Are Trump and Brexit the same phenomena?

I grew up under Margaret Thatcher, loathed and loved in almost equal measure. I got to vote in a UK general election for the first time in 1997. The election was won by Tony Blair and the era of Blairism. Since then real take home wages for typical everyday workers have essentially flat-lined, whilst the economy has risen in pure GDP terms, yet for most Britons living standards have declined, though masked to an extent by the rise in computational power and the internet. Today Joe Biden has won the US presidential election, defeating Donald Trump (loathed and loved in almost equal measure). Have we gone full circle? Both the UK and the US have not reformed our democracies, maintaining two party systems in an era when two party systems are no longer serving democracy.

How did we get here? From 1945 to 1975, the UK and the US experienced Social Democracy, the post-war consensus. A period of growth, rising living standards and where take home wages rose with economic growth. The mid 1970s saw an oil crisis, rampant inflation and the steady rise in living standards came to an end.

By the late 70s, people were fed up with their governments who seemed unable to deal with what had happened in the 1970s. The US voted in Ronald Reagan and the UK Margaret Thatcher, heralding in a new era of Thatcherism and Reaganism, or laissez-faire economics, where all political power was given to capital and a belief in the supremacy of financial markets and market-based solutions. It kind of worked for a while, national assets were sold off, infrastructure was not maintained and that money bought off normal people with tax cuts, normal people who didn’t notice that the gains from tax cuts were being swallowed up by rampant housing cost inflation and in the cost of living, such that peoples net disposable income did not increase, apart from some unsustainable wealth gains for the middle class, who had lucked out by buying houses when they were affordable prior to hyper-inflation of housing.

Since around 1980s, there has been a Thatcherite/Reaganite consensus. Conservative parties argued for taking it ever further and further than Thatcher herself would have and argued that Social Democracy had failed. Left wing parties, tainted by this apparent failure of Social Democracy lost confidence. It can be argued that there was a period up to the global financial crisis of 2008, where things seemed to be going ok, where concerned voices were ignored. Voices for change for solutions to our systemic problems were marginalised; The real economy doesn’t matter because we can just keep borrowing money from the future.

Essentially there was a period where the Left-Right dynamic of these two party systems was about appealing to what was perceived as being the political centre ground between the two main political parties. Leaders were careful to be bland and inoffensive to appeal to soft supporters of the other side. However it meant that the real concerns of ordinary people were left unaddressed by the political system and opposition to this cosy political establishment has perhaps grown.

The problem for this opposition to the political establishment and the multi-national corporate world it supported was divided. We have this legacy from the Left-Right political spectrum, so opposition is marginalised between those identifying between the Left and the Right. Thus antagonism and even culture wars began between the left and right, leaving the political establishment to carry on and smugly grin “the fools fight among themselves”

The lassez-faire capitalism of rentier capitalism, where capital is used to suck in more capital for itself with little to no investment in infrastructure or the real economy has begun to lose the support of middle-income earners, because by now middle income earners were losing out too. People have been looking for someone to offer a solution.

The Left still had Social Democracy, it was perceived as being tarnished and the political establishment has been successful at branding Social Democracy as the problem. The right had nowhere to turn to either, traditional conservatism was ignored, the power of capital entrenched by the free market myth had replaced traditional conservative values.

There was a political malaise, turnouts at elections were falling as people felt that politicians of red or blue were basically the same, feathering their own nests. It seemed a tipping point was crossed, instead of trying to take votes from the other side, a better strategy was to campaign at your base, to raise turnout among your supporter base and to not care about trying to appeal to unity and the other side, especially if they didn’t have an alternative to turn to they were comfortable with.

So along comes Brexit and Trump, offering a populist solution, a possibility a hope of a way back to the growth in living standards provided by the Social Democracy era, but perpetuating the myth that Social Democracy itself was flawed. Those on the right of politics flocked to it. Brexit won the Tories in the UK a general election and the Brexit referendum. In the US the reality TV show tycoon, Trump won the presidency.

