brexit
Neoliberalism’s idea is to shift costs to people while underinvesting and ignoring that government creates money
I think that this might be a good working definition of neoliberalism. It goes together with the idea that – so personally inadequate, uncertain and unconfident are the supposedly best people in society – that they consider, in spite of their power and wealth, that they can be safely certain of flourishing only when both... Read more
‘A Disunited Kingdom? Reclaiming an Englishness Hijacked by the Right’
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While the death of the extraordinary Tom Nairn this year was widely acknowledged in Scotland – with Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown all sharing fulsome eulogies about his significant influence on their own thinking – strangely it barely registered among England’s political leaders.
That’s a particular shame since much of his analysis was actually about my homeland and its seemingly permanent state of political crisis.
Perhaps it reflects the fact that few of England’s political elite are willing to accept they are just English, let alone to contemplate the logic of Nairn’s argument: that the break-up of Britain – the mutual liberation from the crumbling political construct which he famously called "Ukania" – might just be good for all of us.
What’s the nature of the democratic crisis we face?
Seen in one way, the problem is our political institutions.
The archaic and undemocratic 'first past the post’ voting system; an over-centralised governance system; the unelected House of Lords; the populist abuse of sovereignty; the vast networks of patronage; the stuffy and outdated conventions and public school atmosphere – the whole damn lot of it.
But, seen in another way, it is about nationalisms and identity. And specifically about how England, in particular, has struggled to find its way in the modern world. How we cling to our delusions of imperial grandeur, pretend that we’re so much more than just English – and how the devastating consequences of that are all around us.
It was English exceptionalism that drove Brexit, for example. In one way, the EU Referendum campaign seems a lifetime ago. We’ve gone through so much since then and, if anything, the alienation and polarisation are much greater today than they were back in 2016.
But the truth was clear even then: that Brexit was the result of division, and would make those divisions worse. And it has deepened the democratic crisis within the United Kingdom.
The fact that England and Wales voted to leave, and Scotland and Northern Ireland to stay, has put incredible strain on the myth that the United Kingdom is an equal partnership of four nations.
EXCLUSIVE
The Story of Brexit is the Story of Empire: Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
The complicated love-hate relationship of immigrants from former colonies with the British Empire cannot be ignored if lessons are to be learned in post-Brexit Britain, says Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
The Government in London decided what form Brexit would take without any reference at all to the elected governments in Edinburgh or Belfast, or indeed, in Cardiff. Unsurprisingly, as a result, support for the reunification of Ireland has grown. The pressure for a second independence referendum in Scotland remains strong. And in Wales, a new sense of national identity is on the rise. The future of the United Kingdom itself is now in doubt.
Yet we left the EU, primarily, because of what had happened in England. Outside of the capital, every single English region voted for Brexit. It is no disrespect to Wales, I hope, which voted by a majority of only 80,000 for leave, to say that it was an English vote that drove Brexit.
In the months following the referendum, I travelled to as many leave-voting areas in England as I could to hear from people first-hand and face-to-face why they had supported Brexit. Sometimes this was difficult. One reason was that those who benefitted economically from EU membership, and from the UK becoming a more open and diverse society, did not do anything like enough to share these gains fairly and often sneered at those with a more traditional view of England.
But these conversations were also refreshing and reassuring because there was so much more that we agreed on than held us apart. Many people were angry. Of course they were. But if you took the time to go, and paid them the courtesy of listening, then common ground could emerge.
One theme that continually arose throughout this listening exercise (which my small team filmed and shared as best we could, and which came to be known as ‘Dear Leavers’), was about people’s sense of pride in the places where they lived, but – simultaneously – their feelings of powerlessness.
I was told countless times that London, and the power that was held there, was so far away that it might as well have been on another planet. They felt unheard and ignored.
This was about more than an economic complaint, however corrosive this country’s grotesque inequalities of wealth and opportunity undoubtedly are. It was also about culture and identity.
Many resented how some expressions of Englishness were allowed, while others were not. It was acceptable to love the English countryside, English humour, English music and English literature, and to see these aspects of Englishness as welcoming, humane, full of energy and creativity. But the moment Englishness took a political form, it apparently turned into the opposite.
