Starmer is avoiding honestly facing the problem of racism

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At the weekend, Starmer told us that he didn’t think Reform Ltd voters were racists, merely frustrated. It’s a sweeping statement to make. Although it’s entirely reasonable to suppose that some Reform Ltd voters are not racists, it doesn’t follow that none of them are. It also doesn’t address the converse: whilst it may well be true that voting for Farage’s lot doesn’t make someone a racist, it doesn’t follow at all that being racists doesn’t drive people to vote for Reform Ltd. Whilst it’s not an absolute, 100% causal link, it’s not a bad indicator. Racists have a strong tendency to think that Farage is expressing their views, and not without justification.

When asked directly whether Reform Ltd were trying to appeal to racists, Starmer’s response was a flat “No”, before proceeding to waffle about frustration and economic decline. Given that he’d already said that he thought that Reform Ltd policies were racist, this is a somewhat astonishing contradiction. What on earth is the point in promising outright racist policies if not to appeal to racists? His problem is that – just like Farage and Badenoch – he too is trying to appeal to racists. Not only to racists, of course; and maybe not so blatantly as Farage, but in a sense, that just makes it worse. Offering skimmed or semi-skimmed racism legitimises the full fat version, and can make voting for the real thing more acceptable.

Pretending that anger whipped up by the tabloids over migration is really just about the impact of economic decline and that people’s ‘concerns’ can be addressed by improving the NHS and putting more money in their pockets is wilfully turning a blind eye to the pernicious presence of racism. There is more racism, and even more latent racism, around than most of us would really like to acknowledge, even if racist voters don’t all choose to vote for Reform Ltd. It’s understandable that a PM tanking as badly in the polls as Starmer would be fearful of losing more votes to Farage, but aping his rhetoric in milder terms looks more like panic than a thought-through strategy. Whilst he might be more comfortable competing with other ‘right wing’ parties for the votes he’s losing in that direction, it seems as though he’s oblivious to those deserting Labour for the ‘left’, although there is evidence to suggest that he’d actually find it easier to get those back than those who’ve gone over to the Farageist dark side. It might be easier to pretend that it’s all about economics, but it isn’t honest.

Money spent by government doesn't generally simply disappear

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One of the arguments against the Nation of Sanctuary policy which the Tories and Reform Ltd advance is that they want the money spent on the project diverted instead into local communities. The Reform Ltd candidate for the Caerffili by-election probably put it most clearly saying that we should “bring that money back to communities”, but the same point has been expressed in different words by others. It’s economically illiterate (or should that be innumerate?). Where do they think the money used for the project goes? It doesn’t simply pass from the government into a big black hole labelled ‘refugees’ pockets’; it gets spent. On accommodation, on food, on language lessons, on venues, on helping people to integrate and find work – and all that expenditure goes ‘back into the communities’. Much of the spending leads to payment of VAT, and the money which becomes other peoples’ income (as most of it does, eventually) leads to payment of Income Tax and National Insurance. It might not be a big project where the sponsors can put up a giant billboard declaring that it was funded by the Welsh Government, but the cash mostly ends up in local communities, circulating and providing income to people.

There’s a more general point there as well. The above doesn’t only relate to the Nation of Sanctuary. When the government pays out benefits and pensions, that money doesn’t just disappear either. It, too, gets spent in communities and ends up as income for other people, generating tax receipts as it does so. Looking at all government expenditure as though the money spent has gone and disappeared for ever is looking only at a single part of the flow of money: the economic effect of that expenditure is much wider. When it comes to this variety of economic innumeracy around benefits, Labour are as guilty as the Tories and Reform Ltd. There’s something else that we know for certain as well: the less well-off people are, the more likely it is that none of the money they receive will be saved, and all of it will be spent, mostly in the communities where they live.

Having said that, there is one important way in which spending by the government can make money disappear from our communities, and that is when it ends up in the pockets of the richest. As, for instance, when benefits are cut to enable tax cuts, something which always benefits those who pay most tax. Those who can afford to save often do. And money saved is money no longer circulating, no longer providing an income to someone else. Worse, some of those savings end up in offshore accounts – disappearing not only from local communities but from the whole country. Yet that, in effect, is the economic policy supported by Labour, Tory and Reform Ltd alike.

There is scope for debate about what the most effective method is for a government – any government – to put money into local communities. Is it through large, highly-visible projects which feed through into incomes, or is it by making sure more directly that all citizens – yes, and guests, whether temporary or permanent – have sufficient income and/or publicly-funded services to be able to meet their needs and live a decent life? Which approach has the greatest effect in the shortest timescale is a legitimate subject for debate. We should remember though that the two aren’t even mutually exclusive: the constraint on what we can do isn’t the availability of money, it’s the availability of resources, an economic truth which has been known for decades. Claiming that one way of spending money simply makes that money disappear is a dishonest way of avoiding that truth, while blaming the poorest for their own plight and facilitating the accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Voters aren't fish, and don't always choose the 'right' angler

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A couple of weeks ago, following a by-election in the Vale of Glamorgan, this blog post talked about the need to count, rather than assume, voters’ second choices. The question about making assumptions came up again on Thursday, in this article by Ben Wildsmith on Nation.Cymru, calling on Gareth Hughes and the Green Party to withdraw from the Caerffili by-election. I’m something of a fan of Ben’s writing: his articles are well-argued, make good points, and are often humorous to boot. But on this occasion, I cannot agree with his logic. The idea that parties seen as outside chances should ‘stand down’ to avoid ‘splitting the vote’ and letting (insert your bête noir of choice here) win is not one I’ve ever been keen on, although my view might be slightly coloured by having been on the receiving end of such expectations on more than one occasion.

There tends to be something of a belief amongst those performing mathematics on polling numbers that there are only two pools of voters. One contains only progressive fish, with Labour, Lib Dem, Plaid and Green anglers all trying to catch them, and the other contains only reactionary fish, with anglers from the Tories and Reform Ltd trying to haul them in. Since the number of fish in both ponds is limited, any caught by one angler are unavailable to the other anglers, and if one of those anglers is better at catching fish than the rest, his total catch is still limited by the number of fish caught by his competitors. And, obviously, the more anglers in one pond, the harder it is to match the catch of the best angler in the other. I’ve knocked enough doors and spoken to enough punters to know that life really isn’t that simple. Voters don’t always stay in their allotted pond, and if the Green angler lays down his rod, some of the fish are as likely to swim into the other pond as they are to leap onto the Plaid angler's waiting hook.

