Belarus plane: 'Perfect storm' prompts EU to act fast

by Nick Beake</i>

BBC Brussels correspondent

Published

2 days ago

"Had they not acted now," one senior diplomat told me, "an EU foreign policy as an instrument to project geopolitical power was pretty much buried."

The agreement reached on Belarus by the 27 European leaders last night was unusually swift, leading senior Brussels officials to claim they'd taken tough action in the face of a wholly unacceptable act.

Demanding the immediate release of dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, they agreed Belarusian airlines should be banned from European skies and that EU airlines should not fly over Belarus, with a plan for further, targeted economic sanctions.

"This was a unanimous judgement," declared European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at an early hours press conference.

"It was an attack on democracy, freedom of expression and European sovereignty and needed a strong answer."

But, the same diplomat suggested, the crisis that Minsk had precipitated represented a "perfect storm": the circumstances were such that the EU would have been hard pushed not to secure some sort of agreement.

First, the shock that the lives of passengers travelling between two EU capitals were put at risk.

Second, the reason for their imperilment seemingly being the desire to detain a dissident journalist.

Third, EU officials were already at an advanced stage of tightening existing sanctions on the Lukashenko regime.

What happens with a military jet interception?

Some wondered whether Hungary may resist further measures against Belarus. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has continued to lend his support to the 27-year rule of Alexander Lukashenko amid allegations of vote-rigging and brutal suppression of dissenters. But it seems Mr Orban was not willing to pick a fight last night.

What difference will sanctions make?

At this point, it's hard to tell what impact the strengthened sanctions will have. EU officials are now assessing which of the individuals, companies (and therefore sectors) that have propped up the Belarusian government will find themselves targeted.

The leaders may have agreed on the principle of stronger economic sanctions, but there has been division within the bloc on the details.

Germany, Italy and France, countries with considerable commercial ties to Minsk, have reportedly been reluctant in the past weeks to embark on a path that may jeopardise their own legitimate economic interests. German media report that around 350 companies could be affected by harsher measures, including giants such as Siemens and Bosch.

In the coming days, this could become a renewed and heightened source of disagreement between the capitals.

What more can the EU do?

As had been widely trailed, the response to what has been described as "state-sponsored hijacking" and "airline piracy" focused, in part, on the aviation sector.

Here, the EU was not first out of the blocks - the UK and Ukraine had already announced a ban for Belarusian planes and called for a boycott of Belarusian airspace. But this collective action will serve to further isolate Belarus - and significantly its people, which will be of concern.

Why EU is often slow to act

To the EU's critics, foreign policy has long been the bloc's Achilles' heel: a supranational approach that all too often misses the mark. Two recent events symbolise the difficulties the bloc faces in both policy and practical terms in acting with a coherent, unified voice.

First, there was the uncomfortable visit to Moscow of Josep Borrell, the foreign policy chief, in February when he failed to defend Europe's leaders from accusations of lying.

In Ankara in April, there was the sight of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen being a denied a seat, apparently because she was a woman, while European Council President Charles Michel got the VIP treatment.

After these sleights from Putin's Russia and Erdogan's Turkey, another "strongman" in the form of Lukashenko's Belarus has stepped forward this week to present a test in the sphere of foreign policy. Brussels feels its risen to the challenge.

But if there was any hope the converging European consensus would have an immediate impact on Mr Lukashenko, it was short-lived.

As the tougher measures were being agreed upon behind closed doors at the EU summit, the leader was himself approving stricter measures - banning the live streaming of protests his government has not authorised.

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Trade with EU slumps after Brexit

TRADE groups have challenged government claims that post-Brexit freight had returned to 'normal' last month following a record fall in January, saying there were 'fundemental problems' with new trade barriers that were 'real and costly'.

In Januarry after the Brexit transition period ended, according to the Office of National Statistics, UK goods exports to the EU fell 40.7% while imports deopped 28.8%. These were the biggest declines since comparable records began in 1997.

There have been no similar declines in Britain's trade with non-EU countries. This suggests what's happening is likely to be related to Brexit controls and are not down to the consequences of the coronavirus surge and the January lockdown.

