What makes a summer

One swallow, they say, does not a summer make.

It’s pretty hot here, in Valencia as in most of Spain, and yet it doesn't seem to be just the heat that tells me it’s summer. There’s something else, and for some time I couldn’t make up my mind what. 

So I’ve been wondering just what does make a summer.

Not the swallows, I’d say. They turned up here in their masses – I never got a chance to spot the one that didn’t make a summer. Besides, my wife tells me they were swifts not swallows anyway. The swallows showed up a while later and, confusingly, looked exactly the same to me. In any case, one swallow or one swift certainly didn't make our summer, and even the huge numbers that eventually arrived affected our comfort much more than the season.

For a few days before they arrived, we were being irritated by flies coming into the house when we had the windows open. But then the swifts showed up in their hundreds, flying around behind our flat at sunrise and sunset, like vacuum cleaners of the air, scooping up any insect with the temerity to come anywhere near them. The fly problem vanished.

I have a lot of affection for the swallows. Indeed, I’m delighted that the house we plan to move to shortly has a pair in residence and they even have fledglings at the moment. But that doesn’t mean that it’s they who make my summer.

Swallow fledglings in our new place

So, I kept asking myself, what does?

Certainly not the date. How many British residents, including me when I still was one, have enjoyed a glorious, sunny, warm May only to shiver through a dank and cold June?

It wasn’t really the temperature either. It gets hot in Spain. We’ve even had temperatures in the low thirties in Valencia (no, no, that isn’t freezing cold, you poor benighted users of that outdated temperature system), despite the nearness of the sea and the breeze blowing off it. But it’s far worse in Madrid, where I go fairly frequently to visit my sons and their partners (and soon my second grandchild), where the high thirties or even low forties are not unknown.

It took me a while to work out just what it was that made a summer for me. And the enlightenment came in the form of a memory from my distant childhood.

For my first thirteen years, I lived in my native city, Rome. Throughout my childhood, I’d always felt profoundly English, to the extent of experiencing nostalgia for a country I’d visited frequently but never lived in. I remember catching my breath, and feeling a flood of emotion, over a geography book in my (English) school in Rome, when I came across a picture of a typical London street with a sodium streetlamp. My nation. In some sense, my home. Spiritually.

Then my parents sent my brother and me to boarding school in England. One evening some months after that wrenching move, I was at my grandparents’ house, watching TV with them. You know, black and white, and we felt at the cutting edge of technology because we had three channels instead of the two we’d got used to.

The programme was about an archaeological expedition in Greece. I remember nothing about its findings. All that sticks in my mind is a sound. Like the picture of the sodium lamp, it brought a lump to my throat and made me catch my breath.

Cicadas. Grinding away. I could almost feel the heat and smell the pine needles.

That’s summer. Hear that sound and you know you’re out of the grip of the winter and the cold. You know you’re safe in shirtsleeves, and short ones at that. Sunset doesn’t mean a chill that forces you indoors, it means the warmth becomes comfortable and that, even at night, you can sit outside with a drink and enjoy the smells and the easy living.

Just a few minutes’ walk from where we live at the moment (before we move in with the swallows) is the long park that winds through Valencia in what used to be the bed of the Turia river. Right now, it's full of that beguiling sound day and night. Reminding me again and again that summer is here. Just like when I was a kid.

Summer floods the Turia park
Just imagine the cicadas providing the accompanying sound track

It’s as nostalgic as it’s wonderful to hear the cicadas telling me I’m back in a land of real summer again…

Lesson for Trump: why not try generosity? It actually pays

It’s ironic that generosity and opening up to others can sometimes be as beneficial to the nation offering the gifts as to those receiving them.

Truman and Trump
The Statesman and ... the Donald

The winter of 1946-7 was desperately hard, with some of the lowest temperatures on record. For Europe, devastated by war, that was catastrophic. For the vanquished, inevitably – Germany with much of its urban landscape reduced to rubble and huge numbers of homeless among the worst hit – but victors too were suffering, with Britain still having to cope with rationing and struggling to bear the burden of war debts far beyond its resources.

At that time, Britain was still trying to pretend it could play a world role (echoes of today). It had, for instance, forces still deployed in Greece and Palestine. But Clement Attlee’s government began to realise that it was going to have to take a more realistic view of the weight of its (unlike Theresa May’s) . It warned the United States that it would have to start scaling down some of its military commitments, including in Greece.

The reaction of the Truman administration then in power in Washington was astounding and exemplary.

For better or for worse, it decided that resistance to Soviet influence in Greece and Turkey had to be maintained, and that it would therefore shoulder the burden itself, to the tune of $400m.

Far more to the point, it chose to use the newly appointed Secretary of State George C. Marshal, who chaired the chiefs of staff during World War 2, to investigate the state of the economies throughout Europe and to come to their assistance. This was the start of Marshall Aid. It came to over $12bn, corresponding to ten times that amount today.

Much of the money went to the erstwhile and newly-defeated enemy, Germany.

As Truman put it, “We are the first great nation to feed and support the conquered. We are the first great nation to create independent republics from conquered territory: Cuba and the Philippines. Our neighbours are not afraid of us. Their borders have no forts, no soldiers, no tanks, no big guns lined up.”

We’d have to question just how relaxed countries near the US truly felt. The giant to their North had shown itself perfectly prepared to flex its muscles and use its force to have its way, and they must have been a great deal more suspicious than Truman’s sanguine words suggest. Even so, it was an extraordinary act, to fund a defeated foe instead of taking from it. After all, at the conclusion of the First World War, well within living memory of most adults at the time, an intolerable burden of reparations had been imposed on Germany. That had undoubtedly been a contributing factor to the renewed world war twenty years later.

