Brexit

Two Month Report Card – First Thoughts On Theresa May’s Premiership

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

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After an assured and confident start, Theresa May’s government shows welcome signs of moving boldly, if not always in the right direction

To date, this blog has not wasted undue time speculating about Theresa May’s premiership and assessing her early performance – not least because we are only just starting to emerge from summer silly season, and there has not been much yet to judge.

But as somebody who would never have wanted a flinty-eyed authoritarian like Theresa May to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the UK, I must admit that so far I am cautiously impressed.

The relative silence from Number 10 Downing Street over the summer break was refreshing, and the fact that we were not bombarded with press releases, superficial policy announcements and a load of government spin showed the best side of Theresa May – the no nonsense, hardworking operator.

Such rows and dramas as did break out – like the childish playground spat between Liam Fox and Boris Johnson over responsibility for promoting Britain’s commercial interests – were slapped down quickly, while similar turf wars and petty rivalries between SpAds were frequently allowed to fester and spiral into damaging newsworthy wars under David Cameron.

Of course, the worst Big Government, security state instincts of Theresa May are never far from the surface, and soon this blog will likely be riding to battle against the government’s Investigatory Powers Act, due to return before Parliament soon.

And on the most important issue of Brexit, there is still no sense that ministers have even truly begun to wrap their heads around the complexity of what is to come, let alone have an appreciation of the key challenges and opportunities. Theresa May has made a rod for her own back by stating her commitment to significant up-front immigration reductions as a key part of the package, which only makes the vital interim EFTA/EEA transitory option (with controls on immigration in the line of the Liechtenstein model) that much harder to achieve.

And yet there is also good news on Brexit, not least the willingness of our allies in Canada, New Zealand and Australia to lend us the services of their skilled trade negotiators as Britain struggles to regain core competencies in areas of national sovereignty which we allowed to wither and atrophy during our EU imprisonment. Also somewhat heartening is the seeming enthusiasm and energy which the government is throwing into pursuing various assorted “trade deals”.

While the devil will be in the scope and the details, this newfound diplomatic vigour is encouraging to witness, and only emphasises why David Cameron and George Osborne had to go after fighting against Brexit and losing the referendum. This is no time for surly, sulking brooders more keen to prove their Brexit doomsday scenarios true than to faithfully serve the nation to be anywhere near the levers of government. Senior civil servants should take note.

The confident appearance at the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, also marked a welcome break from the past. Gordon Brown’s desperate, fawning approval-seeking, so unbecoming to the leader of an indispensable nation, and David Cameron’s oleaginous Davos Man act, the coping mechanism of somebody who never really understood what it is to be a statesman, were both beneath Britain. By contrast, Theresa May looked every bit the equal of Barack Obama at their joint press conference, neither Blairite poodle nor Brownite starry-eyed fan. For a country which has too often punched beneath its weight diplomatically (thanks in no small part to our absorption within the EU) it is encouraging to see that Theresa May seems to be taking her marching orders from the British people seriously.

But these are only first impressions. The complexities of Brexit have yet to bite (those daily articles either celebrating the Brexit success or gleefully validating the apocalypse are mindless puff pieces from a Westminster media class which has no interest in getting enmeshed in the details, or learning from those in the know). The migrant crisis remains unresolved. ISIS and the threat of radical Islamist terror remain pointedly undefeated. Domestic policy needs to be given new direction and urgency – preferably, given the Labour Party’s ongoing implosion, in the opposite direction to the Cameron/Osborne march to the political centre.

Looking ahead, this blog hopes and expects to see Jeremy Hunt let off the leash and given authority to tear some much-deserved chunks out of the arrogant BMA and the junior doctors’ dispute which has been a grubby pay dispute and not a high-minded defence of Our Blessed NHS (genuflect) all along.

Sensible measures on tax reform would be welcome too – though the words “daring” and “bold” hardly come to mind when picturing Philip Hammond, it would be good to see the scope of Theresa May’s ambition extending not just to make Britain’s tax regime attractive to foreign investors, but also to rewarding and encouraging individuals and small businesses. The 45% top rate of tax, a partial remnant of the stench of Gordon Brown’s premiership, must certainly go, but we also hope to see something more ambitious than mere tinkering around the edges of the tax code.

