Finland is my choice for asylum

I have decided that Finland is the country I will flee to and seek asylum if a Reform government is elected in the UK.

One reason is that I have a long and positive association with the country.   I first went there when I was 19 and was hosted by a political science student who was entering his second year at uni like me and also shared an interest in media work.  I had my first sauna at his parents' country home and also toured the lake district.

Since then I have made a number of return visits both for holidays and to collaborate with Finnish academics.  I saw Charlton play at Oulu in the north and took my grandchildren to Lapland to see Father Christmas.  It is a relatively cold country which is one of my criteria.

The Finns fought the Russians bravely and effectively in the Winter War, although they lost Karelia.  They have now joined NATO and are fully prepared for any conflict.   They have no illusions about Putin just because he is not 'woke'.

On my last visit I went on an organised trip to a small town.  The mayor was a woman who had immigrated from the former Yugoslavia.   I visited a residential facility for the elderly and I have never seen anywhere so well designed or welcoming.

For a number of years Finns have been declared among the happiest people on the planet.  As the excellent book Finntopia makes clear Finland is not a utopia.   It has its own populist party and recent events have shown there is some racism.  The language is very difficult.  But it is relatively egalitarian like other Nordic states.

If Reform do become the government it would mean living in a country where a substantial proportion of the population had very different values from my own.   Despite living in the UK for almost 80 years, I wouldn't feel at home there any more.

Bland keeps quiet on Labour leadershiip

As the year comes to a close, how is our fictitious South Borsetshire MP Guy Bland coping with the travails of the Labour Party?   Will he be one of those who puts his head above the penetrate to defenestrate Keir Starmer after poor election results in May?

Remember that Bland did not expect to become a MP, but thought that a good showing would boost his career as a public affairs specialist in the charity sector.

Bland's wife Emma has left religious affairs at the BBC and has a successful podcast called Honest to God after the controversial book written by the Bishop of Woolwich in the 1960s.

The couple now have a toddler and they are renting a property in the cathedral close in Felpersham.  Bland thinks that he might have a future in the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Church of England.   His chances would be enhanced if he could become Second Church Estates Commissioner in the Commons, but Battersea MP Marsha de Cordova shows no signs of stepping down.

It is much harder to defenestrate in the Labour Party than in the Conservative Party.  Eighty MPs would have to declare their wish to replace Starmer.

Bland's view is that any such nove requires deep thought.   He won his seat by something of a fluke and expects to lose it at the next election regardless of who becomes Labour leader.

He thinks Starmer is a serious man in a serious job, but accepts that the electorate wants more in terms of leadership.  He thinks that Starmer would be a good foeign secretary if he could be persuaded to step aside (following the examples of Sir Alec Douglas-Home and William Hague).

He is not going to put his head above the parapet, but he thinks that a Streeting - Rayner team (PM and deputy) would be the best bet.   A change of chancellor would follow.    However, he thinks that the endless media speculation is in part an attempt to portray Labour as a divided party incapable of governing.

The late news of a concession on inheritance tax for farmers has put some of his constituents in a better mood, although he is barred from most of the local pubs.  However, he will go to midnight mass with his wife tonight in something approaching a state of grace. 

Why not go north of the border?

The news that more people are now members of Reform rather than Labour reminded me that I should renew my search for a bolthole in the event of a Reform government. In an analyis of a by-election result in Darlington, Rob Ford from Manchester University pointed out that the 'progressive' vote had split four ways allowing Reform to win the seat. (This does seem to happen less often in the south of England where the Lib Dems often win). As The Economist had pointed out a number of scenarios are possible at the next election, although I suspect that if Reform were the largest party, the Conservative rump would allow them to take office.

One comment said that he would take his dog to the Scottish borders. So what about Scotland? I am of direct Scottish descent in the male line and a graduate of a Scottish university. I even found my clan tie the other day (NB: the Grants were Unionists).