Marshall aid was an admirable and unprecedented act that deserves congratulations for that fact alone.

It was remarkable for far more than that, though. By allowing Europe to emerge from its ruins, and helping Germany, in particular, become prosperous and successful again, the US guaranteed itself good trading partners from which it too would benefit. It ensured that its presence and influence in the old Continent would remain as strong as ever, at least in the Western areas. Overall, it gave a huge stimulus to the world economy from which all nations, including the US, profited.

Generosity and strategic vision went hand in hand.

Now roll forward 70 years.

Faced with undoubtedly significant economic problems, Donald Trump has decided to use not generosity to advance his cause, but isolationism. He has decided not to try to win the support and trust of neighbouring nations, specifically Mexico, but to wall them off. Where Truman had boasted that Mexicans had needed no fortresses against the US, Trump will build a wall against them.

Trump plans to make Mexico pay for the wall, by taxing imports into the US. In reality, this means that US importers will pay for it. Even so, it will do great damage to Mexico. Far from making it a wealthy and successful nation he is, therefore, taking steps that will undermine its economy and weaken it as a trading partner.

He’s threatening similar action against other nations, notably Germany.

His is the opposite view to Truman’s. He wants walls, not openness. He wants trade barriers, not free business. He wants to take money, not offer it.

Marshall aid was astonishingly successful, stimulating the sustained boom of the post-war years.

It seems obvious that the opposite policy will have precisely the opposite effect.

But then, Trump probably doesn’t waste too much time learning stuff from history. Not even that of his own lifetime.

Interesting times for the world. Or a Chinese curse at least

What we tend to forget about economics, is that it takes a long time for changes to work their way through. A long time, that is, relative to political careers.

Ronald Reagan, enthusiastically supported and followed by Maggie Thatcher, began to dismantle economic regulation in the 1980s. The process culminated in the repeal of the US regulations (the Glass-Steagall Act) that prevented any individual bank providing both retail functions, such as current accounts or personal loans, as well as much riskier investment services, in 1999. The repeal was initiated by Republicans, but backed by President Clinton, so no party is blameless in this sorry episode.

That means that over nearly twenty years, the structure of regulation that had been set up in the wake of the great crash of 1929, and which had prevented any bank failures in the States for half a century, was deliberately dismantled. Because the process took so long, a lot of people could claim credit for the prosperity apparently generated as a result: Reagan, Bush, Clinton and little Bush in the US, Thatcher, Major and Blair in the UK.

These leaders seemed sound managers of their own nations’ and the world’s economy. But that’s because the eventual consequences of the deregulation were only incubating below the surface. Apparent success was being furthered by a wild drive for increasingly risky financial gambling, building up a mountain of unreal value which had, eventually, to collapse.

In 2008 it did. As a result, in Britain blame for the failure tends to be assigned to Gordon Brown, Prime Minister at the time; in the US, although the crisis began to break at the tail end of the Dubya Bush presidency, Obama was in office as it spiralled out of control, and he had to take the steps needed to restore stability. For which he can then be blamed or praised, depending on taste.

It feels to me as though we’re about to see a similar phenomenon. For over twenty years now, the West has been watching the Chinese economic miracle with amazement. At times when our economies have struggled to grow by 2 or 3%, China has seen growth of nearer 10%, year after year after year. Some economists warned that the rate was too high, and could not be sustained in the long run. Indeed, a time of reckoning would come, when this house of cards too would fall.

If you keep saying that for several years, and the growth just keeps happening, eventually you sound like the boy who cried wolf. A belief becomes established that the good times will continue indefinitely, and that those claiming otherwise are merely doom sayers.

Sadly, the reality is simply that it just takes economic phenomena that long to become manifest. In recent times, we’ve seen increasing signs of weakness in the Chinese economy. There has been a steady decline in growth so that, though still high by Western standards, it has now fallen to around the 7% level (though some suspect that the true figure is lower: facts aren’t always easy to come by in China). The trend is firmly downwards.

Economic Growth in China: the International Monetary Fund view

In the last few months, there have been interest rate adjustments, share suspensions and now, for two days in succession, devaluations of the currency (the first of them trumpeted as a “one-off” measure).

It’s beginning to feel as though the wheels may be coming off the bus, as some economists were warning years ago. Once again, we have been lulled into false security by the fact that such processes take so long. Once they start to unravel, they can slide fast and be acutely painful for a long time – look at Greece.

The comparison with Greece is an interesting one. Because the Greek economy is a sideshow, in the global scale of things. China, on the other hand, is the world’s second economy. If it gets into trouble, Greece is going to look like a gentle dip in the smooth running of the international financial system. It’s encouraging that voices are already being raised in the US to protect its economy against the possible effects of a Chinese downturn. They need to be heeded.

As far as I can tell, it’s an urban myth that “may you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. It does, however, look as though we may be about to enter some interesting times. And the cause may well be a curse from China.

Greek debt: parallels and contrasts with the US

Greeks who remember the German occupation, according to the BBC, are now talking about another invasion by Germany without a shot being fired.

Greece will, it seems, stay in the Euro. At least for the moment. It will do so at the cost of measures that apparently represent more severe austerity than the terms rejected by Greeks in a referendum just over a week ago. It feels like Greek voters have lost, but German politicians – apparently the fiercest critics of Greece and the harshest in their demands of them – have won.

Merkel may have avoided this destiny so far
But certainly not be being gentle with Greece

This reminds me of how the United States dealt with a similar crisis, when it faced debt problems not unlike those of Greece within the Eurozone.

