As we approach the most divisive general election I can remember, here is a poem courtesy of The Guardian which reminds one just how artificial and nonsensical physical barriers are between nations
The Frontier
At the frontier the long train slows to a stop:
small men in uniform drift down the corridor,
thumb passports, or withdraw for consultation;
the customs officers chalk the bags and leave us to shut them.
We pass here into another allegiance,
expect new postage stamps, new prices, manifestos,
and brace ourselves for the change. But the landscape does not alter;
we had already entered these mountains an hour ago.
The Frontier by John Hewitt Both poems from John Hewitt: Selected Poems (eds Michael Longley and Frank Ormsby), Blackstaff Press, 2007
Monday 9 December 2019
Thursday 21 March 2019
A story of our time
Eventually, in 1988 the planning process over-ruled some protesters who had been holding things up and a by-pass was built.
Today, Okehampton is once again a charming, small, quiet market town to the north of Dartmoor. The famous traffic lights no longer do their worst. Giant articulated lorries no longer thunder past, belching fumes on the residents of the town who can now move about with ease.
The little castle, complete with its ghostly coach driven by a headless driver, sits tranquil alongside the river Oke. Its banks covered with bluebells in May.
Our date is a Tuesday in March at around 6:30.
Just after dawn a saloon car is parked close to those traffic lights in one of the bays which are typical of small, economically struggling towns who realise that providing free parking is more likely to grow business than charging extortionate amounts for municipal car parks. 'Parking limited to one hour. No return within two hours', says a sign.
On the back seat of the car lies the prone figure of a man, half-covered by an anorak, possibly asleep, possible in a coma, possibly dead. He is alone.
He lies there as the hours tick by, very much more quietly than the lorries of old: 7:30, 8:30, 9:30 ... onwards until midday, the sun high in a blue sky.
In a tele-visual world our boys in blue would never have let this happen. PC George Dixon would have spotted the body on one of his many rounds and would have had some simple homily about neighbourliness. Morse and Lewis would have been in there like a shot, uncovering some intra-collegiate rivalry with the body being that of the Master's good for nothing brother-in-law, down on his luck.
Vera would have muttered 'Pet' at every interviewee, while discovering a tragic tale of deprivation and local corruption emanating from a historic building deal in the North East.
There would have been no stopping Silent Witness whose Nicky Alexander would have given her trademark 'worried look' as she examined the stash of (prescription) drugs in the boot of the car. Line of Duty's AC12 would have arrived all sirens blazing, SWAT teams at the ready.
But we don't live in a tele-visual world. Not in Okehampton. We live in a real world where there are no longer PC George Dixons on the beat tapping on the windows of cars to check on prone bodies: to see if they are asleep, have had a medical emergency or have had died in situ. There are no traffic wardens to monitor free parking spaces: there is no money in it. First responders may be close by but ambulances are probably more than five hours away.
Unlike what might happen in some inner cities, during that long period, no one opens the door, grabs the waiting shoulder bag and runs off with its money and credit cards. No one even tries the door.
And that is perhaps the biggest surprise. During those long five and half hours in broad daylight, in the centre of a town with shoppers passing and re-passing, no one makes any attempt to see if the man in the car needs help. Just one small boy does a double take when he looks through the window and then moves on.
Okehampton is a quiet town and even its Good Samaritans are getting on with their lives.
The man sleeps on, undisturbed by the ghostly rumbles of the articulated lorries of old. The Oke continued to flow quietly towards the sea.
How did he come to be there? Ah, that is another story.
---------
Dilemma: it is 4:15 am. You are driving across Bodmin Moor on your way to Bristol where your passenger requires urgent medical attention. You are on schedule for the 7:00 arrival when you suddenly realise you can no longer drive safely. You pull in to a lay by (yet another on this route which will be awarded a notional blue plaque commemorating some event), and collapse on the steering wheel. 10 miles ahead is Launceston; 30 miles ahead is Okehampton. What to do?
Discovery: Okehampton is the only place that has helpful taxi drivers prepared to be roused from their beds at 6:00. You do not have 24/7 taxi services in the country.
Coda: the passenger survived and is doing well.
Wednesday 20 March 2019
The Mail on Sunday at it again
'Some MPs' it went on, claimed that it was 'a political attack on Theresa May's government.'
So, in one blow, the Mail on Sunday managed to take all the joy out of the incredible fundraising effort by Comic Relief and to spread yet more falsehoods to be lapped up by their adoring (and ill-informed) readers.
For two rather more reliable (aka truthful) views, it is worth reading UN Special Envoy Professor Philip Alston's 2018 Report which says, amongst other things: '... poverty is a political choice ...'
Sunday 10 February 2019
A loss of credibility and moral authority
Does anyone believe in credibility, competence or morality nowadays? Have social media and Trumpism so reduced us that it no longer matters whether you speak the truth - as opposed to fake news or alternative facts - and can no one take responsibility for something and have the honesty to admit when everything goes wrong on their watch, and then resign?
Ah, Lord Carrington, where are you now?
It will come as no surprise to hear that I think this government has lost all credibility and moral authority. Other countries see us as living through a mental breakdown of our own making: probably not far from the truth, harsh though the metaphor may be.
How can it be that all the main protagonists of Brexit have been tested, found wanting and resigned? Of the leading Brexiters, only Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling, remain in the Cabinet. The variability of the former and the pointlessness of the second says it all. The performance of the last is covered below.
Surely, there has to come a point at which someone (brave) walks into Theresa May's office and says: Never mind the confidence of your MPs and Parliament: the government has lost the confidence of the country. You have to try a different tack.
A few cuttings from this week's media give one an idea of the state of the nation.
Brexit: sack Grayling over ferry fiasco, demand MPs - a Guardian headline after it was revealed that the mystical Seaborne Freight contract, in which none of us believed as they had no ferries, had been cancelled.
This came a few days after Chris Grayling was ridiculed by the Chairman of Calais Port:
Mark Steel in The Independent focused on Donald Tusk's remark about the place in Hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan - I won't bore you with the Sun's outburst on the same subject which were predictable and totally ignored the incredibly rude headlines they have used about Donald Tusk in the past:
Ah, Lord Carrington, where are you now?
It will come as no surprise to hear that I think this government has lost all credibility and moral authority. Other countries see us as living through a mental breakdown of our own making: probably not far from the truth, harsh though the metaphor may be.
How can it be that all the main protagonists of Brexit have been tested, found wanting and resigned? Of the leading Brexiters, only Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Grayling, remain in the Cabinet. The variability of the former and the pointlessness of the second says it all. The performance of the last is covered below.
Surely, there has to come a point at which someone (brave) walks into Theresa May's office and says: Never mind the confidence of your MPs and Parliament: the government has lost the confidence of the country. You have to try a different tack.
A few cuttings from this week's media give one an idea of the state of the nation.
Brexit: sack Grayling over ferry fiasco, demand MPs - a Guardian headline after it was revealed that the mystical Seaborne Freight contract, in which none of us believed as they had no ferries, had been cancelled.
This came a few days after Chris Grayling was ridiculed by the Chairman of Calais Port:
'The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, is no longer welcome in Calais, according to the port’s chairman, who has been angered by British plans to divert some sea traffic in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
'Jean-Marc Puissesseau reportedly accused the UK cabinet minister of behaving in a “completely disrespectful” manner on Tuesday. “Mr Grayling came to us in November and asked us if we would be ready. We told him ‘yes’, though we did not know as much as we know today. He did not tell us that he wanted to reduce the activity [at Calais].
