The Bewilderness

Stagnationalism: UK in the age of austerity

The coalition is entering a phase of division of backbiting, where the differences between leaders and parties are becoming much clearer to the public. The Liberal Democrats have moved towards a pernicious narrative of public sector protection: promoting the smallest reforms necessary to curb the public sector borrowing requirement and preening themselves as guardians of the vulnerable. Whether it be health, education or social rights, they attempt to outflank Labour at the expense of Liberalism.

The Liberal Democrats are divided between Left and Right. A predictable Tribune article notes that the strategy of differentiation has silenced the Orange Book wing and upplayed the profiles of Huhne and Cable. Yet frustration must be mounting within the Tory party. To continue postponing the necessary reforms on the supply side, reducing the cost of jobs and regulation, because Vince Cable is a thorn in the side of the economy, must be galling (And the Liberal Democrats are old Labour for the public sector professionals). To find that our policy on Europe is subjected to policy paralysis because do-nothing is better than undermining the coalition breeds anger on the right.

Will the coalition find a better configuration, easing pressures through shared policies in other areas? Both parties have an incentive to play up differences in order to appeal to their base. Yet, the pro-market liberalism identified in the early days of the coalition has certainly been submerged. Is this a reaction to the political needs of each party and the polling evidence, as Tory dominance in numbers begins to count? Was the classical liberalism wish-fulfillment on the part of the media? Or does this disappearance herald dissent amongst the Liberal democrats, who find that they share more common ground with socially liberal Tories than they realised?

The stresses in the coalition may ebb and flow: but the real calamity for this government is that Liberal Democrats footdragging on reform may have reduced the flexibility needed to deregulate. We are in the worst of all possible worlds: facing the necessity of austerity with an economy hobbled by the legacy of New Labour's regulation, defended by the ultimate insiders of the producer interests. Stagnation beckons...

Hurrah for curatorial neglect!

You never know what you may find in the odd nook and cranny. Pull out some forgotten drawer of a "an old wooden cabinet" in the British Geological Survey. What treasures lie within unrevealed? A child sits up: "Doubloons, gold sovereigns, diamonds!" Nothing so mundane!

Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a palaeontologist found a collection of slides from 1846, never catalogued, that had been compiled by Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker and other members of his circle. This fabulous find has now been catalogued and studied for history and science. From the date, this will provide additional insight into Darwin's notes; perhaps anomalous references to specimens unseen can be reviewed with new clarity.

The slides are works of art in themselves. Instead of the small snapshots that we remember from school laboratories, these are up to half a foot in length, allowing the biologist to scroll across the specimen. Their journey is one of logistical legerdemain:

Royal Holloway, University of London said the fossils were 'lost' because Hooker failed to number them in the formal "specimen register" before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas. In 1851, the "unregistered" fossils were moved to the Museum of Practical Geology in Piccadilly before being transferred to the South Kensington's Geological Museum in 1935 and then to the British Geological Survey's headquarters near Nottingham 50 years later, the university said. 

Let us hope there are mysteries awaiting in other cabinets of curios.

When is a veto not a veto?

We are told that European Union institutions will have no sway over the new treaty that is being negotiated on an intergovernmental basis. This is nonsense. Nonsense on stilts. After the draft was leaked on Open Europe's website, integrationist MEPs pushed for changes to the draft. Their goal was to ensure compatibility between the treaty and existing European institutions. European Parliament leaders will also be able to address Eurozone summits. Through a web of permissions and references, the intergovernmental treaty will act as a bolt-on to existing arrangements, supported by the Commission. Dan Hannan's FU will seamlessly merge with the EU, in practice.

This forms part of a wider spread of dissatisfaction within the European Parliament at their perceived intergovernmental failure to resolve the crisis. Of course the solution for these is more integration. Soon, media coverage in the United Kingdom will catch up with the brutal sidelining of Cameron's veto, ignored in practice by other EU members.   

The Green and the Good

Rupert Reed, philosopher at the University of East Anglia and green activist, has launched a proposal for a jury, sitting above the House of Lords with the power of veto over all legislation, on behalf of future generations. A number of serious questions arise over the role of such a body and whether this proposal would meet the needs that Reed sets for itself. One has to ask, with some scepticism, whether a democratic body wielding such strong powers, would be willing to act for future generations as opposed to whatever contemporary issues seize its attention. Power politicises.

In the Grauniad's environmental blog, Reed plaintively claims that radical ideas deserve an air and with a lowest common denominator insight, observes that some progress to the mainstream. He then chooses recycling and abolition of slavery to make his case, because the consequences of ecological disaster will constrain the opportunities of future descendants. He likens this to slavery.

