Since the Brexit referendum it's been fashionable amongst Remainers to point out that those who loved the UK so much they wanted to wrest it from Brussels' sticky embrace might, by having voted to Leave, end up driving the Scots out of the Union.
Scottish adherents of this view - stand up Alex Massie of The Times - tend to imply that in voting the way it did, England should have spared a thought for the Scots, ignoring the fact that as we all trooped to the ballot box last June we had no idea how Scotland would vote, and that in any event not caring much either way was part of our democratic right.
I am however slowly coming round to the view that Brexit might actually make Scotland less likely to leave the UK than more.
It's all about the timing.
It now seems pretty certain that there won't be a referendum pre-Brexit. This drastically changes the nature of the offer the SNP can make. A referendum held while we are in the EU enabled the SNP to say, "Once we're independent we'll just carry on as before". This would probably not be true, because iScotland would probably be out of the EU; but it was a pitch that was made by the SNP in 2014 and it is not readily disprovable.
After Brexit this argument will no longer fly. Scotland would be out of the EU and would have to decide whether to reapply. If it applied it would have to join the Euro. I doubt whether this is a sellable proposition. Comically, the SNP had almost worked this out, which is why Nicola Sturgeon said before the weekend that Scotland might not reapply for EU membership, and might consider joining EFTA or the EEA instead. A handy way of parking the Euro issue, you might think.
However it was only a matter of hours before someone pointed out how strange it was that the SNP should cite Brexit as justification for a second referendum, but then say that Scotland might not rejoin after all.
At the time of writing the SNP's policy has veered back to renewed membership.
That might have changed by the time you read this.
If Theresa May holds her nerve (and whilst I'm sure Nicola Sturgeon is a "bloody difficult woman", Ms May is a bloody difficult woman with a lot more power) there will be no 2nd referendum until after Brexit, possibly not until after the Holyrood elections of 2021, and possibly not at all if the pressure of incumbency tells on the SNP and it cannot muster a majority.
Of course even if I'm right about this, it's arguable that without Brexit there would have been no pretext for another referendum, and that the Nationalists would have remained quiescent. That may be true. But don't forget that the SNP leadership are grievance-seekers and their members zealots. It's not hard to imagine that they would, as the crest of the Nationalist wave receded, clutch at some straw - perhaps a renewed Tory mandate in 2020 - as a pretext for another poll.
Whatever, it looks as if next time Independence is an option at the ballot box Scotland would face losing the Barnett subsidy, having to make EU financial contributions, having to make eye-watering spending cuts to reduce its deficit to an acceptable level, joining the Euro, losing free movement of its citizens to the rest of the UK and losing free access to its largest export market in order to be able to trade freely with a smaller one across the North Sea.
All that because of Brexit. I'm waiting for Alex Massie to say thank you.
Tuesday 21 March 2017
Saturday 18 March 2017
Nicola Sturgeon and the two types of SNP supporter
There are two types of SNP supporters, and they can be neatly separated by attitudes to the annual GERS statistics, compiled by Scottish civil servants to show Scotland's income and expenditure.
These statistics show that if Scotland were independent now it would have to find an extra £1700 or thereabouts per person every year just to maintain public spending at its current level. That's because Scotland gets about £1500 p.p. p.a. more than citizens in less fortunate parts of the UK (courtesy of the Barnett Formula), and because Scotland raises about £250 p.p. less by way of tax revenue.
The first type of SNP supporter is the person who has never heard of the GERS figures, or who has but does not understand them, or who fears they may contain something nasty and would rather not look, or who understands them only too well but maintains they are inaccurate.
Then there are those who understand the figures, understand their consequences for an independent Scotland, understand what they mean for services used by the poorest Scots, but just don't care.
The first category I would class as pitiful, ignorant and/or self-deluding. I feel sorry for them, because they are dupes. But it's the second who really get up my nose; and particularly the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon.
We are constantly being told what a clever and shrewd politician Ms Sturgeon is. Although she has done some stupid things (telling us there must be a 2nd referendum because we are leaving the EU, but then admitting that Scotland may not rejoin anyway is only one of them), I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on this.
I also believe that she is well-informed. She is the First Minister of Scotland and she has lived and breathed politics all her adult life (and probably a lot of her adolescence too). So she will have seen the GERS figures. She will know what they mean.
She will know that iScotland will either face spending cuts of some 15% post Independence (cuts of a severity that George Osborne, on a Class A high in his gimp-suit could only dream of); or it will have to raise taxes across the board by a swingeing degree; or it will have to borrow an awful lot of money (despite not having its own currency or a central bank). Ms Sturgeon knows all this, and she knows what the consequences will be for every Scot who uses the health service, education system or is in receipt of benefits.
Here's a piece of circumstantial evidence which supports this hypothesis. The Labour leader Kezia Dugdale put the reality of Scotland's deficit to Ms Sturgeon at Holyrood the other day. Sturgeon did not even attempt to address the issue. She snapped back a phrase familiar to Holyrood-watchers. Dugdale was, she said, "talking Scotland down". If the First Minister could refute Dugdale's point, she would have. She cannot. She knows it. But she is still arguing for Independence.
