Crises

I was born in 1937, when, and for the next two years I presume (I could hardly be aware) our politicians and diplomats were desperately working to contain the  expansionary foreign ambitions of Hitler  and Mussolini.  They failed and on the day before my second birthday war was declared on Germany. 

This War expanded to involve most of the world, caused between 70 and 85 million deaths, mostly Soviet and Chinese civilians, and was only ended by the dropping of two nuclear bombs  by “our side” on two Japanese cities, together causing between 150 000 to 246 000 deaths.

 I have yet to hear a rational explanation which justifies the use of the second atomic bomb.

On the conclusion of hostilities the victorious Allies  set up a new world order aiming to avoid such a disaster in the future and secure economic prosperity and peace for all.

Although imperfect and subjected to many breaches,(think Palestine, Suez, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine ) that order has endured, battered but intact, until today.

It came nearest to collapsing in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union led by Nikita Khrushchev sent  a convoy across the Atlantic to set up nuclear missiles in Cuba, America’s “back yard” and President Kennedy vowed to stop them. 

I was living here in Birdsall and teaching in Batley at the time and can’t honestly remember being at all worried about it.  We were confident that the “adults” were in charge and no one cold be so stupid as to risk such a devastating conflict again.

  And we were right.  Mr Khrushchev agreed to lose face and ordered the convoy with the missiles  to turn back, and as a quid pro quo President Kennedy agreed (secretly) to remove the missiles pointing at Russia from Turkey, the Soviet Union’s “back yard.”

We need to be considerably more worried now, largely because the key player in today’s crisis may be  “adult” by age, but behaves more like an infant during  a tantrum or an adolescent suffering an identity crisis.  Our sympathies must go out to the West’s political leaders and  the officials of the United Nations.  What on earth are they to do if the US, having virtually annexed Venezuela, goes ahead and uses military force, as President Trump has repeatedly threatened, to take over Greenland?

 Our impotence is partly our own fault.  The US has consistently spent between 3% and 5% of its vast GDP on “defense.”  Few if any of the other NATO countries have matched this  even in percentage terms, and so the US contribution to NATO's defence is double that of all the other members’ combined. 

So President Trump has justification for claiming that Europe’s defence has been provided largely at America’s expense, which is a source of genuine grievance.

Be that as it may, it is hard to know, if Trump does decide to take Greenland buy force, what can be done to stop him.

Sir Keir Starmer has clearly decided to tread carefully, walk a tightrope, utter platitudes but not condemn him.  It is not an honourable position, but it is understandable.

The effective opposition must come from  the American people themselves.

There is considerable hope from this quarter.  Although the Democrats, for the moment, seem to lack an effective, still less charismatic,  spokesperson, those that they have have been very outspoken, indeed outraged, at the actions  taken in America's name.  Eventually, the American people will being Trump down and, if we can leap over the probable horrors of a Vance presidency, the world  of reason may again prevail. 

A start would be a Democrat majority in the Hours of Representatives after the mid-term elections next November.

If we can avert disaster for that long

This Labour Government is not liberal

According to “Labour List” (1^st January) Sir Keir Starmer has appointed a new chair of the Labour  Party.  She is the former MP Anna Turley, who writes that she is so proud of “everything we are doing  to change the lives of working people  across Britain.” (my italics)

Those words “working people” are the first reason why Labour is not liberal.

 Liberals exist to represent  the needs of all people: children, students,  carers, home makers, disabled  people, the retired , criminals (yes indeed, no one should be held in inhumane conditions,) academics, innovators,  migrants and asylum seekers, SME entrepreneurs,  -   what the Prayer Book calls “all sorts and conditions of men (and, in updated editions, women.)”

Labour has its roots in the past when it can be argued that the “working class” needed special protection for which they  deserved  absolute priority. But the modern world  has moved on from a world of ”the bosses v the workers.”  

 Certainly some workers do still  need protection, not least those on exploitative zero-hours contracts and the young unable to find employment other than as unpaid “internships, but there are other and equally important sources of conflict: we citizens v the overweening power of the state; the state v overmighty conglomerates; misinformation v truth; might v the rule of law; fairness v the influence of the rich an powerful.

 

It is on many of these other sources of conflict that the Labour government is found wanting.  Recent examples are:

Labour’s failure to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, the “civilised” European norm:

The confiscation of migrants' phones;

Measures to reduce the right to protest;

The absurd prosecution of those who have peacefully displayed support  for the aims of  Palestine Action;

The failure to remove the restriction on voting and the powers of the Electoral Commission imposed by the Tories;

The proposal to impose compulsory digital ID on those seeking work, clearly the thin end of a wedge;

The ban on freely elected councillors permitting a four-fay week for their council workers:

The shameful cuts to Overseas Aid;

The failure to fund adequately and defend the BBC;

The failure so far to stand up for the rule of international law and condemn the US invasion of Venezuela.

