From the Democratic debate in New Hampshire last night, it’s now clear that the contest between the candidates has effectively come down to two key characteristics which, in 2008 will matter the most to voters. These are experience and change. The third, electability, is an equally important issue likely to be on the minds of New Hampshire’s Democrats, but one which is typically discussed only behind closed doors. Faced with questions on an array of topics ranging from healthcare to nuclear proliferation, candidates’ replies consistently returned to firstly why they felt they had the experience to handle it, and secondly, why they were best placed to offer a significant break with the past on that particular issue.

Hillary Clinton, above anyone else, has worked to make experience the central theme of the campaign. Asked about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal last night, she jumped to draw parallels with a similar incident which occurred under her husband’s administration. When queried about her ability to work with congress, she pointed to her ‘35 years of experience’ in national politics, as well as identifying rival candidates from both parties as good friends and colleagues. The way the she speaks, you’d think that Bill Clinton had spent 8 years in the White House as a yes-man.

This is all part of her chief advisor’s ‘incumbent strategy’, the plan being from the beginning to form the Hillary campaign to look as much like a government in exile, ready from day one to take the reins, as possible. Few now doubt that the current administration is one of the least competent ever to hold office, whilst even fewer doubt that when it comes to competence and experience of how Washington works, Hilary is difficult to beat. The flip side of the ‘incumbent’ strategy, is that is was also designed to make mincemeat of younger, unforeseen opponents standing in her way, Obama particularly by exposing their lack of experience. Over the past few days, we’ve seen her attacks get increasingly nasty, as she tries to convince Democrats that not to give her the White House would be, quite simply, irresponsible

Employing the same politics of fear and cynicism which have characterised the White House for the past 8 years, Bill Clinton has repeatedly wondered out loud if America can afford to ‘take a roll of the dice’ on a candidate such as Obama with only three years in the Senate. Hilary, on the other hand, has openly questioned whether anyone but her is fit to go into battle with the infamous Republican attack machine, seasoned warrior that she is. Last night, she even tried to compare Obama to George Bush, helpfully reminding us of what happened last time America voted for a guy ‘they’d like to have a beer with’, throwing caution into the wind and relying on intuition over intellect. After Iowa revealed that competence wasn’t enough, and that the ability to affect change was something that actually mattered to voters, Hilary last night was at pains to incorporate it into her own message, arguing that, as the most experienced candidate, she is the one best placed to affect change and to go into battle with Republicans to achieve it, reeling off a list of legislation she had fought for over the years.

But change is more than a legislative program, it’s also more than a change in the party to hold the White House. The victory for Obama (and, yes, Huckabee) shows that Americans are looking for something more fundamental than that. Even if viewed as incidental, the Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton pattern that would result from a Hilary victory is symptomatic of a much more fundamental malaise in American politics.

People are waking up to the realisation that lasting change doesn’t come about from switching from one party to the other every eight years on a razor-thin percentage of the vote, just so the new administration can reverse the programme of its predecessor and institute its own. When Clinton talks about her experience in politics, that’s the game she’s referring to. When she talks about competence, all she’s saying is that she can hit the Republicans harder, knocking them out of the White House for perhaps twelve years, rather than the customary eight. That’s not change, that’s business as usual, and a game of merry-go-round politics which Americans know they can no longer afford.

Hilary’s second mistake is to underestimate Obama as a pretty face who gives a good speech. She’s repeatedly underplayed this, referring to him as the man who ‘talks about change’ implying that she, the gritty realist, is the only one who can deliver. The fact is though, despite being the best orator in the contest, Obama’s charisma and personality aren’t the only things which Clinton lacks.

The role of the President of the United States is not just that of Commander-in-Chief, nor confined to that of Chief Executive. The inhabitant of the White House also happens to be the Head of State, too. Despite what Hilary would like you to believe, Presidents are rarely judged on their legislative programme alone, and their office constitutes far more than a prize to be won on behalf of their party. Indeed, in a Federal government, which, in comparison to European countries, still has a relatively indirect role in the lives of its citizens, the President’s ability to bring change directly through legislation is quite limited. Few, for example, would look back half as fondly on the years of FDR, Kennedy and Reagan if judging them on their legislative record alone.

What makes presidents go down in history as great, within the United States, and overseas, is far less tangible- quite simply, the ability to inspire. The United State’s recovery from economic disaster and restoration of self-confidence almost overnight owed just as much to Franklin Roosevelt’s positive attitude, amiable character and fireside chats as it did The New Deal or anything it achieved. Similarly, in his short time in office, Kennedy achieved relatively little. Nonetheless like a breath of fresh air, the youngest president in history succeeded in embodying the self-belief and faith in progress of his age, just as Reagan, (whatever your view of him), restored faith in the Presidency in the wake of Watergate. As for George Bush, as it turns out, he’ll be remembered less for Iraq or the Patriot Act than the fear and loss of self-belief he exploited and grew in the wake of 9/11. However much Clinton would like to deny it, personality matters, a lot. A president’s ability to inspire people to change can bring far wider consequences than a decision to sign a bill into law.

