Only a day or two before Barak Obama’s visit to the UK, I remarked to my wife what I saw was the general difference between the two sides in the EU referendum debate. Whatever I may think about the likes of Cameron and Osborne, the main statements made by the Remain camp seem to be based upon some form of rational argument. The Leave lot, on the other hand, generally resort to personal abuse.

Then along comes Obama, who makes an impassioned speech about why he believes that the UK should remain in the EU. He also strongly debunks the Leavers’ fantasy that Britain will be able to negotiate, easily and quickly, a bilateral trade deal with the USA. And what do we get in return? A load of bollocks from Boris Johnson about a bust of Churchill in the White House (not realising there are two different busts) and some abuse of Obama. Johnson asserts, absurdly, that Obama just made his speech as a favour to Cameron. Can anyone really believe the President of the world’s superpower would actually do that?

There is a dark side to all this nonsense. Public opinion of politicians is already extremely low. This state of affairs was helped in no small way by the Daily Telegraph, who pay Johnson £600,000 a year for his newspaper column. I refer, of course to the paper’s exposure of the MPs’ expenses scandal. This was an important, but highly spun, piece of investigative journalism which tried, and broadly succeeded, in creating the impression that all politicians are as bad as one another. The continuing personal attacks, mainly from the Leave campaigners, can only serve to undermine our whole faith in politicians even further.

It would be a tragedy of enormous proportions if the decision on Britain’s future in Europe were made on a tide of the most despicable cynicism. For goodness’ sake, let’s raise the tone of the debate before it’s too late.

“There isn’t another government just around the corner, to be frank. Teaching unions have a choice – spend the next four years doing battle with us and doing down the profession they represent in the process, or stepping up, seizing the opportunities and promise offered by the white paper and helping us to shape the future of the education system.” So said Education Secretary Nicky Morgan at a teachers’ union conference at the weekend.

Doesn’t that opening sentence sound rather threatening? It certainly isn’t the words of a government minister open to debate and consultation with the professionals in teaching. It’s just the latest in a long line of statements reflecting an increasingly authoritarian attitude towards the voting public.

The United Kingdom is self-evidently not a fascist dictatorship. The lessons of history and of comparison with some pretty nasty governments around the world clearly confirm that. And yet, and yet… I get increasingly concerned that, step by step, we are sliding slowly away from the wider principles of a liberal democracy. By “wider principles” I mean all those other ways, apart from a cross on a ballot paper every four or five years, which make us “civilized” and “free”.

Here are some other examples of my concern.

Arbitrary Detention

In many ways, New Labour started it, after Tony Blair became George W Bush’s poodle after 9/11. I’m thinking in particular of the near miss we had over 42 day detention for “terror suspects”. Britain never went to such lengths during the height of the IRA “troubles” in the 1970s and 80s. A sense of proportion is needed also. The number of us killed by acts of “terror” is minute compared with, say, the 40,000 premature deaths each year due to illegal levels of air pollution. Barak Obama pointed out Americans are far more likely to die in the bath than by a terrorist attack.

For all New Labour’s faults on civil liberties, matters have taken a turn for the worse since 2010 – even more since the last election without the moderating influence of the Liberal Democrats (whoever they were).

Rule of Law

Since Magna Carta 800 years ago, the concept of equality under the law has become a bedrock of liberal democratic thinking. During the 20^th century, this thinking was gradually extended to international law: the League of Nations, the United Nations, International Criminal Court and the European Council of Human Rights. Despite the fact that this it was overwhelmingly a British creation, the Tories have never liked New Labour’s incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. They are still working on ways of replacing this with a so-called British “Bill of Rights”. This has all the hallmarks of a patrician attitude to rights, gracefully conceded by the elite and gratefully received by the supplicant masses. We await Michael Gove’s proposals…

One sinister attack on this general principle is the proposal to exempt British troops from legal accountability. This proposal seems to flow from a general idea that the British military can do what they like to foreigners in their own countries, with no recourse for victims of abuse. That is not the thinking one would expect from a liberal democracy.