There is a convenient and comfortable myth to which many involved in Welsh politics cling, in which the electorate in Wales is of a radical disposition and finds the Tories toxic. Would that it were so; but whilst it may have been a couple of decades ago, it isn’t today. And the rise of Reform Ltd shows us that Tory toxicity isn’t about policies or personalities anyway, it’s just about branding. Take the same people and the same policies and give them a different brand name, and many voters will, apparently, flock to the cause. To a very large extent, I blame Labour for that. Firstly, because they’ve ceased to be particularly radical or even progressive, and secondly because they’ve depended for so long on one simple attribute rather than arguing for any particular policy platform: being 'not-the-Tories'. It turns out that even those who have voted for them for years, if not decades, have come to believe that Reform Ltd, despite being largely composed of ex-Tories, are also now ‘not-the-Tories’, with the additional advantage of being untainted (as a brand, even if not as individuals) by having failed in the exercise of power.

And that’s the point about the Green angler and his rod. Laying it down simply gives credence to, and reinforces, the idea that all self-identified ‘progressives’ essentially share a perspective, and that ‘progressive’ voters should support the ‘progressive’ candidate most likely to win. I doubt that the Green Party candidate will receive many votes in the by-election (sorry, Gareth), but even if the total votes cast for him is more than the difference between the first and second placed candidate, there will be no way of knowing that his absence would have made a difference – in a first-past-the-post election, his votes cannot simply be added mathematically to those of another candidate. And he will be putting a different perspective and agenda before the electorate – can giving the voters more choice ever be a bad thing?

There is actually a very good case for politicians to come to an agreement on which party will stand where, but it applies only to a single issue and is only relevant in a Westminster General Election. It relates to the question of electoral reform. A short, single issue parliament which passed such a law and then dissolved itself for a new election under new rules would be well worth while. The problem is that that single issue doesn’t neatly split itself between self-styled ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’. And whether Farage will still be as keen on electoral reform if an election under FPTP gives him absolute power on a minority vote is an unanswered question. Not one to which I really want to discover the answer the hard way.

Depending on character rather than formal rules could be even worse

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Perhaps it was, as some around Trump like to believe, an act of deliberate sabotage when that escalator ground to a halt; perhaps it was an accident – an aide or a member of the press corps running on ahead and accidentally triggering the emergency stop. My own alternative theory is that Trump was feeling thirsty, saw a big red button, and thought that if he pressed it, someone would bring him a diet coke. Stupidity usually beats both accident and conspiracy.

Trump’s Press Secretary’s response to the incident was to say that “If someone at the U.N. intentionally stopped the escalator … they need to be fired and investigated immediately.” The order of events there is important: start with assumed guilt, implement the punishment, and then investigate to determine the facts. It’s very much a Queen of Hearts approach to justice. It’s certainly an approach that Trump has adopted elsewhere. He’s regularly declaring the guilt of people without having a shred of evidence, and demanding that they be punished immediately and then prosecuted. And if the prosecutors can’t find any evidence, then they should be fired and replaced with people who can. The evidence is probably hiding in the same place as those 11,780 votes that Trump demanded that Georgia’s Secretary of State should ‘find’ after he lost the 2020 election. When you ‘know’ that someone is guilty of breaking a law that you’ve just invented, it surely can’t be that hard to prove it.

The Queen of Hearts was, of course an absolute monarch. ‘Off with their heads’ was an instinctive response to just about anything. To date, the formal written constitution of the US has not proved to be the barrier which I had naively expected that it would be. Partly, that’s because Trump has managed to capture all three branches of government power; and partly because the US system of law grinds exceedingly slowly and no legal ruling ever seems to be final until an overwhelmed supreme court, tilted heavily in one political direction, eventually gets round to ruling. Maybe a written constitution doesn’t provide the protection that some of us might have imagined. On the other hand, just imagine how much more freedom a Trump might have in the UK where so many of the ’rules’ depend simply on precedent, the assumed good character of the incumbent, and the royal prerogative. The same applies, of course, to any Trump surrogate who might happen to come along.

What happens to migrants' property?

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If Nigel Farage were ever to become UK Prime Minister and implement his policy of reversing the residency rights of just about anyone who had migrated to the UK in the past, what would happen to any assets which those migrants had accumulated? I mean, just supposing for a minute that you were a French politician who had found £885,000 down the back of the sofa to buy a house so that your boyfriend could claim to live somewhere that he rarely visited, what would happen to the house if you were forced to return to France so that your boyfriend could implement a wild promise he had made whilst campaigning?

Maybe Farage’s policy has some unstated loopholes, such as excluding French people in possession of valuable homes, although nothing he’s said so far implies any great willingness to make exceptions; he’s even ready to split families as part of his plan, so getting married and having kids doesn't work either. Maybe the assets of those expelled would simply pass to any convenient partner who was allowed to remain. That would make it quite a cunning plan – Farage would end up with a house in his constituency after all, and (unless he was the one who happened to lose £885,000 down the back of the sofa) he’d have got it for nothing.

Starmer and Reeves are feeding Farageism

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Imagine for a moment a different world in which the UK managed to solve its endemic problems. It’s vanishingly unlikely, of course. As long as governments of whatever hue insist that the constraints on what they can do are a lack of money and the need to abide by a set of fiscal rules which they themselves have devised, rather than the availability of physical resources and the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, there is no real prospect of meaningful change.

But, for the sake of argument, bear with me for a moment. Suppose we could get to a situation where the NHS could provide the help that people need, when they need it, with negligible waiting lists; suppose that we had an educational system which produced consistently good results and was the envy of much of the world; suppose that everyone had adequate housing suitable to meet their needs. Suppose also that we had ‘full’ employment: in realistic terms, everyone of working age who was able to work could get a decently-paid job that they wanted to do; suppose that that included not just UK citizens, but also those who had come here from elsewhere; and suppose that all those who arrived from elsewhere spoke impeccable English (or Welsh, of course). In such an ideal world, do we believe that Farage, Badenoch, Starmer, Mahmoud etc. would stop banging on about the need to block migration and remove some or all of those already here?

