Badenoch's alternative suggestion is no better

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The leader of the Tory Party seems quite exercised about the idea that anyone could believe that she has only got to her current position because she’s a black woman. In fairness, the suggestion that there is a sufficiently large group of Tory MPs and members prepared to vote for her out of some desire to pursue a policy of positive discrimination really isn’t credible. That just isn’t the Tory Party as we know it. It’s much simpler to accept the obvious alternative explanation, that those MPs and members who elected her really did believe that she was the best person to be the leader of the opposition and the party’s candidate for PM. Or the even simpler explanation that she actually is the best that they have to offer. I’m happy to accept either of those explanations, but I’m not at all sure that they paint either her or her party in a better light than the suggestion that it’s a result of positive discrimination.

Bad news for savers?

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Yesterday’s official figures for government ‘borrowing’ showed that it was down significantly compared to the same month last year. It was reported as though it was unalloyed good news. But the wonders of double-entry book-keeping mean that there is also another way of looking at it: the government took in a lower amount of people’s savings in July this year than it did the previous year. Whether the news is quite as good as it was portrayed as being depends on which side of the equation matters most.

That’s an oversimplification of a complex series of financial transactions, of course, but the basic point is this: debt and deposits must always net out to zero. Every pound of what the government regards as debt is a pound of assets to someone else – and most of those to whom the government ‘owes’ money are UK citizens and companies (and because of the process of quantitative easing, a significant amount of government dent is actually owed to a wholly-owned subsidiary of the government in the form of the Bank of England – effectively it owes that money to itself, meaning it isn’t really a ‘debt’ at all in any meaningful sense).

The Chancellor and government complain about the cost of paying interest on the money which they have ‘borrowed’, but that expenditure on interest looks like income to those who have deposited their savings with the government – a group which includes all those of us who have any sort of pension scheme from a source other than the state. The problem isn’t with the principle of government borrowing, or even with the amount (the Chancellor’s fiscal rules are entirely arbitrary and self-imposed), it is with way the assets and debt are distributed. The debt is treated as a liability for all of us, but the assets are overwhelmingly in the hands of the wealthiest in society, including those who have the biggest pension pots. The outcome of the government’s approach to tax and borrowing isn’t, as they like to suggest, that we are creating debts for future generations to repay, it is that the system is one of the many ways in which wealth ‘trickles up’, not between generations but within them. And it doesn’t seem to matter which party is in government.

Legitimising tyrants and wannnabes

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In talking about what concessions should be made to Putin, some commentators have referred to the need to address his ‘legitimate fears’. But what makes a fear ‘legitimate’? I can understand why Putin might not like the idea of a successful democracy – or even semi-democracy – on his doorstep; I can understand why he might not want another Nato member on his border; I can even understand why he might not be happy about Ukraine becoming part of the EU economic bloc, but what turns these aspirations and wishes into ‘legitimate’ concerns? Ukraine posed him no threat, and the ‘fears’ seem to have been more of an excuse to indulge his fantasy about recreating the Russian Empire than about being afraid of anything. We, and especially Ukraine, have no choice but to deal with him because of his military power and willingness to use it, but that doesn’t endow his wishes with one iota of legitimacy, and our use of language shouldn’t do so either. Recognising the reality of raw power and ruthlessness isn’t at all the same thing as agreeing that there is any justification for it.

Something similar applies, in a very different context and on a wholly different scale, to the ‘legitimate’ concerns of those opposing all migration. What, exactly, is the difference between blatant xenophobia and paranoia on the one hand, and ‘legitimate’ concerns on the other? And when and how does the one morph into the other? The distinction is not at all clear to me, but politicians are increasingly falling into the habit of using the word ‘legitimate’ to describe the motivations of those opposing migration, as if they are afraid to confront the much darker motives driving many of those opponents. Actually, I think that I can answer my own question: what legitimises fears or concerns is using the word legitimate to describe them. The language we use is important. Those referring to Putin’s fears as legitimate strengthen his hand, just as those who refer to legitimate concerns about migration strengthen the hand of the Farages of this world. Whether we’re dealing with the actual real world authoritarian in the Kremlin, or the wannabe authoritarian of Reform, legitimising part of what they say doesn’t make it easier to debate the matter rationally, it merely encourages them to bank the win, and expand their demands.

There’s nothing ‘legitimate’ about invading a neighbouring country or about spreading deliberate untruths to whip up hatred of migrants and foreigners. Suggesting that there is merely facilitates them.

