Nick Tyrone's Blog, page 10

Why the EU could be in for a rocky few years post-Coronavirus – and why that should make Eurosceptics on the right nervous

Since June 2016, a common trope on the right in Britain has been to big up any problems within the EU between differing member states as proof that the EU is about to crumble to pieces. This is happening now, with Leavers jumping on some Italians complaining about what they perceive as the EU’s poor response to the current crisis – complete with videos of Italians taking EU flags down from somewhere they had supposedly been long resting – as proof that Coronovirus will spell the end of the EU.

Yet the Eurosceptics may have half a point here; by accident mostly, but still. There will undoubtedly be some major problems for the EU to face in the coming years as a result of the current crisis. Some of them are obvious – how is debt handled within the Eurozone, particularly if Italy and/or Spain spiral into depression? But many are less so and aren’t ones Eurosceptics on the right in the UK would pick up on given they call attention to the fact that a lot of their desire for a both a smaller state and more trade doesn’t fit with their Euroscepticism at all – and just for reference, never did. This is where “Global Britain” smacks hard into “Let’s close the borders and get our sovereignty back”, in other words.

Eurosceptics on the left, like the late Tony Benn, claimed that the EU was a capitalist project aimed at spreading markets further and wider. Eurosceptics on the right have always said that the EU is a socialist endeavour whose ultimate aim is to become a superstate with massive powers. While both of these views are overly simplistic – to put it mildly – the left-wing Eurosceptics are the ones who are far closer to being correct. While there are EU directives that are left-leaning – the “social chapter” – for the most part the aim of them, when taken as a body of law, is to stop national governments from interfering in the state as much as possible and to make cross-border trade easier. In other words, to spread the market much wider and deeper across borders. It is an inherently pro-capitalist project, whether pro-European leftists or Leaver Tories like want to admit it or not.

This is the part of right-wing Euroscepticism I have most struggled to understand over the years. If you want a smaller state, then not only staying in the EU but using the nation’s membership of it to help make the state smaller across the continent is surely the way to go. The aftermath to this crisis could become a shining example of this. If we really do see borders closing all over Europe, not only to people but to goods, all while national governments become larger and more invasive in people’s lives, how will that be a good thing from a centre-right perspective? The EU could become an integral part of the fight back against states turning inward and attempting to grab more power within Europe. Yes, they have been poor at limiting Orban in Hungary; yes, they are relaxing some of their competition rules around things like state aid at the moment in light of the crisis. But what happens when the crisis starts to fade and some national governments want to hang on to the looser rules that give them more power to interfere in markets? Ironically for right-wing Eurosceptics, the EU could become the major force on the continent trying to roll back state interference in business over the coming half decade.

Even if right-wing Eurosceptics disagree with everything I’ve just written – and I would be amazed if all of them did not – they should at least be able to see that they have wasted so much of their time and energy trying to get Britain to first vote to leave the EU and then arguing for the most extreme version of Brexit, when they could have been spending that time making the case for free markets in the 21st century. Now they are left with a Conservative Party that was abandoning pro-business policies and becoming more statist even before the CoVid crisis and now look to enlarge the state in a way that would have made Attlee nervous. Did they think someone else was going to make the arguments for free markets while they engaged in their Brexit vanity project? Now, no one has made it effectively for years and they are left at the end of their long war against EU membership with a British state that would have shocked and appalled them had they had a glimpse of it ten years ago. They have worked tirelessly over the ensuing period to create both a Britain and Europe that is the opposite of what they wanted.

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Next week, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Why the EU could be in for a rocky few years post-Coronavirus – and why that should make Eurosceptics on the right nervous appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why Boris and the government’s current bounce in the polls could be brief and what that will mean

In a time of crisis, the government’s poll ratings go up, everywhere in the world. “Rally round the flag” it’s called and it’s completely understandable: at a time when the government becomes necessary, possibly for one’s survival, people invest in that government doing the right thing. However, this has a time limit and is also fragile; it’s just as easy for people to start flipping and feeling like the government has mishandled the crisis.