Sadly, I don’t think it would change their position one iota. There are those who argue that they simply hate migrants per se – I don’t believe that they do. I suspect, rather more cynically, that they believe that a sufficient proportion of the electorate hate migrants so much that there are large numbers of votes to be had by being seen to be tough on migration. It’s not that the politicians themselves are racists or xenophobes, they’re simply willing to appeal to voters who are in order to win elections.

Whether their faith in the innate prejudices of a significant part of the electorate is justified or not is an unknown. For the reasons outlined at the beginning, it’s not a theory which is ever likely to be tested. And for as long as UK governments refuse to fix the problems which they can then blame on migrants, they will get away with pretending that anti-migrant feelings are based on what they choose to call ‘legitimate concerns’ rather than on prejudice and racism, and claim that expelling people rather then improving conditions is the way to solve those problems. Actually, it’s worse than that. By refusing to address the underlying problems and concentrating instead on deporting people, they reinforce the idea that migration is the source of the problems; in other words, the Reeves/Starmer fiscal rules reinforce the narrative about migration. Their ideological blinkers are directly aiding the Farages of this world.

How and why does something become a moral issue?

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The UK’s Prime Minister has described his decision to recognise the state of Palestine as being a ‘moral responsibility’. It’s a nice rhetorical flourish to justify something which should have been done a long time ago, but it doesn’t explain how and why something which was apparently unacceptable to him last year suddenly became a moral imperative. Was it the non-stop killing of Gazans by Israel which tilted the balance? Maybe, but that doesn’t explain why so many had to die before it became a ‘moral’ issue. Perhaps it was the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the driving out of Palestinians from the areas being settled, but that, too, has been going on for a long time. ‘Morality’ isn’t a numbers game; there’s no magic threshold at which deliberately killing civilians, including children, moves from being a practical issue to a moral one, no magic threshold at which the seizure of land becomes a moral issue. Framing it as a moral issue might sound good, but it also avoids serious action to bring about change.

The recognition is, in any event, more limited than it appears. No-one in their right mind would want to see Hamas forming the government of the newly-recognised state, but if the Palestinians have the right to a state (as Starmer argues), by what authority can the UK declare in advance that the people may not choose a government which includes a specified group or party? Although, on reflection, an international order which precludes certain individuals or groups from ever exercising power isn’t such a bad idea – there are a number of regimes across the world which I think we would be better off without. But who decides what is or is not acceptable, and how is it to be enforced? And if it is not a general rule, why should one ‘independent and sovereign state’ be singled out as uniquely having no right to choose whatever government it wishes? There are practical issues as well – banning an organisation is all well and good, but it’s easy enough for any organisation to disband and reform under another name.

There is one simple truth underlying what is happening in Palestine, and it applies to other conflicts as well. The world is not and never has been run on the basis of morality, and there isn’t even a single set of moral standards on which we all agree. It is actually run on the basis of raw power – in effect, ‘might is right’. He who possesses the power and armaments imposes his will on others. It’s a philosophy to which most of the world’s leaders (including Netanyahu, Trump, Putin, and, yes, Starmer himself) subscribe, in their actions if not in their words. As long as that remains true, those leaders talking of ‘moral responsibility’ is just window dressing.

Reinforcing migrant blame only keeps us on the same trajectory

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As something of a parting shot yesterday, Trump told Starmer that immigration “destroys countries from within”, and advised him to deploy the military to stop migration. How that would work isn’t clear, but perhaps he means a few extra-judicial killings of the sort which he is implementing himself. Trumpland tends to see absolute destruction on all sides – his response to an unfavourable court ruling on his imposition of tariffs was to suggest that the court’s decision “would literally destroy the United States of America” as well. The threat of ‘absolute destruction’ is key to his regular invocation of an emergency of one sort or another. It’s hyperbole of course: a good general rule of thumb is that any sentence containing the word ‘literally’ is probably going to be more hyperbole than fact. Even when it isn’t from Trump.

I can’t think of any actual historical example which would lend support to the idea that immigration destroys countries; on the contrary, immigration has made many countries what they are today, with the US being perhaps the most obvious example. What immigration can do, however, is change the culture of a country, sometimes in small ways, and sometimes – especially when the ruling elite are drawn entirely from the immigrant population – much more drastically. Once again, the US stands out as a particular example of cultural replacement as Europeans marginalised, and at times massacred, the former population. The world’s greatest exponents of cultural replacement have been the European colonial powers, foremost amongst them Spain, England and France, but with dishonourable mentions for Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy as well. And here in Wales, we are not exactly unfamiliar with the idea of cultural replacement either, albeit as victim more than perpetrator.

Does the current level of immigration – either into the US or the UK – really threaten that sort of cultural change? There’s no evidence to suggest that it does. Unlike a true invasion where the ruling group is replaced, attracting migrants into the general population really doesn’t have that much impact. Historical evidence says that, after two or three generations, the descendants of immigrants tend to absorb the majority culture more often than challenging or changing it. The economic impact of migration is disputed; most objective studies suggest that it has a net positive effect overall, but for those who are not being well-served by the economy at present, immigration is a convenient scapegoat. Especially when exaggerated by those who seek to use people’s fears and prejudices as a route to power. One of the main elements of those prejudices – we cannot avoid this truth – is a form of racism; not always based on skin colour, although that’s certainly a factor, but often on a fear or dislike of anyone seen to be ‘different’.

I seriously doubt whether the likes of Trump or Farage (or Starmer or Badenoch come to that) really care very much about immigration at all. Playing to perceived prejudices is just a route to power, and dividing those over whom they seek power is a bonus. The result is that, rather than challenging or changing those prejudices, they reinforce them. Those who seek to rebut the arguments generally highlight facts and statistics, but it’s an approach doomed to fail. People will not be swayed by facts and statistics from a view which was never based on facts or statistics in the first place. There is a certain inevitability about the destination if we stay on the current trajectory. A standard piece of advice to writers is ‘show, don’t tell’, and a good starting place for governing politicians would be to create and then demonstrate economic success for all rather than verbally reinforcing blame. I’m not holding my breath.

