Scepticism and Satire - Glossaries to help the fight against the power elites

I’ve just uploaded a new version of my little book Just Words – how language gets in the way – and would invite you all to dip in….

History is assumed to consist of hard events like wars and revolts. But such events don’t just happen – they are caused by what goes on inside our minds – not just feelings of ambition, fear, greed and resentment but the stories (theories) we use to make sense of events.

And their meanings are conveyed by the words we use.

And words have more power than we realise.

All too often, words (and metaphors) can take over and reduce our powers of critical thinking. One of the best essays on this topic is George Orwell’s “Politics and the English language”. Written in 1947, it exposes the way certain clichés and rhetoric are calculated to kill thinking – for example how the use of the passive tense undermines the notion that it is specific people who take decisions and should be held accountable for them.

Having spent more than half my adult life in foreign parts, I’ve become very familiar with the difficulties in conveying meaning and in developing mutual understanding. And with how slippery words can be.

And it’s not just a linguistic issue – it’s cultural.  You learn – but all too slowly - how easily very different meanings can be attributed to words you assumed were clear. This all-too-brief Anglo-EU translation guide take some common phrases and shows the very different meanings which Brits and non-Brits attribute to them.

Less well known is a marvellous guide to civil service jargon which reveals how corporation man (and woman) use phrases to “cover their backs” and play power games.

- For Information Don’t even think of commenting on this but if anything goes wrong I’ll remind everyone you knew what was going on.

- Give me a steer on that I don’t know how to decide on this one. Please make a decision for me and I’ll nick any good ideas you have.

- Happy To Discuss There’s a whole lot more here than meets the eye and that I haven’t told you. Should ring alarm bells.

- Hope This Is Helpful I’m well aware that it is not helpful at all. Please don’t contact me again.

This is all very innocent amusement but can often slip into mere entertainment with any deeper lessons removed. A lot of people in Britain indeed are concerned that satire has gone too far and may have been a factor in the corrosion of public trust in government and politics

So today I want to explore whether it is possible for those with serious messages to present them in a humorous way.

Fifty years before Orwell, Ambrose Bierce was another (American) journalist whose pithy and tough definitions of everyday words, in his newspaper column, attracted sufficient attention to justify a book “The Devil’s Dictionary” whose fame continues unto this day – with almost 2000 definitions. A dentist, for example, he defined as “a magician who puts metal into your mouth and pulls coins out of your pocket”. A robust scepticism about both business and politics infused his work.

Not so well known (at least in the anglo-saxon world) is The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas  - a short satirical work collected and published in 1911–13 from notes compiled by Gustave Flaubert during the 1870s, lampooning the clichés endemic to French society under the 2^nd French Empire. It takes the form of a dictionary of platitudes - self-contradictory and insipid (at least 500 of them).

It was translated and made available to an American audience by the famous Jacques Barzun only in the 1950s – with a definitive version appearing in 1967. I’ve just come across it. The idea of a spoof encyclopaedia had fascinated Flaubert all his life. As a child, he had amused himself by writing down the absurd utterances of a friend of his mother's, and over the course of his career he speculated as to the best format for a compilation of stupidities.

John Saul’s A Doubter’s Companion – a dictionary of aggressive common sense (1994) is, however, in a rather different class. It’s in what the author called the

“humanist tradition of using alphabetical order as a tool of social analysis and the dictionary as a quest for understanding, a weapon against idée recues and the pretensions of power”.

Its entries are not so pithy – many taking an entire page…..and much more didactic.

This glossary of mine is written in that same humanist tradition of struggle against power –  and the words used to sustain it. It explores first more than 100 words and phrases used by officials, politicians, consultants and academics which I’ve personally noticed in the course of government reform - and offers provocative definitions which will hopefully get us into a more sceptical frame of mind.

But I’ve included hundreds more picked up by others eg The Devil’s Financial Dictionary by Jason Zweig published in 2015 but of which I became aware only recently.

And I’ve included two annexes – the first a spoof by Anthony Jay (author of Yes, Minister) “Democracy, Bernard, it must be stopped”; the second a much more serious bit of advice about how we might fight the insidious doctrine of neoliberalism.

Further Reading;

-      Deconstructing Development Discourse – buzzwords and fuzzwords (Oxfam 2010); and

-      The Development Dictionary; Wolfgang Sachs (2015)

-       https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/04/send-in-clowns.html

What Might Have been

This evening should see the definitive British parliament vote on Brexit and we have today also learned that the government intends to have all stages finished in TWO DAYS.