The original constitution of the United States was deeply unsatisfactory, giving almost no power – certainly no power to raise funds – to the national government, and leaving most authority in the hands of the States. It became increasingly clear over just a few years that the situation was untenable and something with a more serious Federal government at its centre would have to be set up.

A Convention met and drew up the Constitution of the United States that we know today (though at that stage without any amendments, of course). George Washington became the first President and, among an all-star cast of Ministers, he appointed Alexander Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury (Minister of Finance).

Now there’s little on which I agree with Hamilton, particularly his views of popular sovereignty, but that’s for another debate. On finance, he was something of a wizard. And one of his first major measures concerned what came to be known as Assumption – not a religious moment, except for those whose God in Mammon, but the initiative by which the Federal government would take over the debts incurred by the individual States in fighting the War of Independence.

That was great news for Massachusetts and South Carolina, which were saddled with heavy debts (viz Greece) but not so good for Virginia and North Carolina which had cleared most of theirs, and didn’t appreciate having to pick up the tabs for the others (viz Germany). There was a battle royal. James Madison, destined to become the Republic’s fourth president, was a Congressman at the time and led the campaign against Assumption. He defeated the proposal.

The story has it that Alexander Hamilton met Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State but destined to be the third President, in the street outside Jefferson’s house. He was distraught and Jefferson invited him in. Hamilton explained that without Assumption, certain States would be driven towards bankruptcy, and also the Federal government would be shown to be powerless to face up to dealing with a financial crisis (viz the Eurozone).

What’s more, Hamilton maintained the apparently paradoxical view that the Federal government would be accepting a “national blessing” by taking on the debt: it would oblige it to collect taxes and establish it as creditworthy (viz the Eurozone again).

Jefferson was a close ally of Madison’s and increasingly an opponent of Hamilton’s. But he allowed his then-colleague to convince him, and took it on himself to win Madison round.

The two allies came up with a compromise solution: Madison would not block the question of Assumption coming up again in Congress; he would vote no, but would not speak against the proposal. That’s what happened, and Assumption was adopted, over the silent opposition of Madison.

At the time, the US had a population of under 4 million. Even the UK had 8 million, and France 20 million. GDP was around $200 million, corresponding to about $4.5 billion today – when US GDP is about $17.7 trillion. The US was, in other words, a minor sideshow in geopolitics back then; today it is the wealthiest and most powerful nation on Earth.

There is no need for Europe to aspire to that status. European nations have been massive global players in the past, and places like Amritsar or Algiers testify to how badly that went. But it strikes me that Europe needs to get its act together if it is only to defend its status in a world increasingly dominated by huge nations, such as the US, China and Russia.

The success of the US wasn’t naturally entirely down to acceptance of Hamilton’s proposals on handling debt. But they certainly contributed: they set up the notion of the Union has owing a duty to all its components, and therefore being more powerful than any of them, capable of playing a full role on the world stage.

So the US passed its test over Assumption.

I’m not sure the Eurozone has done anything like so well over Greek debt.

Time to listen to the Greeks?

The thing about a crisis is that it’s a great moment to re-examine some fundamental assumptions about what on Earth you’re up to. And when it comes to the European Union and, in particular, the Eurozone such an examination is badly overdue.

No one in authority in the European institutions will see it that way, but what this means is that the Greeks may well have done them a service.

By voting massively to reject the austerity package being forced on them by the Troika of the European Union, European Central Bank and the IMF, the Greek people have sent us all an important message. It is that though the Greeks may be in serious trouble, and the difficulties there have to be addressed, it can’t be done exclusively on the backs of those least able to cope with it.

It is almost unthinkable that a modern economy should shrink by a quarter over five years. 26% of the workforce is out of work, and that figure reaches nearly 50% for the young. Pensioners have seen their pensions cut in half – pensions to which they had loyally contributed throughout their working lives. To behave in that way is to break any kind of covenant there may be between government and people – it is to say that even if you do what we ask you to do, and the law requires of you, we reserve the right to refuse you the reward we’ve promised, even if that plunges you into penury.

To say “no” to that kind of action is practically an obligation.

Guardian photo of young Greeks celebrating the "no" vote

Nor does it matter only to the Greeks. Austerity politics are being pursued in a great many countries, particularly across Europe. And yet we know they fail. Back in the 20s, in the last great crash of the proportions of the current one, the immediate reaction of the Right was to tighten belts and impose austerity – though, as ever, not on themselves, only on the poor.

The result was mass unemployment and back-grinding poverty. In Britain, we had the Jarrow Hunger marches, starving workers converging on London from the North. In the US, we had “buddy, can you spare a dime?”

Fortunately for all of us, the US had the genius to find a man of Franklin Roosevelt’s calibre to replace the austerity incompetent Herbert Hoover. He applied policies of public investment in large projects to stimulate the economy and return it to growth. And at last the problems of the slump began to be solved.

This time round, we’re dominated by people of the Hoover persuasion once more, and they’ve made Greece the test bed of their policies. Where, unsurprisingly, they’ve failed again. Even the IMF has admitted as much, in a report that was leaked last week: they conclude that even if it applies the austerity policies precisely as prescribed, Greece cannot sustain its debt.

What Greece needs is help not austerity. It needs debt relief so that it can start to invest in itself, and get itself back to growth.

And by the way – a lot of economic activity these days is in services, where you’re not manufacturing, you’re not even consuming an intolerable amount of energy, you’re just using people to provide service to other people. Growth, in other words, does not have to be environmentally disastrous.

The irony is that the entire Greek government debt works out at $630 per inhabitant of the Europe Union. If the EU took on half the debt and cleared it over ten years, we’d be talking about just over $30 a year per inhabitant. What’s that? The price of a cheap shirt?

