They're not all that different

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During the last week, who said “I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad”, and who thinks that “the British Empire was a force for good in the world”? For those who might not have kept up, the answer, of course, is those two famous peas-in-a-pod, namely Fromage and Sir Starmer. The point that they are both trying to make is that ‘we’ should be proud of ‘our’ history rather than ashamed of it, an aspiration which completely fails to understand the nuance between being proud of one’s country on the one hand and supporting everything it has ever done on the other.

They’re not alone, of course; there are plenty of other politicians, Labour and Tory alike, whose views on the issue are little different from those of Reform Ltd, but there are at least some of us who might be more likely to take pride in a country which recognised its chequered past, was able to admit and face up to the fact that its history hasn’t always been covered in glory, and that much of its wealth is based on theft and expropriation. It’s easy enough to identify the bad things that were done in the Empire like the occasional massacre, and the exploitation of people and territories to seize the wealth for the colonialists. Finding things that are unequivocally 'good' is a lot harder. Claiming that one of the good things was the abolition of slavery rather overlooks the fact that much of the wealth extracted from the empire was extracted on the back of slavery: reversing a policy and compensating the slave owners (but not the slaves) after more than two centuries of benefiting from slavery is rather hard to present as being a ‘net good thing’ for anyone taking an objective view.

The other ‘benefits’ usually claimed by empire apologists are the building of railways (all the better to extract goods and resources), the introduction of English law, Christianity, and the spread of the English language. Implicit in the claim that they are all ‘good’ things is the inherently racist belief that all of those things are better than anything that the mere natives had developed, or might have gone on to develop, for themselves. Whilst there is a clear advantage to being able to speak what has become the world’s lingua franca, claiming that as a benefit of imperial rule ignores the fact that English only achieved that status because it was imposed on so many conquered peoples by the imperial rulers or (in the case of the other great driver of English linguistic dominance) by white settlers driving native Americans from their lands. Presenting that as an unarguable net benefit is problematic, to say the least.

What the convergence of views between Sir Starmer and Fromage (to say nothing of all the others in between) does tell us is that English nationalism is based on a highly ethnocentric view of the world, a view based on an innate sense of superiority and exceptionalism. It’s a world view in which lesser peoples (and that includes the Welsh, Scots and Irish) should know their place and be grateful for that which was forced on them by military conquest. It’s a world view from which they are unable to escape, and in which it is incomprehensible to them why anyone might see things differently. It shouldn’t go unquestioned.

Not doing as we do

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It says a lot about the current state of the Conservative Party that the living, breathing refutation of the concept of nominative determinism is rising through the ranks of those considered possible next leaders, with the party’s internal league table showing only two ministers ahead of him: one who is obviously mad and another who is leaving parliament at the next election. As if being appointed to his current job was not adequate proof, in itself, of the dearth of talent in the party.

He's taken himself off to China this week to ask the country’s leaders very politely if they will please be a little nicer in their relationships with the rest of the world, stop being quite so friendly with Russia, and perhaps think about respecting the human rights of Chinese citizens. The last part of that is something where he feels himself to be under some sort of obligation to say he’s raised the issue, but it may actually be more akin to a study trip, to enable him to make a better contribution to the next cabinet discussion on restricting the rights of UK citizens. Indeed, I wonder how long it will be before leaders of other countries visiting the UK will be obliged to excuse their visits by saying that they’ve raised the issue of human rights abuses with UK ministers. Perhaps they already have; but it isn’t the sort of thing we should expect to be reported here, just as the People’s Daily is unlikely to report that particular part of Cleverly’s discussions with the Chinese government. Whatever he himself might learn from the trip, he’ll probably be hoping that those travelling with him will not be studying the way in which the Chinese government can make Foreign Ministers disappear, whatever hopes some of us might harbour.

In a move which will surely help Cleverly in his attempts to influence China, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons chose today to publish a highly critical report on China, including a statement which implies recognition of the independence of Taiwan, although whether it will influence China in the desired direction is open to debate. The Chair of that committee said it was crucial that Cleverly communicated during his meetings that “we will not stand for transnational repression or drift towards authoritarianism”. As a statement of the UK’s position, it’s only a half-truth – the sub-clause, “unless it’s in or by the UK”, seems to be missing. That omission helps to underline, however, that the whole basis for the visit is the deranged belief that a middling size state actively isolating itself offshore from the most integrated continent on the planet can seriously hope to influence a country rapidly becoming the world’s biggest and strongest economy by appealing to a set of values which it itself is busily abandoning. It’s a classic piece of English exceptionalism in action.

Canaries and ferrets

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With the possible exception of those Conservative politicians disposed to see membership of the RSPB as a terrorist act, most of us would be hard put to think of a less harmful pursuit than keeping and breeding exotic canaries. Although perhaps the canaries might see things differently. It seems however that this comparatively benign pastime is another victim of the new rules and regulations which are the inevitable result of leaving the EU single market and the customs union. Another of those hard-to-find Brexit bonuses, one might say.

The canary breeder quoted extensively in the article seems to think that canary-breeders as a group are working-class Brexit voters, although the research and polling to back up that assertion, if they exist, do not seem to be referenced in the report. But the tone of his words (“the people who are affected – working-class people, people who voted for Brexit, who voted to leave – are now finding that they can’t actually do anything because they can’t take their birds back and forth to mainland Europe”), along with the demand that canaries should be treated “in the same way as dogs, cats and ferrets*” suggests that the very fact that they were proponents of Brexit should be enough to exclude them from its effects. It's a strange form of logic to argue that people who voted for something should be excluded from the impact of their decision. It is, though, not untypical of the Brexit mindset, with its continued insistence that the UK is in some way entitled to continue to enjoy the benefits without following the rules. The idea that the consequences of Brexit would encourage a change of mind rather than an assumption that they are the result of EU intransigence is obviously one for the birds. In this case, literally so.

