Mother Russia

International Relations is a fascinating subject I haven’t yet delved into on this blog. However while the UK debates the fripperies of the Prime Ministers Covid period parties, Russia has built up enough military personel and hardware on the Ukraine border to constitute a potential invasion force. It’s difficult to understadn what exactly is going on here, what Putin’s endgame is and does it raise any interesting political questions.

The idea that a European country would simply declare war and invade another European country kind of sounds arcane, something that had been banished to the history books. Yet it happened recently with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Balkan wars after the break up of Yugoslavia are not all that long ago. Perhaps it has been premature to regard wars between states as consigned to history.

One thing this troop build up has led to is high level talks between Putin and the Western Powers or the NATO alliance. Perhaps these talks were what was wanted. In these talks Putin has been making the case for withdrawal of influence of the Western powers from areas of Russia’s influence. The suggestion is that Russia has been unhappy with former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact states joining NATO and the EU. It seems unhappy about this loss of it’s sphere of influence.

Arguably the two Slavic nation states remaining within Russia’s sphere of influence were Ukraine and Belarus. However in recent decades both in Ukraine and Belarus there has been growth of movements seeking to become Western style liberal democracies and perhaps Russia fears isolation. Such movements for democratic reform exist in Russia too but have been more effectively repressed. Perhaps Russia sees itself as simply helping Ukraine and Belarus repress these democratic movements, to retain it’s autocratic systems.

I can kind of get my head around this as Western style liberal democracy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. After all I spend time on this blog pointing out how weak and ineffective the democracy of the UK actually is and how we are moving towards a more authoritarian autocratic regime.

The fairly recent Euromaidan protests in Ukraine in favour of moves for Ukraine to join the ‘Western European club of membership of the EU and NATO’ were repressed. Other Central and Eastern European states have joined, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Czech republic, Bulgaria, Romania. Why not also Ukraine, Belarus and Russia herself?

Is this whole situation simply seeking a holding onto power over the Russian people. Yet are not Russians just as much Europeans as the rest of us? What is the difference in this cultural melting pot of a continent? Perhaps it’s yet another example of the Culture Wars?

Western Europe has slowly come to accept LGBT rights, to the extent that they are for most of us and particularly those under 40, normalised. Yet in Russia the LGBT rights movement has been repressed. LGBT rights and individualism are perhaps very Western concepts, they are seen as other and not Russian or even Slavic. Perhaps Russia (as in it’s ruling elite) see value in the tradition of repressing LGBT rights and wish to help similar Slavic states like Belarus and Ukraine in so doing. I believe these culture wars continue to rage in the other Slavic former Warsaw pact states like Poland.

Perhaps as an inhabitant of one of the oldest Western liberal democracies in the world, the UK [whether it’s currently breaking up or not] it is easy to forget history and that change takes time. Post-1945 history for the ‘East’ the Slavic nations of Central and Eastern Europe has been very different that of the ‘West’ in that they were Communist states under the influence of the Soviet Union. Whilst the West had this period of post war Social Democracy where such things as universal healthcare, social housing, unemployment benefits, trade union rights, rising living standards and individual rights blossomed. Then the Thatcher-Reaganism of laissez-faire market capitalism took hold, slowly dismantling Social Democracy and lowering living standards. The big corporations took over and Social Democracy waned. The West moved into this new era of capitalism retaining some of the institutions built by Socialism (they take a while to dismantle), wheras the East completely abandoned Socialism in an eagerness to embrace the new capitalism without retaining the institutions of Social Democacy (to an extent and I’m broadly generalising here) as Soviet style Communism was abandoned in it’s entirety. Without such a period of Social Democracy where LGBT rights could mature, such individualism and human rights causes haven’t developed as part of a general civil discourse.

Of course these culture wars are still playing out here in Wales, there are still very much live issues. The difference is that here in Wales those against such things as LGBT rights are now in the minority and slowly dying off, but in the East they are still the majority.

The West really doesn’t want to get involved in armed campaigns in Eastern Europe, yet there is a tinge of guilt that they should be doing something to protect those in Ukraine who share what we call Western values. Yet, the Right has been on the rise in West in recent years and I suspect that in the UK regime there is some sympathy with Putin’s cause, a rejection of the wokism of Gen-Z. I suspect Putin knows this. Putin also knows that sabre rattling and shows of strength are an effective means of achieving his aims and also help his ratings in domestic politics in Russia. However I fail to see the logic in destabilising Ukraine when it seems Putin wants to retain Ukraine in the Russia sphere of influence.

Maybe it’s all to do with the decline of the nation state. What matters in culture wars is culture and spheres of influence. The UK basically joined the EC (now the EU) to retain it’s influence as a former superpower nation state, with it’s culture of dominance and global influence, that the UK could express itself better through influencing the EU more than it could as ‘little Britain’. Perhaps Russia is simply well aware that it has more influence as Russia with a general backing of some former Soviet states, than it could as an albeit large EU member, so is simply doing what it can to slow the spread of the EU in the East and military shows of strength work domestically in Russia, especially when the West is extremely reluctant to engage Russia militarily.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I’m sure Putin has wargamed the potential outcomes. Ukraine has now long been a pawn between Russia and the West. I suspect Putin’s aim is to install a pro-Putin pro-Russia regime in Ukraine. This will be bad for Ukraine as Putin is bad for Russia. I hope that peace will return to Ukraine one day soon.

Cracking Brexit and Unionism?

One of the recurring themes of this blog is my continuing endeavour to understand right wing arguments. It’s been a frustrating journey. I’ve had late night conversations with people where we’ve discussed what an ideal society would look like without disagreeing about very much apart from how to get there. What perhaps binds people of both left and right wing persuasions together is the shared view that neither group hates the other side but simply regard them as being naive in some way.

We also now live in a changing world, where people no longer get our news principally from the mass media (Newspapers, Television and Radio) but more often from Social Media. There is the claim that we now live in bubbles surrounded by people who share our beliefs, but it was perhaps ever thus, where people tended to buy the newspaper that reflected their politics, or simply allowed that newspaper to educate them in their political beliefs. My uncle bought the Daily Telegraph to ‘understand what the enemy were thinking’, but such choosing is I think rare in general society. You could argue that to educate yourself in this way is easy, you just read from a right-wing newspaper to understand the right. In social media you can choose to follow right-wing people.

In practise this is actually quite difficult. There seem to be glaring holes in statements and arguments made and to continually read such things often just makes you angry and you feel a sense of ‘why can’t you see the glaring gaps in the logic of your arguments’. Such that finding a commentator from the other side that you can tolerate most of the time is quite difficult. I am sure that if you this is flipped and a right-wing person reads left-wing postings, they probably feel the same way.

What makes a logical argument is simple a series of statements/ propositions that support a conclusions. If the propositions are true, then the conclusions must be true. For example:

George is a Cat. All Cats are grey. Therefore George is grey.

However in the real world we know that not all cats are grey, well unless the world is poorly lit anyway. So here the argument is false as the preposition that all cats are grey isn’t true.

A problem with political discourse, is that arguments are a lot more complex that this simple example. So late night political discourse at the hearth with a friend often gets quite deep as prepositions are broken down into their constituent prepositions, and the process continues until you’re discussing cats and haven’t put the world to rights at all.

