The Frontier

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 

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: 

'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.

Drawing lines

A Guardian leader entitled Brexit and Ireland: the forging of folly this week opened with the memorable line:

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.

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.

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:

• 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

It all ended in tears, as you can guess, and I became another person 'found wanting'. It was irrelevant that this said as much, if not more, about the Chairman than the people involved.

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)

It is time for her to be honest, not to be pig-headedly stubborn: to check the brief with the client. Ken Clarke was right: she is a Bloody difficult women indeed.

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.

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.

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 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

And, sorry, yes sorry, that we have created a society in which no one seems to turn a hair at the moral paradox that some people can afford a First Class fare on an airline when others are visiting food banks just to survive. As Thatcher might have said: if you are still travelling Economy then you have not been successful.

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. 

'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.

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:

• 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.

Vote Leave and Leave.EU both broke the law.

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.

All it guarantees is more years of negotiation – headed by the same clowns who guided us into this farce in the first place.

--

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.

Today we must be bold, because the challenges we face are just as extreme.

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 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.

Where next?

It seems to be common ground that the government's withdrawal deal will hit the buffers early next week if the PM does not withdraw the proposal before then. Unprecedented times follow with all sorts of options as the Independent sets out.

We seem to have a choice between:

• No deal: chaos at ports, shortage of food and medicines, economic meltdown ... 
• The PM's deal - semi-permanent rule-taking with no say in the content of those rules unless we want to ditch Northern Ireland (who would be closely followed by Scotland) and a long-drawn out process of negotiation on a new trade agreement (which has not even started yet) 
• Norway (with as many pluses as you care to add) - which solves none of the migration problems and leaves us as a rule-taker ... lifebelt being thrown into the mix and likely to be rejected by Norway 
• Canada (ditto pluses and minuses) - which no one much understands 
• Remaining in the EU

And, to make things merry at Christmastime, there is no majority in either the country or parliament for any of them.

Fun eh?

Not that we know why we are doing it of course.

We are being told that 'we should get behind the PM to reflect the "will of the people"'.

As a democrat, should I change my views because the majority has said that they want to leave the EU or am I right to stick to my views and allow others to make the compromises?

If I do change my mind then who will make the case for remaining?

If I supported the deal, would I be merely colluding in declaring:

Isn't it grand! Isn't it fine! Look at the cut, the style, the line! 
The suit of clothes is altogether, but altogether it's altogether 
The most remarkable suit of clothes that I have ever seen. 
These eyes of mine at once determined 
The sleeves are velvet, the cape is ermine 
The hose are blue and the doublet is a lovely shade of green 
Somebody send for the Queen ... 
... who would then to dissolve parliament and make Theresa May dictator-for-life.

What are you for?

As we reach the climax - or is that nadir - of the government's attempt to get us all to sign up to their dodgy Brexit deal, a few wisps of sanity are wafting around. One came from a tweet, via the Guardian and asks:

Is it possible that I’m the only British person alive today that has no clue as to what we’re meant to be fighting for? I literally have no idea what you brexiters want.

I know what we’re meant to be against, but not one positive thing we’re meant to be striving towards in this new non European Britain. It seems to be something to do with Churchill but other than than not a clue. It also seems that as I don’t know what this shared dream is meant to be then somehow you believe I’m now a traitor, why?

So brexiters please tell us all what you’re for, what you want? What is this “control” you claim to want so badly? What is it control over?

I’m not sure you actually understand yourselves. I think it’s a feeling you’re craving, a feeling of control over a world that is passing you by. I don’t think it amounts to any more than that. You want our country to bend to feelings and that’s it. You’re after obtaining the intangible and ephemeral by dismantling the real and permanent.

So please brexiters if you want me to pronounce shibboleth can you please have the decency of saying it out loud first. Give me a clue as to what you want us to be?”

Raphael Behr picked up the theme a few days later, saying:

We conspired to hold a referendum on leaving the EU without a serious conversation about what the EU even is, let alone what it does. Then, a year later, we got through a general election campaign with little mention of Europe at all. Another year has passed and, despite the urgency of the article 50 clock running out, politics still manages to distract itself with arguments other than the only one worth having, which is this: given what we now know about Brexit that we didn’t know then, should we still do it?

Should we indeed?

A fragile democracy

It is not often that I agree with my MP - certainly not recently - but I was pleased to be able to agree with her comment in a recent email: I greatly value democracy and understand how fragile it is. 

Yes, democracy is fragile. We have heard much about it recently, usually from people using as a hammer to beat others into submission: We voted out, get over it: that is how democracy works.