Why? It is it at this point that I run out of answers. A decent person, politician or no, wants the best for his or her country. I believe that the overwhelming majority of British politicians outside the SNP want this. At some deep and grudging level I even believe it of Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage. But I don't believe it of Nicola Sturgeon or Alex Salmond. I believe that they are motivated by something far, far deeper and visceral. How else to explain their enthusiasm to take their country on a race to the bottom? I think they would rather bury Scotland in a dungheap so long they chose which one.
What it so unattractive about this is not the suspicion it arouses that Sturgeon et al hate England far more than they love Scotland. No, it's that they personally, no matter how bad things got post-Indy, will be OK. No doubt the speaking engagements, the newspaper articles, the media appearances, the non-exec directorships and finally the generous Holyrood pensions will sway comfortably into view for Ms Sturgeon. She would retire to some West of Scotland retreat amid the carnage of her country's reduced circumstances, secure in the knowledge that the consequences of her mistakes could not touch her personally. Arguing for Independence is easy for her, because she will be immune from its consequences.
Comically, Ms Sturgeon appears to believe that she holds the moral high ground. Scotland must be independent, she intones, because it operates to a superior set of values to Tory England. That may be so. But not the part of Scotland she occupies herself.
Monday 13 March 2017
Nicola Sturgeon - impulsive gambler
So this morning Nicola Sturgeon has announced she will put in hand the legislation required to start the process for a 2nd Independence referendum, to take place between the end of 2018 and spring 2019.
I think this announcement reveals Ms Sturgeon to be a gambler. It seems to me the act of someone in a weak position who has played her strongest card early, knowing that the longer the game goes on the smaller the chance she has of winning. It also confirms that, far from being the clever politician of popular wisdom, she is impulsive and prone to fits of pique.
The SNP doesn't like Brexit much, and Scotland voted by a significant majority to Remain. In the immediate aftermath of the Leave victory Ms Sturgeon made a number of remarks which gave her supporters to understand that this was a game-changing event which would inevitably lead to Indyref2.
This was a mistake, because it left her with so little room for manouevre. It forced her subsequent management of events into choice between backing down, thus infuriating her own supporters, or following through with a process which she cannot be remotely sure will result in success. The tone of her announcement, and the way she handled the press afterwards, suggest decisions made in genuine anger. Really clever politicians don't do things in anger.
Having been forced by Brexit and by her own rhetoric into putting the Indyref2 process into motion, Sturgeon has decided to go early rather than wait for events. She knows she cannot afford to have the referendum after Brexit, because, faced with a choice between ceding sovereignty to Brussels and being in the Union, Scots may well think that remaining in the UK looks the more attractive option. Moreover, the longer she waits, the more her party's record in government will be scrutinised.
It's actually quite hard at the moment to work out what the SNP's policy on Europe is. Mrs Sturgeon left this tantalisingly blank in her announcement today. Are they in favour of EFTA membership? Or of being in the EEA, keeping the pound in both options (with all the disadvantages that entails, including the absence of a central bank)? Or they in favour of joining the EU, which would almost certainly mean adopting the Euro (that did after all used to be SNP policy)? Sturgeon has conspicuously failed to be specific on this, but she'll have to commit herself long before any referendum.
Being in the EU means losing the rebate and swallowing the Euro. It may mean tariffs and a hard border. Remaining in the UK means maintaining the Barnett formula, and retaining tariff-free access to Scotland's biggest export market. Scots may well wonder why they should leave a Union which has served them well for three hundred years in favour of one which is widely perceived, even by its supporters, as undemocratic, bureaucratic and corrupt. It is bizarre that Mrs Sturgeon should be so upset about "leaving the EU single market" when as part of the UK Scotland is already part of a single market which is significantly bigger.
So the fact that Sturgeon has gone for the quick contest tells us a good deal about what she considers to be the nature of the battlefield.
A further point. Ms Sturgeon herself does not have the right to call a referendum. She has to pass legislation at Holyrood (something which will require the support of the Greens), and then ask Westminster. Mrs May has little option but to accede to such a request, but she can decide the timing of the referendum. She should play hard-ball. She can say, "Yes, you can have a referendum. But not till after Brexit." Sturgeon would huff and puff, but May's position would be perfectly defensible. She can point out that it is unreasonable to expect Scots to make an informed decision when they don't know the nature of Brexit. As it happens I expect that we won't have a signed Brexit deal within two years from now, but there's absolutely no reason why May should allow a referendum until a deal is signed.
If I were Mrs May I'd point out that I am Prime Minister of the whole of the UK, including Scotland, and that Mrs Sturgeon is merely the woman elected to run 10% of it. I'd say that I'm negotiating the UK's decision to leave the EU, and that I certainly don't intend to jeopardise the UK's chances of getting a good deal by allowing myself to be distracted from the job in hand by the SNP's desire for independence.
