The simple conclusion from Brexit and Trump

As anyone who either didn't vote for Britain to leave the European Union, or didn't vote for President-Elect Donald Trump, or was not a fan of either one or both these notions tries to process what has happened in 2016, there is one very simple conclusion.

A lot of us are more conservative than we think, and people in general are, quite simply pretty damn conservative. These results are largely about inherent conservatism.

Of course, this should have become obvious during last year's poll-defying general election in Britain. The predicted knife-edge result in a David Cameron versus Ed Milliband contest turned into a pretty comfortable win for Cameron's Conservatives. The phenomenon of secret Tories was born, the people who could really only express their true beliefs in the privacy of the polling booth.

And then it happened again when Brexit triumphed. Secret Brexiters were also in our midst, people who again dared not mention their intention to put their cross in the "leave" box or even to tell this to a pollster, but did so when nobody was looking.

And then, just as Trump promised when he said his victory would be "Brexit plus plus plus", the polls turned out to be utter bunkum, and typing the words "President-Elect Donald Trump" still feels weird to many a journalist's fingers, my own included.

Of course, "conservative" is a broad term. There are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, some people fit into both categories, others are one or the other. But, if we are going to be honest, there is an element of conservatism in a lot of us. 

It takes many forms. Some of them you may recognise in yourself, some you may not. This is the part of us that claims to be a feminist yet fervently checks the Daily Mail's sidebar of shame to mock a famous woman who has had the temerity to put on weight or wear an unflattering dress. This is the person who claims to be socially liberal but still makes fun of the guests on Jeremy Kyle. This is the old school, hard left trade union type who is also a fervent anti-abortionist. This is anyone who likes the security of a monogamous marriage. This is the eyeroll when one sees how much tax comes out of their salary and mutters to oneself that they hope everyone on benefits appreciates their hard-earned. This is the reason why TV programmes such as Benefits Street and Geordie Shore keep getting made. It is the maintaining of a sexist, racist, classist double standard that allows Trump, with his five children to three wives to run for president, but such a marital track record would have denied Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton the same opportunity. It is the part of us that thanks the troops for their service, gets their kids christened despite being agnostic at best, and judges people's sex lives.

And it is this inherent conservatism that leads people to say things like: "Give Trump/Brexit a chance. It might be OK, after all." and "We need to accept the result and move on." Even if they didn't vote for the winning outcome. But for everyone who tells the world to take a chill pill, to calm down, that everything will be fine, there are people fearful in the wake of both the EU referendum and the ascension of Donald Trump. The inherent conservatism that leads to glib calls for calm is almost always based in privilege, from the people who genuinely don't think the referendum or election result will adversely affect them in any way at all.

While there are certainly people from the black, Asian, Hispanic, LGBT and Muslim communities - oh, and women - who voted for Donald Trump, there are plenty of people from these communities who are fearful as to what the future holds. Based on Trump's awful rhetoric, these are not irrational fears. If any of these fears come true, such as mass deportations, travel bans for an entire religion despite it being made up of 72 sects, a rollback of reproductive rights, a daft wall, more inter-racial violence, a society where it is even harder to be take seriously as a sexual assault victim, and so on and so forth, will those who voted for Trump take responsibility? Equally, will everyone who voted Brexit take responsibility if everything truly does turn to shit after the hounds of Article 50 are released?

After all, personal responsibility is a popular principle among conservatives. Will the conservatives who voted for Trump or Brexit take responsibility if their desired utopia does not materialise? 

And it all makes a mockery of left versus right. The lines between the left and the right are now blurred but the inherent conservatism is still there.

The Trump vote was not, as much as Jeremy Corbyn would like to think so, a massive anti-globalist, anti-establishment wake-up call. Donald Trump, in sending jobs to China (and now his daughter, Ivanka, the only woman on his transition team, in sending jobs from China to the even cheaper workforces of Ethiopia) has benefited enormously from globalisation. Plenty of people, stereotypical establishment types, figured they'd do well under Trump and voted accordingly. Conversely, there was certainly an element of anti-globalisation feeling among many a Brexiter, from the hard left to the protectionist right as well. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn are all apologists for Putin's Russia, even though it is a profoundly undemocratic, anti-freedom regime. 

Disturbingly - and elements of the left and right are equally appalling here - there are calls for censorship of journalists and of all manner of media outlets, as well as stifling of peaceful protests. Like the post-Brexit slanging matches, there are gloating Trump voters taking the "we won, get over it" line, as if democracy begins and ends at the ballot box. These people don't want to be challenged by protesters or by the media. And there are plenty on the left these days who are also mad about censorship and won't rest until the BBC morphs into Pravda, Laura Kuenssberg is replaced by Naomi Klein, and the Morning Star is the only newspaper available.

And when you look at who voted for Trump, and realise that there are plenty of educated, wealthy people among them, and when you realise that large swathes of England and Wales voted to leave the EU, even in areas that have benefited enormously from EU membership, it is clear that generalisations about every person who voted in these directions are grossly unhelpful if there is to be constructive dialogue about any of these issues any time soon. 

But there is certainly an undercurrent of inherent conservatism out there and it tells me that a populist leftist movement won't necessarily win out on either side of the pond. 

Elections are won on the centre ground - or the perceived centre ground - in the UK. Right now, the Tories have convinced broad swathes of the electorate that they hold the middle ground. Hell, there are still people who think the NHS is perfectly safe under this government, despite another £700m of our money going to Virgin Care in Somerset while remaining free from the accountability of freedom of information requirements. Indeed, the NHS is a solid example of inherent conservatism again rearing its head. There is no shortage of people who claim to support the NHS but still blame immigrants if they cannot get a GP appointment, have no issue with unchecked outsourcing of health services to the private sector "as long as it remains free at the point of use" and would not bat an eyelid if services such as IVF, transgender healthcare, abortion and birth control, were not covered by the NHS. 

Meanwhile, it's not quite apples and oranges when you compare it all with the US - there would be a political home in America for many a British Conservative MP in the Democrats, for example. David Cameron, Anna Soubry and Justine Greening, for example, would not look out of place as US Democrats, and it is actually not too hard to imagine Hillary Clinton sitting on the green leather benches of Theresa May's Conservative government. On top of all this, I am unconvinced that an ageing, Jewish-often-perceived-as-atheist, self-proclaimed socialist, such as Bernie Sanders would win over enough of America to lead a government. 

None of this points to either Britain or the US crying out for a hard left alternative, as disappointing as many will find that conclusion. While there are certainly differences between British and American societies, both nations are, at heart, conservative. And this is what the opponents of Brexit and Donald Trump need to address if they are to make a real impact.


Picture by Chris/Flickr

An open letter to left-leaning Brexiters

Dear left-leaning Brexiters,

I understand why right-leaning Brexiters voted to leave the EU in May, even if I fundamentally disagree with them. But this letter is not for them. This letter is for the left-of-centre people - in many cases, the hardcore, far-left-let's-destroy-capitalism people - who voted to leave the EU.

What the everloving fuck were you hoping to achieve? What the everloving fuck did you think would happen if the majority actually did vote to leave the EU? Did you really think leaving the EU would amount to some sort of socialist victory? Why could you not see that it was a choice between two forms of capitalism? Are you really so dim as to believe that leaving the EU was going to herald some sort of workers' revolution?

"But this means we're free from TTIP!", I hear you whine.

TTIP has been killed, largely by France. France has been against TTIP from the get-go and in August, President Hollande stalled negotiations again. Couple this with growing opposition in Germany and Angela Merkel desperate to retain power, and there you have it - the two big hitters of the EU in no position to proceed.

But it isn't just French obstruction or a strong German protest movement that is halting TTIP. Labour and Green MEPs were doing excellent behind-the-scenes work to negotiate terms, going through TTIP with a fine toothed comb. Unfortunately, "behind-the-scenes" are the operative words here - nobody bothered to find out about what our MEPs were doing for us. And soon we will have no MEPs, no power of veto in Brussels, and we will be wide open to a US-UK trade deal, regardless of who wins the US election. If anyone thinks that will be a win for Britain, they're deluded.

"But I wanted to kick Cameron out!", I hear you moan.