David Frost, Boris Johnson's leading advisor on Europe, had claimed that factors like stockpiling before Brexit came into effect on January 1st, meant their was 'less need to move goods in January', and Covid lockdowns had also 'reduced demand' for goods.

'These effects are strting to unwind' he said, adding that freight levels had returned to 'normal levels' since the start of February.

This is now being disputed by the haulage industry, which pinpointed the rise in the number of lorries returning empty yo the continent from the UK. According to a report in the Financial Times this weekend: 'Before Brexit, about 30% of lorries returning to the EU were typically empty. French port data has suggested the figure has risen to 50% in the first two months of this year,...'

Fresh food exports were hit particularly hard. For example new border controls have resulted in the seafood industry experiencing an 83% fall of in sales to Europe, according to Scotland Food and Drink, a trade association. Shane Brennan, chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, which represents the perishable products industry, said that while trading conditions had impoved since January, but he added: 'I wish the government spent as much time listening to business concerns as they do searching for ways to spin the trade figures.'

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Navigating 'Hell' in troubling times!

CHRIS DRAPER reviewing the English film 'THE ROAD TO HELL' which he claims was the 'first socialist film' writes:

'Premiered in London on Friday 28 July 1933, Lansbury himself attended the show and a couple of months later introduced the film to delegates attending the Labour Party’s annual conference in the White Rock Pavilion, Hastings. Although the film was generally well received where shown it proved impossible to secure a general release. Cinemas were dominated by Hollywood and ultimately controlled by local authority licensing committees eager to ban Socialist Film Council films as did Birmingham Council in 1935.'

This film fills a very narrow canvas much of it filmed in George Lansbury's home portraying the impact of the then National Government's Means Test on a family in a city, London. Most of the domestic scenes were filmed in George Lansbury’s 39, Bow Road home making it, as Chris Draper himself says: 'an accomplished though economical production.' It shows the struggles of an urban lower middle-class family dealing with the difficulties of the economic depression.

It is tempting now to compare this film with the European film Kameradschaft produced in 1931 shortly before 'THE ROAD TO HELL'. Kameradschaft is also based on a real life disaster, perhaps one of the worst industrial accidents in history; the Courrières mine disaster in 1906 in Courrières, France, where rescue efforts after a coal dust explosion were hampered by the lack of trained mine rescuers. Expert teams from Paris and miners from the Westphalia region of Germany came to the assistance of the French miners. There were 1,099 fatalities.

Kameradschaft (English: Comradeship, known in France asLa Tragédie de la mine) is a 1931 dramatic film directed by Austrian director G. W. Pabst. The French-German co-production drama is noted for combining expressionism and realism. It reflects the spirit of European internationalism, while the English film is much more parochial.

It would be hard to find an better example of the Little Englander phenomena of an island people contrasting so vividly with the concept of continental co-operation as in these two films.

The plot of the European film Kameradschaft is as follows:

'Two boys, one French and the other German, are playing marbles near the border. When the game is over, both boys claim to have won, and complain that the other is trying to steal their marbles. Their fathers, border guards, come and separate the boys.

'In 1919, at the end of World War I the border changes, and an underground mine is divided, with a gate dividing the two sections. An economic downturn and rising unemployment adds to tension, as German workers seek employment in France but are turned away, since there are hardly enough jobs for French workers. In the French part of the mine fires break out, which they try to contain by building brick walls, with the bricklayers wearing breathing apparatus. The Germans continue to work in their section, but start to feel the heat from the French fires.

'The fire gets out of control, igniting gas and causing roof collapses that traps many French miners. In response, the German miner, Wittkopp, appeals successfully to his bosses to send a rescue team. As the German rescue team leave in two lorries, its leader explains to his wife that the French are men with women and children and he would hope that they would come to his aid in similar circumstances. In the mine itself, a trio of German miners breaks through the grille on the border between the two countries. On the French side, an old retired miner sneaks into the shaft hoping to rescue his young grandson. The Germans rescue the French miners, not without difficulties. After all the survivors are rescued, there is a big party with speeches about friendship between the French and Germans. French and German officials then reinstall the underground border grille and things return to the way they were before.'

