Will Sunak call an election for next month?

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Not because he thinks he’s got any chance of winning it, obviously. That ship sailed and sank a long time ago, and is now lying in pieces at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. The attraction of a snap election lies elsewhere, in the slow-moving but ever more incriminating Covid-19 inquiry. The long-awaited appearance of Sunak and Johnson before the judge leading the inquiry was delayed once because of the party conference season, but it will take another significant factor to delay it a second time, and in the absence of such an event, both men are currently slated to appear during November. In the meantime, the inquiry has had a chance to see and consider some highly incriminating emails, which reveal, amongst other things, that the UK’s top civil servant thought that the government looked like a tragic joke, and that Sunak’s ‘eat out to help out’ scheme was launched with no consultation with the scientists and experts, whose opinion was that it would only help to spread the disease. It’s hard to see how either man can face the judge and KCs without having what remains of their reputations shredded, very publicly. Calling a snap election would be like pushing the pause button. Again.

It's probable that Johnson believes that he can bluster and obfuscate his way through any difficult questions, just as he used to do at PM’s Questions in the House of Commons, blaming Labour, the Civil Service, the media – anyone but himself. He is, quite possibly, stupid enough to think that a judge whose sole task is to get to the truth can be treated like a Speaker whose main task is to referee a bun fight, and that eminent KCs asking precise and difficult questions can be batted away by calling them names as though they were opposition politicians. Maybe Sunak even thinks the same way – his approach to PMQs certainly seems to mirror that of his former boss, albeit minus the snobbish classical references, and without the confidence born of complete and utter shamelessness. But what about the people around them giving them advice? Do they really have so few functioning neurons between them that they cannot see the train crash which awaits their bosses in just a few short weeks?

Calling an election wouldn’t prevent the train from crashing, of course; it would merely delay it – and by not much more than a few weeks at that. And a shredded reputation is still a shredded reputation. But holding an election before it gets shredded might just save a few more seats than waiting until after the shredder has finished its work. There must surely be someone advising him who can see what’s about to happen. Or is it time to order additional stocks of popcorn?

Ultimately, they must negotiate rather than kill

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The reaction of the UK’s two largest parties to the past week’s events in the Middle East has been instructive in terms of their attitudes and priorities. Firstly, they were in competition to see who could issue the strongest condemnation of the BBC for calling Hamas militants rather than terrorists, as though the most important thing is the label used; and they followed that up by competing over who could take the hardest line against any show of support for the Palestinian side. They were, of course, in complete agreement that Israel should be supported in whatever way might be necessary. There was little room for nuance or debate: in this battle there are good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. Presumably, they think that it makes for good politics, but it does nothing to aid understanding, let alone reconciliation.

History, as ever, is complex. Whilst events are generally indisputable, their significance is always open to multiple interpretations. There is no doubt that Jews have suffered centuries of persecution and discrimination, including the attempt in parts of Europe in the last century to eliminate them as a people. Sympathy for a people who have suffered so much is natural, but it cannot give the state of Israel a free pass from any criticism when it comes to its own actions against others. Criticism of Israeli actions is not, in itself, anti-Semitism. Palestinians have been forced from their homes and land and, even today, Israel continues to encroach on land internationally recognised as being outside the boundaries of Israel and the property of Palestinians. But the grievance of Palestinians, in turn, cannot justify the sort of random killings that we saw last Saturday. A cycle of atrocity, counter-atrocity and counter-counter-atrocity ends up as a never-ending cycle of death and grief on both sides, from which there is no obvious escape.

Applying the label of ‘war crime’, whether to the random violence delivered by Hamas last weekend or to the retaliatory denial of food, water, medicines and power to millions of citizens in Gaza may be technically accurate, but it overlooks the fact that the real crime is war itself. The idea that a war – any war – can be fought according to a set of gentlemanly rules is to ignore the reality, which is that people – mostly, but not exclusively, young men, whether regular soldiers or less organised bands of fighters – are sent to kill or be killed, a situation in which they will feel fear, anger, and hatred towards those they are trying to kill, added to which the inevitable raised levels of adrenaline and the sight of comrades being killed can all too easily result in actions which few would call civilized being perpetrated by ordinary, average human beings.

