Porter’s Pensées

8.45 p.m. Theresa May has just made her (fairly) eagerly-awaited statement on Brexit to the cameras in No.10. Some people thought she was going to announce her resignation. No chance. Instead she simply reasserted the position she has held for over two years now: ‘my deal is the only one’. MPs felt insulted that she had not made the announcement to them first, in the House of Commons, according to constitutional convention. We now know why. She feels herself to be above Parliament.  It is Parliament, and in particular ‘navel-gazing MPs’, who have obstructed her all along – twice by huge majorities. She was now appealing directly to ‘the people’, because ‘I’m on your side’ – against, that is, those partisan and out-of-touch politicians. That point, about politicians not representing the ‘will of the people’, has been the argument splashed over Right-wing tabloid front-pages for months now. It is, of course, a typically ‘populist’, and even potentially fascist, line.

Before her public statement there was an ‘emergency debate’ in the Commons about the way the government – and she in particular – have been pursuing Brexit. She didn’t attend – preparing her statement, perhaps, or possibly in Brussels or Strasbourg – but was savaged in absentia from all sides. A prominent Tory said that she (May) made her ‘weep’, and ‘ashamed to be a Conservative’. Virtually no one supported her. (Mind you, the Conservative benches were largely empty.) The main and repeated complaint was that she would never listen, especially to those who criticised her ‘deal’ and offered viable alternatives (like Corbyn’s). Instead the only ‘compromise’ she would brook required her critics to agree with her.

So: it’s her, representing ‘the people’, against the politicians, or the Establishment, or the elite, or whatever you like to call them. I imagine that’s her idea of ‘leadership’. It really does chime in with history’s right-wing populists and Fascists, and also, of course, with Donald Trump. Fortunately for us, May seems to be too dull, rigid and unimaginative to make it work for her like it did for them.

Besides, Britain is essentially – if imperfectly – a Parliamentary democracy. May is Parliament’s servant, not the other way around. That’s what has kept us safe from populism and Fascism for so long. And Brexiteers claim to be defending it!

Historical precedents for current events are usually neither particularly relevant, nor helpful. Certainly there is very little in our (British) past to give much guidance on what has been widely described as the ‘national crisis’ we are in now. But there are some partial precedents.

One is the ‘Home Rule crisis’ of 1886, which could be seen as presaging some of the Labour Party splits of modern times; including the breakaway SDP in the 1970s, and then the ‘Independent Group’ (or ‘TIG’) of seven MPs who have renounced their Labour allegiance in the last couple of weeks. The ostensible issue in 1886 was Ireland, for which Gladstone was trying to legislate a (moderate) form of ‘Home Rule’. The equivalent today, I suppose, although the similarity is not that close, is the European issue, which TIG doesn’t believe the Labour leadership is firm enough on. In the ‘Home Rule’ case, however, most historians now believe that Ireland wasn’t the only or even the main issue for those who became known as the ‘Liberal Unionists’, and that Gladstone’s assaults on private property, and the spectre of ‘socialism’, were rather more powerful. (I see I’ve summarised this rather well in Britannia’s Burden, pp. 98-102.) Clearly there are other issues behind today’s defections too; of which Corbyn’s ‘socialism’ could be one.

In 1886 the Liberal defectors – or those who were left – were eventually subsumed by the Conservative Party, which changed its name to ‘Conservative and Unionist’ to take account of them. In the 1970s the SDP joined the Liberal Party, to become the ‘Liberal Democrats’. In the current case the Labour defectors have been joined in TIG by a handful of Tories. It’s impossible to say yet where they’ll all end up; but these two historical precedents can’t be encouraging for them.

But we shouldn’t make too much of this. History doesn’t repeat itself. The present crisis has much deeper roots; which I hope to explore later, when we can see where it has led.

Kajsa has started referring to my country as ‘your poor little island’. I can live with that. But I don’t imagine that patriotic Brexiteers will appreciate their proud nation’s being pitied in this way. But it’s all their fault.

The solution should be easy. The 2016 referendum vote was very close, and not reliable in any case. Two out of four of Britain’s constituent nations voted Remain. Round about half the total voting population – maybe more now – voted that way. So there ought to be a compromise.

