi.  His grandmother and great grandfather were also Prime Ministers and his great great grandfather was President of the Party in the 1910s and 1920s.  Rahul was educated at Rollins College, Florida and Trinity College, Cambridge.

To make matters worse, Congress is the private property of a single family: the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.  Motilal Nehru, who led party twice, in 1919 and 1928, was never Indian Prime Minister, because the country was still under British rule.  His son, Jawaharlal Nehru, succeeded him as President of the party, and was India’s longest serving PM from 1947 to 1964.

Less than two years after Nehru left office his daughter, Indira Gandhi, India’s second longest serving PM, took the reins of power. She should not be confused with Mahatma Gandhi, to whom she was not related.  She served from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984.  She was succeeded directly by her son, Rajiv.  His five years in office has been matched, but barely exceeded, by three others who are not part of the dynasty.   The party today is led by Rajiv’s widow, Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian.  She has chosen not to be PM, installing Congress loyalist and former Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, who has been in office for five years.  He is elderly and thought to be keeping the seat warm for Rajiv and Sonia’s son, Rahul, or possibly their daughter, Priyanka Vadra.

What could be worse than a party like this?  Well, the BJP could, and it most certainly is.

How would most Americans react if a militant group of Native Americans wanted to demolish the Catholic Cathedral in New York, claiming that it was on the site of a previous temple and the birthplace of one of their gods?  This would be regarded, I think, as an extreme and eccentric view. Yet a very similar issue is what made the BJP leader, L K Advani, famous.  He wanted to demolish a mosque which dates from 1528, on the grounds that it stands on the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. Since Muslims conquered India by force in the Sixteenth Century, it seems entirely credible – though it is not provable – that it really does stand on the site of a previous Hindu temple.  But then any Christian church in America – none as old as 1528 – could stand on a site of religious importance to Native Americans.  Who would know?

The BJP wants to outlaw religious conversion and ban the slaughter of cows as well as gain control of those portions of Jammu and Kashmir currently controlled by Pakistan or China. 

The BJP has been in power before, and actually improved relations with Pakistan rather than starting a war, as its rhetoric might imply, but L K Advani seems to be more extreme than previous leaders of the party. His prominent role in destroying the mosque at Ayodhya would make it hard for him to improve relations with India’s substantial Muslim minority or its neighbours.

There are many regional parties, which between could easily have a majority, but that would make the world’s largest democracy ungovernable.  Congress, which has recanted its socialist past, seems the least bad option.

Look at the following sentence from BBC News online.

Police say Mr Green was held on suspicion of “conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office” and “aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office” - an obscure and little-used offence under common law.

The “misconduct” appears to be leaking information and aiding and abetting civil servants to do the same. There seems to have been no suggestion that he leaked any information which breached national security - he could have been charged under the Official Secrets Act if he had.

Looking at the material gathered in the Telegraph showing what Damian Green has released to the media in the past few months there is plenty in there which could embarrass the government, but nothing which could threaten national security.

It is true, of course, that a civil servant who leaks to the media or the opposition is committing misconduct. It is a breach of his or her terms and conditions of employment. But this would be true of any material. Oppositions - including, of course, Labour, when it was in opposition, have always thrived on leaks, without any suggestion that this was illegal.

So, who gave the order?

The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and the Home Office Minister responsible for terrorism policy all deny that they were consulted about this or knew in advance about the arrest. But Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Conservative Leader, David Cameron, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the Serjeant at Arms of the House were all apprised in advance. So the police told the Opposition, but not the Government? Really?

The order could certainly have come from Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair (no relation). Today is his last day in office. He was forced out by Boris Johnson soon after the Conservatives won the mayoralty for the first time. Though the details of his differences of opinion with Johnson have not been made public, I would have sacked him for the disgraceful behaviour of the Met during its trial over the shooting of Jean Charles Menezes, an innocent and unarmed man whom they mistook for someone else. The police presented a doctored photograph purporting to show - and actually exaggerating - the resemblance between Menezes and Husain Osman, the terror suspect for whom he had been mistaken. Doctoring the evidence is, to my mind, utterly unforgivable.

