Brexit Britain Divided

The United Kingdom is more deeply riven by economic, political and social issues than it has ever been before. I say this with the benefit of a quarter of a century teaching Economics and economic History in a major university followed by a further quarter-century living in Tower Hamlets and active in the City of London. Thus I have half a century of reading, listening and probing; and, as a bonus, I have the luck to have a second home in the Peak District where I hear another spectrum of opinions and lore. Throughout history, most constituencies were controlled by a single party, after the dominant landowners surrendered control during the nineteenth century. Rural areas and affluent inner London were solidly Tory, some mixed-economy areas tended to return Liberal MPs, and the heavily industrial and mining areas were solid Labour. There were - and still are - anomalies: the constituency in which I first had a vote [Darwen, now Rossendale and Darwen] has improbably elected Tories all my life; but such exceptions are rare. However, in a rapidly-changing context, the old certainties have gone. The Brexit vote cut right across party traditions, and leaders' admonitions had minimal impact on voters' choice.

In the nineteen-nineties the Labour Party was split by the Blairites, who did not eradicate old-Labour in the new century but instead left stagnant pools of Marxist infantilism to fester while the legendary pragmatism of the big-union bosses became heavily diluted. The present mushroom growth of a new-left Labour is both an indication of voter dissatisfaction - especially [but not only] among the young - and of a search for ideals. The cupboard-love of the students and graduates who liked Corbyn's reckless 'pledge' about tuition fees during the recent election has dissipated, and the peak of the latest boom has probably passed.

The Conservative Party has never been in such disarray as it now displays: the old establishment of 'grandees' who could remove a leader with swift silence seem to have disappeared, and everything now hinges on a speech in Italy which has been heralded for weeks and will prove in the event [on Friday] to be a display of the Prime Minister's incomprehension, confusion and insecurity. Even if her cobbled-together second kitchen cabinet is able to deliver a more rational speech than I expect, the Tories will be left with the recollection that they set the referendum hare running - expecting a different result - and they have no idea what to make of the situation that they have created. Mrs May said "Brexit means Brexit", a supremely silly phrase which will haunt her even more than "strong and stable"; and she has given no indication of whether she thinks the vote was to leave the political institutions of the EU [only] - as would gain massive popular approval - or to cut adrift from the customs union and the common market, which would smash the economy and make the Irish situation irresolvable.

Tories and Labour are split on which sort of Brexit was intended by the voters, and by their opinions as to where to go now. The LibDems and ScotNats are determined remainers, and may well swing parliamentary votes: especially by the LibDems in the House of Lords.

Meanwhile, media commentators cannot agree whether or not the country has a wider gap between better-off and worse-off citizens; though the gap between the most highly remunerated and the lowest has not been greater than it is now, since the economy and society were put back to zero by the Second World War.

An early General Election would not resolve the situation. In England the LibDem vote might go up, which would mitigate Labour gains and produce the spectacle of Corbyn and Cable negotiating a coalition: that would then have to try to attract the ScotNats and some Irish contingent [most of whom hate Corbyn as an IRA supporter].

Most people know that they are getting worse off. Many worry about their borrowing. Many are extremely anxious about the homes they can barely afford to keep or those they cannot afford to rent or to buy.

Just as the majority of Russians are content to have Stalin rehabilitated, and his statues refurbished in some places, so there is a nostalgia in Britain for the mixed economy and the welfare state that the Thatcherites and the Blarites did so much to destroy.

To that I will return tomorrow; as my recent blogs have become overlong.

Not Another Party, Please!

When it looked as if Jeremy Corbyn was leading Labour to the expected [and deserved] electoral catastrophe a couple of months ago, siren voices were calling for a split in the party; which could lead to the 'moderates' joining up with the LibDems and hoping to attract some Tory Remainer MPs; and thus forming a coalition that could reverse the Brexit decision. The depth of politicians' squalor was again confirmed when Mrs May lost the election and Labour was beefed-up as being a potential governing party. So, although Labour MPs are viscerally split between those who are keen to compromise with Corbyn and those who know him for what he is [an unreconstructed Marxist who has a wide range of casuistic devices], the party has been held together by the fragile cement of ambition.

Subsequently, other voices have been raised - now, within the Tory ranks - hoping to cobble together an anti-Brexit coalition. As with the SDP, it would be impossible for such a party to gain traction with the electorate; even if they had a period of years available to make the attempt. As it is, the Brussels clock is ticking down to March 2019; and the chances of getting Mrs May to understand anything of the ruin to which she is driving the nation are minimal. There is not time enough to reconfigure British politics, or to educate the prime minister.