Even mild forms of patriotism were frowned on. The English flag was acceptable fluttering from a church tower in a picturesque village, but was instantly interpreted as a form of racism if hanging from someone’s window on an estate.
Yet Englishness should not be something to be scared of. Or suppressed within the notion of ‘Britain’ as if this will contain it safely. On the contrary, as Brexit shows, it doesn’t.
We need to recognise that many people who see themselves primarily as English feel they are without a voice, including a political voice. There are no institutions that represent England equivalent to those in the three other countries of the UK. Nothing to give political expression to our complex, rich and sometimes raucous reality, or where differences can be expressed and, perhaps, resolved.
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The so-called ‘English problem’ is not only one of culture and identity, but also – profoundly – one of democracy.
And we need to ask ourselves what kind of England do we want now and in the future, either within the United Kingdom or as an independent state, a reborn Kingdom of England?
Will it be a smaller, diminished version of what we have now? Will imperial delusions and exceptionalism continue to shape its sense of itself? Will it be inward-looking, resentful of lost glories, held back by social and economic injustice, and run for the benefit of a narrow elite?
Or could it become a genuine democracy, confident, outward-looking, inclusive and recognise our future necessarily involves being part of Europe?
These questions have taken on an even greater urgency as xenophobic nationalism continues its rise across Europe, from the success of the Sweden Democrats and True Finns to the growth of the far-right in France, Italy and Hungary.
At the same time, propelled by the outcome of the Brexit Referendum and the 2019 General Election, in the UK the populist-right strengthens its grip on an increasingly extreme and out-of-touch Conservative Party.
If a progressive alternative to this national populist agenda is to be successful, it needs to do more than offer bolder, more ambitious policies, vital though those are: it needs to unify, rather than divide; to offer hope, rather than despair. And one of the most effective ways of doing that is by telling more compelling stories of who we are and who we can be.
And so my answer to the question of how do we get out of the current democratic crisis is not only about constitutional answers. It’s not just about a proportional voting system, an elected House of Lords, an end to political patronage, the drafting of a written constitution. It’s also about telling more compelling stories about who we English are so that we might – finally – be more comfortable in our own skin, less intent on subduing our neighbours, whether they be within the UK or across the Empire.
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Because I would wager that, when we English do finally settle with our own identity, we’ll discover we’re much more progressive than we’re ever led to believe.
Right now, Englishness has been hijacked by the right. The dominant version of our national story solely serves their interests. The only people who dare speak of ‘Englishness’ are cheerleaders for isolationism and imperial nostalgia.
But there are other stories, equally compelling, about who we are: about the English people’s radical inclusivity, their ancient commitment to the natural world, their long struggle to win rights for all. Stories that put the Chartists and the Diggers in their rightful place alongside Nelson and Churchill. That draw inspiration from the Agreement of the People, from Tom Paine, and from Shelley, Milton and Blake. That draw on medieval writers and Romantic poets who emphasised the sanctity of the environment. That recognise and celebrate England’s ancient multicultural heritage.
My forthcoming book, Another England, sets out to tell those stories. Because I believe that rediscovering those stories of an England at ease with itself and with our past – forward-looking, open, more equal, diverse and multi-ethnic – and identifying the policies that can help to realise them, has become a political project every bit as important as investing in infrastructure or levelling-up.
A country without a coherent story about who and what it is can never thrive and prosper, it can’t extract itself from its own democratic crisis, and certainly can’t rise to the existential threats of our time – the climate and nature emergencies.
As the writer Ben Okri puts it, “nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings".
Finding and telling stories that speak to the truth of England’s past and present, and inspire us to imagine and pursue new and better futures, might turn out to be one of the most transformative acts we can undertake. And one of the greatest contributions to a healthier democracy across all of these islands.
Caroline Lucas is the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion. Her book 'Another England: A New Story of Who We Are and Who We Can Be’ will be published in 2024. This is an edited version of her speech at the 'Break-Up of Britain? Confronting the UK’s Democratic Crisis’ Conference in Edinburgh on 18 November 2023
‘A Disunited Kingdom? It Is Time to Tell an Inclusive English Story’
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A new era in British politics began on 18 November in Edinburgh. It will take a decade, perhaps two, to reach fulfilment.