Sturgeon could of course defy Westminster, and have a referendum anyway. The No faction should then call for a boycott. An unlawful referendum would have no legal or moral status.
I think this announcement reveals Ms Sturgeon to be a gambler. It seems to me the act of someone in a weak position who has played her strongest card early, knowing that the longer the game goes on the smaller the chance she has of winning. It also confirms that, far from being the clever politician of popular wisdom, she is impulsive and prone to fits of pique.
The SNP doesn't like Brexit much, and Scotland voted by a significant majority to Remain. In the immediate aftermath of the Leave victory Ms Sturgeon made a number of remarks which gave her supporters to understand that this was a game-changing event which would inevitably lead to Indyref2.
This was a mistake, because it left her with so little room for manouevre. It forced her subsequent management of events into choice between backing down, thus infuriating her own supporters, or following through with a process which she cannot be remotely sure will result in success. The tone of her announcement, and the way she handled the press afterwards, suggest decisions made in genuine anger. Really clever politicians don't do things in anger.
Having been forced by Brexit and by her own rhetoric into putting the Indyref2 process into motion, Sturgeon has decided to go early rather than wait for events. She knows she cannot afford to have the referendum after Brexit, because, faced with a choice between ceding sovereignty to Brussels and being in the Union, Scots may well think that remaining in the UK looks the more attractive option. Moreover, the longer she waits, the more her party's record in government will be scrutinised.
It's actually quite hard at the moment to work out what the SNP's policy on Europe is. Mrs Sturgeon left this tantalisingly blank in her announcement today. Are they in favour of EFTA membership? Or of being in the EEA, keeping the pound in both options (with all the disadvantages that entails, including the absence of a central bank)? Or they in favour of joining the EU, which would almost certainly mean adopting the Euro (that did after all used to be SNP policy)? Sturgeon has conspicuously failed to be specific on this, but she'll have to commit herself long before any referendum.
Being in the EU means losing the rebate and swallowing the Euro. It may mean tariffs and a hard border. Remaining in the UK means maintaining the Barnett formula, and retaining tariff-free access to Scotland's biggest export market. Scots may well wonder why they should leave a Union which has served them well for three hundred years in favour of one which is widely perceived, even by its supporters, as undemocratic, bureaucratic and corrupt. It is bizarre that Mrs Sturgeon should be so upset about "leaving the EU single market" when as part of the UK Scotland is already part of a single market which is significantly bigger.
So the fact that Sturgeon has gone for the quick contest tells us a good deal about what she considers to be the nature of the battlefield.
A further point. Ms Sturgeon herself does not have the right to call a referendum. She has to pass legislation at Holyrood (something which will require the support of the Greens), and then ask Westminster. Mrs May has little option but to accede to such a request, but she can decide the timing of the referendum. She should play hard-ball. She can say, "Yes, you can have a referendum. But not till after Brexit." Sturgeon would huff and puff, but May's position would be perfectly defensible. She can point out that it is unreasonable to expect Scots to make an informed decision when they don't know the nature of Brexit. As it happens I expect that we won't have a signed Brexit deal within two years from now, but there's absolutely no reason why May should allow a referendum until a deal is signed.
If I were Mrs May I'd point out that I am Prime Minister of the whole of the UK, including Scotland, and that Mrs Sturgeon is merely the woman elected to run 10% of it. I'd say that I'm negotiating the UK's decision to leave the EU, and that I certainly don't intend to jeopardise the UK's chances of getting a good deal by allowing myself to be distracted from the job in hand by the SNP's desire for independence.
Sturgeon could of course defy Westminster, and have a referendum anyway. The No faction should then call for a boycott. An unlawful referendum would have no legal or moral status.
Tuesday 28 February 2017
The Oscars and Donald Trump - narcissistic fools?
Is there any occasion in public life more nausea-inducing than the Oscars?
I sometimes wonder. I never watch it of course, but any engagement with the outside world at this time of year involves 2nd hand acquaintance with the awards ceremony cavalcade, an event at which those successful at climbing the greasy pole mingle with their fellows, network furiously, tout for business and pretend to be gracious when they don't win anything, all the while preening before the proles circling resentfully down below, those less fortunate, less rich, less talented, less beautiful and less sycophantic.
Oh, and less pretentious. Here's the actress Viola Davis, accepting her award for best supporting actress in Fences - "I became an artist and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life", Ms Davis gushed. As an artist of a sort myself, I can confirm that we are no better at celebrating our lives than any other demographic. Is it wrong of me to hope that Ms Davis is obliged to return to waiting tables fairly soon, so she can better reflect on what it means to be lacking in self-awareness?
But anyway, on to the main business of this year's ceremony, namely the mix-up which led two accountants from PWC handing Warren Beatty an envelope containing the wrong card for the winner of Best Picture. Readers will be aware that La La Land was announced and that the makers were some way into their acceptance speeches before the mistake was corrected.
