2016 was a year of change.
Maybe THE year of change. Maybe,
like 1848, a year when the tide of politics changed decisively to run in a
quite new direction bringing change, certainly, but also bringing danger and
uncertainty. It is the year when
‘Populism’ emerged as a political phenomenon, and as an insult. When an Ancien Régime starts chucking
insults, its time to wake up and share the fun.
So as a first step, as a Brit, I invite you to see the developments
of the last few months against a backdrop of failure which stretches back for
more than twenty years, during which successive governments have failed our
country. The Iraq war was a calamity
which has left the entire West risk-averse and has opened the door not just to
Isis, but to a surprisingly resurgent and mischievous Russia which is looking
to resume its leading role as superbully on the world stage. In the period since the Iraq war, our public
affairs have been marred by a series of scandals which demonstrate that our
society is rotten at its core. Banking,
newspapers, the police, show business, various churches and even sport have
been shown to be corrupt and venal. My
apologies to any group which thinks it should be included in that list and
which I have overlooked, memory is short, culprits are many, perhaps too many
to recall. We have become accustomed to institutional
criminality to the point that we no longer expect it to be investigated and
punished.
Successive governments have shrugged off massive and
unforgivable failures. They have spent
millions of pounds on aircraft carriers for which they have no aircraft; an
airport on St Helena which cannot be used because of wind-shear (but the
responsible DFID official was nonetheless decorated in the recent honours
list); railways whose fares are apparently six times those paid in continental
Europe. The army has fewer men than at
any time since the eighteenth century, despite being employed on every
continent except, perhaps, Antarctica. A
completely incredible plan to close the gap between the number of soldiers we
have and the number of soldiers we actually need by recruiting 30,000 Territorials
has predictably dropped off the radar since the results were equally
predictably derisory. The Royal Navy has more Admirals than ships. Arguably it has
so few ships it cannot adequately fulfil its role or even protect the aircraft
carriers should they ever put to sea: those last few ships will shortly lose
their anti-aircraft missile capability because the rockets are too old to use
(totally predictable, but nobody has apparently thought to order a replacement
system) so neither they nor the aircraft carriers will be able to put to sea
safely without anti-aircraft protection by somebody else’s navy. Some of them
can’t go to sea anyway because their engines were not specified correctly and
they cannot operate in warm waters. By all means sing ‘Britannia Rules the
Waves’, but please don’t believe it, not even for a moment, the Navy has been
defeated finally by the MoD’s perfectly monumental incompetence. Which Government has apparently neither
noticed, penalised nor remedied (see PPS below).
In the civilian world, persistently inadequate provision of
housing has driven house prices so high over time that most young people can
only expect ever to rent, and those same young people start life with
increasingly burdensome debt as the funding of higher education is increasingly
dependent on student loans. The Health
service is paralysed by a lack of cash and a complete absence of joined-up
thinking over social care. Our prisons
are full to breaking point with people who we can expect to return again and again
because nobody will find the cash to re-educated them: indeed part of the
reason that so many are in prison is that education failed them from the start.
Government has been discredited by being shown to be incompetent time and time
again.
Everybody knows what the besetting
problems are, but the core problem remains unspoken: it is the simple failure
of governments of either party to get to grips with and solve them. Ministers, nominally responsible, are able to float in, utter a few meaningless
platitudes, and float away without ever being held to account. We have become used to knowing that UK
government doesn’t work
.
Why should a political system which has served us well for
so many years have failed so signally? I
suggest that up to and beyond the second war we were governed by political
parties which, although adversarial, shared common values and aspirations for
the country. Since about 1990, our politicians have had no consensual vision of
what Britain is for, so no clear sense of direction. Their ability to debate
and explore a new role for Britain has been vitiated by the long-running open
wound of disagreement over EU membership.
Politics has come to be about party not about country, about power, not
about responsibility. Skills learned
climbing the greasy pole of politics have not prepared ministers for
government. They have been taught
manipulation, not management, confrontation not consensus, evasion not efficacy. Our system used to encourage the promotion of
competent pragmatists, but now produces idealogues whose competence is
circumscribed by their prejudices.
Sadly, we are not alone.
Looking across the channel to our European neighbours we see the
European Union, an organisation which makes rules for others cheerfully and
copiously, but which is discredited by its failure to observe its own; it has not
passed an audit for nearly twenty years.
The Euro has worked for Germany, but for nobody in the South of
Europe. Greeks, Italians, Spanish and
Portuguese feel demeaned and marginalised.
The EU is widely perceived as complacent, domineering, corrupt,
anti-democratic. British pro-Europeans
had an impossible task during the Referendum Campaign, however firmly we
believed in the pure European ideal, because the European Union of today is in
fact indefensible. The EU is seen as
great for the gravy-trainers, the MEPs and the Commission, but for the man on
the Milan tram or Newcastle Metro, the European Union doesn’t work.
