Tory Fantasy Politics

The Sunak Tory Government has entered the realms of fantasy politics.  In so many areas, they are putting forward policies they know won’t work (and may actually make the situation worse) , they know simply can’t be implemented, they know are just being put forward to make it look like they are dealing with a problem when they are not.

Just look at this week, Sunak’s policy to deal with the refugees arriving via small boats across the Channel.  With an ever-increasing crisis in dealing with Asylum Seekers already here in the UK (and many are waiting months in hotels & temporary accommodation for decisions), they need a distraction from that with a “new” policy for those arriving via irregular means.  Having closed nearly all the legal routes for refugees to claim asylum in the UK, they now want to punish these desperate people for taking the only way possible for them to arrive here. 

Never mind it doesn’t make any attempt to clamp down on the people smuggling gangs, never mind it is probably illegal under the UK’s International Commitments, never mind many are desperate people fleeing war, famine ort persecution in their home land, never mind most refugees are dealt with in other countries, the Sunak Government has (after the failure of their last policies) now want to simply to lock them (at great cost) up before return these people to somewhere else (actually no-one is clear where this will be as the UK no longer has agreements with other European countries to return them).  All that matter is good headlines and supportive coverage from the right-wing media. 

The practicalities are glossed over, those who oppose the new policy (which is in reality a rehash of past failed polices) are accused of not having solutions (even when they do have good workable ones), the Tory motto seems to be just keep repeating the Party manta on the issue and ignore those pointing out where it is not going to work.

The Tories have used the same formula of fantasy polices or claims time and time again, from Johnson’s promise to get 40 new hospitals built, claims to have increased spending on schools by over £5000 a pupil, to the promise to build 300,000 new homes a year, and of course Brexit.  All were made and trumpeted but the reality is very different.

For the Tories, the reality is that after 13 years of being in Government (& 8 years of not having the Lib Dems to restrain them) they have run out steam & ideas, not helped by the 2019 cull of all Tory MPs who would not back Johnson’s suicidal Brexit agreement.  All we have left in Government is mediocre politicians who owe their Ministerial position to blind loyalty to the failed Brexit ideology.  No wonder they are failing to deal with any of the problems of the UK and its people, just crashing from one crisis to another, desperate to get hide their failures by announcing more fantasy polices in search of a headline.  Roll on the next General Election to allow the Tories to go away and rediscover their Conservative past.

The Tories & the Wee Noes

The Tories crying crocodile tears over the Northern Ireland Protocol would do well to remember that in the Referendum they so revere, the people of the Province voted to remain in the EU, that at the last NI Assembly election, over 50 (out of 90) seats were won by parties who accepted the Protocol.
It is not the people of NI who want rid of the Protocol. It is the “Wee Noes” politicians of the DUP.

Conservatives no more just hard right Tories

Rishi Sunak’s appointment of Lee Anderson MP as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party has confirmed, to me at least, what I have been thinking for some time.  It is that that Party is totally misnamed.  Its is neither trying to conserve anything but its hold on power nor is it trying to unite the country, even its own Party.  So for clarity, I will call it the Tory Party in this post.

Making Anderson, MP for Ashfield, Deputy Chairman (and the job title includes the “man”, which already tells you much about the Tories) shows how far towards the extreme of Politics in the UK the current Tories have travelled. 

This is a man who espoused the Death Penalty, made (under Parliamentary Privilege) racist remarks about traveller community, had been investigated for Anti-Semitism over membership of a FB group that promoted George Sorts conspiracy theories and is being sued for libel by Jack Monroe & Michael Hollis who runs a food bank in Ashfield.  Anderson (whose CV include being a Labour Councillor on Ashfield Council before defecting to the Tory Party) bases his political platform on appealing to the bassist instincts in what is a former mining area that has suffered much in the last 40 years.  He attacks anyone who looks or sounds different, he offers simplistic solutions to complicated issues and seems to take pride in not caring what his opponents think.  He is the model of a populist right-winger you could meet in a pub, plenty of obnoxious opinions & simplistic solutions that have never worked or are based on racism & intolerance.

I can’t imagine any Tory leader, from Churchill through to Cameroon who would give Anderson the time of day, let alone appoint him to help run the Party.  It is only after the European Research Group took over the Conservatives and drove it further and further to the right, that people like Anderson have found a political home in it and changed the Party of Major, Heseltine, even Hague into an extreme right-wing Party that has adopted the language and policies of the BNP. No wonder so many Conservatives are fleeing what was their Party, disgusted by the polices & behaviour of those who now lead it.

While having such people running the governing Party is a worry, the save grace is that they are making the Tories unelectable in the coming General Election (and the current projections point to the Tories being reduced to a rump in the next Parliament).  Such a defeat will give them time to reconsider what sort of Party the want to be.  Are they really the extremist Party with few principles & even fewer workable policies that Johnson, Truss & Sunak have created? Or are they the Party of the centre Right, the Party that looks to conserve the best in our society and strengthen the Union?