'“It is not fair at all, it is completely disrespectful. I don’t want to see him again,” Puissesseau told the Daily Telegraph.'One wonders how we are to get goods across the Straits of Dover in 50 days' time as this ferry link was apparently going to be the whizzo solution.
Mark Steel in The Independent focused on Donald Tusk's remark about the place in Hell for those who promoted Brexit without a plan - I won't bore you with the Sun's outburst on the same subject which were predictable and totally ignored the incredibly rude headlines they have used about Donald Tusk in the past:
'So Donald Tusk is being absolutely outrageous when he says the promoters of Brexit had “no plan”.
'The plan all along was for the first and then second negotiator to resign, for both to oppose the deal they negotiated, and the foreign secretary to resign, followed by half the cabinet, and for no one to have realised there would be a border with Ireland, and votes to be lost by record amounts, and for rehearsals for when 50,000 lorries are stuck in Kent and businesses to stockpile toilet rolls and insulin, and the government to be dependent on creationists, and plans made for the evacuation of the Queen until it could now be announced we’re in a customs union with The Jungle Book and all have to dance with bears, or Britain has been reclassified as a beehive and Arlene Foster is our queen.'Well, he may overstate things when he comes to the Jungle Book but these fade into insignificance to this wonderful (anonymous piece which explains the Brexit process with staggering clarity:
David Cameron made a promise he didn’t think he’d have to keep to have a referendum he didn’t think he would lose. Boris Johnson decided to back the side he didn’t believe in because he didn’t think it would win. Then Gove, who said he wouldn’t run, did, and Boris who said he would run, said he wouldn’t, and Theresa May who didn’t vote for Brexit got the job of making it happen.
She called the election she said she wouldn’t and lost the majority David Cameron hadn’t expected to win in the first place. She triggered Article 50 when we didn’t need to and said we would talk about trade at the same time as the divorce deal and the EU said they wouldn’t so we didn’t.
People thought she wouldn’t get the divorce settled but she did, but only by agreeing to separate arrangements for Northern Ireland when she had promised the DUP she wouldn’t. Then the Cabinet agreed a deal but they hadn’t, and David Davis who was Brexit Secretary but wasn’t said it wasn’t what people had voted for and he couldn’t support what he had just supported and left.
Boris Johnson who hadn’t left then wished that he had and did, but it was a bit late for that. Dominic Raab become the new Brexit secretary. People thought Theresa May wouldn’t get a withdrawal agreement negotiated, but once she had they wished that she hadn’t, because hardly anybody liked it whether they wanted to leave or not.
Jacob Rees-Mogg kept threatening a vote of no confidence in her but not enough people were confident enough people would not have confidence in her to confidently call a no confidence vote. Dominic Raab said he hadn’t really been Brexit Secretary either and resigned, and somebody else took the job but it probably isn’t worth remembering who they are as they’re not really doing the job either as Olly Robbins is.
Then Theresa May said she would call a vote and didn’t, that she wouldn’t release some legal advice but had to, that she would get some concessions but didn’t, and got cross that Juncker was calling her nebulous when he wasn’t but probably should have been.
At some point Jacob Rees Mogg and others called a vote of no-confidence in her, which she won by promising to leave, so she can stay. But they said she had really lost it and should go, at the same time as saying that people who voted Leave knew what they were voting for which they couldn’t possibly have because we still don’t know now, and that we should leave the vote to Leave vote alone but have no confidence in the no-confidence vote which won by more.
The government also argued in court against us being able to say we didn’t want to leave after all but it turned out we could. May named a date for the vote on her agreement which nobody expected to pass, while pretending that no deal which nobody wants is still possible (even though we know we can just say we are not leaving), and that we can’t have a second referendum because having a democratic vote is undemocratic. And of course as expected she loses. Some people are talking about a managed no-deal which is not a deal but is not no-deal either.
Thank goodness for strong and stable government.
Friday 8 February 2019
Drawing lines
A Guardian leader entitled Brexit and Ireland: the forging of folly this week opened with the memorable line:
I have argued before about the nature of borders and the way some people see them as sacrosanct divisions of identity rather than man-made concepts to separate one administrative area from another. The people on each side of the border are the same and frequently closely related, as they are in Ireland.
We can blame John of Gaunt and his puppet master, Will Shakespeare, for encouraging our insular attitude in the sceptred isle speech: This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands.
If that last line does not breed British exceptionalism, it is hard to know what does.
As John of Gaunt reminds us, the borders of our island are very visible and we easily confuse these with the borders of our nation, ignoring the separate identities of the constituent nations: Scots, Welsh, Irish and ...
Those on mainland Europe are all too familiar with borders which run through fields and besides country lanes, just as we now have in Ireland where the border even runs through houses. After hundreds of years of thinking that our border was wet, the government has no idea how to cope with a land border. Their natural instinct would no doubt be to erect a Trumpian wall against alien invaders but they are hamstrung by the Good Friday Agreement.
Borders are at the heart of Brexit: whether, as a nation, we are to draw a line on our border in the manner of the past or whether, like the rest of the world, we are to adopt a more flexible and participatory approach, working in partnership with larger groups.
This is a challenge of globalisation.
Being global has its risks of course. In an excellent TED talk from soon after the referendum vote, social scientist Professor Alexander Betts Professor Betts characterises Leavers as being fearful of a globalised world while internationalists, he says, embrace it, determined to reap the benefits of greater engagement, greater dialogue, greater trade, greater inter-connectedness and greater peace.
Peace? Yes, peace. In his now-famous Special Place in Hell speech Donald Tusk reminded us that The EU itself is first and foremost a peace project. Peace can only come through greater understanding and greater trust - the breaking down of barriers: intellectual globalisation.
Professor Betts also warns that globalisation has its up and down sides and that we need to be very aware of the downsides and the need to watch carefully over the 'left behinds' - one of the large constituencies that voted to leave the EU.
In reality, those rejecting globalisation are swimming against the tide of history. Globalisation is happening. It is not reversible by putting up walls and burying one's head in the sand. The trick has to be to manage its benefits and guard against its disadvantages lest, like Pandora's box, it unleashes seven types of evil upon the world.
Many of the problems that the world faces are ones which are going to need global solutions: climate change, managing the internet (almost the definition of a global industry), ensuring people and companies pay tax, corruption, smooth trade ... Solutions to these will only come from global approaches.
The efforts of 193 individual countries as individuals will be in vain. There needs to be concerted international action at a pace faster than has so far proved possible, by negotiations between blocs or groups of countries with common interests.
Take the internet as an example There is a perceived need to 'control' some of the activities of social media organisations like Twitter and Facebook although it can be embarrassing to see how out of touch our legislators can be about the workings of such companies: witness the exchanges between US Senators and Mark Zuckerberg.
The UK government tried to call Zuckerberg to account with a complete lack of success. Why should he respond? His company is based in the US and this is his controlling legislation. If we, in the UK, want to use his products then the UK government has no control over him any more than it does over China if I choose to use Weibo. Would China take any notice of UK legislation saying what they must do? No.
The only way to manage the standards of internet companies like Facebook is to bring international pressure to bear and that requires concerted action, maybe even by the UN itself.
The same applies to 'non doms' squirrelling money away in tax havens. There is nothing an individual country can do to control them; only international action will have any real effect and that requires fewer than 193 voices all talking at the same time. A few large trading blocks working to common standards just might.
Global problems need global solutions by groups. Not by individuals determined to draw lines in maps and hearts, or to build walls.