The historic legacy of entrenched attachment to 350 years of greatness is so deeply embedded in English institutions, there is no easy discarding of it. But, finally, the effort needed to genuinely renew Britain has started to take shape, as a multi-national political undertaking independent of any party or faction.
In these pages, Byline Times is publishing a series of three of many significant interventions made at the recent 'The Break-Up of Britain?’ Conference in Edinburgh which was also a salute to the late Scottish political theorist Tom Nairn.
Caroline Lucas, the UK’s only Green MP, stunned the conference with her opening address.
‘A Disunited Kingdom? Reclaiming an Englishness Hijacked by the Right’
At the heart of our political crisis is how England, in particular, has struggled to find its way in the modern world, writes MP Caroline Lucas
Caroline Lucas MP
She was followed by Labour MP Clive Lewis, who spoke with a freshness desperately lacking in his party's official discourse.
‘A Disunited Kingdom? Britain is Built on Forgetting Our Imperial History’
Maintaining the illusory story of what Britain was is integral to the illusion of what Britain is – and the maintenance of political and economic hegemony, writes MP Clive Lewis
Clive Lewis MP
Later, Byline Times’ Editor, Hardeep Matharu shared her ambivalent attachment to ‘Britishness’ and reluctance to see herself as English, in a plenary, which I chaired, on whether England ‘can recover from Great Britain’.
Developing a stronger sense of Englishness cannot merely be looked at through a political lens – our identities are personal and multiple, conflicting and shifting, writes Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
What is the transformation the conference pointed towards?
All of the people of these isles – of what Fintan O’Toole in a special video contribution to the event described as our “archipelago” – can re-join the EU. But how? To do so, we have to be citizens of a member state. On paper we have only three options.
The first is to reverse Brexit and return as we were. But the EU won’t want to offer opt-outs that preserve Westminster’s historic attachment to its special sovereignty. Nor should we want to wind the clock back to how things were, as it led to Brexit in the first place. It’s a dead end.
This leaves two other options, both transformative.
One is for Britain to become internally a European country with fair elections and a democratic constitution. A modest change that appears to be so vast no major party makes it a priority. Nor does it offer political bliss or economic redemption. It is simply the starting point to being a modern country.
The second is that we all re-join the EU as independent nations and replace our membership of the British Union with the European one. It is an option much more conceivable in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where majorities already think of themselves as Europeans – that is to say as Scottish Europeans, Welsh Europeans and Irish Europeans, because you can’t just think of yourself as ‘just European’.
It is a way forward that demands considering how we work together. One that sees ‘independence’ as a collaboration in a joint enterprise to re-enter the EU.
As the conference discussed it, the Brexit discourse of enmity, contempt, polarisation and sullen fatalism was replaced with a different kind of engagement. In terms of the UK’s current political culture, this alone was a real achievement. As Neal Ascherson observed there were “no tired clichés, no self-pity” and no evasion.
But what of the all-British option of becoming European, which I suspect most English Byline Times readers still instinctively prefer?
This too demands our jointly recognising each other’s national rights. For we cannot hope to re-enter the EU while the UK is, in effect, a prison of nations. No domestic, democratic constitution is conceivable that does not give member nations the right to succeed to become EU members for themselves. Either way, progressives, liberals, socialists, greens, democrats and republicans alike will need to tell an inclusive English story. This is something that Caroline Lucas begins to do.
For the EU is not a hobgoblin devouring self-determination or the terminator of national identity as conjured up by Brexiters. Rather, it has rescued the nations of Europe and is a berth for national democracies in a market world, which is why Ukraine is fighting to join it.
Now it is England’s turn. Whether the nations of the UK re-join the EU jointly as Britain or independently we English must become a normal country. How we achieve this is a debate that we failed to have in the last century. The Edinburgh conference initiated it in this one.
These three outstanding contributions, two from English politicians and one from an English Editor (however else she might describe herself), show it's a debate to be enjoyed and relished.