Further afield again, in practical terms, the United States
is currently the world’s only military superpower. Yet recent years have seen it unable to
assert its power in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine or Afghanistan. The loss of self-confidence in the US is in
part due the result of the costly and embarrassing failure in Iraq, but also to
power draining away from the US President and Senate in two significant
directions. Business has hijacked the
economy with the old but wildly wrong adage that what is good for business is
good for America. That was true when
stuff was made in America, but not now China has taken over the manufacturing. Great for profits, not for jobs: no jobs, no
income tax. Further, big business in the
US has found ingenious ways of making tax on profits entirely optional, the
distinguishing characteristic of a banana republic. Business is screwing the USA the way it did
Central America for so many years. The US government is deprived of income,
people go jobless. The rich are getting richer,
but Pittsburgh and Detroit are not. So America doesn’t work either.
As a Brit I have to make one more observation. As Brexit moves forward, negotiating failure
seems almost guaranteed. Mrs May, who in my view has demonstrated neither
competence nor engagement, has appointed a team of smug second-raters to manage
the process on our behalf. When she asks
us all to reunite behind the Brexit vote, she is really, I believe, hoping for
colleagues with actual ability to come forward to serve in her government, she
so needs some real talent in her assembly of mediocrities. No doubt when, in due course, Brexit been
screwed up we will be told that we can always rely on the Commonwealth (don’t
think so, we sold them down the river in 1975, why would they trust us now, and
why would they need to, they have new friends) and the ‘special relationship’
with the United States. Well, let’s
think about that. The US is dominated
not by self-interest (it used to be, and that was bad enough, think Suez, think
Marshal Plan which deliberately didn’t extend to Britain, think Iraq) but by
corporates, see above. Do we want to get
further into bed with the climate-change deniers, the frackers, the GM
croppers, the military adventurers, without any opportunity to vote or decline? That would be our future, a client state with
less freedom or choice even than we have within the EU. Astonishingly, Cameron’s catastrophic failure
has the potential to be eclipsed by May’s.
Britain is badly governed.
The European Union, many European countries (Italy changes government
like socks) and the United States are badly governed. The democratic system we have known for three
hundred years has failed us. It no
longer produces governments that lead, that address issues that matter to
people or which even reach the basic minimum standards of decent performance. So here’s the thing. The people have noticed. They are pissed off, and they are expressing
that through the Ballot Box. In Scotland
the ‘populist’ SNP, which projects a positive future for Scotland, has huge
support. In the US, the ‘populist’ Mr
Trump, however odious you may find him, is talking to a positive view of America. Dangerously in my view, in the UK, the
‘populist’ Mr Farage is conjuring a vision of a Britain free from the EU, from
immigration, and by implication free from quite so many brown and black
faces. It is as realistic as Harry
Potter, but like Harry Potter very many people want to believe it.
By contrast our established political leaders are offering
no positive and attractive view of a possible future. Instead they are trying to persuade us and
the people to fear ‘populism’.
No.
Populism is what you call democracy when it gets up and
bites your bum. That is what is
happening.
I am by no means a supporter of Trump or Farage. Their ‘post-truth’ philosophy is poisonous to
democracy. Politicians must tell the
truth, and they must be held to account, if necessary in the courts, if they
seek to gain electoral or other advantage through lies. Truth and democracy are two sides of the same
penny.
But our established parties and their leaders are tired,
compromised and discredited; unresponsive to the people and incapable of
effective, credible government. The
tectonic plates of democracy are shifting.
Democracy is trying to find a way to return to government of the people,
by the people, for the people, it is what Democracy does. But Democracy needs our help. We need to make sure it is not sacrificed to
‘post-truth’, but that the people are offered an honest choice between new or
fundamentally reformed political parties whose purpose is to serve the public
interest, not the self-interest of politicians or the greed of the money-men, or, indeed, some half-baked ideology. Embrace Populism, but do so through political
parties which are honest and open and accountable to the peoples they serve.
PS I have just read that Tony Blair has put £9 million into
a new foundation dedicated to promoting globalism and combating populism. There is no point in funding a pro-globalism
agenda, it is happening anyway, voting against it is voting for water to run
uphill, backing it is backing the only horse in the race, waste of money. Combating populism? Can it be that Blair is not
a democrat? Who could suggest such a
thing. Hilarious.
PPS Further evidence of the disgracefully failed procurement
policy for the armed forces appears on p 4 of The Times newspaper 6 January
2017. The Royal Navy is £500 million pounds out of pocket, and may have to take
significant cost saving measures as a result, because it has been force to pay
for five offshore patrol vessels when it needed (or could afford, which may be
different) three. The extra two were
ordered by MoD to keep shipbuilding facilities open on the Clyde (read ‘buy off
the Nats’) the Navy budget has been charged, but no extra funding has been
forthcoming. This is worthy of Douglas
Adams. The technique is simple, make a
promise, and make somebody else pay to deliver it. Then its their problem.
