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Oh What a Web We Weave as Friends Take Care of Friends with Public Funds

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent 

On 8 Dec 2010, the Department of Education confirmed the award of up to £2 million in public funds to Community Security Trust (CST) for “the extra measure of security guards at 39 Jewish voluntary-aided faith schools across England.”  The announcement described CST as a charity working to secure the safety and security of the Jewish community in the UK, a description consistent with CST’s own.     

Fast forward to 27 Jan 2012. 

On 27 Jan 2012, the Guardian published an article concerning this award. The Guardian reported that Educational Secretary Michael Gove had personally made the decision to award the £2 million despite the fact that Gove has been a member of CST’s advisory board since 2007. Not only that, Gove has personally “taken credit” for securing the funds in correspondence with CST’s CEO.

The Guardian went on to recount criticism levied by David Miller of Spinwatch. Miller criticized Gove’s participation in the process under these circumstances as a conflict of interest.  Miller then urged clearing up the “murky” world of charity funding and relationships.

The Guardian acknowledged that Secretary Gove had a long history of clear opposition to anti-semitism, but it was clear at least in context that the Guardian questioned Gove’s role in taking an active part in the funding decision.

It was not on the surface an obvious “hit piece.”  Yes, it is well known that The Guardian is not terribly fond of the Coalition in general or Michael Gove in particular.  But the Guardian was careful in its reporting. The Guardian characterized Spinwatch as a “pressure group.”  The Guardian reported the criticism as Miller’s.  The Guardian also included the response of the Department of Education to the effect that the permanent secretary (highest civil servant) had been aware of Secretary Gove’s advisory role at the time of the award and did not then or now consider it to have been a conflict of interest. 

The Guardian article prompted an immediate raft of angry reaction from numerous sources, including CST, attacking the Guardian as well as Miller for the timing of the article in relation to Holocaust Memorial Day.  According to the Jewish Chronicle, a source close to Gove said, “It is unbelievable to attack any politician for funding the protection of Jewish children. It is even more extraordinary, and frankly offensive, to do it on Holocaust Memorial Day.” ¹  

One article defended the Guardian, characterizing the reaction as an overreaction to an article focused on questions about a public official’s conduct in office not on the ethnic ties of the organization receiving the funds.  

Most main stream media did not handle the story at all. I watch Channel 4 and BBC daily and from time to time Sky News for a third view. If they covered it I missed it. Perhaps the lack of coverage was due to the events unfolding over the weekend rather than a decision to ignore this emotionally charged hot potato.

30 January the Guardian apologized, admitting the article ill timed. But this apology was not good enough for those it had offended, who pointed out that the Guardian apologized only for the timing, not for the implications concerning Secretary Gove’s participation in the decision.

As I note above, the Guardian piece was hardly an obvious “hit piece.” Its focus did seem to be, as asserted by the one article that defended the Guardian, the Secretary’s conduct in office, not the ethnic ties of the organization receiving the funds.  Yet it was clearly taken as the latter by a number of organizations and persons, for example Backspin Honestreporting.  Reading this example one can immediately see the level of emotion.

Who came so vociferously to the Secretary’s defence?

The critics included the Jewish Chronicle editor Steven Pollard. I have already previously explored Pollard’s connections with Friends of Israel, Michael Gove, and the Henry Jackson Society in a piece in which I questioned whether these connections might not have something to do with the disappearance from radar screen of the conduct of Atlantic Bridge, Liam Fox, and Adam Werity. 

Another was Toby Young, an associate of Secretary Gove.  The rush funding of Young’s private school by the Education Department had already prompted an earlier Guardian inquiry into the Secretary's conduct of his office.

Then there was Spitton Heresy by Khalid Richards, who asked if the Guardian’s editorial policy was now expressly anti-Semitic. According to Powerbase, Spitton is a hard-to-trace anti-Islamic neoconserviative organization.

Unintended Consequences of Running for President, the Religious Righteous – and More on Elections 2012

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Running for president can be detrimental to a Republican candidate’s political health – at least this year.  