In any case, no one’s asking for that extent of debt relief. The question we should be asking, though, is if we can’t make that level of sacrifice for a member of our own union that is in desperate trouble, then what is our union for?

The Greek referendum result poses that question starkly, to us all.

And we too should be asking it, of our governments. In Britain, for instance, government is about to take £12 billion out of the benefits bill. That may sound like a necessary retrenchment at a time of economic hardship. But what it really means is that £12 billion of demand will go out of the economy: recipients of benefits spend what they receive, so every penny goes into generating demand.

Is Britain really saving anything by making those cuts? Are other European nations or the US doing themselves a favour by seeking austerity solutions? Or are we making things worse?

The Greeks have given their answer. It might be a good idea to listen to them.

Greece and the EU: who's been betrayed by whom?

It seems that Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, feels betrayed by the behaviour of the Greek government.

The purpose of a union is to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. By pulling together, the nations of the European Union agree to work together, giving up some of their individual freedom of action, because they believe that in joint effort they can achieve more.

Within the Eurozone, the bonds are even closer, since the countries have given up control over their own currency, a major sacrifice when it comes to combatting financial difficulties.

Part of the bargain is that if any constituent of the Union gets into trouble, the Union as a whole rallies round to help. Now, following the financial crash of 2008, five EU nations, all within the Eurozone, were particularly harshly affected. These were the so-called PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.

Several years on, all but Greece seem to have weathered the worst of the pressure. That’s not to say that they’re doing well. No one in the Eurozone is doing well. It’s stagnating as a whole,but that’s a not unexpected result of the austerity economics it has imposed on itself. Austerity cuts people’s spending power, so demand goes out of the economy and, as day follows night, the economy fails to grow.

Greece however is in a far worse state than the others. The EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, clubbed together to provide it with funding and to buy it some debt relief, but only at the cost of an even harsher austerity programme than the other nations underwent. As a result, unemployment rose to one in four of the workforce and, far from growing, the economy has shrunk by a quarter. A catastrophe.

Instead of banding together to help its weakest member out of the mud, the EU has inflicted on Greece policies that could only drive it far deeper still. While its membership of the Euro denies Greece the classic solution of devaluing its currency, as Larry Eliiott explains in The Guardian.

Guardian photograph from Athens:
graffiti expressing increasing anti-Euro feelings

So the EU has achieved precisely the opposite of what is intended in a Union.

The result is that it now looks increasingly as though Greece will, as long feared, have to leave the Euro, and perhaps the EU too, if only to have any chance of working its way out of the mess it’s in, with even a shred of dignity left to it.

Make no mistake about it. It would be extremely painful for Greece if it came to that. But it would be a disaster for the EU and the Eurozone. Greece is the first test of the capability of the Union to stand by a member that is in real trouble. They’re on the brink of failing that test. That inevitably raises the question “what is the EU for? If it can’t even rescue a relatively small member from penury…”

Angela Merkel enjoys a high and deserved reputation for her statesmanship. But it is she, and Germany more generally, that has led the campaign to inflict the harsh regime on Greece which it is now rejecting. If she can’t magic some solution out of the chasm in front of her at the moment, her legacy may be that of the leader of Europe who saw the experiment of union founder.

Larry Elliott’s article calls what we are facing now a “Sarajevo moment”. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in 1914 initially seemed to be a relatively minor event in a distant place. But within weeks it had engulfed the whole of Europe in the torment of the First World War.

The exit of Greece from the Union might be another minor event, but it will be a critical step in causing the EU project to start to unravel. The Eurozone will have shown that it is incapable of solving a problem within its membership. And the EU will have shown that it can’t look after its constituent nations.

Those of us in Britain who want the country to remain a member of the EU will find our arguments for staying in weakened in the run up to our promised referendum. And Eurosceptic movements in other European nations will also gain momentum. The impact on the Union could be lethal.

Someone has certainly betrayed the ideals of the European Union here. But, Mr Juncker, I’m not sure it’s Greece.

The Labour leader and the Greeks: it's not the answer that matters, it's the question

Last Wednesday, one of the BBC’s flagship programmes Newsnight hosted a debate between the four candidates for the Labour Party leadership, made vacant when Ed Miliband stood down following his crushing defeat in a General Election on 7 May.

One of the questions from the audience was whether getting a budget surplus was the most important economic objective for the British government. That was a great question, especially in a week in which we moved closer to the wire on Greece defaulting on its debts and possibly being forced out of the Euro, if not the European Union itself. The crisis has been caused by the rest of the Eurozone, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, all insisting that Greece continue to pursue austerity policies to reduce its deficit and ultimately its debt.

Jeremy Corbyn was the last candidate to get onto the ballot for Labour leader. Any candidate needs 35 MPs to back him; he got 36, the smallest number of the four, and it’s known that some of those nominating him wouldn’t actually be voting for him: they wanted him in the running just to ensure a wide-ranging debate, and Corbyn certainly does that, since he comes from the traditional Left of the Party. His answer to the question was an unequivocal “no.”

The most important thing, he said, is to ensure our community has a health service, has an education service, people are decently housed and young people have abilities to go into work and develop themselves.

Then the question was put to Liz Kendall. She was only elected an MP in 2010, making her the least experienced of the candidates, as well as (just) the youngest. She’s personable, apparently likeable, articulate and intelligent – all four qualities that one would regard as pretty much the minimum requirement for any politician, but this is the Labour Party where we’ve just gone through five years with a leader who was outstanding on intelligence and, I suspect, likability, but had a terrible tendency to blunder and mess up in communicating those qualities.

Kendall’s also a woman, and it’s time Labour had a woman leader.

So what did she say to the question?