Anthony Barnett was the chair of the steering group of the 'Break-Up of Britain? Confronting the UK’s Democratic Crisis’ Conference in Edinburgh on 18 November 2023. He is a writer and journalist and the co-founder of openDemocracy
The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life – review
In The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life, Theresa May examines several “abuses of power” by politicians and civil servants involved in policy, and advocates for a shift from careerism to public service is needed to achieve better governance. In Chris Featherstone‘s view, May’s selective case studies and weak defence of her role in controversial events like the Windrush scandal will do little either to forge a new model of British politics or rehabilitate her reputation.
The Abuse of Power: Confronting Injustice in Public Life. Theresa May. Headline. 2023.
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This is not your typical political memoir. The reader is assured of this by a glance at the dust jacket before even opening The Abuse of Power. In recent tradition, books by former Prime Ministers typically take the form of an attempt to correct the narrative of their time behind the famous black door (David Cameron’s For the Record), or to explain their route to the top job in UK politics (Tony Blair’s A Journey). Taking an alternative tack, Theresa May scrutinises a range of cases of what she calls “abuses of power” by politicians and civil servants involved in policy, analysing the reasons behind them. Yet, despite this ostensibly different approach, The Abuse of Power reveals itself as an attempt to rehabilitate May’s reputation after her acrimonious exit from Downing Street in 2019.
The Abuse of Power reveals itself as an attempt to rehabilitate May’s reputation after her acrimonious exit from Downing Street in 2019.
The book examines examples of “injustice in public life”, highlighting the flaws in how government has approached and dealt with these issues. Examining cases ranging from the Salisbury Poisonings and the Hillsborough disaster to Brexit and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, May highlights two factors. Firstly, she argues that it is the natural disposition of many in the public sector to place protecting the public sector ahead of the interests of those they serve. Secondly, she observes the growth of careerism and popularity-seeking amongst politicians, and the prioritisation of this over “the job they are there to do”.
May argues for the necessity of a deep attitudinal change in those in public life, especially from civil servants and politicians.
May’s proposed solution to these pervasive flaws in British public life is “service”, a theme that runs throughout her account of her own political career. As such, May argues for the necessity of a deep attitudinal change in those in public life, especially from civil servants and politicians. Her calls for greater diversity in those recruited to the civil service and a wider selection of candidates to stand in elections are well-intentioned, but unsupported with recommendations for how this can be achieved.
At first glance, her proposal that working for the broad public good could prevent many of the scandals she analyses appears somewhat convincing.
At first glance, her proposal that working for the broad public good could prevent many of the scandals she analyses appears somewhat convincing. The analysis used to form this argument is engaging, especially in those cases where May has personal knowledge, such as the Grenfell Tower tragedy (when external cladding on a tower-block caught fire, killing 72 people) or bullying and sexual harassment in Westminster. Yet, this reveals an underlying theme that accompanies the focus on “service”: May’s attention to governance rather than politics.
This partiality is reflected in May’s scepticism of politicians’ relationship with the media. In a chapter on social media, May characterises politicians’ use of social media as a superficial means of humanising them by showing the coffee cup they use or their typical breakfast. Despite raising important concerns on regulating the use of social media (whilst in Downing Street May initiated a government review of social media regulation, attacking the “vile” messages sent to female MPs), her simplistic and patronising framing of the use of social media in communication between politicians and the electorate is out of touch, and detracts from her argument.
May’s focus on effectively serving the public is coupled with a disregard for the politics of government, the importance of persuading people why policies are effective.
May’s media scepticism continues in her view of what characteristics are desirable in leaders. She condemns both short-term headline-seeking and the media focus that means if a leader does not speak to the media they are “written off.” These reactions against contemporary media and political communication methods are almost quaint, demonstrating wishful thinking for a bygone era of politics. May’s focus on effectively serving the public is coupled with a disregard for the politics of government, the importance of persuading people why policies are effective.
The Brexit chapter in particular highlights this inattention to the importance of persuading people – politicians and voters alike – of her approach. May accuses some MPs, including former Speaker John Bercow, of abusing their power by voting in their own, rather than the “national” interest when debating her Brexit deal. May’s compromise position – that the whole of the UK would remain in a de-facto customs union with the rest of the EU, and the UK and EU would have to agree to the UK’s withdrawal from this de-facto arrangement – received little support from either the remain or from the “hard Brexit” wings of her own party, or from opposition parties.
