Peas in a pod

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Taking the long view of human history, one feature that stands out as a constant factor is migration.  Wave after wave of migrating humans have swept across the surface of the globe and it is a truism to state that every country, every nation, every border owes something to migration in determining what they are and where they are.  The two most widespread languages in use (English and Spanish) both started out in small corners of Europe and were spread around the world by a combination of conquest and the ensuing migration.  There is something peculiar to me that, in a world largely shaped by migration, prevention of migration should have become such a significant political theme; it’s almost as though large sections of humanity have decided to forget how we became what we are and freeze history in aspic at its current point.

I saw an article a while ago in which Farage seemed to be arguing that it was wrong that citizens of EU states should have more right to come to the UK than citizens of Commonwealth countries.  It’s one of the few things on which I almost agree with him.  The problem arises, though, in the response to that inequality.

When two different groups of people have different levels of rights, there are always two obvious ways of resolving that inequality – you can either take rights away from one group or grant them to the other.  And the general problem with people who highlight this particular difference is that they always seem to want to diminish rights rather than enhance them.  It’s yet another case of the privileged few wanting to restrict freedom to themselves.  It also highlights the key difference in ideological perspective between two different world views.  It isn’t the simplistic one as which they present it, which is that anyone who doesn’t agree with them about controlling immigration is automatically in favour of mass immigration, it’s about where ‘rights’ start and end.  And there are two fundamentally different starting points.

The first is that, in principle, every member of the human race should have the right to travel, live and work wherever he or she wishes, and that it up to anyone who wants to restrict those rights to justify doing so.  The alternative starting point is that moving around is a privilege, not a right, and that governments should decide who can benefit from that privilege.  It shouldn’t need to be said (but probably does) that ‘privileges’ always somehow end up being disproportionately available to those who are already privileged, whilst it is the poorest who find the 'privilege' denied them. 

It’s perfectly possible, in principle at least, to end up with the same policies at a practical level when starting from either perspective, but the justifications will look very different.  From the latter perspective, it is the individual humans who have to justify why they should be allowed to move; from the former, it is for governments to justify why movement should be prevented.  It should be no surprise to anyone that a party like the Conservative Party, which believes in essence that ‘rights’ should be few and far between starts from the perspective that movement is a privilege not a right.  They do, after all, seem to think that the same rule applies to health, education, and housing. 

Superficially, it’s rather more of a surprise that Labour starts from the same perspective.  Yet their rhetoric tells us exactly that; it’s almost identical to the Tories.  There might be some difference of emphasis or in the rules governing exactly who and how many people should be allowed to migrate, but essentially, the party of self-styled “socialists” and “internationalists” is as strong in wanting to restrict movement as the Tories.  It’s a factor which Theresa May was quite right to pick up on in her response to Corbyn’s letter, when she pointed out that Labour was as wedded to the abolition of freedom of movement as she is. 

It’s only at a superficial level that Labour’s position should surprise us though.  As with so much which that party says and does, principle long ago stopped being the driving force.  They have adopted their current stance on migration not from principle, or because they think it’s right, or even because of any evidence relating to the economic costs and benefits; no, none of those drive Labour, only a cynical pursuit of votes.  They think, in short, that it’s what the people who vote for them want.  A party which set out to persuade, educate and lead people to a different and better form of society has become a political vehicle aimed at winning power by saying what they think people want to hear – a party which follows rather than leads.

It has been said that, in relation to Brexit, there are two things which both May and Corbyn want.  They both want Brexit and they both want it to be delivered by the Tories.  The reason we are in such a mess over Brexit isn’t just May’s red lines and utter incompetence (important though those factors are); it is also down to Labour’s cynicism and willingness to follow rather than lead.  The ‘game’ has become, for them, more important than the outcome.

The invisible suit

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In the tale of the emperor’s new suit, it was the little child who told the truth which everybody else could see but were afraid to admit – there was no new suit.  The child merely said what he saw; he wasn’t sophisticated enough to see the beauty, or marvel at the colours and pattern of the clothes.  It’s surely no surprise then that it was Trump who immediately saw through the White Paper crafted from invisible threads with which the Prime Minister has attempted to clothe herself since the Chequers meeting last week.

According to May and her courtiers (whose inability to see the beauty in front of them, just as in the tale by Andersen, would only prove them to be either stupid or unfit for high office in the eyes of their leader), the pattern woven into the White Paper is so intricate and perfect that it can allow the UK both to be part of a system where trade deals are common to all members and at the same time be able to go off and negotiate its own trade deals across the world.  But someone as immune to any accusation of stupidity and unfitness for office as a small child (or Donald Trump) has no reason to hold back.  It’s not often that I’d put the words truth and Trump into a single sentence, but in pointing out that tying a country into EU rules is incompatible with negotiating a different set of rules with someone else, he is only stating the blindingly obvious.

Of course, May’s courtiers – like the emperor’s – already know this but must go along with the empress for the time being, at least until everyone else understands the truth.  That won’t be long coming, I suspect; that particular part of the white paper won’t survive first contact with Barnier in the negotiating rooms of Brussels.  There can only be two possible outcomes from that; a messy and abrupt ‘no-deal’ departure from the EU, or further moves towards replicating the Norway model around which May is slowly orbiting.  Who knows which way she’ll jump?  I’m unsure whether she really believes that stockpiling corned beef is going to scare the EU27 into making concessions, or whether it’s really an attempt to scare the leavers into capitulation.  The problem is that I’m not entirely sure that she knows either – and nor am I sure that she’ll survive long enough to come to a decision.

