Is Darwin smiling quietly?

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Balancing the ‘rights’ of different individuals and groups is rarely straightforward, as the debate over mask-wearing demonstrates. At the heart of the problem is the point at which the exercise of rights by some threatens the rights of others, which is the underlying principle behind most of the laws under which we live. In the case of mask-wearing, it’s a clash between the ‘right’ not to wear a face-covering in enclosed spaces and the ‘right’ not to be infected by someone who may not even know that he or she is carrying the virus. The conflict between these two perspectives has been fairly minor in the UK to date but much more significant in the US, where many people (encouraged at times by their president) have chosen to believe that the coronavirus is some sort of hoax perpetrated by the ‘liberal elite’. And some of them have died as a result of that mistaken belief.

There are no simple solutions but the suggestion by Ann Widdecombe that shops should set aside specific times when non mask wearers could do their shopping is a spectacularly silly one. It’s a bit like allocating specific hours of the day when road users can choose on which side of the road they should drive, with no obligation to choose the same side as anyone else. And choose whether speed limits apply to them as well. And if their name is Cummings, drive with impaired eyesight. I can understand why it might seem theoretically OK to allow those who don’t care about getting infected (or simply choose not to believe in the existence of the virus, freedom of belief being another ‘right’) to congregate as they wish, in shops or anywhere else, if it was on their own heads alone. But it isn’t – so there must surely be caveats. Protecting shop workers is an obvious one. Infecting people who have agreed that they don’t care about being infected is one thing; infecting those who do care is quite another. And then there’s the health service and those who work in it, who might be expected to deal with those who end up catching the virus as a result of their own folly.

The source of the crazy suggestion highlights an interesting observation – a Venn diagram of mask-resisters and Brexiteers would show a significant overlap in the UK, as would a similar diagram of Trump supporters and mask-resisters in the US (and we could probably throw in anti-vaxxers and creationists as well in their case). I can’t help but wonder whether Charles Darwin wouldn’t see all this as some sort of proof of the veracity of his theory. That raises another question in my mind, though: whilst we might want to protect others from the effect of the choices made by the deniers, to what extent should we protect deniers like Widdecombe from the Darwinian impact of their own choices?

The illusion of devolution

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There was a time, a decade or so ago, when I attended a number of meetings of various Communities First groups across Carmarthenshire, in case any of the attendees wanted to use Welsh during the meeting. One such meeting sticks in my mind, when one of the CF workers told the ‘clients’ (or members of the local community group as I prefer to call them) that whilst they might, one day, be able to put together a plan for some scheme or other, they hadn’t reached that point yet, so the team were there to do it for them. I’m certain that the individual concerned was well-intentioned, but it struck me as a good example of one of the things that was going badly wrong with the whole CF project. It came across as patronising and condescending; a project which was supposed to be about empowering communities seemed in this case to be actively disempowering them. I don’t doubt the short term effectiveness of employing people to ‘make things happen’ in communities faster than would otherwise be the case, but I seriously doubt that it had the desired longer term impact. Indeed, I wonder whether the approach didn’t leave some communities less well-equipped to take their own initiatives when the funding stopped than they would have been beforehand.

There’s a parallel, of sorts, with the devolution process in Wales, which came to mind when the UK government decided last week not to allow the Welsh government to dip into its own emergency reserves to deal with the current emergency. Whilst devolution was, allegedly, supposed to empower Wales, in practice it sometimes does more to highlight the limits on that power and the extent of dependence, particularly faced with a UK government keen on centralisation and uniformity and utterly unsympathetic to any alternative views. Power devolved is, and always was, power retained, and it’s a conundrum to which those who support devolution rather than independence have – and can have – no answer. Unless the powers ‘devolved’ are somehow immutably written into law (a concept alien to the UK constitution), they can always be limited or reclaimed by the centre.

Labour’s devolutionists, and the Lib Dems as well, regularly bring the federalism fairy out of its cupboard and give it a good dusting, but, like the fairies at the bottom of the garden, it’s an entirely imaginary creature. Quite apart from the imbalance between England and the other nations, a federal solution would require a formal acknowledgement that the power of the various parliaments stems from the people that they represent, not from the crown-in-parliament. In effect, in one form or another, it requires a formal written constitution. Anyone in ‘Welsh’ Labour, or in the Lib Dems, who believes that any conceivable UK government is going to concede that is, him or herself, already ‘away with the fairies’.