*Who knew that ferrets were specifically identified as an exception under the amended Northern Ireland protocol? The wondrous details of Brexit continue to astound.

Is it all about Empire 2.0?

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At first sight, the idea that the UK should leave a large and prosperous trade agreement on its doorstep in order to join one based on the Pacific Ocean looks like a very strange decision. It doesn’t look much less strange on second, third, or even fourth sight either. It’s not totally geographically invalid however – part of the UK is, in fact, close to the very centre of the Pacific Ocean. The Pitcairn Islands may only have a population of 47 (at the last count), but the men are all out of prison now and anyway even 1 would be enough to make the UK a Pacific nation. In a strange quirk of history, that infamous mutiny back in 1789 has given the UK access to the untold riches of a 0.08% boost to GDP (maybe – even the trade minister seems a little dubious about that claim), all based – as was much of the empire – on a bit of robbery, rape and pillage, for which we should now, apparently, be grateful.

The logic of there being strength in numbers as outlined by the minister is clear, and joining a large and successful trade partnership is therefore well worth the price of having to agree to a set of rules drawn up by the existing members and submitting to the judgements of the partnership’s courts. We need to keep reminding ourselves that it’s nothing like being part of the EU’s Single Market, even if that’s only because the benefits are so much smaller and under the new partnership the courts meet and arrive at their decisions in secret rather than in a more public and accountable fashion. And in what might well look to the remaining EU members as an echo of the past, the new kid in the bloc is already preparing to demand that it has its own way on who else might be allowed to join.

It's easy enough to mock, but it’s a lot harder to understand what on earth might drive anyone to believe that a small benefit from a far away trade partnership is better than a large benefit from one much closer at hand. Badenoch’s claim that it is like buying into a start-up is an interesting one, basing the decision on faith about relative economic growth rates into the far distant future, although it rather overlooks the fact that most investments in most start-ups fail. The argument that economic growth in the Pacific will be faster than in Europe probably stands up only if China is included; but that is not part of the plan and, even in China, growth is stalling.

I have a rather different theory about the potential attraction to the Little Englanders with their dreams of Global Britain, and it’s all about harking back to the past. Of the 11 existing members of the partnership, 6 are former British colonies and use English as an official language (4), a recognised language (1), or the main business language (1), so (unlike those pesky Europeans), they are not proper foreigners at all. Those who dream of Empire 2.0 fondly imagine that all those countries and their inhabitants see England (and England is what they tend to call it even if geographically inaccurate) as the motherland, the country that gave them their laws, customs and culture. This is England’s opportunity to place itself, once again, at their head and to provide them with the guidance that they’ve missed so much since foolishly becoming independent. From that perspective, their history is ‘our’ history; they share in the glory of empires past and dreams of empires future. It’s utter tosh, of course; exceptionalism always is. But never underestimate the power of exceptionalist tosh to drive decision-making either consciously or sub-consciously, even if – perhaps especially if – the decisions are economic madness.

No way out for Sunak

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Poor Rishi Sunak. All the indications are that he has gone into the negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol with the honest but completely mistaken view that he was trying to make the agreement signed by his predecessor but one work, and that the way to do that was to be reasonable and reach an agreement which would benefit all the stakeholders involved. He’s now finding out just how wrong he was; the objective of those opposing the agreement – including those who originally negotiated and agreed it – is not to make it work but to destroy it. The man responsible for the original agreement has never concealed, from the outset, the fact that he never had any intention of implementing it. Indeed, he made it so clear that it’s easy to understand his surprise at the idea that the EU ever thought he was being serious. The EU were taken completely unawares, despite all the evidence to help them, to find out that they were dealing with liars all along. 

In fairness to the Brexiteers, they have been fairly consistent in saying that what they want is full access to the EU single market without following any of the rules which member states have to follow, on the basis that this would give UK companies a competitive advantage. They’re right – it would indeed do that. Which is why no-one other than the English exceptionalists behind Brexit (and their DUP allies) ever thought for one moment that the EU would concede such an arrangement. In essence, it’s what those in favour of a ‘pure’ form of free trade have always wanted – trade with no tariffs, no border controls and no rules. And they genuinely seem to be so divorced from reality that they actually believed that they could bludgeon the EU into giving them such a deal.

We don’t yet know the detail of what Sunak has or has not agreed, although it would be surprising if it was far away from what has been widely reported in the press. And from that reporting, it looks like it’s little different from what could have been achieved in the original negotiation had the UK side been willing to take the time to discuss and agree rather than make threats and then sign up in haste (to 'get Brexit done') to something that they were never going to implement. It’s unlikely, though, that anything that is agreed will be acceptable to the DUP or the Tory extremists if it leaves any trace of EU laws or rules in Northern Ireland, or any hint of controls on the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the UK. It's equally unlikely that the EU will agree to any deal which does not uphold both those things. And that would lead us, inexorably, to the establishment of border controls on the island of Ireland. The Brexiteers would say that isn’t what they want (although the DUP would probably be delighted). They might even be telling the truth on that, but only because they’ve always believed two things:

·        Firstly (even if few of them have said it out loud), that the Republic of Ireland should know its place and follow the UK out of the EU, preferably re-joining the UK and swearing loyalty to the English monarchy at the same time. Their attitude towards Ireland is a bit like that of Putin towards Ukraine – it’s not a proper country and has no real right to a separate existence.

·        Secondly, that the UK’s departure would be the beginning of the end for the EU, which is still the end-game for many of them.

