Brexit in a Nutcase: the story so far.

Let's just get this right - and do correct me if I'm missing something, particularly you Quitters out there.

So Britain spends over half a decade suffering from reduced public services, stripped-down local government, a crisis-ridden NHS, an education system that treads water, a shortage of housing to buy and to rent, and a reduction in income and living standards for all but the already-wealthy. (They continue to do nicely.) In many areas of the UK the European Union has had to step in with funding to fill the gaps and prop them up. The worst hit are the people who are already the poorest and most insecure. Understandably they are upset about it. They feel neglected by their government, which they think never listens to them and doesn't care. They are right.

Then, so that he and his party can win an election, the Prime Minister who has overseen the rise of all this anger promises to hold a referendum about whether or not the UK remains in the European Union. In a dishonest campaign targeting fear, insecurity and xenophobia, and with no idea how to deliver "Brexit" if they win, a group of mostly unscrupulous populist politicians encourage and exploit the ignorance of those angry people. They encourage them to target foreigners in general and the EU in particular. As a heartfelt but incoherent protest against the system, huge numbers of them vote to leave the EU. Many of them don't usually bother to vote but, because they're so angry and have been egged on by people who claim to be like them but aren't, even a little bit, for once they do. Even though they lose all the rational arguments, the Leave campaign surprises no one more than itself by winning the referendum.

A new, unelected Government replaces that of the old Prime Minister, who retires to the Cotswolds and years of comfortable obloquy. It is led by Remainers. Like the Leavers, the Remainers haven't a clue about how to deal with the uncertainties, complexities and dangers ahead. But even so, the Government commits to the biggest peacetime change in this country for generations if not centuries. It tries to do it without consulting Parliament, which is the UK's sovereign body. Leavers support this although they explicitly fought to leave the EU to strengthen Parliamentary power. The Government tries to justify itself by claiming to be fulfilling "the will of the British People" although just 37% of eligible adults voted to leave and the referendum's outcome is advisory not mandatory. They are stopped by the High Court. It rules that Parliament is sovereign so the Government must consult it. After standing by while the judiciary's independence is traduced and even threatened, it appeals to the Supreme Court, where an outcome is expected in January 2017. In the meantime, Leavers plan to besiege the Court with 100,000 marchers to force it to deny the very Parliamentary rights they fought a referendum to restore.

Meanwhile, Leave voters are getting even angrier. Having been told that everything will be simple and all their problems soon over, they can't understand why the Government doesn't just leave the EU and done with it. They weren't told (actually, they were, but they didn't listen) and certainly didn't imagine just how long, hard, unpredictable and painful the process will be. Also, they'll now look stupid if they admit to being fooled by a bunch of people who won their vote but then ran away or got nice positions either in the very Government that's now "delaying" Brexit or up the back passage of the President-Elect of the USA. So they don't admit it. They can't.

Of course, even though it doesn't know what to do next, the Government is still responsible for the nation's finances: it has to make big decisions right now based on what little of the future it can predict. These decisions, once made and triggered, can't just be stopped.

Yesterday it published its financial plans and guess what? All the years of "austerity" that made all those people angry enough that they were tricked into voting to quit the EU are going be nothing compared to what will hit them over the next few years! Against all the Government has ever said, after all the pain of the better part of a decade, incomes and living standards will fall, inflation will rise and the National Debt will soar to the highest level since the end of The Hundred Years' War (allowing for inflation). And there will be no EU structural and other funds to help out any more. Above all, the angry people who voted to leave the EU will be even poorer - and even angrier.

Now had there been no EU referendum - or had all those angry people stopped to wonder whether they were being fooled - any government announcing such plans after having put the nation through the mangle for so long would be running for the hills pursued by ... the very same angry people who voted Leave!

But no: the Government will press on because it lacks the imagination and guts to do what's right for the country; and the Quitters will get ever angrier, but instead of asking why they voted to shaft themselves - and the rest of us, and the nation they hold so dear, and the Union whose tattered banner they weepingly fly at every mawkish opportunity - they will blame the people they've saddled with the consequences of their actions.

