Fragile Democracy

 

 

Yesterday, 15^th September, was apparently the UN’s World Democracy Day, though if any of our media mentioned it I didn’t notice.

 The post 1945 new world order seems to have assumed that democracy is the preferred flavour of the future and leading democracies, including the UK and the US,  have taken the view that all we need to do is establish elections for the governments of countries, by force if necessary, and, behold, a democracy has been created.

But there’s more to it than that. 

Yes, governments need to be chosen by” the people,” but the elections  need to be free and fair, and in addition there needs to be a whole infrastructure to include:

The rule of law

Fair (and prompt!) trials for infringements of the law

Independent judges

Separate law making and executive powers

Free and balanced information

Freedom of speech

Freedom to assemble and promote or protest about a point of view

Respect for minorities

A measure of equality.

For most of my life both the UK and the US have gradually moved towards the ideal in the above categories, but, alarmingly, for the past decade, both countries have moved in the opposite directions, both to rig or discredit the judiciary (openly biased appointments in the US, “enemies of the people” in the UK),curb the right to vote (gerrymandering in the US, unequal  ID requirements in the UK) . . . .  .and lots more.

But to my mind the most serious problem is the lack of access to balanced and accurate information.  That is why I have included a “measure of equality” in the list above.  Some people have so much wealth that they can distort the availability of information.  Elton Musk’s  address by video-link to the right wing demonstration in London over the weekend is only the latest, and not necessarily the most blatant, example.  And the advent of artificial intelligence will probably make it even more difficult to discern what is true and what isn’t.

How else can we explain the absurdities that electorates have been persuaded to believe, or, if not believe, at least to vote for - the  £350m per week for the NHS in the UK’s Brexit Referendum, that tariffs in the US will bring back jobs the Rust Belt, that the UK can have Scandinavian-quality public  services without paying the taxes to finance them?

Why do the charlatans, (Johnson, Trump, Farage, to name but three) flourish?

The answer is partly by possessing effective communication skills, which all three of the above have in spades and poor Sir Keir Starmer lacks (and Sir Ed Davey compensates for by doing silly things). 

But more generally we need to know who is financing their distortions.

To restore and imporve our democracy I believe we need to:

Diversify the ownership of the media:

State clearly who owns each organ

Require the owner(s) to pay taxes in the county the medium operates

Forbid multi or cross-media ownership.

Require public broadcasters, when quoting think-tanks and similar sources,  to report who owns them or what particular interest they represent

Operate the same rules of identification on the internet and social media as operate in the press (name and address supplied if there is some valid reason not to give it)

Strictly limit the size of individual or corporate donations to political parties.

Apart from restoring the second choice vote in the elections for mayors and crime commissioners and requiring an over-all majority, there is as yet little interest by our present Labour government in any of the above.  Rather the reverse. 

That is why we need Liberals in government.

Raynergate

 

 

The past two weeks have exposed British politics as squalid and dysfunctional.

 Having probed for over a year without much success the right-wing press have at last exposed a chink in the armour of the Labour Party’s  deputy leader and cabinet minister, Angela Rayner. She has been found to have failed to pay sufficient stamp duty, something in the region of £40 000, when she bought a flat in Hove, has admitted culpability and resigned.

The Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, has joined the witch-hunt,  having declared that Ms Rayner’s continuance in office would have been “untenable.”  That’s a bit of a cheek, to put it mildly, given that the Conservatives, their friends and paymasters, have been ripping off the country for fourteen years (actually much longer if you go back to Mrs Thatcher) for sums involving  millions if not billions of pounds.  

 There’s a strong case  for claiming that the very continuance of the Conservative party is untenable and if they had any sense of decency they would dissolve themselves, though I supposed that would make things even easier for Nigel Farage (be careful what you wish for.)

Although a small fortune in the eyes of most families, M/s Rayner’s £40 000 is peanuts by comparison by comparison with the Tory record (and earlier abuses by MPs of all parties)  However, it is important for politicians to set an example and live by the rules that they make, so the Advisor on Ministerial Standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, was justified in ruling that she had broken the ministerial code, and she herself has decided that she "has to go" (before she's pushed?)

