Letting people determine their own future

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The British Labour Party has long suffered from a blind spot when it comes to the idea of national liberation. They have been enthusiastic supporters of the concept across the whole of the former Empire, arguing that it is for the people of the former colonies and possessions to determine their own future. But when it comes to England’s earliest possessions and conquests, here within the UK itself, their position is rather different. They’ve never quite been able to make up their minds about where Ireland fits in all this, though. Whilst Corbyn was a committed supporter of a united Ireland, Starmer has made it clear that he takes a much more unionist position and would campaign for the continuation of partition in the event of a border poll.

Whether that it the position of everyone in his party is another question – his shadow Northern Ireland Secretary said yesterday that the British Government should remain neutral on the question if a poll were to be called. As she put it, “It is only for the people of Northern Ireland to determine their own constitutional future”. It’s a sound principle, and logically it has more general application. I never understood how Corbyn could be such a strong supporter of a free united Ireland and still be such a strong opponent of Scottish or Welsh independence, and by the same token, I don’t understand how Labour can argue that the future constitutional position of Northern Ireland is entirely a matter for the people there to determine without interference from London, but the future constitutional position of Wales and Scotland is very much a matter for the London parties and the UK government to take a view on.

It might be argued that the ‘situation’ (a euphemism for decades of violence) in Northern Ireland is different, but there’s a danger in taking that view of indicating that, in some sense, violence pays. Another difference is that the British Labour Party organises and contests elections in Wales and Scotland, whereas it does not do so in Northern Ireland; that  would make it reasonable for the branch offices in Wales and Scotland to take a view and campaign on one side or the other, but it’s not much of a justification for the UK government or the English Labour Party to get involved. Doing so goes directly against the sound principle that the Shadow Secretary outlined yesterday. Still, no one should really expect the thinking of the Labour and Unionist Party to be any more logical, or any less muddled, than that of the Conservative and Unionist Party. Unionism always somehow trumps logic.

Could Boris be an alien?

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A conservative candidate, Nadhim Zahawi, found himself struggling yesterday to deny that he thought that Jeremy Corbyn would have all billionaires shot.  The possibility had been put to him on the basis that his party’s leader had claimed that Corbyn was a bit like Stalin.  In fairness to Zahawi, the rules of probability decree that nothing which has a non-zero probability can ever be entirely ruled out, even if the probability is vanishingly small.  In the same way, the probability that Zahawi possesses a functioning brain cell to call his own is hardly backed up by the evidence on display in this interview, but again, it cannot be completely ruled out.

Meanwhile, one of the Nigel Farage plc party candidates who has bailed out since the election was called apparently claims to be from the star Sirius, and given that party’s candidates’ reputation for honesty and truthfulness, I’m sure that we should take her at her word.  In any event, on what we might call the Zahawi protocol, it cannot be entirely ruled out.  It is significant, is it not, that in all that party’s references to immigration from elsewhere on this planet there is no reference that I can see to extra-planetary immigration? 

But if one party can be fielding aliens as candidates, how can we be certain that others are not also doing so?  It is surely notable that the Tories have nothing to say on extra-terrestrial immigration either.  Can we be certain that they have not been taken over by shape-changing lizards?  Perhaps we’ve been given a clue all along in the oft-repeated description of Rees-Mogg as ‘other-worldly’; it would certainly explain his complete lack of human empathy and understanding, to say nothing of Boris Johnson’s shifty eyes.  Like Labour’s alleged desire to shoot billionaires, it cannot be completely ruled out, and may even be marginally more probable.

Perhaps we’re not really having an election at all - just caught up in one of the weirder episodes of the Twilight Zone.

Being neither fish nor fowl

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There is a key difference between a politician who wants to drive and create change and one who merely wants to govern, and that difference isn’t about whether they actually change anything or not, it’s about whether they lead or simply follow.  Politicians chasing votes and power can pursue change, even significant change, if it’s what the focus groups tell them will win them votes, but that isn’t at all the same thing as holding a clear view about what a better future looks like and seeking to persuade people to that view.

Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party started out with great promise: here was a man who had consistently stood against the prevailing consensus, a man not afraid to take a stand for what he believes and willing to champion unpopular causes.  He spoke to and for the membership of his party, often against previous leaders, and was elected as leader on the back of that.  He also argued for a greater role for the members of his party in deciding policy and direction after decades when power within the party had moved away from the grass roots into the hands of MPs.  How things change!  Yesterday, he said, in relation to Brexit, that his job as Prime Minister would be to give people a choice, to remain neutral and “to deliver that option that is chosen by the British people”, a position which makes him a follower of public opinion rather than a leader of it.  I think back to some of the Labour greats of the past and try to imagine them saying something similar.  Can anyone envisage Keir Hardie, for instance, a fervent opponent of war, saying that his job was not to support or oppose war, but to implement whatever option the people wanted at a time when jingoistic British nationalism was the norm?  Of course not – he saw his role as leading public opinion, not following it.  For anyone who seriously wants to challenge and change society for the better, remaining neutral is never an option.