You will need an Education Secretary too. Colin Powell would be an excellent choice. (I suggested him for this role in 2000). What is required in this job is a charismatic leader, a good organiser, and someone committed to school choice. Powell hits all three of these. As far as I know, you only meet two of those requirements yourself, but you have the rhetorical skills to sell school choice in a way that no-one else could. This really would be a way of bringing change to Washington.

This is not the right job for you, Governor. If you are to preserve your viability for a future White House run - and you should - there are two factors you need to consider.

First, the talk about you being inexperienced was not all nonsense. It was a bit rich coming from a ticket with not one day’s executive experience between them, but you are still in the early stages of your career. You should complete your term as governor, at least. And re-election - which I am guessing would be by a big margin - would look good too.

Second, the outsider always wins. 2008 did nothing to upset that. The only job in Washington from which anyone has an even chance of being elected President is, well, President. Apart from 1988, every open election since 1920 has gone to the outsider. Quite a few of the elections with a serving president on the ballot have too. Post-1920, only two serving Senators have been elected President: one defeated the VPOTUS and the other a longer serving Senator.

So, find another candidate. No doubt Sean Parnell would serve with distinction. But this is not the right job for you.

There is a difference. The race card - as most people tend to define it - is about appealing to people on grounds of race: don’t vote for the black/white/Jewish/etc. guy. Obama is trying to paint his opponent as a closet racist.

It is an important difference. I am not sure there is a race card in American politics today - not in the country as a whole. In certain districts there might be, but not nationally. In saying this, I am not claiming that there are no people who are racist. I am simply saying that that there are more people - many more people - who are repelled by racism than attracted to it. Appealing for votes on racist grounds would attract a few and repel a great many more. It would be tactically stupid. And, by the way, would be tactical lunacy when your opponent is both black and well known. The fact is that the tiny number of people who could not stomach a black president are not going to vote for Obama anyway. McCain does not have to appeal for their votes: just as Ted Strickland and Ben Cardin didn’t have to.

It is often argued that the *Bradley-Wilder Effect *- in which opinion polls seem to exaggerate the appeal of black candidates - is evidence of substantial closet racism in the US. It is evidence, so it is said, of the effectiveness of the race card. I suspect it is evidence of the effectiveness of the racist card instead. People who are not supportive of Obama’s candidacy ony anyone of a number of grounds feel reluctant to tell opinion pollsters this, because failing to support Obama is considered akin to racism. Thus opinion polls greatly exaggerate his support. This is especially true outside the hardcore Democratic vote. The media seem happy to report that Obama has a strong appeal to swing and cross-over voters. They ran with this narrative throughout the primary campaign. But the evidence of the way people actually vote show that this is not so. Obama lost the primaries and only won in the caucuses, where the electorate was restricted to hardcore activists. He also tended to lose swing states, winning in states where as a candidate in the general he is assured of either victory or defeat.

So, there is no race card, but there is a racist card. You can accuse people of racism and there is no acceptable response. No evidence is requred the accuser and none is accepted from the person accused. It seems to some self-evident that anyone who is accused must be guilty. It reminds of the words put into Deputy Governor John Danforth’s mouth by Arthur Miller in The Crucible:

“In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim. None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must rely upon her victims — and they do testify, the children certainly do testify. As for the witches, none will deny that we are most eager for all their confessions. Therefore, what is left for a lawyer to bring out? I think I have made my point. Have I not?”

In the traditions of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, a crime which cannot be proved is one of which the accused must be acquitted, even at the cost of acquitting the guilty. But with racism, as with witchcraft, it is considered essential to simply change the rules of evidence: an accusation is considered sufficient proof of guilt.

(As an aside, it is worth noting, that despite the brilliance of his play, Miller’s political analysis is naive in the extreme. He wrote *The Crucible *as an analogy for the McCarthy hearings, failing to distinguish the fairly obvious difference, that communists are real and witches are imaginary. In the 1990s he came up with the even more absurd analogy: to the prosecution of Bill Clinton. Communism may be real, but it is still possible to falsely accused of it. Perjury is not only real, but Bill Clinton was demonstrably guilty of the crime, so the analogy with Salem is pathetically weak. Not only that, he made the comparison at a time when falsely accusing people of witchcraft was, itself, back in vogue. Janet Reno is a much better analogy for John Danforth than Ken Starr ever was).