Time for more women leaders?

Two impressive performances have left me wondering whether we need more women at the top of politics. Not just because equality of rights is desirable, which it is, but also because they seem to be doing a lot better than most of the men.

That’s not all women leaders. Theresa May was convinced that she was right and, impervious to all calls to change course, steered her government straight onto the rocks. And Margaret Thatcher set a new benchmark in the kind of sociopathic government that has no compassion for the victims of the suffering it inflicts. No. Some women leaders are admirable, others anything but.

The two women who impressed me this week did so because the greatest measure of a politician’s worth is how they react to a crisis, and they have risen strongly to the challenge Coronavirus presents.

Neither of them is Jacinda Ardern. As I’ve written before, Ardern may be the most outstanding leader the world has today. My only regret is that, in New Zealand, she leads a country of just 5 million people. Imagine if she were leading the country of 330 million, currently mismanaged by the overgrown toddler in the White House?

So here are the two other women I feel are handling things well.

One was Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister. I was impressed by her quiet, firm and yet encouraging way of delivering bad news. She tweeted:

I know lockdown gets tougher as we head into the weekend, and the weather gets better (even by Scottish standards). But it really matters that we stick with it – we’re seeing some progress but it will be quickly reversed if we ease up. So PLEASE, #StayHome – it will save lives.

A little humour helps communicate a message – we all know the (not entirely undeserved) reputation of the weather in Scotland. As for the message itself, it’s firm but optimistic. It’s what one expects from a true leader.

She reminds me of a particularly potent speech by Churchill. He made it after the British victory at the battle of El Alamein, significant because it was the first time the German army had been defeated on land in World War 2, but still minor because the North African theatre was something of a sideshow compared to the titanic clashes that were taking place in Russia.

Churchill knew how to present the success in a way that was encouraging without exaggerating its importance:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Isn’t that what Sturgeon was saying? The lockdown’s getting tougher, but we’re seeing progress. It isn’t time to relax, but there’s reason for hope.

Merkel, Ardern, Sturgeon
Good to have more of them

Funnily enough, the other woman leader who impressed me used words even closer to Churchill’s. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, told her Parliament:

We are not in the final phase of the pandemic, but still at the beginning. Let us not now gamble away our achievements and run the risk of a setback.

Now there’s a tough statement. Germany’s not even at the end of the beginning, but still at the beginning itself. I’m sure she’s right. I wish some of the men we have leading major nations were prepared to be as open about where we stand.

Donald Trump, for instance, keeps trying to undermine the lockdown restrictions, even supporting demonstrators who (rashly) turn out to protest against them. We know that he believes he needs the economy humming again if he is to have a chance of re-election in November, and to achieve that, he seems willing to sacrifice more lives. That’s despite the US already having more Covid-19 deaths than any other, country in part because of his delays in launching counter-measures.

In the UK, Boris Johnson also worked hard to undermine social-distancing steps. On 3 March, he boasted that he was still shaking hands, even in the hospital he’d just visited where CVid-19 patients were being treated. Providing a useful demonstration of how irresponsible that was, he fell sick with the virus himself. Since he refuses to hand over to someone else even temporarily, but hasn’t been able to work for the last three weeks, the UK is now facing this crisis with no one to exercise the authority of a Prime Minister.

Not that I’m calling on him to hand over to a woman. That might mean the present Home Secretary, Priti Patel. If anyone could make Maggie Thatcher look like an exemplar of gentleness and empathy, it would be Patel.

Thatcher, May, Patel
No need for any more of them

No, not all female leaders are admirable. Just as not all male leaders are as lamentable as Bush or Boris: Sánchez in Spain or Conte in Italy, among others, have shown guts and determination in dealing with the virus, even if they were late getting started. But the women have been more uniformly impressive.

I’m not alone in noticing this. Jon Henley and Eleanor Ainge Roy in the Guardian, for instance, point out that only some of the male leaders, but all of the women, have handled the epidemic well.

That sounds like a lesson we ought to learn.

Boris Coup: Day 15

Day 15 of the coup and, it has to be said, it still isn’t all going Boris’s way.

At least, he’s finally got his prorogation of Parliament in place. On Monday evening. Just as soon as he possibly could. On the way, in the small hours of Tuesday morning, he did have to lose one more vote – maintaining his 100% record of six votes lost out of six votes held – when the House of Commons failed to agree his second demand for a snap general election.

But at any he’s got those irritating parliamentarians out of his hair for the next few weeks. Just like Charles I did when he got fed up with them. Though, to be fair, that didn’t work out all that well for Charles, the only king literally to have lost his head.

In any case, day 15 saw the announcement that the highest court in Scotland decided that the prorogation was illegal and declared it null and void. They didn’t actually order that Parliament be recalled, leaving it to the Supreme Court in London to confirm or deny its judgement and decide whether to issue the order.

Still, however the Supreme Court decides, it was good to see one set of judges saying that it was unconstitutional to suspend Parliament, just because it was annoying the Prime Minister. Most of us would feel the same. Well, most of us who think that Parliamentary Democracy isn’t just an empty phrase.

Tom Watson: only Deputy Leader of Labour
But showing a lot more leadership than his nominal boss

Meanwhile, on the other side of the now-suspended House of Commons, Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is due to speak out for a clear decision by the Party that it demands a new referendum even before an election – Watson reckons that an election can’t decide the Brexit issue – and that it explicitly backs remaining in the EU in that referendum.