Cheer up!

Are there any reasons to hope on this dreadful day for the world?
Perhaps Trump, his cronies and his constituency - the worst and most irrefutable example of ascendant moral scum since the days of Stalin and Hitler - will turn in on themselves; but at what cost and demanding what efforts from those ready to stand up for decency and ride others' blind anger to oppose them?
Perhaps the sheer nastiness and nihilistic, ignorant, culture-free cretinism of Trump and his people will energise Europe - even those who have up to now looked to the Brexit lobby and hateful xenophobic nationalism with admiration not revulsion. Perhaps the threat Trump poses to the world will force us Europeans to come together and fill the dangerous vacuum that we may otherwise become. Trump has said that we shouldn't shelter under the USA's umbrella - so let's not.
Perhaps, from a British perspective, it will become clearer than it would under a Clinton presidency that both Trump and the Quitter lobby suckle from the same toxic tit; that to wallow - as Farage has and will - in Trump's filth will slowly turn both our Government and decent Brexiteers back from the disaster unfolding on this side of the Atlantic. So let's stand back and watch Farage summon a hundred thousand people to "bow the judiciary to the will of the British people" on 5th December, and then let people draw their conclusions!
Perhaps both the Americans and we will finally ask what the hell has happened to our "Anglo-Saxon" societies, to our families, our kids and our educational systems that turns out people who let such a vile bastard trump thought and decency with little more than a snap of his fingers.
Above all, Trump's victory must energise all of us, whatever our politics. Join lobbies, write letters, pledge money, challenge bigotry, make opposition a public act; support morally and practically those in all four UK nations - and in the US, and on the continent - who take a stand: over here the Gina Millers, the Will Huttons, the Ken Clarkes - and MPs of any party brave and true enough to our constitution to say "enough".

A Bridge Too Far

Pardon the title, but these days I feel undraped without a war metaphor to accentuate my shame.
On Radio 4's 'Today' programme I just listened to a borderline-murderous "discussion" between two senior and regular political commentators, Michael White (a Remainer) and Julia Hartley-Brewer (a Leaver).
This was on a day when a Conservative MP resigned, accusing Theresa May of "tyranny" (like "treachery", it's a big word, that).
Today's newspaper headlines suppurate and ooze with accusations of ... ah, treachery ... on account of the High Court's unremarkable ruling that the Government should consult Parliament - which is, after all, the seat of the nation's sovereignty and was until recently lauded as such by the Leave campaign - rather than invoke a pre-democratic Crown prerogative before triggering Article 50.
Meanwhile, a Quitter councillor - who I believe will have more supporters out there than we imagine - has proposed to make it "treason" to call for the UK to rejoin the EU after Brexit.
I've made many failed attempts to have - or even start - constructive debates with Brexit supporters. It's been a depressing experience for many reasons. I've found all but one of them incapable of explaining their views let alone justifying them - or even spelling them in their native language for that matter (with the notable exception of regular obscenities). Which is kind of worrying.
I admit that I'm prone to a bit of overstatement myself from time to time and that I sometimes try to be too smart-arsed for my own good. But I do at least try to have that debate. The question now is: is it worth it?
I know that until someone comes up with a good argument against what I think, I'm not going to change my views. (That's not, as some Quitters have said, arrogance: in fact I'm so desperate to be right that I'll be delighted to be proved wrong. They don't quite get that, you see.) And I'm equally sure by now that the "little people" (and my goodness, I never realised until recently just how little they really are - SEE, THERE I GO AGAIN) aren't going to change their views, regardless of whether or not I or anyone else comes up with a good argument against them. That, I flatter myself, is the distinction between the good and the bad - and why I'm happy being on the side of the angels.
There are now in this country two sets of people who can no longer debate in a spirit of mutual respect or even share a rough idea of what this country is or should be. Forget for a moment who's right or wrong. This is uncharted territory, a chasm which the two sides will soon lack not just the will but the ability to bridge. Our long-disunited kingdom has at last been burst open - and along more than one seam. What now?
Scary times - and they won't go away soon.The same is happening in the USA and may yet destabilise the European continent before we "Anglo-Saxon nations" have finished having our fun.
God help us: the slowboat-turning wheels of the world may be coming round again after all ...

