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unprincipled MP’s who would not vote for something they felt would damage the interests of their constituents have been replaced by their constituents with those who swore an oath of loyalty to “get Brexit done’.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.
(45) How to reform today’s rigged capitalism | Financial Times
Opinion Capitalism
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.
Foreign to Policy
As in everything he does President Trump brings to foreign policy a unique approach. One unweighed down by precedent, existing alliances, traditional enmities or common sense. I recently referred to a book “On Grand Strategy” written by JL Gaddis. He employs a distinction used by Isiah Berlin to categorise different types of leader. On the one hand there are those who know one big thing on the other those who know many small things. President Trump, again in a category of his own, knows nothing.
His foreign policy triumphs include haranguing NATO allies and threatening to pull out of the post-war bulwark against the Soviet Union and latterly Russia. Around the same time inviting the Russian ambassador into the oval office without US minders (no adults in the room) and sharing intelligence provided to the US by an ally. Keeping your adversaries confused is the kind of mundane strategy the President eschews in favour of keeping his allies confused.
In the far east he has engaged in a costly and misguided tariff war with China in the belief that the tariffs he imposes will be paid by the Chinese. He is currently having to bale out the US farming industry damaged by the consequential Chinese response.
His calming influence on the Korean peninsula has provided the pariah leader of the North with a boost to his legitimacy. Worse, the comparison between the ramblings of the dotard and the sharp responses of the rocket man, and their relative diplomatic success, has undermined the credibility of the leader of the free world. It really is only President Trump who could lose a shouting war with the leader of a failed state whose economy is ranked 204th in the world.
Unfortunately for the Middle East this has been an area that has benefited from a significant amount of Trump diplomacy. Red lines have been drawn with missile strikes on Syria following the use of chemical weapons. Unfortunately the Syrians and their Russian allies went around the red lines with the indiscriminate use of Barrel Bombs and traditional munitions to kill civilians and combatants alike in their destruction of ISIS and those within Syria opposed to Assad.
Early on the President, keen to demonstrate his grasp of the dynamics of the region and fresh from dancing with the Saudis, announced that Quatar was promoting terrorism. This is a state which is home to the largest US military base in the region with some 11,000 US military personnel. A place that mistakenly thought it was an ally of the US. To be fair a misapprehension the State Department was also under.
Not content to bring his own distinctive brand of incompetence to the area Trump has secured the services of his son in law, Jared Kushner to deliver the “ultimate deal” resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This seems to be retreating into the long grass following the electoral problems of Benjamin Netanyahu and the “other” problems of Mohammed Bin Salman. These were the two key contacts for an honest broker deal which has shifted the American embassy to Jerusalem and stood by as more land has been taken by Israeli settlers. No doubt the Palestinians are waiting with bated breath for the revelation of the “ultimate deal”.
There is more, much more but the clowning achievement to date must be the tweet following his conversation with President Erdogan of Turkey, another great defender of democracy, giving the green light to an invasion of Syria. An invasion to exterminate the Kurdish fighters who had been fighting the US’s war against ISIS for them in Northern Syria and dying for that cause. How naive to believe that would qualify them as allies.
With his characteristic penchant for inconsistency however, as soon as preparations for invasion were announced President Trump Tweeted that “…if Turkey does anything that I in my great wisdom consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey…” So far his “great wisdom” has not judged indiscriminate shelling and air attacks, the creation of 100k refugees and the escape of ISIS sympathisers in the fog of war as off limits.
To date it seems, President Erdogan, Muhammad Bin Salman, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jin Ping, and most of all Vladimir Putin have run rings around the Wise One. His approach to foreign policy is straight out of the BSD school outlined in Liars Poker by Michael Lewis. Just about as crude and just about as beneficial.
The brilliant theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli did not suffer fools gladly. After reading a paper by a colleague he said “It is not even wrong.” The same criticism applies to Trump and his negotiation of relationships with foreign powers. It is a policy free, strategy free, tactic free, idea free zone. It is so bad that even the supine GOP is struggling to rationalise his actions much less support them.
We know that Trump is not up to the job and we know he doesn’t even understand that. The damage he is doing to the United States of America, politically, socially, economically, internationally just goes from bad to worse and the Republicans must be held to account for their collusion in this process. We must pray in 2020 both he and they are.
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.
northerncomment 