We seem to live in a world where there is a lack of scrutiny. Arguments are not fully explored and things seem to becoming increasingly tribal. The election campaigns of Boris Johnson in the UK and Donald Trump in the United States, two FPTP democracies highlight this. A traditional election campaign would focus on persuading the undecided to support a candidate with arguments. These two campaigns made little attempt at persuasion through argument but relied entirely on firing up their tribe to support them. The logic being that it doesn’t matter is only 30% or 40% of an electorate support you as long as you can fire those supporters up to turn out and vote.

It just seems that the process of forming an argument has somehow ended. It is this which I have found frustrating. Some examples:

Brexit

The Brexit argument seemed to go something like this:

The EU isn’t very democratic

More Democracy is a good thing

Systems can be changed to make them more democratic

We should do good things

Therefore the UK should leave the EU

It’s an argument where I agree with the premises and don’t have a huge problem with the conclusion. However I voted for  Remain as  I questioned whether leaving the EU would make the UK more democratic. It could in theory, but in the real world we should also be asking if practically, in today’s politics whether democracy in the UK would increase. On Brexit this additional analysis has suggested that not only does Brexit not increase democratic accountability in the UK but actually reduce democracy, due to Trade Deals made which lessen democratic control.

Unionism

British Unionism is the ideal of maintaining the United Kingdom as a single nation state. The argument for the union goes something like this:

Having common rules and frameworks is more efficient, there are economic and social benefits from economies of scale.

A Union State increases the population subject to common rules and frameworks

Therefore, the United Kingdom should persist in it’s current form.

Ignoring the irony of the above cartoon for the moment, I also have no issue with the above argument in theory. Again there it raises the practical question of whether it works in the real world. A real world where the evidence is that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t economically benefit from membership of the union. Wales is the poorest region in Northern Europe, whilst London the richest.

The theme I am trying to illustrate here is that everything seems to stop at these simplistic idealistic arguments, without any analysis of whether they work in the real world. The right seem to suggest that we should have as much centralisation as possible, provided that the central authority is democratic. That British Unionism is democratic (<cough> FPTP <cough>) and the European Unionism isn’t. The right seem to suggest that this subtle distinction should be blindingly obvious, when it really isn’t.

The argument seems to stop at these conclusions. I think this maybe simply idealism and entrenchment. The idealism of a national unity as a good thing coupled with the entrenchment of the UK as the ideal as it is the current union and in the UK media there has been relatively little acceptance of Welsh or European Identities. Such a view can be viewed as patriotic and is thus powerful and maybe why the argument stops there.

However it is hard to believe that understanding doesn’t go beyond this simple idealism in right-wing thought. I don’t believe that it is only the left that explores things more deeply or in practical terms. I would argue that these are simply campaign slogans and the actual analysis is somewhat different.

I think it comes down to core beliefs that people have that people have a reluctance to question. Perhaps the fundamental difference between the left and the right is a different interpretation of what equality means. To the left, equality is that every human being is of equal worth, to the right, there are good people and bad people, equality is providing everyone with an opportunity  to become good people. This is probably overly simplistic, but seems to me what all the crazy world of politics often boils down to. Both sides view the other side as naive as they do not share the same view of what equality is.

The problem I maybe have with right wing thought is who are these good people, it isn’t defined and so often it seems to mean ‘people like us’ or people who are comfortable in the prevailing capitalist model. So in Brexit and British Unionism, the good are the British establishment. It’s then a question of identity, so Brexit and British Unionism supporters do tend to be the same people and those who identify with the British establishment. The problem people like me and the left have with this is that this isn’t really about good people, it’s about people like us and a sense of privilege or entitlement that people like us are more deserving than other people. It is easy to think that when you are surrounded yourself with people like you. Yet, when you travel you realise that other people are no better or worse than ‘your people’.

The difficulty is that travel is expensive, or even just reading a newspaper that doesn’t talk to people like you or following a Social Media feed with views that don’t chime with your core beliefs is unsettling, it confuses us to see things that we know to be wrong written so brazenly. As human beings we derive comfort and roots from people like ourselves in our disturbing world, so we are naturally inclined to support ‘people like us’, but in doing so we can easily find ourselves carried along by the mob and not think through arguments calmly and objectively. Social Media often throws people from different bubbles together and often seems increasingly filled with flame wars and a lack of genuine discussion and debate.

It is difficult, viewing the world from the left or right gives a different view of the world and it’s a spectrum, so we all see it a little bit differently. It’s easier to understand a slightly different view to a radically different one. People on the left of politics understand each other as there share a common frame of reference, an unspoken worldview that doesn’t need explanation to gain understanding. I’m sure this is equally true of the right of politics. So perhaps it’s simply that we’re speaking two separate languages and using a common language to communicate, where common individual words mean different things makes understanding difficult. So when words like: freedom, democracy or equality come up and they mean different things, arguments are going to mean different things. Put thi sway it seems that to properly understand each other we have to work out really solid definitions of words that are mutually agreed. Indeed on these late night discussions I mentioned, a lot of the time was spent on definitions of things. 

So when we are not talking with friends but in the media, where language is manipulated we become further apart in our understanding. This doesn’t mean that we should stop trying.

Socially Conservative Wales

I’ve just returned home from Christmas with the family. Such sojourns can be fraught as people struggle to avoid bringing up politics to avoid arguments. This was more of a problem this year as the UK is fresh from a divisive general election and some form of Brexit now looks almost certain.

I spent a Christmas with people in favour of Boris Johnson’s Brexit, whatever that turns out to be. A lot of people, such as myself who are on what is traditionally described as centrists or left wing are a little confused by this. It got me thinking about Wales as a socially conservative country and I have finally got around to reading ‘A History of Wales’ by John Davies. It seems that people voted for Brexit from fear of change and fear of people who are different, yet Brexit will bring greater changes that remaining in the EU. How does this dichotomy exist?

I’ve written before about the traditional left wing right wing spectrum. In my lifetime the divide has seemed to be around to what extent  national infrastructure should be publicly owned, or left to the private sector. The weight of evidence is that such infrastructure is more efficient and better supportive of private business run by the state, such things as education, healthcare, transport infrastructure and energy. Yet for the last forty years the UK has elected right wing governments that have privatised the UK’s economic infrastructure and it has simply got a lot worse as my Brexit supporting family openly admit, such as potholes on the roads that used to get repaired. Every election has left people like me flummoxed as to why people seem to vote against their self-interest. I think it may be because socially, in the view of those not interested in politics, this left-right divide is still based on an older more social view of the left-right divide.

In my reading of pre-twentieth century politics, before the development of socialism, the divide was between conservatives and liberals (radicals). The conservatives being hesitant about change and liberals being more embrasive of change. On this view it makes sense that urban populations were embrasive of change as they live in a rapidly urbanising world that needed structures to change quickly and a rural population that saw no need to change things radically.

This conservative view of change is also resistant to centralisation. It opposes nationalisation as it takes away decision making to a big city a long way away, in the UK, this was and still is, London. A fear exists that local interests would not be taken into account. It may have seemed that a long established local business was taken over to be run by a government far away with decisions made by people not like us.

This view kind of chimes with recent concerns about immigration and Brexit, that it is metropolitan elites in the big cities or in Brussels making decisions. Furthermore a concern about being governed by people who are different, liberal, who are culturally different, speak different languages, have different religious practises or generally have a different ethnic background or at least socialise with different people and be influenced by them (shock horror). This fear isn’t racist, homophobic, nationalist or anti-Semitic in itself and is perhaps why some conservatives don’t feel it is racist. However such a position is dangerously close to being racist. So if you are close to something like that it is perhaps inevitable that some people will cross that hazy line and be racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic.