The Norway Model, or something close to it, keeping Britain within the single market, looks the perfect one. It would meet each side halfway. There would probably be a majority in Parliament for it. It would solve the Irish border problem at a stroke.The EU would grant Britain an extension of Article 50 to negotiate it. Extreme Brexiteers won’t like it, as neither do I (a Remainer), but that’s in the nature of compromises. May won’t brook it, partly because she’s in hock to her Europhobic loonies, and partly, perhaps, because it’s Corbyn’s idea, and she couldn’t stomach that. It would also mean that she’s been wasting her time, and sorely trying the patience (and the treasure) of the country, for nearly three years. But it’s the simplest and indeed the only way out. It could be achieved by a Corbyn government; or, failing that, by the forces of reason and moderation on all sides of the House of Commons taking control and voting it through. Why the f**ck can’t they see it?

Do this, and the whole episode will still have harmed us, of course. But in a short while the world might stop feeling sorry for us, and give us back a little of the respect that our patriots used to credit us with.

I’ve never been there – there was a pilots’ strike when I planned to make a trip there once from Australia – but New Zealand has always lived in my imagination, as a kind of prelapsarian society where peace, justice (even towards the Maoris) and equality still reigned, amidst the most beautiful natural surroundings. Now that doubtless naïve vision has been shattered by this latest massacre in Christchurch.

It reminds me of two earlier incidents: the murder of Olof Palme in Stockholm in 1986, and the Utøya massacre in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik in 2011: both happening in reputedly progressive and even ‘socialist’ countries; two at least of the three perpetrated by rabid Right-wingers; and all of them widely taken to mark the ‘end of innocence’ in their respective countries. (As similar racist atrocities in America weren’t. The USA was never ‘innocent’.)

Unless, of course, all the murderers were Australian, as the one they’ve captured apparently is? We’ll see.

In the meantime, genuinely heartfelt commiserations to my New Zealander readers and friends.

This is good (from the New York Times). Be patient. It gets on to Brexit in the end.

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/INT_11167.html?nlid=66729954

There may be some good arguments for Brexit, but we’re hearing fewer and fewer of them as time goes by. As I’ve pointed out before (https://bernardjporter.com/2019/03/04/lazy-thinking/), most of the case on that side of the divide now centres on peripheral matters, of which the two main ones are: (a) the validity of the referendum result in June 2016; and (b) what is perceived as the élitist and patronising attitude of Remainers. The arguments here are that going against that 52:48 vote would be a betrayal of ‘democracy’ – that’s usually how it’s put; and, secondly, that Remainers regard Brexit voters as ‘stupid’, which is – quite simply – an insult that is bound to, and should, put Brexiteers’ backs up. Liam Fox touched both these nerves in his wind-up speech in yesterday’s Commons debate on a ‘no deal’ Brexit. As it turned out, it did his side no good. The Government lost (yet again). But these two arguments still seem to be uppermost in the minds of ‘ordinary’ Brexiteers: if, that is, one is to judge by ‘below the line’ comments in the social media. (Perhaps one shouldn’t.)

The ‘democracy’ case is of course arguable, but is also easy to argue against. Cameron shouldn’t  have promised a decisive, ‘once in a lifetime’ popular vote on this question, but he did. That could be regarded as having bound the government and Parliament afterwards. But the constitutional legitimacy of that vote in a Parliamentary democracy is highly dubious, as the Commons should have recognised straight away, instead of confirming it in a vote there, which did formally legitimise it. Added to this are the facts that the referendum’s timing pretty well ensured that other factors than ‘Europe’ would come into consideration (see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/06/16/is-it-really-about-the-eu/); that the vote may have been heavily manipulated by malign forces; that it was based on inadequate – often deliberately deceitful – information at the time; and that the electorate then was substantially different from the electorate now, with some elderly Brexiteers being replaced at the other end of the demographic scale with young Europeans. In effect, the present and future population of Britain has been captured by old dead people. So the 2016 referendum didn’t necessarily reflect the ‘will of the people’ in 2019. One would have thought that this alone should justify a second ‘democratic’ referendum, on a slightly different question, of course, now that we know what both of the alternatives are; if only to make sure. But by Brexiteers that’s painted as undemocratic. It’s a curious argument; but you hear it again and again, not least from the hapless Theresa May herself.

Is this simply due to Brexit voters’ stupidity, as many Remainers are apt to think? ‘Of course we knew what we were voting for!’ – Well, I didn’t, and I don’t consider myself to be particularly stupid. In fact scarcely anyone predicted the mess we’ve got into now in trying to extricate ourselves from the EU: a negotiation that Liam Fox (again) originally told us would be the ‘easiest in human history’. It’s for this reason that I’m unwilling to accuse any Brexit voters of ‘stupidity’, from the comfort of my ‘élite’ ivory tower, and so have deliberately tried not to; although it’s possible that I may have occasionally slipped up in this regard in this blog. (It’s difficult not to be patronising, when reading many of those BTL comments.) In truth, I simply don’t know how most people arrive at any of their conclusions, which might for all I know be perfectly rationally, even if those conclusions don’t seem rational to me.