An excellent plan. We’ve had three years of trying to find a Brexit formula that will please a majority of the people, and have been unable to come up with one. Doesn’t rather suggest that the problem isn’t about one deal rather than another, but about Brexit itself? There simply is no Brexit deal that will leave us better off.

So why not oppose Brexit altogether?

And Labour, committed as it is to protecting the interests of the many, should surely be opposing a measure that would leave the many less well of than today.

It’s good to see leadership from the Labour Party. Though disheartening that it has, once more, to come from someone other than the nominal leader.

That leader, Jeremy Corbyn himself, is sticking firmly on the fence on Brexit, and keeps insisting that he wants to see a general election soon. Though not quite as soon as he was demanding a while back. It must suit him to have the excuse of wanting to get a no-deal Brexit firmly off the table first, since he must have worked out that with the polls as bad for Labour as they now are, he would be unlikely to win a majority just now.

The interesting thing is that the Tories, too, are doing badly. Theresa May must be getting some consolation for having been driven out of office by the ghastly BoJo when she sees what a mess he’s in. She must be splitting her sides.

In fact, one of the eye-openers of the first 15 days of the coup is what it has revealed about Boris. Yes, he’s just as unpleasant, narcissistic and authoritarian as most of us imagined. But, and this has certainly come as a surprise to me, he’s proved himself a far less effective politician than I thought.

My fear has been that all his car crashes of the last few days might just make his supporters stronger in their backing, seeing him as the victim of the vile tricks of those wicked Parliamentarians. But the last two polls have his lead down in the low single figures, from the low double figures. Still a lead – no good news for Corbyn there – but far less than before the coup.

So it looks like he may be a significantly less redoubtable figure than I had feared.

For that relief, at least, let’s be profoundly grateful…

Boris Coup: Day 9

Day 9 of BoJo’s coup, and the wheels have really come off the Borismobile.

His first three parliamentary votes as Prime Minister all went against him. His first Prime Minister’s Questions were a disaster where even Jeremy Corbyn, generally pretty wooden, came across as not just more honest but a lot quicker than Boris. Even though arguably he’s neither.

It looks as though the combative style Boris chose to adopt turned out to be thoroughly counter-productive. Threatening to expel Conservative Members of Parliament (members of his own party) if they presumed to vote against his wishes worked entirely against him. It seems to have strengthened their will to resist his rule. Certainly, without that band joining the Opposition, he would not have lost his three votes.

Nor has carrying out his threat and sacking those recalcitrant members done him any favours. Nick Soames had been a Conservative MP for 36 years, as well as being Winston Churchill’s grandson. Ken Clarke sat in Parliament as a Tory for even longer, 49 years. Phil Hammond was Chancellor of the Exchequer until a few weeks ago, when Theresa May’s government fell.

Sacking figures of such stature from the Conservative Party has excited a great deal of criticism and protest from those who remain.

Phillip Lee literally crossing the House, while Boris is speaking,
to join the Lib Dems and wipe out the Tory majority of one

It also means that his voting strength in the House of Commons is reduced still further. He had, indeed, already lost his tiny majority – of one – when Philip Lee decided to cross the House, voluntarily leaving the Conservative Party to join the Liberal Democrats, choosing a moment of maximum drama and harm to make the gesture: in the middle of BoJo’s report to Parliament on the G7 meeting.

No. Boris’s strongest moves all seem to have backfired. One wonders how long Dominic Cummings, the shadowy figure who seems to be controlling all the doings of Downing Street, will survive. After all, this highly combative, not to say confrontational style, is very much his. BoJo may just have to throw him to the wolves to try to win back some sympathy from his fellow MPs.

If nothing else, the behaviour of those MPs makes clear, if anyone needed it clarifying, just why Boris launched his coup. Parliament is a major annoyance to him. It acts to block the arbitrary decisions of a man who feels his will should be sufficient to set national policy.

For those of us who believe that Britain should be a democracy, that is exactly what we believe its role should be: to prevent arbitrary rule, to stop anyone else setting himself up as some kind of latter-day satrap ruling with virtually monarchical power.

Unfortunately, a great many others take a wholly different view. They mouth the word democracy, but it’s rather like a child denouncing an action as unfair: children don’t usually find it unfair to be given a sweet denied to a sibling, and these pseudo-democrats only complain about undemocratic behaviour when it fails to yield them what they want.

Sadly, there are a lot of people like that. And they weren’t defeated in those parliamentary votes. Indeed, they will certainly resent them, as the papers which reflect their views already do. Indeed, many of them are particularly incensed because one of the votes Boris lost was to call a General Election. Labour abstained and so the motion fell short of the two-thirds majority needed.

Corbyn, say the right-wing papers, chickened out.

The Tory Press whipping up fury over BoJo's defeats

He was entirely right. Because for once he looked at political reality with a clear eye, instead of believing it to be as he might wish it. Labour would lose an election called now. And, if anything, the three defeats suffered by Boris only make that more likely. Those who back him will regard them as instances of Parliament denying them their entitlement, and doing so for self-serving or even corrupt reasons.

Astonishingly, given that no one belongs so entirely to the Establishment as BoJo, they will see him even more than ever as their champion against the established parties in Parliament. They will rally to his cause.

Labour needs to wait. Boris is on a rapid downward slope. The sheen is coming off his premiership. In time, even his supporters will begin to see that.

Corbyn still talks of agreeing to an election soon. That may just be spin, to try to cover his change of position, from forever calling for a vote. If he has any sense, he certainly won’t agree to one in the next few weeks.

A few months from now would be a far more favourable moment. Although I doubt BoJo, or whoever takes over from him, will be half as enthusiastic about holding an election then than they are now. 

