Craig Murray's Blog, page 26

Acadia

Intellectual curiosity can takes us in unexpected directions. This particular journey started with my learning that the word “Cajun” is a contraction of “Canadian”.

Nine years after Culloden, 300 British troops under Lt Col John Winslow entered the town of Grand Pre in Acadia, Nova Scotia. They constructed a palisade fort which enclosed both the church and cemetery. They then summoned all males aged ten and over to the church to hear a proclamation. Disarmed and surrounded, the Acadians were all registered, then told they were to be deported immediately.

Here is that register. Remember many of these were children as young as ten years old. About a quarter did not survive the brutal deportation.

Pierre ALIN
Jean APIGNE
Oliver AUCOIN
Claud AUCOIN
Charles AUCOIN
Jean AUCOIN
Renez AUCOIN
Joseph AUCOIN
Alexandre AUCOIN
Jean Batiste AUCOIN
Charles AUCOIN
Pierre AUCOIN
Simon AUCOIN
Abraham AUCOIN
Simon AUCOIN
Charles AUCOIN
Martin AUCOIN
Oliver AUCOIN
Jean a Pierre AUCOIN
Charles AUCOIN
Aman BABIN
Battiste BABIN
Charles BABIN
Feler BABIN
Jean BABIN
Joseph BABIN
Joseph BABIN
Joseph BABIN
Joseph BABIN
Paul BABIN
Pierre BABIN
Rener BABIN
Simon BABIN
Simon BABIN
Johanes BABBIN
Jacques BELMERE
Joseph BELMERE
Renez BELMERE
Oliver BELFONTAINE
Oliver BELFONTAINE
Francois BENOIST
Joseph BENOIST
Joseph BLANCHARD
Pierre Ilasis BLANA
Pierre BOBIN
Joseph BOUDRO sits
Joseph BOUDRO
Pierre BOUDRO
Michel BOUDRO
Michel BOUDRO Jr.
Ettime BOUDRO
Charles BOUDRO
Marin BOUDRO
Paul BOUDRO
Abraham BOUDRO
Jean BOUDRO
Jesepah BOUDRO
Pierre BOUDRO
Joseph BOUDRO
Norez Michel BOUDRO
Benois BOURG
Francis BOURG
Michel BOURG
“Old” Rener BOURG
Joseph BRASSIN
Cherussin BRAUX
Commo BRASSEAUX
Charles BRAUX
Pierre BRAUX
Vicar Francis BRAUX
Paul BRUN
Joseph BRUN
Pierre BRUN
Aman BRUN
Joseph BRUN
Paul CAPIERE
Pierrs CARETTER
Antoine CELESTIN
Joseph CELESTAIN
Norez CELESTINE
Paul CELESTINE
Charles HEBERT
Etimme LANDRY
Renez LANDRY
Simon LEBLANC
Etair LANDRY
Jean LANDRY fils
Paul LEBLANC
Simon LANDRY
Paul LANDRY
Jean LEBLANC
Jean LANDRY
Jos. LANDRY
Francois LEBLANC
Michelle LANDRY
Jean Pos LEBLANC
Francois LEBLANC
Michelle LANDRY
Bernard LEBLANC
Jean DOUCET
Martin LANDRY
Jacques LEBLANC
Jean DOULET
Jean LANDRY
Pieurs LEBLANC
Antaine HEBERT
Germain LANDRY
Jean Pauque LEBLANC
Igneiff HEBERT Rener LANDRY
Oliver LEBLANC
Simon Pierre HEBERT
Charles LANDRY
Allin LEBLANC
Jean Battiste HEBERT
Rener LANDRY
Joseph LEBLANC
Paul HEBERT
Pierrs LANDRY
Felix LAURENT
Francois HEBERT
Le Petis Clauds LANDRY
Paul LEBAR
Paul HEBERT
Etim LANDRY
Jean LEBARE
Pierre HEBERT
Pierre LEBLANC
Norez LEBARE
Francois HEBERT
Pierre LEBLANC
Margaret LAPIERRE
Alexandre HEBERT
Jean Battiste LEBLANC
Delene LEURON
Aman HEBERT
Benois LEBLANC
Jean LEPRINCE
Jos. HEBERT
Charle LEBLANC
Joseph LEBOUS
Bonnos HEBERT
Jacques LEBLANC
Brounos LE GRANGER
Guilljaums HEBERT
Simon LEBLANC
Pierre LE CLANE
Benonis HEBERT
Pierre LEBLANC
Pierre LEBLANC
Joseph HEBERT
Joseph LEBLANC
Pierre Jean LEBLANC
Simon HEBERT
Oliver LEBLANC
Norez LEBLANC
Alexis HEBERT
Charle LEBLANC
Jean Baptiste LEBLANC
Charle HEBERT
Joseph LEBLANC
Michelle LEBLANC
Charle JEANSONNE
Oliver LEBLANC
Pierre LEBLANC
Alexandre LANDRY
Joseph LEBLANC
Charle LABLUN
Pierre LANDRY
Jean Charle LEBLANC
Pinions LEBLANC
Jean a Pierre LANDRY
Michelle LEBLANC
Auguste LEBLANC
Charles LANDRY
Blesse LEBLANC
Baptiste LEBLANC
Antoine LANDRY
Simon LEBLANC
Piere NOALIS
Bonaumturs LEBLANC
Antoine PITREE
Pierrs a GOUITIN
Jean LEBLANC
Dominque PITRE
Aman LANDRY
Francois LEBLANC
Simon PITRE
Jean LANDRY
Battistes LEBLANC
Simon PITRE
Former LANDRY
Daniell LEBLANC
Bour QUETTE
Francois LANDRY
Alin LEBLANC
Michelle QUETTE
Jos. LANDRY
Joseph LEBLANC
Basil RICHARD
Charle LANDRY
Simon LEBLANC
Renez RICHARD
Pierre LANDRY
Jeanmer LANDRY
Germain RICHARD
Jose LANDRY
Alexis LANDRY
Joseph RICHARD
Charle LANDRY
Charle LANDRY
Joseph RICHARD
Germain LANDRY
Germain LANDRY
Jean RICHARD
Battiste LANDRY
Jean LANDRY
Jean RICHARD Joseph BABIN
George CLOATRE
Jean DUPUIS
Simon BABIN
Pierre GRANGER
Antoine DUPUIS
Jos. BABIN
Jean Battis GRANGER
Francois DUPUIS
Rener BABIN
Jean GRANGER
Jean DUPUIS
Feler BABIN
Sorans GRANGER
Alexandre DUPUIS
Charles BABIN
Simon GRANGER
Michelle DUPUIS
Joseph BABIN
Charles GRANGER
Suprian DUPUIS
Jean Robs CHOC
Joseph GRANGER
Charle DUPUIS
Clotis ——-
Rener GRANGER
Germain DUPUIS
Finmi CHELLE
Charle GRANGER
Antoine DOUCET
Pierre COMMO
Francois GRANGER
Tunuislaps FORREST
“le Vieuc COMMO”
Jean GRANGER
Oliver FORREST
Joseph COMMO
Joseph GRANGER
Josses inferms
Jean Louis BOUDRO
Ansemine GRANGER
habitant in formis
Jean Battiste BOUDRO
Joseph GRANGER
Charles JEAN SONNE
Charle BOUDRO
Francis GRANGER
Joseph GOTRO
Pierre BOUDRO
Charle GRANGER
Alexxis GOTRO
Claude BOUDRO
Aman GRANGER
Jean GOTRO
Anseleme BOUDRO
Joseph GRANGER
Pierrs GAUTRO
Pierrs BOUDRO
Vestache COMMO
Paul GOTRO
Paul BOUDRO
Jean Battiste COMMO
Charle GOTRO
Joseph BOUDRO
Esteeme COMMO
Jean GOTRO
Pierrs BOUDRO
Alexis COMMO
Joseph GOTRO
Paul BOUDRO
Oliver COMMO
Paul GOTRO
Joseph BOUDRO
Pierre COMMO
Alexis GOTRO
Pierrs BOUDRO
Simon COMMO
Aman GOTRO
Paul BOUDRO
Norez COMMO
Joseph HEBERT
Joseph BOUDRO
Bassil COMMO
Aman GRANGER
Pierrs BOUDRO
Dominque COTE
Pierre HEBERT
Paul BOUDRO
Jean Beautiste DAIGREE
Joseph HEBERT
Joseph BOUDRO
Jean Baxirles DAIGREE
Manuel HEBERT
Alexandre DUON
Charle DAIGREE
Pierre HEBERT
Joseph DUPUIS
Norez DAIGRE
Oliver HEBERT
Fabien DUPUIS
Oliver DAIGRE fils
Jean HEBERT
Silven DUPUIS
Oliver DAIGRE
Joseph HEBERT
Simon DUPUIS
Brener DAIGRE
Norez HEBERT
Germain DUPUIS Joseph DAIGRE
Etimme HEBERT
Jean Batiste DUPUIS
Astaches DAIGRE
Pierre HEBERT
Aman DUPUIS
Battistes DAIGRE
Augustin HEBERT
Charle CELESTINE
Alin DAIGRE
Renez HEBERT
Pierre CELESTINE
Charles DAIGRE
Aman HEBERT
Jacques CELEVE
Pierrs DAIGRE
Jacques HEBERT
Jacques CLELAND
Norez DAIGRE
Oliver HEBERT
Pierre CLEMENSON
Jean Battiste DAVID
Augustin HEBERT
Lewis Pierre CLOATRE
Joseph BOULET
Joseph HEBERT
George CLOATRE
Pierre BOULET
Joseph HEBERT
Jaque RICHARD
Joseph LEBLANC du
Sour
Maturin LEBLANC
Pierrs LEBLANC
Charles LEBLANC Cems
Paul LEBLANC
Jean Pierrs LEBLANC
Germain TERRIOT
Oliver TERRIOT
Pierre TERRIOTE
Jean TERRIOT
Charles TERIOT
Jacwue TERIOT
Brunois TERRIOTE
Charls TIBODO
Joseph TIBODO
Paul TIBODO
Germain TIBODO
Joseph TRAHANE
Pierre TRAHAN
Claude TRAHAN
Michelle TRAHAN
Charle TRAHAN
Pierre TRAHAN
Jean TRAHAN
Renez TRAHAN
Francis ROUS
Charles ROBICHOCT
Jean Le SOUR
Francis ROUS
Antoine MAJET
Baptiste SAPIN
Jeanm Batptiste MASIER
James SAPIN
Battis MASSIER
Joseph SEMER
Amans MASSIER
Charle SONIER
Battistes MASSIER
Pierre SOSONIER
Paul MELANSON
Renez SOSONIER
Baptistes MELANSON
Marcelle SONER
Pierre Jane MELANSON
Pierre TERRIOT
Battistes MELANSON
Janis TERRIOT
Jean Battis MELANSON
Charle a Claude TERRIOT
Joseph MELANSON
Pierre MELANSON
Suprien TERRIOT
James MELANSON
Charle TERRIOT
Pierre Jean MELANSON
Pierre TRAHAN
Aman MELANSON
Joseph TRAHAN
Pierre MELANSON
Joseph TRAHAN
Jacques MELANSON
Jean TRAHAN
Joseph MUNIER
Charles TRAHAN
Anselmer ales MANGEAN
Jean Batistes TRAHAN
Pierre RICHARD
Pierre TRAHAN
Jos. RICHARD
Joseph TRAHAN
Charles RICHARD
Charle TUNOUR
Paul RICHARD
Joseph VINCENT
Paul RICHARD
Antoine VINCENT
Joseph ROBICHAUD