Look, for instance, at a recent poll in Texas.  It showed that Rick Perry’s failed bid for the US presidency simultaneously weakened his standing at home as the state’s governor. Perry’s bid for that ultimate national crown of thorns simultaneously exposed his many faults to a prime time national audience as well as depicted a display of arrogance, ignorance, memory lapses and mishaps which nearly half of his fellow Texans found embarrassing and detrimental to the state’s image.

This poor showing won’t help a possible Perry re-election bid for governor in 2014 either.  So wealthy Perry backers – mostly Texans although none surnamed Bush – who chose to finance this horse’s non-victory race out the starting gate and now off the national track have just poured millions down the drain.  Most of it will have enriched the coffers of the “hated” lamestream media (their words not mine) because that’s where most campaign money is spent.   

The poll of likely voters supported by the Houston Chronicle, the San Antonio Express News and other media outlets published on January 26 reported that 56% of those questioned said that Perry should not stand for reelection in 2014 (worst showing among registered voters ever). 47% said that their opinion of him had declined whereas only 9% said it had improved. 48% of those surveyed said that his run for the presidency had made Texas’ image among other Americans worse (33% said it had not changed) and a small margin 43% versus 42% said that they disapproved of his job as governor.

Meanwhile, far too much of the pettiness and vindictiveness of the Republican presidential campaign enacted and reenacted on our television screens ad nauseum since the debates began in, what seems, to have been an eternity ago, continue unabated.

Debate after debate after debate

Yes, it’s political theater. The Republican primary debates are also cheap advertising for the Party of No – just add the word absurd – and you’ve called it right.  Or maybe it’s America’s brand of Kabuki Theater.  Anyway, I’ve never watched anything like the displays of petulance, and often ignorance especially in foreign policy, over the many years that I have been an observer of US politics.  Huntsman excepted. Do Republican leaning Americans seriously think these candidates are ready for the big time or should be given access to this country’s nuclear trigger? 

Last week I attended an afternoon symposium at Rice University cosponsored by the university, the Baker Institute and the Texas Freedom Network entitled “Religion in the 2012 Elections.”  The purpose of the symposium was to help an educated audience better understand the influence of religion on American voting behavior. 

I doubt there were many, if any, white Evangelical Christians among the several hundred people who braved the torrential downpour to attend but if so, they would have learned that of all religious and non-religious groups surveyed by Pew, the white Evangelical Christians are the most likely to vote Republican and also the most likely to give the right wing, expansionist Israeli government their unconditional support.  

The Mormons are next in line to vote for Republican candidates.  No surprises then when we look at the candidates who ran or are still running for the party’s nomination:  two Mormons and the rest who claim to be born again or redeemed Christians of one kind or another (yes, Newt’s conversion to Catholicism counts).  The only misfit was Herman Cain – and it didn’t take the party long to decide he wasn’t their kind of candidate.  Tea Party darling Michelle Bachmann, the lone female, was soon to bite the dust, too. 

The least likely to vote Republican?  Black Evangelicals.

These voting patterns, according to Pew polling data, have existed for more than two decades.  Akron University’s John Green pointed out at the symposium that there are strong correlations between religiosity and the Republican Party and the less religiously observant and the Democrats (except for the Black Evangelicals).  Mainstream Catholics, Protestants, other religions(Jews, Hindus, Muslims)  and the unaffiliated, fall somewhere in between.

If you have the time, watch the video of the first panel.  It’s long – this is not your average four minute YouTube train station or shopping mall flash-concert fix - but at the Baker Institute session itself, time seemed to fly by. I took some notes – but didn’t begin to capture all that was said.  For those visually oriented, at least watch long enough to look at the graphs that Green used in his presentation (he was the first of the three panelists) to show the stark pattern that emerges.

 

Basically, there’s only a small number of swing voters that determine an American presidential election’s outcome.  They’re unlikely to be Evangelicals regardless of ethnicity or race.

The good news, I guess, is that Evangelical leaders and preachers are not in lockstep – it just seems that way to those of us outsiders. But I’m not sure it’s good news that far more influence on the movement’s foot soldiers comes from wealthy religious 501(c) (3) organizations like Focus on the Family.  This, according to D. Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College, who wrote his dissertation on the religious right  tracing the movement’s political origins to Pat Robertson who years ago encouraged his followers to enter the electoral fray to give political heft to issues like anti-abortion.

But wait a minute.