Who then will the Conservative press call chicken?

BoJo: a sight probably best left unseen

A statement generally attributed to the outstanding German Chancellor of the nineteenth century, Otto von Bismarck, declares that “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made”.

The same is true of democratic decisions. Or perhaps I should say semi-democratic, or even partially democratic, decisions, since I’m thinking of the ‘election’ of the UK’s new Prime Minister, Britain’s buffoon Boris Johnson, or BoJo as we like to think of him, without affection.

Would you buy a used car from this man?
(with apologies to the campaign against Richard Nixon)

He was elected leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore Prime Minister, by 92,153 members of his party. Rather fewer than 100,000 people, mostly male, mostly elderly, mostly white inhabitants of South-East England, chose the man to fill the most powerful post in a nation of 67 million. Over half of them women. Mostly far younger than the Tory Party average. Many of them non-white. The vast majority living outside South-East England.

There was a time when I shared the view that many of my fellow Labour Party members still hold, that a party’s leader should be elected by its members. I’ve begun seriously to doubt that idea.

Jeremy Corbyn was elected by 303,209 Labourites. Some of them were councillors, representing around 5500 people. Most of them were simply individuals, representing no one but themselves. Unknown, self-selected, not subject to any kind of public scrutiny, they chose the leader of the Labour Party.

Just as 90,000 odd Conservatives have just chosen our Prime Minister.

Each Member of Parliament represents around 70,000 voters, since it is the duty of MPs to represent all their constituents, whether they voted for or against them, or didn’t vote at all. We know our MPs. They’ve been through a public vetting process.

It’s beginning to feel to me as though we’d be serving democracy better if we let them take the decision on who should lead their party or the country.

Especially as we live in what we like to think of as a parliamentary democracy.

Still, I have to admit that my view may be coloured by the choices party members have made in recent years. There was a time when the British system could point to a couple of virtues alongside its many faults. One was that it tended to produce stable governments. The other was that it produced able leaders.

Well, stability is a fading memory. In this decade, only Theresa May held a parliamentary majority for her own party, until she threw it away in an unnecessary and disastrously-run election. Apart from 2015-2017, government has been a cobbled-together business since 2010, made of coalitions or inter-party agreements.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Plenty of countries are run all the time by coalitions. It’s just that Britain seems not to cope with them well, and the governments we’ve had over the last ten years have seemed to be always on the brink of tearing themselves apart.

So much for stability. What about the ability of the leaders? In the past, this came from people serving years in parliament, then for a while as hangers-on of government, then junior ministers, then in Cabinet. The process turned them from neophytes into experts, able to get the most from the system because they knew how it worked.

From time to time, there’d be people who shortcut this process. William Pitt the Younger, in the eighteenth century, Prime Minister at 24. Or Tony Blair, who became Prime Minister without previous ministerial experience, but then Labour had been out of office for 18 years and had precious few experienced people of the right kind of age to call on.

Pitt and Blair were exceptionally talented, think what you like of their policies. They rose to the challenge. But look who we have now.

In the red corner, we have Jeremy Corbyn. 32 years as a backbench MP, never having to deliver anything. A man who could limit himself purely to words, since no one with a sense of responsibility would let him anywhere near the authority to take action. He talked long and eloquently about a range of worthy causes which fascinated Islington dinner tables or Luton pub bars, but touched no one in the mass of the electorate. The results were predictable: unable to take a position on Brexit, he has put off voters from both camps; incapable of taking an intelligent position on antisemitism until just a few days ago, and then only under huge pressure, he has lost the trust of all but the shrinking band of his true believers.

In the blue corner, we have BoJo, who’s worse. Why, he has actually been through the experience mill. He was Mayor of London, with a tenure probably best summed up by his purchase, against expert advice, of second-hand water cannon from the Germans, no doubt with the intention of quelling resistance to his high-handed rule; they were never used and were finally sold for scrap at a massive loss, covered by taxpayers.

His most recent government experience, as Foreign Secretary, was even more deplorable. His ignorance of his briefs meant that officials were constantly having to correct his errors (“cleaning after him was quite a full-time activity,”, according to a Foreign Office colleague); he was rude to his hosts in a number of countries; he imperilled the life of a British subject imprisoned by the Iranians, and certainly extended her captivity, by his mishandling of negotiations with the Tehran regime.

In other words, he’s been tested. But far from making him any better, it just found him wanting. That, however, hasn’t stopped him being elected Prime Minister.

By 92,153 people.

Not an edifying sight. In fact, like the making of sausages, probably best left unseen.

Hey, New Zealand: couldn't you lend us Jacinda for a while?

It’s a tale of two accidental leaders…

Jacinda Ardern was never meant to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. Or at least not yet, not so early as to make her the youngest in a century and a half. She was serving as Deputy Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party when, just seven weeks ahead of the 2017 General Election, the then Leader, Andrew Little, stood down in the face of the dire poll standing of the party.

That’s not an issue for the British Labour Party under its present leadership. It trails a thoroughly discredited Tory government in the polls, at a point when it needs to be well ahead to stand any chance of winning the next election. But Corbynists shrug such matters off. There’ll be a surge, they say, as there was last time. They ignore the fact that the surge wasn’t enough to win and only produced a defeat less drastic than had been feared.

Funnily enough, Corbyn was an accidental leader too. He only stood for the leadership because no one else on the left was prepared to throw his name into the hat. He had no expectation of winning and, indeed, only made it onto the ballot because political opponents within Labour agreed to nominate him as a way of giving the left a chance to be in the game. They didn’t think he’d win either, and how they must be regretting it now.

