Norwich by-election

I haven't heard much on the by-election in the media over the last couple of weeks - one Daily Politics (lunchtime appearance). Question Time was in Norwich last night, but the polls had already closed by then. The two recent national opinion polls, giving the tories 40%+, make it look like the Tories are unstoppable; but 15% of decided voters are other parties while undecideds are not even counted. So these opinion polls overestimate the main parties' vote, including the Conservatives. They become a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially in a first-past-the-post system, with the electorate concluding that the fringe parties are not worth voting for. The polls influence future votes.

If David Cameron's party win well, they can claim to have the momentum to assume government next year; UKIP, the libertarian party and the rest will be cast as also-rans, a wasted vote. The Tories' strategy relies on right-wing voters feeling they have nowhere to go, a captive electorate. This lack of exposure for the other parties will help them close the election down.

The media's tendency to concentrate on the main parties and ignore the fringe parties is good for established politics. Given the disgusting consensus on many issues between the three main parties, which now seems to extend to the pointless war in Afghanistan (all three leaders say the war is worth fighting, some debate on how many helicopters), this impoverishes debate considerably.

I doubt if the tories would be quietly planning to privatise the post office if they had to justify their proposal in opposition to a range of other populist parties. Instead our post office is left to the tender mercies of Peter Mandelson and Ken Clarke, who represent the same discredited consensus that talked unrestrained free markets and gave us the bank bailouts. Repeatedly, three parties agree broadly on the big issues. They are basically saying, "There is no other reasonable or moderation stance on these issues", which is really a cover for a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: "you can disagree but you have no other options."

There has been so much talk about increased choice and competition over the last few decades. But it doesn't apply to politics, which is restricted to a narrow range of approved platforms. If you only allowed three salesman access to the customer, and made it more difficult for the others, this would be seen as a scandal. But that's what happens with the three-party system. If fringe parties were given media space to argue for their platforms, the main parties find it a lot harder to close down the debate.

Pakistan nuclear threat exaggerated

Reading about the Pakistan war, you are likely to be pretty scared: Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state is about to be taken over or become a failed state; the Taliban 60 miles from Islamabad. Potentially Apocalyptic. Even if you're sceptical, there is no way of arguing against it without access to another perspective, not provided by the MSM.

It reached absurdly shrill levels with the “two weeks to survive” warning, reported dutifully by Fox, who seemed to have been the first media organisation to hear about it (i.e., they were given it). The Telegraph report is obviously based on the Fox story, even to the extent that both finish with the coda that US officials don't know what the objective of the Taliban is – to take over Pakistan or establish an area of operations in NW Pakistan. This shows how journalists depend on one source only for a big story, often a government.source.

The Guardian coverage incidentally is a lot better than the neo-con leaning Telegraph. They are more willing to question it.

There is an article by Anatol Lieven – Pakistan's passing grade on the National Interest website, which deflates this conventional analysis (conventional, partly because it is the analysis that the media uncritically accept), making it look like alarmism or downright scaremongering. Lieven pours cold water on the idea that the state is endangered, although it is troubled by terrorism; he suggests that ethnic conflict between Pashtuns and other Pakistani groups is the main driver, not the War on Terror; he points out that the 60 miles between Swat and Islamabad happens to be occupied by a high mountain range, which absurdly doesn't get mentioned in the papers, at least not the right-wing papers.

Now getting involved in Pakistan is a big step; Pakistan is a serious geo-political player; it means potentially violating another country's sovereignty, a country much more populous than Afghanistan or Iraq, with the danger of escalating the war we are already fighting. In spite of this, there is no proper media debate or analysis. What seems clear is that the existence of Taliban havens in North-West Pakistan make the war in Afghanistan more difficult, possibly unwinnable. But getting involved in Pakistan has its own consequences: we make the leaders look like Western stooges, we could make the Taliban look like heroes. We may help destabilse Pakistan, by de-legitimising the Government, even the Army. We could make the people hate us as a result of civilian casualties. The exaggeration of the perilousness of the situation in Pakistan pre-empts any such debate, the western population goes along with it.

The wider moral I draw is this: we see this situation through the prism of the the free world vs War on Terror, world policing vs rogue states. Because the model we apply does not fit the reality, the situation is not as malleable as we expect. Lieven is saying that other, local factors will influence, even dominate why the local actors act as they do. We saw how the utopian scheme of democratising Iraq while destroying Terror and Tyranny initially floundered on ethnic and religious divides (not on a lack of UN resolutions), and contributed to a large-scale insurgency. They still dominate Iraqi politics in a democracy established only by a protracted and bloody war, the economic cost of which has contributed to US (and UK) dependence on Chinese credit. We deplete our resources for marginal gains, if they are gains at all.

Looked at from the local perspective, the Pakistanis will not want to defeat the Taliban because they see Afghanistan as their back yard, and fear encirclement by Hindu India. Their tardiness in fighting the global War on Terror, demanded by the West, has a rational basis.