As I left home this morning, the sky was grey and overcast. It had just stopped raining, but there were occasional periods of intermittent drizzle: you know, the kind of “will it, won’t it” weather only too familiar in Britain. The weather matched my mood exactly. On the day the UK Government’s letter triggering Article 50 reaches Brussels, the weight of history hung over me like an oppressive dark grey cloud hanging low in the sky.

My thoughts were as gloomy as the portentous weather. How will future generations ever forgive us for an act that Michael Heseltine called “the worst peace-time decision taken by any modern post-war government”. Quite.  (Things must have reached a spectacularly low point when I’m quoting Thatcher’s former Defence Secretary in support of my argument!)

The death of the liberal Britain that I have been comfortable to call my own will be a slow and agonizingly drawn-out process. The delusional fantasies of the implacable Europhobes (including those in the Cabinet) will soon hit the immovable object of 27 other countries’ demands and those of the EU institutions. The shits will hit – not the fan, exactly – but the rock of opposition. What will follow won’t be pretty. It’s probably only a matter of months before the hardcore Leavers will start to look around for someone else to blame. So, too, will those who believed – or colluded with – their lies.

Add to this the EU-hating press. The drip-drip poison from the pages of the Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph will grow into a steady and corrosive flow of bile and invective. Public discourse – which already hit rock-bottom during the referendum campaign – will sink to even lower levels. Social media and the Twittersphere will become even more of a sewer of hatred. Expect a further increase in hate crime. The pound and the economy will take a dive – those who predicted this would happen already were wrong, but these are unprecedented times. It’s a matter of when, not if. Staff shortages, particularly in the NHS and in agriculture, will add to the pressure of NHS spending cuts and supermarkets’ abuse of their bargaining power against the farmers.

And, of course, it will be the poor and vulnerable who will take brunt of the fallout from all this. Keir Starmer has said some sensible things about Labour’s “red lines” in relation to workers’ rights and living standards. Other than that, I don’t see anyone coming to their rescue. On the contrary, it creates scope for opportunist populists to wreak further mischief. None of which is an endearing prospect.

On this day, Prime Minister May has called for the whole country to unite. To be fair to her, she has signed a letter to President Tusk that is reasoned and fair-minded in tone and content. But to unite behind this ragbag bunch of intellectual pigmies, moral cowards and deluded fantasists masquerading as the UK government? No way, May. No way. It would take a far, far greater person than you are, or will ever be, to make me unite behind that.

The European Union is 60 years old today. Happy Birthday! On 25^th March 1957, the six founding nations – Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – signed the treaty of Rome. The EEC, as it was originally, has become the European Union and grown considerably, to 28 nations today. 27 of those 28 nations are gathered together today in Rome to celebrate the anniversary. The 28^th, i.e. the UK, is staying away and skulking at home, ashamed to show its face – and deservedly so. We all know why.

Progress

The EEC /EU has developed from being a trading bloc to a wider union with a single market allowing tariff- and hassle-free flow of goods and services between all its member states. The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc. The shared values and democratic principles of the western European nations were a beacon of principle to inspire countries of the former Soviet bloc to democratize and join the Union. Europe has enjoyed the longest period of unbroken peace in modern history.

The EU has used its size and trading weight to take on anti-competitive behaviour of large multinationals such as Microsoft. It has led to practical consumer benefits such as ending the rip-off by mobile phone companies of roaming charges within the EU. The Erasmus programme has inspired generations of schoolchildren and students to work collaboratively across Europe, to mutual benefit and understanding. It has enabled the free flow of ideas and culture between its nations. Here in the UK, our eating habits have become much more Europeanized and varied. A significant proportion of Europe’s youth sees itself as European first and their national identities second.

Flawed

But let’s not get too carried away. Even its best friends, including me, realise that the EU is a flawed institution. Its ways can seem frustratingly arcane. The euro is a project whereby the politics of the case trumped the economics. Politically, it’s a good idea to bind countries further together in a currency union that makes armed conflict between members unthinkable. But the economic strains on yoking the very different economies of northern and southern Europe has led to much real pain – not least for the Greek people.