In the next year 40% of the 15,000 population of Acadia were forcefully deported, deliberately dispersed to British colonies around the globe, in such dreadful conditions that over 1,200 died on the journeys. Males over ten, and females and small children, were bundled into separated random groups and those groups sent off to different destinations.

In Grand Pre itself, the British troops burnt down the church and destroyed the homes, and then smashed the system of dykes and sluices that the Acadians had built for their highly productive agricultural system.

Almost all of the remaining Acadians were dispersed over the next few years. Traveling through the wilds, some who left “voluntarily” eventually found their way to Louisiana. Hence “Cajun”. In 1758 it was made illegal in Nova Scotia for Catholics to own land. In 1759 a further Act was passed:

“An Act for the Quieting of Possessions to the Protestant Grantees of the Lands, formerly occupied by the French Inhabitants, and for preventing vexatious Actions relating to the same.” The legislation prohibited “any troublesome or vexatious Suits of Law” by Acadians trying to recover their lands and made it illegal for any courts in the province to hear cases brought “for the Recovery of any Lands” by “the former French Inhabitants.”

The preamble to Act recounted the “Manifest Treasons and Rebellions” of the Acadians against a British crown to which they had never in truth had the slightest duty of allegiance.

The Acadians had arrived in modern Nova Scotia from 1608. There were three unusual things about them.

i) From the start they had been focused on land reclamation in the coastal marshlands, rather than moving inland cutting down forests for agricultural land as was the prevalent pattern across North America. Historians have calculated they reclaimed in total 5,261 hectares of land. Their achievements in land reclamation were quite startling, especially as in the Grand Pre marsh they were dealing with tidal flows in the Bay of Fundy of over 15 metres, said to be the world’s highest.

Acadian reclaimed marshland at the town of Saint Pre

Modern scholarship has emphasised that their land reclamation skills were brought with then from the Western French seaboard, and then developed in a local vernacular. The unique feature of Acadian land reclamation, as opposed to French or Dutch, is that it was a communal effort and not dependent on central finance and hierarchical organisation. That is because of their second special feature:

ii) The Acadians arrived as individuals or families with no hierarchy. They acknowledged no nobility and crucially they did not acknowledge any Crown. Occasionally they were obliged temporarily to pay lip service to the French or British crown when military forces passed through, but until their deportation they were never successfully subjected to any central authority.

iii) They enjoyed consistently friendly relationships with the local Mik’maq nation and intermarried without apparent prejudice on either side, developing a large Creole component. Historians have generally explained this as due to Acadian agriculture being on reclaimed land and thus not competing for resources. However that ignores the fact the salt marshes they were reclaiming were themselves a very valuable source of food for the Mik’maq – birds and eggs, fish shellfish and crustaceans, samphire etc.

I rather tend to the view that it was the lack of hierarchy and crown allegiance that also led to good relationships with the native people. The Acadians made no claim to conquer the land, impose a new king or create a state. They were just settling non-aggressive farming communities.

Historians are at pains to counter the idyllic portrait of the Acadians. We are told they were very poor, lived in squalid conditions, tended to inbreed, left no cultural legacy and were often led by their Catholic priests. There is validity in all those points, but in the historical context such criticisms cannot help but come over badly. The imperfections of a society do not justify genocide.

In reading about the Acadians, I was struck by this passage:

“When the first New England colonists came to Nova Scotia five years after the Acadians were expelled, they encountered a landscape littered with bleached bones of livestock and burned ruins of houses.”

Anyone who has hill walked in the Highlands of Scotland knows just how frequently you come across the low walls of the base of old homes, often grouped together in small settlements, and sometimes in desolate moor many miles from the nearest habitation or cultivated land. These of course date from the Highland Clearances, some contemporary with the genocide of the Acadians.

One obvious fact had leapt out at me since childhood. The depopulation of the Highlands was a political choice, and the vast managed hunting estates were perfectly capable of supporting large populations through livestock and arable in the past. The notion they can only sustain grouse and small numbers of deer is evidently nonsense.

I am currently researching a biography of the Jacobite General George Murray, and was looking at a journey he took from Blair Atholl to Braemar. There is absolutely no public road there any more – not within twenty miles of most of his route – and the places he stayed including manses seem to be wiped from the map. There was a population – indeed he later raised troops there.

Go to google maps, trace a straight line Blair Atholl to Braemar (yes, obviously you can get there the long way round) and see what you can find today in the middle. But this is not wilderness, it is completely habitable and was populated.

I could recount a thousand or more atrocities across the history of the British Empire as bad as the Acadian genocide. Many are completely forgotten, like the massacre of the Murree tribe in Balochistan under a flag of truce, or the Sierra Leone Hut Tax war. Some are startlingly recent, like the Chagos Islands. But I recount the Acadian story because of its resonance to the Scottish Highlands, with that justification of treason and rebellion, and because of the furious denial in recent days after Scottish colonisation was asserted in the House of Commons.

The tone of much of that reaction is essentially that white people were not the victims of Empire. Well, I give you the Acadians. It is also worth pointing out the very basic fact that there was never the kind of expulsion and depopulation anywhere in England that occurred in both Scotland and Ireland. What happened to the Gael was much worse than effects of agricultural enclosure.

It is Armistice Day today and Remembrance Sunday shortly. What was in my childhood an occasion for reflection, grief and thanksgiving for peace has been turned into an orgy of militarism.