People didn’t trust us on the economy and with their taxes. I believe in strong public finances, because, you know, unless we balance the books, live within our means, and get the deficit and debt down, we can’t do all the things that we’re passionate about like tackling inequality and homelessness.

Well, the passion I like. But that emphasis on strong finances? Isn’t that just more of the austerity rhetoric?

The sad thing is that austerity seems to be the consensus position across most of Europe today. Consensus can be good, naturally. A consensus emerged in Europe in the first part of the twentieth century that women should have the right to vote, and in nation after nation, a terrible abuse was tackled and done away with. But consensus can also be stifling and deeply damaging, as was the case, for instance, with the generalised view that the European powers had the right to carve themselves out empires from the poorer areas of the globe.

When it comes to austerity, the case of Greece rather seems to run counter to the received wisdom that it’s good for you. Five years on, the economy has shrunk appallingly – by a quarter – and 26% of the workforce has been thrown out of its jobs. And there’s no sign of a return to growth and therefore of any real progress towards solving the problem of indebtedness.

Gavin Shuker, our local MP, chairs a meeting with Liz Kendall

So when I heard that my local Labour Party had invited Liz Kendall to come and talk to us this afternoon I popped along to hear what she had to say. I met her outside, and she gave me a beaming smile and shook my hand; I wonder whether I was ungracious, because when she told me “I’m Liz Kendall” I couldn’t help myself replying, “I know, I recognised you.” I hope she wasn’t offended, since she was, as expected, pleasant, personable and apparently likeable.

Of course, she probably forgot the whole event within minutes in any case, but I still don’t like to be brusque.

That, however, didn’t stop me putting the question I’d come to ask her: what was her view of austerity economics, particularly given its apparent failure in Greece?

Well, I had a fairly firm expectation of how she’d answer. She’d already told us that she was a “fiscal conservative” and believed in “sound finances.” And indeed she assured us that:

We have to live within our means and get the debt and deficit down.

Certainly, that is the view espoused by most fiscal conservatives, including those in the present Conservative government.

She rammed the message home with a comment specifically on the Greeks:

They need to stick to their commitments.

Interesting. I can’t help feeling that if the answer is chucking one in four of your workers out of work and shrinking your economy by a quarter, then someone’s asking the wrong question. And I’m not sure that I want that to be happening at the top of the Labour Party.

Personable. Likeable. Intelligent. Articulate. A potential woman leader. Liz Kendall’s all of those things.

But the one I want to vote for? I’m afraid not.

Bad news for the Greeks may be bad news for all of us

So the Greeks blinked first. And it’s not good news.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis:
the guts to denounce austerity but holding few cards

This week started with a pastoral letter from Bishops of the Church of England calling on its followers to get involved in politics and the General Election in May. They spoke great sense, which was encouraging, but weren’t echoed by any of the mainstream parties, which was galling.

That’s not a call for politicians to be Christians. A great many of them already claim they are, a claim with as much validity, I feel, as the claim of ISIS in Syria to be true Muslims.

The Bishops wrote:

Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10). A Christian approach to politics must be driven by this vision: enabling all people to live good lives, with the chance to realise their potential, as individuals and together as a people.

You need to be a Christian to want to quote St John, but men and women of any faith or none could subscribe to the notion that all of us should realise our potential and live good lives.

The Biblical tradition is not only “biased to the poor”, as often noted, but warns constantly against too much power falling into too few hands. When it does, human sympathies are strained to breaking point.

Again, many of us feel the oppression of power being exercised by too few people. And sadly far too few show much “bias to the poor,” even among parties of the Centre Left.

Why is this? Precisely because power has been allowed to be too concentrated.

This week gave an excellent example: the Daily Telegraph in England is one of the papers that prop up the Conservative claim to office; it seems it has been playing down the scandal around the behaviour of HSBC, the bank that was helping wealthy clients avoid tax; HSBC was the advertiser the Telegraph apparently couldn’t afford to offend; the Conservative Party is reticent to take action against the bank or its clients; and those clients include many substantial donors to the Conservative Party.

Money circulates in tiny circles, and money means power. The few inside the magic circle exert a terrible attraction on those outside, who look to them with admiration or awe at their success. The Centre Left, such as the British Labour Party, isn’t in the circle, but its leadership brushes shoulders with those who are, meeting them in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster. Rather than break with Conservative principles, it therefore simply proposes to apply them more gently.

So Labour doesn’t want to reverse cuts, only to cut less and more slowly. It has bought the prevailing tale that austerity is the answer to our financial woes, though austerity has manifestly failed over the last seven years, and has been known to be a policy condemned to failure for eighty: Keynes refuted the belief that economic good management requires government to spend less, and that to restart a broken economy, government in fact needs to spend more.

Not all parties of the Left have fallen for this delusion advanced by the moneyed, powerful few. And one of them, Syriza in Greece, has been elected to power. It has an explicitly anti-austerity platform, and has been pursuing it over the last few weeks since it took office.

Last night, days away from running out of funds altogether, the Greek government caved into the EU, IMF and European Central Bank – which basically means to Germany. in return for a four month extension of credit, it agreed to put its anti-austerity measures on hold.

The loans it will now receive will be used not to alleviate poverty, but to shore up the banks further. Money flowing to money once more.

This is a triumph for the Conservative views of the German government. Indeed, the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, could hardly contain his delight: “being in government,” he declared, “is a date with reality, and reality is often not as nice as a dream,”

Wolfgang Schäuble, German Finance Minister
A Christian Democrat with little Christianity
And old fox playing a handful of trumps, with an ugly line in gloating...

