Blog
1 january 2016, the year of leaving
When the question has been put to more pro-european populations in easier times, the french, dutch and irish amongst them, the answer has been "no". So why does anyone expect something different from the far more half-hearted brits ? Don't look at the "outs" split and disorderly campaign, look at the message, clear and bright. That's why the uk is set to leave, the biggest backwards step for the eu since its foundation in 1957. Rages against the establishment, driven by those on the wrong end of globalisation, inequalities and empowerment, continue to sweep across the western world, the snp destroying labour in scotland, the national front coming first in french elections and donald trump raging to contendership for the american presidency. Underpinned by a generation drip-fed predjudice against the eu "other" doing down "our" country, the risk of such a surge carrying the outs to victory in britain's binary referendum is high. Their clarion call is simple and alluring: good riddance to the lot of them ! Europe costs the country a fortune (a billion pounds a day !), burdens industry with costly regulation (especially on the golden goose of the city of london !), dampens our democracy (brussels makes all our laws !) and, worst of all, forces us to leave our front door open to shady migrants that take jobs, force down wages and suck up school and hospital places. With millions more arriving every day and the euro economy constantly collapsing, why should great britain be weighed down by all that ? Better to cut loose and nimbly sail the world alone again; good fences make good neighbours. Its a fabulous populist bandwagon to jump on, towards which luminaries in all parties (yes that's you boris) may be tempted. With most conservatives against, there is an especial risk that the new labour leadership, anyway lukewarm, makes a tactical decision to see cameron lose and so throw the government into total turmoil from which could be seen the possibility of a new order. The election of a conservative majority government means that mass anti-establishment anger has yet to find a lighting rod in the uk. The referendum looks a very strong candidate.
16 december 2015, what goes down, must come up
So, finally, after almost a decade, us interest rates have risen, ending a period unprecedented in the history of monetary policy since such a thing began with the creation of the bank of england in 1694. Though rates remain on the floor in london and frankfurt, the inevitable upward march (yes, even eventually in euroland) has begun. So what ? Inflation, on both sides of the atlantic, remains extremely low (the "usual" trigger for rate rises) and the jobs market, even in the us, is far from robust, much less so in europe and in both cases (as shown by stagnant wages) flattered by the growth of low-grade and flexible positions. There is a strong argument that this extraordinary period of zero rates and money-printing (see 21 october 2010, "dread the launching of the bad ship qe2") was a necessary evil, but these last years were not a new paradigm but a period that despite its comfort blanket effect has negative consequences which ultimately need unwinding. The lack of any "taper tantrum" shows global markets agree; indeed the rise was anticipated and welcome. There were always limits to how long dropping bucketfuls of money from the sky could be sustained, although the rise will not be without consequence, not least of a dollar bubble, of higher costs for those borrowing globally in dollars and especially for the battered emerging markets, china most of all. Nonetheless, to quote the very uneconomic henry kissinger, whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately. Off we go...
12 december 2015, trumped
Cycling home listening to the ever-excellent pm programme (on i-player of course), I found myself, possibly for the first time ever, agreeing with the visceral mep dan hannan, who brought a semblance of sense to a hysterical debate on donald trump's latest outburst by pointing out that banning him from entering the uk for his calls to ban muslims from entering america was a somewhat ridiculous bending to the inevitable "something must be done" feeling. Alas, everyone is talking about trump (and into that trap I fall), which proves yet again that there's no such thing as bad publicity, and few are better at it than "the don". Happily, he has no chance of actually becoming president: the excellent nate silver, who correctly predicted the result last time around in all 50 states, points out he has about 25% support amongst republicans who themselves make up around 25% of the electorate, so a net 6-8%, which is about the same as believe the apollo moon landings were faked (and probably the same people). He has though, as so many spiky populists have before him (hello nigel), shone a spotlight on an uncomfortable issue and succesfully shifted the political centre. Trump is redirecting obama's isolationism to move american identity more towards its nasty, nativism persona and ever further from the "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" mantra on which it was originally built. Maybe its europe's era to inherit that spirit on which wealth and prosperity was built over generations. Last word though to the real genius behind donald trump, it was finally revealed yesterday: sacha baron cohen (in full).
