Unusa Karimu’s people, the Mbororo, are a marginalised semi-nomadic community of cattle herders in Cameroon. The daily persecution and exploitation they face at the hands of government and wealthy elites inspired Mr Karimu to become a lawyer so he could defend their human rights in court. Karimu talks to Salman Shaheen about his struggle against economic hardship to become the Mbororo’s first and only barrister and the far more difficult struggle to win equality for his people.

Cramped and overheated as it is, Karimu’s London hotel room is a world away from his sweltering, mosquito-infested little place in war-ravaged Sierra Leone where he studied to become a lawyer. He’s in the UK to hone his skills with Derbyshire-based charity Village Aid so he can return to Cameroon to bolster the Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association (MBOSCUDA), an organisation chaired by him which is dedicated to defending the rights of his people.

When MBOSCUDA was first established, its members were threatened with death and falsely imprisoned, languishing in jails without any charges ever being brought against them in court. But, with Karimu as the Mbororo’s first lawyer, things are beginning to change.

Karimu was born in 1980 in the village of Mentang in the Boyo district of the North West region of Cameroon. His mother died when he was three years old and his absentee father squandered much of the family’s cattle wealth. He had just enough left to fund his way through school.

“I did quite well at school, I cannot remember failing any exams,” says Karimu, who used the last of the cattle to go to university, where he graduated in law.

Witnessing the “day to day abuses” of his people, intimidated by rich landowners and corrupt government officials making a fast buck confiscating Mbororo cattle and exhorting bribes, Karimu set out to become a lawyer to use the law of the land to protect them. Despite the rarity of his academic success among a people whose literacy rate remains as low as 5%, however, Karimu had no money to go to law school.

His career, and his ambition to use his legal expertise to empower the Mbororo, might have reached a dead end there had it not been for Village Aid, a small UK charity concerned by the silent suffering of his people, which entered into a partnership with MBOSCUDA and managed to secure funding from Comic Relief to train him to become a lawyer.

“I was trained as a paralegal, providing legal services based in the community,” says Karimu. “I could advise and say where there had been violations of human rights. But we could not intervene directly and had to take the cases to a barrister.”

Karimu quickly realised, however, that for the Mbororo people to truly realise their rights enshrined, but not actualised, in law, they had to have their own barristers capable of representing them in court.

“I could not address the day to day abuses of my people unless I became a practising lawyer,” says Karimu. “So I took up the task and I went to Freetown. If you see my room where I was living, you can’t believe it. I resigned from my job, I left my house and my family and I went down to Freetown, the capital of a country that had undergone 10 years civil war. But now I have qualified and am in Cameroon, I can talk like a barrister on their behalf.”

Representing the plight of his people before Cameroon’s courts, the greatest problem for Karimu and for the Mbororo people is the billionaire cattle rancher and business magnate, Baba Amadou Danpullo. Darling of the national press, bane of the Mbororo, Danpullo has used his position on the central committee of Cameroon’s ruling party and his ownership of the Danpullo Broadcasting System (DBS) television station to make life for Karimu’s people a living hell.

“He is the main perpetrator of abuses on the Mbororo people,” says Karimu. “Because he needs a lot of land for ranching and his tea plantations he has made many evictions without any due compensation. He has imprisoned a lot of my people. Recently he made a ban on the sale of horses, which are the livelihood of the Mbororo.”

Why is Danpullo on a seemingly personal campaign of hatred against the Mbororo? Perhaps it is nothing more complex than blind prejudice. Perhaps it is because he is a powerful man afraid of groups like MBOSCUDA organising against him. Certainly he has done his best to see their members thrown in jail, while using the courts to block cases against his interests.

“DBS was saying very nasty things about the Mbororo and MBOSCUDA,” says Karimu. “We instigated a defamation action against DBS. We reported it to the state prosecutor and a summons was issued for accused persons to give their statements. As I’m speaking to you, I’ve got information from Cameroon that suggests the case will not go anywhere.”