But are the rules of democracy written down or are they, like most things in the UK, based on sound British common sense: something we all took in with our mothers' milk?

One dictionary defines it as the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.

The drafting of this is good as it starts with people and their freedom and equality, not simply with the mechanism. It also includes the word 'belief' suggesting that democracy is not a set of rules but comes from an attitude.

The Brits delight in boasting that we 'invented' modern parliamentary democracy: a boast that is probably as thin as many of our other claims to pre-eminence. It is simply one of those boasts used to underpin British exceptionalism. 

But how do I reconcile my MP's views with what is going on now?

A referendum was held with a binary question so, for once, we were asked what we wanted on a specific question (let's set aside the lies, confused messages and dissembling that the campaign involved). We apparently said what we wanted.

The government of the day has then studiously ignored the views of the people thereafter - despite strong evidence that those views have changed - putting words into our mouths whenever necessary. It is what the people voted for is a useful refrain when there was only one actual question: I don't remember migrants, sovereignty or trade deals with dubious regimes being mentioned on the ballot paper.

It also refuses to consult with the people again. How can this be right?

Either we are a representative democracy - power held by elected representatives - or we are a Swiss democracy with the major issues being decided by the populace. It appears we live in a halfway house: we will ask you when you are likely to give the right answer, otherwise we will just get on with things and ignore your views.

In two weeks time, MPs will vote on the Prime Minister's withdrawal deal. Currently, its future looks bleak and so she has gone over MPs' heads to write a letter to all of us (or, more likely to Tory supporters).

Why bother? We have no power. She has told us that decisions will be taken by our representatives. All we can do is tell our MPs what we think and mine does not seem prepared to listen or debate the issues.

Meanwhile, the whips will start the usual arm-twisting, cajoling, bribery - offers of knighthoods, peerages, promotions, parliamentary time - and use of 'the little black book' to get MPs to fall into line behind the PM. As Giles Brandreth, a former whip, said on the Today programme there are always toilets into which MPs can be locked if they look likely to turn the wrong way.

Is this really the best way to run a democracy? I have argued before that we have a C19 parliamentary system which is long past its sell-buy date. If the PM's withdrawal deal goes through then we will not only have undermined the future for our young but any credibility as a successful democracy: how to manipulate a democracy perhaps but run one, no.

Current heroes?

The list of political heroes has just increased by one: Jo Johnson for his incredibly well-crafted resignation letter (see below). He can now take his place alongside Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve, Keir Starmer, Nicky Morgan and others who still seem to have retained a degree of independent spirit.

Then there are non MPs like Simon Coveney (the 'Foreign Minister' of Ireland) who seems incapable of opening his mouth without making sense, Seb Dance (MEP Labour) whose quiet good sense is equally admirable and almost any non-British journalist writing for a leading newspaper or magazine. such as Jan Fleischhauer with his piece Britain has never looked so foolish in the world’s eyes.

Could it be that we are seeing the beginnings of a central grouping which might form the core of the coalition that will follow Theresa May's inevitable resignation when her deal is rejected? The relentless logic of Brexit points to this as the inevitable solution.

Anyway, to Jo Johnson. Read and enjoy:

Why I cannot support the Government’s proposed Brexit deal

Brexit has divided the country. It has divided political parties. And it has divided families too. Although I voted Remain, I have desperately wanted the Government, in which I have been proud to serve, to make a success of Brexit: to reunite our country, our party and, yes, my family too. At times, I believed this was possible. That’s why I voted to start the Article 50 process and for two years have backed the Prime Minister in her efforts to secure the best deal for the country. But it has become increasingly clear to me that the Withdrawal Agreement, which is being finalised in Brussels and Whitehall even as I write, will be a terrible mistake.

Indeed, the choice being presented to the British people is no choice at all. The first option is the one the Government is proposing: an agreement that will leave our country economically weakened, with no say in the EU rules it must follow and years of uncertainty for business. The second option is a “no deal” Brexit that I know as a Transport Minister will inflict untold damage on our nation. To present the nation with a choice between two deeply unattractive outcomes, vassalage and chaos, is a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis. My constituents in Orpington deserve better than this from their Government.

What is now being proposed won’t be anything like what was promised two years ago.

Hopes for “the easiest trade deal in history” have proved to be delusions. Contrary to promises, there is in fact no deal at all on our future trading relationship with the EU which the government can present to the country. Still less anything that offers the “exact same benefits” as the Single Market, as David Davis promised, or the “precise guarantees of frictionless trade” that the Prime Minister assured us would be available. All that is now being finalised is the agreement to pay the EU tens of billions of pounds. All that may be on offer on trade is the potential for an agreement to stay in a temporary customs arrangement while we discuss the possibility of an EU trade deal that all experience shows will take many years to negotiate.