The route the UK is embarked on will draw lines. It will create barriers. It will make no improvement to the UK's economy or way of life (in fact exactly the opposite). It will emphasise the impotence of the insular UK in a global world.
I am left with an image of a small UK politicians jumping up and down behind a high wall or marooned on an island with no ships, shouting at global companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft ... insisting that they do this or that while the commercial behemoths continue on their way blithely ignoring the two-bit irrelevant government of some tiny inward-looking country somewhere just off the coast of Northern Europe.
The people who live there are all mad, they will say, as they cruise past in their sleek yachts. They thought lines, barriers and borders would solve everything. They live in a little world of their own imagination; behind their self-imposed moat. Their hearts are broken and they spend their lives shouting at the empty wind. I shouldn't try and land if I were you.
Brexit is about drawing lines on maps and hearts. In that respect it is at odds with the 1998 Good Friday agreement which sought to erase them.Savour that one: Brexit draws line on maps and hearts.
I have argued before about the nature of borders and the way some people see them as sacrosanct divisions of identity rather than man-made concepts to separate one administrative area from another. The people on each side of the border are the same and frequently closely related, as they are in Ireland.
We can blame John of Gaunt and his puppet master, Will Shakespeare, for encouraging our insular attitude in the sceptred isle speech: This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands.
If that last line does not breed British exceptionalism, it is hard to know what does.
As John of Gaunt reminds us, the borders of our island are very visible and we easily confuse these with the borders of our nation, ignoring the separate identities of the constituent nations: Scots, Welsh, Irish and ...
Those on mainland Europe are all too familiar with borders which run through fields and besides country lanes, just as we now have in Ireland where the border even runs through houses. After hundreds of years of thinking that our border was wet, the government has no idea how to cope with a land border. Their natural instinct would no doubt be to erect a Trumpian wall against alien invaders but they are hamstrung by the Good Friday Agreement.
Borders are at the heart of Brexit: whether, as a nation, we are to draw a line on our border in the manner of the past or whether, like the rest of the world, we are to adopt a more flexible and participatory approach, working in partnership with larger groups.
This is a challenge of globalisation.
Being global has its risks of course. In an excellent TED talk from soon after the referendum vote, social scientist Professor Alexander Betts Professor Betts characterises Leavers as being fearful of a globalised world while internationalists, he says, embrace it, determined to reap the benefits of greater engagement, greater dialogue, greater trade, greater inter-connectedness and greater peace.
Peace? Yes, peace. In his now-famous Special Place in Hell speech Donald Tusk reminded us that The EU itself is first and foremost a peace project. Peace can only come through greater understanding and greater trust - the breaking down of barriers: intellectual globalisation.
Many of the problems that the world faces are ones which are going to need global solutions: climate change, managing the internet (almost the definition of a global industry), ensuring people and companies pay tax, corruption, smooth trade ... Solutions to these will only come from global approaches.
The efforts of 193 individual countries as individuals will be in vain. There needs to be concerted international action at a pace faster than has so far proved possible, by negotiations between blocs or groups of countries with common interests.
Take the internet as an example There is a perceived need to 'control' some of the activities of social media organisations like Twitter and Facebook although it can be embarrassing to see how out of touch our legislators can be about the workings of such companies: witness the exchanges between US Senators and Mark Zuckerberg.
The UK government tried to call Zuckerberg to account with a complete lack of success. Why should he respond? His company is based in the US and this is his controlling legislation. If we, in the UK, want to use his products then the UK government has no control over him any more than it does over China if I choose to use Weibo. Would China take any notice of UK legislation saying what they must do? No.
The only way to manage the standards of internet companies like Facebook is to bring international pressure to bear and that requires concerted action, maybe even by the UN itself.
The same applies to 'non doms' squirrelling money away in tax havens. There is nothing an individual country can do to control them; only international action will have any real effect and that requires fewer than 193 voices all talking at the same time. A few large trading blocks working to common standards just might.
Global problems need global solutions by groups. Not by individuals determined to draw lines in maps and hearts, or to build walls.
The route the UK is embarked on will draw lines. It will create barriers. It will make no improvement to the UK's economy or way of life (in fact exactly the opposite). It will emphasise the impotence of the insular UK in a global world.
I am left with an image of a small UK politicians jumping up and down behind a high wall or marooned on an island with no ships, shouting at global companies like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft ... insisting that they do this or that while the commercial behemoths continue on their way blithely ignoring the two-bit irrelevant government of some tiny inward-looking country somewhere just off the coast of Northern Europe.
The people who live there are all mad, they will say, as they cruise past in their sleek yachts. They thought lines, barriers and borders would solve everything. They live in a little world of their own imagination; behind their self-imposed moat. Their hearts are broken and they spend their lives shouting at the empty wind. I shouldn't try and land if I were you.
Monday 4 February 2019
Knowing when to admit defeat
When given a novel and complex task, it can be difficult to admit that it is either beyond you or the task is undo-able.
I recall one such task which started with the CEO taking me to one side and saying 'The Chairman wants this done. X and Y have already had a go but he did not like working with them. You are my next hope.'
I should have known that the project was nigh impossible. My team was unsuited to the type of work and so I would have to lead from the front and learn new campaigning skills I did not have. What I had not realised was that the Chairman was wanting to re-create his youthful past, expecting a large and complex organisation to act like a light-footed start-up.
The lessons I learned were profound:
Theresa May could learn some of these lessons.
A run-of-the-mill middle-rank administrator, she is totally out of her depth with Brexit but, having been given the task, is determined to see it through at whatever cost to herself and the country. Like me, she is trying to achieve a big notch on her CV, fully expecting to walk away the moment the finishing line is crossed, satisfied that she could look at the badge 'She delivered Brexit' on television captions and her study wall, in her retirement.
What so many Prime Ministers do not see at the time, is that they will be reviled in retirement for not having listened properly and acted honestly when in office: just think of people like Thatcher (Poll Tax), Blair (Iraq War), Brown (Spending) and Cameron (the referendum) ... All of them could have done with a seriously large majority behind them before taking a politically risky step. May is just going to be one more entry on this list.
I recall one such task which started with the CEO taking me to one side and saying 'The Chairman wants this done. X and Y have already had a go but he did not like working with them. You are my next hope.'
I should have known that the project was nigh impossible. My team was unsuited to the type of work and so I would have to lead from the front and learn new campaigning skills I did not have. What I had not realised was that the Chairman was wanting to re-create his youthful past, expecting a large and complex organisation to act like a light-footed start-up.
The lessons I learned were profound:
- Know your skills and don't be flattered into taking a job for which you know you are unsuited, even if you are the last one standing. It may be the job that is wrong rather than the people
- Make sure you have your constituency behind you and that they are not watching you from the wings, seeing you banging your head against a wall and thankful that they are not involved
- The opposition can be your friend. My Chairman was more inclined to listen to the other big organisation involved rather than my organisation as they did not dare suggest that the project might be impossible
- Know when to go back to those who gave you the job and admit that you cannot do it. It is better to be seen as honest about your own abilities than a 'failure' to be disposed of
Theresa May could learn some of these lessons.
A run-of-the-mill middle-rank administrator, she is totally out of her depth with Brexit but, having been given the task, is determined to see it through at whatever cost to herself and the country. Like me, she is trying to achieve a big notch on her CV, fully expecting to walk away the moment the finishing line is crossed, satisfied that she could look at the badge 'She delivered Brexit' on television captions and her study wall, in her retirement.
