We lost. It is too early and raw for a postmortem. We now have to move on. I have been wrong in the past and I am sure I will be wrong in the future. I fervently hope I am wrong this time and that Brexit will not involve an acceleration of the decline of the UK, or a kick in the teeth for those who voted for it. The signs however are not good.
There has been a distinct shift in the rhetoric of late from the leading Brexiteers. The sunlit uplands of freedom to negotiate trade deals with queues of states around the world has faded. Liam Fox says we should not be obsessing about Free Trade Agreements. Mr Gove accepts that things will be “bumpy” but the real benefit of Brexit will be that we have taken back control, politicians, like him, will have no EU bureaucracy to blame for things. We need to remember that.
However, the ground is already being laid for blaming those unscrupulous Europeans for any pain that may come out of the negotiations over the next 11 months. They will be acting out of fear, ignorance, stupidity, bureaucratic arrogance,… being foreign! If we cannot retain the benefits of membership without the responsibilities where’s the fairness in that?
Democracy has provided PM Johnson with a large majority. A lot of those unprincipled MP’s who would not vote for something they felt would damage the interests of their constituents have been replaced by their constituents with those who swore an oath of loyalty to “get Brexit done’.
To be absolutely clear we should not blame democracy. Democracy is not a guarantee of good government it is an insurance against tyranny.
The country has voted to take back control. We now need to keep a close eye on where it has been taken to and what is done with it. We will be watching Mr Gove, and, as he says, the EU no longer provides a convenient hiding place.
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(45) How to reform today’s rigged capitalism | Financial Times
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How to reform today’s rigged capitalism
We must address weakened competition, feeble productivity growth, high inequality and degraded democracy
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Northern Comment – This is one of many articles from people who wish the ends but not the means. Those who analyse the problem superbly well, e.g. inequality, but hope/believe, that it can addressed by some kind of rational process. I wish! Sadly, I think those that “have” think it is nothing less than they are due. Rational argument is unlikely to win. Irrational violence is more likely to be the ultimate arbiter. Just hope this happens somewhere else.
Boris the radical remainer.
The moment he became Prime Minister Boris Johnson became an arch remainer. His one overriding goal is to remain in 10 Downing Street. Having been selected by c150k Tory party members on the basis that he would achieve Brexit, and having the example of what happens to PM’s that fail he devised a strategy which would secure Brexit come what may.
The problems he faced were a hopelessly divided legislature, a slim majority and a pressure group within the Conservative Party who were not for compromise. In these circumstance Mr Johnson decided the strategy to achieve his goal would be, “no ifs, no buts, no-deal”. However he needed cover for what would happen if he failed by 31 October, and also, for if he succeeded.
If he failed his credibility with the electorate might be shot and in any subsequent election he would face losing votes to Mr Farage. If he succeeded and Yellowhammer came home to roost he might be fighting an election with growing queues at ports, disrupted holidays, food and drug shortages and who knows what other disruptions.
Plan A was to have a snap election and get majority to deliver Brexit. When Jeremy Corbyn refused to play the part offered to him a revised strategy was needed. This involved ensuring that the blame for; a) not securing Brexit, or b) securing Brexit would fall on others.
It is almost certain his first and final offer to the EU will not be acceptable, it is becoming increasingly clear it was never meant to be. If they had rejected it outright he would have claimed foul and that it was the fault of the EU we have crashed out. Again they refused to play ball and are considering what they know is a non-starter. At the coming summit it will become clear that it is not workable. There will then be a lot of manouvering and synthetic anger by Boris and his team trying to portray the Europeans as intransigent and unwilling to negotiate in good faith. This is a tactic we see more and more often in politics where a party will do something outrageous but attempt to hide it by accusing the other side of doing the exact same thing.
Following all the sound and fury we will get to the point where the Ben Act comes into play. Mr Johnson then faces the dilemma, should he really attempt to overcome the Ben Act, crash out of the EU and risk an election in the context of Yellowhammer, or should he manouver himself into a position where he appears to have been forced to accept an extension, then have an election where the risk is Mr Farage is able to portray him as another failed Brexit leader.
It looks as though he is opting for the latter, pinning his hopes on a “people versus parliament” election. He must have calculated the combination of die in a ditch Brexiters and more widely held Brexit fatigue will produce him a majority which he can then apply to taking the UK out of the EU in January. He is probably correct in assuming that Brexit fatigue might quickly evaporate following a no deal departure.
