Job creation for flag attendants?

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The attempts by the UK Government to explain and justify the permanent flying of the union flag from all UK government buildings display that particular lack of joined-up thinking which has become the norm for a government led by a man who seems almost proud of his lack of attention to detail or truth. To say nothing of that sense of exceptionalism which is typical of English nationalism.

In what looks like a blatant attempt to rewrite history (but may simply be complete ignorance – I tend to prefer the cock-up theory of history over conspiracy as a rule), the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said, “The Union flag is the National Flag of the United Kingdom, and it is so called because it embodies the emblems of the constituent nations united under one Sovereign – the Kingdoms of England and Wales, of Scotland, and of Northern Ireland”. Whether there was ever a “Kingdom of England and Wales” is an interesting point for debate, but it certainly glosses over the way that England and Wales became united; and the implicit claim that being a single kingdom makes it a single nation is, shall we say, somewhat provocative. The act of union which combined Wales and England did not unite two kingdoms in the same way that the union with Scotland did but rather, in the words of the Act itself, “henceforth and forever annexed and incorporated”, Wales into England. But if the idea of a “Kingdom of England and Wales” looks to be a fanciful interpretation of history, the “Kingdom of Northern Ireland” is simply an outright invention on the part of the Culture Secretary (an oxymoron of a title if ever there was one) to try and place that bit of Ireland which the UK held on to after Irish independence on to some sort of equal footing with Scotland on the one hand and EnglandandWales on the other.

However, whether Northern Ireland enjoys the same status as the other two ‘kingdoms’ or not is irrelevant in this case because the new rule about flying flags doesn’t apply in that particular ‘kingdom’. The union between it and the other two ‘kingdoms’ is to be stressed and reinforced (“a proud reminder of our history and the ties that bind us”, as the Culture Secretary put it) by excluding it from the rule. Given the potency of flags and symbols in the north of Ireland, it’s a sound pragmatic decision, but exempting one of the three ‘kingdoms’ from a rule intended to bind and unify looks like a government going out of its way to emphasise difference rather than similarity. And it is a strange irony that the staunchest unionists in the whole of the UK, those living in Northern Ireland, are going to be the people most upset by the approach. Upsetting the staunchest unionists even more than independentistas whilst promoting the union is quite an achievement to pull off.

The potency of flags in one part of the UK also underlines the problem that the UK government is busily creating for itself in Scotland and Wales. If the imposition of the union flag as a permanent feature on all government buildings in one part of the UK arouses such strong feelings in that large section of the population which doesn’t identify with the UK that the government doesn’t dare even to do it, what makes them think that those in Wales and Scotland who also increasingly no longer identify with the UK will react in completely the opposite way and feel a sudden surge of pride in the union flag? It’s a very curious assumption to make. Perhaps it’s just a job creation scheme for flagpole security guards.

Slogan and substance

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The very essence of a truly great political slogan is that it should resonate with as many people as possible whilst being essentially meaningless or, at the very least, sufficiently vague so as not to commit its authors to actually taking any particular action. The current government’s mantra of ‘levelling up’ is a masterpiece of the genre. What’s not to like about the idea of boosting the economy in areas which feel as if they’ve been left behind? In practice, however, it’s selective; it only applies to areas which voted for the Tories.

The concept of ‘levelling’ has a long tradition in English history – as does the idea of that levelling being selective. The Levellers of the Civil War period almost four centuries ago were also in favour of equality for all, although their definition of ‘all’ only extended to males (excluding servants and wage-earners of course), and some wanted it only to apply to heads of households or property owners. If Johnson had a political philosophy, he might almost have stolen the gist of it from that movement (although obviously he would have more than a little difficulty with their opposition to corruption or nepotism).

Its selective application isn’t the only way in which the practice differs from the slogan. It also has little to do with ‘levelling’ – there is absolutely no intention, and never has been, to bring all areas up to the level of the richest. It is, from the outset, a means of using public money to attempt to ensure the continued electoral success of the Conservative Party. The funds are being consciously and deliberately directed to those constituencies which the Tories need to retain or win in order to maintain a majority. The rest will remain as forgotten and left behind as they have been for decades, because Johnson simply doesn’t need their votes. That which is presented as egalitarian and unifying is implemented so as to divide and discriminate.