As it happens, Ardern didn’t win the General Election. She came second with 46 parliamentary seats to the National (conservative) Party’s 56. But coalition negotiations allowed her to assemble a government and she took office. Since then, she’s impressed again and again, including in her personal behaviour: giving birth while in office in a way that charmed the nation.

At no time has she been more impressive than in response to the dire events that took place last Friday, 15 March. A new and far more dreadful Ides of March than those that marked the assassination of Julius Caesar. In Christchurch, a terrorist opened fire in two Mosques killing 50 worshippers and injuring many others.

Her statement to Parliament moved me to tears. She found an extraordinarily powerful way of expressing her total solidarity with the victims and their friends or relatives. It was a moving statement that said that these Muslim immigrants belonged to New Zealand and New Zealand belonged to them. It was a highly effective way of rejecting the views of anyone who might be inclined to nurse  xenophobic feelings towards the victims, a sense that it was tragic but nonetheless, they were somehow wrong to have come to New Zealand, that they were in some sense responsible for the attack on them.

She said:

We cannot know your grief, but we can walk with you at every stage. We can. And we will, surround you with aroha, manaakitanga and all that makes us, us. Our hearts are heavy but our spirit is strong.

Jacinda Ardern with the victims
Showing aroha, manaakitanga and ... leadership

She spoke of “us”, embracing all New Zealanders. And she underlined the message by using the Maori words for love and a much deeper sense of hospitality. The Prime Minister was saying categorically and clearly that the victims belonged in New Zealand and deserved its welcome.

Talking of the presumed perpetrator who, following her example, will not be named here, she said:

A 28-year-old man – an Australian citizen – has been charged with one count of murder. Other charges will follow. He will face the full force of the law in New Zealand. The families of the fallen will have justice.

He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety.

And that is why you will never hear me mention his name.

He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist.

But he will, when I speak, be nameless.

And to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost, rather than name of the man who took them.

He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.

I find it hard to read these words, courageous, outspoken, resolute, without feeling a pricking of tears in my eyes.

Compare them with what Jeremy Corbyn said when asked whether, in a second referendum, he might vote for Brexit:

It depends on what the choice is in front of us. If we’ve got a good deal in which we can have a dynamic relationship with Europe which is all the trading relationships and so on that might be a good way forward that unites the country.

“It depends”. A prevaricating, vacillating reply. And why does he make it? Because he thinks there is a Brexit deal that can unite the country. Which means he wants to pull in the xenophobes who voted to leave the EU out of a dislike of immigrants. Where Ardern tells xenophobes that New Zealand stands for different values, Corbyn tries to appease them.

He must know he can’t. Any deal that he would call ‘good’ would involve a softer Brexit that leave voters would regard as a betrayal. He’s making the same error so many others have made before him, not least David Cameron who called the Brexit referendum: he’s throwing raw meat to people who will only demand more, when they see that pushing their demands gives results.

Ardern stood firm and she’ll be admired for it. Corbyn yielded and he’ll be despised. Two accidental leaders, but only one is truly a leader, showing that accidents can turn out well on some occasions and pitifully badly on others.

How I wish we could borrow her for Britain, to lead Labour, and eventually the country. And send Corbyn back to his allotment to tend to his vegetables. He’d be much happier. As would Britain.

Alas, New Zealand wouldn’t let her go. But can we perhaps can find her like ourselves? At least she’s shown us what to look for.

Corbyn: the sheen fades

It’s slightly embarrassing to watch a man not gifted with great wit trying to be clever. How much worse it is when he tries to be devious…

The assessment of Jeremy Corbyn that sticks most strongly in my mind is the journalist Nick Cohen’s: Corbyn’s a man “not overburdened with intellect”.

Jezza: not the sharpest knife in the drawer

His fans, on the other hand, see him as a new brand of politician opening a fresh perspective on the future. In particular, they regard him as a man of courage and principle but also, in a slightly contradictory way, as a wily political operator. These claimed qualities are never more clearly displayed than in his approach to Brexit.

There are constituencies, especially in the North of England, that Labour must hold if it is ever to form a government, where a majority of electors voted to leave the EU. On the other hand, Labour members are overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU, as is the majority of the electorate in a great many other Labour seats. Because he needs both groups, Corbyn has decided to take no position on Brexit, in the hope that neither will be put off by his backing the other.

This is a policy known by his admirers as “constructive ambiguity”. To most other people, it’s hypocritical opportunism: sitting on a fence in order to hang on to support from two camps without honestly backing either. To such critics, this stance simply means sacrificing principle to electoral calculation, and is distinctly short of either honesty or courage.

Indeed, his approach suggests that far from introducing any kind of innovation into politics, he’s just the same old, same old political calculator, who tries to be all things to all voters to try to win elections.

What’s worse, we know him to have been a lifelong Brexiter. It’s true that he campaigned for Britain to remain in the EU at the time of the 2016 referendum, but without any great enthusiasm. So there is a second suspicion about his ambiguity: that it may be a way of covering up his true hostility to the EU, which he dare not reveal in a party 80% of whose members take the opposite view.

Since he frequently claims to want to campaign only for policies endorsed by the membership, this too is seen as a stance not overburdened with bravery or integrity. It is also not likely to endear him to the majority in the party membership.

His reputation for wiliness is based predominantly on this careful triangulation over Brexit, designed to retain support from both sides of the debate. But, as I said before, being this devious requires brains. If intellect is not your strong suit, the deviousness becomes too obvious and, far from retaining support, it puts people off.