Corbyn has a problem, in that he is a natural and instinctive Brexiteer leading a party which is increasingly remain-focussed.  But his determination to avoid coming down on either side indicates that he sees keeping his job as party leader and getting into Downing Street as being more important than either following his own principles or honouring the wishes of his party’s grass roots.  It also goes against all the reasons which led to the party so enthusiastically electing him as leader in the first place.  I can see how a decision to back what the membership is saying could turn his position around; I can even see how coming out and openly saying that he thinks Brexit is fundamentally the right thing to do, even knowing all that we now know, might restore something of his reputation, even if it isn’t the outcome that I’d want.  But a Labour Party led by a man who thinks that being ‘neutral’ on the biggest issue of the day is a reasonable or sensible approach looks to me to be utterly doomed.

Brexit is not their real priority

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If Corbyn’s proposal that he should head a temporary government with an agreed short-term remit to deal only with avoiding a no deal Brexit was, as some have suggested, intended as a trap for the new leader of the Lib Dems, then she certainly walked straight into it.  Having said that stopping Brexit was her absolute top priority, rejecting a firm proposal to achieve that end reveals that it isn’t actually her top priority at all – preventing Corbyn from becoming PM, and/or trying to establish the Lib Dems as the ‘purist’ anti-Brexit party are both more important to her.  The Lib Dems prove to be as keen on putting their own narrow party interests first as ever – if they were serious about stopping Brexit, they’d have immediately accepted the idea of negotiating and raised their concerns or put forward alternatives in those discussions.

Having said that, for Labour to gloat over having so badly wrong-footed her isn’t so clever either.  After also claiming that their top priority is stopping no deal, their move – coupled with an apparent refusal to consider alternative possibilities – reveals that they have higher priorities as well, namely getting Corbyn into Number 10 and smashing the Lib Dem revival.  If they were serious about stopping Johnson’s no deal, they’d have put their proposal on the table and indicated that they saw it as a starting point for an adult discussion, rather than as a trap for the Lib Dems.

As to the substance, well the Lib Dem leader does actually have a point.  There must be serious doubts as to how many of the rebel Tories and newly independent MPs who want to stop no-deal would support a vote of no confidence if the result was a Corbyn-led government.  That does, in turn, though reveal that those Tories and independents who say stopping a no-deal is the most important thing are fibbing as much as Labour and Lib Dems are, because they, too, have a higher priority, namely not being seen to aid Corbyn into Downing Street.  Having spent years demonising him for being something which he is not, they are now unable to exercise the necessary flexibility.  And Swinson’s point is of only limited validity anyway – for every Tory MP who won’t countenance even a single purpose short-term government led by Corbyn, there’s going to be a Labour MP who won’t countenance a single purpose short-term government led by someone other than the leader of their party.  Their opposition to putting a veteran Tory like Ken Clarke at the head of such a government is only what one might expect; but, in typical Labour style, their opposition to putting a different Labour MP at the head is even stronger for many of them.

So, there we have it – three disparate groups, all claiming that their highest priority is stopping no-deal Brexit, all in reality placing more importance on two entirely different questions, namely who is PM and where does the best advantage for their party lie.  Unless at least one of those groups starts to behave like a group of adults and recognises that the important thing here is the remit of any temporary government, not its figurehead nor their respective positioning once the dust has settled, then the Brextremists will win by default.  They have no need to behave like adults or win any arguments; their only requirement for success is that the clear parliamentary majority against their policy remains divided over the peripheral issue of personality.  At the moment, sadly, my head tells me that the Brexiteers are more likely to win if stopping them demands adult behaviour from their opponents.

What sort of society do we want?

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In his speech at the conference of the Labour Party in Wales on the weekend, the party's leader told delegates that the real divide in Britain isn’t between Leavers and Remainers but between rich and poor, and that “The first question is what kind of society do we want to be”.  In principle, I’d agree with all of that, but I’m not so sure that it is that easy to separate the two issues.  For me, Brexit is also largely about what sort of society we want to be, and pretending that it isn’t, or is in some way just an economic issue (the infamous “jobs-first Brexit” which he talks about regularly) is ignoring the reality of the motivations behind Brexit.

Do we want to be looking outward to an increasingly interconnected world, or do we want to be insular harking back to the ‘glory’ of the past?  Do we want to co-operate with our neighbours in sharing resources and building common prosperity, or do we want to compete with them by undercutting them on standards and regulations?  Do we want to be open and welcoming towards others, or do we want to pull up the drawbridge and keep others out?  Do we want to be internationalists with a firm footing in our own roots and culture, or Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all insisting on the uniqueness and exceptionalism of those who just happen to live on a small group of offshore islands?  These are all illustrations of the ideological divide between those of us who want to be part of a wider Europe and those who want to stand alone against the world. 

To ask “what sort of society we want to be” in the current context without understanding the huge gulf between the answer given by Brexiteers and that given by Remainers is to completely miss the point.  Of course, the EU isn’t perfect and there is much which needs to change, and of course being ‘European’ in outlook doesn’t necessarily translate into being an enthusiast for all aspects of the EU.  But it’s a much better starting point for building the sort of society that I want us to be than opting out and trying to turn the clock back.  The way the question was posed simply underlines that Corbyn is himself a dyed-in-the-wool Anglo-British not-nationalist-at-all.