Even if we eventually secure a customs arrangement for trade in goods, it will be bad news for the service sector — for firms in finance, in IT, in communications and digital technology. Maintaining access to EU markets for goods is important, but we are fundamentally a services economy. Many in Orpington, for example, are among the two million Britons employed in financial services, commuting into the centre of London to jobs of all kinds in the City. Countries across the world go to great lengths to attract financial and professional services jobs from our shores. An agreement that sharply reduces access to EU markets for financial services — or leaves us vulnerable to regulatory change over which we will have no influence — will hurt my constituents and damage one of our most successful sectors.

While we wait to negotiate trading terms, the rules of the game will be set solely by the EU. Britain will lose its seat at the table and its ability to amend or vote down rules it opposes. Instead of Britain “taking back control”, we will cede control to other European countries. This democratic deficit inherent in the Prime Minister’s proposal is a travesty of Brexit. When we were told Brexit meant taking back powers for Parliament, no one told my constituents this meant the French parliament and the German parliament, not our own. In these circumstances, we must ask what we are achieving. William Hague once described the goal of Conservative policy as being “in Europe, but not run by Europe”. The government’s proposals will see us out of Europe, yet run by Europe, bound by rules which we will have lost a hand in shaping.

Worse still, there is no real clarity about how this situation will ever end. The proposed Withdrawal Agreement parks many of the biggest issues about our future relationship with Europe into a boundless transitionary period. This is a con on the British people: there is no evidence that the kind of Brexit that we’ve failed to negotiate while we are still members can be magically agreed once the UK has lost its seat at the table. The leverage we have as a full member of the EU will have gone. We will be in a far worse negotiating position than we are today. And we will have still failed to resolve the fundamental questions that are ramping up uncertainties for businesses and stopping them investing for the future.

My brother Boris, who led the leave campaign, is as unhappy with the Government’s proposals as I am. Indeed he recently observed that the proposed arrangements were “substantially worse than staying in the EU”. On that he is unquestionably right. If these negotiations have achieved little else, they have at least united us in fraternal dismay.

The argument that the government will present for the Withdrawal Agreement ‘deal’ is not that it is better for Britain than our current membership. The Prime Minister knows that she cannot honestly make the claim that the deal is an improvement on Britain’s current arrangements with the EU and, to her credit, refuses to do so. The only case she can try to make is that it is better than the alternative of leaving the EU with no deal at all.

Certainly, I know from my own work at the Department of Transport the potential chaos that will follow a “no deal” Brexit. It will cause disruption, delay and deep damage to our economy. There are real questions about how we will be able to guarantee access to fresh food and medicine if the crucial Dover-Calais trade route is clogged up. The government may have to take control of prioritising which lorries and which goods are allowed in and out of the country, an extraordinary and surely unworkable intervention for a government in an advanced capitalist economy. The prospect of Kent becoming the Lorry Park of England is very real in a no deal scenario. Orpington residents bordering Kent face disruption from plans to use the nearby M26, connecting the M25 to the M20, as an additional queuing area for heavy goods vehicles backed up all the way from the channel ports. This prospect alone would be a resigning matter for me as a constituency MP, but it is just a facet of a far greater problem facing the nation.

Yet for all its challenges and for all the real pain it would cause us as we adapt to new barriers to trade with our biggest market, we can ultimately survive these difficulties. I believe it would be a grave mistake for the government to ram through this deal by once again unleashing Project Fear. A “no deal” outcome of this sort may well be better than the never ending purgatory the Prime Minister is offering the country. But my message to my brother and to all Leave campaigners is that inflicting such serious economic and political harm on the country will leave an indelible impression of incompetence in the minds of the public. It cannot be what you wanted nor did the 2016 referendum provide any mandate for it.

Given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say. This would not be about re-running the 2016 referendum, but about asking people whether they want to go ahead with Brexit now that we know the deal that is actually available to us, whether we should leave without any deal at all or whether people on balance would rather stick with the deal we already have inside the European Union.

To those who say that is an affront to democracy given the 2016 result, I ask this. Is it more democratic to rely on a three year old vote based on what an idealised Brexit might offer, or to have a vote based on what we know it does actually entail?