Identifying tyranny

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Can I have been the only one watching the news last night when Charlie Windsor started talking about how ‘we’ defeated tyranny in the past and needed to stand up to it today who initially wondered whether he was talking about Trump rather than to Trump about Putin? Maybe it was one of those cleverly-crafted diplomatic criticisms which seem to be about one thing, but are actually about something else. If it was, such subtlety would have completely gone over the head of the target. Maybe one day we’ll find out who wrote Trump’s speech in response – it certainly wasn’t Trump himself – which, somewhat amazingly, he managed to read out without digressing into one of his lengthy rants about stolen elections, losers and morons.

One of the things that has become clear from the visit is that the much-lauded trade agreement allegedly reached back in May hasn’t really been agreed at all. The detail is still under discussion, with the US president free to renege on anything (such as elimination of tariffs on steel) if he feels like he may have given too much away. And from what we have seen of the man so far, even if he had agreed it, there’s no certainty that he wouldn’t change his mind on elements of it at any time – a trade agreement with Trump is an essentially worthless document. That knowledge won’t be enough to stop Starmer giving way even further as and when necessary.

The remaining potential flashpoint is this afternoon’s joint press conference where the probability that Trump will go off at a tangent remains high, particularly if he’s asked a question that he takes a dislike to. In theory, Starmer is the host; in practice, he’s already banned one broadcaster (the Australian broadcaster ABC) whose Americas editor upset Trump earlier this week by asking some difficult questions about conflicts of interest with Trump’s personal enrichment schemes business dealings. The reason given was some mysterious ‘logistical’ problems, an excuse also used for banning Al Jazeera, in whose case the weather was also mentioned as a factor. How the weather only affects outlets not necessarily friendly to Trump is a question which we probably are not supposed to ask. The underlying point is that a press conference, on UK soil, hosted by the UK’s Prime Minister, is excluding legitimate journalists at the behest of a man who thinks a free press is such a bad thing that he’s suing one US newspaper for having dared to support his opponent in last year’s election.

At what point does ‘mere’ elected autocracy become the sort of tyranny about which the king of England probably wasn’t talking after all? When attempts are made to silence a free press? When broadcasters are bullied into axing programmes or sacking presenters? When people are disappeared from the streets by masked government agents? When law enforcement is deployed to pursue and prosecute political opponents? When universities and museums are told what they may or may not teach or display? When law firms are compelled to donate their services for free to causes chosen by the president as a condition of being allowed to continue operating? When companies are compelled to give a share of their profits – or even their share capital – to the government in exchange for export licences? Tyranny doesn’t always arrive in a single giant leap; sometimes it comes in a succession of small steps, making it difficult to draw a line between tyranny and non-tyranny. Are the Starmers of this world looking on with fear as they comply – or with envy? I’m not entirely sure that I want to know the answer to that one.

Gambling with the future

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For just about the whole of my life, mankind has been on the brink of creating controlled nuclear fusion; it’s always been just ‘thirty years away’. There is no doubt that the technology offers the potential to generate huge amounts of electricity, with fewer of the problems (such as radioactive waste) associated with nuclear fission, although the link between ‘peaceful’ research and the development of ever more powerful weapons remains. Similarly, there is no doubt that progress has been made in many of the technologies involved in building a working reactor, and that some of that progress has benefits in itself, apart from energy generation. Most experts in the field believe, however, that there is still another thirty years or so before remaining problems can be resolved, and the process scaled up and commercialised.

None of that is to suggest that work shouldn’t continue, but using the ‘imminence’ of a breakthrough as an excuse to avoid taking other actions would be folly. Which brings us to the recent words of the US Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. Not only is he considerably more optimistic ("The technology, it'll be on the electric grid, you know, in eight to 15 years") than people actually working in the field, he also sees that as an opportunity to continue to pursue maximal exploitation of fossil fuels in the meantime. By coincidence (?), he happens to have founded and run fracking companies, and believes that the fracking process will "bring back manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and drive down not just electricity prices, but home-heating prices and industrial energy prices".

He doesn’t seem to believe that anthropogenic climate change is as complete a hoax as some opponents of the concept of aiming at net zero do, but he clearly does believe that it’s not as imminent as the scientific consensus suggests, and that we have generations in which to do something, so we can continue to use, and profit from, fossil fuels in the meantime. However improbable it might seem, it’s not entirely impossible that he’s right – scientific consensus has been proved wrong in the past in the light of new discoveries. It’s a gamble, though, and the stakes are incredibly high. Neither he nor I will be around to see the full outcome of decisions being taken today, although he and his mates probably will be around long enough to enjoy the profits they make from oil and gas. That, I suspect, rather than any real concern for the planet or the people living on it, is the real driver of his selective take on climate science.

Second choices need to be counted, not assumed

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Following the result of a by-election in the Vale of Glamorgan last week, some partisan commenters have attempted to make the argument ‘vote Green, get Reform’, or ‘vote Labour, get Reform’. There’s certainly a mathematical basis for such suggestions: added to the vote of the second-placed Plaid candidate, either the votes cast for the Green candidate or those cast for the Labour candidate would have been enough to secure a victory for Plaid had one or other of those parties chosen not to stand. By the same token, however, if the Conservatives had not stood a candidate and all of those votes had gone to Reform Ltd, then Reform Ltd would have won, even if there had only been two candidates in the race. Whataboutery works both ways.

The bigger problem with the argument that voting for one party ‘allows’ another to win is that it makes assumptions about what people’s second choices would have been and about how voters choose a party. In an ideal world, maybe we would all sit down with the detailed manifestos of the various parties and assess which one most closely represents our own views, which comes second and so on, and then assess which of our acceptable choices has the best chance of winning before casting a vote. In the real world, the first doesn’t happen and the second requires a degree of knowledge about what other voters are going to do which owes nothing to science and everything to guesswork and rumour.

Years of direct doorstep experience tells me that, whilst those 85 who voted Green should logically have put Plaid as their second choice (both parties favour Welsh independence, and both have strong environmental credentials, although Plaid is somewhat shaky, to say the least, on energy policy), it is highly unlikely that they would all have done so. Some would have chosen Labour, some the Tories, others would have stayed at home – and I’d be very surprised indeed if at least a couple hadn’t opted for Reform Ltd. Similar considerations apply to those who voted for each of the other parties: the basis on which people choose a party to support is much more complex than an analysis of policy positions.

