The lucky unlucky generation of politics students

Reflecting on a chaotic week in British politics. I keep thinking how exciting things must be for anyone doing an A-Level in Politics at the moment or starting one soon. I can't help comparing this to when I did my politics A-level from 1992 to 1994.

In the preceding decade there had been one change of Prime Minister - when John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The big "current" story was analysing the gap between the polls - which predicted Labour would win the 1992 General Election - and the reality, when John Major won a slight majority to extend Tory government for another five years. In the USA, Bill Clinton won the Presidential Election against the incumbent President, which was slightly unexpected because incumbents usually win. We did one year on UK politics and the second year on US politics, so Clinton's win was well-timed to be current. 

And that was just about it. The various seminars I went to in the course of my A-Level had very little else to discuss except for those misleading polls. I heard lots of theories about it, including from Tony Benn and Alastair Campbell before he became the infamous master of spin for Tony Blair. The most obvious reason for it was that people were ashamed to admit they voted Tory so lied to pollsters. 

Compare and contrast that to the situation now. A decade ago we were in the middle of the first official coalition government of my lifetime. There was a referendum on independence in Scotland. Then there was a General Election where the Tories won an unexpected majority as the Liberal Democrats reaped the reward for their alliance with the Tories and were immolated at the ballot box. That was 2015 - seven years ago - and everything has gone all kinds of crazy since. 

The only picture of this man you will see on this blog

Anyone studying "recent events" since then would struggle to keep up. There was the Brexit referendum (I voted to Remain). David Cameron quit as Prime Minister and was replaced by Theresa May. She gambled on getting a larger majority to push Brexit through against her own rebel MPs, and then lost the governmental majority in a general election in 2017. 

Although Theresa gamely struggled on, she was effectively sacked by her party in 2019, replaced by Boris Johnson. He then called another election - in 2019 - and won a massive majority by promising to "Get Brexit Done". That got fast-tracked and the UK had a 'hard Brexit' in January 2020 ending the 47 year membership of the EEC / EU. And then we've had all the ongoing shenanigans, corruption and lies culminating in a resignation that wasn't really a resignation.

And that's just the UK. The USA political scene hasn't been quite as dramatic, although the election of Donald Trump, thanks in a large way to the weaponisation of evangelical Christians in a 'Culture War', and particularly the end of his reign with an attempted insurrection on the steps of the Capitol, could keep an A-level student in essay topics for days. (Incidentally, the Tories have attempted to co-opt religion over here - it's just not such a massive demographic to tap in to.)

I really don't know where people would start studying all that. Even so, part of me is kind of jealous when I think of how boring politics was in the early 90s.

However, my envy for the current generation of A-Level students is tempered by knowing they are going to have to live with the consequences of all this nonsense. Particularly Brexit, which is already having dire economic consequences. But also the way the country now seems to have a choice of frothing right-wingers intent on pandering to racists and bigots to be its next leader. Who knows what fresh hell will be unleashed from the people eyeing up the job of Prime Minister.

Today's students are going to have to live with these consequences for longer than I will. They might have more to write about in their A-Level work, but at what cost?

Popcorn politics

Well, this is some week in politics (and it's not over yet).  It's been a week to break out the popcorn, settle down and watch the news. Much of the country has watched faintly aghast and disgusted as the Prime Minister has tried to hang on to office like a particularly persistent bacteria fights a rear-guard action against antibiotics.

I'm just going to go ahead and post this tweet, because it's rare enough that I get to say "I told you so" quite so spectacularly. So indulge me.

If you want to see some other things I've tweeted about Boris Johnson over the intervening period, here is a handy preloaded Twitter search. It's not complimentary. 

The real problem, as Cathy succinctly pointed out to me, is that people knew what he was like - he has a history of racist remarks, abandoning his multiple families, lying, taking large amounts of money from dubious donors, and pandering to right wing racists. And people overlooked all that and voted for him anyway.

This current political meltdown is on all of the people who voted for this arch-charlatan. We know why they voted for him in droves. He said he would get Brexit done. Which, I will admit grudgingly, is about the one promise he has kept. Even if it was a brutal version of Brexit that is tanking the economy and will impoverish future generations.

