Nick Tyrone's Blog, page 6

Why I think Maajid Nawaz is wrong about Remainers and post-Brexit Britain

I really like Maajid Nawaz as a pundit. I think he is an interesting addition to a commentariat that can often feel boringly samey. A self-identifying Muslim who is a proper liberal and not only happy to criticise what he thinks is wrong or at least not working in the Islamic world but has taken to doing so as one of his driving missions. A liberal who is not swayed at all by the “liberal orthodoxy” of the present moment, one that often feels anything but liberal; this is unfortunately a real rarity. Maajid is someone who is happy to reach out to people way outside of his own politics and have a genuine debate with them, which in this day and age is little short of miraculous. His current campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the Uyghurs is downright heroic.

I say all this because I heard something on Maajid’s show yesterday that I need to pick up on. And in a sense, it was because Maajid said it that I felt it needed addressing; if what he’d uttered came from a pundit I respected less, I would have just ignored it. Also, it gets to the heart of what I think is wrong with the pro-European movement in Britain at present – and conversely, what concessions that same movement should and definitely should not be making.

First of all, here’s what I agree with Maajid on in regard to British pro-Europeans. Yes, Remainers are too stuck in a civil war footing, with a desire to demonise anyone who still sees Brexit positively. There is a focus on living in the past, trying to re-do 2016 only this time with a different result. Although Maajid didn’t touch on this, there is a nutty, conspiracy theory element to the extremes of Remainer thinking that has crept in over the last couple of years, the ultimate recent example of this being the embarrassing “Boris fake baby” phenomenon on social media. We’ve got Remainers acting even worse than the right-wing conspiracy fruitcakes they pretend they are better than. The need to constantly fight with Leavers, to declare them either corrupt in some sense or totally stupid, is a losing formula that has totally backfired on the pro-European cause in Britain.

However, where I disagree with Maajid comes down to two things. One, I don’t believe that Remainers have to accept that Brexit is a good thing or even accept that it is a permanent thing. While it is now going to happen, I don’t think Remainers should chuck in the towel on the basic principle of what is best for the country. Remainers need to accept the result was democratically legitimate and stop going on about the Russians or some other such nonsense as the cause. However, the fact that people voted for something in 2016 by a narrow margin does not make it a good idea even if it makes it democratically necessary in the short term.

The second thing I disagree with Maajid on is to what degree Remainers could hope to shape a “liberal post-Brexit Britain”, lest Remainers be excluded from such a discussion – or indeed, the parameters of such a concept. For a start, Remainers are being excluded from the conversation and that’s not going change whatever happens. If the entire pro-European movement tomorrow said that they accepted Brexit and were ready to talk about a liberal post-Brexit Britain, it wouldn’t change a thing. The reality is, Britain is playing chicken with a European Commission that knows it has the upper-hand, not only because it is the much bigger market but because the UK has essentially offered them a six-month extension that they don’t have to reciprocate. The British government seems to have decided to drive as fast as possible toward the cliff in the hopes that the Commission changes its mind, with seemingly very little serious thought given to what happens if this doesn’t turn out to be the case. Nothing short of the parliamentary Conservative party deciding they don’t want to play this game any longer and expunging Boris will possibly change this – and I shouldn’t have to point out to Maajid that there are not many Remainers in that parliamentary party any longer.

What is meant by a “liberal post-Brexit Britain” anyhow? A lesser pundit would have uttered the phrase and left it there, but Maajid elaborates. In turning our back on the EU, we should look to “forging closer alliances with the Five Eyes nations”, which are USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and of course, us. And here we get to the heart of it. This sets up a debate that is ultimately a false one; an idea of post-Brexit Britain that has been trumpeted by Brexiteers from long before the referendum campaign that not only doesn’t stack up, but falls down completely when you examine the last four years and indeed, global realpolitik with any sort of objectivity.

Let’s start with America. The discussion around a trade deal with the US in Britain tends to centre on either how amazingly close this is to being realised with no context as to what it would involve; from the other end, how it would involve chlorinated chicken and other such horrors. Both viewpoints are false – the truth is, a trade deal with America is extremely unlikely, or at least, extremely unlikely any time soon. America tends to drag out its trade deal negotiations over long periods of time for a simple reason – it is simultaneously the most successful economic and military power in the history of the human race, not to mention being the size of a continent, thus is doesn’t strictly need to do trade deals with anyone unless it feels it will either 1). increase its soft power in some very desirable manner or; 2). be so economically lopsided as to disproportionately benefit Americans. So, the US trade deal as a reason for Brexit being a good or even a bad idea is a red herring. As scientists like to declare when someone is way, way off: you’re not even wrong.