The EU can appear extremely bureaucratic. Ask anyone who has tried to fill out an EU funding application form! The need for simultaneous translation in its formal sessions slows down discussion and adds to costs. And yet the total EU budget is small – less than that of Birmingham City Council for a union of over 300 million people. And as for the frustrations: I’m almost embarrassed to repeat the old chestnut that it was Winston Churchill who said it was better to “jaw, jaw, not war, war”.

The EU has struggled to cope with major challenges in the past decade. The shock caused by the global collapse of the economic order in 2007-8 and the failure to come up with a more effective alternative has led to ten years of low growth and real economic pain for individuals and families. The unprecedented level of migrant flows resulting from the chaos in the Middle East has strained, to the limit, compassionate and liberal attitudes towards vulnerable migrants. Exploitation by the far right and populists of the fears aroused by these forces poses an existential threat to the EU. A lot of us have our fingers crossed that the centre – and decency – will hold.

So when the EU needs to be concentrating on its challenges and agreeing a common view on the way forward, energy and effort need to be diverted into negotiating with the one who wants to leave: the UK.

The Future?

The EU commission has produced a White Paper outlining five scenarios for discussion amongst the 27 other member countries. The UK government is threatening to turn our country into some devil-take-the hindmost, lowest-common denominator, race-to-the-bottom, low tax and low skills rogue state if we don’t get what Theresa May thinks Britain wants from the exit negotiations. It’s easy to imagine some future scenario when the UK becomes a pariah state.

Freed from the constraints of the UK’s strong rear-guard action to prevent stronger EU-wide regulation of financial services, I can see the EU collectively enacting rules that prevent some of the more obviously risky “smoke and mirror” City practices. Add to that the City’s role as the hub in a network of Crown Dependencies who are offshore tax havens facilitating money-laundering and tax evasion. (See also my earlier blog post: The City: Paragon or Parasite?) And you get a situation where the UK is out in the cold, with trade sanctions and a permanently damaged global reputation.

So, Happy 60^th Birthday, EU! May you prosper and continue to set an example of freedom, democracy and civilized values. It’s a tragedy – especially for our children and grandchildren – that we won’t be there with you.

Viewsnight is BBC Newsnight’s recently created, visually gimmicky, slot to present a wide range of opinions from individuals, often themselves mavericks or non-mainstream, to provoke debate about current topics. It’s a welcome initiative (apart from the gimmicks).

Thursday night’s slot was given to Richard Dawkins on the subject of “Brexit” – his word, not mine. In two minutes, Dawkins is able to demolish the whole EU referendum process and I agree strongly with everything he said. Er, except, perhaps one thing – see below. But first, see for yourself:

Click here to view video

Dawkins makes a concise case about the dangers of referendums and the need for safeguards to be built into any well-designed constitution for a country. This is because of the long-lasting effect of constitutional change, compared to a normal election, where the decision can be reversed a few years later. Neither David Cameron nor the UK Parliament saw fit to build any such safeguards into the EU referendum process last summer. And to cap this, the British public were lied to on an unprecedented scale during the pre-vote campaign. Dawkins rightly condemns David Cameron’s stupidity in running scared of UKIP and the lies told in the run-up to the vote.

He similarly, and rightly, condemns the bullshit along the lines that “the British people have spoken” in the May government’s line ever since. The idea that a small majority of votes in a simple binary choice, in the absence of factual information, represents the enduring wisdom of a nation is palpable nonsense. Similarly, the outright bullying since by the usual rabid sections of the anti-EU press has no place in a modern liberal democracy.

Condemn the Act, Not the Person

But now I come to the one problem I have with Dawkins’ piece. About 20 seconds from the end, he refers to the “ignorant and misled public”. Whilst both epithets may be literally true, he loses sympathy with much of his audience at this point. Referring to the public as “ignorant” is politically unwise: playing the man, not the ball.

A reasonable analogy would be in the upbringing of children. Parents and professionals such as teachers are told, when a child is naughty, to criticise the act, not the child. Just because a child has done something bad doesn’t make that child a bad person.

The same is true for stupidity. We’ve all done things in our lives that we regret as being stupid. That doesn’t necessarily make us stupid people. David Cameron was stupid to cave in to his more rabid backbenchers by announcing an EU referendum after 40 years plus of lies and misrepresentations, by politicians and the media, about the EU. That stupid decision doesn’t mean I think that Cameron is stupid: weak, certainly, but not stupid.