If it ended there, you still might have a good reason to vote for Hilary. After all, given the mixed results of men like Reagan and JFK, it is questionable whether Americans can afford to chase a potentially ‘great’ president at the expense of playing it safe and putting into the White House a merely ‘good’ one for 8 years. But Obama’s personality, and Clinton’s lack of it, will not just be an asset on the campaign trail, but, once in office, a political one too. The same charisma and eloquence that inspired young people to turn out in droves in Iowa can capture the imaginations of young people across the World. From the streets of Gaza to skeptical Europeans such as myself, the story of how the ’skinny boy with a funny name’, became the most powerful person on the planet has the ability to capture imaginations and re-ignite their belief in a nation built not by kings and aristocrats, but the dreams of the dispossessed and the underfoot.

At home too, Obama’s character can stand for far more than Clinton’s ruthless ambition and technocratic competence. She may be the expert warrior, steeled in the bitter partisan battles of the 1990s, but it is precisely her husband’s inability to win the country wholeheartedly that made those battles a necessity. Ever since the hapless Kerry lost by the single state of Ohio in 2004, ‘Ohio plus one’ has been the mantra of the Democrat establishment, of which Hilary is central. To people for whom the White House is simply a prize, the nation divided into irreconcilable ‘red states’ and ‘blue states’, only a few states matter. As long as enough votes are won to tip the balance and deliver their man (or woman) the presidency, that’s just fine. Small wonder, then, when those same marginal states deliver to congress individuals of the opposite party, that they demand the president be ready to battle. A Democrat President fighting, as Bill Clinton did, tooth-and-nail against a Republican congress may, if he’s lucky, achieve change in a trickle, but nothing that a few hanging chads in Florida can’t reverse overnight.

Achieving the kind of lasting, genuine change that Americans of all political stripes desire will mean more than just ‘winning’ a few marginal states, which, with her vast negative ratings, is the best Hilary can expect. At the very least, it will require a sympathetic Congress with more than a razor-thin majority. But it should also go further than that. It’ll mean a fundamental shift of the nation’s political landscape and rely on the ability of a Democrat president to reach out beyond the traditional base. They’ll have to be willing to venture into states such as Mississippi and Alabama, states which, as the poorest in the nation, have much to gain from the Democrat message, and who have been written off as irrevocably ‘red’ for too long. It’ll require framing our arguments in language that evokes not Hillary’s battles of the past, but which builds, as FDR, JFK and LBJ did, a consensus amongst wildly diverse groups of the need to overcome the special interests blocking the corridors of Capitol Hill.

Once in the White House it will also- and Hilary won’t like this- mean relying on more than the winning candidate’s own experience, and beyond a clique of advisors belonging the last party grandee to hold the job. Far more important than such narrow ‘experience’ , will be the humility to listen, as the current administration so often failed to do, to outside experts on foreign and economic matters, to govern in the interests of more than just 51% of the electorate, and the frankness to restore faith and trust once again in the United States and its President. Barack Obama can, and is doing, all of these things. I know who the underqualified candidate is, and it certainly isn’t him.

And so, predictably over the past few days we’ve witnessed the usual chorus amongst the World’s self-appointed guardians of democracy. Bush began the rounds condemning the “cowardly acts”, whist Brown, Sarcozy and Karzai all piled in to register the usual ‘disapproval’ ‘condemnation’ and ‘disgust’. Vladimir Putin, perhaps spurred by his recent selection as Time Magazine’s Person of The Year, went one better, declaring the assassination an act of ‘terrorism’.

At a time when Russia’s post-Soviet hangover grows more distant by the day, it’s interesting that it was Sheriff Putin, rather than the White House Cowboys, who was so keen to make the connection between the current anarchy in Pakistan and the bearded-man-of-whom-no-one-dare-speak. Five years ago, you can guarantee that Bush wouldn’t have missed a heartbeat in pinning this one on Mr. Bin Ladin and his vile cohorts. Instead, in a hangar in Texas, The President’s face was one of a man counting down the days until 20th Jan 2008 every bit as impatiently as the rest of us. He didn’t answer questions, nor did he give any indication of what this meant for American policy in Pakistan. It was a far cry from Moscow.

So why the timidity? Well, part of the answer lies in the fact that Bhutto’s assassination, personal tragedy aside, has left American policy in the area in one hell of a mess. To put it mildly, America backed the wrong horse, pouring billions of dollars into a regime which it now feels obliged to condemn as a pariah and leaving the region and American interests there at greater risk than any other point in recent history.

Bhutto offered a handy route out of that mess; a player ideally placed to act as a bridge between US interests whilst, for a change, also enjoying popular support within her own country. With her death, the US is fast running out of options in a nuclear-armed country which, regardless of your view of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, is of far greater strategic importance than either. George Bush might not have been so keen to blame Al Qaeda for the crime simply because, at this stage, he’d like to leave his options open. Even he now realises that the ‘war against terror’ narrative simply isn’t going to wash, with recent events now leaving policies shaped by that simplistic world view more or less in shreds.

That said, for an individual who claims to want nothing more than to be the World’s number one defender of democracy, Bush’s policy in Pakistan over the past 8 years has been strangely inconsistent. When Pakistan’s elected government was toppled by the army in 1999, led by a military general Pervez Musharaff, the rest of the world quite rightly denounced it and called for the restoration of democracy in the region. The Commonwealth suspended the rogue state, whilst the EU promptly suspended a partnership agreement. In comparison to today, and what had come before, such foreign policy priorities in the 1990s appear positively ethical.

