When will it be?

 

When will it be?

 

For days now the chattering classes in and on the media have been banging on about the possible date of the next general election.  With so much actual news to report, from the sickening  traumas in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere, tensions between Taiwan and China, the inadequacy of our flood defences, homelessness, children in poverty,  to the star quality of  a sixteen-year-old darts player, it is irritating in the extreme to find so much air time and print space devoted to something that the pundits know no  more  about than we do.

The next election will happen at a time when Prime Minister Sunak and his cohort feel will maximise the Tories’ chances of winning, or minimise their losses.  That’s it.

What I haven’t heard mentioned is the absurdity that, in a mature democracy, it is the right of one of the contestants for power to decide when the contest should take place.  If in a running race we allowed one of the runners to wrong-foot the others by allowing him/her to fire the starting gun we should recognise that as blatantly unfair.  Yet in the far more important arena of how and by whom we are governed this goes without comment.

The Liberal Democrats believed we had put an end to this anomaly by passing the fixed Term Parliament Act during the 2010 -15 Coalition.  This decreed that parliaments should normally last five years, and elections for a new one should take place on the first Thursday in May  five years after the election of the last one (cf presidential elections in the US taking place every four years on the first Tuesday of November, and similar arrangements in most other democracies.)

There were arrangements in the Act for the five-year term to be curtailed in exceptional circumstances – more of which later.

The present government, with its majority of 80 won for them via Boris Johnson’s lies and bluster, repealed the Act in 2022, and we now revert to the unfair archaic system.  This is just one of the ways the current Tories are chipping way at our democracy (see previous post.)

The “exceptional circumstances” referred to above meant that a parliament could be dissolved  if two thirds of MPs , a “super-majority”  (no such safeguard was included in the BREXIT referendum) voted for it.  This happened in 2017 when the then Prime Minister Theresa May was finding it impossible  to get the Commons to  agree to  the terms on which to implement BREXIT and leave the European union.  She miscalculated, the Conservatives lost their majority, and the new parliament still could not gain a majority for a BREXIT deal. 

The argument for invoking the premature dissolutions was that the parliaments were preventing the executive from carrying out its well.  This, claimed the Brexiteers, was wrong.

 In fact, these parliaments were acting at their best.  They recognised that there was and is no BREXIT deal which is not damaging to the interests of the British state and people, as we are now discovering to our cost.

The irony is that those same right-wingers are now huffing and puffing that our parliament is sovereign  and it is very wrong of the “lefty lawyers” and courts (enemies of the people) to prevent it from deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Logic is not their strong point.

Be that as it many, I understand the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Ed Davey,  has said that the restoration of Fixed Term Parliaments will be in our Liberal Democrat manifesto.  I doubt it if this issue would be likely to be a bargaining chip in the negotiations for the formation of  a coalition or “confidence and supply”  arrangement.  Rather, if the result of the coming election gives no one party a clear majority, which I earnest hope, the progressive forces could insist on a series of citizens’ assembles to discuss fundamental reform of our constitutional practices, and this could be one of the essential issues included for consideration.

 

Parliament IS sovereign - but . . .

The "perception management" branch of the UK's right-wing has developed the technique of reducing complex issues to a three-word slogan, and then hammering away at it until enough people are convinced that this is an expression of the "popular will."  

This certainly worked for Prime Minister Johnson with "Get Brexit Done."  Rishi Sunak is attempting the same trick with "Stop the Boats," the chosen method of achieving it being the deportation to Rwanda of those unfortunates  (just 3.8% of the total of would-be  immigrants) who are reduced to attempting to enter Britain  by crossing the Chanel in small boats.

Given that the courts have declared  that this  threat is  illegal since Rwanda is not a safe place for them to be sent to, Parliament is now instructed to pass a law saying the it is safe.  The accompanying three word slogan is that "Parliament IS sovereign," -  so how dare the courts (enemies of the people?) try to frustrate the truly expressed ill (oops - will: Freudian slip) of the people as determined  by our sovereign parliament?

In the first of this year's very listenable Reith Lectures,  (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5sPfPYCxr6C999L5bDwrdkb/bbc-reith-lectures-2023-our-democratic-future) Professor Ben Ansell explains that democracy is sustained by a "a spider's web" of strands.  There is nothing new in this: it is what was explained to me a Mr Chekanovski (that may not be the correct spelling) in my first formal studies of politics way back in the 1950s.  To expand the Ansell lecture sightly, and with thanks to Mr Chekanovski and his many successors, in addition to a law-making  parliament the "strands" required for democracy to operate successfully include:

1. respect for the rule of law;

2.  the separation of powers (especially an independent Judiciary);

3.  freedom of assembly;

4. freedom of expression (especially an independent and balanced media);

5.  regular, free and fair elections;

6. respect for minorities;

7.  what Mr Chekanovski called "the British sense of fair play" and what historian Peter Henessy has more recently described as "the "good chaps" theory of government.

It beggars belief (that phrase again ) that Britain's democracy has become so debased  that our government can even propose the absurdity that Rwanda can be made a safe place simply by Britain's parliament saying that it is.

 Those with even the most cursory interest in the UK's politics can see  that our present government is blatantly chipping way at each one of the above strands.

