Poverty and wealth and net zero

 I have over the past few years deliberately avoided commenting on government policy in relation to the end of petrol and diesel transport and the equally vexed question of gas heating.  As I understand it, you will no longer be able to purchase a new petrol vehicle from 2030 and hybrid vehicles from 2035 and that gas heating will be phased out after 2032.  This is because of the government’s commitment to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, one of the most ambitious in the world.  In 2021, the government set two additional interim targets to run a net zero power system and reduce emissions by 78 per cent by 2035. This is part of the global effort to reach net zero.  More than 70 countries, including the biggest polluters – China, the United States, and the European Union – have set a net-zero target, covering about 76 per cent of global emissions. Yet it is already clear that the global net zero commitment will not be reached by 2050.  The Glasgow Climate Pact called on all countries to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their Nationally Determined Contributions by the end of 2022, but only 24 new or updated climate plans were submitted by September 2022.

While there is no reason why, and many reasons for having a net zero objective for 2050, we need to be clear that, although the UK is one of the twenty most polluting countries in the world, even if it reduced its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, it would have negligible impact on the overall level of global greenhouse gases.  Bodies such as Extinction Rebellion may well have called for emissions to end by the end of 2025, but science and common sense alike suggest that this is improbable. 

The government is committed to installing 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 to replace gas boilers. Heat pumps use electricity rather than gas and are more efficient than a boiler though as some users have found they do not keep their houses as warm as gas. The government is offering grants of £5,000 to help homeowners install a heat pump.  However, in February 2023, the Lords Climate Change Committee described this scheme as ‘seriously failing’. Currently, only 50,000 heat pumps are installed annually, meaning the government’s 600,000 target is ‘very unlikely to be met’.

Transport accounted for just over a quarter of UK emissions in 2021, making it the largest emitting sector. By 2028, it wants 52 per cent of car sales to be electric. In 2021, 11.6 per cent of car sales were electric. The CCC says that this is ahead of schedule and that the market is ‘currently growing well’. To meet higher demand, the government wants 300,000 publicly accessible charging points by 2030. This represents more than a ten-fold increase from present levels. It has pledged over £350m to fund charging infrastructure.

Despite government grants to improve the take-up of net zero technology, though in June 2022 grants for electric cars were stopped, convincing people to invest in the modern technology faces a major problem.  Even if individuals would like to have an electric car or a heat pump instead of a gas boiler, they face two major problems.  The first is the cost.  At present buying a new or second-hand electric vehicle is between £5,000 and £10,000 more than the equivalent petrol model.  Even before the cost-of-living crisis, this placed them well out of the pockets of much of the population.  The government appears unwilling to recognise that for most people and despite all the propaganda produced on climate change and net zero, moving to innovative technology is something that the well-off middle-classes with their often-heightened sense of being campaigners for climate change can afford and which the poorer in society cannot.  We are already a society of the haves and have-nots and the move to electric vehicles simply reinforces that.

The second issue is the technology itself.  I recognise that this is a constantly developing process and that, with time, the technology will catch up with what people want from the technology.  Recent reports suggest that the mileage possible from putting the maximum change into the car battery has been inflated by up to 50 per cent.  For instance, a friend with a new electric car was told that it would run for 250 miles and then found when he was half-way up the M5 that he ran out of charge after 120.  This is bad enough but when he tried to find a charging point, he found that the next available one was 50 miles away.  It’s not surprising that people who purchase an electric car then go back to a petrol one as the paucity of charging points and the inflated cost of their usage made popping into the local petrol station seem decidedly attractive.  It’s all very well with government producing targets for electrification of personal travel but until the cost of significantly reduced and the infrastructure brought up to scratch there is little incentive to move from petrol to electricity other than the self-satisfying feeling you get from knowing that you’re ‘on the right side of history’.

Watford FC, Luton FC and Bushey

The current attempts by Watford FC to seek a new stadium as Vicarage Road is no longer fit for purpose reminds me of a similar campaign in Luton that has already lasted four decades and yet remains to be concluded.  Kenilworth Road, Luton’s ground, is like Vicarage Road situated in a built up area and was officially opened in 1905, some seventeen years before Vicarage Road first hosted football.  In both cases, there are strong arguments for a move to a new site especially as current health and safety rules mean that the original capacity of the grounds had been significantly reduced.

The question then is not whether a new ground is justifiable but where that ground is best placed.  This process began in Luton with a proposal in 1982 to move to a super stadium in Milton Keynes to play as MK Hatters.  Not surprisingly, this proved short-lived and was dropped after vehement opposition within Luton.  The Football League refused Luton permission to move to Milton Keynes in 2000, saying that a member club was not allowed to leave its home-town. Unless this ruling has since been rescinded, it means that Watford would be unable to move to any location outside its boundaries and consequently not to Bushey.  

Proposals for a new ground adjacent to the M1 were suggested in 1995 , 2001 and 2007 by different club chairmen but were either rejected or withdrawn.  By 2012, the club was undertaking an independent feasibility study to determine a viable new location. Sites mooted included a ground built as part of a new housing development to the west of Luton and a site by the proposed Junction 11A of the M1, which is the preferred site of the local authorities.

Luton Town did not rule out staying at a redeveloped Kenilworth Road but by mid-2015 this had been ruled out in favour of a move to a new location. The club announced its new preferred location in December 2015—Power Court in central Luton, near the Mall and St Anne's Church, a 23,000-capacity stadium in the town centre that would be financed by a shopping and leisure facility next to the M1.  This was finally approved in early 2020. The Power Court location is popular with supporters as it remains within Luton, is around a mile from Kenilworth Road and not far from the railway station.  Things are currently on hold but 2020 Developments Ltd, the property arm of the Hatters has freehold ownership of the land and an uncontended planning permission.

My point is that Luton’s experience demonstrates the difficulty of developing a new ground even if it is something that the club and its supporters want.  It has taken four decades to get where we are now and the pandemic may well have an impact on the viability of the shopping and leisure facility near the M1.  What is clear about the Bushey proposal is that it has not been fully thought through.  For instance, the report in the Watford Observer on 5 March is paper-thin though this has been upped to pre-application advice between the Club and the Council in recent days.  This presumably accounts for a petition opposing the plans currently circulating…local Conservative councillors have little choice but to support this with an eye to future re-election.  There is no firm proposal as yet and, if Watford is relegated (a not unthinkable proposition), I doubt it would have the resources to sustain such an expensive project.  As Luton found, changing to a new stadium is a long road replete with pitfalls. 

Politicians return ‘to school’

Britain’s relationship with Europe over the past millennium has been one of ‘divide and rule’ and this has meant that we’ve fought against the French with the Germans, the Germans with the French, the Spanish with the French and against the French and the Spanish and so on.  In very broad terms, it’s been a successful strategy that has largely worked for the past thousand years until now…what the government has not been able to do in the Brexit negotiations is to peel off member states and get them to accept Britain’s point of view.  There are some countries, for instance the Netherlands, that are more sympathetic to the British position but that does not mean that they are willing to shatter the unit of the member states…so that’s one part of the British negotiating strategy that had been unsuccessful.  Given that EU unity is likely to be maintained and also that the EU negotiating team has said that they do not accept large portions of the Chequers agreement, you have to ask where the negotiations now stand. 

Former Bank of England governor Lord King, a Brexit supporter, has blasted preparations as ‘incompetent’. He stated in an interview for the BBC: ‘We haven't had a credible bargaining position, because we hadn't put in place measures where we could say to our colleagues in Europe, 'Look, we'd like a free-trade deal, we think that you would probably like one too, but if we can't agree, don't be under any misapprehension, we have put in place the measures that would enable us to leave without one.’  He predicts that we will find ourselves with what's been dubbed as Brino--Brexit in name only--which he said was the worst of all worlds. It's also a state of affairs that he fears could drag on for years. ‘I think the biggest risk to the UK, and this is what worries me most, is that this issue isn't going to go away, you know the referendum hasn't decided it, because both camps feel that they haven't got what they wanted.’  He contrasts the unity of the EU, the clarity of its position and the patience of its approach with the ‘the UK that’s been divided without any clear strategy at all for how to get to where we want to go.’