That leaves one – and only one – way in which the rights of the Welsh people and parliament can be enshrined and protected, namely independence. An independent Wales could always, if it wished, agree to pool and share some of its powers with our nearest neighbours, by agreeing international treaties which specify rights, obligations, and oversight of compliance. And it could always remove itself from those treaties if it wished – but, crucially, the countries with which any such treaties were agreed could not unilaterally take to themselves those powers thus shared which is what the UK government is able to do with impunity at present. Independence would allow Wales to establish that sovereignty lies with the people, whilst allowing England to continue to pursue its delusion that God vested sovereignty in the monarch who graciously agreed to share it with parliament.

Devolution can never empower anyone, because the power is always and necessarily illusory. Devolution isn’t some sort of halfway house between centralism and independence, it’s an attempt to delude people. Local management of central policy isn’t empowerment, it’s an attempt to improve administrative efficiency – and it may not even be the best way of achieving that. I accept that some sincere devolutionists really thought that devolution would empower Wales, but Johnson’s government has shown why that doesn’t and can’t work in the long term; the centre can rein in the devolved legislatures at any time of its choosing. Anything other than independence is merely a form of porcine lip decoration.

Transport Minister bans himself

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The natural cynic in me can’t help but suspect that those opposition politicians criticising the UK government for imposing a sudden self-isolation requirement on people returning from Spain would have been equally critical had the government given 14 days’ notice of its intention to do so. They certainly seem to be the same people who complained about the government being so tardy in implementing any form of quarantine previously. It seems to me that the swiftness of the action on this occasion is just about the first time that the government have got something right (although it will doubtlessly be inconvenient, to say the least, for those affected by the decision). The bigger problem, in terms of public health, is the weak, half-hearted and poorly enforced nature of the restrictions being imposed, which allow those coming from areas of high infection to travel home from the airport by public transport as long as they ‘promise’ to stay at home for a fortnight, coupled with the absence of any support for employers who then potentially lose employees for a fortnight.

The even bigger cynic in me wondered why the government was able to act so quickly and effectively on this occasion, having failed to do so in the past. Could his own department really be that anxious to keep the Transport Secretary out of the way for an extra two weeks? I can’t say that I’d blame them, mind…

Falling for the Big Lie

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Opponents of independence delight in regularly pointing out that an independent Wales would have a budget deficit. This, in their eyes, makes the country unviable. The first part is true – we would undoubtedly have a budget deficit, although there’s considerable scope for debate about the size of that deficit. They certainly (and entirely deliberately) inflate the figure to support their argument by adding in costs which an independent Wales would not have to pay; but the existence of a deficit isn’t really open to debate. The question is, though, so what? Most countries run a deficit most of the time; most countries have a national debt. Many think that that debt is owed to other countries but it isn’t – most of it is owed to countries’ own citizens.

On the criteria which the unionists demand that Wales should meet to be considered viable, the UK as a whole is not viable as an independent state. The UK should, on their criteria, immediately renounce its independence and throw its lot in with a country which is viable. The problem would be finding one, because most other states (including the USA and Japan) aren’t viable either on the same criteria. Most states borrow money (largely from their own citizens, but in times of crisis also from themselves by simply creating extra money). The idea that Wales would be uniquely unable to do likewise is a lie, pure and simple. It’s an attempt to apply one rule to us and another rule to them. Measured by GDP per head, Wales is closer to the top of the world league table than the bottom; if Wales were really an economic basket case, the same would be true of the majority of countries in the world. It’s only the Anglo-centric exceptionalist tradition which declines to consider that Wales could be an entirely normal country.

The UK Government is currently spending a great deal of money, albeit inadequately and half-heartedly, in order to overcome the current crisis (and, as we saw from Johnson in Scotland yesterday, attempting to claim that only the UK could do this). Some of that money is being borrowed by the UK government, mostly from UK citizens; but a lot of it is simply being created by the government and placed into its own account, effectively treated in the books as a ‘loan’ from itself. But miraculously, this newly-created UK money suddenly becomes ‘English’ money (and a ‘subsidy’) when some of it is passed to the Welsh government to spend. It's as though they regard it as their own private piggybank which they are ‘generously’ sharing with us.

The ability to amass public debt is not unlimited, of course, but public debt is a normal part of the financing of any state. When the implications are spelled out, few people would actually want to live in a state which completely eschewed public debt. The claim that Wales’ public debt would make an independent Wales unviable is not the killer debating point as which it’s presented at all, it’s a dishonest way of trying to shut down a debate which unionists find uncomfortable. Why are they so afraid of revealing their real reasons for opposing independence that they need to hide behind such an obvious and blatant lie? Worse – why do so many in Wales fall for the lie?