That’s precisely what’s happening today. While Corbyn was still the new kid on the block, and seen to be bringing a refreshingly innovative approach to politics, his support soared. That made Labour Europe’s biggest party, and propelled him to a far closer defeat by Theresa May’s Conservatives in 2017 than most of us had expected.

Today, though, the gloss is dimming fast. Many of those who joined the party at that time are remainers, and while they might have been in doubt about Corbyn’s true position on Brexit then, today they increasingly understand that he opposes their aspirations. So now they’re leaving in droves. The party’s still huge but it has begun to shrink.

No wonder people are losing faith in politics:
two unpopular main parties.
But Corbyn is taking Labour even lower than the Tories 

The same seems to be happening to Labour’s electoral support. A first poll finding that Labour was seven points behind the Conservatives was only a straw in the wind – a single poll can easily be an outlier. But then there came a second poll with a similar Tory lead; a third with the parties exactly tied; and a fourth with a five-point Tory advantage.

It’s looking as though the Conservatives are building a small but sustained lead.

The only surprising thing about that would be if anyone were surprised. Voters like strength. They like resolve. They certainly don’t like “creative ambiguity”, which they respond to as evasiveness.

Above all, many voters turned to Labour as a party that would oppose Brexit and the Tories’ stance. But now they see Corbyn offering nothing better than a different version of Brexit. No wonder their backing is dropping.

Not that the Conservatives are doing well either. Both parties are now well below the 40% level. In other words, they are both seen as discredited, untrustworthy and a less than attractive choice to lead the country. It’s just that under Corbyn, Labour’s seen as even less attractive than one of the most unpopular governments I have ever seen in Britain.

Ah, yes. There may have been some shine on the Corbyn phenomenon when he got started. But, boy, is it fading now.

Traditional triumph in the board room

It seems that top executive pay in Britain rose by 11% last year, while on average pay packets rose by only 1.7%. That 1.7% is a pay cut in real terms since it isn’t enough to cover inflation.

In 2016 it would have taken a worker on the median wage 157 years to earn as much as a top executive would pick up in a year. There has been progress since those dark days, however. In 2017 the figure had risen to 163 years.

It’s not for me to suggest that a top director isn’t worth 163 times any ordinary person. So I’ll leave it to someone much closer to all these matters. The Guardian quoted Andrew Ninian from the Investment Association, a body representing Fund Managers, not generally amongst the lowest paid themselves:

Investors have repeatedly highlighted their concerns with excessive CEO pay, so it is frustrating that the message does not appear to be getting through to some FTSE 100 boardrooms. This year we have seen more FTSE 100 companies get significant votes against their remuneration reports than in previous years.

So even though shareholders have been voting against these colossal increases, they go through anyway.

If shareholders can’t stop them and executives, who benefit from them, won’t, then who could? 

Government maybe.

Sadly, though Theresa May spoke out loudly for executive pay moderation while she was campaigning for election, she’s been back-pedalling hard ever since becoming PM again. She has, for instance, dropped the proposal to put worker representatives on boards.

So there’s no prospect of any slowing in the drive for ever-higher boardroom pay any time soon. Something that people who backed Brexit ought to think about. You wanted control brought back home? Just look who you’re handing it to.

Not that there’s anything new about any of this. Following my mother’s recent death, I have a huge quantity of photos and correspondence to go through, and even a few books (we gave most away but I kept some). One was a collection of cartoons by the American Peter Arno from the 1940s. I happened to be glancing through it today and came across this one.

‘The motion has been made and seconded that we give
ourselves a raise in salary. All those in favour say “Aye”.’

It seems that the triumph of the board room is by no means unique to our times or indeed to Britain. A tradition honoured by time, you might say.

After all, there’s very little else to honour it, is there?

Britain going rudderless to the chasm

Leadership is hard to define. But it’s easy to recognise when you see it. And easy to spot when it’s missing.

Take Winston Churchill pronouncing perhaps the four most important words of his career: ‘We shall never surrender’. They sent a shiver up the spine of my mother when she heard them in 1940.

‘We were alone against the Nazis,' she told me. 'We knew a great many people near the top of government wanted to open peace talks. Churchill’s words told us the fight would go on.’

My mother never voted for Churchill in her life. But she recognised this act of leadership for what it was.

A counter-example? George W. Bush paralysed in a classroom of children when told his country was under attack on 9/11. And then taking longer to get to ground zero in New York than it took Bill Clinton, though Clinton had been in Australia at the time of the attack and there was a ban on international flights into the US for several days afterwards.

No wonder Dubya struck that pose on the deck of an aircraft carrier, under a  ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner, after US troops had brought down Saddam Hussein. Having failed to show leadership when called on to do so, he needed to ape it later to try to make up.

Britain today is on the brink of the most serious step since watching the breakup of its Empire in the 40s and 50s. The EU has given the country access to a huge free trade area since 1973, and with that access has come investment, trade and jobs. In less than nine months, it is due to leave and there is still no clear vision of what future it will face.

The uncertainty is itself a factor in the country’s economy. Companies, with no indication of how Brexit will look, are beginning to plan for its being abrupt and violent – a hard Brexit where Britain leaves with no agreement in place for continuing trade with the EU or, indeed, with other countries. Investment plans are going on hold or even reversed, with plans to transfer production to other countries.

The impact on jobs and the economy generally is likely to be massive.

Why are we in this position? Because Theresa May as Prime Minister, though she claims to preside over a Cabinet, is in fact doing little more than refereeing a constant battle between a group of warring ministers. Some seem more than ready to accept a hard Brexit, if only as a way to break completely from EU regulation, whatever the cost. Others favour different levels of ‘soft Brexit’ where Britain continues to accept some parts of EU regulation in return for some of the benefits.