- She does not have the skills to lead and bring people together. Flattered to have achieved the top job almost by accident, she had to pretend to be an ardent Brexiter when she had campaigned on the other side
- Because she failed in those early stages, neither her party, nor the country, has ever been united behind her. The abortive election simply underlined this. She promised a new approach which never happened
- She has singularly failed to engage with the 48% Remainers or the Opposition from the start (and is still not doing so in a meaningful way as she seems incapable of talking to anyone who did not vote Tory)
- Now she is trying to push something through in the teeth of opposition from her party and the country and is refusing to go back to the people who gave her the brief and ask if they still mean it now that the reality is clear(er)
What so many Prime Ministers do not see at the time, is that they will be reviled in retirement for not having listened properly and acted honestly when in office: just think of people like Thatcher (Poll Tax), Blair (Iraq War), Brown (Spending) and Cameron (the referendum) ... All of them could have done with a seriously large majority behind them before taking a politically risky step. May is just going to be one more entry on this list.
Sunday 3 February 2019
How did we get here?
It is less than two months before we are due to leave the EU. Whether one agrees with the decision or not, it is almost impossible to understand the breath-taking incompetence of the journey, summed up by the fact that we will not know until 14 February (originally scheduled for October, then November, then December, then delayed until January ...) whether we will leave with a deal (the government's but not Parliament's preferred solution) or without one (abhorred by a majority in Parliament).
One can almost hear the headline-writers sharpening their pens for St Valentine's Night Massacre when the news of the vote comes in.
Any junior, middle or senior manager in business who left things this late would have been out on their ear long ago but the government is ploughing on as though the urgency were no more than where to go for one's late-booked skiing holiday.
We have less than two months to put in place a whole new border system and customs arrangements if we 'crash out'. Two months to pass a mountain of legislation which even Ministers now seeing as nigh impossible. By way of contrast, the patrol boats promised for the Straits of Dover still have not returned from the Mediterranean over two months ago.
Had we decided on 'no deal' two and a half years ago, the preparations might just about be ready by now.
The headlines report that riots will ensue if there is a hard Brexit, that the Queen will be evacuated, that people are stockpiling food, that decaying food will start piling up ... and this ignores the news coming out of business about investment being cut back and jobs being lost: little companies like Nissan, Airbus, Jaguar Land Rover have all warned of the danger of no deal - news that is stoutly denied on the basis of no apparent evidence by Brexiters.
All of which may well be Project Fear Mark VII (or is it VIII, IX or X?) but coming from the government spin doctors to get everyone to support their 'deal' which will ensure that nothing much changes for a couple of years (the 'Transition period') while we attempt the really difficult bit of agreeing a trade deal with the EU. Meanwhile, morale will continue to decline as the consequences of leaving become clearer by the day.
Talk about a decision taken in haste and repented at leisure.
Meanwhile, back in the Duchy, the Cornish MP George Eustace, the Minister of Agriculture and a former farmer - better known as George Useless locally - was explaining the benefits of leaving to a BBC Radio 4 audience. He reassured Cornish farmers that 'modelling had shown' that the price of lamb would go down while that of beef would go up. He was sure they would re-adjust, although he did not mention any help in doing so. And fishing would once more be under 'our' control and we could work out or own fishing policy.
So he has not yet worked out a fishing policy and yet we have voted to dive off the deep end in the hopes that a more successful one will emerge from somewhere.
And as for the previous EU grant of £60m to help Cornwall as a under-performing Region, George was coy. He made no commitment to replacing this directly (as Boris had done quite directly during the referendum campaign) and talked of some new 'partnership fund' which might mean that Cornwall got the money, or a bit less, or even more. I see pink pigs flying past the window.
The future of Cornwall's industry is to be beef farming and fishing. No mention of the EU-supported creative industries, of the EU-supported UK Spaceport. Um ... which century are you living in George? Have you thought of re-opening the mines so we can send small boys down them to keep them out of mischief?
Meanwhile, in order to stitch up her Plan B - or are we up to E yet? - the PM intends to 'visit' Brussels to be told yet again - I forget how many times they have already told her, often publicly and directly - that they have no interest in re-negotiating the withdrawal agreement or the backstop which she herself suggested, while her whips try to bribe Labour MPs with promises of future investment (and we know how reliable such promises are, don't we George).
The blame game has started too. It will never be the Prophets of Brexit's fault that milk and honey does not appear to be flowing in abundance. It will because the rest of us failed to support their act of faith in the Divine, Mystical and all-Providing Unicorn. It will be everyone else's fault. They simply cannot face reality
The EU is accused of being intransigent when we are the ones wanting to leave. Apparently they are meant to adjust the rules of their club so that we can have 'the exact same benefits' as David Davis promised us.
Lord Digby Jones originally said that there would be no job losses from Brexit. In another recent BBC radio show he accepts that now there will be. This does not show that he was wrong when he said there would be none, purely that by failing to get behind the PM to support a policy with which they disagreed, parliamentary Remainers are responsible for the job losses. How on earth does that logic work?
Nissan is withdrawing a new model from its Sunderland works stating that uncertainty about Brexit has made them review their investment programme. Jacob Rees-Mogg's reaction is to claim that this has nothing to do with Brexit, despite Nissan's statement and claims that just-in-time delivery will go ahead unhindered, against the views of the car manufacturers. What does he know that the entire car industry does not? I wonder if he knows that Chris Grayling's friends have not got any ferries.
All of which shows that there is actually no plan, no unity: no national commitment to a single solution. It is horrific to think that a matter of such national importance might be decided by one MP, beguiled or duped by the offer of investment, an honour or 'favourable treatment' rather than, given the uncertainty and lack of clarity, by a super-majority of the British people.
What a stinking, horrible mess. What incompetence. Heaven help us all.
One can almost hear the headline-writers sharpening their pens for St Valentine's Night Massacre when the news of the vote comes in.
Any junior, middle or senior manager in business who left things this late would have been out on their ear long ago but the government is ploughing on as though the urgency were no more than where to go for one's late-booked skiing holiday.
We have less than two months to put in place a whole new border system and customs arrangements if we 'crash out'. Two months to pass a mountain of legislation which even Ministers now seeing as nigh impossible. By way of contrast, the patrol boats promised for the Straits of Dover still have not returned from the Mediterranean over two months ago.
Had we decided on 'no deal' two and a half years ago, the preparations might just about be ready by now.
The headlines report that riots will ensue if there is a hard Brexit, that the Queen will be evacuated, that people are stockpiling food, that decaying food will start piling up ... and this ignores the news coming out of business about investment being cut back and jobs being lost: little companies like Nissan, Airbus, Jaguar Land Rover have all warned of the danger of no deal - news that is stoutly denied on the basis of no apparent evidence by Brexiters.
All of which may well be Project Fear Mark VII (or is it VIII, IX or X?) but coming from the government spin doctors to get everyone to support their 'deal' which will ensure that nothing much changes for a couple of years (the 'Transition period') while we attempt the really difficult bit of agreeing a trade deal with the EU. Meanwhile, morale will continue to decline as the consequences of leaving become clearer by the day.
Talk about a decision taken in haste and repented at leisure.
Meanwhile, back in the Duchy, the Cornish MP George Eustace, the Minister of Agriculture and a former farmer - better known as George Useless locally - was explaining the benefits of leaving to a BBC Radio 4 audience. He reassured Cornish farmers that 'modelling had shown' that the price of lamb would go down while that of beef would go up. He was sure they would re-adjust, although he did not mention any help in doing so. And fishing would once more be under 'our' control and we could work out or own fishing policy.