I get this, I am socially conservative myself. However I educated myself simply by living away from home for several years and came to realise that people are people and the people in the next town, country or continent are no worse than people from my area and <whispers very quietly> do some things better. However I myself remain sceptical of centralisation and still believe that political power needs to return to communities and a return to bottom up power.

When I was at school I struggled because I am different. Yet, I went along with the jokes about homosexuals as homosexuality was something that happened in those big far away cities and wasn’t viewed part of our culture, as it was seen as something to be repressed. No-one came out when I was at school as they would likely have been beaten up for it. However I now know that I had friends at school were are LGBT and have come to realise that it is quite normal and it’s simply very sad that people were unable to be themselves in my school.

There is nothing wrong with being socially conservative, but you have to be willing to embrace change when it’s needed and to be open to possibilities. For example, to not be racist when you realise what it is and how bad it is. This doesn’t mean that the parts of our culture that are good and cause no harm do not need to be supported, such as the Welsh language, Welsh culture or local businesses.

The thing is that the world has changed a lot and people are still making political decisions based on these deeply held folk understandings of political ideology, rather than from a full understanding of modern economics. An idea such as nationalising an industry to be more efficient to provide a better service is no more centralising that giving control of that industry to the private sector. It’s different now because it’s no longer an established local business that understands a community, where you know someone who knows their family well or ceding power to a remote metropolitan government, but instead it is an even more remote large multi-national corporation, that has even less understanding of local needs than a national government does. For example, the railways in Britain, instead of being viewed as a natural monopoly and an important public service and run by the state, they are now owned by corporations and national rail operators of other European countries, or organisations with less understanding of local needs and solely driven my profit rather than providing as service for their community, because they are not part of that community, that is one of the big problems with globalisation.

Perhaps the even greater irony of this is Brexit. Brexit was billed as taking back democratic control from an overly centralised organisation, the EU, to enable regulations to be set that work better with the UK economy, in particular agricultural policy, I completely agree with this. However, there is no plan for reform of democracy to produce that local democratic control and UK businesses will still have to comply with EU standards to continue to trade as it does now with EU countries. There is unlikely to be this great economic and democratic reform as the Thatcherite Tories are still in charge, and there is likely to be less local regulation as trade deals will be desperately sought with Trump’s USA, India, China and Brazil and local needs are more likely to be ignored than they are now and there will likely be more loss of the social cohesion valued by conservatives. It is still the same Tories that have repeatedly ignored the needs of Welsh communities that will now decide Brexit. In my view, with a Tory Brexit, the way now to ‘Take Back Control’ to defend our society is to back calls for Welsh Independence. Yes Cymru!

 

 

Brexit’s Coming Home

I’ve just written a piece about British Identity and am thinking that threatened identities is a large part of the appeal of Brexit.

I’m reminded of a few years ago when I was living in Southern England and was very unhappy. I listened to the Welsh song ‘We’ll keep a Welcome‘ which brought me to tears and made me realise I needed to go home. It is a very powerful song that resonates closely with Welshness. Wales is a small country and there is a srtrong cultural idea that many people need to leave for work or to develop a career, with the understanding that as Welshmen or Welshwomen that they can always come home and there is a hope that they do.

As Welshfolk and perhaps as do people of other communities all around the world we feel that our home may be a shithole, but it is our home. So when things go badly, working with others isn’t really working and you need to go back and re-build or start again there is a hiraeth for home.

This longing for home is very similar to a longing for a time when things were better or stabler. The whole of the UK economy kind of feels like that. You only have to walk down the road outside your house to see the potholes in the road that used to be repaired, or the homeless people on the street who used  to be looked after and helped back onto their feet. So there is perhaps a collective desire to return to how things once were, when things seemed as though they were fine and getting better. From a Welsh perspective it seems that the unions we are a member of are not working for us and that applies to both the EU and the UK.

Hence Brexit, the feeling and the desire for a thing that is akin to finding a place for re-building. I completely understand this, however the problem with Brexit is that there is no plan to enable any such re-building. Brexit falls apart on any hard-headed economic or political assessment.

The Brexit position is generally supported by those over fifty years of age. Those that can remember the post-war period from 1945 to 1979. A time of strong identity with the UK state, which had just won a war with the Nazis, was rapidly losing it’s Empire and there was a consensus to build a new Britain from the broken infrastructure after a major war. A time of collective identification where everyone was working together to build a better future, to grow the pie and everyone made a contribution, whether they were a coal miner or a banker, whether a Yorkshireman or a newly arrived immigrant from a former Empire country. It was perhaps only those who didn’t work who were looked down upon if they weren’t trying hard to find new work.

Then in 1979 everything changed. Thatcherism became the new economics. The people of Britain were no longer told to work together for the common good and grow the pie, but instead to seek  to make your share of the pie bigger, even if it makes the pie smaller, so those who can do this can get more pie and those not willing to be so cut-throat in their economic actions will be the ones to disparage. ‘Greed is Good’ was now a virtue rather than a failing.

Such economics hasn’t worked as fewer people are able to grow their share of the pie and realising the pie really has shrunk an awful lot and some people seem to have very large slices of it. Hence Brexit, a desire to re-build, to return to more old-fashioned ways of doing things that at least worked and produced genuine growth. Hence a desire to leave the EU as there has never really been a true desire in Britain to grow the European pie, all that matters was it was a means to make the UK pie slice bigger, the post war consensus in the UK was never really about re-building Europe.

It seems that if Brexit does finally occur next year, the UK won’t actually be home as there is no home to go to, it is simply a leaving with no idea where to go. Indeed any suggestion  about re-building the UK home such as  electoral reform, confederalism or a return of social democracy have all failed to gain enough traction. All that seems promised by the charlatan Boris Johnson is lies and hot air, which isn’t enough to re-build anything from.

Brexit was tempting to me, I don’t like the idea of centralisation unless there is genuine option to say no and say we can actually do this better on our own thanks, some things are simply cases of too many cooks. Co-operation is great, but you always need to ensure the people tasked with making the decisions are making the right ones, and that has increasingly not been the case. All this Brexit seems to offer is taking control from the EU to give it away instantly via trade deals, in particular with a Trumpian USA.

This Tory Brexit is doomed to failure. We must never forget that we actually want things to get better and that is the motive for doing anything including Brexit. However this Brexit won’t achieve that. As I’ve said so often, we need electoral reform across the UK, to re-build structures so the right decisions get made more often. For me that’s Welsh independence, so the population has some genuine democratic control over the legislature that affects the country.

New Conservatives?

It’s only really occurred to me today what Brexit is. It is simply an internal struggle within the Conservative party in the UK and now may be the point that it is finally resolved.

It has been a long time coming. Going back to the 1979, Margaret Thatcher became UK Prime Minister after a successful election. She won essentially on a platform of increasing the power of capital whilst reducing the power of Labour and Government. It may simply have been for Thatcher that which was needed to sort out the problems in the UK economy from the 1970s. However, it also became the political philosophy of Thatcherism.

You can view the economy of a state as supported by three pillars: Labour (the productive value of people’s work), Capital (The large sums of currency to invest) and Government (Regulation of the economy and spending on public infrastructure from taxation). I would argue that a strong economy comes from an optimal balance of the three, where each pillar is strong but not allowed to dominate. Thatcherism simply states that only capital is important and you can shrink government and the value of labour as much as you can to give more power to capital. I believe Thatcherism is fundamentally flawed, but works as a solution if and only if labour and government are too strong and capital is too weak.