Finding unity of purpose

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In a rather shaky home video released yesterday (the shakiness presumably being an intentional metaphor for either Brexit or the PM’s hold on reality, or perhaps just a reflection of her difficulty in getting anyone with any expertise to assist her in doing anything these days), Theresa May talked about the Brexit impasse and the need for politicians to compromise and work together.  ‘Compromise’, though, is still something that she thinks other people should do – as Labour report from the two-party discussions to date, there’s still no sign of any willingness by the PM to change anything.

Her little homily reveals perhaps why she doesn’t think any compromise on her part is necessary – as she sees it, Labour already agree with all the key aspects of her proposal anyway.  It was interesting, though, that the first thing she mentioned when talking about the areas of agreement between the Tories and Labour was the ending of freedom of movement.  This aspect of why people voted Brexit has been at the forefront of her mind from the outset; the card which trumps everything else.  I don’t think that she’s particularly concerned about customs unions or membership of the single market; her one reason for opposing both is that they would carry a requirement to allow free movement to a greater or lesser extent.  And although she frequently talks about having the right to negotiate independent trade deals for the UK, I doubt that she’s over-exercised about that either, just as long as she can stamp out free movement. 

I wish that I could be confident that she isn’t right in her assumption that ending freedom of movement between the UK and the rest of the EU is as big a priority for Corbyn and the Labour Party as it is for her.  There’s something rather depressing about the thought that the one big idea which unites the government and the main party of opposition is the deliberate restriction of citizens’ rights.

'Honouring the outcome'

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At the heart of the PM’s demand that other parties back her deal is the idea that the way people voted should be respected.  After all, according to her, not only did the leavers win the referendum, but in 2017 the voters went on to back, overwhelmingly, the Labour and Conservative parties, both of which published election manifestos which committed to delivering Brexit.

Up to a point, her argument has some validity – but as is invariably the case with Theresa May, even when she’s telling the truth (infrequent as that may be), she can only ever manage part of the truth.  So, she’s right when she says that a 52:48 vote in favour of a vague undefined Brexit means that people voted to leave, under the rules of the referendum as they were agreed.  There was a considerable amount of law-breaking and dishonesty, true enough, and the vote was only ever supposed to be ‘advisory’: but in essence, it’s hard to argue against the idea that it delivered a mandate for ‘leaving the EU’.

But when it comes to the terms of departure, or the type of Brexit, her argument promptly falls apart.  Since her party is in government, and that party’s manifesto stated clearly that Brexit means leaving both the Customs Union and the Single Market, she demands that others must fall into line.  However, the electoral mandate which she claims for that is a good deal less clear cut than the electoral mandate for the principle of Brexit.  Because even if the referendum never spelt out the meaning of ‘Leave’, the parties' manifestos in 2017 did.  So, although the electorate weren’t given a choice between types of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, they were given such a choice in the 2017 election, and the PM’s refusal to consider the content of more than one of those manifestos is part of the problem in reaching any sort of consensus.  Her party may be the largest party by votes and seats, but in terms of electoral mandate, the position is rather more complex.

Under the rules which are used in the UK for General Elections, the percentages of votes cast show that the Tories, on a manifesto of 'no Customs Union, no Single Market', gained 42.3% of the vote.  That means that her party’s vision of what Brexit should be was rejected by the electorate on a roughly 58:42 split – a significantly bigger margin than backed Brexit in the first place.  Whilst Labour’s manifesto equally clearly stated that the party would respect the result of the referendum, it also said that any agreement reached by the party would emphasise “retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union”.  Applying the percentages of votes once more, Labour’s proposed Brexit model was rejected by a margin of 60:40. 'Our proposal was rejected by a smaller margin than yours' doesn't strike me as the most compelling argument for a particular course of action.  As far as I’m aware, no party represented in parliament proposed the ‘no deal’ option being pushed now by more than half of the Tory MPs, which means that not only are they ignoring their own manifesto commitment, they are also demanding an outcome on which precisely zero MPs were elected in 2017.

Since neither manifesto gained the party presenting it a majority in terms of seats – let alone in terms of votes – any agreement between them means that at least one of the parties must move away from what their manifesto said.  It’s been obvious for some time that the PM’s idea of ‘compromise’ is that it’s something that everyone else must do because she’s the PM, but there is no way politically that Labour can fall in with that (even if, as many of us suspect, Corbyn would quite like to do so); they have to be seen to be getting at least one major concession to their position.  Personally, I still doubt that anything much will come from the talks; I suspect that May’s real objective is simply to pile even more pressure on the dissidents in her own party (although her approach continues to look counter-productive in that regard) but leave herself in a position to then blame Labour if that fails.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that a compromise of some sort does miraculously emerge, under which she drops her opposition to a Customs Union and Labour drop their insistence on remaining close to the Single Market (or some other combination of rubbed out red lines).  What that will mean is that the deal which parliament will then be asked to vote on is one which was not only not on the table in the 2016 referendum, it was also an option which nobody was even given the option of supporting in the 2017 election.  In effect, the outcome of the PM’s demand that what the people voted for must be delivered would become an argument that what no-one voted for must be delivered, and that it must be delivered without asking what the people think because they’ve already told us that.  It’s a very strange definition of ‘democracy’ and makes a complete mockery of the PM's demand that the ‘will of the people’ must be delivered, even if it were possible to believe that the ‘will of the people’ had not changed one iota in three years.  At the very least, it's a highly selective way of 'honouring the outcome'.

