Scots a target for the Lord of Misrule

When United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson dismissed Scottish devolution as “a disaster” he was speaking with some authority.

He is, after all, an expert on disaster.

He presides over a disastrous Government at Westminster; many if not most of his Minister are either proven disasters or disasters waiting to happen.

In a few weeks he is likely to lead his nation into the biggest disaster it has faced in peacetime – exit from European Union’s trading bloc without a deal, without a relationship, setting it adrift on a friendless sea.

Well, perhaps not entirely without friends. There are of course the Government’s mates in the infamous ‘high priority line’ who have grown fat on the thousands of public contracts handed them during the COVID-19 pandemic (the handling of which is another Government disaster).

Contracts worth billions awarded without competition following the suspension of procurement rules, some to companies of little known and questionable backgrounds, with what the National Audit Office has stated “with inadequate documentation”.

The expenditure has been so great that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is now likely to implement an indefinite freeze on public service pay for all but front-line National Health Service workers.

A move described by one union leader as "insulting to those public sector workers that have underpinned the fabric of society during this continuing pandemic".

In effect, those who worked to hold the country together, must now pay for the Government’s mismanagement. 

So it is little wonder there has been a great deal of push back to Johnson’s description of devolution as [former Prime Minister] Tony Blair’s biggest mistake.

Blair delivered on his 1997 manifesto commitment to hold devolution referendums, with Scotland and Wales voting for their own Parliaments, and Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland forming a power-sharing coalition.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “The only way to protect and strengthen the Scottish Parliament is with independence”.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford said it was a clear sign that devolution was under attack and echoed Sturgeon: “We can stop this wrecking ball; it is called independence”.

With successive opinion polls showing Scots favouring independence and the prospect of pro-EU Scotland being dragged out of the European Union by an English majority, it is hardly surprising Johnson’s views have been swiftly condemned north of the border.

Scots will be frustrated for now, while Johnson’s Conservatives have a healthy majority at Westminster, but there will come a time when that will not be the case.

The SNP must hold its nerve, and wait for when that time arrives.

Now for the easy bit…

Not quite the victory speech, but United States Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden came close to it in his address to the nation yesterday.

He made all the right remarks about the need to “look beyond” the deep divisions exposed by the election “toward a more perfect union”.  

This is what many Americans wanted to hear, and it was a refreshing memory of what Presidents used to say in the days before Donald Trump’s Administration.

However, Biden must know he is about to embark on four years in office far more different, and difficult, than that of any of his predecessors other than in times of war.

For a start, he is not going to receive any of the assistance that is usually extended during a change from one Administration to another.

Expect Trump to drag out the election result itself with multiple challenges in many states and at different levels of the court process.

When this fails he will persist with his refrain that many of Biden’s votes were “illegal”; that the Democrats “stole” the election; that there was something underhand in the counting process after Election Day itself.

Having exhausted the legal process he will turn to the people who voted for him in large numbers across the States where he won easily – in the heartland stretching from West Virginia to North Dakota. Expect him to continue to hold rallies in which he will rage against the illegitimate Administration in the White House.

Do not rule out that he will declare himself, or possibly a member of his family, a candidate for 2024, telling his supporters to maintain the rage through the next four years.

Maybe we saw son Donald Jnr already staking a claim in a rabble-rousing address in which he urged supporters “to go to war” over the election.

Never to be outdone, far right pundit Steve Bannon supported the “beheading” of officials who had been disloyal to the Administration.  

Where does that leave the Republican Party itself? We are already getting a glimpse of things to come in an angry exchange between two Republican members of the House of Representatives, Dan Grenshaw (Texas) and newly-elected Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia.

After Grenshaw said that allegations of illegality in the vote count must be investigated, but if this was disproved Republicans should accept the election result, Greene jumped in accusing him of defeatism.

“President Trump has fought for us and we have to fight for him,” Greene said.

For the moment it appears that Republicans are split into three camps —  moderates such as Grenshaw, die-hard rightists like Greene, and a large group in the middle who for the moment are staying silent, not returning calls and waiting to decide which way to jump.

Greene, who sees herself elected as a ‘Trumpist’ rather than a Republican in the traditional sense, will certainly resist views such as that of former National Security Adviser John Bolton who described the President as “an albatross round the party’s neck”.

The difficulty for Biden is that he must begin his presidency with some hard words for those who believed Trump in 2016 and again this year — that he could bring home jobs lost to Asia and elsewhere.

Biden has to state clearly that the country’s old-style manufacturing base has gone, and gone for good, that history has no reverse gear.

That done, he should present a vision for what America does best, and what has kept it at the forefront of the world’s economies for generations – innovation.

Barack Obama realised this when he called for the promotion of innovation hubs around the nation, putting researchers at the forefront of a range of sciences and technologies.

