Quotulatiousness

December 15, 2019

Every time the “wrong” side wins an election…

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

… we get all the media talking about how the winner needs to tack to the left:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Every single time. Whenever the left is slapped by voters like a bony Antifa moll at a street riot, “expert” analysts rush to the scene of democracy, cordon it off with police tape and announce through a bullhorn that there’s nothing to see here. Move along. They then propose that the winner is morally obliged to sideline the constituency that just elected him and heed the boutique preoccupations of the vanquished instead. Successful right-of-centre candidates must govern for All of Us. Successful leftists, on the other hand, are encouraged to give leftism to the enemy good and hard for the next few-to-several years. Possibly the first man to pull out his ‘horn following Boris Johnson’s emphatic victory is Philip Williams.

The sullen acceptance that Brexit will happen but will unleash crises that – alas – must be solved by a buffoon: check. Schools and hospitals: check. The problem of “an economy excised from Europe”: check. Williams’ piece is the Tate of tropes. But no: Johnson won’t faulter by being true to the shy nationalists who elected him but he might antagonise them by pivoting left to usher Hugh Grant’s coterie into a broader Boris marquee. Given his track record, that is very likely. Let’s not get carried away: Johnson did his Conservative duty regarding Brexit, nothing more. The question is whether or not he has the panache to hold on to his base while trying to expand it. The media will be a huge asset. They are certain to make daily sport of Johnson’s “gaffes,” eccentricities and less than squared away private life. This will endear him to everyman even more.

On the other hand, when the “correct” side wins an election, we’re assured that “elections have consequences”, the’ve been “keeping score”, and that the losers must strap in tight and hold on for dear life because we’re going further left than we ever were promised during the campaign.

Update: Related.

December 14, 2019

Livingstone announced Labour’s defeat was at least partially down to “the Jewish vote”

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Barbara Kay on the British general election results:

Boris Johnson’s Conservatives racked up a stunning victory in the U.K. elections, with numbers so decisive — 365 of 650 seats — we will hear no more rumblings about a “second referendum” on Brexit. You can love Boris or hate him, or struggle with mixed feelings (as I confess I do), but he now has a mandate to get Brexit done.

But I have no mixed feelings about the Labour Party’s humiliating loss, at 203 seats their lowest ebb since pre-World War Two. If ever a party leader deserved a definitive smackdown, it was Jeremy Corbyn, and a victory lap is in order for democracy doing what it does best.

On seeing the results, I said to myself, “Yay!” The second thing I said to myself was, “Who will be the first to pull a Jacques Parizeau and how long will it take?” As it turned out, not long at all, and it was former London mayor Ken Livingstone who reprised Parizeau’s infamous “money and the ethnic vote” blame-shift after the Yes side’s narrow loss in the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum.

As soon as it was clear the U.K. Conservatives had crossed the threshold majority number of 326 seats, Livingstone announced Labour’s defeat was at least partially down to “the Jewish vote.” In fact, a Jewish population of 260,000 could not by itself have greatly influenced the result, but it is a mark of the anti-Semitic mindset to constantly exaggerate Jewish power.

Livingstone, who has called allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party “lies and smears,” was himself suspended from Labour in 2016 over an assertion that Hitler supported Zionism. It was by no means Livingstone’s only egregiously insensitive remark. In April, he reportedly told the group Labour Against the Witchhunt that “It is not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel.”

Disappointed progressives, of course, are handling the Labour defeat with calm resignation, patience, and a spot of rioting.

November 21, 2019

There’s nothing “confusing” about Labour’s Brexit policy

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As Brendan O’Neill explains, the Labour Party knows exactly what it wants as far as Brexit is concerned:

I wish people would stop saying Labour’s Brexit policy is confusing. It is actually incredibly straightforward. Labour will kill Brexit. It will block the enactment of the largest democratic vote in UK history and ensure that we do not leave the EU in any meaningful way. It could not be clearer: Labour will betray millions of its working-class voters, its own history of Euroscepticism, and the values of Jeremy Corbyn’s own hero Tony Benn, by subverting British democracy and keeping us in the EU against the people’s will.

Anyone who doubts this – or anyone who is still, inexplicably, confused about Labour Brexit’s policy – only needed to listen to Crobyn’s comments at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on Monday. Corbyn first assured the assembled capitalists that he is not anti-business. Then he assured them that if he were prime minister, no harm would come to their beloved neoliberal institution, the European Union. Corbyn essentially promised the gathered bosses that he would override the stupid plebs’ democratic wishes and keep Britain entangled in the EU.