Yeah, about that. How is that working out for you, dear lefties? When Cameron quit, the glee was palpable on the left, even though at the time, it seemed to herald an inevitable Boris Johnson move to 10 Downing Street. When that fell through, and Andrea Leadsom revealed herself to be awful and inept all at once, Theresa May became prime minister by default. And she is embracing hard Brexit and pandering to the hard right Brexiters like a long lost lover. So much for the safe pair of hands. It is more like a stampeding pair of jackboots at the moment.

And if you are Lexiter who claims to care about the NHS or scientific research or access to the latest medicines, please hang your head in shame. You are part of the problem, contributing to a vote that will probably end freedom of movement and further compound NHS staffing woes, could cost us our European Health Insurance Card for medical treatment in the EU, the risk of lost research funding as part of the EU, and missing out on being part of clinical trials as part of the harmonised approach to medicines regulation. And you have pretty well lost the right to berate Jeremy Hunt about his ridiculous plan to grow more British doctors, despite making the medical profession less attractive than it has ever been to bright students.

Feel free to wave placards about hospital closures and cuts if you like, it's allegedly a free country, but do know that your vote to leave the EU will make whatever we have left of our health system even more precarious. You are just as absurd as anyone who voted to leave the EU because they genuinely believed Boris' bus of bullshit with the stupid "£350 million for the NHS" claim.

Sorry, Lexiters, but you have dropped a bollock. You have helped the hard right usher in a new era of awful policy and there are plenty of aspects of the Theresa May-led hard Brexit that are appealing to a wide number of people. On top of this, we're left with a hapless opposition with which the hard left is enamoured, even though peak Corbyn has been reached with a stacked and skewed inflated membership. Sorry, but this does not actually reflect what the wider electorate is thinking or wants for Britain. Theresa May is currently on a mission to out-UKIP UKIP and it is working. She is being very careful to find just the right level of UKIP-ness for the electorate to tolerate to keep the Tories in power for a very long time.

For those who voted Brexit because they wanted a hard Brexit with no access to the common market and no freedom of movement, congratulations on getting what you signed up for on 23 June. For everyone else who voted out with a completely different idea of what Brexit might look like, you've made your bed and now we all must lie in it. And for those who voted Brexit because they genuinely thought it would result in some sort of socialist revolution, you are genuinely dangerous and stupid.

If I have offended anyone, I really don't care.

Yours sincerely,

Georgia Lewis, militant remain voter







Photography by threefishsleeping/Flickr

Tories versus Labour: The battle of the imploding parties

As the wheels fall off the Conservative and Labour Party clown cars after the referendum, it is too close to call as to which of the two major parties will come out of this debacle stronger. Let's take a look at both teams, shall we?

In the blue corner...

The Conservatives have been caught with their pants down. Nobody seriously expected the Vote Leave campaign to actually succeed. Hell, there were people who voted for Brexit who are surprised that the thing they voted for actually happened.

As such, there is precisely no plan for what to do next. David Cameron should have called an emergency Cobra meeting and there should be an emergency sitting of parliament tomorrow but instead, Dave resigned and hasn't been seen since. What a leader! What a statesman! He looked distraught as he resigned with Samantha tearfully looking on but this is a crisis that he created himself.

Boris Johnson, meanwhile, not only has his pants down but he has probably done a panic-poo in them too. Since the referendum, he hasn't been quite the public gloater everyone thought he'd be if Brexit happened. I'm pretty sure things didn't go according to plan.

For Johnson, a narrow Remain win would have served him well. He could still claim to speak for the "silent majority" and, knowing that David Cameron was going to step aside before the 2020 election, he could make his bid for leadership without being distracted by all that pesky work that needs to be done to extricate Britain from the EU. He shamelessly used the referendum campaign as the start of his leadership bid and was making promises about how Britain would be a land of unicorns for all if we voted to leave and even combing his hair once in a while. Of course, all his promises were smoke and mirrors because he never thought he'd need to come up with a plan to implement them.

Now the man, who as an incompetent mayor couldn't negotiate with tube drivers, is the favourite to be the next Prime Minister and thus, he's meant to lead the way as we negotiate with an entire continent that he has spent the last couple of months slagging off. That can only go well...

The other leadership contended is probably going to be Theresa May, the current Home Secretary. She was pro-remain, she certainly has more gravitas than Boris Johnson and she is largely seen as moderate and sensible. In April, she did call for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights regardless of the referendum result but this is what passes for moderation in the modern Conservative Party. With that in mind, she may be keener to invoke Article 50, which is what the British government needs to do to kickstart divorce proceedings with the EU.

Johnson probably never planned to release the hounds of Article 50 and under his drunk-uncle-trying-to-walk-the-dog-after-Christmas-dinner guidance, he is bound to stall and faff and blunder about. This will only extend the uncertainty and instability and endear us less and less to the EU. Hey presto, we'll have a trade deal with the EU so pathetic, the British export market will be reduced to some obscure Welsh cheese and stuff left over from car boot sales.

In the hour, the BBC has reported that Johnson has said the UK will "intensify" cooperation with the EU (does the EU know this?) and said the 52%-48% result was "not entirely overwhelming". Jesus, Boris, don't bowl us over with your enthusiasm.

He also said that "the only change" will be to free Britain from the EU's "extraordinary and opaque" law (but doesn't seem to have specified which law) and says this "will not come in any great rush".

They are the words of a man who cannot be arsed to negotiate hard with the EU any time soon. Hell, nobody should be surprised if Johnson decides to outsource the negotiations to G4S after the stellar job they did with the 2012 Olympics security.

The one thing the Tories are good at, even when they are in utter disarray behind the scenes, is give the impression that everything is fine. Hence, as soon as the referendum results were in, 84 Conservative MPs, some Brexiters, some remainers, signed the "save Dave" letter. Dave decided to fall on his sword instead, but the letter, as cynical and self-serving as the signatories may have been, is a great way to tell the world they're not going to carve each other up with bitter factional in-fighting.

Which brings us to Labour.

In the red corner...

In the time that I've been writing this post, I've heard the news from the telly downstairs that yet another Labour cabinet minister has resigned from Jeremy Corbyn's front bench. Corbyn is refusing to step down as Opposition Leader and Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell has vowed to manage his campaign to keep his job.

On one hand, we have calls for Jeremy Corbyn to step down in the wake of the referendum results, blaming him for an unenthusiastic campaign for Remain. Given that his Euroscepticism is hardly a state secret, at every campaign event he looked like he'd rather be having root canal work, and with a BBC report that he may have deliberately sabotaged the campaign, this seems like a fair assessment. Of course, it can also be said that there was a lack of passion among many leading Labour Remainers, with the notable exceptions of London Mayor, Sadiq Khan and Ben Bradshaw, the MP for Exeter, but there was an overwhelming feeling that voters didn't really know what Labour stood for on the referendum.

And it is hard to ignore the numbers, as much as the most devoted Corbynistas try. In the referendum and in the local elections, Labour has lost Scotland. Labour took Scotland for granted for too long and the SNP swooped in. The local elections should have been a gift for Labour but the best that can be said about the results is that they were not as bad as they could have been. In a climate of economic austerity with an unpopular Tory government, that isn't enough.

The mandate for Corbyn's leadership is based largely on the new members of the Labour Party, those who paid their three quid to join up after Ed Miliband stepped down. But the problem is that most of these members don't live in the areas where Labour needs to regain ground. In January, the Guardian received internal Labour Party data which revealed that a disproportionate number of new members are city dwellers, many with high paying jobs.

The party is struggling to attract new members among the elderly, in rural areas, in deprived areas, and among the working class. These are the people the Labour Party needs to connect with if they are ever to form government again. And these are the groups who voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. The issue of immigration is the elephant in the room - Labour needs to have intelligent conversations without patronising people if they are going break through here. All the rise in Labour Party membership proves is that people who would probably vote Labour anyway, and are not struggling financially, can spare £3.

The Rant Mistress predicts...

I predict that out of a Boris Johnson-Theresa May leadership race, Boris will win it to become the next PM.

I predict that Jeremy Corbyn is toast as leader of the Labour Party. I suspect Dan Jarvis will be the new leader of the Labour Party.