The total elimination of Hamas – Israel’s stated objective – may buy a period of relative ‘peace’ to the extent to which it is successful. But experience suggests that it will come at a heavy price in lives and will last only until the next generation are old enough to pick up arms, when they will be driven by an even greater sense of grievance and injustice. Ultimately, the only lasting settlement will have to be a negotiated one, and the rest of the world has a responsibility to drive both sides in that direction, using whatever (peaceful) means it has at its disposal. Picking one side, and giving that side unconditional support, is not living up to that responsibility. Yet that’s where the UK is choosing to be. Regardless of which party is in power. Global leadership it most definitely is not.

Magical economic growth

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One of the many areas of agreement between Labour and the Tories when it comes to economics is their unshakeable belief in the Great God Growth as the solution to all economic problems, to say nothing of other problems such as health and education. There is, it seems, no need to consider further taxing, or redistributing, accumulated wealth or disproportionately high income because the Great God will magically make the cake bigger, and a bigger cake goes further. To the extent that there is a difference between the parties, it relates only to the question of which particular rites and ceremonies need to be performed by the devotees of the Great God before (s)he performs his or her magic. The problem with this whole belief system is that it depends on some unstated and very dubious assumptions.

The first of those is that the government itself has no direct role in making growth happen. Government’s job is simply about providing a bit of infrastructure and slackening a few rules, and suddenly growth will just happen. It’s an approach which, incidentally, treats government expenditure as though it is a drag on the economy and therefore to be avoided rather than something which can itself directly stimulate growth, and undermines its own aims in the process.

The second is that a bigger cake means that everyone benefits. But without any consideration or control of the way in which the extra cake is shared out, what stops those who already have the biggest slices from simply grabbing all the extra cake for themselves? After all, recent history of growing disparity suggests that that is the most likely outcome.

And the third is that, as the cake grows, the government’s tax income grows in proportion. It’s a belief which rather overlooks the fact that those taking the biggest slices of the cake are also those who are best at avoiding paying tax, and most likely to be able to conduct their financial affairs in such a way as to take their income in the form of (lower-taxed) capital growth rather than taxable income, and/or shift their wealth and income into off-shore havens.

Perhaps the biggest assumption of all is that growth is, in and of itself, always a ‘good thing’. It is at best arguable and at worst a potentially disastrous approach to the utilisation of the Earth’s resources.

Maybe they believe that their Great God will add a magic ingredient to the cake mix which ensures that baking a bigger cake doesn’t need any extra resources; maybe the same ingredient turns greedy hoarders of wealth into altruists keen to share the cake more evenly. Maybe the moon really is made of green cheese, and revolves around a flat disc called Planet Earth. Or maybe, in the real world, we actually need government to take deliberate action to ensure greater fairness in the allocation and use of resources. That’s an option which currently looks unlikely to be on any ballot papers come the election. Seen solely in terms of the choice of a future UK government the question is very much simpler: which colour disillusion do we prefer?

So stupid, it's almost clever?

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It is a feature of the UK’s electoral system that one party gets absolute power on the basis of a minority of votes, whilst opposition parties are rendered impotent. Occasionally – very occasionally – however, circumstances conspire to place a certain amount of power in the hands of the opposition.

The possibility of a future resurrection of HS2 is a case in point. In an attempt to not merely kill the project, but to drive a stake through its heart and garland the coffin with garlic, Sunak is rushing to try and cancel contracts and sell off the land already purchased. But land sales can take time, and in all probability there are less than 12 months to go before an election which all the polls and pundits predict will usher in a Labour government. If Starmer really wanted to resurrect the project (as most of his party colleagues north of Birmingham seem to be demanding), then he could announce that he will immediately reverse any land sales as soon as he gets into office. It wouldn’t stop land being sold, of course; but if people really believed that the time, effort, and money that they would need to put into acquiring the land would, in all probability, be wasted, most of them would think twice before rushing into any deals. The government could respond by selling off the land cheaply (rather than at a higher price as some have predicted), but any valuer looking at a repurchase by the government would presumably take that lower price into account when assessing market value. Instead of which, Starmer is standing on the sidelines bleating about the Tories tying his hands by selling off land, and using that as an excuse not to commit. It’s possible, of course, that he doesn’t want to build HS2 – a respectable position, even if large swathes of his party disagree with him – but he’s choosing to hide behind the Tories instead.