It should have been obvious from the outset that this would always be the result, although it seems not to have been for many. For any party wedded to the erroneous household budget analogy it is impossible to put more resources into one area without taking them from another. For those of us who understand that ‘money’ is not limited other than by the capacity of the economy, that isn’t a problem; but for fiscal conservatives like the Tories it is always the case that additional money spent in one place has to have come from somewhere else. Levelling up can only be a one-way process for those who accept that there are additional resources available, a category which excludes the current government. Fortunately for the government, it’s a category which also excludes the main opposition party, as evidenced by a report today that a Labour MP is demanding that no resources should be transferred from the wealthiest part of the UK to the poorer areas. That’s right – the party which tells us that ‘the union’ is all about pooling and sharing is at the same time demanding that there should be no transfer of wealth from the richest to the poorest. It’s an odd kind of ‘pooling and sharing’.

There is a reason why one part of the UK is richer than the rest; regional inequality is not an accident. It’s not being ‘anti-London’ to highlight the facts. At its simplest, we have an economic system which drains talent and resources from the periphery and concentrates them in the centre; London’s wealth has grown by transferring that wealth from the rest of the UK (and from overseas colonies before that). It is not an accidental result of some impersonal process; it is the inevitable result of an economic system set up to work that way. It means that ‘levelling up’ can only happen in one of two ways: by identifying and directing additional resources to the poorest areas, or by redistributing those resources which currently exist. Which of those you choose depends on your view of economics, but what is certain is that neither the current governing party nor the official opposition have any intention of doing either.

Levelling up is an utterly meaningless slogan, but it works. The compliant media are still attaching the label to everything that the government tells them is part of the plan. People fell for it in 2019, and are still falling for it now.

The values that unite us

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Those ‘great British values’ which apparently unite all of us who live on this island and distinguish us from the rest of the world have been on display again in recent days.

Yesterday, the PM praised ‘greed’ as a motivating factor before realising that he might have gone a bit too far and desperately asking people to allow him to unsay it. It was a rare moment of honesty from an inveterate liar (the saying of it, that is, not the attempt to unsay it) and an insight into the way the Tory mind works. It isn’t actually true, of course – not everyone, and not even every capitalist, is motivated solely by personal greed; if it were true, then capitalism would have collapsed a long time ago. And in the specific context of the vaccination programme, whilst Johnson may see their role as secondary to that of the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines, the role of volunteers and underpaid and dedicated NHS staff has been crucial. If greed were their only motive, there wouldn’t have been much of a programme. It is, though, part of the mindset of people like Johnson that the ‘little people’ don’t really count and contribute little – ‘success’ is measured by the ability of the ‘winners’ to extract great personal wealth from the economy at the expense of the rest of us, who are seen as ‘losers’.

Also yesterday, the Home Secretary made further announcements on the proposed new regime for handling asylum-seekers. Fresh from the news that she was planning to ship them elsewhere (it doesn’t matter where and neither does it matter whether the places to which they are to be shipped are happy to take them or not), she is proposing that even some of those granted asylum will remain liable to deportation indefinitely. This is the same Home Secretary who is behind the plans to outlaw many expressions of dissent.

Meanwhile, a few days ago, we had a Tory MP suggesting that anyone who does not love the hereditary monarch and the union flag should be encouraged to go and live elsewhere, and another Tory MP decided to use a parliamentary examination of the BBC to complain about the lack of union flags in the BBC’s annual report and demand that there should be more next year.

Veneration of greed, contempt for any display of altruism, inhumane treatment of refugees, outlawing dissent, unconditional support for heredity as a means of choosing the head of state, and a demand that a cloth symbol hanging from a pole be the object of love and admiration if we want to stay in the country of our birth – these are the ‘great British values’ on display this week. These are the values which they claim as unifying factors. They really are their own worst enemies.

They really are serious about flags

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Another week bring us another hare-brained scheme to protect the union. This week’s is all about flags, or, more specifically about enforcing the display of one flag and subordinating all others to it. Apparently, the government has briefed the Mail on Sunday that enhancing the visibility of the union flag would help mitigate against the break-up of the UK, so they are planning to issue new guidance that the flag must be shown on all government buildings all year round. And, so as not to offend the Welsh or the Scots, they propose to allow the Dragon and the Saltire to be flown from the same flagpoles in a subordinate position below the union flag.