The UK has a whole industry of accountants and the like who advise the wealthy on how to minimise their monetary duty to the state that protects their wealth.  “Evading” tax  is illegal and you might get your hand smacked if you try it, but tax “avoidance”  (they call lit “tax efficiency” - it sounds nicer) is perfectly legal. So there’s a wide range of methods -  putting money into trusts, (M/s Rayner had done that in order to ensure an income for her disabled son), holding it in tax havens abroad, calling your income “profit”, setting yourself up as a company, and probably many more schemes which reduce the subscription one pays to be a member of civilised society.  Users of these services presumably sail  as close to the wind as they think they can get away with.  How many wouldn’t, given the chance?

Sir Laurie Magnus is a 3^rd Baronet (perhaps his father knew Lloyd George) and was educated at Eton and )Oxford.  I can’t help thinking that if M/s Rayner's case had been tried by a jury of her peers (or should that be peeresses?) they would have found her not guilty, especially if the jury had contained a couple of working-class teenage mothers and an Ed Davey-type who was also the parent of a disabled child.

Be that as it may, I’m pretty sure Angela Rayner will be a feature on our political scene lag after Mrs Badenoch is forgotten.

While our media and politicians have been fully absorbed in dramatising this relatively trivial affair the Israeli Defence Force continues to murder children, women and men in their homeland of Gaza, Putin's armed forces continue to bombard Ukraine and President Trump continues to pull at the threads of American democracy trash the World’s trading system and make war rather than peace.

 In the UK for the time being the upshot of the chaos is that the Cabinet has been reshuffled. The  Home Secretary has become the Foreign Secretary, the Justice Secretary the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary the Deputy Prime Minister and nothing much else.  Each  of these have been in their original jobs for  just over a year – hardly long enough to get the hang of whatever they’re supposed to do. Now they “move on” probably to fail again in their new posts. 

Has Sir Keir Starmer not read the books by informed commentators* which suggest that this “churn” is one of the main reasons why the British state is failing?

 

*Especially Ian Dunt: “How Westminster Works . . .and why it doesn’t” 

and

Sam Freedman: “Failed State, Why Britain doesn’t Work and How we Fix it.”

More regarding migrants

 Nigel Farage's description of migrants as  "a threat oi our national security [and] our women and children," and his plans to deport "absolutely everyone" arriving by small boats, has received a tepid response from Britain’s political establishment and media.  

The Conservatives merely complain that the  plans are stolen from the.  Labour concentrates on their impracticality.  

No-one expresses outrage that this is absolutely the wrong tone to take and the wrong thing to do.

 Last month Pope Leo reminded us that:“In a world darkened by war and injustice, even when all seems lost [migrants'] courage and tenacity bear heroic testimony to a faith that sees beyond what our eyes can see and gives them the strength to defy death on the various contemporary migration routes”.

 And, not only that: " [C]ommunities that welcome migrants and refugees can also be “a living witness to hope” as they show “the promise of a present and a future where the dignity of all as children of God is recognised”.

 So where are our leaders with the courage to make the point? 

The Conservatives are beyond the pale..

Sir Keir Starmer should be in a strong position as a former Human Rights lawyer but seems to prefer to keep quiet.  (He should be emboldened by a Radio 4 programme being broadcast this week which refers to the free services he gave in the MacLibel trial, which mean that we have evidence his heart is in the right place.)

 

Sir Ed Davey hasn't done too badly with : "Nigel Farage  pretending to be patriotic  while pledging to rip up Britain’s proud record of leading the world on human rights," (but possibly a bit of hyperbole there.)

 Laura Smith, a representative of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, with :" We are hearing proposals  that would tear through centuries of British legal tradition - from Magna Carta to the Human rights Act - with barely any resistance from those who should be defending those values." seems more concerned with Britain’s reputation than the plight of the poor creatures shivering in squalid conditions in such as the Marston Detention Centre. 

