Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Yeah if it was heard by a magistrate and they made this decision it would have been overturned by the High Court because it is legally and factually wrong. But acquittal by jury is also part of the system and they tend to be relatively sympathetic to protesters who've only damaged property - this isn't the first time, as in Haroon Siddique's piece below.

Although I did really like one of the arguments pushed by one of the defence barristers that the four could not have been said to have caused criminal damage, because the Colston statue is now in a museum and worth more - it's a strange form of criminal damage that increases the value of something. I don't think it convinced anyone but I quite like it

Jurors see the bigger picture: activists who were cleared in court
Cases have included climate, environment, human rights and anti-war protests where damage to property was not denied
Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent
Thu 6 Jan 2022 06.00 GMT
The acquittal of four people charged with criminal damage for toppling the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol is the latest in a series of cases in which juries have cleared protesters despite there being no question of their having carried out the actions for which they were tried.

Most recent examples related to the environment, with those on trial arguing that their deeds were a proportionate response to the climate crisis. Here are some examples.
    Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, was cleared by a jury in 2019 despite not denying causing criminal damage worth £7,000 when he sprayed the walls of Kings College London, with the words "divest from oil and gas" in protest against the institution's fossil fuel investments. Hallam, who was acquitted along with another activist, said it showed "ordinary people, unlike the judiciary, are able to see the broader picture".
    In April 2021 six Extinction Rebellion protesters were cleared of causing criminal damage to Shell's London headquarters despite the judge directing jurors that those on trial had no defence in law. Protesters poured fake oil, glued themselves to windows and doors, broke glass, climbed on to a roof and sprayed graffiti as part of wider demonstrations across the capital. Before reaching their verdicts, the jury had asked to see a copy of the oath they took when they were sworn in. Thanking the jurors, the judge said it had been "an unusual case".
    Six climate crisis activists whose protest halted the Docklands Light Railway, which serves London's financial district, were acquitted by a jury in December 2021. Five of the Extinction Rebellion protesters climbed on top of the train with banners that read "Business As Usual=Death" and "Don't Jail the Canaries" while a sixth glued herself to a train window. They were charged with obstructing trains or carriages on the railway and acknowledged their roles in the protest but successfully argued that their action was a lawful protest against government inaction on the climate crisis.
    While there has been a flurry of cases involving Extinction Rebellion recently, there have been previous examples of acquittals by juries concluding that ostensibly criminal actions were motivated by good intentions. In 2008 six Greenpeace climate change activists were cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage at Kingsnorth power station, Kent. The activists admitted trying to shut down the coal-fired station by occupying the smokestack but argued they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world. It was the first case in which preventing property damage caused by climate change had been used as part of a "lawful excuse" defence in court.
    In 2001 Lord Melchett, then executive director of Greenpeace, and 27 other supporters were cleared by a court of causing criminal damage despite admitting destroying a crop of genetically modified maize. The defendants said that they acted to prevent pollen from the maize from polluting neighbouring organic crops and gardens.
    There have also been a string of acquittals in cases of sabotage of military equipment. In 2007, two anti-war campaigners, Toby Olditch and Philip Pritchard, who broke into RAF Fairford Gloucestershire, to sabotage US bombers at the outbreak of the Iraq war, were cleared of conspiring to cause criminal damage after they argued the B52s would have been used to commit war crimes in Iraq.
    In 2000, two anti-nuclear protesters who entered a dockyard planning to disarm one of Britain's Trident submarines with an axe were cleared of conspiracy to cause criminal damage. Sylvia Boyes and River (formerly known as Keith Wright) admitted that they plotted to damage HMS Vengeance while it was docked at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in November 1999, but claimed their actions were justified because nuclear weapons were immoral and illegal under international law.

[Richard Hakluyt]

That long list is quite encouraging; perhaps there are fewer purse-lipped, curtain-twitching gits than we sometimes think 

If we went by the Daily Mail comments all these protestors would have got several years in the Cheshire salt mines 

[Tamas]

So, rewilding... what kind of nonsense is this then? Is Britain a net food exporter? Or at least breaking even, able to feed its whole population?

If not, then isn't the decrease of local agriculture mean increase of imports? Aren't we damaging the climate while trying to ensure people with excess free time will have nice Instagram photos of them being "in the wild"?

Also I am not a fan of reintroducing wolves to places. Whatever natural balancing act those predators have I am sure hunting-happy Brits are more than willing to take on themselves. There is a reason why wolves went near-extinct: they eat the same bloody animals we do, you can't really coexist without taming them.