Leaving the frying-pan

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In his resignation letter and the series of interviews which followed it, David Davis did at least succeed in explaining his own apparently indolent and relaxed approach to negotiating with the EU – he still believes that ‘they need us more than we need them’, and the leaders of EU states would eventually fall into line and dismantle key aspects of the single market to accommodate the UK’s requirements.  Seen from that perspective, who needs to spend long hours locked in negotiations or carry voluminous files of paperwork as a basis for those talks?  It’s simply a matter of not blinking first, and his anger that May did blink gives him and the other Brexiteers the scapegoat they need. In Davisland, all would have been well if only they’d just done nothing and waited for the EU to bend.

It’s the stuff of fantasy, of course, because it turns out that for the EU (albeit not for the UK) it really is true that a bad deal (under which single market integrity is damaged) is worse than no deal (under which the biggest loser is the UK).  It’s what the Brexiteers have been saying all along, just the other way around.

With May in trouble, there’s no surprise that Labour are scenting blood, with the First Minister demanding a general election.  I entirely agree with Carwyn Jones when he says that “We need a different government with a different view on Brexit…”; I’m just utterly unconvinced that the Labour Party is offering that, let alone that a general election would produce one.  It’s true, as Paul Mason writes in the New Statesman, that there is a route by which the Labour Party could offer a coherent alternative based around the so-called Norway option; there’s just no sign that Corbyn is anywhere close to embracing that option.  It might be a sensible approach, and it’s certainly one which leaves the door open to re-joining easily and quickly at some future date (it was, after all, designed to allow easy admission to Norway should the political situation there permit it at some point). 

But if there’s one thing Labour can be depended on for in relation to Brexit, it’s taking a bad situation and making it worse.  The logical outcome of any sensible negotiation based on the May plan is a Brexit which looks remarkably like the Norway option, albeit using different words and descriptions in an attempt to pretend that no red lines are being crossed.  That logical outcome is exactly what is making May’s Brexiteers so angry with her; they can see the further concessions coming.  She knows that she doesn’t have a parliamentary majority for such a deal, which is why she is busy wooing other parties to support it.  And the current probability is that, rather than follow the approach outlined by Mason, the Labour Party will instead unite to vote against the outcome of May’s negotiations in the belief that a general election will lead to a Labour government – effectively demanding a ‘harder’ Brexit than the Prime Minister.  Unless and until the Labour Party changes its position, the First Minister is effectively asking us to leap out of the Tory frying-pan into the Labour fire.

Which wavelength is that, then?

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Apparently, Theresa May and Donald Trump are “on the same wavelength, I think on every respect”.  Or so said Trump yesterday after their meeting, so it must be true, at least until he says the opposite.  I’m not sure that May will be quite so comfortable with the idea, even if finding someone on the same wavelength as her might be something of a novel experience.  It’s certainly not one to which she is accustomed closer to home – in the cabinet for example.

Having slapped down the Foreign Secretary earlier this week, yesterday it was the turn of the Chancellor to have his words disowned by the boss for daring to express an opinion different from her own, even if she has been unable to articulate what it is that she actually does believe.  I thought that the point which Hammond made – which has provoked such a furious reaction from the Brexiteers on his own side – was an entirely sensible one.  The salient part for me was this:

“So instead of doing what we're normally doing in the trade negotiations - taking two divergent economies with low levels of trade and trying to bring them closer together to enhance that trade - we are taking two completely interconnected and aligned economies with high levels of trade between them, and selectively, moving them, hopefully very modestly, apart.”

The words which seem most to have inflamed feelings on his own side are the ones which I have highlighted, namely:  ‘selectively’, and ‘hopefully very modestly’.  Without those words, I can see nothing to which the Brexiteers could possible object.  It would be a simple statement of fact.  It does, though, state the fact in a way which exposes one of the big lies at the heart of the Brexiteers’ claim that the UK will be able to improve its trading position as a result of Brexit.

As Hammond says, one of the keys to the most successful trading agreements is bringing divergent economies together; but at the heart of the Brexit project is a desire to move convergent economies apart.  It is true, of course, that being out of the EU will allow the UK to negotiate its own agreements with non-EU countries, although such negotiations will inevitably require a seeking of convergence with those countries instead; that’s what agreements are about.  And it also overlooks the little fact that the EU is already seeking to expand its range of trade agreements with non-EU countries in a way from which the UK would also benefit if it were to remain a member of the EU, and using its greater power and leverage to secure, probably, a better deal than the UK alone is likely to achieve, involving more convergence.  But pretending that introducing deliberate divergence between the EU and the UK is a route to improving trading relationships is flying in the face of experience and logic.

I can understand why some might feel that it doesn’t matter if trade suffers a little (or perhaps even a lot) as a result of Brexit; because the key thing is that the UK will no longer have to share any of its sovereignty, and will have the absolute right to set its own rules.  It’s an argument which values that separateness, that specialness, over and above mere economic benefit.  And whilst I might take an opposite view, it’s also an honest argument, setting one ‘good’ against another.  The problem is, though, that it wasn’t what they told us at the time of the referendum, and it isn’t what they’re saying now.  They’re still trying to tell us that having greater divergence will lead to more trade.  The sort of honest assessment of reality put forward by the Chancellor yesterday is just ‘fake news’ to them.  Perhaps May is closer to Trump's wavelength than I thought.