The words which immediately spring to mind are those of the tennis player, John McEnroe, but apparently they are indeed completely serious. It seems not even to have crossed their minds that giving the Dragon and the Saltire an obviously inferior status might be more likely to reinforce a sense of resentment and be a reminder of historical subjugation rather than joyful unity, nor that the union flag is often seen (incorrectly, I know, but flags and logic don’t always go together) as a representation of England rather than of the UK. Trying to impose a sense of unity by using a symbol which is increasingly seen as belonging to ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ instead of addressing the substance and the need for change turns their ‘precious union’ into something which manages to look superficial in the extreme.

Still, we should be grateful. It’s good of them to go out of their way, on such a regular basis, to remind us that the single most fundamental problem with the union is the unionists. Their lack of understanding and empathy does more to destroy that which they claim to hold most dear than anything which independentistas are capable of doing.

 

Morality in trade

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There’s nothing particularly new about the idea that morality, standards, and values have a role to play in deciding whether, and with whom, to negotiate international trade deals. Whilst trade usually promotes greater prosperity, the impact of that on the way a country is governed is a lot less obvious. On the one hand, increasing prosperity may help to legitimise a regime and encourage people to be less critical of their own government; on the other, people who aren’t spending their whole lives scratching a bare living can find they have more time for involvement in debate and politics, and greater international links can help them to understand better the freedoms which they don’t have. So, whether increasing trade helps to suppress or encourage opposition to unpleasant regimes is far from being clear-cut – both sides in the argument can draw on some evidence for their point of view.

The question has come to the fore over recent weeks as the UK attempts the hopeless task of replacing what were, until this year, extremely close trading links with near neighbours with necessarily looser links with countries much further away. And there are some pretty unsavoury regimes involved. Some MPs in all parties have been questioning whether the UK should continue to seek trade deals with countries run by authoritarian regimes, countries which outlaw dissent, and countries which don’t respect human rights or international law. The concerns are valid; not all countries can be depended upon to uphold the same standards, and the issue, at its simplest, is to what extent any country should be signing deals with countries which adopt lower standards than itself.

The UK has, though, come up with a novel approach which could eliminate the question, and which is entirely in line with the Brexit way of thinking. It is that the UK should lower its own standards to match more closely those of the regimes with which it wishes to do trade deals. More authoritarianism, less democracy, clamping down on protest and dissent, opting out of human rights legislation, and breaching international treaties and laws – these are the core elements of the current government’s programme. Whilst this might remove any need for moral considerations when the UK is negotiating trade deals with similarly unsavoury regimes, that English sense of exceptionalism which characterises the current government’s approach may be preventing them from seeing the slight little problemette which may arise as a consequence, which is that other countries may simply add the UK to their own lists of countries with which signing trade deals raises some serious moral issues. Believing that morality in trade is a uniquely British value, and that morality can therefore be defined as being whatever the UK does, might just turn out to be as silly in practice as it sounds in theory.

Johnson gives green light for nuclear attack on UK

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The announcement by the PM this week that the cap on the UK’s stock of nuclear warheads is to be increased from 180 to 260 was in direct breach of international treaties committing the UK to work to eliminate such weapons. With each warhead estimated to be around 8 times as destructive as that used on Hiroshima, each is capable of destroying a sizeable city and killing hundreds of thousands of people in the process. How much extra ‘deterrence’ is provided by being able to obliterate 260 cities instead of ‘only’ 180 is the sort of question that only a psychopath would consider worthy of asking, but it assumes that a state which is not ‘deterred’ by a threat to kill some 30-40 million of its citizens would think twice if the threat was to kill more like 40-60 million. As if someone who doesn’t care about the first 40 million is going to baulk at an extra 10-20 million deaths.