May keeps her position unclear, ostensibly because she doesn’t want to reveal her hand during negotiations, though most of us suspect that she actually has no definite position. She’s trying to hold the ring between diametrically opposed contestants, and therefore refuses to pick a side of the argument.

All she claims to want is to keep as many as possible of the benefits of EU membership, such an open border between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland (which is remaining in the EU) and ‘frictionless trade’ with the EU. In return, she wants to accept little or no regulation by the EU.

It’s not surprising she feels this way. To accept almost any degree of EU regulation might be regarded as remaining the EU ‘by stealth’ and a ‘betrayal of the will of the people’ expressed in the referendum vote for Brexit. On the other hand, the benefits of membership are vital. She’s trying to square a circle, trying to take benefits without obligations, a position the EU has already rejected. They claim, correctly, it’s an attempt to have one’s cake and eat it.

May: she may be doing her best but no one knows what it is.
So it's not good enough.
No leader she

Whatever May’s approach is, leadership it ain’t.

Opposite her is Jeremy Corbyn, leading the Labour Party. His position is equally difficult. There is a trend in the Labour Party, mostly in its leftmost reaches (from which, as it happens, Corbyn emerged) that opposes EU membership. It’s an odd tendency that seems never to wonder why it ends up sharing platforms with the far right. If you’re agreeing with people with whom you have nothing in common, it’s worth asking whether you might have gone wrong somewhere.

If you have odd bedfellows, it might be because you’re in the wrong bed.

But there are other more practical problems emerging for Brexiters of the left. Most notably, they’re in a minority in the Labour Party.

Even Corbyn’s biggest trade union backer, Unite, is now questioning whether Brexit really is good for its members’ health. They can see the jobs going, along with the workers’ rights the EU imposed on the essentially right-wing British regime. They’re beginning to demand that Corbyn endorse an explicit pro-EU stance.

This is an embarrassment to Corbyn, who needs Unite support but has been as assiduous as May in avoiding any clear position on Brexit. He’s caught between his roots in left-wing Brexitism and the unpleasant realisation that the majority of Labour, and even of his fan base, increasingly backs staying in the EU.

Corbyn with his pal McCluskey of the Unite Trade Union
But Unite members are beginning to ask for more from Corbyn.
He's not giving it. No leader he

So he’s as paralysed as May. Unable to take a stand on Brexit. Unable to lead his party or nation either towards a hard or soft Brexit, or towards remaining in the EU.

Again, I say, whatever that is, it ain’t leadership.

The worst of it is that a government as weak as May’s could fall. Rumours reach me that we should prepare for an election in October. That might leave Corbyn in number 10, with just five months to Brexit day and everything to negotiate. He might, at last, be forced to take a position.

I have friends who claim he would choose to stay in the EU rather than accept a hard Brexit. That would be a courageous position to take: he too would be assailed by Leavers high and low accusing him of betraying the will of the people. Would he really do that? It might be easier, politically, just to claim it wasn’t his fault that the Brexit was hard, and that he had no choice but to accept it.

That would be followership, of course, not leadership. But if nine months out, he still can’t even say that remaining in the EU might be an option, how can we be sure that he would just weeks before the fatal day?

Either way, what’s certain, is that Britain stands on the brink of a historic decision. And in neither of the parties likely to be in government to make it do we see any sign of leadership on the question. Just when the country needs it more than usual.

Not a prospect to inspire much confidence.

Mission accomplished: déjà vu

It’s always a little sad to see someone who really can’t be expected to know better, take credit for completing a job when they’ve barely even started. Worse still, they may have started down the wrong route. A child, say, who carefully paints all the parts of his new model before assembling it, only to find they no longer fit together afterwards.

Or the US President who claims to have achieved his objective when he has achieved nothing – or, worse still, achieved the opposite of his intent.

Dubya in 2003

That was my first thought when I heard that Donald Trump had claimed ‘mission accomplished’ following the US-French-British missile strikes on Syria. It was exactly the same claim as made by Dubya Bush back in 2003, giving me a thoroughly dire sense of déjà vu. That followed the invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Dubya clearly felt he’d achieved a major success, a view that looks jaded fifteen years on, with fighting still raging in the region and the only winners in Iraq being the West’s great bogeyman, Iran.

That didn’t stop Trump making the same claim for his missile strikes. And I suppose he was right in the most limited possible sense: he gave the world notice of his intention to use missiles against Syria, and he has indeed used missiles against Syria. If that was the extent of his mission – to demonstrate the military power at his disposal – then I suppose the mission was indeed accomplished.

Donald Trump in 2018

One might imagine, however, that such an action ought to deliver more than that, however. More than allow Trump a feel-good macho glow (Macron of France, too, I suppose, though whether May enjoys machismo it’s hard to say – but then, little surprises me about her any more). Generally, one would expect the use of massive military force to advance some cause or another, beyond the purely personal. 

Topple President Assad, maybe? 

End the suffering of Syrian civilians after seven years of civil war? 

At least ensure that chemical weapons would not be used against them again?

Maybe that last goal may be achieved, though I think it would take a brave man to assert it. We shall see. And even if it, it’s unclear to me that being killed or crippled is that much less unpleasant by artillery fire than by chemical weapons.

As for overthrowing Assad or ending the war, it would take a high degree of naivety to believe that the missile strikes will have achieved that much. Or even that bringing Assad down, however desirable in itself, would do any more in Syria’s current crisis than the equally attractive overthrow of Saddam did in Iraq.

