|
There is no shortage of experts predicting what Putin may do if Zelensky fires his Western long-range ATACMS (army tactical missile systems) deep into Russia. On Syria’s borders are both US military bases and Russian including Putin’s strategically important naval base at Tartus on the Mediterranean. But opinions how Russia might respond to a major Israeli attack on Iran, with US back-up, are notable by their absence. Instead, we hear repeated, imprecise warnings of a ‘wider war in the Middle East’. How wide though?
From the inception of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, like Iran, Russia provided Assad with military aid. And from late 2011 Iran sent Revolutionary Guard Forces (IRCG) to join the Hezbollah militias propping up Assad’s collapsing regime. In July 2015 General Qasem Soleimani, later assassinated by Israel, visited Moscow to coordinate military tactics. Two months later Russia intervened decisively with its air-force and troops including Wagner Group irregulars. The resultant bombing and slaughter set a pattern for future Russian war crimes. “A red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised”, the words of President Obama in August 2012. Almost a year to the day President Assad used sarin gas on the population of Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, killing some 1,400. No US military intervention against the Syrian regime followed. For a variety of reasons, not least the US’ previous debacles in Somalia and Iraq, the red line had been erased. In 2014, a US-led coalition did act but in an air campaign against ISIS and the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. An opportunity for Putin had opened up. In 2015, Russian firepower was turned indiscriminately on the Free Syrian Army fighting Assad whose murderous regime was helped cling onto power. Syria fell apart, hundreds of thousands died, 6.7 million left the country mainly to Turkey and Lebanon, and 6.8 were internally displaced. Syria became a haven for militias and terrorist groups. Fast forward to today. It is almost a year since Iran’s Deputy Defence Minister, Brigadier General Mahdi Farah, announced the forthcoming delivery of 24 Russian Sukhoi fighter jets and Russia is also believed to be in receipt of some 200 Iranian surface-to-surface short range (75 kms) battlefield missiles and to be supported in manufacturing drones for its war in Ukraine. How Russia would respond to a major Israeli attack on Iran, with or without US support, remains speculation. But Putin’s past record offers some clues. Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West (William Collins 2020) presents Putin as an adept practitioner of the dissimulation, oppression and criminality of the Russian intelligence services both internally and externally. He, and they, foresaw the collapse of Soviet communism, were determined to retain power in any new dispensation, and moved KGB funds into overseas accounts, notably through the ‘Londongrad laundromat’. In the 1990s, Putin deployed his training in deception as a KGB lieutenant colonel, his spy’s divided personality, to great effect, hiding ruthless ambition, saying what his listeners wanted to hear, and for several years took in both Angela Merkel and Tony Blair. He had risen from a modest KGB post in Dresden organising the smuggling of Western embargoed technology into Russia. Then, via the mayor’s office in St. Petersburg (deputy mayor in 1994), he became a trusted advisor to President Boris Yeltsin (1991-1999). The next task was to remove Yeltsin and his entourage and become President, then to use of the organs of state to bring the primary beneficiaries of Western enforced privatisation, the oligarchs, to heel, and concentrate power in his own hands. State capture, taking over functioning institutions, required and allowed the gradual accumulation of power, national wealth plundered by selected associates, predominantly FSB, successor to the KGB. Belton tracks the process in extraordinary detail. Until it was too late few Western politicians seemed alarmed that Putin was creating a mafia-style autocracy, opponents assassinated or wasting away in Siberian gulags and prisons, punished for disloyalty. Meanwhile huge sums of money that could be used as future FSB and GRU (military intelligence) obschak, slush fund for subverting democracy, was flowing into London and offshore banks. Bankers, lawyers and reputation managers in London took their fees, oligarchs bought up prime property driving up prices, and FSB enemies were assassinated. But like any good spy Putin needed a good cover story. It was sitting there waiting for him amongst Russia’s economic ruins, the wreckage of the loss of the Soviet Union, and America’s growing influence in Georgia and Ukraine. He, Putin, the story ran, had taken up the Presidency to restore the fatherland and return Russia to its imperial glory. Belton suggests that Putin picked up this Tsarist-sounding nationalism in the 1990s from Paris-based aristocratic White Russians who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution and whom he had met and liked. Putin’s adoption of the Russian Orthodoxy that White Russians held dear, as an ideological substitute for communism, fits this analysis. I visited Moscow in 1990 and met with Gorbachev’s religious advisers. They were bewailing the loss of ‘communist morality’. Would Christianity take its place, they asked me? Putin, several years later, seems to have had a similar idea alleging that he’d been secretly baptised by his mother. Archbishop Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, most likely a former KGB asset - undiplomatically warned by Pope Francis not to become “Putin’s altar boy”- was a natural ally. Army officers were even sent to the Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos for religious retreats. Kirill proclaimed Ukraine a Holy War. Putin shares space satellite programmes with Iran, contempt for ‘Western decadence’, rejection of all things LGBTQ+, and, of course, the rhetoric and reality of hatred of the USA. Beyond the distorted world of Putin’s propaganda Russia as Christian