Reasons why I think Donald Trump will be President of the USA

What do you think?

After all these months, despite all his bombast, lies, insults, vain boasts, evasions and general loathsomeness, he’s within touching distance of Clinton. Over that time, Clinton’s lead has narrowed.

There’s a mood among enough electors – as in the UK – not only to tolerate but welcome anyone who will stick two fingers up at the system. Yes, Trump lies and veritably pumps bullshit, but we know when he does it because we see him doing it. With ‘them’ we never know one way or the other. Clinton is stuck with being one of ‘them’.

So it doesn’t really matter if she thrashes Trump – which she did – in presidential debates. To humiliate him (and the first debate was – or should have been – a humiliation) just makes him more like one of us. His incoherence of thought and rage are ours too. The first debate seems to have had no benefit for Clinton. Amazing – but true.

OK, Trump isn’t really one of us, but that doesn’t matter. He speaks for us, that’s all – but that’s enough. When was a president ever one of us? Might he be our mouthpiece as much as we are his voting fodder?

The demagogues of the first half of the 20^th century are distant and possibly unknown to many. Examples from history don’t wash. We might as well fear the Spanish Inquisition.

Trump will tread on the fingers of anyone lower on the ladder than us to make sure they can’t overtake us. We don't think that's one of his lies because we know he craves to do it.

We are modern consumers, not just in the marketplace but in politics and in our relations with the state, right down to tax and welfare. We've become spoilt for choice. Even brand loyalty is now dead: like Trump, in our lives we move from deal to deal and have to squeeze juice from the driest of apples. When Trump boasts that he's “smart” to pay as little tax as possible, that doesn’t repel us. And it’s irrelevant that Obama, a visibly fine and decent man, won two terms as president.

We are isolated from one another in everything but our fear – in that, we are a rock.

As did the Leave campaign in the UK’s referendum in June, Trump will get the non-voters, the angry and the gullible out on the day, and with the trenches apparently dug with a 2- to 4-point margin in Clinton’s favour, that can swing it the other way.

Let’s stop hoping that the old rules apply. They don’t.

Some meritocracy! Some "opportunity for all"!

As the Chief Inspector of Schools has rightly said, the Government's plans to extend grammar schools with a passing nod to increasing access for a few bright but poor pupils is simply likely to make those schools who lose them worse: social mobility for a few bought at the cost of even greater immobility for the many. It will increase not reduce the divisions which are holding this country back and which were so clearly shown on 23rd June.

Two points I'd like to make:

1. I don't have a problem with a school system that separates those better suited to stretching academic work and those with better practical skills, so long as the value of each is appreciated and the type of education each offers is good. Both should be excellent in their own way (not one being a shadow of the other in a demoralising, pigeon-holed hierarchy). They have something rather like this in The Netherlands and Germany which doesn't seem to require those taking the more practical route to be seen as less worthy. Although those countries still make things, of course ...

2) The Government's plans are a perfect example of one reason I believe we should stay in the EU (and why I said so well before the referendum): many of Britain's deepest problems, not least the educational, social and cultural gulf between those who did well and badly out of their education, are of our own making and result from our own bad governance. They were done on our watch, not the EU's. Nigel Lawson's recent plea to complete the unfinished Thatcher revolution tells me that the people who brought us to this are of late full of a passionate intensity. The last thing we need is to let these people out again at a time when we are once again looking inward. They have pissed in our pool for long enough.

If only as an example, we need Europe more than ever.

Parliamentarians: vote down Brexit!

We must call on our MPs to vote Brexit down. Among many other reasons (I have more: please do ask):

Cameron shamefully called the EU Referendum for the short-term benefit of the Conservative Party not the long-term benefit of the nation, including the integrity of the United Kingdom itself.

No respectable organisation - not even a ballroom dancing club let alone a major nation of 60 million people - would let a constitutional change of this size and future impact be decided by a simple majority of those who turned out to vote.