Then came 9/11, which turned a White House of parochialists not much bothered with the World, into one determined to use the full might of America to shape the World to a Texan worldview. In the immediate days after the attacks, Richard Armitage, Deputy US Secretary of State, had promised Musharraf’s intelligence director that the US would bomb the country “back into the stone age” if they didn’t cooperate in shutting down Bin Ladin. The military dictator of Pakistan, sensing, like Blair, that this was his chance to legitimise himself as a World statesman, readily agreed.

Within days, every single news outlet of the World went from referring to Pervez not as ‘General’, as before, but ‘President’. Immediately ‘aid’ in the form of new weaponry for the Pakistani army (yep, the one that had only a couple of years before toppled a democratic government), began flowing in, going from $9.1million between 1999-2001, to $4.7billion a year (that’s a 50,000% increase), as did lucrative trade agreements and personal endorsements for Pakistan’s courageous leader, taking a stand against the forces of tyranny. Thus, for a time, at least, the US had found itself a staunch ally and the military dictator had succeeded in transforming himself into a guardian of democracy.

6 years on to 2007 however, and, mirroring Bush’s other blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan wasn’t looking so hot either. Musharraf’s contribution to the US war effort in the Afghan border regions of Waziristan wasn’t winning him many friends amongst his own population, while at the same time, human rights organisations noticed that the President’s definition of ‘terrorist’ happened to include his political opponents. Add to that growing frustration at the lack of terrorist scalps being delivered in return for Washington’s $4.7bn investment, and Musharraf was clearly in hot water. The time, even Bushites realised, was soon approaching when they’d have to wash their hands of him.

If, 3 months ago, you’d wanted clues as to what Musharraf did next, you might look back to the example of another US ally, back in the days of another Republican president, an equally vocal opponent of tyranny. His name was Saddam Hussein, and despite being, like Musarraf, to put it lightly, of dubious political origins, was, nonetheless for a time a key American ally. Over the course of his rule he received $350bn in Western loans, American military intelligence and arms in return for his courageous stand against the forces of Soviet and Islamic extremism in Iran. In addition, there were the countless atrocities against his own people, rigged elections and all the other features of his rule which it now suits US interests to draw attention to.

At the time, of course, as with Musharraf, such actions were no barrier to partnership with Uncle Sam. As long as Saddam followed America’s short-termist agenda for the region, he was safe. But, as a child who is ‘given an inch and takes a mile’, it becomes inevitable that the dictator would push his luck too far. When this time came with the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Western governments and and the media alike suffered from a sudden, collective bout of amnesia. Hands were promptly washed, and the sides reverted to type. The dictator freed himself from the shackles of respectability, unleashing upon his population an even greater degree of brutality, whilst his sponsors, their hands now clean, reverted to their role as protectors of democracy, giving him a good thumping in the process.

If that parallel doesn’t take your fancy, you could look to Iran itself, prior to the rise of the Ayatollahs who Saddam was sent to defeat. The Shah of Iran, like Musharraf, was brought to power in a coup against a democratically elected government, gradually tightening his grip on power whilst enjoying American and British support. This is a story which can be repeated throughout the Middle East, South East Asia and, most famously, Central America, take your pick.

In the days following 9/11, we were told the US was done with these old games. That it would no longer tolerate dictators or give room to those who sheltered tyrants. That it was a friend of democracy, and a friend of free people, everywhere. For all my misgivings about the Bush regime, I wanted to believe him. The photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with a 1980s Saddam said it all though. As we’ve seen in our less-than frosty dealings with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Saudi Arabia over the past 8 years it’s business as usual.

We are, as usual, backing the wrong horses, pouring money into the regimes of tyrants, turning their people against us, and reaping the ‘blowback’ that inevitably comes a few years later when we outsource our dirty work to dirty men, who are then overthrown in favour of even more extreme, hostile regimes. Oblivious, we shrug and continue to pour taxpayer’s billions into the pockets of extremists, and think that making deals with dictators to consider elections at some point in the future constitutes a path to democracy.

The question of what Musharraf did next should, by now, be obvious. He suspended the constitution, he shut down the press, called a state of emergency, and then used his failure to bring security to the country as an excuse to postpone elections. Battening down the hatches, he played out the same script as every other American ally-turned-pariah over the past 50 years. Cornered by his own people, his political opponents, The West and Islamic extremists within his own country, Musharraf is no longer a man in control of his own destiny. The question that really matters now is not what Musharraf, but what the current administration, and especially the next one, chooses to do, next.

Where once the middle class strove to keep up with the Joneses, we’d now much rather prove our worth by asserting our individualism. The high street, at one time the peddler of a kind of homogenous, identikit fashion for the masses, is now all about finding a new look for ourselves, defining ourselves and marking out who we wish to be, by what we buy. Neurotic middle-aged control-freaks with no sense of humour buy PCs, whilst savvy, young, laid-back creative types use Macs, remember?

And so we’ve been pigeonholed accordingly. Are you a ‘Metrosexual’, ‘BME’, ‘Yuppie’, ‘NEET’, ‘Chav’, ‘Punk’, ‘Hippie’, ‘Emo’, ’Goth’ or one of the others? In the old days, a ‘Green’ was someone who typically recycled their bottles, had a compost heap or womery, didn’t own a car, avoided flying, wore knitted woollen jumpers and bought suspect looking organic veg from a tin shed on the outskirts of town. Often they were vegetarians too, and in their younger days had been caught up in things like the CND or Greenpeace, more often than not still receiving their monthly newsletter in the post. In the day of the ‘New’ Green, on the other hand, anyone can do it. You just have to drive the right car, have the right energy supplier, switch your 60” flat screen off at night and ensure the holiday home in Tuscany has been fitted with solar panels.