Where Danpullo has used his considerable government influence to block cases, Karimu has used international partners and social networks to raise awareness about the issues. It’s an uphill struggle for the hitherto voiceless Mbororo, but Karimu’s work has begun to make a difference.

“The work I’m doing has made things better,” says Karimu. “I can write to the state authorities and explain things to them. They can arrest all of the Mbororo people, but they cannot stop me. So at least there is someone out there who can do something.”

One success story Karimu is particularly proud of is his intervention in a case of cattle theft falsely brought against two Mbororo men by a powerful woman.

“I represented them in court and they were acquitted based on the evidence,” says Karimu.

He believes that it was entirely a case of prejudice and if he had not been there to argue the facts, the accused would have gone to prison for at least three years each.

“Sometimes the judges are not bad, but if you are not well represented, other lawyers will make the opposition case look genuine,” Karimu explains. “We need lawyers who know the facts about their case. I was against the most senior barrister in the jurisdiction. A lawyer is always as good as his case.”

Karimu has close to 60 cases on his hands at the moment. With so many daily injustices perpetrated against his people, generating new cases all the time, it’s a big challenge being the only Mbororo lawyer. North West Cameroon has seven districts with high courts. When two of these districts have a case on the same day, even a man as passionate and dedicated as Karimu cannot be in two places at once.

“I can’t deal with all these cases alone,” he says. “We need more Mbororo lawyers. It’s not like we don’t have other law graduates who can do it. The programme is so expensive, they can’t afford to go to the law school.”

Karimu hopes his example will inspire others and attract funding for Village Aid and MBOSCUDA to send more of his people to law school.

Many challenges lie ahead. Human rights defenders in the Mbororo community continue to receive death threats, while a lot of the cases Karimu would like to take up go unreported because the abuses happen in remote areas. The problem is not Cameroon’s laws. On paper, the country’s legal framework guarantees the rights of all its citizens, including its Mbororo minority. However, as is so often the case, theory falls flat in the face of corrupt practice, poor implementation and a lack of legal understanding among the victimised. With Karimu leading the fight in the courtrooms and in the communities, there is hope for the Mbororo. If that hope is to be realised, Cameroon needs more people like him.

Abu Qatada is a nasty piece of work. Probably. From yesterday evening’s coverage of his release, it’s actually surprisingly difficult to find any specifics as to what it is he’s actually supposed to have done – according to the Guardian “judges accept [he] remains a threat to national security”, and the Daily Mail quotes someone who tells us he has “a litany of terror connections” but both are notably light on specifics. The BBC does have more details, but there seems to be a rather touching faith across much of the mainstream media that if the government wants to lock someone up without charge (especially, it seems, if that someone is brown and beardy), then we can take it as read that they must have done something, so we don’t need to be bothered with the actual details of what that is. Still, it seems unlikely that a man who’s given a sermon condoning suicide bombings and who was once found to be in possession of an envelope full of cash marked ‘For the mujahideen in Chechnya’ is completely free of links with Islamist terrorism, so let’s accept that he probably at least had such links in the past.

The fact remains, though, that he’s never been found guilty – or even put on trial – for any crime in this country. Committing terrorism is a crime. Conspiracy to commit terrorism is a crime. Inciting terrorism is a crime. “Having links to terrorism” isn’t. He has been found guilty in his absence of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in Jordan – and the British government wants to deport him there – but they’ve been blocked from doing so for the very good reason that the evidence for his conviction was obtained by torture, which as you can imagine is generally held to throw the certitude of any testimony obtained by such into doubt. And since torture and unfair trials seem to be endemic in the Jordanian justice system, I’m also inclined to be cynical about any assurances Jordan’s government gives ours about how if we do deport him we can count on them not to mistreat him.