With Labour mired in the row over anti-Semitism for the past three months that has reinforced the often toxic relationship between Labour Party members, its contribution to the Brexit debate has been limited while the response from the Liberal Democrats has been one of studied silence.  There are growing calls for a ‘People’s Vote’ once the deal is agreed but, with the exception of the smaller parties, there seems no appetite for this amongst the leadership of Labour or Conservative parties despite the fact that, for Labour at least, it could be a general election winner.  The Prime Minister has her ‘plan’ that appears to satisfy no-one…the EU won’t accept it, many of her own party are opposed to it, Boris is as always stalking about for an opportunity to seize power, Labour’s ‘six points’ will almost certainly not be met so it will vote against any deal and a no deal solution won’t get through Parliament.  As it stands, there isn’t a majority in Parliament for any of the proposals being touted by the myriad of groups within Parliament or outside. 

This begs the question of whether Brexit is now a viable political option at all.  Polls suggest that as we move towards March next year, the number of people supporting Brexit is declining.  This is hardly surprising as, according to one study, a thousand Brexit supporters are dying every day…whether this is true or not, the support of the younger voters for remaining remains solid while that for Brexit is decomposing with some rapidity. So where does this leave the referendum result?  Could Parliament, for instance, argue that as it was ‘advisory’ and that we now find ourselves in a situation that could not have been foreseen before the referendum, the principle of representative government dictates that Parliament could vote to ignore the result and decide to remain in the EU?  Would that be an affront to the ‘democratic will of the people’?  Well, yes it would if you accept that the participatory principle trumps the representative one.  But if you do not, then there is no reason why Parliament should not exert its sovereign powers to reverse Article 50.  It would allow the country to address the real challenges ahead as Lord King said, "The biggest economic problems facing the UK are, we save too little, we haven't worked out how to save for retirement, the pension system is facing I think a real challenge, we haven't worked out how to save enough for the NHS and finance it, we haven't worked out how we're going to save enough to provide care for the elderly. These are the big economic challenges we face, but are they being discussed at present in an open way? No, because the political debate has been completely taken up by Brexit.  It's a discussion where both sides seem to be throwing insults at each other.’

Is leaving now really an option?

Let me be clear from the outset that I was one of the 48 per cent who voted remain in the referendum almost two years ago.  I was also one of those who was not surprised by the outcome of the referendum…the remain side were complacent, thought no one in their right mind would vote to leave and have spent the last two years moaning about the result and desperately seeking ways to overturn it without really providing an alternative.  I also was prepared to accept the result of the referendum even though I did not agree because that’s what democracy is.

However, two years later I am beginning to change my view.  To say that the ways in which the government and opposition have approached Brexit has been inconsistent, shambolic and a bit like the blind leading the blind is an understatement and that the way the EU negotiating team is reminiscent of Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s…non, non, non…with you give us the money and we might consider a trade deal if not, then it’s back to the dialogue of the deaf.  The problem is that the British government does not appear to have, or has yet to articulate it, a clear idea of what it wants from Brexit while the Labour Party has dithered vacillating from a softish Brexit to a decidedly softish Brexit, its current position.  So both the EU and the UK have no clear idea about what the outcome of negotiations will be. 

Now I’m not in favour of a second ‘People’s Vote’ on the outcomes of the negotiation at all…chances are it would have the some outcome as there’s little indication that there has been a significant shift in public opinion in the last two years and another referendum campaign will simply reinforce existing positions.  What I am in favour of is the Government and Opposition acting in the interests of the nation rather than on party lines to satisfy the inconsistent and incompatible demands of their own MPs and party members.  If there was ever a need for statesmanship, this is the time.  Within Parliament there is—on a free vote--a clear majority in favour of membership of the EU.  There is also a broad consensus that leaving the EU will have challenging economic, social, cultural and political consequences.  I’m not one of those who believes that if we left the EU the heavens would descend and the UK would enter a new ‘Dark Ages’.  The issue, and it’s always been the issue, is what do we gain by leaving the EU.  If you take the two issues that dominated the referendum campaign—the question of sovereignty and control over immigration from the EU—the last two years has seen important shifts within Europe that would I think make it perfectly possible to negotiate a revised relationship with the EU on these issues.

There are people who are opposed to membership of the EU root and branch and their views are not going to change whatever happens but, I would suggest most people—including many of those who voted to leave in 2016—have a more pragmatic view of things.  It isn’t a case of voting to be poorer in 2016 but, as Gordon Brown pointed out yesterday, the failure (and nothing has really changed in the last two years) to challenge the gaping inequalities between London and its environs and the rest of the country that needs to be addressed and Brexit simply does not do this.  That was the true meaning of the outcome of the referendum---an almighty kick in the teeth for the Establishment.  What a statesmanlike government would do is say: we’re going to stop the Brexit process and we’re going to focus our substantial resources on dealing with the problems in our own country.  Brexit is essentially an irrelevance in that…it’s done its job in highlighting the real issues facing the UK.

Paradise and taxation

When Sir Vince Cable, having criticised the government for not clamping down on offshore tax havens trading under the British flag, added ‘The Paradise Papers suggest that a small number of wealthy individuals have been able, entirely legally, to put their money beyond the reach of the Exchequer’, he was making what is the single most important thing about this situation.  UK’s tax law allows the use of offshore tax havens.  It may be galling for the rest of us who, as John  Macdonald said this morning, go to work and pay our taxes and who cannot afford to pay for the skills of tax lawyers and accountants to massage our tax returns.  You have to ask yourself the question…if I was rich enough would I invest in legitimate overseas funds to avoid paying tax?  You might like to take the moral high-ground and but the answer is that you probably would.

The HMRC has a commendable record of getting people and companies to pay their taxes and has collected £160bn by tackling tax avoidance, evasion and non-compliance since 2010. Jeremy Corbyn has suggested the Queen, among others, should apologise for using overseas tax havens if they were used to avoid taxation in the UK.  The Duchy of Lancaster that manages royal finances has already said that it was audited and legitimate. He also said anyone putting money into tax havens for the purposes of avoidance should ‘not just apologise for it, but recognise the damage it does to our society’.  The difficulty is that if it is lawful for individuals to avoid paying taxes by using tax havens, why should you apologise for it.  You may well be a grasping, mean-spirited, amoral individual but if you can live with that and the ‘damage’ you rain down on society, then you are acting perfectly legally…your moral compass may be off by a mile but you’re acting within the law…so that’s alright then!!!

A series of ‘Ds’…

The state of the West can be summed up in a series of Ds: ‘demoralised, decadent, deflating, demographically challenged, divided, disintegrating, dysfunctional, declining’. The chronic problems include economic failure as a result of the 2008 financial crash, verse demographics and a sense of ‘impotence’ in shaping world affairs in the face of the so-called ‘barbarians’ inside as well as outside the gates. Some of those who are challenging the West, such as China, are altering the rules of the game. Others, such as Russia, simply and wilfully flout them, while ISIS simply wants to burn the clubhouse down. Something is not working properly. There is a lack of social trust and powerful monopolies are rigging markets. Equality--or rather fairness--is under threat and this helps to explain why Western voters are turning to authoritarian populist hucksters and demagogues and economic protectionism.