Within the Conservative party of the 1980s, there arose those who adopted the Thatcherite philosophy. It is this philosophy that has held sway over the UK ever since, despite capital now being overly powerful for an efficient economy. The Thatcherite philosophy was built on the lie that everyone can acquire capital, such as the idea of the ‘share owning democracy’. However the Conservative party was built on those who valued conservativism. Conservatism values tradition and traditional structures as things leading to social good and resists change unless it is very clear that specific changes need to be made. Most of the time these two philosophies existed fairly comfortably together. However they have repeatedly come to a head over the UK’s relationship with the Common Market, the EC and now the EU.

The Thatcherites are largely mostly Brexiteers who happily advocate a “No deal Brexit”, they just don’t like the existence of the EU, it is to them a unnecessary layer of government. There is only one legitimate government to them, the UK one and they have been able to control the weakening of the UK government for capital can now flow freely throughout the world.

The conservatives on the other hand have mixed views of the EU, they can see both good and bad things about it. For example as a force promoting peace and stability of European culture, which Britain is very much part of. They are perhaps not huge advocates of the EU but see the need for a relationship of the UK with the EU, thus have nuanced positions, some may advocate leaving the EU but remain in the Single Market or Customs Union.

So when the issue of Brexit arose party members had to decide whether to support the UK remaining in the EU or leaving it has divided the party, before the issue of a No Deal Brexit was discussed and this wasn’t the simple question is has been made out to be.

Along came Boris Johnson, never a Brexiteer, but a journalist who won fame writing humurous anti-EU articles about bendy bananas or chip wrapping paper. To become Prime Minister he needed the support of the Brexiteers within his party so he has adopted the Brexiteer position. Now the issue of a “No Deal Brexit” is top of the UK political agenda, he has to support it and in doing has sacked the conservative members of parliament who are against a No Deal Brexit.

So, Brexit is solely the idea of the Thatcherite Brexiteers, a minority of a minority of the Uk population who have adopted populist language to stay in power and Brexit has practically been solely an internal Conservative party issue, no-one else has had any input into the finer question of what the relationship with the EU should be.

There has been much talk of democracy in discussions of this issue. Maybe the UK is moving towards a better democracy. I have long advocated electoral reform. In the rest of Europe, you can vote for people you support, rather than under FPTP where so many people compromise by voting against who they really don’t want.

What could happen is the current Conservative party morphs into a Thatcherite, hard-right populist party. The expelled conservatives can form a new conservative, unionist centre-right party, bolstered by centre-right people from the LibDems. The LibDems can move to a more natural place for them as a centre left party which leaves Labour free to be a hard-left Socialist party. Hence every party has a clear position and most people who will be able to have a political home if there is electoral reform allowing people to vote for their first choice party.

If the UK can prorogue Brexit until electoral reform takes place, then the UK will be in a position to actually answer this Brexit conundrum and true conservatives can regain their voice.

What is the Brexit Party?

The Brexit party won 32.5% of the popular vote in the recent European elections, the biggest party. What were all these people were voting for is difficult to ascertain as this political party has no policies, apart from wanting Brexit to happen. To try and understand I watched some news reports of vox-pops with supporters of the Brexit party attending Brexit party rallies. A few common themes were expressed:

• A disdain for centralised government.
• For government to better support the livelihoods of ordinary Britons
• For a return of British social values
• A disdain for globalist free market elites

I agree with all of these, yet fail to see how a Brexit party would further these causes. The way I see it is that these issues are why I have taken an interest in politics and been saddened my whole life why the vast majority of fellow Britons haven’t done anything about the decline of Britain instead propping up the Tory parties of the Tories and New Labour when they visit the ballot box.

It’s really the fourth point, about elites. The Brexit cause has been advocated by elites. The Nigel Farages and Jacob Rees-Moogs are the elite and want even more globalist free market solutions, rather than the radical alternatives I would argue that Britain needs.

Brexit was a stitch up. We were offered two choices, Remain [in the EU] and Leave [the EU]. A remain vote would have allowed the current elite to carry on business as usual, or a Leave vote to remove all the protections of the EU and leave the UK exposed to the worst excesses of global “free market” capitalism. The only way for Brexit to work would be a radical transformation of UK democracy, to give the UK governments that genuinely reflect the needs of the people of Britain, that actually address the four points above:

Devolution, increased powers for national, regional and local governments. To ensure that every part of the UK gets it’s fair share of investment, by investing in infrastructure and local solutions.To address the housing crisis, to enable people to gain meaningful employment that paid the bills and left a bit over for discretionary spending. Rather than life to get ever harder, despite notational economic growth. For a return to community values, for courtesy and respect for all. For local businesses to have a level playing field with giant corporations.

I have always supported anti-establishment causes for all these reasons. Yet instead of a clamour for reform, for support for those who have consistently argued for reform and tested the solutions for decades, popular support has grown instead for the single issue Brexit party, who focus on immigration and the EU as scapegoats for the UKs problems rather than the UK governments. Worst than that rise of the Brexit party does have very worrying parallels with the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

The generally accepted history of the 1930s is that the global financial elites had messed up, causing recessions across the Western world and declines in living standards. People looked for solutions, and in Germany, so arose two extreme solutions, the Communists and the Nazis. These extremists fought each other on the streets, but over time it was the Nazis that rose to power in Germany with devastating consequences. The Communists, laid the blame correctly in my view at capital, but were too extreme in suggesting that all capital is wrong. The Nazis were far worse, instead laying the blame at minorities, the Jewish people, Homosexuals, Romanis and so on.

Who are the Brexit elite blaming for everything? Immigrants, Muslims and people who can speak languages other than English. Is it not a worrying parallel to draw?

It’s just very disturbing that when people finally seem to be waking up to the idea that globalised neo-liberal “free market’ capitalism has failed, instead of rallying together to support change, that support has been taken by a group using disturbing nationalist imagery and refuse to argue for their solutions, but ask people to trust them that they have our interests at heart. We live in a world where  that happened before and people were taken to gas chambers.

Those advocating genuine positive change and the radical reform Britain needs are still on the sidelines and the elites are still in control. Brexit is achieving nothing, it only divides people. We need to come together and work on solutions that deliver real benefits.

 

 

 

 

Brexit and Respecting Democracy

This whole argument coming from the UK government that people in the UK must ‘respect the Brexit decision and democracy’ just annoys me. It completely misunderstands what Brexit is all about.

I saw a video this week of people who support Brexit being interviewed. i was Particularly interested when they were asked why they were supporting Brexit. Their view was that their community was in in decline, shops had closed, wages stagnated, services declining and everything getting more expensive and harder, so to have a meaningful vote on something would be a refreshing bit of democracy, and promote change, to give Brexit, which will solve of the problems in UK society.

The only thing I disagree with them about is Brexit being the answer, there is no logical path from the premises to this conclusion. It looks unlikely that whilst we are remain a country with an outmoded democratic system where the Tories keep getting re-elected on an ever slimmer popular vote. It is Tory governments that have caused the decline of the UK. Leaving the EU won’t alter the decline by itself.

What I passionately agree with these Brexit voters is the need for democracy in the UK and to ‘take back control’. Leaving the Tories negotiate Brexit entirely missed the whole point of Brexit, which was for more democracy.