A renewed commitment to national defence and the Armed Forces would also turn the page on David Cameron’s willingness to see the UK lose core capabilities. The NATO target of 2% of GDP to be spent on defence should be treated like a minimum requirement, not an aspiration or a triumph to be crowed about. For a seafaring island nation, the Royal Navy is worryingly undermanned, and may struggle to operate even one of its new aircraft carriers, let alone both. Unlike other European powers, our maritime patrol and coastguard capabilities are virtually nonexistent. These and other issues should be remedied.

One would like to add robust support for freedom of speech and civil liberties to this list, and an end to persecution of people at the hands of the criminal justice system merely for the beliefs they hold or the ideas that they express – but let us not kid ourselves. There is no sign yet that a popular rebellion against the state’s efforts to criminalise thought and speech is anywhere near gaining traction. In fact, even many of those who spend half their time praising free speech (when it suits their own purposes) are happy to turn around, play the wounded victim and demand that others are held to account for expressing speech which they dislike.

A nasty authoritarian streak runs through Britain, and by no means only at the level of the political elite. Go to any pub or hipster coffee shop and you’ll hear people of all backgrounds and demographics expressing outrage at something and suggesting that it should therefore be banned by the government. And while Theresa May’s Conservative government is almost certainly likely to be a disappointment on the issues of free speech and civil liberties, they will be no more of a disappointment than many of the British people themselves.

So here we are, nearly two months into Theresa May’s premiership and there are unexpected causes for optimism and good cheer in a number of areas. There are also, inevitably, areas where May’s instincts and political convictions mean that she must be watched like a hawk and opposed where necessary. But over two months since the historic EU referendum and nearly two months into a most unexpected new premiership, Britain does seem to be walking a little taller and more confidently in the world.

Long may it continue.

 

Theresa May - Philip Hammond - G20 - China

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Top Image: International Business Times

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On Owen Smith

Samuel Hooper10 Comments

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Owen Smith is the worst person in British politics

I have been struggling to put my finger on exactly why it is that I loathe Owen Smith with such a visceral, burning, contemptuous rage. It’s neither healthy nor seemly – to the extent that I have nearly hit “send” on a few truly nasty social media comments which I would never normally make before finally regaining my composure and putting the iPhone safely out of reach.

It’s as though someone carefully and methodically packaged absolutely everything that I hate about modern politics into the greasy, grinning form of one man and paraded him on the television news every day to raise my blood pressure.

There’s the oleaginous, media trained (but not sufficiently that it looks convincingly natural and authentic) television persona.

There’s the craven cowardice of pretending he is every bit as old-school socialist as Jeremy Corbyn in a pitiful attempt to peel off Corbyn’s voters when we all know that he is the Parliamentary Labour Party’s centrist mole.

There’s the sanctimonious waffle about Saving Our Blessed NHS (genuflect) from privatisation, admittedly hardly unique to Owen Smith but particularly eyebrow-raising coming from the mouth of somebody with his past career and political track record.

There’s the deliberately old-school typeface and stylistic theme employed by his campaign (see picture at the end, or his pitiful website), designed to evoke thoughts of 1970s and 1980s Labour when his campaign is the living embodiment of the PLP’s mission to suppress Corbyn’s throwback movement.

And then there’s Brexit. Oh yes, and then there is Owen Smith’s incessant, petulant whining about Britain’s decision to leave the EU, his channelling of the metro-left’s howl of anguish at the thought of being separated from their beloved European Union and his declared intention to nullify the public’s vote using any means at his disposal.

But on this occasion, Dan Hodges actually says it best, excoriating Owen Smith for his lacklustre campaign, broken political radar and sheer amateurish incompetence:

It took precisely 24 hours for Smith’s clean skin to be scarred by the stigmata of Blairism. He had worked as a consultant for ‘Big Pharma’. He had welcomed private sector involvement in the NHS. He had guardedly backed the Iraq War.

His skill as a media performer was demonstrated on Wednesday, when he tried to boast of his pivotal role in the Northern Ireland peace process. When this John Terry-style glory-hunting fell flat, he tried to further embellish his credentials in international conflict resolution by announcing he would happily sit down for talks with Islamic State.