 

 

 

In the workplace, there is a gulf between permanent workers with legal protections and job security and those on temporary or zero-hours contracts, whose rights are no more elaborate than the phone call telling them they are needed that day. Various questionable forms of human resources management  are used to distance overworked and underpaid contract personnel from the parent corporations that in reality govern their working days, as a recent documentary on Amazon delivery drivers showed. Banks, hedge funds and technology companies spend huge sums on lobbyists to keep regulation soft and corporate taxes low, despite nearly collapsing the global economy in 2008 with their artificially confected financial products. It should come as no shock that so many ordinary people think that every political system is rigged against them by big money. Many young people think the system is also rigged by the pampered over-sixties, the ‘baby-boomers’ who are more assiduous voters and have the full attention of the politicians they effectively elect, though the intergenerational warfare that alarmists predicted is not in evidence. Money buys much more than a few biddable political friends. Access to the best private schools leads to admission to top universities. Privilege is reinforced by informal networks acquired at elite institutions and ‘associative mating’ that is then reproduced in the next generation.

Big money also has a strong political voice. Many commentators argue that democratic political systems are being corrupted by vested interests every bit as powerful as the overmighty trade union barons of the 1970s. Two US Supreme Court rulings in 2010 and 2014 allowed rich corporations and individuals to make unlimited political donations, on the grounds that their constitutional right to free speech would otherwise be infringed. Donald Trump played on this to his advantage in the 2016 election campaign, frequently stating that he did not need anyone else’s money. Geert Wilders does the same in the Netherlands, ostentatiously declining state subvention though he allegedly receives money from anti-Islamic organisations in the USA. We have taken our democracies in the West for granted for too long.

Let the divorce begin!!

With the Article 50 letter sent on Wednesday and the EU response yesterday, we have a (slightly) clearer idea about how the negotiations will proceed over the next two years. Those who said during the referendum campaign that leaving the EU would mean leaving the single market and customs union has--despite the incredibly weak remoaning argument that the people weren’t asked if they wanted to leave them—again been confirmed.  Those who argued that the UK could leave the EU and yet remain in the single market were never going to get that point accepted; as several European leaders said, you can’t cherry-pick the bits you want and leave the bits you don’t.  Since control over immigration was a significant issue in why the country voted to leave, leaving the EU always meant leaving the single market…there was no way that the EU would concede abrogation of what is regarded as one of the four key principles of the Union.

 

Central to the UK leaving is the question of control.  As a society the referendum suggested that we are prepared to give up certain things—and that may include a slower rise in standards of living—so that we have control over our own destiny.  What seemed like a good idea in 1975 is not seen as being the case today.  There have always been some who were opposed to its membership but since the global crisis after 2008 that accelerated and was reinforced by the crisis in the Eurozone over which the EU had some control and the mass migration from the East and South over which its response was little short of shambolic.  The problem was that the EU seemed incapable of introducing the fundamental reforms necessary after 60 years in existence—does what applied in 1957 still apply in 2017?  Well for the many integrationists in the EU, it appears that its fundamental principles are non-negotiable as David Cameron found to his cost. 

The government has been talking up how they see the negotiations progressing while its opponents just keep banging on about how bad it’s all going to be, a reflection of their reticence towards the referendum result. Where we end up will be somewhere between the two extremes…a free trade deal that’s not as good as the single market but good enough…a compromise on both sides if the negotiations are handled well.  But it all could come to nought if Spain vetoes the deal over the contested position of Gibraltar despite its acceptance of the principle of self-determination and the EU including this possibility in its response to Article 50 was inept.  Gibraltar may only have a population of 30,000 people but it would be a grave error to think that the UK would bargain Gibraltar’s position to get a clean Brexit.  It may appear as a minor issue in the negotiations but it’s the little things that can lead to negotiations failing.

Reviewing 2016: A second stab

After Brexit came the election of Donald Trump as the US President.  If Brexit was a shock, Trump’s election was an earthquake…no one thought he would get the Republican nomination let alone win the election against the experienced if not popular Hilary Clinton.  The election campaign, especially its last weeks, was one of the most visceral I’ve ever seen with making promises that he will need to honour—though in some cases this is unlikely—with the FBI saying it was reopening investigations into Hilary’s private email server ten days or so before election day and then withdrawing from investigation a few days later when the damage to Hilary’s already fragile reputation was done.  With Hilary wining the popular vote but Donald gaining the electoral college votes and the presidency, the result was hardly a ringing endorsement of the processes through which American democracy functions.

 

 

One of the major criticisms of Trump in the election campaign is that he has little experience of Washington but this misses the point that it is precisely because he has no experience that he was elected.  His brand of authoritarian populism, his notion of ‘American First’ appealed to those Americans for whom globalism has paid no dividends and whose lives have been blighted by the impact of untrammelled global free trade and who see no real benefit from the United States acting as the arbiter of global affairs.  What Trump is is an extremely successful if ruthless businessman who tweets what he thinks and who had vast experience in running and particularly managing things and increasingly people believed that he had the skills necessary to bring an expanding federal state to heel by not being prepared to do things the way they’ve always been done.  For the electorate this is his greatest strength but it is also his greatest weakness as the whole panoply of the Washington establishment will be against him and will obstruct his changes.  For a US President to get his policies accepted by Congress, there needs to be a degree of consensus; without this he becomes a ‘lame duck’ with the Washington political elite—and it has inexhaustible patience and ability to ‘dig the dirt’--simply waiting for his term of office to expire. 

 

 

Reviewing 2016

2016, the year that the ‘commentariat’ got just about everything wrong!  It was supposed to be a victory for ‘remain’ and Hilary Clinton preparing for her inauguration as US President half way through next month…well, no.  Britain was supposed to make a further…if perhaps reluctant…commitment to the European Union with an economic meltdown if this did not occur as companies abandoned what would become the Titanic of economies; that voting leave would result inevitably according to David Cameron and other ‘remainers’ in leaving the single market and the customs union, something now denied by the ‘remoaners’ and especially the Liberal Democrats who respect the referendum result—remember it was advisory not binding--but want to have another just to make sure and perhaps a third one for two out of three!!  The irony is that, although three out of four people eligible to vote did so, the percentage was lower amongst younger votes, some of whom are now complaining that the ‘baby boomers’ have stolen yet another part of their inheritance.  Brexit was not expected to happen and neither side in the debate had made any real provision for this eventuality…any sensible government would have taken steps to plan for Brexit even if they didn’t expect it to happen.  And when it did, instead of staying on to help with the transition to a new Prime Minister and to sort out the mess of his own choosing, David Cameron simply quit within hours of the result…it was a bit like, ‘well you didn’t take my advice, so I’m off!!’  Almost a hissy fit!!!!!

 

 

So why did England and Wales vote for Brexit?  Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain, though in NI’s case by a small majority.  This in itself caused problems as Scotland then demanded some sort of accommodation with the EU to recognise that it did not vote to leave.  This raised significant constitutional issues that have yet to be resolved…how do you accommodate a devolved, but not federal, structure within a unitary constitution?  The result is that Scotland demands that it has a special status under devolution in relation to the referendum despite the fact that the UK as a whole voted for Brexit by a significant if not enormous majority.  We may still be a ‘United’ Kingdom in theory but in practice that is clearly no longer the case.  This explains why the current mantra is ‘Yes, we accept the result of the referendum and the will of the people….but!!!!!’  The metropolitan elite cannot understand it and, if some of the recent comments in the press are a good indicator, some are still in denial about it all…they’ll wake up from a bad dream and the referendum won’t have taken place.  It’s the Peasants Revolt all over again but this time the peasants have got what they want…or have they?  Just as Richard II and his ministers betrayed the peasants in 1381 so constitutional niceties, legal arguments, practical politics and the realities of negotiation from March 2017 may well see yet another betrayal…this is what we’ve negotiated and Parliament’s agreed so that’s it whether or not there’s control over free movement of people or complete severance from the EU…it’s economics silly!! 