The leaders  of the Brexit side, however – the ‘Brexit élite’ as we might call them – are a different matter. Some of those I would dare to call ‘stupid’ – either that, or simply deceitful – on the grounds that they should know better, in their circumstances and with their educations, which are fairly similar to mine. Some of these people might not superficially appear stupid, especially if they are good at putting words together and embellishing them with Latin quotes. Look closely at the arguments of people like Farage, Mogg, Boris and Gove, however, and you’ll find them spilling over with illogicalities, false premises, non-sequiturs and all the other defining features of a genuine  stupidity; which I don’t think it’s at all unfair to call out.

As nearly everyone predicted, May’s ‘deal’ was overwhelmingly rejected by the Commons again. Her deep-laid strategy seems to have been to scare her Conservative backbenchers into accepting it, for fear of something worse: a no-deal Brexit; or – God forbid – a General Election with the possibility of that 1960s Commie terrorist-hugging Jeremy Corbyn’s coming to power and confiscating all their ill-gotten tax-free gains. It was the same plan as she appears to have adopted in her negotiations with the EU side: leave the possibility of a No Deal on the table in order to scare the Europeans, to whom it would do as much harm as it would to Britain. Then it would depend on who blinked first. Brexiteers were telling her that the Europeans always resisted until the very last moment, when – if you held your nerve – they would cave in. (And, whatever else you can say about her, Theresa certainly has some nerve.) Well, they didn’t, did they? That’s because diplomacy is not like a poker game. It’s more serious, for a start.

The upshot – and this is being written just before the second great debate of the week, on whether or not to rule out ‘No Deal’ – is that the situation, after months and even years of foolish posturing, is at last veering towards the solution that has been Labour’s policy for months: excluding any possibility of a ‘No Deal’ (remember that this was the issue between Corbyn and May at the very beginning of this present round of debates); rubbing out May’s ‘red lines’, so as to enable Britain’s either staying in or at least securing a close relationship with the single market; and going forward from there. Now this is being widely touted as the best way out of the present impasse. Corbyn has shown that he could negotiate a settlement on these lines, and the European negotiators have clearly indicated their willingness to re-open talks on this basis. (See – again – https://www.itv.com/news/2019-02-21/jeremy-corbyn-pushes-labours-brexit-blueprint-in-brussels/.)

It’s difficult to envisage May, with her stiff and unyielding opposition to ‘free movement’ – as well as to the imposition of human rights on Britain by a European court: both the fruits of her experience as a very right-wing Home Secretary – resuming negotiations along these lines. So who can do it? Unfortunately neither of her most-touted successors – Boris and Jacob – looks capable of fulfilling this role, or, of course, willing to try it. And no-one who ‘matters’ wants Corbyn. (Do they?)

Of course there’s still the possibility that new life might be breathed into the ‘Remain’ (or ‘Return’) option over the next few days. If so, no-one would be more delighted than I; though I would fear the ‘populist’ reaction. Aside from that, however, the single market idea – the ‘Norway option’ – must be the only way out. Maybe a cross-party alliance, marginalising both the Tory ‘crazies’ and the ‘loony’ lefties, could achieve it.

Even in that case, however, one would hope that Corbyn would be given credit, if perhaps only in the history books, for having been right, all along.

Whatever his critics may say, Jeremy Corbyn’s approach to Brexit has been clear, principled and consistent from the start. He is a Eurosceptic, of course, as he is bound to be, as a socialist disturbed by the way the EU appears to be in hock to neo-liberalism and its powerful agents. But scepticism is not the same as opposition. You can be a Eurosceptic and still deplore the alternative of a ‘hard Brexit’, which almost everyone accepts would certainly strengthen the hands of the neo-liberals in the Conservative party. Indeed, there might be little alternative, with Britain’s needing to bid low in order to replace her existing European trade with – say – a commercial treaty with the USA requiring her to lower her food import standards, and to open up her NHS to American private health firms.

However difficult it might be to resist such pressures from within the EU, it would be vastly more difficult – nay, impossible – to do so alone, and in the parlous economic situation Britain would find herself in directly after a hard Brexit. ‘Socialism in one country’ is not a realistic option. Britain would not even be ‘one country’, in this sense, but a de facto ‘informal’ colony of other, bigger economies. (See https://bernardjporter.com/2019/03/06/sovereignty/.) To achieve any measure of social democracy in the modern world, you need allies whom you can persuade to march with you in this direction. The European Left offers at least a hope of this. That’s a good argument in favour of Remain; but only as the lesser of two evils. I imagine it’s Jeremy’s.

