Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

How did prime ministers acquire military responsibilities if the position emerged form being the King's beancouter?

King had to ask parliament for the money to raise an army.
From there it's a short step to obeying the guy paying your wages.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah and I think that's a pretty common process where power of the purse and relatedly the ability to raise (and meet) debt are key in building of state institutions beyond a monarchic/aristocratic court. Part of that is taking control of the monarch's military powers because if they can't pay for it or issue debt their ability to wage wars for fun is severely curtailed.

In the UK this was also reflected by the rule that historically the Commons has sole right to deal with laws that raised taxes or issued debt. It's now I think more broadly money bills in general.

[Sheilbh]

I'm an absolute sucker for stories like this where I low-key hate everyone involved
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/02/wentworth-golf-club-reignwood-yan-bin?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I'd like a TV series. Olivia Colman, long suffering; Tom Hollander, politely seething, breaking down.

[Sheilbh]

Re. never bet against the authoritarian streak of the British people - about 1/5 of the British people think that if you refuse to get the vaccine (and you don't have a valid medical reason) that you should be imprisoned A quarter think you should be denied access to the NHS (which sets an alarming precedent for people like me who have smoked, like a drink and enjoy dessert ).

I still find it a little mad that Tory MPs are so anti-restrictions etc when their voters are very supportive and I think that may have quite negative impact when they look at a replacement for Johnson. But this is an area where I think we possibly need MPs to act as a little bit of a liberal restraint on the instincts of the British people, which would probably be to become a full biosecurity state - see also the death penalty which MPs consistently vote against but there has never, to my knowledge, been a poll that has the public with less than 50%+ support for it.

[Josquius]

Denying access to the nhs is a bit much but I do see the appeal of punishing people for using resources unnessarily. Slippery slope lies there however

I'm an absolute sucker for stories like this where I low-key hate everyone involved
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/02/wentworth-golf-club-reignwood-yan-bin?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I'd like a TV series. Olivia Colman, long suffering; Tom Hollander, politely seething, breaking down.

.
It's iffy sort of story.
I can empathise with the "oh dear what a shame. Get the tiny violins out" it's nice to see the rich being fucked for once side.

On the other hand this is the sort of thinking that fueled brexit. There's nothing in it for me to fuck up these people's lives.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting piece from Stephen Bush following Starmer's speech which I broadly agree with - I also feel that, absent a pandemic, it's the type of speech a leader of the opposition would give in their first year. They have policies but no analysis at this stage - and that's fine, at this stage of an electoral cycle - but I'm broadly of the view they will need to tie this together with a coherent analysis/narrative and "better than this shower" is a thin reed to base your plans on. It's touched on here but the economic policies that've been proposed by Rachel Reeves, who's identified as on the party's right, are really bold and interesting. I hope they embrace it and start to tie it to their other polices and hammer out some coherence:

Keir Starmer has a big idea – but he doesn't seem to want to talk about it
The Labour leader's decision to reassure voters, rather than to promote his radicalism, is a political risk.

By Stephen Bush
Photo by Darren Staples/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The British economy produces too many bad jobs, grows at a sluggish pace and is contributing to the destruction of our climate. The levers that a Labour government would pull to fix that would be to much more tightly regulate the labour market, to increase trade union power, and to use the UK's borrowing capacity to invest in new green infrastructure and research projects.

That's the big economic analysis at the heart of essentially every major announcement and speech by Keir Starmer and his top team, including in his speech today (4 January).

Yet the existence of this analysis would, I think, be a surprise to most people, including those who follow politics closely. Even most of the journalists who have had to cover the more than 200 policy announcements that Starmer's Labour has made would, I think, struggle to identify it.

Why is this so unclear? Well, as I've written before, one problem is that Labour under Starmer has made a dizzyingly large number of policy proposals (that is to say, commitments to do a specific thing about a specific issue) but hasn't really set out any policy principles (commitments to do a specific thing for a specific reason). "The two-child policy limit on child benefit should be scrapped" is a policy proposal, announced by Starmer's Labour in 2020. "The two-child limit should be scrapped because childcare is a shared social responsibility that we all, childless or not, have a stake in" is a policy principle. "The two-child limit should be scrapped because everyone should have a minimum standard of living" is another. "The two-child limit should be scrapped because people should be able to have as many children as they damn well please" is yet another.