Perhaps there’s one negative benefit the strikes have produced: they seem not to have destroyed any Russian equipment or inflicted any Russian casualties. That suggests that we may have avoided a third world war for now.

No. It’s hard to believe that these strikes have done anything very much, except persuade people in the west that, because something had to be done about the chemical attacks, it was legitimate to just about anything, which is what has now been done.

That may have made Trump, Macron and May feel better about themselves. Which I suppose is a benefit of sorts. Though they’re unlikely to have done anything for the Syrians or, indeed, for anyone in the West.

Still, Mission accomplished. Again. In some sense of the expression.

Age of midgets

As Britain staggers into an ill-considered Brexit, it feels to me that future generations, struggling with its painful consequences, will look back and wonder at the age of midgets that led them there.

Corbyn, Cameron, May
Do we really deserve no better?

Britain has been here before. Neville Chamberlain trying to buy peace from Hitler. Anthony Eden taking Britain into war over Suez. John Major crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Second or third-rate Prime Ministers failing to meet their challenges.

These are Tory examples, but Labour has its own spectacular mediocrities to add to the mix.

Ramsay MacDonald, as Prime Minister in 1931, led Labour into coalition with the Tories. His austerity policies crucified the people Labour was set up to defend. Tony Blair, though a giant when with Gordon Brown he battled child poverty and invested in the NHS, chose to be a moral pygmy when he obsequiously followed the US into a needless, harmful and unjustified war in Iraq.

It’s such midgets who dominate the British political scene once more.

In both main parties, leaders are giving precedence to the health of their parties over the wellbeing of citizens. Britain is sleepwalking into Brexit, a slow-motion car crash which the rest of us can only watch with growing horror because we don’t have a leader with the guts to step on the brake or turn the wheel.

The Tories are the most culpable. David Cameron, the previous Prime Minister, called an unnecessary referendum in the hope that a comfortable victory for continued EU membership would see off the toxic and insurgent Eurosceptic wing of his party.

Unfortunately, as we know, the result went the other way.

That result was deeply flawed. And not just because the victory was wafer thin.

First of all, it was a choice between a single option – there was just one way to stay in the EU – and a myriad of others – leaving the EU with no relationship in place (hard Brexit), agreeing a trading arrangement, staying in the Customs Union, staying in the Single Market, and there may be others. A plethora of Brexit campaign groups testifies to the diversity of views.

Secondly, Brexiters made false promises. Far from saving money, Brexit will cost us more. New trade agreements will be harder to sign than was claimed, and the terms will be less favourable than those we are giving up. It’s unclear how we can avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

It seems likely that once the real nature of Brexit is known, the level of dissatisfaction would produce a majority for the Remain side at least as big as the Brexit camp won in 2016.

There’s a majority in parliament for staying in the EU, though making it effective would require cross-party cooperation, with pro-EU Tories and Labourites voting together. Against the Tory leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May, but also against the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Alongside Cameron, these are the other two midgets of our time.

May claims to be pro-EU but refuses to oppose Brexit. Corbyn’s a long-term Eurosceptic, but his party has a 2:1 Remain majority. Though his fans trumpet his honesty and courage, he refuses to come clean as a Brexiter or to endorse a Remain position. Again, his fans like to underline the contrast between him and Tony Blair, but this kind of spineless prevarication is like nothing so much as the spin Blair fed us on Iraq while proclaiming his honesty and demanding our trust.

May won’t oppose Brexit for fear of splitting her party. Corbyn won’t oppose it for fear of losing a number of supporters for his own. Both hide behind the ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the referendum. However, Britain isn’t a plebiscitary democracy but a parliamentary one. We elect MPs and delegate decisions to them, reserving the right to remove them next time if they go against our wishes. Constitutionally, nothing stops MPs voting against the referendum result.

That may be too much to ask. Still, the referendum said nothing about what kind of Brexit we should accept. Once the real terms of Brexit are clear, what’s to prevent a specific question being asked about them? Voters could choose between accepting the terms, going for a hard Brexit instead, or staying in the EU. A new referendum would protect MPs from the accusation of rejecting the people’s will.

What would be the harm?

May’s ruled it out. She feels, probably rightly, that it would deepen the rifts in her own party.

Corbyn’s ruled it out too. Though, as is his wont, in no consistent way. When Diane Abbott, a supporter within his leadership team, called for a second referendum he took no action. That was odd, because she has a trail of public relations disasters behind her, for which most Shadow Cabinet members would have long ago been sacked. When, on the other hand, his rival Owen Smith made the same suggestion, he was fired at once. It seems that Corbyn, a serial rebel – 500 votes against the party leadership before taking the leader’s mantle himself – is happy to be a top-down autocrat when it suits him. He also endorses the conservative principle of collective cabinet responsibility over the national interest, when he can use it as a weapon against an opponent.

Like Blair, he prefers pragmatism to principle and personal authority over the national interest. He also seems committed to preserving another fine tradition, that of political double standards.

So the midgets at the head of both parties keep the country firmly on the road to Brexit and the slow-motion car crash continues to unfold before our fascinated but impotent gaze.

The final judgement will be made by later generations. It is they who will suffer the consequences of Brexit. I suspect they’ll be asking, ‘how did our parents choose such petty and incompetent leaders when we so badly needed figures of stature?’

Which is my own question precisely.

Doug Jones: a key victory. One to emulate in Britain

What a relief – an unexpected one, to me at least – to see Doug Jones beat the alleged sex abuser and paedophile Roy Moore for a Senate seat in Alabama.