bulwark against Western secularism seems bizarre. After Afghanistan, Russia’s brutal conflict in Chechnya involving Sunni jihadists, the terrible 2004 Beslan school slaughter of young children and the horrors of ISIS, and with American bases in most Sunni States, it’s not surprising Russia might be more comfortable with the geopolitics of Iran, a Shi’a-led State. What then is Putin’s next move in the Middle East? Russia received a Hamas delegation in Moscow in 2023. It has de facto abandoned its former balanced position on the Palestine-Israel conflict. But this does not amount to the Kremlin committing Russian military forces to support Iran against Israel. The IRCG are competing with the needs of Russian forces in Ukraine. Iran even denies that the awaited delivery of Russian Sukhoi fighters is imminent. Putin will continue attempting to use disinformation and cyber-attacks to disrupt UK society as punishment, not for support of Israel, but for Britain’s outspoken role in Europe championing Ukraine. His immediate task is getting Trump elected and US support for Ukraine curtailed, the decisive victory this would give Russia in the Ukraine war, putting NATO in jeopardy. Ukraine takes, by far, priority over Palestinians, Lebanese and Iranians. One thing is sure: Putin will increase his cyber efforts to influence the November US presidential elections and put his friend, Donald Trump, in the White House again. See TheArticle 09/10.2024
0 Comments
When the verbs disappear from a political speech it’s crowd-rousing time. At the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool last week, the Prime Minister went verbless early. He was describing work begun and “only just getting started”: “more teachers, more neighbourhood police, more operations”. Tucked into the to-do list was “devolution to our nations, regions and cities”. More devolution? In all of these?
Between 1997 and 1999 Tony Blair’s first government passed, after successful referenda, three devolution Acts. Two created devolved legislatures for Scotland and Wales. Within the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998, a third established a power sharing assembly and executive at Stormont replacing direct rule from Westminster. To describe these various configurations of executive power as asymmetric is something of an understatement. England, with by far the largest population, lacks almost any devolved government - unless you count the patchwork of Metro Mayors who have proved rather popular- and is governed by MPs serving in the national Parliament at Westminster. The “English question” did bob up between 2015 and 2020 but subsided. The name United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not a strict reflection of reality but Starmer’s intimation of more powers for different parts of the Kingdom is important. And what of our “regions and cities”? Past attempts at creating English regional middle-level political authorities, have struggled with two problems: hostility to the notion of another layer of politicians and central government’s inadequate financing of local government. In November 2004, Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott tried and failed: a postal ballot for a new authority in the North-East was negative. Metro mayors, though, have some regional responsibilities. Devolution has traditionally been seen by the Conservative Party as the proverbial ‘don’t go there’ minefield. Apart from David Cameron whose arrogant self-confidence in calling a badly framed, ill-judged referendum in 2014 narrowly missed Scottish secession, Conservatives tend towards limiting devolution and maintaining centralised government in keeping with the party’s name: the Conservative and Unionist Party. Lib Dems on the other hand champion local government. Labour promotes devolution though opinions vary. But by far the strongest argument for greater devolution is that decisions made in Downing Street and Whitehall do not accurately address the needs of “our nations, regions and cities”. Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge, Michael Kenny’s Fractured Union: Politics, Sovereignty and the Fight to Save the UK, Hurst 2024, provides a comprehensive history of devolution in the UK. Professor Kenny makes comparisons with the experiences of Canada with Quebec, Spain with Catalonia and even Czechoslovakia, a lesson in how to lose a chunk of your territory (Slovakia) peacefully. The book’s title suggests crisis and high drama, but the text is scholarly with the moderate tone and attention to detail of a civil servant – which Kenny isn’t. He is non-judgemental about the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) of Northern Ireland) who contributed to us ending up with the most radical option for BREXIT. The DUP subsequently complained about the terms of Sunak’s Northern Ireland Protocol which dealt with the intractable border issues, a direct consequence of the radical BREXIT to which they had contributed. He does emphasise how Boris Johnson further aroused Scots nationalism over BREXIT, a rejection of Scotland’s significant Remain vote. Unhelpful differences in approach also emerged over COVID strategy. There is a particularly helpful chapter for politicians on future proofing the Union, how to prepare for the undermining of devolved authorities by events, how to increase cooperation between different layers of authority on key topics such as health, housing, transport, and employment. Kenny’s book went to press before the General Election and the dramatic change of political fortunes in Scotland, the implosion of the SNP and Labour’s electoral victory. Luckily for the Labour Party, pressure for a Scottish referendum on independence looks as if it has gone away for at least a decade. But this is not the case for Northern Ireland where Irish nationalist demands are becoming more prominent. It will not have escaped the Prime Minister’s attention that the President of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald, attended the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool and spoke at a fringe meeting on Monday 23 September. Her message was