Not good for the Pope. Not good for Britain either

One thought can easily conjure up unrelated memories, can’t it?

I was reading about the present Pope the other day, and it brought to mind memories of the Falklands War. Or perhaps I should say Conflict, since war was never declared. And perhaps I should say Conflict over the Malvinas, to give the Spanish name for those islands, since that’s what the Argentinians call them.

What’s the link to Pope Francis? The Conflict brought to an end the military dictatorship in Argentina. That, incidentally, is why I always think the Argentinians won, even if they didn’t keep the islands: they got rid of one of the bloodiest and most brutal dictatorships in their troubled history, while we were stuck with Thatcher for another seven years, followed by further Tory government under John Major for another five after that.

It wasn’t just the supposed ‘victory’ in the Falklands that kept Thatcher in power and gave her a landslide election win the following year. She was helped by Labour having a brainstorm and going into that campaign led by the hard left, which played right into her hands. Sound familiar? Yes, just because we made that mistake 36 years ago doesn’t mean we’d learn from it and avoid it this year.

Francis, then Jorge Bergoglio and head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, lived through the dictatorship and its “dirty war”. Indeed, the darkest era in his past is that he may have contributed to two priests being tortured by the regime.

Esther Ballestrino
A significant influence on Pope Francis

A woman who played a major role in Bergoglio’s development was Esther Ballestrino. She headed the lab where he worked when he was still a chemist and hadn’t decided to become a priest. In 1977, her son-in-law and her pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter were abducted and tortured by the regime. In the absence of any news of them, Ballestrino joined with other women in founding the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ who would gather every week, demanding information, outside the presidential palace on that square in Buenos Aires.

Eventually, her daughter was released. But Ballestrino kept turning out with the other protestors. Unfortunately, the group was inflltrated by a man called Alfredo Astiz, from Naval Intelligence, nicknamed the ‘blond angel of death’. When the group published an advertisement listing the names of the ‘disappeared’ – the people abducted and about whose destiny no information was available – Astiz arranged for five women, including Ballestrino, to be arrested. They were tortured and eventually loaded, heavily drugged, onto a ‘death flight’: a plane that took them out to sea where they were dropped, hands and feet bound, out of the back of the aircraft.

So Esther Ballestrino died, one of the great sorrows in Pope Francis’s life.

And what memory did this conjure up in me?

I was conflicted over the Falklands War – conflicted over the Conflict. It strikes me as ridiculous that a group of islands off the coast of Argentina are possessions of a country, Britain, nearly 13,000 kilometres away. On the other hand, I loathed the Argentinian junta and deeply disliked the way they decided they could use military force to solve a territorial dispute. Above all, I disliked their obvious contempt for the views of the local population.

The use of military force and the trampling of the rights of the local inhabitants? It felt far too much like what the Israeli government does to Palestinians.

In any case, I can only be pleased with the way things worked out for Argentina, giving them a far more important victory than anything on the battlefield could have achieved: it freed them from a particularly nasty regime.

At the time, however, I remember being regularly sickened by the news. There was a day when I arrived in London from the suburb where I lived at the time, and caught sight of a startling headline in the local paper, the Evening Standard. The Argentinian cruiser Belgrano had been sunk by a British submarine, leading to the deaths of several hundred young conscripts. My stomach churned over that massacre, and even more over the gleeful celebration right-wing papers engaged in over it.

The Sun delighting in the deaths of conscript sailors

Then there was the recapture by British troops of the island of South Georgia. They took the surrender of the Argentinian garrison there. It was commanded by – Lieutenant Commander Alberto Astiz. Yes. The blond angel of death.

Both Sweden and France wanted to question him for the murder of some of their nationals. But the Thatcher government, pleading the Geneva Convention, had him questioned by a British policeman and, when Astiz refused to answer any questions, decided to release him and send him home.

So a torturer and murderer was treated with kid gloves, while the young conscripts on the Belgrano were sent to their deaths with callous indifference.

Alfredo Astiz, torturer, murderer, released by Thatcher

Funny to be reminded of all that by a book talking about Pope Francis. Funny but no fun. To me, that act of the Thatcher government ought to be remembered in perpetuity as a moment of glaring shame in the history of Britain.

Astiz was at last sentenced to life in prison in 2011. By the Argentines. Who again emerge from this sorry story, as they did from the war, with more honour than a deeply flawed Britain.

Labour languishing where once it soared

They’re funny old things, opinion polls. A bit discredited, in Britain. At the 2017 general election, they pointed towards a sizeable Conservative win, which would have justified Theresa May’s calling of an early General Election. She’d hoped to increase her small majority in the House of Commons. In the event, she did far worse than the polls suggested and lost her majority altogether.