Whereas most Labour politicians content themselves with waving the red flag, Smith opted to wave a black one. An hour later Corbyn’s camp issued a statement distancing themselves from his stance, leaving Smith the only person in British political history to be outflanked by Jeremy Corbyn on the issue of national security.

Questioned about the ongoing bullying and intimidation of Labour members who do not support Corbyn, Smith the dogged street-fighter pleaded: ‘I am not a Blairite, I am a socialist just the same as you. I have never been a Blairite.’

That last exchange perfectly encapsulates Smith’s strategy. His message has essentially been: ‘I am just like Jeremy Corbyn. I believe in the same things as Jeremy Corbyn. Ditch Jeremy Corbyn.’

Amazingly, this ‘Dump Corbyn, Get Corbyn’ line isn’t resonating with the Corbynite true believers. For the simple reason that while many of them are stark-staring mad, they aren’t stupid. This is how Smith thought he could secure the Labour leadership. ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are very Left-wing,’ he told himself, ‘and I need them to vote for me. So I’ll pretend to be very Left-wing too. That’ll fool them. Then I can start dragging Labour back to the centre-ground, which is where it has to be if I’m going to get to be Prime Minister.’

As a master-plan for wooing Corbyn’s supporters into his warm and pragmatic arms, it was utterly brilliant. Except it had one fatal flaw: It was so childishly transparent and craven, every Corbyn supporter in the land knew it was his master-plan.

A weak plan from a weak and utterly forgettable man. In a decade’s time, nobody will remember who Owen Smith is. He will have returned to some anonymous career as a lobbyist or PR man, and will have a footnote in history as somebody who once caused minor irritation to Jeremy Corbyn for a few months.

The Parliamentary Labour Party could of course have put forward someone with more gravitas and prime ministerial potential, but they didn’t. To a man and woman, they prized their own political careers over the opportunity to lead Labour to likely defeat in 2020. In many ways, Owen Smith is the collective cowardice of Labour’s remaining big beasts, given human form and a uniquely irritating grin.

And Hodges is absolutely right – the bait and switch move that Owen Smith is trying to pull would be obvious to a ten-year-old. The 1970s font and protestations that he agrees with Corbyn on policy isn’t fooling anyone. He is treating Labour Party members with open contempt by even asking them to swallow his ruse, and I have no doubt that he will catastrophically underperform even the rock-bottom expectations of the Westminster political class when the results of the Labour leadership contest are announced.

Ultimately, my problem with Owen Smith is this: now that Corbynism has been unleashed within the Labour Party, it can only be comprehensively tackled and beaten back through defeat at the ballot box in a general election. Anything else – whether it is forcing Corbyn to resign, shenanigans to set up a shadow “party within a party”, disenfranchising his supporters within the party or changing the rules to thwart him – will be insufficient. It may succeed in removing Corbyn, but Corbynism will live – his supporters will be enraged and his successor will have almost zero scope to change direction without seeing the bottom fall out of the Labour Party at the grassroots level, effectively destroying the party.

By contrast, if Jeremy Corbyn is permitted to unapologetically lead Labour to a landslide defeat in 2020, then the centrists have a much fairer shot at regaining control of the party. Corbynism will be discredited and rejected by the British people, and the opening for an alternative will again exist.

Owen Smith represents the Parliamentary Labour Party’s craven, ill-considered plan to try to circumvent that process. For reasons that this blog has previously explained – primarily impatience to return to power for the sake of their own political careers – a 2020 defeat and potential 2025 victory is simply too long to wait for a bunch of oily careerists who didn’t lead blandly forgettable lives and forego careers in the banking sector only to rot away, as they see it, on the backbenches. And so unwilling to even give Corbynism a chance to fail on its own, the restive PLP has decided to try to reassert their control now.

But it won’t work. No political party can long endure when its elected representatives are so markedly at odds with the grassroots membership, the ordinary people who knock on doors and hand out leaflets to get their MPs elected in the first place. And Owen Smith’s candidacy represents a giant two-finger salute, fifty feet high and covered in glitter, directed at Labour Party members who strongly support Jeremy Corbyn.