Of course, very often such people don’t exist beyond the pages of marketing manuals or the studies of sociologists or demographers, and few would doubt that being some shade of ‘green’, New or Old, is better than no green at all. Equally so, a lot has been said and written about the Old Greens and their uncertain relationship to the vastly more numerous New Greens as it is they, rather than the Old, who now set the environmentalist agenda. That’s a debate for elsewhere, and indeed, this article is a broader analysis of the current state of the environmentalist movement, just as applicable to both as we approach what may prove to be some of the most critical decades of modern history.

The first bitter pill for both to swallow is that if ‘green’ is regarded a little more than a lifestyle choice, we’re toast. It’s easy, having put our own houses in order, to enter into a guilt-free comfort zone. We’re doing our bit, and exhort others to do the same. For the New Greens, many of whom now dominate Britain’s establishment, the environmental lifestyle is in danger of being a political carrot; the kind of lifestyle the pollsters know middle England aspires to, and thus the one the politicians promise to deliver by way of symbol, speech and gesture.

For the ‘Old’, environmentalist hardcore, the situation is slightly different. Whilst their issue now tops the political agenda, the majority hold out against the political mainstream, for fear of being co-opted into a social and economic agenda of which they (perhaps rightly) want no part. Instead, many judge their time better spent as part of local and national interest groups and NGOs, or within smaller, more radical political parties. Some even chose to disengage altogether, sectioning themselves off onto the smallholding, content in the knowledge that they’re doing all they can to insure themselves and their family against the apocalypse they know is coming.

Continued on Monday 16/7/07

Remember the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 90s? McDonalds was a novelty, few had heard of GAP, Starbucks or Top Shop, and things like Nike caused wars in shoe shops. On the political side of things, the country was still run by old men with comb-overs and thick glasses. I remember watching them, as a toddler, during a particularly boisterous session of PMQs which happened to have been left on, slightly bemused when told these men ran the country. The slick pr-managed smile had barely been invented yet. Neither, I think, had environmentalism entered the mainstream. Even the arrival of the messiah, ‘pretty straight guy’ Tony Blair didn’t really do that; his climate change promises tended to be regarded by commentators as electoral garnish. A pleasant, if not particularly filling, addition to New Labour’s juicy promises to rebuild hospitals and get the trains running on time.

Of course there were the occasional middle-class one-family crusaders who did their bit, composting food scraps, cycling the kids to school and recycling their bottles, just as there’s always been those who took it further, downsizing to the Shetlands to grow organic veg. But these people on the whole went against the mainstream, not with it. Next Door was by no means hostile; ‘Nice people’ ‘lovely family’, but nonetheless, slightly eccentric. Harmless enough, mind you, but following a different lifestyle choice to the rest of us. They had to put up with the same kind of warm-hearted ignorance and inadvertent condescension that might greet the first black or gay family to move into a sheltered English village. Although, even in todays enlightened times that’s still the reality in many places, ‘the establishment’ view, arguably, has changed substantially. Today even the party of combovers and thick glasses pays homage to Mother Earth.

In 2007, everyone wants to be green just as ardently as everyone wanted a pair of Nikes back in 1990. If you’re in the public eye, it’s not really a choice, it’s an electoral imperative. Green toilet paper, green cars, green wellies, everything in green, even if it isn’t really, and the marketing men can hardly keep up. It’s never been easier to be green as it is now, while you’re hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t possess at least some form of awareness of climate change. For those who have been at the forefront of this movement, that’s a real victory. With David Cameron wily having picked up on it, and every other political party out there scrambling to outbid them for the green vote, ‘green’, sets the agenda like never before. For fear of being lynched, however, I think it’s high time we questioned whether, having brought the debate this far, being ‘green’ is really where we need to be.

Part II on Friday 13th

While, on the whole you make some pretty good points, it does concern me that you seem to regard Bob Geldof as synonymous with the Make Poverty History Campaign, when, in reality, the two were, to a large extent seperate.

The Make Poverty History campaign was led by GCAP (the Global Call to Action Against Poverty), made up of NGOs worldwide. Some of them, such as Oxfam have been in the business of international development for over 50 years now, longer than most governmental agencies, and with it have a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge of its intricacies. If you bothered to look, the aims of MPH were very clear and achievable, asking G8 nations to live up to their promise of a 0.7% (made almost a decade ago) contribution of GDP to international aid, measurable and systematic cancellation of debt for specific countries etc.

Your real target is idiot Geldof and his cohorts. Unlike Oxfam, ActionAid, WDM or any of the other big NGOs, Mr Geldof does not represent a constituency, supporters fundraisers, campaigners, partners in the developing world or otherwise. He represents himself. You will recall that unlike the planned and strategic long-term campaign of MPH, spread over the year at specific points, ‘Live8′ was announced no more than a month in advance, seemingly because Bob and co woke up one morning and decided it would be a nice thing to do.