Normally international treaties – and this is such a treaty, under law – must be before parliament for at least 21 sitting days in order to be ratified. This minimum time period is laid down in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (Crag) of 2010. But this provision is lifted for the purpose of the WAB, to allow the 31 October deadline to be met.

Amazing how governments can play fast and loose with convention. That’s the beauty of the country having no written constitution……

MPs were given the 220 pages of the Bill only yesterday evening – although Friday evening saw a rough guide. No serious person now believes a word that comes from Johnson’s mouth or pen. So the text will need line by line attention – and much consultation. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, put it nicely when she wrote

“MPs had more time to debate the Wild Animals in Circuses Act (affecting 19 animals) than they will to decide the future of 65 million people”  

On such a critical day, I don’t want to play the usual guessing pantomime which passes for political comment. I want simply to indicate why those who simply ”want to get Brexit over” are in for a bitter, bitter disappointment and why the air will, in a few years, be full of bitter recriminations.

And, in this argument, I want to bring into play the words of the longest and strongest Brexit supporters – Richard North and his son Pete who also has a blog from which I give you these facts

- countries do the highest volume of trade with their immediate neighbours.

- Just under half our trade is done with the EU.

- Much of our exports only exists because of the facilitation measures inherent in the single market.

- Frictionless borders is a product of regulatory harmonisation.

- The EU is a regulatory superpower.

- If you want to do business with a regulatory superpower then you follow its rules.

- It doesn't have to take your position into account. 

- The cost of non-tariff barriers far exceeds the cost of tariffs. 

- The EU is the largest contiguous regulatory block in the world, extended by way of its own FTAs and external agreements. 

- There is no likely combination of new FTAs that could ever offset the loss of the single market.

On the face of it, therefore, there isn't an economic case for leaving the EU. If only this were just an economic question.

Brexit, though, touches on a range of issues which come into conflict with the direction of travel of the EU. It is said that the EU wishes to be a federal superstate. EU scholars say that ambition ended with Lisbon with a recognition that member states to not share that aim. To a large extent they are right. It's only really the mouth foamers such as Guy Verhofstadt who still speak to that goal.
But the EU is still an incomplete project and one that is still guided by its founding dogma of "Ever closer union". Economic integration is a tool of political integration. As rules are harmonised authority over them is centralised which diminishes the power of national parliaments to reform or repeal laws according to their own values and political manifestos.

If we take democracy to mean the ability of peoples to organise and take power to direct the institutions then the EU does not qualify. It is a benign dictatorship - but a dictatorship nonetheless. There can be no democratic choice against the treaties.

The EU may never become a federal superstate with homogenised law throughout but it will continue to weaker member state sovereignty and lay down the parameters in which member states must operate. Primarily the objective is to liberalise trade within the borders of the EU so that national borders are increasingly meaningless. Superstate it may not be but it is most certainly a supreme government with the power to overturn laws of member states.

The effect of such rapid integration on the UK has been profound. Economically and culture it has made a deep and lasting impact. It has transformed the culture of politics and government. All levels of government below the EU are constrained by it and must give over much of their resources and time to implementing agendas devised in Brussels and above. The people can be overruled and their decisions nullified.
That the EU has a parliament does not make it a democracy. Elected representatives turning up to rubber stamp initiatives devised by the EU machinery is a figleaf of consent but one lacking a legitimate mandate. Especially when you consider the Euro election turnouts.

52% of British citizens who bothered to vote were not convinced by the economic arguments – or, rather, were prepared to set them aside for the issues of “political sovereignty” (for which read “immigration” and a clear understanding that European Court decisions now trumped British justice). There may have been some uncertainty about which of the 2 European Courts had the most influence but they knew that they didn’t like the situation)

So far, Pete North isn’t saying anything we haven’t already heard….it is the next part of the argument which Pete (and his Dad) have been hammering (to little avail) for the past decade – namely that unpicking the legal implications of EU membership and negotiating acceptable trade deals will take a decade; and that a far better arrangement is to go with EFTA. This would, of course, keep the UK under the aegis of the European Court of Justice – although, in theory, this could be negotiated about further down the line. Pete north’s post goes on -

There are two types of Brexiter. There are those who hold these economic realities to be true and those who deny those realities. The latter believes that leaving without a deal has manageable consequences and an exaggerated economic impact. I therefore have as much difference of opinion with them as I do remainers.