There’s a great episode of The West Wing where two of President Bartlet’s aides, Communications Director Toby Ziegler and Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, are left behind by the presidential motorcade during an election campaign stop and have to hitchhike their way back to Washington D.C. The two men begin to get on one another’s nerves as the ideological Toby Ziegler demands to know why the politically calculating Josh Lyman isn’t more enthusiastic about the president’s barnstorming stump speech, in which Bartlet aggressively criticises his Republican opponent.

After Toby’s rant,  Josh finally snaps and tells Toby:

“Which is one of the reasons that I work full-time for his opponent. I don’t know what gave you the impression that I had to be convinced, but I want to win. You want to beat him, and that’s a problem for me, because I want to win.”

I’ve always thought that this is an important distinction, one which I try to apply in my own political thinking. Far nobler it is to want to win, to convince others of the rightness of one’s cause, than to want to beat the other side and take enjoyment as they suffer the bitter pangs of defeat.

During the EU referendum, I genuinely wanted the Leave campaign to win more than I wanted to defeat the Remain campaign. Despite immense provocation from the political establishment and many on the Remain side, I was generally motivated more by a desire to secure a better and more democratic future for my country than to make Remainers sad or to wipe the smug smile off George Osborne’s face (though that has certainly been a wonderful bonus).

Not so with this Labour leadership election though. I want Owen Smith to lose. I want him to lose big, and lose hard. I want him to suffer such a humiliating, lopsided, landslide defeat that he bursts into tears on live television and has to run from the conference hall in shame and ignominy. And I want the Parliamentary Labour Party, who cynically used the shocked aftermath of the EU referendum as a pretext to launch an antidemocratic coup against their elected leader and their own members, to behold this gruesome scene and take their lesson from it.

I’m not proud of it, but that’s what this despicable, oleaginous, ideologically rootless C-list politician does to me. The sooner British political life is rid of him, the better.

 

Owen Smith - Labour Party Leadership Coup

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Owen Smith Yearns To Defy The British People And Thwart Brexit. Let Him Try.

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

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Owen Smith’s desperate, EU-loving Labour leadership candidacy is a giant F-U to the very people the Labour Party needs to be courting if it ever wants to regain power

Fresh from announcing his plans to host a jolly afternoon tea party for Islamic State in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, contemptible Labour Party nobody Owen Smith has continued to set about alienating Labour’s already furious working class base by pitching himself as a champion of the metro-left’s childish demand that democracy be overturned and the EU referendum result disregarded.

From the Guardian:

Owen Smith has accused Jeremy Corbyn of having never believed in the European project and is seeking to turn the issue of the EU referendum into the key dividing line in the battle for the Labour leadership.

The Labour leader hit back by telling his challenger that he had to respect the result of June’s referendum and accept that Brexit was on the table.

In his strongest attack yet, Smith – whose team are planning to place debate over the EU at the heart of their campaign – said:

“I think Jeremy can’t bring himself to say he would argue for a second referendum or put into a Labour manifesto that we would stay within the European Union because he fundamentally never believed in the European union.

“That is why he steadfastly refuses [to promise a second referendum], even though he acknowledges a likely Tory Brexit will diminish workers’ rights; damage social protections; damage our ability to deal with tax avoidance. Even though he thinks that is likely to happen, he thinks it more important that we stay outside the EU – I think that is a deep deep mistake.”

Smith, who is trailing well behind in the polls, hopes that a pledge for Labour to take Britain back into the EU will appeal to pro-European Labour members and boost his chances.

“We should be fighting harder, why can’t you say you would fight to stay in?” he shouted.

Why won’t he FIGHT, mummy? Why won’t the Bad Man fight for us to stay in our pwecious European Union? Why won’t he stand up to the Evil Tor-eees and make the wefewendum wesult go away? It’s not fair mummy, it’s not fair!

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic. If by some complete miracle (probably involving the abduction of Jeremy Corbyn by aliens) Owen Smith does become leader of the Labour Party, what little is left of Labour’s depleted working class base will march off into the sunset forever. Labour will be able to add northern England to Scotland on the growing list of UK regions where anyone wearing a red campaign rosette is no longer welcome.