The reality is that because there was little planning for Brexit, the whole thing is a mess.  Whoever allowed a referendum bill to go through Parliament that did not specifically make the result binding was really incompetent…I cannot believe that nobody noticed that.  A conspiracy theorist might well argue that this was deliberate so that government could twist its way out of taking account of the result if it was leave…though I tend to the cock-up theory of politics.  And of course it’s also a mess for the EU…it has as little an idea of what Brexit will mean in practice as the government.  Yes it’s all…well don’t expect an easy negotiation from us but it then has to get through all 27 countries and how do you do that successfully? No one knows.  It’s almost a back of the cigarette packet situation. Yes it would have been easier to stay within the EU…certainly my own view…but that’s not how the people voted.

The West’s blame and the West’s shame

Watching Newsnight yesterday evening was one of the worst examples of a political post-mortem I think I’ve ever experienced.  The subject was the imminent fall of Aleppo to the Russian supported government of President Bashar al-Assad that commentators think represents perhaps not the end of the civil war but the beginning of the end of the civil war.  Aleppo itself may not matter much on Moscow's strategic chess-board. But the defeat of the rebel opposition there underscores the extraordinary turn-around in President Assad's fortunes. Before Russia intervened President Assad was on the ropes, his military power crumbling; now it looks as if he’ll win.  The West’s response…a fiery exchange at the UN, with US Ambassador Samantha Power accusing Syria and its allies of contributing to ‘a noose around civilians’ asking  ‘Are you truly incapable of shame?’

She is, of course, right. The civil war has been characterised by a total indifference to the fate of civilians who have been subjected to unspeakable atrocities, a new barbarism.  But the West is also culpable.  Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003—either an unprovoked assault on an independent country that may have breached international law or something authorised by United Nation sanction—the West has completely failed to stabilise the region and arguably has made the situation worse.  By removing despicable dictators in Iraq and then in Libya, initiating regime change and then failing to provide the mechanism to create a stable future, the West has been guilty of gross stupidity.  The scenario seems to have been…remove dictator, establishing a western style democratic government, let the liberated people get on with this and then act surprised when it all falls apart.  What this shows…apart from the hubris of the West…is that you can’t simply transplant democracy to countries with no real tradition of liberal democratic institutions.  The same applies to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’---I remember commenting on my blog at the time that the 1848 European revolutions came to mind…things that shone brightly and briefly and were then snuffed out by the forces of reaction…and so it was.  The West encouraged political aspirations and then expressed surprise when things did not turn out as they believed they ought.  The West’s interference in the region has largely been disastrous.

As the bombs continue to fall on Aleppo and its people, we sit well fed in our warm, comfortable houses and wring our hands at the inhumanity of man.  We moralise.  We call for the war to end, for the evacuation of civilians, for the feeding of the people starved for weeks.  We give words…words…words.  But we do nothing.  In fact, words are all we can give as the West has effectively abdicated any responsibility it may have felt for Syria.  I am reminded of Sir Humphrey’s words on the principles of foreign policy…’perhaps there was something we could have done…but it’s too late now!’

In denial

One of the things that struck me particularly about last night’s Newsnight Special, was the extent to which Democrats remained in a state of denial not only about the election of Donald Trump but also about the reasons why he won.  There was a palpable sense in which they simply could not believe that their neo-liberal experiment had been rejected by a substantial proportion of the population; a remaining belief that they were the ‘establishment’ and that they had a God-given right to rule and that the people had been duped by a demagogue with promises that he would be unable to carry out.   It was the same with Brexit where few were prepared to saw the ‘Leave’ would win, something many ‘Leavers’ also thought.  The polls in both Britain and the USA got it badly wrong and political elites across Europe—with national elections in 2017—are looking with increased scepticism at polls that suggest they will win and the populist resurgence will fail.  The issues which the political establishment have failed to address are broadly the same across the western world—the benefits of global economic prosperity have not be spread across society with those that have gaining more and those without losing further; the impact of uncontrolled immigration; a burgeoning sense that government is unresponsive, unaccountable (yes we have elections but the result is simply more of the same) and corrupt; and, the overarching sense that the democratic experiment is under threat from globalism and global institutions whose power is increasingly pervasive and linked to national institutions and elites.

 

Old and New or Old and Old?

This sense of denial is evident in the ways in which Brexit has to date been managed.  There had been virtually no preparation in case of a Leave victory; the assumption was that Remain would win (just) and that this would give the EU such a shock that it would give the UK the reforms it wanted.  The government and civil service had done little; the Leave campaign had made lots of statements about what would happen after Brexit but had not formulated them as anything more than rhetorical flourishes.  The 24 June and 10 November—the day after the vote—found the political elites in a position they never imagined. Most British politicians say, at least publically, that they accept the ‘will of the people’ adding the all important ‘but’.  ‘But’ is the establishment’s response to the referendum.  Yes we know ‘Brexit means Brexit’ but what does Brexit mean in practice.  Apart from a few diehard ‘remoaners’, we are going to leave the EU but on what terms?  The legal decision means that triggering Article 50 means that Parliament will have a statutory input but are we talking a rubber-stamping the legislation or is it something up for debate and amending?  And the negotiations should they be left to the government…it’s right when it says that you can’t give a running commentary as it would compromise your negotiating position…or should Parliament have the final say or the people through a second referendum?  The problem with the government’s position—and the EU Commission is right here—is that it wants to be shorn of the institutional dimensions of the EU whilst retaining as closely as possible the current economic benefits of membership; a case of one foot in and one foot out, a hokey-cokey solution.  Now that really is denial.

Globalisation and nativism

Talking to an eminent pollster this afternoon I was struck by the number of occasions she said ‘But that’s not what was supposed to happen.’  But then she’d said the same thing after the Brexit victory in late June and she could well be in the same position if President Le Pen takes over in France.  I was also struck by the number of occasions in the weeks leading up both to Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory that commentators said that people’s common-sense dictated that they would vote for the status quo and that they would not vote for ‘walking off a cliff’.  What both victories show is that globalisation has not spread its benefits across society and that many people, especially the white working-classes, not only feel that they have been left behind by global trends but that their feelings reflected the harsh realities of economic change—deindustrialisation because things can be manufactured more cheaply abroad but government had provided no alternative economic opportunities for those who lost out.  Brexit should have warned the Democrats of the consequences of failing to listen to working-class anger…but no, the political establishment continued down their road to political emasculation undaunted.

 

 

 

 

What has happened in the last decade has been a shift in people’s attitudes to globalisation though it was already a growing force before the financial ‘crash’ of 2008.  Globalisation in the West resulted in the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer and the middle- and working-classes feeling forgotten by an establishment whose sole aim appeared to be ‘let’s make money whatever the social cost’.  This may have been a tenable, if morally bankrupt, position while those beyond the charmed establishment circle were content with the crumbs from their masters’ tables…the financial crash changed all that.  People became viscerally angry with bankers who appeared to wield power without responsibility knowing that the state would be compelled to bail them out if things went wrong and arrogantly most appeared not to care complaining that they no longer had their six-figure bonuses slashed and expecting society to understand.  And, of course, the establishment did what was expected of them…they used tax-payers’ money to bail them out. No bankers went to jail because of their reckless roulette behaviour.  Did bankers’ behaviour change?  Well, there were a few mea culpas but then things adapted to the new circumstances and bonuses were back, interest on savings was slashed and bank profits began their upward trajectory again.  The establishment might have thought…problem solved but bailing out the banks was one thing but bailing out other industries and protecting jobs, that’s something very difficult…nationalising banks might be a good thing, but nationalising steel production that’s another thing.  So the bankers, seen as part of the establishment, were protected but steel workers were not…yes the government made all the right noises but the end result was always the same…stagnant wages, unemployment, community disintegration, deindustrialisation and cheaper foreign imports and losing out to the economic rebalancing that comes with globalisation.

