Wednesday 30 December 2020

A burnt oven ready deal is the meal at the table

I watched quite a lot of the Brexit debate today.  In the latter part backbenchers either seemed to want to celebrate their contribution to bringing about Brexit or say how awful it was.  In fact I switched off after Dame Cheryl Gillan's contribution as in terms of both content and delivery she seemed to be auditioning for a role as a minor royal in the next series of the Crown.  I did catch Caroline Lucas and then the closing speeches.

I suppose if there was a take home message for me it is that, as Hilary Benn said, the agenda now shifts to determining our relationship with the EU which I suspect will be in a state of constant flux and renegotiation like that of Switzerland.

Boris Johnson managed to get away with his usual range of invalid points.  He made a comparison with the time the Uruguay Round negotiations took, but those involved most of the world.  We would be free of state aid rules which is not how I understood the agreement given that the UK will have to set up a new state aid review body.    We could make our own regulatory rules.   But supposing, say, we approved a pesticide banned in the EU.  Crops produced with it could then face tariffs or even a complete ban.   He mentioned again that the EU original transition offer on fishing had been 14 years, but that soon reduced to eight which is why 5.5 years was halfway between Britain's three and the EU's eight.

He called for an end to rancour and recrimination, but that overlooks the way in which social media makes everything binary.   His best point was at the end when he referred to the UK as a half hearted, sometimes obstructive member of the EU.  We have, indeed, been an awkward partner.   However, T Singh Daesi made one of a number of effective interventions when he referred to a 'burnt oven ready deal'.

Keir Starmer was caught between a rock and a hard place and indeed one Opposition Whip has resigned. He just about managed to hold on to his argument that a thin deal is better than a no deal and that voting against was a self-indulgent luxury given that there would be a vote in favour.   His speech as a whole made some good points on details, such as the fact that there would be non-tariff barriers to trade, but was not very impressive in big picture terms.   Indeed, he often looked grim faced, flustered and exasperated, particularly when the honourable member for Carmarthen (independent) kept interrupting him.   His vision was of an 'outward looking, optimistic and rules-based country.'

Ian Blackford managed to pontificate for 25 minutes in his usual self-satisfied and pompous manner.  At one time he seemed to be yearning for the Auld Alliance.  He did, however, argue with some force that Scotland would lose a 'precious part of what we are' by leaving the EU. He did manage to score a few points against Michael Gove  on fisheries.   Having invoked the spirit of Winnie Ewing as Madame Ecosse, he predicted that the empty seat at the top table at Europe would not remain empty for long.  It is, of course, a possible scenario.

Theresa May's stock is very low these days but I thought she made an effective short speech.   She pointed out to those voting against that there was a better deal on the table in 2019.   She was disappointed by a deal on goods which had little or nothing to say on services which account for 80 per cent of the economy. [Of course, many of these are not traded, but financial services are].  Services would have to be negotiated on a member state basis, those for the Czech Republic, for example, requiring a residence requirement.  She also referred to something called the Partnership Council which I admit that I know nothing about and must investigate further.  [Apparently it is the body that settles trade disputes between the UK and the EU, but much will depend on how this works in practice as with the WTO disputes settlement mechanism].  She warned that sovereignty does not mean isolationism or exceptionalism.  We live in an interconnected world.

Ian Duncan-Smith insisted that he was not anti-European and loved Europe (just as Ian Blackford said that he loved England and the English).   What this means, of course, is that he and others have no objection to enjoying French cuisine, but don't want to work alongside France in a systematic rather than ad hoc fashion.

Caroline Lucas admitted that she and others had voted against a softer form of Brexit, but referred once again to the need for a confirmatory referendum.   I was never as confident as the hard core remainers that a second referendum would have delivered a different result.  I never liked the idea of a second vote to get the right answer and would have probably abstained.  The Brexiteers have had the better strategies and tactics, if only in terms of unrelenting pursuit of their objective.

Michael Gove declared in conclusion that 'We have kept faith with the people.'   He then proceeded to make a number of partisan points against Starmer and the SNP.

Both the second and third readings passed by 521 votes to 73.   My MP, Matt Western, was going to vote in favour which I think was the right decision.

Tuesday 29 December 2020

It's all at the Co-op now

The other day I joined the Co-op.  I shop at a local one every so often and realised that they offer 2p in the £ back, but also 2p in the £ for a local charity.

When I was growing up the Co-op was a central part of my life.   Our day to day shopping was done at the shopping parade with its distinctive clock tower built at 'The Links' at Plumstead Common by the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (sometimes irreverently known as Rob All Customers Slowly). It's where we did much of our shopping with the Co-op also delivering bread and milk by horse and cart. 

The Co-op issued customers with small paper slips which could be exchanged for tin checks at the check office. When the tin checks were tipped on to the kitchen table, they looked like a treasure trove to a youngster. The checks could be exchanged twice a year for the 'divi', but the sum received always disappointed my parents. 