Tough words won't cut it

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In their response to Trump’s support for Putin’s position on Ukraine, the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Finland, along with the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, issued a strongly worded statement, in which they made clear their view that “Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s pathway to EU and NATO”, and “International borders must not be changed by force.” Brave words, but ultimately meaningless. Putin does not need a direct veto on Ukraine’s membership of Nato when his willing puppet in the White House has one, and has made it clear that he’s ready to use it. And the international borders of Ukraine have effectively already been changed by force. Indeed, the whole history of international borders shows that force is the most usual way in which they are changed. There are few – if any – international borders which are not the result of armed conflict at some point in the past. We might wish that the world had learned better by now, but it hasn’t, and the fine words of an assorted group of leaders don’t change that.

The situation in Ukraine remains where it has been for the last three years, with only three potential outcomes. The first is that Ukraine’s allies provide the resources, both weaponry and personnel, to defeat Russia and restore previous boundaries. There is little doubt that the capacity to do this exists, although whether it would ignite an even bigger problem is an unknown. The second is that Ukraine’s allies continue to supply just about enough weaponry to keep the war going until one or both sides – most probably Ukraine, as the smaller of the two – lose the will and the manpower to continue fighting. The third is that some sort of accommodation is reached with Putin under which new de facto, if not necessarily de jure, borders are agreed. None of these is palatable, but only one offers the hope of an early end to the slaughter.

Leaders like to be seen to be talking tough, but tough rhetoric solves little. As a statement of the way the world should be, it’s hard to fault what they say; but as a recognition of reality it’s a dismal failure. And what’s lacking above all is any sense of an understanding that the world isn’t as they want it to be – let alone of the fact that they are some of the key players who should be working to change the way the world works.

Does homelessness stop Trump getting the Nobel Prize?

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Lurking somewhere in the back of my mind is a vague recollection of a TV series fronted by James Burke back in the 1980s in which he explained how a change – sometimes quite a small change – in one factor could lead to large changes in apparently unrelated fields. Or maybe that rogue memory is based on one of Douglas Adams’ books: he was, as I recall, something of a proponent of the idea of the interconnectedness of everything. In any event, it set me to wondering whether Trump’s clampdown on homelessness and crime – the scale of which is, in his vivid imagination, enormous – in Washington DC is related to his overwhelming desire to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Bear with me here.

We know that he strongly believes that he is entitled to the award, and cannot tolerate the fact that Obama was given one and he has not been. The desire runs to extreme lengths, with reports today that he personally phoned the Norwegian Finance Minister, as the latter was going about his business on the streets of Oslo, to tell him that he wanted the prize. Just for good measure, he also discussed possible tariffs. No connection between the two things I’m sure, and certainly not a case of ‘nice country you’ve got there; shame if anything bad happened to it’. Maybe.

We also know that he seriously believes that bombing Iran was what ended the brief war with Israel and should therefore be counted as part of his record of bringing peace to troubled places. And we know, because he’s told us, repeatedly, that he is the only man who can end the Russia Ukraine war, and that he stands a 75% chance of doing just that in Alaska today. I hesitate to make such a wild claim, but it is at least possible that he has enough self-awareness to know that pulling off such a deal might just improve his chances of being invited to Oslo. But one of the obstacles to such a deal is, in his view, whether and to what extent Putin respects both Trump and the US. An objective observer might see that as problematic, given that Putin seemingly respects almost no-one, but I’m sure that it doesn’t look that way to Trump.

And that brings us back to the imagined disaster zone as which Trump sees Washington DC. He’s already told us that the rest of the world disrespects the US because of the dirt, crime and homelessness which exists in defiant denial of all statistical evidence to the contrary, and that he’s going to clean up the imaginary mess in order to earn back that respect. The route to winning his much-coveted prize therefore runs through deploying the National Guard to bulldoze homelessness camps, deport anyone who he doesn’t like the look of, and clear the slums. I realise that there is a danger in making his acts look almost rational, but it’s an explanation which might actually be closer to the truth than anything else.

Double standards usually apply

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It’s probably reasonable to assume that US Vice President Vance didn’t know that he needed a licence to go fishing on the lake at Chevening. Whether he would be so indulgent about a visitor to the US breaking a local law of which (s)he was ignorant is another question, but being fair-minded and reasonable doesn’t depend on reciprocity. Lammy, however, and the staff at Chevening should have known, and he certainly would have known had he been an avid angler.

It's apparently a non-trivial offence: it seems that the fine for fishing without the requisite licence is up to £2,500, even if you’re fishing in your own lake on your own land to which there is no public access, although unless you’re dull enough to invite a photographer to film the crime, you’re unlikely to be caught. It does sound a bit like what politicians normally like to call unnecessary red tape. In Lammy’s defence, inviting a photographer to capture the scene is hardly the action of someone who knows that he is breaking the law. My best guess is that he’s never fished before, and angling is one of those life-long passions which politicians suddenly remember when a good photo-op presents itself. That, though, begs the question – where did the rods come from? It’s possible that they are kept at Chevening for the use of guests (which might make this a case of serial offending) or that some underling was sent out to acquire them. In either case, someone should have known that a permit was required, even if that someone wasn’t Lammy himself.