Then we come onto the three other Five Eyes countries: Canada, New Zealand and Australia. None of them have shown particular interest in some new Five Eyes shaped trading future; they want it as a defence and intelligence sharing arrangement and nothing else from the looks of things. Some of this is led by America – were the US much more into the whole idea of the Five Eyes as a real trading bloc and leading from the front, it might be different. Yet have we seen no evidence of this. This is where British exceptionalism kicks in: the idea that we can be the catalyst for such an arrangement, even if the US is blasé at best about it. We can’t – America really are just much, much, much, much more influential in this equation than almost anyone in this country is willing to admit. Wishing Suez didn’t happen isn’t a good excuse for willing on another similar incident, only this time one where the rest of the world cares a whole lot less.

In the absence of American leadership, all that’s left is national interest, which doesn’t involve the other three Five Eyes countries giving Britain concessions that were difficult to concede in order to gain access to the largest trading bloc in the world in the first place, all to a country who has acted for the last four years like launching Empire 2.0 was either the conscious or unconscious plan. Canada refusing to roll over their trade arrangements with the UK recently caused a confused flutter in the Daily Express and didn’t even get traction in most of the remainder of the UK press. It’s like there is wilful denial going on around this issue.

To summarise: yes, Remainers should stop talking about how 2016 was fixed and how Britain is basically North Korea. No, that does not mean Remainers should just go along with Brexit and admit that it was a good idea. Brexit is about to get real at the end of this year; if Remainers can stop going on about Russians and fake babies, it has a chance to change some minds if no deal really is as bad as a lot of us think it will be. If Remainers can stop picking fights with Leavers for no good reason, I believe at least 20% of Leavers are up for grabs if the pro-European approach changes, weird as that may seem from where we sit now. Even if we this doesn’t occur, it still won’t make Brexit a good idea. Which is ultimately, more than any other reason, why Remainers shouldn’t back down from what they ultimately believe in.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post Why I think Maajid Nawaz is wrong about Remainers and post-Brexit Britain appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Starmer is going to have to remove the whip from Corbyn eventually – so he might as well do it now

The Labour civil war appears to have begun. Keir Starmer deciding to make settlement payments to seven former party employees turned whistle blowers was the catalyst – but the Labour left were itching for a fight, so almost anything could have started it. Jeremy Corbyn retaliated with a statement that appears designed to ratchet tensions up even further. In the wake of the Corbyn statement, rumours began to swirl that Corbyn was going to have the Labour whip removed; this was squashed by the leader’s office. Given what I’ve seen over the last few days, it appears obvious to me that at some stage, almost certainly in the near figure, Starmer is going to have to remove the whip from Corbyn. It is clear that Jeremy is going to keep pushing the envelope until Starmer’s hand is forced. It is for this reason that I would argue he should do it right now – kick Jeremy Corbyn out of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

I realise taking the whip away from a Labour MP who was the leader only a few months back is a huge step and not without large risks. It is almost certain that some of the fiercest Corbynistas in the PLP would do things that would cause Starmer to make them suffer the same fate, reducing the already small size of the parliamentary party even further. Corbyn could launch his own party, getting the young left-wingers to flock across, possibly greatly depleting Labour’s membership, not to mention taking votes away from Labour. This would make an already difficult task, ie getting a parliamentary majority, even trickier.

Now let’s look at the arguments for removing the whip from Corbyn as soon as possible. As I said, Corbyn looks set to force Starmer’s hand. He seems to want to provoke and isn’t going to go into some sort of semi-retirement, that much is abundantly clear now. Starmer probably wants to wait for JC to do something so egregious everyone agrees Corbyn has to go – yet nothing like this is ever going to happen. The cult around Corbyn is just that, so there will never be something the former leader does that will be bad enough for those who have really drank the Kool Aid to agree with Starmer kicking Corbyn out into the Socialist Worker Party cold. In other words, there never will be a better time, so just go for it now.