He said Labour’s policy is to get a good Brexit deal with the EU and then put it to the people in a confirmatory vote – otherwise known as a second referendum. This referendum would, in his words, be a choice between the “sensible deal” struck by Labour and fully remaining in the EU. That “sensible deal”, by the way, would include “a customs union, close Single Market relationship, and guarantees of rights, standards and protections”. So we’d have a choice between remaining and … remaining. A customs union, Single Market links, and EU-guaranteed rights and standards – that is, immovable EU regulations – do not not add up to Leave. By any stretch of the imagination. With complete contempt for the democratic will, and the basic principle of democratic choice, a Labour government would say to us: “You can stay in the EU or you can stay in the EU. It’s your choice.”

This is not confusing. Labour would pursue a backroom coup against Brexit. It would not only renege on the democratic vote to leave – it would then remove the option of leaving entirely from the ballot paper in a second referendum. It would deprive the British people of the thing that the largest number of us in the democratic history of this country called for: a break from the EU. Labour MPs, activists and bureaucrats would engage in a bloodless coup against the people’s will.

October 29, 2019

Parallels between the current Brexit mess and the 1906 general election

Filed under: Britain, Europe, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Sean Gabb writes in the Libertarian Enterprise on the clusterfail in Parliament and an interesting historical parallel from the beginning of the 20th century:

… the Brexit debate that only began with the counting of the Referendum votes has been a valuable education. So far as it blurs the lines of accountability, membership of the European Union has been a useful entrenchment of our ruling class. It has also helped provide a mildly liberal and cosmopolitan gloss to a domestic project that has been anything but liberal. Its refusal to honour the Referendum has torn aside what remained of the democratic veil behind which power is exercised. These people are not our servants. They are a hostile elite. Their interests are not ours. They despise us. They fear us. They are determined not to give us even the shadow of what we were – perhaps unwisely – promised.

I have given a quotation from Chesterton. I am increasingly minded of parallels between his day and ours. In 1906, the Liberals won a large and unexpected majority in the House of Commons. They set about transforming the country on the lines they had been discussing since the end of their last majority government in 1885. In doing this, they faced a wall of resistance from the old ruling class. The Conservatives controlled the Law and education and most of the administration. They possessed the greatest mass of the national wealth. Above all, they dominated the House of Lords. They used their majority here to block the Liberal Government until such time as the people could be persuaded at the next election to bring back a Conservative Government.

Now, in that contest, I would have sided with the ruling class. I think England had a better future under the Conservatives than under the Liberals. I think most of the Liberal changes were bad. Moreover, the Conservative strategy showed some evidence of working. The Liberals lost a steady stream of by-elections — most notably Peckham in 1908. Then the Conservatives went too far. In 1909, the Liberals brought in a deliberately populist budget. The Conservatives broke more than two centuries of convention by voting this down in the Lords. This gave the Liberals their excuse. With the cry of “The People against the Peers,” they attacked the Conservatives in their most powerful stronghold. After two general elections in 1910, the Lords were stripped of their blocking veto. Of course, the Great War then changed everything. But it is reasonable to suppose that, had the Liberals won another election in 1915, most of the domestic changes that we blame on the War would have come about, if more slowly.

The lesson is that ruling classes often make strategic mistakes. Had the Conservatives before the Great War taken a more selective approach in their opposition, they might have won an election in 1911, and carried on with their own vision of the national future. As it is, they only lost the 1910 elections because the Liberals were able to rely on Labour and Irish support in the Commons. Because they overreached themselves, they eventually lost everything.

It may be the same now. Had our own ruling class pulled sad faces in 2016 and delivered a minimal Brexit — something like continued EEA membership and a Norwegian relationship — they might have put the issue to bed and continued riding us all to certain ruin. Instead, they went into a three-year filibuster, every so often drawing breath to suggest another referendum. The strategy appears to have failed. We may now have a more substantial Brexit than was intended. More to the point, the democratic veil has been torn aside. The continuing argument over Mr Johnson’s new Withdrawal Agreement is largely now unfinished business. The Agreement needs to be passed — but so we can go into a general election where the main issues will not be a new relationship with the European Union. These issues will be the nature and personnel of the country’s domestic government. I do not imagine that we shall become more “democratic.” But I can imagine that we shall find ourselves with a new ruling class that holds the mass of ordinary people in less vicious contempt.

October 26, 2019

A look into yet another dystopian future

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Humour, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This time, it’s Tom Slater looking at the parliamentary situation well into the future:

The year is 2051. An 87-year-old Boris Johnson is still prime minister, commanding a majority of minus 200 in the House of Commons.

The taxidermied remains of Jeremy Corbyn looks lairily at him each day from across the chamber.