We are supposed to think of those who “gloriously” gave their lives for Britain, perhaps while shooting up Afghan civilians in a village or destroying the infrastructure of Iraq. Have a look through that list of names from the town of Grand Pre, and wonder which ones were ten year old boys separated from their mothers. Ponder which died on their hideous deportation journeys. The victims of Empire deserve remembrance too.

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The post Acadia appeared first on Craig Murray.

Rampant Deprofessionalisation

It is not controversial to say that the UK’s immigration system is utterly broken. The reason is very plain but seldom noted – decades of cuts in which the cheapness of the system is crazily prioritised over the system working.

The costs to the economy of the system not working are simply enormous.

I have line managed the managers of two of the UK’s largest visa departments abroad. Over twenty years I witnessed first hand the systematic deprofessionalisation of the immigration service, which has continued apace since I left.

The plain truth is this: while governments driven by a desire to cut public spending are unwilling to fund the administration of immigration with reasonable levels of professionalism and expertise, it really does not matter what the policy is. The tool to carry the policy into effect was degraded long ago.

It is not that the system has collapsed under the weight of applications. Ever increasing applications are a complete myth. To take asylum applications as an example, do you know in what year asylum applications peaked? 2002. Yes, twenty years ago. 2022 is seeing something of a surge on 2021, but that surge will take 2022 to about 50% of the levels we were seeing twenty years ago.

The problem is not increased volume of applications. The problem is the wanton destruction of the machinery to cope with them.

When I first worked closely with immigration officers, in the British High Commission in Lagos over thirty years ago, this was the system:

All visa applicants had their case initially reviewed by a member of locally employed staff, but still a UK government employee of UK nationality. They would carry out an initial sift. Obvious visa grants – people who had previous visas and had never overstayed – would be put in a pile for rubber-stamping. All others would be granted an interview.

There were 22 visa officers to do the interviews, half from the Immigration Service and half from the Foreign Office. They would interview the applicants who required it. These officers were all well paid and well housed, enjoyed diplomatic status, and were highly trained and frequently very experienced. They would serve three or four years in the country and many took real pains to develop expertise in its culture. There were two Chief Immigration Officers in charge.

I remember one wise CIO impressing on their staff to judge the person in front of them. You give a visa to an individual, not to a document. Paperwork could be forged, or a genuine applicant may have difficulty getting the mound of papers together. Conversing with the individual and asking them questions, making due allowance for nervousness, was the most important part of the process.

The system had not substantially changed when I was Deputy High Commissioner in Accra 20 years later, except that rather more responsibility was given to the locally engaged staff, and the FCO insisted that we should no longer employ British local staff but could hire much cheaper Ghanaian staff for the initial sifting.

I viewed this as crazy; the pressures brought on local Ghanaian staff by extended family and friends over visa issue was immense, and it was pretty well socially impossible for them to avoid what we would view as corruption.

Now the system has changed completely. It has been privatised – almost everywhere in the world, Visa departments are outsourced to private firms with a slim layer of official management. Most visa decisions are taken by very low paid agency staff working through a computer checklist. Very few applicants get interviewed at all – it is done almost entirely on the documentation.

There are no appeals against refusal of a visit visa. If you are turned down, you are turned down.

Businesses in the UK suffer massive damage from important export customers being inexplicably refused visas, with no right of appeal. Equally very large numbers are allowed in on the basis of entirely fraudulent applications and forged documents. We liberals are not supposed to admit that side of the equation, but it is true.

Furthermore the number of visa departments abroad has been radically reduced. Visa decisions are now often taken by a minimum wage person, working for a private company, operating from a computer checklist in a completely different country to the home of the person being judged. The person taking the decision almost certainly knows nothing about the education system, economy, social systems or corporate structures of the country the applicant is applying from.

Rational, evidenced decisions are simply impossible in this situation. The excuse for cutting back visa departments to “regional hubs” was – wait for it – the cost of the machines that print out the high technology visas. This is symptomatic of the crazed accountancy of the whole system – for the price of about £3 million in capital expenditure the UK abandoned all local knowledge and expertise in its visa issuing process.

Let me give you an example of the effect of this. Visas for Uzbekistan are now processed in Istanbul. Two years ago I was shown an instance of a visa refusal where the minimum wage drone writing the reason for refusal, believed Tashkent to be in Turkey.

The UK Immigration Service I used to work alongside was a service, regulating immigration. That was abolished in favour of the “UK Borders Agency”, a title more suited to the privatisation agenda. It then got changed to the macho “UK Border Force”, a paramilitary sounding body that conjures images of lantern jawed heroes holding back Suella Braverman’s “invasion” of foreigners.

The Tories change the name regularly, and I am not sure what it is this week. But all the time the administation is sliced and cut, farmed out for profit, and run on cheaper and cheaper lines, with contempt for any notion of professional expertise.

There are still experienced and good immigration officers in the service of the Border Force, but these are now heavily concentrated at UK ports of entry. When there was a professional and competent visa service operating abroad, the visa officers at ports of entry had a relatively easy task, looking out for forged visas and passports, or applying intelligence material on smuggling etc.

Now, however, the person arriving from India with an entirely valid visa in his entirely valid passport, is being scrutinised at Heathrow for the very first time by somebody with skills and experience; after being given the visa by a 18 year old at a private company who never laid eyes on them.

The immigration officers at ports don’t trust the visas their own government has issued in its crazy cheap system. So in effect you have immigration interviews being conducted at the arrival airport desk, while thousands of passengers are queued up behind. That is the reason for periodic immigration chaos at airports – and results in immigration officers effectively being instructed not to do their jobs. Morale is at an all time low.

Asylum is a related but different issue. The Observer today reports that Home Office staff are being recruited to decide asylum cases in the UK who have no relevant experience and have come straight from working in supermarkets or cafes, being empowered to decide cases after three days of training. The report confirms that the grade of such staff has been reduced to Executive Officer, again to save money over using more senior staff.

The UK does not receive disproportionate numbers of asylum applications. Asylum applications per head of UK population are just half the level of the EU average. This from a UK parliamentary library briefing:

In 2020, 72% of all asylum applications were accepted as genuine at first decision by the Home Office. About one third of the remaining 28% were accepted on appeal. So 81% of all asylum applications are ultimately judged genuine. The Patel/Braverman line that most are “economic migrants” is a plain lie.

The mass arrival of Albanian citizens by boat is a relatively new phenomenon. I am sceptical that the numbers are as large as being put out. It seems to me wildly improbable that 2% of the adult male population of Albania is crossing the Channel in small boats. But it is worth noting that over 40% of Albanian asylum applications are accepted as genuine at first decision by the Home Office. The shameful painting of all Albanians as criminal is plain wrong.

Let me again upset some of my “own side” by saying that the Home Office is so denuded of well paid, expert staff that the bad decisions are not all one way. There are horrible instances of refugees being returned to torture and death after a bad asylum decision. But equally, there are bad decisions the other way, with frauds and criminals also gaining asylum.

The government simply refuses to pay for the degree of knowledge and expertise to make good decisions. I represented (without fee) a number of asylum applications at Immigration Appeals Tribunals – and never lost a case. The reason that so many appeals succeed is that the tribunals are before a real judge, and the Home Office officers have an embarrassing lack of basic knowledge and expertise, often depending for country information on publications or – very frequently – denials of human rights abuse by the particular despotism in question. It just does not cut ice with a judge.

Personally I am pleased that the system in general errs towards generosity to asylum seekers, once they get out of the hideous limbo of years of waiting for the application to be decided, frequently effectively in prison, and even when allowed into the community denied the right to work and support themselves.

It is now illegal in UK domestic law to arrive in the UK for the purpose of claiming asylum – contrary to international law and the UK government’s obligations under the Refugee Convention. At the same time, there is no provision to claim asylum outside the UK. In effect, the Conservative government has made it impossible to claim asylum other than by the desperate measure of pitching up in a small boat.

They then claim astonishment that people pitch up in small boats.

There is nothing in either the 1951 Refugee Convention nor its 1967 Protocol that stipulates that refugees must claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. That is a peculiar right wing canard. There is an obligation to treat refugees humanely, assist with housing and allow to find employment. The UK is failing in all of these duties.

At the risk of diluting the impact of this article on why the UK’s immigration system does not function, I cannot refrain from noting that this is part of a much wider trend in neoliberalism.

Twenty years ago a visa applicant facing refusal would have an interview with a real, experienced and properly paid immigration officer. Now the decision is taken by a low paid employee with a computer checklist who does not see the applicant.

This is for precisely the same as the reason I cannot normally see my GP as I would simply have done twenty years ago, but have to explain my symptoms instead to somebody with little or no medical qualification working their way through a computer checklist.