Consequently, when July 2nd came round, it was the rock stars, and what they had eaten for breakfast that made the front pages, rather than the millions of ordinary people who took to the streets that day, not just in the UK, but in the developing world also, in order to demand a better deal for themselves. They did not, it seem, need Geldof to speak on their behalf.

You’re right though; Geldof’s idiotic proclaimation to his assembled worshippers of ‘mission accomplished, frankly’, was a disaster. To hijack a campaign is irritating. To prematurely call it to a close is catastrophic. None of the credible organizations in MPH believed business would be finished at Gleneagles. These organizations employ entire teams of researchers and economists who knew from the word go that mission was not accomplished. They have partner organizations and agencies in Africa and Asia who knew for a fact the limitations of what was promised at Gleneagles. Did Geldof? No, but he’d shaken hands with ‘I’m a pretty straight guy’ Tony Blair, which was enough for him.

It was always going to be difficult to mantain the coalition and momentum built, with great success, by the Make Poverty History Coalition. Despite that, however, the organizations which put 2005 on the map as the year of reckoning posessed the will and to some extent the means to do it, had it not been for Geldof. Like his ego, he inflated the campaign we began, filling it with hot air, too quickly, and too big. And when he was done with it, he popped it.

As you all probably know,at the core of the EU is economic cooperation between its member countries, which, most of us agree, has on the whole been a pretty good thing. In light of this big, scary globalized super-competitive economy, it certainly makes sense for countries to be bargaining collectively, rather than individually. Because the EU is such a lucrative market for, for example, Chinese textiles or Nigerian cotton, many countries would give their right arm to do a deal to get access to it in a way which they might not if, for example, they were to sign a deal with Wales alone.

The EU is well aware of its strong hand, no more so than when dealing with developing countries, themselves somewhat less enviable position. Woe betide any developing countries which follow our example and band together, of course- in WTO-speak, that’s called price fixing and is strictly prohibited. So all in all, think of EPAs as a bit of a divide-and-rule tactic; they tend to be used as an alternative to more multilateral avenues such as the WTO, where developing countries have had a nasty habit of sticking up for one another in recent years.

And so what do to with all that power? Well, us Europeans have a dirty little secret, the kind of secret which we try to bury below all kinds of sanctimonious language about human rights and democracy, but which is still a bit of an open secret on the world stage. We really like to run other people’s countries. Been doing it for years, centuries even. And so, being Europeans, we simply can’t resist using EPAs as an opportunity to build in all kinds of nifty extra clauses which interfere with the running of the countries we deal with. We can, for example, require the privatization of state owned goods and services (such as water, electricity and even, in some cases education and healthcare), the ending subsidies for certain industries, and and pretty much anything else we’d like to add. A bit like a the highwayman who humiliates you by making you dance in the middle of the road in your undies, just before making off with your handbag.

f the guys in Brussels decide that they’d like everybody in Zambia to wear polka dotted t-shirts on the first Wednesday of every month in return for the right to sell Zambian peanuts within the EU, then who is Zambia to argue? The same principle applies to selling off government owned assets such as the water supply and other public utilities to private (and, funnily enough, often European) ownership.

In the UK, everyone remembers, and some still live with, the kind of upheaval which resulted when British Rail, BT, British Gas etc were all privatised, when certain subsidies and benefits have been changed and when other major changes to the British economy have taken place. Imagine similar changes being demanded of a developing country, and it’s understandable that before committing to some of this stuff, Zambia and others would like the opportunity to work out exactly what the impact of these changes will be.

So how long is Zambia getting to consider the impact of their EPA on their economy? Well, here’s the punch line. They’ve got until next month to sign on the dotted line, or they’ll face penalties which include massive cuts in aid. In other words, they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Damned if they sign up to a trade deal which is so clearly rigged in the EU’s favour, forcing them into major changes to their own economies in which they’ve had no say or time to consider. Damned if they don’t, for the simple reason that if they don’t sign, aid gets cut and they may have lost a rare chance to get badly needed access to foreign markets.

Of course, this is nothing new, tactics have just slightly changed. A few years ago, everybody was pinning their hopes on doing much the same thing through the World Trade Organization, on a multilateral basis. When, thanks partly to bickering between the EU and US, and partly due to pressure from campaigners worldwide, those talks stalled, the EU has therefore been forced to change tack. The new strategy is to make these deals on a bilateral basis, using the clout of the EU to pick off the developing countries one by one.

If this was a gangster movie, you’d at least be impressed by their sheer audacity, resourcefulness and lack of scruples, and after all this, nobody should doubt the EU’s commitment to securing rock-bottom prices for the British consumer. Of course everyone loves scrambling for cheap underpants at Primark, but the question is, at what price?

Smog in Hong Kong © Greenpeace / Leo Chan 2004

Given that the day before the Conservatives reportedly started making positive noises about meeting that 80% target, it’s worth throwing just one more statistic at you: if the UK was to stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the drop would be made up for by China alone within three years. Add into that equation the other massive developing countries such as India and Brazil, and it’s clear that us switching to energy efficient light bulbs isn’t going to be enough.

That begs the question of what we, here in the suddenly impotent anglosphere can do about it. Obviously, the old solution of keeping them poor and agricultural, reserving for ourselves the bulk of emissions isn’t going to be workable for much longer. It would also be an incredibly hard sell to convince these nations to curb their own growth for the sake of a problem which we, through pioneering a flawed pattern of development, have created. Yet, if this is allowed to continue, old, recently developed and developing countries alike will face catastrophe.