There are early signs of trouble for Boris Johnson. The nightly press conference is starting to seem barren; essentially, one of the cabinet members gets thrown on to demonstrate that the government still doesn’t have the answers or a real game plan beyond “lockdown and hope for the best”. Even the most Tory-friendly portions of the media are starting to get tetchy about HMG’s response. The fact that vital equipment does not seem to be filtering through to the frontline of the NHS looks increasingly bad. The fact that Rishi Sunak looks capable and confident doesn’t help Boris in the medium term.

All of this takes time to filter through into poll ratings and with Corbyn still there, reminding everyone of what the alternative might be had the general election result been widely different, the Tories will ride high in the polls for now. Yet Corbyn is gone in a couple of days, with Starmer being given a chance to assert himself as a possible future PM.

The crisis has unleashed all sorts of conspiracy theories on the left, from Boris faking having the virus to the government intentionally killing old people. Yet it’s obvious to anyone not mad that Boris has never been a proto-fascist or a demagogue in waiting; the problem with Johnson is the same as it has always been, which is that he isn’t very good and is in the wrong line of work. I don’t doubt he’s trying his best here, but he’s hampered not only by his own shortcomings but by the fact that he selected his cabinet for maximum short-term compliance over ability, for understandable Brexit negotiation purposes, only to find himself in the middle of a crisis where having the most competent people round the table would have been incredibly useful.

The government can weather this political storm. But it better start being seen to be handling the crisis better than it is at present, particularly as we are about to enter the worst phase of all this, where hundreds of people will die from CoVid every single day. The government is getting to a point where it needs to have a plan that the country can buy into. Otherwise, I think Boris is in real trouble. Sunak is a credible alternative and it wouldn’t take long, in the midst of unprecedented crisis, for the worm to turn on Johnson. Instead of being this era’s Churchill, as he dreams of, Boris could end up being a 21st century Chamberlain.

************************************************************************, Next week, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Why Boris and the government’s current bounce in the polls could be brief and what that will mean appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Here’s what Starmer needs to do when he becomes Labour leader – and as quickly as possible

Unless the granddaddy of upsets takes place, Keir Starmer will become leader of the Labour Party on Saturday. Word has it that it intends to try and clear out the worst of the tankies on day one. Great start.

We will find out several things about the Labour Party in April. One, how many of those in the shadow cabinet who appeared slavishly devoted to the Corbyn project were actually in love with it or if they merely blew with the wind. I suspect there are many more in the latter camp than even cynics like me suspect. Two, how quickly Starmer feels he can move to make the Labour Party a serious political force once again. Move too quickly and he invites a backlash – move too slowly and the tankie blob becomes impossible to move. How quickly can Starmer distance himself from Corbyn without causing himself internal problems – and the Corbyn I’m talking about here isn’t the one of legacy but the still out and about Corbyn who is going to be causing him problems from day one from the looks of things.

All of this comes into focus when you consider what Starmer really needs to do relatively early in his leadership given the Labour Party have already wasted four months for no reason: he needs to unite the non-Tory vote. This will be brutally difficult.

While the Tory vote is largely united and geographically well-spread in a First Past the Post sense, the non-Tory vote is split in all sorts of ways and geographically clumped in an unhelpful fashion. On the latter point, the Labour vote, already hollowed out in Scotland and the countryside, has declined in towns as well. It is meanwhile built up massively in the cities. It may be nice for David Lammy to get 80% of the vote in his seat, but under FPTP it isn’t actually helpful.

The first point about it being split is actually the more serious one and is even harder to fix than the geographical vote clumping problem. Labour have a split between Remainers and Leavers, and more specifically between social liberals and social conservatives; they have a split between working and middle class voters; they have a split between pro-Union and pro-independence Scots; they have a split between hard left and social democrats; I could list ten more of these but you get the gist. How does Starmer bring all of these voters together under the Labour banner?

