Whose wealth would we be protecting?

Tweet

 

It is often repeated as though it were indisputable fact that the first duty of any government is the defence of the realm, or some other form of words meaning much the same thing. It’s used as a justification for ever-greater spending on weaponry, but it’s rarely challenged because the assumption is that we all accept it. But is it really true?

In seeking to increase the funding for weapons without breaking its own wholly arbitrary fiscal rule, the UK government has already targeted the ‘easy’ option of foreign aid, and there is increasing talk of targeting welfare payments and the pensions triple lock as well. There is, of course, nothing wrong with reducing the total spending on welfare payments if it is the result of getting more people into work, but cutting the payments first and assuming that that will ‘force’ people into work, even if suitable employment doesn’t exist, has repeatedly been shown not to work. It just makes people poorer, not to say increasing child poverty in the process. When it comes to pensions, the argument goes that not all pensioners ‘need’ the extra money guaranteed by the triple lock (or the winter fuel payment). Multi-millionaires do not ‘need’ extra millions either, but reducing the living standards of pensioners is, apparently, preferable to taxing the richest. There is, implicit in the argument, the idea that somehow the ‘needs’ of pensioners are less, or of less importance, than the needs of others, and that those in receipt of the state pension should be prepared to accept a lower standard of living as a result.

It seems to be true that some pensioners, at least, have been putting their hands up to say that they don’t mind a little bit of deprivation if it keeps us ‘safe’ from those horrid Russians, but I’m not sure how widespread that feeling is. Is it really the case that people who are struggling to fund both food and warmth would be happy to make themselves a little poorer to ‘deter’ the non-existent threat of an invasion which might leave them struggling to fund both warmth and food?

Assuming that someone (it doesn’t have to be Putin, although that’s the threat usually waved at us) really wants to take over the UK by violent means, what would be their objective? There are only two conceivable reasons: the first is to remove any threat that ‘we’ might want to attack ‘them’, and the second is to seize assets and wealth. And who owns those assets and that wealth? It certainly isn’t the pensioners and those on benefits, the ones who are being compelled to make a sacrifice to protect those assets. No, the wealth is owned by the wealthy – by definition. What those who want to pay for armaments out of reduced welfare and pensions are arguing, in effect, is that the many who own little should be prepared to make a sacrifice for the benefit of the few who own a great deal.

Maybe, instead of elevating ‘defence of the realm’ above all else, we should define the first duty of any government in terms of ensuring that all citizens have a good and improving standard of living, and can afford food, heating, and decent housing as a minimum. None of that will be achieved by diverting ever more funding into armaments, especially if that funding comes at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable.

There are always some who profit from war

Tweet

 

It is said that Keir Hardie died of a broken heart in 1915, having been a lifelong pacifist who failed to stop the first world war. As the maker of a film about the war put it, Hardie “...saw it as a profiteering exercise as well as a loss of men”. The idea of a conflict between spending on weapons of war and spending on food or welfare (‘guns vs butter’, as it is known) is nothing new – and it has historically not been the exclusive preserve of ‘the left’. In a major speech in 1953, then-President Dwight Eisenhower, hardly a socialist icon, declared that, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”. It was a powerful speech, with a powerful message. In some ways, it was echoed by one Margaret Thatcher who said in 1976, “The Soviets put guns over butter, but we put almost everything over guns”. Their words might almost be an expression of some of those famous western values which we’re supposed to uphold.

And then we come to the man named after Hardie, the UK’s current prime minister, who said yesterday, after announcing that more would be spent on weaponry, that the defence sector offers: “the next generation of good, secure, well-paid jobs”. I somehow don’t believe that the man after whom he was named would have been overly impressed. There is no doubt that war is good for business in the eyes of some companies; it’s no coincidence that the share price of defence companies has soared in recent days. It was ever thus: the soldiers sent to their deaths come predominantly from the working class whilst the capitalists benefit. Profiteering, as Hardie would have put it. It’s also interesting to note that Sir Starmer talks about the increase in defence spending boosting economic growth, after having told us for months that public spending needs to be cut in order to boost growth. Things he wants to spend money on magically have the opposite economic effect to things on which he does not wish to spend. Strange, that.

