How does bombing help?

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I can understand why Tory MPs keen for the UK to further ramp up the pending conflict with Russia are ready to misrepresent the facts, but there is really no excuse for the media to be doing the same thing.  Suggesting that the OPCW have ‘backed the UK’ over the Salisbury poisoning is at best going beyond the available facts, and at worst a deliberate misrepresentation.  All the OPCW have actually done is to confirm that the UK had correctly identified the chemical formula of the substance used, as Craig Murray has succinctly pointed out.  And unless one chooses to believe the wilder conspiracy theories suggesting that there never was an attack, it was always close to certain that the chemical analysis would be confirmed. 

That tells us nothing, though, about who actually made it or deployed it, and it was never going to answer those questions.  The answers to those questions depend on the continuing investigations by the police and other agencies, and the government issuing both verdict and sentence in advance doesn’t change that.  Personally, I tend to the view that the most obvious explanation is likely to be the correct one; I just don’t think that ‘likeliest’ is good enough to start punishing the supposed perpetrator.  Having motive, method, and opportunity (as the Foreign Secretary has put it) isn’t the same as proving guilt - especially if you can’t demonstrate that no-one else had all three.

I have a similar position on the chemical attack in Syria, in that I suspect that the likeliest explanation is the most obvious one, but again, I don’t think that ‘likeliest’ is good enough to start dishing out the punishment, particularly when the individuals likely to be executed in the process are neither those who used the weapons nor those who ordered their use, merely those who happen to be in the vicinity of the chosen targets.  Killing a random group of military personal and/or civilians is a very odd definition of ‘holding Assad to account’.

I understand the frustration of those who feel powerless in the face of the tragedy of Syria, and I agree with those who argue that non-intervention has a price as well as intervention.  And of course it’s true that allowing people to get away with the use of chemical weapons once will encourage them to do it again.  But the argument which takes us from those statements to ‘we must bomb Syrian military forces or facilities’ is lacking in logic or reason, and simply attacking anyone who questions that as being unpatriotic and a supporter of Russia is a puerile and unworthy debating tactic.  

What those people calling for military action against Assad need to demonstrate is how such action would make the situation better not worse for the people of Syria and how it would shorten rather than prolong the war.  To date, they have not only failed to do so, they don’t even seem to be trying.

The problem of borders

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The proposal by Michael Gove to ban the export of live animals for slaughter has provoked a range of reactions, but none of them seem to have touched on what is, to me, the most curious part in political terms.  It’s presented as being in the interests of animal welfare, and I can certainly see that it is better to slaughter animals for food as close as possible to the point of production rather than to transport them across large distances.  I don’t, though, understand why it makes a difference whether the animals are being transported for slaughter rather than for other purposes.  I can’t believe that the animals are aware of the difference between the two – it’s the transportation which causes any distress, not the purpose of that transportation.

But above all, it’s the distinction between ‘export’ and ‘internal’ transportation that I don’t understand.  Under his proposals, transporting animals from Kent to Pas-de-Calais would be unacceptable, but transporting the same animals from Aberdeen to Exeter would not.  In truth, the sheep really don’t know the difference – crossing an international border is to them a meaningless concept.  And that, rather than animal welfare, is the real point of this post.

International borders are an artificial, entirely human, construct.  For sure, they are important in terms of marking the difference between different regulatory regimes, and between the territories administered by different human authorities, but considering their impact on the degree of additional stress experienced by farmed animals when crossing them (i.e. zero) should help us to understand just how artificial these lines on maps are – and in the process, help us to understand the innate silliness of the ‘control our own borders’ nonsense of the Brexiteers.

It is a backward-looking form of nationalism which insists on the importance of these lines on a map and in controlling what crosses them; as an independentista, I don’t believe that policing lines on maps contributes anything to the degree of independence a country has.  What it does do is contribute to a sense of exceptionalism and apartness, a sense of ‘us’ and ‘others’.  Sheep don’t need that – why should humans?

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.

Don't just do something

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Whether chemical weapons were or were not used in Syria, and who was responsible if they were, are questions to which the answers, at present, are far from being as certain as the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister are asserting.  They, of course, believe that they are uniquely placed to judge guilt or innocence without needing firm evidence, as we've seen on other issues recently.  But one doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder why the Syrian regime would choose to risk international outrage and potential further military action against itself by using such weapons in a battle which it is on the point of winning in any event, even if the war still seems to be far from over.  I can accept as a fact that dictators are not necessarily bound by any considerations of logic, but that, like much of what the UK and US governments are saying, is not enough to pronounce Assad guilty.   

But let us suppose that the simplest explanation of the facts that are known is also the correct one, and that Assad did order the use of some sort of chemical weapons against civilians in a rebel-held area, what should the response be?  The outrage against the use of banned weapons is justifiable, although I note in passing that I struggle to understand why the method of inflicting death and injury is considered more important that the fact of inflicting them.  My support for banning certain types of weapons has always been based on such bans being a step along the road to ending war, not as a means of legitimising non-banned forms of warfare, which is how governments seem to interpret it.  Civilians killed by high explosives are no less dead than those killed by gas, and the tragedy of what is happening in Syria is by no means contingent on the methods being used.