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.

Sticking to principles

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Theresa May: You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

Jeremy Corbyn: Not until you rule out no deal.

TM: I can’t and won’t rule out no deal.  The only way to rule out no deal is to support my deal.  You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

JC: Not until you rule out no deal.

TM: I can’t and won’t rule out no deal.  The only way to rule out no deal is to support my deal.  You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

JC: Not until you rule out no deal.

TM: I can’t and won’t rule out no deal.  The only way to rule out no deal is to support my deal.  You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

JC: Not until you rule out no deal.

TM: I can’t and won’t rule out no deal.  The only way to rule out no deal is to support my deal.  You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

House of Commons:  We don’t like no deal.

TM: That’s non-binding and changes nothing.  I can’t and won’t rule out no deal.  The only way to rule out no deal is to support my deal.  You should come and talk to me about Brexit.

JC: Oh, alright then.

Maybe Corbyn's right

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No, not about whether he did or did not say that the Prime Minister is a stupid woman – I think that he probably didn’t.  Nor about whether she actually is stupid or not (delusional seems a better description to me).  It’s rather about whether now is or is not the time to move a vote of no confidence in the government.  Moving a meaningless vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister herself, which is unlikely to even get discussed let alone passed, and which even if it were both discussed and passed would have no impact on anything is something of a copout, of course – but is it really any more meaningless than moving a motion of no confidence which would certainly be defeated?

I can understand why the other opposition parties are so angry; it can’t be easy to sit there and observe on a daily basis the lies, duplicity, obstinacy and sheer incompetence of the governing party.  The desire to do ‘something’ must be overwhelming.  And the temptation to hope that at least one of the 117 Tory MPs who have clearly indicated their lack of confidence in their leader in a secret ballot might be willing to do the same in a public vote must be a strong one.  But, in all seriousness, would the demanded vote of confidence, with all its associated huffing, puffing and expressions of outrage, really do much more than add to the sense that the so-called (albeit badly misnamed) ‘mother of parliaments’ has chosen the lead-up to the pantomime season to degenerate into utter and impotent farce?

The one lesson that I draw from the events of recent months in respect of our ‘democracy’ is about how little power parliament actually has.  They can’t even discuss Corbyn’s cop-out motion unless the government allows them to, and they can’t vote on anything connected with Brexit unless the government first puts down a motion, and the government seem to have an awful lot of control over what they can vote on even then.  Given that, for many, Brexit was about ‘democracy’ and ‘taking back control’, there’s a certain irony in the way that it has succeeded in highlighting the flaws in the UK’s system of democracy and underlining how little control parliament has over anything. 

I’m not convinced that creating a situation where all those Tory MPs who voted to say that have no confidence whatsoever in the PM would be lining up to say that they’re backing her to the hilt is a particularly constructive way of using the time and energy of MPs.  Nor am I convinced that the consequences of success, however improbable that would be, in such a vote have been thought through.  Even if it resulted in a General Election, and even if the Labour Party were to win, swapping a blue unicorn believer for a bearded pink one doesn’t look to me like a huge gain.  Corbyn is probably right that a no confidence vote is unwinnable at present, but he’s accidentally right for another reason as well – it wouldn’t change anything.  The only thing that seems likely to bring about a change in direction would be for the Labour Party to swing behind a second referendum, and he's still resisting that.

The meaning of words

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“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”  That seems to make Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty something of a role model for the average Tory politician these days.  When Gove, Leadsom et al proclaim their loyalty to the Prime Minister, what they mean is that they will do everything in their power to undermine the agreement which she has reached with the EU.  Only a badly-weakened Prime Minister would tolerate that sort of ‘loyalty’ and ‘support’ within her own cabinet; effectively, the ‘gang of five’ have become unsackable, in the short term at least.

There is something very surreal about a Prime Minister trying so hard to sell a deal which her cabinet has ‘agreed’ (another word whose meaning is somewhat flexible) which a group of people who were party to the ‘agreement’ are busy rubbishing, and which all involved know full well stands no chance of getting through the House of Commons, even if she’s still around to promote it.  In parallel with all this is the attempt by some Tory MPs to unseat her by persuading enough of her own MPs to demand a vote of no confidence.  What better at a critical juncture than to put everything on hold for a few weeks whilst they hold an internal party election to determine who gets the ‘opportunity’ to make an even bigger hash of things?

It was only a few weeks ago that her internal critics were regularly telling the media that they already had over 40 letters delivered and just needed a few more, but we seem to have had at least 20 more in the last few days without ever getting to the magic number.  This probably simply means that Tory MPs have been lying to each other for months about whether they have or have not submitted their letters and/or subsequently withdrawn them.  But then there’s no reason why lies and duplicity should be restricted to those of cabinet rank.  Who knows what Humpty Dumpty might have meant if he said he’d submitted a letter?

At the heart of all this dissension lies the great fantasy.  Gove, Raab, Johnson, (yes, and Corbyn too) – a parcel of rogues if ever there were one – all essentially claim that if only they were doing the negotiating, the EU would immediately cave in and give them more of the benefits of membership with fewer of the obligations.  Even Humpty Dumpty might have struggled to make sense of that one.