Back in the days when Plaid would have been seen as a ‘no-hope’ party in places like Barri, I and other candidates (I did once stand in a ward in Barri itself) used to argue that people should vote for the party they most want to see win, rather than against the one that they most want to see lose, whilst those parties seen as having a real chance at winning argued that people should vote for the least distasteful of them rather than ‘wasting’ their vote. Now that Plaid is seriously in contention in such seats, it’s no surprise (even if a little disappointing) to find those positions reversed.

The real lesson of the by-election is that an electoral system based on first-past-the-post where more than two parties are involved can deliver seats to a party which enjoys only minority support – and the more parties in serious contention (there were four in this case), the lower the percentage of the vote needed to win. If we really want to know about people’s second choices, we need to count them. A system of proportional representation wouldn’t necessarily stop the rise of Reform Ltd (I suspect that a number of people in all parties would be unpleasantly surprised to see how many of their supporters would give their second vote to Farage’s lot), but it would be likely to deny absolute power to any party which cannot demonstrate broader support. The question is whether the government in Westminster is able to understand that, and make the change before the next UK-wide parliamentary election. Rueing the day afterwards will be too late.

Rushing to judgement

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No-one yet knows exactly what drove Tyler Robinson, allegedly, to shoot Charlie Kirk last week, although that hasn’t stopped various people declaring the reason with absolute certainty. Trump, along with Musk and sundry other unhinged Americans, have claimed that it was the ‘radical left lunatics’ (which seems to be code for everyone from ‘only moderately right-wing Democrats’  to actual socialists). Some even went so far as to demand the designation of the Democrats as a terrorist organisation and the immediate incarceration of all party members, on the basis that the action of one man who probably wasn’t a Democrat anyway was enough to make them all guilty. Others have suggested that the shooter was a Groyper (no, I’d never heard of them either) and that Kirk was shot for not being right wing enough. A third theory is that the killing was much more personal and less political than that, because the shooter may have been in a relationship with a transgender person, something which was anathema to Kirk. Time will tell.

If only half of what I’ve read since the shooting is true, Kirk seems to have held what many of us would consider to be some deeply unpleasant and hateful views. They don’t justify shooting him, of course – we shouldn’t even need to say that – but he was highly polarising, and made plenty of enemies. There are, though, some double standards at work here. It’s only a matter of days ago that Trump openly celebrated the extra-judicial killing of 11 people aboard a boat which he claimed was trafficking drugs to the US. Even if he was right about their intentions (and the only thing stopping me giving him the benefit of any doubt about that is his usual inability to tell the truth about anything), the crime which they were committing was not one which would be punishable by death in the US itself. Arbitrary application of capital punishment by presidential whim without any process at all does not sit well alongside a condemnation of an assassination on US soil; it implies that the objection is not to killings per se, but is based on drawing a distinction between victims based on the president’s opinions.

The argument for the warning-free attack on the alleged drug smugglers is that killing 11 of them will prevent many more deaths from drugs amongst US citizens (of whom, apparently, around 300 million out of a total population of 340 million were killed by drug overdoses last year – according to Trump). Balancing good and evil is a thing which governments do, but the problem is around certainty. There’s a parallel with the old historical dilemma: if someone had assassinated Hitler in 1936, or Stalin in 1924 – before either of them had presided over mass murder – would history see the assassin as a hero or a villain? We can never know whether, or to what extent, history would have been changed, because we can only ‘know’ about the history that actually happened. Killing people as a precautionary measure against the drugs they are smuggling, or the hate they are spreading, in an attempt to prevent harm which might or might not be caused in the future, is a dangerous approach which ultimately leaves all of us open to an arbitrary application of ‘justice’. That’s as true for actions taken by governments as it is for those taken by lynch mobs or lone individuals – trying to draw distinctions merely blurs a clear moral line.

A tale of two Peters

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Back in 1997, John Prescott held up a crab in a jar of water and told the world that the crab was called Peter. The name was not chosen at random. Peter (the other one, not the crab; details of the subsequent career of the crab, who was actually a female called Dennis even if she didn’t know it herself, are lost to history) has led a somewhat chequered career, having been forced to resign from government posts twice over different scandals: in 1998 and again three years later. The common thread in both resignations was his over-familiarity with the very rich. It’s a theme which has run through his life.

His latest ‘resignation’ is down to much the same thing: a familiarity with, and willingness to overlook the failings of, a very rich man. In this case, it was Jeffrey Epstein, the source of whose wealth itself remains a mystery to many, although neither of the two Peters are known to care very much about the provenance of that wealth. In the crab’s case, that is entirely forgivable. Those who resisted his enforced departure from his latest role think that he was an effective bridge to Trump. Perhaps being tarred with the same Epsteinian brush is indeed actually an advantage. Being joint contributors to the Epstein birthday book gives them something in common, even though only one of them has admitted it to date. Trump continues to deny that the words, artwork and signature are his.

Trump’s supporters concentrate on the signature, claiming – despite all appearances – that it’s nothing like Trump’s own signature. Somehow, it seems that the Democrats (I mean, of course, ‘radical left lunatics’) had forged his signature 30 years ago (when he was a Democrat himself, before, obviously, they became ‘radical left lunatics’), as a hoax and planted it in a book ready to reveal it when he became a Republican president for the second time. There is probably a universe in which that is credible – it just isn’t this one. I wonder, though, if they’re concentrating on the wrong thing. What if the signature is genuine, but the words above it aren’t? I mean, setting out an imaginary conversation requires the deployment of imagination doesn’t it? And is ‘enigma’ really part of his vocabulary? I suspect that he really didn’t write the words himself. Maybe someone else did it at his behest and presented it to him to sign, or maybe he was tricked into signing it. He might stand a better chance of being believed if he admitted that the signature was genuine, but claimed he was fooled into signing it. In his case, being a fool would be a highly credible defence.

The crab’s namesake has no such defence. He really did write the words attributed to him. He was long overdue another ‘resignation’.

Who gets the benefits of technology?

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Politicians from those increasingly pea-in-the-pod parties, the Tories and Reform Ltd, have come up with a solution to the strike by train drivers on the London Underground: replace them with technology. Well, when I say ‘solution’, I (like them) am obviously referring to future strikes rather than the current one; whether the cost of automation is the £10 billion claimed by Sadiq Khan or some arbitrary lower figure pulled out of Farage’s flat cap (clue: based on historical trends in public infrastructure, Khan’s figure is almost certainly an underestimate, not an overestimate), it would take years to implement. The suggestion might generate the odd headline, but it’s not going to address the immediate dispute.