Where that leaves Sunak and his renegotiation is a big question. There is some doubt about whether he actually needs to put his deal to Parliament at all. Under the UK’s arcane system of semi-democracy, it arguably falls under the royal prerogative, meaning that ministers can just sign it and implement it. It would make him look frightened and weak, but he might prefer that to the alternative scenario where he puts it to parliament and it gets passed by opposition votes with a huge number of Tories voting against it. Rocks and hard places both leave him weakened, with the blond-headed shark circling maliciously. And both still leave the Conservative Party unmanageable and drifting as it attempts to reconcile the two irreconcilably opposing views on Europe which have destroyed so many of its leaders over the past three decades. In any functioning democracy, these two views would be represented by two different parties, but an outdated electoral system which polarises elections between two parties means that both try to manage differences within a broad church. Traditionally, that’s been more of a problem for Labour than the Tories, but it increasingly looks as if it might turn out to be terminal for the Tories. The coming implosion is almost too kind a way out.

Overpaid comics

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Living former Prime Ministers – a species of which the UK currently has a glut which is bigger than ever before in its history, the size of which is projected to rise again shortly – can command handsome fees for giving speeches based on their experiences and the wisdom it has allegedly given them. We know, for instance, that Boris Johnson was paid £276,000 (plus expenses) for one speech in the US (whilst also being paid for being an AWOL MP). We also know that he has since given another speech in Singapore, although the fee for that one will probably not become public until the next update of his declaration of interests. The host for the second one has had to apologise to those present to hear it, some of whom felt his robust remarks about China were inappropriate and offensive. The words used by Bloomberg in delivering the apology were that “…the presentation was meant as after-dinner entertainment rather than serious discussion of important controversial and complex issues”, implying that, whatever the fee was, it was being paid not for any expertise or enlightenment, but for a very expensive – and not particularly amusing – stand-up comedian. Overpaid, unfunny and offensive stand-up comic may be one of the fairest descriptions of Johnson ever, but it is surely not what people think they are getting when they pay an exorbitant price for a guest speaker.

It’s also interesting to read precisely what Johnson said that so aroused the ire of those in attendance. He accused China and Russia of being “… states that have been traditionally hostile to immigration and that are becoming increasingly nationalist in their attitudes”, of being “… willing to show a candid disregard for the rule of international law”, and of having demonstrated “… the immense limitations of their political systems by the disastrous mistakes they have made”. There’s not much to disagree with in any of that, but any objective observer would recognise that those same traits have recently been on display a lot closer to home – and especially under the so-called leadership of Johnson himself and his successors. It is that curious English exceptionalism which enables him to see dangerous nationalism everywhere except in the mirror. Paying the pot to criticise the kettle is obviously lucrative from the perspective of the pot, but it provides little in the way of meaningful political analysis. Just as well that one host, at least, recognises that he was overpaying a bad comic rather than employing any sort of expert.

Silly numbers and extraordinary claims

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Interpreting crowds is never easy, not least because in any crowd there are likely to be many different reasons for the participation of individuals. In 2019, it was estimated that more than 100,000 people joined a march through the streets of Edinburgh in support of Scottish independence. The march was regarded as a huge success by its organisers and gave a huge fillip to independentistas in Scotland. In the same way, marches here in Wales attended by thousands, even if not (yet) on the same scale as those in Scotland have encouraged independentistas here as well. It’s important, though, to put the numbers in context: 100,000 is around 1.8% of the Scottish population (for a Welsh march to achieve the same level would require around 54,000 marchers), and given that it’s a self-selecting subset, it tells us little about what the other 98% think on the issue. Projecting numbers of marchers into an assumption of majority support for their aim is a risky business, to say the least. No matter how impressive the sight might be, no assembly of people can, in itself, tell us much about the opinions of those who are not present. For that, we need opinion polls – as well as real polls at election time.

The same is true – although from the media coverage, one wouldn’t know it – about the huge crowds turning out to watch the monarch’s coffin on its progress from the place of death to its final resting place. Motives for doing so vary. In addition to monarchists, fans of individual royals and lovers of pageantry, vox pops have shown a good sprinkling of republicans as well as others who just felt that the event was historic and wanted to be in some way part of it. Projecting that into an outpouring of love for the Union, and claiming that those taking part are an entirely representative sample of the population as a whole is as silly as claiming that 100,000 marchers for independence are entirely representative of the Scottish population. That hasn’t stopped the unionists, though. To them, the crowds are a clear indication that the idea of Scottish (and Welsh) independence is finished; a dream relegated to the past. We should probably be grateful for the over-simplicity of their analysis and the resultant complacency which it engenders but certainly should not believe it.

At the weekend, there was one estimate that, as well as the huge numbers turning out to physically watch the coffin being moved from one place to another, around 4.1 billion people – more than half the world’s population – would tune in to watch the funeral. I don’t know how they’ve calculated that and I’d like to see their workings, but it reminded me of my old maths teacher talking about the importance of subjecting the result of any calculation to the ‘common sense’ test. By that he meant asking the question ‘does it feel right’? And it simply doesn’t. The best estimate that I’ve seen suggests that of the world’s population of around 7.8 billion, around 5.4 billion are television watchers (in around 1.7 billion households with a tv). We can probably discount most of the 1.4 billion Chinese (where an astonishing close to 100% have access to a television), to say nothing of the 144 million Russians or 84 million Iranians, as well as a goodly proportion of the 1.4 billion Indians and 220 million Pakistanis (the latter of which have other things on their minds at the moment, although one would scarcely noticed from television news reports). There are other places one could add to the list; the point is that, if 4.1 billion of those remaining were glued to their tv sets, it means that rather more than 100% of those with both the facilities and desire to watch proceedings had to have been tuned in.