And it must be why he seems to be less committed to ‘Remain’ than true Remainers would like him to be. For him Brexit matters, but it’s not the crucial issue of our time and place. He’s said this over and over again, most recently in a speech to Scottish Labour’s annual conference.

[The Labour Party] is not obsessed by constitutional questions, like the others are. We are obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with tackling the problems people face in their daily lives…  So let me spell it out: our mission is to back the working class, in all its diversity. And that’s what drives our approach to Brexit. (Guardian, 9 March.)

Holding to this priority, ‘Remain’ – or ‘Return’, as it may soon be – would be the likeliest means to this end, granting a socialist Britain in Europe some considerable say in the formulation of EU policy. But it might not be the only one.

There are alternatives. Something along the lines of what is called the ‘Norway model’ – remaining in the European single market, and accepting its rules, including ‘free movement’, but without any influence over their formulation – would at least allow Britain to continue trading with the EU without lowering her standards. This incidentally is what I’ve semi-predicted all along: see https://bernardjporter.com/2018/12/30/corbyns-way/. It would also enable Corbyn to escape from the practical, political difficulties he would face in going all-out for ‘Remain’ (vide the same reference).

The current problem is that Prime Minister May apparently can’t accept that, partly because it conflicts with one of her notorious ‘red lines’: the immigration-obsessed one. (Unless, that is, she gives in in the next couple of days; this is being written on the eve of some crucial debates in the Commons.) But we know that Corbyn – in favour of ‘controlled’ immigration – could fix it, if he were in charge of the negotiations; as indeed he already has done, informally and unofficially: see https://www.itv.com/news/2019-02-21/jeremy-corbyn-pushes-labours-brexit-blueprint-in-brussels/. The Europeans have indicated their willingness to renegotiate on that basis. Which explains why Corbyn’s preference, in the event of the current talks breaking down, has all along been for a general election, which (hopefully) would put  him in charge. Only if that were ruled out would he favour a new referendum – whose result would be unpredictable in any case. Then, once this knotty problem has been settled, a Labour government can get on with what Corbyn sees as the really important business of the day: which is to return Britain to social democracy.

That seems to me to be a rational and practical strategy. The only reasons why most political commentators seem unable to credit it are, firstly, that they can only see the issue as a simple black/white pro/anti-Brexit one, without this added layer of sophistication: if you’re not either for it or against it, you’re dithering; and, secondly, their visceral antagonism towards Corbyn personally, politically and in view of his support for the Palestinian cause.

That in its turn has much to do with ‘image’, our appallingly dishonest media, and foreign (Israeli) pressure. For me, as an old Leftie, Corbyn seems an ideal candidate for the premiership: decent, liberal, honest, deep, social-democratic in the Attlee mould, nearly always right in the past and with spot-on judgment about the crucial issues of our time, unwilling to resort to the kinds of rhetorical and propaganda weapons his critics deploy against him, and so genuinely representing a new, better, kinder and more thoughtful kind of politics. He is both right and wise on the subject of Brexit. Although pretty old, he inspires youth (who are mostly Europhile); rather like Bernie over the water. I’d love to see him triumph.

But… Yes, there’s a big ‘but’. – The forces ranged against him are formidable. He’s the most vilified Labour leader in history, even including Foot and Milliband. His supporters cannot disregard this. Our current Conservative government may well come to be regarded as the worst in Britain’s history – the most incompetent, if not the most malevolent and corrupt. It’s clearly heading the country in a disastrous direction. It seems to be on the very edge of toppling. Our (the Brits’) overriding priority just now must be to defeat and replace it. This ought to be easy, in the present political situation; but if the monstering of Corbyn, and its effect on public perceptions, makes it less likely, then maybe he’d better be got rid of first. (So long as a left-wing but less monsterable replacement could be found.) It would be grossly unfair to him, a kind of surrender to the devil, and a sad disappointment for bearded Lefties like me; but perhaps it’s a compromise that needs to be made.

Unless, that is, his virtues – to my mind – can be made to shine through the propaganda; which they might do, perhaps, if that propaganda seems to be going too far. Surely by now its readers can see through the grotesquely over-the-top Daily Mail?

The next week may change all this. I’ll be glued to the ‘Parliament’ station on TV. More comments to follow that.