As mentioned much of our high tech just in time economy is a product of regulatory harmonisation and much of our trade with the EU only exists because of it. An overnight departure, subjecting us to the full force of tariffs and third country controls (as defined by the Notices to stakeholders) is a hammer blow to the UK economy with grave ramifications for jobs. Thus far this has been disregarded as "project fear" - with Brexiters ever keen to remind us that this isn't just an economic question.
On the latter point I do not disagree but the economic question is not one we can afford to ignore. In the bluntest of remainer terms, you can't eat sovereignty. Bills have to be paid. Mortgage payments have to be made. Politics impacts our lives.

I do not pretend to be a trade expert - but don’t need much convincing that few politicians understand the transformation which has taken place in the role of regulations in the past decade…Anthony Barnett is one of the UK’s most independent-minded and thorough journalists and confessed in 2018 that it was only then that he started to appreciate its significance.   

I wrote about this earlier this year, referring to some of the discussions which have been taking place in academic circles about the “Regulatory State” – particularly “The Rise of the Unelected Democracy and the new separation of powers” by Frank Vibert (2007)

The EU has for the last two decades used global standards as the basis of its regulations and the base framework of regulatory cooperation in its external relations. Globally we are moving toward a single regime of standards, leaving only the USA and China as the sticks in the mud. Were we to secure a deal with the USA according to their system of standards, even if it doubled the volume of trade done with the USA (which not FTA has ever done) it wouldn't come close to mitigating the loss of the single market.

Much of what is commonly understood about trade follows assumptions from the previous decade of globalisation when offshoring was the fashion and corporates moved around to exploit differences in tax regimes and labour standards. To some extent the EU has sought to close some of these holes by way of its own "level playing field" provisions and seemingly it has had an effect

But the talk is no longer about “offshoring” but of “nearshoring”

update;
Anna Soubry says that she can’t find a single part of the Brexit bill that meets a promise made by the Leave campaign in the referendum.

Further Reading

The Odyssey of the Regulatory State; article by D Levi-Faur (2011)

The Rise of the Unelected Democracy and the new separation of powers” by Frank Vibert (2007) which, full disclosure, I still haven’t been able to complete

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-brexit-won-t-work-eu-is-about-regulation-not-sovereignty/

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/regulatory-sex.html

http://peterjnorth.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-makes-me-such-expert.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/18/remainers-boris-johnson-brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/catastrophic-men-theory-history-step-forward-boris-johnson

The Meaning of “it”

It was Bill Clinton who, during the Lewinsky impeachment, famously answered “it all depends what you mean by "is”. That is the stage we are reaching with Brexit

As you might anticipate from ex-Eton schoolboys, the UK government continues to operate with counter-productive petulance and high-handedness. It was the threat of a No-Deal and Johnson’s attempt at prorogation that produced both the Benn Act and Saturday’s postponement of a vote on the “Johnson deal”.

And the Eton arrogance was on display at the end of Saturday’s parliamentary proceedings when the Leader of the House – the fop Rees-Mogg – announced that the vote on the Johnson deal would take place on Monday and then flounced out without taking any questions. The Speaker of the House of Commons will actually decide whether it is appropriate for the House to resume consideration of the matter…..

A few hours later, PM Johnson – having stated in the House that he would not be seeking "to negotiate a delay" – sent not one letter to Donald Tusk of the European Council but three – the last of which baldly stated that no extension of the 31^st October deadline was being sought.

He didn’t even bother to sign the first letter – which indicates the crassness of the man….. (The second letter is an explanatory note from the UK Ambassador to the EU)

Technically his third letter is inconsistent with the Benn Act – and is therefore illegal. So on Monday the court consideration of that point will be resumed.

The UK Courts are naturally very reluctant to get involved with anything that smacks of politics – but have a duty to uphold the Rule of Law – as they did unanimously on the attempted suspension of parliament at the end of last month.

A lot of British people are saying they “just want it all to be over”. What they don’t seem to understand, however, that no one really knows what “it” is. I know this sounds clever – but it isn’t. It’s the reality.
- Theresa May’s 2018 deal was what is called a “soft” Brexit – remaining inside the Customs Union (CU) and Single Market (SM)
- Johnson’s is a “hard” Brexit – with the entire UK except for Northern Ireland being outside the CU and SM at December 2020. We  don't actually know what sort of trade arrangements will be attempted with the EU and others. If the EU negotiations on that score (by December 2020) are unsuccessful (or later if agreed), we could crash out with “No Deal”
-  “No Deal” has the country crashing out on 31 October – with total uncertainty and with no trade deals negotiated and operating immediately under World Trade Organisation Rules
- The publication on Friday of the detailed text of the new Johnson Deal confirms that he favours the American (ie minimal) regulatory model for trade agreement to which all british trade unions and what’s left of manufacturing industrialists are opposed

Further Reading

As I’ve indicated, there are only two blogs which give you the “unvarnished truth” on Brexit. Oddly, they are from opposite ends of the Brexit spectrum…..