Silencing Critics

I have written in the past about the distorting effect of so-called “think tanks”, which often act as nothing more than lobbying groups for rich and powerful vested interests. Through the smokescreen of this outrage, the coalition government came up with what its critics have dubbed a “gagging law”. This was carefully drafted to exclude from its effect the “think tanks”, who tend to favour the government line, whilst stifling the more independent minded charity sector. A new clause in agreements for government funding of charities requiring them not to criticize government policy has a similar chilling effect.

Starving Opposition of Funds

The Tories have always held the advantage when it comes to funding. The rich are happy to donate to pursue their interests. Over 50% of their donations come from City types. One counter to this is the so-called “Short money”, which is state funding paid to political parties by a bipartisan-agreed formula. (It has been a long standing convention that the matter of Party funding is agreed between the major Parties.) The government sneaked out a consultation document when Parliament was in recess to cut this money.

The Lords recently rejected another way the Tories are planning to tip the balance of advantage further their way. This is to change the rules for trades unions to collect political donations from their members, the overwhelming majority of which goes to the Labour Party.

Taken together, these changes would make it so much easier for the Tories to outspend their opponents at election time.

Tilting the Balance

Whilst there is some logic to the proposal for redrawing electoral boundaries, the changes will tip the advantage at elections towards the Tories. One argument put forward by the government is to reduce the cost of politics, as the proposal is accompanied by the reduction, from 650 to 600, in the number of MPs. If so, how come Cameron is also planning to stuff the House of Lords with Tory peers at a cost of some £2.6m? This is because there is no longer a Tory majority in the upper House and Cameron has suffered a series of defeats. His anger is that the Lords are not playing their traditional 100 year role of blocking Labour government legislation. It all smacks of Cameron’s usual arrogant assumption of an entitlement to get his own way all the time.

Politics Before Economics

George Osborne has repeatedly used his budgets to set traps for Labour, rather than doing what makes economic sense. But his reputation for his deft handling of the politics is now slowly falling apart. It is deeply worrying that the Chancellor is prepared to play fast and loose with the national economic interest in an endeavour to secure long-term Conservative hegemony.

No Opposition, No Compassion

All of the above add up for me to a truly depressing prospect. For the first time that I can remember, we have a government that seems prepared to do everything in its power to turn Britain into a one-party state, despite its lukewarm electoral support. This piece, written by Nick Cohen, when Ian Duncan Smith was still in post, makes for interesting reading now. Its central thrust still stands. The Tories will occasionally throw some sop to the poor or disadvantaged, for purely short term political gain. But their true aim is to try to remove all obstacles to their staying in power indefinitely. That sounds like a slow slide into some kind of fascism to me.

In 1946, German pastor Martin Niemöller wrote:

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

No, we’re not Nazi Germany. But, for goodness sake, we need effective opposition to stop the slide.

If I hear much more of the EU debate filtered through the prism of the rivalry between two old Etonian contemporaries, I shall scream! The slanging match between David Cameron and Boris Johnson ensures that this so-called debate will generate much heat and very little light. What’s more, both contenders have form when it comes to being economical, at best, with the truth.

Liar One

The art of the spin doctor is not new: it’s been around since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. Exaggeration, misleading emphasis and such have been in the armoury of politicians for a long time. Since 2010, David Cameron has taken this a stage further. I simply cannot remember a time when government ministers, led by the example of the prime minister, have told so many outright lies. Remember, the only career Cameron had before politics was in PR. There’s only one skill working in Public Relations teaches you. That’s the ability to lie convincingly. Putting aside party political differences, Cameron is in a league of his own as the prime minister whom, in my lifetime, I trust least to tell the truth.

The most notorious lie orchestrated by Cameron on taking power was that the 2007-8 economic crash was the fault of the Labour Party. The belief in that lie was the most important reason the Tories won the 2015 election. Of the many other lies, perhaps the most pernicious concern those which demonise the poor. The best example of this genre was the way the level of benefit fraud (actually 0.7% of benefits expenditure) was twisted in such a way that public opinion, on average, believed it to be 25%. The repeated assertions that debt reduction is Britain’s top economic priority and that austerity is the only solution are both lies: actually, they’re both matters of political choice.