That left egg on the faces of the pollsters, Theresa May, and those, including me, who felt that Jeremy Corbyn would lead Labour to a defeat of historic proportions.

Indeed, Corbyn supporters never tire of telling the rest of us that under his leadership, Labour achieved the biggest increase in its popular vote since World War 2. Which is true. It’s also true, however, that he still lost the popular vote to May and emerged with far fewer MPs. His supporters are less inclined to mention that, though it’s also true.

Given how much better their man performed than the polls predicted, they now like to dismiss unfavourable polls as fake news. Curiously, that doesn’t stop them triumphing on those occasions when a poll, even a single, isolated one, shows a Labour lead – not a frequent occurrence these days. I suppose its very rarity makes it all the more welcome to those frantic to prove that Corbyn is proving effective.

Well, the polls may indeed be only a poor guide to what will actually happen in an election. But between elections, we have no other indication of the state of the parties. And in the past, they’ve often proved more accurate than in 2017.

For instance, most of us in Labour went into the 1997 general election confident, though not complacent, about winning. The confidence was justified by the massive win, and it was based on excellent poll standings. Take a look at the graph. It shows the standing of the two main parties, as an average of the previous fifteen polls, from the moment where there are fifteen onwards.

How Labour fared in the polls in the runup to victory, and now

The lower pair of lines shows how, in the first seventeen months following the 1992 election, Labour had gone from trailing the Conservatives to establishing a healthy lead over them. The lead tightened in the actual election but Labour still won a landslide victory.

They were helped by the fact that the Conservatives were massively split, above all over Europe. The then Prime Minister, John Major, even called his anti-EU colleagues ‘bastards’. It has to be said that he was also rather a colourless figure, short of charisma or even any manifest talent for his office.

Today, the Conservatives are led by a colourless, uncharismatic leader with no manifest talent for her office. Her party is even more split than Major’s over the issue of Europe. Moreover, some of the most outspoken among her Brexiter critics, notably Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg, have set a new benchmark in bastardy.

Now look at the upper pair of lines, covering the seventeen months since the 2017 election. Unlike 1992, Labour under Corbyn started with a lead over the Tories, which seems to have dissipated. Now the two main parties are essentially level-pegging, and Labour may well be a little behind, though the difference is well within the margin of error for any opinion poll.

Things can change, of course, as they did in the 2017 election. But there is one big difference: back in 2017, Jeremy Corbyn was still a fresh face, a break from the old style of politics represented by establishment figures who were beginning to look well past their sell-by date. Since then, Corbyn has become far better known. He’s tried to steer a careful course between Brexiters and anti-Brexiters, committing to neither side, in order to avoid offending Labour voters from either. Unfortunately, that is very much the old-style, tired electoral game, where it matters more to count votes than to defend principles. His is a stance which rather takes the sheen off his appeal as a fresh, more principled figure and leaves him, instead, looking just as stale as his predecessors.

That might not matter if the approach were working. But the polls suggest it isn’t.

A big last-minute surge? Well, it can’t be ruled out. But given the image Corbyn projects today, I think it would be reckless to count on it.

Back in 1993, we’d already had fourteen years of Tory rule. But John Smith had taken the Labour Party to a position where, for the first time, our poll standing meant we could look forward to a forthcoming election with some optimism.

That is emphatically not the case today. At the moment, it looks as though Labour might win enough seats to form a minority government, as May leads now. Or it might lose again.

Opinion polls may not be reliable, but we have no other measure of where we stand. And the picture they paint today is far from pretty.

Corbyn supporters, and Corbyn himself, are calling for an early general election. Maybe they ought to be more careful what they wish for.

Clinton: showing how to beat reaction

They do say that, in politics, you shouldn’t build a campaign on nostalgia for the past, but on promise for the future.

It was the problem faced by John Major, British Tory Prime Minister after Maggie Thatcher, when he launched his “Back to Basics” campaign. Going “back” is never appealing. And there’s nothing particularly inspiring about “basics” either.

As a slogan, it had none of the spark of Tony Blair’s “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” The truth is that once he was in power, Blair concentrated on being tough on crime and much less determined in rooting out the causes, but as a slogan, it certainly had appeal, helping position him to take on the Tories and win.

Hillary: wrong on some things, right on many others, turning
into quite a campaigner. And hugely to be preferred to the alternative

That all came back to me when I saw Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Because, faced with Donald Trump’s slogan, ‘Make America great again’, so easy as to be simplistic, she answered with words suggesting that America is great still.

We have the most dynamic and diverse people in the world.

We have the most tolerant and generous young people we've ever had.