Biden needs to promote a crash program of infrastructure repair and development —bridges, roads, inner-city transformation, that has been allowed to languish for too long.

Most controversially, he should re-energise the space program, promoting a sense of adventure and enthusiasm among young Americans that he would have experienced as a young man during the Apollo Moon missions.

And he must do all this with the Trumpists snapping at his heels, waiting for mistakes, ever ready to drag him down.

Apart from that it’s an easy ride.

Scots must keep the pressure on Johnson

In his speech to the virtual Conservative Party Conference, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson eulogised a Britain that was “more united than for decades”; a Britain where the exit from the European Union “has delivered a new excitement and verve”.

A Britain where Brexit would be “a huge opportunity for Scotland”. 

The unusual setting was fitting for such an address, because it seemed that whatever reality the Prime Minister was living in, it was certainly not this one.

The country has never been so divided, and in so many ways: Brexiteers against Remainers, north against south, rich against poor, Scots against English, far left against far right, the list goes on.

Far from creating “excitement and verve”, the likelihood of the United Kingdom severing its ties with the EU without any form of compensating trade deal is spreading disillusionment and despair among all but the most rabid haters of Brussels.

Scotland, far from being eager to anticipate the “huge opportunities” that Brexit will bring, is straining at the leash for a new referendum that would almost certainly result in it breaking free to set a path to independence and its own relationship with the EU.

The really terrible thing about Johnson’s address is that he doesn’t believe a word of it.

He knows all about the dangers of Brexit but is too far along the path to attempt any kind of correction, instead falling back on Joseph Goebbels’ dictum that if you tell a really big lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Lying is one skill at which Johnson is supremely proficient, going back to the days when he was sacked from a newspaper for making up a key quote.

He cheated his way through the EU referendum campaign with lies about the huge financial benefit to the country’s National Health Service that Brexit would bring, and most recently he lied during the exit negotiations with Brussels, making arrangements over the future of Northern Ireland he had no intention of keeping.

Johnson has tried to preserve the image of a likeable rogue; a bumbling eccentric who somehow muddles through. In fact he is as brutal and ruthless as any Mafia captain.

At the last General Election he demanded all Conservative candidates sign up for his version of Brexit before gaining party endorsement, thus silencing any debate within the rank and file.

The hollowing out of the party left him short of talent for his Ministry, having to pick from the rump of narrow-focused Brexit fanatics who owed their loyalty, not to the country, or even to the party, but to him.

It is little wonder that many Scots are regretting their decision to place trust in one of Johnson’s predecessors, David Cameron when during the 2014 referendum campaign, he told them their future in Europe was better assured as part of the UK than as an independent nation. 

Johnson has stuck to the broken record-formula that the Scots made their decision to stay within the UK then and the question of independence is not going to be revisited.

Given that the vote was taken on the understanding that Scotland’s place in the EU was assured, there is every reason to allow voters north of the border the chance to change their minds.

While it is difficult to exert pressure in Westminster while the Brexiteer Government holds a substantial majority, it behoves Scottish Nationalists, both in and out of Government, to make the next few months and years as difficult for Johnson as they can.

Eventually, the make-up of future Parliament will be less favourable to the ruling party, of whatever colour.

Then will be the time to strike.

History is poised to judge us

History is a harsh mistress, and those who disrespect her pay the penalty regardless of previous ability and success — reference Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1942.

I am writing this on the anniversary of one such singular event. The Battle of Stamford Bridge, which might have been one of the defining moments in British history, is now almost forgotten because of what followed.

In 1066 Harold II of England, the most able Anglo Saxon king since Alfred, defeated an invading army of Northmen at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, virtually ending the Viking era in one master stroke.

He fell upon the huge but unprepared host by making a forced march from the south, covering hundreds of kilometres at a rate unprecedented for the time.

But when William of Normandy landed a far smaller force on the south coast a few days later, Harold, instead of waiting for reinforcements, made the mistake of rushing his depleted and exhausted army back to meet the new threat.

As a result what should have been a mopping-up operation became a hard-fought contest between two roughly matched opponents which William narrowly won, so radically changing the story of what eventually became the United Kingdom.

So why am I writing this? Because I feel that 2020 may be another year in which the currents of history are flowing towards an international crisis which has the potential to threaten us all.

In the United States we have an erratic and self-centred President who is currently seeing everything through the lens of his re-election in November, and has even hinted he might not accept being beaten.

We have a European Union distracted and weakened by the United Kingdom’s ill-thought-out and damaging Brexit process, unable to respond to mounting atrocities on its own borders as the Belarusian dictator stops at nothing to remain in power.

In Russia a leader who is on record as saying that “democracy has had its day” is orchestrating social media chaos among those states who still try to hold free and fair elections.