Myths and fairy godmothers

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I’m sure that the Prime Minister would have preferred that no-one asked Macron about Brexit at their press conference yesterday.  And her second preference would have been that, if asked, he would have declined to answer.  However, her fairy godmother appears to have gone AWOL for the day (well, actually, she seems to have been AWOL for some time now), and the question was not only asked, but answered in very blunt and direct terms.

Fortunately for her – albeit not for the rest of us - in the parallel universe inhabited by May and her team, this apparent answer isn’t an answer at all; it’s merely a negotiating position.  When the French president says exactly what the President of the EU Commission, the President of the EU Council, and the EU Chief Negotiator have reiterated time and again (in essence, that they too want a good deal with the UK, but they’re not going to undermine the single market to get it), what the Brexiteers actually hear is that they need us more than we need them, and of course they’re going to compromise on the single market rules, it’s just a matter of time and negotiating skill, both of which they believe – despite all the evidence to the contrary – that the UK possesses aplenty.

There is a sense in which the EU team are as deluded as the UK team in this process – the EU team actually seem to believe that spelling out mere facts clearly, explicitly and repeatedly is going to make a difference.  I’m not sure what other strategy they could reasonably be expected to follow, but depending on facts and evidence is doomed to fail when dealing with a UK leadership which remains mired in romantic historical myth.  Insofar as I see any potential benefit coming out of all of this, it is that that myth is inevitably, and at long last, going to be shattered. 

Brexit Masterchef

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Yesterday, the former chief of the Vote Leave campaign told us that triggering Article 50 to leave the EU was an “historic, unforgivable blunder”.  Strong words, but they don’t necessarily mean that he’s completely changed his mind about leaving the EU at all (although some of his comments suggest that he’s never been entirely convinced about Brexit).  It’s more a criticism of the approach adopted, and particularly of the way that the government has plunged into the process without having a plan or knowing what it wants the end result to be.  He’s not the only one in the leave camp who has expressed such doubts.

The problem with that analysis is that the Prime Minister really does seem to believe that the government is working to an agreed plan.  In response to the latest statements by Boris Johnson, she told us yesterday that “We are all agreed as a Government about the importance of ensuring that we get the right deal for Brexit”.  It’s a statement that I can believe, but it’s wholly inadequate if they don’t have any sense of agreement about what that ‘right deal’ might look like.  It’s as though they’ve decided to bake that famous cake which everyone is always talking about, but without deciding whether it’s for eating or merely having.  Even worse, they haven’t decided what sort of cake to bake – some want a good old patriotic Victoria sponge, others want a nice sticky chocolate cake, and yet others – I blame their education – will be happy to accept a good dollop of Eton Mess.  Worse still, they’ve started to bake the cake without having agreed on the ingredients.

Still, as the Prime Minister keeps telling us in lieu of answering any question put to her, she’s perfectly clear that the people simply want her to get on with the baking, and not to get distracted by such irrelevant detail.

Keeping one's head in a crisis

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The Secretary of State for Exiting the EU told Parliament yesterday that anyone who voted against the government bill on withdrawal was voting for a chaotic Brexit.  In the light of events so far, and in particular his own performance to date, it’s tempting to ask whether there actually is any other type of Brexit, whichever way they vote.  Chaos seems to be the order of the day, and it’s largely self-inflicted.

It looks like another attempt to blame someone else – anyone – for the failures of a government which gives every appearance of having not a clue what it wants in any degree of detail, but continues to maintain that whatever it is, the others should give it to them, because, well, UK.  There was another example of blame-apportioning a week or so ago, when William Hague argued that the government shouldn’t blame the voters even though it was really all their fault; by not giving the Tories the bigger majority which May had assumed would follow the election, they were going to end up having to pay more to leave the EU.  The mechanism by which the size of the government’s majority affects the amount of money owed to the EU was not spelled out of course (it would be interesting to see him try), but the electorate is the latest convenient scapegoat.

In the meantime, the leader of the Scottish branch of the Conservative and Unionist Party, said last week in relation to Brexit: “My real fear is that if there’s a short-term economic hit, we don’t bounce back from it”.  It’s an interesting definition of ‘short-term’ to say the least.

However, whilst her party, government, and ministers thrash around spending more time debating with each other than negotiating with the EU27, the not-at-all-robotic Prime Minister continues to talk serenely about smooth transitions, strength, and certainty.  It reminds me of someone I once worked with who, at a particularly difficult time in a large and complex project, said to the project manager, “if you can keep your head whilst all around you are losing theirs, you haven’t got a (expletive deleted) clue what’s going on”.

Who's out of step here?

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The initial position taken by the UK Government over the future rights of EU citizens does not bode well for the Brexit negotiating strategy.  Denying rights to people who have not yet arrived in the UK at the point of exiting the EU is one thing, but retrospectively removing rights from people who are already here is another thing entirely.  It's a strange logic which leads the UK Government to believe that removing rights from EU citizens is anything resembling the ‘fair and reasonable offer’ as which they are describing it, especially when the EU27 have already stated that they want to protect all those rights currently enjoyed by UK citizens elsewhere in the EU.  Given the importance of getting this issue right before trade talks can even start, it seems a very curious way of trying to earn a bit of friendship.