And now I find myself on the same side of the fence as Cameron in the June EU referendum. We may be on the same side, but our reasons differ greatly. It’s an uncomfortable place to be. (Perhaps more on this some other time.)

Liar Two

Right up to the time of his carefully timed, much publicised and choreographed announcement that he was joining the “out” camp, Boris Johnson was yelling at all and sundry about how conflicted and agonized he was over the decision. And then – in a flash – he came out full throttle in favour of leaving the EU. That means one of two things. Either he lied when he said he was agonizing over the decision or he is insincere in his passion to leave. Either way, he lied.

A fascinating insight into Johnson’s character was revealed in a Guardian article in late February about the time in the 1990s when Johnson was the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent in Brussels. Over the years, a great many myths have circulated about the EU. Faceless bureaucrats were trying to over-regulate our lives: straight cucumbers, bans on using the word “chocolate” and so on. The myths could be entertaining, sometimes with a tiny grain of truth, but always grossly exaggerated or distorted. It turns out that a great many of the myths at this time came straight from the imagination and pen of… one Boris Johnson. He made them up for fun.

But much more seriously, the image of the EU as a killjoy, humourless and unelected bunch of over-zealous regulators who are tying us all up in red tape was nurtured in these years. This image helps the “outers” in their campaign. Johnson is now able to use the image he helped create to persuade British voters to opt to “leave”.

Other Voices Please!

So far, the debate in the media has been largely portrayed through the opposing (apparent) views of two rivals from privileged backgrounds. Both have an over-developed sense of their entitlement to power. The agenda is set by their respective wings of the Conservative Party. The only other voices to be heard so far are those media heroes and know-alls: business leaders. The experience of Donald Trump surely tells us that, just because you’re very rich or a business leader, does not mean you’re capable of having anything worth saying on the subject.

There are many other people and groups who deserve airtime during the oh-so-long period of debate. The opposition parties for a start. Academics, trades unions (who often fund useful research) and community groups have, so far, been given very little opportunity to join the discussion and, more importantly, set the agenda. One perennially under-represented group in the debate are Britain’s young people. As the referendum decision will have profound effects for years to come, it’s their future, above all, that’s at stake here.

So, starting with the BBC – which, as it says, belongs to all of us – let’s ensure our national debate gives a chance for people from all walks of life to have their say. It’s too important to be settled on the word-playing fields of Eton.

Schadenfreude is a guilty pleasure of low moral worth. But I can’t help deriving some delight from watching the Tories tear themselves apart over the EU referendum. There are, however, more serious issues at stake: the governance of the country for the next four months.

What Price Good Government?

With key players in the Cabinet expending so much energy on criticising each other, the mere matter of actually running the government is bound to suffer. Few people will be able to withstand the barrage of arguments of the next four months without the reputation of politics – and politicians – sinking still further. The very idea of liberal western democracy will take a further bashing.

It comes as no surprise to see the likes of Gove, Grayling, Duncan Smith, Whittingdale and Patel enthusiastically campaigning for the EU leavers. This is a distraction from their day jobs, but there is no fundamental conflict of interest. There is one important exception to this.

Peace Process Threat

That exception is Theresa Villiers, Northern Ireland Secretary. It beggars belief that she has refused to step down from her post whilst campaigning to leave the EU. Her lack of judgment borders on the criminally reckless, for the reasons below.

It took a great deal of very difficult negotiations to achieve the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 to bring peace to the streets of Northern Ireland. The Agreement is in two parts. It’s between the various factions in the province; it’s also an international legal agreement between the British and Irish Governments. The UK Government committed to incorporating the European Convention of Human Rights into Northern Ireland law. Both governments set up Human Rights Commissions to support this.

The European Parliament produced a report in 2014 which lists the help, support and funding Northern Ireland has received since 1998. This was in recognition of the extra needs the province had following its troubled history. A total of €450 million is being given by the EU under the PEACE III and PEACE IV programmes (2007-2020).