So he has not yet worked out a fishing policy and yet we have voted to dive off the deep end in the hopes that a more successful one will emerge from somewhere.
And as for the previous EU grant of £60m to help Cornwall as a under-performing Region, George was coy. He made no commitment to replacing this directly (as Boris had done quite directly during the referendum campaign) and talked of some new 'partnership fund' which might mean that Cornwall got the money, or a bit less, or even more. I see pink pigs flying past the window.
The future of Cornwall's industry is to be beef farming and fishing. No mention of the EU-supported creative industries, of the EU-supported UK Spaceport. Um ... which century are you living in George? Have you thought of re-opening the mines so we can send small boys down them to keep them out of mischief?
Meanwhile, in order to stitch up her Plan B - or are we up to E yet? - the PM intends to 'visit' Brussels to be told yet again - I forget how many times they have already told her, often publicly and directly - that they have no interest in re-negotiating the withdrawal agreement or the backstop which she herself suggested, while her whips try to bribe Labour MPs with promises of future investment (and we know how reliable such promises are, don't we George).
The blame game has started too. It will never be the Prophets of Brexit's fault that milk and honey does not appear to be flowing in abundance. It will because the rest of us failed to support their act of faith in the Divine, Mystical and all-Providing Unicorn. It will be everyone else's fault. They simply cannot face reality
The EU is accused of being intransigent when we are the ones wanting to leave. Apparently they are meant to adjust the rules of their club so that we can have 'the exact same benefits' as David Davis promised us.
Lord Digby Jones originally said that there would be no job losses from Brexit. In another recent BBC radio show he accepts that now there will be. This does not show that he was wrong when he said there would be none, purely that by failing to get behind the PM to support a policy with which they disagreed, parliamentary Remainers are responsible for the job losses. How on earth does that logic work?
Nissan is withdrawing a new model from its Sunderland works stating that uncertainty about Brexit has made them review their investment programme. Jacob Rees-Mogg's reaction is to claim that this has nothing to do with Brexit, despite Nissan's statement and claims that just-in-time delivery will go ahead unhindered, against the views of the car manufacturers. What does he know that the entire car industry does not? I wonder if he knows that Chris Grayling's friends have not got any ferries.
All of which shows that there is actually no plan, no unity: no national commitment to a single solution. It is horrific to think that a matter of such national importance might be decided by one MP, beguiled or duped by the offer of investment, an honour or 'favourable treatment' rather than, given the uncertainty and lack of clarity, by a super-majority of the British people.
What a stinking, horrible mess. What incompetence. Heaven help us all.
Monday 28 January 2019
You could start by saying sorry
It started with the news that Cathay Pacific had sold £12,450 Business Class tickets for a Hong Kong to Lisbon flight at Economy Class prices: £1,175 by mistake. We all laughed at the idea but it sparked a thought: why would anyone pay 10 times the economy price to fly on this journey. The beds? The food? The peace and quiet? The space? By contrast, the First Class cost is 20 times the Economy one.
Yes, we all know that the high fares in the front of the plane help to reduce the costs for those of us in the back. If airlines flew with only one class then we would all be complaining. But who has this sort of money and what do they really want?
The Swedes have long recognised that a country or business at ease with itself is one where the most well-off receive no more than 20 times the salary of the least well paid. So, they might argue, Cathay Pacific's prices reflect this. The First Class passenger can be separated from the Economy one on the basis of price.
That 20 times multiple salary ceiling was broken in the UK long ago. As Polly Toynbee recently remarked, inequality shot through the roof in the 1980s and the distance between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' - or 'just about managing' in modern parlance - has continued to widen. Cedric Brown of British Gas fame was awarded a salary of £475,000 (plus a bonus of £600,000) in 1995: 47 times that of his average employee. Now FTSE 100 CEOs now regularly earn £4m a year (with/without bonuses) when salaries have been frozen of pushed down for the vast majority.
The world's 26 richest people now own as much as the poorest 50%. What a terrible condemnation of our world that we should have allowed such an imbalance.
Trickle down economics - keeping taxes low for the super rich and encouraging them to splash their cash to create jobs for the less well off - has not worked. Research shows that they simply add the benefit to their wealth.
Our local newsfeed reports that the number of paupers' funerals has doubled in recent years: 77 people in Cornwall could not afford a funeral in 2017/18. The difference between those Business Class and Economy class fares on Cathay Pacific would have paid for a decent funeral for at least three of those 77: the First Class fare would have paid for more than 6. Can we not even say goodbye to people with dignity?
You do not have to be steeped in left-wing propaganda, watch Ken Loach's I Daniel Blake or Jimmy McGovern's excellent Care on the BBC to be concerned about how the 'other half'' are treated: actually, if the figures above are to be believed, it is a lot more than half. Those films have done what Brassed Off did for a previous generation showing we have learned nothing in the interim.
Jobs advertised today across Cornwall suggest salaries of around £20k for responsible sounding jobs which are well above the capabilities of a person prepared to accept the 'minimum wage'. How do you bring up a family on a salary like that? How do you even begin to contemplate putting aside some money for the deposit on a house? Even the smallest affordable house is going to cost well over 20 times that salary, way beyond anything a mortgage company might consider.
People taking these jobs are not 'failures' that can be despised by Tory politicians. They are not relying on the state (the biggest Tory crime) They are decent people wanting decent jobs to help them live a decent life. They are, or will be, taxpayers. To precis Daniel Blake, they are not numbers, customers or service users: they are citizens. They are voters.
Thankfully, some Tory MPs are beginning to notice. Heidi Allen is on a tour of England with Labour MP Frank Field, looking at some of the most deprived areas. I've absolutely had enough she says, all too aware that her party's policies have caused problems. Will it make any difference? Will her experiences feed back into the Westminster policy bubble? I somehow doubt it.
The People's Vote people are trying to find emotional slogans that will resonate with people if we are actually allowed a second referendum on Brexit: something that will counter the We told them the first time, now tell them again: the vacuous, argument-free, thuggish slogan of the Leavers.
We all know that, amongst many people up and down the country, the original Brexit vote was a protest vote about austerity, about the centralisation of power in Westminster, about the easy life of the 'haves' in the South East, paying themselves eye-watering salaries, about the fact that 'the City' had carried on as though austerity had never happened.
The People's Vote campaigners have nothing to apologise for as they were not responsible for the failings of government over the years, but they could embarrass Parliament into an apology: into saying 'sorry'.
'Sorry' is not an easy word but it might start a new debate in the country and might do more to bring the country back together than any infighting winner-takes-all self-centred fighting in the adversarial bearpit that is our Parliament.
One can live in hope.
Yes, we all know that the high fares in the front of the plane help to reduce the costs for those of us in the back. If airlines flew with only one class then we would all be complaining. But who has this sort of money and what do they really want?
The Swedes have long recognised that a country or business at ease with itself is one where the most well-off receive no more than 20 times the salary of the least well paid. So, they might argue, Cathay Pacific's prices reflect this. The First Class passenger can be separated from the Economy one on the basis of price.
That 20 times multiple salary ceiling was broken in the UK long ago. As Polly Toynbee recently remarked, inequality shot through the roof in the 1980s and the distance between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' - or 'just about managing' in modern parlance - has continued to widen. Cedric Brown of British Gas fame was awarded a salary of £475,000 (plus a bonus of £600,000) in 1995: 47 times that of his average employee. Now FTSE 100 CEOs now regularly earn £4m a year (with/without bonuses) when salaries have been frozen of pushed down for the vast majority.