It is very apt that these reviews are appearing now as the EU and the UK are arguing over rights to fishing.

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Recolonising Africa?

by Les May

A FEW hours after war was declared at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914, the paddle driven cable laying ship Alert was sent out from Dover on a planned mission to drag for, and cut, the five German cables in the English Channel which linked to the rest of the world.   The idea was to force German communications on to radio where they could be intercepted more easily and so give British codebreakers a better chance of gaining useful information.

Although they may seem old and outdated undersea cables, now having the benefit of fibre optic technology, still carry the majority of the Internet traffic around the world.   The amount of Internet traffic which a cable can carry at any one time is called its ‘bandwidth’.  The more people who want to use the Internet at any one time, the more bandwidth is necessary.  Compared with America, Asia and Europe the cables linking Africa to the rest of the world are seriously lacking in bandwidth.

Whether changing this situation is more important than improving access to clean water and sanitation, and improving access to health care, is a moot point, though in my book I regard these as a ‘human right’.  But earlier today I heard two Africans, one in Ethiopia and one in South Africa claiming that access to the Internet was itself a human right. (Remember how six months ago Corbyn was laughed at when he said a Labour government would promote free Internet access?)

Within Africa mobile phones and the Internet have expanded what people can do even in areas where not everyone has access to an electricity supply. Some enterprising individuals allow mobile phone owners to recharge their device for a small sum. Potentially there is a huge unsatisfied market in Africa. Unsurprisingly this has attracted the attention of cash rich multi-national businesses.

Facebook and Google are intending to team up to lay 37,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable to link African countries with the rest of the world.  The Chinese company Huawei, Microsoft, like Facebook and Google a USA based company and the Norwegian company Opera, (see below), also have projects targeting Africa. Should we be worried about this? Should Africans be worried?

Huawei’s interest seems clear. It supplies the hardware which makes systems run. Microsoft has an interest in making sure that the millions of new users become hooked on its software.

Potentially the ownership by Facebook and Google of the physical network and their control over what content Internet users have access to, seems to me problematic.  It has been suggested that Facebook has harvested up to 4,000 snippets of data about many users.  This is enables the company to form a profile of every individual user.  Likewise Google has the power to harvest a great deal of information from the search terms we use.

There is good evidence that Facebook was used to sway the outcome of the 2016 elections in the USA when about 77,000 voters in three states were targeted. Trump lost the popular vote by about 3 million ballots, but gained the presidency because the make up of the electoral college had been influenced via Facebook. Not all African leaders are models of integrity and defenders of democracy.

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/fln36fd-soc-2016election/facebook-and-the-2016-election-the-facebook-dilemma/

Another issue is that Europe in particular has gone a long way to recognising the importance of personal privacy and protection of personal data.  This is not the case in other countries and many African states may have legal systems which are very weak in this regard.  Facebook and Google will only respect these issues if they are made to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

https://www.contagious.com/news-and-views/shoshana-zuboff-on-the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism

We are familiar with the term ‘Scramble for Africa’ which refers to the invasion, occupation, colonisation and annexation of African territories by European countries in the period 1880 to 1914.  Are we about to see this process happening again, but this time led not by nation states.  Has colonialism been privatised?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

(I struggled to determine the exact ownership of ‘Opera’.  It may be owned by a Chinese private equity firm or it may still be Norwegian.  I am not sure which of these is correct.)

Author's Note:  

Les May said...

In the above piece I suggested that many African states which may have legal system that are weak with respect to personal privacy and data protection, and that Facebook and Google will be in a position to take advantage of this.

A report by several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) published today (18 June) highlights the problems facing a country, Nigeria, which had weak laws regarding the protection of the environment, which was taken advantage of by Shell. So polluted by oil contamination is the water supply for people living in the delta of the Niger that the cannot by any reasonable standards be said to have access to a clean water supply.

https://cloud.foeeurope.org/index.php/s/LyqrCFskx2RRdcf#pdfviewer

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/nigeria-shell-still-failing-clean-pollution-niger-delta

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Not just about chlorine chicken

This isn’t just about chlorine chicken

 by Brian Bamford

GEORGE ORWELL wrote an essay 'In Defence of English Cooking' that:
'It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go.  And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor's point of view.  This is that you practically don't find good English cooking outside a private house....  It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English are hard to find.' [1945]

Over half a century later in the Caterer & Hotelkeeper Millennium Supplement, on the 23 December 1999 claimed:
'Rationing was reintroduced in 1940, a year after the outbreak of the Second World War.  It continued until 1954, casting a shadow over any real culinary progression. Post-war London's leading restaurants were almost entirely run by Continental Europeans.'