Almost immediately after the UK crashed out of the EU we had the pandemic, which is being spun to us as a Boris success. Except it wasn't. The UK has the highest number of deaths compared to EU and EAA countries in Europe (including 20,000 people who have died so far in 2022). It wasn't Boris that saved the nation from an even worse outcome. It was NHS staff who reorganised services in double quick time, worked to breaking point, and organised the largest vaccine roll out ever seen in the UK.

The NHS saved his life too. And what was the thanks - when the wave of stories about lockdown parties in Number 10 broke - Boris Johnson's defenders said it was no different to nurses having a drink in the break room at the end of their shift. This slur has been angrily challenged by every healthcare professional I know.

In my most uncharitable moments, I have said that the biggest tactical mistake ever made by anyone working in the NHS was keeping Boris Johnson alive. I'm not saying a replacement would have been outlandishly better, but it can hardly have been any worse.

So we come to the last few months. Almost every week has brought a new scandal. More hypocrisy. More corruption. More sexual indiscretions. (The most recent one caused an explosion of jokes when he was alleged to have knocked up his hairdresser. Most people seemed incredulous that he had a hairdresser.) More lies - until eventually a civil servant said enough was enough and publicly stated that Boris Johnson definitely did know that his deputy chief whip was a serial groper and his denials were lies. 

Even the way he has sort of resigned today reveals the real Boris Johnson. He snidely blamed the 'herd mentality' of Tory MPs, subtly implying they lost their nerve and were bitter ingrates. He saw the last election as his victory, his parliamentary majority to do with as he wished, his mandate to rule, and now it was being taken away from him because of the cowardice of others. No sense that he brought this on himself. In his eyes it can't possibly be his fault even though his decisions are the fuel that has kept this bin fire raging for months. He's not even leaving properly - appointing himself the sitting duck caretaker Prime Minister so he can stay in his corrupt little palace for as long as possible. 

So he is going. Not gone. Like I said, the week ain't over, Neither is this shitshow.

Doomscrolling

Let's start this week with a new word that I recently saw on Twitter: Doomscrolling. 

The all-round comms genius that is Helen Reynolds, directed me to the dictionary definition courtesy of Merriam-Webster.

(Doomscrolling and doomsurfing are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening...)

Sometimes I discover a word and think, 'ooh, I do that'. It's very hard to break away from reading about the various ongoing things that upset or enrage me. Whether it's the economic slo-mo car crash of Brexit, the disgusting levels of government corruption, or the toxic stupidity of covid denialists, there is always more to read. There is always a new grubby revelation. The stupidity bar keeps dropping every time a true believer in a pandemic conspiracy or an ardent Brexiteer opens their mouth.

And I keep scrolling!

I do my best to keep my timelines upbeat and non-toxic. But somehow the doom creeps through!

(A big thanks to Helen for her help. Helen runs Comms Creatives, offering great courses in social media. Helen is also a cartoonist!)

Reflecting on 2021 – the year in politics

Another review post, of yet another year that's been interesting politically...

In January the UK officially left the European Union. This was Boris Johnson’s promise that won his party a majority in the 2019 General Election – that he would “Get Brexit Done”. Except, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. There is a general reluctance to honestly assess the problems the UK is facing as a result of Brexit. Instead the government line seems to be that everything is going fine and if it’s not going fine, that’s the fault of those pesky Europeans.

But there are loads of things that aren’t going fine. Earlier this year there was a lot of coverage about the shortage of lorry drivers, due to Brexit. There has been a steady stream of different businesses that have been badly affected by new import and export barriers. More recently, a trade deal with Australia looks like it is going to be a disaster for Welsh farmers. We still don’t know what is going to happen with regards to Northern Ireland where the peace agreements signed in the mid-90s are dependent on open borders with the Republic. It’s all a mess and the people who are meant to be sorting it out keep quitting.

Throughout the year there have also been revelations of government sleaze and corruption at an unparalleled level. From Boris Johnson purloining funds to pay for expensive flat furnishings, to preferential treatment for political donors when emergency contracts related to the pandemic were awarded, through to the media breaking story after story of government ministers and advisors flouting covid restrictions and partying while the rest of the country suffered, it seems to have been a non-stop train of grubbiness, pilfering and backhanders.