- The first is that of the man who has argued for Brexit for many decades, the only person to have produced a blueprint for it (subsequently ignored by Brexiteers because it warned that it would decade at least a decade to unpick the country from all the EU legislation) -  Richard North’s EU Referendum blog which gives you here his assessment of what happens now

- The other blog is that of Chris Grey – The Brexit Blog – who gave us today this analysis which is what I have based this post on.

Readers who want to get a sense of what leftist Brexiteers think should keep an eye on The Full Brexit blog

As resort to the Courts is always possible, I will also be keeping an eye on the Constitutional Unit’s blog
For once, a political “correspondent” actually gave a good summary of the event viz https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/boris-johnson-saturday-drama-turns-to-farce-all-his-own-fault

And, as always, Boffy continues to challenge conventional wisdom - https://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/no-deal-is-better-than-johnsons-deal.html

Brexit SuperSaturday – and my role as your guide

I blog for my own amusement and edification but readily confess to a thrill when the clicks soar to 750 which they did yesterday – presumably as readers sensed we were reaching Brexit End-game.

I am very conscious that English is a second language for some 70% of my readers and therefore take my role as a guide to the specifics of the UK very seriously indeed.

So before offering any comment on today’s events, let me try to spell out in a little more detail how I see that role.

I do not pretend to be an impartial observer on either Brexit or the UK – but I do try to be fair-minded and reasonably “inclusive”. I learned the importance of this initially from my parents and then from my own experience of negotiating the various boundaries of class, group, profession, intellectual discipline and nation. That soon taught me that seeing the different sides of an issue has its advantages

I am, for example, very open about my Scottishness; am no friend of the nationalist cause (whether Scottish or English) but am pretty critical of the perverse influence of the upper-class elites on the British political culture. Too much of the rhetoric practiced for decades by people such as Boris Johnson smacks of the blinkered arrogance one expects from imperialist adventurers…..

I was deeply disappointed (and personally threatened) by the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum – although I can well understand (if not sympathise with) the emotions caused by migration trends. And the European “project” has been technocratic and secretive. In the late 60s and early 70s as the debate raged in the UK about membership of the “common market” I was a bit of an agnostic - although by 1979 I was openly European.

In the 1980s I was active in European networks and starting to understand the differences in cultural style.
From the 1990s I was in the middle of the European Commission procurement system and able to see with my own eyes some of its corruptions……..

I hope this helps readers understand my background a bit better…

So – today’s events

There will be drama at Westminster today – but it might not be quite the historic day people expected…...One of the early amendments to be dealt with is the one covered in my last post which would require Parliament to confirm any Brexit deal with its Final Reading of a Withdrawal Bill. (That seems to me fairly obvious - so I confess I don't quite understand why Lewin and Benn felt it necessary to have Thursday's vote)  

The latest numbers I have is that Johnson could win today by 2-3 votes. Everything is down to the votes of a few maverick Labour MPs and the new MP from Grimsby has just indicated she will join 8 other Labour MPs to support the hard Brexit which Johnson is asking the House to approve. Even if he wins, parliamentary procedure requires 2 further stages of "reading" and things are so finely balanced that the exact votes for these 2 stages can't be taken for granted. People have to be present physically and move into the appropriate voting place.....   

I was, however, impressed by an article which suggested that there was too much focus on such tactical issues and that most people were ignoring the elephant in the room

The talk is mostly on the numbers in parliament. Occasionally it veers into the provisions for a dual customs system in Northern Ireland and the reliability of the level playing field concession. That makes sense - it's where the votes will make or break. 

But it is extraordinary that we are not talking about the real issue of what is happening here, the actual underlying reality of what this decision involves. It is more than an elephant in the room. It is a monster, filling up all the space, breathing fire on us, and yet we are somehow managing to pretend it isn't there while our hair sets alight. 

The issue is: What would Johnson's deal actually do to the economy of this country?

That's not about Brexit. You can leave the EU and stay close to its trade regime. This is about how you do Brexit. 

The Johnson deal is the hardest of hard Brexits. It pulls Britain completely out of the customs union and single market and envisions a very minor free trade agreement to replace it.