I predict that in the inevitable general election that will happen before Christmas, the Tories will win but with a reduced majority. Therefore, it would be political suicide for Labour to ditch whomever their new leader will be. If they are to have a hope in 2020, they need to sail a steady ship, work really hard in Scotland and not be afraid of doing a deal with the SNP and possibly a resurgent Liberal Democrat party to form a coalition government.

And if nobody has invoked Article 50 by the time we have this year's next trip to the ballot box, the election will basically be a referendum do-over.

I'll check back on these tips and see just how wrong I was...










Photo by Alex Proimos

Waking up to Brexit Britain...

It was like that awkward moment when you wake up and realise you've shagged the office creep. You remember him at the party, saying things you wanted to hear, and you believed them, whether they were true or not. And then the alarm goes off on a new day, you look across the bed and there he is, in your bed, and you can't quite believe that you went there.

He may be the owner of a radioactively blonde barnet and a drooling leer. Or, possibly, he reeks of beer and fags and is gazing at you with a rictus grin. Either way, he is now refusing to leave and you start to worry that he may take up permanent residence at your flat.

This is how it felt to wake up to a Vote Leave win in the referendum.

And the pound crashed, and the FTSE crashed, wobbled back up again like a drunk kitten and flatlined, exactly as the experts predicted. They were the experts people ignored in favour of wanting a "victory for commonsense". Whatever the hell that means today.

Then Nigel Farage, fresh from despicably trying to claim victim status after Jo Cox was murdered, showed all the sensitivity of a hessian condom, by gloating that "we won it without a single bullet being fired". And then he shut the gate after the horse had bolted by helpfully telling us the pledge that a vote to leave would mean £350m a week for the NHS was "a mistake". Never mind that a cornerstone of the catastrophically dishonest leave campaign was that a Brexit would somehow mean a massive infusion of funds for healthcare.

Another cornerstone of the leave campaign was that "taking back control" of our borders and deciding who we let into the UK would relieve pressures on public services. Plenty of people called bullshit on this before the referendum - we will have to agree to freedom of movement to trade with the EU, same as Norway and Switzerland, and the Vienna Convention means there won't be an instant exodus of EU citizens - but this was ignored by every voter who cited immigration as their main concern.

Daniel Hannan, a Tory Eurosceptic MEP, has essentially told the "piss off, we're full" brigade to prepare to be disappointed. "All we're asking for is some control over roughly who comes in," he said this morning, watering down the tough border control rhetoric of the last few weeks.

In short, the British public has been sold a massive lemon with the leave campaign. The desire to ignore experts has been especially depressing. It is typical of an increasing race-to-the-bottom mentality that seems to be growing like a pitiful fungus. There is a disdain for the educated, as if getting an education and developing experience and expertise in a field is something on which to look down. Would these same anti-experts submit to a tailor for major surgery? After all, it's just a bit of cutting and stitching. Who needs years of medical training for that?

Educated people are being criticised for voting remain on the basis of analysing evidence and reading widely and considering a range of views. This apparently amounts to hatred of the working class. For some, voting with your heart rather than your head was a better methodology for the biggest political decision of our lifetimes.

Nigel Farage was arrogant enough to say that GDP doesn't matter if quality of life improves, except that the two concepts are connected. But nobody really challenged him on that or any of the nonsense he spouted during what was an appalling, unedifying campaign.

Areas of low immigration and high unemployment voted heavily to leave. The leave campaign was obsessed with the job-stealing ways of Polish car washers, as if they were all desperate to wash cars for a living, or somehow felt that in a free market economy, they would be unable to start their own car-washing business in competition. Never mind that there are so many educated EU citizens making amazing contributions to the country or that educated Brits work in professional jobs across Europe. Schrodinger's Immigrant was stealing all our jobs while claiming jobseekers' allowance.

Of course, there is also an element of jealousy, of tall poppy syndrome in regard to British people working in the EU. These are, by and large, the British people who have taken the time to learn other languages and, as a result, enjoy incredible professional opportunities. Like Australians, British people are often shamefully monolingual. But resenting those who have taken their language skills to Europe is simply pathetic.

And then there are the cries of "Sore loser!". With all due respect, grow up. This is not some kids' football game where a wailing six-year-old refuses to accept the offside rule. This is extremely bloody serious and the implications deserve serious discussion and analysis. If we are to come out of this unnecessarily divisive period of British political history equipped with the information and a credible plan to minimise the inevitable hit the economy will take, we need to break it down, to work out how we can find a way to move forward and prosper.

How will we make up the shortfall from losing EU funding and a possibly reduced tax and consumer-spending base? There will be job losses? Do we have a plan to create more jobs? Will the welfare state be an effective safety net in the meantime? What will the role of the public and private sectors be in this vague new world in which we now live? What will our trade relationship with the EU look like? These are all serious economic questions that need to be discussed as a matter of urgency and constructive solutions need to be found.

We also need to discuss racism. Not every Brexiter is a racist. There are people I am proud to call friends and family who voted out. But it is naive to say that racism didn't motivate some voters. We need to be prepared to look into that grim underbelly of British society and deal with the bile and hatred before it eats society alive.

All this because David Cameron was scared of losing voters to UKIP in the last general election.

The campaign turned into Boris Johnson's personal crusade to become Prime Minister. His speeches, while generally bollocks if anyone bothered to analyse them, were carefully designed to set him up as looking more statesmanlike. He made promises he had no business making about what post-Brexit Britain will look like. Right now, he is not the party leader, he is merely the Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Bad luck if any of his constituents want a surgery any time soon. Pish tosh! He is way too busy for such trifles of democracy!

I genuinely thought I'd wake up this morning with a sense of relief, with the realisation that the country didn't metaphorically shag the office creep. I was hoping we would have thought better of being seduced by one-liners and lame Facebook memes and outright lies about everything from Turkey to how laws are made, and decided to give the creep the number of a taxi company instead.

Thanks, Dave. You bet the house on this referendum and the whole debacle has been a lesson in unintended consequences that defies parody. Next time you want to pander to UKIP, meet Nigel down the pub, buy him a few pints and give him a light. After all, you have plenty in common. You are both the establishment that in no way has been defeated.







Photo by Davide D'Amico

"The Turks are coming! Let's be more like Norway!" The latest Brexit campaign panic...

Today, the Brexit campaign is warning us that if we vote to stay in the EU next month, we'll be overrun with Turks. It all exploded this morning on The Andrew Marr Show (BBC One) when Penny Mordaunt, a vote leave campaigner, incorrectly said that the UK would be powerless to stop Turkey joining the EU. Next up, on Peston's Politics (ITV), David Cameron correctly said that the UK has the power of veto over any Turkish bid for EU membership and that it will be "literally decades" before the prospect of Turkey joining the EU is realistic.

Turkey's ambitions for EU membership never really got out of first gear, since applying for European Community membership back in 1987. As long as Turkey continues to illegally occupy the northern third of Cyprus, they're not going to be allowed in. Cyprus too has a veto and Turkey won't even recognise Cyprus. And over the years, genuine concerns about security, human rights and economic reform have further stalled their campaign.

If we vote to leave the EU, we won't ever get the opportunity to veto Turkey's membership.

But why would this matter if we left the EU and had full control of our borders? ask the Brexiters. Because, dear Brexiters, leaving the EU does not automatically guarantee this utopian border control of which you so frequently speak.

If you are a Brexiter who constantly points to Norway as an example of why we'd be just fine out of the EU, you are especially culpable in a bad narrative.

Norway has twice voted to remain out of the EU, first in 1972 and again in 1994, with the out vote narrowly winning each time. But in order to trade with the EU (and anyone who thinks we can simply not bother trading with the EU or negotiate a mutually beneficial trade deal quickly is utterly deluded), Norway must retain all EU financial regulations, employment regulations and product standards and contribute to the EU budget, all while having no say in any of these regulations, standards or contributions. Do you really think the EU will treat the UK like a special snowflake in this regard if we vote to leave? Please. Do not be so naive.