Meanwhile, it turns out that, despite what he said and what most of the media reported last week, Sunak most emphatically did NOT announce the electrification of the north Wales mainline. Not only is the figure he placed on the cost little more than a finger in the air estimate, he’s now saying that nothing on the long list published last week was intended to be taken seriously, it was just a list of illustrative examples. A bold attempt to counter the fact that he had p***ed off large swathes of the north of England by pleasing a larger number of people elsewhere has ended up p***ing them off too. Perhaps he was just insufficiently clear about the actual status of his little list, but it looks more like a wholly deliberate intention that people would be so delighted at his ‘announcements’ that they wouldn’t scrutinise the detail too closely. Or maybe he’s enough of a realist to understand that nothing he can or say do will avoid the looming defeat and that his best strategy is to make things as difficult as possible for an opposition which has committed to accepting his policies and budgets as a starting point, no matter how unrealistic and incoherent they might be. He might almost be so desperately incompetent as to be clever: perhaps the stupidest one is the one who accepts unrealistic budgets and incoherent policy as a valid starting point and tries to work from there.

Yet more union-jackery

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The near ubiquitous presence of the Union Jack at the Tory gathering last week was little surprise. They have long been Anglo-British nationalists, even if the stridency with which that nationalism is expressed has increased dramatically over the past decade or two. They don’t always seem to understand the difference between British and English, but it really doesn’t matter – they don’t participate in electoral politics in Northern Ireland and their appeal in Wales and Scotland is largely limited to fellow British-identifiers.

In this week’s gathering, Labour seem determined to out-do the Tories’ union-jackery, with the flag appearing everywhere. The wish to be seen to be every bit as patriotic as the Tories is perhaps understandable given their obsession with pleasing the increasingly nationalistic media in England, but given that we know here in Wales that a large proportion of Labour voters support Welsh independence, and that in Scotland Labour see independence-supporting SNP voters as a target group (a point expanded on by Mandelson this morning), it’s reasonable to wonder whether they’ve thought through the extent and potential implications of their union jack waving enthusiasm. From a non-English perspective, it can look as though they have the same difficulty as the Tories in distinguishing between British and English.

Legally and constitutionally, of course, the union flag is ‘our’ flag whether we like it or not, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a flag with which we all identify to the same degree, and it's not so very long ago that England fans would see the union flag as their symbol. Clinging ever more tightly to it whilst actively seeking the support of those least attached to it doesn’t look like the smartest of moves. And, solely in symbolic terms, it somewhat undermines Labour’s claim to be seeking to reform the union in a way which better reflects modern reality. It gives the appearance that Starmer is every bit as much of an Anglo-British nationalist as Sunak. And it isn’t always true that appearances are deceptive.

Could Braverman be right?

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The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been roundly criticised for recent speeches in which she has argued that immigration threatens the UK’s identity and values. But there are two possible ways in which her claim that immigrants and their descendants are “not embracing British values” may not be entirely inaccurate.

If we look at a few prominent second and third generation immigrants, there is indeed some evidence that they are not embracing traditional British values. Take, for example, er, Suella Braverman. This is someone who believes that lawyers should not be allowed to use the provisions of the law to aid their clients, that the UK should renege on its international treaty obligations, that people should be detained without trial in camps, that homophobia is normal and widespread, that British values include hostility and cruelty to distressed people arriving on our shores, and that racists are afraid of expressing their views for fear of being labelled as racists. Or take Priti Patel, who believes that British values allow the UK to use wave machines which would probably overturn small boats, with an accompanying risk of drowning people as a result. Then there’s Kemi Badenoch, another advocate for reneging on international treaties. Or how about Rishi Sunak, the man who appointed all of these people to high office, validates their positions and words on an almost daily basis, and for whom dishonesty in his words is second nature. Oh, and who also believes, somewhat bizarrely, that British values revolve around the use of the private motor car. (Maybe he’s forgotten where he is, and is referring to his preferred home in California?)

The argument that this provides evidence for her thesis that immigrants are not embracing British values falls down however, because these values aren’t restricted to immigrants and their descendants. The values held by all of these individuals may not be the traditional values which many of us thought were widely held in Britain, but they’re not out of line with the ‘new’ British values of the Conservative Party. That brings us, however, to the second sense in which she may be right after all.

I have no figures or hard evidence to back this up, but observation and experience lead me to believe that many immigrants and their descendants are more firmly wedded to what one might call ‘traditional’ British values than the modern Conservative Party. Things like the rule of law, tolerance, fair play, honesty, a sense of justice, welcoming others. And immigrants and their descendants may well be more resistant than others to swapping those for the ‘new’ values of intolerance, dishonesty, disregard for the law, and cruelty to others which have taken hold in the Conservative Party. If by “not embracing British values” she really means that most immigrants and their descendants don’t share her values, then she may have a point. Her error is in seeing that as a bad thing.