I've seen both La La Land and the eventual winner, Moonlight, and thought both over-praised. La La Land's purported critique of Hollywood is toothless to say the least compared to Altman's The Player (its one good joke is at the expense of the ubiquity of the Toyota Prius: that's how satirical it is), its plot implausible (there's neither showing nor telling why the principals' career commitments should have ruined their relationship) and, in a musical whose McGuffin is devotion to jazz, its score is unforgivably lame and bland.
As for Moonlight, a coming of age movie about a young gay black boy, it is well-made, well-acted, and has a good score but is too long and just a bit dull. The most interesting plot development (boy goes to prison for beating his bully and upon release becomes a successful drug-dealer) is skipped over entirely. Yes, being bullied for "being a faggot" is pretty horrible (although surely no worse than being bullied for being posh or for liking classical music or for anything else you can think of), but good art entertains as well as informs. I could see no reason for Moonlight being a film as opposed to say an article in the paper. And what would that article have said? Young gay people get bullied at school? Not exactly news.
So in the age of Trump a film with gay black people wins Best Picture. Not surprising, not in a climate where Meryl Streep can be lauded for making an acceptance speech in which she lambasts the new President - surely the least career-threatening outburst in the history of thespianism.
Donald Trump will probably not have been watching the Oscars, but I expect that when he heard about the cock-up by some other narcissistic fools he will have laughed long and hard at his tormentors.
PS The two best films I've seen this year were Hell or High Water, a contemporary western in which Jeff Bridges pursues two bank-robbers trying to raise the money to prevent foreclosure of the family ranch, and Toni Erdmann, a three-hour German comedy about a divorced father's relationship with his daughter. Hell or High Water, relentlessly entertaining but insufficiently portentous for Oscar-bait, features Bridges on magisterial form with his True Grit Rooster Cogburn shtick turned down to acceptable levels. Toni Erdmann has a sex scene which ensures you'll never look at a cup-cake again; and for all its length Moonlight seemed a hell of a lot longer.
I sometimes wonder. I never watch it of course, but any engagement with the outside world at this time of year involves 2nd hand acquaintance with the awards ceremony cavalcade, an event at which those successful at climbing the greasy pole mingle with their fellows, network furiously, tout for business and pretend to be gracious when they don't win anything, all the while preening before the proles circling resentfully down below, those less fortunate, less rich, less talented, less beautiful and less sycophantic.
Oh, and less pretentious. Here's the actress Viola Davis, accepting her award for best supporting actress in Fences - "I became an artist and thank God I did because we are the only profession that celebrates what it means to live a life", Ms Davis gushed. As an artist of a sort myself, I can confirm that we are no better at celebrating our lives than any other demographic. Is it wrong of me to hope that Ms Davis is obliged to return to waiting tables fairly soon, so she can better reflect on what it means to be lacking in self-awareness?
But anyway, on to the main business of this year's ceremony, namely the mix-up which led two accountants from PWC handing Warren Beatty an envelope containing the wrong card for the winner of Best Picture. Readers will be aware that La La Land was announced and that the makers were some way into their acceptance speeches before the mistake was corrected.
I've seen both La La Land and the eventual winner, Moonlight, and thought both over-praised. La La Land's purported critique of Hollywood is toothless to say the least compared to Altman's The Player (its one good joke is at the expense of the ubiquity of the Toyota Prius: that's how satirical it is), its plot implausible (there's neither showing nor telling why the principals' career commitments should have ruined their relationship) and, in a musical whose McGuffin is devotion to jazz, its score is unforgivably lame and bland.
As for Moonlight, a coming of age movie about a young gay black boy, it is well-made, well-acted, and has a good score but is too long and just a bit dull. The most interesting plot development (boy goes to prison for beating his bully and upon release becomes a successful drug-dealer) is skipped over entirely. Yes, being bullied for "being a faggot" is pretty horrible (although surely no worse than being bullied for being posh or for liking classical music or for anything else you can think of), but good art entertains as well as informs. I could see no reason for Moonlight being a film as opposed to say an article in the paper. And what would that article have said? Young gay people get bullied at school? Not exactly news.
So in the age of Trump a film with gay black people wins Best Picture. Not surprising, not in a climate where Meryl Streep can be lauded for making an acceptance speech in which she lambasts the new President - surely the least career-threatening outburst in the history of thespianism.
Donald Trump will probably not have been watching the Oscars, but I expect that when he heard about the cock-up by some other narcissistic fools he will have laughed long and hard at his tormentors.
PS The two best films I've seen this year were Hell or High Water, a contemporary western in which Jeff Bridges pursues two bank-robbers trying to raise the money to prevent foreclosure of the family ranch, and Toni Erdmann, a three-hour German comedy about a divorced father's relationship with his daughter. Hell or High Water, relentlessly entertaining but insufficiently portentous for Oscar-bait, features Bridges on magisterial form with his True Grit Rooster Cogburn shtick turned down to acceptable levels. Toni Erdmann has a sex scene which ensures you'll never look at a cup-cake again; and for all its length Moonlight seemed a hell of a lot longer.