On top of that, free movement of people, as per EU rules, is central to Norway's relationship with the EU. Yet Norway has no say in the making of these rules. This has resulted in a higher inward migration of EU citizens into Norway than the UK when measured as a percentage of total population. So, in decades to come, if we vote to leave, we'd have no say in Turkey's EU membership and, in order to keep trading with the EU so the economy doesn't completely tank, we'd have to give Turks freedom of movement into the UK if they ended up joining.

In short, if you think leaving the UK will mean less people in the country, and therefore less pressure on the NHS, schools and social services, you are wrong.

The Vienna Convention of 1969 would give EU citizens already living in the UK legal protections post-Brexit because of individual acquired rights. The convention says that the termination of a treaty "does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination".

Bang goes the Brexit arguments that leaving the EU would mean we could trade with the EU without letting in EU citizens or that we'd instantly be able to pull a drawbridge up on EU citizens coming to work here.

Additionally, plenty of businesses would struggle if they had to sponsor the visas of EU citizens, as is the case with non-EU staff. This would be crippling particularly for many businesses which rely on staff who can speak European languages. As long as the average Brit remains embarrassingly monolingual, plenty of employers will require the services of EU citizens.

On top of all this, the Norwegian example is particularly ridiculous especially when spouted by conservative Brexiters. The simplistic moronomics of the Brexit campaign, as encapsulated in the stupid campaign bus (made in Poland and Germany...) goes along the lines of "If we leave the EU, we will have £350 million per week to put into the NHS". Except the bus slogan neglects the money we get back as a result of being in the EU, such as the billions invested in the European Regional Development Fund, money made in trade and contributions by EU citizens who are resident here and are paying taxes and being economically active consumers.

If anyone seriously thinks the government,  particularly the current one, will match the funding we receive from the EU, especially for infrastructure projects and especially in the north of England, think again.

"But Norway is doing alright without all this EU funding!" comes a howl from the Brexit peanut gallery.

Again, if you are a conservative Brexiter and you think this is a good argument, you are being absurd. Norway is one of the highest taxed nations in the world. This is how it funds things. While this may appeal to left-leaning Brexiters, you cannot be taken seriously for a nanosecond if you are a low-tax conservative Brexiter using Norway as an example. VAT is at 25%. Corporation tax is 25%, the top rate of income tax is 46.9% and ordinary income is flat-taxed at 27%. Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is consistently above 40%, as opposed to just above 30% in the UK. All tax rates for Norway are well above the OECD average - this would be a massive vote loser for the UK, regardless of who is in power. The Norwegians might well be perfectly happy with this tax burden but it is naive to think this will fly in the UK.

But the sad truth is that this whole EU referendum debate is degenerating into an unedifying Dave versus Boris spectacle along with people trying to win the argument with internet memes. If the standard of debate improves over the next month, I will be amazed.

Politics: It's all about perception

What a total shower last week was for British politics, and in particular for the Labour Party. It didn't have to be quite so embarrassing. Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, was suspended over a Facebook post from 2014 that suggested Israel should be moved to the United States. She gave a classy and dignified apology and we may not have heard quite so much about whether or not Labour has an anti-semitism problem if Ken Livingstone hadn't happened.

It was just one of many examples of how utterly incompetent the media management is in the Labour Party. Yes, yes, I know all about right-wing media bias, but even with the might of the Murdoch press, the Telegraph and the Mail, there is no excuse for the pitiful media management that is going on in the Labour Party at the moment.

If Seumas Milne had anything resembling a clue, he would not let Ken Livingstone on the telly. Censorship? Maybe. Self-preservation of the party by reining in a loose cannon? Definitely.

It does not really matter whether you think Livingstone's comments this week were anti-semitic or not. What does matter is how it is perceived beyond the Labour Party echo chamber. And Livingstone was perceived as coming across like a drunken uncle at a wedding. Why anyone thought it would be a good idea to trot him out to defend Naz Shah is anyone's guess. Why he thought it'd be prudent to describe Hitler as a Zionist while attempting to defend Naz Shah is equally astounding.

Livingstone picked up the Godwin's Law ball, ran with it, crossed the try line, did a victory lap, and then ran out of the stadium. And kept running as if he was Forrest Gump.

This week's farce, complete with Livingstone hiding in a disabled loo while journalists barked questions about Hitler at him through the door, created a ridiculous paradox.

On one hand, the Livingstone debacle and subsequent inquiry into anti-semitism in the Labour Party dominated the news cycle at the expense of all manner of important stories. Labour did not come out of this looking particularly good, even though the Tories could benefit from their own inquiry into racism, after Boris Johnson's awful comments about Barack Obama and a London mayoral campaign from Zac Goldsmith that has enough dog whistles to summon all 101 dalmatians.

But on the other hand, elections in the UK are not won and lost on foreign policy in relation to Israel and Palestine. This may come as a shock to the chattering classes on both sides of the debate, but it's the brutal truth.

With this week's local elections, we will soon find out whether the damage has been done.

Despite this week's often highly staged drama, it is pretty likely that Sadiq Khan will be the next mayor of London. Naturally, he is being slammed in certain quarters for criticising Livingstone. But what else did people expect him to do? A man who describes Hitler as a Zionist "before he went mad" is an electoral liability. And Labour needs to be elected to make any impact.

While a Khan victory will be good news for the beleaguered Labour Party, it will be interesting to see if the predicted decimation of Labour happens in local elections outside of London. London is not the rest of Britain and it is not a litmus test for broader election results. It could well be the case that voters will punish a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party outside of London, given that outside of the Labour Party, he is not polling well. Or maybe people will simply vote on local issues. Weirder things have happened in British politics.

The other brutal truth is that elections in the UK are won on the middle ground. Or on what is perceived to be the middle ground.

At the last election, the Conservative Party did an excellent job of convincing people that they represented the middle ground. Plenty of people now regret voting Conservative, but plenty of people voted that way in good faith. It is churlish for the left to slag off regretful Tory voters now. It is just another way to create divisions when people should be coming together.

Right now, there is so much going on with this wretched government that should be a gift for Labour.

This week, during Prime Minister's Questions, there was a junior doctors' strike going on. But this had all but vanished from the news cycle by Thursday afternoon. This should have been how Corbyn kicked off his questions, with an excoriation of David Cameron for losing control of his failed marmalade mogul health secretary, a robust defence of junior doctors, and evidence of every Labour MP supporting junior doctors on picket lines this week (if indeed they did this or was Heidi Alexander too busy faffing on with the daft pilot idea?). Instead, he led with a question on the forced academisation of schools - it is a very important issue, don't misunderstand me here, and it deserved a hard question -  but Corbyn should have kicked things off with the junior doctors and the NHS.

The Labour Party currently has a terrible tin ear for public opinion, an embarrassing inability to capture the news cycle.

And none of this is helped by Corbyn constantly storming away from journalists instead of answering questions. Even though politicians of all stripes do this, it makes Corbyn in particular look like a grumpy old man who can't be bothered to engage with the media and therefore the wider public. And then the media coverage grows ever more hostile. The coverage is frequently unfair or just plain absurd, but it will keep happening as long as Labour's media strategy is so poor.

Like I said, it is all about perception. Sadiq Khan understands this, but neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Seumas Milne do. And as long as they maintain their tin ears and only listen to advice they want to hear, the much-needed middle ground will be out of their reach. Its easy to say that they don't want the middle ground, but they cannot do a damn thing from the sidelines apart from wave at Ken Livingstone as he runs past.

It's EU Referendum campaign season! *opens wine*

The date is set! June 23! David Cameron had no choice but to fulfil his election promise of an in-out EU referendum. I'm voting to stay in. There! I said it! It's liberating to come out!

Yes! Dave has done a deal in Brussels! Never mind that everyone there wanted to discuss bigger issues, such as the migrant situation, rather than arguing over Britain's welfare provisions. Never mind that Dave has basically made a mountain out of a mere £30 million molehill of benefits for foreigners. It's all about looking like he is doing something that will appeal to the Daily Mail readers. My response to the deal is "meh". My views on the EU remain the same as they were before he went to Brussels, trying not to look like a virgin at an orgy.

Jeremy Corbyn's column on the referendum in the Guardian yesterday was largely sensible but it is the soundbites that ended up on the news that people will notice and these made him sound ungracious and not entirely convinced that we should stay in the EU. Corbyn's Euroscepticism is not exactly a state secret and this is already undermining his credibility in the campaign.