I am not a Tory & have never (nor ever will) voted for the Conservatives but for political balance and good Government we need a Party of the centre Right that will help counterbalance the centre against extremists on either side of politics.  Currently we don’t have one, & with Anderson in a leadership role, the Tories don’t look capable of being one.

Why is Sunak not acting like other

In most organisations, when you are accused of serious wrong doing, you are suspended (on full pay if applicable) while an investigation is carried out and (if needed) a disciplinary hearing is held.

Sunak’s claim that it is “natural justice” for him not to suspend ministers who have been accused of serious breaches on the Ministerial Code pending an investigation flies in the face of most people experience and shows that he has scant regard for “natural justice”.

Rightly, we expect those who serve in our Government to be above any suspicion of wrongdoing so it is time for Sunak to act to remove any minister how is subject to any credible accusation of breaking the Ministerial Code (let alone the numerous accusations that Dominic Rabb is facing) instead of hiding behind the investigation.

We deserve better from those who would govern us

Labour’s Problems

If I was a Labour member, I would be worried now that, if they win the next General Election, due within the next 26 months, the economic situation they will inherit will still be dire and with many of the spending cuts promised by Jeremy Hunt in this week’s Autumn Statement still to be implemented. 

While the Tory & Brexit induced Cost of Living Crisis and subsequent recession may be ending by the time the General Election is called, the chances are that the recovery will be weak but the expectations on Labour to undo the damage done by Brexit & the Tories since 2016 will be great, probably too great to be met.

Given the current Tory Majority, despite what the current polls suggest, it is unlikely that Labour will have a large majority (if one at all), making life difficult for Keir Starmer as the ne Prime Minister. Also, as Starmer has already ruled out re-joining the EU ‘s Single Market, UK industry will still be trying to recover with one arm tied behind its back further reducing the new Government’s room for manoeuvre. 

Even if Labour manages to survive for 5 years in Government, I doubt whether they will have managed to revive the UK economy so that people will feel better off or that there is enough money to revive the public services which have suffered so much even before the current recession. This will give the Conservatives, revitalised after a spell in opposition, the chance to get back into power before the end of the decade, which would be a disaster for most people in the UK. 

The only way to make sure that this doesn’t happen is for Labour, regardless of whether they have a majority or not, to push ahead with introducing Proportional Representation to replace the failed First Past The Post (better named “Winner Takes All”) system that has give us Conservative Governments for 41 years out of the last 77 without once winning a majority of the public vote. Defenders of the current system can’t even claim it gives strong government after the political turmoil of the last 6 years.  

PR is the only hope that extremist Governments, as we have had for 6 years here in the UK are less likely in the future and we can rebuild the UK to be a more inclusive and more prosperous country. 

How can we end this political madness?

It is possible to date reasonable precisely when UK Politics started to descend into madness, May 7th 2015 when David Cameron won an unexpected (not least by him) majority but found himself caught out by his rash promise of an In/Out Referendum on EU Membership. The rabid Europhobic wing of his Tory Party would not allow him to renege on that promise and there was nothing he could renegotiate with the EU to placate them once they smelt blood.

6 years on, after the divisive Referendum, the May years of political stasis while she attempted to achieve the impossible (a “good” Brexit) and the last 3 years of Johnson’s disastrous Maladministration has left the UK a global laughing stock.

That same rabidly anti-Europe tendency in the Tory Party (and the more extreme versions in UKIP and the Brexit/Reform UK Party) has driven UK Politics further & further to the extremes so for the last 6 years we have lurched from crisis to crisis, making the Conservative Party unmanageable and (with Labour also in disarray for most of that time) impossible to govern the UK sensibly.

All this mayhem has been aided and abetted by much of the media that has done its best to lie and dissemble rather than report objectively, run by powerful owners that do not have the UK’s interests at heart, just wanting to protect their wealth & influence.

So how can we stop this madness carrying on?

Firstly, we need to change our voting system from the the current so-called “First Past the Post” system which gives us Governments with big majorities in Parliament with 1/3 of the electorate voting for them. We must implement a Proportional Representation system so that the representation in Parliament is governed by the number of votes each party gets. If such a system had been used in 2019, the Commons would be divided approximately 283 for the Conservatives, 209 for Labour, 75 for the Lib Dems, 25 for SNP & 17 for the Greens. This would mean that Parties have to cooperate to govern stop extremist views in one p[arty being allowed to gain control of the agenda. There are a number of different schemes for PR (Party List, Alternative Vote, Single Transferable Vote, Additional Member System, and many others), all have their advantages & disadvantages but do give a Parliament that is more representative of the nation’s political make up than our current system. The argument that, because they almost always create Coalitions, they create unstable Governments has been shown to be false by the antics of the Tories in the last 6 years.