A majority of Orpington voters chose to leave the EU in 2016 and many of the close friends I have there, among them hard-working local Conservative Party members, are passionately pro-Brexit. I respect their position. But I know from meetings I have had with local members that many are as dismayed as me by the course of negotiations and about the actual choice now on offer. Two and a half years on, the practical Brexit options are now clear and the public should be asked to choose between the different paths facing our country: we will all have different positions on that choice, but I think many in my local party, in the Orpington constituency and around the country would welcome having the last word on the Government’s Brexit proposals.

Britain stands on the brink of the greatest crisis since the Second World War. My loyalty to my party is undimmed. I have never rebelled on any issue before now. But my duty to my constituents and our great nation has forced me to act. I have today written to the Prime Minister asking her to accept my resignation from the Government. It is now my intention to vote against this Withdrawal Agreement. I reject this false choice between the PM’s deal and “no deal” chaos. On this most crucial of questions, I believe it is entirely right to go back to the people and ask them to confirm their decision to leave the EU and, if they choose to do that, to give them the final say on whether we leave with the Prime Minister’s deal or without it.

The televised interview

We have had a masterclass this week on how (not) to avoid a car crash when faced with a difficult interview.

Aaron Banks should never have been invited onto the Andrew Marr Show when his case had recently been passed to the NCA. As Caroline Lucas remarked, it might well have prejudiced his ability to get a fair trial. He would be delighted with this of course.

The interview was not Andrew Marr's greatest moment. He is not a Paxman who can ask the same question 13 times, nor is he an accountant. Banks said nothing and dodged every question, merely trotting out the old populist lines that everyone is corrupt (except him of course).

But then we had the hapless Caroline Nokes, Minister of State for Immigration: not once but twice.

Her appearance before the Home Affairs Committee chaired by Yvette Cooper was a simple car crash which reduced Yvette Cooper to putting her head in her hands. Dramatic stuff indeed.

OK, let's give the Minister the benefit of the doubt: she was up against a seasoned parliamentary performer from the other side. Her performance required her boss, the Home Secretary, to issue all sorts of 'clarifications' to try to rescue things.

Caroline Nokes has form. Back in May she appeared before the Norther Ireland Committee and was completely at sea.

One of the joys of these three examples is the style of the questioner: Andrew Marr was considered and adult (but did not get the truth); Yvette Cooper was precise, direct and dramatic.

I love the last one for its gently spoken approach:
'The Government tells us that it puts great store by the Good Friday Agreement. Have you actually read the Good Friday Agreement whose 20th birthday we have been celebrating?'
'No.'
'Have you read any part of it?'
'No. Twenty years ago I was having a baby. I have only been a Minister for five months.'
Ouch! It is not always best to have heavy feet to make one's point.

How do people face themselves in the mirror after sessions like this? Aaron Banks is arrogant to think he had 'won' (cf Trump and the Mid-term elections). When Tracey Crouch disagreed with a policy announcement, she resigned. Caroline Nokes clearly does not think it necessary after two car crashes.

And the plan is ... ?

Laura Kuenssberg reports on the BBC website today that Theresa May was at a Monday night reception in Westminster and talked about how, 'in her view, Brexit gives the government a big chance to reform the country'.

Interesting to hear but exactly how is the country 'going to be reformed' and are we allowed a say in what this might be?

The sad state of politics today is such that everything has now been reduced to a soundbite.

Did any one actually read and consider the Tory manifesto before voting in the general election? Did our revered Prime Minister go out on the stump spelling out the way in which she believed that the country could or should be 'reformed'? Was there any sort of 'debate' about her vision of a newly reformed country?

No, of course not. All we got was a repeat, and repeat and ... of 'Strong and Stable'. Is that how we plan our futures nowadays?

So where's the plan?

• There was no plan for Brexit before the referendum.
• No plan for Brexit was shared with the public after Brexit (was there one to share?)
• David Davis lied his way through the 58 sectoral analyses which were the basis for his negotiating plan.
• 'Chequers' - the nearest thing to a plan that has appeared, was shot out of the water by the EU's first salvo.

Now, apparently the country is going to be reformed. How? Why? Where's the plan.

No competent business would operate like this. Why do we accept it from our government?

Finding some soldiers

So we are going to take back control of our borders and ensure that only 'highly qualified' people who are able to command salaries over £50,000 pa will be allowed in unless there are special shortages ...

... like soldiers apparently.

Commonwealth residents will now be allowed to join the military without having first lived in the UK for five years.

Will they be given residency? How will this affect the immigration figures?

Wasn't it the Roman empire that fell to pieces when all its forces were staffed by mercenaries?

Letter to an MP

Following the march for the People's Vote, we drafted the following to send to our MP but then thought better of it and sent a much shorter note. 

She won't listen. She never does. The only answer we get is a clip form Central Officer saying how wonderful everything is. 

