The unitended consequences will continue with Brown

It's an interesting observation that whilst Godwin's Law states that as an "online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one" is strictly about the Internet yet it also readily applies to political discourse in the non-virtual world. More interesting perhaps is that there is no equivalent law relating to Stalin and stalinism which by all accounts was a fair nastier reality for far more people than the repellent nature of Nazism could ever have hoped too be.

Yet, particularly in the current political climate in the UK, Stalin is the subject of much of discussion when placed around the context of the coming coronation of Gordon Brown. It was, as most will recall, Lord Turnbull who said that Brown had stalinist tendencies, and it is today in the Independent that the comment is mentioned once more by Steve Richards.

Bizarrely, and this is probably worthy of a Quote of the Year award, Richards says that, "Being Stalin can have its upsides." I'm not quite sure what those upsides are exactly, unless he means that having show trials and ordering the deaths of your political enemies can actually be a pleasure - assuming your a sociopath maniac of course. What is interesting though is how the Brown campaign is indeed living up to the reputation of stalinist techniques.

Any incoming leader said Stalin - so the joke goes - should write two letters of advice for his successor. The first should be opened at the first crisis and should simply say "blame everything on me". The second should be opened at the next crisis and should say "sit down and write two letters". This was the modus operandi of the Soviet System from Stalin onwards.

When you look at the papers today we see that Brown has decided that educashunn is his "personal passion". We're told of his plans to solve the education problems we face. So, in one foul swoop he has delivered the first letter, albeit it in sub-text. "I will fix the mess" he says, thereby saying that the past ten years of Blair have been to blame for the mess. We are of course expected to forget his role in the past ten years.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre juxtaposition of commentary, another left winger, David Aaronovitch in the Times, argues that essentially, actually, Cameron is the Stalinist because of his tacit support for a Civitas proposal to put limits on immigration. He argues that,

"Governments - except for genocidal ones - can no longer control demographic change. To act otherwise risks incurring unreasonable cost or causing intolerable hardship. So the job now - the huge job - is to predict such change and manage it. The rest is Stalinism."

For Aaronovitch, these sort of immigration proposals are tantamount to the centralised planning by GOSPLAN throughout the years of Soviet ruled Russia. Of course, what's interesting here is how - actually - immigration and education, which appear to be two very separate policy areas, are linked by virtues of the age old law of unintended consequence. How so you may wonder but it goes like this.

Massive immigration in to Britain today is driven by the market. Jobs are available, but the only people willing to take them at the rate which is offered are the immigrants who see them as an opportunity for social mobility. The young native inhabitants of the country meanwhile are either too lazy, or, even worse, think themselves too clever and think the jobs are beneath their dignity.

Why would they think this? Well the answer lies within the Lefts' push on education (which takes us neatly full circle back to Brown most recent announcements). The Left's desire to get almost everyone into University, and the ever-increasing grade inflation that we are all told to be so proud of is creating a nation of young people that think they're too good to be shelf-stacker, or coffee house workers.

We are now witnessing a nation of young people that have little to no work ethic and who will not dignify a poorly paid job because "they've got qualifications don't you know!". I got "nine A* GCSEs and 4 A grade A-Levels!" is the cry from some many. By quirky twist of irony, David Aaronvitch described think-tanks like Civitas as "the sort that campaigns constantly for fewer people to go to university", and yet the campaign to get more people into University is actually the problem.

Well I say it's the problem, it's only really problem if policy wonks take a moment to think outside of the box in a freakonomic type way. If we don't do that then we just end up compartmentalising policy into its neat little boxes. This is especially the case on the Left where ideology dictates the direction of policy, rather than a more honest analsyis which take a mechanistic approach to understanding the problems and being devoid of prejudice about where causality might actually lie.

Don't get me wrong here, Aaronovitch is correct to argue against immigration control policy, but not because they're Stalinist. It's correct because without a sea-change in the ideological approach that directs the education system, we need immigrants to do all the perceived to be "crappy jobs" that our young peoplel refuse to do.

At the end fot he day of course, the rich irony is that as Brown calls for greater egalitarianism of outcome in the education system, the result will be the unintended consequence of ever increasing elitism amongst the future generation.