Like most carefully crafted battle plans, Mr Johnsons did not survive the first engagement with the enemy. People refused to behave as they were supposed to. The tactics that have survived are about attempting to threaten and bully and lie their way to Brexit. It is a moot point whether this will be successful.
However, elections are unpredictable as Theresa May found to her cost. There is no certainty about what the election result will be. And there is no doubt it will be anything other than a Brexit election. What happens then if the popular vote is for remain candidates but the electoral result is a leave majority in parliament? Who knows?
There are only two things that I think are clear, first, Mr Johnson’s steadfast commitment to leaving Europe, second his absolute commitment to remaining in 10 Downing Street.
What’s in a word.
The Prime Minister believes there is nothing wrong with labelling the Benn Act, which prevents him from leaving the EU without a deal, the Surrender Act. His colleagues have suggested it is a legitimate part of robust political discourse. It is equivalent to the Labour Party’s labelling the removal of the “spare room subsidy” as the “bedroom tax”. This is however a false equivalence.
In the case of the bedroom tax there was a dispute over the change to a welfare benefit which penalised households deemed to have chosen to live in accommodation which had a bedroom they did not need. The Government attacked the Opposition for tax and spend profligacy and a failure to recognise the seriousness of the deficit. The Opposition attacked the Government for a heartless attack on some of the most vulnerable members of society. The debate about this was passionate some might say vitriolic.
However, whilst the terms were strongly contested the disputants were always arguing about who was right and who was wrong. However much they disagreed about who was right and who was wrong they accepted the legitimacy of the other side putting their case. On the bedroom tax, critically, the Government thought the opposition was wrong, but not the enemy.
Using terms like surrender and other rhetoric that has its origins in military discourse and war time challenges the legitimacy of the other sides right to argue a case. The patriotic integrity of the other side is brought into question. They are no longer people who have a very different view of the world they are the “enemies of the people”.
The distinction between this kind of language and the the dispute over the bedroom tax is fundamental, and profoundly important. It takes public debate into very dangerous territory. At best the PM’s hubris is clouding his common sense. I don’t like to think about the worst.
Recently, I looked at how President Trump compared against a number of tests set out by Levitsky and Ziblatt. in their book How Democracies Die. He did not fare well, which is a real worry for democracy in the US. Sadly, looking at the actions of Mr Johnson we also have cause for concern.
Before I go any further however, let me make clear I do not think Boris Johnson is equivalent to President Trump. Mr Trump is in a category of his own for venality, banality and an absolute stranger to the meaning of right and wrong, truth and lies. By contrast Boris is a pale imitation. But imitation he is.
In their book Levitsky and Ziblatt look at how how populist leaders gain democratic support and then proceed to corrode the democratic system from within. Typically they argue the system is frustrating the “will of the people”. Initially they may well be implementing popular policies but over time their view of the “will of the people” becomes less consistent with what most people think and they transition into increasingly authoritarian systems of government.
This transition is not always the result of a conscious strategy. They did not set out to be an authoritarian. They started out shortcutting the democratic system because it was too bureaucratic, or complex. The shortcuts outrage the opposition who push back and a tit for tat process spirals out of control and can lead to the establishment of a genuinely authoritarian government.
Levitsky and Ziblatt recognise that many people in long established democracies think “it could never happen here”. Their research, however, is a wake up call as in a number of the examples they consider similar views were present before it did, in fact, happen. Their aim is to provide warning signs of the kind of behaviour that precedes a drift to increasing authoritarianism. They identify 4 key indicators and for each indicator they give examples of more or less egregious behaviour which evidence a move towards it. Thankfully, as yet in Britain, there is evidence of only the first two indicators and indeed the behavioural evidence is at the lower end of the spectrum.
The first key indicator is “Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game” evidenced by whether they “… they reject the constitution or express a willing ness to violate it.” The Supreme Court seemed to think, eleven / nil, that the Prime Minister’s behaviour did evidence this. Choosing which laws to obey probably falls into this category also.
The second indicator and the one most relevant to the question in hand is the “Denial of the legitimacy of political opponents” evidenced by whether “… they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to the existing constitutional order?” Talk of “surrender”, “traitors” and “betrayal” clearly attack the legitimacy of those opposed to a no-deal Brexit.
Boris Johnson is not a “dictator” and he has not staged a “coup”. He is, however, playing with fire. Talk about a people versus Parliament election ignores that 48% of “the people” wanted to remain. Reinforcing and promoting the divisions in a country should not be the aim of a of a democratic leader. It may not work in achieving the leaders goal but even if it does it could well be a case of an operation which was a great success but sadly the patient ended up dead.
northerncomment 