Neither saving the World by ourselves nor forcing others to follow our lead are options available to us as they too often have been in the past. Instead, our best hope of saving ourselves, it seems, lies in proving that it is possible to combat this problem, reducing the risks in other, larger countries adopting our model voluntarily. If we want to make real progress in these areas; it’s down to us to prove that it is possible, and even beneficial, to have a sustainable, ethically accountable society and at the same time, enjoy the benefits of economic development.

Changing your light bulbs won’t make any difference unless all of China or India does it too, but that’s no argument for not putting in place here in the UK the relevant laws, regulations and programmes to make it happen. As a smaller nation with a highly-skilled workforce and a history of resourcefulness and innovation, we are ideally placed to prove that a modern, prosperous zero carbon economy is possible, unlike larger nations where it can take far longer to mobilize public and political opinion.

Clout on the world’s stage which has historically far outstripped our size is something almost unique to this country. Instead of writhing in apathy or in staking everything on efforts to lever larger countries into ‘doing something’ on our behalf, it seems to me that the opportunity is there to take the lead in a second industrial revolution, providing that model for sustainable development which the world so clearly needs.

That may be all fine and well (it isn’t), but the fact remains that under 25s are the fastest growing section of the planet’s population, and more often than not, at the epicentre of most of its problems.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, as HIV wreaks havoc amongst the adult population, it is a new generation, born in the shadow of the disease, who will determine the way forward for the continent. In the export processing zones of Indonesia and Bangladesh, it is the young women of whom the workforce is largely comprised who are leading the struggle for proper rights and working conditions. In Latin America, it is the students who are speaking out against the forced privatisation of their public utilities by foreign multinationals. As climate change and environmental degradation begin to wreak their unfathomable consequences, it again will be the irresponsible ‘yoof’ who have the most to lose, but with the greatest means to find alternatives outcomes.

At first glance, to your proverbial Martian observer, finding these alternatives might not seem so difficult after all. ‘Alternative’ is everywhere! It’s impossible not to walk into Top Shop and buy ‘alternative’ clothing, or to buy anything else but ‘alternative’ music in our chain record stores. Want teenage rebel? It’s this summer’s hot look. Want to be a punk? Their next concert is sponsored by a shoe company and the new album goes on sale next week. Surf bum? Get your ‘vintage’ effect £50 t-shirts from the beach hut in your local shopping centre. Teenage rebellion has, like just about everything else, been sliced, diced, tamed, mass-produced, marketed and packaged, ready for you to buy. Alas, it’s exceedingly difficult to be anything but ‘alternative’ these days.

So whilst the ‘yoof’ are being savaged to sell newspapers here in the West, and in the South, called to the fore of some of the greatest problems of our age, the marketing men are clambering all over themselves to grab a slice of our culture and the right to speak on our behalf. Is a real ‘alternative’ culture and type of consumerism still possible; or in doing that, do we become just another niche market? Stay tuned for the dilemmas, ideas and observations of a student campaigner doing his best to find out.

In fact, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of, and to a large extent reliance on Roe vs. Wade to the American Right, and in explaining middle-America’s dramatic shift from the moderate progressivism of the New Deal and Fair Deal, which has seen states such as Kansas -once seen even as a hotbed of progressive politics- become one of the most reliable red states in a matter of decades. Whilst middle-America used to gripe about being screwed over by the GOP: the Rich-Man’s Party, the Friends of Big Business, these days they enthusiastically rally against increased spending on healthcare, education, in favour of tax cuts for billionaires, blaming America’s ill’s on the so-called East and West Coast ‘Latte-drinking Liberal elites’, all whilst their jobs disappear off to China and their small-towns are laid to waste.

So the question which follows is, why has so much of America wedded itself to a party and an ideology which clearly does not represent them or their interests, and which has clearly failed to fatten their wallets, failed to secure their livelihoods, and failed to protect their way of life, resorting to the crudest of persuasive methods, the butt of a gun? The answer, is ‘values’.

The Democrats simply don’t stand for anything anymore. Their election strategy for the past 12 years has been to simply cherry-pick the issues which election agents and polls say matter to people. They present election promises almost as a menu, for all the various bases of support to pick something which appeals, and to vote for them accordingly. “Something for the Latino vote”, “Something to keep the Afro-American lobby happy”, “Something to keep the contributions coming in from business”- there is simply no coherence. The Democrats can talk in details about their policies until they go blue in their faces, and often what they have to say makes a lot of sense- but, thanks to the short-term electioneering of ‘flexible’, ‘middle of the road’ politicians such as the much-sanctified Clinton, any kind of ideological basis or narrative underpinning all that has gone out the window.

The Republicans, on the other hand, don’t need complex statistics about tax bands, median rates of income, national product, domestic growth rates or anything else to get their message across- it’s pure and simple. “We’re about values” they say, speaking in broad, all-encompassing terms such as “protecting life”, “upholding the American family”. While it’s often extremely unclear which policies these vague soundbites describe, the soundbites themselves are jarringly clear. The GOP knows what it believes, we are told. Unlike all these intellectual, head-in-the-clouds East coast elites who speak in statistics and with mountains of evidence to support their argument which nobody bothers to read, the GOP speaks the common man’s language; the word on the street. They are, it would seem, now the ordinary man’s party.