Of the Bishops’ conscience, Real Politik, and the rapid implosion of Labour in the dis-United Kingdom

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

24 Jan 2012. Westminister.  It is High Noon for two major Coalition policies, the “reform” of Welfare and the “reform” of the National Health Services. As the week began, both bills faced major tests in a rebellious House of Lords. 

This drama provides a study in contrasts between the stands of conscience of the nations’ Bishops on Welfare Reform (and rebellious Social Democrats among the Liberal Democrats on NHS Reform) and the real politik of the nation’s Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders.  

The drama may also seal the deal for Labour’s current leadership.  It comes at a time Labour appears to be imploding rapidly, at least in terms of electorate support, due, it is widely argued, to a right turn in its leaders’ rhetoric, if not their actual policies. 

Of the issues, the reform of the National Health Service (NHS) is probably of most interest to (and most easily understood by) most Americans. The United States is itself struggling to define the appropriate boundaries for government involvement in the provision of care.   Some have looked to the NHS as a model alternative system.  So the debate over NHS strengths, weaknesses, and affordability would be of great interest and an easier connect.

But for those very reasons, the NHS debate deserves a focused article. This I will undertake another time. I raise the issue now only to flesh out the drama that this week represents.

Turning to Welfare Reform

Turning to Welfare Reform, the Tory led Coalition government has introduced several initiatives to dramatically cut the costs of benefits.

The packaging rhetoric is a social conservative attack on the “something for nothing culture.”  Welfare recipients are widely portrayed as “scroungers” who do not deserve the support.  The Coalition argues that benefits should not pay more than work. It is not “fair” for a taxpayer earning less than a welfare recipient to pay taxes toward that benefit.

Fair enough, but the Coalition is not seeking to increase wages or harmonize tax levels to welfare levels. Far from it.  The coalition simply seeks to diminish benefits and force recipients onto an already glutted labour market.  

Moreover, the Coalition sweeps together what Americans would recognize as Welfare (support to families with dependent children) together with what Americans would regard as Social Security (recipients of “incapacity benefit” who paid into the equivalent of Social Security while they worked but became permanently or temporarily disabled from performing the work for which they trained or in which they were experienced).   Both groups now must make efforts to secure a job or face sanctions. Even failing to accept a “voluntary” unpaid position can lead to loss of benefits for an entire year.  

This, in a job market where there are already between 5 and 200 able bodied applicants for every job.  Not counting the welfare recipients, most observers project that the ratio of seekers to jobs will only worsen as the UK slips once again into recession.  Which employer, given the choice, is going to pick a person with a history of disability when given the option of 5-200 able-bodied and qualified applicants?

The Ambassador Effect

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I have been having an ongoing e-mail conversation about whether and what kind of influence the US and Western Europe can and should have on the political situation in Russia in view of the recent anti-government demonstrations protesting Putin’s cavalier changing places announcement last September and the well-documented and blatant electoral fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections which was employed – almost Soviet style - to maintain his party in power.   

No, this was not a send-in-the-NATO-tanks-as-Putin-plays-hardball-with-the-Russian-political-opposition sort of conversation.  It was more about moral suasion and whether the new US Ambassador can have a positive influence on Russian internal politics at a time when the situation is more fluid than at any other period since 1991 only this time with Putin and his henchmen assuming the roles of the drunken coup-makers of twenty years ago.

What sort of influence can an Ambassador have on another country’s internal affairs – if at all?  This is what the tough and broader question boils down to.  Or should a US Ambassador in a country like Russia, China or even Syria confine his or her activities to dealing with the government in power as the best way to represent this country’s interests. 

There’s been a fair amount of play in the US news media and American academia about soft power and the importance of an Ambassador’s role as the country’s chief public face or public diplomacy representative and what sort of message that individual sends or should send to the people and the government of the country to which he or she is accredited.

Leave USTR Alone, Consolidation is Not the Answer

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Why is it that Democratic administrations – in particular - think that shrinking the federal government means forcing agencies including small, highly effective ones with excellent track records like the USTR (Office of the US Trade Representative), into large, lumbering ones like the Commerce Department?

You’d think people would have learned from the ill-fated consolidation of the US Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency into the State Department and almost eviscerating the US Agency for Development under President Clinton that this is a really bad idea.  Aside from Monica Lewinsky, the consolidation of the foreign affairs agencies into State was by far the worst decision Clinton made during his entire presidency. 