Reality, you see, means austerity. Even though we know that all it has achieved in Greece is drive citizens to despair, literally, with the saddest comments from that country being complaints at the lack of any hope whatever for the future. Yesterday’s decision will put the hopes excited by Syriza’s election victory on hold for a few more months at least.

The Bishops wrote:

Christ’s incarnation confirms the fundamental truth that every human being is created in the image of God. Because of this, we are called to love our neighbour as ourselves. This is the starting point for all of the church’s engagement with society, politics and national life. This is the truth that lies behind everything we have to say here.

Shäuble is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, so clearly calling yourself a Christian doesn’t stop you rejecting such basic Christian thinking. He’s clearly less than inclined to love his neighbours as he loves himself.

That he’s won this first round of the battle is a setback for the Greeks. It’s a setback for the kind of values the Anglican Bishops were propounding. And I rather fear it’s a setback for all of us who concerned at “too much power falling into too few hands.”

Should we fear Tsipras bearing gifts?

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, the old saying has it. Though what Virgil actually wrote – timeo Danaos et dona ferentes – translates more closely as “I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts.”

The Greeks brought us a gift on Sunday, and it’s certainly dangerous. Will Alexis Tsipras, the new Prime Minister, succeed in his bid to free his compatriots of the scourge of austerity while staying in the EU and even the Eurozone? Or will he throw the whole continent into instability and further crisis?

Tsipras of Syriza: bearing a gift, to be feared – or welcomed?

We simply don’t know. But one thing we learned from the weekend election is that if you create sufficient despair in a people, with a prospect only of more suffering ahead, they will ultimately vote for a change whatever the risks may be. Again and again, I’ve heard Greek voters telling journalists, “in winter, I can’t afford to heat.” 

Why would anyone put up with that indefinitely?

And it would indeed be indefinite. There’s no prospect of Greek recovery yet. The economy has shrunk by a quarter since the international financial collapse of 2008. It is growing now if you ignore the burden of debt repayment, but in the case of Greece, that’s not something you can ignore. The austerity Greeks have suffered for five years has only led to a crippling debt mountain which is beginning to fall due for payment, promising only more dreary pain ahead.

The answer proposed by the EU and the previous Greek government is more austerity. More, in other words, of precisely the same remedy that has failed so far and led to the despair so many feel. More of a remedy which we’ve known, since Keynes, isn’t going to work.

He called it the paradox of thrift. When in debt, the standard reasoning goes, you need to save money to pay off what you owe. That works fine at the level of the individual. But at the level of a nation, it’s a disaster. If we’re all spending less, the economy contracts. People lose their jobs. They stop paying taxes. Government revenues fall. Debts climb.

That’s what’s happened in Greece. It’s happened in Britain too. We’ve had five years of austerity policies. The health service is screaming in pain. Social care has been cut massively at a time when people hope it might take some of the strain off the NHS. Libraries are closing. The education service, for which the government likes to claim all sorts of success, is failing to turn out skilled labour so that the building industry isn’t able to gear up to the challenges ahead – and the housing crisis intensifies.

Meanwhile, the poor are being put to the rack like their Greek counterparts. The unemployed and sick, naturally, but even the working poor whose praises the government likes to sing: tax credits for low earners have been eliminated, assistance for young children gone, assistance from local authorities cut back as those authorities are starved of funding.

Meanwhile, as Polly Toynbee points out, at the opposite end of scale, the top 1% of earners, have done well from austerity – just like their counterparts in Greece. In the run up to the election on 7 May, the Conservative Party is explicitly promising more of the same: cuts that will take state spending down to the level of the 1930s, but £7 billion of tax cuts for the wealthiest.

So what gift have the Greeks given us? A model. An example we might care to follow. An illustration of the fact that one can say no, demand that the wealthy nations help the poorer with a more open hand, and that even within a nation, the rich can shoulder more of the burden to free the poor from some of the suffering.

But we’re told to fear the Greeks with their gifts. Certainly, there’s no guarantee Tsipras will be able to pull off his trick. And if the move to question the received wisdom of the self-serving Right is limited to the south of the continent – perhaps Spain and Portugal alongside Greece – while the wealthier North holds firm, there’s little likelihood that the movement will lead on to success.

But if the rest of us also learn to say no, and if we find leaders prepared to say no with us, the election of Tsipras may turn into a turning point that can transform our lives throughout Europe.

In which case we should all welcome the gifts the Greeks are bearing. Even if they are a little fearsome.

Countdown to War, day 18. 15 July: Will Socialism prevent war? Hope for Suffragettes. Oh, and Ireland again...

One hundred years ago today, on Wednesday 15 July 1914, Martin the Mancunian railwayman might have taken some encouragement from a piece in the Manchester Guardian he shared with his workmates. 

Headlined “Franco-German Friendship. Socialist Hopes and Beliefs”, it reported on a congress in Paris of supporters of a Unified Socialist movement, preparing for a full Congress to take place in Vienna the following month.

It was heartening to see the socialists working for unity across the Franco-German border. It was only that week that he’d been reading about Hansi, the artist who’d had to flee German-occupied Alsace because he’d agitated for its reincorporation into France. It would take a movement like socialism, with its inherently internationalist standpoint, to break down that kind of tension and guarantee the peace Europe badly needed to maintain. That the world needed. A French delegate in Paris, Mr Renandez, had said as much: “it was Socialism alone which was qualified to speak in the name of all countries.”

There had been a British presence too, a Bruce Glasier, speaking for the British Independent Labour Party. Not the mainstream Labour Party, perhaps, but not far distant. It made him proud to be associated with such people.

Mehmet V, Sultan of Turkey
A new agreement with Britain?