Carwyn and Corbyn aren't that different

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There have been times during the Brexit saga when the First Minister has seemed to be saying something different and more helpful than his party’s leader in London.  He has generally managed, in particular, to give the impression that he is much more open to continuing membership of the single market and customs union.  But his comments last week put him right back in the same position as both Corbyn and May.

There’s nothing wrong with asking the EU to ‘help us avoid a catastrophic Brexit no-deal’, as the headline put it.  Indeed, it seems to me that the EU27 have had that as an objective from the outset but have been hampered by the utter inability of the UK Government to agree on what it actually wants.  But in asking the EU to ‘blur its red lines’, he is effectively asking for exactly the same thing as May, Corbyn and the rest – a deal in which the UK gains some or all of the benefits whilst avoiding compliance with the rules.  The semblance of reasonableness is once again lost in the demand for exceptional treatment for the UK.

It’s important, of course, that he does what he can to get the best deal for Wales from the increasingly shambolic process which Cameron kicked off; but he’d stand a better chance of doing that if he were willing to explain, clearly and repeatedly to the people of Wales, why the Brexit fantasy they were sold was never an option, instead of joining the fantasists in pretending that it, or something like it, can be implemented as they expected.  He's as much an Anglo-British nationalist as the rest of them.

Rees-Mogg's little helper

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I can think of no good reason in principle for opposing Corbyn’s call for a return to ‘making things’ in the UK rather than depending on cheap labour elsewhere.  He’s not alone in believing that the UK economy has become over-dependent on what are loosely called financial services.  But linking it to Brexit rather than to under-regulated capitalism is playing into the hands of those who want to use Brexit for a completely different vision of the future.  And some of his proposals fly in the face of reason.

There is nothing that prevents EU members from having a healthy manufacturing sector.  As a percentage of national output, Germany, for instance, manages 23% compared to only 10% in the UK (UK Parliamentary research briefing).  The chart on page 7 of the same source shows how the UK has declined from being in the top 20 in terms of manufacturing output as a proportion of GDP in 1970 to the 118^th position by 2015.  The cause of the decline in manufacturing in the UK has more to do with a long-term productivity issue (largely down to a lack of investment) and the economic policies pursued by successive governments – Labour and Tory alike.  The capitalist mechanisms which led to globalisation and the ‘offshoring’ of manufacturing don’t operate in a vacuum, they operate in the context of policies followed by governments. Being a member of the EU is no obstacle to a successful manufacturing economy, and it follows that ceasing to be a member isn’t the solution. 

There are many on ‘the left’ who believe that part of the solution to the decline in manufacturing is to give more state aid to industry, and that membership of the EU prevents that.  The idea that the EU ‘prevents’ state aid is not new, despite having been debunked many times over.  (Here’s an example of one response on that issue.)   What EU state rules do prevent is ‘unfair’ state aid; the sort of state aid to industry which distorts the market and gives companies or countries an unfair advantage.  There are plenty of examples of nationalised companies and state-aided companies within the EU; there’s nothing that prevents the UK from following the same route as long as it’s done in a way which does not tilt the playing field.

Of course, that may be exactly what Corbyn and his acolytes want to do – provide state aid in ways which enable UK companies to gain a competitive advantage over those in countries like Germany - and to the extent that those companies can find an adequate domestic market in the UK, it’s an approach which can work.  It would be naïve, however, to believe that companies receiving such aid would be able to trade freely with countries whose companies do not receive such aid.  Any trade agreement with the EU will inevitable make it clear that subsidised companies in the UK will not have access to the EU market; and any other country entering a trade agreement with the UK will almost certainly impose similar conditions – it would be economic suicide for them to do otherwise.  Corbyn’s policy is a recipe for the sort of economic isolationism which Trump is pursuing in the US.

Perhaps most alarming of all was Corbyn’s suggestion (reported by the BBC) that Labour ‘would opt out of parts of world trade rules if necessary’ to ensure jobs went to local people.  I can see how the promise might be attractive to those whose votes he wants to win but given that we already know that a trading relationship based on WTO rules is the worst possible outcome of Brexit, suggesting unilaterally opting out even of those rules is taking things to a whole new level, and is in danger of making Corbyn look even more like an extreme Brexiteer than Rees-Mogg.

There is much about the trend to globalisation which I dislike.  On that I’m with Corbyn but where we part company is when the proposed solution is to try and pretend that it all never happened, turn back the clock, and go back to where we were before.  That really is Brexitism writ large and, as we are in serious danger of discovering, the past was not the nirvana as which some seem to see it.  Any viable solution has to come from working with others, not pretending that the UK can simply go it alone.  It’s not only the Tories who are suffering from Anglo-British nationalism and exceptionalism, and an idealised memory of the past.

Trying to spot the difference

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Since the outset, it has been clear that there is only one way of avoiding border controls on the island of Ireland, and that is a common regulatory framework governing all goods and services traded across that border.  And there are only two ways of maintaining a common regulatory framework – either the UK follows the same EU rules as the Republic, or else the Republic opts out of the EU and follows the same rules as the UK.  The latter is, of course, the preferred option of Brexiteers; not for nothing has Farage been attempting to stir up support for ‘Irexit’.  And a few extremists on the Tory side have also made it clear that they think that the Republic should follow its former masters as the next step in the dismantling of the whole structure of the EU, and a return to the good old days of wave-ruling.