Of course, the inevitable response to this from many will be incomprehension that we should care at all how he’s treated. There’s hysterical tabloid outrage (such as in the Daily Mail link above) about how much it’s costing the British taxpayer to have him kept under house arrest for 22 hours per day, but no outrage whatsoever at the fact that he’s been detained – for literally years – and then placed under house arrest despite never having been convicted in a fair trial of any crime. But that’s how human rights work – they apply to everyone, even nasty terrorist sympathisers. Restricting someone’s freedom without a fair trial or deporting them to a country where they’ll be tortured isn’t OK, no matter how much we might – justifiably – wish they weren’t in the UK. And no, asking “but what about the human rights of the victims of terrorism?” as Tory MP Robert Halfon did on The World at One yesterday isn’t a sensible response. “Terrorists do it, so we should too” is about the most disastrously misguided principle to apply to criminal justice that I can think of.

It’s at this point that a rightwing troll (if we had any left here at TTE) would probably interject something like “so you’d rather have suspected terrorists roaming free in the streets would you?” The simple answer is yes, I would. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, but if we’re supporting the principle of universal human rights, we shouldn’t have to pretend that the people who need theirs upholding are nice people. Abu Qatada might well be a fundamentalist preacher of hate. But if we accept that it’s OK to lock him up then you’re tacitly accepting that we live in a society where you can be indefinitely deprived of your liberty without anyone needing to prove that you’ve done anything wrong. And it’ll take a hell of a lot of would-be terrorists to be walking the streets before I accept that.

Last week’s seminar at the Frontline Club asked a very pertinent question of the Occupy London movement pitched outside St. Paul’s. What do you want? I was surprised to see from the show of journalistic hands that the majority in the room did not know exactly what the protesters are camped out for, though, given the lineup of speakers included accountant turned campaigner Richard Murphy and Julian Assange, fresh from court after losing his extradition appeal earlier that day, it was less surprising that the majority supported their broad aims.

Self-confessed occupy sceptic, Harry Cole, one of only two voices of dissent on the panel, accused the protesters of possessing an overwhelming mismatch of ideas.

“If you’ve got a movement that is calling for a realignment of capitalism, having speeches about climate change and Kurds within the space of 10 minutes, it’s not working,” Cole said.

More baffling opposition came from Daniel Ben-Ami, who described himself as of the left, but lost me when he called the protesters a deeply conservative movement loved by the establishment.

It fell to Murphy to give the most passionate defence of the movement, offering a rare charisma I had thought was bred out of accountants at playschool.

“The message from Occupy is you guys have got it wrong,” Murphy said. “After 30 years of neo-liberalism, which has actually suited both left and right in many ways, we end up with a social movement which is actually saying hang on a minute, what this is about is creating a geography of dissent. A space where people can say we are looking for alternatives ideas because our right to dissent, our right to even think has been crushed.”

“Yes it’s messy, but so is reality,” Murphy added.

Assange, confessing he had “had a bit of a busy day”, played up the importance of new forms of media and criticised the role of the mainstream press as the reason movements like Occupy were not in place five years ago.

“We now have ways to bypass the mainstream press,” said Assange, whose own means of bypassing the mainstream press, Wikileaks, has already helped topple governments, “pouring oil on the fire” that fuelled the Arab Spring.

From the speeches, particularly that of activist Naomi Colvin, and from contributions from the floor, it was clear that Occupy, despite the disparate groups that came together to form it, knows what it wants. A stand against cuts and tax avoidance and for the reform of a broken capitalism; a stand for the world’s poorest against the excesses of the world’s richest.

After my lunch breaks spent at the camp and marching on Westminster, swapping caps between journalist and protester, I find it hard to see why anyone could accuse the movement, messy and messianic as it is, of not knowing what it wants. They are persistent in their cause and assured of their politics – turning on, tuning in and dropping out in true radical spirit – and in that I can only wholeheartedly support them.

Equally, when Colvin talked of government not working in the interests of the general population and of her concern with financial services out of control, I found it hard to disagree. What worries me slightly, however, is the tendency of some protesters to link the movement to the Arab Spring.

“It’s one manifestation of a global emancipation movement that began with Egypt and Tunisia,” said Colvin.

Those make for stirring words, powerful, pretty, but also pretentious. It’s a pretention exemplified for all to see in the sign sitting opposite St. Paul’s reading ‘Tahrir Square EC4M’.

