Tag: Jeremy Corbyn

How many more crisis votes will there be?

More votes last night. Arguing as ever on the wrong territory.

The argument should not be, in any sane polity, ‘should we be part of the EU’, but what form that participation should take. Any organisation pulling together states with disparate backgrounds but shared interests will always be, in one regard or another, close to crisis, but likewise, always be looking to reform and develop itself. The EU is an ongoing project.

The UK is aiming to put ourselves outside that process. Without any other body with whom we could engage, which could act as a substitute. Not the old Commonwealth, or (God forbid) the USA. And at a time when ‘a new pattern in world commerce is becoming clearer’ (The Economist).

A key aspect of the slowdown (‘cross-border investment, trade, bank loans and supply chains have all be shrinking or stagnating relative to world GDP’) over the last ten years in globalisation is the increasing focus on more regionally focused trade, as wages rise and market size increases in developing countries. (‘Supply chains are focusing closer to home.’) Containerisation brought about a radical reduction in transportation costs, but that was effectively a one-off. Distance adds cost, and takes out of the equation just-in-time availability. Brexit is intended to take us in the diametrically opposite direction, trading with more distant, less reliable partners, over long distances with slower supply chains, and at the same time putting up barriers and souring relationships with our local hitherto partners.

And so to yesterday’s series of votes in the House of Commons, where attempts to delay the Brexit process to allow parliament more time to discuss alternative options, to avoid a hard Brexit, were all voted down, and instead a Tory amendment passed, backing a renegotiated version of the agreement with the EU – a renegotiation of the Northern Ireland backstop, which the EU has made it abundantly clear it is not willing to renegotiate.

It is hoped – assumed – imagined – that the EU will cave in, wishing to avoid the damage that a hard Brexit would cause to the EU as well as the UK. Having seen that there is a majority in the UK parliament for some kind of an agreement, the EU would find a way to circumvent the Irish border issue. There is a reported lack of unanimity among the leaders of individual countries: true or not I can’t say. But if the continuance of an open border is crucial to the EU and specifically to Ireland, I (and the mass ranks of commentators out there) can’t see how there can be any agreement which fails to guarantee absolutely that an open border will remain in place indefinitely. There is a patent absurdity here.

I may be wrong – maybe the EU will find a way to trim and compromise, with a show of politeness, and withholding their scorn in any public utterances. One way or the other, we will be back again in the House of Commons in two weeks’ time, for more votes. The assumption must be that the May agreement would again be voted on,  unchanged, in its current unamended form, and again be thrown out. Or May will pre-empt that by proposing some kind of Customs Union, backing down from one of her original red lines, those hostages to fortune she put up so foolishly shortly after she became prime minister.

She is meeting today with Jeremy Corbyn, who now says he is prepared to talk with her. Maybe he wants to explore how and when such a change of policy on the government’s part might occur, and in what circumstances the Labour Party, and Labour MPs, might support it. He will know now that he is not likely to bring the government down. When it comes to the crunch Tory MPs, even the moderates such as Dominic Grieve and Anna Soubry, will always rally to the flag.

Being a Tory MP, which requires a certain mindset, local constituency alliances, and a habitual and habituated tolerance of local opinion, instils loyalties which will survive crisis and sometimes override what common sense dictates. (Labour loyalties also run deep, but aren’t so tribal.)

That’s my take on current events, on what will come out of last night’s more ordered than usual chaos.

I’ll be away in the Southern Hemisphere, far from the madding crowd, when the next vote, or series of votes, come around. There will probably be a snow-capped volcano on the other side of the lake when I draw back the curtain the morning after. They are always the best kind.

Prize (political) idiots of the year

The Economist in its 8th December issue reports on the Spectator magazine’s annual dinner where the editors hand out awards to MPs. Or, rather, The Economist didn’t report. They chose instead, in a year when politicians are ‘falling over each other to make fools of themselves’, to present an alternative set of awards. No bean-feast or ceremony of course, just dishonourable mentions in despatches – the Bagehot page to be precise.

Names names names – if you’re from over the pond, or antipodean, or subcontinental, or even European, they won’t mean much. But you could always come up with your own list. It is Christmas, after all.

I’m not doing much more than reporting here – sharing the names. Compassion, you ask? Should I show some? My counter to that would be – incompetence must out in the end.

1] Ministers who should never have been promoted. Liam Fox, Andrea Leadsom, prime candidates, but ‘no-one can hold a candle to Chris Grayling, whose unpopularity and incompetence put him several lengths ahead of the rest.’ Justice secretary, transport secretary – why is he still there? ‘Maybe it’s because he’s a Brexiteer…’ (Indeed, it is.)

2] Failed comeback of the year: Vince Cable, leader of the LibDems (a little cruel). David Cameron – mooted the idea he might become foreign secretary. Laughter echoed for miles, so I hear.

3] Most deluded politician of the year. Jacob Rees-Mogg? No, the award goes to David Davis: ‘He was a disaster as Brexit secretary, which he blames on the civil service and everybody else blames on his laziness.’