It’s all part of their fantasy world, a world in which a vote in the UK means that everybody else must change so that the UK can continue as though nothing has happened; a world in which everyone else pays the cost of decisions that we make.  To date, they’ve found ways of kicking all the cans down the road, in some cases by making promises that it later became clear that they never had any intention of honouring.  But sooner or later, reality will catch up.

One of the biggest obstacles to that dawning of reality is a Labour opposition which indulges in the same fantasy thinking, pretending that using different words to describe the same thing somehow turns the unachievable into a practical and realistic prospect.  Last week, Corbyn reiterated that “Labour will not support any Brexit deal that includes the return of a hard border to this island” in a speech in Belfast, but he continues to reject any and every solution which would actually ensure that that could be the case.  In substance, albeit not in rhetoric, his position is indistinguishable from that of the Tories.  May and Corbyn are both demanding that there should be no border across Ireland whilst rejecting the common regulatory regime required to ensure that.  They’re as bad as each other.

Not being worse

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In normal times, a demand from the leader of the opposition that an incompetent Prime Minister, patently making very little progress in managing her own party on the major issue of the day, let alone managing relations with people outside both the party and the country, would cause many people to conclude, “Well, he couldn’t do much worse, could he?”.  Not doing worse is hardly a compliment to anyone’s ability, of course, and it isn’t the same as ‘doing better’.

But these are not normal times.  When the leader of the opposition shares the same red lines as the Prime Minister, and seems to be essentially demanding the same thing – a unique customs relationship where the rules applying to other members don’t apply to the UK, and access to the EU single market on the same terms as members but without following the same rules – and where he would face the same problem of keeping his own party on side with whatever he says, there is little left to distinguish between the two.  Perhaps he’d be a better negotiator, but I’m sure that I’m not alone in wondering on what basis anyone would believe that Corbyn’s negotiating skills are going to be superior to those being deployed at the moment; there seems no obvious reason to believe that they would be.

None of that invalidates the, “he couldn’t do any worse” argument however; if only because it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could.

Mirror, mirror...

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…on the wall, who’s the stupidest of them all?

The Foreign Secretary seems to be spending much of his time and effort criticising the leader of the Labour Party for not immediately condemning unequivocally those whom Johnson holds responsible for both the Salisbury poisoning and the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  Johnson claims that Corbyn is the ‘Kremlin’s useful idiot’ in response to which Labour have in turn called Johnson an idiot for undermining the UK Government’s position by lying about what the man from Porton Down did or did not tell him.  If Johnson is right, than at least being useful to someone puts Corbyn a step ahead of Johnson, who has never been demonstrably useful to anyone.

We can all swap insults, but it isn’t the most helpful or enlightening approach to grown-up politics, and given Johnson’s reputation for lying, time and again (having been sacked from jobs twice for doing so, without even starting on the £350 million a week for the NHS), he’s not in a good position in the credibility stakes.  Bluster and diversion are his standard recourse when challenged, but surely people are seeing through that by now.

As I’ve posted before, it may well be that he and the government are party to some secret intelligence not shared with the leader of the opposition, let alone with the rest of us, which enables him to be as certain as he is.  But given his record, his demand that people fall into line and agree with him is unrealistic and unreasonable.  It’s true that there is something very British about supporting ‘my country, right or wrong’, but it’s an approach which hasn’t always exactly worked out well.   Not for nothing is patriotism regarded as the last refuge of a scoundrel, although scoundrel seems a bit mild as an epithet to apply to Johnson. 

There’s something very un-British, however, about demanding that people be found guilty and punished without due process and proper examination of all the evidence.  I always thought that the adage that ‘justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done’ was one of the core values that we’re all supposed to share.  It isn’t the first time, though, that I’ve discovered that my understanding of ‘British’ values is different from that of those demanding that we all sign up to them.

British nationalism isn't exclusive to the Tories

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One of the lines used by Corbyn in his speech at the weekend was this: "As democratic socialists, we respect the result of the referendum”.  At first sight, it looks like an entirely reasonable statement, but the premise behind it deserves a bit more thought than that.

I can see how being ‘democratic’ requires the result of any vote by the people to be ‘respected’, in the sense of being a decision at a point in time.  But any democratically-taken decision at a point in time can always be changed by another democratic decision taken at another point in time.  Whether a particular time is the ‘right’ time to test opinion again or not is a question of detail, and I can understand – and even support – an argument which says that we can’t keep on asking people to revisit a decision until we get the ‘right’ answer.  That isn’t at all the same thing, though, as saying that we have no right to continue the argument and try and persuade people to change their minds.  There’s nothing about the word ‘democratic’ which requires a decision thus taken to be immutable regardless of the consequences or subsequent events.

I don’t see, though, why being a ‘socialist’ requires any decision to be ‘respected’ to the extent that it is somehow illegitimate to argue for it to be reversed.  Indeed, quite the reverse.  Being any sort of ‘socialist’ surely requires one to articulate a particular view of the world and to actively seek to persuade people of the validity of that view rather than simply accepting that the people have rejected your world view.