For the left on the other hand the argument being that Social Democracy stripped of it’s pragmatism had become Blairism, with only right appealing policies whether they were any good or not (such as PFI) as a means to win the centre-ground meant that it’s very definition had been usurped, so the only way forward was a lurch to the left and ever truer and ever perhaps less practical forms of socialism.

The right on the other hand had a chance to rid themselves of the ever centralising big government institutions they have long wished for.

The problem the left has with Brexit and Trump is that whilst they offer getting rid of something they does not serve them, it offered no actual alternative. There was no plan for the UK post-Brexit and there still isn’t and neither did Trump apart form a lot of hot air and divisive rhetoric. It seemed that the argument was merely exiting the EU would magically solve all of the UKs woes, which is incredibly naive.

Coupled to this situation was a change in how the political class dealt with the media. The empty words of the political class, the avoidance of answering questions (in the 70s and 80s politicians actually answered questions), let alone debate grew. That chimed with neglected demographic on both the right and left, the downright lies of Brexit and Trumpism appealed to the right as being a solution to at least mix things up for a change. The problem was the political establishment, but the supporters of Brexit are the political establishment, so they had to create the myth that it was the other lot, those who are not in power as being to blame. The campaigns successfully scapegoated Social Democracy yet again, despite the UK not having had Social Democacy for now approaching 40 years. Further bolstered smears and hatred towards whomever was the scapegoat of the day. The left divided into splinter groups, those that want something done about climate change, or racism, or poverty, rather than a unifying creed. There was no party to unify the left, just an ever growing list of causes of growing urgency.

The Left has lost it’s popular appeal as an appealing dogma to the working class, despite it being the political creed that most favours this demographic economically. The left’s leaders are university educated, used to nuanced arguments, the ‘libtards’ who don’t have a nice simple message, because the economy is complicated, life is complicated. This has turned away working class support. Yet the left isn’t really left or socialist anymore, it’s the whole swatch of opinion from far left to centre-right. The centre ground has shifted so far right by Thatcherism/Reaganism and been so distorted by the ‘free-market’ dogma of Thatcherism. Paradoxically it has seemed the left doesn’t even have a unifying dogma to rally the troops anymore

We are kind of back to the late 1970s position, we have struggling economies, built on mountains of debt to the world of finance. People want a solution, but there seems no ready political philosophy, no new solution and a political class who seem ever more out of touch with the economic realities of ordinary citizens.

We’ve just had an election in the US for a new president, won by Joe Biden, with a simple message of hope and truth. Is this the end of the populist Brexit phase? Despite the euphoria on our television screens, is not Biden simply another establishment, middle way, safe pair of hands, a former Vice President to soften the blow of our crisis, rather than tackle the real problems? It’s hard to see supporters of the right of Trump and Brexit getting behind a bland steady the ship offering once Brexit and Trump are seen for the empty shams that they are. I should add this equally applies to Keir Starmer. But then if Biden can now win simply on competence and not being a figure a fun, then perhaps Starmer can too? These new leaders don’t really offer solutions on the scale we need (though we should give Biden a chance). People need to pile the pressure on the political class to get stuff done. We seem to live in a world where politicians don’t lead but are led kicking and screaming by campaign groups to getting the simplest of things done. Perhaps we should keep massive pressure on the political class until they realise that people are not going to shut up unless we are assured they really are getting on with what they are elected to do, govern us in our interests.

For democracy to work, to do it’s simple job of picking the best decision makers from a list of candidates we need to perhaps do a couple of things:

No.1 Expand the list, reform democracy and get away from two party politics, where the choice is between terrible and even worse. Allow people to vote positively for someone they believe in that they can trust, rather than fear of the ‘other guy’. We need serious electoral reform on both sides of the pond.

No.2 Ditch political dogma, of left and right, of socialists and conservatives. Political dogma is relative. If a society’s economy is too left wing, then you need predominately right wing ideas to be the solutions and vice versa. The idea of things needing to be more right and more left are relative to the state of things, they are merely ideologies in themselves and dangerous if pursued to their extremes. Practical solutions should always trump those that arise from political dogma or a slavish following of doctrine.

I think that if the UK and the US can do these two things, it will transform our societies into true democracies, where losing an election doesn’t lead to four years of trauma for over half of the population and society in retreat but instead leads to change we are all mostly happy with, because everybody will get a share of the pie and a reward for their hard work, everyone will be better off.