At the same time that many in the working-classes felt under pressure, levels of immigration increased with growing numbers, often fleeing conflict, crossing international borders in search of economic security.  For proponents of globalisation this was a good thing…if you allow unfettered immigration then wages will fall—a simple result of supply and demand--and profits rise.  The problem was not immigration itself but its rapidity and scale…too many immigrants too quickly placed pressure on infrastructures already stretched by austerity policies across the West.  Again it was the white working-classes that disproportionately bore the brunt of this process…it was their services that were under pressure whether in education, health or housing; it was their jobs that were threatened by being undercut by cheap immigrant labour; it was their communities whose cultural character changed in a matter of a decade.  And the establishment, well, did very little…it did not provide the finance necessary for local authorities to build more cheap housing, new schools and hospitals.  Is it surprising that the level of ‘hate crime’ and racially aggravated offences increased?  In the UK, whether you could deport people or not was a matter no longer decided in London but in Brussels while in the USA support for ‘Trump’s wall’ was symptomatic of the depth of the establishment’s failure to understand people’s anger and that this anger was being directed against migrants.

Nativism and populism—usually together—tend to occur where sections in society feel that their status is in some way threatened or compromised by the uncaring attitude of the liberal political establishment.  Its character may vary but it is based on the dualism between them and us.  Brexit in many respects represented ‘institutional nativism’ where them is the increasingly pervasive interventionism of the European Union and us is the reclaiming of British sovereignty…the nativist question is where ought power in Britain lie?  The establishment had, since the referendum in 1975, maintained its support for the European Union as an economic institution though increasingly not as a political one…Britain always saw itself as ‘exceptionalist’ in relation to the EU with its non-adoption of the euro, its rebates and red lines where the hope was that the EU would reform itself at satisfy the establishment’s wish to remain a member.  Yet, for the past twenty years, the people increasingly and inexorably moved away from that political position…was promised an input through referendums that never occurred and which, had David Cameron not decided to slay the Eurosceptic dragon in his own party, would probably still be the case…there were always good reasons from the political elites not to ask the people, they might get the wrong answer (which of course they did).  As with Trumpian nativism, migration became a central issue on Brexit building a wall—whether symbolic or actual in the USA is unclear—as a means of controlling immigration though what ‘controlling’ means is unclear.  In the United States, unlike in Britain, nativism is linked to isolationism, the policy of the 1920s and 1930s…the view that we need to make America ‘great again’ at home, addressing the anger of the white working-classes among Trump’s key supporters if necessary, and unlike the UK that sees its future in global free trade, through protectionism and by building economic, political and military strength at home.

 

Brexit and Trump’s decisive victory are both revolts against neo-liberal establishments and elites that were not merely deaf to the concerns of the working-classes but never entered into any form of dialogue with them.  They appear to have assumed that they knew what the proper directions were for the UK and USA and, I suspect it never even entered their mind until it was too late, that many people thought it was the wrong direction.  The neo-liberal elites in Europe are under sustained attack.  Marine Le Pen wants France to leave the EU and will contest the presidential elections next year and so does Bepe Grillo leader of the populist Five Star Movement in Italy.  Italy will hold a constitutional referendum in December that may unseat Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.  There are also strong anti-EU parties in the Netherlands and increasingly in Germany that won a surge of support in September’s local government elections.   The liberal consensus that has been a central feature of political discourse since 1945 is now in tatters. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reacting to judgements

Conservative MP Dominic Grieve said the criticisms over the High Court judges' decision were ‘horrifying’ and reminded him of ‘Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe’.Three High Court judges found that the government could not start the formal process - the triggering of Article 50 - of leaving the EU by using the royal prerogative alone, and would need the backing of Parliament.  There have been many occasions in the past when judges have made ‘political’ decisions that have been unpopular with one group in society or another and they have faced the opprobrium of the public and not only were they regarded, to use the headline in yesterday’s Daily Mail, as ‘enemies of the people’ but especially in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries paid with their lives.  This was before the ‘independence of the judiciary’ was established in the early eighteenth century.  Let us be clear, the appellate judiciary in the High and Supreme Courts are asked to make decisions on points of law and, while they may well have their own views on Brexit—it would be surprising if they did not—that was not the issue on which they were asked to adjudicate.  They were simply asked whether the government had the right to trigger Article 50 without there being a vote in Parliament. To my mind rightly, they decided that the government could not use its executive powers because it would mean effectively overturning an act of Parliament, the domain of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

 

 

Labour has urged the government to come out and defend the three judges behind the controversial High Court ruling on the process of leaving the EU and  called the silence of Justice Secretary Liz Truss ‘embarrassing’ and said she had ‘let down’ the judiciary. 

The reaction to the judgement highlights the ignorance many of us have about the nature of the judiciary and the basis on which it makes decisions.  While the effect of the judgement has political consequences, it was not—and this was something the judges recognised in their statement about it not being political within the judgement—a political judgement but simply a restatement of what the law has been since the seventeenth century: the executive does not have the right to dispense with laws by decree.  Those who called for Brexit wanted Parliament to assert its sovereign powers and this is precisely what this judgement allows them to do.  You might not like the judgement and it might be inconvenient but you’ve got what you voted for…a sovereign parliament asserting its rights.

The critical question now is how Parliament uses those rights.  We know that the Lords largely supported the ‘Remain’ position whilst the Commons also had a less clear majority in favour of remaining.  But the people have spoken and most of the MPs interviewed in the media suggested that they would vote for Article 50…assuming a one line bill…but the Lords appear less clear.  There have been calls for transparency about what the aims of the negotiation will be and resistance from the government to what it calls a ‘running commentary’ on the issue.  The problem with this is that there is little consensus among those calling for transparency over what that actually means in this context.  Should the government simply lay down the broad principles…’we want to achieve a, b and c…that it seeks to achieve?  Well, yes but nothing more…you cannot have a situation where 650 MPs are effectively the negotiating team for Brexit…it simply won’t work.  Once it has completed its negotiation should it bring this back to Parliament for approval…again probably yes…but whether Parliament can then amend those conclusions or not becomes difficult.  Presumably the EU will say after the negotiations…this is what we’ve agreed, you have to accept it and if not, you leave the EU with no agreement about further relations.  We all knew that Brexit was going to be messy; Thursday’s legal judgement simply messed things up a little more. 

Brexit…A Never-Ending story

The High Court has ruled that the government does not have the power to trigger Article 50 - to start formal exit negotiations with the EU - without the approval of Parliament. What parliamentary approval means is unclear because the High Court did not specify.  So it could mean full legislation or a resolution, either by the House of Commons or from both houses. A resolution could be quicker and simpler, allowing the government to seek a very narrow resolution from MPs that grants approval for the triggering of Article 50. But using a narrow resolution could also be challenged in the courts, whereas full legislation should be watertight. Full legislation would be more complicated and time-consuming because it would require debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, allowing amendments to be tabled that could, for instance, limit the government's freedom in negotiations about the UK’s future relationship with the EU. 

In effect, the legal judgement—that will be appealed to the Supreme Court (but could it then be appealed to the European Court of Justice?)—reiterated the principle  laid down in 1610 during James I-Vi’s reign that the prerogative powers of the Crown—today exercised by the Prime Minister—do not have precedence over the powers of the legislature.  In the Case of Proclamations Sir Edward Coke stated ’the King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him’  while the Bill of Rights 1688 confirmed this by stating that suspending and dispensing with ‘laws or the exercise of laws by regall authoritie as it hath been assumed and exercised of late is illegall’.  Parliamentary sovereignty has also been recognised in many leading cases as the highest constitutional authority.  The case centred round the argument that prerogative powers could not be used to invoke Article 50 because it would result in abolition of rights established in the 1972 European Communities Act without the legislation being repealed by Parliament.