The Liberal Independent Group for Anti-Democratic Change, formed by breakaway elements of the other parties in the great merger of 2020, is by far the largest bloc.

For some reason it has never found the “right time” to assert control of the Commons. But by some convoluted means it has successfully delayed some 187 attempts to hold a General Election.

The UK is still a member of the European Union. But no one else is. Long since collapsed, it is now just a portacabin outside the Mini-Europe miniature park in Brussels.

It employs one man, whose job it is to sweep up, sort the post, and respond to the United Kingdom’s periodic requests for an extension to Article 50.

Somehow, his expenses are exorbitant.

They say making predictions these days is a mug’s game. But I’m pretty sure that’s where we’re headed. Or rather, given the Kafkaesque turn British politics has taken, nothing could surprise me now.

PM Boris Johnson has offered the opposition the election they claim to have been craving, again, and they appear set to reject it, again.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will back a General Election once the European Union grants an extension to Article 50. But the EU is holding off on making that decision until MPs vote on the election.

You can see the problem here. But at least it will keep half of Corbyn’s parliamentary party happy, who are apparently dead-set against an election and would rather we go for a second Brexit referendum first.

October 8, 2019

Sarah Hoyt on the “rough music”

Filed under: China, Economics, France, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

Sarah Hoyt borrows a notion from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series to explain a real phenomenon in our world:

Pratchett’s “Witches” world was so similar to my own, from jumping over fires to get married (not legal in my day, but there was memory of it) to various local folk superstitions, that it was always a surprise when he pulled something I’d never heard of.

One of these is the “rough music.”

When someone has done just about enough that a small village can no longer put up with him, the men in the village get together and play a barbarous and terrible music as they nerve themselves up for the barbarous and terrible things they have to do.

In Europe — hell, all over the rest of the world — the rough music is playing. Just because no one is reporting on this, it doesn’t mean it’s not going on, and growing, and nerving itself up to … something.

The level at which the Gilets Jaunes have been under reported is extraordinary, except that it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.

(And now I think about it, how much do we see in main stream news about Hong Kong? And it hasn’t stopped the uprising either.)

[…]

So, let’s talk about the rough music. Sure, you can hear it. I can hear it too. The stomp and the drumming can be heard all over the world.

That which can’t go on, won’t.

But I implore you to stop and think: if the rough music plays, what comes after?

There might be no hope for Europe, but Europe’s … ah … how do we put this? Europe’s tenets, their stand before the world, an improvement as they were on everything before them, are not ours.

Even in Europe I suspect when this bursts — and there it will burst. The elites flaying and screaming is only making it worse — you’re going to see things that will make you wonder why on Earth good American boys died in WWII. Because we’re about to get National Socialism, the sequel. National because they’re getting tired of the international elites (and who isn’t) and socialism because the poor bastards have not experienced anything else their entire adult lives.

It will happen. It is necessary. The EU was probably one of the most bizarre ideas in the history of bad ideas. The way it’s run which essentially steals the franchise from ordinary people was just the old style “good families” coming back into power through a back door.

But what comes after will probably be horrific. If we’re all lucky it will also be briefish and like France after the revolution they’ll find their way to something slightly less insane. With or without Napoleon and Europe wide war? Ah … that’s where we need to talk.

First however, let me say that hearing the rough music from the rest of the world is starting to echo here. We see what’s going on there. And we hear strange and stupid stuff, like the “whistleblower of the day” and an impeachment without voting and of course, pancake-gate.

Faced with that kind of behavior you obviously think “It’s insane.” And “We have to stop it.”

September 27, 2019

England’s constitution before the shiny new Supreme Court was created

Filed under: Britain, History, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Peter Hitchins provides a thumbnail sketch of the state of play before the Supreme Court was added to British constitutional arrangements:

Why did we never even have such a body until ten years ago? As we shall see, it would have been, and still is, a contradiction in terms. But in interesting times such as these, elephants fly, fishes walk, figs grow on thorns, and oxymorons inherit the earth.

The most powerful law court in the land was, by a curious paradox, not in the land at all, but based in tiny Luxembourg, across the Narrow Seas which have kept invaders from our door but are useless against bureaucratic takeovers by the European Union. There sits the European Court of Justice, which as long ago as 1990 established that it could tell British courts to overrule British Acts of Parliament when they conflict with E.U. law. It can carry on doing this until we eventually do leave the E.U., if we ever do.

These various messes came about because we are so old, and rely so much on convention and manners, that it is all too easy for unconventional and ill-mannered busybodies to come storming in with new ideas. England’s constitution was not planned and built, like America’s. Instead, it grew during a thousand years of freedom from invasion. Both are beautiful in their way. America’s fundamental law has the cold, orderly beauty of a classical temple. England’s has the warmer, more chaotic loveliness of an ancient forest. It seems to be wholly natural but, when examined closely, it shows many signs of careful cultivation and pruning. Our powers are not as separated as America’s, but slightly tangled. Still, it has worked well enough for us over time.