What stands out is May’s lack of engagement with the other views in the Brexit debates, giving insight into her difficulties building unity in the Conservative party during the Brexit process.
What stands out is May’s lack of engagement with the other views in the Brexit debates, giving insight into her difficulties building unity in the Conservative party during the Brexit process. Conspicuously absent is an explanation of how this judgement of “national interest” was made, other than this simply being May’s opinion. There is a ring of the internal-external attribution problem in her assessment, wherein she attributes her own actions to a personal conviction to pursue a “compromise” position in the national interest, and others’ actions to political machinations for personal gain. The chapter unintentionally highlights a root of the May government’s difficulties in persuading MPs and the public of the efficacy of their approach to Brexit.
The book’s highly selective approach to the cases analysed is epitomised in the chapter on the Hillsborough disaster, when 97 Liverpool football fans died in a crush, the UK’s worst sporting disaster. May confesses that when the tragedy occurred, she believed the “propaganda” put out by the police, politicians, and the media. May was by no means alone in this acceptance of the official line, yet, of the three groups she identifies in promulgating this lie, it is the police who come in for the major share of her analytical ire. As a former Conservative Home Secretary and Prime Minister, and current Conservative backbench MP, the inattention to the torrid relationship between Conservative politicians and Liverpool as a city as well as to the Hillsborough tragedy is a stark omission. Except for a couple of sentences on the role of politicians, the chapter largely diminishes their role in the framing of the tragedy in public discourse. Notably, almost all references are to “politicians”, intentionally skating over the (Conservative) party which they represented.
[May] fails to substantively support her claim and convince readers how Windrush is markedly different from the other abuses she examines.
Similarly, the explanation of the Windrush scandal, in which she was embroiled, is short and historically focused. May’s defence of the fiasco (which saw hundreds of Caribbean immigrants wrongfully issued with deportation notices) is that whilst other abuses of power she examines were to defend an institution, the Windrush case was in defence of a policy. She fails to substantively support her claim and convince readers how Windrush is markedly different from the other abuses she examines. May accuses the US of an abuse of power in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and yet this would surely be defended by the Biden administration as the enaction and defence of their policy of troop withdrawal. Similarly, May’s defence of the use of the term “hostile environment” in her controversial immigration policy lacks depth. She suggests that when the term was proposed, it clearly referred to people who were in the UK illegally, implying that the controversy stems from its misinterpretation. This assumes it was merely the name of the policy, rather than the contested and controversial views that it was built on, with which critics disagreed.
The underlying message – that greater devotion to public service will solve these disparate and varied problems – falls flat. Her analysis of the ‘abuses’ catalogued reads at best naïve and at worst wilfully ignorant of the pervasive and deeply entwined nature of many of the causes of their causes.
May’s non-traditional memoir is an interesting read, giving some insight into cases that continue to puzzle policymakers (Brexit), and memorably controversial cases. However, the underlying message – that greater devotion to public service will solve these disparate and varied problems – falls flat. Her analysis of the “abuses” catalogued reads at best naïve and at worst wilfully ignorant of the pervasive and deeply entwined nature of many of the causes of their causes. This shallow defence of her time in government will do little to help polish May’s image, relying on unsupported claims about the intention of policies, such as those that led to the Windrush scandal, and selective attempts to blame others, as in the case of Brexit.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: pcruciatti on Shutterstock.
‘Those Who Enjoyed the Post-1945 Social Progress of the West Were Made Complacent By It: We Forgot Its Price is Vigilance’
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On New Year’s Day 2024 ‘DEI’ will end at all 33 publicly-funded higher education institutions in Texas. ‘DEI’ stands for ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ and is the programme aimed at ending racism, sexism and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination while promoting multiculturalism and inclusion. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the anti-DEI Bill into law in June, and already many institutions have dismantled their DEI resource centres and reassigned their staff.