4] Own-goal scorer of the year. Lord (one-time Andrew) Adonis … a candidate for obscure reasons I won’t go into here. But for me he also qualifies as an enthusiastic supporter of HS2, unnecessary speed at extraordinary expense. But that’s not quite an own goal. Not yet. Not until it gets finally buried in a bunker under the Chilterns.

Own-goal, who else? Jeremy Corbyn one suggestion. As an effective opposition (leaving ideology out of it) Labour has been one spectacular own goal since Corbyn was elected. But that was three years ago. We’re in the here and now, and for The Economist it has to be Arlene Foster of the DUP – her strident opposition to Mrs May’s deal makes a second referendum – and no Brexit – that much more likely. For a Brexit supporter, that’s impressive.

5] ‘The most coveted award’ – the politician who has done most to let his party and country down.  Corbyn is a candidate – a ditherer on Brexit, a follower of the line of least resistance.  ‘But Mr Corbyn merely exploited Brexit, and we felt our award should go to one of the architects of this catastrophe.’ There’s one outstanding candidate. ‘He failed miserably as foreign secretary.’ He sniped while in cabinet, from the back benches, and in his Telegraph column. ‘A demagogue not a statesman, he is the most irresponsible politician this country has seen for many years.

‘Step forward Boris Johnson!’

Well done Bagehot for an excellent bit of … reporting? The awards are all spot on, and they made me in these depressing times smile out loud.

*

Just for the record, who won the actual Spectator awards? They were reasonably cross-party. Campaigner of the Year: David Lammy (Labour MP for Tottenham) – right on. Speech of the Year: Margaret Hodge. Inquisitor of the Year: Yvette Cooper. Cabinet resignations of the Year: David Davis and Dominic Raab. (There were so many, comparable to resignations in the Trump White House.)

Take out Davis and Raab and they are mostly an impressive bunch, fighters for causes, well away from the deluded end of the spectrum. The fringe, those who make their fellow MPs cringe, weren’t likely to get far in the voting.

The Economist on the other hand had no such quibbles.

Dare we be optimistic?

We’ve few political role models in this day and age, people who’ve been through it all, and suffered all the slings and arrows, and opprobrium, but somehow now stand above the fray – and we listen to them. In Tony Benn’s case we might not agree. But we listened. Michael Heseltine is another, and I often agree.

John Major – we wonder how he stuck it out.  As for Chris Patten, after losing his seat in 1992, he escaped. And one hell of an escape – to be governor-general of Hong Kong in its last years as a colony. He’s now written a biography, ‘First Confession: A Sort of Memoir’.

There’s a phrase, a summary of his life and aspiration, which I love, his ‘immoderate defence of liberal order [as] a counter to the violence of narrow identity’.

‘Immoderate defence’ – there needs to be, there can be, no holding back.

To quote Jonathan Fenby in the FT Weekend, Patten ‘ is aghast at Britain’s decision to leave the European Union’. He ‘worries about a prime minister who “seems to doubt whether you can be both a British citizen and a citizen of the world” – both of which he clearly sees himself as being’.

‘His greatest admiration is reserved for …John Major, who shouldered the problems of the Thatcher inheritance… and “on one issue after another has been shown to have taken the right decisions and to have been on the right side”’.

Too often we hedge, prevaricate, tread gently… worry we’re going too much out on a limb in opposing Brexit. Witness all the Tory MP s who supported, and still support, remaining in the EU.  There’s a uniquely Tory hypocrisy about all this.

Patten is another kind of Tory. I’d love to have his comments on the recent election. We could with Brexit and especially a hard Brexit be seeing the biggest shift in British politics since the war. But, Fenby speculates, and I think Patten might just agree, that ‘the die may not be cast’. And here he picks up on the optimism I’ve felt, and spoken about, in the weeks since the election.

Optimism – being optimistic has worried me.  Terrible things shave happened since 8th June, but the post-referendum certainties have been shaken. Events could yet, in Fenby’s words, ‘lead to a more reasonable path than appeared likely a year ago’.

Macron, the likely re-election of Merkel, the (still tentative) rolling back of the populist tide in Europe, positive signs from mainland European economies….

Trump on the other hand is still there as a terrible reminder of how asinine politics has become in the USA. So too May, Davis, Johnson, Gove, Fox…

But I’ve long argued that that there are no certainties in politics. (Or life!) Policy goals are all too often for the birds. Apparent sea changes forget that there are tides and seasons.  Where we can have more influence is the direction of travel.

God knows where Corbyn would take us if elected. Into a frenzy of nationalisation and anti-global action… or a frenzy of rhetoric. I think we’d survive a short spell of Corbyn, whether he pushes to the extremes or no. I don’t have that confidence about Brexit – there’s a will to destroy our prosperity and reputation, and a seeking of finalities which won’t easily be pulled back.

I think the direction of travel has shifted in the last month.  We have some small cause for greater optimism. But there remains a mighty struggle ahead.