Professor Sionaidh Douglas-Scott of Oxford University is a qualified lawyer and an expert in EU and public law, human rights and legal and social theory. She wrote an article last year dealing with the constitutional threats to the UK’s coherence if we were to leave the EU. The section on Northern Ireland is particularly troubling. She describes the UK’s leaving the EU as a “source of great instability”. She says that the Northern Ireland Peace Process has been “unforgivably ignored” in the discussions. She also states “it risks shattering the fragile balance and stability of the UK by threatening the peace settlement in Northern Ireland”. (There’s a message there for Gove, too, in his attempts to rewrite Human Rights law.)

There have been many crises and threats to the stability of the power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland since 1998. Villiers would be the Minister responsible for dealing with any such crisis and for keeping the peace. How can she possibly stay in post and campaign to leave the EU?

Cameron, Get a Grip

It was David Cameron’s weakness and inability to manage his own backbenchers that led him to promise an in-out referendum by an arbitrary deadline. He has a responsibility to see that Britain maintains an effective government during the campaign period. This means imposing an appropriate level of discipline on his Ministers. A good start, and a minimum requirement at this stage, would be to sack Villiers from her Ministerial post.

Many years ago, I had a week’s holiday on the island of Jersey. (This was well before the Jersey authorities had sold their souls completely to international financial institutions. Tourism was still a major part of their economy.) The holiday was very pleasant, the weather warm and fine, as I recall. At yet, after a few days there, I began to feel just a tiny bit uneasy. The people were friendly enough, but something was definitely wrong. It was hard to put a finger on it at the time. But the overall effect was a bit claustrophobic.

I had a similar experience when visiting my then father-in-law in a small country town in Australia. We spent 5 nights there. We then drove to Canberra (think Milton Keynes with a parliament building if you’ve not been). It felt like escaping from prison.

Island Mentality

In retrospect, I think that, in both cases, we were experiencing the effects of a kind of “island mentality”. Yes I know the Australian town wasn’t an island. But, if you colour in blue on a map those parts of Australia which are (virtually) unpopulated, you see the country as an archipelago of islands. The towns and cities are surrounded by a vast, empty “sea” of land.

On the morning after Cameron announced his EU “deal”, the Today programme interviewed a Tory MP from a rural constituency. She was in favour of leaving the EU. She described Britain as a “maritime nation”. I don’t agree with her “leave EU” views or think that Britain is a nation of seafarers, but I do think she was making a similar point to mine above. There does seem to be something about being surrounded by water which affects how people view the world – and not for the better. The smaller the island, the bigger the effect. But I think this is something subconscious which works at an emotional level and helps to explain some of our attitude problems to the EU over the years.

After Empire

The second, and arguably more sinister, factor affecting our national attitudes to “the foreigner” is what I call our post-imperial delusion. I believe the British Empire, which really did cover more of the globe than any other in history, was a very mixed blessing. The subject remains controversial. See, for example, the spat between Niall Ferguson and Johann Hari in the Independent in 2006.

There’s certainly quite a lot of material on the internet taking a critical view of the workings and legacy of the British Empire – sometime polemically so. Here are a few examples of varying degrees of neutrality and partisanship:

1. An article in The Hindu (2012) reprinted from a George Monbiot piece in The Guardian. The discussion posts at the bottom of the page make for interesting reading, mainly of the fervently anti-British nature.
2. An item by a newly-qualified teacher listing the ”Ten evil crimes” committed by the British Empire. A good starting point to investigate each issue in turn, if that is your idea of fun.
3. An interesting and reasonably objective item on the British Library website about how the Magna Carta has been used over the years to both justify imperial oppression and to fight it.
4. The first Wikipedia page I have come across which is practically disowned by Wikipedia itself as unbalanced and polemical. Its subject Is “British War Crimes”.
5. An academic piece by a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, entitled ”A Moral Audit of the British Empire” (2007).