Thursday 2 February 2017
Brexit, Donald Trump and the pointlessness of protest
I've written a couple of days ago about the singular opprobrium reserved for Donald Trump by (self-described) Liberals, who seem to be incensed far more by the be-coiffed one's temporary ban on visitors from some (largely) Muslim countries than they are by, for example, the Turkish Premier's imprisonment of judges and closure of hostile newspapers.
Why should this be?
Well for a start Mr Trump is in charge of a country whose culture lives in our own and to which we feel very close. Turkey and China on the other hand are far-away countries of which we know nothing (and of course even the bien-pensant don't seriously expect Johnny Foreigner to uphold the same standards as we do). Liberals always hate their domestic political opponents and pass easily over the flaws of overseas leaders. See Jeremy Corbyn for details. Moreover Donald Trump is a person who has contributed to the seismic assault on the certainties of their political and social class which began with the 2015 election, continued through the Brexit vote and concluded (perhaps) in the US in November. Their assumptions lie in ruins. They have therefore particular reasons for hating him more than other leaders with a far worse record.
These are people (and I'm one of them so I should know) who thought that by virtue of their intelligence, affluence, power and influence they were born to rule. They - we - have reacted with horror verging on petulance to the discovery that they live in democracies and that other people who lead less gilded lives are not quite as pleased with their lot.
The class I'm talking about first responded to Brexit by asserting that the poor were badly educated, ignorant and stupid (thus demonstrating that whatever they are, they aren't liberals at all). They then, slightly more charitably, elaborated their analysis by observing that the underclass were lied to (as if other election campaigns had been the acme of truth, and as if the UK government hadn't used taxpayers money to lie to its own citizens).
Brexit has had a six month head start however, so Britain's intellectual bed-wetting classes are still at the anger stage regarding Trump. Hence the petition and marches.
Trump is pretty loathsome. His ban on travel to the US is irrational, hurtful and pointless (you are more likely to be killed in the States by an armed toddler than a gun-toting Islamist), but it is not racist (Muslims are not a race - if they were, how come you can become one?) and it isn't even anti-Muslim (if it were, why didn't Trump include the world's biggest Muslim population, Indonesia?) Of course, if there really were a group of people who were pervasively hostile to the US Trump would be well within his rights to keep them out.
The marches will do absolutely no good and have no influence on Trump or May. I heard a Trump aide interviewed by some low-wattage radio presenter - possibly Martha Kearney - yesterday. Was not the US administration worried that Middle Eastern countries like Iran might impose a reciprocal ban? The aide actually laughed in response, and you could almost hear her thinking, "Why would we give a fuck about what Iran does? Why would anyone want to go to such a fly-blown shit hole anyway?"
Trump will no doubt do other stupid and repellent things in the next four years. But he is leader of the most powerful country in the world and we can do much to influence him. Theresa May's engagement with him has already borne fruit in the restatement of his "100% commitment" to NATO.
Those in the US who hate and fear Trump would do well to concentrate their energies on other things than protest. They could consider whether the people that put Trump in the White House had any legitimate grievance, for example, and if so how to put together a group of policies which might make them vote Democrat in 2020. The Democrats could consider how to select a candidate who showed some sign of understanding their problems, who they could trust to try and address them, who was not in the pocket of Goldman Sachs and who did not merely represent the accumulation of power, favours and influence or the continuation of a discredited dynasty.
We could do with ideas like that in the UK too, but as long as the opponents of Trump, Brexit, and austerity carry on marching, organising petitions and knitting pussy hats instead of sitting down and thinking how to make policy adapt to the realities of the world (instead of the other way round), they will achieve nothing.
The thought remains that it was precisely because of the failure to come up with ideas which might overcome the intractable domestic consequences of globalisation that Trump won and the UK voted Leave. The Left has had years to come up with answers, but they haven't even begun thinking about the problems.
Why should this be?
Well for a start Mr Trump is in charge of a country whose culture lives in our own and to which we feel very close. Turkey and China on the other hand are far-away countries of which we know nothing (and of course even the bien-pensant don't seriously expect Johnny Foreigner to uphold the same standards as we do). Liberals always hate their domestic political opponents and pass easily over the flaws of overseas leaders. See Jeremy Corbyn for details. Moreover Donald Trump is a person who has contributed to the seismic assault on the certainties of their political and social class which began with the 2015 election, continued through the Brexit vote and concluded (perhaps) in the US in November. Their assumptions lie in ruins. They have therefore particular reasons for hating him more than other leaders with a far worse record.
These are people (and I'm one of them so I should know) who thought that by virtue of their intelligence, affluence, power and influence they were born to rule. They - we - have reacted with horror verging on petulance to the discovery that they live in democracies and that other people who lead less gilded lives are not quite as pleased with their lot.
The class I'm talking about first responded to Brexit by asserting that the poor were badly educated, ignorant and stupid (thus demonstrating that whatever they are, they aren't liberals at all). They then, slightly more charitably, elaborated their analysis by observing that the underclass were lied to (as if other election campaigns had been the acme of truth, and as if the UK government hadn't used taxpayers money to lie to its own citizens).