As a move in the culture wars, this is pretty blunt – only one step short of banning people of colour or difference of sexual preferences from campuses outright (people who do not feel welcome will ban themselves; that’s part of the plan), and – in my view – two steps short of lynching them, which was once, and not that long ago, the option of choice in the US’ southern reaches. This fact has to be mentioned because the direction of travel indicated by ending DEI points that unpalatable way – for the simple reason that it’s the direction from which conservative moral thinking comes.
‘Conservative moral thinking’ is a kind way of putting it, because thinking is not what underlies moral conservativism.
What underlies it is feeling: emotions not of empathy and kindness, understanding and acceptance – but of tribalism, xenophobia, racism, fear of change, fear of difference.
Simplistic binaries – white-black, good-bad, male-female, right-wrong – lie at the source and limit of these feelings. Any gradations or nuances upset conservatives and must therefore be stamped on.
One of the major attractions of religion to conservative moralists is that it offers strong rules in relation to anything that does not observe the binaries – the more simplistic the better.
The political wing of conservatism is not, however, quite so unthinking.
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From its followers’ point of view, the great inconvenience in life is what they regard as the wrong kind of liberty. Whereas being free from taxes and federal laws, free to carry a pistol and own several assault rifles, free to exploit workers, free to cheat customers, and free to say hateful things about people different from them is the kind of freedom they like – they do not like protests and strikes, people voting in support of their opponents, the law protecting people unlike themselves, and they emphatically do not like paying taxes for other peoples’ health care or education.
This point of view has been frankly and openly voiced in America for decades. But it is only in the last decade or so that this agenda – from 1945 a mostly sleeping virus in Europe’s immune system – has broken through the skin like leprous ulcers in the form of Hungary’s Orbán, Italy’s Meloni, the Netherlands’ Wilders, Austria’s Kickl, France’s Le Pen, Germany’s AfD, and the enablement of the British Conservative Party’s capture by the UKIP/Brexit Party.
The current UK Government has placed limits on protest, set out to ban strikes, introduced mandatory voter ID, shifted billions of pounds from public service budgets into cronies’ pockets, allowed the NHS and local government to wither (so that they can be bought cheap by ‘private providers’ one suspects), protected the Thatcher-sold utility companies with profit-gouging and poor services matched in ambition only by the further billions of debt that have accumulated in order to pay dividends, plan to introduce dozens of ‘freeports’ and ‘special economic zones’ in which private corporations will be effectively be the government and will sell to the local population, for profit, what once were public services – and so wretchedly on, in full asset-stripping, civil-liberty-limiting, anti-democratic mode.
Rishi Sunak attended a gathering in Italy recently, along with Viktor Orbán and Steve Bannon, as a guest of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Bannon’s presence is significant. The ‘Bannon playbook’ for right-wing politicians is brutal in its simplicity and effectiveness. It is: cause chaos, disrupt, frighten and anger people about immigrants, wokeists, gay people coming for their kids; roil them up; embroil them in difficulties caused by anarcho-capitalism (privatisation on steroids) which makes them paddle faster and harder in the rising waters of debt and insecurity, and put the blame for their plight on the immigrants (mainly) and the wokeists, bien-pensants and ‘liberals’.
Anarcho-capitalism, very bad for the have-nots, is very good for the haves – there’s profit in chaos, lifting bonus caps and selling public assets cheap. While this is going on ‘the state can be rolled-back’ and those pesky civil liberties and democratic restraints that make governing difficult can be ‘disapplied’.
The aim is to reverse the idea that government is the servant of the people’s interests; the people are to be made to serve the governor’s interests. Rulers must rule – without following any rules – and the little people must not get in the way. Their role is to be milked, ceaselessly, mercilessly, impotently.
We see all of this unfolding before our eyes, plain and clear. There is a mighty battle already under way.
Donald Tusk in Poland, Pedro Sanchez in Spain, and Keir Starmer in the UK appear to buck the Bannoning trend. The EU is structured on the progressive and liberal principles of the post-1945 immune time, but in the 2024 European Parliament elections a Bannonish majority might win. Alas: those of us who enjoyed the increasingly open and inclusive social progress of the West after 1945 were made complacent by it; we forgot that its price is vigilance.