A small price to pay

Tweet

 

It’s entirely understandable that so many people are clamouring for the invitation to Trump for a state visit to the UK to be withdrawn, given what happened in the 24 hours after issuing it. It’s less clear what would be achieved by withdrawing it. There is a mismatch between the expectations of the inviter (that it would happen next year) and those of the invitee (that it would happen this year). Whether it’s best to get it over with quickly or keep it hanging for a while – there is always a potential for ‘diary’ issues to create a delay if necessary – depends on one’s assessment of how Trump will be likely to react to either. That is, essentially, unknowable. The thought that the red carpet and a great deal of obsequiousness will be rolled out for the man who sought to demean and humiliate the leader of a country resisting an invasion by a larger neighbour is unpleasant to say the least. That doesn’t mean that there is no chance of it helping.

The bottom line is that, whether we like it or not (and an awful lot of us don’t), Trump is right about two things, even if his way of expressing them is repugnant. Firstly, it is not a war between equals, and in the absence of any willingness by other countries to commit forces to support of Ukraine, Ukraine will ultimately lose. The cost in money and lives to both sides will be enormous, but the trajectory is clear. The second thing about which he is right, which flows from the first, is that the immediate priority has to be to stop the death and destruction through some sort of ceasefire, and that inevitably means accepting that boundaries, for the time being at least, reflect the territorial gains made. That’s neither fair nor just for the country which has been invaded, but it does mirror most of the other borders in Europe and beyond, which are where they are because that’s where they were when the fighting stopped. It’s uncomfortable for any Welsh independentista to see a country which so recently gained its independence being dismembered by an invading force, but it takes more than hope, sympathy and an endless supply of armaments to get out of the current situation.

Trump’s approach to achieving that ceasefire, by allying himself with one party and attempting to do a deal over the head of the other, looks ham-fisted and has angered many, but how much worse it is than simply supplying ever-increasing amounts of armaments which do little more than slow Russian progress is debateable. For the long term, European security needs to be established on the basis of de-escalation and demilitarisation rather than on competing to see who can build the biggest stick. That must include an assumption that the US will no longer play a role in Europe. In the short term, the alternative facing Ukraine is some sort of accommodation with Russia or a long grinding war in which the eventual outcome will probably be worse than freezing things where they are.

The question is whether a state visit, with all its flattery and fawning over His Orangeness, will help or hinder in either the short term or the long term. It’s a question to which I don’t have an answer, and neither, I suspect, does anyone else, given the quintessential unpredictability with which the world is dealing. What is likely to be a sick-inducing spectacle for many is a small price to pay compared to that being paid daily in Ukrainian lives, and might still be better than the impact of withdrawing a rather hastily issued invitation. It could hardly make things any worse, whereas withdrawing the invitation might do just that.

Deliberate or merely incompetent?

Tweet

 

A lot of people are seeing the bust-up in the White House last week as having been deliberately planned in advance by Trump and Vance, with the intention of humiliating Zelensky. I’m not so sure; that would require a degree of planning and forethought which is certainly beyond Trump – this is a man who can’t stick to a script when it’s written out in front of him, let alone when he has to remember it – or Vance, whose general ignorance of history and geography seems to be matched only by his innate nastiness.

Even if they had fully intended to find a way of delivering a humiliation, did they really intend that the outcome would be a total breakdown of the relationship, or did they simply assume that Zelensky would cave in and show his subservience? One of the attributes of bullies is that they invariably assume that people will do as they are told, and are always surprised – not to say angered – when they don’t. And Zelensky’s quiet attempts to push back certainly escalated Trump’s anger. The one thing that I do believe is that Trump really wanted that deal on minerals. He may not care about Zelensky or Ukraine, but he really does care about money and about further enriching US billionaires. It's increasingly clear that Trump and Vance – the latter possibly even more than the former – believe that the US has the right to do as it wishes and that lesser states (everyone except Russia, apparently) should bow down before them. They don’t care whether people like them or not, only whether they are obeyed.

Putin has produced a range of ‘justifications’ for his invasion, and amongst them is the idea that the Ukrainian regime was a client state of the US and that the regime in Ukraine was a puppet installed and operated somehow by the CIA. The behaviour of Trump and Vance suggests that they have, in a sense, bought in to that narrative, and genuinely believed that they could dictate to Ukraine. Their belief in their own absolute power to dictate what happens outside their own borders received a nasty jolt on Friday, and a man who holds grudges (and Trump’s grudge against Zelensky for not digging up dirt on the Bidens is probably a significant part of the cause of last week’s events) is likely to become even more unpredictable as a result.