It is precisely the same reason I cannot see a bank manager, in the branch I have used for forty years but which no longer has a manager, about a loan for my company. Instead I have to speak to a low paid person in a call centre working their way through a computer checklist that simply applies a formula related to historic turnover and profit, with no experience or understanding of start-ups and investment periods.

We have had decades to get used to the replacement of the skilled working class through automation. What we see now is the replacement of the professional middle classes through automation. Be they local bank managers, immigration officers, or GPs a computer checklist and unskilled operator is cheaper.

In all cases, the delivery of the service which is the reason for the process is massively undermined, but that is ignored in favour of very short term financial benefit.

I expect this trend will attack higher education soon, with the need for face to face interaction with students denigrated and mass redundancies among lecturers in favour of computer learning. That is one of my dystopian predictions for the next couple of decades.

To return back to immigration, the Tories have destroyed the system meant to implement their flailing policies. The policy levers have no viable implementation mechanism at the end of them. It could be fixed, by substantial investment, reversing privatisation, and re-establishing a worldwide expert immigration service again.

If you add that to a genuine and effective legal mechanism for accepting and processing the European average of refugee applications and a sensible policy to admit the workers the UK economy desperately needs, the benefits would far outweigh the cost. But in a mad universe where all public spending bar defence is effectively viewed by the Tories as loss, it will not happen.

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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

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Braverman Loses the Dressing Room

The only thing more remarkable than the number of classified documents the Home Secretary leaks to her mentors, is the number of civil servants leaking to the newspapers about Braverman leaking the documents.

In her brief period(s) as Home Secretary, civil servants have separately leaked to the papers:
the fact of her emailing classified documents to backbench Tory MPs and others;
that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case was furious at her reappointment;
that civil servants were disquieted by her briefings of backbencher John Hayes inside the Home Office;
that Braverman ignored legal advice over responsibilities at the Manston detention centre;
that Braverman vetoed planned hotel bookings for Manston detainees because the hotels were in Tory areas.

Those are just the stories I happen to have picked up. I have never seen anything approaching this volume of civil service leaks against a minister. Clearly Braverman has completely lost the Home Office dressing room.

For decades, the position of Home Secretary has been used by both Labour and Conservative parties simply as a platform for winning votes through right wing populism. The last reforming Home Secretary in the UK was Roy Jenkins in 1976. Since then the only liberal tenure was the brief one of Kenneth Clarke. The rest have been a nightmare of slogans on fighting drugs, terror, crime and immigration.

The massive social disaster of the counter-productive “war on drugs” is but the most glaring example of the practical result of a fifty year Home Office policy of aggressive stupidity when faced with any problem.

Given the consistent anti-liberal bias of the Home Office, it naturally attracts civil servants to work there who tend to side with the Department’s underlying stances. You do not get what Braverman herself calls “the Guardian reading, tofu eating wokerati” at the Home Office. You get a lot of people who think like Theresa May and rather enjoy creating hostile environments for people – yet that is the kind of audience Braverman has managed to alienate.

By all accounts Braverman has done it largely by what she would call iconoclasm and I would call being unnecessarily rude to staff members who ask you to consider why, from their experience, there is another way of doing something worth considering. Braverman is substantially hated by her senior staff.

I do not know how the civil servants are coping. When Braverman talks in parliament about an “Invasion” of immigrants just after one of the terrorist followers of her philosophy attempted to kill specifically children of migrants with petrol bombs at a reception centre, it creates a dilemma for the civil service – practical as well as ethical.

Speeches for ministers – and carefully crafted compendia of replies to possible questions that may arise – are written by civil servants. They are not drafted by the Institute of Economic Affairs or by the Centre for Policy Studies. They are written by civil servants.

I did this job for years. You inherit many pages of past speeches and prepared answers, encapsulating the agreed official wording on the subjects you cover. You amend the wording only where a minister signs off new wording in response to a written submission (that may entail copying in other government departments affected, who have also to agree any new wording), or where a minister themselves institutes new wording in amending a draft letter or utterance you have prepared for them.

Minor alterations of phrase with no difference in meaning or practical effect can just get added in without fuss.

The minister’s job is to stick to the agreed wording they have been given as the official government line, cleared within Whitehall and in line with policy agreed in writing. 99.9% of the time ministers do this, bar the odd retort or witticism which they understand, if on subject, has to stick within the official lines. Even Boris Johnson, who would generally reply to questions or interventions by an attack on another subject entirely, would normally stick to official government lines when discussing the matter in hand.

Braverman however careers dangerously off piste at will. Referring to migrants as an “invasion” is inflammatory and liable to incite violence against them.

There had been no government agreement to characterise migrants in this way, her own media department did not know it was coming and were not ready for the backlash. Her casual characterisation of Albanians per se as criminals had not been cleared – as it should have been – with the FCO. She is the loosest of loose cannons.

In the normal course of events, civil servants preparing Braverman’s speeches and briefings would now have to incorporate the new lines on migrant invasion and Albanian criminals into the material. Personally I never had to try retrospectively to clear with other government departments very stupid language my minister had used. At a minimum the foreign office,the ministry for local government and the cabinet office should have been consulted in advance on what Braverman said. They were not.

Where civil servants cannot agree language between departments, the matter is referred up to their ministers. Where they cannot agree, it is sent to the Cabinet Office where, in cases of real dispute, a committee will meet and prepare a report, and ultimately the Prime Minister will decide. I have been through all these processes personally.

I suspect Braverman has by now been less formally told to tone it down. But stirring up racial hatred is the right wing Tories’ basic weapon. I fear more will follow very quickly.

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A Response to James Kelly

The ever excellent Scot Goes Pop blog of James Kelly has posted an article disagreeing strongly with my contention that the Alba party should fight the SNP at the next Westminster election, should the SNP renege on its commitment to a “Plebiscite election” that determines Independence.

As James is a person for whom I have great respect, I am taking the time to respond to his points.

We both agree that if the SNP declare a genuine plebiscite general election, where victory leads directly to Independence and not to just another referendum request to Westminster, then Alba should not stand candidates against the SNP (leaving aside the question of Alba’s two sitting MPs).

Where we differ is on whether Alba should stand against the SNP, in the event that the SNP resile on their promise of a plebiscite referendum, and seek to define it as just the seventh election since 2014 where they ask people to vote for them on the grounds they will then ask Westminster for a referendum.

This is not all very hypothetical – I am quite certain that will happen. I suspect James is too.

In that event, I think Alba should stand against the SNP and James believes very strongly we should not. Let me reply to his arguments.

Firstly, he sets up a straw man in knocking down an argument I have never made, that Alba might win seats or overtake the SNP at the next general election.

No, Alba will not be replacing the SNP as the largest party any time soon. We will not even be getting close to doing that.

Of course. My article clearly discusses Alba support at hopefully 4%. It makes the comparator to Sinn Fein, who like Alba had two MPs defected from Redmond’s IPP in 1906, lost them in 1908, and Sinn Fein did not go on to supplant the Redmondites until 1918, twelve years later.

That is about how long I think it would take. It took only slightly longer for the Labour Party to supplant the Liberal Party as the opposition to the Tories in the UK. Because of FPTP, when the switch comes, it comes fast. But that does not mean it comes tomorrow.

We are talking of how we get to Independence in a situation where the SNP leadership has thrown away our best chances and has every intention of continuing to do so.

Of course, I would much prefer a drastically quicker solution where the SNP leadership genuinely make a move for Independence, defy Westminster and stop thinking about their personal careers and bank balances.

Please call me when that happens.

Where I disagree most strongly with James is his notion that Alba would be “humiliated” in an election. I have stood twice as an independent, anti-war candidate in parliamentary by-elections. I gained 5% of the vote in Blackburn and 2.7% of the vote in Norwich North – the top end of the Alba range.

I was not in the least humiliated. I had the chance to express my beliefs, against all the might of the big party machines, and thousands of people listened to what I said and cared enough to go out and vote for me. Honest presentation of your beliefs, as a choice for the electorate, is never humiliating.

Every vote won against the big battalions of the state is a small victory for independent thought.

James’ great error is repeatedly throughout his article to count SNP seats as pro-Independence seats. Independence will never be achieved with Westminster agreement. It must be taken as a right asserted in international law.

Any MP not prepared to defy Westminster for Independence is a Unionist. That is every SNP MP.

My question to James is this. For how many decades is he prepared to assert that we should vote for SNP MPs, who will never make any move for Independence? Why would we vote for people for whom their career, their bank account, and their respectability within the British Establishment are all more important than Scottish Independence?