Campaigners who brought the case insist it was about ‘process not politics’ and the High Court made clear that there’s was not a political judgement but the decision has huge implications, not just on the timing but on the terms of Brexit.  It lays Parliament open to criticism that it is trying to subvert the will of the people expressed in the referendum…ah, well the referendum was only advisory and not binding on Parliament…so we’ve listened to what you say but we have to act in the ‘national interest’ and the national interest dictates that we don’t really leave the EU.  It could also lead to a constitutional crisis between the elected Commons where most MPS will probably support Brexit—the question is not whether but what form it should take—and the unelected Lords that was largely in favour of Remain.   The potential for this increases the likelihood that the Prime Minister will call a General Election early next year.  There are certain advantages in doing so with the polls giving the Conservatives a clear victory as well as the potential for a Labour meltdown.  Assuming that she won, the Prime Minister could put invoking Article 50 into the manifesto that would head off problems with getting the necessary legislation through the Lords (it can’t vote against legislation contained in the manifesto). 

What happens now is far from clear.  An appeal will be held over five days in early December and if, as I suspect will be the case, what is an unequivocal High Court decision is upheld, the government will need to introduce legislation in early January 2017 (or even before Christmas) to seek parliamentary approval to invoke Article 50.  The High Court stated that once invoked Article 50 could not be revoked…Lord Kerr, the author of Article 50, had stated before the judgement that the process could be stopped if both parties agreed.  Though some MPs will certainly vote against invoking Article 50, having voted for a referendum by 6:1, it seems probable that any legislation will pass the Commons with relative ease so long as MPs are given some information about what the government’s plans are; the House of Lords is more problematic and prolonged resistance might result in the use of the Parliament Act to get the bill through.  If this was the case the planned timetable for leaving the EU would be thrown into question with Article 50 not invoked until much later in the year or even 2018.

Nigel Farage said that the ruling could be the start of a ‘deliberate wilful attempt’ to ‘betray voters’ and an attempt to ‘water down what people had voted for’.  Whether this is right or not, what we have seen today is a reassertion of the authority of the political elite at the expense of the popular will.  While we may still leave the EU, the decision about what ‘leaving the EU’ means will in practice l be what the political establishment decides and I am certain it will use the nebulous notion of ‘in the national interest’ to justify their decision.

1066 and Brexit

In a week’s time it will be the 950th anniversary of the one event that most people in Britain know…the Battle of Hastings.  It is no surprise that this totemic event has been linked to the equally totemic decision to leave the EU…the one was when England lost her independence before the Norman onslaught; the latter when the people of Britain took back that independence from the hordes of EU technocrats…a case of one in the eye for Brussels!!! 

The events of the summer and early autumn of 1066 are well known. On 25th September, the combined armies of Earl Tostig, brother of King Harold, and King Harold Hardrada of Norway, were defeated at Stamford Bridge. Upon his return to London, King Harold received the news of Duke William’s landing at Pevensey on 29th September and within a fortnight the battle of Hastings took place. King Harold was killed and with him the greater part of the English nobility. Duke William’s victory, the carnage of the battlefield, and the retrospective significance of the heavenly sign portending victory were at once reported all over Europe.  Britain lay at the heart of the globalisation of northern Europe in the eleventh century with the rapid expansion of the Viking trading empire…yes there was a Norway option even then!!

Many Norman families were of Scandinavian descent and retained memories of their Viking forebears. However, links between Normandy and Scandinavia weakened with time, and there is little evidence that in the period from the 1020s that the dukes of Normandy maintained relations with the Scandinavian realms in the way that they clearly did with the Scandinavian kings of England, Cnut, Harald and Harthacnut. When William became king of England in 1066, however, he was obliged to pay attention to these realms because of the threat represented by Denmark in particular. He had little to fear from Norway, because King Harald Hardrada, together with Earl Tostig, had perished. But King Sweyn Estrithsson of Denmark was a nephew of King Cnut of England; moreover, a sister of his father Ulf, called Gytha, had married Earl Godwine and was the mother of the Harold who died at Hastings. These dynastic links encouraged, in Sweyn Estrithsson and subsequently in his eldest son and successor King Cnut IV the ambition to reunite the kingdoms of Denmark and England. Svein Estrithsson gave active backing to the Anglo-Saxon rebels in England, besides invading England himself in 1069 and 1070. His sons invaded England again in 1075. And yet another invasion was planned in 1085 by Cnut IV in alliance with his father-in-law, the Flemish Count Robert ‘the Frisian’. This never materialised and was the last attempt to oust William from the English throne. 

Three sources are relevant with regard to Scandinavia. The earliest is a poem, which gives us a glimpse of how the Anglo-Danish community felt a decade after the arrival of the Normans. It was written in England in 1076 by Thorkill Skallason, a Danish skald[1] in the service of Earl Waltheof, shortly after his master had been executed by King William for his involvement in the 1075 rebellion. His view of William is understandably bitter[2].

“William crossed the cold channel and reddened the bright swords, and now he has betrayed noble Earl Waltheof. It is true that killing in England will be a long time ending. A braver lord than Waltheof will never be seen on earth.”

The second source is the History of the Archbishops of Bremen, written c. 1080 by Adam of Bremen, a clerk at the archiepiscopal court[3]. His testimony is important because in 1068 or 1069 he visited King Sweyn Estrithsson and may have incorporated some of the king’s views. He justifies a digression on 1066 by reminding his readers that the battle of Hastings was great and memorable and that it had happened in England which of old had been subjected to the Danes. Adam calls Harold Godwinson a ‘vir maleficus’ who usurped the throne of England. He continues by saying that Harold killed not only his brother Tostig, but also King Harold Hardrada and the king of Ireland. Then, relying on hearsay, he says that only eight days later William crossed from France to England and fought a battle against a tired victor. Harold died, together with 100,000 Englishmen. According to Adam, William was God’s avenger in punishing the English, who had sinned against Him. He banished almost all the monks who lived without a monastic rule and brought in Lanfranc to restore divine worship. In a later addition, Adam himself attributes King William’s wealth to his confiscation of 300 ships left behind by King Harald Hardrada plus the gold which Harald had collected while a Varangian in Greece. If this story originated from King Sweyn, which is quite possible, then it reinforces the hypothesis that Sweyn’s attacks on England in the immediate post-conquest period were inspired by a quest for booty as well as land. Although Adam of Bremen openly condemns Harold’s election as king, he justifies William’s invasion and his succession to the throne only in terms of divine retribution. The same attitude can be found in contemporary English sources like the anonymous Vita Edwardi, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The third source that reflects Danish opinion dates from c. 1122, when the Anglo-Saxon exile Aelnoth of Canterbury[4], who lived at Odense, wrote his biography of King Cnut IV, son of King Sweyn Estrithsson, who was killed in 1086. According to Aelnoth, King Cnut planned the abortive invasion of 1085 as revenge for the death of his kinsman, King Harold Godwinson and for the imposition on the English by William the Conqueror of the imperium of the Romans and the French. “In their despair”, he wrote,

“the English, whose dukes, counts, lords, noblemen and other people of high rank had either been killed, or imprisoned, or deprived of their father’s honours, wealth, dignity or inheritance or expelled abroad, or left behind and forced into public slavery, were not able to bear the tyranny of the Romans and the French and declined to seek foreign help.”

King Cnut is pictured as the natural protector of the English people against the aggression of a foreign duke. Even almost a millennium after the Conquest, it seems there were people who still see the British Isles as part of a larger Scandinavian kingdom.