that the UK government needed to make clear its intention “to trigger a referendum on Irish unity” before 2030. This sally was one consequence of the restoration of a power-sharing government in Stormont with a Sinn Féin majority. Michelle O’Neill, now First Minister of Northern Ireland, has been making the same demand. But in the Republic of Ireland which needs to agree to reunification Sinn Féin received only 12% of the vote. Sir Keir Starmer has said that an Irish unity referendum is “not even on the horizon”. But that horizon is specified in the Good Friday Agreement, an international treaty. It is binding on the Prime Minister of the UK to call a border poll under certain – somewhat subjective – conditions: “if at any time it appears likely to him that a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to be part of the United Kingdom and form part of a United Ireland”. Polling suggests that 40% of Northern Ireland voters currently want unification with the Republic against 50% opposed. But the government of the Republic isn’t keen to take over the UK’s c. £10 billion subvention for Northern Ireland. Nor to face raising the salaries there to levels in the Republic where they are on average 10% higher. Nor to incorporate a hostile Protestant minority. Who could blame them? True to his word, within four days of entering 10, Downing Street, the Prime Minister was meeting with the UK’s Metro Mayors and out visiting the leaders of the UK devolved authorities. During the March local elections, he had spoken of seeking “full-fat devolution” and wanting to “push power and resources out of Whitehall”. Nestling in the to-do list in a speech where every word will have been pored over “devolution to our nations, regions and cities” should get a little more attention. It suggests a significant transformation of governance in the UK. It may also forestall the growth of popular demand in Northern Ireland for unification with the Irish Republic. See TheArticle 28/09/2024 We associate assassinations by one State on another’s territory - ‘targeted killings’ is the softer sounding word - with autocratic States. But such killings are also undertaken by a variety of different States, and for diverse reasons. Since the end of the Cold War, the most unacceptable have been to humiliate another State considered a threat, purely to wreak vengeance, to silence opposition or to undermine peace negotiations.
Since 1945 the UN founding Charter has made national sovereignty the fundamental, near inviolable, organising principle of international relations. Yet in the last two decades, in flagrant disregard for the UK’s national sovereignty and international law, Russian agents have killed prominent Russian exiles on British soil. Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB agent, was poisoned in 2006 using radioactive polonium administered by two FSB agents who also contaminated several venues in London. Then there were the ‘unexplained’ deaths: for example, in 2013 by a seemingly staged ‘suicide’, the hanging of Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch and vocal critic of Putin. Yet an unequivocal reaction from the UK government had to wait until March 2018. Acting after a spectacular, reckless infringement of national sovereignty, Prime Minister Theresa May expelled 23 Russian diplomats following belatedly the attempted assassination at home in Salisbury with military grade nerve agent, Novichok, of former Russian FSB spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia. Other European nations and the US followed suit. Contamination was widespread. An investigating policeman, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, became seriously ill after contact with the poison. That July Dawn Sturgess died from Novichok poisoning after spraying her wrists with polonium from the cast-off perfume bottle used by the assassins, another victim of Russian actions on British soil. Putin, openly taunting the UK government, had the two GRU military intelligence agents, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, give an outrageous RT (State Television) interview in which they claimed to have been tourists with a particular interest in Salisbury cathedral. There is nothing new about autocratic States eliminating opponents on the territory of other States. Famously, in 1940 Leon Trotsky was brutally killed at his home in Mexico City on Stalin’s orders, the archetype for Putin’s actions: punishment for disloyalty, a warning against treachery. Apartheid South Africa used car, letter and parcel bombs in African countries against the ANC, Pan African Congress, and SWAPO (Namibian nationalist) exiles, but avoided alienating the UK by similar tactics. Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, who instituted substantial funding for the ANC, was shot dead on the street in Stockholm in 1986; nobody was charged with the murder. Ten years later Colonel Eugene de Kock claimed – plausibly - this was a South African special unit ‘hit’. The cynically named Civil Co-operation Bureau, and special units under Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok, planned and executed the assassinations. The general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, Frank Chikane, was poisoned in 1989 with Paraoxon on Vlok’s instructions. He survived through treatment in an American hospital. Modern drones have increased the opportunity for assassinations by decreasing the cost in manpower and money. Drones also reduced the risk and stress on perpetrators. The Predator drone came into use in 1995 allowing long distance elimination of jihadists and their leaders. However, the killing of Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan hideout required a full Special Forces’ operation with helicopters, watched in real time by President Obama. The impact of 9/11 made drone killings in the Middle East routine. As they responded to, or tried to pre-empt, militia and terrorist attacks, Israel and the USA were drawn even closer together. The words of the Talmud: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” fitted the bill. Israel has a long and known history of assassinations in other countries - in Israel’s view, a weapon in its armoury of self-defence or as an arm of justice. After the capture and murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, from just a few weeks after the massacre in 1972 until 1988, MOSSAD hunted down and killed the Black September and PLO perpetrators living in different countries. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister from 1999-2001, a former member of the elite unit involved in finding and killing remaining perpetrators resident in Beirut, was open about the wider Operation Wrath of God. Steven Spielberg’s 2005 film Munich tells the tale omitting the killing in Norway of a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchiki, mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, the Black September leader. The film evoked sympathy for the MOSSAD agents, their bravery and the consequences in their private lives. Assassination is liable to drift out of hand. Massively armed Israel, surrounded by a threatening and belligerent Muslim world, has stretched the justification of self-defence to its limits and beyond. A major escalation was the targeted killing of civilians in Iran during 2010-2012. The deaths of particle physicist Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammedi in 2010 and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 2012, expert in uranium enrichment, and other scientists, were attributed to MOSSAD assets in Tehran. Years away from being able to assemble a nuclear warhead, were these Iranians an immediate threat to the security of Israel, a nuclear power? In 2015 Iran signed an international treaty intended to limit the enrichment of uranium needed to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel – and Saudi Arabia - opposed the treaty. After the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, in April 2024, a car was bombed in Gaza killing three sons and four grandchildren of Ismail Haniyeh, Chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau. In July 2024 whilst in Tehran attending the inauguration of the new Iranian President Mahmoud Pezeshkian, Haniyeh himself was assassinated. Haniyeh, not by any normal understanding of the words ‘a moderate’ was considered a potentially pragmatic negotiator during prolonged ceasefire negotiations with Israel - unlike Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ hardline military leader, who planned and executed the 7 October massacres and who is now its uncontested dominant voice. Many observers believe the massacres were, in part, Sinwar’s deliberate provocation to thwart any normalisation of relations between Israel and key Arab States. And many in Israel have come to believe Netanyahu’s order to assassinate Haniyeh as, in part, aimed at aborting negotiations and prolonging the war allowing him to continue as Prime Minister and avoid an Israeli court room. There are many difficulties in attempting to outlaw or even govern assassinations in an agreed, effective ethical regulatory framework, not least that killing by drones, guided by a hand-held device, seems remarkably like playing a computer game. The ethics of ‘targeted killing’, how broadly to define criteria by which such actions might be judged legitimate or illegitimate, such as ‘in military settings’ or ‘for self-defence’ have been widely and eruditely discussed. Do sporadic terrorist attacks create a ‘military setting’ or are they a policing matter? The rise of asymmetric warfare involving extremist groups made such judgements even more difficult. How immediate must the threat evoking self-defensive lethal action be? No agreed answers. Proliferation of assassinations is a symptom of a progressive decline in respect for both international law and national sovereignty on which the UN was built. We need our international legal bodies whether the European Court of Human Rights, the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, to slow or halt the dangerous erosion. See TheArticle 11/09/2024 We live in interesting times. The Soviet satellites in eastern Europe and elsewhere, the military oligarchies once supported by the United States in Latin America, have receded into the past, features of the second half of the 20th century. During the Cold War, those who suffered under, and resisted, authoritarian regimes understood their rules, their alliances, their diversity and what qualified those who sought change for prison or worse. The collapse of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev heralded not the gradual global triumph of liberal democracy but fresh growth and development of unpredictable authoritarian States.
What causes authoritarianism? Economic explanation of political structures is the tribute Liberalism paid to Marxism. The old liberal refrain was apartheid would be ended if only a black middle class could form sharing in national wealth. The Soviet Union collapsed after economic failure. The ending of support from East Germany and the Soviet Union were largely instrumental in bringing Mandela’s ANC to the negotiating table. And it was economic sanctions against South Africa that drove the Afrikaner regime to negotiate. In October 1990, West German diplomacy achieved the re-unification of Germany. Germany firmly believed that key to its success lay in trade and economic development. As Anne Applebaum puts it in Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators who Want to Run the World, published this year by Allen Lane: * “They also believed that trade and diplomacy would, eventually, help normalize relations between Russia and Europe”, a foundational element of Angela Merkel’s thinking. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline was born. In 2022, the $20 billion project designed to bring gas - bypassing Poland and Ukraine – direct from Russia to Germany, was destroyed in an underwater explosion. The hope of “Wandel Durch Handel”, change through trade, went with it. As energy bills rise this winter, we are still living through the consequences of the policy. The priority of trade and economics were UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s refrain as he promoted interdependence with China hoping to bring it into the democratic world during his tenure as Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016. Such was the hold an optimistic economism had on international relations. In 2022 former Hong Kong Governor, Chris ( now Lord) Patten, called Cameron’s position on China “mush diplomacy”, “hoping for the best is not a very good basis for policy”, he added. Yet, a stubborn belief persisted, at least during the first decade of the 21st. Century, that, given time, economic progress, wealth creation, and reduction in inequality could sort things out. As Quartet representative, 2007-2015 (for the UN, EU, US and Russia), Tony Blair was tasked with promoting economic growth in Gaza and the West Bank in pursuit of peace. A kind of economistic faith that with enough GDP all manner of things would be well lingered alongside faith in economic sanctions against declared enemies. Applebaum makes a strong case that Russia did not emerge from the 1990s as a State that for a variety of reasons had tried, but failed, to adopt the liberalism its Western advisers were promoting. Rather, from Putin’s first days in the new century, she argues, he was setting up Russia as a mafia State to enrich his coterie, a kleptocracy with added nationalism and a “restorative nostalgia” for a defunct imperial Russia as its motif. The new feature of most post-Cold War authoritarian regimes is organising power primarily to enrich themselves. Trump-like, they do deals with each other forming an eclectic, transactional rather than ideological, network. Such unlikely bedfellows as Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mali and North Korea are participants. In pole position, there is a pragmatic China relying on its economic power to reel in client States and supporting Russia in its episodes of combat with Europe and the USA. There are also States of geopolitical importance, even functioning democracies like Turkey and India, as well as Saudi Arabia governed by a dynastic dictatorship, who for their own purposes occupy a Janus-like position. Iran remains a full-blown autocratic Shi’a theocracy, an active player in the network. Afghanistan under the Taliban stands alone as a Sunni tyranny driven by a crazed gender ideology. The key to the new projection of authoritarian power is found not only at national level: a brutal security apparatus and, in the case of China, Orwellian levels of surveillance. Internationally, technological opportunities open to all allow the spread and sharing of disinformation tailored to intensify social conflict in democracies and the political advancement of political extremes. Social media provides multiple platforms on which “to manipulate discontent, channel anger and fear”, in their target communities and enhance a search for homogeneity, belonging and order over diversity and difference. As Applebaum succinctly puts it, liberalism and democracy were not exported to the East, rather an ‘autocratic pre-disposition' and illiberalism infected the West. This was a message in her Twilight of Democracy first published in 2020 by Allen Lane. But the picture looks a little less dire today. Beginning with the 2023 defeat of the Law and Justice Party in Poland by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO), followed this July by the Labour Party landslide crushing a Conservative Party too long in hock to its right-wing, then Marine le Pen’s setback in the French elections followed by Bangladesh ridding itself of Sheikh Hasina in August, and the USA seemingly past peak-Trump populism, liberalism has been making a comeback. The problem with Applebaum’s two books – and some sympathy is appropriate – is that while with great journalistic skill she pulls together a convincing diagnosis, her policy prescriptions are either too generic or underemphasise the powerful forces that will block their impact. Most notably getting some control over cyber-subversion and political interference of a sophisticated kind on social media platforms seems intractable. (The arrest of the Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, in France suggests one possibility). She also – laudably - advocates non-violent resistance while acknowledging the terrible toll of civilian casualties that resulted from street demonstrations and resistance in Iran, Myanmar, Egypt, Syria and other authoritarian States. She is right that autocratic drift, the ubiquity of corruption enriching political leaders for whom elections are a form of ‘decoration’, needs calling out. But her suggestion that civil society in democracies, as well as diasporas, should see themselves linked to citizens in autocratic regimes, faces the longstanding dilemma: “foreign interference, working for a foreign power” is the first thing on the charge sheet. Autocracy, Inc. provides a welcome coherent analysis of the kleptocracy network from a prominent centre-right figure. There are very few lacunae in the story Applebaum tells. You get a handle on a vital security topic in double-quick time. It was news to me that an emphasis on a ‘multipolar world’ is a key authoritarian card played to justify repressive political systems, or that the repetition of ‘the decadent West’ is primarily aimed at non-aligned nations. Applebaum’s warning is timely. It explains why States need to pool expertise to counter effectively the combined forces against democracy. There is no doubt the way forward will be demanding for democratic States struggling with overwhelming internal problems created not by authoritarian States but by feckless governments, bankers, tech-giants and, secondarily, by the international energy companies. *Talking about the book in Union Chapel, Compton Terrace, London N1 2UN, September 2nd Doors open 18.00 See TheArticle 30/08/2024 The sigh of relief on 21 July when Jo Biden stepped down as Democrat presidential candidate was deafening. Within less than a fortnight the Democrats nominated Vice-President Kamala Harris to replace the outgoing President with ratification to take place at their 19 August National Convention.