It seems likely that the madman in the White House will respond by launching a further military strike against some target or other in Syria, and apparently the UK government is seriously considering taking part in any such action.  But what exactly would adding further to the toll of death and destruction in Syria (which is the inevitable outcome) actually achieve?  The Prime Minister said that her aim is “…to ensure those responsible are held to account”, which sounds strong and resolute, but it's just a meaningless form of words.  The likely target of any strike is an airfield or military base somewhere in Syria (preferably where there are no Russians who might become victims of such a strike), but that is more to do with killing a few government soldiers or airmen selected at random than with holding anyone to account.  It assumes, seen from the perspective of those claiming that Assad has authorised the use of banned weapons, that killing a few random members of his armed forces will punish a ruthless dictator to such an extent that he will mend his ways and never do it again.  That seems unlikely to me, to say the least.

I understand and share the frustration of the leaders of countries across the world at their apparent inability to bring the war in Syria to a negotiated end.  But negotiated end there will have to be, eventually.  In the meantime, the very least we should be doing is avoiding making a bad situation worse.  Dropping more bombs on a country which is already being bombed by half a dozen air forces from around the world because we ‘have to do something’ and that’s all we can think of doesn’t look to me like the best way of helping the Syrian people, even if it didn’t run a serious risk of escalating the conflict.

A rock and a hard place

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The anger of many over the re-naming of the Severn Crossing is understandable, and was entirely predictable.  And the disappointment with the First Minister in ‘raising no objections’ is equally unsurprising.  I do though, almost feel a little sorry for him – he was caught between a rock and a hard place.  If he raised no objections, then he was obviously going to get the criticism now being hurled at him by some politicians and through social media.  But, had he raised an objection, I think we can be certain that the Secretary of State would not simply have forgotten the idea and gone away; royal sycophancy is his natural state.  And any objection raised by Carwyn Jones would certainly have become known to the media (anyone really see Cairns missing an open goal like that?), as a result of which he would have been pilloried by the tabloids for a snub to His Royal Charliness and family.  So, weighing up the options – a storm of protest from the usual suspects on social media or a front page tirade in the most widely-read newspapers in Wales - which would you choose?

But that brings me back to the ‘almost’ a few sentences ago.  He either weighed it up in the calculated fashion I’ve suggested above and opted for the quiet(er) life, or he gave it no real thought and went for Labour’s traditional deferential approach to the monarchy.  In neither case does he actually deserve much sympathy; but the latter case looks the likelier, and getting off (comparatively) lightly is just a bonus for him.  The biggest mistake is being made by anyone who ever thought that his response would be made on the basis of any thought about what’s best for Wales.

Responding to the threat of redundancy?

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At long last, I understand why the Foreign Secretary is so angry with the Russians.  When he said, “Russia has had one goal in mind since the attempted murders on UK soil through the use of a military-grade chemical weapon – to obscure the truth and confuse the public”, all became clear to me – he’s really worried about his own future.  After all, if the Russians should succeed in obscuring the truth and confusing the public, what role is left for Boris?

Sharing the eggs between the baskets

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Last week, the leader of Cardiff Council told us that the City of Cardiff is ‘Wales's best economic asset’.  As is ever the case, such terms need more precise definition before being accepted uncritically, but in the sense that Cardiff and the area around it is the wealthiest part of Wales and contributes most to GVA, then I agree with the statement.  That isn’t the same as agreeing with the conclusion, however, which seems to be that Cardiff should therefore receive a disproportionate share of future investment to make it even more successful and wealthy.  There are two main reasons for rejecting that conclusion.

The first is that it ignores, or overlooks, the question of how that situation has come about in the first place.  There is nothing inherently special about Cardiff which means that it has become wealthy while the rest of Wales has not (in the same way as there is nothing inherent in being Welsh which dooms us to being one of the poorest parts of the UK).  One of the reasons for Cardiff’s greater success has precisely been that it has already received a disproportionate share of past investment.  Imagine for a moment replacing Cardiff with London, and saying ‘As the result of previous wealth concentration, London is the UK’s best economic asset, therefore future investment should be concentrated there’.  As a statement of current UK government policy, it looks pretty accurate, but most of us in Wales would reject that as a basis for determining future investment strategy.  Why would we want to simply replicate that in Wales?

The second is that, ultimately, such an approach amounts to seeing the future economic growth of Wales in ‘average’ terms.  That is to say that Wales, as a whole, looks better off if the average GVA per head increases, and the easiest way of achieving that might well be to put the investment into those areas where GVA growth is potentially the fastest.  But improving the ‘average’ GVA per head isn’t the same as making everyone in Wales better off.  Indeed, it is perfectly possible in mathematical terms to increase the average whilst decreasing the actuals across most of the country.  And sometimes it even looks as though government policy is to attempt to prove that mathematical theorem in practice.