And yet it goes on to argue:

'Outside the capital, though, the general state of food being served in most restaurants was abysmal, apart from rare exceptions such as Sharrow Bay in Ullswater (which opened in 1949) and the Bell at Aston Clinton.'


Raymond Postgate who went on to jointly write The Common People with G.D.H.Cole, helped to found The Good Food Guide.  Postgate a socialist, who helped to found the Communist Party of Great Britain, laid down some rules for fighting a war for English food wrote:



'Navigating a British restaurant during the middle of the twentieth century was in its way not so different from scoring a drink in Sweden before the outbreak of hostilities.  Postgate likened it to war.  The “Rules for Eating Out” published in the first Guide , from 1951-52, refer to restaurant staff as “the Enemy” and recommend battle tactics.'  And he advises:

“Take a long time reading the bill of fare, and see that your wife decides what she wants first. If the Enemy hears one of you say: ‘I’ll have whatever you do, dear’, he immediately decides he has no serious foe to encounter. What you want to impress on the establishment is that it has to deal with a pair of people who know exactly what they want, and are implacable.” ( GFG 19)

Adding in his recommendations:  'While diners and waiters were engaged in conflict, rules of war did apply, and the encounter should be civil even if it was not yet civilized. “You wish to give the impression not that you are angry with this particular restaurant, but that you are suspicious, after a lifetime of suffering.” ( GFG 19)'

His basic justification for the founding of The Guide is clear:
 'The Guide had become necessary because the suffering had lasted longer even than the lifetime of many GFG users: “For fifty years now complaints have been made against British cooking, and no improvement has resulted.” ( GFG 7)'


Serious entertaining was more likely to be done in private houses, where most professional chefs were employed, or in gentlemen's clubs - there were 200 at the turn of the century, compared with about 40 today.  Restaurants were frequented mostly by aristocrats and the gentry.  Women, of whatever class, were rarely seen in such establishments.

Derek Pattison & the 'Veblen good'

In response to the recent news that members of the US Congress have written to the US negotiator, calling on him to get rid of the UK’s ban on chlorinated chicken ‘once and for all’ DEREK PATTISON writes:
'I think it is true to say that people are economic maximizers and though we can make choices, our choices are always constrained for a variety of reasons.  This could be economic and also due to our social/class position in society .'

So speaks Pattsion, the economist, on behalf of the most miserable of sciences; forever labouring the price of everything and the value of nothing.  What would Raymond Postgate, founder of the Good Food Guide have to say about that?

When I did my degree in sociology at Manchester Poly. it was structured around economics, because at that time it was considered  that of all of the social sciences it was the closest to a 'natural science' like physics etc.  Do we want to eat cheap chlorine chicken suitably swilled with the chemical from the USA?  Yet when we considered this science of economics our attention was drawn to 'inverted demand curves'  and the effect of what came to be called a Veblen good as a type of luxury good for which demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure.  A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own. *

This is a sociological consequence which determines a price according to a snob value.   Here the effect on demand depends on the range of other goods available, their prices, and whether they serve as substitutes for the goods in question.  The effects are anomalies within demand theory, because the theory normally assumes that preferences are independent of price or the number of units being sold. They are therefore collectively referred to as interaction effects.

We can imagine that after Brexit cheap chlorine chicken will quickly become the food of the poor.

Another writer John Wilkins writes:  'And so we have the climb down.  The ban will be dropped and low animal welfare, chlorinated chicken will be UP on our supermarket shelves.'


The concession in this case has been that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.  But even if the US agrees to this, there is no guarantee that the tariffs rate won’t be cut later on.