Like many estimates of the numbers in a crowd, the number is obviously something of an over-statement. Does it matter? In itself, no, not really. The basic fact is that there would have been a very large audience; there was no need to exaggerate that by putting a silly number on it.  As even most republicans must surely acknowledge, the event was a historically significant one – more so for the UK than for any other part of the world, although numbers never reached 100% here. The number does, though, tell us something though about those English nationalist exceptionalists and their belief that what happens on these offshore islands must be equally significant for everyone else as well. And it isn’t just about the belief itself; it’s about the fact that they have a desperate need to believe in their own country’s specialness. One of the best illustrations came from the Speaker of the House of Commons who made the truly extraordinary claim that the funeral of the Queen will be “the most important event the world will ever see”.  That it is a highly significant occasion for the UK cannot be doubted. It marks the end of an era, and it would be wrong to underestimate the importance of that. But “ever”, and for the “world”? That indicates the very exaggerated sense of self-importance which is sadly endemic amongst our rulers. They have a deep need to exaggerate the importance of their little corner of the world and what happens here; everything has to be portrayed as world-leading or world-beating. Being a large and important event isn’t enough: it has to be the largest and most important to validate their own self-belief. It is an essential element of their deeply nationalistic ‘non-nationalism’ that everything about their country is both the best and the most important. As with so much that happens in the UK these days, mere facts will never be allowed to get in the way of such self-aggrandisement.

Brexit benefits, #94

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According to the BBC’s Katya Adler:

“EU announces it has agreed unanimously amongst all member countries to take in Ukrainian refugees for up to 3 years without asking them to first apply for asylum. Just been announced following a meeting of EU Interior ministers.”

Fortunately for the UK, Brexit means that we are free to ignore this and insist that they must apply for visas which will only be available to spouses, unmarried partners of at least two years, parents or their children if one is under 18, or adult relatives who are also carers (of people already entitled to be in the UK). Or they can apply for seasonal fruit-picker visas. I can feel the pride swelling up inside me to see the UK ‘leading the world’ (© Boris Johnson) by responding to the crisis in such a generous fashion. Oh, wait a minute, what I can feel swelling up inside me isn’t pride at all, it’s something entirely different…

Don't let them take us down with them

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The old headline which some say is apocryphal but which others attribute to the Times in 1957, which read “Heavy Fog in the Channel. Continent cut off.”, serves as a classic indicator of that special English sense of being exceptional and at the centre of everything. We had a contemporary indication of that same attitude this week, when Sir Somebody Tufton-Bufton MP declared that if England does something different to what he referred to as ‘the principalities’ then it is not England which is out of step, but everybody else. Given his obvious ignorance of the nature of the UK and its component parts, it will surely come as a surprise to no-one to discover that he is, like his party’s leader, yet another Old Etonian, another product of that network of so-called ‘educational’ institutions which seem to exist primarily to remove any feelings of empathy and humanity from their charges and replace them with an innate sense of superiority and exceptionalism. Accurate and useful knowledge seems to play only a minor role in the curriculum.

Anyway, the basic difference between the more civilised parts of the UK on the one hand and England on the other in this case is about whether it is sensible to take formal precautions to try and slow the spread of Omicron before it gets completely out of control, or whether we should rely on the common sense of people to take their own decisions about the level of risk involved and wait until the health service is overwhelmed before acting. And the problem for the civilised parts is that it’s only when England acts that money will be available in the quantities required to support the affected individuals and businesses. Notwithstanding certain obvious exceptions, and without playing down the damage that those exceptions can do in spreading the virus, it is true that many people, even in England where their leader is still exhorting them to party on and leading by example, are showing a great deal of common sense and voting with heir feet. Some of the businesses affected are effectively being closed by customer withdrawal rather than by government dictat – something which the Chancellor apparently considers a good thing since he doesn’t need to subsidise them, but which will not feel quite so good from the perspective of either the businesses themselves or those working in them.

The argument of the so-called ‘freedom lovers’ of the swivel-eyed crazy tendency which has infiltrated and taken over the Tory party is that setting rules infringes our rights to take our own decisions. I suppose we should be glad that they haven’t – not yet anyway – tried to apply this to certain other offences, like murder or theft. There is a sense in which they have a point: what events have shown us is that, whether we are given rules or merely guidance, most people do the sensible thing. For most of us the outcome (in terms of our behaviour) is much the same. In the same way, most of us don’t need a law banning us from killing other people to prevent us from doing it. The difference between rules and guidance, though, is about the lack of enforcement. With rules, we can and do take action against those who transgress and endanger the rest of us (unless, of course, they are cabinet ministers, advisers, Tory MPs or donors), whereas with guidance, they are free to continue to act as they wish (and may even gain unfair advantage from their actions). Specifically, in this instance, to spread a virus variant the potency of which is still not fully known or understood. Underlying their argument is an ideological aversion to any action being taken collectively rather than individually.

Some might object to the distinction drawn above between England and the more civilised countries of the UK, but doesn’t this go to the heart of an important aspect of what civilisation is about? Acting collectively, in the interests of the many rather than the few, setting rules which allow us to live side by side in a commonly-agreed framework rather than allowing individuals to do as they please regardless of the consequences for others  – aren’t these all aspects of a developed civilisation? Under the leadership of an ignorant and exceptionalist elite, England is rapidly turning its back on civilised values. And that applies not only in the specific dealt with here, but in the treatment of the least fortunate in society and of refugees, to pick just two examples. Remaining attached to what England is becoming is not a future which offers much hope to anyone.

Fearing the truth or trying to ignore it?

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The point about the exceptionalism of English nationalists is that it’s exceptionally exceptional, but it still takes a very, very exceptional kind of exceptionalism to spend months negotiating a deal in excruciating detail, declare it to be the best deal ever in the whole of human history, and then refuse to implement it because it’s such a rubbish deal. Even more exceptionalist is to then expect the partner with whom the deal had been so painstakingly negotiated to agree that actually implementing it is unnecessary because, well, because the UK is so very exceptional. And because sausages. Oh, and also because some of the more extreme loyalists, whose degree of loyalty can apparently be directly measured by their propensity for violence against the state to which they proclaim said loyalty, who were promised that the deal to put a trade border down the Irish Sea meant that there would be absolutely no border checks or controls whatsoever and were silly enough to believe that any utterance from the mouth of the exceptionalist PM could bear any relationship to truth, might vent their anger by further violent demonstrations of loyalty to the state.