Unless the SNP are opposed at the ballot box by real Independence supporters, their false flag Independence stance will remain unchallenged. Doubtless Alba would receive fierce criticism from SNP supporters for splitting the Independence vote. Doubtless Alba could enable a few Labour gains from SNP, causing short term unpopularity.

But how else will you get a platform to point out the SNP are not a real Independence party? How else will you ever impact the troughing charlatans?

James’ argument suffers from the fundamental flaw that it treats SNP MPs as pro-Independence MPs, when every single one of them is a Westminster bootlicker, grovelling for “permission” that will never be given.

I am genuinely perplexed as to why James left the SNP at all if he wished to campaign for them. I certainly will not myself remain in the Alba party if it sees itself as not a real alternative for Independence, but simply a bolt-on to the SNP for the Holyrood list vote elections.

————————————————-

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The post A Response to James Kelly appeared first on Craig Murray.

A Real Plebiscite Election, or Fight the SNP

A “plebiscite election” on Scottish Independence can only mean an election fought on that issue with the understanding that, if the election is won, Independence will be declared. It cannot mean anything else.

In particular, a “plebiscite election” cannot possibly mean an election which, if won, results in a request for a referendum. We have had lots of those elections already. A “plebiscite election” is not an election about holding a plebiscite. It is the plebiscite.

Plebiscite elections are not a new idea in the UK, and are generally on constitutional issues. The accepted historical narrative is that the 1832 General Election was over the franchise and led to the Great Reform Act. The 1910 elections were on reform of the House of Lords. In both cases victory was taken as an unanswerable mandate on a fiercely resisted constitutional reform.

It is worth noting that electoral victory in UK general elections has always meant winning the most seats under the first past the post system. It is a terrible system, but those are the rules. It is 91 years since any party has gained more than 50% of the popular vote in a UK general election (the Tories in 1931). All Westminster government have been elected in the range of 37 to 43% of those voting.

Nobody has ever argued – at the time or since – that the “plebiscite election” on Lords reform in 1910 needed a majority of the popular vote to be valid, as well as the majority of MPs.

In fact if you took the Liberal Party, Labour Party and Irish Parliamentary Party together you get 47.7% of the vote in December 1910 for parties standing on the platform of abolishing the legislative veto of the House of Lords. Yet the election of 399 MPs between them meant both King and Lords gave way. So don’t let the Establishment now con you into accepting vote share rules for a “plebiscite election” in Scotland.

There is no reason a general election in Scotland won by a majority of pro-Independence MPs should not give a similar mandate to action, and lead to a Declaration of Independence. That is the mechanism by which the majority of countries on the globe have won their Independence. Actual referenda are not only not mandated in international law, they are very rare and often distrusted.

Unionists routinely use the argument that one side cannot fairly declare a plebiscite election when voters are concerned about other things. But that argument does not survive thirty seconds of serious thought. If you fairly and squarely say this to the electorate:

“We are standing on the issue of Independence. If we win we will declare Independence”

then the electorate have fair warning and obviously anybody who does not want Independence can and should vote for somebody else.

If the opponent says

“That is nonsense. I do not accept this is an election about Independence. Vote for me because imposing long jail sentences for climate protestors is a much more important thing to do”

then the electorate have a choice. But if the majority vote for the first proposition, it is self evidently true that the less popular second proposition cannot outweigh the electoral victory, by a denialism which the electorate rejected.

It is a nonsensical argument, even if one beloved of the mainstream media.

Now Nicola Sturgeon announced, as a cloth pressed to the haemorrhage of exiting party members, that if the Supreme Court ruled against the Scottish Parliament having the power to hold a referendum, then the next general election would be a “plebiscite election” on Independence.

Having, through her specially appointed Unionist Attorney General Dorothy Bain, done everything possible to ensure Scotland loses the case at the UK Supreme Court, the ruse has got Nicola through a party conference attended largely by the payroll vote and bought her four months in which to wriggle her way out of the plebiscite election pledge.

Sturgeon pressed hard for a Westminster election now, before the Supreme Court judgement comes in. That would be perfect for her because it would provide a plausible argument that it is too early for the election to be treated as the promised plebsicite.

What precisely would be achieved for Scottish Independence by a UK General Election now? Nothing. It would however keep SNP MPs’ bums on the green benches at Westminster for a further five years. In return, it would lose the chance of a plebiscite election after the Supreme Court judgement.

It is however now clear that we will have to endure two full years of a Sunak government. The state and corporate media will unite in promoting the genuinely far right Sunak as a genial technocrat striving to save the UK economy, as it sails into the headwinds of a disastrous world economic situation utterly portrayed as outwith his control and entirely the fault of Vladimir Putin.

Back in the real world, Sunak’s only difference from Truss is one of sequencing – he wants deep spending cuts first and tax cuts for the rich next. She wanted to do it the other way round. With a wave of deep cuts and public spending rises being planned to be well below inflation, we are about to be hit by an austerity shock that will make George Osborne look like Santa Claus.

In that period, having lost the chance to extend their MPs’ lucrative employment contracts to 2027 with an early election (not to mention extend those of their MPs’ staff and get all the Short money), the SNP will now continue to swivel away from the promised “plebiscite election”.

They are already doing that with multiple party figures close to Sturgeon explaining that a plebiscite election is no different to any other election and not actually to be used as a plebiscite. It was just a figure of speech, with no meaning. “Plebiscite” here apparently just means “mandate to hold a plebiscite should Westminster agree to it.”

It is notable that there is zero SNP campaigning going on, in the streets or even online, for a referendum on scottish Independence they claim will be held on October 19 2023. If they did anything to mark one year to the referendum – which you would think would be a key campaigning moment – I could not find it.

For a pro-Independence political activist like myself, the question is now whether genuine Independence supporters should oppose the SNP candidates at Westminster elections. To do so under the first past the post system could lose SNP seats at Westminster to the Unionist parties.

The question is primarily one for the new Alba Party, of which I am a member. Alba has, through membership votes at party conferences, fleshed out a policy platform different to that of the SNP.

Alba wants immediate Independence, and it wants an Independent Scotland to be a republic, outside NATO, in EFTA/EEA rather than the EU, and to have its own Scottish currency from the outset. In addition to these there are a raft of more progressive taxation, nationalisation and spending policies, so Alba has defined its positon well to the left of the neoliberal captured SNP.

What Alba does not have is any significant number of voters. This is a major failing for a political party. But then it is only two years old, contains almost all the people actually campaigning for Independence, and is starting to be picked up as a blip in the opinion polls at up to 4% in Scotland.

Electorally that would not elect any Alba MPs but it is ten per cent of the SNP’s vote.

There is the question of Alba’s two existing MPs, Kenny MacAskill and Neale Hanvey, who under the super vindictive Sturgeon will almost certainly be opposed by the SNP. But leaving that important question to the side, should Alba stand against the SNP in Westminster elections, when this could cost the SNP seats and there appears no realistic chance of Alba winning any?

If the SNP declare an actual plebiscite election, in which a SNP majority will lead to a declaration of Independence, then Alba should not stand against them. It would complicate matters unnecessarily and confuse the electorate. In those circumstances, I would call on all Independence supporters to get behind the SNP, putting aside all differences until after Independence is achieved.

But if the “plebiscite election” tag is purely a ruse to describe a normal election, in which the SNP plan nothing more than to ask Westminster again for permission to hold a referendum (which they know will be refused), then most certainly I shall be arguing that Alba should stand in every single constituency.

If this causes the SNP to lose a handful of seats to Unionist candidates, I shall shed not a tear. Frankly I prefer to argue against open Unionists to the closet Unionists of the SNP, who have betrayed those who voted for them believing they were voting for Independence.

Westminster will never willingly cede Scottish Independence. Never.

The 2014 referendum was only agreed because Independence was at 28% in the opinion polls and Cameron believed a referendum would be easily won. Scotland gave the British establishment the shock of their lives in 2014, and they will not repeat it. Scotland’s economic resources are invaluable to the British elite.

If the British Establishment believed they would win a second referendum, they would not sacrifice so much democratic credibility by refusing it.

Scotland therefore needs to take Independence, not wait to be given it. We have seen moments of great vulnerability for the British state – the Brexit vote and the moment of leaving the EU against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Scots, the Johnson premiership, the disintegration of Westminster ministerial structures this anarchic Tory autumn – massive opportunities for a bold move on Independence all spurned by Sturgeon.

Opportunities spurned in favour of a legal strategy designed to lose.

Those SNP MPs and MSPs who enable Sturgeon are fast coming to the end of the period where they could claim they were duped.