Brexit has had a six month head start however, so Britain's intellectual bed-wetting classes are still at the anger stage regarding Trump. Hence the petition and marches.
Trump is pretty loathsome. His ban on travel to the US is irrational, hurtful and pointless (you are more likely to be killed in the States by an armed toddler than a gun-toting Islamist), but it is not racist (Muslims are not a race - if they were, how come you can become one?) and it isn't even anti-Muslim (if it were, why didn't Trump include the world's biggest Muslim population, Indonesia?) Of course, if there really were a group of people who were pervasively hostile to the US Trump would be well within his rights to keep them out.
The marches will do absolutely no good and have no influence on Trump or May. I heard a Trump aide interviewed by some low-wattage radio presenter - possibly Martha Kearney - yesterday. Was not the US administration worried that Middle Eastern countries like Iran might impose a reciprocal ban? The aide actually laughed in response, and you could almost hear her thinking, "Why would we give a fuck about what Iran does? Why would anyone want to go to such a fly-blown shit hole anyway?"
Trump will no doubt do other stupid and repellent things in the next four years. But he is leader of the most powerful country in the world and we can do much to influence him. Theresa May's engagement with him has already borne fruit in the restatement of his "100% commitment" to NATO.
Those in the US who hate and fear Trump would do well to concentrate their energies on other things than protest. They could consider whether the people that put Trump in the White House had any legitimate grievance, for example, and if so how to put together a group of policies which might make them vote Democrat in 2020. The Democrats could consider how to select a candidate who showed some sign of understanding their problems, who they could trust to try and address them, who was not in the pocket of Goldman Sachs and who did not merely represent the accumulation of power, favours and influence or the continuation of a discredited dynasty.
We could do with ideas like that in the UK too, but as long as the opponents of Trump, Brexit, and austerity carry on marching, organising petitions and knitting pussy hats instead of sitting down and thinking how to make policy adapt to the realities of the world (instead of the other way round), they will achieve nothing.
The thought remains that it was precisely because of the failure to come up with ideas which might overcome the intractable domestic consequences of globalisation that Trump won and the UK voted Leave. The Left has had years to come up with answers, but they haven't even begun thinking about the problems.
Monday 30 January 2017
Should Donald Trump come to the UK?
Donald Trump is a dangerous man. He appears to be an impulsive, egotistical, blinkered narcissist. And he's in charge of the most powerful country in the world. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if we can get to 2020 without having to dig a bunker in the back garden.
Should he come to the UK on a state visit? Many of my friends feel very strongly that he shouldn't. Some of them are planning to go on a protest march. Lots of people have signed a petition (over a million of them), urging the Government to ban him.
It turns out that the petitioners tend to live in constituencies represented by the usual suspects, ie Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Keir Starmer and so on. But that doesn't mean they are wrong. Neither does the fact that the same people did not blink when President Obama signed orders preventing people from some Middle Eastern countries going to the US, or when Theresa May went on a state visit to meet President Erdogan in Turkey.
There are three possible answers to the Trump question. One, politicians we find unappealing should never be allowed in. Two, they should sometimes be allowed, depending on the circumstances. Three, they should always be allowed.
I think most of us would dismiss number three. Would we want to entertain Pinochet or Hitler? No. Stalin? No. What about Stalin when he was keeping Hitler usefully occupied on the Eastern Front? Well maybe. Churchill certainly thought it was worth meeting Stalin at Yalta. Without the Russians Hitler might not have been overcome.
This consideration rather deals with point number one, and brings us to number two. You may find Trump unappealing, but he is also the leader of the most powerful country in the world, one with whom for a wide variety of reasons it pays to have good relations. I think May should offer him a state visit. I concede that there are other leaders who are absolutely vile and whom I wouldn't cultivate. Erdogan, for example (although hang on, Turkey is a member of NATO - does that make a differenc?) As far as I know, unlike Erdogan, President Trump has not imprisoned judges, beaten and tortured political opponents and closed down publications which have criticised him.
What if Trump had done all the things Erdogan had done? That's much harder. There is clearly a point at which a regime becomes so awful that no matter the disadvantage you your own country you really want to stay well clear. That point will be different for everyone of course.
I wouldn't criticise my friends for reaching it sooner than me, but I do think they are guilty of double standards. For why did they sit on their hands when Mrs May went to Turkey? Or when David Cameron invited the Chinese premier over and had a pint with him in a Cotswolds pub? Where were their million signatures then? Where was their march? Where were their complaints when a raft of Middle Eastern countries banned Israeli citizens? What did they do when Obama banned Iraqi refugees in 2011?
The truth is that President Trump is their very particular enemy. It would be foolish to say the most powerful man in the world was being picked on, but he's certainly being picked out for a level of opprobrium his opponents don't seem to be able to muster for people significantly worse.
Should he come to the UK on a state visit? Many of my friends feel very strongly that he shouldn't. Some of them are planning to go on a protest march. Lots of people have signed a petition (over a million of them), urging the Government to ban him.