He has two things going for him. One, the anti-Tory vote really doesn’t like the Tories and with Corbyn gone it becomes much easier to persuade a lot of people who were unreachable to vote Labour again if only as an anti-Tory vote. Two, people are crying out for something new and interesting in politics. If Starmer puts together something that sounds sensible and that addresses society’s problems in a way that sounds plausible, this could be all he needs to do. Sometimes in politics, the answer is right in front of you.

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In just over a weeks’ time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Here’s what Starmer needs to do when he becomes Labour leader – and as quickly as possible appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

We have indulged the far right and the far left too much and for too long. Here’s how we stop

Up until the EU referendum result hit in June 2016, some level of centrism, loosely defined, was considered to be a political necessity for any party wishing to govern. Labour had picked Corbyn as leader and it was assumed by almost every political pundit that this would prove to be an electoral disaster (they were proven right, eventually). Cameron had managed to get a parliamentary majority by a partial emulation in some respects – at least presentationally – of New Labour. Heading to the extremes was considered political suicide and this was a truism to which everyone in Westminster who wasn’t either on the far left or the far right fringes of their parties adhered.

Then came the EU referendum result and everything was flipped upside down. All political wisdom was questioned. In some ways this was both natural and even good – assumptions had become lazy, leading us to be blind to the Leave vote coming our way. But it just as soon developed into a whole new set of assumptions that in many ways were even more flawed than the old ones had become. People who self-identify as “communist” as well as people who think leaving the EU was good because it meant no Muslims could come to the country were suddenly treated very seriously by mainstream media outlets, as if these idiots had some point that was worth listening to. This was done partly in the name of balance but also in a chase for ratings: if people were way more politically extreme than we had imagined, perhaps there are whole audiences out there to tap into!

I recall when Nick Griffin was on Question Time in 2009 and the heated debate at the time about whether having him on a BBC show was a good idea or not. In one corner, the argument that putting him on the BBC conferred upon him and his racist party legitimacy; in the other, the idea that having him on to say stupid things would expose how awful he and his ideology were and deflate the BNP bubble. Yet almost no one at all was arguing that Nick Griffin had a serious point or represented a voice that legitimate concerns. Flash forward ten years and the BBC thinks nothing of putting a far right campaigner in the audience to ask a very dodgy question.

On the left, there has been way too much tolerance of the far left, particularly by the soft left. It’s like what we see in conservative circles: yes, these people are extreme in many ways, but perhaps they do have a point we should be listening to. The time has come to stop this behaviour – to halt the acceptance of far left and far right lunacy as something to be seriously considered. I’m not talking about censorship – I was amongst those who felt that putting Griffin on QT was a good idea in 2009 as it would expose his stupidity – I’m just saying we need to all come to our senses a little bit and stop indulging racists and tankies as if they had important things of note to say. We need to stop chasing balance in the name of common sense.

I think this is particularly true since I think at least 80% of people in Britain are not extreme politically at all and fit vaguely into centre-left, centre-right or politically neutral. I think that because of the 52% vote to leave the EU we just assumed everyone was much more different than they are politically and made a lot of assumptions that turned to bullshit upon contact. It is time to return to giving sensible centre-left and centre-right politics the time of day and stop giving so much credibility to the loony fringes.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post We have indulged the far right and the far left too much and for too long. Here’s how we stop appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Whatever else happens, Corbyn will soon no longer by Labour leader. That will be a huge positive

Corbyn was on the BBC yesterday, talking about how the government spending money to get round the coronavirus was his idea first and that essentially the Tories are now just nicking his style. Of course he was – what else was Corbz going to do? The merry trickster, always sure he’s on the right side of history, even when there is circumstantial evidence to the contrary – we’ll miss him, won’t we? No, we won’t because for starters, it’s clear he’s going to hang around like a bad smell for years and years to come yet, trying to hurt Starmer’s attempts to resurrect the Labour Party as a serious political force with every crazy media appearance he can grab.