If there is another left party created, it will fail, very, very badly. As I’ve said elsewhere before, it will probably help Starmer – what could put more clear water between the new Labour leader and the unfortunate recent past than the fact that the old guard has literally left the party? The next general election is going to be more binary than any held in the past thirty years. The question will be stark: do you want Boris Johnson, or whomever is Tory leader by then, to continue being prime minister, or do you want a change of guard? The fact that the Lib Dems are currently doing all they can to obliterate their own personality as a party will only aid this along. Starmer shouldn’t worry about the Corbynistas leaving. In fact, he should help it on its way – starting with Corbyn himself.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post Starmer is going to have to remove the whip from Corbyn eventually – so he might as well do it now appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

It’s time to talk about the British left and China

I’ve sort of held off writing this article for a while now. But things have gone too far. I was triggered by an article in the Independent authored by Vince Cable last week on the topic of China and the west. I’m simplifying a lot here, but basically the former Lib Dem leader was saying Britain as the ex-colonial power should watch it when it comes to China. In fact, we should probably stay out of the Hong Kong debate altogether given our past sins.

This has been an emerging narrative on the western left for a while now. Partly it is a consequence of the modern day leftist formula which goes: is country x a friend or a foe of the United States of America? If it is a friend, let’s find some reason to hate it; if it’s a foe, let’s try and equivocate for all of its faults so we can still paint the country in question as one of the good guys. Example: is China really worse than any other power on Earth, when you stop and think about it? You know, that whole Uyghur prison camps things – what country doesn’t have to get a little rough on occasion, right? Hey, look at Israel – how can you defend what they’re doing and still attack China for what they do? And besides, the west shouldn’t get involved in all of this anyhow. We should keep to ourselves; anything else is neo-imperialism.

There are so many internal contradictions in the example I laid out above, it would take me 1,000 words to go through them all. I trust you’ve spotted most of them anyhow. This still hasn’t prevented a lot of the British left falling into two camps on China: one, China isn’t that bad and besides, it’s not really any of our business anyhow; two, China is an active force for good in the world, as it is nominally communist and is in the process of knocking the US off its mantle as the world’s lone superpower.

The worst thing for me about all this is the way the left can see China as being two totally opposite things at one and the same time. China is a victim of imperialism and a superpower still on the rise. When you look at modern day China’s own version of imperialism, this is dismissed through the light of the victimhood; victims can’t be oppressors in the left playbook. You are one or the other, that’s it. The plight of the Uyghurs doesn’t fit into this equation, which is why the topic is avoided as much as possible on the left. “The Uyghur prison camps? You want to bring that up when Palestinians are being murdered every day, you Tory scum?”

China really should scare the left a lot more than it does. At least Russia, for all its faults and the psychological warfare it has waged with the west with surprising success, is a fading power that is clinging on to relevancy. China is a genuine threat to the way things are. The left, in all their hatred of America, can’t understand that a new world order organised by the Chinese Communist Party would be a truly dreadful thing – by their own standards. LGBT rights? Shockingly bad. Right to peaceful protest? Yeah, right. Oh, but if we had a good government, we wouldn’t need to protest, would we? You might want to look up what happened to trade unions in the Soviet Union – or for that matter, how trade unions fare in China. There is only one legally acceptable trade union in China; it called the ACFTU and predictably, it is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

The western left will one day hopefully realise that it is all right to oppose laissez-faire capitalism and dictatorships that don’t like America at the same time. That you can fight for a better deal for those who are worse off in society without wanting to turn the world into North Korea. It seems stupid that this even needs to be said – welcome to 2020.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post It’s time to talk about the British left and China appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

What the Julian Lewis-Chris Grayling affair tells us about the state of the Boris Johnson government

Yesterday, an upset in the world of parliamentary committees took place large enough for people who aren’t total politics nerds to notice. The reason was that the government, who wanted Chris Grayling to be the new chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, was undone by Julian Lewis, a then Tory backbencher, who conspired with Labour MPs to get the chairmanship instead. The government retaliated against Lewis by removing the Tory whip from him, the strongest thing they could have done within the boundaries of common law.

People are interested in the story for two reasons. One, Chris Grayling has been humiliated, which is good fun for most people across the political spectrum. Two, for people on the left side of British politics, a chance to claim that Boris Johnson is a dictator in the making. Dealing with the second thing here: governments whip their MPs to vote for the leader’s choice of chairs of committees all the time. It is extremely common practice. The only reason you noticed is because it didn’t work this time. Which is way more interesting to think about.