Promising to replace anyone who goes on strike with technology is an ‘interesting’ approach. Not only is it likely to be extremely costly, but (unless alternative jobs appear somewhere else), there is at least an outside chance that it adds to the numbers of unemployed people claiming benefits. They haven’t been imaginative enough though. Many of those whose journeys have been disrupted are commuters travelling to and from work – if they were replaced by technology, London wouldn’t need the trains at all. Maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas.

Whether in response to the disruption caused by strikes or not, it is clear that technology will eventually replace humans in a number of roles, and sooner or later, that is likely to include the introduction of driverless trains. Fans of automation like to claim that replacement of vast swathes of the working population by robots, computers and AI will actually create new opportunities, pointing out that that is what has always happened with new technology in the past. Perhaps they’ll be proved right, but the fact that it’s happened previously isn’t always a good guide, and even if it does, there’s likely to be a transitional period during which new jobs may not match, in terms of numbers and skills, those destroyed. One of the long-promised advantages of technology has been the idea that humans would have more time for leisure and cultural activities rather than being bound to a rigid timetable laid down by their bosses. Whether that’s ever achievable depends in large measure on how the benefits are shared. The omens are not good; as things stand, benefits are likely to flow to the richest rather than the no-longer-needed workers.

But, just supposing for a moment that we collectively decided that the benefits should be more widely shared, how might such a reduction in the need for workers be managed in a mutually acceptable way? One way of doing that might be through a gradual reduction in working hours without a reduction in pay running in parallel with the introduction of more and more technology. We can assume that capitalists and their political representatives will resist that all the way, as they have always resisted the idea that workers, not just capitalists, should benefit from innovation. By coincidence, it’s worth noting that at the heart of the current dispute on the London Underground is a demand for a reduction in working hours to 4 days / 32 hours per week with no cut in pay. Seeing the introduction of technology (and sacking workers as a result) as an alternative to that, rather than a potential complement, tells us a lot about the nature of the battle still to come over sharing the benefits of technology.

Maybe we need a 'bad chaps' theory of government

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In a plot twist so obvious and predictable that even Nadine Dorries would have avoided writing it, it has emerged that former PM Boris Johnson appears to have been using the public funds allocated to his office, alongside his contacts made whilst in office, to enrich himself. Yawn. Labour’s Margaret Hodge declared that the reports suggest that “Boris Johnson is prepared to break the ethical standards of behaviour” (yawn again) and appeared to have acted “with complete impunity” (double yawn). From a man who has gone through life ignoring all rules and doing as he pleased to satisfy his own needs and desires, none of this is a shock or even a mild surprise. None of which stopped the Lib Dems’ Cabinet Office spokesperson Sarah Olney from declaring that “These allegations are extremely shocking”. Anyone genuinely shocked by these allegations would probably also be surprised to discover that the Pope is a Catholic. Even the Lib Dems can’t be that naïve.

The Guardian’s report also states that: “Revelations from the Boris Files will place pressure on Johnson to explain how some of his recent contacts with foreign governments on behalf of commercial interest fall within the rules”. No they won’t. This is a man completely impervious to pressure or criticism, and who adheres to the Mary Poppins maxim of never explaining anything. In this case, the ‘rules’ he has broken appear to be both unwritten and unenforceable. All the revelations really prove is that the ‘good chap’ theory of government only works when those involved are ‘good chaps’. But there is no mechanism for ensuring that they are – or for dealing with those who aren’t. And we already knew that.

Orthodoxy was always the intention of the OBR

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Criticism from within the Labour Party about the remit and actions of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the slavish adherence to its conclusions by the Chancellor is long overdue. It’s a pity that it’s taken an accidental slide into an election for a new deputy leader to wake anybody up, but no sooner had Haigh launched the mission than she declared that she was not going to be a candidate. Whether it was never her intention or whether the campaign was halted before it got going by the stitch-up giving candidates just days to collect 80 supporters from among the party’s MPs is unclear. Paradoxically, the fact that the attack on financial orthodoxy is no longer associated with an internal leadership election might make it easier to take it seriously. Candidates for internal elections in the Labour Party have traditionally argued from the ‘left’ to attract the votes of the members, only to end up moving to the right once elected. Sir Starmer is a classic example of the genre.

I don’t agree with Haigh’s definition of the problem in terms of the OBR having been “Originally created to provide an independent check on economic forecasts and help policymaking” or that it “has morphed into a gatekeeper of orthodoxy”. It has always seemed to me that it was a deliberate trap set by George Osborne as some sort of insurance against a future Labour government, and that institutionalising (Tory) orthodoxy was its main aim from the outset. The enthusiasm with which Labour ran into the trap was astounding. Some have interpreted recent appointments by Sir Starmer as an attempt to undermine his Chancellor, but those he’s appointed seem almost to be even more steeped in orthodoxy than Reeves herself: more about keeping her on the narrow track and reinforcing her view of economics in 10 Downing Street than undermining her.

Other than that faulty analysis of how we got to where we are, Haigh makes some very good points. Her claim that “It is beyond comprehension” that the Bank of England is paying interest on central bank reserves to commercial lenders echoes a point that a number of economists have repeatedly made – and there are plenty of examples of other countries that do not make such payments. At a stroke, not making these payments (or even just reducing the entirely arbitrary interest rate paid) would ‘save’ up to £40 billion a year, and make a big difference to the government’s income and expenditure accounts. The only reason for not changing this is a Chancellor and PM who are utterly wedded to the ‘household analogy’ for government accounts and think that austerity and a small state are really good ideas.

Sadly, someone holding views such as those expressed by Haigh would be extremely unlikely to be elected as Labour’s deputy leader, even if she were to stand; and, either way, her influence on government policy from outside the cabinet (and there is little chance of Sir Starmer appointing the winner of the contest to his cabinet, with the position of deputy PM already neatly sewn up) will be small. Not enough to change the narrative and approach of her party’s leadership, most of whose MPs seem quite content to continue down the road of facilitating Farage. They are far too comfortable languishing in the trap which Osborne laid for them.