The tendency to place destructive economic growth above the green measures necessary to preserve the habitability of the planet;

An obsession with social mobility, and hence a tiered society, rather than an aspiration for social and political equality.

For  a genuinely liberal future we still need the Libel Democrats.

Reporting on Israel and Palestine.

 

In his second  mock “Annual  Awards” in his “Strike” newsletter commentator Ian Dunt names “Unholy” as Podcast of the year and comments on the . . .”  grotesque trend” in the UK’s reporting of the Israel Palestine conflict in that:

 “… Israeli lives are personalised. They are made real. But Palestinian lives are anonymised, turned into rubble along with their homes.”

Equally of note to me is the disproportionate  quantity of time and space devoted to the suffering of  Israelis compared to that of the Palestinians. Last week, after the shooting on Bondi Beach in Australia, in which 15 people were killed and others injured, including a ten year old girl,  the Guardian devoted five pages , including the front one, to the incident on Monday, seven on Tuesday and still two on the Friday.

On the situation in Gaza, the Google search engine seems to have stopped counting after the end of November, but by then there had been around 300 Palestinian deaths since the October cease fire (repeat, since the cease fire).  Some of them were probably ten year old children, or even younger, but I don’t remember much mention of such details.  One possible explanation  for this, as Dunt points out, is that the Israeli government bars independent journalists from entering and reporting from Gaza.

However, that does not explain the disproportionate amount of coverage.  In  his Christmas Day broadcast there are clips of King Charles visiting Heaton Park Synagogue  in Manchester, where he visited survivors of the October terror attack, and of floral tributes  commemorating the victims of the Bondi Beach attack, but nothing relating to Gaza. 

In her sermon the Bishop of London (++Canterbury designate) offers wise counsel on our national “conversation” in immigration, which divides us when our common humanity should unite us,  but does not stray beyond such domestic  matters.

It is the Archbishop of York, ++ Stephen Cottrell,  who, at least according to the Guardian’s report, highlights the injustices and indignities daily heaped upon the Palestinians in the rest of Palestine, though he does not appear to mention the   death still rained on Gaza.  Cottrell speaks of being subject to intimidation by the Israeli militias, being stopped at check points and being forbidden  to visit Palestinians in the West Bank.

 A letter in yesterday’s Guardian (27^th December) from a Rev’d David Haslam, points  out that the report of the Israeli government ‘s “green light “ given for the establishment of 19 new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, clearly a brazen flouting of international law, was reported simply in an “In Brief” paragraph. (22 December)

King Charles spoke of “peace through forgiveness.”  

 Terrible injustices have been heaped on both the Jewish people and the Palestinians. The persecution of Jews goes back centuries, culminating in the Holocaust in Europe in the twentieth.  Yet the victors of the Second World War have ignored the second part of the Balfour Declaration, that in looking favourably on a  “homeland” for Jews in Palestine “ . . .nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. ” Thus, in what appears to be a fit of hubris, they gave way what was not theirs to give.

If there is ever to be  “peace through forgiveness” in this benighted area, then one step towards it must surely be that  the wrongs done to  and committed by   both parties should be fairly and equally reported.

 

The Budget: sound and fury signifying very little.

 

 

In nearly sixty years of studying and teaching economics I have always felt attitudes to the UK’s annual budget to be over-hyped. In earlier time MPs honoured it by wearing top hats,  chancellors of the exchequer stimulated themselves with mysterious drinks, one of Disraeli’s  budget speech lasted five hours  but this wasn’t a record as he took a break in the middle, Gladstone once  managed four hours non-stop.

Rachel Reeves’s budget probably wins the record for the longest and most misleading  deluge of pre-event speculation around (deliberately leaked?) predictions.

These annual budgets have very little effect on the quality of the day to day lives of the vast majority of the population.  The very poorest may benefit by  a little more income or a better chance  of getting a job.  The lives of the comfortable and rich are hardly affected at all.

Similarly whatever the government does to try to affect the over-all level  of economic activity,  presently  the desperate quest for economic growth,  is often far overshadowed by external events:   Donald Trump's tariff wars, the price of oil, the Ukraine war, a stock exchange crash, to name but some.

That said, I watched most of the speech  and M/s Reeves sounded confident and  I felt made a good case.  She kept within her self-imposed fiscal rules and pre-election promise, found enough money to abolished the two-child benefit  limit, taxed gambling and EV cars, and introduced an additional council tax on very expensive houses. (Will that stay with the councils or go to the central government for re-distribution from the rich to poorer authorities?)