It’s wrong, of course, to make light of a very serious situation, but the consequences of the deal signed by the UK Government were obvious from the outset, and signing a legally-binding deal with another party in the expectation that the UK could then wriggle out of it by firstly ignoring it, then refusing to implement it, and then seeking to use potential violence by groups whose views they deliberately ignored in the first place in an attempt to blackmail the other partner into dismantling its own regulatory regime is much, much worse. The phrase used yesterday by Cummings to describe the English Health Minister (“Totally f*****g hopeless”) looks like an understatement when applied to the government as a whole.

As ever, the Labour leader managed to ride to the rescue. Faced with a hopeless government, the last thing we need is a hopeless opposition, but Labour can generally be relied upon to provide that last thing. Starmer managed to say both that the deal signed by the UK Government – a deal which he and his party supported by voting for it in parliament – must be implemented and there is no scope for major renegotiation, but at the same time there should be no border checks either in the Irish Sea or across the island of Ireland. Whilst he’s critical of the government for signing the deal which he supported, he neither wants to change it nor implement it in full – it’s hard to see what the difference in substance is between him and Johnson. They have, though, arrived at the same position by different routes. Johnson doesn’t care about the truth, whilst Starmer actively fears it. Johnson lied about the deal to get himself out of a tight spot and never had any intention of implementing it; Starmer knows that avoiding borders ultimately involves re-entry into the single market or something very similar but fears telling his voters that simple truth. Both are left arguing for the impossible.

For exceptionalists, actions have no consequences. Even if they do.

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Those who believe that the way in which problems have arisen in the implementation of the Brexit agreement with the EU would lead to any sort of rethink are very much mistaken. Cakeism lives, and any and every attempt to point out that the difficulties are an inherent and inevitable consequence of the choices which Brexiteers made simply leads to them doubling down on their demand that the EU must allow the UK to be a ‘third country’ but must not then treat it as such, and any failure by the EU to comply simply proves how evil and vengeful the EU is.

It is true that some of the detailed problems with the agreement might have been avoided had the agreement been more carefully negotiated rather than rushed through to meet an arbitrary timetable. That is one of the major reasons why most trade agreements take many years to bring to fruition. Lack of experience of trade negotiations on the UK side after delegating such discussions to the EU for decades didn’t help either. But the biggest problem, throughout the process, was a UK side whose attitude was coloured by that special sort of English exceptionalism and entitlement which assumed from the outset that the UK was entitled to special privileges.

Another fatal assumption – based on the same attitudes – has been that we could simply opt out of any part of it that we don’t like; having obtained the requisite signatures on a piece of paper, the UK could unilaterally change any bits which don’t give it what it wants. It’s an attitude which is most obvious in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol. The DUP are now campaigning to simply scrap the protocol, as though that is some sort of stand-alone action which has no impact on any other aspect of the agreement. They’re being egged on by a PM who himself is threatening to simply walk away from the protocol, as though the UK has the right to rewrite an agreement to which it has signed up. Unsurprisingly, both the Republic and the EU have said that the only option available is to look at what steps can be taken to make the protocol work more effectively. Legally, they’re right: whilst the UK can abrogate the whole treaty any time it wants (and accept the consequences), it cannot rewrite parts of an international treaty without the agreement of the other parties. Their case hasn’t been helped by the silly suggestion by the EU last week that it would activate Article 16 over vaccines. It had no right to do that without exhausting the other remediation steps set out in the agreement first, but the suggestion that they could and would didn’t help.

None of that means that it is impossible for the UK to simply scrap the protocol as the DUP are demanding. Johnson can do that at any time – but what the UK can’t then do is hold the EU to any other parts of the agreement. There would be consequences, the likeliest of which is border controls between the two parts of Ireland. Neither side might want to implement such a proposal, but it would be inevitable under international trade law covering ‘most favoured nation status’. There are other options, such as re-joining the single market, or agreeing a common regulatory regime, but all those other options have been ruled out by the UK itself. As Sherlock Holmes said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” And given that those demanding that the protocol be scrapped have ruled out all the other options, it leaves them arguing, in effect, for border controls between the Republic and the North. The fact that they are incapable of understanding, let alone accepting, that fact attests to the influence of the cakeism fallacy.

Under this fallacy, which has large numbers of adherents amongst the population of the UK, when all the things that Remainers said would happen come to pass, that doesn’t prove that the Leavers were wrong, it underlines how right they were all along about the EU. Anyone who believes that mere facts or logic will shake that belief is not understanding the power that fallacious beliefs have over their followers. Unless and until the leaders of this cult are removed from power, things are likely to get worse rather than better.

The fading of the myth

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Statistics tell us that around 8% of the UK’s population are 75 or over, meaning that the remaining 92% were all born in or after 1945. Unless my understanding of the age profile of users of social media is seriously wrong, it is reasonable to conclude that the proportion of those users who have direct experience or memory of the second world war is a number which approximates very closely to zero. This apparently makes a proportion very much higher than zero particularly well-qualified to assert that ‘we’ not only survived the war, but ‘we’ single-handedly won it, either sorting out or liberating (depending on which nationality they are referring to at the time) all those pesky Europeans, who now owe us a whole bunch of favours, but whose favours we can easily survive without if they insist on pursuing their own interests rather than recognising ‘our’ sacrifices on their behalf.