It's not fashionable to talk about this now. These arguments were made after the referendum. As Brexit bored on, we all desperately searched out new areas of debate and focused on the aspects which caused most division in parliament. And somehow we ended up in this place, where the fundamental choice we are about to make is barely discussed. You could watch dozens of hours of TV news without even a mention of it. So it's worth, one last time, providing a reminder of what's actually going on before we decide to do it.

“Taken together, the single market and customs union are the most advanced examples of international economic cooperation in the history of mankind. They do two things. The customs union harmonises tariffs so that goods pay no tax and experience no country-of-origin checks inside their territory.

“The single market aligns regulations, so that goods can move freely without worries about whether they're against the rules in one country or another.

This project massively increases trade and improves the economic well being of the countries who are members of it. It means that investors from countries like Japan use Britain as a beachhead to Europe.

It means services, a core and criminally under-discussed part of the British economy, can sell their products all over a continent of well-off consumers. 

It means you get infinitely more than any trade deal, because it does not involve the country-of-origin checks which make exports complicated and laborious. It means just-in-time supply chains can operate with lightning efficiency, because they know there will be no blockages.

It keeps you locked in to one of the most advanced regulatory climates on earth, with high standards for food safety, agricultural rules, worker safety and environmental protection. It gives the UK access to major trade deals with countries like Japan and Canada, on terms negotiated using the leverage of the massive European consumer market, and secured using some of the most impressive trade negotiators in the world.

It allows lots of medium-sized economies to club together so that they can go toe-to-toe with larger economies. China and the US can bully almost anyone. They're big enough. But they can't bully the EU. In a world that is slowly degenerating into a dog-eat-dog system without the old rules-based order, it offers strength and protection.

“Outside of that system, Britain is going to hurt. A recent report by UK in a Changing Europe projected a reduction in UK GDP per capita after ten years of between 2.3% and seven per cent under Johnson's plan.

The gap will be defined by whether we try to make up the loss by bringing in lots of immigrants and find a way to improve productivity. The best case scenario is a £16 billion hit to public finances per year. It's £49 billion hit in the worst case.

This will not be made up for by securing new free trade deals overseas. These agreements are tiny and inconsequential next to the European project. The government's own analysis suggests that even at peak British negotiating success they would amount to an increase in GDP after 15 years of somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2%.

People's lives will be damaged. They will be poorer. They will be £2,250 a year worse off by 2034. The nation's finances will be hurt. There will, in the end, be more austerity. And this will be done just as the world is most uncertain, amid a bitter trade war between China and the US, when the WTO is being brought to its knees by Donald Trump.

These arguments are treated with scorn nowadays. We're told that people who still care about economics have lost sight that this is a debate about identity and sovereignty. That's fine. It's about those things too. But when you experience hardship, everyone cares about economics. A man without bread is not concerned with where the regulatory decisions are made on lawnmower levels. 

“We are about to sabotage our relationship with the most successful economic project in the modern world. It is the biggest decision we'll take in our lifetime and one which, if we do it, we'll regret for a long time to come. It's worth mentioning that - the actual reality of what is happening - at least one more time before MPs vote. 

while our attention was diverted.......

We were all so focused on Brussels yesterday that we forgot to keep check on what was happening in Westminster where the government was defeated by 12 votes on a motion tabled by Sir Oliver Letwin, the former Tory cabinet minister, ensuring that, when the Commons votes on the Brexit deal tomorrow, it will be possible for MPs to debate and vote on multiple amendments.

Taking advantage of his own rule change, Letwin has tabled an amendment to the government motion tomorrow. It has heavyweight, cross-party support, with those backing it including Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Brexit committee, Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, and Philip Hammond, the former Conservative chancellor.

The amendment would remove almost all the government motion (which says the Commons has approved the Brexit deal) and withhold approval of the deal until the legislation implementing it has been passed.

As Letwin explained in the debate yesterday, his aim is to close a loophole in the Benn Act, the legislation forces the PM to request a Brexit extension if a deal has not been passed by the end of tomorrow.

A vote in favour of the deal would have meant there was no need for the PM to request an extension. But if the withdrawal agreement bill (WAB) failed to get through parliament by 31 October (several stages or “readings” are necessary and key individuals could be missing), the UK could end up leaving with no-deal by accident.

                          

Letwin’s amendment would lead to the PM having to request an extension tomorrow, on the proviso that if the WAB gets through by the end of October, at that point the extension would be withdrawn. You could call it a backstop.

The Benn Act passed by 29 votes at second reading and it is likely that the Letwin amendment, which is just intended to copper bottom the Benn Act, will also pass tomorrow.

If it does, the make-or-break vote on Johnson’s deal will never actually take place. Instead MPs will vote on a bland motion (see below), which could go through on the nod.