This has led to an interesting phenomenon of a succession of Tory ministers going out onto the interview circuit to peddle the official lie (sic) to try and mitigate public anger, only for new evidence to be presented, which then prompts an admission that, yes, they have been naughty. The Prime Minister doesn’t seem to care that he is making his loyal acolytes look like chumps time after time. And yet he still seems to have a ready list of people willing to go out and lie for him and then be exposed as liars themselves. Clearly they aren’t that smart, that they keep doing it.

In comparison to the never-ending corruption circus in Westminster, the Welsh Government looks stable and boring, even. We had a Senedd election this year and everybody was surprised that Labour did as well as they did, retaining governmental power again. 

Senedd election leaflets

The Conservatives made gains too, at the expense of the various warring factions that used to be UKIP. I interpret that as evidence that the Tories are now very right wing, because they seem to have hoovered up those votes and hollowed out their opponents to the right.

Plaid Cymru didn’t make any gains in the Senedd, which was disappointing for people with a preference for Welsh Independence. It feels like much of the energy has been lost from the Independence movement. That may be due to lockdowns and living through the pandemic perma-crisis, but there has also been a lot of nastiness within the big independence organisation, Yes Cymru.

As the UK Government lurched from embarrassment to embarrassment in 2020, Yes Cymru membership grew to 17,000. However, it had dropped to less than 9,000 by the time of the vote on the future of the organisation in early December 2021. There have been some long-running toxic rows on Twitter. None of these rows are about the big questions of independence; instead they have almost all been focused on trans rights and opinions held by some people within the movement.

This seems to have completely derailed Yes Cymru as an organisation. I have heard some mutterings that the whole trans rights issue blew up after the UK Government formed a ‘Union Task Force’ to look at countering the growing independence movement. I feel it’s an overreach to claim the trans rights issue was a false flag used to splinter a progressive movement. Similar debates have taken place in the Green Party and in other movements, so it’s not unique to Yes Cymru. But it has damaged the organisation, taking away impetus and causing it to stagnate. Back in March I was planning to start blogging more on issues related to Independence, but the toxicity in the movement kind of put me off. I’m still a member of Yes Cymru, although I’m not really sure why.

So it has been an interesting year, politically. One more outcome of the Senedd election is a change of health minister, which in turn seems to have delayed work starting on some behind the scenes changes that will have an impact on my job. It’s one of those rare occasions when a politics news story has an effect on me personally. Or at least an effect I notice.

Wisdom from Firefly: losing and being right

I was sure I had blogged about this in the dim and distant past of this blog, but I couldn't find it anywhere when I was compiling posts for my page of cultural posts. So here we go...

Firefly was a short-lived TV show that has garnered almost legendary status among fans of TV science fiction series. It was cancelled midway through its first season, however the fan community has kept it going and there have been comics and board games and similar related media over the last 15 years or so. (Including action figures...)

Yes, I own this...

The set-up of Firefly is very much 'Wild West in space'. Humans fleeing a dying planet Earth have colonised several planets in a cluster of solar systems that makes interplanetary travel possible. Several of the planets are arranged in an Alliance, which favours the interests of the more populous and prosperous planets. However, some of the less well-off planets reject the control-grabs of the Alliance and ultimately this leads to a "War of Unification" between the Alliance and the Independent Planets, which the Alliance wins, setting up an authoritarian government and trying to impose laws on the newly "unified" planets.

Some of the main characters in Firefly fought for the Independent Planets. The soldiers wore long brown overcoats and were known as 'Browncoats' as a result. Malcolm Reynolds, known as Mal, is the captain of Serenity, a Firefly-class spaceship. He was a Browncoat and still wears his military coat on a day-to-day basis in his post-war career of transporting goods between planets (sometimes illegally).

At one point Mal is questioned about some shady dealings by a hostile Alliance Officer who asks him how it feels to have been on the wrong side in the war. Mal looks him squarely and says:

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

I've thought about that phrase a lot over the last few years. It particularly resonates when I think about the EU referendum and the subsequent chaos that has followed. I am still convinced that leaving the EU was an utterly terrible idea, for so many reasons, and I am convinced that a great many people were manipulated into voting to leave the EU by individuals who stood to gain from Brexit and were determined to do anything to get that result. 

I find the idea of accepting loss while still holding onto principles and beliefs is very encouraging. It's a good way of responding to setbacks. Losing doesn't mean we were wrong. 