True, it wasn’t just the Clinton administration that acted alone.  Republican connivance was there front and center, too.  Without isolationist Jesse Helms as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee spurring, or perhaps goading, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on – in fact, forcing her to choose between USIA and a Chemical Weapons Treaty – this fiasco wouldn’t have happened.  

In the end, consolidation is a questionable money-saving device and it certainly won’t make the USTR – the agency responsible for negotiating our international trade agreements - more effective by cramming it into the behemoth Commerce bureaucracy – likely the opposite on both accounts.

Consolidation is expensive, time-consuming and disruptive

First, the process of consolidation itself is expensive, time consuming and disruptive.  Second, it creates a knowledge deficit that will not be easily filled because professionals who excel working in small, nimble environments will leave. The USTR staff I’ve met and heard speak at conferences over the years were and are excellent, experienced international economists who can and will find jobs in the private sector or at one of the international banks or funds.  Or those who are close enough to retirement will find an island in the sun, pronto.    

Attrition at USIA was huge after the merger with State 12 years ago:  the two cultures were night and day and the pachyderm, as expected, rolled over the mouse.  If I remember correctly a good 25% of the very experienced staff was gone within two years.  The State Department made a travesty of public diplomacy expertise from day one – so it’s no wonder.    

As a consequence, the US government lacks a nimble, coordinated agency designed to improve America’s image abroad. Instead, the current operation resembles a pair of torn jeans with a few shiny new colorful patches sewn on and a strong Pentagon tilt. Because State was so ineffective after 9/11, most public diplomacy funds went to the can-do Pentagon. 

But here’s one little problem:  selling America abroad works far better when this country’s interface with foreigners is undertaken by civilians and our tanks, uniforms and battleships are kept in mothballs - or at least over the horizon.   

Yes, Madeleine, it was a huge mistake

Even Madeleine Albright, a chief proponent of the ill-fated consolidation has been heard to question whether the whole consolidation affair wasn’t a mistake.

Yes, Madeleine. It was. Hindsight is often better than foresight.  History is not dead and the US still needs a flexible governmental organization along USIA’s lines to tend this country’s image throughout much of the troubled world. 

Meanwhile, the Obama administration - which in my view has done a lot right otherwise - needs to shift into reverse before it’s too late on this latest ill-thought-through proposal.  Small is often more effective.  The National Security Council, for instance, is small.  Doesn’t mean it should be broken up and made parts of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department. 

Please. Leave USTR alone.  This proposal should be dead on arrival.           

 

 

What do Coalition Education Secretary and Labour MP Chris Bryant have in common?

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

Nothing, you reply?

At first glance it might seem preposterous.  

Chris Bryant is a Labour MP, Shadow Minister for Borders and Immigration. Bryant was last seen in vigorous attack mode, seeking Home Secretary Theresa May’s head over a little experiment gone ‘orribly wrong (at least ‘orribly visible in the fishbowl).  Bryant is better known, however, for his battle with Rupert Murdoch, whose grubby fingered underlings exposed Bryant to unseemly and embarrassing (not to mention politically difficult) ridicule.  Bryant recently appraised Rupert Murdoch, an unflattering comparison to Sivio Berlusconi.  

Michael Gove is, on the other hand, a Conservative MP, current Coalition Education Secretary.  Gove’s very name makes die hard Labour supporters awaken in the night with cold sweats. He is the bane of public educators, dedicated to the overthrow of public education through private Academies (albeit to be fair to Mr. Gove, he would see it as their fulfillment and betterment).  His “reforms” are legion and legendary, opposed vigorously by Chris Bryant and Bryant’s Labour Party. So black and white is this it does not bear citation. Michael Gove is also a well known “Neo Conservative.”     Gove served Murdoch as an editor at The Times.  His appraisal of Murdoch now?  A great man.

So what could Chris Bryant and Michael Gove possibly have in common? Outside the fact they presumably put their pants on the same way in the morning, although maybe we shouldn’t assume.    The answer is, the Henry M. Jackson Society.   And a little more as will unfold.

