Rule 1: There are no rules

Supposedly left-wing blogger, Oliver Kamm, writes this:

Three simple rules of politics. Governments need to take decisions on national security with the best information they have available. They are entitled to bipartisan support in doing so. And national security is not a matter of 'personal conscience': it's the first duty of government, and of any party that aspires to government.

For a start, I always distrust any talk of 'rules' in politics. Some writing about rules isn't really setting out universally accepted and agreed rules, just what they believe, and expect others to agree with. But, let's take a closer look at Oliver's three 'rules', anyway.

Governments need to take decisions on national security with the best information they have available.

Wow, really? I thought they made it on the basis of the worst information they had, or just made it all up on the spot and winged it. I believe this rule comes into the category known as the Argument from the Bleedin' Obvious. Of course, there's a huge assumption within it - that someone is capable of deciding just what 'the best information' is, but we'll let that slide for now.

They are entitled to bipartisan support in doing so.

For a start, the use of 'bipartisan' here, shows the US-centric nature of this argument. The usual term in Britain is 'all-party', but given that Oliver is one of those people who's so obsessed with the supposed 'irrelevance' of the Liberal Democrats he has to remind people of it all the time, he obviously wishes we had a nice two-party system.

The question has to be asked - why are they entitled to this support? What makes national security the issue where the government must be agreed with above all else? There's no real explanation, but then these are supposedly 'rules of politics', not things to be discussed. So, let's look at the third rule, which makes some effort to include an explanation:

national security is not a matter of 'personal conscience': it's the first duty of government, and of any party that aspires to government.

Again, we have high-sounding words, but ones without any real meaning when you look closely at them. Oliver writes about 'national security' as though it's a simple issue, one where there are agreed-upon answers to every question and where everyone agrees there is only one possible course of action. Yes, ensuring the security of the people they have been elected by is the primary responsibility of government, but that does not mean there is any agreement over the way in which that security is to be achieved.

I'm still unsure as to why Oliver has referred to 'personal conscience' in quotation marks, as though it's a fictional entity, but to claim that an individual's conscience can have no bearing in matters of national security is to hand the government an alarming amount of power. As I've already stated, there is no agreement over how national security is ensured, so there will always be dissent from what the government wishes to do, not because those opposing the policy are opposed to national security, but because they do not believe that policy will ensure national security. In fact, it may even harm the defence of the nation, and thus, it is a matter of personal conscience as, from the point of view of the person who opposes the government, the government is failing in its 'first duty' and is thus worthy of condemnation.

These supposed 'rules' are quite simply opinions, and are dangerous ones at that. Allowing a government to use the line 'well, it's a matter of national security so we don't have to discuss it, and anyway, you're not allowed to oppose it even if we do' is giving them a dangerous amount of power, even if one assumes that it is possible to determine what is the 'best intelligence' and the best course of action based on that. National security may well be the first duty of government, but to believe that there is only one possible way of ensuring national security and all must agree with it is anti-democratic and potentially dangerous to national security - if policies cannot be opposed, reformed, scrutinised or discussed, how can you be sure they are effective?