Bigger purchases meant a trip down to the Royal Arsenal's art deco department store in Powis Street, Woolwich. With its lifts and escalators, and topped by a tower pointing skywards, it looked both huge and sophisticated when I was five or six years old. For some reason, the lifts could only go down to the basement with difficulty. The third floor had a restaurant, bookshop and hairdressers and lifts went 'express' there in the lunch period. 

After many years of going down hill, it closed and was left as a vandalised shell, but has now been converted into apartments. There are some photographs of it in its derelict state here: Abandoned

As the years went by, the Co-op lost its market share. As people became more prosperous, the 'divi' paid to Co-op members lost its attraction, and its goods seemed less sophisticated than those of its emerging competitors. We moved away from what the late Mick Moran called 'a world of deferential citizens and grateful consumers'. The Co-op also suffered from the spread of car ownership: its stores were in traditional shopping parades or, as at Plumstead Common, former suburban parades.

Where the Co-op was very successful (and continues to be) was in providing a funeral service. They provided my grandmother's funeral. I wondered irreverently if that qualified for a dividend.

I always thought that the Cooperative Party was a bit of a rotten borough in the Labour Party because of the way in which John Stonehouse used it as a springboard for his career: -https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/politics/2019/02/28/from-soviet-spy-to-the-disappearing-man-how-ex-mp-john-stonehouse-still-fascinates/

However, one shouldn't generalise from a particular case and like a lot of people I am relatively ignorant about the party and its political role within Labour.

Saturday 26 December 2020

Brexit: I want my life back

I must admit that I have not yet looked at the 1,260 page legal text of the agreement between the UK and the European Union or even the summary document.   Boris may says its an extra Christmas present, but it is one I could live without for now.

For four-and-a-half years I have been answering media queries on Brexit.  I agreed to be media point man for our Comms Office over the festive period and was hoist with my own petard.

For example, on Christmas Eve I had to deal with an enquiry from a national newspaper about alleged attempts by President Macron to rule Europe.  At 8 pm I had to go live on France24, although fortunately not to deal with any suspicions that Macron is a shape shifting lizard.   At 5.30 am on Christmas Day, my phone rang again.

So I am quite looking forward to getting my life back.  If I was a MP or a member of the upper house, I would vote in favour of the deal on the grounds that a thin deal is better than no deal at all.  (BTW, congratulations to my former student Vernon Coaker on his peerage, but it does need reforming).

I did vote for remain and I actually campaigned in the north of England.  Invited to be the warm up act for Ken Clarke by Skipton's MP, I encountered an audience full of UKIP supporters.   The first question asked was why was I a waffler?  (Less so than some academics).  The second was how much the EU paid me.  (Nothing).

When Ken came on, a man walked on to the platform, pointed his finger at Ken and said 'You are a traitor to the country, Mr Clarke.'   Needless to say, Ken was not in the least bothered and gave a lively speech with some good jokes.

Having seen the EU close up sitting on a technical committee and as a research leader, as well as organising a MPA class in Brussels for many years, I have a lot of concerns with its decision-making processes.  Reforming them is a monumental effort.  If reform was possible, we wouldn't have had a dysfunctional and expensive Common Agricultural Policy for so long.

Nevertheless, I am sceptical about the possibilities of a new special relationship for the UK.   The idea of the UK sitting at the heart of three overlapping circles of the US, Europe and the Commonwealth doesn't wash any more.  I persuaded Andrew Gamble to write an essay for Political Quarterly on Brexit and the 'Anglosphere': https://politicalquarterly.blog/2020/12/15/after-brexit-the-anglosphere/

For me it's goodbye to the EU not au revoir.  We could only be readmitted on tough terms.   However, I see that a petition on a referendum to rejoin has started.

What I would find much more of a blow is the end of the union with Scotland which is a real risk.  As someone of Scottish descent in the direct male line and a graduate of a Scottish university, I would feel I was losing part of my identity.   More significantly, an England without Scotland could well be a less pleasant place.

As Anand Menon points out, we could be in for a very interesting debate about deregulation versus an interventionist state: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/a-deal-is-done-but-what-happens-now/?fbclid=IwAR233hWOYZ7dgLCE0MB6uc5HXmDOIeCtgDMqlHjSGnSx1oHHS-4QlIZpB0g

Thursday 10 December 2020

Government handling of pandemic erodes support

A report from the Nuffield College Elections Unit suggests that the Government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has undermined its support among voters: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/media/4388/covidattitudesreport.pdf

As of June 2020, the Government had lost the support of a quarter of its December 2019 voters, who had mainly switched to ‘undecided’.  Conservative losses were greater among the party’s new voters.

Conservative losses, coming so soon after an historic electoral win, were primarily due to perceptions that the government had not tackled the pandemic competently, rather than because of ideological positions on the appropriateness of a full-scale national lockdown. A third of new 2019 Conservative voters thought the government had handled the crisis badly, whereas this figure was only around a fifth for those voters who voted Conservative in both 2017 and 2019.