[Sheilbh]

I agree I think it's broadly nonsense.

I don't think the UK's ever been a net food exporter. There's maybe one or two commodities - I think lamb and wool (plus ca change - and most of the rest of the world doesn't even like lamb - the best meat ) - where we are, but you'd need to go back to at least the corn laws if not the 18th century or earlier for a time when we were a net food exporter.

We became more self-sufficient after joining the EU, but still nowhere near net exporting.

In terms of climate my understanding is that food miles is basically bollocks it just tells you how far something has travelled but nothing about comparative carbon emissions - unless your diet is strongly seasonal then getting local stuff doesn't help and is generally more carbon intensive.

Also "hunting-happy Brits", have you met Brits? A brisk walk is about as close as most of them want to get to the natural world and there's loads of anti-cruel sports campaigns trying to ban all forms of hunting and fishing because of Geronimo syndrome

I think that's right and why re-wilding is becoming more popular. We generally live in cities or towns or comparatively manicured countryside. We are not close to the food we consume. We don't do things like hunting. It's the countryside as theme park for a day trip.

I also think there's an argument against re-wildling that part of the attraction and distinctiveness of the English landscape - like many landscapes - is that it has been created over centuries if not thousands of years of use by humans. Re-wilding is more an act of imagination and creation than restoration. You know the lack of forest, the fell ponies or herds of sheep on the dales, the hedgerows and dry stone walls, even peat bogs and gorse hills are all a human created natural world that reflects very long-standing practices and divisons lf land etc (it takes a long time for a hedgerow to grow, it's not easy to move a dry stone dyke) so I'm not sure there's any "re" to re-wilding in a meaningful way.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Pretty annoying when Rees-Mogg comes out with something I agree with :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024

However :

"MP for Ipswich Tom Hunt told the Telegraph: "If you've broken the law and committed criminal damage you should be punished. If the jury is a barrier to ensuring they are punished then that needs to be addressed." "

Its a good job we have rhyming slang when we have people like him in politics.

[crazy canuck]

Pretty annoying when Rees-Mogg comes out with something I agree with :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59893024

However :

"MP for Ipswich Tom Hunt told the Telegraph: "If you've broken the law and committed criminal damage you should be punished. If the jury is a barrier to ensuring they are punished then that needs to be addressed." "

Its a good job we have rhyming slang when we have people like him in politics.

Ha! A system which allows people to defend themselves from criminal charges should be fixed if it is a barrier to punishing them.  A sitting MP you say?  Oh my.

[Agelastus]

We became more self-sufficient after joining the EU, but still nowhere near net exporting.

CAP incentives provided a bit of a final boost, but most of the post-war improvement in food self-sufficiency was pre-EU and driven by our own subsidy system (which topped up UK farmers incomes allowing food to be sold at world market prices without farmers being driven bankrupt, compared to CAP which artificially raised food prices compared to the world market*) and other government policies regarding mechanization etc.

Since 1990 our self-sufficiency has actually been declining.

*It's an oddity of history that joining the EU increased UK food prices, and leaving the EU increased UK food prices, partly due to the reformation of the CAP over the years of our membership of the EEC/EU.

[Sheilbh]

That's fair but you'll often see people talk about the UK going back to the 1950s in relation to food with Brexit and going more self-sufficient (not helped by John Redwood's occasional trip into the Maoist), but we imported more of our food in the 1950s and 60s than we do now.

What's also true is that because of Empire the UK was really exceptional pre-war and imported the vast, vast majority of our food.

[Sheilbh]

Totally agree with this column by Duncan Robinson, the new Bagehot. It's linked to what I've said before that we should lean into the sectors where the UK has a genuine comparative advantage: financial and professional services, culture and higher education/research. Instead for different reasons they're all disdained by the current government and I'm not sure Labour will be much better:

Kicking winners: Britain's political economy
British politics has a unique disdain for the country's strengths
Jan 8th 2022

MOST COUNTRIES take pride in their successful industries. Olaf Scholz, the new German chancellor, hosted a rally for Volkswagen's workers, ignoring a decade of corporate misdeeds by the carmaker. After his health minister suggested easing off the wine, Emmanuel Macron boasted that he drank it at lunch and dinner and shuddered at the idea of dry January.

In Britain politicians take a different tack, ignoring, disdaining or even actively despising the most successful sectors of the economy. Everything from banks to universities is denigrated. Two centuries ago David Ricardo came up with the notion of comparative advantage, that countries should focus on producing goods and services in areas where they are relatively efficient. Britain's politicians have turned this on its head: comparative disadvantage is in vogue.

