tim's experiment

The Chief Secretary, John Lee, seems to have selected himself as the government’s specialist in the campaign against “false news”, probably culminating in some upcoming legislation on the topic.

This means, I fear, that his own efforts in the journalism direction are likely to be subjected to careful scrutiny. His latest effort was a letter to the editor of The Economist. Alas it is not in this week’s edition. Perhaps it was too late. Perhaps not, for it had some problems.

The Economist, possibly freed from inhibitions by the fact that its Hong Kong correspondent had already been expelled, roundly condemned the recent Legco election as “rigged”, and “a travesty of democracy”.

Mr Lee characterised this as “a baseless accusation”. He pointed out, according to RTHK, that free speech and the right to run for election are protected by the Basic Law. I don’t know what that might have done for the international reader but it would have been greeted with hollow laughter in Hong Kong.

His more interesting offering was that no country would allow “treasonists, traitors, foreign agents or other forms of non-patriots to take part in its political system”. Really? No country? Has Mr Lee checked with all 193 countries in the United Nations that they have adequate mechanisms to purge their political system of “non-patriots”?

Critical readers of The Economist might be expected to notice that there is an important word missing here. That word is “convicted”. Countries which bar traitors and foreign agents from their political systems generally leave the question of who that might be up to the courts. It is not left to the discretion of the returning officer, a committee of uniformed government minions, or a committee of non-uniformed big-wigs with the unofficial advice of the local Liaison Office.

Can we think of a country which does not bar traitors, etc. from its political system? Easy. The people barred from running for seats in the London Parliament come in four categories: prisoners serving their sentences, lunatics, priests of the Anglican Church and Lords.

The reason for the last two is that the church is represented by its bishops, who are ex officio members of the House of Lords. And the Lords, of course, have their own arrangements.

What, no ban on traitors? Well to be fair that was not a practical problem for a long time. Convicted traitors and spies were decapitated or shot, which effectively prevented them running for election. Non-patriots have never been barred. Irish Nationalists were elected in the 19^th century, Welsh and Scottish ones in the 20^th.

Sinn Fein candidates run in Northern Ireland on a platform of explicit preference for their province to be transferred to the Irish Republic. They do not take their seats when elected, because to do so they would have to swear an oath of allegiance to the United Kingdom. Nevertheless they run, are elected, do not take their seats, and run again.

English by-elections regularly attract a variety of eccentric candidates, of whom perhaps the most celebrated called himself Screaming Lord Sutch. He repeatedly stood as the candidate of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. After his death in 1999 the party carried on, and has had some successes in local elections. Its manifesto for parliamentary constituencies is deliberately satirical rather than practical, although some policies it pioneered, like all day pub opening, have been implemented by more respectable parties.

So I’m afraid Mr Lee is quite wrong in supposing that no country bars “other non-patriots” from its political system and indeed even traitors and spies, having served their time in prison, would be allowed to try their luck. Avoiding false news is harder than it looks.

For a more subtle catastrophe we can turn to Mr Grenville Cross, who has evolved from defending the government’s legal brainwaves to defending everything. As a result his offerings have become more frequent and less interesting, but I was drawn to the headline (repeated in all pro-government print channels) “Electoral reform: hypocrites in glass houses should not throw stones”. I remind readers, as usual, that newspaper headlines are not written by the reporter. But this one sums up Mr Cross’s drift accurately enough. His targets are two conservative MPs and Benedict Rogers, who is not yet an MP but clearly has hopes.

Mr Rogers’s criticism of the new electoral arrangements was comprehensive and colourful: a “rubber stamp, puppet, zombie, quisling, Hong Kong branch of the National People’s Congress”.

Deplorable stuff, no doubt. But where comes the hypocrisy? Mr Cross complains that Conservative candidates are “thoroughly vetted” before they can be considered by local associations, and the qualities sought include “core beliefs and values”, which Mr Cross interprets as excluding independent thinkers.

He points out, quite truely, that MPs who dissent from the party line are sometimes expelled from the party, which means they cannot run as Conservatives again. He adds, also accurately, that people so excluded are rarely successful in running as independents, or under another label.

But at this point he has torpedoed his own argument. These unlucky people are not unelected because they have been excluded from the polls by the Conservative Party, the returning officer or a government vetting committee. They are free to run and who wins is decided by the electorate.

It is entirely normal and common for parties to decide who may be allowed to run under their flag. I do not doubt that there are similar mechanisms in the DAB, although one wonders whether they are necessary in view of the recurring rumours that such matters are decided in the Liaison Office.

Of course if you have run the Conservative flag up your mast the electors may be a bit suspicious if you reappear under another banner. Mr Cross’s colourful history might also be a political liability if he ever ran for office.

But parties everywhere try, with varying degrees of success, to ensure that their election candidates support the party’s aims and ideology. And getting the bum’s rush from the Conservatives is not always the end of the line. Enoch Powell survived the experience and returned to parliament as an Ulster Unionist. Nor is the party’s blessing for a “safe” seat a cast-iron guarantee of success. In 1997 a particularly seedy conservative MP was unseated by a crusading journalist running as an independent.

I am not personally a fan of Mr Rogers, nor of Mr Cross’s other targets, Dominic Raab and Liz Truss. But they must be acquitted of the charge of hypocrisy. Mr Cross is not comparing apples and oranges. He is comparing apples and unicorns.

The fact that British parties decide who may run on their behalf does not in any way excuse or explain the new Hong Kong system, in which the government in effect chooses its own legislature. Mr Cross’s version of this is that candidates had “to show they were capable of shouldering the responsibilities involved in running an advanced Chinese metropolis”.

Looking at our new Legco, can you repeat that without giggling?