Her latest hobby horse is that 'there is real anger in the country and therefore we have to deliver Brexit'. Maybe intelligent people should get angrier instead of marching peacefully.

Dear MP,

I am returning to the familiar subject of Brexit.

It will not have escaped your attention that over 700,000 people took the trouble to march, or rather shuffle, through Central London last week in support of a People’s Vote. I was very sorry not to be able to join them.

The arguments for a further public vote are surely now inescapable.

It is now abundantly clear there was never a single plan for leaving the EU. Instead, the leading Brexiters made a series of wildly extravagant and conflicting promises. There is evidence that they both lied and over-spent their permitted budgets. They promised vast additional sums for the NHS and that we would ‘take back control’ by leaving the EU. They clearly had no plan but were motivated entirely by emotion.

Having changed sides herself, the Prime Minister brought some of these individuals into the Cabinet and challenged them to implement their proposals. Gradually, as reality has bitten and they have been faced with the contradictions of their positions, some of the ‘big beasts’ and many of their acolytes have left the stage, unable to support the Prime Minister or the way the negotiations have progressed.

There has continued to be no plan. The Prime Minister has not offered the British people a single vision of what the future might look like, how we might trade with the rest of the world, how we might control our borders, how we might actually ‘take back control’. We have had to pick these up from the various statements that have been made while the government’s negotiating team has been getting on with its work.

What is now emerging as being on offer bears almost no relation to the proposals made by the Brexiters during the campaign. The nearest we have had is ‘Chequers’ which was summarily dismissed by the EU and which, anyway, would have left the country as a rule-taker – hardly taking back control – with no say in the making of those rules. It had the merit of keeping us economically linked to Europe but the disadvantage of offering no realistic solution to the problems of Northern Ireland or the possible domino effects of any NI solution on other parts of the UK. 

Survey after survey confirms that the public believes that, for whatever reason, the government is making a mess of the negotiations. What we were told was going to be ‘easy’, ‘the simplest negotiation ever’, ‘we hold all the cards’ has turned out to be anything but.

To add to the difficulties, the government’s own studies have confirmed that any alternative to staying in the EU is going to impact the economy of the country negatively. It may sound like a revival of ‘Project Fear’ but the reality is now becoming clear. Stockpiles of food and drugs, lorry queues, visas, staff shortages, aeroplanes unable to land, ‘adequate’ food, companies exporting their head offices, manufacturing and investment to other countries, investment stagnant and the UK dropping down the world rankings: the list goes on. And these are not campaigning slogans, they have come from the government.

The country was, and remains, split. Remainers like me have refused to lie down and be silenced, convinced that the best future for this country is as part of a wider partnership of countries: not giving up sovereignty but sharing in certain areas in the common interest. ‘Subsidiarity’ is and will remain, enshrined in EU law.

No doubt many of those marchers last weekend were Remainers but many more were people who originally voted Leave as there is no confidence in the government or Parliament to deliver anything remotely like what was promised by the Brexiters. Even if we knew what that was.

Parliament has been promised a ‘meaningful vote’ on any deal but the government seems intent on gerrymandering anything but. If the Tory party calls on the dark arts of the whips, strong-arms a few Labour MPs, buys off a few more DUP MPs to push through a vote in favour of the Prime Minister’s deal then it will, yet again, have shown the narrow politics and party interests are of more importance than the good of the country. I have argued before that In or Out of the EU is not a party political issue despite the cynical attempt of many in your party to make it one.

And let us remind ourselves that the deal we are being asked to consider is only the deal on the terms of exit and a political statement about our, as yet un-negotiated, future which will no doubt be suitably vague. That we have got to this situation with five months to go, is irresponsible in the extreme. No wonder companies are holding back investment, the housing market is stagnant and people are moving investment offshore.  

Ah, you will say, there is genuine anger across the country at the way things have been in the past and we must listen to the people. I agree. People are cross with elites: and I include both you and me in this. They are cross with austerity when those in power appeared not to suffer from pay and investment cuts. They are cross with the London-centeredness of investment and the media. They are cross because the trains don't work, the prisons are overflowing, because crime that affects people is not being tackled. They are cross because individual people suffering hardship or disability are being 'examined' by people with no brain, sensitivity or specialist training, tick boxes in hand. They are cross at the lack of investment in the regions – and here we can include Cornwall.

It is the populists who have harnessed this anger, offering up the EU as the whipping boy to suit their own ends. You know the EU was not responsible for this list of failures. Can you honestly face your Cornish constituents and say that investment is going to be greater in Cornwall after we leave the EU than we have received during our time in it? 