 

---

[1] R. Frank, Old Norse Court Poetry: the Dróttkvætt Stanza, Islandica, Vol. 2, (1978) for the nature of scaldic verse; also, R. Frank, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, Old Norse - Icelandic Literature: a Critical Guide, edited C.J. Clover and J. Lindow, Islandica, Vol. 45. (1985), pages 157-196.
[2] Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway, translated by L.M. Hollander, London, 1964 is the great twelfth-century synoptic history by Snorri Sturluson. Two sections of this poem have survived in Old Norse as part of the saga of Harold Hardrada: King Harald's Saga: Harold Hardrada of Norway from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, translated M. Magnusson and H. Palsson, Harmondsworth 1966, pages 157-8; cf. De gestis regum ii, 311: “Siquidem Weldeofus in Eboracensi pugna plures Normannorum solus obtrucavenat, unos per portam egredientes decapitans.” The suggestion of an underlying verse was first launched by F.S. Scott, ‘Earl Waltheof of Northumbria’, Archaelogia Aeliana, (1952), pages 159-213 at page 179.
[3] Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum was written c. 1080. In four books: book I covers activities of missionaries in the north; book II is on 10th and early 11th century archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, including material on reigns of Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut; book III is on Archbishop Adalbert (1043-72), including material on reign of Edward the Confessor etc. (e.g. pages 124-5, 158-9); book IV is on the islands of the north. Text: Adam von Bremen, Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte, ed. B. Schmeidler, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, 1917. Text and German translation: Quellen des 9. und 11. Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches, ed. W. Trillmich and R. Buchner, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 11, 1978, pages 160-502. English translation: F.J. Tschan, Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, 1959.

[4] Aelnoth, Gesta Svenomagni etc 1047-1104, translated by E. Albrechtsen, Odense 1984.

A sense of deja vue!!!

Although we’ve become somewhat jaded in our attitude to political polls, there was little surprise in JC’s victory over Owen Smith yesterday. He slightly increased his majority from 59 per cent last year to 61.8 this largely because he polled 85 per cent of the post 2015 members while Smith had a majority of those who were members before the 2015 elections.  The problem is that the election solved little…JC’s supporters think that he can walk on water and presumably feed the Liverpool conference with loaves and fishes while the ‘moderates’, the term now sneeringly applied to those MPs and presumably party members who do not subscribe to the Corbyn mantra and who are now faced with the choice of continuing to fight against the Corbyn surge and almost inevitably face deselection, join the crusade, faded into the woodwork and hope not to be noticed or leave the Party.  The scale of the challenge facing the Party was well illustrated in a survey published in the Independent on Friday of attitudes of working-class voters.  

Almost half of unskilled and manual workers believed JC to be ‘out of touch’ and an ‘election loser’.  More than a third thought he was ‘incompetent’ and ‘naive’ with middle-class voters holding slightly more positive views of the Labour leader. The survey also showed that those planning to support him in the future were completely detached from working-class voters and those who voted Labour in the 2015 Election. The polling suggests JC has a huge amount of work to do in convincing voters who once automatically voted Labour that he is the man for them.  Most worrying is the evidence that only 22 per cent of working-class people thought he was ‘in touch with the voters’ while 42 per cent thought him ‘out of touch’ and 36 per cent did not know.  This result is paralleled by responses to his competence: 26 per cent competent, 36 per cent incompetent and 36 per cent did not know.  Across the responses, unsurprisingly, those who support JC had a far more positive view of his capabilities with 65 per cent seeing him as competent, 49 per cent see him as ‘insightful’ with 26 per cent as ‘naive’ and 51 per cent as the ‘best choice for leader’ and 29 per cent ‘not the best choice’--which raises important questions about why people who thought him incompetent, naive and not the best leader were still prepared to support him. 

The problem for the moderates in the Party is that if they dare to criticise JC in any way, then the opprobrium of Momentum and the different sects that now form the radical Left descends from a great height using social media…you’re out of touch with his huge mandate, you’re a closet Tory or even worse a Blairite, you’re being taken in by the anti-Jeremy media rhetoric.  All of this may well be true but, and here is the critical question, in the decades that Jeremy has been a Member of Parliament—and by all accounts he has been an excellent constituency member--what has he actually done that has had any impact on national politics?  In fact, is there any evidence that he has ever had an original radical thought…everything he says appears to have been said before (and often better) by others.  His over-weaning characteristic appears to be ‘anti’ as illustrated by his response to the question ‘what’s your favourite biscuit?’…instead of just saying shortbread he prefaced it with being anti-sugar…yes I know we all should be…but why lay yourself open to ridicule.  You may well say…yes but he’s been consistent in his opinions…well why?  I’m not sure I know anyone whose view of the world and the issues that face us have not radically altered in the last thirty years.  

Imploding Politics

Having spent much of the past three years writing about Chartism and its importance in the development of radical working-class politics, it is ironic that during those years that the Labour Party has degenerated from a credible opposition and potential government into political farce.  The precipitous resignation of Ed Miliband in the immediate aftermath of his defeat in the 2015 General Election and the consequent leadership election in which Jeremy Corbyn--left-wing, arch-rebel and only on the ballot paper when some MPs ‘lent him’ their vote—surprisingly emerged victorious. 

That Jeremy was not expected to win…something that he probably thought himself at least to begin with…and that he did reflected a growing disconnect between Labour politics as seen from Westminster and the Labour Party and perhaps more importantly (electorally) in the country.  Those who support Jeremy initially came from the young..and his motivating the young to become involved in politics is important…but many of those thrown out of the Party in the 1980s and 1990s re-emerged..the problem of ‘entryism’…often with views of politics that had changed little.  It is perhaps not surprising that the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party took a contrary view…from the beginning Jeremy did not have the wholehearted support of his MPs.  Increasingly the issue between him and his MPs was not one of policies—though inevitably there were differences between the leader and his troops—but whether he was or was not a credible leader and future Prime Minister.  This was evident right from the beginning…one remembers the National Anthem incident (a grossly overplayed issue by the government)…and over the past ten months have reoccurred with monotonous regularity.  To be fair, Jeremy made concessions to his opponents sitting behind him on issues such as active intervention in Syria by making it a free vote but this showed him as a weak leader unable to get his MPs to vote for his policies. 

 

What has happened in the past few weeks has been a slow motion car crash.  Matters have now come to a head with the failure of attempts to persuade Jeremy to resign as party leader following the ‘rolling resignations’ from the Shadow Cabinet.  What is clear is that there is now an unbridgeable chasm between the PLP and the leadership with its ‘mandate’ from the party membership.   Will changing the leader actually help?  Well probably not.  Despite restricting the electorate in the forthcoming contest between Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Eagle and/or Owen Smith (assuming those opposed to Corbyn can get their act together) for, as one MP has it, for the ‘soul of the Labour Party’, whoever wins it difficult to see the party coming together at least in the short term.  The divisions are now so deep, the internicine, intimidating behaviour so intense and the words spoken so toxic  that they are not going to be healed overnight, if they can be healed at all.

A final thrust

In the light of the tragic murder of Jo Cox, today’s recall of Parliament to pay tribute and the break in the referendum campaign should have given politicians and the rest of us time to ponder the direction in which we want our politics to go.  Whether her death will have a lasting effect on the way that we ‘do’ politics is, I suspect, unlikely.  MPs will still have close and personal links with their constituents that will inevitably make them vulnerable; social media will continue to pile bile on politicians in ways that are often offensive and threatening; we will continue to hold politicians in considerable contempt even though the overwhelming majority are good public servants; and, though the language of debate may be temporarily muffled it will soon return to its vibrant, confrontational best.  It’s easy for us all to say, after this we must do things better and I’m certain that’s what we believe but past experience suggests that we soon return to our good or bad old ways.