Yet whatever he does, he won’t be the leader of the opposition any longer and that will be a huge moment. Whatever one thinks of Starmer – and some say he’s dull, or that he’s more politically extreme than he wants centrists to believe – he isn’t Corbyn or anything like someone who normally hangs around with JC. He is credible, decent and smart – three qualities that you could never accuse Corbyn of possessing. Having the leadership of at least one of the two major parties filled with someone with these qualities will be a big turnaround in British politics, even against the backdrop of the unfolding crisis.

The two things that have struck me about the Corbyn farewell “victory lap” this week: one, the fact that they pushed ahead with it in pretty much the exact style they would have had the current crisis not been happening says a lot to me about the far left. Two, that Corbyn still displays no sense of taking any responsibility for having been leader of the Labour Party through two general election losses, the last one being a particularly brutal one. He shows no sympathy even for his fellow travellers or the poorest in society he says he is sure will be most negatively affected by continuing Tory governments. It’s not even a display of Ed Miliband-esque intellectual arrogance – he just can’t be wrong and that’s it. His God is the one true God; he is one of the designated leaders of the chosen people and there is no circumstance under which his God can be wrong. He shows no remorse or second guessing of what he could have done differently because he literally doesn’t know how to do that. In Corbyn’s world, if reality rejects you, then reality is at fault, not you.

Hopefully, this is the last thing I will ever write about Corbyn; I sincerely hope it is. He’s been as bad for the Labour Party and British politics in general as most sensible predicted back in 2015. Good riddance.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Whatever else happens, Corbyn will soon no longer by Labour leader. That will be a huge positive appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How long will the pretence of “real Brexit” happening on December 31st, 2020 be kept up by the government?

The government is in the midst of an unprecedented crisis at present, so one certainly cannot reasonably expect daily briefings on how the negotiations with the EU are going. For those of you who are interested, they are understandably not going at all; with the EU up to its neck in CoVid related problems as well at present, there are no negotiations to speak of. The fact that the main negotiators on both sides have contracted the virus certainly doesn’t help.

Yet whenever Brexit does come up, the government insists that if there is no deal in place by the end of this year, we will still action “real Brexit” then, no matter what. The question is really when the government will drop this pretence and tell the British public the truth about the next step in the Brexit melodrama. It will have to extend the transition period; anyone with any sense of realism understands this now. The other question is how the government will do this, i.e. what is the explanation given to Leavers for why this is being done.

I think the government will take this down to the wire and only announce the extension in July, when the deadline is upon them. Which is silly – it would be better for them to do it as soon as possible, both because this will give businesses with intricate supply chains, many of which are now struggling to keep those supply chains up and running in the midst of CoVid, reassurance that this next major problem will not be dumped on them at the end of this year, probably just at a point when all of the crisis related issues have been sorted out. The other reason they should just get it over with is that we are in the midst of the mother of all bad news cycles – if you want to bury something like this, now’s your chance.

Yet I think part of the reason they’ll take it down to the wire is because there will be enough people inside of government – inside of the cabinet – who will be avoiding the reality of this until they absolutely have to. Around messaging: probably the closest thing to the truth, which will seem novel in regard to Brexit communications, is the best bet. There was no time or space for the negotiations because of CoVid. Even if the UK were to opt for an “Australian deal”, it would need more time free of a major crisis to implement everything that would be needed. They’ll panic about it for a couple of days before putting out the word and realising all but the most foaming at the mouth Brexiteers will be fine with it.