At that point, if Johnson complies with the assurances that he gave to the court of session in Scotland, he will have to write a letter to the EU requesting an extension.

And at that point Johnson would have to decide whether to try to pass his withdrawal agreement bill by 31 October, to release him from the obligation to take up the extension - or whether to accept the extension, and then hold the election that Labour has promised to back in the event of an extension happening. He would campaign promising to implement his Brexit deal - against Labour promising a further negotiation.

This is starting to get speculative, but what is clear is that there is now a real chance that “Super Saturday” could turn out not to be the make-or-break Brexit moment people have been expecting.

Assuming that Letwin’s amendment passes, this is the motion, as amended, that MPs would be voting on. (The Letwin text, replacing 12 lines in the original, is in bold.)

That, in light of the new deal agreed with the European Union, which enables the United Kingdom to respect the result of the referendum on its membership of the European Union and to leave the European Union on 31 October with a deal, this house has considered the matter but withholds approval unless and until implementing legislation is passed.

You can read the text of the Letwin amendment on the order paper here (pdf). 

Johnson's Three Card Trick

My Bulgarian, Portugese, Polish, Italian, Romanian, Russian and American readers will, I know, be waiting “with bated breath” for my reaction to the latest Brexit development. So my post is based on 5 of your questions -

- How did he manage to pull it off? 

- Will it fly tomorrow in Parliament? 

- In what sense is it different from the Deal which Theresa May negotiated last year?
- What are this morning's front pages saying? 
- what happens now? 

1.     How did the “greased piglet” manage to pull it off?

The media reaction in the UK so far seems to assume that all he conceded was that Norther Ireland will remain under EU rules, for the foreseeable future - with the Belfast Assembly (mothballed since January 2017) given the power to decide when to opt out. The reality is rather different (see section 3 below).

The EU’s main concern has been to maintain the integrity of the Good Friday agreement  that saw the end of violence in the north. The EU could not accept the idea of any border controls or customs arrangements on the border between Ireland (an EU member) and Norther Ireland (UK). So the EU was happy to get this concession – although it just seems to postpone the moment at which there could be such controls….

One of the known risks is that the North could eventually unite with the Irish republic - but Conservative party members have already given a clear indication they are fed up with Northern Ireland and would be happy to see it go. And ditto for the Scots – who have too loud a voice in the British Parliament - and have anyway clearly stated that what’s sauce for the Irish goose is sauce for the Scottish gander.  

2.    Will MPs vote for it?

Johnson’s tactics have loosened the parliamentary logjam. He basically threw his allies in the DUP (the Irish unionists) to the wolves when he made the concession. When Theresa May gambled in the 2017 General Election and lost her majority, she had to make major concessions to the DUP which cost a lot of money.

The DUP was strongly supported by the right-wing ERG group in parliament (led by Jacob Rees-Mogg) - but the approach of a No-Deal reality; and the distaste for the Irish connection seem to have been sufficient to allow a lot of the ERG members to peel off and declare their support for the Johnson Deal.

And, of course, Boffy had sorted all this out by Thursday afternoon.

Reaction from Northern Ireland itself suggests general acceptance for what would be a considerably increased special status

MPs have this year consistently voted down May’s Deal and also what few efforts Boris Johnson managed to put in front of them. The Labour party has 6 simple tests for any Deal -

1. Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?

2. Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?

3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?

4. Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom?

5. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime?

6. Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK?

As a party, they cannot therefore support this new Deal – not least because they simply don’t trust Johnson in his assurances about coherence with EU-type regulation (the “level playing field” of EU jargon)

That leaves the mavericks who have left or been booted out of the Labour and Conservative parties in parliament – about 30 of them. 
It is therefore basically their votes tomorrow which will decide this….

And this is a quite brilliant analysis of the choices individual MPs now face - with the gun at their head and given a mere 36 hours or so to make a decision whose consequences will reverbate for at least decade. As Jeremy Bentham might have put it “nonsense on stilts”!

3.  How does the Johnson Deal differ from May’s?

The border basically moves from the Irish mainland to the Irish Sea. And the Northern Irish Assembly (which has been in abeyance for a couple of years) is given the power to decide on its extension (or not) of EU customs regulations.
But Johnson has basically been deceiving most of us with his version of the "three cards trick".

Our attention was on the harsh reality of No-Deal - against which this deal is better.  If, however, we compare this Deal with the Theresa May one, this one takes the country out of the Customs Union and Single Market....
It took Ian Dunt of the Politics Today website to remind me of that basic fact - despite my having reproduced the Labour Party's 6 tests above. 
MPs, of course, are not as stupid as me and will not fall for such legerdemain (????)