Craig Murray describes it well as a bit of ‘pointless cruelty’, and it has already emerged that it will require even those EU citizens who have applied for and obtained residency rights to apply again for a new and lesser status.  What on earth is the thinking behind this which enables apparently intelligent people to conclude that there is anything fair or reasonable about this?

It strikes me that part of the issue here might well be very differing conceptions about citizen’s rights.  It is already true that EU citizens living in the UK have more rights, in terms of bringing family to join them for instance, than do UK citizens.  And it is revealing that in drawing attention to that apparent unfairness, the implicit assumption is that EU citizens’ rights should be curtailed rather than widening the rights of UK citizens.  Indeed, in more general terms, the government seems to have a real problem in acknowledging the whole concept of people having ‘rights’ at all – it’s a very un-British concept.  Although the term ‘citizen’ is more widely used than it used to be, the underlying reality is that people in the UK are subjects with obligations, rather than citizens with rights.  They are two very different perspectives.

If we start with that implicit assumption about subjects with obligations, it becomes a lot easier to understand how the ‘offer’ which the government has made might indeed appear to be a ‘fair and reasonable’ one; but it was never going to appear that way to anyone who starts from the other perspective.  It seems typical of May and her team that they have no real conception or understanding of the gulf between the two perspectives, and therefore are making no real effort to bridge it.  Understanding the thinking of other parties is key to any successful negotiation but on this issue, as on so many others, the UK Government seems determined to insist that it’s everyone else who is out of step.

An initial reaction

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At one level, not a lot has changed; it is clear that we will still have a Tory Government, which will be able to rely on the members of the DUP for support on most issues, even without a formal agreement or coalition.  Yet at another level a great deal has changed; a Prime Minister who chose to make the election all about how strong she was and how she needed to strengthen her hand has become a Prime Minister who has demonstrated how weak she is and has weakened her own hand.  It was a spectacular miscalculation.

In terms of the immediate problem in hand, it does not change the fact of the Brexit vote; there is still no majority in parliament for revisiting the decision or allowing a second vote when the details are clear.  What has changed is that there is no longer a majority in the House of Commons for a form of Brexit which involves leaving both the single market and the Customs Union.  Even the DUP, as I understand their position, prefer continued membership of both whilst being outside the EU itself; and there are some members on the Tory benches – even some strong Brexiteers - who would also prefer that scenario, for a period at least, and who are rather less committed to the hard-line anti-immigrant rhetoric of people like May.

However, a preference for that outcome isn’t the same as a willingness to support the concessions which will be necessary to achieve it.  Whilst membership of the European Economic Area can offer many of the economic benefits of membership of the EU, it would come at a price, in terms of acceptance of EU rules, acceptance of the authority of the ECJ, annual payments into the EU, and a willingness to accept freedom of movement.  Without compromise on at least some of those, it’s hard to see how the parliamentary majority can be translated into a deal.

I find it hard to see how even May, with her recently well-demonstrated ability to stand on her head whilst arguing that she hasn’t moved, can make any of the necessary compromises – replacing her is probably the first prerequisite for a change in the UK’s position to a more pragmatic stance.  The good news is that her party will probably see to that, even if not immediately.  The second prerequisite is probably for the Labour Party to drop its insistence on an end to free movement and be a bit more open to compromise.  At the moment, I’m not sure how likely that is; they seem to have hooked themselves on an anti-immigration peg in the belief that it was electorally necessary.

Thinking around the alternative futures for Wales, I remain convinced that reversing Brexit is the best option, and I remain disappointed that so few are making that case.  But continued membership of the single market and Customs Union through the EEA would at least offer a fast-track return to the EU at some future date – either for the UK as a whole or for an independent Wales (and Scotland).  I can at least see a route forward for an independent Wales in that context, which I could not see in the context of the type of Brexit being pursued by May.  However, yesterday’s result was not enough to make me feel optimistic about such an outcome – just a little less pessimistic.

Appearing tough

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There are three things which the Tories can normally be relied upon to do when a response is needed to any question of ‘Laura Norder’.  The first is to blame someone or something else, the second is to restrict citizens’ rights, and the third is to promise tougher penalties.  And, sure enough, the Prime Minister has rehearsed all three over the past day or two in response to the atrocities in Manchester and London.  And they’re all as irrelevant in this case as usual.

The implied blame in this case is a combination of incorporating human rights legislation into UK law, and making the UK subject to ‘foreign’ courts, which actually dare to uphold the relevant legislation.  It’s a convenient scapegoat, but it is being used to divert attention from the fact that, as Home Secretary, Theresa May herself failed to protect the UK using the already adequate powers which she had.  And part of the reason for that failure brings us to the second strand of her response.