I suppose the question after all that is, what happens to the negotiations in 2021? I don’t have the emotional strength to think about it yet.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post How long will the pretence of “real Brexit” happening on December 31st, 2020 be kept up by the government? appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why a CoVid coalition government would be of long term benefit to Labour – and short term benefit to all of us

George Freeman, Tory MP for Mid Norfolk, used Twitter to call for a wartime coalition style government, bringing the Labour shadow frontbench in. He specified that this only be genuinely considered once Labour had “serious leadership” in a week and a half’s time, but it was still a Conservative Member of Parliament calling for a temporary grand coalition to fight the CoVid crisis. Is this a good idea for the country, for the Tories, for the Labour Party?

The short term benefits to the country would be having all the best brains available round the table to figure out how to get out of this mess. This assumes that Starmer will bring MPs who are actually talented back into the shadow cabinet, Nandy, Phillips, Cooper, etc, while booting most of the current nutters to the backbenches, but that appears to be likely. It would also help bring the country together and stop partisan bickering about the government’s approach, making any laws easier to implement and with fewer people flouting the new rules.

The main short term benefit to the Conservative party of this arrangement is that if things get really bad, they aren’t the ones holding the bag. If both the Tories and Labour can be seen to be at “fault” for what happens during the crisis, then that’s better for the Tories who have a majority already. The short term downside for the Tories is the exact flip-side to this: that if we come out of this quickly and with minimum damage done from the stand point of where we are now, the Tories have to then share the glory. The other short term problem for the Conservatives is that they would have to agree to a Brexit extension, surely, to get Starmer and his team on board. This could be looked at as a another benefit to Johnson and his party, however; the extension looks inevitable anyhow and there is a chance to blame it both on the crisis and the Labour Party in one go.

The long term benefit of a grand wartime coalition, I think, would belong to Labour. The major problem Keir Starmer’s got as he looks set to become leader of the Labour Party is that he leads an organisation that has very little credibility. It has come to be seen as a party that has lost its collective marbles, destroying the big tent they had built up over a century to become some sort of Islingtonian art project. Starmer as deputy prime minister in a time of crisis has the opportunity of bringing Labour back that lost credibility very quickly. It has the potential power to wash away the mistakes of the last five years (or ten years if we’re being less generous here).

Boris Johnson likes to see himself as Churchill, as we all know. Wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony if he were to lose the next election like Churchill lost in ’45, ultimately because the wartime coalition that he led made it impossible to effectively attack the Labour Party? Clement Attlee had been a diligent deputy for most of the war, so when it came to the ’45 election, none of the Tory attack lines on Labour worked. We’ll have gestapo in the streets under Attlee! Really? No one was going to buy that when in Attlee they clearly saw a man who had helped Churchill win the war for the Allies; an obviously patriotic and level-headed bloke. All of the Tory attempts to hurt Attlee and his party just bounced off.

Could this be Starmer’s fate? We’ll see how bad things get and how unavoidable a grand coalition starts to feel once Starmer becomes leader of the opposition. But if I were working for the Labour leader, I would advise him heavily to jump into such an arrangement if it comes on offer.

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post Why a CoVid coalition government would be of long term benefit to Labour – and short term benefit to all of us appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How the Left is misjudging the CoVid crisis

After the 2008 financial crash, many people on the Left took to their blogs (and sometimes, their newspaper columns) to write about how the crisis would mean the end of capitalism, the rise of socialism and the triumph of left over right. We all know how that one turned out. The Left is making a similar mistake again, at least so far they are. They are assuming that the crisis will work in their favour when they should be worried about the opposite taking place.

The current left-wing theory about CoVid goes: as western societies, even ones governed by traditionally fiscally right-wing leaders and parties such as in the UK, pump massive amounts of public money out to keep the economy going, this will normalise socialism. It will deal capitalism either its death blow or a wound so deep it will never fully recover. Classical liberal ideas about how the world should be run are going to be one of the victims of CoVid to be replaced by much larger states with a much more interventionist bent. Socialism is about to win.

Except there are loads of ways to realistically predict the crisis unfolding from here where the exact opposite happens. The Tory government spends huge amounts of money over a short period of time in order to save the economy. The message then is that we need to tighten our belts to save for the next crisis – and the public go along with this. Any Labour plan to spend money on almost anything could be characterised as wishing to risk people’s lives “for the sake of ideology”. When you lay on top of this the still weak Labour Party, it is not that difficult to imagine playing out.