Part of the problem is political geography. Take London. During the past three decades it has been transformed from a shrinking husk into a global powerhouse. Its productivity means that it pays £36bn ($49bn; 2% of GDP) more in taxes than it gets back in public spending. Both Boris Johnson, the prime minister, and Sir Keir Starmer, his Labour counterpart, represent London seats. But they keep quiet about it—except when exchanging barbs. "You can take the lawyer out of Islington but you can't take Islington out of the lawyer," Mr Johnson once said. In fact, Sir Keir does not live in Islington, but Mr Johnson did for many years.

Both parties are desperate to avoid being painted as metropolitan. Lisa Nandy, the Labour shadow minister for "levelling up", frequently laments high investment in cities, arguing that regeneration in Manchester has failed to boost Wigan, her constituency. But wealth flowed from London to Woking perfectly efficiently. The problem is not that places like Manchester became too much like London; it is that they are still not enough like London, with too little wealth to spread. But now that the frontline of British politics is in towns, such arguments go down poorly. Politicians do not follow growth, but votes.

If cities have fallen out of favour politically, the City has fallen furthest of all. Financial firms have few political friends. As mayor of London between 2008 and 2016, Mr Johnson was a booster of banks; as prime minister, his government is an enthusiastic basher. The finance sector was sacrificed during Brexit negotiations. Virtually none of its demands were met. Again, the negativity runs across party lines. Labour is twitchy about Tony Blair's economic model, namely being intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they paid their taxes. The era of encouraging prosperity and sharing out the gains is over.

One reason Britain's strongest professions struggle to gain a sympathetic hearing is that they fall on the wrong side of the "Richard Scarry rule". Named for the much-loved author and illustrator, this warns politicians against picking fights with workers depicted in children's books. So fishermen will always find political allies; traders, lawyers and management consultants will struggle. The best-known reference to lawyers in the English canon comes in "Henry VI", where a character suggests that the quickest way to improve the country would be to kill them all.

Another is that, when it comes to economic matters, British politicians can be puritanical. They seem to think the country's thriving creative industries are not serious enough to merit praise. They talk about Premier League football as if it were a mere den of iniquity, rather than Britain's most potent cultural export. Videogaming is dismissed as a hobby rather than acknowledged as a national strength. When Nadine Dorries became culture secretary in 2021, her main qualification was a willingness to put the boot into luvvies. In the same vein, politicians seem to see culture as easy and industry as hard. This gets things backwards. Any big European country could host a Nissan factory. But few could devise ITV's teatime quiz, "The Chase", which has been a global success.

Higher education is one of the few sectors where Britain can truly claim to be, in Westminster's peculiar vernacular, "world-beating". But the big rise in students going to university is cue for hand-wringing by (degree-holding) commentators, as if three more years of education over 80 years of life will lead to decadence. If the push to cut student numbers succeeds, it will be the University of Bolton that downsizes, not the University of Manchester. For a government set on levelling up—delinking opportunity from geography—this is a bad idea. In a place like Teesside, the new freeport may snatch headlines and be graced with visits by politicians in hi-vis jackets. The expanding university, which has helped stem the region's decline, is sometimes ignored.

Many of these factors are long-standing—and indeed, Britain's star industries may have flourished in part because of political neglect, rather than despite it. But Brexit ripped up its economic blueprint. Universities, financial and legal firms, and the creative industries were boosted by EU membership, and no party has identified a replacement. Many voters seem not to care. About two-thirds of pensioners supported the Conservatives, who promised a hard Brexit, at the election in 2019. So did nearly 60% of people who own their home outright. To someone with no rent or mortgage, and an inflation-linked pension, it may seem of little concern whether Britain's strongest industries wither.

Hard hats v mortarboards

Indeed, comparative disadvantage has its fans. Politicians are kicking winners because they think it will be popular. After all, bankers deserved opprobrium after the financial crisis. And man cannot live by quiz shows alone. If a voter's town struggles, it is easy to resent a thriving London. Many felt that the old system did not work for them, and so politicians stood on a platform of smashing it. Britain's economy was lopsided. But it is easier to fix weakness if you also play to your strengths.

[Sheilbh]

Ha! A system which allows people to defend themselves from criminal charges should be fixed if it is a barrier to punishing them.  A sitting MP you say?  Oh my.