Any thinking person must admire both the American and the English constitutions as serious efforts in a world of chaos, despotism, and stupidity to apply human intelligence to the task of giving people ordered, peaceful, and free lives. They have a common origin in the miraculous Magna Carta, which Americans often revere more than modern Englishmen do. We in England have grown complacent about our liberty, and have become inclined to forget our great founding documents.

But the two constitutions are not the same, and in my view they are not compatible. For my whole life, until a few years ago, the very idea that England should have a Supreme Court was an absurdity. The Highest Court in England is the Crown in Parliament which, as I was once taught, had the power to do everything except turn a man into a woman. In these more gender-fluid times, that expression is not much used. But it contains the truth. Parliament can make any law and overturn any law, made by itself or by the courts.

That is why England (often to my regret) lacks a First Amendment and cannot have one unless we undergo a revolution. No law in England could possibly open with the words “Parliament shall make no law.” Our 1689 Bill of Rights, the model for the U.S. Bill of Rights a century later, tells the king what he cannot do and the courts what they cannot do. It grants me (as a Protestant) the right to have weapons for my defense. But while it draws its sword against arbitrary power, it puts a protective arm round Parliament.

September 19, 2019

QotD: Parliament and democracy

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In legal theory, the members of the Commons are representatives and they have the role that was enunciated in the famous letter to the electors of Bristol by Edmund Burke. “I owe you my discretion; I don’t merely owe you my vote.” That was nearly 250 years ago when there was no democracy and politics was run by a handful of families like the Marquess of Rockingham to whom he was the paid lackey (and by the way the electors of Bristol threw him out). There is a very vague relationship between Parliament and democracy. We have had Parliament for 800 years. We’ve had democracy for less than a century. And the great issue was: how do you reconcile the previous tradition of representative in a non-democratic Parliament with the position of delegate in a democratic Parliament. And the way it was dealt with — this is what all the fuss, all the things that we are talking about: Erskine May, A V Dicey, they all appear at a particular moment of time. They appear in the middle of the 1880s because it’s the 1884 reform act that introduces something like democracy.

But you see we’ve never worked out the relationship between the fact that we’ve got two sovereigns. There is the legal sovereign which is the Crown in Parliament and there is the real, political sovereign which is the sovereign people behind them. But what we did, and this is why Bercow’s behaviour is so disastrous; it’s why Theresa May’s behaviour has been so catastrophic: what we developed thanks to Erskine May and the Parliamentary Handbook and endorsed by Dicey, we developed a whole series of devices. They were conventions that turned MPs from more or less representatives into more or less delegates. And what are these things? They’re party affiliation. They are manifestos. They’re standing on a ticket and they’re being whipped when they’re in the house. That is the thing that binds them to the popular vote. No MP; Dominic Grieve was not elected in a personal capacity. He was elected because he stood as a Tory on a Tory manifesto which promised Brexit. That man did not dissent at the time. His claims to dignity, his claims to acting honourably, are totally false.

There are other rules in Erskine May about the procedures of Commons business which gives the government the basic control of the parliamentary timetable. Otherwise what happens is the house just dissolves into a talking shop. Becuase MPs have refused to vote for any deal: they’re strong in the negative but they’re hopelessly weak in the positive. They can’t agree on anything. We developed a series of conventions in the 1880s that turn MPs into something like the representatives of the people and what has systematically happened in this Parliament: we have broken those conventions.

Theresa May’s loss of the election and her absurd notion that you can keep people with completely contradictory opinions on a main platform of government policy in the same party broke down the whipping system. Bercow broke down the government’s control of legislation. And you’re left with this chaotic mess.

David Starkey talking to Brendan O’Neill on the Brendan O’Neill Show, 2019-09-15. (Transcription from The Great Realignment)

September 8, 2019

Boris may have a viable escape hatch after all

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It could not only untangle the current mess in Parliament but have the almost equally attractive feature of sending his opponents into paroxysms of rage:

The consensus is that the Government is trapped in an iron vice that will now be tightened till it cracks. The truth, however, is that this vice is less of iron than of hot air.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 is a constitutional outrage. It allows a government to declare an emergency, and then to rule by decree. It should never have been made. But it was made; and it can now be used as an instrument of liberation.

The Act defines “emergency” as just about anything the authorities may dislike. One possible definition is “an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the United Kingdom.” (s.1(1)) This sounds a promising excuse. It seems to cover what the Opposition claims would be the effect of a No-Deal Brexit.

