Poor little Britain

It’s cold out there at the moment.

Sean Bean in Game of Thrones: “winter is coming”

Still, it is November, in the Northern Hemisphere, so we have to expect temperatures to be pretty uncomfortable. And at least we know that there are only three weeks to go before the days start to grow longer again. While the cold will be even more bitter, at least the lighter evenings will contain a promise of better times to come.

So much, at least, for the physical weather. When it comes to its status in the world, the cold has only just started to grip Britain. It will deepen a great deal further in the coming years, and not start to recede until British people at last emerge from the illusions behind which they prefer to hide.

Most central among these is the sense that their country is still a world power. A lion whose roar is heard around the globe. Some will cling on to that belief for a long time, but others are beginning to take the tough object lessons reality is delivering to them.

For many months, the hard Brexiters in government have been insisting that they will not move on the amount Britain will have to pay the EU on leaving. This is the so-called ‘divorce bill’. While a member of the EU, Britain entered into a number of commitments many of which involved the payment of money. Among other things, there are people who have retired from the EU Civil Service, to whose pensions Britain pledged to contribute. There is a sense in Brussels that these commitments have to be honoured despite Britain’s departure.

The hard Brexiters have been insisting that the figure should be low.

Take the case of Priti Patel. She had to resign from her post as International Development minister earlier this month, having demonstrated her humility in public service by conducting her own foreign policy while on holiday in Israel, where she had meetings with senior ministers including Benjamin Netanyahu, without reference to any other member of the government including the Foreign Secretary. Demonstrating the diplomatic self-control which make her such a loss to foreign affairs, she announced at the weekend that the EU could just “sod off” with their demands for a divorce bill.

It must have come as quite a blow to find that her erstwhile boss, the Prime Minister Theresa May, is now talking about paying as much as £50bn, perhaps twice the sum many had hoped. Ultimately, of course, there will be a compromise and a sensible figure will be agreed, whether near the £50n level or not. The key point is that Britain blinked first, and had to. In a doubtless unwelcome reminder to Brexiters, May had to admit that Britain is not in the driving seat, it can’t call the shots, it has to move towards the EU before the EU will move towards us.

Then came the affair of the Trump far-right Tweets. When Britain leaves the EU, it will be more dependent than ever on the US. President Trump (it still feels slightly unbelievable to write those two words together) early on made it clear that he was keen to offer Britain a trade deal, a piece of news Brexiters reacted to with glee. Sadly, Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary was in the UK at the beginning of this month. He stressed that the US was ready to give Brexit Britain a trade deal, but we might just have to make a few minor accommodations. Like giving up on European-style regulation – shorthand for our having to abandon our unreasonable demands for our food to be edible.

Just over two weeks later his boss, the President himself, decided that it would be judicious to retweet three tweets with Islamophobic videos attached.

Even the most elegant of houses has to have a sewage system. All nations have to have their political cesspools. Britain’s is called ‘Britain First’, a neo-Fascist grouplet of no significance in our politics. Indeed, the woman who put up the tweets the President chose to pass on, chalked up the triumphant total of 56 votes in a run for parliament. Just to give some perspective on that figure, the winner of the election took 16,897 votes.

She is now facing criminal charges for religiously aggravated harassment and for using threatening and abusive language.

This is the person whose views the President decided to endorse.

In another example of our unreasonable attachment to certain standards, many of us in Britain rather resented this behaviour. The Prime Minister isn’t famed for her courage in standing up to Trump – she was the first head of government to visit him in the White House and issued him with an invitation to a State visit immediately, without the customary waiting period we generally like to take to see what kind of a President we are dealing with.

Yet even she felt she should speak out this time, telling Trump explicitly that he had been wrong. His reaction? To tell her to mind her own business.

When Home Secretary Amber Rudd spoke to the House of Commons about the Trump row, she repeated her boss’s rebuke to Trump. But then she went on to remind her listeners that the relationship with the States is vital. Which is true, and particularly now. But does she mean that we have to be careful what we say about him – even when he endorses our Fascists?

Many have been asking whether the invitation to Trump for the State Visit would be cancelled. It looks as though what Britain’s going to do is leave the invitation out there, but simply fail to set a date for it. Which, if you’re feeling generous, is a classic British compromise; if you’re feeling a little more severe, you might view it as something more like moral cowardice.