Labour MP for Exeter, Ben Bradshaw, however, did an excellent job on Sky News yesterday responding to Cameron's deal. It was pitch perfect, just the right mix of class and criticism, while still putting forward a clear and positive case for staying in the EU. He came across like a real leader.

The irony of the Vote Leave campaigners accusing anyone of scaremongering is laughable, given that Nigel Farage's entire schtick is based on fear of anything a bit different and a pathetic yearning for good old days that weren't actually that good at all. That'd be Nigel Farage who could actually do some good for Britain by bothering to turn up to debate on behalf of us all and attend votes once in a while as an MEP instead of just making his vague and pointless claim that he is our eyes and ears in Brussels. He is as much on the gravy train as any Eurocrat.

The Vote Leave campaign also has the dubious presence of Michael Gove, who was an utterly appalling Education Secretary. He wrote a 1,500-word diatribe about why he wants to leave the EU, which starts with five excruciating paragraphs about how his standpoint "pains" him, how he hates ever so much to disagree with David Cameron and is now probably worried about awkward dinner parties in years to come.

George Galloway is an awful pig of a man and a rape apologist so he's clearly a boon to the Vote Leave campaign.

Ian Duncan Smith, meanwhile, has imposed awful policy on the disabled people of Britain that is as cruel as it is economically illiterate, so it makes perfect sense that he wet his whistle by claiming we're more vulnerable to terrorism if we stay in the EU. Yeah. Because Daesh cares really deeply about EU membership when choosing its targets. And, in any case, it's not as if this government is in any rush to open the borders to refugees in any great numbers - and that is the group to which IDS was referring in his tantrum on the BBC today. Another case of the Tories trying to out-UKIP UKIP for political gain.

And speaking of political gain, Boris Johnson has only formulated his position on the EU based on what he thinks is best for Boris Johnson. If you have seriously formed your view based on what Boris Johnson says he will do, you are, with all due respect, a fucking idiot. Boris is egomaniacal enough to believe his position will have real sway with the electorate and he has taken an educated gamble by backing Vote Leave.

If Britain votes to leave the EU, that is the end of David Cameron's political career and Boris can stick his irritating head over the parapet as a candidate for the Conservative Party leadership. This is obviously his big dream here. And if we vote to stay, Boris can still claim to speak for large, Eurosceptical swathes of the electorate and he will get a nice job in the cabinet based on the notion that he will win UKIP voters back to the Tories.

Nothing Boris has done today has anything to do with what is good for the country or for wider notions of democracy. Nothing.

And then there are the Eurosceptical voices from the left. One of the main objections to staying in the EU is opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). If passed in its current form, it is a free trade agreement that will open up UK government contracts to the US, not just the UK and EU, as is the case at the moment.

But to vote to leave the EU based on TTIP is to then trust the Conservative government to not just go ahead and sign their own free trade deal with the US, with even less safeguards than TTIP and negotiated without the might of other European nations behind us. Indeed, opposition to TTIP is growing across Europe, with Germany being a strong case in point. France, meanwhile, is making it very clear that they will not support the dispute resolution mechanisms of TTIP as things stand right now.

If TTIP loses the support of the two big economies Germany and France, the whole deal is on very shaky ground.

Like it or not, we have a Conservative government in place here until 2020. Do you seriously think a post-Brexit Conservative government will just forget the whole idea of a free trade agreement with the US or negotiate a deal that is in the interests of the people of Britain? After all, one of the big alleged selling points of Brexit is that the UK will be able to make free trade agreements with gay abandon. Nigel Farage loves to bang on about this with tedious frequency. (Never mind that we already trade with the rest of the world and our pandering to China and Saudi Arabia is truly embarrassing. That is another rant for another time...).

Similarly, to vote for Brexit because you hate David Cameron is pathetic, small-minded and intellectually bankrupt. I am no fan of David Cameron but I am not basing my EU referendum vote on this any more than I'd base my vote on what Boris Johnson says. As I just said, we have a Conservative government in place here until 2020. Yes, sure, Cameron will go if we leave the EU but there won't be a change in government. It'll be Prime Minister Johnson, May or Osborne. Yeah, voting to leave the EU really showed those Tories!

And then there is the wild card of Scotland. If the SNP can convince its voters to stay in, that is one huge voting bloc right there. Regardless of what Nicola Sturgeon's motives might be for staying in the EU, it was pretty clear during the Scottish independence referendum that many pro-independence voters were also convinced that an independent Scotland would easily waltz into the EU, a process that can take years. The SNP could skewer the Vote Leave campaign as effectively as it skewered Scottish Labour in last year's general election.

Honestly, on one hand, I say roll on, June 23, because Peak Idiocy cannot be too far away with this campaign. On the other hand, I say it's not enough time for people to get to grips with the issues surrounding such a huge decision.

Personally, I believe we are better off having a seat at the top table of such a huge trading bloc. Even if we leave, decisions will be made without us that will still affect us because we are part of the world. We can't just stop the world and get off, as much as tiny-minded isolationists want for that to happen. We are part of Europe and part of the world.

I believe we get more out of the EU than we put in. I know it can be cumbersome and overly bureaucratic but it needs to be reformed with the UK involved rather than watching from across the channel. Freedom of movement works both ways, which UKIP fans seem to forget. The implications for British expats across Europe will be enormous, the irony of UKIP having branches in Spain notwithstanding. There are medical research projects that UK universities will no longer be a part of, there will be EU funding for roads, for the arts, for infrastructure and so on that will be no more.

I do not want to see Britain become an insular little island, closed off to so many opportunities that we currently enjoy as part of the EU. It is because I love both Britain and Europe that I will vote to stay.






Photo by George Hodan

Random rants from a busy Rant Mistress...

I've started a new job, I've been in and out of the country, I'll be out of the country and back again soon, I've been busy, I've neglected to rant. Here, in no particular order, are some random thoughts that I have not gotten around to committing to paper, or indeed the internet.

- Frankly, if the junior doctors' strike was only about pay, so fucking what? I want to live in a country that respects doctors enough to pay them properly. The race-to-the-bottom nonsense of wanting everyone to live in penury is pathetic.

- Richard Dawkins' absurd (and now deleted) tweet saying Queen Rania of Jordan is a good Muslim, showing off her lovely hair, is merely another tragic example of the fetishising of said queen. Sure, she is an attractive, articulate woman with good hair. But, thanks to her position of privilege, she has the luxury of being outspoken in a way that many in her country, particularly journalists do not.

- I don't think Jeremy Corbyn will ever win a general election.

- Trying to get people to understand that PFI and the cost of administering the marketised NHS are the two main cost pressures is bloody exhausting.

- The world will need fossil fuels for a while longer. If you own anything made of plastic or a T-shirt that is not 100% cotton, or you'd prefer to abseil using nylon ropes instead of hemp ropes, then you are using petrochemicals. Sorry.

- Stop asking stupid questions of women over 35 who do not have any children. If she wants to discuss the reasons behind her child-free life in detail, regardless of whether she is childless through choice or circumstance, she will volunteer the information. If not, butt out of her uterus.

- The Revenant is a completely overrated film.

- It is tiresome and ridiculous that the Zika virus outbreak is once again dragging non-scientific anti-vaxx arguments out of the woodwork yet again. Give it a rest. Learn some science. You are embarrassing yourselves.

- Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States of America.

- The UK will vote to stay in the EU - and I suspect the vote won't be as close as people think it will be.

- If you seriously think the homeopathy-mad, failed marmalade mogul, Jeremy Hunt, is a good Health Secretary, you are deluded and I am not sure I can help you.

- Does anyone find Keith Lemon funny?

- It was really moving to see the Stade de France full of spectators watching the France vs Italy Six Nations match yesterday.

- David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are all pathetic negotiators and I refuse to take any of them seriously.

- It is time for long-standing refugee camps in the Middle East to be turned into proper towns with proper schools, hospitals and economic activity, such as businesses and industry.