I can see what Occupy is trying to do and in showing solidarity with the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and the millions oppressed across the Arab world yearning for freedom from the yoke of dictatorship, they have a noble cause.

But where are the bullets and the cavalry charges? Where are the arrests, the beatings and the killings? I do not envy the Occupy protesters shivering in tents towards Christmas. But Paternoster Square is not Tahrir Square and they are not putting their lives on the line trying to get into it. I’m sure no one in the camp means to belittle the struggle for democracy in the Middle East, or lay claim to a struggle as dangerous, but as destructive and exploitative as modern capitalism is, as immiserating as its failings have been for the most vulnerable people in this country, the Arabs paid in blood for their emancipation, while the St. Paul’s protesters have been given a protected space by state and church – at least until the new year – in which to air their rightful grievances. To forget that, or to elevate a lengthy unseasonal politically charged festival to the status of a fundamental struggle against a sovereign that is trying to destroy you for speaking out against it, smacks of pretention.

That said, what they have done, in creating a space for discussion and democracy, linked with movements across the world, with a clear sense of what they are for and who they are against, is create a powerful symbol that politicians cannot afford to ignore.

As Sun Tzu famously wrote, “if know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles”. I suspect there will be more than a hundred battles ahead. Capitalism will not be over by Christmas and the camp may be gone by Easter. But the Occupy movement has tapped into a mood that stretches much further than a few hundred tents outside a famous London landmark. And, if indeed they do this once speak for the 99%, then that mood is not going away anytime soon.

The government couldn’t move him. In the end only cancer could. A symbol of peace and freedom, an icon of the anti-war movement and a picture of stalwart self-sacrifice for the cause of right.

Regardless of what anyone on the left thought of his tactics, I don’t think anyone could argue that he gave anything less than all of himself to ideals so many of us share. For all of us who struggle to find time to give a Saturday afternoon to protest, Brian Haw, who spent ten years camped outside the seat of power of a bankrupt ex-empire still bent on playing policeman to the world showing them the visceral evidence in bloody still-frames of all they were doing wrong, should stand as an inspiration.

While the evangelical Christian beliefs of some turned them into neo-conservative warmongers, Haw’s told him to stand up for peace and human life.

He fought a good fight, he finished his course, he kept the faith.

A version of this article was first published in International Tax Review

Bongo players, Robin Hood, men dressed as drag dinner ladies and Mrs Doyle from Father Ted proclaiming the only tea she does not like is poverty greeted activists as they filed into Westminster Central Hall to lobby their MPs. But behind the fun and frolics of Tea Time for Change, organised by seven of the UK’s leading development agencies, was a serious message. The government must act to shore up aid, crack down on tax avoidance and push for a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions to help the world’s poorest people.

Tax justice

“It’s a scandal every day that 850 million people are going hungry,” said Chris Bain, director of CAFOD, which helped organise the event. “But aid alone won’t enable us to end global poverty. Developing countries need sustainability.”

It is for this reason that tax was such a central focus of the event, which attracted 131 MPs, and activists welcomed International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell’s positive words on the subject.

“Everyone should pay their taxes due,” said Mitchell. “We champion transparency.”

Mitchell told the audience that the government is working in Rwanda and the occupied Palestinian territories to help them build the capacity necessary to ensure companies are not avoiding taxes.

Mitchell’s opposition counterpart, Harriet Harman, was even more forceful in talking about the role of multinational companies in development, pointing out that developing countries lose more through tax avoidance than they receive in aid.

“Many developing countries are rich in natural resources – in oil, diamonds, and precious metals – but their people go hungry,” Harman said. “Businesses can play a major part in helping development. But they can also be an ugly force for exploitation – the unacceptable face of global capitalism.”

Harman urged the government to act to ensure companies play their part in development and backed the Publish what you Pay campaign.

“We want the government to require companies to show what they pay in the developing world – country by country,” said Harman. “So that the world can see whether the relationship between a multibillion dollar multinational and a poor country is fair. And so that the people in that country can see that too – and hold their leaders to account.”