China has, in recent days, been testing the resolve of democratic Taiwan (and those who might come to its aid) as it prepares to add to its already unashamedly expansionist ambitions.

The list of states that have failed or on the brink of failure is growing almost as fast as that of so-called strongmen who are squeezing the life out of nations that once proudly lived by the rule of law.

Add into this mix the world-wide disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences, plus a number of more local but no less devastating natural events, and we are living firmly within the Chinese curse of “interesting times”.    

Can it get worse? The dystopian scenarios of troops surrounding the White House to haul out a President who refuses to leave, of a second American Civil War, unthinkable only a few months ago, are now being seriously canvassed. Yes, it could get worse, but it need not.

What is desperately required in the democratic powerhouses of Europe and the US is for people to pay attention and stop being taken in by slick, populist slogans and easy answers to increasingly complex questions.

Never have true leaders — those who are prepared to take action not because it is popular but because it is right — been more in demand.

The next few weeks and months are either going to provide them, or we will all face a very troubled and uncertain future.

 

The repackaging of fascism

‘Fascism’ and ‘fascist’ are words that are being slung about with a great deal of abandon these days, almost always as a term of denigration for governments, policies and people that that are considered abhorrent.

They carry a great deal of emotional baggage, conjuring up frightening images of death camps and jackboots, but are they being used wisely, and do the actions of politicians deserve the description?

Before it became a term of abuse in the wake of World War II, fascism was widely considered as an acceptable form of government, not just in Italy and Nazi Germany, but among considerable minorities in most democratic countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.

The thinking during much of the 1930s was that liberal democracies were ill-equipped to meet the rise of communism which was a threat to social order, and that something stronger, more authoritarian, was needed to stop its spread.

Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had their admirers. In the UK Sir Oswald Mosley was a particular fan of Mussolini’s style of fascism and if a General Election had been held in the late 1930s his British Union of Fascists may well have gained seats and played a pivotal role in Parliament.  

In the United States Charles Lindberg headed the America First movement, which opposed US involvement in the war against the Nazis and embraced polices that if not fascist, were certainly on the far right.

Today there are fringe groups that adhere to the legacies of Hitler and Mussolini, but no mainstream politician in their right mind would ever go to the electorate under the branding of fascism.

However, policies and actions can easily be disguised under more comfortable titles.

Philosophy Professor at Yale University, Jason Stanley suggests a few aspects of a political movement that might suggest it is masked fascism.

First is an appeal to an imaginary or glorious past which has been destroyed by the forces of liberalism, cosmopolitanism and globalism.  

“Through appeals to this mythical past, fascism establishes a hierarchy of human worth: Law abiding over criminal; hard-working over lazy; racially pure over impure; heterosexual over homosexual; able over disabled,” Professor Stanley says.

“Those deemed worthy are considered the nation’s true people; those deemed unworthy are singled out as threats.

“These false distinctions between worthy and unworthy are enforced through propaganda and anti-intellectualism that corrode shared reality, degrade language and create fertile grounds for conspiracy theories to flourish.”

It is not hard to find examples equating to fascism in countries around the globe. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most blatant when he says liberal democracy is “obsolete” has “outlived its purpose” and that multiculturalism is “no longer tenable”.

Some three quarters of a century after his country won a war against Nazi Germany in which millions of his compatriots died, Putin espouses concepts that would not have been out of place at a Nuremburg Rally.

While not yet so outspoken as the Russian leader, Xi’s China, Erdogan’s Turkey, even Bolsanaro’s Brazil are heading in the same direction — but what about the bastions of the liberal democracy that Putin dismisses , the United States, The United Kingdom, the European Union?

US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that November’s presidential election be delayed because of the pandemic prompted condemnations of fascism, but he was not calling for the election to be cancelled, and he has not succeeded in silencing his critics, one of the hallmarks of a successful fascist dictatorship.

There is no doubt that Trump wants more powers than his office currently gives him — but wishing and getting are different things.

However, should he win — and win well — in November, he and his supporters might be emboldened to push harder against the restraints that have held him in check so far.

The EU is dealing with waves of what has been called Populism, but which almost always has its genesis in the ultra-nationalist far right, most prominently in Poland and Italy, but with supporters in most of the countries of the bloc. 

Most concerning is the path taken by the United Kingdom Government in the wake of its exit from the European Union.

Without the US’s system of checks and balances, the ruling Conservative Party has shifted to its extremes, destroying or subverting long-standing conventions in its bid to cement itself in power.

In its Brexit campaign it referred endlessly to the UK’s so-called glorious past, to the false claims that it stood alone against the Nazis in World War II, and how all this could be reclaimed if only it broke the shackles of the evil bureaucrats in Brussels.