So let’s get back to Roe vs. Wade. If we are to see the rise of the popular American Right as part of some kind of ‘backlash’ against these so-called Liberal elites betraying ‘traditional American family values’, then there really can’t be any clearer symbol. You see, Roe vs. Wade didn’t legalize abortion; it was legal in many states already. What it did do, however, was take the decision out of the hands of individual states, and instead forced onto them a decision made, with no vote, no debate- a decision made by a bunch of presumably out-of-touch, arrogant, anti-democratic amoral liberal ‘activist’ judges up in Washington. Whether you agree with that verdict or not, that’s how it looks to the guy on the street, and when the traditional Democrat support rally behind the decision, making it a key part of their platform, that view is simply confirmed.

In terms of abortion rights, Roe vs. Wade has actually achieved very little. All the states which have always opposed abortion continue to do so, and whilst thanks to the Supreme Court no law can prevent you from having an abortion in the Mississippi Delta, in practice, obtaining one there would be little less problematic than 34 years ago. Violence against those who carry out and receive abortions remains, cultural attitudes towards the practice remain unchanged, while states such as Mississippi continue to pass all the legislation they can to make the process as difficult as possible. In effect, Roe vs. Wade, whilst a symbolic victory, has cost the pro-choice lobby considerably more than it has gained.

On the other hand, Roe vs Wade has become the talisman of the American right’s revival. “Forget your economic woes, your lost jobs, your dying towns and floundering small businesses, put your selfish concerns to one side”, the Right need only call, “This is about values!; America’s soul, things much larger than any of our day-to-day concerns”. By appealing to the moral and religious consciousness of Middle America, focusing them on broader issues such as homosexuality, the death penalty, and, at the very top, abortion, -matters which, while not having a direct bearing on your average voter, are nonetheless ‘matters of principle’- the much more personal, ‘bread and butter’ issues of financial security, education, healthcare – all of the Democrat’s traditional issues- become almost irrelevant.

It’s time to call their bluff. It’s time to shift attention back onto the real political issues; the issues which directly affect your average voter, questions like whether they have a secure job without having to look over your shoulder to China, whether they can send their kids to college, whether they have enough money to retire. The question of whether it is right for one man to marry another, or for stem cells to be used in medical research are not political issues which have a direct bearing on the lives of the vast majority of Americans, they are moral ones; matters for prayer and critical thought, resolved through calm, careful consideration and conscience, not the havoc of endless rhetoric, frenetic lobbying, disagreeable disagreement and shameless electioneering.

As long as American Politics is haunted by the ghost of that decision in 1973, it will be impossible for us to move beyond these questions onto the real ones affecting America’s future and that of much of the Western World. By allowing such pressing matters to be eclipsed by the ’smallness’ of the political discourse, Americans are, allowing the Right wing to get away with this, the greatest steal in decades. A steal in which, with the nation transfixed on abstract issues, matters of principle, rather than of politics, unresolvable by any law or politician, they are able to walk off with other people’s money, pollute our cities, ship your jobs abroad, and pawn off your futures to the highest bidder, all without a murmur of dissent.

Meanwhile, at home, we’re being implored to ‘Feed the World’, ‘Adopt a Child’ ‘Save Africa’, and even, by a certain Mr Geldof, to “give us your fookin’ money!”, while a stint in one of these nations digging wells or cuddling orphans is likely to factor into the plans for one’s future gap year. Indeed, it would seem that Africa is a terrible, backward sort of place, full of destitution and despair. The natives are diseased, the people need educating, their conflicts need peacekeeping, their children feeding and their streets cleaning, tidied up and equipped with nice chain stores – all of which they are wholly incapable of doing by themselves.

Of course, as worthy as these efforts may be, with the best of intentions, and often the most worthwhile of results, is this a helpful or even accurate image? Funnily enough, little over 100 years ago, our great and great-great grandparents were saying similar things, this time to justify the occupation of nations such as India, Iraq and indeed much of Africa, too. Much of European thought rested on the idea that the ‘natives’ of such lands needed the paternal hand of Western, civilized thought to guide them down the path of enlightenment, and that through colonization, exploitation, commerce and, in it’s most extreme expression, slavery, such things could be achieved. Many famines, natural disasters, wars and rebellions later, we’ve quite rightly moved out of that business, and yet the idea seems to persist that those less economically well off than ourselves are inherently incapable. As healthy, materially wealthy and, at home at least, peaceful people, safe and secure in our cul-de-sacs, we reason, ‘we’ have everything to give, and ‘they’ have everything to learn, with our wallets alleviating our consciences accordingly.

On the other hand, while it’s easy to be critical of that approach, nobody denies that somebody needs to ‘stop the rot’. It’s no myth that literally thousands die every day due to malnutrition, AIDS, dirty water, and that hundreds of thousands lack access to basic healthcare and education. If we let things stay as they are, the current trends will simply continue. Clearly, things need to change. The question is, when working to solve these problems, why do we do it? What is our role? Who do we do it for? Is it out of altruism, or a paternalistic desire to watch out for those who, as if by nature or magic, happen to be less-well off than ourselves? We want to help, but who are we to tell others the ‘right’ way to live? In short, are we, our government, The G8, Bob Geldof, Oxfam, the Red Cross, Christian Aid or anybody else the right people to ‘Make Poverty History’?

