When Memory Lane took me to Never Land

It must, I suspect, be my age that keeps driving me back down Memory Lane.

On my trip to London this week, I stayed in a hotel in Kensington. West Kensington, I should add, not the really fashionable bit. But even so, I wandered down a few charming Mews or around squares lush with leaves and with their private park in the middle, and saw how privilege is still doing just fine in Britain, Brexit or no Brexit, recession or no recession.

Quiet elegance in Kensington
How the other 1% live

The hotel was also within walking distance of Hyde Park. This is the biggest park in London, although technically only one end of it is actually Hyde Park: all the western bit is called Kensington Gardens. For a walker wandering around it, however, it all feels like one colossal extent of glorious greenery, with its fountains and even its lake, the Serpentine. Except that when Hyde Park gives way to Kensington Gardens, the lake changes name too, just to confuse visitors. It becomes the Long Water.

The Long Water. Looking towards the Serpentine

It occurred to me that I really didn’t know Hyde Park at all well. Mostly I only go there for demonstrations, and then only to the far eastern end. Then I trail along the side of the park and through the streets of London with a million or two others, doing our damnedest to stop damn fool acts like the Iraq War or Brexit. Quite why we bother isn’t clear to me, since we hardly achieved our aim on those occasions.

This time I went for two or three walks in the park and made a point of acquainting myself with some of the bits I’d never been to, or not been to for a long time. I went to see the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Playground, dedicated as the name implies to the memory of the person the French persist in referring to as “Leddi Di”. It looked like a fairly impressive playground but not that different from ones I’d seen elsewhere. Euro Disney it certainly wasn’t.

The Diana Pricess of Wales Memorial Fountain was also pleasant, but hardly breathtaking. And, because the designers had clearly decided not to let go of the theme once they’d got hold of it, they’re linked by a Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Path which is probably the best of the three, but only because a long path through fine parkland is always attractive.

None of these things, however, were my real objective in going to the park. I wanted to go, or rather go back, to the Peter Pan statue. Somewhere deep in my somewhat misty memory was a recollection of my parents taking my brother and me there when I was about eight, and telling me on the way that it was absolutely marvellous and evocative of the whole world of Never Land.

I couldn’t remember whether, once I’d stood before the statue, I’d felt any of that magic, and I wanted to get back to see what feelings it would awake in me.

You can imagine, I wanted to see whether I’d experience a sense of poignancy, of nostalgia, of the lost wonder of childhood, particularly as the parents who’d taken us to see Pan have both since gone to their graves. My wife always laughs at the way that I can spring a tear over a rom com. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity to indulge all my mawkish sentimentalism to the full.

Finally, I got there. And stood before the pleasant little statue, bits of which, like any bronze sculpture, had been rubbed by thousands of hands to gleam yellow. And what did it evoke in me?

Peter Pan. Rediscovered at last

Well, to be honest, nothing at all. No tingle of nostalgia. No pricking of the eyelids at long-distant recollections of childhood.

In fact, I couldn’t remember the anything about my previous visit to it at all.

Trump, Climate Change, and Britain's abandonment of independence

America first, we now learn, seems to mean the planet second.

That may strike you as a paradoxical position to take, America being, like it or not, part of the planet. If that’s your reaction, it only means that you’re one of those who feel we’re duty-bound to take reality into account in forming our beliefs. A great many others, and not just in America, seem to regard reality as an inconvenient obstacle, to be overcome in the quest of some transcendent truth.

Trump digs coal so much he’s prepared to sacrifice the planet to get it

Not just in America. Certainly not. If you’re a Brit in your thirties or older, you probably remember that great May Day in 1997, when Tony Blair grabbed Downing Street for Labour after eighteen years of Tory rule. A new age appeared to be dawning, hope was resurgent, a better future seemed within our grasp.

These days, it’s fashionable to focus on the disappointments that followed. That however is to belittle, to betray some remarkable achievements: a huge onslaught against child poverty, an unprecedented and sustained level of investment in the NHS, the incorporation of the convention on human rights into domestic law, devolution to the constituent nations of the UK, the Good Friday agreement, to name only some of the more remarkable. It seems a pity to focus instead on the poor performance in education and certain areas of benefits: it was a mixed bag, perhaps, but infinitely preferable to the unmixed bag of injustice and cruelty we’ve seen since Labour lost office.

Among the disappointments, however, one is particularly unforgivable: British participation in the Iraq War, which introduced further instability to the Middle East and precipitated a wave of international terror from which we’re suffering still today. It’s most recent manifestation was the suicide bomb attack in Manchester.