Mr. Wilkins adds:  'This is fundamentally about the right of our government or any government to set standards and regulations on things that people care about, whether on animal welfare, climate standards, workers rights, public health, environmental standards or anything else.'



Worryingly, the government is trying to present this as a win for the environment minister, because even though the promise that a ban would be maintained has been broken, it turns out that what the trade minister, Liz Truss, actually wanted to do was not only overturn the ban but also reduce all tariffs on chicken to zero! 

The Decline of English Food 

When George Orwell was writing in the post-war years there was rationing, and as he says 'Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches.'  Meanwhile, at that time, the 'expensive restaurants  and hotels almost all imitate French cookery ... while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant.'

Raymond Postgate believed that the decline in English cuisine went back to the Industrial Revolution, when he claimed that the young migrant women from the rural areas who moved into the cities had lost contact with their grandmothers thus distancing them from their traditional recipes and ingredients. 

The concession is that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.

But we know agribusiness has been lobbying hard on this, and 47 members of the US Congress have written to the US negotiator, calling on him to get rid of the UK’s ban on chlorinated chicken ‘once and for all’.  Former trade minister, Liam Fox, said last month that “the US would walk” if it had to comply with the UK’s animal welfare standards.[5]

And so now John Wilkins says 'we have the climb down and the ban will be dropped and low animal welfare, chlorinated chicken will be UP on our supermarket shelves.  The concession is that low welfare products will pay a higher tariff (the tax charged on imports) than high welfare products.  But even if the US agrees to this, there is no guarantee that the tariffs rate won’t be cut later on.

'Worryingly, the present government is trying to represent this as a win for the environment minister, because even though the promise that a ban would be maintained has been broken, it turns out that what the trade minister, Liz Truss, actually wanted to do was not only overturn the ban but also reduce all tariffs on chicken to zero!' 


It is hard to believe that the quality of English cuisine will improve as a result of these recent developments in UK-US trade relations and animal welfare.

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*   Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.^[2]

A Veblen good is a type of luxury good for which demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve. A higher price may make a product desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own.

Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.

Veblen goods are named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, who first identified conspicuous consumption as a mode of status-seeking in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).^[1] A corollary of the Veblen effect is that lowering the price decreases the quantity demanded.^[2]

The Politics of Delusion

by Les May

I VOTE Labour. In the referendum I voted to remain in the EU, but accepted the result.   At no time have I felt it necessary to criticise Labour’s policy about Brexit. It has confounded the ‘scribblers’ in the media whose criticism has had to be limited to grumbling about its lack of clarity. How nice it would have been for them if Labour had declared its support for, or opposition to, a further referendum.  They would have been able to look forward to lots of ‘exclusive’ briefings from Labour MPs in favour of or against the policy, as the equivalent of open warfare gripped the party. It has not happened.

Credit for this not happening is not due to Corbyn alone.  Those seen as ‘big names’ in the party who do not entirely agree with his stance, John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer, plus those Labour MPs which some sections of the media would find more congenial as Labour leader, e.g. Yvette Cooper, Hillary Benn and Stephen Kinnock, have been muted in their criticism.

Criticism has tended to come from Labour MPs eager to convince us that if only it would adopt their preferred strategy of supporting a second referendum and campaigning to remain in the EU, the party’s poll ratings would magically improve.

What people who believe this forget is that Labour does not have a majority in Parliament. Labour is essentially a bystander with no power to influence the decisions of the next prime minister, who at this moment is being selected by 160,000 Tory party members in no way representative of the wider population and who seem happy to trash the economy, the union with Scotland and tear up the international treaty which gave guarantees to the people of Ireland in a single minded pursuit of leaving the EU.

If Labour did adopt such a strategy it would have the support of the Welsh and Scottish nationalists, LibDems, MPs who identify themselves as Independent and some Tories.   Even if collectively the different groupings could muster a majority, constitutionally there appears to be no mechanism by which Parliament can prevent a Johnson or Hunt led government forcing us to leave the EU without a deal. To believe that Labour declaring itself in favour of a second referendum and that it will campaign to remain in the EU will in some way influence what happens when a Johnson or Hunt led government takes over is the politics of delusion.