And that brings us to the heart of the Corbyn/Labour problem in relation to the EU.  Corbyn – and some of those around him – still cling to the view that detaching the UK from the rest of Europe is actually a way of advancing their socialist vision rather than constraining it.  An ‘independent’ UK coupled with a ‘socialist’ government is, from that viewpoint, a route to beginning a transformation of British society.  They just seem unable or unwilling to articulate it in those terms, which suggests at the least a lack of conviction either that they can make it happen or else that they can convince people of the merit of the case.  Possibly both.

The political analysis which paints the EU as a club of capitalists committed to an ideology which does not operate in the best interests of working people is one with which I have considerable sympathy, and was part of my opposition to membership of the EEC at the time of the first referendum back in 1975.  As things transpired, however, working people had more to fear from the government of the UK throughout the 1980s whilst it was the EEC/EU which did more to protect the rights of working people, even if the UK repeatedly sought opt-outs from the relevant EU rules.  Looking back over recent history, it was Tory governments which sought to resist extensions of rights proposed through the EU structures, and Labour governments which subsequently embraced those changes, such as the Social Chapter.  In that context, it’s no surprise that one of the Tory drivers for Brexit is the idea that all of those protections can be removed once free of the influence of ‘Brussels’.

The problems for the unarticulated Corbynite view of the world are, firstly, that he can’t carry his own party with him, which is part of the reason for failing to explain his position in detail; secondly that even if he could, it depends on Labour being able to win a succession of elections over a lengthy period to make and embed the sort of changes required – a possibility which history suggests is unlikely; and thirdly that the rest of the world needs to play ball while it happens.  The history of trying to build ‘socialism in one country’ is not exactly a happy one.

The alternative is that ‘democratic socialists’ in the UK seek to work with similarly-minded people in other countries across Europe to bring about wider and more permanent change across the continent.  It’s a daunting task, but it seems to me more likely to succeed in the long run.  It requires the sort of ‘internationalist’ approach about which Labour often talk but on which they rarely act.  Deep down, there is a strong thread of British nationalism and exceptionalism running through the Labour Party, just like in the Tory party.  It’s always been there, but the combination of Corbyn and Brexit is exposing it more clearly.

Choosing the wrong target

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After Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at his party’s Scottish Branch meeting over the weekend, it is a complete mystery to me how anyone is still giving any credibility to the idea that Labour’s policy on the EU is in any way different in substance to that of the Tory government.  As an exercise in cakeism, it was a tour de force: Labour want all the benefits of the EU without being bound by any of the rules; they want to be outside the EU yet still have a say in all the important EU policies; they want the exact same benefits as we get from membership whilst having more freedom to make our own policies than any member, let alone any of the countries with which the EU has an existing relationship.  Other than the use of words, and the fig leaf of ‘a’ rather than ‘the’ customs union, it was a speech which could have come from the mouth of Johnson, Gove, Fox, or May.

Except, that is, for the part about immigration.  That was more Farage than Johnson and friends.  And it was a particularly depressing section of his speech, designed more to try to appeal to the prejudices of a particular segment of the electorate than to set out any sort of vision for the future.  There’s been plenty of research showing that the impact of immigration on wages and opportunities is minimal, but he chose to ignore that, concentrating instead on the idea that the damaging part of immigration, in economic terms, is when agencies bring in foreign labour to undercut workers in the UK.

Now, on a factual basis, I don’t know what proportion of total immigration this issue affects.  It’s certainly not all immigration, and I suspect that it’s actually a small part, but it’s a part which is more visible in some communities and some types of work than others, as a result of which it probably has more impact on people’s views on the issue than other types of immigration.  It would be interesting to see some more detailed research on it, but I’ll accept that there is a widespread perception that some agencies are getting around UK law on issues such as the minimum wage by providing food, accommodation, transport etc. and docking these costs (at an inflated level) from the wages being paid to the migrants concerned.  As I said, the extent to which this is a true or accurate perception is a question on which I do not have adequate information to make a judgement, but I’m certain that the perception is widely held.

If we suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is an accurate perception, and that the practice is in use widely across the UK, then it is reasonable to ask what the solution might be.  And my immediate reaction is that if there are holes in the law allowing unscrupulous capitalist employers to exploit employees, than those holes need to be plugged and enforcement action taken.  And had Corbyn suggested that, I would have whole-heartedly supported him.  Protecting workers from exploitation by unscrupulous employers is exactly the approach that I would have expected from anyone calling himself or herself a socialist.

Sadly, however, that wasn’t what he did.  To his shame, he effectively scapegoated the migrants themselves, by supporting an end to freedom of movement.  It’s a case of blaming the victims of an economic relationship based on power and wealth for being on the wrong side of that relationship.  His underlying point, I assume, is that freedom of movement for lower paid workers is a policy which is working more in the interests of employers than of employees.  But even if he’s right, the answer isn’t to curtail the freedom of workers to move, it is to curtail the freedom of employers to exploit.

The race to the bottom

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It is right that the government and opposition parties should be competing with each other to offer alternative views of the future.  But that doesn’t make it sensible for them to compete to see who can come up with the most inane ideas about borders and customs union.  In a tight race this week to see who could say the silliest thing on the issue, Corbyn’s claim that we could be part of a customs union in which the UK could set its own external tariffs was narrowly pipped by Johnson’s claim that the whole border issue is as simple as recording the registration numbers of vehicles crossing it.  Neither show much understanding of the question.