The Henry M. Jackson society is an astro turf “Think Tank” with an agenda.  That isn’t greatly editorialized. It calls itself a think tank and it has an expressed agenda.  I dub it “astro turf” because it looks like a pressure group, acts like a pressure group, is funded like a pressure group, and has assiduously cultivated rich and powerful people with agenda and connections, like a pressure group. But it calls itself a think tank and is organized as a charity. How benign. Rather like Atlantic Bridge, but more on that in a moment.

The Henry M. Jackson society was formulated in 2005, named after US Senator Henry M. Jackson. No, not for his public welfare agenda, but for his “hawkish” interventionist agenda. Again, not editorializing.  It is well documented and the Society says so itself. 

The Henry M. Jackson Society promotes trans Atlantic cooperation in the intervention into the affairs of other nations, particularly in the Middle East, allegedly to spread liberal democracy.  This agenda can be seen directly in the Society’s own activities. 

Lobsters in the Pot: Is Privacy Still Possible?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Let’s dispense quickly with the contradictions besetting the Republican notion of privacy during this amazing rundown to the upcoming presidential election.  Privacy à la GOP largely involves business and finance, which means allowing the close-mouthed  denizens of the executive suite to connive exorbitant profit-making opportunities free of interference from regulations designed to protect consumers from confusion, manipulation, deception or outright fraud.  Meanwhile, most Republican presidential candidates want to regulate every aspect of the sex lives of consenting adults.  Surely having government tromping around like an elephant in the bedroom is a gross invasion of privacy.

But my primary interest here involves the ever-increasing, ever more pervasive and intrusive  invasions of privacy made possible by modern technology.  At this point, we can be monitored day and night no matter where we are.  Even our private thoughts are in danger.  There is virtually no escape from the watchfulness of the national security state.

The Naked Ape in the Airport

Personal privacy is a thing of the past for those who wish to board an airplane.  We must be scanned or wanded or patted down, and if we are too sassy, we’ll be interrogated in a frightening little room, like criminals, which means the flight will leave without us.  Although we are assured that no other passengers can see our nakedness, the fact is that we are undressed by the machinery operated by TSA personnel, who can view our underwire bras, the titaniam repairs to broken bones, the depth of our fat layers, the subtle details of our posture, thus totally violating our bodily integrity.  Worse, official assurances not withstanding, we have no way to prove that our images are not stored, like fingerprints, for future purposes beyond our control.

Herded along like cattle, we dare not utter a word of protest.  We cannot make jokes. We can’t protest too vehemently when a pat down is too intimate or a person with a colostomy bag is humiliated.  We must simply put up and shut up, even though we know that this supposedly sophisticated equipment routinely misses dangerous weapons and that the regs about lotions and so on have no basis in science.

Maybe the whole purpose of the exercise is to teach us docility.

The Fear that Shuts Us Up

It’s not only the fear of missing a flight that turns us mute, passive, as abject as captives in a slave market. If we say or do something that leads us to be apprehended as possible terrorists, we could lose every liberty and right supposedly guaranteed to every citizen by our Constitution, which has been more or less amended by various incarnations of the “Patriot” Act as endorsed by compliant courts and judges.  If we end up in legal limbo, we might never be tried.   We would, to all intents and purposes, cease to exist. 

So we toe the line, remembering how proud and happy we were when democracy overcame totalitarianism.  Perhaps we need an Occupy Airports movement to reclaim our privacy and our dignity.


Brain-Reading as Non-Fiction

But personally invasive science is offering even more license to those who would control us by taking away our privacy.  The latest wrinkle is this: those thoughts that we keep rigorously to ourselves in the hope that we may pass unscathed through the TSA inspections system may not be sacrosanct much longer.  I’m not talking of old hat truth sera.   I’m not referring to the familiar misuse of the notoriously unreliable lie detector test that terrifies the unpracticed and unsophisticated.  I’m talking about the evolving ability of brain monitoring devices to evoke reasonable facsimiles of images that we have seen and thought of.  At the moment, this technology seems to be tentative and crude, but the usual trajectory of such technology is refinement toward perfection. Maybe words won’t be recovered from our brain cells anytime soon, but imagine this: no longer being able to retreat into the pleasant privacy of your own thoughts. Talk about self incrimination!