An extract from the recollections of Sir Humphrey

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The dying months of the Sunak administration were a curious time. In the lead-up to his first (and last) party conference as leader, I recall that he told us he was going to make a speech in Manchester and asked us if there was a major Manchester-specific announcement that he could make. Somewhat tongue in cheek, I suggested that it would be a very brave decision to say that he was going to cancel the new railway line to Manchester. To our utter amazement, he seemed truly delighted.

The PM wondered aloud whether there was anything he could announce as an alternative which might please the audience, so I proposed that he could make a bold announcement by packaging up a series of announcements which we’d previously made and already put into long term budgets for road and rail improvements across the country, brand them as ‘Network North’, and claim that they were being funded by the £36 billion previously allocated to the railway line, thus giving him a £36 billion saving in the process. It would never actually have been £36 billion, of course – the estimates for all those schemes were drawn up by the same people who’d prepared the estimates for the railway line, and there was no chance of delivering them at that price. I explained to him that the budgetary process was such that they were really just lines in a spreadsheet the main purpose of which was to deter the Chancellor from making tax cuts, but he was so enthusiastic that I think he’d stopped listening. Bernard pointed out to him that the package included schemes in places like London and Exeter, which not everyone might agree were in ‘the North’, but after a momentary doubt he was reassured when I explained to him that, in Civil Service speak, ‘the North’ is a concept, not a place.

I fear that the alacrity with which the PM accepted this explanation served only to encourage Bernard, and when the PM asked what he could do to confirm his reputation for taking long term decisions, Bernard told him that whilst the cancellation of the biggest long term project which we were undertaking would help, if he wanted to add to that, he could promise to establish a fund to repair potholes in roads. As Bernard explained to me later when I spoke to him privately, he was being entirely honest – it would indeed ‘confirm’ the PM’s reputation in relation to long term decision-making, which is exactly what he had asked us to do.

Shortly after the decision to axe the railway line was leaked, the PM asked us how he could best demonstrate his decisive nature. Bernard, by now carried away by his own enthusiasm, suggested that the PM should deny that a decision had been taken and say that he didn’t know when he would take the decision, adding that he would take all the time he needed to think about the matter very carefully. Then, when he did stand up and make the announcement only a couple of weeks later, he would look very decisive indeed. As Bernard explained to me later, a few short weeks of prevarication is what decisive looks like in the Civil Service.

It all turned out to be a great success. We got a railway project which no-one in Whitehall had ever wanted cancelled, and replaced by a whole series of alternative projects all of which could be (and were) quietly cancelled later. As for the PM – well, PMs come and PMs go. Only the Civil Service goes on for ever.

The problem isn't the birth rate, it's inequality

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It has been calculated that the population of Earth is currently consuming natural resources at a rate which requires 1.7 planets to sustain it; that if everyone lived like the average European we’d need three planets; and that a US lifestyle for all would require the resources of five planets. Now there are many problems with such calculations, because they inevitably depend on a lot of assumptions and estimates. They also hide a multitude of differences within countries as well – not all US citizens live a five-planet lifestyle, and some are probably living a ten planet or more lifestyle.

For the purposes of debate, it’s reasonable to ignore the arithmetical detail of the calculations and concentrate on the key message which is that, given that the natural resources of the Earth are finite, there is an unavoidable relationship between two factors: the size of the population and the lifestyle which that population can sustainably live. To the extent that that circle is currently being squared, the ‘solution’ is in two parts: inequality of access to resources, both between and within countries: some must live in poverty so that others can enjoy a wealthy life; and a willingness to use resources at an excessive rate, thereby denying them to future generations. A situation where many live in poverty isn’t some divinely ordained outcome, it’s a necessary condition for the few to be wealthy. It is inequality of access to resources which largely drives those euphemistically referred to as ‘economic migrants’ to seek to escape poverty by going to where the wealth is or, to use a corollary, the desire of some to hold on to their unfair share of the Earth’s resources is a major driver of population movements.

At a global level, it appears likely that the birth rate will stabilise by the end of the century. It is likely that longer lifespans will mean that the total population continues to grow, albeit slowly, even if the birth rate falls below the replacement level, but that growth will not be universal. Europe’s population, for instance, is projected to start falling by then. Looked at globally, a falling population is probably a good thing overall; whilst a stable, or even falling, population does not in itself address the inequality of access to resources, it does create a better opportunity to adopt a fairer approach. The question, in political terms, is how to respond to a situation where the population of a country is stable or falling but in which the age profile is changing, with the average age increasing. It’s an issue which needs a great deal more discussion than it's currently receiving.