Yet despite this, and much more, I contend that the dominant narrative in our national discourse is that the British Empire was the most enlightened ever seen and brought benefit and “civilisation” to colonists and colonized alike. I believe the picture is much more mixed. But any attempt to have a mainstream honest debate seems to be stifled at birth. There were probably more benefits than disadvantages to the colonizing power, but almost certainly the reverse for the indigenous colonized peoples. Unlike, for example, Germany and South Africa, we have made no attempt to critically understand our past history. This leaves us with three legacy problems:

1. An unjustified sense of moral superiority;
2. An arrogance that flows from this, and
3. An inability to see ourselves as others see us.

EU Negotiations and Referendum

Which brings me to the topical reason for all this. David Cameron’s states that he’s “battling for Britain” and securing us a “special status”. This may persuade a few otherwise “leave” voters to vote in June to remain in the EU. That, in my view, will, of itself be a good thing. But it plays straight into the 3 weaknesses listed above. That can only defer the day when we begin to take a more honest view of ourselves and our past. That, in turn, damages Britain’s relationship with other counties and our long-term interests as a nation.

Firstly, my grudging congratulations to David Cameron for getting an agreement with his EU partners in Brussels. This clearly was the better of the two possible outcomes. And at least it makes a positive statement about the man’s stamina! BUT… and it is a big but. When it comes to Britain and the EU, I’m sick and tired of the debate always being about the wrong things.

The Wrong Things: EU

The first set of “wrong things” is what the EU leaders talked about this week. Three really key challenges right now are:

1. The poor state of the EU countries’ economies and the unfinished reforms following the 2007-8 financial crash. Growth in the Eurozone remains pitifully slow and the north/south pressures, typified by the “Germany v. Greece” arguments of the past year, have unresolved issues.
2. The humanitarian crisis caused by refugee and other migrant flows at levels unseen since the end of the second world war. A fair and sustainable solution is still far from being worked out.
3. The threat of fundamentalist terrorism and the strains it places on the key principle of free flow of people across borders in the Schengen area.

These three issues at least would have been a very heavy, but necessary, agenda for the EU’s leaders to have discussed this week. Instead, we have had two full days taken up with 28 heads of government discussing an issue which is essentially about managing the tensions inside the British Conservative Party. To 27 out of the 28 leaders, this must have seemed like an awful waste of time.

The Wrong Things: UK

The second set of “wrong things” is the list of what Cameron was “battling” for, on behalf of a grateful British public. None of the items would be on my list of reforms, as I explain below:

1. The Emergency Brake (4 year freeze on in-work benefits): I’ve worked as a volunteer advisor for a well-known advice agency for over 13 years. In that time, I’ve met very many workers from the newer EU member countries: Poles and Lithuanians above all. I’ve never met a single one who showed any evidence that they came to work in the UK because of our benefits system. Such research as exists shows such workers claim far less in in-work benefits than UK native workers. Expert opinion has stated that the “brake” will have no or marginal effect. No one in the government has ever produced a shred of evidence to show why this measure is needed or will make any difference. So why all the fuss?
2. Child benefit: the proposal to index child benefit paid to workers in the UK with dependent children abroad would save only a proportion of the £30m p.a. cost. This is a tiny amount roughly equivalent to the saving of £1 from each £350 spent on child benefit. There will be additional administrative costs to handle the more complex payments system, reducing the savings further. A lot of bother over very little.
3. Non-eurozone protection: there are reports that this was Cameron’s most important requirement. It gives the UK the right to force a debate among EU leaders about any new euro regulation we feel unhappy with. And yet the other EU non-euro countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden) aren’t bothered and haven’t sought it. This sounds strongly like just another case of Cameron confusing the national interest with the special interests of the City financiers – who contribute over half the donations to the Tory Party.
4. Ever-closer union opt-out: The original 1957 Treaty of Rome in its preamble includes the phrase “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”. Similar phrases appear in subsequent Treaties to which the UK was a signatory. Parliament’s own research department has the details here. Controversy has raged over the decades as to its actual meaning and intent. To me, it does not seem to imply a European Superstate. For Cameron and the Tories, it seems a red-flag symbol they cannot live with. It seems to me to be part of a continuation of “British exceptionalism”, about which I plan to write a future blog post.