It turns out that the petitioners tend to live in constituencies represented by the usual suspects, ie Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, Keir Starmer and so on. But that doesn't mean they are wrong. Neither does the fact that the same people did not blink when President Obama signed orders preventing people from some Middle Eastern countries going to the US, or when Theresa May went on a state visit to meet President Erdogan in Turkey.
There are three possible answers to the Trump question. One, politicians we find unappealing should never be allowed in. Two, they should sometimes be allowed, depending on the circumstances. Three, they should always be allowed.
I think most of us would dismiss number three. Would we want to entertain Pinochet or Hitler? No. Stalin? No. What about Stalin when he was keeping Hitler usefully occupied on the Eastern Front? Well maybe. Churchill certainly thought it was worth meeting Stalin at Yalta. Without the Russians Hitler might not have been overcome.
This consideration rather deals with point number one, and brings us to number two. You may find Trump unappealing, but he is also the leader of the most powerful country in the world, one with whom for a wide variety of reasons it pays to have good relations. I think May should offer him a state visit. I concede that there are other leaders who are absolutely vile and whom I wouldn't cultivate. Erdogan, for example (although hang on, Turkey is a member of NATO - does that make a differenc?) As far as I know, unlike Erdogan, President Trump has not imprisoned judges, beaten and tortured political opponents and closed down publications which have criticised him.
What if Trump had done all the things Erdogan had done? That's much harder. There is clearly a point at which a regime becomes so awful that no matter the disadvantage you your own country you really want to stay well clear. That point will be different for everyone of course.
I wouldn't criticise my friends for reaching it sooner than me, but I do think they are guilty of double standards. For why did they sit on their hands when Mrs May went to Turkey? Or when David Cameron invited the Chinese premier over and had a pint with him in a Cotswolds pub? Where were their million signatures then? Where was their march? Where were their complaints when a raft of Middle Eastern countries banned Israeli citizens? What did they do when Obama banned Iraqi refugees in 2011?
The truth is that President Trump is their very particular enemy. It would be foolish to say the most powerful man in the world was being picked on, but he's certainly being picked out for a level of opprobrium his opponents don't seem to be able to muster for people significantly worse.
Friday 27 January 2017
Fake news, Denzel Washington and the BBC
The other day I heard a series of news bulletins on Radio 4 and Radio 5 to the effect that the UK inflation rate had risen to 1.6%. The implication, we were told, was that this was a worrying development for the Tory government and for the Bank of England.
This was fake news.
Why? Well, what the broadcasts consistently omitted to point out was that the inflation rate, although rising, is still well below the level the Government requires the Bank of England to achieve. That figure is 2% (some economists think it should be 2.5% or more). To put it another way, inflation is only about three quarters of the level the Treasury regards as ideal. We could do with more inflation, not less.
To this extent, rising inflation is A Good Thing. The Governor of the Bank of England will have been writing to the Chancellor of the Exchequer every month for years to explain why inflation is below target, and what action BoE is taking to rectify the situation. Mr Carney should be pleased it's going up.
The point here is not that the news bulletins got the inflation rate wrong. It was that by leaving out part of the context crucial to understanding the true situation the listeners were presented with a version of events which was false.
This is not a BBC-knocking point. Every other news outlet in the history of journalism has been guilty of similar misdemeanours. The point is a wider one. The factitious division of news into two categories - real and fake - implies that somewhere, perhaps in the respectable print media and state-funded outlets, there exists a stream of news which is "real".
There isn't. And not just because journalists fail to include information which puts facts like the inflation rate into context.
Journalists get facts wrong. They do it all the time. Whenever I read anything in the papers on a topic in which I have a degree of expertise (I'm trying to think of some, but let's start with mountaineering and music) I am staggered by their mistakes. Moreover journalists exaggerate. No journalist ever made their reputation by acting on the thought, "D'you know what? This isn't really much of a story". That way lies professional oblivion. Moreover the stories that are not reported, the programmes that are not commissioned, the questions the powerful are not asked and those who are not interviewed at all contribute to a worldview which must be widely skewed. Even the stuff that gets past the Editor can be presented in a way that minimalises or emphasises its impact.
To some degree this is inevitable. But journalists, a necessary evil like estate agents, have made it much worse than it had to be.
It's for that reason that, hearing complaints in the po-faced and self-righteous media about the recent onset of fake news and post-truth, I want to stand up and shout, "Hold on you fucking wankers! Who d'you think you are, pontificating about post-truth? You're journalists! Get a mirror! Look in it from time to time!"
In the current edition of Private Eye there is an advert for the "Paul Foot Award". The Eye gives this award for the best piece of campaigning journalism in the previous year. Readers may remember that Paul Foot was an Eye journalist who campaigned doughtily to clear the name of James Hanratty, one of the last people executed in Britain. Hanratty was convicted in 1962 for the so-called A6 murders.
Unfortunately for Foot, DNA evidence from a victim's clothing demonstrated in 2002 that, despite having denied his presence at the scene, Hanratty was indeed the murderer.