Secondly we need to regulate the media better, not to censor what the print or broadcast, but to make sure the ownership is more diverse (not concentrated in the hands of a few rich individuals) and that those owners, be they corporate, individuals or trusts, are resident for tax purposes so they have a real stake in the country they are trying to influence. This will give us a more diverse media and a less politically powerful one.

How to recover from Brexit

We are out of the EU. Sad I know but I doubt we will be allowed to rejoin, even if it was the settled will of the British people, for many years. The EU members will not want even the remotest possibility of Brexit II happening so will want to be sure there is no possibly of it happening.

While the economic damage caused by the Pandemic & by the war in Ukraine have been felt across Europe, it is the effects of Brexit that mean the UK is predicted to have the slowest growth of any G7 country in 2023. Our trade figures are abysmal, inflation is rising faster than any other G7 country and we have a workforce crisis in the NHS, Social Care and across the private sector. No wonder more and more people are realising that Brexit has been a disaster, made worse by the incompetence of the current (as I write) Johnson Government who seem the have chosen ideology over practicality, conflict over cooperation & rhetoric over action.

Earlier this week Keir Starmer laid out Labour’s answer to the Brexit, no to re-joining, no to the Single Market/Customs Union, no to Freedom of Movement.

Basically, the same as the Johnson Government but with less antagonising of the EU.

While we can’t rejoin fully, we can still work closely with the EU, the largest Single Market in the world, right on our doorstep, by re-aligning our standards with the EU, opening up trade without costly, time consuming, paperwork, for UK firms, bring down their costs and resolving the issues around Northern Ireland that Brexit have caused. We can re-instate Freedom of Movement for workers, allowing those UK companies struggling to fill vacancies here with people from Europe. We can rejoin EU schemes like Erasmus, the Horizon Europe science funding program, and much more.

This won’t be easy and will involve lots of negotiating with the EU but I believe there is willingness in Brussels to do this and welcome the UK back into the European family, if not as a full member, at least as a partner they can trust and work with. If we can do this it will ease our journey back into the full membership in years rather than decades.

Brexit has been a disaster but we can recover even if it will take time.

Sturgeon plays a blinder

Well done Nicola Sturgeon! 

By making everyone concentrate on the attempts to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence, she has in a stroke taken away any examination of her failing SNP administration at Holyrood and sent the Tory maladministration at Westminster into apoplexy.

Sturgeon’s announcement earlier this week was not about an Independence Referendum, she knows that current UK Law means that this power is reserved to the Westminster Government and the current Government shows no sign of allowing it.  What it is mostly about is to create the illusion that Westminster is the enemy of Scotland and the duplicitous English who control the UK Government want to keep Scotland in the Union against their wishes.  It is all about creating an enemy who can be blamed for all that goes wrong in Scotland, very much as Boris Johnson has tried to do with the EU for the UK as a whole. 

As such it is a political game done to deceive the Scottish people, not advance Independence for them, and the Tories (& to be fair, other parties) fell into her trap and by immediately opposing such a referendum, allowing Westminster to be set up as the enemy against which Sturgeon can lead her party.  Anything and everything that goes wrong under the SNP Administration can then be blamed on Westminster, not on the SNP in Holyrood.

I need to make one point clear, while I think Scotland leaving the United Kingdom is a bad idea, for many of the same reasons I think that the UK leaving the European Union was, is and always will be a terrible idea, it is a decision for the Scottish people to make, not me.  That a country of 5½ million could successfully govern itself is not the question (there are many such countries in Europe & further afield) but is that the best choice for them?

I have a great deal of sympathy for Scotland, dragged out of the EU against their will (they voted nearly 2 to 1 to remain) even though continual EU membership was one of the reason put in 2014 during the previous Independence Referendum as reason to remain in the UK.  Scotland has also suffered unfairly under the current Tory Maladministration (although, truth be told, so has everywhere else in the UK) and leaving the UK may be one way to rid themselves of a centralising authoritarian Government.  However, the SNP run just as much a centralising authoritarian Government, concentrating power into Holyrood rather than Westminster so I am not sure most Scottish people will see a great deal of difference under a SNP designed devolution.

As a Liberal, I certainly want to see more power devolved to Scotland to run their own affairs, but that power should not just move from to Holyrood but flow down throughout Scotland.  I would also want to see more power devolved from Westminster to the English Regions & Local Government and to the Welsh Government & councils.  I would like to see the UK become a more Federal nation of equal parts so that no one party (not even the Liberal Democrats) can dominate political live they way the Conservatives & Labour have done for most of the last 100 years. 

I want a proper debate on how we can restructure the UK to the benefit of all parts of it, including Scotland.  I want to see a more democratic government in the UK where a party with less than 45% of the vote can’t ride roughshod over any opposition to impose its vision (or, in the case of the current Tory Maladministration, lack of vision) on the rest of the country.  Most of all I want to see a system of Government at all levels that allow real powers to be exercised at the most appropriate level and is responsive to the needs of all the people in the UK.

So, I hope the Scottish people resist the SNP’s manoeuvring to force an Independence on the terms they want.