We are already witnessing how Brexit is turning into precisely the damaging outcome that was routinely dismissed as fear-mongering during the campaign, and we are less than six months out of the EU. There is a lot more to come. I have a feeling I will be thinking of Mal Reynolds' reply quite a bit over the next few years.  

"Common sense" in politics

Something I noticed in the election leaflets we have received in the run up to the Senedd election are appeals to 'common sense'. This was especially noticeable on the leaflet from UKIP, but it also featured in the screed on the Freedom Alliance party leaflet.

Appealing to "common sense" is soundbite politics. Any point of view is made to seem reasonable because it's "common sense". Saying something is common sense means it's obvious, it's what everyone thinks, and by extension, that commonness is because it's correct. "Common sense" is the great leveller. You don't need an education or a deep knowledge of the subject or any grounded experience to know what to do as long as you are following common sense. It's the calling card of the opinionated bore who has an answer for any situation and brooks no follow up questions. 

The appeal to Common Sense fails because it's a form of magical thinking. You don't need to know how these complex systems work - just apply a bit of common sense. With common sense you don't need to understand geopolitics - just send the migrants back. You don't need to understand international trading arrangements, just Vote Leave. You don't need to be aware of how you are being manipulated by shadowy data companies, Facebook keeps telling you that Boris will get Brexit done so vote for him!

I feel like I run up against common sense a lot. I hear people who have never worked in the NHS talking about how to fix it and they are almost always focused on exactly the wrong things. There have been some bold plans laid out in election promises this year. Plaid Cymru and the Tories are seeking to outdo each other on how many new doctors they will get for the Welsh NHS. But nobody asks the questions about whether that is what the NHS really needs. After all, it's common sense. The system isn't working so let's throw more people into it until it does.

Similarly the Conservative solution to congestion on the M4 is to build another motorway. Every traffic expert in the world will tell you that building more roads only increases traffic. 

Common sense provides easy answers to dfifficult problems, and I think that's why people like it. But as a way to make decisions that will affect all our lives, it's disastrous. 

I will be voting to stay in the EU and here are some reasons why...

On a message board I was part of a discussion about the upcoming EU referendum that spilled out of a person explaining why he voted UKIP. His reason was that "I think national sovereignty is the defining issue of our generation."

I asked him why. I had to ask him several times before he came out with "I don't like them telling us what to do." Or in other words, I don't like being told what to do by foreigners. Apparently it's OK to be told what to do by people who were born or who live in this country and definitely don't have your best interests at heart unless you're a millionaire or a member of the Eton old boys network, because at least they aren't foreign!

Putting aside the basic racism of that point of view for one moment, does it really make sense? The UK is one of the powerhouse economies of Europe. It's got a lot of people and it should have a lot of say and a lot of sway in Europe as a result. I can see tiny countries like Belgium and Denmark deciding they don't want to be pushed around any more, but the UK is big enough to be among the big hitters. The fact that we don't feel we are is more to do with the ineptitude of our leaders than anything else.

Let's be honest if we put Merkel up against Cameron, only a true-blue rosetted moron would seriously bet against Merkel. I'd question whether Cameron could hold his own against any premier from one of the big European countries, and most of the smaller ones. He's a political lightweight and that's why the UK has floundered in Europe in the five or so years he's been in charge.

In fact, the only reason a referendum is in the offing is because Cameron lacked faith in himself. It was a sop to the euro-sceptic Tories to stop them defecting to UKIP and everyone thought the parliament was heading towards coalition government again. No way Cameron would ally with UKIP if they returned any MPs (which in the end they effectively didn't, because their one MP was a Tory who switched sides in a bacon-saving move), and any other party wouldn't want a referendum, so Cameron knew it was a promise he would never have to follow up on. Unless the unthinkable happened and he won an outright majority. Oops.

Well, sometimes if you don't back your own horse in the race you end up looking like a chump.

Cameron doesn't want a 'Brexit'. (Yes, the British Exit has it's own bastardised nickname now.) Of course he doesn't. It would be a disaster for the main financiers of the Conservative party and the home counties core voting districts. Economically, the uncertainty would damage the stock market, trading agreements would be torn up and we would no longer be a key player in a very good team. We would be one against many and we would be owned by China within a generation - their trading post on the edge of Europe, a bit like we used to use Hong Kong.