The Surveillance Octopus

Other surveillance technologies have already reached high levels of reliability.  Heat detectors can tell if we are home, even if the car isn’t outside and we aren’t standing in front of a window.  Sound monitors can pick up conversations from considerable distance, and there isn’t a single electronic communications device that can’t be turned against us.  What’s more, anything hacking doesn’t reveal, documents may, and the courts are all too happy to ask IPOs and phone companies to supply them.  To make the invasion of privacy even more pernicious, it may be illegal for those who supply the records to tell us that the documents have been seized. 

How much more naked can we be?  How much privacy is left to lose?

Oh dear!  I forgot about the spies in the sky. And, not only are there geosynchronous satellites that can watch us 24/7, there are spies in our cell phones and rental cars that reveal to those who have the right equipment exactly where were are whenever we’re away from home.  Finally, spy cameras are becoming a commonplace part of the urban landscape.  To foil criminals and terrorists, of course.  But how convenient for other purposes, too.  Talk about 1984! 

You can monitor your baby from afar, too, which may be a good thing.  But that's the trouble with technology.  It's two-faced, and too many people abuse it too frequently.

Lobsters in the Pot

In the era of voluntary self-revelation on Facebook and given the data-mining to which all users of the Internet are willynilly subjected, it may seem silly to worry about privacy.  Furthermore, many Americans would say that a little erosion of freedom is the small price we pay for increased security.  But I’m not sure that everyone has reflected on the extent to which privacy has become all but unattainable.  Nor, I fear, have they thought of the implications for extreme social control in a not so distant future.

It’s said that creatures who are immersed in a stew pot filled with cold water don’t realize that they are being cooked until it’s too late. The process is too slow.  The increase in heat is too gradual.  Just so, our freedom is eroding degree by degree as our opportunities for privacy fade toward zero.  I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the human lobsters who read this piece guffaw and decide I’m over-reacting. 

I guess they haven’t felt the heat yet.  If they don’t wake up soon, we’ll all be cooked.

 

     

       

 

The Ground Begins to Move Beneath the “United” Kingdom

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

9 January 2012 London and Edinburgh.  The simmering conflict between the governments of Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond and Prime Minister David Cameron has erupted in verbal warfare. 

Over the weekend Prime Minister David Cameron demanded that, subject to further legal advice due later this week, Scotland’s leadership set a date for its planned referendum on independence. Cameron also insisted there only be one issue on the ballot - in or out. In return Cameron offered the referendum would be binding. Cameron pointed out that the referendum could only be binding if Whitehall agreed.  Cameron would agree subject to an in or out vote to be scheduled within 18 months.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon responded for Scotland.  Sturgeon replied that the Prime Minister was interfering with a Scottish decision.  She argued that the Scottish people were entitled to have the referendum for which they voted in the time frame for which they voted when they handed the Scottish National Party a significant electoral mandate in the last election. 

During the campaign for that election, First Minister Alex Salmond promised a referendum no sooner than 2014. He has also suggested that the ballot raise the question of whether or not the government should instead seek repatriation of greater powers rather than full independence.    

By the night of the 9^th, Sky News reported that Cameron may have backed off the 18 month deadline in the face of Scottish anger.  But not a demand for it to be held "sooner rather than later."

On 10 January this became "only Westminster has the power" to schedule a referendum.  With these words Westminster opened what the British call a "consultation" on when the referendum should be held, what should its form should be, who should be able to vote.  The announcement was heralded as a historic gauntlet laid down to Scotland.  First Minister Salmon essentially told Westminster, in an American phrase, to "pound sand." 

The battle is now joined.

Cameron cited feedback from unnamed companies reluctant to invest in the UK while the issue remained unresolved. But BBC’s political analysts suggest the reason for the timing of Prime Minister Cameron’s gambit is the Prime Minister’s assessment that he cannot leave this to the capable First Minister’s management.

But I wonder if there is more to it than Scottish independence alone.

I raised this issue prior to the Prime Minister’s deadline during my reflections in this blog on the Prime Minister’s 2 January address to the country.  The demand for Scotland to set an in or out referendum comes less than a week after I warned that overall poll numbers that seem to suggest a consensus in support of the Prime Minister actually disguise serious division between the “Home Counties” and the balance of the UK.