- Deutschland 83 is excellent television and should cure people of Ostalgie, even if it is a fictitious account. If not, read Stasiland by Anna Funder instead. Romanticising East Germany is ridiculous and makes elements of the left look completely stupid.













Photography by Kim Rempel

Time for Oliver Letwin to come out of the shadows

Two days ago, the Mirror newspaper "revealed" that Oliver Letwin wrote the blueprint for the privatisation of the NHS. Except this has been known by plenty of people for quite some time now. The Mirror made no mention of a book on privatising everything that he wrote back in 1988. It was called Privatising The World: A Study of International Privatisation in Theory and Practice and it has had enormous influence on Conservative party policy ever since.

But who the hell is Oliver Letwin and why should anyone care about him and his 28-year-old book?

Oliver Letwin usually only appears in the public eye when he fucks up. He, like many of his colleagues on both sides of the House of Commons, has been caught up like the vile hypocrites many of them are, in expenses scandals. And he is probably best remembered for being the colossal bellend who threw important papers in a London park bin. It turned out they were letters from his constituents. Apparently, in the minds of his apologists, this somehow made it OK, not quite as bad as tossing official business out with the rubbish.

And, pitifully, apart from a few dissenters, his constituents didn't seem to mind their views being treated with such utter contempt by the man they pay to represent them, because he is still, like a smug and brattish barnacle, their MP. He has been the MP for West Dorset for 19 years, a seat which has been held continuously by the Conservative Party since 1885.

Because he is such a gaffe-prone car crash of a man, he is not trotted out during election campaigns, he does not appear much on telly, and the fact he has written a book, even though it has been a blueprint for Tory policy for more than 20 years, is certainly kept quiet on purpose.

And Letwin was back in the news the other week because he did something embarrassing and made a non-apology apology. He revealed his contempt for black people in a memo when he was a policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher in 1985, saying that assistance for black communities would help the "disco and drug trade" and Rastafarian crafts. Frankly, Oliver, you may as well legalise the drugs so people can make money there as well as encouraging disco and Rastafarian craft businesses, if you are truly the free market libertarian you claim to be.

Except that for Letwin and many of his colleagues in this current wretched government, they are only interested in money-making opportunities for themselves and Conservative Party donors. There is certainly an ideological drive towards this government's drive towards privatising everything but we are also being governed by a party whose MPs are up to their eyeballs in vested interests and serve the needs of their party donors rather than their constituents.

Letwin's 1988 book, Privatising The World: A Study of International Privatisation in Theory and Practice has an interesting title, to be sure. "Theory" rather than "practice" is the operative word for Letwin when it comes to his career. From childhood until he was 26, he was at Eton and then Cambridge University. Academically, he is clearly no fool. Morally, he is a vacuum.

After Cambridge, despite zero experience in the real world, he joined Margaret Thatcher's policy unit. He has also been a bank director, written a few other things, and from 1997 onwards, he has been a constantly promoted MP, albeit one who is not given much media prominence by the party. This is clearly deliberate.

In particular, Letwin has advocated for the privatisation of the NHS. But this is not happening in any blatantly obvious way. It's not even happening in a vaguely competent way. If that were the case, we'd be on a clear path towards the mixed public-private system of Australia - it's not a perfect system, it is currently being messed around with by the current Australian government, but it does not generally leave people in terrible debt, as happens in the US.

It is happening in a way that is far more insidious than that and the incompetence is deliberate. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 paved the way for Clinical Commissioning Groups across the country to make decisions for their local areas. Local people making local decisions sounds great in theory, but in practice, we have CCGs in many parts of the country stacked with members with vested interests in private healthcare and it is not uncommon for them to commission these companies.

Additionally, the administration of the private tenders for the NHS marketplace is one of the biggest cost pressures on the health system. It is difficult to get an exact figure on how much the added bureaucracy costs but estimates vary between £5 billion and £20 billion per year. The other big cost pressure is PFI debt which, unless all the contracts are renegotiated or declared null and void through some excellent lawyering, will probably never be paid off.  In short, PFI (private finance initiative) debts on construction work for hospitals mean British taxpayers are getting such crap deals as one hospital for the price of nine. The billions and billions of pounds that PFI and the marketised NHS cost the system means the "health tourists", women undergoing IVF, and New Year's Eve drunks, and anyone else that the Daily Mail, the Sun, and Daily Express uses as scapegoats, are drops in the financial ocean.

Even when incompetent (but Tory-donating) companies such as G4S get NHS contracts and do things such as kill patients in "never" events, they tend to keep the contracts, even though in the private sector, that kind of thing might well lead to a contract being torn up. Virgin has been running vast chunks of Croydon University Hospital very poorly too, but this has not been the front page news it should be either. A woman died in agony at Croydon after being triaged by a receptionist.

But it doesn't matter to Letwin et al because these fuck-ups, even when a private company is at fault, all serve to whet the public appetite for cuts, closures of essential services and entire hospitals, and selling stuff off, usually to private companies who make vast donations to the Conservative Party.

This government quite literally does not care if people live or die as long as they can continue with their agenda.

And other privatisations are completely cack-handed. Atos has done an abysmal and expensive job of fitness-for-work assessments for the Department of Work and Pensions, for example. All this should be a gift for Labour. But it seems "kinder politics" may be getting in the way. After Letwin's racist gaffe was revealed a few weeks ago, the only real resistance from Labour was to trot out Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, to make a few comments and that was it.

If Labour is at all serious about winning the middle ground back - and winning the middle ground means winning elections - an attack dog approach to Oliver Letwin is essential. Instead of embarrassing, backfiring stunts like throwing Mao's Little Red Book around the House of Commons, Privatising The World needs to be thrown at the government benches. The major news channels and newspapers should request interviews with Oliver Letwin and tell the readers and viewers if he refuses to be interviewed/is not given permission from Tory spin doctors to be interviewed.

We need to see more of Oliver Letwin's Alfred E. Neumann-like face in the media, as a constant reminder of what this government is really up to.






Photography by Peter Griffin

Cut the crap on Chinese and Saudi human rights!

Come on, David Cameron. Come on. If you're going to kowtow to China and Saudi Arabia, at least have the honesty to admit that it has sod-all to do with human rights and everything to do with money.

This really has been the week of unedifying spectacles in Britain. The state dinner to honour Xi Jinping served bottles of wine worth £1,450 each - that's one month's rent on a one-bedroom flat in Clapham or a figure not too far above the drop in annual household income that will be experienced by an estimated 20% of British households if the House of Lords can't fend off the planned changes to tax credits. There was the Duchess of Cambridge looking demurely bored, resplendent and obsequious in the red of the Chinese flag. The blokes looked either dapper or awkward in white tie. It was all rather obscene.

Then there was the press conference that wasn't really a press conference. Not if Britain is trying to be a democracy with a free press anyway. Cameron kicked things off by announcing there would only be two questions. Two! One from a British journalist and one from a Chinese journalist. Sorry, Dave, that does not a press conference maketh. But I'm sure you know that. But God forbid we do anything to offend Xi with anything resembling a media holding governments to account. That's not how they do things in China.

And it sure as hell shouldn't be the way things are done here.

Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, crammed a lot into her one question (she had no choice, really...), calling out the Cameron and Xi on the steel industry job losses, the lavishness of the state visit and China's human rights in one fell swoop. And both men gave glib politician's answers that promised nothing and said nothing worthwhile or courageous.

Xi can slyly grin his way through a monologue about human rights being important to China and how changes are happening all he likes because he knows he will not get voted out of office any time soon, nobody will hold him to account to make any changes and he leaves the UK safe in the knowledge the moneymaking deals are safe.

Britain and China have been trading for a while now. Historically, we've done business with China since the Ming Dynasty and more recently, we've lapped up the deals as China became open to making money (largely for state-owned companies and with very little of the new wealth trickling down to the cheap labour force...). China is now a massive market for luxury goods and has the world's highest number of women billionaires at 49. Way to go, Red China!

But despite all these yummy deals, human rights have not improved in China. Exact statistics are almost impossible to obtain but it is estimated that China alone executes more people than the rest of the world combined - at least 607 executions took place in China last year and 778 in 2013. There is no free press and journalists are arrested with alarming frequency - just last month, Wang Xiaolu was arrested for "spreading false information" when he reported on the stock market crash. The one-child policy leads to forced abortions and forced insertion of IUDs. Freedom of religion is restricted. Chinese democracy is nothing but a fairly terrible Guns N' Roses album.