The question is what happens next. No matter how much we admire the way Zelensky stood up to the bully, to say nothing of Ukrainian courage and resistance, no lover of peace, and no true friend of Ukraine, should seriously be urging them to fight to the last Ukrainian against a numerically superior force. If Trump really does ‘turn off the tap’ of supplies of armaments, it’s hard to see how the European states can make up the resulting shortfall. We might wish it were otherwise, but Trump is actually right in saying that Ukraine is in a bad place right now. Unless other countries are going to come directly to its aid militarily – which seems as unlikely as it is undesirable – then a peace deal of some sort has to be negotiated. Trump is clearly the wrong person to broker such an agreement, but who and where is the right one? Even if Sir Starmer and Macron can devise a peace plan, will Trump accept anything that doesn’t give him what he wants?

The art of the undeal

Tweet

 

The flourish of Sir Starmer producing an invitation letter from the King of England from his pocket to hand to Trump was probably intended to add a little bit of drama to the event, but Sir Starmer hasn’t really got what it takes to be dramatic. He’d probably fail an audition for a bit part with his local Am Dram group, even if they were desperate for players. In any event, the idea that the letter and its content hadn’t been agreed through diplomatic channels in advance is for the birds – a public refusal by Trump of an unexpected invitation would hardly be helpful as an opening to the discussions. Still, however hammy it appeared, it ticked an important box when dealing with the narcissism of His Orangeness: it made him feel important, respected, and uniquely better than all his predecessors, none of whom was ever invited twice. (Whether Buck House and Number 10 have fully thought that through is another question; future presidents only invited once are now likely to feel slighted, especially if they compare themselves and their contribution to world affairs to the present incumbent. What one might call ‘State Visit Inflation’ risks devaluing the currency.)

The visit ticked a second box as well. Since Trump sees everything in transactional terms (usually presented as ‘what’s in it for the USA?’, but actually more about ‘what’s in it for me?’), giving him something he wants might make him better disposed to giving something in return. Or at least, that is presumably Sir Starmer’s fervent hope.

I wonder, though, whether it doesn’t rather ignore a third key characteristic of the current occupant of the White House. It doesn’t take a very detailed look at his business record to realise that this is a man who has never signed any deal which he didn’t believe that he could break at any time that it suited him. There is a long list of law suits involving stiffed suppliers and dissatisfied customers to testify to that. And it isn’t just his business dealings. This week, he effectively repudiated the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico by saying that he will override its provisions and impose tariffs anyway. His justification was that the agreement was signed by a previous administration whose leader was a fool. In an uncharacteristically honest way, he was right on both counts, although he ignored the fact that the previous administration in this case was the first Trump administration. But the real fools were the leaders of Mexico and Canada who either assumed that he would abide by an agreement that he signed, in the face of all the available evidence to the contrary, or else believed that he was just a short-term phenomenon about which they didn’t really need to worry unduly. Sir Starmer should be a great deal more wary than he seems to be about adding his name to that list of fools.

We don’t know, as yet, exactly what is in the ‘agreement’ with Zelensky over Ukrainian mineral rights, and maybe Zelensky has little choice but to sign something at this stage, but the chances of Trump honouring his side of any bargain should be assumed to be low, to put it mildly. In his attempt to dissuade Trump from getting too close to Putin, Zelensky is shouting very loudly that Putin is not a man whose word can be trusted. He's right, of course, but I wonder if he understands that Putin’s willingness to renege on any agreement probably only adds to Trump’s admiration of Putin, rather than sowing doubts. When Trump calls Putin ‘smart’, it’s a rather condescending statement carrying the unstated implication, ‘…but not as smart as me’. One of the most dangerous aspects of Trump’s unshakeable belief in his own deal-making ability is that he thinks that he can outsmart Putin. From Trump’s perspective, compared to Putin, Sir Starmer looks like a mere gnat.

There is one potential growth industry

Tweet

 

In order to maintain the fiction that government must always abide by the arbitrary fiscal rules that it itself writes, any additional expenditure in one area must be balanced either by cutting expenditure in another area, or else by increasing revenue. Or so says Sir Starmer. It’s dangerous nonsense, not least because it legitimises the arguments of all those arguing that ‘we should look after our own first’ by validating the idea that spending on refugees and asylum-seekers always and necessarily reduces the money available for homeless people (to choose one example), and especially homeless armed service veterans, a group considered by right-wingers as being particularly deserving. It would still be nonsense, even if it didn’t completely ignore the fact that the reasons for there being so many homeless people in that category are far more complex than a simple lack of cash or housing.