Triggering the Act requires no more than “a senior Minister of the Crown” – that is, Boris Johnson – to announce an Emergency. This done, he can make, alter or suspend almost any law he likes. (s.22) He can do this for a period of thirty days. (s.26) All he has to do is preface his decree with a statement that he “is satisfied that the regulations contain only provision which is appropriate for the purpose of preventing, controlling or mitigating an aspect or effect of the emergency in respect of which the regulations are made.” (s.20(5)(b)(ii))

He cannot change the Act itself, or the Human Rights Act. He cannot set up concentration camps for his opponents, or put them before a firing squad. But the Fixed Term Parliament Act is fair game. He could suspend that. Then he could dissolve Parliament in the traditional way.

He must, “as soon as is reasonably practicable,” lay his decrees before Parliament. (s.27(1)(a)) No doubt, the Parliament we have would punish him with an Act of Attainder. But this Parliament would no sooner reassemble after the prorogation than it would be dissolved. The Speaker would barely have time to open his mouth. Assuming the general election went as hoped, the next Parliament would not be inclined to dispute the circumstances of its birth.

All the opposition parties would go screaming mad. But, as said, we are not talking about concentration camps and firing squads. The only use of the Emergency would be to give a voice to the people. Who could legitimately deny that? As for sharp practice in general, the opposition parties have spent this year turning the Constitution upside down. Who could complain if the Government now joined in the fun?

September 7, 2019

Mark Steyn – “So the Remainer leaves, putting a question mark over whether the Leaver can remain”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Despite the lovely scenery outside his cabin window … I guess that should be “porthole” … Mark Steyn still finds time to comment on the circus at Westminster:

Greetings from the Mark Steyn Cruise, currently sailing the beautiful Inside Passage of Alaska. Across the continent and an ocean, Westminster continues to be roiled by Brexiteers and Remoaners locked, like the latter seasons of Dynasty, locked in ever more demented plot twists. Today Her Majesty’s Government suffered its first resignation since Boris Johnson took over as Prime Minister. The Minister for Universities and Science quit, and is leaving Parliament. His name is Jo Johnson. Any relation? Why, yes. He’s Boris’ brother. In the normal course of events, no normal person knows who the Minister for Universities is, or indeed that such a post exists, or, if aware of this grand office, what the chap who holds it does all day long: He ain’t a heavy, he’s his brother — that’s all. But the junior Johnson, a Remainer, has walked out on the senior Johnson, a Leaver, so it’s the biggest thing since Cain fired his Secretary of State for Sheep-Herding. Boris was his brother’s keeper, but he couldn’t keep him. So the Remainer leaves, putting a question mark over whether the Leaver can remain.

~All sides are throwing around media accusations of “constitutional outrage”, ever since Boris got the Queen to prorogue Parliament and was instantly ungraded from PM to Caudillo of the new dictatorship. I am more sympathetic to the charges against his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, has been claiming for months to want a general election. Indeed, there is no reason not to have one. On Tuesday the Prime Minister formally lost his majority, when some Tory nobody I’d never heard of crossed the floor and became a Liberal. So Boris and his team cannot govern. Indeed, even their minority is shrinking by the hour, as he removes the whip, expels and deselects those who vote against him on Brexit.

And yet Corbyn voted down Boris’ motion for a general election — because the Opposition Leader is determined to force the Government to enact not its own but the Opposition’s policy, by making Boris go to Brussels, grovel, and beg for another extension of Britain’s zombie membership in the European Union. To put it in American terms, the legislative branch wants to maintain the executive branch in power purely as its dead-eyed sock puppet. That is certainly a constitutional abomination, and, cautious as she is in such matters, I have no doubt the Queen regards it as such.

~Why is Corbyn doing this? Isn’t an Opposition Leader supposed to bring down the Prime Minister so he can force an election and replace the bloke? Yes, but Corbyn would lose that election, and Boris would likely win. The guff about the will of Parliament and the people’s representatives obscures the reality — that this situation exists because of the ever wider chasm between the people and their representatives, between a citizenry that voted to leave the European Union and the fanatically Remainer Liberal Democrats, openly Remainer Celtic nationalists, covertly Remainer Labour Opposition, and semi-Remainer Tory backbench all determined to subvert the will of the people. You can dress that up in all kinds of parliamentary flimflam, but, when politicians who’ve been bleating about a “people’s vote” for over a year refuse to let the people vote, you know these tribunes of the masses have gone rogue and left the masses far behind.