Lammy has owned up to the problem, paid for a licence and apologised, and that seems to be the end of the matter. I can’t help wondering, though, whether offering to pay for a licence retrospectively would have worked the same magic for those who have been fined for similar offences, or whether double standards are in operation. Lammy has actually handled it rather well – none of the usual bluster about no wrongdoing, just a rapid apology and retrospective purchase of a licence. It does still, though, underline the eternal truth: them what owns or controls the land can get away with more than the rest of us.

Idiocy is what got him the job

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According to the US Ambassador to Israel this week, if Sir Starmer had been the UK’s PM during the Second World War, we’d all be speaking German now. He’s not the first to use the “…all be speaking German now if it weren’t for” (insert saviour of choice here) line, and he probably won’t be the last. It’s like some sort of bizarre corollary of Godwin’s Law, except in this case it’s an argument of first resort rather than last. Those deploying the line usually seem to think it’s an absolute killer line, but all it really demonstrates is an ignorance of history, especially linguistic history.

Even had the outcome of that war been different, the probability that the German overlords would have been able to replace the languages of all the conquered peoples with their own in such a historically short timescale are pretty much negligible. For evidence, one has only to look at what was, perhaps, the single most prolific attempted perpetrator of linguistic and cultural elimination in history, namely the UK itself, in its then guise of the British Empire (and it was, incidentally, the British Empire which declared war on Germany, not the UK). Whilst the language of the colonial administration might have been English, most people in the conquered realms continued speaking their own languages throughout the period of colonisation. And here in Wales, half a millennium of attempted linguistic cleansing succeeded only in reducing the use of Welsh, not eliminating it.

But the real problem with it as a line of argument is the way in which it reduces the consequences of conquest to a rather simplistic question about which language people end up speaking. It wasn't even relevant to the ambassador’s underlying point, which was that providing food to a starving population who have been driven from their homes by a completely disproportionate response by Israel somehow equates to a capitulation to Hamas: he would clearly prefer them to starve to death. Labour’s Emily Thornbury was surely right in saying that “This Ambassador is clearly an idiot,” but isn’t being an idiot his prime qualification for serving as part of the Trump administration?

Throwing people probably wouldn't help

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Yesterday, in advance of Trump’s meeting with Putin later this week to redraw Ukraine’s boundaries, Sir Starmer warned the world that he wouldn’t trust Vladimir Putin “as far as you can throw him”. It’s another of those rare occasions when Sir Starmer has spoken half sensibly. Only half mind, because there is also a major question about the trustworthiness of Trump. And looking at the two men, if it came to a distance throwing contest, I reckon that most of us might be able to throw Putin a millimetre or two further than Trump. It’s probably something to do with the Big Mac consumption ratio.

And that’s the problem with Sir Starmer’s statement backing Trump’s interventions over the Ukraine war: neither of the two parties can be trusted. Putin’s motivation is to get US recognition of his control over as much of Ukraine as possible; Trump’s appears to be earning himself a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the bloodshed, at least long enough for him to get to Oslo and collect it, regardless of whether any peace is just or lasting. Most of Europe is saying that Ukraine must be part of any agreement – the country must not simply be carved up between Trump and Putin.

Sadly, the truth about the world in which we live (rather then the one in which we might prefer to live) is that two dictators, each heavily armed with the means to wipe us all out, meeting in Alaska can and will carve up Ukraine and, come to that, any other country that they choose (a side-deal on Greenland, maybe, as a quid pro quo?), and no-one can stop them. Without US support, unless the rest of the world – and particularly Europe – is willing to commit resources, including military personnel, to the defence of Ukraine, then the ultimate outcome is certain, with only the timescale in doubt. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s not just, it’s not the sort of world most of us would want, but Trump is surely right to say the cards are stacked against Ukraine. He should know – he’s the one who stacked them.

For decades, we have lived under the delusion that the world order is rules-based, but the US has always had a shaky commitment, at best, to that concept, and has abandoned it completely under Trump. The truth is that we live in a world where the powerful can and do impose their will on those less strong than themselves – Trump has merely shredded the pretence that things were otherwise. Might is right, in practice if not in theory. With the US having gone rogue, the choice is between telling Zelensky to fight to the last Ukrainian, or advising him to accept that some territorial loss is the price of peace, and concentrating on getting back the stolen children and rebuilding what’s left of Ukraine, with absolutely no guarantee that Putin won’t try and grab more of the country in a few years time. It’s not a pleasant choice, but not choosing the second means that Sir Starmer is effectively choosing the first. Slathered in a good dose of meaningless rhetoric about the evil Putin.

How we get to a position where the world can get back to at least the pretence of having a rules-based international order is a much bigger question, to which none of us have the answer. But we can at least start by asking the question, something which Sir Starmer seems unable to comprehend.