We have the most powerful military, the most innovative entrepreneurs, the most enduring values, freedom and equality, justice and opportunity, we should be so proud that those words are associated with us.

Now, you can agree or disagree with the sentiment. You can’t question the impact. Trump is looking backwards, to a supposed time when America was great, just as Major hankered after days when, allegedly, we were back with basics. Clinton proclaims the greatness of America today. And because she believes in today, she can paint an appealing picture of tomorrow.

Democrats, we are the party of working people.

But we haven't done a good enough job showing we get what you're going through, and we're going to do something to help. So tonight I want to tell you how we will empower Americans to live better lives.

My primary mission as president will be to create more opportunity and more good jobs with rising wages right here in the United States.

From my first day in office to my last, especially in places that for too long have been left out and left behind, from our inner cities to our small towns, from Indian country to coal country from communities ravaged by addiction, to regions hollowed out by plant closures.

And here's what I believe. I believe America thrives when the middle class thrives. I believe our economy isn't working the way it should because our democracy isn't working the way it should.

Clinton’s not naïve though, or a newcomer to politics. While she wisely presented a positive, forward-looking programme, she also knew that it was no use being good and kind and decent in politics. To win supporters, you also have to beat the other guy. When that guy’s Trump, that’s all the more important than ever, but also a lot easier for the opportunities he gives you.

… don't believe anyone who says I alone can fix it.

Yes, those were actually Donald Trump's words in Cleveland. And they should set off alarm bells for all of us. Really? I alone can fix it? Isn't he forgetting troops on the front lines, police officers and firefighters who run toward danger, doctors and nurses who care for us, teachers who change lives, entrepreneurs who see possibilities in every problem, mothers who lost children to violence and are building a movement to keep other kids safe? He's forgetting every last one of us.

Americans don't say "I alone can fix it." We say "we'll fix it together!"

And I particularly liked:

He spoke for 70-odd minutes, and I do mean odd...

That got a furious Twitter reaction from Trump. Rather confirming something else Hillary said:

A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons!

She was feisty, she was positive, she was forward-looking. She’s well ahead in the polls. She may not say all the things you, or I, would like but she has a message worth listening to. And boy, she's preferable to the alternative by light years.

Let’s hope she’s stays in front, right through to polling day and beyond.

And for us, back here in Britain, let’s hope we too can find a campaigner as effective as she is.

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.

Strange tale of an extremist, a Prince and the not-so saintly Maggie

It was ironic to see the pictures of Prince Charles, tea cup in one hand, using the other for an apparently cordial handshake with Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland and for many on this side of the water, one of the great bogeymen of all time.

The Prince and the Extremist
Extraordinary cordiality

He repeatedly leaned forward towards the Prince, apparently exchanging not merely remarks, but confidences. This is particularly surprising because they both have bitter history against the other, as Adams made clear yesterday: he blames the British paras for the terrible killing of fourteen people on Bloody Sunday, in Derry, in 1972, and the Prince is the honorary Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment. However, Adams did also recognise that Charles had “been bereaved by the actions of Republicans”, in a reference to the IRA killing of Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and a relative to whom Charles was particularly close (his “honorary grandfather”).

None of this was half so ironic, for me, than the contrast to Margaret Thatcher’s attitude when she was Prime Minister. She famously talked about the need “to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend”. That led to one of the more risible aspects of her long and painful reign: she banned the voices of extremist organisations being heard on British TV.

This meant that for six years, we could see Gerry Adams on our TVs, we could see his lips forming the words he was pronouncing, but we couldn’t hear his voice pronouncing them: instead, an actor would dub them in over the picture. Exactly the same words, mind you. The “oxygen of publicity” denial didn’t affect his message, only his voice.

This is one of the less well-remembered aspects of the Thatcher years. I always remind her fans of it, when they present her as some kind of secular saint, as they regularly do. It was an entirely pointless act, and damaged only Britain: you can imagine how difficult it made it to argue against freedom of speech limitations in other countries.

The ban kept running after Thatcher fell, perhaps out of deference to her memory. But finally, in 1994, her successor John Major dropped it. The only people who regretted its passing were the actors who were called on to dub the voices: it had been a nice little earner for them.

Today, that same Gerry Adams met and chatted for a few minutes to the next in line to the British throne. With every appearance of cordiality. No actor was on hand to repeat his words for him. And the earth didn’t fall into the sky.

In fact, what the incident did was to strengthen the growing bonds between erstwhile adversaries in Northern Ireland, as the Queen herself did three years ago, when she met Adams’ colleague and the current Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Martin McGuiness, and shook his hand.