Meanwhile, it seemed that Britain was about to sign an agreement with Turkey. That felt dubious: Turkey’s behaviour towards the Greeks hadn’t been exactly exemplary (but then the Greeks had been pretty nasty back). Still, better to have bonds between nations than unresolved tensions: things would be best with peace and prosperity, so on balance he was glad that the Turkish Minister Talaat Bey had told a correspondent “... a complete agreement has been arrived at between the British Ambassador, Sir Louis Mallet, and ourselves, and that the agreement is on the point of being signed.”

“Arms for Dublin” was a less welcome headline. There’d been another seizure at the Isle of Man. If those weapons were heading for Dublin, then presumably they were for the nationalists, perhaps in response to the stocks being built up by Edward Carson’s Ulstermen.

“It’s always the same,” complained Martin, “we get some moves towards peace on the Continent, and then Ireland comes and bites us in the back.”

“Well, it’s our own fault,” said the Cynic, “take it out on Oliver Cromwell and William III. The sooner England gets out of Ireland, and that includes Ulster and its suspect loyalists, the better.”

“Hey, what sort of talk is that?” said one of the younger men. “Ireland is English, you know.”

“Tell that to the Irish. The armed Irish.”

There was a glimmer of hope over the Women’s suffrage question, but only a glimmer.

The foreign delegates to the International Suffrage Conference, which is being held in London, were received at the House of Commons yesterday afternoon by members of the party in the House in favour of women’s suffrage, comprising Liberal, Unionist, Nationalist, and Labour members.

Lord Robert Cecil and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald both expressed the opinion that the time was not far distant when women would be enfranchised. Mr. Acland (Under Secretary, Foreign Office) said he was convinced that the next Government would be obliged to deal with the question of women’s suffrage as a party measure in some shape or form.

So the only one who could have done something about the question, Francis Dyke Acland, a Minister in the current government, had put it off as a matter for the next. Even Robert Cecil, for the Conservatives, and Ramsay MacDonald, for Labour, neither of them in office, could only say that the time was “not far distant”.

“Jam tomorrow,” said the Cynic, “you want something now from government? You have to hold their feet to the fire.”

And then – what was this? “Lancashire did well to draw with Derbyshire at Derby yesterday.” The teams had last met only a few days earlier and Lancashire had won comprehensively. And now they had to “do well” just to secure a draw? Dismal.

Whatever else he would look back on 1914 for, it clearly wasn’t going to be with pleasure over the cricket.

Countdown to War, Day 17. 14 July 1914: "No Surrender", Mrs Pankhurst struggles on, and gentility is maintained at Birkdale and Southport. Viciously

One hundred years ago today, on Tuesday 14 July 1914, Martin the young railwayman and his friends might have read some historic words in the Manchester Guardian. Spoken by Sir Edward Carson, the leader of Unionism in Ireland, they were deliverd to a meeting in Drumberg as part of the 12th of July Battle of the Boyne celebrations. Faced with all those cheering people calling on him for leadership, he had asked himself:

What is the one lesson I ought to learn from all that I have seen to-day? And I think I can sum it up in the two old words you every one wish to say to me, “No surrender.” (Great cheers).

“No surrender”. A call for implacable conflict and words he felt might well echo down the decades.

While the Protestants were cheering Carson, at Castlebellingham in County Louth, 4000 Irish Volunteers were parading in military formation, as a photograph published by the paper attested. And so the descent towards civil war continued...

Things weren’t getting sorted out in the Levant either. The paper published another extract from a letter by an “Englishman in the Aegean Islands”:

It is, I confess, difficult for me to see how, if, as it seems, the expulsion of the Christian inhabitants of the coasts opposite Lesbos and Chios, was, so to speak, a simple move in the game, a simple retort to Greece, it might not have been carried out openly and diplomatically without the horrors that attended it. 

“More horrors,” said Martin. 

“With religion to fuel them,” said the Cynic, “to make sure they really cut deep. The Irish don’t know what delights they’re preparing for themselves.”

Meanwhile, Mrs Pankhurst, released from prison for four days, was going to be returned to gaol before she could address a planned suffragette meeting. Mrs Mansel had told a meeting of the Women’s Social and Political Union:

Mrs. Pankhurst was too ill to be able to go to the meeting except on an ambulance with her nurses and doctors. And what did the Home Secretary propose to do? Did he propose to tear her away from her nurses and doctors? ... Mrs. Pankhurst was going to the meeting on Thursday evening, and nothing could stop her. She was going to be there, and they were going to see that she was there. (Cheers)

It was impressive just how far people were prepared to go to attain their goals. Whatever it cost, even their own or others’ lives or liberty. Would he go so far for any of those causes? Ireland? Did it matter whether it stayed or went? Turkey and Greece? He didn’t understand their conflict, but did anyone else? The vote? Well that was worth a sacrifice, he agreed. But would he go through what Mrs Pankhurst had?

Croquet: genteel. And vicious

In a world where so much seemed to be going wrong, there was at least one area in which a sense of proper order and decorum was being maintained.

The eighth annual croquet tournament promoted by the Birkdale and Southport Croquet Club began yesterday, and will continue for the rest of the week. In spite of the fact that there are several other meetings in various parts of the country in progress at the present time the entry was much more numerous than usual, and the standard of the competing players was much higher.

“See?” said the older tracklayer, “what are you complaining about? Things can’t be going all wrong in a world which still has that much gentility in it.”

“What are you talking about?” asked the Cynic. “Bloody vicious game. Good preparation for war, if you ask me.”

Countdown to War. Day 5, 2 July: 1914 – year of peace?

One hundred years ago today, on Thursday 2 July 1914, Britain was undergoing a heatwave. In London, temperatures reached 90 Fahrenheit (or 32 Celsius as the Continentals, who always want to be different, called it). 