Let’s see the light, that allowing the capital of huge unaccountable financial to suck away all the wealth we all generate through work isn’t a sustainable economic situation, to acknowledge that Thatcherism/Reaganism is simply another dogma that has inevitably failed, we need to move on. That there are not good and bad people, but simply people who can help and those that need help. The less people there are who need help, the more work that gets done. The more that gets done the better off we all are. It really isn’t rocket science. We just need political systems that facilitate productivity, and work against, rather than for, systems that reduce productivity. To get there we need a better representative democracy that works for us rather than against us.

There are so many parallels between support of Brexit and Trump, by mass appeal to their base on a promise of hope. Now that Brexit and Trump have been exposed as a sham, it seems that people are prepared to get off their arses and go to the polls and say no, no to this divisive crap which doesn’t solve one problem.

What will emerge from all this will be interesting and hopefully, finally turn things around and we can start raising living standards once again.

All Change UK

What do the changes brought about in the 2019 UK General election mean? It was an unusual election because the issue of Brexit dominated. Brexit now looks very likely to happen, as soon as next month and whatever happens will probably not be the main issue at the next election. What happens between now and then will continue to be interesting.

To understand this election it is perhaps worthy of considering how UK general elections usually work. The traditional view is that people self-interestedly vote based on their demographic grouping. In this very generalised model there were broadly two groups:

White-collar workers, people who generally work in offices are those who generally havd some spare money to save and invest, these generally vote Tory as the Tories offer reduced wealth taxes, making it easier to earn more from investments.

Blue-collar workers, people who generally work with their hands, tend not to have spare money to invest, are often unionised workers whom generally vote Labour as Labour offer improved working conditions and improved rates of pay.

Hence a traditional UK election is a battle for in-between voters; those who readily switch parties based on whom seems to have the better offer.

However this traditional model has broken down, arguably since the adoption of Thatcherism by the UK economy. This Thatcherism has led to reductions in investment in the wider UK economy, particularly in the ‘provincial’ nations nations and regions of England. Instead the focus has been on making the UK attractive to financial services, favouring capital, rentiers and leading to  ever widening inequality, richer rich people and poorer poor people.

Politically this breaks the traditional model as the general economy isn’t invested in so there are ever fewer people with a little bit of money to invest, but those that do have ever larger amounts of capital. This has perhaps presented a problem for the Conservative party as their voter base is declining. Compounded by the housing crisis, where young people are disenfranchised by being unable to afford decent housing, while older generations sit in housing which has increased in value by doing nothing. Essentially Tory economics has destroyed it’s own voter base. The below chart illustrates this from the last election (I would suggest the 2019 data conforms to this pattern too)

The Tories have needed new stratagems to continue to be electorally successful. a popular strategy for struggling governments has been appeals to patriotism. For example the 1983 war with Argentina or involvements with the various conflicts in the Middle East. Arguably military spending is simply useful for keeping failing governments in power.

For the past 5 years, The Tories have used Brexit as a surrogate for war. It has a patriotic appeal, of Little Britain against the big bad EU, fuelled for decades by the right-wing media barons endlessly negatively reporting news about the EU. Frankly, it’s worked. Incidentally, looking at the results, it has been less effective in the Valleys and Merseyside, where the popularity of the UK right wing press, particularly the Sun “newspaper” is less and in these areas there popularity of Boris Johnson is a lot less pronounced, so it seems to hugely influenced by media spin, especially as Jeremy Corbyn was spun as a London metropolitan liberal. We had a campaign dominated by ‘Get Brexit Done’ when the whole Brexit saga was fabricated by the Tories themselves, there are much bigger issues facing the UK economy in actuality.

In any case FPTP has delivered Boris Johnson his majority to “Get Brexit Done” yet the percentage results if split by parties for Leave or Remain in the EU paint a different picture, Leave 46% Remain 54%. It can be viewed as a Brexit or the Union election, yet Boris Johnson seems to want both, to have his cake and eat it.