I was sorry to see the Lower Thames Crossing confirmed as that is just a pointless prestige project, (ditto the largest of the London Airport expansion schemes) and the overhauling of the planning system which will further over-centralise our inefficient government.

In summary, the budget raises taxes in order to marginally improve the public realm and the plight of the poorest. The Tories regard that as a criticism: Labour should be “out and proud.”

I have three major criticisms.

1.The whole hooligan atmosphere of the budget debate does our democracy little credit.  Despite the reservations expressed above, the budget is a serious business, especially for the poorest, and should be treated as such, not for jah-boo behaviour which would disgrace a football crowd

 2.The approach is “muddling through.”  The extra “add on “ of council tax for expensive houses is simply to make an unfair and ineffective tax just a little bit less  unfair and ineffective.  For real change we need a root and branch revision of the purpose of local government and how to finance it.

3.  We need lots more “green” measures.  Why is the pause in “accelerator” on fuel duty still in place, and no duty all or aviation fuel; why no taxes on pollution, congestion other “bads.?”

As to the political effect, I suspect both M/s Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer (who was very confident at PMQs) have saved their jobs.

 Now let’s hope the Labour Party will stop fighting itself and get round to governing the county efficiently and with vision.

World Toilet Day 2025

 Like Christmas, World Water Day (19th September) seems to come round more quickly every year.  The number of people without access to a place to defecate,and  urinate in privacy, safety, decency, with  and the waste disposed of  hygienically, at 3.4 billion,  is slightly lower than the figure I quoted last year, 3.5 billion,.  Not much as a ball-park figure, but it does mean a reduction in human anxiety for 500,000 individual people.  

Think of that when you next retire to your bathroom or a lavatory cubical. That's a huge reduction in human anxiety.. Maybe you'll feel "moved" (pun intended) to send a donation to Wateraid  ,  who work hard to help communities create suitable and sustainable facilities for their inhabitants.  One such is the VIP toilet, which doesn’t mean for Very Important Persons, but Ventilated Improved Pit, the ventilation cutting down the smell and the flies and therefore  the spread of disease.

 Today is also International Men's Day, so it's worth remembering that the lack of access to lavatories is a bigger problem for  women that it is for men, and particularly those who still have to resort to  "Open Defecation" (squatting in the bush ) where they can be the prey to predators aiming to rape them as well as to  embarrassment  and indignity. 

 Maybe we males should double our donations in recognition and  appreciation  of our more "convenient" (pun intended)  endowment.

 

A Liberal Policy on inward Migration

 The following is lifted 100% from a post by  Matthew Hulbert on Liberal Democrat Voice (17th November 2025.https://www.libdemvoice.org/mathew-on-monday-labours-reformlite-immigration-crackdown-isnt-leadership-its-politics-by-fear-78723.html)

 

"Liberals should say this clearly: You don’t fix the asylum system by making life harder for refugees. You fix it by creating safe, managed, humane routes to the UK; by processing claims efficiently; and by helping people (not forcing them) to integrate and contribute once they’re here, as the overwhelming majority of people do.

A genuinely fair system would do three things.

First, expand safe and legal routes so people fleeing war and persecution don’t have to gamble their lives on dangerous journeys.

We know this works – it’s the safest, most cost-effective, and most orderly way to protect people and maintain public confidence.

Second, replace indefinite insecurity with clear, timely, routes to settlement. Twenty years in limbo doesn’t deter desperate people; it simply prevents them from building stable lives, working, contributing, and integrating into our communities.

Third, enforce the rules in a way that distinguishes between criminality and legitimate asylum claims. A blanket crackdown treats human beings as a problem to be managed rather than as neighbours, workers, parents, friends, and future citizens.

Our Liberal vision isn’t naïve. Rules matter. But compassion matters too. The two can – and must – go together. A Britain that treats people with dignity is a Britain that strengthens its own social fabric and moral standing.

Labour had the chance to show that progressive government can be principled as well as pragmatic. Instead, this Prime Minister and his new Home Secretary opted for headlines over humanity.

As Liberal Democrats we must make the case for something better: an immigration system rooted in fairness, compassion, and confidence – a system that treats everyone as human beings, not political props."

Thank you Mr Hulbert. I hope our parliamentary party adopts this policy and its tone lock, stock and barrel. and so demonstrates there is till a sense common decency in Britain's political system.

 

As well as posting regularly  on LDV Matthew Hulbert is   Co-Host of the Political Frenemies podcast.