So when it comes to a demand from the military for more soldiers and more equipment, the first things in the government’s sights are, as ever, the old favourites: overseas aid, immigrants, welfare and the pensions triple lock. It is, apparently, entirely ‘obvious’ that those best-placed to bear the burden of paying for additional weaponry and military manpower are the poorest and weakest in society, both at home and abroad. Starmer’s announcement yesterday to divert money from the aid budget and increase the proportion of GDP devoted to preparing for war is hardly a surprise in that context.

The idea that defence preparedness should be measured by the proportion of GDP spent on armaments is, and always has been, a spectacularly stupid one, because there can never be any guarantee that spending more leads to a more effective fighting force. It could be achieved, for instance, by simply doubling the salary of every member of the armed forces. In itself, that might not be a bad thing to do anyway; the pay of junior ranks is not exactly over-generous, so maintaining the numbers involves targeting recruitment at young people living in the most deprived areas. (Recruitment isn’t currently terribly effective either, and whilst outsourcing recruitment might have generated private profit, it hasn’t done much for the numbers.) But increasing salaries wouldn’t make the forces any more useful for war-fighting. Alternatively, they could simply pay more for the equipment that they buy. That might sound like a silly idea, but given the MoD’s history in procurement, it’s one of the likeliest outcomes of an increase in budget. And while paying more for the same equipment (let alone buying equipment which either doesn’t work or is not needed) might help meet the arbitrary target of a percentage of GDP, it doesn’t improve the capability of the UK’s armed forces.

What Sir Starmer did yesterday is what he has been saying for months that he would not do, which is to pre-empt the conclusion of the Strategic Defence Review. Worse still, the reason he’s done it is more about appeasing the madman in the White House than about defending the UK. The working assumption of the military mind – and, it would appear, the Sir Starmer mind – is that the supposed enemy is just waiting for us to drop our guard before launching an all-out invasion to seize land and oppress the population. How likely is that in practice? Assuming for a moment that the enemy really wants to control the UK, invasion is about the least cost-effective way of doing it. Far better and a great deal cheaper in terms of lives as well as money to take over the country from within and install a puppet government, as committed to rule by oligarch as Putin himself is. It increasingly looks like a strategy which has worked beyond his wildest dreams in the US, and brings a bonus in that the puppet government can help him to repeat the trick elsewhere.

On the receiving end of Sir Starmer’s pusillanimity are some of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in the world, already hit by the body blow of the Trumpian destruction of USAID.  Still, it is, as they say, ‘an ill wind…’, and for a government obsessed with growth there is one group of ‘entrepreneurs’ likely to see an increase in demand for their services – people smugglers. One of the likeliest consequences of aid cuts will be an increase in the number of people seeking to migrate from where they currently live to the richest countries of the world – including the UK – in search of a better life. Whether Sir Starmer’s attack on living standards of the poorest in the UK acts as a sufficient counter-deterrent remains to be seen.

There has to be a better way of ensuring peace

Tweet

 

To all intents and purposes, NATO is dead, even if that wasn’t quite what the new German Chancellor said yesterday. It is entirely clear that members can no longer assume that the US will abide by the commitment that ‘an attack on one is an attack on all’. Without the support of the largest and most powerful member, the claimed deterrent effect of NATO is effectively nullified. To be fair to Trump, all he has done is to clarify what some of us have suspected for many years under a succession of US presidents, which is that the US will never commit to all-out war to save a far-away European country from being wholly or partially eaten up by a larger neighbour. The theoretical point of ‘deterrence’, however, was about creating a sufficient degree of uncertainty. Although the supposed adversary, Russia, might have doubted US commitment, they could never be entirely certain. Trump has removed that uncertainty.