The 2019 UK general election has returned the UKs worst ever Prime Minister to majority rule (a 5 year effective dictatorship), largely on the back of what could be described as blue-collar workers in neglected provincial towns. With a compliant media demonising the EU and metropolitan liberals as the “enemies of democracy”.

Boris Johnson’s government now faces a quandary, it can take two paths, this is why the next month or so will be very interesting:

Path 1 acknowledges that the Tories have destroyed their own voter base, so need to find a new way to maintain their grip on power, and actually does all they have promised to do, to keep hold of their new working class voters. To invest in the country’s infrastructure in the provinces, to care for the Union rather than neglect it,  to be become the party of the blue collar workers. This would be a huge policy U-turn for the Tory party, undoing thirty years of Tory policy, especially for one that has just expelled it’s moderate wing though, yet may be the new way for the party to retain power.

Path 2 is Tory business as usual, selling off the UKs assets like the NHS to Trump and making money for their already rich friends and allies,  while continuing to  work on finding a new scapegoat to attack for an appeal to patriotism in time for a future election. There is a ready enemy here, the pesky ‘Celts’. Brexit has been based on an appeal to British/English Nationalism. Such an appeal has never resonated as much in the Celtic nations, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (particularly as in this election the Unionist parties are no longer the majority in Northern Ireland). So much so, that Scottish Independence now looks very likely, though as in Spain, the UK state can stop it by force if necessary. Northern Ireland is heading seemingly inexorably towards re-unification with the Republic of Ireland and in Wales support for independence continues to grow and will continue to grow with a hostile UK government. So there is a very handy ‘enemy within’ to blame for any failure of Brexit to not make Britons poorer.

Essentially the future for the UK over the next five years is whether Boris will continue to dupe the politically uneducated or shift ground and become a stanch advocate of the UK economy. It will be interesting and probably depend on how clean or messy Brexit will be over the next year or two.

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.

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.

 

 

A British Brexit?

One of the traits that the ‘British’ claim is the ability to wing their way through problems, rather than plan things through, to end up pretty much as things started without much in the way of change. We seem have seen this today with the British government’s further winging of Brexit. I argued on here earlier that what the British wanted from Brexit was simply a loosening of the relationship with the EU, to remain effectively in the EEA Single Market and the Customs Union, but instead of planning this from the outset they seem to have ended up there through a convoluted winging it process through strategy rather than design. So who are the British and what after all is Brexit?

It could all have been plotted in the quiet confines of a Mayfair gentlemen’s club. It was clear from the outset of Brexit that the issue of Northern Ireland and it’s border with the Republic of Ireland and hence the EU presented a myriad of issues for Brexit. So the British governments solution was to say that a solution could be Northern Ireland remaining in the Customs Union, obeying EU rules and regulations whilst outside of the EU. Of course the hard line Unionists of the DUP would cry foul, the Welsh and Scottish governments would demand the same deal as Northern Ireland, everyone would declare an impasse and then the British government plays it’s masterstroke “Okay, let all of the UK remain in the Customs Union and effectively in the Single Market too, problem solved, we’ve resolved Brexit and made our political opponents look even dafter than we made ourselves look, even though they were being sensible at the time, aren’t we so very clever?” It’s almost like a cunning Jeeves solution to a crisis from the ‘Jeeves & Wooster’ stories of P.G.Wodehouse.

So how exactly is this especially a ‘British’ Brexit Solution’? Well, you have to understand what British means in this context. The notion of Britishness is one that even people who like me who have lived all their life on Great Britain often struggle with. Indeed it is a label few are comfortable with, let alone agreeing upon what it means. These days, most inhabitants of Great Britain are Welsh, Cornish, Scots and so on. Only a minority of Britons define themselves as ‘British’ as their primary identity. There are two different versions of Brutishness which sit uncomfortably in this one word, British. Indeed, I pity the foreigner who comes to Britain trying to find an easy word to use to describe the people of this island without offending any Britons. It is a tough challenge, to me the only really safe phrase is ‘the people of the U.K.’, which trips off the tongue delightfully does it not?