 Absolutely no one is saying, loudly and clearly: "This is wrong! Farage's proposals are not how we should treat people.  They are fellow human beings - men and women like us  ("Humanity is single" as lawyer Sir Geoffrey Knight explained on the BBC.) We share one planet. We treat each-other as we could wish to be treated ourselves.  Those fleeing danger deserve our compassion.  Those seeking a better life should be applauded, as we would applaud such endeavours in ourselves and our children.".

 Unless our leaders shout this out proudly we are on the road to a repeat of the Brexit error of nine years ago.  Then the case for reason and optimism was lost becasue for decades our leaders had failed to speak out enthusiastically  in favour of the European Union. Rather they had blamed it, usually without much justification, for any minor inconvenience for which they'd rather shift the blame from themselves.  

We are in grave  danger of making a similar mistake again, leaving the field open for the purveyors of lies, distortions and chauvinistic bombast.

 So politicians, influencers, religious leaders, humanists, philosophers and academics, men and women  who hold values of decency and compassion and know how to change a tyre,  speak out now , before it's too late.

 

 

Accommodating migrants et al

 "Than shall the Kings say unto them on his right hand, come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom  prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger and ye took me in; Naked and ye clothed me: I was in prison and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee, or thirsty and gave thee to drink?  When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, or naked and clothed thee?  Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer them, and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it  unto one of these the least of  my brethren , ye have done it unto me."

Matthew 25, vv34 - 40, KJB. 

Present dangers?

 

Statistics.

 

It’s now 71 yeas since I took my mathematics ‘O’ level (as it was then called) and over 20 years since I taught any maths, so I presume the curriculum has moved on a bit.  I certainly hope so.  In my day we spent a lot of time messing about  solving  simultaneous and quadratic equations, to “find x;” using trigonometry ratios discover the dimensions of figures and other such erudite activities; and spent very little time on statistics.

As a teacher of economics I spent a lot of time  explaining yet again  that a fall in the rate of inflation did not mean that prices had stopped rising.

Recently there have been some interesting revelations regarding statistics relating to immigration and race.  A week or so ago  a Reform spokesperson raised the alarm because apparently no fewer than one in eight of the inmates of our prisons were born overseas. Presumably this was meant to imply that people from abroad are disproportionately wicked and should either be stopped from coming here or be sent away asap.  

 Better informed heads gleefully pointed out that people born abroad constitute one in six of the UK’s population, so if  they make up only one in eight of the prison population they  are relatively more law-abiding than we natives.

In other words, Robert Jenrick’s daughters have more to fear from the native population that from immigrants.

In this week’s “New World” newspaper (formerly “The New European”)  an article by a  Sonia Sodha reminds us that “”Under international law anyone has the right to apply for refugee status  having reached another country  if they have  a ’well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of  race, religion, nationality , membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’”  

She points out that a relatively small proportion of the world’s refugees  set out to reach Europe.  73%  are “hosted” by low and middle-income countries. Of those who do come to Europe most are “hosted” by other countries.   The UK  comes 17^th  in the Europe for asylum applications per population head, far behind countries like Greece, Germany, Austria and Switzer]and.

 So why on earth do we make such a fuss?  Really we ought to be a bit jealous: why don’t more want to come here and help raise the standard, quality and variety of our lives, instead of giving all these advantages  to others, mostly better off then we are

 Finally a letter in yesterday’s “Guardian” (15/08/25) from a Dr Bernard Gallagher examines the danger to “our women and girls” played by men of Pakistani origin or heritage in “Grooming Gangs.” 

 Of the 115,489 cases of child sexual abuse recorded by the Home Office in 2023, only 3.7% involved “group based contact offences” of which those with majority Pakistani-heritage would have been just a part.  (Child-abuse is overwhelmingly a family affair.)  

Persons of Pakistani heritage  account for 5% of cases, whereas this group form 9% of our population over the age of 16.  So once again this group  is more virtuous than we natives. 

Sadly, more attention to statistics in the school curriculum will not stop right-wing publicists jumping on to individual incidents and, amplified by their sportive press,  exploiting them in the apparent hope of igniting the “tinderbox” they seemingly hope to explode into public disorder.  But it might help.

What would help even more is politicians of other parties (and especially Sir Keir Starmer) boldly amplifying the truth rather than cosying up to those who distort it.