A famous victory. We need more of them. Here too.

The state is solidly Republican, so for a Democrat to win is extraordinary in itself. But Doug Jones isn’t just any Democrat. He proclaimed on his campaign website that, “I will defend a woman’s right to choose and stand with Planned Parenthood”.

He adds, “I believe in science and will work to slow or reverse the impact of climate change” putting a gulf between himself and Donald Trump. And, again flying in the face of far right views including the President’s, he proclaims that, “discrimination cannot be tolerated or protected. America is best when it builds on diversity and is welcoming of the contributions of all”.

These are bold statements of a liberal outlook. Just the kind of views that sink most candidates in the US, especially in the Bible Belt. But despite all that, Jones was elected.

Of course, he was helped by the fact that his opponent was mired in shocking, disgraceful scandal. But then, Trump had made claims to have engaged in much of the same behaviour in his past, and that didn’t stop him getting to the White House. It seems that the mood has changed in the United States, and when moral bankrupts like Moore run, it takes only courage and decency to beat them.

That’s great news. Congratulations to the US for a step back towards a more civilised polity. But also a comfort for the rest of us, who still have to strike out along that road.

Because in Britain we too face a government that is weak and indefensible. Not because it has been engaging in shameful sexual behaviour – some Members of Parliament have but most MPs seem not to have been caught up in that scandal, including the current Ministers, with one exception (Damian Green, deputy Prime Minister in all but name, is having a torrid time at the moment).

No, in Britain, the tribulations of the government are down to the ineptitude with which it’s handling the biggest question of our time for this country: Brexit. Again and again, Ministers and not least the Prime Minister, Theresa May, find themselves ill-prepared, inconsistent in their approach, incapable of presenting an argument effectively.

As a result, the other EU nations – the EU 27 – constantly out-negotiate the government and leave it having to make concessions.

I’m not particularly upset about that. The concessions seem to take us towards softening Brexit. They may in the end leave us able still to enjoy many of the benefits of EU membership (at the cost of having to comply with some of its obligations), making Brexit a somewhat less damaging prospect.

On the other hand, it leaves the government looking like damaged goods. Weak. Adrift. Inept. Bereft of leadership.

In other words, for different reasons, the British government looks like a target easy to strike. Ripe for an effective campaign from its adversaries. An open goal, virtually.

If that puts the government in the role of Roy Moore, who do we have to play Doug Jones? That, sadly, is where the analogy breaks down.

Up against the British government we have an excellent shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, putting up a powerful, coherent narrative and, frankly, running rings around the incumbent Brexit secretary, David Davis.

However, this is an issue of such importance that the Prime Minister, rightly, has taken a directing role in the negotiations. Her Brexit Secretary handles the detail, but the broad thrust is in her hands. What we need in front of her is a figure capable of running rings round her like Starmer does round Davis.

And what do we have? Jeremy Corbyn. Who seems to have taken a Trappist vow of silence on Brexit. He has nothing to say. Even when journalists pressure him to take a stance, he refuses to do so. Doug Jones proclaiming his commitment to a woman’s right to choose? Sadly, nothing that bold, radical or powerful is coming from Corbyn.

A friend and Corbyn supporter tells me he’s “keeping his powder dry”. The words “put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry” is often attributed to Oliver Cromwell, as an exhortation to his soldiers.

If they’d kept their powder dry by never using it, Cromwell would have died on the scaffold instead of Charles I.

Trust me. If the powder is ever going to help, you have to keep it dry, certainly. But then you actually have to open fire with it.

Doug Jones did. Look at the result. When will Jeremy?

A first glimmer of hope in the Brexit tunnel

Since the morning of 23 June 2016, when the British electorate demonstrated to the world that a referendum is a poor way of reaching good sense in politics, I’ve never felt so encouraged about Brexit as today.

A fine day in Winter. A good moment for a glint of hope on Brexit

Much can still go wrong. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove remain senior ministers in the British government. They were leading figures in an anti-EU campaign that took political mendacity to levels not often achieved in pre-Trump democratic nations. Leaving the EU would free £350m a week for the NHS, they claimed; the reality is that leaving the EU will cost huge sums and the NHS crisis worsens by the day.

Instead of being driven from power as such dishonesty deserves, they continue to exert great authority at the highest level of government. It would be unwise to write them off. They will counterattack and it would be sensible to expect them to be highly effective.

Nevertheless, we can still enjoy, at least for now, an outline agreement between the UK and the EU in which Theresa May in effect conceded that we might not actually leave. In order not to create a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, she accepted the principle that the whole of the UK might remain aligned on regulatory standards with the EU, at least for some aspects of trade.

That means that she has opened the door to the possibility of our staying in the EU Single Market in effect, if not in name. If we can hold off the wild men of Brexit, such as Gove and Johnson, and make sure this happens, we shall at least have limited the damage that Brexit could do to our economy. That’s both in maintaining easy reciprocal access with our major trading partners in Europe, but also in fending a threatened dependency on an arrangement with the US. Such dependency, it has already made clear, would mean our abandoning standards that matter to us.

We would, if all this happens, have limited the worst of the damage to us. We will have maintained values and standards that protect our way of life. What we will have given up is merely the right to have any say in defining those standards: we will no longer have a vote in the deliberations that decide the regulations we adopt.

In other words, we shall have cut off our noses to spite our faces, but at lest we won’t have completely shot our foot off.

For that small mercy, on this fine winter’s days, let’s at least be thankful.