A lot of people forget that ‘Great Britain’ is simply the name of the island, the largest island of the British Isles archipelago. When the Romans left in the 3rd century, Great Britain was left to the Britons, the people of the Brythonic Celtic tribes, except for what is now Northern Scotland where the Picts lived, the Picts may have been Celts too, though not enough is known about their history to be certain.

A few centuries later, the Saxon tribes started arriving and settling in Britain, displacing the local Chieftains and assuming positions of political power, replacing the  Brythonic language (which split into Welsh, Cornish , Breton and Cumbric) with the Saxon tongue dominating in what is now England becoming  Old English and later Modern English, after some Viking influence. It is often forgotten that the legendary King Arthur of the Britons, was battling against the invasions of the Saxons. After all this the Britons were left in control of Wales, Cornwall and Scotland, which were ultimately too much effort to conquer completely, as the English crown could easily control the local Vassal Princes when required.

Then by the end of the Middle Ages, the English monarch ruled over all of Great Britain , having effectively annexed Wales and Scotland by political means. Everyone in Britain was ‘British’ again, kind of having rebooted the term back to it’s original meaning of the people of the island of Great Britain.

This British King then sought to increase in wealth and power though conquest and after another few hundred years was the British Empire formed. Again the meaning of ‘British’ changed to mean to ‘Ruling Classes of the British Empire’, the Britons didn’t really notice as it wasn’t really a big issue at the time.

The advent of the two European parts of the World Wars of the last century, dragged the British Empire to it’s knees. The Empire called upon the Britons and indeed the Empire to fight in the war on the promise of bringing Britain together as a nation, where no-one would be left behind, ‘Homes for Heroes’ , the NHS and suchlike. It worked, the Britons fought and died in those wars and afterwards, as a united nation, enjoyed the fastest economic growth they had ever seen and a sense of being a modern national family.

More recently, this sense of the British as the Britons has faded once again, as the Ruling Class / Tory governments have not cared about dividing the Britons in there fervour for capital and international influence for themselves. Ironically the Unionist politicians have done more to break the Union of the UK than anyone else with their neglect of the regions outside the direct influence of London. Britain is now a very divided nation again. The hardcore Brexiteers seem to have hoped that somehow by magic to restore the unity of Britain, when only a tiny minority sought this ‘Hard Brexit’ with a divisive Brexit referendum.

Or perhaps the British ruling class triumph again by being perceived to have played a blinder and won Brexit. The Brexiteers may squeal, but I suspect the Brexieers only really care about power and influence and to be on the winning side and will quietly return to the back room grumbling that is their true love. This is the thing I despise about the Tories, as long as their star stays in the ascendant, they care not a jot about the fate of the Britons or the economy under their rule. As long as you are rich enough to offshore capital, you can keep your family and friends safe from a declining economy and nation state.

I could be completely wrong of course. It is impossible to predict events, but it does seem a very British [read English Ruling Class] way around of solving this Brexit to produce perhaps the ‘Golden Brexit’ [Probably been coined before , every other adjective has been used to prefix ‘Brexit’ at some point.]

More Democracy

In the UK we have been in a situation where a small minority actually support the government. A larger minority vote for the government of the day, but only do so because they dislike the alternatives more. This isn’t democracy. A lot of people are fed up of it.

The problems of modern capitalism are fairly established as I see it. Western democracies were lucky that over the last century that technology and innovation produced enough economic growth that even those on low incomes quality of life improved. However we are now at the point where economic growth is sluggish at best and there is a decline in living standards.

It often seems as though people are more prepared now for change, to sweep away the failing establishment that has no answers. We have seen a rise in those who aren’t from the traditional political establishment. For example the rise of Donald Trump, the Brexit vote and support for Jeremy Corbyn. These populist causes have drawn support as being agents for a change from the established order.

There seem to be parallels with the 1930s, where political extremist causes both of the right and light of politics rose in prominence, offering the hope of a return to normality. However such extreme visions do not lead back to normality, but further away from it, such as Communism and the Nazis. While these extremes can gain popular support they don’t actually offer real solutions to the ails of populations, but rather offer a short term solution to a perception of the current problems.