Why did Lewis defy the government like that? Particularly given BJ has shown no shyness in removing the whip from MPs when it has suited him in the past, so Lewis would have been well aware of the potential consequences. Particularly given Lewis is no latter day Remainy liberal type – he’s an ERG supporter and solidly on the right of the party. He should be the type absolutely cheerleading for Boris at this stage. So why did he defy the prime minister so openly instead?

I have no idea why Lewis did it but I can hazard a guess. A lot of Tory MPs are getting frustrated with the Number 10 machine and Boris Johnson’s leadership style. The Lewis-Grayling situation could be the first of many such upsets. Perhaps HMG being so harsh with Lewis, removing the whip, will deter others. Then again, perhaps it won’t. The fact that it could happen once suggests the government needs to be mindful of rebellion becoming an issue. Julian Lewis isn’t the chap you would have picked out of the parliamentary party to have done something like this, which suggests there are a lot of other Tory MPs who might be open to defiance.

As always with Boris, the usual rules don’t seem to apply, so let’s see. He’s one of those guys in Westminster where you think gravity is finally going to kick in and yet there he is, floating in mid-air still, somehow. Yet I always come back to David Cameron. Everything worked out for him – until one day, it didn’t. With a whole other phase of the CoVid crisis to get through and no deal Brexit looming on the horizon, Boris has a whole lot of gravity to defy in the next six months.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post What the Julian Lewis-Chris Grayling affair tells us about the state of the Boris Johnson government appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Will the new face mask requirement have repercussions for the government?

What many have been speculating will happen for some time has finally taken place – the government has said that face masks are to become compulsory to wear in all shops and supermarkets in England from July 24th, ie, next Friday. It is classic CoVid era Boris, this one; it appears to be a decision made under some amount of resistance from Number 10 and then with a staggered introduction that might please no one in the end.

I suppose one could cite the relative difficulty of getting masks, but there are two ripostes to this. One is that you can make one at home relatively easily. The other is that the British government, unlike other western governments, hasn’t exactly busted its back making masks copious within its borders. One only has to consider the ones being publicly given out on the Paris Metro as a comparison. Part of this seems to come down to the ambivalence at the heart of HMG toward face masks and whether they were ever going to be made compulsory in England.

Yes, this is a crisis situation, facing a novel problem and thus you can try and cut the government some slack for having to constantly be changing the goalposts. The only problem is, with the notable exception of America, every other western nation seems to have handled this better, at least in terms of guidelines and messaging. There has seemed to be a fight from the beginning, with some in government wanting to go as liberal as possible in restricting personal freedoms, with others pushing for stricter guidelines. The result has been an emerging situation in which the government has opened itself up to criticism from all sides – again, the face mask introduction is the perfect example of this. For those on the very pro-lockdown, we’re all going to die side of the spectrum, the delay of 10 days will seem like madness and be used as fodder if there is an increase in new cases. Meanwhile, the introduction of the face mask rule at all will cause those on the “this is nothing more than a bad flu”, let’s get the economy up and running and sod the risk side of the spectrum to feel like the government is being overly cautious, enforcing something that will be a very visible sign that things are still far from normal, thus inhibiting the economic recovery unnecessarily.

I’ve said from the beginning that I have no idea where on this spectrum is actually factually correct; I will not join some of my fellow writers in becoming an amateur epidemiologist. I can only talk about the politics. And again, I think the Boris crew look flat-footed and indecisive this time. Once more, we have restrictions put in place with a delay that will make sense to few people not on the government’s payroll. I believe the repercussions of this could start to build for Boris Johnson now. He has opened himself up to the critique that he both didn’t do enough and did too much. The messaging doesn’t help either: please go out and spend money in restaurants, we’ll give you ten pounds. Please support your local shops as well. Oh, but wear a face mask along the way because you might die if you go to the shops, actually. And of course, there are ways to handle the friction between keeping everyone as safe as possible and getting the economy going again. There are international examples too. Yet the British government isn’t making best use of them.

Some on the left have criticised Keir Starmer for not going in hard enough on the Tories during the crisis. Yet this is because he wanted to buy credibility with as wide an audience as possible to be able to criticise the government during the fallout, which is fast approaching and may arguably be upon us already. This is all with a no deal Brexit looming, less than six months away now. The problems could start to snowball for this government very soon. Yes, it’s still comfortably ahead in the polls due to Labour’s brand being so tarnished by the Corbyn era. The Tories can’t assume that will last forever – or even much longer.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post Will the new face mask requirement have repercussions for the government? appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Here’s why the Liz Truss letter about post-Brexit trade is so revealing

An email from Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove outlining her concerns about what a no deal Brexit would entail has been leaked to the media. As expected, it was a big news story yesterday. Yet given all it reveals, it is amazing how relatively little attention it received. For it shines a light on just how unprepared it looks like Her Majesty’s Government is for almost any Brexit scenario that is realistic at this stage. And when I say unprepared, I mean that they aren’t even dealing with the most basic of basics.