The detailed provisions which Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement  had made about the “level playing field” have been removed and put, instead, into the political agreement (which, of course, has no legal force)

Readers can see for themselves in this track-change document produced by the Open Europe website - which has also produced this guide to the Johnson Deal

This confirms the view of those who read the very composition of the new Johnson Cabinet as indicating he was going down the American path of loose regulatatory capitalism...

4.     What the front pages of the British  Press are saying

Most papers make it clear that this is not a done deal. The Times says: “Final hurdle in sight as Johnson gets his deal”, the Guardian reports: “Johnson gets his Brexit deal – now it’s a numbers game”. The Mirror says: “On the brink of Brexit … once again”, the i has: “Johnson gets his EU deal … now for the tricky part” and the FT says: “DUP veto threat leaves Johnson’s Brexit deal gamble in the balance”.

Other papers are sounding warnings to MPs to vote for the deal.

·         The Telegraph quotes from the prime minister: “It’s my deal or no deal”,

·         the Daily Mail features a picture of Johnson pointing, with the headline: “He’s done his duty. Now MPs must do theirs”,

·         The Sun has rhyming advice: “Get real … take the deal”
the Express says: “Just do it!”

And the European press is clear that the concessions were all Johnson’s

5. What Happens Now?

There could be a slight hiccup tomorrow if an amendment is selected and passed for MPs to be given a few more days to given to read and assess the implications of what is before them (see next post). The government has denied MPs an official cost-benefit analysis but enough independent economic analysis is available to indicate that the costs of the "hard" Brexit this is will be very severe....

This post from Richard North reminds us that, even if the UK Parliament approves the deal, it becomes a “done deal” only after ratification by the European Parliament and the European Council - which may take more than a week. 

And that, if the deal is voted down (however narrowly), it immediately triggers the Benn Act whereby the government has, legally, to seek a 3 month extension from the EU

So there…consider yoursel' tell’t!

Further Reading

- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/oct/18/how-much-johnson-great-new-deal-actually-new; perhaps the single best briefing – includes a visual guide to the 5% difference between May’s Deal of 2018 and this one. And also to parliament’s vote on 19th
- https://www.politics.co.uk/author/ian-dunt; the best British website on politics and Brexit

- https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/time-and-motion.html; The most incisive and objective of the many Brexit blogs

- http://eureferendum.com/Default.aspx; the most independent of the pro- Brexit blogs
- http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-withdrawal-agreement-implementation.html; detailed legal commentary on the latest withdrawal agreement 
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/consolidated_withdrawal_agreement_17-10-2019_1.pdf - all 537 pages of the official withdrawal agreement from the EU website

On Writing Well

“The Road to Character” was an unusual book for me – bought on impulse for a euro in one of the second-hand Bucharest bookshops which give me an intellectual lifeline. And it made me realise how “dead” and technocratic a lot of the non-fiction material is in the “professional” sections of my library – particularly those concerned with Economics, Management (whether public, private or third sector), Development and Politics.

Political economists like Mark Blyth, Paul Collier, Wolfgang Streeck and Yanis Varoufakis are the exception – their prose glows and they keep you hooked – as did veteran Susan Strange’s. And recent Nobel-prize winning Jean Tirole’s Economics for the Common Good (2017 Eng) isn’t your usual economics book but takes themes of interest to us all and reasons conversationally about them.

British political scientists like Richard Rose, Rod Rhodes, Matt Flinders and Gerry Stoker also managed to break away from the mainstream focus on parties, elections and statistics and engage our interest on important issues.

The geographers and anthropologists can generally be relied upon for fresh insights – eg Danny Dorling and Chris Shore - although you have to persevere a bit with the likes of David Harvey.

I have quite an extensive history section but have to confess that my interest gives out at about page 50 of a 400 page tome on the history of a nation or of Europe. The only writers who have survived my boredom threshold for this genre are Richard Evans (Germany) and Geert Mak. But, interestingly, some recent histories of economic or sociological thought (or indeed thought generally) can make for a good read – if they have the appropriate balance between ideas and personalities.

Traditionally such books have been a bit of a slog, with the emphasis too much on the dry dissection of ideas - but the success of a few non-specialist writers in the last decade (think Bill Bryson) has demonstrated the public’s thirst for the exposition of scientific ideas.

The academic community, however, has always taken a dim view of popularisation – the eminent economist JK Galbraith who wrote “The Affluent Society” suffered very much from academic jealousy as did the historian AJP Taylor – so it is great that some writers and journalists have turned increasingly to the world of science and ideas.

