Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Richard Hakluyt]

£12k is too piffling to be a real bribe. So it was either gross incompetence on Jenrick's part or straightforward crony capitalism..........possibly both.

[Sheilbh]

£12k is too piffling to be a real bribe. So it was either gross incompetence on Jenrick's part or straightforward crony capitalism..........possibly both.

Yeah. I think it's more likely that Desmond is "our people" so you want to help him out.

Though £12k isn't impossible for a UK bribery scandal - cash for questions was £2,000 a pop and the numbers in the expenses scandal were generally embarrassingly low.

I think the real opportunity/space for corruption in the UK is what people do after they leave office/move to the Lords - whether it's Tony Blair or George Osborne who still probably have some (oversold) connections selling thier "strategic advice" for millions.

[Tamas]

£12k is too piffling to be a real bribe. So it was either gross incompetence on Jenrick's part or straightforward crony capitalism..........possibly both.

Yeah. I think it's more likely that Desmond is "our people" so you want to help him out.

Though £12k isn't impossible for a UK bribery scandal - cash for questions was £2,000 a pop and the numbers in the expenses scandal were generally embarrassingly low.

I think the real opportunity/space for corruption in the UK is what people do after they leave office/move to the Lords - whether it's Tony Blair or George Osborne who still probably have some (oversold) connections selling thier "strategic advice" for millions.

If he saved them 40 mill fo 12k he is quite a noob compared to his Hungarian counterparts.  IIRC somewhere along 5% is quite normal over there. One of the more influental MPs is said to have the nickname "Mr. Ten Percent" in business circles.

[Sheilbh]

They also reduced the amount of "affordable" housing they intended to build from 35% (the legal standard) to 20% (their development), so I think that's estimated to earn another £100 million.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally given BLM, statue toppling and that we're still learning the truth about the Windrush scandal I really recommend the NT Live production of Small Island which is available for free on Youtube. It's an excellent production and well worth the three hours of time.

Available until Friday I think.

[Josquius]

Something from the well duh files.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/21/exclusive-labour-councils-in-england-hit-harder-by-austerity-than-tory-areas

Really needs highlighting more though. Stupid buggers blaming the council for everything bad absolutely infest local social media. Key foot soldiers in the destruction of society army.

[Sheilbh]

Very interesting piece on the role of Empire in racism by David Edgerton - really need to read his revisionist post-war history:

Britain's persistent racism cannot simply be explained by its imperial history
David Edgerton
It played its part, but empire does not explain all of Britain's record of elitism, exploitation and discrimination
Wed 24 Jun 2020 08.00 BST
Last modified on Wed 24 Jun 2020 08.39 BST


Enoch Powell electioneering in his Wolverhampton constituency, 1970. Photograph: Leonard Burt/Getty Images

The question of empire has become central to discussions of Britain's national past. Some see residual imperialism as the prime element in a deficient, delusional, racist culture. Others think emphasising the dark underside of empire is an attempt to erase British history. The problem is that although long historical tradition sanctions criticism of imperialism, national history has proved far more resistant.

Talk of empire is now omnipresent, but it was previously written out of history. In the 1940s the unashamed imperialist Winston Churchill didn't offer an imperial history of the second world war, or even a national one, but an Anglo-American, cold-war version of events in his six-volume work, The Second World War. Subsequently, what's striking about postwar historiography is the lack of imperialist histories and the absence of condemnation for nationalist and anti-imperial forces. At most there were sotto voce claims that the British empire should have done a deal with Adolf Hitler in 1940 to keep itself alive.

More importantly, national histories ignored empire altogether. The reason is easy to find: after the war, a new nation arose that wanted to tell a national, not imperial, history of itself. This story was about the dawn of the welfare state, the Labour party and the National Health Service. This country's ancestry lay in the industrial 19th century, but it only became a true nation in 1940, during the Battle of Britain and the blitz.

Putting the empire in its proper historical place is hugely important for understanding the sheer scale of slavery, the racialised nature of the imperial project, and how this project shaped the Conservative party into the 1950s. For much of the elite, the UK was seen as a part of something far bigger: the empire. This is why we have an Imperial War Museum and an Imperial College, and why the head of the army was called the chief of the imperial general staff. Britain's second world war, as it was understood at the time, involved the whole British empire (and many, many allies). In 1940, no one in authority could say "Britain stood alone". If anything was alone, it was the entire empire.