The solution is simple better democracy leading to solutions based around the actual political centre of a society, where everyone is part of the system and buys into the system, creating patriots. Patriotism is really nothing more than I’ll help you if you help me or the idiom, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine, it’s basically society that is necessary for organising ever more efficient use of dwindling resources. This patriotism need not be confined within a nation but extend outwards in looser arrangements.

The difficulty is that such radical centrists advocating more democracy, are often viewed as part of the establishment and not offering the chance of genuine change. I don’t think it has to be simply regime change, replacing one lot with another, but placing accountable politicians in power controlled through the democratic process.

Party politics is too much about winning power and retaining it, rather than exercise of that power for positive transformation of economies. If a politician argues for a policy but it is rejected then that politicians is of as much value as the one whose policy happened to be right or more popular. Democratic discourse should be about ideas and not a battle between movements.

True democracy comes from the bottom-up, so having smaller political bodies increases individuals voting power and forces leaders to live in the communities they govern. In large countries like the UK, the ruling class don’t have to live the life of ordinary people, so have no interest in ensuring the schools are the hospitals work well. It just seems that smaller countries, like Iceland or the Baltic states seem to do much better than the big ones. I don’t see what big states are for anymore. Supporting democracy is not about a desire to be separate, the reality is the reverse to create more accountable democracy that simply by being more accountable will aid economic growth.

Why I am not a Tory

I am a Social Democrat, a centrist, so I both get the idea of conservatism and socialism, yet view the two as both being fundamentally flawed when applied in the extreme. A good economy an da good society is I believe best achieved by taking elements of both creeds and applying a pragmatic analysis of what works where.

So, part of me is conservative and I know many conservatives, yet I kind of feel pity for them because of the Tory party in the UK. The Tories post-Brexit immigration plan leaked this week, it is just so typical of the kind of ill-thought through damaging policy I expect from the Tories, it’s so extreme, which should be an anathema to conservatives.

The issues with the Tory party is that is a party with three competing dogmas struggling for dominance: Firstly, old school conservatism which hasn’t had the chance to develop, and has become the backdrop, or a shared idea between the other two factions:

The market fundamentalists, neo-liberals or whatever label you wish to apply. The belief that markets can solve every problem, that all the world needs is less regulation and less services to be prosperous and healthy. It’s simple and a pure idea, but it just doesn’t work.

Then there are the nationalists, the people who hold that there is an exclusive club of people, of people just like them, or people who are prepared to act like them who deserve all the fruits of labour of society. This British nationalism harks back to the glory of Empire, of Imperialism. People with the idea that they’re lot arer simpler fundamentally better than everyone else for some unstated reason.

The problem for the Tory party is that these two beliefs are incompatible with each other. You can’t have an anarchy of free trade and provide protection for your privileged group, the idea of ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’ that we hear mentioned so often these days. What perhaps holds the Tories together is that it was once possible to square this circle, Empire!

The British Empire was essentially a large free trade area, controlled by the British state, which was run by the privileged classes. So there was free trade and protection at the same time. The days of Empire have gone but the Tories get stuck thinking that somethign similar can still be achieved.

This war between the Tory factions has often bubbled over on the issue of the Common Market, The European Community and now the European Union. The Nationalists hate the idea of the UK being subservient to a supranational organisation, yet some of them believe that it is a modern equivalent of the Empire; a large free trade area and protections for the privileged few, provided you are on the top table of the club. The nationalists however really dislike the social side of Europe, the community aspects of the club, the regulations. That the free trade aspect means that EU citizens come to the UK and have successful careers appals them, simply because they are not like them. This group have never liked the EU, because they have never been in enough control of the Eu to satisfy them.

On the other hand the market fundamentalists have mixed views of the EU for different reasons. They like the free trade aspects and want the EU to less regulated and more fundamentalist (these groups loved TTIP and CETA) and also this group hate the social and community side of the EU, not because they hate other people but because a working community rubs against their fundamentalism.

Generally both groups of Tories have, have mixed views of the EU, but have a mistrust of it because they don’t have full control over it, like they do with Westminster government in the UK.