The former Home Secretary showed no interest in urgent threats to the UK as the National Security Strategy Committee reveals that Vladimir Putin made attempts to interfere with the last General Election
David Hencke
Though highly allergic to conspiracy theories, I find it ever harder to resist thinking that there might be something to the allegations of a Russian connection with the Bannoning of politics in the democracies of the West. Putin, Orbán, Trump, Republican reluctance to help fund Ukraine’s war, Boris Johnson and the Lebedevs, Russian donations to Britain’s Conservative politicians, Russian interference in elections, Russians murdering Russians on British soil without much consequence – these are a spattering of dots that beckon one to wonder whether they join up.
If there is a connecting line it is to be found in the answer to this question: who stands to gain most by disunity in, even the fragmentation of, Europe? The answer is: Vladimir Putin.
It is a longstanding and well-known aim of his. To some, it is plain that Brexit was his first great success in this endeavour, with the added bonus of considerably weakening the UK itself. The UK, when both in the EU and a strong ally of the US, was once a formidable thorn in would-be resurgent Russian flesh, if you look at it from Putin’s point of view. Now it is a rusting hulk drifting offshore, and the task of picking off others in the convoy is easier.
The connection between moral and political conservatism? Attacks on immigrants and wokeism and the rest do a double job and do it beautifully: they fire up the base, and distract them from the agenda of making them the subjects to an anarcho-capitalist system in which they have few rights, but pay for everything with and beyond their last pennies.
It is not too late to resist what is happening.
Get the UK out of the Putin-helping (whether intentionally or not) Bannoning trend, return to the task of helping to build a strong and Europe committed – as it constitutionally is – to human rights and civil liberties, and resume vigilance thereafter. This is the least we must do.
‘Climateflation’ and Culling
So called ‘climateflation’ is a christening given to the consequences of climate warming on the economy – in particular food prices where, as the ‘i’ reports: Drought, for example, has reduced UK onion yields by 30 per cent while an autumn of heavy rain has left farmers struggling with one of the lowest potato harvests... Read more
‘Get Brexit Done’ is now ‘Stop the Boats’: Is the Rwanda Bill the Conservatives’ Trojan Horse?
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One of the lines that stays with me from learning Latin at school is from Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid – “Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferrentes” ("I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts”). This line was uttered by the Trojan priest, Laocoon, who was warning that the Trojan Horse apparently gifted to the city of Troy by the departing Greeks might actually be a trap.
In similar fashion, I can’t help feeling that 'I can’t Trust the Conservatives, even when they obey the Law'.
A huge song and dance was made by the Government before last week’s first vote on its Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill that the legislation – just – stayed within the framework of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The Bill, if adopted, would allow government ministers to ignore temporary injunctions raised by the European Court of Human Rights to stop flights taking off at the last minute. However, it would still allow asylum seekers to launch legal appeals to argue that they should be spared deportation, if they can claim various special circumstances.
Supporters of the Government’s approach argue that the Bill goes as far as it can, without breaching international law – and that Rwanda itself would withdraw from the scheme if the UK went any further.
Conservative opponents of the bill, including 29 MPs from the right wing of the party, who abstained on the vote, argue that it does not go far enough and that the language should have explicitly ruled out the scope for any legal challenges to deportation, whether under domestic or international human rights law.
Former Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, who resigned over his disagreement with Rishi Sunak’s migration policy, was even quoted (ironically, on Human Rights Day) as saying that the Government must put "the views of the British public above contested notions of international law" and that MPs are "not sent to Parliament to be concerned about our reputation on the gilded international circuit".
I feel a weary sense of déjà vu. This is Brexit, on repeat.
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Yet again, we have some members of the Conservative Party arguing that the UK needs to abandon another European institution – this time the European Court of Human Rights – in order to 'take back control' of immigration.
Yet again, they scapegoat others – on this occasion 'lefty lawyers' – for 'thwarting' the will of the people.
Yet again, they claim unique knowledge and possession of what that 'will of the people' actually is – though there has been no explicit vote put to the public as to whether they really do support the Rwanda scheme, even if it involves the UK derogating from some aspects of human rights law. Just as there never was any explicit indication in the EU Referendum that the British public wanted the most hardline break with Brussels, including departure from the Customs Union and Single Market.