The seeds that disastrous adventure can be traced to the greatest weakness of New Labout. Peter Mandelson, always perceived as the would-be puppet master of the Labour government, summed it up when he declared himself “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Those are words I never expected to hear from the mouth of a Labour Minister. That people can get rich by contributing to society seems only fair, but that:

• Bankers can drive their banks into the ground and precipitate a financial crisis while taking eye-popping bonuses? 
• Tony Hayward, then Chief Executive of BP, point out that he’d like his “life back” after the Deepwater Horizon disaster on one of his company’s oil rigs? 
• Alex Cruz, Chief Executive of British Airways, refusing to take any responsibility for his company’s apparent inability to run a reliable computer system?

These are indeed examples of people who are “filthy” rich, rather than deservedly rich – who have taken their remuneration rather than earning it – and no one should be relaxed about them, intensely or not, least of all in the Labour Party.

New Labour suffered from a tendency to be star-struck by wealth and power. Its proponents felt at ease with the filthy rich and powerful. No one is more prosperous and powerful than the United States. That was enough to drive us into that war, even though it was led y the man who surely then held the uncontested crown of worst US President even, Dubya Bush.

Today Trump has seized that crown from Bush’s head. The new worst President has pulled the US out of the Paris agreement on climate change. And the saddest aspect from Britain’s point of view? While Germany, France and Italy were quick to oppose Trump, Theresa May’s Britain – Brexit Britain – wouldn’t, or possibly couldn’t, line up with them.

Certainly, there’s no reason to believe a Tory government would be any less star-struck by the US than New Labour was. But in addition, we now have another constraint on our independence of action: Brexit means we have been thrown into far greater subservience still to the US. We can’t stand up to Trump because we need him.

It’s another strange paradox. Many backers of Brexit claimed that its aim was to make Britain independent. The reality is that it will reduce our independence. And just when we should be learning what dire consequences it has on our lives when we abandon it – surely the Iraq War was lesson enough.

Taking back control? You sure? Or are we just handing it to yet another appalling US president?

It was a triumph for Trump. But for democracy? Not so much

It’s become a bit of a recurring refrain these days: you have to bow to the will of the people. And you have to learn to listen to them.

If you’re in any sense a democrat, then the first statement is so obvious as hardly to need saying. So why do people say it? 

Because they mean rather more than you might think. What they mean is that not only should we bow to the will of the majority, but we should like it. That’s no part of the democratic compact. We have every right to oppose a decision of the people and to try to amend it; the only obligation on us is to accept that if the will of the people remains firm, we have to acquiesce to its ultimately being acted upon, however much we dislike.

What about listening to people? I keep being told that too, and it’s another obvious idea. So again the people who say it must mean more than the words suggest. They are asking us not so much to listen, but to go along with what we’re hearing. If people are saying that there are too many immigrants, I feel I can listen and then explain, yet again, in the clearest possible terms, and with as much patience as I can muster, that they’re problems aren’t being caused by immigrants.

Indeed, by focusing on immigrants, they let off the hook the very groups they should be targeting: employers pressing down on wages, reducing rights at work, making jobs as precarious as possible, all with the support of a government that regards being “business-friendly” as meaning backing those employers, reducing their taxes while increasing everyone else’s, and recouping the money by cutting back on benefits. Opposing racism, as well as being morally right, also makes good economic sense. So I’m fully prepared to listen, but not with a view to reaching some kind of compromise with notions that are both repugnant and counter-productive.

What does all this mean in practice, right now? Well, in the US, we are under an obligation to accept the outcome of the 8 November election. It was fought under long-accepted rules – the provisions of the US constitution – and Trump won. We have to accept that he has the right to occupy the White House.

But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go towards all those people who tell me to knuckle down and stop complaining about his victory. Why shouldn’t I complain? It is perfectly democratic to prepare to oppose him. And this is particularly true in the case of Trump: his victory may have been won under the rules, but it wasn’t democratic, in the strict sense that it did not reflect the will of the people. Why?

Trump: elected but not democratically

Because Hillary Clinton beat him. She took 60,556, 142 votes to his 60,116,240, a clear majority of 439,902 even though it was small (under 0.4%).

Why was she denied?

Well, as its name implies, the United States was set up by a bunch of states which agreed to pool their sovereignty. They certainly weren’t prepared to give up all control over their lives though they went a great deal further than, say, the European Union, where states are retaining so much of their sovereignty that one of them, Britain, is even packing its bags and leaving.

One of the impacts of the retention of states’ rights in the US was that the President would not be elected directly by the people but the states, though with each state casting a vote weighted to reflect the size of its population. In other words, the President is elected indirectly with voters only choosing electors, state by state, and the electors choosing the President.

This can obviously create a situation where the people’s choice is out of line with the electors’, as it did this week. The phenomenon is relatively rare but, strangely, it has happened twice in the last five elections. In 2000, Republican George Dubya Bush beat Al Gore despite having fewer votes, before Donald Trump pulled off the same trick against Hillary Clinton this week.