Similarly, May’s desire to give parliament and the people no further say in whatever deal her government is able to negotiate does not appear to be the result of May’s stupidity. But it does reinforce my impression of May as someone with very strong authoritarian instincts and a determination to get her own way, come what may. That’s more sinister than stupid.

Meanwhile, back to Richard Dawkins and his video. The man has a reputation of getting up people’s noses – even of those who agree with him. It’s a shame he does this again in the Viewsnight video. Because on this topic, as on may others, he’s absolutely right.

Theresa May appears to have taken her gloves off in her approach to consulting the Scottish Government over the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU. The more conciliatory tone she used in her early days as PM has given way to something altogether more aggressive. The word “obsession” caught my eye from May’s speech to the Scottish Tories’ conference yesterday.

Obsession was what she accused Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her Government of. Obsession, that is, with a drive for independence for Scotland. It strikes me that this term misses a glaringly obvious point. Sturgeon leads a government whose ruling party is the Scottish Nationalist Party. Pardon me, but its name is a bit of a giveaway. Its principal raison d’être is, by definition, to strive for Scottish independence. It’s a bit like criticising UKIP for banging on about leaving the EU. Or the Suffragettes obsessing about votes for women.

May’s Own Obsession

In a recent post, I spoke of Theresa May’s own obsession: immigration. Her choice to place control of immigration above all factors will, if carried through, lead to the most economically and socially damaging form of our exit from the EU. The economic case has been made repeatedly and I won’t repeat it here. But there are lots of examples in the media to illustrate the point, such as this tale of the Mini’s camshaft manufacture.

The list of heart-rending tales of inhamanity dished out regularly by the Home Office on both EU and non-EU citizens in their residency applications grows longer almost daily:

• The Dutch woman of 24 years residency, with two British children, who was told to make preparations to leave – even though she has residency rights as an EU worker at least until Britain actually leaves the EU;
• EU citizens denied UK residency for various technical problems, including failure to provide proof of having medical insurance;
• A 32 year-old German national who was born in the UK was refused UK permanent residence for failure to supply documents from 1982 to the Home Office because the Revenue & Customs don’t keep records going back that far;
• A Zimbabwean asylum seeker who fears for his life if returned to Zimbabwe has been told he will be deported – he bravely rescued two children from a neighbour’s house 3weeks ago.

And so on and so on. As the man in the last case said: “someone should have a heart”. May ran the Home Office for six years, during which the bureaucratic nightmare of its handling of immigration issues steadily hardened. Setting the tone from the top of that Department, it’s clear May doesn’t “have a heart”. That’s made all the clearer by May’s stated intention of overturning the Lords amendment to the Article 50 bill guaranteeing rights for existing EU residents in the UK. She plans to ensure 3 million EU nationals and 1 million Brits living elsewhere in the EU are political pawns in the exit negotiations. No “heart” then, for the uncertainty and anxiety caused to 4 million people.

No Heart

From her track record at the Home Office, disrespect for the democratically elected government of Scotland and disregard for the wishes of its people, May’s authoritarian streak shows more and more. I get the impression of a woman who has led a sheltered, middle-class life with narrow, socially conservative ideas and (as I said) an authoritarian streak. She shows no curiosity to actually find out or empathise what impact her government policies have on those who lead very different lives from her own circle. May’s words of concern for the “just about managing” are just that: words. There are no discernible actions or policies yet to back them up. The words stem from a cold-hearted political calculation, not from the heart.

It’s ironic that it was May herself who warned the Tory Party conference in 2002 about their party’s image as the Nasty Party. In recent years, it seems she is the one above all who is reinforcing that image. With the Conservatives almost 20% ahead in the polls, May’s hubris continues to rise higher. As today’s Guardian says: “Mrs May subordinated economic policy to the pursuit of a myth of cultural indigenousness. History shows that leads to a spiral of ever more aggressive nativism.” It ends: “Mrs May, be warned: this won’t end well.” But, sadly, millions of the more vulnerable of us will suffer before she does.