Truss points out in the email that if the UK were to not apply any trade barriers to the EU during the six months following no deal Brexit – which seems to be the plan at present – then the government would be open to a challenge by the WTO. You see, the WTO operates this thing called Most Favoured Nation status, which is sort of the opposite of what it sounds like. It means that if you offer one nation or trading bloc certain trading terms, you must then apply them to every other nation in the WTO. For the record, every nation on Earth is in the WTO apart from several micronations, North Korea, Eritrea and Turkmenistan. Basically, this means that if the UK wants to offer the EU open trade on its side, even for six months, it has to offer this to what amounts to every other nation on Earth during the same period. There are exceptions to the MFN rule, of course. For instance, if you are in a customs union, the collective members of said customs union can offer collective trade arrangements with the rest of the world that do not apply to its own members.

That Truss is having to spell this out in an email at this stage of the game should deeply worry everyone, whatever your position on Brexit. It’s the equivalent of the government announcing it is going to build the largest tower in the world by the end of the year and then a member of the cabinet having to point out that if they want to do this then they’ll need to purchase some land to build the thing on. The fact senior members of the government have to be updated on the most basic facts about how the WTO works with less than six months to go until we are trading on their terms should be deeply worrying and be getting a lot more attention.

I could try and think of the best case scenario here. Perhaps it’s just Liz Truss who is confused on this stuff, with Sunak and Gove laughing at her lack of comprehension. I sort of hope this is the case, because all of the concerns Truss lays out in the email are trading 101. There’s nothing she brings up that you would assume the government not only doesn’t already know, but is several layers of technical understand beyond. I suppose time will tell.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix 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 here:

The post Here’s why the Liz Truss letter about post-Brexit trade is so revealing appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

This is why I think non-Labour people like me are warming to Keir Starmer

Jeremy Clarkson has given a very guarded endorsement of the new Labour leader; it was less of a blessing than most people who haven’t actually read what Clarkson had to say about him think. Yet it wasn’t without real significance. A lot of people who aren’t natural Labour voters really are warming to Starmer all of a sudden. I’m amongst them. I have never even seriously considered voting for the Labour party at a general election before; and yet, if a general election were held tomorrow, I would probably vote Labour for the first time.

A lot of this boils down to the negatives of voting for anyone else, of course. My conviction that Boris Johnson did not have what it takes for the top job has only grown over the last year. A lot of the criticism thrown Boris’ way by the left is incorrect, which muddies the water – it’s not that Johnson is a proto-fascist that’s the issue (for what it’s worth, I think BJ’s personal instincts are broadly liberal). It’s that he’s not a serious person and isn’t very capable when it comes to the practical side of politics. Until the Tories lose Boris, I couldn’t consider voting for them at any level. This is going to create huge problems for me when it comes to the London mayoral election next year. Sadiq Khan has said it is a referendum on rent controls. In that case, I have to vote against him. But if I’ve promised myself not to vote Tory so long as Boris is leader, who does that leave me with?

There are other options to explore, including the most obvious. At every general election I have participated in, I have voted Lib Dem. In 2017, this was more of a place to put my vote than a positive endorsement of the Liberal Democrats and in 2019, it was more a hope of what the party could become if it did all right, something which obviously didn’t happen. Yet I couldn’t vote Lib Dem if there was an election tomorrow; it no longer feels like a consequence free vote. I have come to a point where my issues with the Lib Dems on policy have become too massive to continue to ignore. Also, if I want to vote against Boris, voting for Labour is the best way to do that anyhow.

I still have a lot of doubts about Labour, of course. They could still opt for a manifesto that I find too loony to accept. There are signs of this already – the wealth tax that the shadow chancellor couldn’t or wouldn’t spell out the details of was worrying. Yet in the face of a statist Conservative party, the downsides to any of this is blunted – if there are two big state, big spend parties to choose from, why not go with the one led by a competent individual?