But what choice does Britain have? We’ve chosen Brexit which means we’ve chosen dependence on the States. Even under Trump.

Game of Thrones got it right. Winter is coming, and it’s going to be cold. For a very long time.

Trouble in Paradise

The latest revelations about how the richest protect their wealth and minimise their tax burden tell us little but confirm a great deal. The information in the Paradise Papers show us a truly glittering pageant of celebrities using offshore tax havens, including fine upstanding members of the community, such as Queen Elizabeth II herself, Trump’s Commerce Secretary with shady friends in Russia, Wilbur Ross and, regrettably, the mostly admirable Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau.

Why, it seems that even Bono, fine humanitarian and protector of the poor in the Third World, may have been benefitting from tax regulations that protect the rich of the Old World. Ironically, I read (in a piece from the Sunday Express, not the most reliable of sources, but this story has the ring of truth), that Bono’s own foundation was set to denounce the tax haven system until it realised that he was a beneficiary.

Still, it isn’t these fine luminaries that interest me here, but just two specific individuals, for what they reveal of how our system works more generally.

(Lord) Michael Ashcroft
Worthy citizen, tax avoider and major contributor to the Tory Party

The first of these is Michael Ashcroft, Lord Ashcroft, former Deputy Chairman of the British Conservative Party and one of its main individual contributors. For many years, he held “non-domiciled” status in the UK, meaning he could live in the country without paying its taxes. When he was raised to the House of Lords, he pledged to give up that status and become a full UK resident, but failed to do so for ten years, when a change in the law would have forced him to give up his peerage otherwise.

It now turns out that he’s a major tax haven investor. That saves a power of tax. Who needs non-dom status when you have tax havens you can take advantage of – and without even giving up your peerage? You might feel, and I’d tend to agree, that the law needs changing again, so that a member of the House of Lords can’t benefit from tax havens any more than from being non-domiciled in the UK.But let s see why that s not likely to happen.

The use of a tax haven saves someone like Ashcroft a great deal of tax. That sets up a fine cycle of mutual benefit. With so much more money to play with, it’s easy for him to make contributions to his favoured political cause, in this case the Conservative Party. For the 2017 election campaign, he stumped up £500,000, which by British standards is a massive contribution to a political party.

Now, isn’t that neat? Serious money for a political party. The party that happens to be in government. In government at least in part thanks to that money.

Now, how much priority would you expect that government to set on changing the law to deal with the abuse of tax havens?

The second person is something of a favourite of mine.

Glencore is one of the world’s major commodities companies. The Paradise Papers reveal that Glencore “loaned” £45m to a shady Israeli businessman, on the basis that it would be repaid if they failed to win a lucrative deal in the blood-soaked, deeply corrupt so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nothing illegal seems to have happened, but that only highlights the weakness of the law. It may have been legal, but there was nothing edifying about this transaction.

So how about this favourite character of mine? He wasn’t with Glencore at the time, but he is now. He’s the company’s non-executive chairman.

His name is Anthony (Tony) Hayward. Not a name to conjure with, you may feel, and I’d agree though I have mentioned him before. If you’ve heard of him at all, it’s likely to have been in the context of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, when an oil exploration platform caught fire and the ensuing oil spill polluted vast swaths of the Gulf.

Deepwater Horizon: fitting monument to reign of Tony Hayward

The oil rig belonged to BP. And the Chief Executive of the time? Why, Tony Hayward.

He came to fame with a series of brilliant gaffes. The one I like the best was his apology for the damage and, indeed, loss of life caused:

We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.

I’m sure he wanted all that unpleasantness over. As I’m sure that the millions whose lives or livelihoods were affected by the oil spill, to different degrees but seldom positively, couldn’t have given a flying curse for how much he wanted his life back.

Now just as the tax haven issue proves how little consideration of integrity or any kind of principle drives our governments, the Tony Hayward story reveals how little high business office owes to competence or even basic humanity. The colossal remuneration these people receive is often justified as being a reflection of the responsibility they accept. But far from being driven into the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth, Hayward simply stepped from BP into a series of lucrative and comfortable directorships, including at Glencore.

He wasn’t with Glencore at the time of the Congo deal. But still, it’s interesting that it was a company with as savoury a reputation as Glencore that offered him its non-executive chairmanship. And that a man with his track record accepted it.

Might that be just a coincidence? Speaking for myself, I doubt it.