Nasty Party, nasty woman in charge.

… brings shame on us, too

Theresa the Appeaser, she was called in parliament. Strong words, with powerful historic resonances – but about right, too. “Events, dear boy, events” said PM Harold Macmillan, when questioned about his likely greatest challenges as Prime Minister.

Well, events she got last week, in quick succession:

Event 1: She undertakes an ill-advised dash across the Atlantic to meet Donald Trump, just seven days after his inauguration and a week of highly controversial and divisive executive orders.

Event 2: She makes an over-hasty offer to Trump of a state visit to the UK this year, an offer never previously made to a US President in his first year of office.

Event 3: journalists capture a photograph of May and Trump holding hands in the White House. Whatever the explanation (and there have been several), it just looks creepy.

Event 4: just hours after May leaves, Trump announces his most reviled executive order banning refugees and travellers from seven mainly Muslim countries. The order is widely condemned by other world leaders, political opponents, civil rights campaigners – and anyone with any concept of basic, civilized values.

(Non-) Event 5: May fails to condemn Trump’s banning order four times on the Andrew Marr show and has failed to offer anything but the weakest of comments since.

To continue…

The above half-finished post has been delayed for reasons outside my direct control. Since then, May’s government has tried to bury bad news, by sneaking out one announcement under the cover of the Commons Article 50 vote. That was the abandonment of the so-called “Dubs amendment” of giving safe haven to unaccompanied refugee children after only 200 children have been helped, with a final 150 in process. Campaigners had expected around 3000 children a year. “Mean-spirited” is wholly inadequate to describe the decision.

These appalling catalogue of misjudgements presents a picture of a narrow-minded, mean-spirited, introspective  government and, by inference, the same for our country. Britain once boasted of “punching above its weight” in international affairs. But that depended in no small part, on the moral standing we held in the world. Well, goodbye to all that.

Let’s face it: May is turning out to be a first-class disaster as Prime Minister. The real tragedy is that there is no realistic scenario in prospect where she could be replaced by anyone who isn’t even worse. With a mentally unstable, narcissistic sociopath – and one who wants to bring down the existing order of international law – as our only friend, Britain now inhabits a very lonely and dangerous place. And one full of shame.

Shame on you, May, for bringing us to this pass. And we all share in our collective shame as a once-proud country. Be very afraid.

Only people well above retirement age will remember a gentle 1950s TV panel game called What’s My Line? Panellists would try to guess a person’s line of work from a mime and answers to ten “yes” or ”no” questions. Right now, Theresa May doesn’t seem to know what her job is. She spent too long as Home Secretary and still hasn’t woken up to her apparent promotion.

The Home Office

It’s been a truism of British politics that the job of being Home Secretary breaks politicians. In the last 25 years we have had 11 jobholders in that post. That’s an average duration of 2 years and 3 months. Theresa May stuck it out for 6 years (with Michael Howard and Jack Straw next, at 4 years apiece). That speaks to me volumes about May’s politics and outlook on society.

For a long time, I’ve believed that the Home Office is the most illiberal, dysfunctional of all the government departments. Even more this is true of its bastard offspring, the UK Border Agency, where asylum-seekers and would-be citizens have to navigate a nightmarish, Kafkaesque system to gain residency and citizenship rights. Anyone who has had any dealings with the system knows that the tabloid portrayal of Britain as an “easy touch” for immigrants is a gross, downright lie.

May is, I believe, a rather small-minded person with a strong authoritarian streak. I detect no real sense of empathy or genuine humanity – just like I view the Home Office. No wonder she lasted so long there. During this time, Prime Minister Cameron often repeated that Government policy was to reduce net migration into the UK to “tens of thousands”. This policy was absurd, as achievement was outside his control.

Possibly bruised by her experience of repeatedly failing to meet Cameron’s daft immigration “target”, May appears to be over-obsessed about immigration. May has swallowed whole the argument, put forward by UKIP, her Europhobic flank and the rabid tabloids, that the referendum result implies reducing immigration is a top priority in the EU negotiations. There is no sound reason to draw this conclusion.