What I mean by democracy is simply government that represents the people governed. The UK parliamentary system of representative democracy is based on sound principles. Every area of the UK elects a politician to represent them in Westminster, then the elected politicians get on with the job of making decisions to continually improve the functioning of the UK economy and solve problems as they arise. The politicians job is threefold, firstly to listen to a full range of arguments and positions, their constituents, business leaders, trade unions, academics, economists, lawyers, anyone with a view essentially. A Policy is then produced which the politicians scrutinise, debate, amend and eventually vote on, to ensure there is a broad consensus that that policy is the right thing to do. To be a good politician you need to be a good listener and a good decision maker.

The modern politician isn’t selected to have these qualities though. The modern politician is skilled in climbing the ‘greasy pole’ of the competitive career ladder in a major political party. Along the way they acquire the skills of effective electioneering to win power. This means that the is no incentive to develop the skills of arguing for something, listening or rigorously analysing an issue, these are not the valued traits. Instead the modern politician skilfully avoids saying anything noteworthy, for fear of alienating those who may disagree with what may be a good idea. Indeed, any politician who does open their mouths to argue for a cause is shouted down. It is a sad state of affairs, society is rapidly losing debating skills.

I would argue that is is the failure of the political class and the democratic systems that support them that have failed. We now have a political class who are in cahoots with the capital class, drawing ever more wealth in top their hands and away from the productive economy. The problem with modern capitalism is that there is too much capital. But you can’t solve the problem of capital when the political class also have their noses in the capital trough. Capital no longer invests enough in research or innovation and instead increases their share of the pie by rentiering, or making money from their capital, by renting out their land, rather than using it for anything productive.

If you speak to someone ‘in the street’ in the UK, you will often hear the phrases ‘politicians are all the same’, yet few do anything about it. The problem with the UK economy is too much capital because of the political class and the failure of democracy. It is democracy that needs to rediscover its roots and represent the people again. The tragedy of Brexit is that the EU and Brexit became the scapegoat for the UKs troubles rather than the UK government.

The EU has always had a bad press in the UK. Most of the popular newspapers have regularly run stories blaming and often misreporting the EU for many all sorts of things. However wrapped up in Brexit is this truth of Brexit. The EU is a corrupt, centralising, weakly democratic organisation. It would be beneficial to leave it to obtain a genuine representative democracy. To take back control to a more accountable, more local institution. However this isn’t going to happen just because of the Brexit vote, it will take action within the UK for democracy to rise again, though through Brexit may be how that process is ignited.

My argument has always been for devolution, for bottom up decision making. It is why I support independence for Wales and for stronger local government. Simply because it is more representative of a population and there is less chance of corruption due to smaller organisations and because the politicians have to live in our communities, to speak daily with those they represent. Big states or  supra-national organisations need to be accountable to their constituent regions to function well and in accordance with their founding principles, you need to be strong locally before you can help wider society and make any efficiency gains through cooperation.

The counter argument I often hear is ‘Where do you stop, will each village be its own kingdom?’ Of course not, the principle isn’t ever smaller territories, but local accountability and finding the right size population for decision making. Once you reach the optimum size you don’t surpass it!

This reductionism has been very rife in Brexit. Especially so in the big issue of the Brexit debate, immigration. ‘Immigration is bad, we must stop it!, the only way we can do this is Brexit”, the Brexiteers cried, again and again, over endless months. Except immigration is only a proxy for the actual problem. It goes something like this:  ” I don’t mind foreigners/ people of other races, but every time I visit the hospital I rarely see a native British doctor or nurse. There are too many immigrants, we should have more British doctors and nurses” I don’t disagree. The problem isn’t “allowing” overseas people to be doctors or nurses in the UK, the problem is not producing enough doctors and nurses natively in the UK economy. Unfortunately that issue has not been tackled by the political class and it’s been around for decades. What you would need to do is invest more in training and then paying the doctors and nurses at an adequate rate to retain their services in the country. But that involves spending money, putting taxes up and the political class knew that to win that next election they needed to prioritise tax cuts and not spending on doctors and nurses. So we got tax cuts they didn’t give us any more money and more immigrant workers. There is no problem with this system,  in the medium term, until the population suddenly decides it no longer likes immigrant workers, not realising they have facilitated this by voting in the same career politicians, election after election.

Historically, this was kind of how European society functioned for most of human history, albeit without the democracy. The typical person would work a small patch of land to raise enough food for their family and be taxed to give a proportion of what they grew to the local landowner. The local landowner gaining their titles competitively, not all that dissimilar to how the modern politician achieves power! These landowner had at least some spare time and energy to develop new solutions to problems and thus society developed. Many of them were benign and often helped their serfs who hit difficulties

The industrial revolutions changed all that. A new breed of people with capital emerged who built factories in large towns and cities. and drew people from the land to work in these factories on the promise of a better life. It soon transpired that the city life of the newly emerging working classes was worse than when they had worked the land.

Modern capitalism came into being perhaps when it was realised that there is no point having an amazingly efficient mass production if there aren’t enough middle classes to buy the products. So the later 19th and 20th century saw new middle classes and decently payed working populations and the Western economies emerged and fast paced economic growth, where almost everyone’s quality of life improved. The typical wage grew as the overall economy grew, most of the time so everyone was happy. The capitalists were happy as their wealth grew faster than the working man.

After centuries of a system that increased the wealth of the capital class, which laso slowly gave the common man an improving living standard, In the UK all this changed, when Thatcher broke the social contract in the 1980s and particularly so after the financial crash of 2008 when the Tories brought in Austerity, to cut public services to deprive the social and economic life of the UK. Wages stagnated, what economic growth there was has gone entirely to the capitalist wealthy class. Things have got more expensive, and for the typical Briton the quality of life is in decline, something not expected in the 20th century.and against the bulk of human history in Britain. This is perhaps why there is a feeling of a need for change and to bring about that change requires reform of the democratic structures that have failed. There needs to be less capital and more money in the market, to ordinary people to spend on what they need, for liquidity or cash flowing around rapidly from person to person to provide market forces for the technological developments of the future, rather than the fat cats squeezing more out of the system that is shrinking. There needs to be less capital for capitalism to function.

The problem with this is that it sounds like old skool socialism. The barons of our times sneer and jive at the ‘socialist’ and focusing on the narrative of the failures of communist governments in the 20th century. The principle is not socialism, the principle is economic efficiency and getting the balance right. To get the balance right you need democracy so the decision maker has to be good decision maker and make decisions for the benefit of the community.

The other issue is that communities function well when there is a sense of belonging, that you feel that you are a valued member of a society. This inspires confidence and an outward looking attitude. So when you tend to agree with the government that governs your community, this fosters this sense of belonging. Surely in a democracy your views are going to chime with those of the government, because you voted for them, you had a say in the kind of ideas that shape your society.

However we have had a divide and rule Tory governments for all of my adult life. We are now loving with the consequences of that , a non-representative government, one that has failed to listen to people’s concerns with immigration.

When Brexit is discussed in the media you will often hear the phrase ‘The UKs position is…” or “the UK reaction is…”. Having learnt a second language, this looked like sloppy English, when they should be saying “The UK government says…”. However was it ever thus? If you look back to the mid 20th century and UK election history, from election to election you see massive swings between the Tories and the Labour party. When one party won big, it had consensus and support of a majority of the UK population behind them, a genuine mandate to govern. So even if you were in a minority, there was a sense of ‘ok, I’m in the minority on this, but my community has made a decision it’s my duty to go along with it’. This doesn’t happen anymore. The last few UK general elections have been hung parliaments, there is only a small difference in percentage support for both of the traditional big two parties. I remember a world where politicians of either side would try to argue the case for their position to bring across support from the ‘other side’. Times are now that politicians don’t even bother trying to argue, falling voter turnout had led to it being more important to fire up your natural supporters to vote than trying to persuade a new voter by argument. Trump being the epitome of this.