September 5, 2019

The “Stop the Coup” movement and the chances for a British general election

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Brendan O’Neill on the recent political upheavals in the Mother of Parliaments as Boris Johnson lost his parliamentary majority and the “Stop the Coup” activists celebrate by backing away from the election they claimed they wanted all along:

The ridiculousness of the “Stop the Coup” movement is now starkly exposed. For the past week a few thousand members of the obsessively anti-Brexit urban elites have taken to the streets to accuse Boris Johnson of behaving like a dictator by suspending parliament for a few more days than is normal. “It’s a coup d’état!”, they hysterically cry. And yet now our supposed dictator, the author of this foul, anti-democratic coup, is offering people a General Election, and how have the “Stop the Coup” saps responded? By saying they don’t want one.

What a momentous self-own. They have literally traipsed through the streets saying “Britain is a dictatorship” and “Boris has stolen our democracy”. Now, Boris hasn’t only disproven this claptrap (dictators don’t usually suggest holding an election). He has also helped to expose the fact that if anyone is agitated and even disgusted by the idea of democracy right now, it isn’t the imaginary jackbooted generals of Downing Street – it’s the pseudo-democratic Remainer elite.

All of them are running scared from the idea of a General Election. Labour has made clear that it will not be backing the call for an election, at least not until No Deal Brexit has been legally taken off the table. “We are not going to dance to Boris Johnson’s tune”, said Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer this morning when asked if the party would back Boris’s General Election proposal in parliament later today. An election on Boris’s terms would be a “trap” for Labour, he said.

Jo Swinson, leader of the Lib Dems, is against an election too. And her justification is very revealing indeed. In the Commons she said “It is vital that this House acts with responsibility and does not tip our country into an election at a point when there is any risk that we will crash out of the European Union during that election campaign or immediately after.” With added emphasis she declared: “We must act responsibly.”

… but not democratically. After all, elected MPs know far better what’s good for the country than the majority of Britons who voted in favour of Brexit.

August 21, 2019

British-EU negotiations under Boris Johnson

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In a speech to Slovak journalists, Sean Gabb outlines what he expects the British government to be doing about Brexit now that May has been put out to pasture and Boris Johnson is in charge:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

Here, I come to a digression on the nature of how Britain is governed. My country is not particularly democratic. At the same time, there is no cabal of evil persons directing all events and appointments from behind the scenes. This is generally not how ruling classes operate. A more realistic model can be taken from Ian Kershaw’s analysis of the National Socialist revolution in Germany. This proceeded with limited central direction. Before 1939, the leaders were concerned mostly with foreign policy, after that with fighting a big war. Instead, the revolution was decentralised. Reliable men were put in key positions and told to “work towards the Fuhrer” – that is, to act in any situation as they might imagine Hitler himself would act. The result was often administrative chaos. The benefit was that the leadership could concentrate on what it saw as the essentials, and more local knowledge could be used in the overall revolution than would otherwise have been possible.

This is largely how things work in Britain. Our own Transformation is not driven by detailed orders from the Shadowy-Ones-on-High, but by creating a bias within every useful institution to those who are broadly in favour of the Transformation. The benefit is a constrained diversity of approaches that can be presented as a genuine diversity of opinion. The disadvantage is that executive power lies in this country where it has since 1701 – that is, in the hands of the Ministers of the Crown, who are accountable to the House of Commons. If the Prime Minister turns out to be a fool, and the other ministers are too cowardly to stab him in the back, there is no easy way to remove him.

I come at last to the Brexit strategy of the new Government. These people are not right-wing extremists who can eventually be forced to give in. Just like Theresa May, they see Brexit as a problem that needs to be solved. If they could wave a magic wand, they would roll back the calendar to 2016 and make sure that Remain won the Referendum. Or they would roll it back a little farther and make sure the Referendum was not called that year, or at all. But they cannot. Instead, they have to deal with the effects of leaving a political fool in charge for three years of the Brexit process.

Theresa May had one job after 2016. This was to produce the minimal departure I have mentioned. Instead, she negotiated a Withdrawal Agreement that caused a storm of outrage among the English. The details of what this Withdrawal Agreement contained are, again, unimportant. What does matter is that the Withdrawal Agreement was published in English on the European Commission website, and millions of us read its 585 pages. We may not have been that interested in the details of our membership. But the details of our “withdrawal” were unacceptable. She tried three times to force it through the House of Commons. Each time, a majority of some very trashy people were terrified to be seen supporting it. Anyone else less stupid would have tried something else. Instead, Theresa May treated us with open contempt. Whether or not we really cared about it, we had been asked if we wanted to remain in the European Union. Having voted “No!” we expected some show of respect for our clear instructions. We did not welcome a Brexit-in-Name-only.

