The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session.  Mayor Boris Johnson is in the Chair, but the Uber Vice Chair Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM (the UVCDMKMAM) is not at his side yet (he is running late), so the Mayor is flying without lights (and no hand on his tiller).

First business is a petition calling on the Metropolitan Police to retain its dedicated specialist unit dedicated to to combating the crime of human trafficking.  It is being presented by Mary Honeyball, a Labour Member of the European Parliament since 2000.   As she takes her seat to present it, it is clear that Mayor Johnson has never heard of her (or possibly the European Parliament, as John Biggs AM comments sotto voce that he thought that under the Mayor’s administration London was seceding from the European Union).

The issue is a proposal is to disband the human trafficking unit and to mainstream its activities in the work of the 32 Borough Command Units with the specialists in the unit being transferred to the central Clubs and Vice command.  There are fears that this is in reality a cost-cutting exercise, that expertise will be lost and that the focus of the work in practice prioritising one type of trafficking (prostitution) at the expense of others (eg forced labour and domestic servitude).  Mayor Boris Johnson looks uneasy throughout the discussion.  He clearly recognises the importance of the issue and perhaps is unhappy at the direction that seems to be being taken within the Metropolitan Police on how to deal with human trafficking.

The Commissioner promises that a report will come to the Authority after his Management Board has reached its conclusions.  I ask the Mayor whether he (or the UVCDMKMAM) has given a touch on the tiller steer to the Commissioner on the direction being taken.  The Mayor responds that he is keen to ensure “the maximum efficiency and effectiveness of work on human trafficking in the run up to the Olympics”.  The Commissioner smiles, so clearly he thinks that’s the right answer.  We’ll have to wait and see what it means.

I am delighted to hear that Baroness Cathy Ashton is to be the new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs.  Typically, there has been some sniping from Tory Euro-phobes like Timothy Kirkhope MEP, demonstrating yet again that the Conservative Party have difficulty understanding what the term “national interest” means in the context of the European Union.

Why is this good news?

Firstly, it is recognition of the hugely impressive work she has put in as EU Trade Commissioner – following on the similarly impressive role played by her predecessor, Lord Peter Mandelson.

Secondly, the new role is going to be pivotal in the EU and may at least initially turn out to be more significant than the part played by the new President and having a Briton right at the heart of the EU will ensure that the UK is not sidelined.

This is particularly important now that the Conservative Party have taken themselves out of the Centre-Right mainstream by the bizarre decision to withdraw their MEPs from the EPP grouping.  In the event (remote, of course) of there being a Conservative Government after the next General Election, it will be important for the UK’s standing in Europe that the UK is not seen as being only represented by swivel-eyed phobics.

Thirdly and most importantly, she will do a good job.  She demonstrated as Leader of the Lords that she could build consensus (she was genuinely a Leader of the whole House and not just of the Labour benches), and as a Minister that she could master complex detail (steering hugely complicated and difficult pieces of legislation through the House – not least the Bill ratifying the Lisbon Treaty).

My only regret is that this means that she will remain on “Leave of Absence” from the House of Lords while she remains in post.

And, of course, I also feel sorry for her husband Peter Kellner, who was one of my local Labour Party members when I held my first political office as a Party Branch Secretary when I was still at school almost 40 years ago.  I bumped into him a few weeks after Cathy’s appointment as EU Trade Commissioner, greeting him with the words “When did you last see your wife?” and detected a whiff of sadness when he replied defensively “Sunday night”.

I spent some time tonight at the Cyprus High Commission viewing a very powerful exhibition of photographs showing how a huge number of churches and places of worship have been desecrated in those parts of Cyprus that were invaded and occupied by Turkish forces in 1974.

The photographs were taken by Doros Partasides who settled in London with his family after the 1974 invasion (he also photographed the invasion itself and its aftermath).  In the last few years, it has been possible for him to return and, as he puts it, that it was “with great trepidation” he finally visited his father’s village in the occupied area for the first time in over thirty years.

He writes:

“It was if time had stopped there in 1974.  It was immeasurably moving for me.  I decided then to record these tragic images and so this long photographic journey began.

The first church I photographed was in the village of Gerolakos.  … The doors were shut.  Inside, a hut had been erected next to the altar labelled ‘KEBAB’.

From then on, wherever I went, the message of devastation was the same.  I encountered abandoned churches to the point of collapse, interiors desecrated with animal and human waste, precious frescoes defaced, altars and icon stands damaged beyond recognition; churches transformed into mosques, places of entertainment, military headquarters and watchtowers; cemetaries strewn with broken headstones, the graves themseves dug up.

My camera became my weapon.  The anger and horror I experienced served only to give me the strength to continue recording this terrible destruction of my religious heritage.”

The House of Lords today agreed to refer back a recommendation that would have given force to the House of Commons purported decision to stop UK MEPs from having passes admitting them to the Parliamentary Estate.  The House of Commons decision was intended to avoid having to allow the BNP MEPs, Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, access but would have had to apply to all MEPs.

