(Or, On democracy, faction and the future of party)

The House of Lords is great:

“Elections are still vitally important in holding decision-makers accountable, but that does not mean that every political institution should be elected. We need the addition of more deliberative scrutiny of particular policy proposals, and that is a task that may well be better suited to an independent, life-appointed House of Lords than an elected, party-political upper house.”

Too right – I’ve argued this before. “Democratic” may often be used as a short-hand for “legitimate” and “best way forward”. But all you need to do is take a look at our current batch of MPs, or the denizens of any county council in the land to see that “democratically elected” does not necessarily mean “best person for the job”.

Of course, if Lords reform does come back on the agenda, the logical next question would be “when are we going to get full separation of powers?” How can an executive which is not directly elected (you can make a case for the Prime Minister, but not for the Cabinet – certainly not the likes of Lords Falconer and Adonis) try and claim the moral high ground by forcing democracy on a second chamber which, arguably, works far more effectively for the good of the country than the elected Commons?

There’s a lot about the way this country runs that makes little sense. The fact that the House of Lords is unelected, however, is the least of our worries. In fact, in countless votes over the last few years, the lack of an elected second chamber has been the one stopper on the government’s efforts to shunt us ever closer to authoritarianism. Without that freedom of action born of a sense of personal honour, the “glorification of terrorism” nonsense would have been passed without a fight the other day.

Appointments for life mean the whips have less power, which can only be a good thing in a system of government blighted by factions, parties and coalitions throughout its existence. And it is the age-old demon of party rivalry and party loyalty which has long been and continues to be the biggest threat to any democracy.

Every now and again the party behemoths need a shake-up; they need to be split and formed anew merely because the old ties that bind similar interests together will naturally, over the years, grow loose. Within both major parties there are so many differing opinions that their sole reason for continuing as they are is the desperate lust for power.

The Tories, under David Cameron, have known this for years now, and are still desperately trying to tame the birth of new internal factionism and prevent a new party breaking away. Having already lost the more extreme wings with the formation of the Referendum and UK Independence parties in the mid-1990s, they have a good chance.

Labour, meanwhile, seem not to have learned the lesson of the SDP breakaway; the party leadership is making no real effort to placate the discontents. The promised saviour Brown, long-dangled in front of the internal rebels, is increasingly looking like a false messiah, and it can surely only be a matter of time before enough people within the party realise that not only has it changed beyond recognition from the one they joined, but also that there is little hope of it shifting back.

Galloway’s Respect party has proved a bit of a damp squib. In that, Labour were lucky. The next time there’s a splintering, they could be set to lose far more.

And yet Blair still persists in his bloody-minded path, despite the complaints and rebellions. Concessions – as on the Education Bill – come of necessity, but always grudgingly. He has forgotten the single most important duty of any leader in a representative democracy – to effectively manage the party.

Disillusioned ex-Labour voters are already forming cross-party coalitions online through the likes of Liberty Central. It’s only a matter of time before some MPs begin to follow. Because despite all the invective spewed on the telly, in Westminster most MPs actually get on rather well, no matter what their party. Labour MPs will be chatting to Tories and Lib Dems about their discontents. And – most worryingly for the Labour leadership – thanks to the successes of the Blair/Brown partnership the single biggest obstacle to a new coalition, the economy, is no longer such a contentious issue as it once was.

Interesting times are in the offing.

But it must be said, “Big Brother” was the first thing that sprang to mind on reading that plans are afoot across the EU to increase the cover of surveillance technology.

Naturally enough, CCTV is a useful tool. But unless coverage is total, it may as well be useless when trying to catch people after the fact. I’m on the record, in the liveblog of last Thursday’s bombings, as reckoning that thanks to the massive CCTV coverage in London the guys responsible would be caught in a matter of hours. But unless the people arrested today turn out to be the bombers, which doesn’t sound especially certain, as of yet they are still on the loose. All they needed to do was leg it to an area where the cameras are not. My confidence in technology has been shown to be ill-founded.

Lest we forget, in Orwell’s increasingly prescient 1984, Winston Smith was able to indulge in activities disapproved of by the state for a fairly extended period of time, even though the government had video cameras even in his own home. Unless we get to a Star Trek scenario, where somehow Captains Kirk and Picard are able to summon up images of pretty much any part of their ship despite the fact that the Enterprise doesn’t seem to be surrounded by and permeated with vast numbers of cameras, there will always be areas which cannot or are not being watched. And even if everywhere IS covered by cameras, you still need people to watch what they are filming or (after the fact) to trawl through the thousands of hours of footage looking for suspicious activity.

Just take London Underground. There are currently 6,000 CCTV cameras down there, set to increase to 9,000. 9,000 cameras, working just while the tube is running (c.5:30am to c.12:30am) would produce 171,000 hours of footage a day. And it’s more than possible to sneak into the tube system at night to drop a few devices off, as large parts of the network start off overground – all you need to do is wander down a tunnel. The number of cameras in London as a whole is probably unknown, but would certainly run to well over 100,000 – a figure which would produce 2,400,000 hours of footage a day.

It simply isn’t practical to keep an eye on everyone all of the time. It’s not even practical to try to keep an eye on specific people all of the time. If you’re using technology, this technology can be flawed, break down, or have limited coverage. Even if you’re using security service personnel to tail people, these tails can be shaken.

In 1984, the point of the surveillance was deterrance. The camera in Winston Smith’s home wasn’t watching him all the time. But it COULD have been – and so he didn’t want to risk doing anything suspect, just in case.

We are currently dealing with people who simply don’t care whether they are spotted or not. They are prepared to kill themselves in the process of killing us – are they really going to worry about the minute chance of the watchmen actually watching when all it takes (as the apologists for last week’s shooting keep pointing out) is a fraction of a second for them to set off their bombs?

When it comes to suicide bombers, by definition deterrance doesn’t work, as deterrance implies that something worse could happen to you than you are prepared to accept. That was the whole point of the Cold War “Mutually Assured Destruction” nuclear policy. That policy wouldn’t have worked for five minutes if either the US or USSR actually WANTED to be blown to shit.

When it comes to speed cameras, there is already a commercially-available map of the country listing their locations to enable drivers to break speed limits to their hearts’ content. If our terrorist chums are as organised as we’ve repeatedly been told they are, what makes it so likely that they aren’t going to scope out their routes beforehand and find CCTV-free black spots for either their route in or escape?

Yes, CCTV is reassuring. But in the face of suicide terrorists it is precisely no use in preventing attacks. Expanding coverage will do little but waste vast amounts of money providing endless hours of footage which no one will ever be able to trawl through. Much as with ID cards, which will cost insane amounts yet still be relatively easy to get around if you’re determined to, I’d imagine that this money could be rather better spent elsewhere – for example, on recruiting and training more intelligence officers who, rather than merely observe as the cameras do, have the ability to interpret and act on information as well.

I don’t have any solutions to our current dillemma, because I for one am convinced that there aren’t any. We can not wipe out all terrorists, nor are we likely to be able to convince these particular terrorists to give up. We can, however, at least stop wasting resources chasing solutions which are nothing of the kind and try concentrating on preventing these bastards from launching their attacks in the first place rather than mopping up after the fact. And – at least when it comes to terrorism – mopping up after the fact is all that CCTV and ID cards are good for.