Taking away, or reducing, citizens’ rights is always their preferred option.  In general, it often seems as though they’d really prefer it if citizens didn’t have any rights at all, and just did whatever they were told – the surprising thing is that so many people seem to accept that it’s a good idea, but then, they probably are assuming that it will only affect ‘someone else’.  But in many ways, tearing up our protections against over-intrusive security services is a way of making up for a lack of resources within those services.  And that’s what ties the first and the second strand together – the problem isn’t that someone else is to blame, nor that human rights prevent the proper operation of the security services, it is that the resources available to those services have been consciously and deliberately reduced over recent years by a Home Secretary whose priority was financial.  And let’s just remind ourselves who that Home Secretary was.

In the case of the third strand, the response is just plain silly.  The argument is that knowing that there will be longer jail sentences for perpetrators of crime makes them less likely to commit crime.  I can see how that might conceivably work in the case of, say, burglary, but it depends on the idea that the burglar will sit down and do a cost-benefit analysis of the potential gain from the burglary and the potential pain of the jail term.  That seems highly unlikely to me; insofar as our hypothetical burglar does any weighing of the pros and cons in advance, the factor most likely to weigh in his or her mind is the probability of getting caught.  (And that, of course, brings us straight back to the question of the level of police resources…)  However, in the case of our would-be terrorist attacker, he or she has already assumed that the outcome of the attack will be his or her death; either through use of a suicide bomb or else by police action.  The idea that knowing that they face a sentence of 30 years rather than 20, say, if they survive is hardly likely to be much of a deterrent.  Could it be a deterrent to those aiding and abetting the actual attackers?  That also seems unlikely to me; martyrdom is a part of their belief system, and prison is just another form of martyrdom.

I can’t believe that May actually believes any of what she says on these points; it looks more like a pitch to persuade people that she’s being tough.  But appearing to be tough isn’t the same as actually being tough, nor as solving a very serious problem.  It might win a few votes though, which is what it’s really about.

Losing the argument

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The battering which Corbyn has taken throughout the election campaign on the question of Trident has been a sad reflection on the state of politics.  It’s an issue on which he has been utterly consistent for the whole of his political life, but seeing interviewers trying to bully him to say that he’s changed his mind when he very clearly has not done so has been a depressing exhibition of the power of the media to create and sustain the Tory narrative.  He’s handicapped, of course, by the lack of support for his viewpoint within his own party, particularly from those unions who seem to see preparing for nuclear annihilation as just an expensive job creation scheme, but refusing to change his mind, or even just pretend that he’s changed his mind to please a particular audience, is surely a sign of strength and conviction rather than the weakness as which it’s been portrayed.

The hounding of him on the issue during the Question Time non-debate left me feeling that there’s something very wrong in a country where a gung-ho willingness to incinerate millions by launching a first strike is deemed one of the most important tests of leadership.  It’s about time someone challenged the established consensus on nuclear weapons, and it’s a great pity that his own party has prevented Corbyn from doing that effectively at an election for the first time in a generation.

It also raises a question in my mind about the much-vaunted ‘British values’ which the Prime Minister keeps banging on about.  In the light of recent events, she has quite rightly condemned those who are prepared to strap on a suicide vest and go out and kill as many randomly selected civilians as they can as being something which is completely contrary to those values.  But at the same time, she tells us that being willing and ready to launch a nuclear strike which will kill millions of randomly selected civilians (as well as probably being suicidal for the UK if the target country itself possesses nuclear weapons) is a key test of support for those same values.

Now some will no doubt object to that comparison, and argue that the whole point of having nuclear weapons is never to need to use them; that the very act of possessing them acts as a deterrent.  And obviously, they can only be a deterrent if the ‘other side’ completely believes that the PM of the day will be ready and willing to use them if the UK is attacked or if he or she believes that the UK is in imminent danger of attack.  All of that is true, of course.  But my point is simply this: a Prime Minister who declares publicly and repeatedly that she is ready and willing to order the deaths of millions of civilians – men, women, and children alike – is not in a particularly good position to argue that attacking and killing civilians is somehow alien to her core values.  Of course there are differences of opinion about the circumstances in which it can be justified, but having stated that there are indeed circumstances in which it’s not only justified, but she’s willing to do it, she’s lost the argument about values and principles.  Corbyn, at least, is still in a position to argue on the basis of values and principles - May is not.

None of this can or should be taken to provide any sort of excuse or pretext for recent attacks, but ridding humanity of its propensity to resort to extreme violence isn’t a problem restricted only to ‘others’.  The UK’s continued possession of nuclear weapons is a clear and unequivocal statement of a willingness to use them, and thus is itself a provocative act.  And it’s the sort of act which tells us more about the true values of our political leaders than any amount of rhetoric ever can.

It's what she doesn't say that matters

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Yesterday, the Prime Minister told us that she believes that the UK will become more prosperous following Brexit.  In the simplistic terms in which it is stated, and treating the phrase ‘following Brexit’ as a temporal rather than a causal expression with no specific date put on the realisation of that outcome, I’d even agree.  But it’s close to being a statement of the obvious; given economic history, the trend line over the long term towards increasing prosperity is clearly an upward one.  Regardless of what politicians do or say, the long term underlying trend points in only one direction.

It’s not answering the right question, though; like almost everything which the Prime Minister prefaces with the words “I’m very clear about…”, it’s obfuscation rather than an attempt to provide clarity.  The right question is not whether the UK is likely to be more prosperous in the future than it is now; it is whether it will be more prosperous because of Brexit than it would have been if Brexit didn’t happen.  And the second question – probably of even more significance – is how that prosperity is shared.