The blogger, Damien Carrington, then points out that the idea can be traced back to Burke, probably further, if one shoehorned Plato etc.. And the basis of slavery ensnaring future generations is applied more commonly to the notion of government debt, mortgaging future tax revenues for present consumption. The Green Party does not recognise this form of slavery, if their support of 'green quantitative easing' is believed. That said, the two principles do share this common perspective. Robert Reed may even have copied this idea from conservatism and recast it in a different form.

Reed's solution to this perceived problem of contemporary consumption is a jury called the Grauniads of the Future, acting on behalf of intergenerational justice. I am sure his report is detailed, full of safeguards, and key controls to ensure that this body does the work. It is the assumptions that worry me:

The core idea is both radical and straightforward: a council of "Guardians of Future Generations", chosen like a jury from the general public, would sit above the existing law-making bodies and have two core powers. A power to veto legislation that threatened the basic needs and interests of future people and the power to force a review, following suitable public petition, of any existing legislation that threatens the interests of future people.

For the Greens, the basic needs and interests of future people are valid for they will stave off ecological disaster and set up a sustainable economy (so goes the narrative). Yet, intergenerational justice is more important than the bodies through which it is implemented. If the Green Party becomes disillusioned with a parliamentary path that fails to meet their needs, then they will seek to cicumvent or constrain its powers. The first iteration grounds itself in the notion of democratic renewal via a jury system; how long before such iterations are recast as committees of experts or panels of the 'green and the good'. The latent authoritarianism within the green agenda is slowly seeping out. 

Cry Wolf for Money

Dylan Evans, writing in The Huffington Post (UK), talks about the post-apocalyptic scenario that he was working upon as a Phd student at the LSE in the 1990s. It envisaged a crisis of peak oil and climate change. Pushed by Nick Bostrom (of simulation theory expertise), Evans gave a figure of 50% as a probable outcome. Evans had already set up a small settlement in Scotland to ride out these prospective troubles. However, the experiment was abandoned by him (perhaps it is best to enjoy comforts whilst they are still available?)

Now the very scenario that Evans imagined all of those years ago is evident in the hands of the Doomsday Clock moving towards midnight. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists adds environmental dystopia to its list of things that could go wrong. So, such far off disasters which we cannot model very well, if at all, become the basis for a world sitting at five minutes to midnight. In their own words, they state a lack of movement towards nuclear disarmament, no climate change treaty and an unwillingness to immediately bomb all coal stations and convert them into wind stilts or some such nonsense.

They should stick to their nuclear knitting. However, this does nuance Evans's point on our culture's view of the future: given a choice between better or worse, people choose worse and then start acting to make it so.

We live in strange times, caught between two opposing views of the future. On the one hand, the believers in technology and progress promise a world of ever increasing prosperity, a science-fiction scenario in which huge advances in technology have made material abundance and long healthy lives possible for people all over the world. On the other hand, the doomsayers warn us that climate change and the end of cheap oil will put an end to the stupendous economic growth we have seen in the past hundred years, and usher in a new dark age of poverty, disease and war. There are some middle positions, it is true, but they seem less convincing than the two extremes.

Recently, the doomsayers have been gaining the upper hand. On the surface, they may appear more sober, more realistic, and more courageous than the optimists. They want to stare the apocalypse in the face, which seems better than denying it could possibly happen. But thinking too intensely about the end of civilisation can be just as dangerous than denying the possibility of such a danger. It's important to consider such worst-case scenarios when planning for the future, but the point of considering them is to help one plan how to avoid them. If you dwell on them too much, you can begin to forget that this is just one possible future out of many, and start to think of it as an inevitable occurrence. And from there, it is not such a big step to start idealising this dark future. It's an extreme version of the 'sweet lemons' phenomenon.

What Evans does not yet grasp is that the ideology of dystopia or, more accurately, the politics of fear, is used to justify any number of rent-seeking coercive policies. Tied into funding networks and political legitimation, the pessimists need to clamber aboard scientific authority whilst avoiding counterthrusts of accountability or transparency that could derail the gravy train. 

Deborah Orr's neverendum story

Deborah Orr accuses the Prime Minister of "short-term populism" in his refence to the Scottish neverendum. A pithy line I rather liked and one which seems to have kicked off a debate. But then again Deborah Orr has never seen a Tory she didn't like. #

A wearisome tour of recent political history reveals some odd perspectives. All Prime Ministers go for wars as domestic policy is too distracting, and Libya's no fly zone is equated with the full scale invasion of Iraq. Blameron is damned but Brown is praised as the saviour, if only of banks.