Now, of course, you might look at those principles and go "well, I hold all of them", but the reality is that the more we discussed your principles and positions, the more clear it would be whether you were really a "shared social responsibility" type, "a minimum standard of living" person, or a "as many children as they damn well please" one. Policy positions are what ultimately gives a political movement definition: so too is a clear sense of its opponents.

Why isn't Labour doing more of this? Today's speech is an improvement on previous ones in that Starmer's "security, prosperity and respect" represents the leadership's first attempt to anchor its labour market reforms in some kind of broader political context.

But I suspect part of the problem is that Labour's policies on this area – and its broader diagnosis about the country's ills – are fairly radical, and under Starmer Labour has sought to reassure voters rather than to talk up its radicalism. You can see the appeal: if you want to draw a favourable contrast between the Labour leader and Boris Johnson, "Starmer is sensible and wouldn't do anything that crazy, Johnson is chaotic and disorganised," is the easiest one to land because people mostly already think it.

However, if you have a big and radical set of reforms to the labour market and you plan to spend £28bn a year on the climate crisis, it is hard to provide yourself and your party with any definition unless you acknowledge that you have a big and radical set of proposals.

It may be that Labour under Starmer doesn't need to do this: David Cameron took the Conservatives back into office while very consciously downplaying the radicalism of his proposals, and by presenting himself as a candidate with a high degree of continuity with the era of Tony Blair. If Boris Johnson is still the Conservative leader at the time of the next election, Starmer may similarly find that his best position, politically speaking, is to play up the reassurance and just leave the overarching analysis in the background. But if the age of Johnson gives way to the era of Rishi Sunak or Jeremy Hunt, a different approach may be required.

[Josquius]

What are the odds of Johnson still being pm by the next election?
I am surprised he lasted the year really. Seemed a dead man walking after his covid bout.

Starmer does need to more actively push a positive case for labour. I just can't see "I'm not Boris" working as its very likely the other guy won't be either. Especially if that's clearly the only tack labour take.

[Sheilbh]

Lovely lengthy eulogy/travelogue by Tom McTague. I'm reminded of Linda Colley's point that British identity and Britishness was basically an 18th century creation with three binding parts: Protestantism, opposing the French and Empire. Each of those has fallen away in importance basically since the war. I suspect any future for Britain will depend on creating a new identitiy (though I hope that we can all still rally around opposing the French).

The challenge is that the people who most identify as Britain tend to be the ones who are most squeamish about national symbols or anything that reeks of "nationalism", while the people who are more relaxed about that also tend to be more comfortable in their English, Welsh or Scottish identities.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/01/will-britain-survive/621095/

I'm broadly optimistic that the UK will survive in the short/medium-term, ironically because of Brexit. But I think in the long-term unless we start to work on some common projects/points of identity I'm not sure it will and I think the Joseph Roth line on Austro-Hungary is very aptly used, it will die "not through the empty verbiage of its revolutionaries, but through the ironical disbelief of those who should have believed in, and supported, it." What's the point of a UK if there's no such thing as Britain?

Edit: Separately - and I think this happened with some green protests too, jury clears protesters of criminal damage for tearing down the Colston statue:

BLM protesters cleared over toppling of Edward Colston statue

Sage Willoughby, Jake Skuse, Milo Ponsford and Rhian Graham celebrate after receiving a not guilty verdict at Bristol Crown Court. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images
Damien Gayle
@damiengayle
Wed 5 Jan 2022 16.20 GMT

Three men and a woman have been found not guilty of criminal damage after toppling the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol, an act of public dissent that reverberated around the world.

Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, and Sage Willoughby, 22, were accused, with "others unknown", of helping to tie ropes around the statue's neck and joining with others to pull it to the ground.

Jake Skuse, 33, was accused of helping to roll it to Bristol harbour where it was thrown into the River Avon.