In practice, this is not just a matter for the House of Commons.  The Parliamentary Estate is a single entity and there is currently no way in which a passholder can be prevented from entering both ends of the building; it follows therefore that as currently constituted both Houses have to agree to deny passes to particular categories of person.

The original decision to give MEPs passes was intended to facilitate communication between UK MEPs and the UK Parliament and, when the issue was brought to the Lords today, the unanimous view expressed was that this interchange was valuable and important.

There are some 12,000 passholders with access to the Parliamentary Estate – the occasional access by MEPs has not produced any visible problems.

Summing up Lord Brabazon of Tara said:

“The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I think I can honestly say that I have heard enough. [Laughter] Seldom have I heard such unanimous opposition by noble Lords on all sides and of all political complexions to a House Committee report. I can say that the committee should indeed reconsider this matter, taking into account what has been said today, and we will therefore do just that. Perhaps I may say that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is absolutely correct to refer this matter back to the House Committee, so I recommend that the House should agree with his amendment.

Noble Lords: Hear, hear.”

What was left unsaid was: why give Nick Griffin and his sidekick another opportunity to claim martyrdom?

No sooner had I finished my previous post on the dilemma that David Cameron has over Europe and the Lisbon Treaty than I discover that Mayor Boris Johnson has spoken out, skilfully prodding the sensitive skin over David Cameron’s carefully nuanced position on the issue.

Who says ambition is dead?

I’m sure David Cameron will be OK.  Old Etonians are taught how to watch their backs.

The next week will present a crucial test to David Cameron and the Conservative Party.  The issue will be one that has bitterly divided the Tory Party for the last twenty years: Europe.

Now that the Irish have voted so clearly to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, the pressure will be on for the Tories to clarify their position.  As I understand it, this is their evolving position.  Two years ago, they were unequivocal: there would be a referendum and the Conservatives would campaign for a “No” vote.  Now, the position is more “nuanced”: if after the General Election (and if by some mischance they find themselves in Government) and if the Lisbon Treaty has not by then been ratified by all EU member states, then a Conservative Government would “suspend” the UK ratification, call a referendum and campaign for a “No” vote.

And if the Treaty has been ratified by every EU member state? Well that’s the nuanced bit.  Essentially it boils down to accepting the Lisbon Treaty as fact, but having a bit of a whinge about it.

Of course, even the “easy” bit is actually quite complicated.  Now that Ireland has voted.  There are only two member states that have not yet completed the ratification process.  In both of those instances, their Parliaments have voted to ratify.  The Tories seem to be pinning their hopes on the President of the Czech Republic stalling long enough to give them a chance to “suspend” the UK ratification.

But what does “suspend” mean?  UK ratification is a fact.  It is an Act of Parliament that has received the Royal Assent.  No Prime Minister has the power to “suspend” an Act of Parliament.  A new Act of Parliament would be required to undo the ratification.  More legislation would then be required to enable there to be a referendum.  It would all take at least a year – probably more.  And what’s going to happen while all of this is going on?  The rest of Europe is not going to sit still.  Even the President of the Czech Republic is not envisaging holding up ratification beyond next June (by which time even with a May General Election the British Parliament will only just be sworn in …).

So what are the options for David Cameron?  If he wants to show real leadership, he should stop nuancing.

He has two options: either he should tell his Party Conference this week that the Lisbon Treaty is now a fact (and will be past the point of no return by the time of a General Election) or he should admit that the Conservatives want to withdraw from the European Union (with all the dire economic consequences that that would bring) and that the Tory manifesto will commit to calling a referedum to do just that.

That’s why the poll of Conservative Party members in ConservativeHome is so significant.  Only 16% of Tory Party members are in favour of accepting ratification of the Lisbon Treaty as a fact.  (Iain Dale rather innocently seems to think that this finding is such dynamite that it should have been suppressed.)  The real reason this poll has been released now (and Tim Montgomerie has acknowledged in a comment to Iain Dale that it would have been suppressed nearer the time of a General Election) is to PREVENT David Cameron showing that leadership.  There was clearly a fear that he was going to tell the Party that it had to accept Lisbon and the publication of the poll was intended to preempt that.

The effect is to raise the stakes.  If David Cameron were to go ahead and say to his Party Conference, despite the ConservativeHome poll, that the Tories will now accept the Lisbon Treaty, he would be showing some real and genuine leadership.

So has he got the cojones?  We’ll see.  But don’t hold your breath.

My webmaster (a grand title for a really nice guy who is also really good on sorting out websites for novices like me) has been cyber-squatting but for a sound political purpose.  He has demonstrated that the new European Conservatives and Reformists Group – the strange alliance that the British Tories have joined in the European Parliament – has no web presence.  So he registered one for them: www.ecrg.info.  More than three months later, there is still no official ECRG web presence.