You know what? Good luck to him. I hope Owen Smith actually wins the Labour leadership contest and joins up with other antidemocratic snakes like Hampstead & Kilburn’s Tulip Siddiq in trying to derail Brexit in Parliament. If Smith thinks that things are bad now, I look forward to observing the expression on his face when the entire fabric of the Labour Party comes apart in his well-manicured, pampered, ex-lobbyist’s hands as he loses his faltering grip on constituency after Brexit-supporting constituency.

I look forward to future generations of politics students learning about the daring exploits of Owen Smith, the man who stuck two metropolitan fingers up at Labour’s own working class voter base and led his party to true, permanent electoral Armageddon.

So bring it on, Owen. Hug the European Union even tighter, tell all the Brexit-supporting people whose votes your party needs to go to hell again, and bring. it. on.

 

Owen Smith - Labour Party Leadership Coup

European Union - United Kingdom - Britain - Flags

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Waiting For The Brexit Apocalypse

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Brexit - EU Referendum - European Union - Apocalypse

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I told you so!

This piece by satirical news site NewsThump accurately sums up the attitude of many disappointed pro-EU Remain supporters, consumed with bitterness at their defeat:

A Remain supporter has confirmed that he would feel much happier for Brexit to be a massive failure and proven right than for Britain to become successful in a post-EU world.

“Well, obviously, I’d like to live in a successful country,” said Simon Williams, a Remain supporter who works in ‘media’.

“But not at the expense of me being proved wrong. That’s unthinkable.

“These are clearly very uncertain times,” he continued while sipping a frappe-mocha-latte-coo-coo-ca-chino.

“So I think it’s important that I, along with all remain supporters, maintain a constant state of gloom and pessimism, and meet any signs of optimism by saying something like ‘well, it’s early days, you wait until the country just falls into a big hole in the ground and everyone dies screaming, then you’ll be sorry’.

“Because otherwise it might mean that Brexit won’t be a disaster, and who wants to live in a world where people like me can possibly be wrong about anything.”

In a sense, it is inevitable that a hard core of bitter Remainers are actively willing political isolation and economic ruin on their own country. When someone’s concept of patriotism and their belief in the capabilities of modern Britain lead them to conclude that sheltering in a failing, anachronistic supranational union is our only shot at maintaining global relevance, it is somehow unsurprising to catch them in the act of rooting for our national failure.

Unsurprising, but disappointing all the same.

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Top Image: Metro

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Pathologising Donald Trump Supporters Will Not Diminish His Appeal

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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The voices in this New York Times video of Donald Trump supporters may be “unfiltered”, but they were chosen very carefully indeed to reinforce every negative liberal stereotype about people who have the temerity to support Donald Trump

It is hard to understand exactly the New York Times thinks it is trying to accomplish with videos like this one, published today, scornfully “studying” Donald Trump supporters with a keen anthropologist’s eye, while tarring his many moderate supporters by associating them all with the most intemperate, rude and racist characters that their camera can find.

The Times helpfully explains to its readers that “at Donald Trump’s rallies, some supporters express themselves with slurs and violent language”, before linking them to a video in which the absolute worst dregs of the Trump campaign are paraded before the Times’ liberal audience like it were some kind of Victorian circus freak show.

And sure enough, after the obligatory trigger warning from the Times, the video’s subjects make themselves look extremely stupid, as well as racist and misogynistic in places. But this in itself is hardly surprising – it is obvious that racists and other undesirables will be disproportionately (though not exclusively) drawn to a populist politician like Trump, but this does not mean that a majority of Trump supporters share these vile sentiments.

In fact, one wonders why the liberal media which goes to excessive pains to avoid linking all Muslims with the actions of Islamist terrorists, and which frets about broadcasting the names and biographies of mass shooting perpetrators suddenly loses all squeamishness when it comes to linking all Donald Trump supporters with the specimens shown in their video. Why does the Times titillate its readers by showing the worst side of the Donald Trump campaign rather than making a hard-hitting and informative piece  debating the issues with some of the many Trump supporters who turn up to his rallies minus white robes and burning crosses?

If anything, this video reveals the bias of the New York Times, and the desperate liberal (in the American sense of the word) need to paint anything contradictory to their own worldview as being seeded in intolerance, bigotry and hate. This bias is never clearer when the Times’ video attempts to portray Trump supporters as anti-immigration, period. At one point in the video, an editor’s caption reads “vitriolic language is often aimed at immigrants”.