It's also important to remember the important role anti-imperialism played for radical liberals and socialists. Radical liberals in 19th-century Britain criticised imperialism as the cause of unnecessary wars, and for sustaining a useless elite. More recently, the British centre-left has cited imperialism as the cause of war, militarism, nuclear weapons, economic decline, the failure to join the common market in the 1950s, and the failure to adapt to it since. For some historians, the demons and ghosts of empire are the spectres driving contemporary racism and Brexit, too. The UK, according to these critics, seems perpetually trapped in an Edwardian imperial mindset.

Blaming empire is a deep-seated reflex that feels reassuringly progressive. But it has also been a way to avoid confronting things that lie a little closer to home. It has long been easier, and less morally and intellectually contentious, to castigate the actions of the British state and elite in faraway colonies than confront their actions at home. Far too many ills of past and present are lazily laid at this door.

To make empire the dominant story in British history is to misunderstand the nature of Britain, its elite and its exploitative power, and its persistent racism. The racism of Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, for all its roots in the past, was a self-consciously post-imperial nationalist one. Imperialism reluctantly granted British Caribbean people UK citizenship. These rights were stripped away by nationalists, right down to Theresa May – this was the essence of the Windrush scandal. People voted for Brexit not because they were imperialists, but because they were nostalgic for a national Britain. They were certainly not voting for the return to free immigration from the old imperial territories. The history that seems to matter most to Brexiteers is a particular account of the second world war, one that is decidedly nationalist.

Empire has only ever been part of the British story, but it can never stand for the whole. Even at its peak, it represented only a fraction of Britain's relations with the rest of the world, not least in war, but also in trade. From the late 19th century onwards, the Caribbean empire was tiny in terms of trade and population compared with Canada and Australia. In population numbers, India accounted for four-fifths of the entire empire, but trade with India was significantly less important than trade with the dominions. And the history of migration to and from the UK stretches wider than the empire, too – with people flowing into and out of the country to the US and from Europe. Britain's global history, in other words, is not the same as its imperial history.

If we want to look for great silences in our history, empire is hardly the only one. There has been a glaring hole where the history of British capitalism and the British capitalist class should be; in its place are overwrought stories of decline and of imperial finance. The neglect of the British working class is particularly stunning. Giants of (anti-imperialist) postwar history such as EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm made this their field, and inspired countless others in a historical endeavour that peaked in the 1970s, but has since decayed even more rapidly than the industrial working class. Around 1900, Britain's industrial proletariat was one of the three largest in the world, comparable to those of the US and Germany. The British working class alone accounted for roughly 30% of the population of the entire empire outside India, and a far higher proportion of those producing for capitalist markets.

There are many aspects of British history – many dark sides, too – other than imperialism. We should not admit the framing of the debate about history as a question of a dark imperial history sullying a bright national story. To do so would be to ignore a more difficult truth: all our national history needs rethinking.

• David Edgerton is the author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a Twentieth-Century History

[Tamas]

Britain's persistent racism cannot simply be explained by its imperial history

Apologies for not having read the rest of the post, but that strikes me as evident. Racism is pretty strongly present everywhere, not even a white men's unique thing, and most countries never had an empire.

[Sheilbh]

Britain's persistent racism cannot simply be explained by its imperial history

Apologies for not having read the rest of the post, but that strikes me as evident. Racism is pretty strongly present everywhere, not even a white men's unique thing, and most countries never had an empire.

So you've focused on the one bit of the article he didn't write

[Richard Hakluyt]

One of the primary rules of reading the Guardian; try not to read the annoying headline which can often bias one against the sound points being made in an article.

[Josquius]

Its a chronic misunderstanding of the empire to paint it as a monolithic racist institution. Britain didn't conquer quarter of the world because they weren't white. Britain conquered quarter of the world then began grasping for psuedo-scientific reasons why this was OK and many came to a conclusion this was because white people were better.
However the empire, and the way many have came to look back on it in modern times, is undoubtedly a key factor in modern racist attitudes. When you're in an unjust hierarchical society and find yourself on the bottom you've two possible paths open to you.
1: Support change to the unjust hierarchies. Seek to ensure that future generations won't have to go through the same thing that you did and will get a fairer chance than you did. Socialism.
2: Adopt a world view where, despite all appearances to the contrary, you're not on the bottom but you're part of the master group that has accomplished great and wonderful things, but due to some horribly unfair set back paradoxically finds itself on the brink of certain doom. Nationalism.