Chris Jordan, an economic justice campaigner at ActionAid, one of the charities behind the event, welcomed the government accepting the principle of transparency in the extractive sector, but argued that it should be wider.

“The government needs to take tangible steps before the G20, there’s no reason why transparency shouldn’t apply to all sectors,” Jordan told International Tax Review.

Financial transactions tax

Mitchell was positive on the possibility of a FTT and he stressed that using revenue from a new tax to finance development goals would not replace Britain’s commitment to spending 0.7% of its national income on aid.

“The Treasury is warm to this approach and it is looking at means to raise additional income,” Mitchell said, pointing to the report Bill Gates is preparing for French President Nicolas Sarkozy on financing for development. “We are looking at all the ways.”

Harman also supported taxing the financial sector to fund development.

“We back the demand that within Europe, in the G8 and in the G20, the Prime Minister leads on how we make the financial sector play its part in extra finance for development to tackle global poverty and climate change,” said Harman.

Campaigners were encouraged by the arguments heard from the government and the opposition.

“We welcome that the government is warming to a Robin Hood tax,” said Jordan. “We want to see those warm words turned into a commitment. Lots of the technical work has already been done, there’s no reason to delay.”

The benefits of a FTT for development, given its ability to raise large amounts of revenue with a tiny rate because of the breadth of the tax base, are obvious. So too are the difficulties. The European Commission, while giving its support to the FTT, said that it is something that needs to be implemented on a global level.

“It’s going to be most effective if it’s international, but there’s no reason why countries can’t go it alone,” said Jordan. “The concept is feasible, we already have a share transactions tax in the UK.”

The mood on the day was upbeat, with more than 1000 activists clearly excited to be drinking tea with their MPs and talking to them about tax and development. And despite the levity of the event, personified by Spitting Image comedian Jan Ravens impersonations of Sarah Palin – “When I heard there was a tea party I just had to come” – no one was in any doubt as to the gravity of the issues as the charities prepare to step up their campaign ahead of the G20 meeting in November.

“I want to share an African proverb because to me it sums up why you are here,” said Adwoa Kwateng-Kluvitse, country director for ActionAid Ghana. “When spiders webs unite they can tie up a lion.”

When you’re a member of a small party to the left of Labour, elections rarely give you much to cheer. Thankfully, the Greens (in England at least) have provided a somewhat more positive narrative for those of us who believe the Labour party’s dominance over the progressive vote is a dangerous thing.

Reading some of the party material before the election, it sounded as though the Greens were bracing for a setback in Brighton & Hove after Caroline Lucas’s breakthrough result, and losing council seats to a resurgent Labour party would have been very uncomfortable. Thankfully, they held all their seats and won ten more to become the largest party on the council.

Over at Socialist Unity, Andy Player has some good analysis of the challenges the party will now face, and the hope that those to the left of Labour might see in a rising Green Party.

After defending 13 seats and winning 10 new ones, the Green party now has the largest group on Brighton & Hove city council. The Tories dropped from 26 to 18, Labour remained on 13 and the Lib Dems were wiped off the map.

Following on from the remarkable General Election victory a year ago to the day, the Greens have made astonishing progress at a time when votes for smaller parties seems to be diminishing.

In many central Brighton seats the Greens had already replaced Labour as the progressive choice. The results in these wards were cemented by campaigning last year and large majorities increased on Thursday.

The push continued into the Labour suburbs with one seat being turned into three in Preston Park and two seats out of three taken in Hollingdean and Stanmer – with Labour deputy leader Pat Hawkes ousted.

Seats were taken from the Tories in previous Tory / Labour marginals like Goldsmid, but the shock results were in two ‘safe’ Tory wards – Central Hove and Withdean – where a Green candidate came from nowhere to top the poll.

The Greens’ relentless progress in Brighton & Hove should be of enormous interest to those on the left who believe that electoral politics play a part in the fight for a better world.