Limiting a press conference to two questions, both from government media outlets, is just the sort of thing one would expect from China. And yet that happened here in Britain this week.

Let us not pretend that China is anywhere near being a freedom-loving democracy. But, more than that, let us quit pretending that doing business with them will stop the human rights abuses any time soon. By "us", in particular, I mean you, David Cameron.

And the same goes for Saudi Arabia. It is probably the worst place on the planet to be a woman. And it is pretty damn horrific if you're an atheist, a Christian, a Hindu, gay, bisexual, transgender, unmarried and sexually active, a republican, a Wiccan, or you are at all interested in a free press, freedom of assembly or universal suffrage.

This didn't stop Cameron giving the same apologist answers for human rights abuses in China when he was asked by Channel 4's Jon Snow about his part in the ridiculous election of Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council. As well as stammering around the issue of whether he'd personally intervene to try and save the life of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the teenager sentenced to be beheaded and crucified for encouraging pro-democracy protests, he again peddled the lie that all these trade deals we do with Saudi help improve human rights.

Nothing much is improving in Saudi Arabia when it comes to human rights. Saudi has executed at least 175 people in the past year, including 102 in the first six months of 2015 alone. Nearly half of these people were foreign nationals and the mentally disabled and those accused of crimes committed while under the age of 18 are not safe from the sword or firing squad either.

It took the lobbying by Jeremy Corbyn and the ensuing mass outrage at the sentencing of British expat, Karl Andree, to 350 lashes for being caught with home-made wine in his car for David Cameron to do anything constructive. He cancelled a training contract with Saudi prisons worth £6 million to the UK and now, it seems, Karl Andree may be spared the lashes.

Obviously, this is great news for the Andree family and anyone who is appalled at such a violent punishment for a victimless crime but it was also a case of affordable principles.

In the big scheme of things, a £6 million pound contract to train staff who work in one of the world's most repugnant justice systems is small potatoes.

David Cameron was never going to risk the lucrative arms trade with Saudi Arabia to spare a British citizen from being lashed. The UK-Saudi arms relationship goes back a long way. Between 1992 and 1994, 75% of the UK's total arms sales were to Saudi Arabia. In 2013, Saudi was the world's biggest buyer of British arms, spending £1.6b. Since March this year, the government granted 37 export licences for military goods to Saudi Arabia. We will never know how many of these weapons will end up in the hands of IS but it would be naive to suggest that does not happen.

If David Cameron just admitted that the deals with China and Saudi Arabia were all about the money and really won't have any impact on improving human rights in either country, at least I'd appreciate his honesty. Right now, there's nothing honest about pretending these trade deals will help the people of either country and everything about a supposed democracy where a two-question press conference is allowed by the Prime Minister stinks.

Charity and the cult of the personality

Today, #kidscompany and Boris Johnson were trending at the same time on Twitter. It was quite the coincidence because both stories that led to the social media noise illustrated precisely why the cult of the personality continues to make idiots of us all. We may look back with the privileged superiority of 20/20 vision in hindsight at how people fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin but we are not necessarily any smarter in 2015.

Boris Johnson was in the news because he rugby-tackled a 10-year-old boy. Everyone reported this with the usual "Oh,  isn't Boris hilarious!" tone. It's another Boris distraction from his appalling record as Mayor of London and his ineffectiveness as an MP. He does this on purpose, because he knows it's what people will talk about instead of anything serious.

But falling for the cult of the personality isn't limited to the BoJo fan club. The #kidscompany Twitter trend centred on the terrible story that is the collapse of the Kids Company charity. Kids Company was founded in 1996 by British-Iranian psychotherapist, Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Batmanghelidjh was lauded across the political spectrum. Celebrities, such as the members of Coldplay and JK Rowling, donated generously to the charity that started as a youth drop-in centre in London's Camberwell neighbourhood and grew until it had therapy centres, alternative education facilities and a presence in 40 schools in London and Bristol, as well as a performing arts programme in Liverpool.

And, crucially, David Cameron hailed her as a heroine, as part of his "Big Society" concept. Remember that? That thing in which we are all meant to be in together? That one.

Kids Company received £30m of taxpayers' money. Three million of this was meant to be spent on restructuring an organisation that had grown perhaps too fast with ego and ambition overtaking reality. Instead, it was mostly spent on overdue staff wages and, if we're lucky, the government might be able to recoup £1.8m. When a government has to prop up a charity that is attempting to provide vital social services, we have a serious problem.

When Camila Batmanghelidjh became a public figure, she was very quickly known for her brightly coloured caftans and turbans. She was charismatic, she was passionate, she was patronisingly described as "larger than life", which we all know is code for "overweight but makes up for it with personality".

And it seems that her dizzying presence blinded people to a lot of things. There is an ongoing police investigation into sexual assault. Today, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Commons committee hearing into the inner workings of Kids Company. The committee heard that despite claiming to care for 36,000 clients, there were only records for 1,699 people. There were questions about handing out cash to vulnerable minors and whether that really is the best way to deal with the complex issues that go along with social and economic disadvantage. After this day of testimony, it would appear that Kids Company was poorly run with no real strategy for solving social and economic problems at their root causes or for how the charity should expand.

Just because Kids Company is a charity, that should not make it immune from scrutiny. If anything should be scrutinised, it's charities because people who donate have the right to know how their money will be used. It is a huge responsibility.

The elephant in the room is that the government saw fit to give £30m of our money to one charity without a whole lot in the way of due diligence. The very notion that £30m of public money can be thrown at a charity to try and solve complex problems in three different cities is ridiculous.

While tweeters waste bandwidth giggling at Batmangelidjh's weight and outfits and at Boris tackling a child, not enough people are talking about how few answers the government has for elevating people out of poverty.



Photography by George Hodan

Piggy wiggy woo-who cares...

I can't lie. Like most of Britain this morning, I gasped and laughed when I first heard the astounding claim that David Cameron inserted his penis into the mouth of a dead pig in some initiation ritual during his days at Oxford. I can never resist a pun and I found myself in a piggy pun vortex with friends on Facebook. The shots were cheap but we all needed a good laugh, joking as I was with friends who regularly roll their eyes at the sorry state of British politics. I freely admit my own hypocrisy here.

But now the time has come to analyse this situation a little more soberly, even as "Get Piggy With It" remains my earworm. I usually reserve the conspiracy theories for the likes of Pamela Geller and David Icke, but the timing of the Daily Mail breaking this story in the form of extracts from Call Me Dave, a book by the sour-grape-laden Lord Ashcroft and ex-Murdoch journalist Isabel Oakeshott is curious to say the least.

Just last week, the Daily Mail, along with the usual media suspects, was busy writing reports on Jeremy Corbyn that had very little to do with policy. Corbyn should be as open to policy scrutiny as any other party leader, but some of the crap in the media last week was ridiculous. Most absurd of all was the Daily Express exposing Corbyn's great-great grandfather as a workhouse boss. What next? Corbyn's caveman ancestors beat their wives with clubs?

By splashing the "bizarre initiation ritual" story across the front page, the Daily Mail was effectively flying the false balance flag. "Hey, look! We can slag out the left and the right! We are equal opportunity sex scandal peddlers!", they may as well be yelling from the rooftop at Northcliffe House.

It's funny how this story breaks just as some real news was starting to seep through the cracks of mediocrity. People were actually talking about cuts to free school meals and cuts to junior doctors' salaries. Some were even embracing a less circus-like approach to parliamentary debate.

But not today.

Never mind that the free school meal cuts break yet another Tory manifesto promise and cutting junior doctors' salaries will see even more medical graduates seek careers abroad. The Daily Mail doesn't want you worrying your pretty little heads about those sorts of things.

It suits the Mail's agenda to have Britain laughing at #piggate and we've all pretty much fallen for it, hook, line and sinker.