Putin took a calculated gamble in Ukraine, mitigated by signalling his intentions well in advance and assessing the reactions, that the country’s friends would not intervene actively on behalf of a country which wasn’t even a member of NATO. His judgement was proved correct on that (even if it was proved dramatically wrong in terms of Ukraine’s ability and willingness to resist, and the extent to which the population was waiting to give a warm greeting to the Russian ‘liberators’). The military types keep telling us that, having got away with taking a big chunk out of Ukraine, he will turn his attention elsewhere – the Baltics are the most-often named target. It would still be a gamble for Putin. Whilst he can now be completely certain that the US would not rush to aid those attacked (indeed, the current president might be more inclined to sit down with Putin and decide how to split the spoils), he cannot be so certain about the European response. Indeed, he would be very unwise to gamble that several other European nations would not respond to any call for help from, say, Lithuania if he tried to create a corridor to Kaliningrad, one of the more commonly posited reasons for starting a war. Scandinavian countries along with Poland would be very likely to engage (albeit not under the umbrella of NATO (if it still exists), even if the response of the larger European military powers, such as France, the UK, and Germany might be less certain. Having already learned, to his cost – or, rather, to the cost of the dead and wounded soldiers and their families – that the Russian army isn’t quite the force he believed it to be, why would he risk such an attack?

That brings us to the crux of the question of future European security. For those of us who’ve never been convinced that security comes through ever-increasing amounts of weaponry, the issue has to be about ensuring that an attack is prevented not by military means but by ensuring that there is no reason to attack in the first place. That doesn’t mean following a policy of appeasement, as the warmongers claim. Of course, if Putin really is the madman as which he is often presented, sitting in the Kremlin stroking his cat like some sort of Bond villain plotting world domination, then there is little scope for rational debate and negotiated common security. (On the other hand, if that is indeed an accurate picture of Putin, then the history of the film franchise would suggest that we don’t need a large army to defeat him, just one man armed with a pistol and a few Martinis.)

If we discount the possibility of simple insanity, the single most frequent cause of conflict, historically, is access to wealth and resources, even if it isn’t always presented that way. The second is a fear of attack unless ‘our side’ attacks first: the ‘use it or lose it’ mindset. Both of those look more likely as causes of the war in Ukraine, for example, than an insane desire for domination at all costs, with the idea that Russia and Ukraine are a single historical identity and nation being more a stated rationalization than an actual reason. Even if the fear of attack is irrational or unjustified, it still acts as a motivation: fear doesn’t have to be reasonable to motivate a response. I don’t believe that NATO ever had any intention of attacking Russia, but it isn’t parroting Putin to suggest that things might not have looked that way from Moscow.

Most Europeans and most Russians probably want the same things: peace and prosperity. Both are being let down by leaders who tell them that those things can only be achieved by war and impoverishment rather than discussion and agreement. There’s never a ‘right’ time to break the cycle – there will always be unresolved disputes and arguments. But the ‘best’ time will always be ‘now’, whenever now is. Where are the politicians able to recognise that?

The problem of capricious autocracy

Tweet

 

One of the more surprising, at first sight anyway, revelations of the war in Ukraine has been that the Russian armed forces – whose strength and capability we have been told to fear for decades – have been shown to be rather less effective in practice than the military hype suggested. They appear to be slowly turning the war in their direction anyway, but that owes more to their ability to field – and willingness to lose – larger numbers of soldiers than their Ukrainian opponents.

The reasons for their poor performance are varied, but the main ones appear to mirror the wider problems of the Russian state apparatus, many of them inherited from the Soviet Union which preceded it. It is riddled with corruption and bribery, and successive purges have ensured that those at the top comply with the wishes of the Kremlin, and fear taking any decision with which the man at the top might disagree. Those lower down in the hierarchy know that they must wait for their orders and not show any undue initiative, initiative being seen as a threat to the established order. It makes for slow, cautious decision-taking and a sclerotic organisation.

It looks increasingly as though Trump, instead of seeing this as a warning, is seeing it as a model to be emulated. He is conducting a ruthless purge of any public servants who might not be fully attuned to his thinking, and since his thinking changes by the day, or even by the hour, he is creating a situation where decision-taking becomes increasingly difficult, as people wait to be told what to do. He is now extending that approach to the armed forces, purging top generals and replacing them with people who are loyal only to him, and not to the Constitution as their oath of allegiance requires. The working assumption of his administration seems to be that anyone who isn’t a white male has obviously only been appointed because of their gender or skin colour, and should therefore be removed. Those who replace them will be Trump loyalists, waiting to be told what to do. An autocracy headed by someone who changes his mind suddenly and randomly can end up being even less effective than an autocracy headed by someone ruthless and single-minded, but full of corruption and bribery.

Maybe it’s all part of a really cunning plan to make war between the US and Russia less likely by reducing the effectiveness of the US military to the same level as that of Russia. Other explanations are available.