The SNP MPs at Westminster are achieving nothing whatsoever that advances the cause of Independence. They increasingly get immersed further and further into the processes of legislation for the whole UK, failing to differentiate the interests of Scotland, particularly in the areas of defence and foreign policy.

Unless Sturgeon is ousted in short order, and the plan ditched to please MI5 with a handover to the Robertson power couple, re-electing SNP MPs will continue to do nothing other than to ensure the continued swelling of the bank balances and the pension pots of the MPs themselves, funding for their staff and Short money for the SNP’s smug office bureaucrats.

Independence has not been advanced an inch by these highly paid British state collaborators of the SNP these last five years. That will not change.

Since 2014 the SNP has managed to achieve Scottish Labour levels of both corruption and of incompetence in administration. I once believed that impossible. There are many causes, including crazed over-centralisation where everybody is terrified to take a decision which may displease the dictator, or even to discuss unapproved options.

The limitations of making appointments on the dual bases of personal loyalty and identity politics quotas have also been exposed. There remains a huge amount of talent in the SNP but it has been marginalised and driven from the centre by a leadership that only sees talent as a threat.

Scottish Labour has for decades marginalised any real socialists in the party. But unlike Sturgeon’s continued abuse of state police and prosecution systems systematically to jail or attempt to jail real Independence supporters, at least Scottish Labour did not imprison its internal dissidents.

I have consistently argued that the SNP remains the only realistic vehicle for Independence, it is just a question of changing the driver. But as it continues merrily on the path of Unionism with the passengers apparently too comfortable to care, there comes a time when true Independence supporters simply have to drop the SNP from their calculations as a lost cause.

I believe we are finally there.

So I shall be arguing for Alba to fight the SNP in all constituencies at the next Westminster election, excluding a real plebiscite election. I shall also argue for Alba to fight the SNP everywhere in the next Holyrood election, on both the constituency vote and on the list vote in the d’Hondt system.

This is a hard road. But not an impossible one. There is an extremely close parallel.

The Irish Parliamentary Party of John Redmond was even more dominant in Ireland than Sturgeon’s SNP is in Scotland. In 1906 just two of its MPs, like the two Alba MPs we have now, deserted as a result of lack of progress towards Home Rule. One retired at the next election and one stood and was defeated as a Sinn Fein candidate in 1910.

In the 1910 election the Redmondites continued to be utterly dominant electorally, taking 78 Irish MPs to the Unionists 27. Sinn Fein got nil.

But in the course of just 8 years, by the 1918 general election, Sinn Fein had 71 Irish seats to the Redmondites 6. Simply put, people worked out that the once triumphant Redmondites were not serious about Independence, and they switched to a political party that was. The Redmondites changed their name to the National Party, and quickly descended into irrelevance.

Westminster first past the post is a brutal electoral system. It makes change extremely difficult. But when change does come, it enables it to be exaggeratedly swift and dramatic.

The SNP needs to be opposed simply because it is doing nothing about Independence and has no real intention of doing so. Put bluntly, my patience with the grifters, who grow fat on the backs of betrayed supporters of Independence, has snapped completely.

They need to be shaken hard. If that results in a small temporary increase of open unionists in Westminster, that will be a necessary step in opening the eyes of the Scottish people.

————————————————-

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The Primrose Path

Rishi Sunak’s career reminds me of another spoiled child of fortune who became UK Prime Minister without having to fight an election, Archibald Primrose, the only previous PM almost as rich as Rishi.

Primrose, Lord Rosebery, became Prime Minister in 1894 when William Ewart Gladstone, old and now blind, retired after his fourth (non-consecutive) term in office. Primrose had stood by Gladstone in support of Irish Home Rule, but was well to the right of the Liberal Party and really had nothing relevant to offer in a new democratic and urbanised society. He retired from politics permanently after losing the subsequent general election in 1895.

I strongly expect Sunak will follow a very similar political path.

Sunak attended Winchester College, a private school where fees are currently £46,000 per year. From there it was easy to get into Oxford. 32% of Oxford admissions are from private schools (known as public schools in England) and only 68% from state schools. But only 6% of the population attend private schools whereas 94% attend state schools.

So private school pupils are over five times more likely to get into Oxford than state school pupils.

Elite networking is far more important as the social advantage of attending the “right” school and university, than anything learnt in class. With his Winchester and Oxford background it was a matter of the right contacts for Sunak to get into Goldman Sachs and earn his first millions in investment banking, and then move on and up into the world of hedge funds and private wealth management, with money sticking to him like… use your own analogy.

Marriage to the daughter of a billionaire was only natural. Sunak’s path has been gilded. The notion that his elevation is some sort of victory for equality is the reductio ad absurdum of identity politics.

Like Rishi Rich, Archibald Primrose had started life from a position of great privilege, as heir to the coal rich Rosebery estates around Edinburgh. He went to Eton and Oxford. He too held a variety of ministerial offices and enhanced his wealth spectacularly by marrying a great heiress – Hannah Rothschild, who had the advantage of being an only child.

Dalmeny House, family seat of Archibald Primrose Lord Rosebery

We will have plenty of time to talk about Sunak, so I want to concentrate today on Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery. As a historian, it always fascinates me which parts of history have entered national consciousness and which have not, and indeed which are explored by historians and which ignored.

Rosebery acquired Mentmore Towers on marrying Hanna Rothschild

Most people know something of Oscar Wilde’s affair with “Bosie”, Lord Alfred Douglas, son of the Marquis of Queensberry, which ultimately led to the trials that destroyed Wilde. Far less well known is what was widely believed to be the related affair between Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery and Lord Alfred Douglas’ elder brother, Lord Francis Douglas.

The Marquis of Queensberry followed Rosebery to the spa at Bad Homburg to confront him over what Queensberry believed to be the sexual relationship with his son, and in a remarkable scene was only restrained from attacking Rosebery by the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII).

40 Piccadilly, Rosebery’s London home

Rosebery’s name cropped up from time to time in the Wilde trial, which fact was reported in continental newspapers but not in British ones. Rosebery was Prime Minister at the time of Wilde’s trial in the election year of 1895 and had wanted to help Wilde, both financially and possibly in giving evidence, but was warned by Arthur Balfour “if you do, you will lose the election”. Rosebery refrained from helping Wilde, but lost the election anyway.

Villa Rosebery, his Italian home, now the country palace of the President of Italy.

Rosebery when Foreign Secretary had installed Francis Douglas as his Private Secretary, and as Prime Minister arranged Douglas’s elevation to join him in the House of Lords as Baron Kellhead. Rosebery also created him a Lord in Waiting to Queen Victoria, which made it possible for Francis Douglas to be at royal venues when Rosebery was present. It also elevated Francis above his father, whose Scottish title of Marquis of Queensberry did not carry a seat in the Lords.

Lord Francis Douglas then had been shot to death in a “hunting accident” at Quantock Lodge in Somerset a few months before Wilde’s trial began. Rosebery was Prime Minister at the time.

It was almost certainly not an accident. Francis may well have committed suicide. It also must be possible that he was murdered to avert a massive gay scandal (homosexuality was highly illegal) involving the British Prime Minister.

The incident is almost entirely unexplored by historians – I have on my shelves Robert Rhodes James’ life of Lord Rosebery which does not mention his being gay at all. You can find bits and pieces in lives of Oscar Wilde; much of this comes from that by Richard Ellman. Ellman notes that the prosecutor decided to retry Wilde after the original jury came to a hung verdict, telling Solicitor General Lockwood “I would not, but for the horrible rumours against Rosebery”.

The events of 1894/5 – Francis Douglas’ suicide, the Bad Homburg incident, Wilde’s trial and then general election defeat – completely unnerved Rosebery. He had a breakdown and retired from public life aged only 48. He was a reclusive depressive the rest of his life.

History simply drew a veil. Few people today know Britain’s wealthiest Prime Minister ever existed.

One small foonote on Primrose/Rosebery. He had stuck with Gladstone in the disastrous split of the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule, and Rosebery also advocated for a degree of Home Rule for Scotland. Rosebery had campaigned strenuously for the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Scotland, and introduced a Bill to do so in 1885. This fell with that Gladstone administration but Rosevery’s bill was reintroduced by the succeeding Conservative government and passed into law.

Modern nationalists rightly see the post of Secretary of State for Scotland as an instrument of alien rule, but this was the first political acknowledgement for nearly two centuries of any kind of separate Scottish political administration.

Together with the independence supporting Marquis of Bute and others in an aristocratic circle in the late nineteenth century, Rosebery contributed to the revival of the idea of Scotland as a separate political identity and helped lay the foundations of the future nationalist movement.