Back when the empire was a going concern the association of empire with the reigning regime that oppressed workers from Glasgow to Bombay was strong. One couldn't be anti regime and pro empire. It didn't work.
Now the empire is a figment of the past it can be recast into a mould where all Britain sat astride the brown people.

[Sheilbh]

Re. Jenrick - they've issued loads of documents. Apparently the PM considers the matter "closed" and Jenrick has the "complete support of Number 10". So he's being ceremoniously shown into a room with a bottle of scotch and a revolver:

Robert Jenrick under pressure to resign after donor-row documents released
Housing secretary 'insisted' planning decision for a £1bn development should be rushed through
Rajeev Syal
Wed 24 Jun 2020 19.11 BST
First published on Wed 24 Jun 2020 16.08 BST

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary, is under pressure to resign after newly released documents indicated that he had "insisted" a planning decision for a £1bn development should be rushed through so a Tory donor's company could reduce costs by up to £50m.

In one document, a civil servant in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government wrote that the secretary of state (SoS) wanted the Westferry development in east London to be signed off the following day so that Richard Desmond's company would avoid the community infrastructure levy (CIL).

"On timing, my understanding is that SoS is/was insistent that decision issued this week ie tomorrow – as next week the viability of the scheme is impacted by a change in the London CIL regime," the official wrote.

The documents also show that Desmond, the former media owner and pornographer, lobbied Jenrick about the deal in writing and arranged a site visit for him.

Desmond urged Jenrick to rush through the deal before the levy was introduced, writing: "We don't want to give the Marxists loads of doe for nothing!"

Jenrick replied: "I think it is best if we don't meet until the matter is decided."

The documents relating to Westferry Printworks were released after Jenrick admitted to MPs that he saw images of the development on Desmond's mobile phone. Jenrick was accused of breaking the ministerial code.

He confirmed that he looked at images of the development on the phone of Desmond, the former pornographer, at a Tory fundraising event, as revealed by the Sunday Times.

Jenrick told MPs: "I recognise that there are higher standards of transparency expected in the quasi-judicial planning process, which is why I will also release discussions and correspondence which the government would not normally release."

He added: "This was a decision taken with an open mind on the merits of the case after a thorough decision-making process."

It came after Labour tabled a motion seeking to force the government to release all documents relating to the controversial approval by Jenrick for the development in east London, which was submitted by Desmond.

The housing secretary has faced accusations of "cash for favours" after it emerged ex-Daily Express owner Desmond had personally given the Conservative party £12,000 two weeks after the scheme for 1,500 homes was approved.

Jenrick has since had to quash his own approval, conceding the decision was unlawful.

Following his announcement, Clive Betts, the chair of the housing, communities and local government committee, questioned why Jenrick had waited until Labour tabled a debate on his role in the development to make the announcement. "I think it might have been helpful if we had had it before the debate today," he said.

Opening the debate, the shadow communities secretary, Steve Reed, asked about the Conservative party fundraising dinner in November 2019, attended by both Jenrick and Desmond.

"I understand Mr Desmond's lobbyists, a company called Thorncliffe, had been busy selling tickets to the event to people who wanted access to the secretary of state," he said.

"Ministers are not allowed to take planning decisions if they have been lobbied by the applicant and, under the ministerial code, ministers are required not to place themselves under an obligation by, for instance, helping to raise funds from a donor who stands to benefit from the decisions they make because it raises questions about cash for favours – which would be a serious abuse of power."

Jenrick was asked to confirm a report in the Sunday Times saying that he had watched a video about the development at the fundraiser, on Desmond's phone.

On the second time of asking, Jenrick addressed the house and said he could not recall the details, adding: "He did bring out his iPhone and show me some part of the development."

Labour also said the timing of the planning approval – just a day before a new community infrastructure levy came into force – would have saved Desmond's Northern and Shell company up to £50m.

Jenrick originally approved the plan in January 2020, overruling both Tower Hamlets council and a planning inspector.

[Tamas]

He should be investigated by the police, frankly. This is Hungary-level stuff.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The Daily Mail is covering this in detail too :

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8457073/Dossier-private-messages-Robert-Jenrick-rushed-property-scheme.html#comments

They are now pretty close to being an anti-government paper; which is important I think.

[Duque de Bragança]

One of the primary rules of reading the Guardian; try not to read the annoying headline which can often bias one against the sound points being made in an article.

Your piece of advice should really be part of the curriculum for English classes, be it in the UK or abroad.