Motives for Voting “Leave”

Let’s unpick this assumption a bit. The referendum produced a binary result to the question whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU. It stands to reason that voters on both sides would have had a variety of reasons in mind when voting. I’m unaware of any convincing research as to what those reasons actually were. Let’s try to list those of the “leave” voters, in roughly ascending order of merit:

1. Bigotry: racism and xenophobia: sadly, there is still a minority of people who fit this category. They are implacably opposed to the EU and all its works and their opinions are fixed firmly. A few of these are those responsible for the rise in hate crimes since the referendum. Clearly, all people with such a reason would wish to see a drop (to zero, presumably) in immigration.
2. Credulity: the referendum saw politicians in the leave camp at their most mendacious: I have never known so many blatant lies. This followed 40-plus years of lies, distortions and propaganda from sections of the media (you know who). I have to keep reminding myself that many – most? – people do not take the degree of interest in politics that I do. Such people may be more willing to accept these lies as the truth. A difficult-to-quantify proportion of these will agree that immigration should be reduced.
3. Post-imperial hubris and delusion: Likely to be skewed towards older voters, there are many Brits who continue to live in the shadow of our airbrushed imperial past. They hold instinctive views that we can relive our former imperial glory and be better off going it alone. Probably a majority holding these views would wish to reduce immigration, since, obviously, the British are better at doing things than Johnny Foreigner – despite vast evidence to the contrary.
4. Resistance to change: I would guess there’s a far greater number of “leave” voters in this category. Too-speedy change to the composition of a community can be disconcerting and a proportion of people will be opposed. It’s likely a significant proportion of this group would want reduced immigration. Some may not: they may see the economic and key skills benefits of migrants, as long as there are not too many in their back yards.
5. Desperation to be heard and for a change from the status quo: Much has been heard about this group and their vulnerability to populist siren voices. There’s a partial overlap with “credulity” in that they’re likely to have allowed their anger about “elites” to be diverted away from those people and policies responsible (bankers / free market fundamentalism) to the “faceless bureaucrats” in Brussels instead. There’s no obvious way of guessing the importance they attach to immigration as part of the problem.
6. Socialist dreamers: There is an honourable reason to want Britain to leave the EU, exemplified by the late Tony Benn. This is that the EU has been “captured” in ideology by the free market fundamentalists. Britain would be better going it alone with a (presumably Labour) Government introducing legislation which restores the balance of rights to employees and poorer members of society. Control of immigration hardly enters this line of reasoning. Attractive as this idea may be, I suspect this isn’t going to happen any time soon. The greater danger was spelled out by Phillip Hammond threatening to turn the UK into a tax haven with even fewer rights for workers and the poor and a further erosion of our tax base.

Of course, an individual voter may have weighed up several of these factors and some have clear overlaps. But there’s nothing to suggest that immigration is the top concern of Leave voters. When you add in the 48% who voted Remain, the argument for prioritising immigration over the economy – or anything else – falls away entirely.

Read the Job Description!

For me, this all leads to a straightforward conclusion. May was in her comfort zone as Home Secretary. By definition, her brief as Prime Minister is much wider. Viewing the EU negotiations from the perspective of her previous job has led to a grievous consequence. She has, without perhaps realising it, surrendered to the view of the most nauseating and bigoted of the extreme Europhobes in her own party and to the even more nauseating populist slimebags in UKIP.

In short, Theresa May clearly falls a long way short of the Job Description for the job as Prime Minister of the UK. As predicted, she has now lost the Supreme Court appeal – at great expense and waste of time. Let’s hope that members of parliament will help her to understand she is not some medieval monarch, but the Prime Minister of a 21^st century democracy.

The Red Cross, not known for exaggeration, calls it a “humanitarian crisis”. The “it” is, of course, the state of the NHS and its A&E services in particular, as winter takes its toll. Three times as many NHS trusts are in deficit as a year earlier, key targets such as waiting times are being missed on a spectacular scale.

The NHS remains one of Britain’s most cherished institutions. And yet, it seems that significant numbers of the electorate are very slow learners: The Tories can’t be trusted with the NHS!!

On the Cheap

Britain has been getting its healthcare on the cheap for a long time, compared with similar countries. The graph below compares spend on healthcare (as a percentage of national income: GDP) of around 30 countries:

It can be seen that most of our comparable countries in the developed world spend more than the UK – the USA spectacularly so. The obvious consequence of this is that the NHS is less well-resourced than its main European neighbours (but not the USA! – see below).