Which brings me finally onto Starmer himself. Here are the traits about him that I find likeable: he’s decent, he’s serious about turning the fortunes of his party around, he knows how to communicate with people outside of his political bubble, he understands the importance of mainstream media as a communication device. Those are the things that come instantly to mind. Now, ten years ago, none of that would have made him stand out from the crowd. Those were things that broadly applied to every politician who would have become leader of one of the two major parties. But after Corbyn and Johnson in particular, this is no longer the case. It’s why the shock of Starmer has been so profound – it’s strange to have a serious politician in one of the top two jobs in British politics again. We had become so used to fundamentally flawed people in those roles that having someone genuinely suited to it has been refreshingly odd.

Again, I still have a lot of reservations about Labour. But Starmer has made me think about the party in a warmer way than I ever have before. Part of this is down to how bad Johnson is, combined with the Lib Dems going into some strange nether world that baffles me, one where eliminating the Treasury is a solid idea. It is mostly process of elimination at this stage, in other words, but if Starmer continues to improve, my endorsement of him may become more than that.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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 here:

The post This is why I think non-Labour people like me are warming to Keir Starmer appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why I believe the Boris Johnson government is going so hard toward a no deal Brexit

I wrote an article for the Spectator yesterday about how I thought Peter Mandelson was wrong when he overplayed the likelihood that the government were going to avoid no deal by getting something nailed down between the UK and the EU before the end of the year. Instead, I posited that I thought no deal Brexit was far and away the most likely outcome. Some people had a thoughtful response to this on Twitter: yes, all right, but why is the government going to do this? What is the reasoning behind going full tilt toward a no deal situation?

Part of the answer to this lies in another Spectator article I wrote about no deal. To summarise what I said in that piece: just because you and I are either convinced or pretty certain that no deal Brexit will be a disaster, that doesn’t mean this is a universal feeling. Not by a long way. Whether you think it’s a silly thing to believe or not, lots of people either think the fallout from no deal would be minimal – or they think it will actually be all positive. A lot of people just don’t see Brexit in the same terms that you or I do. It’s what makes some people Remainers and others Leavers.

But there is more to it than this. I only have to think back to before the referendum, to the debates I had with Eurosceptics about Brexit in 2012, 2013. I would always at some point bring up the question of “What happens if the EU won’t back down in negotiations? Won’t we end up in a no deal situation?” This question was always – and I do mean always – answered with the retort that we would go for a Norway type deal if that’s where the talks ended up. It would be Norway or something better, according to Eurosceptics – my talk of “no deal” was nothing but project fear. So, I know that this isn’t something they have always thought was where Brexit would end up. In fact, behind the scenes, a few of them are now worried about no deal being really bad, making people turn against Brexit and a re-entry into the Single Market in a few years then looms as a possibility, with full membership only being a matter of time once our situation as a rule taker with no say becomes politically unmanageable.

No, the fact that we’re heading for no deal is at least partially accidental – or at least, leaving the EU with no deal wasn’t the intention when Brexiteers first started going on about how no deal is better than a bad deal. It was a tactic, done with the naive notion that if no deal was talked up as something the UK might realistically do, this would alter the EU’s approach to the negotiations. In essence, they thought that by constantly mentioning no deal as an acceptable option, it would make no deal less likely. But now they are cornered. For a start, a lot of grassroots Leavers have taken the no deal is better than a bad deal mantra at face value and believe it to be completely and undeniably true. In making people believe this, the Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers have come to believe in no deal themselves, as this thought is bounced back at them via their activists and right-wing articles. In the face of getting a deal from the EU taking a decade or perhaps even more, during which we’d be in Brexit limbo, the transition going on and on for this whole period, only two realistic options began to emerge. One, go Norway, which they have long since decided isn’t real Brexit. The other is no deal. So, you decide then that no deal won’t be that bad given every other option has been effectively eliminated. Once you decide no deal won’t be that bad, you are granted a huge positive, at least in context: you can play this game of chicken with the EU as effectively as it is possible to be played from a UK perspective. Just keep driving at the EU’s headlights because hey, they’ll probably swerve and then we get what we really want, or it’s a head-on collision and we’ve decided that not only can we survive impact, we will be taken instantly to heaven.