Just in case anybody has forgotten, Dubya was the man who seemed to fulfil HL Mencken’s famous forecast:

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

He took us into the Iraq War, one of the most appalling decisions of recent decades, which has left the Middle East in chaos and led to the emergence of so-called ISIS with the atrocities that we know followed.

Now we have Donald Trump elected in the same way, against the will of the people. This is encouraging, if only because it shows that there’s still a majority in the US against the unstable bigotry Trump represents. He seems likely to illustrate Mencken’s prediction about the Presidency, even more fully than Dubya did.

So, Trump has won the office, in accordance with the rules. We have to accept that. But he doesn’t represent the will of the people and lacks democratic legitimacy.

Given the fear we must have that he’ll take decisions even more catastrophic than Dubya’s over Iraq, why on Earth shouldn’t we oppose them?

Brexit: the High Court speaks for the British Constitution

Today, the British High Court decided that the government could not, on its own authority alone, launch the procedure that would take Britain out of the EU.

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the Lord Chief Justice
presided over the historic hearing

That’s the exercise known as “triggering article 50”, referring to the relevant article of the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty. It states:

Any member state may decide to withdraw from the union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

Sounds straightforward. Britain voted for Brexit on 23 June and, despite the regrets of Remain supporters like me, all we have to do now is trigger the article 50 process and go. But, as always, the devil’s in the detail.

The first awkward bit of detail is a problem I’ve mentioned before: just how far out do we go? Do we leave the Single Market? Do we leave the Customs Union? All options have their merits and their disadvantages. They need to be weighed and judged. And the great question is – by whom?

‘By whom’ takes us straight to the second tortuous detail, which is the one that was addressed by the Court today. It’s all about those words “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. Just what are those requirements in a nation without a written constitution?

Many of us feel that much of British history has been about the conflict between an executive power originally represented by the monarch and a body that has increasingly come to represent the people, Parliament. All the progress there has been towards freedom, and there’s a lot further to go, has gone hand in hand with increasing the authority of the Legislative power over the Executive.

Now the peculiar characteristics of British power is that this long process has moved executive authority from the Monarch to Ministers who are themselves Members of Parliament. So that ancient tension has now been internalised within Parliament, opposing a powerful minority, the members of the Government, to the majority, all other MPs.

Those of us who would like to see British liberties protected and, ideally, extended are on the side of the Parliamentarians. Unfortunately, a great many people see far more efficiency in action being taken by the Executive untrammelled by such oversight. They particularly favour that approach if they see the government about to take action they like – so, for instance, a lot of Brexiters want Parliament to back off and let the Prime Minister, Theresa May, trigger the exit process herself, on her own authority, without referring the matter to Parliament at all.

In its judgement, the High Court’s view is that this isn’t the right way to go. Brexit is a key decision for the nation. The government should not be able to take it alone. It should, at the very least, obtain Parliament’s assent to it.

The irony is that if the government asks for that approval, it will almost certainly get it. A few MPs will stand up for the Remain cause and vote against triggering Article 50. Far more will see doing so as a defiance of the will of the people expressed in a referendum, which they consider wrong, or at least career-limiting.

David Lammy is a Labour MP who says he would vote against triggering Article 50. But, he claims, the real issue isn’t whether individual MPs vote for or against, it’s that they should have a vote at all. As he says, “it’s about whether you believe in a sovereign parliament.”

David Lammy:
anti-Brexit parliamentarian strong on principle

I do believe in parliamentary sovereignty, so I’m in favour of their getting that vote. That’s a curiously topical matter. Just yesterday, Lord Chilcot, who wrote the damning report on British involvement in the Iraq War, was questioned by MPs. His view was that the problem was caused by the dominating personality of Tony Blair, who drove his government into the war and refused all parliamentary scrutiny. It seems particularly appropriate that the next day a court has ruled that, on an equally crucial issue, parliament must have its say.

The government will appeal the decision, so that might still not happen. My hope is that the Supreme Court upholds the High Court, and Parliament gets to take the decision – even if it goes against me and in favour of Brexit.

So much for the matter of principle. .

At a more pragmatic level, and in the longer run, having Parliament take the decision does suggest that there’s a glimmer of hope for those of us who’d like to remain in the EU. MPs consulted about Brexit may also be consulted about the final Brexit terms. It will be quite a time before negotiations reveal what those terms will be, but when they’re known, Parliament should vote again.

That takes us back to the first point of awkward detail I mentioned earlier. What kind of Brexit is going to be on offer? Many people tell me that Brexit means Brexit and that means getting out of every single European institution. Well, I think if we get that far, the prospect may start to look so utterly appalling that more MPs might feel they can, in conscience, vote against it. So, in order to avoid a disastrous Brexit, they might refuse a Brexit at all.

That’s why, for both principle and pragmatism, I think the High Court’s judgement is the best piece of EU news we’ve had since that sad night of 23 June.

An excellent reason to salute it.