The people who believe this are not alone in being deluded. Corbyn, Hunt and Johnson all share their own delusions.  They believe that if they become Prime Minister they will be able to negotiate with the EU to produce something that is different from the deal that was rejected three times by Parliament.  Corbyn has already tried to sweet talk the Irish government to no avail. I doubt whether the other 27 countries of the EU are exactly quaking in the boots at the prospect of meeting Boris or Jeremy who both seem to think that threatening to leave with ‘no deal’ is going to wring some major concession from the EU.

Labour’s worst nightmare has to be that blame will be dumped on it for the chaos that will follow if Hunt or Johnson have to ‘put their money where their mouth is’ and the UK leaves the EU without a deal.  Labour will be accused of doing ‘too little, too late’ by people who don’t want to acknowledge that its ability to significantly affect whether the UK leaves the EU after the referendum was always limited. Labour’s best option now is probably to look to a damage limitation strategy. 

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Unite, Len McCluskey & Labour's Squabble

YESTERDAY Len McCluskey accused Labour'a deputy leader, Tom Watson, of being a 'poor imitation of Machiavelli' as alleged rumours were rife of another challenge against Jeremy Corbyn's leadership following Labour's poor showing in the EU elections.

McCluskey's remarks matter because his union is a major paymaster for the Labour Party.  Judging by what he had to say he seemed to suggest that Sir Keir Starmer was likely to be a challenger for the leader's job.


The Unite union's policy agreed by the union’s 2016 policy conference made it clear that the union accepted the result of the 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union.  It also set out our union’s priorities for dealing with the process of Brexit, which included protecting jobs, defending employment rights, and opposing the racist backlash that the referendum campaign unleashed.

In June 2018, Unite even joined the National Shop Steward's Network (NSSN) which has long been dominated by the Socialist Party (formerly Militant).  The ideology of this group has been bitterly anti-EU and has been rooted in a belief in the old-fashion concept of the 'British Road to Socialism'.
The recent affiliation of McCluskey's Unite seems to have been encouraged by a decision by the NSSN in 2018 not to field candidates against the Labour Party in elections. 

By linking up with the hole-in-the-corner anti-EU Trotskyist NSSN must now suggest that Unite, which formerly backed Remain, is stuck in the BREXIT trough.

Sir Keir Starmer has now said a second referendum is the 'only way' to break the Brexit deadlock, after Labour suffered a mauling from voters in the European elections.

 Meanwhile,three former ministers are now daring Corbyn to sack them in solidarity with Alastair Campbell who was expelled yesterday for saying that he voted LibDem in the European elections.

Mr Corbyn's office has thus far refused to say if the trio would be expelled

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Politics of prediction: The EU & Brexit

 by Brian Bamford

TONY GREENSTEIN on his Blog last Saturday asked  'The Real Question is Why has Corbyn not Benefited from the Tory Crisis?  Commenting on the poll predictions for EU elections the writes:  

'The victors are, it is predicted the Brexit Party.  The second party is forecast to be the Liberal Democrats. Labour is forecast to be in third place. These are, of course predictions but if they are correct then a number of things need to be spelt out.'

He naturally issued his warning about these results being based on predictions, but now we know that the forcasts were largely spot on in terms of outcomes.  And as I write this, based on these outcomes people like both Nigel Farage and even Joanne Swinson of the Liberal Democrats, have made further predictions which are becoming more like what Karl Popper has called 'unconditional historical prophecies'.*

Tony Greenstein is clearly what is called a 'Remainer'  and on his Blogg he argues:
'Brexit, the desire to withdraw from Europe is not an anti-capitalist project.  People didn’t vote leave because they desired an independent socialist Britain. The primary force behind leave was the Right and far-Right. Euro scepticism of one variety or another is a Europe wide phenomenon.'

Mr. Greenstein warns that 'Corbyn has prevaricated and dodged for far too long' and he suggests on his Blogg is influenced by the old left-wing idea of the  'British Road to Socialism', or as he suggests is rooted in the concept that Tony Benn used to claim when he says Benn had said that 'the Common Market took away British sovereignty, as if workers and the poor had ever had control over their lives'.