Even worse than the increase in killing capacity is the announcement of a new range of conditions under which the weapons might be used. It has long been at least implicit in the UK’s policy that such weapons would only be used to respond to a nuclear attack on the UK, the theory being that knowing that such a retaliation would follow would deter such an attack. The theory always depended on two contradictory assumptions: the first being that potential enemies are mad enough to want to launch a nuclear attack, and the second that they are sane enough to decide not to if the counter-threat to them is great enough. Seen from the other side, ‘deterrence’ depends on the enemy believing that the UK’s government in its turn would be mad enough to launch a nuclear strike. Assuming that only your own self-proclaimed madness makes other mad people behave in a sane fashion is not the soundest of principles on which to run an international order.

What the PM also announced this week was that the circumstances in which the UK would consider the use of such weapons would be widened considerably. Firstly, page 77 of the document makes it clear that the assurance that “The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968” will “…no longer apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations”. Secondly, the UK reserves “the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary”. These are major shifts in policy, making it clear that the UK government now considers it both reasonable and proportional to respond, in circumstances which it will not and cannot define in advance, to a cyberattack with a nuclear strike, and to launch a first strike against a country which it considers to be in breach of the relevant treaties.

Making unilateral decisions in such an arena is seriously problematic. In the first place, effectively threatening non-nuclear states with a nuclear strike provides a direct incentive to those states to acquire nuclear weapons of their own – after all, if renouncing nuclear weapons no longer protects them against a nuclear strike, why wouldn’t they also want the protection of this ‘deterrence’ which the UK claims is so effective? And in the second place, the UK is both in breach of its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the author of cyberattacks on others; if either of those is justification for a nuclear strike by the UK, on what basis can it be argued that they are not a justification for an attack on the UK? Assuming that other countries will share the UK's opinion about its own exceptional status is both foolish and dangerous. Johnson and his government are making the world a much more dangerous place, wholly unnecessarily, in pursuit of a flawed dream of past glories and power.

Abandoning voodoo economics

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According to legend, the infamous Laffer Curve was first drawn by its author on a napkin at a lunch time meeting with some of America’s most notorious conservatives. It was completely devoid of any numbers along the x-axis, making it easy enough to draw. Almost 50 years later, the graph (and the underlying theory) is still an abstract theory with no numerical underpinning.  The concept of the Laffer curve is well-known, and the principle has every appearance of being rational and logical: it is “there is a tax rate between 0% and 100% that maximizes government tax revenue”. There are a number of reasons why this might, theoretically, be true but the theory is not necessarily reflected in reality. A rate of zero for any given tax will self-evidently produce no tax revenue, but the theory also argues that an income tax rate of 100% will also produce no income, because people will have no incentive to work. Whether that second conclusion is true or not is rather more arguable: it depends, at least in part, on the nature and values of the society and on what people get in exchange for their tax. It is not, however, a wholly unreasonable starting point for a theory. Since, as far as I’m aware, no modern economy has ever tried a 100% tax rate (although some economies have come close to a 100% marginal rate, which isn’t quite the same thing), there is no obvious empirical data on which to judge. But if we accept the ‘truth’ of the statement, then one can draw a curve between 0 and 100 showing how, in theory, tax initially increases as one increases tax rates before starting to fall off and return to zero as tax rates approach 100%. And that is all the Laffer curve is. Neither the curve itself, nor the underlying theory, require any hard numbers to support them – but to be of any use in practice, provable numbers are required, and they are notable only by their absence.

The flaw in using a graph which appears reasonable in theory but has no supporting evidence as a basis for a policy of low taxes should be obvious, but that hasn’t stopped proponents of low taxation from basing their whole argument on an unproven hypothesis. Even worse, they have generalised the argument to the point where they argue that lower taxes always increase government revenue. But the lack of hard data means that, even if the theory were true, no-one can accurately say when we are at or near the peak, nor what the shape of the curve should be. There is simply no empirical data to justify using any particular figures. Any attempt to derive figures is complicated by the tax systems in use in different economies – systems of tax reliefs and deductions mean that actual tax rates being paid by taxpayers are rarely the same as published headline rates. The result is that the circumstances in which direct lines can be drawn between tax rates and tax revenues are non-existent. That makes it easier for quack economists (and Tory politicians) to argue their case that lower taxes increase rather than reduce total tax revenues by providing incentives for compliance, investment, and effort. They can’t prove any of this – but they have the advantage that no-one can disprove it either.