Attached File: trump.pdf
3 december 2016, the other hilary
From the leadership vacuum that is today's british labour party, step forward hilary benn, after a stonking speech in yesterday's totemic debate about whether or not to extend british bombing of islamic state into syria. Joining 60-odd other labour members to support the government, against his leader and the rest of the party, benn established himself overnight as the principled, strong orator, independent-minded bulwark from within against jeremy corbyn, should the party ever want such a thing. With a combination of this year's general election and the subsequent party leadership contest taking out a whole generation of post-corbyn potentials, it was inevitable that one of the next crop would establish themselves alongside the refuseniks of chuka umunna and tristram hunt as the weathervane leader-in-waiting on whose shoulders the future of the party may yet rest if they ever get to the point of taking the fight for centre-left social justice outside labour altogether. The princely former cabinet minister and shadow foreign-secretary is of course the son of one of the left's greatest modern orators (best interview ever) and joins a worryingly-long list of party dynasties, including will straw, tamsin dunwoody, stephen kinnock, the millibands (if brothers count) and (oh yes) emily benn. Meanwhile, talking of heavyweights in the making, tonight is the oldham west and royton byelection, contested by the ex-council leader jim mcmahon with whom I had the pleasure of working alongside on a number of occasions...
27 november 2015, fiddling while the rome connection burns
One of the uk's easier demands of the eu is for economic governance arrangements that stop the eurozone ganging up on the "outs". In reality this is about stopping london's financial centre being disadvantaged (a longstanding desire of several within the eurosystem). The uk though are not really against (in many respects they are actually for) the eurozone, and indeed other "core" configurations, integrating further and faster. Schengen (see 23 september 2015, will schengen survive ? and the euro are only the most notable of the differentiated integration that already exists. Staying in orbit around the core would not be a bad position for the uk while its decade or two of adjacency funk lasts, although when the referendum comes along such subtleties will be lost in the laconic to hell with the lot of them/good fences make good neighbours simplicities (see 27 february 2014, sleepwalking towards the exit) that are increasingly likely to turn the brits back into little englanders.
17 november 2015, hot on the heels of cornwall...
There was a crucial moment in negotiating manchester's devolution status with the government, when news broke to lighten the mood in the form of liverpool, after some years trying to get their act together, again miserably failing to. The number one item facing that city region's six (all labour-run) local authorities, was the combined authority's new name. In a monty pythonesque twist to the concept of local empowerment, their utter disagreement led to them asking whitehall to decide the name for them, which is how they ended up with the snappily-titled halton, knowsley, liverpool, st helens, sefton and wirral combined authority (or hklsswca for short). A couple of months later they were at it again with four of the authority's members choosing the new leader while the other two were out the room. Finally though, today was a big day for the hklsswca, as they got their handshake with my old mucker, and now the official minister for sorting out liverpool's arguments, jim o'neill (see 14 january 2010, brics and more tar) and agreed to elect a mayor in return for the transport-and-bells-and-whistles powers that regular readers will recall my describing many times. "I'm pleased, not so much that we've managed to negotiate with central government" said joe anderson, liverpool's current mayor, "but that we have finally been able to get an agreement at a local level". No I didn't make that up, and yes, anderson is mayor of the small liverpool city area, not the whole of the hklsswca city region; do keep up. And yes, hklsswca is still its name, which my sources tell me is excellent branding on the streets of shanghai, right up there with manchester united. Seriously though, all power to your elbows. St michael must be proud.
14 november 2015, paris to paris, a heavily-edited story of 2015
13 november, paris, france, 129 killed; 13 november, baghdad, 19 killed; 13 november, beirut, lebanon, 43 killed; 1 november, mogadishu, somalia, 13 killed; 31 october, sharm el sheikh, 224 killed; 23 october, jacobabad, pakistan, 22 killed; 14 october, maidugurie, nigeria, 42 killed; 10 october, n'djamena, chad, 38 killed; 10 october, ankara, turkey, 102 killed; 5 october, baghdad, iraq, 57 killed; By 1 october, usa, 994 killed (mass shootings only); 20 september, maidugurie, nigeria, 145 killed; 16 august, douma, syria, 82 killed; 13 august, baghdad, iraq, 76 killed; 10 august, diyala, iraq, 50 killed; 7 august, kabul, afghanstan, 51 killed; 13 july, monguno, nigeria, 43 killed; 29 june, leego, somalia, 70 killed; 26 june, soussa, tunisia, 38 killed; 26 june, kuwait city, kuwait, 27 killed; 13 june, monguno, nigeria, 63 killed; 8 june, waziristan, pakistan, 26 killed; 1 june, randi, iraq, 41 killed; 22 may, saudia arabia, 21 killed; 13 may, karachi, pakistan, 45 killed; 2 april, garissa, kenya, 147 killed; 28 march, Idlib, syria, 236 killed; 20 march, sanaa, yemen, 137 killed; 4 february, fotokol, cameroon, 91 killed; 24 january, mariupol, ukraine, 30 killed; 7 january, baga, nigeria, over 2, 000 killed; 7 january, paris, france, 7 killed.