It does highlight what a nonsense (albeit a damaging nonsense to the UK’s prestige in Europe) the Conservative Party’s stance in the European Parliament has become. 

Iain Dale has been banging on about how wonderful the Tories’ new online strategy is going to be.  If it is so good and so expert, you might have expected them to make sure that their presence in Europe also reflected this expertise.  But then again, perhaps the UK’s largest market just doesn’t matter to them.

A few years ago, the Guardian was famous for its typographical errors.  I was reminded of this when I ran into Anita Pollack, the former London MEP, at the Foreign Policy Centre fringe.

She has a book coming out: “Wreckers or Builders? – A History of Labour MEPs 1979-1999″.

I can never see her without remembering the Guardian error.  This was in the European Election results issue in (I think) 1989.  At a late stage, the editorial team had clearly decided that they should refer to the “turnout” rather than the “poll” in each euro-constituency.  They used the then cutting edge technology of “Find and Replace”.

The result was that one of London’s MEPs suddenly became – the hitherto unknown – Anita Turnoutack.

I went to an entertaining (if small) fringe meeting organised by the Foreign Policy Centre addressed by Baroness Cathy Ashton, former Leader of the House of Lords who was parachuted into the European Commission as the new EU Trade Commissioner when Peter Mandelson returned to the Government last year.

She gave a genuinely fascinating account of the negotiations at Doha (about which I readily admit I had known not a lot), but she also described how Britain is viewed in Europe and across the world.  Gordon Brown is “hugely revered around the planet” (sic) for his achievements in shaping a global response to the international financial crisis and for what he is doing through the G20 process.  She painted a vivid picture of reactions in mainstream Europe to the UK MEPs from the BNP and UKIP and to the strange positioning of the Conservative MEPs now that they have left the EPP grouping.

She also talked about the implications of the delays in ratifying the new EU Treaty.  Ireland’s second referendum is, of course, imminent, but assuming that they do vote “Yes” there remains the issue of what the Czech Republic will do.  The Czech Parliament has approved ratification, but since then the Czech Government has fallen.  There were going to be early elections in November, but the Czech Constitutional Court has ruled that the elections cannot be brought forward from next June and the Czech President has said that he will not conclude the ratification process until after the elections and there is a new Government in place.

Apparently, David Cameron is urging the Czech President to stand firm in his intention to delay ratification.  This, of course, is something of a two-edged sword for Cameron.  His pledge is to have a referendum on the Treaty, which he could presumably drop on the basis of cost, if by some chance he were to find himself as Prime Minister with the Treaty ratification safely concluded.  His hotheads are pressing him to have the referendum anyway, which they want to turn into a referendum on the whole principle of EU membership.  The Czech delay is emboldening this faction and there are moves to harden the Tory position on Europe at their Party Conference next week.

Europe is a far more divisive and corrosive issue for the Conservatives than it is for Labour (the Labour Party went through its own patch of divisiveness and corrosiveness on this thirty years ago – the Tories have still not got past that stage).  It’s all potentially a toxic Achilles Heel for Team Cameron.

I have just returned from the celebrations marking the thirtieth anniversary of the Haringey Cypriot Community Centre with which I have been closely associated throughout its history.

The Centre was conceived by a dozen local Cypriot groups in 1977 in the aftermath of the 1974 invasion which had seen the existing Cypriot communities in Haringey (already numbering between 40,000 and 50,000) augmented by some 11,000 refugees.  The concept was a Centre that would bridge the communal divide (there were both substantial Greek speaking and Turkish speaking communities in the Borough) and provide support structures within the communities themselves.

Thirty years on, the Centre still flourishes, continues to act as a bridge between the different sections of the Cypriot community, and provides a range of valued services (including a luncheon club for elders and a meals-on-wheels service, classes and training, advice services etc).

Guest of honour today was the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Demetris Christofias – quite something for a local centre to be singled out in this way by a Head of State (although he and his wife have visited the Centre in the past before he was President).

The significance, of course, is that President Christofias is now engaged in face-to-face talks with Mr Talat, the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community on the island – talks which may lead to a settlement of the divisions on Cyprus.

The Haringey Cypriot Centre, where the leadership of the Centre (both Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking) cooperate together to deliver services that meet the needs of all sections of the community, is a living model of what a future united Cyprus might be.

In his speech, however, the President did not minimise the difficulties that remain.  Although it is ground-breaking that 35 years after the invasion direct face-to-face talks are happening, there remain substantial issues: not least over the objective of a unified Cyprus as a bizonal, bicommunal federation with a single citizenship and undivided sovereignty (as specified in successive UN resolutions) versus the concept of a confederation of two equal states tacitly favoured by the Turkish government.

The people of Cyprus – of all communities – deserve a successful outcome to the talks.  The Community Centre in Haringey demonstrates that collaboration and cooperation between the communities can work.  And in that vein, I wished the President well in his negotiations.