Tag: four freedoms

Where are we now??

I abandoned my blog a few months ago. ‘Abandon’ feels like the right word. The liberal world was already in crisis and that was before the profoundly illiberal Trump was re-elected. So much has happened since. It’s more than I could do to resist the temptation to put down a few thoughts on where the world is now.

What kept me awake last night were jail sentences. An American resident illegally deported and now imprisoned in a brutal Salvadorian jail. No, he won’t be returned to the USA, said the Salvadorian president, Bukele. Trump standing alongside smirked a complicit smirk. Does Trump care that Ekrem Imamoglu, Mayor of Istanbul, and main rival to Erdogan in Turkey, has been locked up on absurd corruption and terrorism charges? Would Trump look to stymie some future presidential challenger if he had the chance? There’s no certainty he wouldn’t. You could argue that nepotism and the accumulation off family wealth are Erdogan’s stock in trade. Looking no further than the role of Trump’s own family, and their financial transactions, and to bitcoin, might one not say the same about Trump?

Imamoglu would have known the risks and yet he stayed the course. There can be no certainty that he will ever be released. Think of the Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan. It’s now 26 years in jail. The title of Ahmet Altan’s book was ‘I will never see the world again’? He did. He was released. Arrested on a whim. Released on a whim.

Courts in Russia hand out long prison sentences for any kind of anti-government expression. Five years for associates of Navalny. Sixteen years for a social media post.

The four freedoms of the European Union, allowing the free movement of goods, services, capital and people, allied to freedom of expression, now stand out ever more clearly. Giorgio Meloni in Italy has surprised many by holding true to them, albeit while pursuing a socially conservative agenda. Where might a National Rally government take France if elected next year? What of Orban and Hungary? He’s taken over both the press and courts. Will that be enough to ensure his re-election next year? Might we have another Poland, where the populist Law and Justice government was voted out in 2023?

Law and Justice in Poland, and Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, are both opposed to abortion and wider gender rights. The National Rally in France claims to be an ardent supporter of women’s rights. It supports abortion. But many in its ranks disagree.

On the subject of gender, here in the UK we have had today had a Supreme Court ruling stating that the legal definition of a woman has to be based on biological sex, which is not what supporters of transgender rights had been hoping for. The decision was, I think, inevitable. The safe spaces argument has cogency. But the issue won’t go away.

Staying in the UK. We have Reform still polling 25%. How will that convert into votes come next month’s local elections? Any support for Trump’s tariff agenda will surely be a vote loser, but his attitudes to gender and race, his scorn for academia, his taking down of ‘elites’ and bureaucracy, may well appeal. And that puts Farage on strong ground, even if he hasn’t through his political life ever propounded a sane, considered and politically workable policy. A focus on investment and social mobility has to be the way to handle social division. Not disruption for its own sake

We should be focusing on Ukraine and Gaza, and, as David Lammy as Foreign Secretary has bravely tried to do, on Sudan. Helping Ukraine produce the weapons it needs, as well as supplying from our own stocks. Holding Putin to account for the incredible number of his own Russian soldiers killed in pursuit of a very personal vision he has of restoring the old Soviet hegemony. (Yes, we were at fault for being far too slow to recognise this was his intent. And for our Western arrogance. But that story is not for here.)

Also, holding Netanyahu to account, as we should the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) and government forces in Sudan for the appalling loss of life they’ve inflicted. There is also Taiwan, and what China might yet do. We’re now in the crazy position of taking sides with China in a trade war against Trump’s USA, when Xi Jinping’s China is the most illiberal society of all.

Even truces or cease-fires can be hard to imagine. In Sudan, Arab versus non-Arab divisions in Darfur have been intractable for decades. In Israel/Palestine divisions go back a hundred years. For Ukraine/Russia it’s many hundreds of years. The UK and the EU working together on defence, and the UK and France, Starmer and Macron. That at least has to be positive.