I am perhaps the product of this. I have never felt represented by a UK government. It’s not just being an odd ball outsider though.  I have come to realise. It doesn’t have ot be this way, which is why I’ve always supported Welsh independence. i believe that an independent Welsh government would represent all the people of Wales, democracy can be re-built. The adage of ‘think global, act local’ comes to the fore, by having genuine democracy in Wales, it could then spread to the world.

The thing about belonging , when you find a community that you fit into, that you belong in, gives you a great strength and confidence. So when you are not afraid to encounter new or different things. It is this sense that has been neglected by UK government no longer being representative or leading by consensus. There is a general disconnect felt by the UK population towards the UK government. So as a people the Britons feel less confident, are a bit bothered that their doctor speaks a language they don’t speak, a sense of being alien in your own country. I know what they feels like from when I lived in Southern England and you do yearn for a sense of belonging.

It is possible this is the explanation of what Brexit is, for a return to investing in Britain once again. That Britain is gone, we need to build a new Britain and it is simply not possible to do that without reforming the constitution and democracy itself. We live in a diverse, changed world. We need new solutions to old problems.

There needs to be a raising of awareness of the need to constitutional reform, to increase local accountability away from centralised power structures. For awareness to grow that the cronies of the UK establishment are as bad if not worse than those of the EU. Then better decisions are able to be made by accountable decision makers, not career politicians. We can do all play our part by supporting things like Welsh independence. To get behind good local ideas and not moan about bad decisions made far far away. To not seek scapegoats , by race, religion, nationality or sexuality, but to acknowledge that we need to build things up and not tear other people down. That there are no easy catchphrases to solve our problems, but complicated analysis and rigourous debate to get to the answers we need. We need everyone to work on this building process. Brexit, leave or remain will not achieve this, we just need to create a new way of doing things.

Unionism vs Devolution

 

Or Centralism vs Separatism

In terms of the political creed these words represent they are ultimately inconsequential. Though in political debate in Wales these concepts loom large. I will argue that fundamentally there is little difference between the two. so what on Earth is the debate about? Yet this week a political shower has been thrown up in the debate about how powers that the EU will longer have responsibility for post-Brexit are devolved to the UK. Notably agriculture and the environment. The issue is that these areas are currently the responsibility of the Welsh government in UK terms, but most of the rules and regulations are currently set at EU level.

Unionism in a Welsh context means supporting or furthering the union of the United Kingdom. Unionism, party politically, is generally the preserve of conservatives and right wing people and tends to favour the British state (the UK). Whereas Devolution is generally the preserve of the left wing people and favours decision making made at a more local level, Wales or it’s regions.

On principle, I am neither a Unionist or a Devolutionist, it’s one of those spectra things I keep talking about. It’s an area I am a good Social Democrat and take a centrist pragmatic position: In a democracy power should reside at the lowest sensible level and then consensual passed up to wider bodies where the benefits of mutual cooperation and economies of scale are manifest. In today’s Wales I am regarded as a Devolutionist as I believe that centralised big government has too much political power.

The thing is, locally accountable decision making is a good thing and so is cooperating more widely. A functional democracy should in theory achieve the optimum balance over where responsibility should lie for decisions on any issue. I can’t get my head around why there seem to be so many people adopting the extreme fundamentalist positions on this, that either Devolution is bad or Unionism is bad, when the answer is neither, they are both good, provided one doesn’t go too far and balance is achieved. If you adopt the extreme position and enforce it then no-one can stop you when you go too far in ideological fundamentalism over practicality.

The case of Welsh agriculture is one of the areas that is  currently being debated. Largely because the UK government have faffed around indecisively so much with Brexit that suddenly decisions have to be made without sufficient time to debate and scrutinise them. If you are European you will be aware of how the EU subsides agricultural production in the EU. There is an awful lot wrong with how it is done, but the systems have been adapted to. Brexit presents an opportunity to improve agriculture in Wales and the rest of the UK, but handled badly could lead to a disaster, especially as the UK haven’t committed to continuing the subsidy system as is until a better system can be put worked out and put in place.

Welsh farming is broadly very different to that of a typical farm in the UK as a whole. Wales mostly consists of clayey uplands, which are generally poor for growing crops, but fantastic for grazing. So Welsh agriculture in the industrial age has adapted to be dominated by Lamb, Beef and Dairy production. In contrast with much of England with flat well drained soils, more suited to growing crops and producing Pork at industrial scales. Hence it seems sensible to have differentiated policies for how these different farming systems are regulated.

On the other hand there are benefits of having common rules and standards for mutual benefit. There is no reason why the UK government can’t produce a system that works for farmers across the UK. However there is no-one with the power to decide whether the benefits of common frameworks outweigh the losses of bespoke systems for Welsh agriculture who also has sufficient understanding of Welsh agriculture. That power should not reside with the centralised authority.

Really, this whole discussion is Brexit in a nutshell. It about this friction between unionism [top down power] and devolution [bottom up power]. The EU makes the decisions about agriculture and they don’t work terribly well for Wales. If it wasn’t for the EU’s ability to cut off Welsh produce from European markets by imposing tariffs, then the case for devolving responsibility to Wales would be fairly clear cut, Brexit or no Brexit.

The EU has spent 40 years centralising and increasing the size of it’s government and failed to identify areas where decision making would be better returned to regions. The people of the UK had zero chance to have a real say on the structure of the EU until Brexit. If you deny people a voice and then then give them a once and only lifetime chance to take power back, it is hardly surprising that people in Wales voted for Brexit. That was the clinching argument for a few of my friends. They wanted to remain in the EU, but felt they had to make use of their only opportunity to say no to what the EU has and is doing. Conversely people like myself are reluctant Remainers because we knew that the Tories were incapable of delivering a sensible Brexit that would improve things. It wasn’t really a question about membership of the EU at all! So whenever anyone asks that I should ‘accept this Tory Brexit’ I say ‘no’. It is impossible to discern what a majority decision of the people of the UK would be, what we collectively want, from a simple yes/no vote to two possibilities of which the majority wanted neither. What it did perhaps suggest was that the British wanted more devolution of decision making, or more democracy, so that the relations between Wales, the UK and the EU can come to  work better, yet that clearly isn’t what it going to happen from the Brexit process.

It’s almost the same sort of relationship between identities, or geo-political identities. My prime identity is Welsh, secondly it is British and thirdly it is European. Any other way of expressing my identity makes no sense to me. What this means is that my primary interest is seeking the economy of Wales to improve, I would also like the whole of Britain to improve too ( a little bit less and as long as it isn’t at Wales’ expense) and thus I’d like Europe to improve too for everyone benefits( again a little bit less and as long as it isn’t at Wales’ and Britain’s expense). So, decisions about Welsh agriculture should be made by the Welsh government. Where common frameworks can improve things across the UK, great, I would expect the Senedd to sign up to any such common frameworks and at a European level too, provided that there is a net benefit.

What I don’t get is what I perceive as the  Brixiteer or British Unionist position of UK first, then Wales then Europe. This only works if you are a member of the British establishment and you want the British establishment to exceed at the cost of the British nation, which seems to be what the Tories want. People outside of the establishment, why pick the middle one as the primary one? Any other combination makes little sense, such as European first, then Welsh then British. It’s not just a Welsh thing, I have friends who have Yorkshire or Norfolk as their prime identity.