After intense consultations, at a Philadelphia rally on 6 August Harris presented Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, as her Vice-Presidential running mate. Walz memorably described Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as “creepy” and “weird”. Walz’s humour and masterful engagement with his audience in an acceptance speech was striking. To those watching from afar it suddenly felt like Trump was toast. The Harris-Walz ticket is nicely balanced. Kamala Harris, a former senator who now presides over the United States Senate and a former Attorney-General of California, tough on crime, modern and colourful, father Jamaican heritage, mother Indian heritage, husband Jewish. Walz, white, Lutheran and folksy with a track record of worker-friendly policy in Minnesota and a personal history that might have been designed to counter Trump. The son of an aspiring Nebraska Catholic family, Walz followed his father, a school superintendent, into teaching. He was his school’s football coach - the nearest thing to a secular priest. In three years, he turned a dud team around to win a state-level schools’ championship. The stuff of movies. He also served 24 years as a US Army reservist and, before entering politics in 2005, taught in China, his interest in human rights gained during this rich experience continues. The religious dimension of the Democrat ticket is perhaps less well balanced. And given the significant white evangelical Christian support for Trump, this matters. Since the attempted assassination, Trump has been ‘doing God’ more and has found a fruitful narrative as beneficiary of divine intervention. Kamala Harris is a member of the progressive Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, established in 1852. It is led by the Reverend Amos C. Brown, a respected former black civil rights activist - taught by Martin Luther King - who supports same-sex marriage. Tim Walz, raised a Catholic, joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ECLA), the most liberal branch of Lutheranism and the largest in Minnesota where it makes up 20% of the state’s Christian community, second only to Catholics. He acknowledges his debt to his Catholic family. “My mum and dad taught us: show generosity to your neighbours and work for the Common Good”. Walz avoids ideological language and presents down-to-earth policy. He is also passionately pro-choice seeing it as a basic human right. His Minnesota State Protect Reproductive Options Act says, “every individual has a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about the individual’s own reproductive health”. Abortion is a salient issue for US voters. Some 82% of Democrat voters disapprove of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that unduly restrictive regulation of abortion by states was unconstitutional. Polling of all Catholic voters by the respected Pew Foundation in 2022 indicates that only 42% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, though for the smaller number of those who attend mass regularly (20%) the figure is 68%. Despite there being some 70 million American Catholics, pro-choice is politically a vote-winning position. The voting behaviour of other groups in US Christian communities remains important. White male and conservative Evangelical Christian voters notably helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Against that precedent the religious implications of the Harris -Walz ticket might remain a vulnerability. But there are far too many political issues for religious positions to determine the result of the Election. Trump, now at sea strategically, has fallen back on branding Kamala Harris a ‘left-wing extremist’. His denunciation of his opponent as a dangerous radical with a ‘crazy laugh’ is manna for Trump’s core constituency, but US Presidential elections are won or lost by swing and undecided marginal voters in seven battle-ground states: Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. A spectrum of local and national issues, several of them falling into the category of social justice, will decide their choice. The most dangerous for Kamala Harris, whom Trump likes to call Biden’s former ‘border czar’, (though she never had that role), is immigration. It is the American Constitution itself which gives these battle ground states their peculiar importance. In the national vote, which is a stage in the overall electoral process, voters determine the members of the national Electoral College which in turn determines who will be the next President. How many each state is allowed depends on how many representatives the state has in the Federal House of Representatives plus two Senators – a number which is related to each state’s population. In all but two small states, the winner of the popular vote takes all the Electoral College delegates. And it is possible to become President without winning the national vote; Donald Trump did this in 2016 with 77 electoral votes more than Hillary Clinton who beat him by 2.87 million popular votes. In the majority of states, the result of the election is predictable, in UK terms ‘safe’. California, the largest US state with 54 electoral votes, has been solidly Democrat since 1992 and Minnesota, with 10 electoral votes, Democrat led since Richard Nixon’s Republican landslide victory in 1972. As in the UK, the strategic priority is to hold your safe seats and gain the marginals. Fewer than 80,000 combined votes in three out of six of the key marginal states gave Trump the Presidency in 2016. Kamala Harris has considerable ground to make up and she is making it up fast. She is currently behind Trump in only one of the marginals, Nevada, and that by a whisker. Much of the two campaigns is happening and will happen on social media. She performs well with a lightness of touch, laughing at Trump, and benefits from endorsements and funding from stars such as Beyoncé. “She does it all with a sense of joy” in Walz’s unexpected words. The same could be said of Walz himself. Homey, mildly amusing videos featuring his daughter Hope are attracting the generally pro-Democrat Gen-Z voters (18-27). There is a touch of the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey’s, endearing antics. Dad (or Grandad) is on the ticket. A week is a long time in politics and there are under twelve of them before America chooses a President. The US has never had a female President, let alone a black woman, and nobody knows how the idea will play with the Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics. Never underestimate misogyny or racism. Never forget the power of repeated lies and disinformation. So even with Dad on the ticket, it is perhaps premature to assume Trump is toast. See TheArticle 16/08/2024 After the general election, in the House of Commons, the former and present Prime Minister laughed together and said nice things about each other. This occasioned a note of self-congratulation in the media about the state of British democracy. Peaceful change of government. No-one disputing the vote count. A gold medal for GB in electoral conduct.