The world's 26 richest people now own as much as the poorest 50%. What a terrible condemnation of our world that we should have allowed such an imbalance.
Trickle down economics - keeping taxes low for the super rich and encouraging them to splash their cash to create jobs for the less well off - has not worked. Research shows that they simply add the benefit to their wealth.
Our local newsfeed reports that the number of paupers' funerals has doubled in recent years: 77 people in Cornwall could not afford a funeral in 2017/18. The difference between those Business Class and Economy class fares on Cathay Pacific would have paid for a decent funeral for at least three of those 77: the First Class fare would have paid for more than 6. Can we not even say goodbye to people with dignity?
You do not have to be steeped in left-wing propaganda, watch Ken Loach's I Daniel Blake or Jimmy McGovern's excellent Care on the BBC to be concerned about how the 'other half'' are treated: actually, if the figures above are to be believed, it is a lot more than half. Those films have done what Brassed Off did for a previous generation showing we have learned nothing in the interim.
Jobs advertised today across Cornwall suggest salaries of around £20k for responsible sounding jobs which are well above the capabilities of a person prepared to accept the 'minimum wage'. How do you bring up a family on a salary like that? How do you even begin to contemplate putting aside some money for the deposit on a house? Even the smallest affordable house is going to cost well over 20 times that salary, way beyond anything a mortgage company might consider.
People taking these jobs are not 'failures' that can be despised by Tory politicians. They are not relying on the state (the biggest Tory crime) They are decent people wanting decent jobs to help them live a decent life. They are, or will be, taxpayers. To precis Daniel Blake, they are not numbers, customers or service users: they are citizens. They are voters.
Thankfully, some Tory MPs are beginning to notice. Heidi Allen is on a tour of England with Labour MP Frank Field, looking at some of the most deprived areas. I've absolutely had enough she says, all too aware that her party's policies have caused problems. Will it make any difference? Will her experiences feed back into the Westminster policy bubble? I somehow doubt it.
The People's Vote people are trying to find emotional slogans that will resonate with people if we are actually allowed a second referendum on Brexit: something that will counter the We told them the first time, now tell them again: the vacuous, argument-free, thuggish slogan of the Leavers.
We all know that, amongst many people up and down the country, the original Brexit vote was a protest vote about austerity, about the centralisation of power in Westminster, about the easy life of the 'haves' in the South East, paying themselves eye-watering salaries, about the fact that 'the City' had carried on as though austerity had never happened.
The People's Vote campaigners have nothing to apologise for as they were not responsible for the failings of government over the years, but they could embarrass Parliament into an apology: into saying 'sorry'.
- Sorry for the easy win of blaming the EU for things that were all the time within the control of the government
- Sorry for wasting time on Brexit when they should have been doing something about the issues which we really face, which would really improve people's lives (rather than pandering to a pampered, over-wealthy elite)
- Sorry that economic trickle-down has failed and agreeing to do something serious about limiting fat cat salaries and insultingly large bonuses (a commitment made by the PM when she took office but which has sunk without trace)
- Sorry that so many wealthy people were managing to avoid tax through the use of off-shore accounts when 'the people' were being screwed
- Sorry that salaries for the few had been allowed to mushroom way beyond anything realistic
- Sorry that austerity has been applied so unfairly
- Sorry for incentivising cost reduction: imagining that everything can be done to the same standards on less money, and enriching the wealthy on the proceeds
- Sorry that the social services system has been unable to cope and for managing them so inadequately with insensitive, unfair and ill-thought through procedures
- Sorry for constantly tinkering with, and under-funding vital public services like the NHS and Education
- Sorry that there has been a need for food banks to become a main source of nourishment for so many people
- Sorry that Westminster has so concentrated power in the country, cutting budgets for local authorities and seizing all their powers of decision-making
- Sorry that the party political system has so signally failed to provide a country at ease with itself or any sense of representation for more than half the population
No MP has ever wanted to say sorry. They will avoid questions, offer fake news, twist the truth: anything to avoid the need to say that they got something wrong. They believe they are required to be omniscient and omni-competent. To apologise or admit fault would lead inexorably to the need to resign. It would fail every test they falsely set themselves.
One can live in hope.
Sunday 13 January 2019
The (Brexit) debate rumbles on
Having delayed her 'meaningful vote' from before Christmas into January because she was convinced she would lose it, Theresa May now faces the music on Tuesday 15 May.
A last desperate scramble for votes is taking place. To what end, we cannot know.
She threatens that to reject her deal will be 'bad faith' with the British people. Methinks she doth protest too much. Setting aside the fact that a majority of the British people did not actually vote to leave the EU, the vote actually said 'leave the EU' it did not say 'Leave the EU by St Theresa's deal'. There are lots of other ways of leaving the EU other than through her miserable deal.
The Norway model is back on the agenda. I wonder how long it will take for someone to point out that this will only give us control of fishing and agriculture and so far we have no idea what we want to do with either. We would be in the single market and customs union and would have to accept free movement (except in very exceptional circumstances); we would have no say in EU regulations and would thus be 'rule-takers.'. So much for 'taking back control'.
Meanwhile, the redoubtable Grayling says that we must do what the right wing yobs say or they will get really cross and riot. It is good to have someone like this in charge of appeasement.
As a little coda to his ferry fiasco, enjoy the attached grilling of one of his Ministers. There is nothing like a QC for being dogged and asking the same question three times.
In the debate in the House of Commons, David Lammy summed up his objections to Brexit.
... We have a duty to tell our constituents the truth. Even when they passionately disagree.
We owe to them not only our “industry” but also our “judgement.”
We are trusted representatives, not unthinking delegates.
So why do many in this House continue to support Brexit, when they know it will wreck jobs, the NHS and our standing in the world?
This is the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the Brexit debate.
Most MPs now recognise it in private, but do not say it in public.
Brexit is a con:
Russian interference is beyond reasonable doubt.
And by now every single campaign promise made in 2016 has come unstuck.
Brexit will not enrich our NHS - it will impoverish it.
A trade deal with Donald Trump will see US corporations privatise and dismantle the NHS one bed at a time.
And even those promises on immigration – which has so greatly enriched our country – are a lie.
After Brexit immigration will go up, not down.
When we enter negotiations with countries like India and China, they will ask for three things. Visas. Visas. And more visas. And they will get them because we will be weak.
Then there’s the myth about restoring parliamentary sovereignty. The last two years have shown what a joke that is.
--
Mr Speaker, we are suffering from a crisis of leadership in our hour of need.
This country’s greatest moments came when we showed courage, not when we appeased.
We must not be afraid to tell the truth to those who do not agree.
--
Friends on this side of the house tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns. The former miners, the factory workers, those who feel they have been left behind.
I say we must not patronise them with cowardice. Let’s tell them the truth.
“You were sold a lie.
Parts of the media used your fears to sell papers and boost viewing figures.
Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson exploited the same prejudice to win votes.
Shame on them.
Immigrants have not taken your jobs. Our schools and colleges failed to give you skills.
Hospitals are not crumbling because of health tourists, but because a decade of austerity ground them down to the bone.
You cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build -- not because Mohammed down the road who moved in.
And wealth was hoarded in London - when it should have been shared across the country.
Blame us, blame Westminster. Do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes.
And do not be angry at us for telling you the truth.
Be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie.
--
As Martin Luther King said long ago “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
So just as I speak plainly to the government this time around, let me also speak to the opposition about some home truths.