However, I am no great fan of the Scot Nats. I have been following them since 1968 when I had my first article published on Welsh and Scottish Nationalism. I am not a great fan of nationalism in any shape or form. Although the SNP can claim to be 'progressive', they also lack competence, e.g., the fefrries fiasco, falling educational standards, the inability to tackle the admittedly formuidable drug problem in the central belt.

The inhabitants of the Northern Isles do not paticularly see themselves as Scottish. Indeed, the Orkney flag displayed at the top of the page is based on that of Norway. Norwegian is taught as a second language. Planes depart from Grimsetter to destinations like Stavanger and Bergen.

Hoy from Stromness

I know all this because I have made a number of visits to stay with an old friend who could not resist the lure of the isles and got his last job there. He has a splendid view from his home outside Kirkwall, but I prefer the huddled streets of Stromness with the great views of the mountains on Hoy.

As I like cool temperatures the climate would suit me. However, it is a long way even from Aberdeen and while the local hospital is well regarded any advanced medical treatment requires a flight to Aberdeen. It's not necessarily a cheap destination as the ísland economy is doing well. Moreover, I would still be in the UK.

We still need experts

In one of her recent diatribes, tin eared Liz Truss said that people were fed up with experts who were always wrong.  I wouldn't bother with her vapourings, except that her remark echoed that by Michael Gove that 'we've had enough of experts'.

If I took this at face value it would be quite alarming.   I am fortunate enough ti live in a very efficient and innovative NHS trust.  When I felt unwell recently I called the community emergency response service.  A nurse arrived in 20 minutes, checked me over and tried a minor procedure. 

When this didn't work she called her coordinator who told her to call an ambulance.   This arrived promptly with a very helpful paramedic on board.   On arrival at A and E I was immediately sent for a scan and a battery of blood tests.

Three different doctors examined me and then two returned and carried out a minor procedure.  I was then told that I was well enough to go home.  My only disappointment was that the fire brigade didn't take me home which was the service provided for my partner.

Throughout all this time, I was in the hands of experts.   They hadn't gone online and decided that they would be doctors, paramedics, ambulance drivers or nurses for a day.  They had gone through a long process of qualification and monitored experience.   They were experts and caring ones at that.

Now, I suppose the response to that could be 'aqueducts' as in the Monty Python Life of Brian in response to the question, 'What have the Romans ever done for us?'   Doctors (and vets) could be treated as an exception to the general rule.

The populist logic is that experts are part of a technocratic elite that exploit the mass of the population, e.g., scientists claim to believe in climate change because they can get money to study it.   Or they urge people to take vaccines because they profit from them, or at least big pharma does.

On reflection this distrust of experts has deep roots in British culture and history.  We were the first country to industrialise and in large part this was done by trial and error and training consisted of 'sittuig by Nelly.'

Countries like Germany decided to go down a systematic technical education route, hence in the First World War we had to get our supplies of khaki from Germany and after the war was over engaged in industrial espionage to discover the secrets of the German chemical industry, albeit we were helped by German emigres and the formation of ICI.

We need experts more than ever, but also politicians who are prepared to take uncomfortable decisions and that is too much to hope for.

Is an anti-woke visa for me?

Rumours of a pre-election merger between the Conservatives and Reform have been denied, but it's effectively what happened in Canada.    Having one party on the right to defend privilege has a certain logic.   However, at the moment all that is happening is that every second rate Tory rat is deserting a sinking ship as Kemi Kaze does her best to re-establish the Tories as the 'nasty' party.

So I had better resume my search for a bolt hole.  With the cooperation of a former Tory candidate, Russia is offering three year 'anti-woke' visas.  I have never really understood what 'woke' means, but as I nap  a lot I probably don't qualify.  Anyway I don't share my gardener's view that Putin is a colossus of the 21st century as he stands up to the Ukranian Nazis.   To me he looks like a man searching for some justification to attack the Baltic States.

I wondered if I ought to start in the British Isles.   I have had a couple of excellent holidays in Jersey in the past few years (superb fish suppers), but the population density and traffic would get me down.  Anyway, I am not rich enough to qualify.