But the economic meltdown that would ensue following a Brexit and the destruction of the stock market aren't really my reasons for staying in the EU. I'm not a fan of the money-making-money empire of Mammon so I won't mourn its passing, even if it's a hard time to live through.

My reasons are simpler. Here's one: we haven't had a major war in Western Europe for over seventy years now. I think the EU has played some part in that. When you are sitting down working out ways to work more closely together, there is less likelihood of people gunning up and prepping for war.

Seventy years war-free on our continent is pretty much unheard of and we have all reaped the benefit. We are the richest generation ever with luxuries and technology which our forefathers could only dream of. Yes, that has made us hated in the parts of the world we could describe as the 'have nots', which brings it's own ethical considerations into play, but most people in the UK have a standard of living that would be unheard of in previous generations. When you aren't spending money on bombs and then using those bombs to blow things up, you can achieve a great deal as a group of countries.

I think that's a good reason to stay in the EU.

Then there is the way money is spent. I know it makes no sense for the UK to contribute to European funds and then claim the money back to spend in poor areas, just like it makes no sense to take tax off poor working people and then pay them benefits to limit the impact of poverty. But that process of Euro funding has really helped in parts of the UK that I call 'not-London'.

Just about every major infrastructure project in South Wales - from fast, safe roads to the lovely Cardiff Bay developments to the new Swansea Marina - has been funded by European money. Yes, it's our money they are giving back to us, but that's the point, it's coming back to us. London governments are very good at spending money in London and even when they don't, it's money spent in the provinces to benefit London (HS2 anyone?).

The EU has made the redistribution of wealth easier and better. Do we think a London government would have bothered revitalising Cardiff Bay? No, of course not. They were happy to hoover up the cash when the valleys were exporting coal by the shipload, but it was Euro money and Euro laws that cleaned up the toxic effects of mining and helped turn Cardiff into the snazzy happening place it is today. And the same is true of many regional cities in England.

And then there's the third thing, the real big reason. Being part of the EU protects us from extremist governments back home. This is the plus side of 'them' telling 'us' what to do. It prevents 'us' from doing something stupid by voting for an evil government.

I've been reading my Grandad's memoir recently and he wrote about how he was caned at school for speaking Welsh. This was less than a century ago, when the British government was still pursuing an educational policy that aimed to eradicate the Welsh language. It worked in my family. My Grandad stopped speaking Welsh and that was lost.

No EU government could do that now. It would be considered a breach of a child's human rights to beat them for not speaking the 'correct' language. I don't really think a UK government would want to pursue a policy of suppression, but let's say they did. Inside the EU, they can't. Outside the EU they can.

We have to careful with politicians. We know they say one thing to get elected then do another when they are. Cameron and his cronies never mentioned austerity in the run up to 2010. One of Cameron's big promises was 'No top down reorganisations of the NHS'. That was nixed just a year after entering coalition government.

So politicians lie. They tell half-truths or no-truths and they get elected and then they can do what they want. Unless there are checks. Unless there are balances. The EU is one of the best checks and balances we have and I don't want to lose that. I don't want to be at the mercy of a Westminster government as the highest authority in the land, just in case...

So there's three reasons:

1. it's a check on wanton destruction through war, 
2. it redistributes some of the wealth to where it is really needed, 
3. and it puts limits on our national government, which is a good thing if you really think about it.

On the other side there is a nebulous 'I don't like foreigners telling me what to say' proto-racism that calls itself a desire for 'national sovereignty'. But patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. I would like the UK to be bigger, better, more inclusive and safer - I think that's a patriotic statement - and I think that would happen inside the EU rather than outside it.

Incidentally, if you disagree with me you can say so. If you hate the EU, you can say so. You have complete freedom of speech. Do you know why? Well, it's not a British law that gives you freedom of speech. It's because you are in the EU.

And so to a last question. The guy on the message board kept complaining that no one gave reasons to stay in the EU, except I did and he didn't acknowledge them or reply to them. He also didn't answer my other questions, which included this: What law, if any, passed by the EU has directly harmed or damaged you?

I have yet to hear anyone from the 'Brexit' campaign actually answer that.