On Brexit, Britain exiting the EU, the two groups are really coming to blows as neither group can get what it really wants, the British Empire back. The market fundamentalists eye up a deregulated Britain that can be the most market fundamentalist state in the world. However they are constrained that Brexit also means losing access to the huge free trade area of the EU. This group want access the the single market and also not have to obey the markets rules. This group could probably get a deal with the remaining EU that would suit their dogma, but the nationalists want somethign else:

The nationalists want very strict immigration controls, hard borders, restrictions to free trade and protectionism and this is the opposite of what the fundamentalists want. Hence we have this internal war within the Tory party, constrained only by the innate conservatism of their membership.

The divisions within the Tories over Brexit and lack of a coherent Brexit plan encapsulate the whole question of the EU. Outside of the Tory party the people of the Uk are also divided. There is the social EU and the market fundamentalist EU. The left object to the market fundamentalism and the right to the social Europe. Traditionally the political centre supports the EU as a mixed bag as it balances these two competing forces, which is what centrists want. However the EU isn’t perfect and even those of the centre have misgivings with it. My support fro remain is the the EU is better placed to provide some balance than the UK is. After all both the EU and the UK are supranational organisations. There can be no good Brexit until the UK has electoral reform and the Tories and Labour are kept out of absolute authority.

The recent EU, post Lisbon treaty has been ‘free’ movement of people within the EU, which is a new concept in economic terms. People have rightly objected to this free movement as it doesn’t deliver economic growth, it perpetuates problems. For example the UK doesn’t train and retain enough doctors and nurses, so the UK imports them rather than make sure it produces enough of them domestically, however the immigrant medical professionals only partially go where they are most needed.

It’s this ideological dogma that causes many problems, there are very few genuine free markets. Trying to impose free market reforms on imperfect markets doesn’t work. Look no further than the UK railways for examples of overpriced poor quality service in comparison to similar states. People may desire Brexit for ideological reasons as the EU is far from perfect, but there is no mechanism at the moment to make markets function better outside of the EU.

I’ve lived under this dreadful Tory party my whole life and I’ve never understood why ordinary conservatives and centrists have kept propping them up in election after election. Partly the FPTP electoral system is fairly rigged to keep the Tories or someone very like them (‘New Labour’) in power. Really the Tory party are the very worst people to be attempting to negotiate a workable Brexit solution.

Hopefully the Tories will collapse, but don’t bet on it, their resilience  is astonishing. Maybe, just maybe, we can but hope and we can forget this whole Brexit business, reform our electoral system, have autonomy for Wales and have decisions about our communities made for the benefit of those communities, to cooperate as widely as possible, to make decisions  that make economic sense; essentially to give democracy a crack!

 

British People in Hot Weather

The British are famous for our obsession with British weather. Britain is rarely hot (>25C) and rarely cold (<-5C). So when it is hot we go crazy and run out outside to bask in the experience the strange newness of the our area being hot. When it snows we also run out to play with the magical icy white stuff. However because such events are usually only for two weeks of the year we don’t bother preparing for them, it’s deemed too expensive to bother, even when buildings exist for over a hundred years, a few quid saved when building and hang the long term efficiency costs.. So, we we suffer in sweaty places of work and grumble about the madness of being only half as productive for a couple of weeks a year. The vast majority of British buildings are not designed for inclement weather and we just put up with it, or try and do things outside and burn our skins to the colour of lobsters.

Sometimes this lack of long term planning ends in tragedy as happened last week. The Grenfell tower block in London caught fire with a tragic loss of life of people dying in their homes.

The tragedy multiples when we think start to think about why this tragic event occurred.  People dying in a burning building is always tragic. Its doubly tragic when it is suggested that mistakes were made that were directly responsible. It’s particularly tragic when the whole UK political system is part of the problem.

Grenfell Tower was part of the 1960s policy to replace falling apart housing with cities in the skies. They were built on the cheap and poorly managed. However at least some thought was put into preventing fire spreading. However, because these flats were near to the most expensive part of London, it seems a decision was made to clad the tower to make it look nicer, rather than install a sprinkler system, which was what the building needed more, to bring it into line with modern tower constructions. There are suggestions that this cladding contributed to the fire spreading quickly and it is this that has made people particularly upset. The UK ‘planning’ system is woefully  inadequate and our building regulations are farcical; which is the fault of the political system.