The answer to the first is essentially unknowable over the long term.  There are too many factors to be able to predict accurately, and any predictions would be based on assumptions – essentially guesses – as to what may happen.  I tend to the view that the longer term economic scenarios (Brexit vs no Brexit) will converge; the argument was never primarily an economic one for me.  But in the short term, it seems clear to me that growth in prosperity will falter.  It may even reverse for a while, depending on the terms of any deal - with ‘no deal’ causing the biggest short term problems.  In the short term, any form of Brexit has more economic downside than upside, and the Brexiteers would have been more honest had they spelled that out from the outset.  Whether it is really a case of ‘short term pain for long term gain’ remains to be seen (they may be right, even if I’m not convinced); but it’s a more honest position than claiming we’re on the way to an immediate land of milk and honey.

The bigger question is about how any increase in prosperity will be shared, both geographically and demographically.  Some of the proposals which have emanated from the Brexit camp, such as deregulation and seeking to become some sort of tax haven, carry very clear implications that the disparity in wealth between the well-off and the less so will continue to increase.  And the suggestion that targeted regional aid should be replaced by a pot of money for which regions could bid suggests a move away from the EU policy of trying to spread wealth geographically as well.  Under such a scenario, an ‘average’ increase in prosperity for the UK is unlikely to have much impact here in Wales.

As with so much of what May says, the most important part of what she said is what she didn’t say.  Not for nothing does she avoid committing to any detail.  

Failing the Turing Test

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For almost 70 years, the touchstone of researchers in the field of artificial intelligence has been the Turing Test.  Devised by Alan Turing in 1950, the essence of the idea is that if a human can’t tell whether a particular conversation is with a human or a machine, then the machine passes the test and can be considered intelligent.  It strikes me, though, that there’s a problem with this approach – what happens if an entity which in most other respects appears to be human fails the test?  Should we conclude that we are not dealing with a human at all, but with a machine?

This question came to the fore a few days ago, during an interview which Theresa May did on Radio Derby.  When asked whether she knew what a mugwump was – trust Boris to have put her on the spot again – her response was “What I recognise is that what we need in this country is strong and stable leadership”.  Now had any competent AI researcher been holding this conversation with an unknown entity, that entity would have been immediately identified as a computer; the researcher would have to record a ‘fail’ and note that no intelligence had been detected.  Even the most basic of AI programmes would have come up with a better answer than that.

So is she human or a machine?  And how can we ever be certain?

Beware unstable coalitions

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The Prime Minister is visiting Wales today, and is delivering a stern warning about the dangers of “an unstable coalition of nationalists”.  I think she’s absolutely right on that; being governed by such a coalition is a recipe for disaster.  The difference between us is that I think that the phrase “unstable coalition of nationalists” is a near-perfect description of her Conservative Party. 

Their nationalism, of the worst kind, is becoming increasingly and stridently obvious in the tone she and other members of her party are adopting.  It’s not just the primacy of immigration policy regardless of economic consequences, although that’s bad enough.  It’s also the way in which our future over the next few years is increasingly being defined in terms of the UK standing up to the rest of Europe.  It seems designed to evoke memories of the wars of the past.  Just take this phrase from her article in the Western Mail “as 27 other European countries line up to oppose us”.  This is not the language of friendship or co-operation; it is the language of naked nationalism.  It’s hard to believe that anyone talking like this ever believed in the idea of European co-operation.

And the instability of the nationalist coalition which is the defining feature of the Conservative Party under her leadership is at the heart of the fact we are having an early election.  It isn’t, and never was, the opposition parties, whether Labour or independentistas, which threatened to derail or undermine her negotiations over Brexit – she has had no difficulty to date in getting her way in parliament with the aid of a clueless Labour Party.  No, any threat to her majority comes from dissident Tories, and the election is aimed at neutralising that threat.  With the need for rapid candidate selection, she has given herself an almost unparalleled opportunity to influence the nature of the new Tory intake which she is expecting, and ensure that they will be more loyal to her.

Particularly in the light of yesterday’s opinion polls, I hope that people in Wales will think very carefully and take note of her warning.  Helping the Prime Minister crush her internal opposition is neither the only way, nor the best way, of getting rid of the current unstable coalition of nationalists which is governing the UK.

Setting the wrong specification

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It is already clear that a major part of the Tory election platform will be to compare and contrast May and Corbyn, in the belief that May will come out better.  And I suppose it’s a fair tactic, even if strictly speaking most of the electorate can’t vote directly for either of the two individuals.  Assessing which of the two best meets the perceived person specification for the top job is a fair question to be asking.  The more important question, though, is who decides what that person specification is?

The Tories and their allies in the press and media are in no doubt at all: they will set the specification, and the rest of us will be expected to make the assessment on the basis of the specification which they set.  From the interview which Corbyn did yesterday, it appears that two of the most important attributes for any Prime Minister of the UK according to the specification with which we are being presented are a willingness to annihilate millions of men women and children in a revenge attack, and an enthusiasm for extra-judicial killing of perceived enemies.  In both cases, the only acceptable answer is an unequivocal ‘yes’; anything else can and will be used to suggest weakness, and the idea that any PM should want to consider the detail of the situation at the time is to be officially regarded as risible.