Tacking another tack, what of Starmer’s benefits policy? His return to the old Blairite and especially Cameronian agenda of reducing benefits. There’s been a massive increase since 2019 but it’s argued that we’re only now approaching the level of benefits enjoyed in some other Europeans countries. At the same time, there has to be a reason for this surge in the take-up of benefits. Are we genuinely less healthy, physically and mentally? I can see both sides but there are good reasons why a financially straitened government has to take the action it’s taking.

Tariffs are our current obsession. It seems we might, in the UK, escape the worst of them. We shall see. But such minor straws of good fortune in the current whirlwind are no more than straws. As I said many times in this blog we must deep-anchor our liberal values, personal, social and economic. I think we have currently a government with as good a chance of handling our current crises as we’re likely to have. That is a small mercy.

The referendum – for the record

Musings I put on Facebook before and after the referendum result. (Read in conjunction with my last post:  24th June – the day after.) Plus a quote from a brilliant post by my son, Ben.

8th June

I came back on Monday from Spain to find – no surprise – good old England more than ever entangled in the referendum debate. My trip underlined, as did walking across Spain on the Camino last summer and autumn, what we’d endanger by voting to leave on the 23rd.

On the one hand we have a remarkable trading bloc, an open market which in all previous ages would have been inconceivable. And on the other we have – we share – a common European mentality, a sense of a common European heritage. It’s not just a British heritage but a European heritage that we, as seen by non-Europeans, present to the world.

Are they small achievements?

We have 28 countries all working together, with many a disharmony – as you’d expect – but still working together. It is unprecedented. Don’t take it for granted. It didn’t just happen.

One market with its four freedoms – free movement of goods, capital, services and people – requires the same trading conditions across the continent, and agreement has not been easily negotiated or easily won.

Europe – the EU – is unique in world history – nations after centuries of conflict finding a remarkable level of common ground, and working together, and presenting one face to the world – not just a trading bloc but an exemplar to the world of cooperation, decency and integrity – a collective advocate of social justice and equal rights – a model for the world of how a continent can put past enmities behind it.

I hope and pray we don’t have the too easy cop-out of a ‘plague on all your houses’ influencing the vote on 23rd June. Or that too many of us have recourse to a ‘close borders and close minds’ attitude. Yes, there’s much wrong with Europe, with the EU. But we should be working to put it right, to make it function in the interest of all Europeans.

By that I mean public servants, teachers, children, employers and employees, professionals, artists, musicians, charity workers, the retired, the unemployed, the disadvantaged, immigrants – and those who feel their lives are threatened by immigration.

All Europeans – anything less than that and we will continue with the same problems, the same tensions we have now. And given the impossibility of closing borders in our modern world, they will get worse.

24th June

I was a counting agent for Stronger in Europe last night, in a west London borough, and as early as midnight I could see how the Leave votes were piling up. Sometimes there would be a run of as many as ten Leave votes before a Remain vote or two showed up. That brought it home. We can’t easily take on the Mail’s bile and bitterness but we can take up the standard from Jo Cox, be proud of Britain (and in her case Yorkshire as well!), proud of Europe and what it’s achieved and where it’s come from over the last seventy years, and be open and open-hearted toward the world. That’s a challenge, and one I think with the young people if not the old fogeys of Britain on our side (a generalisation of course – I am by some definitions an old fogey!) I’m sure we can rise to. What happens over the next few months is all highly uncertain. The Tories need a majority in parliament, and as we’ve seen recently there are Tory MPs like Anna Soubry who do understand the issues and will continue to fight for the cause. 52% is not a done deal.

25th June – from Ben Collier’s post

It’s not about us. ….It’s about the union we’ve just left behind when we should have been part of leading it. It’s about the years of progress we’ve just undone for purely selfish and narrow-minded reasons. It’s about the fact that there are bigger issues to solve in this world than our own day to day problems…

26th June  – in response to a post from a UKIP-supporting friend:

Tony, I agree, we shouldn’t let friendship suffer. I remember the great solidarity shown by UKIP supporters at the Spelthorne count on Thursday night. They were good people. But I believe passionately they were wrong. When someone says to me they cried for twenty minutes when they woke in Friday morning and heard the news – I understand why. For so many of us, so many millions of us, we can see no good reason for leaving, we see only damage to ourselves, to the wider world, and to our place in the world. The EU has brought Europe together after centuries of conflict, and created a single and highly efficient market. We accept that it needs reform – and we want to be part of that process, not watching on the sidelines. In the end it’s about how we see the world – and I know that’s what you’d say as well. We may profoundly disagree – but it’s important we listen to each other. All best, Chris

Extract from Tony’s post:

Trying so hard not to open or read messages that are negative about our leaving the EU. It is upsetting that once good friends and family members are falling out…

27th June

My last post on the referendum result. We have, so many of us, expressed our consternation and shock over the result, and we’re united in arguing for an open, open-hearted, outward-looking, international Britain. That will guide our future actions – will guide mine. My aim, one I share with millions – to see the result overturned.

At the same time – the Leave vote was for many a protest vote, against marginalisation, elites, the ‘establishment’. And that needs to be immediately addressed. One starting-point would be to scrap HS2 without further ado, and switch investment to developing infrastructure nationwide. Can we seriously imagine HS2 bringing any benefit to the North-East?

Social media and Facebook. Why were so many of us so surprised by the result? We couldn’t have imagined 52% for Leave. Could we? The danger of social media is that it’s all too easy to exist inside our own cocoons, linking up only to those who share our outlook on the world. AC Grayling has argued that the Leave vote was irrational: I don’t agree. There were reasons, and we need to understand them.

An extension of this argument: don’t let the referendum vote undermine friendships. Which is the point made by the exchange between Pooh and Piglet that I shared yesterday. Keep talking. Don’t let either side patronise the other.

Having said that when it comes to Faragian misanthropy, and all its various manifestations in the media – there is no shared ground. Likewise, for me, the neo-liberal agenda which has hijacked the debate.

And finally, there has been much good stuff, many wise and passionate posts and articles written over the last few days. I shared one such last Friday – from my son, Ben Collier. If you missed it, do scroll back to read it!

In Ben’s words, ‘It’s not about us. …It’s about the union we’ve just left behind when we should have been part of leading it. It’s about the years of progress we’ve just undone for purely selfish and narrow-minded reasons. It’s about the fact that there are bigger issues to solve in this world than our own day to day problems …’

Why bother to vote?

My last post focused on which way to vote in the EU referendum. But there’s another concern, another issue – apathy. Why bother to vote? Could be indifference, or ‘a plague on all your houses’.

So – why vote?

There’s much wrong with the EU, much that needs reform, but what we do have is on the one hand a remarkable trading bloc, an open market which in all previous ages would have been inconceivable.

(By way of contrast, there’s a hard left faction in the National Union of Teachers which views the EU as part of vast capitalist conspiracy: for them the plague is all-encompassing and they’re voting to leave.)

And on the other we have a common European mentality, a sense of a common European heritage. It’s not just a British heritage but a European heritage that we – as seen by non-Europeans – present to the world.

Is that a small achievement?

We have 28 countries all working together, with many a disharmony – as you’d expect – but still working together. I think it’s remarkable. Don’t take it for granted. It didn’t just happen.

One market with its four freedoms – free movement of goods, capital, services and people – requires the same trading conditions, across the continent, and agreement has not been easily negotiated or easily won. Europe – the EU – is unique in world history – nations finding a remarkable level of common ground, and working together, and presenting one face to the world – not just a trading bloc but an exemplar to the world of cooperation, decency and integrity – a collective advocate of social justice and equal rights – a model for the world of how a continent can put past enmities behind it.

I hope and pray we don’t have the too-easy cop-out of a ‘plague on all your houses’ influencing the vote on 23rd June. Yes, there’s much wrong with Europe, with the EU. But we should be working to put it right, to make it function in the interest of all Europeans.

By that I mean public servants, children, teachers, private sector employers and employees, professionals, artists, musicians, charity workers, the retired, the unemployed, the disadvantaged, immigrants – and those who feel their lives are threatened by immigration.

All Europeans – anything less than that and we will continue with the same problems, the same tensions we have now.