There is no left-wing justification for Brexit.
Ditching workers’ rights, social protections, and ending environmental cooperation is not progressive. This is a project about neoliberal deregulation. It is Thatcherism on steroids, pushed by her modern day disciples.
Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.
Socialism confined to one country will not work.
Whether you like it or not, the world we live in is global.
We can only fix the rigged system if we cooperate across border-lines.
The party of Keir Hardie has always been International.
We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them on the biggest issue of our lives.
If we remain in the EU, we can reform it from the top table.
Share the load of mass migration, address excesses of the bureaucracy, and fix the inequalities between creditor and debtors.
We can recharge the economy.
We can re-fuel the NHS.
We can build the houses we need, after years of hurt.
Hope is what we need.
Remain in the EU.
Give Britain a second opportunity to decide.
Sadly, there were few MPs around to hear him as they simply could be bothered and had gone home for the weekend.
A last desperate scramble for votes is taking place. To what end, we cannot know.
She threatens that to reject her deal will be 'bad faith' with the British people. Methinks she doth protest too much. Setting aside the fact that a majority of the British people did not actually vote to leave the EU, the vote actually said 'leave the EU' it did not say 'Leave the EU by St Theresa's deal'. There are lots of other ways of leaving the EU other than through her miserable deal.
The Norway model is back on the agenda. I wonder how long it will take for someone to point out that this will only give us control of fishing and agriculture and so far we have no idea what we want to do with either. We would be in the single market and customs union and would have to accept free movement (except in very exceptional circumstances); we would have no say in EU regulations and would thus be 'rule-takers.'. So much for 'taking back control'.
Meanwhile, the redoubtable Grayling says that we must do what the right wing yobs say or they will get really cross and riot. It is good to have someone like this in charge of appeasement.
As a little coda to his ferry fiasco, enjoy the attached grilling of one of his Ministers. There is nothing like a QC for being dogged and asking the same question three times.
In the debate in the House of Commons, David Lammy summed up his objections to Brexit.
... We have a duty to tell our constituents the truth. Even when they passionately disagree.
We owe to them not only our “industry” but also our “judgement.”
We are trusted representatives, not unthinking delegates.
So why do many in this House continue to support Brexit, when they know it will wreck jobs, the NHS and our standing in the world?
This is the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the Brexit debate.
Most MPs now recognise it in private, but do not say it in public.
Brexit is a con:
- A trick. A swindle. A fraud.
- A deception that will hurt most those people it promised to help.
- A dangerous fantasy which will make every problem it claims to solve worse.
- A campaign won on false promises and lies.
Russian interference is beyond reasonable doubt.
And by now every single campaign promise made in 2016 has come unstuck.
Brexit will not enrich our NHS - it will impoverish it.
A trade deal with Donald Trump will see US corporations privatise and dismantle the NHS one bed at a time.
And even those promises on immigration – which has so greatly enriched our country – are a lie.
After Brexit immigration will go up, not down.
When we enter negotiations with countries like India and China, they will ask for three things. Visas. Visas. And more visas. And they will get them because we will be weak.
Then there’s the myth about restoring parliamentary sovereignty. The last two years have shown what a joke that is.
- The Prime Minister has hoarded power like a deluded 21st century Henry the Eighth.
- Impact assessments have been hidden. Votes resisted and blocked. Simple opponents of a government policy bullied and threatened to get into line.
- Even when we forced this meaningful vote, the Prime Minister cancelled it, certain we would reject her disastrous deal. And oh we will reject it. Because this is a Lose-Lose compromise, which offers no certainty for our future.
--
Mr Speaker, we are suffering from a crisis of leadership in our hour of need.
This country’s greatest moments came when we showed courage, not when we appeased.
- The courage of Wilberforce to emancipate the slaves, against the anger of the British ruling class.
- The courage of Winston Churchill to declare war on Hitler, against the appeasers in his cabinet and the country.
- The courage of Atlee and Bevan to nationalise the health service -- against the doctors who protested it was not right.
We must not be afraid to tell the truth to those who do not agree.
--
Friends on this side of the house tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns. The former miners, the factory workers, those who feel they have been left behind.
I say we must not patronise them with cowardice. Let’s tell them the truth.
“You were sold a lie.
Parts of the media used your fears to sell papers and boost viewing figures.
Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson exploited the same prejudice to win votes.
Shame on them.
Immigrants have not taken your jobs. Our schools and colleges failed to give you skills.
Hospitals are not crumbling because of health tourists, but because a decade of austerity ground them down to the bone.
You cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build -- not because Mohammed down the road who moved in.
And wealth was hoarded in London - when it should have been shared across the country.
Blame us, blame Westminster. Do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes.
And do not be angry at us for telling you the truth.
Be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie.
--
As Martin Luther King said long ago “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
So just as I speak plainly to the government this time around, let me also speak to the opposition about some home truths.
There is no left-wing justification for Brexit.
Ditching workers’ rights, social protections, and ending environmental cooperation is not progressive. This is a project about neoliberal deregulation. It is Thatcherism on steroids, pushed by her modern day disciples.
Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.
Socialism confined to one country will not work.
Whether you like it or not, the world we live in is global.
We can only fix the rigged system if we cooperate across border-lines.
The party of Keir Hardie has always been International.
We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them on the biggest issue of our lives.
If we remain in the EU, we can reform it from the top table.
Share the load of mass migration, address excesses of the bureaucracy, and fix the inequalities between creditor and debtors.
We can recharge the economy.
We can re-fuel the NHS.
We can build the houses we need, after years of hurt.
Hope is what we need.
Remain in the EU.
Give Britain a second opportunity to decide.
Sadly, there were few MPs around to hear him as they simply could be bothered and had gone home for the weekend.
Thursday 3 January 2019
A Happy New Year?
It is always good to start the year with some good uplifting news and this has been no exception.
With the Prime Minister's deal likely to appear before the House of Commons in a week's time, Pravda has been in full flow, trying to convince us that a 'no deal' would be a disaster so that we all roll over and buy her deal. We are warned there are more messages to come in the next few days.
Meanwhile, with the PM now on borrowed time, it has been fun watching the leadership contenders all trying to stake out their claims to be 'the chosen one' to succeed her. The vanity of Ministers knows no bounds and many have been keen to show they are 'back at their desks', 'being active' or 'making an announcement' (generally ill-thought through). It gets them brownie points at No 10 and with the faithful. Needless to say they have mostly fallen over in the process.
Jeremy Hunt has been off to Singapore: oh the advantages of being the Foreign Secretary and therefore being allowed to travel whenever/wherever you want. Boris missed an important Heathrow vote using precisely the same trick.
His message was that the UK could become another Singapore: a view which was rather spoiled by the Prime Minister of Singapore who said their model would not work for the UK.
One suspects that the residents of Hartlepool and Bournemouth would agree with the Prime Minister if they saw the conditions in which people live, and looked into the political structure of Singapore: We decide what is right, no matter what the people think. Yes, that is just what Brexiters want.
He was keen to tell us that Britain's role after Brexit should be as an invisible chain linking together the democracies of the world ... yatter, yatter. What on earth is this meant to mean? Has he asked them if they wish to be bound by an invisible chain or has he been reading too much Harry Potter with his mince pies?
Gavin Williamson has been throwing his diminished weight around by suggesting that we could open military bases around the world. Why? Oh yes, we used to have them back when we had an empire.
Um, Gavin, the armed forces are way under strength and much smaller than they were in the past. Heavens, we cannot rustle up enough patrol vessels to manage the straits of Dover.