And, as Martin’s crew discovered from the Manchester Guardian, there were other hotspots around the world. One article reported on “the cruelties committed on Greeks in Asia Minor” by their Turkish rulers. Or was it the other way round? Neither side was behaving well, it seemed, as a piece about “Balkan charges and counter-charges” made clear:

For some time past the Anglo-Hellenic League, the Ottoman Association, and other English bodies pledged to the support of the Moslem or Christian Balkan races have been bandying charges of atrocity which have made it clear that the aftermath of war have left the Balkans in an appalling state. Responsibility for this is attributed, in large measure, to the Christian races in the letter that we publish from Miss Durham – an eye-witness of both the Balkan wars; while an English gentleman travelling in the Aegean islands brings serious charges against the Turks.

A plague on both your houses, then. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. Pots and kettles.

Meanwhile, the dust still hadn’t settled after the assassinations in Sarajevo. It had emerged that the Archduke and his wife had never stood a chance of leaving alive:

Persons connected with the suite of the Archduke ... are reported as saying that the plot against the Archduke was so widely extended that it was impossible for him to leave Bosnia alive. They declare that under the luncheon table prepared for the Archduke and Duchess after their return from the Town Hall at noon were found two clockwork bombs. Another similar bomb was found in the chimney of the room.

Arrest of Gavrilo Princip, author of the Sarajevo murders
Four days later, disturbances were still going on in the region

There had also been “Disorders in many towns”:

Demonstrations were made yesterday at Konyitza (Herzegovina) by the Mussulman and Catholic inhabitants. There were also anti-Servian disturbances, during which the windows of several Servian houses were broken... 

Demonstrations took place at Livno (Bosnia), where several Servian shops and Servian schools were attacked...

At Zavidovitz (Bosnia) the day before yesterday a crowd of Mussulmans and Catholics assembled before the Servian club. Through a window was seen a portrait of King Peter of Servia hanging on a wall. The crowd broke into the building and demolished the furniture. The police dispersed the mob.

At least there was one place where the communities had shown their ability to rise above their differences:

In Banyaluka (Bosnia) great memorial ceremonies took place, in which Servian national societies participated.

Some, it seemed, appreciated peace. 

As did ordinary citizens in Britain and North America. Preparations for peace celebrations were under way, since 24 December 1914 would be the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and the end of war between Britain and the United States. The Guardian picked up a piece from the Daily Chronicle:

The decision of the House of Representatives at Washington against a grant of money to promote the celebration of the centenary of the Treaty of Ghent should not discourage the supporters of the movement who represent the leading men of all parties in the United States, England and Canada. The movement did not originate in official quarters, it has been spontaneous and popular, and while it would add to its completeness for it to receive official recognition, it will not militate against its success if it remains of a voluntary character. The War of 1812 was ended not by the action of legislators, politicians, or diplomatists, but by the force of public opinion.

That was encouraging. The year 1914 could end, despite the many troubles in the world, under the sign of peace. A peace demanded on both sides of the Atlantic by peoples who had understood the futility of war. An idea with an attractive ring to it.

Countdown to War. Day 4, 1 July: so there weren't just Serbs in Bosnia. Who would have guessed?

One hundred years ago today, Wednesday 1 July 1914, our young Mancunian railwayman and his friends, leafing through their Manchester Guardian, would have read that the bodies of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, brought to the coast from Sarajevo, had been picked up by a battleship of the Austrian navy.
“Austria has a navy?” Martin might have asked. “How does a country without a coastline get an Empire that stretches to the sea?”

Inland, the assassinations had sparked trouble:

Violent demonstrations have been made in many parts of Bosnia by Catholics and Moslems against the Orthodox Serbs. Many shops and houses have been looted and several persons injured. The disorders, in part no doubt genuine proofs of devotion to the Hapsburgs [the imperial family], would be more important than they are were they not largely due to an old political animosity.

Curious. So there were three communities in Bosnia, not just the Serbs. And they didn’t like each other very much. Nor were the problems limited to Bosnia: in the Diet (parliament) of the Austrian province of Croatia, “an angry quarrel between the Croatian Nationalists and the Croat-Servian coalition caused a suspension of the sitting.”

More internal dissension, then. 

That chap, Princip, the student who shot the Archduke and his wife, was a Serb nationalist, but in the province next door it seemed there were Croats who were just as nationalist in their own cause. Always a recipe for trouble, that kind of thing. Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia were none of his business, of course, but he couldn’t help feeling it would be a good idea to sort out those tensions before they became really nasty.

Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary
He had plenty on his plate.
Long before Martin or his mates knew it

In another piece, the Manchester Guardian turned its attention to Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary. Not in connection with Austria or Serbia, but with the other end of the Balkans altogether, where Turks and Greeks were being thoroughly vile to each other, and leaving a trail of bodies behind them. Challenged by his critics, Grey had one of his officials reply:

...as regards your proposal that his Majesty’s Government should suggest to the Greek and Turkish Governments their acceptance of an international commission to regulate the reciprocal emigration of their Christian and Moslem subjects, and the adjustment of losses thereby incurred, I am to state that Sir E. Grey considers that these objects should be attainable by the Turco-Greek Commission already designed for the purpose and, further, it is his experience that offers of mediation are seldom acceptable to Powers at variance unless they can be made at the desire of both of them.

Yes. If there was too much bad blood between them for the parties to agree among themselves, mediation was never going to work. The idea of swapping populations, on the other hand, was a good one. It made no sense to have Christians living in Muslim countries or Muslims in Christendom. The faiths weren’t designed to get on with each other.

How could there ever be peace between them?