I was tackling some of these fairly fundamental questions at a workshop on ‘Attitudes and Beliefs’ at the Oxfam Assembly in June 2006. Every two years, individuals from across the international development organization and its partners across the World get together to discuss its future direction, to question the directors and trustees, float ideas, and find out more about the work of others. As a delegate of Oxfam GB’s ‘Youth Board’, I was there along with three of my colleagues to represent the interests and voice of young people, and in the UK in particular, within our work. Sitting opposite me in one of the smaller groups we had broken into was Dilma, a regional manager in Brazil, to my left, Bibash, a project coordinator from north Sudan, John Carlos, from Mexico, and to my right, Killanga from Vietnam. All except Dilma, who made use of a Portuguese interpreter, spoke English, and together, we were engaged in lively debate, sharing out experiences of the way in which Oxfam was seen in our respective constituencies, and the kind of attitudes which assisted or obstructed our work there.
“We are not beneficiaries; I wish they would stop referring to us as such”,
protested an indignant John Carlos,

“Yes”,
agreed Bibash,
“We are not your beneficiaries”,
he said, smiling as he turned towards myself and the other group members, pausing for emphasis,
“We are your colleagues; programme participants, working with you for the same things”
Killanga nodded, as I ventured,
“So really, we need less of a focus on this idea of the helpful helping the helpless, don’t we?

This idea seemed to meet with approval from John Carlos and Bibash, and, after a perhaps a brief struggle to translate my wordplay, Dilma too, who explained how she felt that in Brazil, they needed more freedom to shift the focus of campaigning to the problems they specifically faced in her community. As the discussion continued, Bibash pointed out that,

“We need a greater sense of self-responsibility”,

an idea which I was fairly used to, myself continually arguing for the need to create a sense of shared responsibility for the World amongst you, my fellow ‘youth’ here in the UK.

For Bibash, however, it meant local people in Northern Sudan taking responsibility for themselves. He explained that in one village, an aid agency had come in and built a well with little consultation with local people. Once the conditions there had stabilised, he told us, the community had difficulties coming to terms the agencies pulling out, leaving them again to their own devices along with a well which few were willing to take ownership of, nor felt inclined to maintain, regarding it as ‘their’ well, rather than ‘ours’. Clearly, however good the intentions those who built that well, unless we approach these situations with a little bit of humility and willing to listen, asking ‘what can we do for you’, allowing those we work with to take ownership, rather than ‘we’ll do this for you’, such work can never be truly effective in our efforts, instead allowing this grotesque status quo to remain.

But from that discussion, and the event as a whole, I drew a wider message. I spent three days with among the most intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, articulate and experienced people I have ever met, most without the undisputed benefit of a private school, let alone the dreadfully crucial Oxbridge education we’ve come to expect of our leaders. These were not the ignorant, diseased, voiceless, faceless, nor indeed helpless individual of the infamous Band-Aid album art, these were people who understood the problems of their communities, and who possessed the ideas, experience and means to do something about it.

So why then, aren’t nations like Sudan, Mozambique and Venezuela centres of blue skies, green grass, singing birds, bright sunshine and peace, love and prosperity for all? Well, in Mozambique, they used to have a sugar industry, a fairly productive, competitive and profitable one too. Then, in the tradition of the missionaries which swept the continent a hundred years before, in came economists who, knowing best, took charge, changing policies, removing rules and barriers to comply with a system to which we, here in the developed world, do not ourselves subscribe. Similarly, Sudan has been racked for decades by a civil war, which preceded a famine which has killed thousands more. Funnily enough, there are few gun factories in Sudan, and so arises the question, where did they come from? If you fly over to Venezuela and you’ll find a nation which continues to lack basic medical services, and yet pays millions annually in debt repayments to far wealthier nations, while enjoying some of the largest oil reserves in the World.

Taking such things into account, it’s not hard to see the absurdity in our basic ideas of charity; akin to a gangster’s driver offering to take the victim to hospital on his way home to count his loot. If we, -you- want to be really effective in leaving the world a better place for all of us, then it increasingly seems to me that it’s not simply enough for ourselves to be doing positive things, whether that be raising money, volunteering in these places, or building wells, however useful these acts may be, so much as preventing our own governments from doing the negative things.

Perhaps, in nations which were not racked by war sponsored by our commercial opportunism, places not ripped apart by our economic arrogance, and governments bankrupted by our greed, individuals such as Bibash, John Carlos, Dilma and Killanga would be able to get their work done, which they clearly possess the expertise and drive to do. That’s not to say that our own efforts go unwanted, or unneeded, or that there isn’t a role for us to play, but I truly believe that it’s time for us to realize that the solutions to the developing world’s problems lie in the developing world. W e are their partners, not their benefactors; and we should instead see our role as making room in the global arena for others to take control over their lives, rather than simply replacing one type of foreign control with another.

In our discussions about the beliefs which stood in our way, they talked of ‘selfishness’ and ‘greed’ as characteristics which could be reversed, rather than as basic qualities of humans, to be accepted and exploited rather than challenged. Scoff as you will at such apparent naivety, but the fact that such beliefs and optimism persist and are honestly held in nations which, we are led to believe, are such pits of decay and disaster, to me speaks volumes. Could it be that, in doing these things, we find we have as much to learn as to offer?