Snippets

1. Romanian efficiency and European obfuscation and exploitation

I this week completed the (Pfeizer) vaccination process (in the city of Ploiesti) with Romania being credited with having vaccinated about 12% of its population – putting its performance very much in the main body of European countries.

And I have to say I was pretty impressed with the efficiency of the organization I saw in the school gymnasium – with help for those filling out the forms quickly on hand. 

As indeed I had been earlier when I had started the process of getting the new Certificate of Residence I require as a citizen of a country which is no longer a member of the EU. A Brexit help-desk has been set up in the Ministry of the Interior which deals with such things – and their response to my question about required health insurance was immediate, helpful and correct.

And the two visits I had to make to the Tax and Public Health authorities to acquire the necessary paperwork took only a couple of hours…

Even Romanians despair of their country – but my experience suggests that all is not lost! 

Ask me, however, about the paperwork I get from my (Austrian) bank; (Italian) electrical or (French) water companies – and that is a very different matter. I simply can’t understand the complicated information they send me…. The bottom line, however, is that they all charge too much….

 2. One Party Government

This May will see the Scottish Nationalist Government celebrate its 10^th year of overall control of the system of devolved government in my country (having initially operated as a minority government from 2007). Here’s a very useful – if dated - French take on the situation which doesn’t quite catch the recent sense that – despite the much-praised leadership of Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic – the government had been somewhat inert in fields such as education. 

 One criticism which has been raised in recent years about the apparently social-democratic Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) is of its tight discipline – any challenge to its authority is quickly dealt with. In a small country. This can and does profoundly affect reputations and careers.

The UK Civil Servant is a very useful and thoroughly independent website - so this critical assessment is all the more significant – 

The SNP came to power in Scotland having had no previous experience of government and with few core policies other than Scottish Independence. It had a charismatic and controversial leader in Alex Salmond but wasn’t supported by any heavyweight think tanks, nor by experienced Special Advisers. The new government accordingly leant heavily upon Scottish Government civil servants. The latter work within the rules and customs of the wider UK Civil Service, and in particular are supposed to avoid any sign of political allegiance. 

In practice, partly as a result of ministerial pressure, and partly because it was the only way to ensure smooth and effective administration, senior officials became close to SNP ministers and were more obviously supportive of SNP policies than their London colleagues (or the Public Administration Select Committee) thought wise. More recently, Scottish Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans has of course been accused of lack of impartiality in the handling of the investigation into Alex Salmond.

 The parallels with the Boris Johnson government in Westminster are all too clear. The Johnson Cabinet is weak and inexperienced, having been chosen exclusively from the ranks of Brexiteers. It has a charismatic but controversial leader and no obvious core policies other than to get Brexit done. Its promise to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all – with a clear plan we have prepared” was a lie. It didn’t have any idea how it intended to take advantage of post-Brexit freedoms, nor did it have an “oven-ready Brexit deal”.

Its closest supporters may not be drawn from post-UKIP ‘fruitcakes’ but they are certainly not drawn from mainstream industrialists, scientists and economists – or even heavyweight think tanks. Its most prominent Special Advisers, in the form of Dominic Cummings and his close colleagues, clearly had no clue how to get things done in government.

 But weakness has to be concealed under shows of apparent strength – with bullying and cronyism as a result. Lord Acton put it most succinctly – “All power corrupts – and absolute power absolutely…”

And it all culminated in recent weeks with committee scrutiny of the two leading figures in the Nationalist drama (Salmond and Sturgeon) - reduced in recent years to squabbling figures as Salmond has faced, and successfully fought off, accusations of sexual harassment – and then brought forward his own counter-accusations against the Scottish government and party figures of wrongful behaviour. The Scottish public may have had rich spectacles as a result – but it has hardly been an edifying or useful experience – as this rather gossipy LRB article makes clear - 

The committee appointed by the Scottish Parliament to inquire into the Scottish government’s mishandling of its investigation into the first two allegations against Salmond (both made by civil servants) has been sitting regularly since August 2020.

It rapidly descended into a partisan free-for-all, with opposition members less interested in the HR error which led the investigation to be ruled unlawful (after a judicial review brought by Salmond) than in trying to find the killer question that would somehow lead to Sturgeon’s resignation. They took evidence in the morning and took to social media in the afternoon. 

No one has come out of it well: not the committee members, or the obfuscating civil servants, or Salmond, who refused to apologise for his ‘inappropriate’ behaviour, or Sturgeon who, though full of regret, could not shed light on all her government’s mistakes………. 

The SNP’s problems are not all linked to the Salmond allegations. After nearly fourteen years in power, the party is exhausted. But, with or without Sturgeon at the helm, there is no effective opposition (the Tories’ Scottish leader isn’t even in the Scottish Parliament, and Scottish Labour’s leader, Anas Sarwar, its sixth in the last decade, has only just been elected). The polls were predicting that on 6 May the SNP would regain the majority it won in 2011 (despite a PR system that was supposed to prevent absolute majorities) and lost in 2016, but now a hung parliament is being forecast (and a drop to 49 per cent support for independence). I find it hard to imagine that the spirit of 2014 will ever be rekindled.

3. The new-style Clown politician

Beppe Grillo has a lot to answer for….Since his arrival in Italian politics more than a decade ago,  comedians have become serious political figures – although it was, arguably, Ronald Reagan who made politics a world of “make-believe”. It’s therefore entirely appropriate that it’s a dramatist who brings us this one of the best analyses of Boris Johnson 

Observe classic Johnson closely as he arrives at an event. See how his entire being and bearing is bent towards satire, subversion, mockery. The hair is his clown’s disguise. Just as the makeup and the red nose bestow upon the circus clown a form of anonymity and thus freedom to overturn conventions, so Johnson’s candy-floss mop announces his licence.

His clothes are often baggy – ill-fitting; a reminder of the clothes of the clown. He walks towards us quizzically, as if to mock the affected “power walking” of other leaders. 

Absurdity seems to be wrestling with solemnity in every expression and limb. Notice how he sometimes feigns to lose his way as if to suggest the ridiculousness of the event, the ridiculousness of his presence there, the ridiculousness of any human being going in any direction at all.

His weight, meanwhile, invites us to consider that the trouble with the world (if only we’d admit it) is that it’s really all about appetite and greed. (His convoluted affairs and uncountable children whisper the same about sex.) Before he says a word, he has transmitted his core message – that the human conventions of styling hair, fitting clothes and curbing desires are all … ludicrous. And we are encouraged – laughingly – to agree. And, of course, we do. 

Because, in a sense, they are ludicrous. He goes further, though – pushing the clown’s confetti-stuffed envelope: isn’t pretending you don’t want to eat great trolleys of cake and squire an endless carousel of medieval barmaids … dishonest? Oh, come on, it’s so tiresome trying to be slim, groomed or monogamous – when what you really want is more cake and more sex. Right? I know it. You know it. We all know it. Why lie? Forget the subject under discussion – Europe, social care, Ireland – am I not telling it like it is, deep down?

Am I not the most honest politician you’ve ever come across? Herein the clown’s perverse appeal to reason.