A convenient lie

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One of the convenient lies we are told on a regular basis is that governments and politicians make the laws, but the way in which those laws are enforced is ‘an operational matter’, entirely in the hands of individual police forces, who set their own priorities when it comes to using the limited resources allocated to them by those same governments and politicians. Thus it was parliament, at the behest of the Home Secretary, which declared that showing any sort of support for Palestine Action was itself a terrorist act, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but it was the Metropolitan Police who decided that this was such a high priority that it justified arresting over 500 people, many of them for doing little more than holding up a placard, and then bailing them on suspicion of terrorism.

Maybe the Home Secretary, an authoritarian to her fingernails, didn’t actually tell the Met that she wanted the maximum number of arrests to be made. Maybe she didn’t even give them the odd nod and wink about her expectations. Perhaps her expectations were already clear enough for the police to ‘know’ what they needed to do. But there are now two possible outcomes. The first is that the authorities really will charge most or all of those people with terrorism, adding to the courts backlog in order to hear cases, most of which will, at huge public expense, end up with a minor fine or even a discharge given the pettiness of the ‘offences’. The second is that they will, rather more wisely, simply drop all further action to avoid a situation where they look like the complete idiots they have made of themselves.

It's possible, of course, that the police have deliberately been heavy-handed in order to expose the ridiculous nature of the law that they are being expected to enforce, in the hope that the government will back off and allow them to get back to dealing with proper crime. That does, though, require rather more cunning and Machiavellianism than the Met are usually known for. And, in any event, Occam’s Razor applies.

There is little doubt as to the guilt of those holding up placards, although that says more about the silliness of the law than the actions of the protesters or the police. In the meantime, it means that the police have released more than 500 suspected terrorists, each of whom has committed an offence carrying a custodial sentence of up to 14 years, onto the streets of the UK to continue their nefarious activities. We are expected to believe two things at the same time: firstly that these are dangerous terrorists who deserve to be locked up for a very long time, and secondly that it is safe to allow them to roam the country. A rational and sensible government might stop and think about the course they are following, but we’re more likely to see them doubling down on the rhetoric. As well as seeing more protests and more arrests. I suppose it’s what the UK deserves for electing an authoritarian and illiberal government.

Statehood includes the right to choose a government

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Whether or not Palestine meets the usual requirements to recognition as a state remains in doubt, as noted last week. Israel is certainly doing its utmost to ensure that there are no enforceable boundaries nor any functioning administration with which the rest of the world could deal. That doesn’t take away the right of Palestinians to have an independent state if they so choose, even if statehood may not be exactly the thing uppermost in their minds as Gazans desperately struggle for food. And it surely can’t be right that an occupying power – wherever in the world it might be – can frustrate the right of territories it occupies to gain statehood.

Opponents of recognition claim that it would ‘reward’ terrorism and somehow legitimise the horrific attack by Hamas which sparked the latest round of fighting. It’s true if, and only if, one’s historical perspective on Gaza starts on 7 October 2023. On any longer timescale, terrorism didn’t start then and has never been restricted to one side: indeed, Israel as a state only exists as an internationally recognised state within its current recognised boundaries as a result of terrorist acts by Israeli settlers in the 1940s. And even that is choosing an artificial start date – history doesn’t start and stop neatly at any point in time that we choose. Sir Starmer and others have declared that ‘we don’t negotiate with terrorists’, one of those statements which is only true up until the point when negotiation becomes the only rational option, and there are numerous historical examples of that.

The leader of the Tories has come up with another obstacle to recognition, claiming that the UK shouldn’t recognise a state led by people we consider to be terrorists. Superficially, it sounds almost rational – after all, does anyone really think that Hamas are the best people to be governing any part of Palestine? It is, though, a deeply colonialist attitude, perhaps not entirely surprising from someone who has newly thrown off any suggestion that she might in any way be Nigerian, with its implicit assumption that the rest of the world can or should determine who the Palestinians might want to represent them. And is she seriously suggesting that, if Hamas stand aside now to gain recognition and the people of Palestine subsequently choose to elect a government led by Hamas, or a similar group under another name, that the UK should then de-recognise Palestine? It doesn’t look like a position to which she has given much thought.

Actually, although it’s surely inadvertent on her part, maybe there is a non-colonialist point to be made here after all. The world might indeed be a safer place for humanity as a whole if certain governments were removed from power by international action (even if we might disagree about which ones). But a world in which states were required to abide by certain globally adopted standards (such as a declaration of human rights, perhaps?) and where governments could be removed by collective action by other states if they did not would require a few things to be in place, not the least of which are a global set of rules and the will and organisation to enforce them. Something about Badenoch’s attitude towards international law tells me that that is most definitely not what she has in mind. Which just leaves opportunistic posturing.