This political tragedy is that such problems as Grenfell tower were known about for years but nothing got done about them. This is arguably due to a government that has had a strange ideological objection to regulation and is corrupt in being lobbied only by big businesses which don’t like the cost of following regulations.

Surely it is wrong for government to only be responsive to corporate interests and ignore the concerns of the people it is supposed to represent. The market is great at making some things more efficient, cheaper and as a system for deciding what to invest in. However it is not perfect and sometimes we need human beings to make decisions about what works. With a such a government as the Uk has suffered recently, in perhaps supporting luxury residential development and pricing key workers out of towns and by decreasing safety for poorer people living nearby. Less scarily, it is happy to save a few quid now and allow building inefficient buildings and their subsequent productivity effects on the businesses within them. Isn’t is just crazy not to put air conditioning into a building and cover the roof with solar panels to power the air-conditioning, which will provide the power just when it is required. Such obvious solutions are not favoured by the UK planning system with arbitrary points based decisions making. Trivially I grew up with dreadful British showers and it has taken plumbers from outside the UK to come in, shake their heads and install nice showers for us to wash in, it’s like no one ever thought through the installation of showers. There seems no interest in developing solutions, rather allow the population to be used to being ignored and put up with crumbling housing, transport networks, inefficient healthcare and schools.

Hopefully, the tragedy of Grenfell tower will serve as a beacon for change, for greater democratic accountability, where people raising concerns will not be slammed as troublemakers, but actually listened to.

In the recent UK general election, we got an unexpected result. This was due to younger people turning out to vote in greater numbers. However there are suggestions that it was not merely that younger people tend to vote for left wing parties, nor that this time more of them actually voted, but that they voted for Corbyn’s Labour party in huge numbers. This suggests that the disparity in voting intention between generations was the greatest it has ever been.

I believe that the reason for this was about how different generations receive their news. Younger people tend to use social media on the internet more. I heard about the Grenfell tragedy through social media. Older people perhaps use traditional mainstream media more: newspapers and television stations. The issue in the UK is that the majority of the traditional print media is biased towards the Conservative party and television coverage has this right wing bias. So it is arguable that the older generation don’t hear about the real problems with the planning system and only hear a superficial story about leftist trouble makers. Whereas social media does tend to be left wing in its focus. If this theory holds, then there is hope for the future, that practical solutions are implemented rather than a slavish adherence to a single political creed.

What Britain needs is more democratic accountability, more control from the bottom, from communities and regions. Doing this creates systems where people raising concerns are actually listened to and such concerns acted upon. With the current system only the powerful interests of capital are listened to, nations like Wales and the communities within them are ignored, instead one size fits all solutions are found that favour the wealthy few at the top, rather than increasing the amount of wealth and productivity of the workforce.

Of course sometimes the local solution will be impractical, so it remains important that decision makers should research all available information. However in recent times the top-down way of doing things has been proved wrong most of the time, which suggests that the balance of power is seriously off kilter.

The First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system does not work well in the modern world, it favours those at the top of big UK wide political parties. In such parties those that make a fuss about local issues tend not to make it up the greasy pole to where real power resides. This is not how FPTP is supposed to work. FPTP works when a local representative is elected to represent that area in parliament. That local representative will then support initiatives that help their constituents and vote against those that make things harder. These representatives may be members of a whatever political party, but should be prepared to vote against their party when their voters are detrimentally affected. Policy should proceed by consensus, where there is enough support from across the political spectrum for an individual policy. Nowadays the system doesn’t work as party is more powerful than constituency, Members of parliament (MPs) have to take the party whip and not vote on an issue by issue basis. The solution to this is increase power to the bottom, in regions, in communities, rather than top down from political parties. For decisions to be taken with knowledge of people who use things in their daily lives, rather than those who macro manage from afar.

It is time that we wake up and realise that it is wrong that we swelter on packed trains with broken air-conditioning in the summer, on our way to work in inefficient buildings, and then return home to housing with dreadful showers and the risk of being trapped to burn to death in our homes.