Guernsey is said to be more 'understated', i.e., down market.   When I was briefly approving graduate courses for our new medical school, I was astonished to be told that all the staff on a new MSc in Cosmetic Dentistry lived there.   I started to probe gently as to how they would get to classes and they told me that some of them had qualified as pilots and they had their own fleet of small planes called DentAir.

Alderney intrigues me. but I have never been there and jt is far too remote.   Perhaps I should look at the Isle of Man which has some great scenery and is a less expensive place to live.

Why I won't be escaping to Switzerland

I was intrigued to read in The Times property section on Friday that a lady featured there was thinking of going to live in Switzerland to escape the clutches of a right-wing government.  Actually Reform's poll ratings seem to have fallen a bit after the revelations of Russian bribes and allegations about the banter that Nigel Farage used at Dulwich College.

I am actually one of the few people who has studied Swiss politics as part of their degree, although we mainly looked at the constitutional structure and decision-making processes rather than the underlying politics.   I did subsequently work with a Swiss political scientist who assured me that it was an essentially elitist country with the conscript army giving it a democratic facade.   The army is now much reduced in size.

Somehow I was not surprised to learn that a delegation of top Swiss companies such as Rolex had gone to see President Trump about the high tariffs he had imposed on their country.   They presented him with a gold bar engraved with his name and a Rolex clock.   This seems to have been helpful.

I am rather old fashioned and back in the day we called this bribery.   However, although there has been some critical comment in Switzerland, the consensus appears to be that it represents 'realistic economic diplomacy'.

It's all a bit remiscent of the Nixon 'Meltgate' scandal which became subsumed in Watergate.   AI tells me that the Nixon administration was accused of raising federal milk price supports in exchange for substantial campaign contributions from the dairy industry to Nixon's re-election campaign, The dairy industry reportedly contributed more than $200,000 in secret to the campaign.

My recollection is that the dairy lobbyists actually turned up in the Oval Office with a case full of used notes and Nixon said something on the lines of 'many come into this office and ask for things but not many show their appreciation.'   Nixon aides were then dispatched to collect the money from around the country at small airports.

To return to Switzerland, it looks like a company state to me where big international companies call the shots rather than the divided federal government.

It turns out that the attraction of Switzerland to the lady in The Times was that her father was Swiss and she holds a Swiss passport.   Meanwhile it is not on my bolt hole list.

The 1970s show: ungovernability is back

I am no fan of Rod Liddle, a right-wing head banger and Millwall supporter.   But he make a good point in his latest Spectator article.   Keir Starmer has the worst ratings of any prime minister in modern history, but Liddle points out that each successive prime minister in recent times has had worse ratings than his or her predecessor.

This leads Liddle to the question, is Britain ungovernable?   Of course, there is a risk of reinventing he wheel: there was such a debate on ungovernability in the 1970s featuring the late Tony King and Sam Brittan.   The general conclusion was one of government overload: government tried to do too much and ended up doing little of it well.

However, government today probably faces an electorate than has more expectations and sense of entitlement than in the 1970s.   One can see why many voters are disillusioned: taxes are up, but public services are seen as deteriorating.   Young people cannot get on the housing ladder in a way that was still possible in the 1970s (inflation paradoxically helped by reducing the real value of loans).

An analysis carried out for Hope not Hate shows that Reform voters are a rather variegated and in some ways contradictory group.   What I suspect does unite them is a 'none of the above' feeling: all other parties have failed, so Reform couldn't be worse.

This week Reform has to appear at the CBI conference to explain and justify its economic policies.   There has been some rowing back from the rasher promises, but will the attempt to appear responsible undermine their raw populist appeal?

Given that they are billed as the government as waiting, it is surprising that they are not winning more local government by-elections.   It is the Lib Dems and Greens who seem to be doing well with even the Conservatives winning the odd seat.  In line with the polls the Labour vote has tanked.