Extending the tour

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There might, conceivably, be a parallel universe somewhere out there in which Boris Johnson touring a series of venues in Scotland, presumably meeting the invited few in his usual manner and spouting his usual mixture of bluster, lies and impractical bridges will convince Scots to abandon any thoughts of independence. His cheerleaders seem to think not only that there is such a universe, but that this universe is the one. To the more grounded amongst us, it seems unlikely to say the least; far more likely an outcome is that his tour will deal the final blow to his party north of the border whose very existence he denies.

It could, of course, be a bluff. Perhaps he has already decided that England would be better off without those troublesome Scots, and just in case his promise to deny them any chance to determine their own future through a referendum (even if they vote overwhelmingly in favour of holding one) isn’t enough, he’ll seal the deal with a few incoherent speeches in which he can continue to deny reality. The flaw in that theory is that it presupposes a degree of self-awareness on his part which has been conspicuously absent to date. It is far more likely that he, and those around him, really do believe that all they need to do to turn the tide of public opinion in Scotland is to send an Old Etonian who knows little and understands even less to tell a few bad jokes to selected audiences, make some promises he has no intention of keeping, and have union flags plastered everywhere. Thus, in their view, will the ‘precious union’ be saved. It’s an attitude tells us more about them than about anything else.

In truth, I don’t believe that the union is doomed, much as I’d like to believe that it were so. But the problem that defenders of the union have is that they don’t understand – are psychologically incapable of understanding – why anyone would want to end an arrangement which they ‘know’ to be the bestest and most perfectest ever devised. They still struggle to understand why all those countries which were formerly part of the British Empire couldn’t see how much better it would have been to remain subservient to the ‘mother country’, but instead went off and chose to misgovern themselves. And that, ultimately, is why they will fail. Not because there is no argument for the union, but because they are unable to see or understand any argument against it, or even see any need to do so. One of the keys to winning a debate is to be able to understand the thinking of the opposition; not agree with it, merely understand it enough to respond to the other viewpoint. Brow-beating people into submission isn’t winning an argument, and in any event it’s now too late for that. Boris Johnson is one of the best recruiting sergeants the SNP has ever had; they must be absolutely delighted that he’s throwing himself into the campaign against independence. They’re probably even hoping that he’ll spend three weeks on tour rather than just the one.

Do as I say, not as I do

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The Foreign Secretary stood up in the House of Commons this week and very sombrely announced sanctions against China. His argument was that it is completely unacceptable that a country should breach an international treaty to which it had signed up. But hold on a moment: the EU Withdrawal Agreement is an international treaty on which the UK Government is attempting to renege daily. And government MPs are amongst the authors of a new report advocating that the UK should unilaterally repudiate that agreement and present the EU with a new one, on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, to replace it. For English exceptionalists, it seems that the grand and important principle that states should abide by agreements they make only applies to other, lesser countries. Such are, apparently, the ‘great British values’ to which we are all supposed to subscribe.

Secrecy isn't always in our best interests

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Later today we will finally get to see the much-delayed report on Russian interference in UK elections. That there was such interference and that it was designed to promote Russian interests, including weakening the EU by promoting Brexit, is beyond doubt. That the Conservative Party received significant sums of money from people with strong Russian connections and interests is also not open to question. I’m less convinced that there will be any sort of ‘smoking gun’ proving incontrovertibly that the Tory Party acted on Russian bidding as a result of such funding or that hacking was enough to swing an election – or a referendum. I don’t doubt for a moment that the Russian state uses all means at its disposal to influence events in its favour, including cyber warfare and hacking. But neither do I doubt that the UK state does exactly the same thing; they’re just not keen on telling us about that, preferring to provoke outrage at the actions of others rather than admit that it’s simply the way in which competing states behave. I could be wrong, of course, but the fact that the committee contained four Johnson loyalists and voted unanimously to release the report suggests that it might not be quite as damning as it could be. Perhaps the juiciest bits will be in the unpublished annex.

In any event, the UK government has been busy over recent days, in what looks like a diversionary tactic, expressing its outrage at the way Russia has been trying to hack into and steal the data on potential vaccines for the coronavirus. But instead of meekly reporting the outrage at this attempt to steal data, perhaps the media should be asking why the data is secret in the first place. It isn’t government data, of course, it’s data belonging to researchers and private companies, but it’s data which would be useful to anyone trying to deal with the worst pandemic to hit the world for a century. We should be asking ourselves why that data would be so secret and why, in fighting a common disease affecting every country in the world, countries and companies are keeping data to themselves rather than sharing it openly in a common and united effort.

The standard answer would be that the pharma companies want to protect their investment in research so that they can recover it in subsequent sales, but that just provokes a further question – why is this research and development work so heavily in the private domain rather than the public domain? Why is the effort to find a vaccine to respond to a global problem causing hundreds of thousands of deaths a competitive one rather than a co-operative one? There is no obvious or necessary reason why research into fighting disease should be conducted primarily by private companies in secret for profit rather than by public bodies in the open for the good of all. The Government’s attacks on Russia for hacking in this case owe more to the protection of capitalist enterprises than to promotion of public health.