The Green party won their first council seat in 1996, adding two, then another three, and then another six at subsequent elections, plus a first Hove councillor in a by-election the year before Caroline Lucas won in Brighton Pavilion.

One lesson for the left is that the Greens in Brighton & Hove have achieved electoral success through consistent hard work. They have also built a significant layer of support amongst trade unionists and campaigners with their swift and unambiguous backing of the right causes.

The Greens in Brighton & Hove have a reputation for being honest, active and progressive. That is a breath of fresh air for many voters in this city.

Hard work and the right principles are one thing, but the crucial factor in surviving the current electoral squeeze of smaller parties is that voters believe the Greens can win. After last year’s result, that belief has mushroomed.

The Green party have now replaced Labour in most of their traditional areas and have become the opposition party in most Tory wards. Are we seeing the crumbling of Labourism – the Holy Grail for left-of-Labour electoral parties?

Some big challenges face the Brighton & Hove Green party councillors and the local party membership. The Green platform in these elections was to oppose cuts to services and to protect jobs. Taking over the council purse-strings in a time of savage cuts is not good timing for a progressive party, yet it is what the electorate demanded.

Tories, Labour and many on the left will be rubbing their hands and waiting for the new Green administration to ‘sell out’. To deliver on the local party’s manifesto is not going to be easy. But our local party has not got to where it is by being strategically naïve, vain or politically cowardly. We may have been handed the poisoned chalice, but no-one is forcing us to drink it.

“Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!” as Saint Benedict of Nursia once said.

On the same day that David Cameron and arch-Blairite former Home Secretary, John Reid, shared a platform to denounce AV, the Evening Standard came out against voting reform, patronising the electorate by basing its flimsy argument on the crazy notion that AV is so much harder to understand. I wonder what’s so hard to understand about ranking candidates in order of preference. Most semi-intelligent people have learnt how to count to five by the time they reach 18. Then again, perhaps the Tories implicitly accept that right wing voters are inherently stupid and that’s why they’re so scared of electoral reform. It might also explain why the BNP are equally opposed to AV.

Meanwhile, with a few honourable exceptions, the Greens are out in force campaigning for AV. As Waveney Councillor Graham Elliott reports:

In Waveney I know several people who voted for their THIRD choice candidate in the 2010 general election in an attempt to keep the Conservatives out. They knew their first choice (Green) would not win and they also knew that the Lib Dems (their second choice) were weak in Waveney and the contest was really a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservatives. They therefore voted Labour which was their third choice. Under AV they would have been able to vote 1 for Green, 2 for Lib Dem and 3 for Labour with no increased risk of letting the Tories in. This is just one specific example to illustrate why the current system doesn’t work. Far too many people vote to keep a party out rather than vote for they believe in. AV will allow a more honest expression of voters values.

From my time campaigning with Elliott, back when I used to live in Suffolk, I’ve come to realise that he’s one of those people whom if they’re on your side, you’re probably on the right one. And if it’s a choice between the Greens, Ed Miliband and the Lib Dems vs. The Tories, John Reid, Nick Griffin and the Evening Standard, I think it becomes clear which side has the moral highground.

Of course, as Reid’s appearance with Cameron shows, the debate does cross party lines. But, increasingly it seems, it is running along ideological ones. With a few obvious exceptions, the left are falling behind AV and the right are coming out against it. No one wants to have Nick Clegg on their team, I admit, he’s the spotty fat geek with asthma we got lumbered with because nobody picked him. But set him aside for now. The referendum isn’t about kicking Clegg – we can wedgie him in the changing rooms come the next election – this is about setting the direction of our democracy.

We can go forward or we can stand still forever. It’s time for those on the left who, for whatever genuine and principled reasons they have, have come out against AV, to look around them and see who’s playing for their team and what their agenda is. It’s time for them to ask themselves, whose side are they on?

We all know that the Alternative Vote isn’t the panacea. It’s not going to cure all the ills of our democracy. Only true proportional representation can do that. But since it’s the best we have on offer, it deserves fair consideration on its own merits.

