Jul 13, 2016 | Uncategorized
One of the stranger aspects of the past few days has been the number of times I’ve found myself saying: “I’m no fan of Theresa May, but…” And it is true: I am no fan of Theresa May.
And yet I do find myself saying and writing it, in part because (without wishing to be ungallant) she was the least worst of the candidates available for the post of Prime Minister. This includes those on the opposition front benches: the Labour Party, to which I naturally incline, is toast.
I am intrigued that Theresa May has been tacking to the centre this past week, and making some strategic statements designed no doubt for the ears of those floating Labour voters who aren’t already in the welcoming arms of UKIP or the SNP. What Mrs. May understands and Mr. Corbyn and his acolytes do not, is that the aspirational working and middle classes are not socialist. To be sure they lean generally leftwards in most social attitudes, but they are also the children of the cohort that bought their council houses under Mrs. Thatcher, and voted for a Blair government three times. It is a cohort that distrusts ideology of any kind in favour of an undefined sense of “fairness”, albeit that the past couple of weeks have shone light on some grubby beasties hiding under stones.
Britain has changed hugely during my lifetime as have the attitudes and expectations of Britons. For the most part I think these changes have been for the better. It really will not do for the Labour Party operate on the basis of early 20th century economic and political ideology expressed in the language of a second-rate nineteen-seventies sociology tutor.
As matters stand as I write this, I reckon the Conservatives will be in government, probably with a very substantial majority, until 2025 at the earliest. And it is for that reason I find myself regarding Theresa May with my fingers crossed.
Jul 10, 2016 | Brexit
More Brexit.
I had a discussion with my MSP on Twitter last night. Alex (Lib. Dem.) retweeted his party leader. The discussion went as follows:
What troubles me about the Lib Dem position is the underlying assumption that the result of the referendum is something to be overturned by people who know better, blithely discounting the expressed votes of those who voted Leave. That is exactly the sort of attitude that, it appears, many Leave voters reacted against, and seems to me to be profoundly anti-democratic.
We can discuss until the cows come home whether referendums are themselves flawed instruments (I think they are), but we had one, and having had one we should think long and hard before dismissing the result, and the views of our fellow-citizens, simply because we disagree with them.
Jul 3, 2016 | Brexit
This isn’t the post I was going to write.
I spent time yesterday trying to sketch down some further thoughts about Brexit, but abandoned them when I realised they were guff.
No change there, then.
What I was thinking about yesterday was finding an upside to the Brexit clusterfuck. I toyed with the notion that if we are out then it might be best were we out completely, without playing with notions of the EEA, which looks like an expensive band-aid to cover a gaping wound. It struck me that the benefits of joining the EEA, either for the UK as a whole or Scotland in particular, are uncritically assumed rather than established on well-articulated and analysed evidence.
I’d like to think an analytical case could be made weighing up the various options, but I think it’s probably too soon for that to have been done, and, anyway, we seem to be in an era of policy based on social-media sloganeering.
So yesterday I was thinking that it ought to be possible to aim for a Britain that remained egalitarian and cosmopolitan, a Britain that sought to compete as a trading nation, and to build strategies around that objective.
My provisional conclusion is that all of that is just a nice aspiration. I have three reasons:
- A trading nation succeeds because of innovation and competitive energy from SMEs. While the UK (and certainly Scotland) is an SME-based economy, our governance structures are stuffed with people who only understand large-corporate culture. Lip-service is paid to SMEs and their importance, but there is no indication government has the first idea how to approach growing an SME economy.
- I realised I need to look at my own assumptions. The bits of Britain I find most congenial are egalitarian and cosmopolitan, but they are unevenly distributed. One theme of the referendum seems to be that a large number of Leave voters see the very things I find admirable as manifestations of “the elite”, and representative of a life they do not share, often because of social and financial inequality.
- A hallmark of competitive trading nations is more or less free movement of people and capital, the former of which is another strand that Leave sentiment, on both left and right, finds objectionable.
Change is coming to the UK as the consequences of Brexit work through the system; effective change follows desire paths of least resistance. Politicians since Thatcher have been pushing notions of an entrepreneurial culture (which seems to me to be a requirement for a trading nation) but we don’t really have one, or at least not one that fits the bill.
I look in vain for signs of understanding in our political parties, but I don’t see it.
I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this yet, though I already see some aspects that lead to business opportunities. But even if Brexit does not eventually occur (and my working assumption is that it will), change–and challenge–is in the air.
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And finally…
In the days after the referendum I muttered about finding ways to get round the outcome. Over the course of the week I’ve seen a lot of arguing about the Constitutional niceties of triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and several people whose views I listen to argue that the trigger will never be pulled. Well, maybe it will and maybe it won’t.
But I’ve stopped muttering.
After the Scottish referendum in 2014 I took the view that the decision was made and that was that. Of course the outcome in that referendum was one I agreed with. I didn’t have (and still don’t have) a lot of time for folks trying to re-fight that battle through Twibbons and flag-waving. But, of course, I have to apply the same standard to myself: I don’t like the result, but it is what it is.
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