Add to all this the political pressures that Boris Johnson suffers under. If he were to have extended the transition period, he would have had instant, massive problems with his own Eurosceptic backbenchers as well as Farage. The Leavers in the country outside Westminster would have been furious as well and given Farage’s political ambitions a new lease on life. Boris can’t back down now on his red lines with the EU; if he buckles at the last second and gives in to the EU on everything – because, that’s what it would come down to – he’s finished. Boris only has one move left to him: to drive forward without budging an inch, hoping that either the EU caves and gives him some wonderful deal or that no deal isn’t actually bad. This is why I keep saying Boris Johnson not being prime minister for very long is the most likely outcome: all his ways forward are extremely precarious. He’s going for no deal and praying it isn’t a disaster because that is the only move left to him. He exhausted any other possibility on his way to setting himself up to win the 2019 general election so handily. He achieved that goal, but ultimately put himself in a corner, the tightness of which few people seem keen on describing. Whether Boris is prime minister in a year’s time will very likely come down to whether a no deal Brexit is a good idea or a bad idea. I’ve told you before what I think is the mostly likely outcome from all this.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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 here:

The post Why I believe the Boris Johnson government is going so hard toward a no deal Brexit appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Five myths Corbynistas cling to in a post-Corbyn world, debunked

In the wake of a stunning turnaround within the Labour Party, with the left having lost control of the party, something they looked certain to hold onto for a generation at least, the core myths that propel Corbynistas onward are widely circulating on social media. I have decided to sit down and debunk the five most prominent of them.

Corbynite policies are “wildly popular”

Corbynistas like to point to the fact that some of JC’s policies were very popular with the public. Re-nationalisation of the trains is the classic amongst these that gets a mention. Yes, these policies poll well – they are also low salience, meaning that while people are generally in favour, they also don’t care that much either way. In terms of what will make them vote for one party or another, low salience issues don’t help you much, even if 100% of people want the policy in question enacted. It’s like the Lib Dems pointing to the fact that most people want cannabis legalised or want House of Lords reform. Yes, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean loads of people are going to vote for the Lib Dems because, to repeat, people may favour these things but don’t care very much about them. This applies to almost every policy that Corbynites cite as being wildly popular.

This is before we get to all of the Corbyn policies that were wildly unpopular with the voting public, such as pretty much the whole of his foreign policy agenda.

2. Labour almost won the 2017 general election

I’ve written a whole article about this already, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much here. To summarise: this “Corbyn was 2,000 votes from victory” is total nonsense. If Labour had won a couple thousand more votes perfectly efficiently in a handful of seats, the Tories would have been unable to form a government with the DUP. The Corbynistas then make the leap of faith that this would have meant that Labour “won”, when in reality they would still have been almost 50 seats short of a majority, needing to try and form a government with the SNP, the Lib Dems, the Greens, and Plaid, all for a majority of 1. If you want to consider that a Labour victory, at least spell out explicitly that this is what you mean.

3. Corbyn didn’t win because he was “stabbed in the back” by a cabal of evil characters

The “stabbed in the back” myth is a long running far left device. What else is there to reach for when they constantly lose other than to question their own beliefs and tactics, something they aren’t going to do? Boris Johnson went into the 2019 general election having gone to war with the entire moderate wing of his own party. He won an 80 seat majority. The left constantly bitched about Blair during his time as leader and yet Labour won three straight elections. I could go on, but you get the drift.

4. Corbyn didn’t win because the “MSM” conspired against him

Corbynites use this one as if every other Labour leader was fawned over by the media and only poor Jeremy was given a particularly hard ride because of all those cursed Blairites in high places. Every Labour leader has to figure out how to navigate a media, particularly a predominantly right of centre print media, that gives their party a hard time. Perhaps Corbyn should have worked on a media strategy that went beyond saying “Can I just finish?’ and making a face like he smelled a fart whenever asked an even slightly tricky question.

5. Corbyn defeated the Tory government 21 times

Corbyn had as little to do with those defeats as was physically possible while remaining the leader of the opposition. They all happened because of splits in the Conservative Party about the shape of Brexit and Corbyn just rode the storm. As little as possible, I might add, mostly because he never actually wanted to stop Brexit. If Theresa May had been better at politics – all right, if Theresa May had been in any way good at politics – none of those defeats would have ever happened. Amongst all of the Corbynistas claims for their hero, this one if the most pathetic.

There are plenty more Corbynite myths, but I think these five are the most common and are among the more egregious (they are actually probably the most awful claims they make that don’t involve actual racism to some degree). At least you can say this: all they have left now is their petty myths, which is massive progress.