I almost feel sorry for Corbyn that an intelligent and reasoned response to such a black and white question is being interpreted as unsuitability for the job; for me, a willingness to declare in advance that death and destruction will be unleashed whatever the circumstances makes a person far less suited to the job.  But only ‘almost’ feel sorry – because for decades, the Labour Party’s leaders have been part of the consensus which has narrowed the acceptable range of responses to one.  The Labour Party has collaborated in setting the person specification in such a way that their own leader is now regarded – even by most Labour MPs – as being unsuitable for the job.

Searching for the silver lining

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It has long struck me as a strange sort of democracy which gives the incumbent Prime Minister the right to choose the timing of the next election in a way which favours his or her party interest rather than being subject to a pre-set timetable.  The act decreeing that parliaments should be for a fixed term may have been the pragmatic product of a grubby coalition deal in which the Lib Dems appeared to be gaining something in terms of their longer term constitutional agenda, but it did nevertheless appear to put an end to what would be regarded as a very dodgy practice in most of the world.

‘Appear’ turns out to be the operative word, however.  The act left a get-out clause allowing the Prime Minister to propose to parliament that it should dissolve itself.  Now it should be fairly obvious that no Prime Minister is going to use that clause unless he or she sees advantage in doing so; and that’s why the two-thirds majority required is of all MP’s, not just those voting.  So unless the government of the day has the sort of overwhelming majority which might just result from this cynical act, an opposition has only to sit on its hands for the proposal to fail.  Had the Labour Party followed the example of the SNP, there would have been no early election unless the Prime Minister decided to propose a vote of no confidence in her own government, a spectacle which many of us might rather have enjoyed.

The act was supposed to provide protection against precisely that which it has now facilitated.  It has turned out to be meaningless in practice – another much-vaunted Lib Dem ‘gain’ from coalition which is worthless in reality.  And the cause of that comes right back to the confrontational and superficial nature of UK politics.  The main opposition party is so much more afraid of being seen to be afraid than it is of being annihilated that it has voted, more or less en bloc, for getting itself culled and for handing power to the Tories for decades to come.  Yes, of course, the right wing press would have pilloried them if they had not supported calling an election; but they were going to find other issues on which to do that anyway.  And they are going to do precisely that mercilessly over the next 7 weeks.

We can be certain that the main thing we will hear from Labour over the coming weeks is that we need to protect services from the Tories.  But allowing the Tories to call an election at a time of their own choosing, when all the indications are that the result will be a much bigger majority for the Tories, is a very strange way of providing greater protection for anyone.  If the outcome is as currently appears probable, the Labour Party will have succeeded, wholly unnecessarily, in making itself irrelevant for the next decade or two.  It is not inconceivable that it could even end up with less than half the seats in Wales.

The polls could all be wrong, of course.  Corbyn could yet succeed in making his case with the public as effectively as he did with his party’s membership in two leadership elections.  And May has managed to make herself look shifty and untrustworthy by saying one thing and then reversing her position on a range of issues.  Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic about the probable outcome for Englandandwales - or perhaps I should just focus my mind on the probable advantage for the cause of the independentistas in Scotland.  There has to be a silver lining somewhere in all this.

Serving whose interests?

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The complexities of Brexit negotiations are enormous, and the available time tightly limited.  As plenty have already noted, the theoretical 24 months reduces to 18 when we take out the necessary time for all the relevant governments and bodies to debate and approve any package.  What better way could there be to start that narrow 18 month window by taking 2 months out to fight a general election?  The logic is impeccable to all residents of planet Zog, who obviously understand these things better than I.

The claim is that this election is necessary because all of those horrid non-Tory MPs are failing to vote in accordance with the Tory whip, and some of them are even daring to pretend to oppose the government.  I know that it’s dangerous to take anything said by any politician at face value, but just suppose for a moment that she actually believes it to be true that the people of the UK are uniting behind her vision of Brexit whilst opposition MPs are trying to undermine her (what a novel thing for an opposition to try and do, eh?).

Clearly, if every single one of those opposition MPs lines up against her Tories, they can defeat her government and maybe even influence the nature of Brexit.  Oh, wait a minute – no they can’t.  Mathematics is clearly not her strongest suit, but to the mathematically less-challenged she does actually have an absolute majority over every one else combined.  Unless of course, some of her own side decide to vote with the opposition on a particular issue, and – dare I say it – try and stick to the manifesto on which they were elected.  With, I think, one solitary exception, they haven’t actually done that yet, but some of them have muttered a bit about maybe possibly doing it as the details become clearer.

Her only fear of losing a vote in the House of Commons is if she fails to carry her own party; and that in turn means that defeating and marginalising any waverers in her own party is the only interpretation of her stated reasoning which makes any sense.  I can see why she’d want to do that; she is currently faced with two minority groupings in her own party: the Brexit-at-any-cost head-bangers and the this-is-an-act-of-self-harm remainers.  It means, however, that the election, like the referendum before it, is really all about the internal problems of one party rather than about the interests of the UK.  I can certainly understand why she would want to marginalise those groups.  And I can even agree that marginalising them might make it easier for her to negotiate (although she’s already conceded the most important points anyway).  But it’s more than a little dishonest to try and blame a largely dysfunctional opposition for problems which are a lot closer to home.

Stupid or very clever?

