Undermining democracy and diplomacy

We used to be told, “Don’t point your finger at someone, because you’ll be pointing three at yourself.” How ironic then that in a month when as a nation we’ve been pointing the finger fiercely at Russia, over their alleged involvement in the Salisbury poisoning, it should transpire that the most massive dirty political tricks originated in the UK and the USA. 

Channel 4’s newshounds have revealed that the British political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica, far from being an academic research outfit as its name suggests, became in fact a mercenary dirty tricks operation which specialised in covert manipulation and sold its services to political big guns. And their source of information? It’s none other than your chatty friend and mine, the multi-billion Facebook, based in the United States. So this narrative of a malign Russia conspiring to undermine western democracy loses some credibility. It turns out that much of the undermining is home-grown.

It’s surprising that other major news outlets such as the BBC have not been more interested in the story, seemingly confining themselves to the suspension of CA’s Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, Old Etonian, and the Prime Minister’s answers about the firm’s links to the Tory Party. The Guardian has run it as a main story. I suppose it’s not so surprising that newssheets owned by millionaires don’t major on the story. (The BBC has today given it more attention.)

Photos from Huffington Post; 2 experts in diplomacy

On Wednesday afternoon, another Old Etonian, our Foreign Secretary, once again demonstrated his mastery of diplomacy when asked about the similarities between Hitler’s 1936 Olympic Games and the forthcoming Football World Cup in Russia. “Yes,” said Boris Johnson, political boss of the Diplomatic Service, “I think the comparison with 1936 is certainly right.” Aside from a hint of sour grapes for the UK’s ignominious elimination from the choice of host nation and the overwhelming support received by Russia, this comment surpassed Mr Johnson’s norm of buffoonish wit. He fires from the hip in a manner reminiscent of Mr Trump and for, one suspects, similarly populist purposes.

A couple of years ago I read Anna Reid’s Leningrad: the Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-44, which recounted the horrific suffering of that blockade in which 750,000 died. I’m now reading Nobel Prize Winner, Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War. Both books rely on first-hand accounts, the latter almost entirely of women who were involved on or just behind the front lines of the Soviet army, as soldiers and pilots, radio operators, doctors and nurses. 

Their memories are vivid and painful, and are as intensely moving account of the “pity of war” as any I have read or viewed on screen. Both books serve as a powerful reminder that just in the Second World War the country which paid the highest price for defeating Hitler and Nazi ambitions was the Soviet Union with 25 million people killed. (By comparison, UK war deaths were 450,900: World War 2 statistics) We seem to forget that in European wars since Napoleon we have been allied with Russia (or the Soviet Union) and their part in those wars has been extraordinarily costly. Twice invaded from Western Europe by small men with imperialistic ambitions and powerful military forces one can understand their fear of history being repeated – and one can understand their finding a comparison with Hitler’s Germany “offensive and unacceptable”. I’m inclined to agree with the view that it is "unworthy of the foreign minister of any country". 

A Foreign Secretary should, I reckon, have less braggadocio and more circumspection. Sadly, in its desperation to appear decisive and strong, our government has seized upon the affair of the poisoning of our spy, Sergei Skripal, and becomes more and more demagogic and less and less statesmanlike. It’s a pity - a sad example of our proud history of the subtle art of diplomacy.

PS There's a fascinating set of unanswered questions about the Salisbury affair here:/30-questions-that-journalists-should-be-asking-about-the-skripal-case/

A nightmare versus a dream

The fact that the Conservatives won't oppose Zac Goldsmith in the by-election for Richmond Park says it all. What more eloquent testimony could there be for their lack of conviction that "this is the right thing for the country", as Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Transport, has adopted as his mantra? If it is, then make the case so persuasively that the residents of Harmondsworth, Harlington, Sipson, Longford, and Richmond vote for you. See how those directly affected by the environmental pollution vote. They might agree.

Photo : Premier org.uk

The project will apparently generate employment for thousands and billions of pounds of national wealth. What's not apparent is why this proposal would generate more than any others - except perhaps in demolishing 950 homes and resettling their occupants, presumably in places not of their choosing, and bulldozing an ancient church and village green. As too often with current governmental decisions, the public rationale is financial and not human. Value for money is elevated above quality of life. There is the implicit accusation of selfish nimbyism. "Take a hit for the rest of us" has been the political philosophy of the past couple of administrations, addressed to the most vulnerable within society - the easiest to target.

However, it's all very well to be negative. What better solution is there? The London airport commission, we are told, thoroughly examined the alternatives and ruled in favour of a third Heathrow runway. Clearly I've not read the report, but I strongly suspect that its overriding criteria were economic. Reluctant though I am to admit any merits in one of Boris Johnson's madcap dreams, I do in fact think that his Thames Estuary island scheme was the most visionary. A brand new hub airport with approaches over the sea and 21st-century infrastructure into London would of course cost more than building an extra runway, but as the Transport Secretary has been at pains to affirm it would be provided by private finance. And the human cost would be far less. Maybe it would impinge on the good burgers of Essex and Kent, were the flight paths badly delineated. Yet one could envisage an eventual reduction in the impact of Heathrow as it ceased to be the hub airport for London, the UK and the world.

I recall the days when there were soundings for a new London airport in rural Buckinghamshire (for example at Wing). Fortunately those were binned. Hopefully Heathrow's third runway will go the same way, and Boris Island will rise from the waves. Now that would be a small legacy to offset the disaster of Brexit.