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

I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It 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 here:

The post Five myths Corbynistas cling to in a post-Corbyn world, debunked appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

The BLM “FREE PALESTINE” tweet: could the “liberal consensus” actually go into reverse?

Over the weekend, the official Black Lives Matter UK twitter account put out a tweet that read:

“As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades.

FREE PALESTINE.”

It caused a lot of liberals who had hitherto not questioned Black Lives Matter as being anything other than for the greater good to think again. Not about racism, obviously, I just mean about what this organisation that has taken on the slogan really stands for and what it wishes to accomplish. Particularly galling was the “gagged of the right to critique Zionism”, a line which could have come straight out of a far right pamphlet. Not a good look for an organisation dedicated to fighting racism, to say the least. The use of the word “comrades” gave away something as well; less sinister, but noteworthy nonetheless.

There has been a paradox at the heart of the protests around race relations in this country since they began following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. On one hand, the argument they are putting forth is that the UK is deeply, institutionally racist. Yet the messaging and approach all rests on the assumption that the UK is actually pretty tolerant and liberal; the whole thing has been done on the basis that most Britons broadly support the sentence “Black Lives Matter”. My worry here is that the liberal consensus that is often assumed to be now permanent, not just subconsciously by leftist anti-racist campaigners but by Blue Labour/Red Tory types amongst others, is nothing of the sort. I worry constantly these days about Britain actually becoming a less tolerant country over the next decade and not for institutional reasons but because of a backlash against socialism parading as liberalism.

I’ve spoken before about where I think anti-Semitism on the far left comes from. Under the modern socialist mindset, the world is split into good guys and bad guys, or more specifically, victims and oppressors. They have put Israel into the bad guys/oppressors category, mostly because of their relationship with the US, the great Satan in modern socialist thinking. They don’t see themselves as anti-Semitic because so long as Jews are at least partly ashamed to be Jewish – in the same way Anglo-Saxon white people should be ashamed to be Anglo-Saxon white people in their view – then they are absolved of any association with the bad guys. Just denounce Israel, that’s all they ask of British Jews on the left. They are only asking Jews to do what they themselves are willing to do and denounce portions of their own ethnic heritage, one that has been placed in the oppressor category.

All of this is deeply illiberal. It is other things too, but I’ll stick with my focus here. What liberalism seeks to do on race is to try and move toward a world where it does not matter. Good liberalism understands that this is complicated. Take positive discrimination. On the surface it may seem illiberal to some, but if it is used to give a generation of BAME kids a leg up in life so that the socio-economic distance between people of different races is far less for the next generation, than I support it for what I feel are liberal reasons.

My fear is that this may be the opposite of what a lot of socialists want to achieve. The far left simplifies things in the fight against racism and seeks to separate the good guys from the bad guys, as it does in every other sphere of life. The push to demonise “whiteness”, while to some extent I understand where the idea comes from, is a deeply problematic example of this. Once you accept that white people should be ashamed of their skin colour, it sets up a reality where being ashamed of one’s skin colour, whatever skin colour that happens to be, is an acceptable premise. Further, it solidifies the idea that judgements of people based on skin colour are a reasonable thing to do, at least in some instances. Amongst other negatives, this can only be bad for BAME people, particularly in a country where almost 90% are white.

What is particularly galling about white liberals declaring their shame at their skin colour, while seemingly having no idea of the long term damage this is causing, is the fact that it is so easily done on their part. This isn’t a real sacrifice of any description – for the vast majority of white people, whiteness isn’t really a part of their true identity. Having lived in a society where your skin colour is the predominant one, unless you become a white supremacist, the colour of your skin isn’t something that is genuinely important to you. You identify as many things, but “white” is way, way, way down the list. You could say this is part of what white privilege actually is in reality – the freedom from having to feel insecure about your racial identity to the point that you can publicly denounce it without any fear of repercussion.

All of this is difficult to talk about and to be honest, my instinct was to let it all go. Let someone else discuss this stuff. But I knew that would be cowardly. Yes, this stuff is tricky but it’s important. If we want to eventually get to a world where race really doesn’t matter, we can’t leave this to bad faith actors, with the rest of us too scared to speak. If we hand anti-racism to the far left, we are damning it to failure and it is far too important to allow that to happen.

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

I have a new book out now. 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.

It’s available here:

The post The BLM “FREE PALESTINE” tweet: could the “liberal consensus” actually go into reverse? appeared first on nicktyrone.com.