Tweet Half a century ago, I remember my Chemistry teacher telling me that she was struggling to work out whether I was as stupid as I appeared to be, or very clever and trying to hide the fact by pretending to be stupid.  I thought that she was being very perceptive in her second interpretation, but that's not a proposition which would necessarily gain unanimous support. What brought the thought back to me yesterday was Theresa May's interview in which she was asked about the second Scottish independence referendum, when she followed her now customary approach of ignoring every question and just restating the same thing over and over again (in this case that "now is not the time").

It is, to follow the theme with which I started, entirely possible that she believes that to be an adequate answer to the question "when, then?" after the first iteration, however it is formulated. Or perhaps she believes that the rest of us will accept it as an entirely adequate response because she's the boss and she's said it.  In either case, I'd have to conclude that she really is as stupid as she appears to be. But what if we give her the benefit of the doubt and postulate that she is actually very clever, just pretending to be stupid? (And I'd really like to be able to do that; assuming that the Prime Minister really is as stupid as she seems to be is not exactly a comfortable position for any country to be in.)

Is there any way in which we might we be able to conclude that there's some underlying cleverness at work? Well, I suppose that if she really believes that the Brexit negotiations are doomed to fail (as she apparently thought was the case before the vote itself) and has turned the whole exercise into a trap into which Johnson, Davis, and Fox have unwittingly rushed and are in the process of hoisting themselves by their own red white and blue petards, that might be quite clever.  She could just be waiting until they're all absolutely tied up in knots before reinventing herself as the white knight riding to the rescue of the UK to save us from ourselves by cancelling the Brexit project.  Or perhaps she has a cunning plan to allow Scotland to stay in the single market after all, thus revealing to the Scots that she's had their best interests at heart all along, but couldn't say anything for fear that those evil Europeans would be able to use her words against her.  That might turn out to look rather clever too.

Sadly, try as I might, I can't believe either of those.  In fact, I simply can't find any scenario which works better than the simplest assumption of all.

Christmas Wrapping

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It’s that time of year when we cheerfully (?) tolerate unfunny old jokes written on tiny slips of paper and concealed in crackers, so here’s my effort:

“What’s red, white and blue, or possibly grey, but definitely not black or white, and comes in hard and soft varieties?”

No, I’m afraid there’s no funny punchline.  In fact there’s nothing very humorous about this at all, it’s deadly serious.  I don’t know who came up with the ‘red, white and blue’ line, or what was going through the Prime Minister’s head as she duly recited it, but it’s even more inane than the mantra about breakfast meaning breakfast.

According to what the papers tell us, May was actually a Remain supporter, although she didn’t do a lot to promote that view at the time.  It has occurred to me more than once recently that perhaps she really is having a laugh with all of us – giving the Brexit head-bangers the impossible task of trying to come up with a plan, sitting on the side-lines making comments which say nothing, and waiting until it’s safe to come forward and say something along the lines of “well, I always thought this was a silly idea; why don’t we have a rethink?”

I’d like to believe that; it’s preferable to believing that she really thinks that what she says makes any sort of sense.  It would be a cunning plan of course, albeit in the Baldrickian sense of being not very cunning at all and doomed to fail, but it would at least be a plan.  I’d like to believe it, but I can’t.

Instead, they’re just blundering forward, telling Johnny Foreigner in no uncertain terms that he needs us more than we need him, behaving as though they live in the imperial past, and now wrapping up what looks like an almost total vacuum in a flag and appealing to people’s sense of British patriotism to believe that this emptiness is in fact a thing of substance, which has colour and form as well.

The odd thing is that, as with the emperor’s new suit, those who want to see it can, and believe it to be a thing of great beauty.  We need to remind them constantly that, in this case, the beauty that they see really is entirely in the eye, or perhaps brain, of the beholder.

Perhaps we should stop pretending

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It’s a long-standing tradition in the UK that diplomats are career civil servants, and that ambassadors are appointed from within the civil service.  The argument is that they are politically neutral, and represent the government of the day of whatever colour.  (Although some would argue that this is part of the reason why UK foreign policy changes little when governments change, whatever the ministers may wish.  ‘Real’ policy is controlled by that ‘neutral’ civil service.)  The United States, on the other hand, has a long tradition under which ambassadors are political appointments; when the government changes, the voice of that government abroad also changes.

I can see merit in both approaches; it’s not as simple as saying that one is right and the other wrong.  What I don’t see much merit in, though, is for governments to appoint as their voice overseas people who agree with, and will kow-tow to, the government of the country in which they work, which seems to be what Trump has in mind.  Can anyone imagine his response if the UK Government were to suggest that Hillary Clinton would be quite a good appointment as US ambassador to the UK?

Having said that, if the UK were to move to a political basis for appointments, then it’s clear that we have recently had a change of government, and some of the policy changes between Cameron and May look to be more significant than they would have been if Miliband had been elected last year.  It seems to me that we have what looks increasingly like a UKIP government in all but name – get out of the EU at any price, clamp down on immigration, reintroduce grammar schools, say whatever is thought might be popular, and make up policy on the hoof, just for starters – so perhaps a UKIP ambassador to the US doesn’t really look as silly as many might think.  Farage is probably closer to the views of the current government than any civil servant would be - it’s just that people pretend he isn’t.