I support AV because I believe that in a democracy, I have the right and the responsibility to vote for who I want to run the country, not who I think would be least bad out of the devil and the deep blue Tories. Under AV there is no wasted vote, no ridiculous need to squander my democratic right on tactics, no dyed pink in the wool New Labourites telling me that if I vote Green or Respect or whatever I believe is best for this country and the world, I’m letting the Tories in through the back door.

The last eleven months of Tory-Lib Dem cuts and fees have already left an unpleasant taste at the back of my mouth. But a decade of Blair’s neoconservative wars hardly made me feel much better. Like so many people I know, I marched against the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. We’d campaign against Blair for five years, shouting from the streets and rooftops, across blogs and broadsheets, but come polling day, so many of them would swallow that sick and stick their cross next to New Labour for fear of the Tories getting in. As George Monbiot told me before the last election, “As much as I dislike and am disgusted with the Tories, I think you have to vote for what you think is right. And if you cling onto something bad for fear of something worse, no one will end up with the government they want.” I will always vote for what I think is right. Under AV, I can do that safe from the fear of something worse. A two party state, after all, is only twice as good as a dictatorship, and I refuse to accept a system that allows me the choice between one of two evils.

This is exactly why Reuben was wrong to argue that AV should be voted down as the most extremist-proof electoral system. True, the BNP are voting against it, which in itself might be enough to make any sensible progressive support it, but there are more compelling reasons. What Reuben has done is mistake radical parties for parties that are unpalatable to the majority, fascists for example, who may well lose out under AV because they are less likely to be able to attract second preference votes from the mainstream, as Rupert Read argues. As Martin Kettle writes, however, the German experience suggests parties like the Greens could do very well out of AV. This is precisely because the progressive majority we hear so much about in this country will no longer feel that a vote for their conscience is a wasted one.

Some radical have argued that AV will constrain extremist viewpoints because it will encourage parties to attract the widest possible range of voters to scoop up their second and third preferences. They’re right to argue that AV is about coalition building, but I see it not as a constraining force, but an enabling one. As Labour MP Alison McGovern explained to me, this process of pre-election coalition building will naturally benefit the UK’s progressive majority. After all, Labour can look to pick up support from the Greens, the Lib Dems and other left of centre parties. In doing so, it will mean the party, already on a leftwards tilt, will be forced to abandon the banal middle ground, get off the fence and start reaching out to progressives with policies that will appeal to them. Who will the Tories reach out to? UKIP? Perhaps, but go too far down the Europhobic line and they risk falling back into their familiar patterns of disastrous infighting. The BNP? I don’t think so.

Some on the left have argued that the best reason to vote against AV is to deal a blow to the Lib Dems and cripple the coalition’s weak link. Hate Nick Clegg, vote against AV. Hang on, isn’t David Cameron doing the same thing? Don’t we hate him even more? I think we need to be more sensible in picking both our enemies and our battles. The Lib Dems may be the weaker part of the coalition, but it won’t come apart if AV fails, the Tories have thrown them enough bones and there’s no where else for them to go. It might ruffle a few backbench feathers, it might irk the rank and file, but the Parliamentary Lib Dems will stay behind the coalition because they’ve lost their clothes and the wilderness is too cold without them. AV, on the other hand, will benefit genuine progressive reformers. It is childish to put short term political gripes that we all share ahead of long-term democratic reform. Nick Clegg deserves to be the punchbag he wishes he weren’t. He deserves every expletive, every hate-filled column inch, every ounce of fight we can possibly bring to him, but the future of our democratic system is not the right battle.

And let’s not forget, this really is about the future of our democratic system. AV is far from perfect. It’s a sop, another Tory bone, a limp excuse for listening to the people and above all, it’s not proportional representation. But it’s all we’ve got for the moment. We can either say yes to meagre change, or stick with what we’ve got. If we vote down this reform, we will derail all attempts for genuine democratic reform for decades to come. Our opponents will say ‘look, no one wanted AV, there’s no demand for PR’. And the debate will die there for another generation. If we vote to pass AV, we have a platform. We have an argument to say this is just the beginning, we want more and we’ll have the power of a referendum behind us.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But when Honorious saw the Visigoths coming over the hill and decided to do nothing, it was sacked much more quickly.