Beyond worrying about a low spending state making a big time comeback, the Left also need to contend with the nationalist right possibly gaining ground. Far Right groups flourish in a crisis and could make hay during this one. We can only hope not, but it cannot be discounted as a risk. In other words, we could end up with large states with lots of power and a distinctly un-left approach.

I suppose my main point here is to ask why the Left seems to always assume that things are going to go their way when they never do? Why don’t they stop and evaluate the situation and how it pertains to them in the most level headed way possible? Part of it is the religiosity of the far left; there is a feeling within it, unconsciously borrowed from Christianity, that the end days are bound to come soon and when they do, the righteous, i.e. them, will be saved. I think it is hard to mingle practical thinking with this sort of belief. But that is only a hypothesis on my part.

Whatever the reason, I think there are a lot of reasons the left as well as the centre-left should be hesitant in their appraisal that we are on the cusp of some new progressive age. It sure doesn’t feel like that’s happening for a start, does it?

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In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

This is what I think Boris is trying to do here

23RD MARCH 2020 BY NICK 5 COMMENTS(EDIT)

As many of you already know, I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson. I don’t hate the man or even really dislike him; I just think he chose the wrong line of work. There is an alternative universe where the Boris Johnson Show on BBC1 is keeping the nation warm during the crisis, as Boris interviews celebs and MPs via Skype, with the usual technological breakdowns adding to the standard Boris shenanigans. I’ve always seen Johnson as an entertainer, not a serious bloke. Certainly not someone who should be prime minister at the best of times – and God help us for the worst.

Yet I now want to take the time to be as objective as possible about how he has handled this crisis so far. I’ll start off by saying that on my Twitter timeline – and digging deeper into FBPE Twitter in general, because I have that sort of time at the moment – a widely shared video clip showed what appeared to be the draconian punch back awaiting anyone in China who defies the authorities over any aspect of their CoVid policy. It ends with the victim having a net forcefully fitted over his head before he is dragged off mercilessly by the authorities.

I don’t speak Mandarin or any other Chinese language, so I have no idea what’s being said in the video. What I can comment on is the left/FBPE/anti-Boris section of social media’s response, which to summarise was: you see, Boris? This is how you deal with CoVid! Which is interesting since only last week, a lot of these same people would have been calling Boris a proto-fascist who is looking for any excuse to grab power. Hell, some of them are still claiming that while simultaneously sharing videos of what goes on in a dictatorship and being upset that Boris isn’t doing the same thing and grabbing all the power for the state available. All while never beginning to grasp the irony.

If this crisis undoes Boris Johnson as a politician, it will be because he was too unwilling to grab power for the state; he was too liberal in the most basic sense. He is clearly fighting against a lot of his cabinet at present, who want to introduce heaver measures like full lockdown. Now, it may be that, given the circumstances, those calling for more restrictions on movement are right and Boris is wrong in an objective sense. What cannot be said is that Boris is the fascist here. To keep saying that in the face of clear evidence is nonsensical.

Boris has fought against depriving Brits of their liberties as much as possible since the beginning of this crisis. I still don’t think he’s the right man to be prime minister because, more than ever now, I don’t see him as a serious enough figure to be prime minister, particularly in a time of crisis. But it’s clear where his instincts lie and that is in favouring personal liberty to a fault. Liberals should at least acknowledge this, even if they think that perhaps he’s been too liberal given the circumstances. The “Boris is a fascist” thing never held any water for me but has now been disproven to everyone who doesn’t want to wear very thick partisan glasses.