The degree of goodwill shown by NHS staff in maintaining the system becomes apparent when you see the relatively thin provision of key staff: doctors shown above and nurses below. (NB: no / incomplete nurses data for the Netherlands and Italy.)

But perhaps the most shocking of all is Britain’s incredibly low provision of hospital beds: see below. When you add in the “bed blocking” caused by draconian cuts in social services budgets over the past few years, it’s easy to see why “running out of hospital beds” is a daily news item. It’s not just the cold weather and feckless patients, it’s the result of government policy.

The US Confidence Trick

It’s perhaps worth pointing out something else that jumps out of these graphs. That’s the spectacularly poor performance of the USA healthcare system. Despite the eye-wateringly high spend, Americans get very little for their money – as the graphs above show in terms of doctors, nurses and hospital beds. US life expectancy is lower than the UK and EU average, its infant and post-natal mortality rates are practically third world standard. A stark warning is the fact that a significant faction of the Conservative party wants to undermine and destroy the NHS to bring in something more like the US system. Clearly, the Americans are being conned big-time. Their dollars must go to the fat profits and the spending on major lobbying and propaganda campaigns of the private US healthcare companies. You have been warned.

Recent Healthcare History

All the above information shows how Britain compares to similar countries, using the most recent data available to the OECD. A historical perspective of trends in healthcare spending in the UK is also instructive, as the graph below demonstrates. Background colours on the graph represent Labour (pink), Tory (blue) and Tory / Lib Dem coalition (green) governments.

From the 1950s through to the mid-1970s, both Labour and Conservative governments followed similar policies in terms of funding the NHS. Spending rose slowly in line with longer life expectancy and a wider range of treatments available. The period of decline in the late 1970s can be attributed to shock to the economy of the oil crisis and the five-fold increase in the price of oil. The jump up in the graph in 1980, shortly after Thatcher won the election, is not due to an increase in spending on the NHS. Rather, it is due to the sharp drop in GDP; Thatcher’s monetarism experiment resulted in a sharp recession, wiping out much of British manufacturing industry and the steady jobs with them – never to return.

Spending was stagnant through the 18 years of Tory government, mostly falling slowly under Thatcher with a slight compensatory rise under John Major. When Tony Blair won the 1997 election, spending was under 6% of GDP, whilst average spending in the rest of the EU had steadily risen to over 8%. Blair pledged to bring NHS spending up to the level of the EU average: a 25%-plus increase overall. The graph clearly shows a rise to nearly 8% by the 2010 election, but the EU average by then was approaching 11%.

Under the 2010-15 coalition, spending was stagnant, despite the continuing increase in demand due to increasing longevity and new, expensive treatments. The graph shows the forecast decline for the Tory years to 2020. This forecast is made by the respected, expert medical charity The King’s Fund, based upon stated government policy announcements. No wonder that Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, told the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on Monday that Theresa May’s assertion that the NHS was getting all the funding it wanted “stretches it” – “it” being the truth. That’s polite speak for pointing out she’s a liar.

Tory Private Healthcare Links

The figures above speak for themselves: Tory governments since the 1980s tend to underfund the NHS. The institution is still much loved by the UK public whereas, to some implacable free market Tories, it acts as an inconvenient contradiction to the “truth” that private provision is always better than public. Add to that the many Tory MPs with vested interests in private healthcare providers: see this 2014 Daily Mirror article, for example. (It’s interesting – and disturbing – to note that many people in the Mirror’s article have now moved to government posts closer to healthcare and cabinet posts since the article was written.)

Which brings us full circle to my original point: how much more evidence do people need that the Tories cannot be trusted with the NHS?

Serious attempts are being made to formulate some kind of non-partisan, consensus policy-making to secure long-term funding for healthcare in this country. Indications so far are that May and company are resisting this: she appears always to want to have her own way and dismisses, rather than listens to, dissenting voices. Failing that, we will need some organised, grassroots political movement to get the Tories out of office before they destroy the NHS completely. The fightback must begin – soon.