If you do push ahead and leave the EU then, the government will be hated by well over half the country (all those who would wish to remain plus either the deal or the no dealers). As the impact of leaving begins to bite, businesses will fail and more and more people will fall into poverty, gearing up the hate to levels not seen in generations.

  

The country will look round for someone to blame and it will not be the EU. It will be the Tory party. The whole parliamentary system will have been tainted leading to even less confidence in our system of governance. That may suit a right-wing dictatorial regime but it is not the liberal democracy in which you and I grew up.  

The only credible way out of this bind, and the statesmanlike approach, is to allow a proper three option People’s Vote. This would allow the government to breathe a sigh of relief, put it back to the people and agree to implement that result in full and final settlement. 

‘In 2016 you voted to leave the EU. Key elements behind that were large sums of money for the NHS, the ability to ‘take back control’ and the promise of a much richer economic future. I have to say to you that these are not deliverable. We have done what we can to talk to the EU but find ourselves in a bind. 

'If we continue to be linked closely to them economically then we will have to accept their rules without having any say in the content of those rules. If we break away completely then we will incur a massive bureaucratic burden which will take years to establish and pay-off, for a questionable economic future. We were already the 5^th largest economy in the world and are now the 6^th. It is hard to see how we can do any better than we have in the past.

‘Having come to the end of our negotiations on the withdrawal agreement, and before we start work on the really difficult negotiations about our future trading relationship, we are going to ask the British people once again whether they want to go ahead and leave the EU. If we leave without a deal then we estimate the economy will suffer a 7.7% hit. If we leave with a deal then the economic hit is estimated to be between 2-5%, depending on the deal but we will have to accept others’ rules. Or we can simply stay in the EU as we are at present and take our chances.

‘Yes, there are real challenges in our country. The ‘Have-nots’ and the ‘Just about managing’ are struggling. We have been through a period of austerity but we can genuinely see the end of this and we are determined to ensure that in future the benefits are shared more widely.’

'But first, we need to decide whether we tackle these problems from within the EU when there just might be enough money to make a difference, or from outside when we will have to weather a difficult storm as we settle down to t anew reality.

  

‘The decision is to be yours’

I accept that any further vote is going to be divisive but it is a bit late to be worrying about that now. The country is already divided. It is also not a denial of democracy as some would have us believe; on the contrary, it is the best sort of democracy. I need hardly echo the words of last weekend’s campaigners about being allowed to read the small print before signing the contract.

And this time can we make sure that the vote includes all those who are affected by the result. 

My sister is a UK passport holder who exercised her right to work in a European country travelling smoothly between EU countries and working without problem. When the referendum came she and her adult children were denied a vote. Now she faces being deprived of her right to hold a UK passport and to travel smoothly between different EU countries.

If we leave the EU then you will have deprived her of her rights without her having any say in the matter. This feels positively C19. Because she owns no property and has not lived in the UK recently – which there was no requirement to do – she has been deprived of a vote. Americans threw tea into a harbour for such things. 

And then there are the young people, many of whom could not vote in 2016 but who may well be of voting age when we finally leave the Transition period in 2021. A 23 year old voter could wake up in December 2012 outside the Eu and yet never having had an opportunity to vote in the decision which will have the greatest affect on their career and life. They have to have a chance to vote now.

It was all very well to have an 'advisory' referendum to test the feeling of the country but now that the lies and deceptions have been exposed, now that the government had finally issued some advice on what the various futures might look like - none very rosy - then the people must have another option to review the detail and decide whether they still want to go ahead. And it must be a three way vote. Transferable voting is possible, you know; it is just hated by dictators and bullies.

If Brexit is such a good idea, what have the Brexiters to fear?  

I look forward to your reply and please do not make it one of those photocopied Central Office replies such as you sent me last time which was so shot full of self-serving illogicality that it did more harm than good.

Yours sincerely

She was probably better off with the short version. 

How societies choose to fail or survive

Reading Jared Diamond's brilliant book Collapse or How Societies choose to fail or survive would be depressing if it were not so well written and interesting. Published in 2005 it reflects the optimistic liberal views of the early years of the decade.

He looks at a variety of societies which have disappeared, and draws the conclusion that they made one or more of five classic errors:

• We damaged our environment (Easter Island)
• We had hostile neighbours who we were unable to contain (Rome)
• We lost the support of friendly neighbours (Greenland)
• The climate changed and we did not adapt fast enough (the Mayans, Greenland) 
• We responded to these issues in the wrong way

He then draws the threads together with some almost prophetic thoughts and describes our inability to adapt as often being rational behavior (sic - after all, he is American) ... that is some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people. Scientists term such behavior rational precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible.