'Over by Christmas'

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Given the latest statement by the PM that it will all be over by Christmas, this report on 19^th March (a mere 17 weeks ago) claiming that he had said that the virus would be “sent packing” in 12 weeks must obviously have been fake news. Either that, or it took place in an alternative reality (perhaps the same one which Matt Hancock inhabits in which the lockdown started on 16^th March rather than the 23^rd). But given his predilection for history, especially of the war variety, perhaps the PM has accidentally been almost semi-honest. The last time something was all going to be ‘over by Christmas’ it actually lasted another 4 years and cost 20 million lives, almost a million of them from the UK. With his, at best, passing relationship with the truth anyway, the allusion to the phrase ‘over by Christmas’ might just be an inadvertent revelation of a rather more ominous expectation.

The world's worst interview?

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As a general rule, and assuming that they’re serious, people applying for jobs tend to try and demonstrate why they’re the right person for the job. Most people’s experience would confirm that demonstrating that one understands the requirements and highlighting how one’s talents and experience match those requirements is not a bad strategy if one wants to convince the interviewers. In what must surely be a contender for one of the worst interview pitches in history, Liam Fox, the UK’s candidate for head of the WTO, tried, instead, the novel approach of highlighting precisely the requirements which make him a singularly inappropriate candidate for the job.

Apparently, according to the Guardian, “Fox said the organisation needed a scarred political heavyweight capable of talking directly to major countries about the value of a rules based free trade order.” Scarred, maybe, but for a lightweight who has been sacked from his last two jobs and who has been a significant part of a campaign to destroy the idea of a rules-based order, it looks very much like an appeal to appoint someone else. And just in case they weren’t entirely convinced by that, he added that he hoped the EU “would back the candidate most in line with their values and aspirations for global free trade that the EU has”. I think we can be confident that the EU will do precisely as he wishes rather than back a candidate who has spent years trying to undermine everything the EU does. His only chance is if the other candidates are even better at talking the interviewers out of appointing them.

Compromise is for everyone else

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One of the advantages of achieving Welsh independence within a wider grouping of sovereign states, such as the EU, is that it provides a context within which the political change occurs whilst leaving the external economic relationships largely untouched. That is precisely the reason why some argue that it isn’t ‘proper’ independence, because Wales would not have the same degree of freedom to determine economic policies as it would have outside such a grouping. It’s true, but more in theory than in fact. As the UK is finding out – and this would be even more true for an independent Wales outside the EU – even one of the world’s major economies is going to have to compromise significantly with the rules set by one or other of he world’s major trading states or blocs if it wants the best trading terms. The freedom to ‘set our own rules’ is largely illusory in practice.

The determination of the UK government to protect the UK’s internal single market demonstrates very clearly that they understand in principle why having a common set of rules is generally a good idea when it comes to promoting frictionless trade. But the way they are setting about it also demonstrates very clearly why they see the EU internal market and the UK internal market in two very different ways. Any single market necessarily involves the pooling and sharing of a degree of sovereignty, an agreement, in effect, to make rules jointly rather than unilaterally. But ‘jointly’ means two quite different things in their minds. In the case of the EU, all those involved have to discuss and compromise; in the case of the UK internal market, the ‘smaller’ partners must simply fall into line. No discussion, no agreement, no compromise, just do as you’re told, even if, under statute, those partners have the right to set policy in the affected areas.

It’s perfectly possible – maybe even probable – that in most cases a discussion would lead to consensus anyway. It is, after all, in the interests of all concerned to keep the internal borders frictionless. And in any imaginable approach, the sheer size of England in relation to the three devolved administrations gives them more clout than the other parts of the state (which is precisely the problem with any proposal for a ‘federal’ UK). But the English nationalists running the UK cannot conceive of the possibility that they should ever need to discuss or agree their rules with anyone. That would be to cede some of the absolute sovereignty that they foolishly thought Brexit was going to give them. If only those Europeans had allowed the UK to dictate unilaterally the terms of the Single Market rather than discuss them, things might have been different. The Single Market would still look much the same, of course – much of the impetus behind it came from the UK in the first place. But it’s not the outcome which matters, it’s the principle – England is special and different. They entirely accept that sometimes compromise is needed; they just start from the position that compromise is what everyone else must do, not them. The problem with the rude awakening which lies ahead of us at the end of this year is that it won’t affect those driving the process; they and their backers will profit either way. The price will be paid by the rest of us.