4 november 2015, it was 20 years ago today
Rarely in history has a bullet found its target as well as that of yigal amir, yitzchaq rabin's assassin. He was no saint: rabin it was who, as defence minister, tried to snuff out the first intifada (a year I spent in israel) with orders to break palestinian legs. Yet, after usurping his great rival shimon peres to become prime-minister, he came to understand and indeed define the position that only engagement and compromise could end the conflict. So came oslo, the greatest - and probably last - breakthrough in our lifetime. No other leader, right or left, has credibly taken most israelis on that journey. Oslo though was only a first step, postponing the most difficult issues of jerusalem, settlements, the rights of refugees to return and a palestinian state itself. Yet, start the journey they did, each side for the first time recognising the other and their aspirations. Though no less for the palestinians, the scale of compromise represented for israel is like america today sitting down with islamic state. Amir's bullet, in the square I stood that night, directly led to a weak peres picking up the torch and narrowly losing the election a year later to netanyahu: rejectionist procrastinator par excellence, for whom the appearance of the journey was the most he would ever accept (see 18 april 2015, bibin there, done that). From that moment the process was ultimately doomed, and the prospects of peace ever more remote. And here we are, several wars and many dead later, perennially on the cusp of the third intifada and even the most optimistic of souls has no conceivable solution to hand beyond the faint hope of dampening down the violence just below boiling point for a period. How far in the wrong direction we have travelled these last 20 years; a personal tragedy of our age.
Attached File: ...and that's how it all ended.pdf
23 october 2015, china comes to manchester
Once several years ago, a small cog in the machine started shouting china, china china as the economic powerhouse we need to hook our economy up to (see 27 april 2013, china in my pocket). Today, after a few of the thousand flowers we planted bloomed, we were visited by the greatest of chinese heights, president xi jinping, as he toured around the town and the airport waving investment as he went and beaming brand manchester back home to a billion souls. If you look hard around 2 seconds into the film (sat down, second from left), you can see me straining to get a decent view, although the man on the stage is my boss, introducing el presidente. David cameron was there too, which was nice. The president was most effusive about manchester, capital of the north, dynamic modern metropolis and world centre of media, science and football, all of which I'm sure will be culled for an age to come. He got to see the national graphene institute (and I'm going to say I had a hand in that too) and then to the etihad campus, home of £1billion foreign investment (and manchester city) and now of "that" selfie. Shame the poor guy thought he was being taken to a football club he'd actually heard of (ok, I like city too these days) and then home via my own wee place of work, which made for an interesting break in an otherwise meeting-filled afternoon. Quite an entourage, quite a journey. Here is the slick version of the video.
Attached File: photos from man.pdf
17 october 2015, death, death, death spiral
"We are all human beings" was the protest of a jew stabbed by another jew who thought he was an arab in haifa. Sadly though more than ever in israel today there are no human beings, just jews and arabs. The centre of the violence is jerusalem, where a new physical dividing line looks to be emerging as an end result of this latest wave. Israel has long resisted admitting that jerusalem is not, after all, one indivisible city. However, whilst not, yet, the berlin wall, throwing up checkpoints and controlling movement across a line is simply following the logic of the rest of the west bank barrier, a peace line that literally separates two peoples. Pre-wall, when I travelled around a quarter of a century ago, there was no way of knowing when you crossed the invisible"green line". A generation on, the two populations know each other less and consequently fear each other more. With random knife attacks the terror of choice, with seven jews killed this week, and around 40 palestinians, it is ever easier to see security as only possible through division - yet how does that work when in much of the country the communities live at the top and bottom of a hill. There is no security without a solution, just the prospect of more terror, methodical and horrific, from both sides. "The unalterable truth: the last day of occupation will be the first day of peace". However israel has ever less inclination to think any solution can bring it security. And the world, that's us folks, absenting itself hardly helps.
Attached File: death, death, death spiral.pdf