The perpetrators know that they will often get away with their bad behavior especially if there is no law against it or if the law isn't effectively enforced. They feel safe because the perpetrators are typically concentrated (few in number) and highly motivated by the prospect of reaping big, certain and immediate profits, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals. That gives the losers little motivation to go to the hassle of fighting back, because each loser loses only a little and would receive only small uncertain, distant profits even from a successfully undoing the minority's grab. 

If this is not a description of the Brexit cabal at work then I wonder what is. A small group: tick. Big certain rewards: tick. Losses spread widely to others: tick. Uncertain profits to the majority: tick.

He goes on: A frequent type of rational behavior is 'good for me, bad for you and for everybody else' - to put it bluntly 'selfish'. 

After looking at the problems of the commons - it is not in an individual's interest to limit their take of a resource held in common - he goes on:

A further conflict of interest involving rational behavior arises when the interests of the decision-making elite in power clash with the interests of the rest of society. Especially if the elite can insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions, they are likely to do things that profit themselves, regardless of whether those actions hurt everybody else. ...

Throughout recorded history, actions or inactions by self-absorbed kings, chiefs, and politicians have been a regular causes of societal collapses ...

He then quotes Washington insider who said that after the 2000 elections there was a 90-day focus: they talked only about those problems with the potential to cause a disaster within the next 90 days. So much for long-term thinking.

He goes on to mention group think (crowd psychology) as yet another potential problem as it causes people to be swept along by a tide to accept a group's decision uncritically. He quotes Schiller: Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible and reasonable - as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead. Added to psychological denial, this makes a dangerous cocktail.

What a selfish, self-centred, self-seeking and irrational society Mrs T created. Now her heirs seems determined to carry on her work fulfilling at least three of the conditions for a society to collapse (four in the case of Donald Trump).

Only by working together with others, in a shared endeavour, will we solve the major world problems. To go our own selfish way is to take the road to collapse. If that means that we knowingly and willingly share some of our so-called sovereignty then bring it on.

What an unholy mess!

The anniversary of the Brexit vote has passed with confusion on both sides. No one seems inclined to 'celebrate' for there is little to celebrate.

The vote divided the country into two almost equal camps who have continued to bicker for 12 months with plenty of heat but no light. The government has expected us to be satisfied with empty soundbites: 'Brexit means Brexit' and 'No deal is better than a bad deal' (a general principle that does not stand up to any analysis, especially given the option of not leaving Europe).  

A couple of months ago Theresa May told us that 'the country is united but Westminster is not' we would therefore have a general election. The result simply highlighted how wrong she had been. Her rhetoric did not got through to the voters (especially as she studiously avoided meeting any); the polls were as misguided as ever; Jeremy Corbyn was not 'unelectable'. The country is now as divided as ever and Westminster is more evenly balanced than it was before.

She actually had the nerve to announce after the election that 'nothing has changed' and that she would be 'getting on with the job' (repeated several times for the hard of hearing). How crass could she be? How ignorant of the message coming out of the balance of votes: that we were not all her greatest fans. She does not have the confidence of the country.

She stumbles on - because we all know that only the Tories are allowed to rule the country - with a divided Party, a divided Parliament and a divided country, while David Davis postures about 'negotiating' when he has actually had one day of talking about the cost of divorce: from a position of considerable weakness.

Of course, the outcome of the election is being interpreted in ways that bear no relation to the question on the ballot paper, just as happened with the referendum.

The referendum asked a single question: should we leave the EU. The answer was interpreted as meaning that we wanted to control migration, get rid of regulation, have freedom to do trade deals, give the NHS more money, and take back sovereignty (for whom; the people? the country? parliament? the Tory party?).  It is ironic that the one explicit thing on offer - more money for the NHS - was withdrawn by the 'winning' side within 48 hours of the vote.

Theresa May then added that we had also voted to leave the Single Market and Customs Union: something that some Brexiteers had specifically said, before the vote, we would not be doing.

The same post-event interpretation happened with the general election. We are now told that we have just voted to 'reject Theresa May's Hard Brexit'. Welcome though this is, I don't remember reading that on the ballot paper. All I saw was a list of names. Is this conclusion the result of some backroom number crunching on who might and might not support her if it came to a vote?

Theresa May takes comfort from the fact that 'over 80% of people voted for a party which supported Brexit'. This is simply more spin. That was not the question on the general election ballot paper. Many voters, on both sides, will have held their noses and voted for the manifestos in the round rather than the different approaches to Brexit, especially as neither major party gave us any detail on what they propose.