That isn’t to say that Cardiff shouldn’t receive a ‘fair’ proportion of future investment (although defining ‘fair’ is a major topic in itself, far more complex than mere headcounts).  But any Welsh government which was serious about sharing prosperity would be looking to a strategy which improves life for all the people in Wales.  And that can’t be measured simply in averages.

The EU is not alone

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According to the Brexiteers, the ability of the UK to sign new ‘free trade’ agreements with other countries across the world is one of the great prizes open to us following Brexit.  Unburdened by the need to act collectively with the other 27 members of the EU, the UK will be able to negotiate directly with a host of other states.  And having what they now admit will necessarily be ‘less free’ trade with the EU27 is, in their view, a price worth paying to get to that position.  (I understand, and have considerable sympathy with, the argument put forward by some of the so-called ‘left-wing’ Brexiteers that the UK could negotiate fairer deals with developing countries, who can at times be subject to exploitative deals by large blocs like the EU.  I somehow doubt, however, that concern for the exploited poor is uppermost in the minds of the Tories who are actually driving Brexit.)

One of the little-discussed flaws in this picture of the world is that the EU is not as unique as is often claimed.  It may be the most developed and integrated free trade area, but it is far from being the only one.  Other common markets and customs unions exist elsewhere.  There are many countries which have recognised the benefit of acting collectively on a regional basis to boost trade amongst themselves and to negotiate collectively with the rest of the world; and they see the EU as an example and are working towards a similar level of economic integration.  It’s also one of the ways in which developing countries can respond more powerfully and collectively to any attempt to impose exploitative deals upon them.  But here’s the thing – when negotiating a trade agreement with any country in relation to products which are covered by the provisions of another customs union or common market, the UK will need to talk to the relevant bloc collectively rather than discuss the deal with the individual states.

It raises a simple enough question.  In a world increasingly coalescing into distinct regional trading blocs, which is the best route to increasing free trade between them rather than purely within them?  (That is, is it not, a key part of what the Brexiteers say that they want?)  Is it, as the Brexiteers claim, for individual states to break free from their existing collective agreements and negotiate directly with each other on a bilateral basis creating a multiplicity of different and unique agreements, or is it for the regional blocs to talk directly to each other leading to a smaller number of more comprehensive deals? 

The answer to that question was blindingly obvious even before it became as clear as it now is that leaving an existing trade bloc introduces more trade barriers than it removes.  That in turn raises a supplementary question – if the Brexiteers know that their approach is going to lead to less free trade overall and a much more complicated set of agreements, why do they persist in arguing that ‘free trade’ is their prime objective?

Of prime ministers and bent bananas

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Last week, the Western Mail’s Chief Bent Banana did a thorough and effective demolition job on the attempts by the Prime Minister and those around her to exercise tight control over the coverage of her so-called ‘whistle-stop’ tour to reunite the kingdom.  I find it hard to believe that she and her advisers could really have believed for one moment that four half-hour meetings with a small number of carefully-invited attendees coupled with rigid control over which reporters would be allowed to ask which questions could ever be portrayed as some sort of grand tour meeting the peoples of the nations which comprise the UK.  But what’s even more surprising is how little coverage there seems to have been along the lines of that delivered by the Western Mail.  Were reporters elsewhere cowed or overawed to such an extent that they simply regurgitated the desired message of a robotic Prime Minister as commanded?

Stunts – and it’s hard to see this particular grand tour as anything other than a stunt – have become the bread-and-butter of political campaigning in an age where the expectation is a 30 second sound bite on national news, and a whole day given over to travelling between 4 brief sessions is apparently considered a reasonable price to pay for that 30 seconds.  It takes no more than a moment’s rational consideration to dismiss outright the idea that such a stunt, involving no more than a couple of dozen individuals, could really have anything to do with ‘listening to the people’, let alone uniting the parts of ‘this precious union’, yet that it how it was, by and large, dutifully reported.

There’s more to ‘reporting’ than simply writing what the powerful want written, and for once the Western Mail managed to lead the way.  Clearly, the current Prime Minister struggles seriously to say anything ad hoc or unscripted and selecting which questions are asked is a wholly unnecessary step for someone who knows what ‘answer’ she is going to give regardless of what the question actually says.  The complicity of much of the media in reporting what she says as though she has in fact delivered answers is more reminiscent of what happens in a dictatorship than a democracy.

EVEL is as EVEL does

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The Labour MP for Swansea East has earned a great deal of praise for her campaign to establish a fund to cover the cost of children’s funerals in England, mirroring the situation in Wales, and rightly so.  I don’t want to take anything away from her determination or her success, but it did strike me that there’s a small constitutional issue here.

This is a case of an MP for a Welsh constituency campaigning for a change in policy in England only (because the policy has already been implemented by the devolved administration in Wales) which doesn’t affect the constituency which she represents or the people who live there.  Whatever happened to the infamous West Lothian question?