That is why I’m voting for AV on May 5.

I’m sure your thoughts are with Japan. If not, read now. The death count is unbearable, the initial Hollywood-style video footage has become merely a prelude to the suffering which is happening in its wake.

Reactor explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant

In Haiti last year, the earthquake brought with it artificial disasters: US imperialism. the squabbling cash divisions of NGOs, everything except real Haitian government. Now in Japan the natural, unchangeable series of events have been worsened by the Nuclear material artificially created and left in its path. The exploding reactors are not merely a part of the natural disaster, they are an avoidable exacerbation of suffering.

A friend of mine said to me earlier today “It’s times like this that I wish I hadn’t studied physics at University.” Most of us don’t understand what the effects to a nuclear disaster in Japan would be, but many who do are saying that this is worse than the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.

Nuclear power and weapons have not gone away, we have merely taken them out of public thought. And the horrors of nuclear material remain. This is the kind of disaster which has made so many of us oppose nuclear power even in the face of climate change, even in the face of those citing the clean, safe, responsible nature of modern nuclear technology. It’s only purpose is to secure short term profit, never mind the human cost it has levied for decades in Japan, Russia and beyond. It isn’t clean, and it isn’t safe.

If any good can come out of this disaster, maybe it is that we can finally end the absurd calls for increased nuclear power, and turn our backs on its foul technology, and overturn a politics which puts short-term profit over life itself.

Cameron said: “I simply don’t understand how you can’t understand how democracies have a right to defend themselves. I would have thought this argument is particularly powerful right here in Kuwait which, 20 years ago, was invaded by a thuggish bullying neighbour who disrespected your sovereignty, invaded your country and destroyed parts of your capital city.

He added: “Are we honestly saying that for all time, forever and a day, that countries like Kuwait have to manufacture and maintain every single part of their own defences? I think very few people considering that argument for any time would give it any consideration at all.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. No one – no one – who’s criticising Cameron for taking a trip to the Middle East to talk up democracy in between visiting arms fairs is saying democracies shouldn’t be allowed to buy weapons to defend themselves. That would be stupid. The idea that nice cuddly democratic governments might still need to buy weapons from time to time is entirely reasonable. But as an adequate response to the criticism at hand Cameron’s statement falls short so badly it’s hard to know where to even begin.

First, isn’t it a teensy bit of a stretch to imply – as Cameron seems to – that Saddam Hussein still constitutes a threat to Kuwait’s sovereignty? I don’t think even Genghis Khan managed to conquer anywhere from beyond the grave.

Second, Kuwait’s a democracy now? Oh dear. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s only ranked it 114^th out of 162 countries for political freedoms, and classified it as an authoritarian regime. Boy, are they going to feel stupid when they learn that all that ‘research’ and ‘studying’ they did was a waste of time. A country where peaceful political meetings are violently broken up by riot police is clearly exactly the kind of place we want to be selling riot shields to.

This is what democracy looks like. Apparently. Image - TTC Press Images/flickr

Third – and this is so obvious it really shouldn’t need pointing out – it might have escaped Cameron’s notice, but Kuwait’s not the only sodding country in the Middle East. We’ve sold tear gas to Gaddafi’s Libya, Land Rovers and Armoured Personnel Carriers to Saudi Arabia, combat helicopters to Algeria…the list goes on. At this point I almost feel it’s insulting all of our intelligence to point out that none of these regimes are in the least bit democratic, but Cameron seems not to be aware of it, so it seems worth spelling out.

All in all, it’s hard to see how Cameron’s statement could have been less convincing. It’s as if someone had a go at him for running over a small child while five pints over the limit and he came out with a spiel about the vital role cars play in meeting our travel needs in modern society. I know politicians have a habit of being evasive when faced with awkward questions, but it’s kind of galling to see it done so brazenly.