At first, the damage was confined to the possibility of a Labour Government. Then, with the rise of the Brexit Party, the system as a whole moved towards a crisis of legitimacy. The European elections of the month before last were seen as the second Referendum the Remainers had demanded. It was won by the Leavers. The Conservative were crushed. Labour was humiliated. It seemed that a general election would, for the first time, produce a bloc in the House of Commons of Members opposed not only to the peripheral issue of the European Union, but also to the Transformation.

So Theresa May had to go, and she was replaced by Boris Johnson. His own inclination, I have no doubt, is to get a few cosmetic changes to the existing Withdrawal Agreement, and then tell us he is a diplomatic genius. His problem is that this will no longer do. Theresa May has left too much poison in those waters. Brexit must now be more meaningful than was at first projected. Last week, there was an election in Wales to fill a vacancy in the House of Commons – a bye-election. This should have been won by the Conservatives. Instead, the Brexit Party took enough Conservative votes to give the seat to one of the opposition parties – not the Labour Party, which did badly. The political arithmetic is that anything less than a No-Deal Brexit or a diplomatic triumph will mean a collapse of the Conservative vote at the next general election. And this will not mean a Labour Government, but political chaos and a crisis of legitimacy.

In a post at the Continental Telegraph, Alex Noble shows the quite different political trajectories of Change UK (or whatever they’re calling themselves this week) and the Brexit Party:

[Simon Jenkins in the Guardian claims that] the majority of Britain want to stay in the EU.

Is he right?

Well, the recent defectors from the main parties clearly believed he was – Chuka Umunna, Anna Soubry et al abandoned their positions to form the CUKs and provide the disenfranchised British masses with the staunch Remainer party they had all been failing to demand for so long.

They came out of the blocks fast, called in favours with journalists to get favourable press coverage, and burst upon the political consciousness of Great Britain like a glitter-filled Zeppelin of cross-party europhilia.

And then … oh the humanity.

Whereas Brexit geezer Nigel Farage sauntered out of the blocks under withering crossfire from the establishment and its pet churnalists, and immediately went hypersonic – from 0% to 20% before the establishment pollsters could unlimber their clipboards and stutter their leading questions.

Up and down the country, the British voter was encouraged to overlook the Brexit Party by an establishment still traumatised by the referendum, with pollsters snidely relegating the party to the column entitled “Other” during their obfuscatory enquiries.

And the British voter seized them by the lapels and yanked them into a ferocious Brexit headbutt.

The desperate EU stooges in the Tory party, realising their puppet Treason May was fatally wounded, threw her under the bus and began their Stop Boris campaign, but all the manufactured scandalettes failed to prevent the Johnson Juggernaut from roiling over them and into Downing Street.

For now, the Brexit Party have stalled on 20% – they hold their position now like a lioness crouched in the long grass, waiting for Boris Johnson to reveal the slightest Remainer tendencies. And if he does, the catastrophic injuries he and his party will suffer will make Theresa May’s mauling look like the amuse bouche at the Marquis de Sade’s final soundproofed basement party.

August 1, 2019

“Since I recently called [Johnson] ‘a bag of living offal,’ my view is unlikely to be positive”

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Sean Gabb provides a brief evaluation of new British PM Boris Johnson:

Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs at an informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council on 15 February 2018.
Photo by Velislav Nikolov via Wikimedia Commons.

I have been asked to comment on Boris Johnson’s appointment as Leader of the Conservative Party and therefore as Prime Minister. Since I recently called him “a bag of living offal,” my view is unlikely to be positive. However, I will try to be fair. More to the point, I will try to relate this latest turn of events to my general analysis of British politics.

Last month, I wrote that membership of the European Union was a peripheral issue for our ruling class. The main agenda for this class is to carry through a neo-Puritan remodelling of our institutions, and indeed our minds. The details of a customs and regulatory union are less important than control of education, the media and the criminal law. This being said, membership is useful so far as it blurs the lines of accountability. It is also an article of belief among some elements of the Ruling Class. For this reason, the verdict of the 2016 Referendum was unwelcome. It meant a diversion of effort from the main purpose. It upset various important people. The obvious solution was to give us a minimal departure that would satisfy us, but would keep in place those elements of the European Project that really are important to the Ruling Class.

Here, I come to a digression on the nature of how we are governed. There is no cabal of evil persons directing all events and appointments from behind the scenes. This is generally not how ruling classes operate. A more realistic model can be taken from Ian Kershaw’s analysis of the National Socialist revolution in Germany. This proceeded with limited central direction. Before 1939, the leaders were concerned mostly with foreign policy, after that with fighting a big war. Instead, the revolution was decentralised. Reliable men were put in key positions and told to “work towards the Fuhrer” – that is, to act in any situation as they might imagine Hitler himself would act. The result was often administrative chaos. The benefit was that the leadership could concentrate on what it saw as the essentials, and more local knowledge could be used in the overall revolution than would otherwise have been possible.