I don't believe we can make unconditional historical prophecies about BREXIT or what will follow a 'No Deal Brexit'.  That kind of historism falls into the trap of vulgar Marxism.  Yet I believe we can make negative predictions like for example as when George Orwell suggested that the consequences of the 'Treaty of Versailles' would be bad but we couldn't predict that it would lead to the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler.  I would suggest that while I can't predict in detail what will happen with Brexit but I do believe that it will be bad for most of us.

* Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper (1963)

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Squaring the Brexit Circle: Whither Corbyn?

by Les May

THERE is a saying that ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there’.   With less than eleven weeks before we are scheduled to leave the European Union (EU) I don’t think that any of the major players, the European Research Group (ERG), Theresa May, those campaigning for a second referendum, the MP(s) trying to rescind the 29 March date or the Labour party, have any clear idea where they want to end up or how they are going to get there.  Having a wish list isn’t the same as knowing how you are going to achieve it.

For the people who take the same line as the ERG leaving the EU is an end in itself.  As if by magic the problem of the Irish border will vanish.  The transition to conducting trade with other countries under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules will be seamless.  Bi-lateral trade deals with other countries will follow as surely as night follows day. We take a tough stance with the EU and the other 27 countries will be begging us to trade with them.  All these things may indeed come to pass, but I would like to see the plan of how they are to be brought about. Until I do I’ll accept the conclusion reached by Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and Michael Heseltine that for those politicians who think that leaving the EU is an end in itself it ‘would provide the pretext they have always wanted for their programme of extensive labour market deregulation and corporation tax cuts.’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/we-need-another-eu-referendum-tony-blair-nick-clegg-michael-heseltine

For two and a half years Theresa May has parroted her mantra ‘Brexit means Brexit’. At no time has she given any sign that she was willing to listen to anyone who had concerns about where we would end up following our leaving the EU. She’s got deal, but it’s really a fudge so that she can say she ‘delivered Brexit’.  I don’t think she has any clear idea of where the UK will be in two years time or a plan for getting there.   The Irish border problem is not simply going to vanish.  With a few days to go before the crucial vote in Parliament we hear that she is scurrying round trying to get union leaders to pressure Labour MPs to vote for her deal.  And what has she to offer in return?  A reversal of the traditional Tory policy of ‘union bashing? I think not.

The individuals who seem to have thought least about where they want to end up are those calling for a second referendum.  I have already written that I believe such a move would undermine faith in parliamentary democracy. Parliament voted for the referendum in June 2016 with the result to be decided by a simple majority.  This produced a vote in favour of waving the EU, but not an overwhelming one.   For parliament to use this as a pretext for calling a second referendum with perhaps different rules seems to me improper. I voted to remain in the EU, but I would struggle to square my conscience with even casting a vote in a second referendum.

But just in case I find a way to salve my conscience, I keep reminding myself that I can see absolutely no evidence that the result would be any different than last time. Although there’s a lot of noise coming from politicians it does not seem to figure in everyday conversations. In the absence of evidence either way it’s an evens bet that the result will be the same. Then what? We are back at square one, perhaps with a bolstered and empowered ERG, and facing even more pressure for dropping out of the EU immediately with the consequences noted above. That’s an awful lot to risk on another throw of the dice.

The former Attorney General Dominic Grieve is the MP behind the idea that the 29 March date should be struck from previous legislation if Theresa May’s ‘deal’ fails to be passed by MPs.  As it stands this idea has a lot of merit.  There isn’t time to pass all the legislation which must be passed before we can leave the EU. It would also give time to produce a clear plan of where we want to get to in relations with the EU and the rest of the world, and how to get there.  Where I disagree with Grieve is his call for a second referendum which I think has no merit whatsoever.