The Anglo-British emphasis on ‘the war’ is understandable. In many ways, it is reasonable to argue that what we know as the UK was ‘born’ out of the Second World War. It was the British Empire, not the UK, which declared war on Germany in 1939, but it was a much-diminished UK which emerged from the war and its aftermath. What looked very much like a victory to those who were there at the time turns out to have been merely the beginning of the end, as another of the world’s historic empires disintegrated and declined, as they all do eventually. What lives on in the collective memory is more myth than fact. The UK is not alone in clinging to myth; many countries have a creation myth about how they came into existence as a way of promoting unity and shared beliefs. Myth, however, is absolutely the right word to use. Some countries’ creation myths are more believable than others, but they are all, ultimately, more about myth than fact. The strongest are those which everyone knows to be myth; fantasies based on tales of dragons, giants or gods are more powerful than creation myths which turn around actual events, because events can (and always will be) re-interpreted, misremembered, or even forgotten as time passes.

In the case of the UK, the misremembering takes many forms. Where historical fact shows black marketeers and spivs enriching themselves at the expense of the many, the myth tells us about social solidarity and stoicism. Where fact talks of food shortages and rationing for the many whilst the few had access to all they needed, myth tells of a great levelling, in which all had their basic needs met. Fact talks of hunger; myth reports a lack of any obesity problem. Historical fact tells of the huge military contribution of the US and the USSR, the latter suffering horrific numbers of deaths during the conflict, but the myth talks of brave and exceptional little Blighty, standing all alone against the menace of Hitler.

Dragons and giants can survive historical revisionism in a way that the UK’s creation myth could never do; sooner or later, the myth was going to come up against reality. If it weren’t Brexit, it would be something else. Ultimately, there can only be one winner of the contest: the myth is dying. It’s a long-drawn-out death, and the death throes are marked by ever more extreme protestations, but the conclusion is inevitable. Just as the UK was born out of the myth, so it will also die with the myth. It falls to the current generation to ensure that the new states which emerge from the ashes are founded on more solid grounds – new creation myths? – than a belief in exceptionalism and superiority.

It will all be plain sailing

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Yesterday’s announcement that the UK has licensed a vaccine for immediate use against Covid is welcome news. And it seems likely that one or more other vaccines will also be licensed shortly. The claim that a quick decision to license was somehow related to Brexit was rapidly debunked; if anything, the use of a vaccine developed by a German company run by a Turkish owner and manufactured in Belgium shows the benefit of a co-operative approach across borders.

Delivering a vaccine which requires storage at a very low temperature quickly and effectively would be challenging at the best of times to the best of governments, and erecting obstacles to importing it would clearly be something which any rational government would seek to avoid. With Boris providing the competence, Brexit facilitating the free movement of goods, and English exceptionalism driving us forward, what could possibly go wrong?

When the wind blows...

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According to Bloomberg, the Tories are busy preparing a strategy to respond to the growing calls for Scottish independence if the SNP win their predicted large pro-independence majority in the Scottish election next year. However, what some might initially interpret as a long-overdue understanding that simply repeating the word ‘no’ would be counterproductive, the detail of the proposals so far considered suggests precisely the opposite: they have learned nothing and understood less. It’s said that generals always fight the last war, but I’m not sure that the Tories are even as up to date as that.

There are four main elements to their proposed ‘strategy’:

1.    Attempt to persuade the Scots that they should stay by devolving more powers to Holyrood. It sounds a lot like a watered-down version of the infamous ‘Vow’, a promise of greater devolution if the Scots voted ‘no’ on which the UK parties, led by the Tories, promptly reneged after the vote. As cunning plans go, assuming that the Scots will be stupid enough to fall for the same tactic again looks more Baldrick than Machiavelli. And that would be true even if the Scots couldn’t read, in the same article, that many Tories will oppose this route anyway, preferring to reduce rather than enhance the powers of the Scottish parliament.

2.    Get the EU to make it clear that there is no easy route to membership for an independent Scotland. The EU will, of course, play ball with this because… Well, presumably because they really want to go out of their way to provide political support to people who have spent the last four years being obstructive and objectionable and who are trying to undo the whole EU project rather than those who have bought into the European ideal and want to promote it. Yes, I can see how that looks like a sensible approach to English exceptionalists - but not to anyone else. On the cunningness scale it also runs far wide of the goalposts.

3.    To attack the perceived failings of the Scottish government, “making the [SNP] 'pay the price' for running the semi-autonomous administration since 2007”. I’m not going to pretend that the SNP record in a number of fields has been perfect; it has not. But given that at least some of the problems can be laid at the lack of powers (and especially financial powers) devolved to Scotland, and given the patent failings of the UK Government, the words which immediately jump into my mind at the thought of the UK government inviting people to compare its record with that of Scotland are ‘shoot’ and ‘foot’.

4.    To launch a “a hard-hitting, attack-focused” campaign against Sturgeon. Again, I can only wonder at the mindset behind a proposal that what is widely seen to be the most dishonest, corrupt and incompetent government in the modern history of the UK would be taken seriously if it launches a personal attack on the single politician in the whole of the UK who most emerges from the handling of the pandemic with hugely-enhanced credibility.

The one thing that the report showed clearly was that, despite everything, the English ruling class as represented by the English Conservative Party still has an unshakeable conviction in its own innate correctness and inalienable right to rule the whole of the UK (as well as the colonies and dominions which many of them don’t even seem to realise left a long time ago). Years ago, I thought that the rapid loss of the Empire might shift that view, and more recently, I thought that Brexit would convince them that they need to adjust their world view: the UK does not rule the waves and will struggle even to get away with waiving some of the rules. But no, they learn nothing and show no signs of being able to learn either. That’s good news for Scotland – it is, as the proverb says, an ill wind that blows nobody any good. People in Wales need to see which way the wind is blowing as well, there’s no good reason why we shouldn’t also seize the opportunity.

