You can find the judgment here. It's fairly short and punchy so you should read it if you're at all interested. If you want some temperate and balanced comments from me then read on. Warning: there is nothing about the Establishment below, very little relevant to the prospects for Brexit and something about James I.
Monday, 30 September 2019
Tuesday, 10 September 2019
Brexit stuff - UPDATED
Consider yourself warned by the headline. But there is something for everyone here, I think, whatever your views on the subject.
1. Ivan Rogers on no-deal Brexit. A lot of sense here. One minor caveat from Bruno Maçães: "Rogers like many is wrong,though, that the backstop is something the UK not the EU wanted. And he admits this by saying EU will not scrap backstop. Why would you insist on having what you don’t want?" Interesting stuff. One big point: no deal is not the end. And what is the end? Revocation is not the end. A second referendum is not the end (what about a third?).
2. Why hasn't Brexit happened yet? asks Christopher Caldwell. Again, good stuff, although, after you have read Rogers himself, you may feel that Caldwell is too harsh on Rogers.
3. Historical prorogations.
4. The one iron-clad law of Brexit discussion prevails again. Jonathan Freedland, writing in the New York Review of Books, starts his piece as follows: "An easy way to measure how much and how swiftly Britain has changed in the age of Brexit is to compare the Britain of 2019 with the image the country projected of itself [in the past]. The last time that pre-Brexit Britain showed itself to the world, the last time it thought hard about its identity, even its own meaning as a country, was ..." I pause here to see whether you can finish Freedland's sentence. When was it, this solemn occasion on which Britain last thought hard about its identity? At the 2017 General Election? Maybe at some point during the 2016 referendum - or in the aftermath of its surprising result? No, of course not. The last time that the 60-something million citizens of this country sat down and truly considered our own meaning as a country was - yes, you guessed it! - "... on a warm summer’s evening in 2012 when, under the guiding hand of the movie director Danny Boyle, London staged the opening ceremony of that year’s Olympic Games." (The rest of the article writes itself and can be safely ignored.) Mr Boyle's achievement in channelling the thoughts and desires of an entire nation into one evening of made-for-TV entertainment is truly remarkable. Unfortunately he is not a politician and so not available for helping us out of our current mess. Perhaps instead we could turn to the politician who presided over the amazingness that was London 2012 - the man who was the triumphant Mayor of that at-ease-with-itself city now sadly one with Nineveh and Tyre. As I recall, that man, whoever he was, was "a huge asset to the Games, as a jovial Master of Ceremonies, the right mayor for the right place and time. He lifted the mood before Team GB golds rolled in, and became a totem for many of the British characteristics Danny Boyle sought to showcase in the opening ceremony, the mildly deranged humor, the appearance of chaos that overlies purpose...". If only that human representation of the London 2012 opening ceremony were available to serve as Prime Minister now! How unfortunate that we are stuck with Boris Johnson, the very antithesis of everything that we loved in 2012.
5. UPDATE. Here's a pleasant coincidence. This is the LRB, with an interesting article about the intellectual background to the Single Market (an international free-trade zone horribly insulated from the passions of the populace) and how awful it is. Meanwhile, here is the Economist, describing the Single Market (an international free-trade zone wonderfully insulated from the passions of the populace) and how it has failed to go far enough. The two articles largely agree about the facts. And here (with a bit from Alan Walters!) is how this all plays into Brexit: "What happened was single market in services never happened in part because it would favor UK and the largest part of the British economy was never fully integrated into the EU". It is perhaps fair to say that the UK is to services what Germany is to manufacturing, and would have dominated the service sector of Europe in the same way that Germany dominates manufacturing had it been allowed to do so. I doubt it is as simple as saying that the Brexiteers' mouths could have been stuffed with gold, but perhaps enough mouths could have been stuffed.
1. Ivan Rogers on no-deal Brexit. A lot of sense here. One minor caveat from Bruno Maçães: "Rogers like many is wrong,though, that the backstop is something the UK not the EU wanted. And he admits this by saying EU will not scrap backstop. Why would you insist on having what you don’t want?" Interesting stuff. One big point: no deal is not the end. And what is the end? Revocation is not the end. A second referendum is not the end (what about a third?).