The question of who should make decisions about agriculture, the Welsh government or the UK government, should be established democratically, to get the balance between centralisation and establishing  beneficial common frameworks and devolution and delivering bespoke local solutions right. Yet this isn’t how this debate is working, though this is how it should. What seems to be occurring is this facile debate between British unionism and Welsh devolutionists, when we don’t actually disagree about any actual issues, just where the decisions about them should be made, locally or at the top level. We have a centralised big state favouring Tory party and a centralising big state Jeremy Corbyn led Labour party, when Britain is imbalanced too much in favour of big state centralisers and has been for a long time. And we’ve just had a Brexit debate where devolution won over centralising decision on decisions making at UK or EU level. To follow Unionist arguments to there logical conclusions the UK would be signing up the the Eurozone, Schengen and every centralising initiative as The EU also has a U in it. It’s bonkers, yet people, such as myself arguing for Welsh independence get labelled as separatists, when that isn’t true at all.

I’m British, I have nothing against the union of the UK and I love Britain, it’s my home too which is why I care about it. I know of the benefits of having common sets of rules to facilitate trade and other things, I’m an internationalist who would love there to be no borders anywhere in the world. Simply, there are lots of challenges to face in things like Welsh agriculture in a world of climate change and a global shortage of agricultural land and we need to make the best decisions we can about that, which means listening to what Welsh farmers need, establish where, if at all, divergence in regulations is important, and I don’t trust Westminster as an institution capable of getting these things right.

That is ultimately what the whole Unionism / Devolution debate is about, It’s perhaps not about where best to make decisions, but who do you trust? I don’t trust Westminster or the EU. I don’t trust most of the the politicians in Cardiff Bay either. However the politicians in Cardiff are mostly people who live in Wales with a vested interest in making Wales better, because they actually live here in our communities, they visit the places we visit, some of them know what it’s like to live (or at least spoken with those that do) on an upland farm, so I trust them more. The argument against taking control back, seems to be that Westminster doesn’t trust the Senedd, that perhaps because they label the Welsh as separatists, they think that Wales might make decisions to diverge from sensible practise, purely for the hell of it to ‘spite the English’ or some reason, when it would make Wales suffer economically, which is just daft, perhaps they think this because they don’t live here and are thus basing decisions on a prejudice. It shouldn’t be about who you trust less, it should be about democracy and enabling a sensible assessment of where pooling rules works and where it doesn’t, when to join the union or the club and when to go it alone.

 

 

What do they know of England? Only England knows

I read an interesting article in today’s Irish Times. My summary of the article is that is that Brexit has intensified speculation on what it is to be British or rather English. Indeed the Brexit debate has ostracised the different elements that make up British Society; that in England there is a recent re-awakening of exploring what it is to be a nation, which has long been silent in England. The article makes a point of hardly mentioning Wales, because Wales would make things too complicated and detract from the thrust of the article

I’m also in the middle of reading Gwyn Williams’ ‘When Was Wales?’ This book also explores the concept of nation. It seems that it is quite possible to argue that Wales, England, Scotland and indeed Britain have never really been nations in the modern sense. The concept of Britain was perhaps formed from the union with Scotland and the beginnings of the age of the British empire. Hence Britain has never been a true nation, it hasn’t had the opportunity to gain a sense of itself as it has long been the seat of empire, a global superpower which has been the primary influence on how the state of the UK has operated. Arguably the UK has only been a nation from the early 1950s up to the early 1980s, a scant 30 year generation, a nation formed glowing in the unity brought about by winning a just war, the collapse of empire and an era of discovery of who the Britons were themselves. a fortunate era of  rapid economic growth and living standards from the 50s to the end of the 60s. In the 80s there seemed to be a halt to this process of nation forming.

I left Wales when I was eighteen to go and live in England. Admittedly I ended up surrounding myself with a mainly liberal bunch. what perturbed me was that none of them identified as English and saw any identification with a nation as being a rather divisive thing to do. I found this odd because I am Welsh, I couldn’t get my head around what exactly was supposed to be wrong with being Welsh? For to be Welsh was to believe that the Welsh are anyone’s equals and to be interested in exploring other cultures. In contrast to the the sense of Britishness, formed of the empire, which seemed to regard itself as superior to anyone else. That I could understand as being a nationalism akin to Nazi Germany and something to be opposed to.

I also noticed this when what was the  Fiive nations or international football came up. I support Wales and whoever plays against England, which is a very internationalist thing to do, where everyone can be a friend. This wasn’t understood by my English friends, they saw this as somehow being anti-English and even anti-British. From my perspective England were our local rivals, so I of course support the other team, in exactly the same way as I support anyone who plays against Manchester United as a Manchester City fan.

However having spent time in England I have understood that there is a different attitude in England. Where England  is perceived as the principal representative of the UK, so Welsh folk should support the England team as such, for Wales is but a parochial regional team. Perhaps there is a wider sense that England sees itself as the most important player in the UK, whilst in Wales, we see the UK as a partnership of equals, though we are aware that often this isn’t reciprocated. Yet in any case, there was no sense of an England, England is perhaps only a collection of various regional identities that share a British identity, but little sense of what it is to be English itself.

If you look at footage from England football matches from around twenty years ago, the England supporters wave the Union Jack and not the St George Cross. it seems the supporters were supporting Britian rather than England.  Things have changed, at England games, even the England cricket team, you will see St George Crosses everywhere and only rarely spot a Union Jack. It does seem that Englishness is quite a new thing and you meet more people that identify as Englsh these days.

My perspective on these questions is interesting. I am a child of Thatcher, of a prevailing political culture that proclaimed that ‘there was no such thing as society’, culture and communities are not important, to abandon your family and community to seek work, that identity is not something of any value and is a hindrance to economic growth. So Brexit was interesting as the majority of people younger than myself, with no direct knowledge of life under Thatcher were against Brexit, yet the majority of people older than me of whom many remember life before Thatcher were for Brexit. It makes me feel very middle aged! Perhaps it is only the appeal of Brexit to the ‘English’ in that it seems to offer the opportunity for England to become a true nation, to return to identity and culture being valued, whereas in Wales, perhaps especially in regard to the Welsh language, we kind of have known for a long time that such things have value in themselves. Yet Brexit has occurred at a point of flux, during a period where a sense of English identity is still a relatively new concept. We witness the rage of the far-right English ‘nationalist’ movements spurred by hate of others, yet there is much less sign of a considered mature English nationalism.

But what is England? What separates England from Britain? This remains a difficult question to answer, for many never used to not see any difference and why the question of an English identity is problematic. It’s less of an issue from a Welsh perspective, it is easier to pin down things that are Welsh and which are British and where they overlap. Yet as a Welshman I have a dual perspective on England and Britain. To me England is the mixture of peoples and regional identities all the way up to Scotland, whilst Britain is both the shared culture of the people living across the island of Great Britain as a separate thing to the British establishment.

Ireland occupies a special relationship with Wales. I have always viewed Ireland as being our neighbours across the sea and Ireland is no more foreign than England to me. I only feel slightly foreign in uireland in the same way as I do in England. The idea of no longer being able to arrive in Ireland after Brexit without needing to show a passport just seems incredibly odd.