Upping the stakes

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President Trump has been widely (and justifiably) mocked for his promise to reduce the price of medicines in the US by up to 1,500%. It’s an illustration of his somewhat shaky grasp of elementary mathematics, although I suppose it helps to explain how he managed to bankrupt casinos. By and large, UK politicians have not shown themselves to be quite so mathematically challenged as Trump, and the argument about the extent to which immigration should be allowed has largely stayed on the positive side of zero. Until last week.

Robert Jenrick has now attempted to trump Labour, Reform and his own party by calling for a ten year period in which net migration to the UK should be negative. It’s a reduction of more than 100% in the level of immigration, even if it’s not yet quite in the Trumpian league of 1,500%. Give him time. But given what we know about the falling birth rate, he is effectively demanding that the population of the UK should be cut as a deliberate act of government policy. To say that it puts him somewhat outside the normal range of political consensus is an understatement: other politicians (including both Farage and Badenoch) have recently been calling for measures to increase the birth rate to tackle the potential problems associated with a declining population (even though that rather ignores the fact that using an increased birthrate to fill gaps in the UK economy has a rather lengthy lead time). But being outside the consensus is probably what he’s after.

The consequences of a falling population would be significant, not least because those being driven, or encouraged, to leave are likely to be of working age and therefore making a positive contribution to the productive economy. Unless, of course, he wants to offer incentives – which an increasing number of us might even be willing to consider, with madmen like Jenrick and Farage in danger of leading a government – for UK pensioners to emigrate. I suspect not, however: something tells me that predominantly white UK-born people aren’t the ones he wants to get rid of. He hasn’t yet offered a solution to that economic conundrum, and probably won’t. Not only because there isn’t a simple one, but also because spelling out the consequences might somewhat undermine the blatant appeal to prejudice.

It would also be seriously at odds with the rest of his political philosophy. Actually, a reduced population would not, in itself, be an entirely bad thing, ignoring for a moment that merely moving people from one country to another doesn’t exactly achieve an overall reduction. It would reduce the demand for finite resources which is hardly a poor idea, but it would also require a significant rethink in the way the economy works to ensure that economic benefits are shared more equally rather than being increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. That, or force an increasing proportion of the population into poverty, which is not an obvious election-winning strategy, particularly if the deliberately-impoverished come from the voting demographic being wooed by his rhetoric. As they inevitably would. We shall have to see who will attempt to out-compete him, by assigning a hard number to the target for exporting residents in a government-sponsored people trafficking scheme. The way things are going, I wouldn’t put it past Labour to open the bidding.

Papers, please?

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There are some advantages to the idea of issuing ID cards to all, but unsurprisingly they’re not necessarily the ones which advocates use, nor are they as easily implemented as those advocates have suggested. The sort of electronic ID which is being mooted could make it easier for citizens to access government services, depending on how it is implemented. They could make it easier to prove identity when seeking credit, or buying age-restricted products. They also have some potential advantages in policing, although that only works if people are obliged to carry them. It is precisely that potential obligation to carry them which raises concerns for many, as well as carrying echoes of an unpleasant past. There’s a practical obstacle as well: whilst most of us do have smartphones these days, not everyone does, and even those who do don’t always feel it essential to carry them at all times.

One of the more novel reasons suggested this week for implementing ID cards is that it would allegedly help to reduce the ‘pull factor’ of the UK economy, which means that the UK apparently attracts migrants because they find it easy to get work in the black economy. To say that I’m unconvinced about the logic of that would be an understatement. If people are able to get work in the black economy without a NI number and without paying PAYE, then what exactly is the mechanism by which the need to have electronic ID changes that? An employer prepared to take on a member of staff without that person demonstrating the right to work in the UK is no more likely to demand to see an ID, whether physical or electronic, than (s)he is to demand a NI number. It’s called the black economy for a reason.

I’m not a huge fan of the idea of ‘British values’, largely because I’ve never seen a clear definition of them which is anything like uniquely British nor which comes close to matching the observed values of those who claim to espouse them. But given that they are supposed to be a thing, to the extent that I understand what that thing is there’s something very un-British about any move towards a ‘Papers, please!’ type of society. And there’s something very dishonest (another breach of those same values?) about a claim that doing so will reduce migration. Authoritarians always want more control over citizens, and this looks like another attempt to get that, using whatever short-term crowd-pleasing argument comes to hand.

We shouldn't be driven by speculators

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The market for government bonds works in what looks to most of us a very strange way. Despite the newspaper headlines about rising interest rates, the interest rate is actually fixed for the whole term of the bond. What appears to make the interest rate change is that the bonds can be traded, and the price at which they are traded doesn’t necessarily bear any relationship to the amount which the government accepted into savings when it issued the bond or the amount which it is obliged to return to the saver when the bond matures. So a £100 bond issued at 3% for 30 years will cost the government £3 a year in interest, and the government will refund £100 at the end of the term. In the meantime, that bond may have been bought and sold many times at varying prices: for anyone buying at less than £100, the interest rate will look higher than 3% and for anyone buying at more than £100, it will look lower than 3%. But, to the government, it is always £3 per year. For any new bonds, the government might need to match the apparent interest rate being paid on existing bonds, but changes in the bond market price do not and cannot affect the cost of existing commitments.

It means that headlines about rises in the rate of interest increasing the cost of ‘borrowing’ and putting huge additional pressure on the government can be misleading. They only increase the cost of ‘borrowing’ on any new bonds issued, not on all bonds currently in existence, although one wouldn’t necessarily understand that from the headlines. There are a number of factors which have pushed the rate for new bonds upwards, not all of which are in the control of the Chancellor. Many of them are part of global rather than local trends. The extent of the impact of the required higher rates depends on whether, and to what extent, the government is obliged to issue new bonds to cover its spending. The Chancellor and government choose to believe that they have no choice in the matter, a conclusion which pushes them inevitably in the direction of austerity and/or tax rises, which just happens to suit their own ideological view. It isn’t the only view, though. As Professor Richard Murphy points out, the government could simply stop issuing bonds and wait for the price to fall, as it inevitably will.