Enormous lies and deceptions were perpetrated and admitted by both sides: the campaign wasn't a sign of democracy but a dispiriting insult to it.

Lies told by the demagogues of the winning side became clear within hours of the result, as did their desire to quit the field once they'd surprised themselves by winning and now feared having to see it through.

Many Leave voters did so out of ignorance, anger, fear, and a desire to hit back at political and economic classes by whom they felt betrayed. Their scapegoat was - as so often in history - foreigners. A referendum of this kind and about this specific question is no place for such a protest vote, however justified their anger might be.

3 million people who'd never bothered to vote before did so on 23rd June and nearly all voted Leave. This swung it. Leavers have no right to lecture the rest of us about democracy if so many couldn't even be bothered until now to cast a vote for which others fought and died.

Unlike Hitler's Germany, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Saddam Hussein's Iraq and many other corrupt and brutal countries down the years, Britain isn't a plebiscitary democracy. That is one of the things of which we should be most proud and should defend rather than undermine: we elect MPs as representatives not delegates. The referendum result is not binding and there is nothing unconstitutional in throwing it out.

MPs should now stand up and terminate this mean farce. They should forget both their personal careers and their party's fortunes. They need to do it for the nation and to explain carefully and fully why.

I'm supporting, joining and getting directly and practically involved with people who think the same way. We all know that the Brexit campaign lost the argument even if it (only just) called out the vote; we must now defend, restate, redouble and massively extend the narrowly economic argument for remaining which so badly neglected the real cultural issues at stake.

The biggest - and I think decisive - challenge will be to make clear that most of the things which caused the anger behind June 23rd's protest vote were not due to the European Union. Rather, they happened on the watch of the very class of politicians who now stand to benefit from it, and against whom that anger should now be constructively directed.

As a song goes, if you tolerate this, then your children will be next.

Or, simpler, the decent internationalist message of 1936: ¡No pasaran!

The Examined Life, 7

Me: "Bonjour, mes petits champignons!"
Them: "Uh? 'E's tawkin' dat langwidge again innit." 
Me: Good morning all, and welcome to our penultimate class!"
Them: "'E's doin' it again ... woss pen ... pen ... penmultiplate ... pen ...?
Me: "Penultimate, Gorgon! And I was hoping YOU might tell ME!"
Gorgon looks at me as though I had asked him to disembowel himself in front of a whole-school assembly wearing nothing but a pair of ballet shoes while singing the Eton Boating Song.
Me: "Cabbidge?"
Cabbidge: "It's a ... it's a ... it's a ting, innit."
Me: "Penultimate, Cabbidge: 'the one before last'! After today there is just one lesson to go before I say farewell to you all."
After a couple of minutes the silence is broken by one or two inadequately stifled cheers.
Me: "I am sure that many of you will be delighted to see the back of me, and may I fraternally assure you that such sentiments are most warmly and fervently reciprocated."
Chlamydia: "Oh Sir, dassa first nice ting wot you've said to us all year. Why couldn't you of been so nice earlier like?"
LaShagga: "Sir, are you bipolar?"
Me: "Yes, LaShagga. Half the time I'm angry and the rest of the time I'm a bastard. But enough banter: today's end-of-year task is very simple. I would like you all to take a sheet of A3 paper and a selection of pens from the front of the class. Then, with due reference to the no-doubt copious notes in your exercise books, I require you to prepare a short visual presentation about one topic you have learnt about this year and that has stayed with you. As you will probably have forgotten, we have looked at Britain's Celtic origins, Saxon England, the Norman Conquest, William's consolidation of power, the feudal system, life on the land and in medieval towns, the Crusades, King John, Magna Carta and the origins of Parliament, food and hygiene, and the impact of the Black Death on the population and economy of Britain. To confirm: an A3 sheet presenting one thing that you have learnt this year and that you'll never forget. You have thirty minutes. Get on with it and if I hear as much as a sound then by Christ I shall Behaviour-Point the miscreant out of existence."