Yet again, we have Conservative MPs misrepresenting the facts, to argue that the Rwanda scheme will brilliantly solve all of the UK’s immigration problems – despite the evidence that it will only ever be able to remove a few hundred migrants, at most, and only at vast expense; that it will do nothing to resolve the massive asylum claim backlog; and the fact that most immigrants to the UK come here legally, partly as a result of the Government’s own migration policies.
But then, Conservative MPs never acknowledge inconsistencies in their arguments, whether over Brexit or now over immigration.
Just like during the Brexit debates, Conservative MPs now are also happy to gloss over inconvenient facts regarding migration – such as that our health, care, agriculture and hospitality sectors are dependent on affordable immigrant labour, and that there are no 'safe, legal' routes for asylum seekers to come to the UK.
Instead, they waffle on about this being yet another issue of 'sovereignty'. Indeed, the Rwanda Bill goes one step further than Brexit, in deliberately overriding the Supreme Court’s judgment on Rwanda, to assert that Rwanda actually is a safe country. So now, not just laws, but facts, are whatever the British Government says them to be.
Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping are no doubt delighted to see members of the British political establishment adopt their practices of disinformation and disdain for international law. How much easier it makes it for them to continue gulling their own citizens, and defying international conventions and treaties, when they can point to a country like the UK – previously a stalwart defender of the international rules-based order – doing the same.
And just as during Brexit, so now, we have different factions of the Conservative Party tearing themselves to shreds, while critical national and international problems go unaddressed.
The hapless Sunak is in the role of Theresa May, desperately trying to hold his party together and risking pleasing none. The same Goldilocks dilemma prevails – his immigration policy risks being too hard for the One Nation group of MPs on the moderate wing of the party, but too soft for the so-called 'Five Families’ factions on the right wing of the party.
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Terrified of losing voters to Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, Sunak, like May, will keep trying to appease the migration hardliners, though they will never be satisfied until he has fully ruptured relations with the ECHR. Terrified of alienating traditional conservative voters in their constituencies, the centrist MPs will hold their noses and keep going along, putting party before principle, time and again.
The one advantage Sunak has over May is that it would be hard, even for this shameless party, to seek to replace him as party leader, without triggering a general election, in which – on current polling – many MPs would lose their seats.
But this is precisely why I sense a trap.
For now, Sunak can play the role of responsible statesman, doing his best to restrain the more extreme members of his party, and insisting that any British legislation should stay just on the right side of the law. If the legislation passes, and asylum seekers start being deported to Rwanda – even if it’s only a few dozen – he can make the case that his scheme works, and campaign in the general election for voters to back him, in order to allow it to continue.
But if the legislation falls, or squeaks through only to be defeated again in the courts, before any asylum seekers are deported, Sunak can switch tactics to campaign full bore in support of leaving the ECHR – on the grounds that he has exhausted all options and that his hand has been 'forced' into accepting the most extreme approach.
This ploy might not be enough to prevent Conservative defeat to the Labour Party, but it might be enough to save a few seats and to allow the party to keep posturing in hardline fashion on immigration, without ever having to suffer the embarrassment of the Rwanda scheme failing, or having to deal with the damaging wider consequences of leaving the ECHR, such as for the Good Friday Agreement, or our post-Brexit relationship with the EU.
Like the Trojan Horse, I believe the Rwanda bill is a set-up. 'Get Brexit Done’ is now 'Stop the Boats’. But, unlike the good citizens of Troy, I believe British voters will not let themselves be suckered a second time.
Never trust the Conservatives, even when they bring 'gifts'.
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase. George Orwell The 5th and final part of this Brexit series analyses the state of the nation and recommends ways forward, not... Read more
Rethinking Parliamentary Sovereignty – 2
Caroline Lucas’ statement (the first 26 seconds or so in the video below) expands and improves upon the interpretation of the UK’s rickety constitution given by ‘our learned friends’ that I highlighted yesterday. It certainly provides explanation as to why the Rwanda bill is so utterly destructive of the UK constitution and cannot therefore be... Read more