2. Why hasn't Brexit happened yet? asks Christopher Caldwell. Again, good stuff, although, after you have read Rogers himself, you may feel that Caldwell is too harsh on Rogers.
3. Historical prorogations.
4. The one iron-clad law of Brexit discussion prevails again. Jonathan Freedland, writing in the New York Review of Books, starts his piece as follows: "An easy way to measure how much and how swiftly Britain has changed in the age of Brexit is to compare the Britain of 2019 with the image the country projected of itself [in the past]. The last time that pre-Brexit Britain showed itself to the world, the last time it thought hard about its identity, even its own meaning as a country, was ..." I pause here to see whether you can finish Freedland's sentence. When was it, this solemn occasion on which Britain last thought hard about its identity? At the 2017 General Election? Maybe at some point during the 2016 referendum - or in the aftermath of its surprising result? No, of course not. The last time that the 60-something million citizens of this country sat down and truly considered our own meaning as a country was - yes, you guessed it! - "... on a warm summer’s evening in 2012 when, under the guiding hand of the movie director Danny Boyle, London staged the opening ceremony of that year’s Olympic Games." (The rest of the article writes itself and can be safely ignored.) Mr Boyle's achievement in channelling the thoughts and desires of an entire nation into one evening of made-for-TV entertainment is truly remarkable. Unfortunately he is not a politician and so not available for helping us out of our current mess. Perhaps instead we could turn to the politician who presided over the amazingness that was London 2012 - the man who was the triumphant Mayor of that at-ease-with-itself city now sadly one with Nineveh and Tyre. As I recall, that man, whoever he was, was "a huge asset to the Games, as a jovial Master of Ceremonies, the right mayor for the right place and time. He lifted the mood before Team GB golds rolled in, and became a totem for many of the British characteristics Danny Boyle sought to showcase in the opening ceremony, the mildly deranged humor, the appearance of chaos that overlies purpose...". If only that human representation of the London 2012 opening ceremony were available to serve as Prime Minister now! How unfortunate that we are stuck with Boris Johnson, the very antithesis of everything that we loved in 2012.
5. UPDATE. Here's a pleasant coincidence. This is the LRB, with an interesting article about the intellectual background to the Single Market (an international free-trade zone horribly insulated from the passions of the populace) and how awful it is. Meanwhile, here is the Economist, describing the Single Market (an international free-trade zone wonderfully insulated from the passions of the populace) and how it has failed to go far enough. The two articles largely agree about the facts. And here (with a bit from Alan Walters!) is how this all plays into Brexit: "What happened was single market in services never happened in part because it would favor UK and the largest part of the British economy was never fully integrated into the EU". It is perhaps fair to say that the UK is to services what Germany is to manufacturing, and would have dominated the service sector of Europe in the same way that Germany dominates manufacturing had it been allowed to do so. I doubt it is as simple as saying that the Brexiteers' mouths could have been stuffed with gold, but perhaps enough mouths could have been stuffed.
Monday, 2 September 2019
Rory Sutherland on London
Sutherland is always worth reading. Always. I am sure he is wrong about this and yet I can't see how.
"two married London teachers in their early fifties owned a small house now worth just under £1 million. The husband was originally from East Anglia, and wanted to move back there. His London–born wife refused to leave.
"two married London teachers in their early fifties owned a small house now worth just under £1 million. The husband was originally from East Anglia, and wanted to move back there. His London–born wife refused to leave.
The choice was clear. They could move to a very nice house in Suffolk and continue to teach while having £500,000 in the bank with which to retire early, buy ostrich-skin elbow patches, donate to the Guardian website every day — or whatever it is teachers do with half a million quid. Or they could continue as before.
I don’t know the ‘right’ answer. It’s not for me to judge how much the wife values living in London. But I do know a telling question you could ask them. Can you imagine the same decision happening in reverse?
Imagine a couple of teachers living in a nice house in Norwich who one day win £500,000 on the National Lottery. Is it likely that one of them would say, ‘Oh, thank God for that. We can move to a much shittier house in London and work until retirement age’?"
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