Having grown up under the shadow of Thatcherism, I do not share the sense of belonging to a British state and the British establishment that my parents and grandparents had that was forged in the post world war period and belittled by Thatcherite policies. Yet I feel a belonging to Wales and a sense of being a Briton. My generation is perhaps the last to have any sense of what it is to feel a belonging to the British state, it’s a force I have seen weakened as I have progressed through life.  Those younger than myself surely have very little sense of a shared belonging with the British state, it may be seen to be a relic of history and hence the notion of taking back control from the EU seems baffling. The inept directionless nature of the process of the UK leaving the EU seems but a bizarre sideshow to the the fundamentals of whatever Brexit is; and whatever it is isn’t what the majority of people who voted for Brexit voted for.

I don’t get why the calls for Welsh independence are not being more widely being taken up. Wales as a partner in the global British Empire and sharing in the  benefits and advances that come with being a part of it, I can kind of get my head around. Yet continued membership of the UK now doesn’t offer anything apart from continued neglect and sheep jokes. A neglect that will likely intensify as England struggles to come to terms with itself and which has no money or resources to invest for the future anymore in any case, that Britian is in decline is palpable every day.  The resources Britain took from Wales have not been repaid. Surely, now is the time for Wales to ‘take back control’ to find it’s own way to develop in the twenty first century. Looking across the water to Ireland we see an independent state that has done fairly well free from the shackles of the British establishment, whilst Wales remains as the poor disregarded relation of the powerful in England.

Yet the fact that ‘Wales voted for Brexit’ does suggest that there is an appetite for change, to no longer accept decline. Wales is very different to Britian as a whole and has a very different set of problems. However neither the EU nor the Britain state offers Wales the chance to develop. It is surely time for independence.

 

The Few – Billy Bragg

Bubble Popping

Remembering being a child blowing bubbles and then chasing them around popping them is not the subject of this missive. Rather I wish to consider the bubbles I live in. These days we live in social bubbles based on where we live, work and socialise. Increasingly it seems that we live more in bubbles of people who think like we do than generations past. A consequence of this bubble living is that we understand less people who are not like us and due to this we seem to be living in a society that doesn’t consider what life is like for people who are different from ourselves. We don’t consider enough people’s backgrounds or how we are different. There seems to be a tendency for this to be exposed when families who live apart gather for Christmas, suddenly we are living with people who live in different bubbles and these bubbles can burst creating arguments.

As children we make a start in life thinking that other people think broadly the same way as we do. We learn to empathise by putting ourselves in others shoes. For example when someoen says that they are hungry, we understand because we know what hunger feels like ourselves. Yet somehow as adults we do this less, perhaps because we think we know enough not to have to do this thinking as often.

So how am I different and what insights have I gained over the past year and what has happened to me this year and to the society I live in.

I am different because I have suffered from anxiety. Living with anxiety led me to analyse my social interactions very deeply, too deeply. Overcoming anxiety was partly a process of letting go, of stopping analysis, of allowing a first impression to be generally correct.

I am also a scientist, which means I have lots of experience dealing with data sets in the attempt to answer questions, to remove sources of bias as much as possible. To be exhaustive in testing data and being cautious about any conclusions reached.

Really it is perhaps safe to assume that most people do not analyse things in such great detail. Indeed, i am often surprised by how little other people seem to analyse issues to what i feel is a decently robust level. So, what has happened this year?

Work

I have not been working in science this year sadly. Instead I have been working in the supposed ‘real world’ in an office working with the largest, but least robust or reliable data sets I have ever had to. I am managed so that i am not given the time to do any rigorous analysis and have to resort to processing data in a a rough and ready way withing very short time-frames. In terms of efficiency of the business, this makes sense as the broad results will generally be improve the business situation and in any case where the results are wrong, a major reason can often be reasonably assumed and the suggestions modified; rather than spending a lot of time getting things robustly right in the first place. Often rigour or deeper analysis is seen as a luxury if there is ever tiem for it. I have found it a challenging way to work, yet it is one that I have found to be shared by sciencey friends who work on the real world; speed is more important than accuracy. Working this way does make me a little uncomfortable at times and I do crave a return to science and ‘doing things properly’. Perhaps this is how most of the world works and how decisions are made, we thus live in a world which makes avoidable mistakes.

Cymraeg /Welsh

I am still learning Welsh, but can speak Welsh now and have become a part of the culture of the Welsh language. I am now exposed a lot more to opinions about the Welsh language from people with no knowledge of Welsh at all. For example complaints about bi-lingual signs. Bi-lingual signs are provided in two languages because there are two main language communities in Wales. If you don’t know anything about the Welsh language, then what exactly is the basis for an opinion on Welsh signage? When I hear the near constant criticism of the Welsh language, which you really notice when you are a Welsh speaker, it does feel like an attack. Yet, i don’t believe it’s an attack it’s perhaps simply a disregard for people with different needs. such ‘attacks’ happen to every grouping who is different from any individual. What i don’t get is why any individual would regard communities they are members of as being ‘normal’ and only these ‘normal’ causes are worthy of attention.

Brexit

Which brings me to Brexit again. The debate about Brexit should be about analysing likely impacts of Brexit on democracy in the UK and likely changes to the economy. Yet during the Brexit vote debate and ever since, this exploration of the costs and benefits of the two options barely gets a mention. Instead Brexit has exacerbated the tensions between people of the right and people of the left and been about which side you are on.

Brexit seems to be a division between those who desire a British mono-culture, similar to that which existed in the post second world war period and those that don’t. So, being of a range of identities and perhaps as a liberal “intellectual” I have to be on the Remain side, despite all my criticisms of the EU. There is no wiggle room for people to ‘switch sides’ even when we never desired to be on one side or the other.

British is one of my identities, yet the Brexiteers position seems to be attacking my British identity, which sees Britain as a union of diverse identities. I am Welsh, it is impossible for me to envisage Britain as a mono-culture, it hasn’t ever been and never will be. The terms of the debate now have entrenched the UK population into this division and the opinion polls suggest that eighteen months on from Brexit are still 50:50 and will probably remain so.

I fear this focus on this irreconcilable division at the expense of working out what is the best way forward isn’t helpful at all. If only someone could find a solution that everyone can unify behind, but it seems the likelihood of that happening is infinitely small.

Popping Bubbles

What I really find difficult to deal with, especially with the Brexiteers, is this adopting a position that doesn’t hold up to any serious analysis even when data breaks those positions. There is merit in not analysing everything to death, to adopt a position that works okay for now, but there should always be a readiness to accept that it is inaccurate and develop a new position. This maxim applies in science and social life and especially politics where we live in an ever changing world. It allows us to be independently thinking individuals and not suffer in a herd mentality of one size fits all.

The whole Blue Passports issue came up over Christmas. If people want the UK passport to be blue, fair enough. I’m not bothered about its colour, really I’d like a Welsh passport. However, when it is pointed out that 1, The UK passport was never blue, my parents had the old style ones and I looked at them at Christmas, one is black, the other is a very dark blue and not navy blue at all and 2, The EU did not prevent the UK government changing passport colour if it really wanted to anyway. Yet despite these two facts, people still try and maintain that blue passports is an important issue, in spite of the facts.

As I see it, life is about deciding when to engage with deeper analysis and when to just move forward with a quickly framed rough and ready position that is good enough for now, enabling us to live in the moment. As an anxious person, I needed to learn how to do the latter. However for the new year, I really believe that we need to consider other people more and that means accepting that our first answer may need some testing and analysis of data from beyond our cozy bubbles. Next year lets keep running around popping bubbles, be open to new ideas and consider other people.