On the surface, Archibald Primrose was a hugely successful figure – wealthy beyond imagining, Prime Minister at 45 years old. Yet his career is always presented, when remembered at all, as one of failure – almost of Liz Truss dimensions. Sunak will probably be a similar one time PM who never wins an election.

I am drawing Sunak/Primrose parallels with respect to extreme wealth, an easy life and unelected one term PMs. I am absolutely not drawing any parallels on the sexual front.

Yet the failure of history and collective memory to this day to come to terms with the anti-gay prejudice that destroyed Primrose is really interesting. Primrose knew Wilde personally, was Prime Minister during his trial, had to be dissuaded from helping him, like Wilde had been threatened with physical assault by Queensberry, after having an extremely close relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas’ brother which many, including Queensberry, believed was sexual. Yet even the great many books and films on Wilde’s downfall barely begin to explore it.

This is a strangely deferential country.

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Covid Inquiry Mystery

There is still no explanation as to why the judge chairman Lady Poole, the lead counsel Douglas Ross KC and three other lawyers have all quit the public inquiry into the handling of Covid in Scotland. This is an astonishing event. The inquiry currently is not happening. But nobody in the media seems particularly to care.

Word being put around the Edinburgh establishment is that there is nothing to report, it is nothing to do with remit or evidence, just about terms of service and the length of the inquiry. But that really does not wash. If the inquiry has collapsed over such issues, either the Scottish government has starved it of resources or the lawyers have behaved disgracefully and unprofessionally, abandoning an important public responsibility midway.

Either way, this cannot simply be shrugged off as nothing. And that is assuming it is true that there is no dispute over substance.

On that substance, obvious mistakes were made – such as the release of patients with covid back into care homes – but plainly they were not malicious. What was extremely malicious was the profiteering – for example over PPE, and Pfizer’s price maximisation on their vaccine. But these are outside the scope of this inquiry. I do not know why.

As regular readers know, I have avoided commenting much on covid on the grounds of lack of expertise. My instincts are libertarian – I would have concentrated more on enabling robust (but voluntary) shielding of the vulnerable rather than locking down healthy young people at low risk. Some things made no logical sense at all – like closing the universities when the schools were open. But I do not share the radical opinions many people genuinely hold, both for and against the lockdowns.

One major issue I have not resolved in my own mind is whether covid-19 was a natural development or an escape from a laboratory of a man made variant. The problem is that the experts best able to determine this are of course themselves in this research industry, which could be at fault in inflicting enormous human suffering.

If it were determined that covid-19 were human engineered, the backlash would result in massive closure of labs and defunding of the industry. I therefore don’t expect the scientists to tell us that any time soon.

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The Party is Over

The highly paid political class in charge of each of the UK’s three major political parties detests, despises, distrusts and seeks to discard their own party membership.

The Conservative, Labour and SNP elite all view their party members as a potential embarrassment.

The Tory Party MP’s appear to have worked out how to get rid of Truss , the hopeless leader the membership lumbered them with, and to put in place a replacement – crucially – while minimising their own rules on including a vote of party members in the process.

All Candidates will require 100 MP nominations to stand – which should eliminate member favourites Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch. This makes it impossible for there to be more than three candidates nominated, as there are under 400 Tory MPs. MPs will then hold one or two rounds of voting until a winner is announced.

Only then will the candidates be put to the membership, with information on who the MPs chose. It is plain there will be huge pressure on  candidates to step down after the MPs’ vote, so the election does not go to the membership at all.

There is a precedent. Andrea Leadsom was a kind of proto-Truss, with a similar ideological stance. Leadsom did not get to be Prime Minister because she was made to stand aside by pressure from senior MPs before the vote was put to the membership, where polls showed she might well have beaten Theresa May.

Given the chance, Tory Members would bring back Boris Johnson – that remains their number one choice. Alternatively they would, given the chance, be more likely to vote for populist right wingers like Suella Braverman or Kemi Badenoch, than more Establishment friendly figures. The new rules are designed to ensure they won’t get that chance.

Johnson however appears to be hoovering up more MP nominations than expected. Careerist Tory MPs will be worried about the impact on their own prospects of not backing him.

Many members entered the Tory Party from the winding up of UKIP. Opinion polls show that, after the economy, immigration remains their next highest priority, even after free movement from the EU has ended. In short, the Tory membership will vote in any nutter who promises rough treatment for immigrants.

It is fascinating that both the Tory and Labour parties have now adopted exactly the same mechanism to prevent the membership electing a leader again with views outside the narrow Establishment consensus – in both parties that mechanism being an increase in the number of MPs who have to nominate, before a candidate can get their name before the party membership.

The professionals are to radically limit the options of the members.

The Labour Party had under Jeremy Corbyn the largest mass membership of any political party in Europe. The current leadership has succeeded – quite deliberately – in losing half of them. The Labour members elected Keir Starmer on the basis of ten pledges to carry out the kind of left wing policies the Labour membership support. Almost all of those pledges have been summarily broken.

We have witnessed the Labour leadership refuse to endorse strikes which are the main avenue for working class resistance, ban its MPs from the picket lines, and refuse to oppose massive Tory attacks on civil liberties at home, while vying to be the most enthusiastic zionists and warmongers abroad. Labour members are summarily expelled for connection to legitimate socialist organisations.

This is what Labour Party members voted for:

This is typical of what they got:

Keir Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, not only wants to deport more immigrants than the Tories, she has for a decade been proclaiming that Labour will cut more benefits than the Tories. The disjunction between what Labour Party members want – and were promised by Starmer to get elected – and what Labour MPs want, could not be clearer.

The SNP, like Labour, has been shedding loads of members. The 2022 SNP Conference took place at the same conference centre in Aberdeen where I attended the 2015 SNP Conference. On that 2015 occasion the entire main hall was used, and full with some 7,000 delegates. In 2022 attendance had fallen to about 10% the number of delegates, with an equivalent fall in the hall space used:

By inviting non-delegates to attend for the leaders’ speech, the party managed to get 1,000 people for its big showpiece, which with complicit broadcasters using tight camera angles, looked pretty good.

The SNP is both paranoid and fundamentally dishonest about membership numbers. The 2022 election results for National Secretary are illuminating, an election in which the large majority of conference delegates might be expected to vote. A total of only 822 delegates voted in that election.

To give some indication of the rate of decline in participation in the party, that is about a third of the delegates who voted in the election when I stood for Party President just two years ago.

If you take alone the SNP MPs, MSPs, their paid staff, and SNP headquarters staff, SPADs etc, that gives you over 400 payroll votes. Hundreds of paid SNP councillors also automatically qualify as conference delegates. In short, the 900 odd delegate SNP conference is now almost totally devoid of the thousands of ordinary party members who used to be delegates.

Crucial past party conference decisions – including that an independent Scotland must have its own currency and central bank – are simply ignored by the party leadership which has announced this week that its proposal for an “independent” Scotland involves still using sterling for several years, and accepting some of the UK’s sterling denominated national debt; a simply disastrous proposition.

About 5,000 SNP members have defected to the small Alba Party, which now includes Scotland’s own currency, no NATO membership, and a republic as policies on Independence clearly different to the SNP. With its radicals gone, the SNP has become ever more neo-liberal, with an annual 1% reduction in the state sector share of GDP as a policy. The SNP leadership openly briefs the media against its own membership.

Here follows the perception, I believe very important, which led me to start writing this article four days ago. I have needed constantly to rewrite it because of the astonishingly fast developments with the Truss government collapsing; but originally the article was nothing to do with that, except for the fact the Tory party professional elite also hate their own membership.

I live in Joanna Cherry’s constituency and was an SNP member here. All of the stalwarts in this constituency have left the party. There was a system of 16 individuals who received the leaflets for distribution, and then gave them out to local volunteers in their area (I presume the 16 are by ward, but that’s a guess). All 16 key individuals left to join Alba.

The universal motive of members quitting was the Sturgeon SNP’s failure to make any move towards Independence despite multiple successive electoral mandates. This member insistence on Independence was deeply annoying to the large professional class in the SNP making excellent personal money out of the positions they occupied within the devolution settlement.

That is the same all over Scotland. The average Alba member is not just ex-SNP (and over 90% are), but were the heart and soul of SNP membership, the people who chapped the doors and delivered the leaflets. A year ago, it was being suggested the SNP would be seriously damaged without these people.