What both these votes included was a common cry of protest from the dispossessed, from those who had suffered under austerity. And yes, I am probably falling into exactly the same trap as those commentators who interpreted the results. Both votes were demands for change: an end to austerity.

The Tory front bench refuses, or is incapable, of understanding this as they carry on with 'business as usual' as though they had not just been given a bloody nose by the electorate. 'Nothing has changed' repeated Theresa May in case we had not heard it the first time.

For once, I agree with arch-Brexiteer Gisella Stuart when she said that the 'vacuous' referendum should never have been called. Her argument, amongst others, was that there was no one around to be accountable for the result. No one had been prepared to take ownership of all those vague promises.

At least with the election, we will know who to blame when it all goes horribly wrong. The slimmed down Queen's Speech - hardly long enough for one year's worth of work let alone two, said Jeremy Corbyn - mercifully left out some of the nastier Tory policies but was still pathetic for the first year of a government which is meant to be lasting for five. A fat chance, in my view.

There is talk of having another general election in two years' time to put the Brexit deal to the public. This will simply compound the problem. You cannot bury a question like that in with a whole raft of other policy measures and expect a clear answer. Not unless you are a spin doctor, determined to interpret any result to suit your agenda.

The Tory front bench is hardly a beacon of sanity. As one commentator pointed out, 'We now have a climate change sceptic in charge of environment, a man who hates Europe in charge of Brexit, an NHS enemy in charge of health and a PM who hates human contact (Did I mention that we have a justice secretary with an appalling voting record on LGBT rights)'. They don't often write headlines like that.

The list gets worse, not least with a Chancellor that the PM wanted to sack now throwing his weight around and (thankfully) insisting that economics should be the main consideration in the Brexit negotiations.

Andrea Leadsom demonstrated her grasp of the message from the election when she said that broadcasters (ie the BBC) 'should be a bit patriotic' and suggesting that the country needed to come together. Which bit of democracy does she not understand? Is she suggesting that people should give up their strongly-held views to support her? Why? Has she not understood that the British people do not like being told what to do, or preached at?

Before long, it will finally dawn on people that the referendum promises are undeliverable. Being British, we will not be brave enough to declare the truth and face the consequences. That might look like 'failure'. Mayhem will never allow that. Instead we will cobble up some ghastly compromise with a little bit of everything and the worst of all worlds to show that 'we have delivered what the nation wanted'.

Because of the deep political divide we are now hearing suggestions, including from the Archbishop of Canterbury, of a possible cross-party commission on Brexit. Very sensible in terms of building bridges but I would have expected a better understanding of human nature from him.

In our adversarial system of party politics, the Labour Party has no incentive to help Theresa May achieve a successful Brexit. Napoleon's adage about never interfering with your enemy while he is destroying himself, comes to mind. If Jeremy Corbyn helped out then who would take the praise? And he would have to share the blame if the process, of which he did not have control, did not work out 'brilliantly'. Neither Theresa May nor Jeremy Corbyn behave like team players.

Why would anyone work with the leader of a party they did not believe in? If there is to be joint working on Brexit then the Commission will have to be headed by someone different. Neither May nor Corbyn would be acceptable to voters on the other side.

Is it a surprise that, with a lame duck Prime Minister, no one is putting themselves forward from within the Tory party as a possible substitute. 'Boris' says someone. 'Amber' says another. 'Phil for a maximum of two years', says a third. Who would want the poisoned chalice?

We still don't know what Brexit might mean in practice as the government has been so secretive. How can we come together Andrea?

All of which shows democracy at its worst: blunt, ill-informed, open to abuse.

So how do we actually get out of the bind in which we find ourselves? A new Tory leader before the Autumn perhaps? A statesman honest and brave enough to call out Brexit for what it is? A degree of honesty and openness about the nightmare of Brexit, any flavour of which, both sides agree, is going to cause real pain in the short to medium term ... a Macron perhaps. A person without significant baggage who can cut through traditional two-party loyalties and unite people. Someone prepared to put a range of practical and achievable Brexit options to the public, to allow a real, informed debate before decision, before triggering Article 50.

No chance. This is Britain. We are the experts at democracy. The Tories rule and the rest of you do as you are told.

How different it might have been with proportional representation and years of experience of consensus-building as used by those perfidious Europeans with their weak, unstable governments. 'That jeering sound is Europe laughing at Britain' as Andrew Rawnsley's article puts it.

One thing is certain: no one wants another general election just now, no matter how much we need it. I can understand why no one wants to risk making our current woes even worse.