That hasn't deterred the Eye, and perhaps it's even appropriate that the "Paul Foot Award" should commemorate a journalist whose most famous campaign tried to exonerate someone who turned out to be guilty of murder and rape.
What's surprising is not that there's unreliable news out there - deliberate or otherwise, it's ubiquitous. No, the amazing thing is that anyone thinks there's sjuch a thing as reliable news. Naturally the unreliability of news is a matter of degree, but as Denzel Washington said, we have a choice. We can be uninformed, or we can be misinformed.
Belief in fake news and a post-fact world, gullible though it may seem, has been extremely convenient for those suffering cognitive dissonance in the wake of Brexit and Trump. Don't like the outcome of an election? Your response is easy. Why bother wondering why other people voted for something you don't like? Instead you can dismiss the other side as ignorant morons, reliant as they are on fake news in a post-fact world.
The news that you rely on however, collated and distributed by people like yourself, must be true. The other lot will believe anything.
Of course this is a kind of xenophobia as toxic in its own way as that spouted by some of the racist right. Poor people from the provinces! What scum!
Like most people of my social and educational class I yield to no-one in my eager disparagement of the celebrity-obsessed, obese and ignorant poor. It's just that I can't quite fight away the suspicion that they know the reality of their own lives better than I do. And better than my friends, family and assorted experts do.
As for journalists . . .
Fake news. Gah!
This was fake news.
Why? Well, what the broadcasts consistently omitted to point out was that the inflation rate, although rising, is still well below the level the Government requires the Bank of England to achieve. That figure is 2% (some economists think it should be 2.5% or more). To put it another way, inflation is only about three quarters of the level the Treasury regards as ideal. We could do with more inflation, not less.
To this extent, rising inflation is A Good Thing. The Governor of the Bank of England will have been writing to the Chancellor of the Exchequer every month for years to explain why inflation is below target, and what action BoE is taking to rectify the situation. Mr Carney should be pleased it's going up.
The point here is not that the news bulletins got the inflation rate wrong. It was that by leaving out part of the context crucial to understanding the true situation the listeners were presented with a version of events which was false.
This is not a BBC-knocking point. Every other news outlet in the history of journalism has been guilty of similar misdemeanours. The point is a wider one. The factitious division of news into two categories - real and fake - implies that somewhere, perhaps in the respectable print media and state-funded outlets, there exists a stream of news which is "real".
There isn't. And not just because journalists fail to include information which puts facts like the inflation rate into context.
Journalists get facts wrong. They do it all the time. Whenever I read anything in the papers on a topic in which I have a degree of expertise (I'm trying to think of some, but let's start with mountaineering and music) I am staggered by their mistakes. Moreover journalists exaggerate. No journalist ever made their reputation by acting on the thought, "D'you know what? This isn't really much of a story". That way lies professional oblivion. Moreover the stories that are not reported, the programmes that are not commissioned, the questions the powerful are not asked and those who are not interviewed at all contribute to a worldview which must be widely skewed. Even the stuff that gets past the Editor can be presented in a way that minimalises or emphasises its impact.
To some degree this is inevitable. But journalists, a necessary evil like estate agents, have made it much worse than it had to be.
It's for that reason that, hearing complaints in the po-faced and self-righteous media about the recent onset of fake news and post-truth, I want to stand up and shout, "Hold on you fucking wankers! Who d'you think you are, pontificating about post-truth? You're journalists! Get a mirror! Look in it from time to time!"
In the current edition of Private Eye there is an advert for the "Paul Foot Award". The Eye gives this award for the best piece of campaigning journalism in the previous year. Readers may remember that Paul Foot was an Eye journalist who campaigned doughtily to clear the name of James Hanratty, one of the last people executed in Britain. Hanratty was convicted in 1962 for the so-called A6 murders.
Unfortunately for Foot, DNA evidence from a victim's clothing demonstrated in 2002 that, despite having denied his presence at the scene, Hanratty was indeed the murderer.
That hasn't deterred the Eye, and perhaps it's even appropriate that the "Paul Foot Award" should commemorate a journalist whose most famous campaign tried to exonerate someone who turned out to be guilty of murder and rape.
What's surprising is not that there's unreliable news out there - deliberate or otherwise, it's ubiquitous. No, the amazing thing is that anyone thinks there's sjuch a thing as reliable news. Naturally the unreliability of news is a matter of degree, but as Denzel Washington said, we have a choice. We can be uninformed, or we can be misinformed.
The news that you rely on however, collated and distributed by people like yourself, must be true. The other lot will believe anything.
Of course this is a kind of xenophobia as toxic in its own way as that spouted by some of the racist right. Poor people from the provinces! What scum!
Like most people of my social and educational class I yield to no-one in my eager disparagement of the celebrity-obsessed, obese and ignorant poor. It's just that I can't quite fight away the suspicion that they know the reality of their own lives better than I do. And better than my friends, family and assorted experts do.
As for journalists . . .
Fake news. Gah!
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