The one thing that we definitely do not need is the sort of response put forward yesterday by Robert Jenrick at the Tory conference, which is to encourage more people to have more children so that there are more younger people to support the continuation of the giant Ponzi scheme which passes for the UK systems for care and pensions. Predicating the whole economic structure on an assumption that if more people live to be older we need to grow the population to support them, and do so indefinitely, may be viable for one country in the short term (although even that viability depends on a willingness to invest in homes, schools, hospitals to support an increasing population, something which his government is noticeably unwilling to do, preferring to blame immigrants for any deficiencies), but is, in global terms and in the long term, utterly irresponsible. The alternative necessarily involves looking at total available resources and how they are shared, both within and between countries. It’s easy to understand why those (like Jenrick and his colleagues) keen to defend and maintain huge disparities in wealth will recoil from such a suggestion. It challenges their whole outlook, to say nothing of their privilege and wealth. But it’s the only way forward in a resource-constrained world, even if it’s going to take some time before enough of us realise that fact.

Yes, they really can be this incompetent

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Over the weekend, Sky News reported on some leaked messages from a What’s App group run by the Conservative Democratic Organisation. This is the organisation founded by supporters of Boris Johnson with the repeatedly denied aim of restoring him to what they see as his rightful position as Prime Clown and First Lord of Chaos. To say that many of those commenting are making rather unfavourable remarks about Rishi Sunak would be something of an understatement. Others buy in to sundry, and fundamentally antisemitic, theories about globalists and the World Economic Forum.

When it comes to talk of conspiracy, my own favourite was the one who argued that, “No party can be this incompetent on purpose. It's got to be by design”, thereby proving that the author, at least, really can be that incompetent by accident, given that he or she either thinks there is some fundamental difference between “on purpose” and “by design” or has failed to transcribe his or her thoughts accurately. Actually, however, I wonder if he or she might accidentally have hit the nail on the head – perhaps the party and its leader really aren’t as incompetent as they look and are actively trying to ensure defeat in the next election. Given that Labour are so busy trying not to rock any boats that they’re signing up to changing very little when they get into government, it might make sense for the Tories to legislate for a whole series of incoherent and damaging policies, locking Labour into implementing them. Meanwhile, they can change leader again and criticise the Labour government for implementing the very policies that they themselves have passed. It might even be their fastest route back to power.

It would be a very cunning plan. Unfortunately, I tend to side with Occam on this: the simplest explanation is that they really are as incompetent as the person writing the comment thinks, and that it’s neither on purpose nor by design.

Should we all join them?

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In the space of a single interview round yesterday, Rishi Sunak managed to say both that he wasn’t going to talk about the past because he was focussed on the future (in response to a question about Mad Nad), and that he wasn’t going to speculate about future things (in response to a question about HS2). Excluding both the past and the future is a neat way of limiting the scope of questions to which any sort of answer can be even half-expected, but if he’d given it enough thought in advance, he would have realised it left him with nothing much to say other than that it would be a good idea to fill in a few potholes, so he proceeded to say exactly that, at length.

Not speculating about speculation that he (or his minions) has himself started isn’t exactly honest, but then honesty isn’t exactly his strongest suit. He’s been at it again since, with Number 10 speculating about the possibility of banning (or at least restricting) the powers of English councils to follow Wales’ lead in introducing 20mph limits. Never let a good bandwagon go unjumped upon. For good measure, and just in case anyone thinks that he isn’t fully committed to the primacy of private cars, he has also encouraged speculation that he wants to clamp down on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and bus lanes, a policy not exactly designed to appeal to those who live in LTNs or who depend on buses. It’s not a question to which he can respond directly himself, of course, because that would be speculating about the future. Until after he’s announced it, in which case he won’t be able to talk about it because it will then be in the past. And once it’s in the past it’s someone else’s fault anyway. Probably Labour’s.

Talking of which, and closer to home, it seems that some of those opposed to 20mph limits in Wales are going to protest against the ‘blanket ban’ by driving slowly on roads where there has never been any suggestion of a reduction to 20mph, proving, in a strange way, that it isn’t a blanket ban at all. I don’t know what the accident statistics are like on the A55, A483 and M4 on a normal Saturday, but forcing people to drive along them at very low speed is a very peculiar kind of protest against low speed limits which carries the very real possibility that they will also demonstrate how cutting speed reduces both the number of accidents and the severity of injuries caused. Maybe Lee Waters should think about joining them.