This is largely how things work in England. Our own transformation is not driven by detailed orders from the Shadowy-Ones-on-High, but by creating a bias within every useful institution to those who are broadly in favour of the transformation. The benefit is a constrained diversity of approaches that can be presented as a genuine diversity of opinion. The disadvantage is that executive power lies in this country where it has since 1701 – that is, in the hands of the Ministers of the Crown, who are accountable to the House of Commons. If the Prime Minister turns out to be a fool, and the other ministers are too cowardly to stab him in the back, there is no easy way to remove him.

On balance, Theresa May was more stupid than malevolent. Her job was to produce the minimal departure I have mentioned. The question of who wrote her Withdrawal Agreement is less important than the fact that few who mattered wanted or dared to accept it. She should never have thought it would be accepted. Having discovered it was unacceptable, she should have tried something else. Instead, she tried four times to ram it through the House of Commons. She also reached out to a Labour leader who is feared or just hated by important strands within the Ruling Class. At first, the damage was confined to the possibility of a Labour Government. It then widened, with the emergence of the Brexit Party, to the threat of a general delegitimisation of the system as it has emerged since 1997, or perhaps 1979.

July 9, 2019

The main economic damage of Brexit is the extended period of uncertainty

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall interprets a recent Bank of England recommendation to really mean “do Brexit” and “get it over with”:

To pull that out of the jargon, when every bugger’s running around screaming because they don’t know what’s going to happen then things are dark for the long term future of the economy. Just because the screaming and the running around means no bugger is doing anything else.

And here’s the thing – that lookin’ dark bit gets worse the longer the uncertainty lasts. To the point that the effect just of the not knowing becomes greater than the possible effect of any particular event in that universe of possibilities. It really is true that continuing to delay Brexit will, at some point, become worse than any particular Brexit outcome.

Thus get on with it, get it done. And given that we’ll get something of a bloody revolution if the Remainers win – we Brits being really quite keen on this democracy idea, we get to choose not they – then the getting on with it will have to be to leave. Yesterday would have been good, tomorrow if that’s not possible.

July 1, 2019

Theodore Dalrymple on “the ancient rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi“

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the New English Review a recent Theodore Dalrymple post on “inventing European identity”:

I doubt whether there is anyone who has never resorted to the ancient rhetorical tricks of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi. Some do it knowingly, others unknowingly. The omission of relevant facts and the insinuation of falsehoods are dual and often inseparable techniques that are the stock-in-trade of most practising politicians. Arguments have often to be schematic and if in theory it is possible to tell no falsehoods, it is virtually impossible not to suppress, or at least omit, some truths if a discussion of complex matters is not to be interminable.

Nevertheless, universal resort to error, whether honest or not, is no defence for those who utilise it. This is particularly so of intellectuals, whose metier above all is, or ought to be, honest argumentation. I was therefore intrigued to read an open letter published in the Guardian newspaper by what were described as “30 top intellectuals.”

The letter began with a ringing suggestio falsi: “The idea of Europe is in peril.” What the authors meant was that the idea of the European Union is in danger. They implied, in effect, that Europe and the European Union were synonyms, which is clearly false. If a country ceases to be a member of the European Union, or has never been a part of it, it does not cease to be European, neither geographically nor culturally.

The opening salvo sets the tone for the rest. Any opposition to the ever-closer union that is the aim of the European Union is characterized as purely irrational, nostalgic and even fascistic. It cannot by definition be founded on any rational considerations whatever. It success would be, as the authors put it, the triumph of “a politics of disdain for intelligence and culture” — which is in effect to say that anybody who opposes the proposed ever-closer union is either a demagogue or uncouth and stupid. Thus the top intellectuals, including five winners of the Nobel Prize and many world-famous writers, appear to have learned nothing from the single most disastrous phrase used in any recent election, Mrs. Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables.” Who is more stupid than whom?

The top intellectuals say of opponents of the drive towards a large federal state something like, “Let’s reconnect with our ‘national soul!’ Let’s rediscover out ‘lost identity’!” They go on to say, “Never mind that abstractions such as ‘soul’ and ‘identity’ often exist only in the imagination of demagogues.”

I overlook the fact that any British politician, however fervent a supporter of Brexit would never use a term such as “the British soul” for justified fear of being laughed out of court, but notice only that a few lines further on the top intellectuals say “We count ourselves among the European patriots.”

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