Well, up to a point Lord Copper. There is evidence of what seemed organised intimidation during campaigning: death threats requiring police protection, canvassers photographed while talking to voters, masked men disrupting a community meeting, fake Labour Party leaflets, yelling and vitriolic abuse directed at Labour candidates. All serious enough for the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, to call relevant ministers and civil servants together to discuss what might be done. The grievance behind such worrying levels of intimidation is, of course, Gaza and the Labour Leader’s initial response to what became horrifying civilian casualties. It all began just four days after Hamas’ massacres inside Israel. Sir Keir Starmer was interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC just after the Labour Party conference ended. Asked about ‘proportionate response’, whether a siege, “cutting off power and water” was appropriate, Starmer, endorsing Israel’s “right to defend herself”, replied that it did “have that right, it’s an ongoing situation, obviously everything must be within international law”. A siege of enemy forces is not prohibited by international humanitarian law but besieging civilian populations is. Starmer’s words had conflated his insistence on the right to defence and his answer to the illegal besieging of a civilian population. It was a costly mistake. Refusing to call for a ceasefire made things worse. Starmer, expecting to become Prime Minister and determined to gain credibility in the international arena, chose not to break step with the USA which opposed an immediate ceasefire until destruction and death of civilians in Gaza became intolerable. His stance compounded anger, discomfort and criticism inside and outside the Labour Party and highlighted the growing gap between politicians and the public. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby responding to the King’s Speech in the House of Lords acknowledged these divisions. “Interfaith dialogue in this country has almost collapsed since October 7 last year and tensions are high and that is entirely as a result of overseas matters. That is seen with Israel and Gaza. Conflict overseas has a profound impact on our own society and our own domestic policies, because of the multicultural nature of our communities”. Systematic electoral punishment of the Labour Party, in the opinion of many for taking the Muslim vote “for granted”, needed organisation. TMV, The Muslim Vote, is a collective of Muslim organisations, led by Anas Altikriti - himself a contentious figure - which supported some 30 candidates, including 9 Independents, 9 from Galloway’s Workers’ Party, but also Greens, Lib Dems and Scottish and Welsh Nationalists standing against a Labour candidate. Several of the groups in the TMV network are mistrusted by government. Four pro-Gaza candidates supported by TMV were elected, wiping out thumping Labour majorities, several others came close to winning, in seats like Bethnal Green and Bow, Birmingham Ladywood, and Ilford North. Some polling shows that in constituencies with over 30% Muslim population the share of Labour votes had dropped since 2019 from 65% to 36%. TMV was certainly not the only reason Labour lost key seats such as that of the Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth’s Leicester South. Muslims who like other British voters were concerned about the NHS, housing, cost of living and, also, like other less affluent voters, felt neglected. Part of the general malaise with politics. Gaza energised voting particularly amongst Muslims. But it is difficult to deny that the Israeli Defence Forces’ (IDF) Gaza massacres and destruction in response to civilian slaughter of October 7 was so profoundly shocking – not only for Muslims – that it became the passionate focus of single-issue voting this July. And undeniable that the characterisation of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the Middle East as religious is still hardening Palestinian and Israeli positions, exported into a British election encouraging intimidation and bullying. Fury directed at Muslim women candidates who remained loyal to the Labour leadership revealed a misogyny we have come to know in Afghanistan that should by now be in the dustbin of history. Gaza has become a religious dispute to the degree that Hamas and the right-wing religious fanatics in the Knesset have forced it into this mould. At the heart of the conflict lies rival nationalisms and a battle for control of territory. To be Palestinian is not identical with being a Muslim nor ever has been. There are Christian and secular Palestinians. Christians were amongst some of the earliest Palestinian nationalist leaders. There are also plenty of Jews in Israel and around the world appalled by what the IDF is doing in Gaza. The TMV’s approach amongst Muslims reinforced the perception that protest about Gaza was a religious single-issue. Christians are not immune to the lure of sectarianism and single-issue voting as the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland showed, and the issue of abortion in the USA is now showing. The United States Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2019 gave an example that seems to me excellent counsel to voters of all faiths. “As Catholics, we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support”. In the past, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have said much the same. The events after the horrifying murders and stabbings of young girls in Southport have put the intimidation of electoral candidates into a wider perspective. Violent and planned public disorder in Hartlepool, Westminster, Manchester, Aldershot and Sunderland, as well as Southport, has revealed a major national issue. Re-emergent EDL, English Defence League, followers plus other small extremist groups, and their incitement of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hatred, adds to the Home Secretary’s in-box and that of the Prime Minister. There is more to come. It is striking a chord amongst certain – male- sections of the population. EDL-type thuggery and disinformation in social media - needing decisive government intervention - are yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s problem. As far as British democracy is concerned, sadly, everything in the garden isn’t lovely. See TheArticle 03/08/2024 During the recent election campaign, eligibility to govern became reduced in Tory political rhetoric to ‘having a plan’. But isn’t central planning a feature of the big, interventionist State, anathema to true blue Conservatives? And what ‘the plan’ was to achieve varied from stopping the boats to defeating Putin to growing the economy, all requiring well planned government action.