That turns out to be completely untrue. Because those who lead political parties – and here comes my promised perception – believe they don’t actually need members any more. Almost nobody attends hustings meetings, nobody reads leaflets and nobody engages with canvassers. Elections are now fought almost entirely through the mainstream media, and online.

For the modern campaign, parties need paid PR practitioners and they need paid troll farms. They don’t need little old men and women going door to door, other than once or twice for a candidate photocall.

The members, bluntly, are redundant old nuisances in the eyes of the political class. Nobodies who presume a right to have a say in party policy which should be dictated by the professionals.

Nor do they need the members’ subscription money. Starmer is delighted to have shed hundreds of thousands of Corbyn supporting members, to pursue instead corporate and billionaire money. The SNP Conference in Aberdeen was simply a festival of corporate lobbying. The Tories have always run on dark money in huge tranches.

Then there is the ever increasing largesse of Short money – taxpayer funds which the political class have awarded themselves to fund their party administrations. This state funding of political parties is one of the very worst innovations of my lifetime and fundamental to the development of our careerist and unprincipled political class.

The UK’s political parties are becoming uniformly right-wing organisations which represent a very narrow spectrum of views – those of the corporate sector and billionaire donors; who also of course own the mainstream media, which thus has precisely the same narrow spectrum of view.

This is a fundamental change in what a political party is – it no longer is a free association of citizens holding a common political outlook and working to elect representatives to support that philosophy. This great change in society – which renders western “democracy” entirely meaningless – is being consolidated before our eyes.

The destruction of Corbyn and his member-supported left-wing programme is mirrored in the destruction of Truss and her member-supported right-wing programme.

Nobody is allowed any longer to put forward any programme that is not within the narrow and entirely unimaginative confines of the professional political class.

An election that pitched Corbyn against Truss would offer voters a real choice between two radically different visions of society, with the Lib Dems as an option for those who liked neither. That would be a real democracy. But it is not to be permitted to voters.

Irrespective of what Labour and Conservative Party members would like to offer, the electorate is likely to be presented with Sunak or Starmer, two people so close in political outlook and policy there really is little point in turning up to vote. In Scotland you can choose the SNP, with the same basic economic policies and no genuine desire to change much on the constitution.

This of course links to the ease with which the “markets” were able to destroy the Truss/Kwarteng mildly radical economic policy. Be in no doubt the “markets” would have done precisely the same to Corbyn/McDonnell. Again, no actual political choice that deviates from our unseen masters is to be permitted.

That is a much larger subject, for another day.

To end on a happier note, I am not sure the professional politicians can so safely write off the power of ordinary people campaigning in the real, not virtual, world. Both climate chance activists and union strikes are showing a way forward, while the feeling of social solidarity at the Assange protest in London recently reinvigorated me.

I will never forget the genuine social mobilisation behind the major unexpected and still sustained advance in support for Scottish Independence in 2014. I don’t think troll farms and PR firms can replace genuine popular movements, and I believe those are still possible, drawing on – but not dominated by – modern communications technology.

————————————————-

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Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Winners at Raindance

Nadira’s first feature film as Producer, Winners, won the Audience Award for best film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival to our (frankly surprised) delight. It will play in London at the Raindance Film Festival on Saturday 29 October at 8.30pm, at the Genesis Cinema in Bethnal Green.

Other than sometimes making coffee for Nadira and a lot of babysitting, I had no hand in the film, so I feel entitled to say it is most enjoyable on a number of levels. Set in Iran and in the Farsi language (with English subtitles), it can be enjoyed as a simple amiable comedy. But for those with a knowledge of Iranian cinema it is a fest of references and hommage shots.

There is also a great deal of social commentary for those with an eye to pick it out – remember the film had to pass Iranian state censors. The entire basis of the plot is founded on Trump’s travel ban, which led to an Oscar having to be delivered to Iran rather than the winner receiving it at the ceremony.

Then there are deeper levels of observation of socio-economic conditions in Iran – the action centres around children who literally scrape a living from a landfill site – and of the conditions under which the artistic community has to live and work.

There are currently several important Iranian directors in prison – in watching the film, bear in mind that certain visual references were perhaps not apparent to the state censors who approved the script!

All in all it is a triumph for the Director Hassan Nazer. I do commend it to you as well worth watching. You can buy tickets here.

Here is a link to the trailer. At Raindance there will be a Q & A after the film in which Nadira will take part.

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The Great Crossing

The logical outcome of the UK’s current political situation is for a large section of Conservative Party MP’s to defect to Keir Starmer’s well right of centre, pro-Brexit, New Labour Party.

Every now and then a number of Westminster MPs change party, to long term political effect. In 1886 The Liberal Unionists, opposed to Gladstone’s policy of Irish Home Rule, crossed the floor en masse and allied with the Conservatives. This led to Tory rule for 17 of the next 20 years, and after a while the alliance became one as the Conservative and Unionist Party.

In 1981 just four MPs, but very senior, left the Labour Party, principally in opposition to nuclear disarmament, to form the Social Democratic Party and ally with the Liberal Party. This resulted in 16 years of consecutive Tory government. Eventual merger formed the Liberal Democrats.

Tory MPs are currently in an incredible funk as they face almost certain loss of their jobs at the next general election. Keeping their job, perks and salary is the overwhelming preoccupation of almost all current MPs. Tory MPs are actively considering ditching the chaotic Truss experiment after a few weeks, and feverishly telling any passing journalist about it.

But there is a much simpler way they can keep their jobs. Cross the floor and join the Labour Party, after negotiating with Starmer that they will be accepted as the Labour candidate in their constituency at the next election.

There is no ideological obstacle. The Labour Party’s current slogan is “Make Brexit Work”. If you stood on “Get Brexit Done”, it is not a big switch.

Sam Tarry MP has just been deselected as a Labour candidate for being a little bit left wing and for disobeying Starmer’s order not to appear on an official RMT picket line.

Red Wall Brexiteer Tory MPs need not worry about losing the racist vote. Starmer’s party are more than happy to pander to anti-immigrant racism.

Here is the Labour Party’s impeccably right wing Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, calling for more deportation:

(I can’t embed that video, here is the link)

I am not aware that it is possible to be too right wing for Keir Starmer’s New Labour. I know personally a number of people who have been kicked out for being too left wing. Has anybody been kicked out for being too right wing? Serious question.

The Forde Report said there was a “Hierarchy of racism” in the Labour Party, and that while anti-semitism led to immediate expulsion, Islamophobia and prejudice against BAME people were not taken seriously enough. I can therefore see no reason why Tory MPs would feel in the least uncomfortable.

Or take the case of John McTernan. This is from the famous Leaked Report on the Labour Party:

“John McTernan, meanwhile, formerly involved in New Labour and a delegate to 2016 party conference, was repeatedly reported from 25 July onwards for abusive language on Twitter and elsewhere, including describing Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn as “morons”; tweeting twice that Corbyn was a “traitor”; describing “Corbynistas” as racist; telling an SNP MP that he should “Come down to Peckham and try saying that, mate”; calling Corbyn a “Putin-hugging, terrorist-loving, Trident-hater”; and writing in the Daily Telegraph that all of Corbyn’s supporters were “online trolls”.”

“No action was taken, and McTernan received the staff decision “No action – removed at referral”. On 18 August, however, Dan Hogan did report a member of McTernan’s CLP, Omar Baggili, who – in response to an article by McTernan in “The Telegraph” urging the Conservative government to “crush the rail unions once and for all” – tweeted at him “seriously John why haven’t you got yourself a Tory membership card. They’re anti unions & pro privatisation like you.” Baggili was suspended for “abuse”.””

In addition to writing in his Telegraph column that the Tory government should “crush the rail unions once and for all”, McTernan produced gems like this one:

Despite formal complaints, Labour HQ staff refused to take any action against McTernan’s membership for being too right wing: and that was while Corbyn was leader.

So in crossing the floor, Tory MPs safeguarding their jobs could respectably console themselves that they are not joining any kind of left wing project.

For Starmer, there would be a big attraction in accepting the Tory MPs. There is a danger that Labour candidates in some Tory seats may be residual left wingers. As Starmer’s main focus is to protect his leadership against the pro-union, pro-immigration and pro-EU elements in his party (aka the membership), a good accession of fellow right wingers from the Tory Party would be welcome to him.

It would of course be terrific publicity for the Knight of the Realm, and may hasten the general election. If he sends out signals the doors are open, he might even get enough Tory MPs coming over to destroy the Tory majority in the Commons.

Perhaps none of this will happen. Logic and politics are uncomfortable bedfellows. But I expect the term “crossing the floor” will be bandied about a fair bit by political journalists over the next six months.

————————————————-

Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

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