Murphy isn’t alone in challenging the tyranny of the bond markets. There was a letter from another professor in Wednesday’s Guardian addressing the question of bond markets very succinctly. To quote Professor Kushner, bond traders “…strive to reduce long-term stability to short-term volatility in order to multiply transactional opportunities”; in other words the price (and therefore the headline interest rate) is very largely being driven by gamblers and speculators out to make a quick buck rather than by investors making long term decisions. A half-decent Chancellor would seek to isolate us from, rather than fall into line with, the interests of such casino capitalism. It really is time to challenge and smash the hold which these people have on economic policy rather than allow them to cripple the ‘real’ economy in which most of us live in order to satisfy their greed and selfish interests.

Starmer, Amazon, and cats

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Fast, efficient and effective delivery isn’t an entirely unworthy objective of an organisation, as Amazon would attest. It’s certainly better than failing to deliver. So Sir Starmer’s promised obsession with delivery isn’t as entirely vacuous as some have suggested. There is, though, another parallel with Amazon: as long as they receive the punter’s cash and deliver the box, they don’t really care a great deal what’s actually in the box. It could be anything, anything at all; they really don’t care. Sir Starmer seems to be on the same path: what is to be delivered is incidental to the fact of delivery. Where Sir Starmer and Amazon part company, though, is that Amazon do care, at least a little bit, about whether what’s in the box matches what the customer thought they’d ordered, whereas Sir Starmer doesn’t seem particularly bothered about that. Just as long as the box gets to the doorstep.

Entirely incidentally, there are two other constituencies which enjoy receiving Amazon deliveries, other than the paying customer. Cats and small children. Few things please them more than a nice empty box. A happy cat or child doesn’t guarantee a happy customer, of course, but it’s a nice bonus. It’s not clear, however, that Sir Starmer’s deliveries will even arrive in boxes. And relying on pleasing non-voting cats and small children with virtual empty boxes which might or might not have once contained something that the voting customer might or might not have wanted doesn’t look like the brightest of political strategies. There’s a bit more to this delivery business than having an efficient courier – and so far, Sir Starmer doesn’t even seem to have found one of those.

A choice of possible legacies for Starmer

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There is a lot not to like about the new voting system which will be used for the Senedd elections next year. Whilst most seem to object to the idea of voting for parties rather than individuals, I tend to see that as little more than validation of what already happens: people tend to vote for parties not individuals, even if individual candidates prefer to believe that their ‘personal’ vote is a bigger factor than it is in practice. I've been there myself. The bigger issue for me is that, effectively, only first votes count – votes cast for any party which does not win enough votes to gain a seat are effectively worthless. It is simply not true, as proponents of the system claim, that it means that ‘every vote counts’. Like many others, I would prefer a system of STV, which overcomes both of those objections.

As systems go, however, it’s still better than the one we use for Westminster elections. At the last election, Labour gained absolute power and almost two-thirds of the seats. This is described as an overwhelming victory, despite Labour receiving only a little over one third of the vote. Latest opinion polls (and there’s a lot which can change in the interim, including a high probability of a Farage-led implosion) suggest that it’s a trick which might be repeated by Reform Ltd at the next election. It would, again, be described as a huge victory. Opinion polls for the Senedd suggest a similar level of performance by Reform Ltd in terms of votes which, translated into seats, might even make them the largest party – but they would be a very long way short of a majority. And given that their only conceivable coalition partner is the Tories, there is a vanishingly small probability that they will get anywhere near forming a government. Some have talked about how excluding the ‘winners’ from government is somehow undemocratic, but the problem is with language not democracy. A party which can only win around one third of the vote and cannot find one or more coalition partners to get it up to 50% of the membership of the Senedd hasn’t ‘won’ the election, even if it has more votes than any other party. The only thing they’ve ‘won’ is a few seats, the same as any other party represented in the Senedd. Generations of dealing with a system based on first past the post has led us to a degree of confusion about what ‘winning’ means, and we need to recalibrate our language. The ‘winners’ of an election held under a system of proportional representation are those who end up with enough partners close enough in outlook to them to be able to form a government.

There should be a lesson there for Westminster parties (and most especially Labour) in that first past the post may well gift absolute power to Farage and Reform Ltd, but a system of proportional representation would be likely to lead to a very different outcome. As Polly Toynbee pointed out in Monday’s Guardian, based on current polling Sir Starmer has a choice of legacy: he could be the man who reformed the UK’s electoral system or he could be the man who gifted the UK to Farage. The omens are not good. Not just because this is not a man who never seems particularly enamoured with the idea of changing very much at all, but because he also seems to belong to that strand of thought which has long dominated the Labour Party which would prefer to exercise absolute power occasionally (leaving the Tories or even Reform Ltd to hold similarly absolute power the rest of the time) than share power almost continuously. Choosing between enabling Farage and blocking him ought to be what is jokingly called a no-brainer, but Sir Starmer seems likely to make it literally so, by avoiding the engagement of a single neuron in the process.

Men of fighting age

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Those who would stir up anti-migrant feelings have recently taken to describing migrants being accommodated in hotels as ‘men of fighting age’. There’s no universally-accepted definition of ‘fighting age’, but broadly speaking most of us would probably think in terms of 18-45 year olds. I haven’t seen any definitive statistics on the question, but it is probably not unreasonable to assume that many of those arriving (in small boats, in particular) do indeed fit that demographic. The objective of using the term is clearly to encourage fear of the asylum-seekers.

There are some very obvious reasons why the demographic would be slanted in that way, however, and they’re nothing to do with a desire to terrorise the local population. It is precisely the demographic likely to be targeted by the regimes they are fleeing – whether as potential dissenters or even as potential soldiers. There is also a natural human resistance to risking the lives of families with children; and if a family wants to flee, who better to send as the ’advance party’ than those perceived as being most likely to be able to establish themselves in the new country.

That leads us to the corollary of the ‘fighting men’ trope: that same group are also the most likely to be capable of adding to the productive economy and the least likely – at least until any other family members arrive – to be adding to demand on services such as health, education and benefits. Allowed to work, even if only temporarily whilst their asylum claims are processed, they would actually add to, rather than subtract from, the economic health of the UK. Referring to them, more accurately and usefully, as ‘men at their peak productive age’ would, of course, have little effect on those determined to demonise them, but then those who reach their political position on the basis of prejudices and priors are never going to be swayed by mere facts anyway. It might, though, help to encourage a more reasonable debate amongst those to whom facts continue to have some salience.