In fact, I’ll close by saying that I actually fear for Boris, as in, for the first time since he became leader of the Conservative Party, I’m conflicted about wanting to see him stay in the job. I used to take it as a given that I’d be happy if almost any other Tory MP took the job but now I’m far less sure. Even if Boris has massively screwed up by not being authoritarian enough over the last couple of weeks, I fear for what happens if Johnson goes only to be replaced by a Tory MP who will have no second thoughts about grabbing as much power as possible. It may get us through the crisis in a way Boris wouldn’t have managed – but what happens after we’re through this horror show and are left with someone truly authoritarian in charge? Jesus, shows how bad things have got that I now have some shred of hope that Boris Johnson hangs onto his premiership. But that’s where we are.

************************************************************************

In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post How the Left is misjudging the CoVid crisis appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

This is what I think Boris is trying to do here

As many of you already know, I’ve never been a fan of Boris Johnson. I don’t hate the man or even really dislike him; I just think he chose the wrong line of work. There is an alternative universe where the Boris Johnson Show on BBC1 is keeping the nation warm during the crisis, as Boris interviews celebs and MPs via Skype, with the usual technological breakdowns adding to the standard Boris shenanigans. I’ve always seen Johnson as an entertainer, not a serious bloke. Certainly not someone who should be prime minister at the best of times – and God help us for the worst.

Yet I now want to take the time to be as objective as possible about how he has handled this crisis so far. I’ll start off by saying that on my Twitter timeline – and digging deeper into FBPE Twitter in general, because I have that sort of time at the moment – a widely shared video clip showed what appeared to be the draconian punch back awaiting anyone in China who defies the authorities over any aspect of their CoVid policy. It ends with the victim having a net forcefully fitted over his head before he is dragged off mercilessly by the authorities.

I don’t speak Mandarin or any other Chinese language, so I have no idea what’s being said in the video. What I can comment on is the left/FBPE/anti-Boris section of social media’s response, which to summarise was: you see, Boris? This is how you deal with CoVid! Which is interesting since only last week, a lot of these same people would have been calling Boris a proto-fascist who is looking for any excuse to grab power. Hell, some of them are still claiming that while simultaneously sharing videos of what goes on in a dictatorship and being upset that Boris isn’t doing the same thing and grabbing all the power for the state available. All while never beginning to grasp the irony.

If this crisis undoes Boris Johnson as a politician, it will be because he was too unwilling to grab power for the state; he was too liberal in the most basic sense. He is clearly fighting against a lot of his cabinet at present, who want to introduce heaver measures like full lockdown. Now, it may be that, given the circumstances, those calling for more restrictions on movement are right and Boris is wrong in an objective sense. What cannot be said is that Boris is the fascist here. To keep saying that in the face of clear evidence is nonsensical.

Boris has fought against depriving Brits of their liberties as much as possible since the beginning of this crisis. I still don’t think he’s the right man to be prime minister because, more than ever now, I don’t see him as a serious enough figure to be prime minister, particularly in a time of crisis. But it’s clear where his instincts lie and that is in favouring personal liberty to a fault. Liberals should at least acknowledge this, even if they think that perhaps he’s been too liberal given the circumstances. The “Boris is a fascist” thing never held any water for me but has now been disproven to everyone who doesn’t want to wear very thick partisan glasses.

In fact, I’ll close by saying that I actually fear for Boris, as in, for the first time since he became leader of the Conservative Party, I’m conflicted about wanting to see him stay in the job. I used to take it as a given that I’d be happy if almost any other Tory MP took the job but now I’m far less sure. Even if Boris has massively screwed up by not being authoritarian enough over the last couple of weeks, I fear for what happens if Johnson goes only to be replaced by a Tory MP who will have no second thoughts about grabbing as much power as possible. It may get us through the crisis in a way Boris wouldn’t have managed – but what happens after we’re through this horror show and are left with someone truly authoritarian in charge? Jesus, shows how bad things have got that I now have some shred of hope that Boris Johnson hangs onto his premiership. But that’s where we are.