My own list of priorities would be utterly different. No space to go into detail here, but it would include things like guaranteeing minimum workers’ safeguards against exploitation, stepping away from adding free market fundamentalist ideas (including austerity) into regulations. Also, certain topics lend themselves to supranational collaboration: tackling tax avoidance, fraud and money-laundering, pollution, climate change, energy security, fighting cross-border crime (including terrorism), to name but a few.

Still Battling

My heart sank when, before the start of the summit, Cameron used the phrase “Battling for Britain”. This dog-whistle soundbite designed to appeal to the Tory faithful was clearly intended to recall the glory days of the war when plucky Britain held out for freedom. But the people with whom Cameron was negotiating are supposed to be our allies, not enemies, for f***’s sake! Think of the goodwill towards Britain we have squandered. It just makes us look mean-spirited, confrontational and parochial. It’s some comfort that EU leaders recognise it’s just a game. They all play it for domestic consumption at some time or another. But, more worryingly, it also gives encouragement to the bigots and xenophobes among us.

The Referendum: My Vote

Of course, I shall vote for the UK to remain in the EU in the planned referendum. The EU is a far from perfect institution and I think there are many ways it needs to be improved. But my instincts are always towards engagement and collaboration rather than confrontation (if it can be avoided). Secondly, a rational analysis of the evidence strongly suggests the UK is better off within the EU: socially, economically, our ability to influence world issues and for our own security.

Cameron claimed in a tweet last night that he had secured “special status” for Britain in the EU. Yes, I thought, “special” as in “special needs” and “special measures”. Not forgetting that supplicant, poignant and self-deluding attachment to our “special relationship” with the USA. So I don’t know who in Britain Cameron thinks he’s battling for, but it doesn’t include me.

Three news stories yesterday caught my eye.

The first concerns Dawn Amos, a 67 year old woman suffering chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a debilitating lung condition. This left her with severe breathing difficulty and barely able to walk to the end of her short garden. She died in a Chelmsford hospital in November. Two days later, her husband opened a letter from the DWP stating that she no longer qualified for sickness benefit (attendance allowance) because she was not ill enough. The DWP letter was sent on the date she died.

The second concerns the National Audit Office report into the “fitness to work” tests carried out by US-owned company Maximus in assessing entitlement for another benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). This is the contract previously run by French private firm Atos until last March. Atos lost the contract following widespread criticism about poor standards and delays. The quality of the assessment tests were so poor that a huge number were overturned on appeal: around 60% of appeals were upheld for clients with support from advice organisations. Mental health charities complained there were too few assessors with skills to assess people with mental health problems. Maximus has managed to reduce the delays from 29 to 23 weeks, but other areas of performance are actually worse than its predecessor. 10% of their reports have been rejected as failing quality standards, compared to 4% of those previously done by Atos staff. And the annual cost of the new contract, at £579m, is almost double that of the previous one.

The third relates to the suspension of seven G4S staff in a Medway young offenders institution. This follows an undercover investigation by Panorama of evidence of abuse of inmates by G4S staff. G4S have launched an investigation but have also written to the BBC asking them not to broadcast the programme, due for transmission on Monday.

Common Factors

All three stories are about services provided by private for-profit companies in areas once undertaking by public sector staff. My earlier blog post Cat and Mouse described the frustrations of consumers trying not to get ripped off by privatised gas and electricity suppliers. A similar tale could be told of our privatised railways, by far the most expensive in Europe.

In my view, all these services should be supplied by staff working in the public sector. In such cases, there is complete consistency between the objectives of the service as seen by all employees, from the front-line staff through to the most senior managers. For a privatised service, senior management will be primarily focussed on profit maximization and returns for shareholders. No matter how client-orientated the staff may be, the message gets mixed between those at the top and those at the bottom of such organisations. The temptation to cut costs is great, to the detriment of service to clients and to pay and working conditions for the staff. This is particularly acute, for example, in social care.

To promote the virtues of “public service values” may sound terribly old-fashioned, wacky even. The government, abetted by its thought police in “think tanks” and the majority of the press, would have you think so. But I firmly believe my ideas presented here are more in line with majority public opinion – and would lead to a happier and more socially cohesive society.