Rather underlying the fact that if you want to bring peace anywhere, it’s a lot more effective to come to terms with your resentments, however deeply held they may be, however justified, and listen to your adversary. A lot more effective than spreading further hatred by labelling him a terrorist and extremist. And then trying to shut him up.

And if it turns out you actually can't, it’s laughable as well as ineffective

I'd be preparing for champagne in 2015, were it not for 1992

It was a strange old evening, 9 April 1992. 

Friends had gathered in our house, clutching bottles of champagne, one of them a magnum, though to be honest more in hope than expectation. It looked as though after thirteen years of Conservative rule, the first eleven under Margaret Thatcher, we might at last see Labour returned. Perhaps.

The fall of Thatcher, out of the blue nearly eighteen months earlier, had seemed to open the door a chink, giving us a glimpse of the myriad possibilities beyond. Of a gentler, fairer country, in which support for the underprivileged would not necessarily be viewed as a weakness.

The bellwether in the 1992 general election was Basildon. It would be the first of the marginal constituencies to declare a result. If the Conservatives held on to it, John Major’s Tories would be back in Downing Street; if not, Neil Kinnock might well form a Labour government.

It didn’t take long. Basildon made its announcement: David Amess had held it for the Tories, and the government clung on to office for another five years. Our friends trooped disconsolate into the night, the champagne uncorked.

The story even had a curious sequel. A year or so later we opened the magnum, and the wine was flat, the only time I’ve seen that with champagne. Perhaps I should have complained, but I didn’t: that the sparkle had gone from the wine seemed entirely appropriate to that joyless evening back in April 1992.

Now we have another dismal Tory government. It calls itself a coalition, because it includes some Liberal Democrats. The aim was that the Conservatives would get to pursue a ruthless policy of austerity to fix the country’s finances, while the Lib Dems would get constitutional reform – proportional representation and an elected House of Lords.

In the event, the Tories got their austerity and the economy has taken a severe turn for the worse, with debt climbing and an unprecedented triple-dip recession in the offing; meanwhile, both proportional representation and House of Lords reform were defeated.

Charmers all: Danny Alexander (Lib Dem), George Osborne (Con) and
David Cameron (Con) enjoy the moment they cut benefits still further

So this feels terribly like the run up to 1992 again. It’s a lousy government failing on everyone’s criteria, even its own. A little over half way to the next election, the desire for change is in the air. Labour is riding high in the polls and achieving good results in by-elections. It could be back in 2015.

On the other hand, 30 months before the 1992 election, in October 1990, Labour was averaging leads of around 10% in the opinion polls. Today, Labour’s lead is around 10%. Are we just looking at a mid-term lead that could be lost as quickly as it was gained?

As it happens, I remain hopeful. There were two great differences back then. The smaller parties represented far less. Labour and the Conservatives between them accounted for 85-90% of the total; today they’re in the mid-seventies. A 10% lead today is more significant than in 1990.

The other great difference is that in October 1990, Thatcher still had a few weeks to run as Prime Minister. After eleven years, most people had had enough of her. There’d been riots over her so-called poll tax and there was a general feeling that even her erstwhile supporters had just about had too much of a good thing. In November, she was unceremoniously ditched by the men whose careers she’d nurtured in the Conservative Party and government.

Lo and behold, the polls turned round. The Labour lead was slashed. Certain polls even showed the Conservatives in front. In the runup to the election, Labour was sitting on leads of 5% or less. By contrast, as it approached the 1997 election, which it won, Labour had leads of up to 20%.

Dumping Cameron after only two and a half years in office would feel much more like an act of desperation than the kind of renewal Thatcher's removal represented. But – who knows? The Tories are good at pulling rabbits out of hats. A 10% lead is good, but it isn’t impregnable.

To make things safe still needs a lot of work. Above all, Labour needs to realise that its lead is mostly down to the Conservatives. Their abject failure to hit their own targets, has cost them dear. The reaction against the government has taken Labour up into the low forties in the polls. But to be sure of victory, it needs to press on, up towards 50%, with leads in the high teens, as in 1997.

The Tories have done about as much as they can for Labour. It can’t just rely on the government continuing to shoot itself in the foot, however good it’s proved at doing that so far. Now Labour has to come up with something positive itself, convincing voters it’s ready for government. 

That has yet to happen, so I haven’t ordered the champagne, far less put it on ice. Even so – those opinion polls, those by-election results – they at least make me feel I can choose the bottles I want to purchase, plan the celebration I hope to hold. Whether I can move from plan to action depends on the two Eds, Miliband and Balls, at the head of the Labour Party today. Let’s hope two Eds are better than one and they can give us a 1997 rather than a 1992.

That’s an outcome to which I'd be happy to raise a glass.