************************************************************************

In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post This is what I think Boris is trying to do here appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How people almost always under and overreact – and what that means for the current situation

On February 26th, 1993, a group of Islamist terrorists managed to detonate a nitrogen-hydrogen gas enhanced truck bomb underneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. It was meant to bring the tower down and into its neighbour, sending both towers crashing to Earth; instead, it merely caused some fixable structural damage while killing six people and injuring thousands.

The measured response to this should have been to take the spectre of Islamist inspired terrorism much more seriously within the US. Instead, it was largely ignored until September 11th, 2001. This happened even within intelligence circles – there are many good books that have been written about how low a priority Islamist inspired terrorism continued to be after February 93, despite a bomb going off in lower Manhattan. The attack barely had any effect on public opinion on the matter within America whatsoever. The reaction to the attack was for everyone to hugely underreact, particularly in hindsight given what we know that underreaction directly led to eight and half years later.

Cut to September 11th, 2001. In the wake of the attacks, widespread Islamophobia sweeps across the western world. Within the US, a sort of security mania ensues – I recall passing through Philadelphia airport in 2002 and having to go through five security hubs to get through a single terminal I was not even flying out of. It felt manic; I haven’t flown into or within the US since 2009, but the echo of 9/11 could still be palpably felt eight years after the fact in a mostly dysfunctional way.

What the 9/11 hijackers had done was spot the fact that pre-9/11, there was no security when you flew within the US. So, if you caught a flight from Boston to Chicago, there was no security whatsoever along the way. The measured response to this would have been to simply replicate the security American airports already had in place for when people were flying from or to an international destination. Instead, they went bonkers. In the process, I don’t see how they made flying in America more safe myself.

I understand the overreaction to 9/11 and the underreaction to the 93 bombing. The latter had a narrative of “bad guys tried to something horrible, mostly failed” which allowed the vast majority of people to file it away immediately, while 9/11 seemed unfathomable at the time. This is human nature – we are biologically programmed to filter risks in our environment and discard anything that isn’t a priority and really, really prioritise stuff that we think is immediately of importance. I just think this factor of under and overreaction isn’t taken into account nearly enough within public policy making. It’s like we assume people are always rational actors when within the context of a crisis, when we are almost always anything but.

Take the current crisis. You can see massive under and overreaction side by side with each other. On one hand, you have people queueing to get into supermarkets at five am to panic buy items when there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the supply chains – they are just under too much sudden pressure from people over buying. This is a massive overreaction. At the same time, we have people going on holiday in Spain and refusing to comply with lockdown, or people in London still going to the pub most nights. A massive underreaction. It’s like people fall into one camp or another, which makes perfect sense – you either see this as a threat to your well-being or you don’t. If you have taken this on board as a threat, panic buying becomes logical; if you haven’t seen it as a real threat, why should you change your lifestyle to accommodate something that’s no big deal?

Meanwhile, people who have weighed the pros and cons and taken a measured response are outraged by both sets of behaviours. Which again, is understandable – if you have evaluated a situation and figured out that if everyone just avoided big gatherings, stayed at home for the most part and only bought what they needed, we’d be out of the woods reasonably soon, then watching people either run around like headless chickens or acting like nothing’s happening is very frustrating. But again, there is no point in being upset about this or thinking people are somehow going to stop acting the way they are biologically programmed to respond.

How would we be responding to this crisis differently if we baked in under/overreaction? I have no idea specifically, but I just feel like if we factored that in more, we’d probably deal with crises a lot better. If we just stopped expecting people to act in a level-headed manner that took into account a balance of collective and individual needs and threats, and instead figured out that a large enough part of the population to cause real problems is going to massively panic while another segment just isn’t going to respond at all until the threat to them personally is blindingly obvious, we’d make better decisions about what to do.

*******************************************************************

In a few weeks time, I have another book coming out. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!

It’s out on April 9th, but you can pre-order here:

The post How people almost always under and overreact – and what that means for the current situation appeared first on nicktyrone.com.