The great majority of MPs, mostly with regret, accept that the referendum vote was decisive. The question was whether the UK should "leave the European Union" or "remain in the European Union". There was no definition of the European Union. It was left unstated whether the European Economic Area, or the European Economic Community [the common market and customs union] - as Mrs May now says is inextricably the case - were included in the vote. This is the basis on which honest men and women who accept the referendum result can legitimately believe that the vote was to withdraw from the political aspects of the EU - the Parliament, the Commission and the Court - but not to undermine the economy by withdrawal from the economic area.

From everything that I have heard and read in recent weeks, there could well now be a strong majority of the electorate in favour of splitting the economic from the political aspects of the Union. The Economic Community pre-existed the Union, and membership of that club was clearly accepted in the referendum on withdrawal that was held under Harold Wilson's premiership. The electorate was not allowed an opinion on the transmutation of the Community into the undemocratic morass of Brussels under the nomenclature of the Union [and with the intention that the Union should become 'ever-closer': which means 'ever less accountable to the people']. I believe that a national petition - a reflection of the People's Charter of the 1840s - might be the most effective way of proving to the boneheaded Brexiteers that a very clear majority of the nation is capable of making the distinction between the Community and the Union.

If that could be proven, I like to think that majority of MPs have sufficient dregs of integrity then to act as representatives of the nation, and compel the government [whether the present shoddy shower, or a coalition containing the heavily-compromised Corbyn] to make a sensible and mutually beneficial deal to remain in the Community.

The issues of the European Court and of migration would remain to be resolved; but they will be much easier to define within the context outlined above. Time is short, but there is enough time to implement this suggestion of a People's Charter, deploying the resources of up-to-date social media.

The Descent of Ascension as a Symptom of Britain's Decline

Ascension Island was indispensable to the Falklands War in 1982: without that airbase the islands could not have been supplied. Subsequently, until recent weeks, regular RAF flights from the UK to Stanley have stopped off at the Ascension airstrip: which has given the locals a regular access to the UK for themselves and for supplies. That has had to stop: the islanders must now travel several days by ship to South Africa to get a commercial flight to Britain. Sick people are in a deep quandary and it is impossible urgently to secure any medical supplies.

The reason for this is Osbornian austerity: the cuts that have so disastrously undermined every aspect of social and public services in the UK and its dependencies. Under a longstanding agreement, the Americans have use of the Ascension airstrip; in return for which, they maintain it. The cuts in UK defence spending [even before the Queen Elizabeth is fully manned or armed] mean that the RAF has had to dispense with the planes that have formed the 'airbridge' between Brize Norton and Stanley, via Ascension. The planes that are now available are unsuitable for the increasingly ropey surface of the airstrip on Ascension, which the Americans do not plan to upgrade for a couple of years. Thus an important point of communications, which has been militarily vital since at least the Second World War, is left to fester along with with council tower blocks, decaying schools, under-equipped hospitals and all the other increasingly conspicuous evidences of the failure of the state.

Ascension island is a long way off, so it is almost completely out of mind to the British public: which suits their government very well. The Tories [aided and abetted by the LibDems for their first five years in office] have painted themselves - and the country - into a corner where many options are cut off, and will remain so until the inevitable decision is taken to open up the stop-cocks of state spending. Then the catching-up will be begun, with remote islands in the South Atlantic very low down the list of priorities.

But hereby hangs another tale. The UK government, after a century of pleading, did build an airport on the larger island of St Helena: and located it in a place where the prevailing winds make it next to impossible for the sort of 'planes that could use the airport to do so. So one dead duck and one white elephant have been provided on the UK's major possessions in the mid-south-Atlantic. Thus the bureaucracy and the supine politicians whom they manipulate have embarrassed the nation, at significant cost in the case of St Helena and at the opportunity-cost of surrendering essential access to Ascension. Between crass incompetence and cretinous austerity Britain has created a total cock-up.

But why should anyone really take notice? The answer is very clear. Today the Chinese president drops in on Hong Kong, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the surrender that Mrs Thatcher left it to John Major and Chris Patten to complete, the abandonment of any chance to secure the then-colony's independence. Hong Kong is inexorably being wound in to the hegemonic block that China wants to consolidate. Meanwhile, China is building islands islands in the South China Sea to provide military bases and evidence on the map that a huge area is 'Chinese home waters'. Those claims are contested, and will increasingly be a source of friction with neighbouring countries and the USA.

Meanwhile, Britain is frittering away the residue of a great empire: in the island territories all around the world that could be developed [as the Chinese are developing theirs] into strategically significant points of focus. If Britain would just invest the necessary few billions of pounds the islands from Ascension to Pitcairn to South Georgia would restore a global presence as the contest to control the resources that are accessible in and under the oceans becomes increasingly important. The UK has given up or wasted most of its assets. It should quickly undertake a rational audit of what we have, and what can be done with it by an enterprising nation.