It’s good to see that the Labour Party has agreed to be investigated by an outside and (I hope) neutral body about claims made against it of ‘anti-semitism’: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/06/equality-watchdog-could-rule-on-whether-labour-broke-law. I’ve made my views up to now on this whole sorry episode clear: see https://bernardjporter.com/2016/04/28/anti-semitism-and-labour/, and two or three of my subsequent posts. But I’m open-minded about it all, and willing to be corrected on the basis of solid and neutral evidence of anti-semitism in the Labour Party, which has been in astonishingly short supply throughout the course of this dispute.

In any event, the inquiry should put the whole distressing matter to rest; so long as it doesn’t rely on the well-known – and deliberate? – confusion of criticism of Israel’s policies, especially towards those other Semites, the Palestinians, with genuine Judenhetze. In connection with this, the Commission could perhaps take on board today’s ‘long read’ in the Guardian, which is the best – the most forensic and rational – argument on this that I’ve seen. Here it is:  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic. – Game, Set and Match, I think.

It might also take a glance at the Conservatives, whose Islamophobic pockets – if that’s all they are – don’t appear to be so newsworthy; though they’re starting to come into the open now: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/05/tories-suspend-14-members-over-alleged-islamophobia. Perhaps Islamophobia is not regarded as quite so shocking as anti-semitism. Zionists don’t cut people’s heads off, after all.

My PhD research was done under the supervision of the late, dear RE (‘Robbie’) Robinson – DSO, DFC: he’d been a bomber pilot in the War – who first (I think) coined the term ‘free trade imperialism’ to describe Britain’s effective control over countries which weren’t formally administered by her. It was also called ‘informal’ or ‘soft’ power. Argentina in the nineteenth century was one of the prime examples, but there were many others. Later the idea was further extended to describe any relationship between Britain and a formally independent country – economic, cultural, or what have you – which could be seen to be one-sided; to the advantage, that is, of Britain. Eventually the ‘one-sidedness’ dropped out of it. McDonalds (the eateries) were painted as manifestations of ‘American imperialism’: as if their dreadful burgers were forced on us. That I think is when it went too far. But the main point was and still is valid: that a nation can be, at least to an extent, under the effective control of another, without that control’s being registered by means of boundary lines, colours on the map, constitutional convention, or even the claim of ‘sovereignty’.

Which of course brings us on (or back) to Brexit. One of the main arguments made in support of Brexit – and it may have been a genuine motive behind the Brexit vote, more important say than ‘immigration’ or ‘£350 million more a week for the NHS’ – was that it would ‘take back control’ of Britain’s affairs from what some saw as a quasi-colonial dependence on ‘Brussels’: back, that is, into the hands of Britain’s own democracy. Hence the spelled-out name of ‘UKIP’ – the United Kingdom Independence  Party – and Nigel Farage’s reception of the result of the 2016 referendum as marking her ‘Independence Day’: which seemed superficially attractive. (Unlike most countries, including her own ex-colonies, Britain has never had an Independence Day. It’s a serious lack; a bit like not having a birthday.) But of course it also reflected a very superficial idea of ‘independence’, and indeed of ‘sovereignty’: to think that these could be secured merely by cutting one’s country away from its alliances.

We’re beginning to learn now that, in Britain’s case, this is unlikely. Formal ‘independence’, rather than the pooled sovereignty we had with the EU, can only make us less able to make our own decisions, and in that sense less ‘free’. The example which is being highlighted just now is any commercial agreement we are likely to get with the USA, in order to compensate for those lost European ones; which apparently can only be made by subordinating our food standards to hers (‘chlorinated chicken’, and all that). Vulnerability to American competition in the healthcare field is another example. These will, in an important way, make us more reliant on America than we ever were on the European Union. How is that ‘taking back control’?

My second book, The Lion’s Share  (1975), was subtitled A History of British Imperialism, rather than of the British Empire, in order to emphasise the difference between the two things; and to encourage scepticism towards those old maps of the ‘Empire’ which coloured only the formal bits of it in red, thus failing to indicate the true extent of British influence and control in the world. It’s the same error in reverse that leads ‘Leavers’ to place far more emphasis on Britain’s formal situation after Brexit – the idea of ‘sovereignty’ – than it deserves.

But that’s a common failing of most people, and with regard to their view of many other things – ‘democracy’, for example: to confuse the formal with the real. That’s why we need historians, political scientists and other ‘experts’ (sorry, Michael Gove), to delve beneath appearances. Robbie, peace be unto him, showed me that.