In the weeks and months after the 2016 referendum many of its triumphant supporters taunted fellow citizens of colour, or who spoke with strange accents, calling on them to “go back to where you came from”.

Ministers routinely reject any advice, however sensible, that might be contrary to what they want to hear; instead they huddle around a select group of unelected sycophants plotting how they might target and neutralise those who stand in the way of their march to greater authoritarianism.   

Those who take this path maintain, as Putin said recently, that it is what the “overwhelming majority of the people want”, the problem being that under the system Putin advocates — and has largely succeeded in putting in place — there is never an opportunity for second thoughts.

The fire bells are ringing in the night. We ignore them at our peril.

AG’s decision threatens rule of law

For several weeks a team of United Kingdom activist lawyers have been trying to get answers over what it regards as one of the most worrying developments emerging from the way the Boris Johnson-led Government conducts its business.

The Good Law Project sensed concern when the Prime Minister supported his Special Adviser, Dominic Cummings who travelled hundreds of kilometres on non-official business with his family when the country was in strict COVID-19 lockdown.

The group watched “in growing disbelief” the justifications, or rather the lack of them, offered by Mr Johnson and other Ministers.

“What the British public want us to do is focus on them and their needs rather than on a political ding-dong about what one adviser may or may not have done,” Johnson said.

Cummings’ own convoluted explanation was that he and his wife “might become ill” during the pandemic and unable to look after their son, so they needed to travel to family in the north of England to get support — even though he had relatives nearby in London who might have been called on to help.

What horrified the law team was that these lame and spurious excuses were supported in a statement by the nation’s Attorney General, Suella Braverman who issued an opinion that Cummings had broken no laws and his explanations should be supported.

Founder of The Good Law Project, barrister Jolyon Maugham said he could not understand how Braverman could properly have given that advice.

“We believe that it is of vital importance — to preserve the integrity of her office, the integrity of the rule of law — that we find out,” Maugham said.

However, requests for the legal basis for the decision were brushed off by both the Attorney General’s Department and the Cabinet Office.

“In almost identical responses they refused to disclose the requested information because it would not be in the public interest to do so,” Maugham said.

“Instead, they have said that it is more important that the Attorney General can continue without fear of any adverse inferences being drawn from either the content of the advice or the fact it was sought.”

Or in other words, we do not have to justify whatever course of action we decide to take.

This is extremely dangerous reasoning.

Throughout history the Attorney General, the chief law officer of the land, has acted as a brake on Government Ministers; cautioning them from rushing into questionable projects that could prove to be an embarrassment or worse.

While the officer is a member of the ruling party, it has been generally accepted that their first loyalty must be to apply rigorous interpretations of the law to whatever the Government of the day does, or is planning to do, over and above any political loyalties.

The Attorney General’s office is not supposed to provide a tick-off for the convenience of Ministers — as appears to be the case here.

By making her decision, and then refusing an explanation of it by hiding behind a “not in the public interest”, Braverman is giving the Ministers free rein to make a plaything of the law — interpreting it to their advantage or, if necessary, ignoring it altogether.

History has shown that when Governments embark on this course, the only destination is dictatorship.

Placing a penalty on poetry

The latest change in Australian university fees is a sad reflection on the thinking — or probably lack of it — amongst our leaders.

Unlike some commentators, I do not believe that the massive increase in fees for humanities courses will deter those who want to pursue that line of study.

As higher education expert Andrew Norton pointed out, the choice of course reflects students’ interests.

“You are not going to do something that will bore you for three years and then bore you for another 40 simply because the course is cheaper,” Norton said.

He is right, but there is a more fundamental aspect to all this — the devaluing of the concept of education itself in the minds of the Ministers responsible for these changes.

The feeling that has now taken hold in the Government is that universities should be conveyor belts churning out graduates to fulfil its endless parroting of “jobs, jobs, jobs”.

Ministers demand that young people should be worshipping at the altar of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and other subjects — history, music, art and so on — are not only less worthy, but penalties should apply for those who waste the country’s time by engaging in them.

There is no argument with promoting STEM subjects in schools as there will certainly be rewarding occupations for those who have an aptitude for them.

What should be vigorously rejected is that STEM is the only way to fulfilment and indeed acceptance in some mythical society of the future.

Australia does need more scientists, engineers and mathematicians.

It also needs its philosophers, musicians, ballerinas and sculptors.

The study of Shakespearian drama, the poetry of Blake, the history of art, and the ideas and influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is not wasteful of our talents or irrelevant to our future.

It is through the study of humanities that we come to an understanding of the world and of ourselves. It has enriched countless lives down the ages.

In the past it has flourished because there were people who appreciated and cared for it. If neglected it may well wither and fade.

To put obstacles in the way of those who would seek that wisdom in the future is small minded and ignorant.

We should expect better of those we have chosen to lead us.