Actually, that very last bit isn’t entirely true; there is some evidence of the impact of tax cuts on tax revenues from the US. And that evidence is that, on the whole, cutting taxes reduces taxation revenue. It’s a conclusion which most ordinary mortals, not armed with high-faluting theories and graphs like the Laffer curve, would instinctively expect. It doesn’t actually disprove the theory; it merely confirms that no-one actually has a clue about what the practical (as opposed to theoretical) optimum level of tax might be. Empirical evidence of revenue loss after the event only confirms that the level of taxes before the cuts wasn’t – as the proponents of tax cuts claimed – already above the optimum (if one exists), but was actually at or below it.

One of the lesser-commented aspects of the recent budget was that it represented at least a partial abandonment by the Conservative Party of Laffer-curve economics. The Cameron-Osborne plan for reducing Corporation Tax over a period was based on an assumption that allowing companies to retain more of their profits would result in more investment and thus more jobs and more tax revenue overall, but it didn’t happen in practice. There are a number of reasons for that (and of course, the pandemic and Brexit have further complicated things over the last year). But in promising to reverse the cuts over coming years, the Chancellor is very clearly stating that he doesn’t accept that the argument applies at anywhere near current rates of Corporation Tax and accepts – in line with most mortals – that, as a general rule, increasing tax rates generates more income for the government. Who’d have thought it? The significance of this U-turn looks to have been underestimated by many – although it’s only a start. There still seem to be Tories around trying to apply the Laffer curve to other taxes, as though there is only one tax for which their over-generalisation of the rule doesn’t work in practice. But a law of economics which only applies to some taxes some of the time and which has no means of telling us when it does or does not apply isn’t much of a law at all. It’s just a way of making voodoo economics sound like it has a valid academic basis in order to progress the interests of the richest in society.

Can Wales and Scotland choose the rule of law if England does not?

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The expected announcement later today that the UK will build on its reputation as a rogue state by increasing the number of nuclear warheads it holds highlights one of the problems with all the various proposals for ‘reforming’ the UK as an alternative to Scottish or Welsh independence. Both increasing the number of warheads and developing new types of warheads are directly contrary to international treaty obligations, but we live in a state which regards international treaties as being things which bind other countries, not this one. And all the proposals for reform or federalism start off by assuming that certain issues, always including ‘defence’, are UK-wide issues, not ones for the member states of the ‘federation’.

It means that none of the proposed alternatives would enable Wales and Scotland to sign up to, and comply with, existing international treaties unless England also renounces nuclear weapons. But with both the Tories and Labour committed to the retention and replacement of Trident, there is no realistic prospect of England doing that. Unless defence also becomes a matter for the individual member states of the union, Wales and Scotland are condemned to remain part of a nuclear-armed state and, in Scotland’s case, to host the submarines, missiles, and warheads. On the other hand, if defence were to be a matter for the individual nations, then there is very little left to justify the continuation of the union from the perspective of the authors of the various ‘federation’ type proposals.

Independence is the only way forward which allows the people of Wales and Scotland to choose to opt in to the international community and the rule of law – rejecting independence is a choice to continue as part of a rogue state, with its exceptionalist attitude that only ‘other’ people are bound by any rules. The federalists never spell that out – but that’s because they mostly share both that sense of exceptionalism and a commitment to the continued possession of nuclear weapons.

Saturday was not just a one-off 'mistake'

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Throughout the pandemic, there have been regular calls from some for the police to be more pro-active against those breaking the coronavirus rules, demanding a crackdown with more fines and arrests. On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police gave us a clear demonstration of what a crackdown looks like. Suddenly, it seems that some of those previously egging the police on to do more to enforce the rules aren’t quite so sure – or, rather, they want to apply different rules to different groups and causes. Clearly the police could and should have adopted a different approach to the proposed vigil and worked with the organisers to ensure that the event could take place in as safe a way as possible; the flat refusal to do so underlines a degree of incompetence and lack of empathy which is hard to understand. But on what basis do we expect the police to distinguish between, say, a beach party and a vigil, both of which involve an assembly of a greater number of people than is permitted under current legislation? That is not to argue that there is some sort of equivalence there; clearly there is not. But distinguishing between the two involves the application of values and judgement, and there is a real question as to whether the police are the best people to make that call, particularly if their role is defined simply as ‘upholding the law’.