Honestly the more worrying thing is the number of MPs and others - on both sides of the debate - who are saying this sets a precedent. Which suggests a slightly worrying level of ignorance (or bad reporting) on our legal system

[Tamas]

Ha! A system which allows people to defend themselves from criminal charges should be fixed if it is a barrier to punishing them.  A sitting MP you say?  Oh my.

Honestly the more worrying thing is the number of MPs and others - on both sides of the debate - who are saying this sets a precedent. Which suggests a slightly worrying level of ignorance (or bad reporting) on our legal system

This sort of reflects on the fact that there are too  many actors in politics who are interested in escalating situations, chiefly among them is the media, from big outlets to individual people with Youtube channels and whatnot. "Let's consider it in a measured way" is never going to win you enough attention to generate profits.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Ha! A system which allows people to defend themselves from criminal charges should be fixed if it is a barrier to punishing them.  A sitting MP you say?  Oh my.

Honestly the more worrying thing is the number of MPs and others - on both sides of the debate - who are saying this sets a precedent. Which suggests a slightly worrying level of ignorance (or bad reporting) on our legal system

Are they fools or rogues?

Maybe both.

[Richard Hakluyt]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jan/07/suella-braverman-accused-of-politically-driven-meddling-over-colston-four

I particularly liked this comment :

"Ken Macdonald QC, who was director of public prosecutions from 2003 to 2008, said: "It is difficult to think of a case more appropriate to be decided by a randomly selected panel of local people. Juries have always been given the space to do what they think is right, sometimes by using their verdicts to assert changing values or to push back against abuses of power. This dispensation has served our country very well over the centuries, and ministers would be very foolish to try to challenge it – particularly for what appear to be political motives pushed by backbench Conservative MPs." "

[Oexmelin]

Honestly the more worrying thing is the number of MPs and others - on both sides of the debate - who are saying this sets a precedent. Which suggests a slightly worrying level of ignorance (or bad reporting) on our legal system

There is a concerning amount of ignorance about the building blocks of our democracies - in all places I have taught. My vague sense of it is that lower level civics classes were all displaced in favor of "real" subjects in high school; and that college courses are concerned with teaching a critical approach, that can no longer assume a stable narrative there to be criticized... And everyone now thinks it is someone else's role to teach it. 

[Sheilbh]

I think there's something to that especially the lack of a stable narrative - I feel like it's particularly severe here because what we don't have is a constitutional text, but did had a fairly stable, shared constitutional history. I'm not sure the narrative is now shared in any real way or stable which is linked to issues that I think we've had.

I don't know if there were ever civics classes here - and I don't really remember ever learning about how politics works or the courts (even at the basic level of the pyramid of appeal courts). Although I think they do now - since I was at school they have introduced mandatory citizenship classes which apparently covers some of this stuff - but I imagine it's treated as not a serious subject and a bit of a doss. Like general studies was when I was at school (but I do query a subject that is just "general studies" ). I think it started in the mid-2000s

Apparently aged 11-14 kids learn:

Citizenship education should develop pupils' understanding of how the United Kingdom is governed and the rights and responsibilities of its citizens.
Pupils should be taught about:
 how the political system of the United Kingdom has developed as a democracy, including the role of the monarchy, the development of our constitution and Parliament, and how democracy is different from other forms of government
 the operation of Parliament, including voting and elections, and the role of political parties
 the precious liberties enjoyed by the citizens of the United Kingdom
 the nature of rules and laws, and the difference between criminal and civil law
 the justice system, including the role of the police, and how courts and tribunals work
 the functions and uses of money, the importance of personal budgeting, money management and a range of financial products and services.

Then 15-16 they learn:

Teaching should build on the Key Stage 3 programme of study to deepen pupils' understanding of how the United Kingdom is governed, as well as other forms and systems of government.
Pupils should be taught about:
 parliamentary democracy, including the role of Parliament in holding governments to account, and the different roles of the executive, legislature and judiciary
 the different electoral systems used in and beyond the United Kingdom and actions citizens can take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond
 other systems and forms of government, both democratic and non-democratic, beyond the United Kingdom
 local, regional and international governance and the United Kingdom's relations with the rest of Europe, the Commonwealth and the wider world
 diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding
 the different ways in which a citizen can contribute to the improvement of their community, to include the opportunity to participate actively in community volunteering
 wages, taxes, credit, debt, financial risk and a range of more sophisticated financial products and services.

Which covers some of this. So it may just be the sad case that the average 16 year old know more about this stuff than the average MP