Patriotism, scoundrels, and rule-breakers

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In his attempt to explain, during PMs Questions last week, why it was that other countries have both a lower death rate from Covid-19 and fewer restrictions, the PM came up with an absolute classic example of the English exceptionalism which is proving so damaging to the whole of the UK. He said, “Actually, there is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary”. I’m not sure which is worse – the possibility that he actually believes any of this, or the possibility that he knows it to be absolute guff and says it anyway.

It is one of the problems of a certain kind of nationalism that those nationalists have a desperate need to believe that their nation is in some way ‘better’ than other nations; claiming that ‘we’ invented virtually everything of value plays to that. I wouldn’t argue against the proposition that the UK has been the home of people – both native-born and immigrants – who have been responsible for a number of major advances (more than average for a country of its size, even) in a range of fields, including science, technology and political philosophy, but most advances are the result of a process of collaboration and synthesis of work done in many places. Ideas feed off each other. However, conflating the genius of particular individuals who happen to reside in one place with the characteristics of a nation is a nonsense – and a dangerous nonsense at that.

To take one specific of his claim, the idea that a state more than half of whose parliamentarians hold their position due to heredity, religious affiliation, or appointment rather than election, and where a governing party can gain an overall majority on around 30-35% of the vote, can be regarded as the ‘inventor’ of democracy is laughable. At best it requires a strange definition of democracy; at worst it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead.

To turn to the more immediately relevant specific, the idea that ‘the British’ love their freedom so much that they can’t be made to follow rules sounds like an attempt to project his own attitude onto the population at large. He certainly has some difficulty getting his own family and advisors to follow rules, but – despite such application of double standards – most of the population were willing, for an extended period, to follow the rules laid down.

He may, though, have accidentally stumbled upon a key point, even if it isn’t the one he thinks it is. There is indeed a key difference between the UK and most of the rest of Europe, and it’s about social solidarity. One of the key elements in getting a population to follow advice willingly and collectively is that they should believe that it is for the common good. That works better in much of Europe that it does here, because in the UK the Tories (aided and abetted by New Labour) have spent four decades promulgating the idea that there is no ‘common good’. People, they have argued, should put their own interests first and look after themselves rather than expecting the state to look after them. Competition, they have told us, is good – there must always be winners and losers, and the losers have only themselves to blame. The problem is not, as Johnson effectively says, that people in the UK (and he largely means England here, of course) are too fond of their freedom to follow rules, it is that they have been drip fed an ideology (by Johnson and his ilk) which encourages them always to ignore the needs of others and pursue their own selfish interests. Against that background, the surprise is not that some have not been following the rules, but that so many have done so.

Saving the rainforests

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In principle, the idea that legislation should be introduced to ensure that goods on sale in the UK have been produced in a way which does not encourage or promote deforestation is a sound one. The particular approach being proposed by the UK has a number of major flaws however, not least that it depends on the production of raw materials to be ‘in accordance with local legislation’. In states where ‘local legislation’ is either non-existent, badly defective, or hopelessly unenforced as a result of them exercising their own sovereignty, it creates a massive loophole which makes it look more like a gesture than a serious attempt to protect the rainforests. I’m sure that a desirable outcome could be assisted by UK legislation, but it would involve a willingness not only to have an independent international arbiter rather than depend on ‘local legislation’ to determine whether the rainforests are being damaged by producing the relevant products, but also to demand, effectively, that companies operating elsewhere which are selling into the UK market would have to abide by the same rules. It’s a clear instance where legislation in one country will never be enough to prevent environmental damage happening on the other side of the world – countries need to co-operate and work to common rules to ensure change. The UK could lead on this - if it really wanted to do more than make gestures.

In completely unrelated news, it seems that the negotiations over a trade deal with the EU are foundering largely because the UK government considers it utterly unacceptable that the EU should expect third parties (such as the UK) to abide by its rules in relation to issues such as environmental protection, rather than recognise that, as a sovereign state, the UK has the right to set its own rules independently of anyone else, and equally unacceptable that whether it is complying with rules should be determined by anyone other than itself.

No form of Brexit will satisfy the Brexiteers

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The spectacle of Iain Duncan Smith complaining about the small print of the deal which he claimed only a few short months ago did not need further detailed scrutiny has inevitably led to entirely justified ridicule. There’s a danger, though, that the entertaining ridicule diverts attention from an essential truth in all this which is that, for the followers of the true Brexit faith, there is no achievable Brexit in the real world which they will not regard as a betrayal. I had thought that the rhetoric about enjoying all the advantages of the EU with none of the disadvantages was exactly that – rhetoric. And I had assumed that the rhetoric was designed as a dishonest cover for their belief that the ‘advantages’ of Brexit as they saw it, in terms of ‘independence’ and ‘sovereignty’ outweighed the obvious economic disadvantages. Stated openly, that’s an honest and defensible intellectual position to take, even if it’s not one with which I’d agree (not least because the people paying the economic cost aren’t the ones enjoying the very limited extra ‘independence’ which it would confer) – but it’s not one which would have been likely to have gained even the slim pro-Brexit majority which we saw in 2016.

It increasingly appears that I was wrong on that – I gave them far too much credit both for having a defensible position and for being simply devious. It increasingly appears that many of them genuinely believed – and still do believe – that penny-and-bun is an available option, if only everyone else wasn’t being so obstructive. It’s not that they knew there would be an economic downside but thought it a price worth paying at all – it’s more the case that they genuinely believed that the EU would give the UK whatever it wanted because the UK is so special and powerful. Indeed, part of their defence for now arguing for scrapping an agreement which they supported is that the agreement committed both sides to reaching a longer-term agreement on the terms of trade, and that such an agreement now looks increasingly unlikely. Both of those statements are ‘true’, of course, but the interpretation of that as effectively meaning that the EU therefore committed to agreeing with whatever the UK wanted is perverse to say the least. The English sense of exceptionalism is edging in slow motion towards its inevitable clash with real world reality at the end of December. Predicting that the real world will win is a safe bet, and if that outcome was likely to cause the exceptionalists to rethink it might just about be a minor plus from Brexit. But what Smith’s ramblings tell us is that they’re more likely to simply double down and shout their unrealistic demands ever more loudly.