Only when the global financial crisis struck did Brown step on to the international stage and become sure of himself (even if he didn't convince the electorate). Brown went so far, in what was surely a Freudian slip, as to declare that he had "saved the world". He hadn't. He'd just saved the Anglo-American banks.

With this bizarre retelling of recent events, I think that I shall take Orr's 'insights' on Prime Ministers, their motives and their actions, with the same rolled eyes as her recasting of electoral arithmetic giving the SNP a balance of power in Parliament (highly unlikely, that improbable Abyssinian emperor).

Tussles in Brussels

We are getting mixed messages from European leaders over the Merkozy monopoly. But today we had Montkel, and more backtracking on the Tobin tax. What we want, what we propose, what will happen: three different stories. It seems that Cameron is not the only leader with coalition difficulties. The free democrats in the German government do not want a Tobin tax either. Seems they agree with us that it is a useless jobkiller enriching civil servants (er no, they want to handicap everyone!). It cannot stop at the Eurozone (a pity), it has to encompass the whole EU (which it won't due to the trusty Union Jack veto).

And look who doesn't like Brussels ordering them about, telling them to cut spending or face fines and generally putting elected politicians in their place. Er, Brussels....oh, the irony!

"The commission is today going too far with its measures. Who knows [economic affairs commissioner] Olli Rehn? Who knows where he has come from and what he has done? Nobody. Yet he tells us how we should conduct economic policy. Europe has no democratic legitimacy to do that," Belgian enterprise minister Paul Magnette said in an interview with Flemish newspaper De Morgen.

You signed your powers away. You are now the elected functionary, who just does what the apparatchiks tell you, and as the Commission points out:

"We held a democratic debate on this with the European Parliament and the 27 governments of the EU, including the Belgian government." 

They held a debate, it wasn't democratic, but Brussels sprouts concern afetr the horse has bolted. They will get sod all sympathy from me.

The second year of the Arab Spring

Tunisia has now elected a government but faces continued discontent. Immolations, the new symbol of frustration, continue to burn and kill. Martyrdom in the streets of Tunisia will not be abandoned once it has been discovered to be a potent weapon. Yet, immolations are not frequent in other Arab springs.

Take Libya. A new wave of protests is flooding towns and cities at the slow progess undertaken by the National Transitional Council. The sheer complexity of work that needs to be achieved is daunting; but transitional arrangements will always lack legitimacy if they do not concentrate on a short and clear handover. Libya needs an election sooner rather than later: taking to the streets may be the signal for this (similar to their Egyptian brethen).

Now Algeria is beginning to see sporadic protests, similar to those which sparked regime change and civil war in Maghreb regimes. Youth unemployment, frustrated aspirations and glimmerings of reform sparked the crisis of legitimacy. Last year, Algeria was an outlier. This year, along with Syria, it may be centre stage.

Pakistan draws towards the edge

Pakistan is entering a new political crisis, one that perhaps heralds encroachment towards the edge of state failure. This was deemed likely some years ago when the Pakistani Taliban expanded beyond the ungovernable North West Frontier provinces. Then, a balancing act between Islam, army, civil government and the United States led to a fightback.

The venal elites have proved as incapable of democratic trust. Activist judges react against Zardari with as much zeal as they fought Musharraf, that long forgotten figure of contempt. They wish to reopen corruption charges against President Zardari, which the government has refused to comply with. Even worse for the beleaguered party is a leaked memo hankering after US support in the event of a potential military coup. That would be touching the third rail.

Whilst the troubles rise, terrorism and violence are on the increase. Is it a matter of time before the Taliban again see an opportunity to assert greater control beyond their strongholds?

Out by default?

Nick Clegg has a problem. A problem of perspective for his rank and file, his activists and the pockets of gullibility that may still view him as a liberal. Perhaps it is part of his Tet offensive in the slow war between the coalition partners. 

The arithmetic in Parliament does not lend itself to a new EU Treaty. There is no majority for a treaty. Windy declarations of unity and togetherness cannot overcome this fundamental fact. Therefore, Britain will have to stand aside or veto the treaty, unless opt-outs are provided by other countries. This is unlikely after the last summit.

Clegg has a veto power of his own: withdrawal from the coalition. Would he use this over the current issue of Europe, given the divisions between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats? An emphasis upon the 'nuclear option' has been spared up to now. A  tory minority government would be no better at dealing with our problems than the coalition and the Liberal Democrats could face a disastrous narrative: placing the good of Europe above the needs of the United Kingdom.

We can expect a lot of wind this quarter and much reaction, as events in Europe run their course. Out by default?