Labour’s position on the EU is clearer than many people give credit.  In a long debate on the impact on security of leaving the EU the shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said that in the 2016 referendum Labour campaigned on ‘remain and reform’ and in the 2017 election on honouring the result of the referendum whilst being ‘committed to a jobs-first Brexit that will not harm our economy’. But of course that is a wish list, not a roadmap of how it is to be achieved.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-01-11/debates/DBEB14BC-9AE7-4965-9DC9-3C5B273B8CE7/EuropeanUnion%28Withdrawal%29Act#contribution-C160BB51-9221-403E-B323-7178361A3D0B

If as is anticipated Theresa May fails to get a majority for her ‘deal’ and Labour tables a vote of ‘No Confidence’ which fails immediately or in the later vote to be held within 14 days, then if Labour really is committed to ‘jobs-first Brexit that will not harm our economy’ it is going to have to come up with concrete proposals about how it is going to get to that desirable situation.  Simply saying it will renegotiate the present deal is to repeat Theresa May’s mistake of not involving MPs representing the wide spectrum of views about the EU which exists in the present Parliament.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/14/section/2/enacted

Views on the EU, and on leaving it, are so polarised that no way forward is going to satisfy everyone.  There is no perfect solution which will honour the referendum vote, get us out of the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy, give us the benefits of the single market, block immigration from the EU, cease payments to the EU and resolve the issue of the Irish border, all in one neat package.  It is time for MPs to tell the public that this is the case and that some compromises will have to be made. I’d like to think that Corbyn is the man to do this, but I’m not holding my breath.

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Is the Corbyn Project Finished?

by Les May

THE day after Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour party on 12 September 2015 the BBC showed its filmed production of J. B. Priestley’s 1945 play An Inspector Calls which has been seen by some people as a call to British society to take more responsibility for working-class people. Certainly this is how I read the play. It is calling for a shift in attitude, but it’s not a prescription for how it can be achieved.

I grew up in the 1950s, a time when that shift in attitude had to a significant degree been achieved. My dad was in hospital and we lived on National Assistance introduced by the Atlee government in 1949. Unlike today my mum was not made to feel like a scrounger. Many of the scribblers who write the opinion pieces in our newspapers are too young to remember that world. They are ‘Thatcher’s Children’ and since her election in 1979 the centroid of politics has shifted to the Right, so they view any move away from that centroid as Left wing extremism and swallow the myth that the Social Democracy which underpinned those years was a failure. It did not fail. It was ruthlessly destroyed by Thatcher and her followers in pursuit of their own interests.

Whilst older people like me have been attracted to ‘The Corbyn Project’ because they want to see the more caring world I experienced as a child restored, other, younger people have been attracted by what they see as his willingness to break with the Blairite legacy they grew up with and promote an alternative vision of society. Labour’s ranks have been swelled by younger people joining the party and older people rejoining it. These are the people who re-elected him when, in 2016, the win in the EU referendum by the Leave campaign led to the spurious claim that he was to blame for not campaigning hard enough.

In fact he was much more successful in persuading Labour voters of the virtue of staying in the EU (60% voted Remain) than Cameron was in persuading Tory voters (60% voted Leave).

I can see much the same scenario building as we approach 29 March 2019. This is what Andrew Rawnsley had to say in The Observer last Sunday;

‘The Labour leader is not making any effort to prevent Brexit because he doesn’t want to prevent Brexit. The conclusion for Labour supporters ought to be clear. If they want another referendum, they will have to rebel against him.’

It’s not difficult to spot the non sequitur here. There is absolutely no guarantee that the result of a second referendum would be different from the first. Rawnsley wants Labour supporters who don’t want to leave the EU, and I’m one of them, to think it would. From there it’s only a short step to saying, ‘It’s Corbyn’s fault we left the EU because he did not call for a second referendum’ if we do in fact leave.

Corbyn’s unwillingness, so far at least, to call for a second referendum is a principled stance. As I have written before when I voted to Remain in the EU I assumed that result would be honoured. But I doubt that the people in the Labour party who have tried to get rid of him once will see it that way.

I think Corbyn’s unwillingness to commit Labour prematurely to a definite policy with regard to leaving the EU has been shrewd because it makes it difficult for Labour’s enemies to attack it. At some time it will have to be clarified. Or will it?

As things stand there does not look like a majority of MPs in the House of Commons who will vote to leave. If there isn’t then perhaps Theresa May will feel she has to call a second Referendum. That would let Corbyn off the hook, May would get all the flak and Jeremy would be seen as the man who respected the voters wishes. That certainly would not do him any harm in an election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inspector_Calls

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02z80kq