Has he even checked that the host countries want us?
Sajid Javid has been the most prominent, boldly cancelling his 'luxury safari holiday in a £800 a night lodge' in order to be seen managing the 'migrant' 'crisis' (it was neither) with 'swarms' (well a few) people trying to cross the straits of Dover in small boats.
Having played all the 'right tunes' to the Torygraph faithful, including questioning whether they were genuine asylum seekers anyway, he was then taken to task by the 'liberal elite' who pointed out that under international law he should not pre-judge their status.
He was also taken to task for suggesting that the way to manage migration was by working closely with European partners: precisely the people from who we were about to cut ourselves off and who would no longer have an EU duty to co-operate.
'Bold action' followed with two vessels being withdrawn from the Mediterranean where they were dealing with large numbers of boats, to bolster the defence of the homeland. It will take one of them several weeks to arrive by which time the 'crisis' will be over. What price it never actually bothers to return? The media will have moved on long before it gets here.
It did not take long for headlines to emerge suggesting that Javid and Williamson were scoring points off each other.
I suppose we should be grateful that Caroline Nokes was not left in charge.
The star of the show, as usual, has been Chris Grayling. He had two strings to his bow. He blamed the unions for the 3.1% rail price rises. Um, Chris, that sounds so terribly 1970s and how would you feel if you had been squeezed by the government into having no pay rise for years and then, when you did get one (perish the thought), the government blamed you for the price rises.
And after a year when he had manifestly cocked up the whole rail system with a series of gaffes like changing the national rail timetable and forgiving a whole host of franchisees who were patently incapable of running a railway.
Trains are still not arriving or departing on time and there are suggestions that the ones that do appear will soon be running at 200% capacity. Yes, I know the London Undergound does, but that is for short journeys, not for five and six hour ones.
But this was simply a warm-up to his explanation as to why he let a contract to a 'ferry company' that had no money, no ferries and had never actually done anything in its short life.
Only later did it emerge that the company's terms and conditions were copied and pasted from a pizza delivery company's website. And Grayling re-assured us that the 'due diligence has been thorough'.
But we can relax as he has also assured us that he is expecting the channel ports to operate normally in all Brexit circumstances. So that's all right then. There is no need to believe the government's own warnings about turning the M20 into a lorry park. JR-M was right that unicorns can nod lorries through in 6 seconds.
Honourable mentions should go to Matt Hancock who is something to do with Health who has been claiming that the NHS will be the best place in the world to have a baby. We have some way to go, apparently but that does not stop a Minister making a bold claim (with no money attached).
If we are the best place in the world to have a baby, might that not just lead to a greater demand for migration?
And to James Brokenshire, our worthy Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for so diddling the figures that the £17m extra promised to Cornwall by central government will not actually be coming to Cornwall at all but will have to be provided by Cornwall Council.
It is so good to know the government of the country is in strong, stable, safe and reliable hands.
With the Prime Minister's deal likely to appear before the House of Commons in a week's time, Pravda has been in full flow, trying to convince us that a 'no deal' would be a disaster so that we all roll over and buy her deal. We are warned there are more messages to come in the next few days.
Meanwhile, with the PM now on borrowed time, it has been fun watching the leadership contenders all trying to stake out their claims to be 'the chosen one' to succeed her. The vanity of Ministers knows no bounds and many have been keen to show they are 'back at their desks', 'being active' or 'making an announcement' (generally ill-thought through). It gets them brownie points at No 10 and with the faithful. Needless to say they have mostly fallen over in the process.
Jeremy Hunt has been off to Singapore: oh the advantages of being the Foreign Secretary and therefore being allowed to travel whenever/wherever you want. Boris missed an important Heathrow vote using precisely the same trick.
His message was that the UK could become another Singapore: a view which was rather spoiled by the Prime Minister of Singapore who said their model would not work for the UK.
One suspects that the residents of Hartlepool and Bournemouth would agree with the Prime Minister if they saw the conditions in which people live, and looked into the political structure of Singapore: We decide what is right, no matter what the people think. Yes, that is just what Brexiters want.
He was keen to tell us that Britain's role after Brexit should be as an invisible chain linking together the democracies of the world ... yatter, yatter. What on earth is this meant to mean? Has he asked them if they wish to be bound by an invisible chain or has he been reading too much Harry Potter with his mince pies?
Gavin Williamson has been throwing his diminished weight around by suggesting that we could open military bases around the world. Why? Oh yes, we used to have them back when we had an empire.
Um, Gavin, the armed forces are way under strength and much smaller than they were in the past. Heavens, we cannot rustle up enough patrol vessels to manage the straits of Dover.
Has he even checked that the host countries want us?
Sajid Javid has been the most prominent, boldly cancelling his 'luxury safari holiday in a £800 a night lodge' in order to be seen managing the 'migrant' 'crisis' (it was neither) with 'swarms' (well a few) people trying to cross the straits of Dover in small boats.
Having played all the 'right tunes' to the Torygraph faithful, including questioning whether they were genuine asylum seekers anyway, he was then taken to task by the 'liberal elite' who pointed out that under international law he should not pre-judge their status.
He was also taken to task for suggesting that the way to manage migration was by working closely with European partners: precisely the people from who we were about to cut ourselves off and who would no longer have an EU duty to co-operate.
'Bold action' followed with two vessels being withdrawn from the Mediterranean where they were dealing with large numbers of boats, to bolster the defence of the homeland. It will take one of them several weeks to arrive by which time the 'crisis' will be over. What price it never actually bothers to return? The media will have moved on long before it gets here.
It did not take long for headlines to emerge suggesting that Javid and Williamson were scoring points off each other.
I suppose we should be grateful that Caroline Nokes was not left in charge.
The star of the show, as usual, has been Chris Grayling. He had two strings to his bow. He blamed the unions for the 3.1% rail price rises. Um, Chris, that sounds so terribly 1970s and how would you feel if you had been squeezed by the government into having no pay rise for years and then, when you did get one (perish the thought), the government blamed you for the price rises.
And after a year when he had manifestly cocked up the whole rail system with a series of gaffes like changing the national rail timetable and forgiving a whole host of franchisees who were patently incapable of running a railway.
Trains are still not arriving or departing on time and there are suggestions that the ones that do appear will soon be running at 200% capacity. Yes, I know the London Undergound does, but that is for short journeys, not for five and six hour ones.
But this was simply a warm-up to his explanation as to why he let a contract to a 'ferry company' that had no money, no ferries and had never actually done anything in its short life.
Only later did it emerge that the company's terms and conditions were copied and pasted from a pizza delivery company's website. And Grayling re-assured us that the 'due diligence has been thorough'.
But we can relax as he has also assured us that he is expecting the channel ports to operate normally in all Brexit circumstances. So that's all right then. There is no need to believe the government's own warnings about turning the M20 into a lorry park. JR-M was right that unicorns can nod lorries through in 6 seconds.
Honourable mentions should go to Matt Hancock who is something to do with Health who has been claiming that the NHS will be the best place in the world to have a baby. We have some way to go, apparently but that does not stop a Minister making a bold claim (with no money attached).
If we are the best place in the world to have a baby, might that not just lead to a greater demand for migration?
And to James Brokenshire, our worthy Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for so diddling the figures that the £17m extra promised to Cornwall by central government will not actually be coming to Cornwall at all but will have to be provided by Cornwall Council.
It is so good to know the government of the country is in strong, stable, safe and reliable hands.
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