 A government minister has argued that one of its  proposals did break the  law "but only in a specific and limited way; rather than being respected  the judicial system is regularly caricatured as being at the mercy of "lefty lawyers;" our right to assemble and protest is circumvented on various whims; the independent BBC is bullied and the bulk of the media are in the pay of the rich; measures  to  make elections fairer a ripped up and restrictions imposed on the right to vote; minorities (eg we"remainers") are dismissed "unpatriotic;" and any sense of fair play long since went out of the window.

Our liberal democracy is in crisis.  Rather than just relying of "good chaps" one restraint on abuse by the temporary minority that happens to hold the reins of power has so far been the realisation that "the other lot" might gain power and do the same to them.  That too has gone out of the window.

Rather than take revenge, I hope that, if and when the "other lot" (preferably including Liberal Democrats) do win a parliament majority we hall take steps to restore and improve  all the strands essential to a democracy, of which  I was taught to be proud.

Party Game

 In Sunday's Observer (10th September) columnist Andrew Rawnsley suggests that, if we want to liven up we Christmas parties we might try listing the Tory "screw-ups" of the past 13 years in order of seriousness.

To start the ball rolling, here is my suggestion:

                     1.     The calling and conduct of the Brexit Referendum.

2.    The “Hard Brexit” settlement.

3.    The “Austerity “ policy in central government spending.

4.     Cuts to the financing and powers of local government.

5.    Failure to heed the recommendations of the Cygnus Exercise of 2016 on preparedness for a pandemic.

6.    The lateness of the lockdowns  in the Covid emergency.

7.    The discharge of hospital patients to non-ring-fenced care homes.

8.    The VIP line for medial procurement - PPE etc.

9.    The scandal of “partygate,” along with repeated lies on this and other matters,(not least the Brexit referendum) reducing trust in and respect for government

10. Cuts in the Overseas Aid Budget

11.Contempt for domestic law – the illegal proroguing of parliament.

12. Contempt for international law.

13.The “Hostile Environment” for immigrants – leading to the humiliating Rwanda policy.

14. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

15. The privatisation of the Probation Service.

16.The Lansley “ reforms” in the health service.

17. Gove’s education ”reforms,” squeezing "the Arts" from education; OFSTED bullying; the Academisation of schools.

18.  Regressive moves in the operation of democracy.  (eg Voter ID, abolition of the second preference vote in “directly elected “ mayoral elections)

19. Contempt for the civil service.

20. The scandal of Grenfell Tower.

 

Suggestions for additional items (eg putting more people in prison for longer but neglecting the estate) and changes in the order are welcome.

 

Enjoy.

The immigration deception

 

Thursday 30 November 2023

The immigration deception

As recently as December 1999 (which doesn‘t seem all that long ago to those of us in our 80s) fewer than 5% of the British electorate chose Immigration as one of the top five  issues the government should deal with.  This compared with 30% who chose the NHS as one of their top worries.

 However, once the century turned and the Eurosceptics became more effective at influencing British political debate, immigration began to increase in importance as an issue. As early as 2002 Theresa May warned the Tories that in trying to accommodate the right-wing nationalists they were in danger of being seen as the “nasty party.”  This, unfortunately, didn’t stop her, while Home Secretary, making her own contribution to the nastiness by deliberately trying to create a “hostile environment” for immigrants. 

Rather than oppose this deplorable trend the Labour Party whilst led by Ed Miliband produced mugs urging those “concerned about immigration” to "Vote Labour," and set a trend by including control of it among its on five election pledges in 2015.  Some senior members deplored the mugs at the time.  I think they’re all ashamed of them now,

Consequently today, as a result of the Tories’ desperate attempts to stem leakage of their support to the crudely nationalist UKIP party and its variants, Labour’s pusillanimous failure  to combat the bile by proclaiming the benefits Britain has received and continues to receive, Prime Minister Sunak is able to flaunt his “stop the boats”[policy  as one of his five priorities and he and his henchpersons claim to be expression “THE WILL OF THE BRITISH PEOPLE.”  (Capitals deliberate.)

Rather than the truth I believe this to be the product of despicable perception management to gather votes at any cost, including  the abandonment of all sense of humanity and decency.

 As a society we are better than that.

 Some facts were carefully spelled out in an article by Gaby Hinsliff in Tuesday's Guardian.  The vast majority of the record number of migrants who came to our shores in 2022 were actually approved by ministers, having been granted leave to work (40% of them in the NHS or Social care), study, join their families of seek sanctuary via “approved” routes for the favoured Afghanistanis (sadly not all of those who helped the British forces) and escapees from Ukraine. 

Only a very small minority come illegally by boats.  The flagship policy of deporting these to Rwanda is not only obscene  and ineffective  but even if implemented would have only a minuscule impact on the total of immigration.

 I like to enumerate how my own life is both enabled and enhanced by immigrants or the children (and these days, probably grandchildren) of immigrants.  They deliver my morning paper, clean drill and fill what’s left of my teeth, run my favourite restaurant, provide about two thirds of my medical treatment on the NHS, dispense my medicines, provide the vicar, half the choir, much of the congregation and the brilliant organist of the church I attend, clean my car, drive about half the buses on which I travel, and much more besides, including paying some of the taxes which furnish my pension. 

Grateful thanks to them all.