Pity the drafters of that communiqué

Tweet

 

Last week, Trump appeared to crown himself King of the USA. Perhaps it was a joke, although I’m not really sure that he does jokes, seemingly being prone to a degree of confusion between a joke and an insult. It has occurred to me previously that he might rather fancy the idea of a hereditary presidency, and that’s all a king is, really; so it’s more likely that he’s simply planting the idea so that it doesn’t come as a surprise later. We know that he strongly believes that ability is down to genes, and that he has what he calls ‘good genes’, which he apparently inherited from his uncle. Inheriting genes from his uncle might, of course, tell us something not previously known about the intimate relationships of his family members, but it’s more likely that we lesser mortals simply don’t have the capacity to understand the science of inheritance the way that Trump does. His genes clearly give him a level of understanding beyond the ken of other mortals, to say nothing of an entitlement to rule.

In any event, his belief in his own ability is unshakeable, as is the belief that anything he says becomes truth simply by issuing from his mouth. And once he’s said something and it has appeared in the media, he can legitimately say that he’s read reports about whatever it is, thereby reinforcing its truthiness, and attribute it to the media, who are only (and always) ‘fake’ if they dare to correct him. It is into that parallel universe which Sir Starmer is planning to venture next week, assuming that the meeting goes ahead and doesn’t get cancelled because Trump takes offence in advance at what Sir Starmer has said he’s going to raise, or at his refusal to pardon and release a random selection of people about whom Trump has heard reports in the meantime, abolish VAT, and cut taxes on US billionaires.

There have, historically, been other meetings where the two parties have gone in with rather different expectations as to the nature of the discussion, but not many with the sort of gulf which is opening out at present. Sir Starmer rather simplistically thinks he is going there to explain the European perspective to Trump and plead with him to maintain existing long standing alliances. It’s based on the naïve belief that the so-called ‘special relationship’ ever meant anything to the US, rather than simply being part of a UK attempt to big itself up; Trump is simply being more honest about the true US view on that issue. Trump, on the other hand, probably thinks that Sir Starmer is going to the US to receive his orders with the expectation that he will faithfully execute them on his return.

The people I feel sorry for are the staffers on both sides, tasked with writing some sort of joint communiqué which presents a complete non-meeting of two minds (well, one and a half) as though it were a hugely consequential agreement on matters of great importance. Which Trump will probably refute within days.

Holding up a whole civilisation

Tweet

 

Perhaps it’s inevitable that a person elected to the leadership of a major political party starts to believe that the whole world is hanging on his or her every word. It’s a heady position in which to find oneself, with access to media coverage all but guaranteed. An exaggerated sense of self-importance comes with the territory. But there’s the ordinary, everyday exaggerated sense of self-importance – and then there’s Kemi Badenoch. In her case, it’s not just an inflated sense of the importance of what she has to say; she genuinely seems to believe that the whole future of Western civilisation is now hanging on her ability to renew the English Conservative and Unionist Party. ‘Renew’ is another of those ‘interesting’ words which means whatever the person using it wants it to mean, but is intended to convey some sort of revival. In her case, it seems to include the elimination of dissident thought, another of those British values which seems to have passed me by.

Uniquely, it seems, in her deluded understanding of world events, the values that make the West what it is – or at least, her interpretation of those values, which just possibly, maybe, might not be the same thing, although it would be a brave person that might try and tell her that – are now uniquely to be found amongst those in that party who think like her. And she seems not even to realise the extent to which she is carving out a minority status for herself, even amongst the dwindling ranks of her party’s membership.

The thing is, it’s actually difficult to discern from what she says what her understanding of those values is. Certainly it seems to include the right to hold and express racist or misogynistic views, to discriminate against anyone who doesn’t conform to ‘the norm’, and to believe that some entire cultures are inherently inferior to the one to which she thinks that she belongs (although, whisper it quietly, at least some of those to whom she is seeking to appeal might just harbour some doubts as to whether she can ever fit into their own definition of the superior culture). The problem with banging on about British or Western values is that they are pretty poorly defined. What the term actually means seems to depend on the perspective of the person banging on about them at the time. But to the extent that there are some underlying shared values, I had thought that they included things like the rule of law, fairness, equality, compassion and tolerance, none of which actually seem to shine through her words on the issue. Perhaps the values changed at some point and I just didn’t get the memo.