It will, however, have an impact on the butt-end of the referendum campaign and I think that is a good thing.  The intensive campaign has lasted for three months with politicians from both sides making their pitches for your vote on what is billed as an existential question, a generational response to whether Britain should remain in the EU or not.  I do not use the term ‘member’ as our membership has always been conditional and tentative…we have never been enthusiastic Europhiles and were we voting on whether to join or not on Thursday I think there would be a resounding ‘Non’.  Jo’s death has led to a softening in both Remain’s and Leave’s campaigns…both sides are still fighting for every vote but now making the case with vigour rather than just using ‘fear’ as their political tool of choice.  One thing that has been thrown up during the campaign is the profound distrust people have for ‘experts’ especially those seeming to support the establishment’s position.  In his debate on BBC last night David Cameron sought to defend ‘experts’ by arguing that if a mechanic said that your car needed repairs before you went on a long journey, you would undoubtedly take her advice.  Well of course you would especially if the alternative was being wrapped round the central reservation of the M25.  But this misses the point.  The problem is that economists—the group trusted least I think—have difficulty predicting what will happen to the economy next week, let alone next month or next year.  The IMF had to apologise to the British government when it got its predictions wrong.  You should certainly listen to employers as they are in the forefront of the economy and know what they’re talking about…but then you could argue ‘they would say that wouldn’t they.’  

Why, you may wonder, is the result still on a knife-edge?  Why are many people, despite the doom and gloom peddled by Remain, still prepared to vote for Leave?  For many people what is crucial is the question of ‘control’ and taking back control to govern our own country, make our own choices and so on and, if we don’t like them, have the right to boot out the politicians whose policies we dislike.  For them, these cannot be present as long as we are members of an undemocratic and unaccountable EU.  These are views—whether they be right or wrong—that Remain has largely failed to dent.  As in 1975, the critical question for them has been the economy though, in a globalised world, this has less resonance with many people than forty years ago.  I have long been a supporter of the EU—though primarily as an economic institution than a political one—and remain so but it needs fundamental reform, something that appears not to be a priority for those in Brussels.  The EU has grown too quickly..nothing we can do about that…and the principles on which it is based are today less for for purpose that they were in 1957 or 1986.  Its tunnel vision and one-track approach is no longer acceptable to the peoples of Europe.  For me, the costly and completely unnecessary cycle of the European Parliament between Brussels and Strasbourg epitomises the need for change and the problems of actually making changes that everyone thinks are needed.

So, with the polls finely poised, my prediction for the result of the referendum is as follows: Remain will win with 53 per cent of the vote. Let’s hope I’m right.

Taxation and the politics of envy

So should politicians and, if some people have their way other people in ‘public life’, choose to do what the rest of us will never be asked to do…reveal how much tax we pay?  Like the confessional, our tax affairs are sacrosanct; they are between us and the Inland Revenue and if we breach the rules we are subject to the Law.  Our personal relationship with the Inland Revenue is not governed by our morality but by the taxation rules enshrined in statute law structured so that people, by following the rules, pay no more tax than they are legally obliged to.  It is my right to plan my payment of taxes within those rules and that includes gifting to my children money on which they will not pay inheritance tax as long as I survive for seven years. So is this tax avoidance…well, yes it is, you are avoiding paying tax on your estate after you die.  We live in a society where tax avoidance has taken on a morally unjustifiable, and in the case of ‘aggressive tax avoidance’ repugnant, status especially if you’re wealthy while we are all quite prepared to avoid paying tax if we possibly can. 

 

Parallels have been drawn with the expenses scandal and the publication of David Cameron’s summary of his tax affairs that are to my mind spurious.  MPs’ expenses was about how some MPs defrauded the tax-payer of public monies and for which they could quite justifiably be held publically and legally accountable.  Politicians’ personal tax affairs or the tax affairs of anyone in the public eye may well be legally accountable to the rules controlled by Inland Revenue but they are not—and nor should they be—subject to public scrutiny.  As long as they operate their own tax affairs within the rules, whether we think they are avoiding paying tax is beside the point…they are acting within the rules.

I have on several occasions in the past commented on our tax system and the ways in which it operates.  Why should individuals because they hold a particular position in society be ‘compelled’ by public opinion or political opponents to reveal private tax affairs when Inland Revenue is perfectly happy with the amount of taxation those individuals are paying?  Ah, I hear you say, precisely because they are in the public eye and because they may well be wealthy in their own rights.  So it’s not really about how much tax they pay but because they’re ‘rich boys’.  I can see you getting greener as this goes on!!  But is the genie now out of the green bottle?  Not necessarily if politicians of whatever party have the guts to stand up to the pressure that they will undoubtedly be put under.  Some will publish and to refuse to do so raises the question…why not?   But you have to question the motivation of those calling for transparency…is it about people breaking the rules or is it moral indignation or is it about causing political embarrassment and making party political points?  If you don’t like the rules that apply to personal taxation than—and there’s a very strong case for doing so—change them but until that occurs why shouldn’t people apply those rules so that they do not have to pay any more tax than they are legally obliged to do so.  But then being morally affronted is so much easier!!!

Another ‘omnishambles’!!

It’s easy to see why George Osborne included the changes in disability benefits in his budget last week.  By adding it to a ‘money bill’, he removed the possibility of the House of Lords, should it have got that far, of repeating its treatment of proposed tax credit cuts.  It’s also easy to see why, following the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, why they have been abandoned.  This and the debate over Brexit probably now means that George will not succeed David in Number 10…for a significant number of MPs and an even greater number of Conservative Party members and for the broader public, George has now become a toxic brand.  With his reputation as a master political tactician—something I must admit I’ve always believed has been over-stated--now in ruins, he appears to have forgotten one of the most important rules in politics…you can push colleagues so far but eventually they’ll say right I’ve had enough.  For IDS, the change to Personal Independence Payments was that tipping point...the ‘quiet man’ bites back.

At the heart of the resignation is a growing tension within the Conservative Party between those who espouse a liberal Conservative position grounded in market enterprise—what might be called the ‘powerhouse Conservatives’—and compassionate One Nation Conservatives, many of whom were elected in 2010 or 2015, for whom a fair society is at the heart of their thinking.  You might say that George represents the first while David ‘hug a hoodie’ Cameron is more inclined towards the latter.  You could also argue that the reason why the Conservatives have done so well since 2010 is because of the creative tension between the two, unlike the tendentious Brown-Blair relationship.  Cameron had urged the Chancellor to avoid any major controversy in the Budget so as to avoid fuelling discontent among Tory MPs ahead of the EU referendum.  George listened over changing when pensions were taxed but then went for disability benefits presumably without recognising that it was equally controversial. And it could all have been avoided.  I don’t see why there couldn’t have been an uncontroversial mini-budget to keep thinks ticking over until November or until after the referendum.  Could this be a further example of political hubris…a belief in their invincibility?  Well, yes it is.  If you see a potential obstacle in front of you, you don’t march straight into it in the misguided belief that it will simply evaporate. Once the referendum is over George needs to be moved…Foreign Office I think…so that a new pair of eyes can look at the treasury brief if only because he’s been in the job for six years and, as he’s said on several occasions, there’s no Plan B. 

Do we spend too much on welfare and should this be reduced?  Across the political divide there is general agreement that welfare is disproportionately high compared to other areas of government spending and that reductions can be made.  The question is how should this be done and IDS’s resignation has again highlighted the view that the government’s approach is often deeply unfair as it juxtaposes cuts for the majority with tax cuts for the wealthy and that, in IDS’s words, the government is in ‘danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it, and that, I think, is unfair’'.’  IDS also criticised the ‘arbitrary’ decision to lower the welfare cap after the general election and expressed his ‘deep concern’ at a ‘very narrow attack on working-age benefits’ while also protecting pensioner benefits.