Grand Pursuit; the story of economic genius (2011) is a good example.  
Written by Sylvia Nasar, a Professor of journalism (who also produced “A Beautiful Mind” about game theorist John Nash), it attracted a rather sniffy review from one of the doyens of Economics - Robert Solow. (Michael Pollan is another Professor of journalism – this time one who has chosen to convey to the general public the realities of agro-business and food).  

Not, however, that I want to discourage academics from writing well and for the general public! The previous paragraphs have given the examples of those who have managed to do it without apparently attracting opprobrium or jealousy in the fields with which I am familiar. Philosophy is not such a field but I was delighted to discover recently a “popular” book by academic philosopher James Miller Examined Lives – from Socrates to Nietzsche with a nice interview here    

Alan Ryan is another academic who writes well although his On Politics is just a bit too voluminous a history of political thought for me. These extensive notes give a useful sense of what would be in store for any brave reader

My own favourite is “Comparative European Politics – the story of a profession” which invites 28 big names in what was then a new discipline to tell the personal story of how their careers developed. Richard Rose was one of those originals and has a delightful memoir “Learning about politics in time and space” (2014). Here’s one of his reflections on a colleague which will give you a sense of his care with words. Not for nothing was Rose in his very early life a journalist! I’m glad to say he is still going strong in his mid 80s.

I know some of you will tell me that, if I am now finding texts in my own library “dead” and technocratic, I should reconsider my antipathy to novels. I considered this question a couple of years ago in a post which started thus -

I’m not a great reader of novels – the interactions and fate of fictitious characters pale against those of the real people I find in histories…..If I want good prose, I find it in essays, travelogues and short stories – although I grant you that it’s only in stories (short and long) that the inner life of people can be treated in depth…..Perhaps that’s why I’m so partial to short stories – produced by the likes of William Trevor, Carol Shields, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabakov, Joseph Miller and……Joseph Roth

Nine years ago one post here did actually pay tribute to about 75 novels which had taken my fancy – only one third of which, interestingly, were British….And, of those, most were Irish or Scottish since I have found their style of writing much more lively than that of English novelists…..It’s not just the older generation I’m referring to (such as Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Edwin Muir, Robin Jenkins and Muriel Spark) but also the younger writers (such as Andrew Greig, James Meek and James Robertson on the Scottish side – and John Banville, Sebastian Barry, John McGahern and Edna O'Brien on the Irish).

But too many contemporary English writers seem to be unable to shake themselves out of their limited middle-class environment – eg Ian McEwan, although this is not something you could say about his acerbic mate Martin Amis. Sebastian Faulks and Louis de Bernieres are two exceptions who deal with big issues – the latter giving us “Birds without Wings” about the tragic exchange of population in early 20s Anatolia. And Lawrence Durrell still thrills me – despite the reputation he has unfairly been given for “over the top” writing…… 

I was not always so prejudiced. In my youth I read a lot of novels and the 2010 post reflected the novel reading which continued to entertain me. The later 2017 post demonstrated that I was still partial to novels…. So I don’t know why I suddenly apparently went off the genre…..

Lists of personal favourites are rather self-indulgent and pointless – unless including some sort of justification for the choices….which might just persuade us to give some of the texts a whirl…. 

It’s in that spirit that I now update that earlier post. 

In 2010 I hadn’t quite adjusted to my Romanian base – so had missed a baker’s dozen of superb books - Miklos Banffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy (originally written in the 1950s but only widely available from 2010); Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy (written in the 60s but receiving a new lease of life after the film); and Gregor von Rezzori’s brilliant three semi-autobiographical books drawn from his time in Romanian Czernowitz (now in southern Ukraine) – first written (in German) between the 50s and 70s but issued by NYRB only recently.  

Rebecca West’s massive and stunning Black Lamb and Grey Falcon – a journey through Yugoslavia  was first published in 1941 and is actually four books in one – about Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia – but received a huge boost from the 90s Yugoslav conflagration. It’s not, of course, a novel but, some 80 years on, it is a gripping read - and still repays study.

I would stand by my 2010 list – with the embarrassing exception of Paul Coelho! And I also don’t know how Jason Godwin crept onto the list…. Otherwise the mix of South American “magic realism”; French romanticism and nihilism; Irish, Israeli and Egyptian realism; and Scottish whimsy stands up well……

My recent tributes to the likes of John Berger and William MacIlvanney demand their addition – as do the works of JM Coetze and Svetlana Alexievitch