If the filmmakers wanted to produce a respectable, balanced piece rather than juicy footage for their Trump freak show, they might have engaged those supporters in conversation. But had they done so, it would have quickly become apparent that the Trump supporters oppose illegal immigration, not all immigration. These days, of course, the decadent New York Times is completely incapable of distinguishing between the two. All immigrants are saintly figures holding hands beneath a rainbow to the Times, a newspaper which long ago ceased any mention of illegality and started talking about “undocumented” migrants instead (whoops, where did their documents go, one wonders). And so the camera rolls, the supporters chant “build the wall!” and New York Times readers are bolstered in their prejudice that anybody who opposes illegal immigration is a big fat racist who actually opposes all immigration.

And so it goes on, for issue after issue. Legitimate questions and concerns about Hillary Clinton’s conduct and record are ignored while footage of a Trump supporter shouting “Hillary is a whore!” feeds the narrative that Trump supporters are entirely unreasoning and uncouth creatures. Serious questions about how the American political establishment speaks about and responds to Islamist terror attacks are swatted aside so that we can focus on the redneck wearing a “Fuck Islam” shirt. Forget nuance. Forget the decent people who go to Trump rallies as a fun family day out. Just focus on the morons and reinforce the message: the people who support Donald Trump are as unacceptable as the candidate himself.

Watching the New York Times (and much of the establishment media) report on Donald Trump supporters is like watching a David Attenborough wildlife documentary in which the grizzled naturalist attempts to explain to us the feeding and mating rituals of some lower primate species – recognisably similar to us in some ways, but far more primitive and with rituals and customs which we civilised people cannot possibly understand without their expert interpretation.

Watch the video. I challenge you to watch it and come away feeling anything other than that this is an unbearably condescending hit piece on Trump supporters, a nauseating attempt by a Clinton-backing newspaper to “play to the gallery” with a compilation of all the worst Trump supporters imaginable rather than an attempt at serious journalistic enquiry.

I’ve said it before (in the context of the Brexit debate and, repeatedly, the US presidential election) and I’ll say it again: pathologising one’s political opponents and assuming (or at least publicly declaring) that they are motivated by hatred and malevolence is the sure path to defeat, and is no way to unite a fraying country. And prissy little video explainers like this one by the New York Times only serve to further divide Americans, giving liberals more reason to be smug and Trump supporters more reason to feel besieged.

Imagine that you are a wealthy, Times-reading East Coaster. Does this video make you question any of the beliefs which currently make you want to vote for Hillary Clinton? Does the video make you question whether the Trump supporters have even the kernel of a legitimate point about immigration, or trade, or national security? Or does the video boldly reinforce all of your existing prejudices about Trump supporters, reassure you that you are quite right to fear and despise them, and encourage you to keep shouting your own message louder and louder rather seeking dialogue with people the New York Times clearly portrays as being impenetrable to reason?

This is coastal elitist mockery of flyover country writ large. It is unbearably sanctimonious, and does nothing to further understanding and dialogue between Americans of different political and cultural backgrounds. It serves to further validate the accurate perception among Trump supporters that they are looked down on and belittled by the rest of the country. And, if another external economic, security or political shock turns this election into a dead heat between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the high-handedly arrogant way in which the establishment media treats the insurgents could push Donald Trump over the line on Tuesday 8 November.

This blog has no time whatsoever for Donald Trump. But I have endless time for his supporters, the majority of whom are decent people – to think otherwise would be to write off a massive proportion of the country based on their political views. And while I firmly believe that Trump’s simplistic solutions, policy ignorance and prickly ego would do immense harm if set loose in the Oval Office, right now I am more offended by the New York Times’ portrayal of all Trump supporters as though they are somehow less than human, less intelligent, with less self control and possessed of unique and grievous character defects which are supposedly entirely missing from their more enlightened, liberal compatriots.

One expects this kind of two-dimensional, good vs evil, sanctimonious ra-ra nonsense from the Huffington Post or other leftist agitprop sites. But the New York Times supposedly aspires to something higher, something more closely resembling journalism.

Everything about this video fails that test.

 

Donald Trump Protesters - St Louis

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