Category Archives: Politics & Governance

This is the blog I never intended to write, but which the growing democratic deficit of the UK, the inequity between its four nations and the existentially self-destructive farce that is Brexit have made inevitable. So this is my Canuteish attempt to reverse the tide of corruption, incompetence, disinformation and xenophobia that has swept the UK into a small and stagnant rock pool on the margins of the global ocean.

Politics & Governance

Democratic Clarity

2 Comments

For nearly three years now, I’ve been trying to engage some of my fellow Britons in meaningful debate, initially about why they’d plan to vote to leave the EU and then about why they voted to leave.

It’s been very depressing – all I’ve found is delusion, denial and the repetition of Daily Mail level mantras such as, “Were taking back control” (they tend not to do apostrophes) or, “We need to get out from under the unelected EU superstate/dictatorship“. Which is a bit rich coming from citizens of a country that, for nearly half a century, has been one of the key players in formulating the structures, processes and decisions of the EEC, the EC and now the EU. Continue reading Democratic Clarity →

Politics & Governance

Brexit naked…

Leave a comment

Last night’s vote pretty much removed the middle ground from Brexit. The May ‘agreement’ was constrained by the predictable, consistent and appropriate requirement by the EU for its four fundamental freedoms to be respected in any future relationship. So there’s a very limited range of Brexit options that can be built around that and which maintain any integration whatsoever with the rest of Europe. Which means that anything within shouting distance of the middle ground will look very little different to the motion that was vaporised in the Commons yesterday and would stand about as much chance in any future remix, however and whoever was proposing it.

Continue reading Brexit naked… →

Politics & Governance

Order! Order! Holding power to account

Leave a comment

Lots of people seem to be getting their fundaments in a knot over Speaker John Bercow’s decision to allow an amendment to the otherwise procedural vote on the Brexit debate, or rather on the UK’s government’s desperation to avoid a meaningful debate. So? The bottom line here is that The Speaker is the representative and protector of the interests of The Commons to the government (and monarchy, at times when that mattered). 

Continue reading Order! Order! Holding power to account →

Highland Life, Politics & Governance

Brexit Local

Leave a comment

Health of Government Warning: this is an intensely political post. But it is not a party political post. And, yes, it’s about Brexit, two years after the referendum. Mostly though, it’s about the integrity and principles of politicians, and of our local MP in particular.

Still here? I commend you…

Continue reading Brexit Local →

Politics & Governance

Brexit and other Fantastical Beasts

Leave a comment

In two days, we elect a government. In the recent history of things, we’d normally be following our historical party affiliations, where a small number of marginal seats tip the balance between parties who pivot around a vaguely centrist axis where, whatever the outcome, most of us can live with it for another five years, the while employing the traditional British relief valves of dark muttering, sarcasm and cynicism. And so the world turns.

But not this time. This time, the stakes are far greater than a short-term opportunity for an elected government to tinker with the parameters of policy, income, debt and stimulus. This time, the stakes are no less than the future of both the UK’s place in the world and, as a consequence, the future of the UK itself. This is an election whose ramifications will play out, not over a five-year term, but over generations.

Continue reading Brexit and other Fantastical Beasts →

Politics & Governance

Dumbocracy Rising

Leave a comment

So, it appears that the UK now has a ‘parliament’ where most members don’t actually understand their job description or the nature of representative democracy itself.

At its most basic, their duty is to represent their local electorate, not blindly, but through the filter of their judgement and experience,  to balance and reconcile what is actually in the best interests of the constituency and of the country as a whole. There, there is a system, evolved over a millennium or so, that has  put them where they are, to be the buffer between the baying of the wilfully uninformed, the ill-intentioned and the fear-driven, and the common good. That system now seems to have been abandoned, in the name of bigotry, personal agendas and party dogma. Continue reading Dumbocracy Rising →

Politics & Governance

Democratic Bereavement

Leave a comment

Thoughts for our US friends, from the “sneering liberal elite” (as apparently we now are) of the UK. We’re a few months ahead of you in trying to work out why our country has taken the ‘Samson’ route of pulling down the temple whilst standing inside it (there will be more on that), and we’re starting to see how the stages of bereavement from principle and reason play out. This isn’t entirely serious – it’s a play on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s long-discredited model for the stages of grief,  nor is the language safe for those of a nervous disposition but, for all that, it’s been well received…

Continue reading Democratic Bereavement →

Politics & Governance

Apocalypse Now vs Yes, Minister

Leave a comment

Yes, we’re screwed. And we’ve done it to ourselves. But it isn’t over yet, not by a long chalk, baguette or würst. And there are so many factors and factions in play that attempting any firm predictions would be an act of senseless and misdirected hubris. Rather like the referendum itself. But there are a couple of semi-logically consistent scenarios that could play out and a few key decisions and tipping points that would make one or the other more likely. So, without further ado… Continue reading Apocalypse Now vs Yes, Minister →

Politics & Governance

Illusions of Independence

Leave a comment

For those voting for Brexit on the ‘it can’t get any worse’ principle, don’t you believe it. It can, it will and it already is: the uncertainty around the outcome is already impacting the pound, the markets and investment in the UK.  An actual Brexit vote would accelerate that immeasurably. You’d like a little certainty about your future in an increasingly uncertain world. I get that. But the contradiction here is that voting us out of the institution that does most to facilitate trade and protect workers’ rights would only achieve greater uncertainty. This world is not that of your grandparents but an ever-developing tapestry of trade between nations and blocs, the dynamic of which is part of the warp and weft of society and the generation of the wealth that keeps us going. If you try to unpick the part of that fabric labelled ‘Britain‘, the whole thing starts to unravel and everyone suffers, not just the UK. There is not (and never was) a mythical Little England to retreat to and, if you try to make it so, you will discover this, in the hardest possible way. A Brexit would emphatically not be a ‘Victory for the common man’, it would be playing directly into the hands of those self-serving demagogues whose only interest is to profit from disunity, from corruption and from the demonising of the innocent.

Politics & Governance

Deflecting Blame: Britain, Bureaucracy & the EU

Leave a comment

So much of the agitation for a Leave vote in June seems to be in the fond (as in, “absurd, foolish“) belief by some that a Brexit would return us to a mythic age of independence and freedom from bureaucracy. Well, here’s some news for them: they simply don’t understand either the modern world or the very British ability to bureaucratise a good idea into something completely untenable and then blame it on someone else. Here, the EU is an appartchik’s godsend: the ability to create pointless process that does nothing but perpetuate the salaries of those involved and then be able to duck responsibility by saying, “It’s the EU’s fault“. No, in this case it isn’t and we really need to remind ourselves that there’s a tolerable correlation between those parts of the world known for overweening bureaucracy and those bits of it that used to be coloured pink. Continue reading Deflecting Blame: Britain, Bureaucracy & the EU →