What the Government has failed to explain to the satisfaction of just about anyone so far is why it is so important that the UK should be able to negotiate its own trade deals rather than relying on the 60 or so trade deals which the EU already has in place and the new deals which it is already pursuing.  Why duplicate or compete with that, just to put a different flag on the agreement?  In fairness to Corbyn and Labour, as I understood what Corbyn and his supporters to be saying this week, the reason that they want to be able to do that is because they feel that the EU has been discriminatory against poorer countries in its current tariff structures.  If true, that’s a fair point, and a reasonable basis for seeking change.  The problem with Labour’s position is that they seem to believe that they can both stay within a single tariff regime with the rest of the EU and at the same time adjust the UK’s tariffs with the countries concerned.

If we use a few simple figures to illustrate the point, what they are arguing in essence is that their (new, improved, bespoke) customs union can impose a common external tariff of, say 20%, and that the UK can then negotiate separate deals to reduce that tariff to say 10% (or even 0%) for those poorer countries to help them to improve their economies.  In principle, that’s simple enough – provided that those imported goods then stay inside the UK and are not transported elsewhere with the customs union.  But the point of the customs union is that goods from one member state can flow freely to all the others.  How would one prevent goods from being imported to, say, Belfast with no tariff and then transported by lorry to Dublin where the common external tariff of 20% applies, without introducing the sort of hard border which Labour say their proposal is designed to obviate? 

The whole point of a customs union is that it allows goods to flow across the ‘internal’ borders of that union without requiring any tariffs; Labour’s proposal would seem to undermine that completely.  Their fraternal support for the poor whose goods are being shut out of the EU is well-intentioned but, assuming the truth of the claim, what is the best way of seeking change?  Is it by changing the EU’s trade policies to allow those poorer countries better trade access to the whole EU market of 500 million, or is it by negotiating UK specific deals which only allow access to the UK market of 60 million? 

Noting the registration details of vehicles crossing the border with no clue as to who or what is inside them was the even sillier response from the Foreign Secretary who seems not to comprehend the difference between a county border and an international one.  His proposal would certainly provide an electronic list of which vehicles are in the UK at any time and which are not.  But it would tell us nothing at all about who or what was in the vehicles.  Obviously ‘taking control of our borders’ is rather less important to him than he said it was.

How long is the horn?

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Based on his speech yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn has clearly been taking lessons from Theresa May.  And fair play to him, why should it be the exclusive preserve of the Tories to make speeches in which they say very little but which the media portray as some sort of pivotal moment?  For make no mistake about it – despite the media hype, the detail of what Corbyn actually said (full text available here) was essentially the same as what he and the Prime Minister have both been saying for months. 

It’s true that he said that Labour would seek to remain in ‘a’ customs union, something which May has ruled out.  That certainly looks like a difference, but the devil is in the detail.  The Government have ruled out remaining in any sort of customs union on the solid and entirely accurate basis that any such union necessarily precludes individual trade agreements with third party countries.  They are demanding a bespoke agreement instead which provides the benefits of the customs union whilst also allowing the UK to negotiate other trade deals.  What Corbyn said was that he was quite happy for the UK to remain in a new bespoke customs union, but that such an arrangement “would depend on Britain being able to negotiate agreement of new trade deals in our national interest.”  That doesn’t look like a whole lot of difference to me; it’s just semantics.

It is, of course, in the interests of the Tories to pretend that Labour are saying something radically different so that they can portray them as betraying the will of the people.  It is in the interest of the Labour Party to pretend that they are saying something radically different so that they can persuade Remainers to vote for them in the general election which is looking increasingly likely.  And it is in the interests of the media to pretend that Labour are saying something radically different so that they have something to report.  However, none of this actually makes it any different in reality.  Using different terminology to describe a beast of fantasy doesn’t make it any less of a fantasy.

In the epic session at Chequers last week, the Tories managed to unite around the proposition that they want the EU to provide a unicorn.  I’m not sure that they’ve entirely resolved the enormously important theological questions about how long or what colour the horn should be, but they’re absolutely certain that any type of horse would be completely unacceptable, and a betrayal of the will of the people who, whether they knew it or not, demanded a unicorn in the referendum.  And, let me be clear (as the PM might say), the government is getting on with the work of delivering that unicorn in the negotiations with the EU27.  Corbyn and Labour, on the other hand, are now entirely in agreement that they are not going to demand a unicorn at all, oh no.  For them, a horse will be perfectly acceptable, just as long as it has a large single horn growing out of its forehead.  I don’t know whether they’ve got round to discussing the size and colour of the horn yet, but I’m sure that they will in due course.

Meanwhile, the EU27are doing a lot of collective head-scratching, wondering what sort of people can devote so much time and energy to debating the finer points of the appearance of a mythical beast.  For those who follow the true faith of Brexit, this insistence on ascribing the status of myth to their beloved unicorn (or one-horned horse if you prefer that term) is yet another example of the way in which those evil Europeans are determined to punish the UK for leaving the EU.

Now, let’s get down to basics.  Should the horn be smooth or spiralled?