Politicking politicians

'Tis not yet the season to be jolly, so I hope you will allow me some disillusioned observations before we're all ho-hoing down the supermarket aisles. They were sparked off when Jane read me an extract from the Humanitarian Aid and Relief Trust winter newsletter. In it Baroness Cox wrote this:

"After one visit to Karabakh at the height of the war (between Armenia and Azerbaijan 2011), I brought back photographs of children shredded by cluster bombs. I asked the then Minister at the Foreign Office if the British Government would make representations to Azerbaijan, concerning the use of cluster bombs on civilians – a violation of international conventions. The Minster’s reply was brief and brusque:

'No country has an interest in other countries; only interests – and we have oil interests in Azerbaijan' – and I was shown out of the room." 

I shared Caroline Cox's sense of shame at being British and disappointment in our political class. This augmented later by both our Deputy Prime Minister and our Prime Minister. 

It was started by David Blunkett, Sheffield MP and former Home Secretary, speaking about the newly settled Slovakian Romas in his home city. He said: "We have to change the behaviour and the culture of the incoming Roma community because there's going to be an explosion otherwise. We all know that."

Mr Clegg, Sheffield MP too and Deputy PM, adding fuel to the fire, weighed in with: "There is a real dilemma when you get communities that behave in a way that people find sometimes intimidating, sometimes offensive. I think it is quite right that people should say so. We have every right to say if you are in Britain and you are coming to live in Britain and you are bringing up a family here, you have got to be sensitive to the way that life is lived in this country." As the Western Morning News sensibly commented: "This might all sound quite reasonable, were it not for the fact that the Slovak Roma in Sheffield have done little that could be described as either intimidating or offensive. But when it comes to gypsies, the age-old prejudices are trotted out with impunity; from the Brothers Grimm to Enid Blyton, they have been insulted and scapegoated."

The politicians should both have listened to Professor Yaron Matras, an expert on Roma culture from the University of Manchester, who accused both Nick Clegg and David Blunkett of "ethnic profiling" gypsies and claimed their use of "medieval stereotypes" was likely to increase rather than prevent the likelihood of attacks on Roma, who would inevitably then retaliate.

"People who meet Roma personally have a positive experience," said Professor Matras. "Those who get their information from indirect sources, such as parts of the media, have negative impressions – but there is nothing in Roma behaviour that is inherently more offensive or intimidating than for any other group."

One doesn't know what talks David Cameron has had in China about human rights on his current trade mission, but his press office has been keen to tell us what a success it's been, generating in a week, apparently £6 billion's worth of trade. It was sad therefore that the photo opp which appeared on the news I was watching was of him with a lady entrepeneur from the "gaming industry" who's going to invest in Britain - yippee! More of our countrymen getting into debt chasing an illusion!

And only last week, Tsar Boris, aka the Mayor of London, in the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture declared that inequality is essential to fostering "the spirit of envy" and hailed greed as a "valuable spur to economic activity". Envy and greed used to be two of the seven deadly sins. The ambitious Mr Johnson clearly thinks he knows better. I'm not sure he does, any more than he understands the mathematics of the IQ test. "Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2% …" he said as he departed from the text of his speech to ask whether anyone in his City audience had a low IQ. To muted laughter he asked: "Over 16% anyone? Put up your hands. 16% have an IQ below 85 while 2% have an IQ above 130. And the harder you shake the pack the easier it will be for some corn flakes to get to the top." Well, they would do, old chap, as the IQ test is a bell-curve based round an average of 100. That's the normal distribution  - get it? 

It is truly depressing when a politician tipped by many as a future Prime Minister lauds envy and greed as economic and social virtues, and attributes wealth to intelligence and poverty to the lack of it. "You're poor, because you're stupid."

I also found it depressing to listen to another potential PM on Desert Island Discs. I'm not able to judge Ed Miliband's musical tastes, since I shared none of them, but was interested to hear what he had to say about his political assassination of his brother, David, in the Labour Party leadership election. You may remember that Ed declared he was running after David and narrowly won only with the support of the big union votes. As I heard it, his justification was that he wanted to put party before family. It was an extraordinary insult to his brother's abilities, and seemed to me a weasel way of saying, "I wanted to put self before family." I'm sorry, Ed Milicain, I can't vote for someone who lacks both selflessness and transparency.

Finally, as you'll detect, I'm quite even-handedly disillusioned with politicians of all three mainstream parties. One omission from my scatter-gun seems to be women. In fact two of the outstanding political breakthroughs have been achieved by women. The MP for Walthanstow, Stella Creasey's unremitting pressure has at last led to a U-turn by the Government on capping the interest rates of Pay-day lenders, and, on the international stage, it appears that the interim agreement between Iran and the big powers over its nuclear industry was largely engineered by Baroness Ashton, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs. Women seem to be doing all right in politics.

So to redress the balance let me have a go at Cherie Blair, not exactly a politician but certainly a political figure. She was recently interviewed in The Independent. The headline was "Being a mother isn't a job. It's a relationship"  It sounds exactly like a politician's sound bite. So I looked at the article and came across what she said about being a mother. In a way it sounds unexceptionable. “Don’t say being a mother is the most important job to do because being a mother isn’t a job. It’s a relationship. The quality of the relationship is what matters . The most important thing is the relationship we have with our children.” And yet it does sound like the words of someone who can afford a nanny, someone like a... millionaire barrister, or someone... married to a prime minister, or even... better, both. You might not like to describe motherhood as a job, but whatever you call it, there's nothing more important to do well than bringing up children. And whatever else it isn't, it certainly is hard work. I would reply, "Don't say being a mother is just a relationship. It's much more than that." 

I know politics is what politicians do. But it doesn't seem to me that ours are doing it very well.

Now for the season of goodwill!

PS Here's hoping George Osborne doesn't come up with some madness tomorrow.