Don't get me wrong - the notion of initiation via dead pig fellatio is gross and anyone who compares head-fucking a dead pig to the more commonplace university hijinks, such as stealing traffic cones, is an idiot. Hell, most of us manage to have sex with living people when we're students. But the whole awful story - which is still a pile of allegations - is a distraction from real issues that will have long-term implications on the country.

And it's not just the fact that the story broke after a week of Corbyn-bashing that is pertinent. This story has broken during the week Parliament goes into recess because it's party conference time again. The Twitters got all excited about the prospect of MPs oinking at this week's Prime Minister's question time (wow, that's the kind of mature debate we need...) or subtle porcine references being slipped in to the questions.

So then people were deflated when they realised PMQs is not on again until October 12. That is more than enough time for this to blow over, for us to be distracted by something new and stupid, for the party conference season to throw up more stories, many of which will invariably be personal attacks rather than policy criticism. Woe betide the MP who attempts to crack a joke or tests out a daft new haircut.

And it is plenty of time for important issues to be swept aside because the likes of the Daily Mail don't actually want us to talk about them. I'm not sure if I am enough of a conspiracy theorist to believe David Cameron knew about this in advance but it has probably done him a perverse favour. And Toby Young will no doubt benefit one way or another by taking one for the team as the only Tory to stick his head above the parapet today to defend Cameron.

Anyone thinking of wearing a pig mask and oinking outside outside the Conservative party conference in Manchester the week after next is part of the problem.



Photo by Lilla Frerichs



  

It's about time Britain grew up...

It has been one of those weeks where I just want to yell: "GROW UP! GROW UP, THE LOT OF YOU!" at the internet. Seriously, too many people have been really pathetic.

In particular, those outraged at Jeremy Corbyn not singing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain commemoration need to pipe down and let the grown-ups talk at the big table. If you want to live in a place that forces people to sing national anthems, I hear North Korea is lovely at this time of year.

But, honestly, the outcry over Corbyn and "God Save The Queen", a ludicrous anthem if ever there was one, was manufactured by the media, with the notable exception of the Guardian choosing not to plaster the fauxrage on its front page today.

If the editors were genuinely offended by Corbyn's respectful silence and wanted to show they are all about honouring those who have died in war, why weren't the front pages focused on the actual service of remembrance at St Paul's cathedral? It wouldn't have caused the easily offended little petals on Twitter to lose their shit, it wouldn't have been great clickbait, but it would have been the mature way to cover that story.

Another mature story to put on today's front pages would have been a report about how £4.4 billion worth of cuts to tax credits will affect people who are in work, but that wouldn't play into the whole "all people on benefits are feckless, lazy scroungers who spend all day watching Sky TV in tracksuits while texting their drug dealer on their iPhone" narrative.

And then it was Prime Minister's Question Time, Corbyn's first as leader of the opposition. Has anyone noticed that all of a sudden, journalists are referring to "Her Majesty's Opposition" when they have never done so before? It is accurate, but it is naive to think this is not being done on purpose. Again, grow up and quit editorialising when you are meant to be doing balanced, fair journalism.

Corbyn set the tone with an appeal for a less theatrical PMQs. He asked questions that real voters want asked in parliament. This is what parliament is for - it is meant to represent the people. This is Democracy 101. It would have been good to see Corbyn add more facts and stats to the questions and the responses, but the idea is sound and it will be interesting to see how this continues to play out in the coming weeks and months.

And it's not as if David Cameron's fans can complain about Corbyn's calm, measured approach. The law of unintended consequences means that Cameron comes across better in a less melodramatic forum. His answers were no more substantial than they were in the last parliament. He trotted out the tired £8-billion-for-the-NHS line out once more, without any detail or context again, for example, but he did not come across as a braying schoolboy.

Even when another Tory MP added a jibe about the national anthem to the end of his question, Cameron was classy enough to not take the bait in his response.

It was a far cry from the ding-dong battles of the last parliament but then things got a bit silly again. Andrew Turner, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, popped up from the government back bench to ask a question about the isle's struggle to import a tiger for its zoo. Apparently, the hapless kitty has been kept in isolation in Belgium for two years because of red tape about a rabies certificate. Leaving aside the ethics of keeping a tiger in a zoo on a tiny island rather than letting her live in the wild, this was the moment that PMQs jumped the shark. The whole scenario smacked of a set-up, of a way to draw attention away from questions on issues such as housing and mental health.

And again, PMQs looked like a schoolyard.

Afterwards, there was a pleasing tweet from Labour MP, Chuka Umunna. He may have thrown his toys out of the pram by refusing to be part of Corbyn's shadow cabinet but he was very gracious when he tweeted: "#PMQs is a circus. I've long argued to abolish it and put a better alternative in its place, but it was rather refreshing today - good."

And some people lamented the lack of theatrics. They too can grow the hell up. I am really sorry if a civilised exchange of views is boring for you. I am really sorry that you have the attention span of a kitten and can only concentrate on politics when members on both sides of the house are carrying on like a Grange Hill brawl. And I am really sorry if you truly think that sort of mindless, unproductive crap is the way forward for British political debate.

Why the Ashley Madison hacking matters

"These lying cheats look like they'll get some of their own medicine now." (Daily Telegraph reader)

"I didn't used [sic] to believe in karma, but this, honestly is making me question my doubts. This totally made my Monday. I hope they totally out everyone on that site. ;)" (Huffington Post reader)

"I think the hackers should publish the whole damn lot, regardless of whether the site is taken down." (Guardian reader)

And so on... It was inevitable that the hack on Ashley Madison, a website aimed at people who want to discreetly cheat on their partners, was not going to generate much sympathy for the victims. But the pearl-clutching outrage and sanctimonious gloating over the unfaithful masks the bigger problem here.

Melanie McDonagh, Moral Guardian in Chief for the Evening Standard drearily, predictably wrote yesterday that she would be "even more inclined to cackle if the Impact Team was a group of evangelical Christians anxious to put people out of the way of temptation."

Sadly for St Melanie of the Marital Bed, the real story was not a moral crusade with the potential to destroy millions of lives and provide a bonanza for divorce lawyers. Instead, it seems the Impact Team hacked Ashley Madison as disgruntled customers - they were outraged that the company would only permanently delete details of membership from its servers for a £15 fee. Given the nature of the site and the desperation of people not to be found out if they decided Ashley Madison's human smorgasbord was not to their taste, this would be an easy money-spinner. Welcome to free market capitalism, cheaters!

But it is the fact that such a devastating hack can happen on websites that claim to have the very best security that is the real worry for everyone. How many websites have your personal details? How would you feel if someone wasn't happy with waiting all day for an Argos delivery, hacked into their database and threatened to release the information? Obviously, being outed as an Argos customer is marginally less embarrassing than being outed as an Ashley Madison customer, but the breach of privacy is still completely unacceptable.

What if the government decided that a website you'd signed up to was not to their liking and they wanted to find out the details of everyone involved? David Cameron's speech this week about dealing with radical Islam is a case in point. Maybe you signed up to a website for some information about Islam for any number of reasons, none of which involved terrorism. But this is a government that is becoming less and less libertarian about your online privacy - do you trust this government to not obtain personal information from sites they deem to be "of interest"?

How relaxed and comfortable would you feel if you discovered you ended up on a watch list for no good reason? Maybe you'll get stopped from boarding that flight to Turkey, even though you were simply hoping for a Kate Moss-style rampage on a beach in Bodrum and weren't using the trip to enter Syria and join IS.

But, hey, it is far easier to moralise about the lives of people you don't know. Never mind that with 70% of Ashley Madison members being men, the chances of feckless husbands actually getting laid via that site are not brilliant. Never mind that it's the kind of site that plenty of people probably join for a bit of a nosy around before logging off and never logging back on again. Never mind that there might be people on that site desperate for some attention because they are in an abusive relationship or a relationship they don't feel they can leave for any number of reasons.

No, let's just get the pitchforks out instead and affect an attitude that leads to execution in Saudi Arabia! Yeah! Well played, people!

Nobody is denying that infidelity can destroy relationships and that it usually ends up being deeply unpleasant for all concerned. But if all you're getting out of the Ashley Madison story is an excuse to get on your high horse about other people's sex lives, you're not paying attention.





Photography by Circe Denyer. Picture posed by models in no way connected to this blog post.