Seeing oursels as ithers see us

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Confirmation bias is something from which most of us suffer to a greater or lesser extent. It means that we see and interpret things from the viewpoint of our own priors. The bigger problem that arises is not the bias in itself but the unrecognised assumption that the underlying viewpoints aren’t always necessarily shared by others. When coupled with an exceptionalist belief system like that of English nationalists, it can make people utterly blind to the very possibility of an alternative point of view.

The PM said this week that he is determined to preserve what he called ‘the magic’ of the UK, a ‘magic’ which makes England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland disappear in the eyes of foreigners, who see only the huge successes of ‘Britain’ when they look at these shores. The first problem with that is that, even if it were true, that which he sees as an advantage is precisely part of the problem from an alternative standpoint. For those English nationalists for whom England and Britain are largely synonymous, making the non-English parts of the UK invisible is a feature of success. But using that line of argument in Scotland where Scottish invisibility is seen as a vice rather than a virtue is entirely counter-productive to the cause which Johnson claims to espouse; it’s an approach which completely fails to understand the situation on the ground. Reducing Scotland to a ‘brand’ of the UK is more likely to inflame than persuade.

The second – and bigger – problem is that it isn’t even true. Yes, of course, there are many people abroad who don’t understand the more-than-subtle differences between Great Britain, the UK, and England. There can be few Welsh people who have been abroad who haven’t struggled to explain that Wales may be part of both Great Britain and the UK but it is not part of England (although in my own experience the awareness of Scotland is significantly higher); on that Johnson is broadly right. But I suspect that most Welsh people – even many of those resolutely opposed to independence – would add the word ‘sadly’ to that sentence; one does not have to be an independentista to desire a degree of recognition of the distinction between England and Wales. The ‘invisibility’ touted by Johnson is not only not desired by many but it isn’t as absolute as he claims.

His broader comments about how foreigners see, admire and envy ‘Britain’ manage to progress from wishful thinking to the utterly absurd. There is zero recognition of the fact that most countries in the world are standing by in amazement watching a country which used to have a certain reputation for probity and common sense descend into chaos as it commits an act of great self-harm by exiting the EU, let alone the sadness that a country once regarded as a reliable partner is now degenerating into a country whose word cannot be trusted and which eschews co-operation in favour of making unrealistic demands. As part of his comments, the PM said, “I think what people in this country often don’t appreciate is the way in which the UK is seen abroad”. If the phrase ‘the people in this country’ had been replaced by ‘I and my government’, he might have come dangerously close to the truth. But his own confirmation bias would never allow him to understand that.

Being the best

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One of the problems for a certain type of nationalist is that they have a deep and abiding need to believe that their country is in every way ‘better’ than any other country. English nationalists are one of the most extreme in this respect. Indeed, they believe themselves so much better than anyone else that their form of superiority must not even be referred to as nationalism at all. They’re so nationalistic that they believe themselves to be uniquely not nationalist at all.

Such nationalism is often displayed by claims that the country is in some way ‘world-leading’. It’s a phrase trotted out regularly and is so self-evident that it never needs to be justified by mere facts or evidence. The phrase ‘mother of parliaments’ is one example, even if it doesn’t actually mean what most of them seem to believe that it means. Westminster is neither the oldest parliament nor the model for most other parliaments in the world, excepting only those that had some sort of version of Westminster imposed on them by Westminster itself. And most of those have reformed significantly since then, jettisoning the most arcane rituals such as the approach to voting.

Last month, Boris Johnson claimed that the UK’s approach to testing and tracking would be ‘world-beating’ and in place from the beginning of June. It isn’t and it wasn’t. Despite both of those negative statements being patently true they haven’t stopped him repeating the claim. It is an essential part of the nationalists’ approach to Brexit that the UK will become a ‘global leader’. It won’t and it can’t. I often wonder whether they really believe – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that the UK really is the best at everything; can they be that blind to the facts?  I’d almost like to believe that they know it’s just empty rhetoric – that would demonstrate that they have at least some connection to reality – but I can’t be certain. The intriguing question is why they have such a great need to believe that ‘we’ are in some way ‘better’ than everyone else. Perhaps the apparent arrogance and superiority masks a feeling of inadequacy. That’s a question for the psychologists – but for the rest of us, what’s wrong with being a normal state rather than demanding that everything ‘we’ do is labelled as being the ‘best’ merely by dint of being British?

Whatever the underlying reason, it leads the nationalists into saying and doing things which are increasingly farcical. Yesterday, the PM insisted that he is ‘very proud’ of the UK government’s response to the pandemic. That would be the response which has taken the UK to the number one position in the league table of deaths per million of the population, most of them avoidable, and managed to combine chaos and incompetence on an almost world-leading scale, beaten to the top slot only by Trump. I suppose, though, that coming top of any table is ‘world-leading’ in a sense, it’s just not the sense that a rational person would seek.

Bridges to nowhere

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This last week, some government ministers have been floating the idea of establishing ‘air bridges’ with other countries to enable air travel to restart without quarantine requirements. It’s an interesting idea, based on the assumption that there is a lower risk of transmission by people travelling between any two countries which have the pandemic under control than between two countries which do not have it under control. But the problem with bridges is that they have to have two ends; the idea depends on the countries at the other end of the bridge accepting that the people they admit are coming from a country where the pandemic is controlled. That raises one simple and obvious question – which other countries in their right minds would consider the UK government to have the pandemic under control? This is another classic example of English exceptionalism at its best – assuming that the problem is with other countries, not here in the UK.