In a 10-day trial at Bristol crown court, the four defendants did not contest their actions on 7 June 2020 but sought to argue they were justified, because the statue was so offensive.

Giving evidence in their own defence, each described being motivated out of sincere antiracist conviction, frustration that previous attempts to persuade the council to remove the statue had failed, and a belief that the statue was so offensive it constituted an indecent display or a hate crime.

The prosecution, however, argued that the fact Colston was a slave trader was "wholly irrelevant". William Hughes QC, for the crown, said the case was about "cold hard facts" and the "rule of law".

The prosecution showed jurors a CCTV video compilation capturing each of the four defendants playing roles in toppling Colston. Bristol council's head of culture, Jon Finch, gave evidence of the damage caused to the statue, which lost a cane and part of a coattail. He confirmed £350 damage to the harbour railings and £2,400 damage to the pavement.

The Colston statue was approved by the council in 1895 and it had not given permission to anyone to alter, damage or remove the statue on 7 June, the trial heard.

But Liam Walker QC, representing Willoughby, said: "Each of these defendants were on the right side of history, and I submit, they were also on the right side of the law.

"Colston's deeds may be historical but the continued veneration of him in this city was not. The continued veneration of him in a vibrant multicultural city was an act of abuse."

Willoughby, who climbed the statue, told the court he targeted Colston "because he was a racist and a slave trader who murdered thousands and enslaved even more""

"I thought that a statue that celebrates a figure such as Colston was disgraceful, and offensive to the people of Bristol," Ponsford told jurors. Graham, who also brought rope, said she acted out of "allyship and solidarity" with people of colour.

Skuse admitted helping roll Colston to Pero's bridge, named for an enslaved man who lived in Bristol, where it was thrown into the water, "sentencing [Colston] to death". "I knew I was in the right, I knew everyone wanted it down," he said. "I knew Bristol wanted it, everyone wanted the same thing."

Judge Peter Blair QC, the recorder of Bristol, allowed expert evidence from David Olusoga despite past comments by the historian and broadcaster that he "desperately" wanted to join protesters that day, which were raised as a sign of potential bias by the prosecution.

Olusoga described to the court the horrors of the slave trade, from "rape rooms" in slaver fortresses on the African coast to grotesque punishments meted out to rebellious slaves. Colston was "chief executive officer" of a company that branded children as young as nine, and which was eventually responsible for enslaving more Africans than any other in British history, Olusoga said.

The court heard from black Bristolians including a former lord mayor of the city, Cleo Lake, who had removed a portrait of Colston from her office. "He was the person responsible for brutalising my ancestors, taking away their humanity; and for me and my community experiencing the harm they still experience today," Lake said.

The four defendants laughed with relief as the verdicts were returned and hugged the many supporters that were waiting outside of court when they were released from the dock.

[Valmy]

I'm an absolute sucker for stories like this where I low-key hate everyone involved
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/mar/02/wentworth-golf-club-reignwood-yan-bin?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I'd like a TV series. Olivia Colman, long suffering; Tom Hollander, politely seething, breaking down.

Just shows we all get gentrified out eventually.

[Tamas]

I am sorry but a bunch of white people celebrating themselves as heroes of BLM just looks odd.

[garbon]

I am sorry but a bunch of white people celebrating themselves as heroes of BLM just looks odd.

Why? White people insert themselves wherever they can...

[Valmy]

Fortunately, I only insert myself on Languish.

[Sheilbh]

Also they're the ones who got identified from CCTV and charged, that's all.

Although those are a magnificent set of middle class Bristol names (and I think I know Milo )

[Josquius]

It's a known fact that cameras often suck with black faces.
I wonder how often this works to their advantage.

Quite a funny outcome. I just don't get it. Seems one of those cases where they were totally in the right but nonetheless obviously broke the law. Guess thats where a jury of locals gets you.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I guess the jury must have decided that taking down the statue of a noted slaver was fine with them; I'm fairly sure that they would have decided the other way if the statue had been of someone worthy.

It is a reminder of how important trial by jury is, especially when we have a government that is interested in criminalising activities such as protest. It gives the little guys a chance when the state machine arrogates too much power to itself.