Differential application of the law is, of course, one of those traditional British values of which politicians are so fond, although that isn’t the way they usually describe it. In practice, Lady Justice has never been as unseeing as the blindfold she traditionally wears might lead us to believe. Being part of the ruling elite has long bestowed a degree of indemnity – the Covid rules applied to Cummings were clearly not the same rules being applied to others, to quote just one recent example, and there was never the same expectation that someone like him should abide by the rules. It hasn’t always been as blatant or rampant as it has become since England elected a fundamentally dishonest man as its Prime Minister. Previous regimes haven’t always been as confident about what they could get away with, but the current regime seems to be pushing at an open door. The new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently wending its way through parliament actively seeks to extend police powers to decide what is or is not ‘acceptable’ behaviour, including criminalising any assembly of people which causes “serious annoyance”, effectively giving the police on the spot the power to decide the meaning of both ‘serious’ and ‘annoyance’. They are targeting dissent and opposition.

For many of us, Saturday’s events underline the need for policing in a democracy to be based first and foremost on consent and a sense of social solidarity; but the current government is taking us in a completely different direction, where policing is seen as enforcement of rules by whatever means are necessary. To them, Saturday will look simply like a one-off mistake, rather than a problem with the approach. If they come under enough pressure, a sacrificial head might roll to protect other more culpable heads, but they won’t see it as a reason to change their approach. The question is whether, and to what extent, people at large go along with that view. The way in which so many have been calling for the police to be more heavy-handed in other circumstances is not exactly a cause for optimism. Wales doesn’t have to follow England on this, but following England towards becoming an authoritarian state is precisely what will happen if we don’t take control of our own future.

Sardines and independence

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There was a story yesterday which neatly illustrated the gap between the  scale of reform which is required if the unionists want to stand any chance at all of the UK surviving as a state and the reform which the English nationalists currently running the country are intellectually, ideologically, and emotionally capable of considering. According to the Telegraph, Jacob Rees-Mogg is proposing that, for two weeks every three years, the entire House of Commons (all 650 members) should cram itself into the debating chamber of the Senedd (designed for 60 members) to hold its debates. Although Cardiff is the home of Doctor Who, it was almost disappointing to discover that Jake is not depending on the Tardis-like qualities of the Senedd, which really isn’t bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Apparently, the lack of space is not a problem because the 650 MPs are accustomed to debating in a chamber which can only hold around 427 people – they just remain standing during debates. Some might argue that there’s a difference between fitting 650 people into a space for two-thirds that number and fitting the same number into a space holding less than one-tenth of that number, but fortunately Jake’s school never taught him about this new-fangled concept called fractions. They probably hadn’t invented fire regulations either.

The master plan behind this scheme, it seems, is that holding two weeks’ worth of debates in Cardiff will bring parliament closer to the people, and demonstrate a commitment to the Union. Since the period proposed for this spectacle is the two weeks after the summer recess and before the break for party conferences, a period during which parliament traditionally debates little of great importance, the probability is that at least half of them wouldn’t turn up, which might go some way to solving the capacity problem. I struggle, though, to think of anything less likely to convince me of the value of the Union than only half the membership of the House of Commons bothering to travel to Cardiff to stand like sardines in a small room holding a debate about something inconsequential. I’m obviously not gifted with Jake’s immense perspicacity on that. Sadly for Jake, I suspect that I’m far from alone in that respect.

Demonstrating close-up the reality of how parliament works is the sort of revolutionary idea which might sound better coming from opponents of the Union rather than its supposed supporters, but if Jake wants to do the job for us, who am I to disagree? A parliament without enough seats for all its members is something which would embarrass most modern democracies, but for Jake and his pals, it’s a source of great pride. It does rather illustrate the point made by our own First Minister this week when he described the UK Government as a “recruiting sergeant” for Welsh and Scottish independence. It isn’t just the UK Government, though – it’s the whole of the UK structure and processes which are not fit for purpose in the twenty-first century but which are incapable of reforming themselves, because they’re proud of being hopelessly outdated and see it as a strength rather than a weakness. And despite Drakeford’s own ability to see the need for change, what he still seems unable to see or understand is that the English Labour Party is part of the problem, not the solution.