The accusation of not having a plan was mainly directed at Sir Keir Starmer, bearer of the ‘Ming vase’ full of policy positions vulnerable to ambush. He had good reason not to, as the French say, ‘vider son sac’ (speak his mind), confide in the public detailed policy priorities and how they would be implemented. Not an ideal exercise of democracy but one necessary for any Party wishing to win a general election. Faced with a right-wing Press and predatory social media, much of it supporting a collapsing ruling Party reduced to false claims and misrepresentation, hardly blameworthy. And perhaps there was an unrevealed plan behind the reticence. We are now half-way through a political dance of the seven veils. We’ve had the debates and interviews, a substantial Manifesto and Kings Speech, some elaboration of the new PM’s headline priorities, Rachel Reeves’ first speech to business leaders as Chancellor of the Exchequer with, shortly, her first speech in office to Parliament. The new government is determined - and has been so for some time - to establish its credibility both nationally and internationally. Something more than pragmatism, the makings of a plan, is appearing. But the big picture and the economic and political philosophy that shapes it, what we arrive at when the 40 pieces of legislation in the King’ speech are put together, and implemented, remains still out of focus. When I turned over Will Hutton’s This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain, Bloomsbury, 2024, to find Sir Keir Starmer’s bonanza of a blurb on the back cover, “a brilliant book.... read it if you haven’t already”, it seemed to promise a sharper focus. And indeed Will Hutton - former Principal of Oxford College, journalist and political economist, a former editor-in-chief of The Observer for which he writes a column - provides both a big picture and a detailed policy analysis. The book gives a coherent intellectual and historical account of the mess we are in, how we got here, and how we might emerge. It looked like a strong contender for what New Labour Mark 2 is all about. The headline formula Hutton applies is “an ethic of socialism with the best of progressive liberalism”. By this he means ‘blending’ the dynamism of the market and the restless energy of capitalism with the values of “fellowship, solidarity, fairness and mutuality”, informing a social contract to protect citizens from the risks of uncontrolled capitalism. Not a bad definition of social democracy or, come to that much of Catholic Social Teaching - though This Time No Mistakes never refers to this body of social thinking. Probably wise in these secular times. Not surprisingly Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908-1915) in the Liberal “great reforming government” that fought the Tory-dominated House of Lords to create national insurance and an old-age pension prior to the First World War, is an early example of what Hutton calls the politics of balancing the We with the I. Then comes the Christian socialist, Richard Henry Tawney, who influenced much more than Anglican social thinking after the War. Tawney’s friend from Toynbee Hall days (1903), and Liberal hero, was William Beveridge, whose expertise in social insurance was taken up by Atlee’s 1945 Labour government. The other big name amongst the founding fathers of Hutton’s political economy is John Maynard Keynes who bequeathed Keynesian economics and the core belief that government intervention can stabilise economies. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933-1938) which sought to remedy the Great Depression, economic recovery, reform of the financial system and help for the unemployed and impoverished, was profoundly influenced by Keynesian thinking. Hutton describes how Harold Macmillan’s one-nation conservatism, support for the welfare state, his Keynesian approach, mixed economy with some nationalised industries and strong trades unions, represented a retention of a post-war consensus dominated by the thinking of his three heroes. The Conservative belief that the free market, individual freedom and a minimal state is the correct formula for growth stands out in stark contrast Macmillan’s approach which was finally dropped by Margaret Thatcher who wished to counter a ‘culture of dependency’, denounced the idea that people should turn to Government to solve their problems, and for whom there was no such thing as society. “There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first”. Take away Thatcher’s pragmatism, add the last 14 years of government, and we end up with an extreme right-wing version of Toryism and its discontents that almost destroyed the Conservative Party. The second half of This Time No Mistakes, detailing policy prescriptions for reform and how we might escape from the present economic and social crisis, shows an extraordinarily deep grasp of our multiple problems, both financial and social, and the policy work of different Ministries. The wide sweep of Hutton’s proposed reforms and institutional innovations, from restructuring pension funds to incentivising socially purposeful businesses committed to more than benefitting shareholders, makes them impossible to cover within a brief review like this. Just read them. They may well have influenced the thinking of the Chancellor and the Prime Minister and should be the subject of a national conversation. The rub is that most of Hutton’s proposals require funding either from government or private investors perhaps with the former leveraging the latter. The UK’s current debts are eating up government revenue and Starmer is self-limited by tight fiscal restraints to funding small-scale initiatives with maximum impact. Rachel Reeve is already having to find some wriggle-room. Credibility and Stability are the necessary first aims in the Labour plan. Hutton’s comprehensive analysis and prescriptions possibly foreshadow much of what is to come. It looks like being a long haul. See TheArticle 25/07/2024 Sir Tony Blair’s message to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in the Sunday Times included the following advice: “Avoid vulnerability to wokeism”. During the last decade, within the vocabulary of political abuse, the word ‘Woke’ leaked into the word ‘Left’. This was partly because both words have fluid meanings. But it was also an example of the Right’s skilful manipulation of language. On 13 November 2023 Rishi Sunak appointed Esther McVey, MP for Tatton, Minister without Portfolio, an appointment widely understood as Minister for Culture Wars, rooting out wokeism and pinning it on the Left.
Like so many words, ‘Woke’ migrated from the USA, originating in a call in a 1938 song by folk and blues singer Lead Belly, protesting the conviction of nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape, to ‘stay woke’ to racism. That call to be ‘woke’, awake to the persistence of racism, was powerfully renewed by Black Lives Matter in 2013 after the acquittal of police officer who had fatally shot an unarmed seventeen-year-old African American. In 2020, during protests at the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Black Lives Matter brought some 20 million Americans onto the street. A small number were responsible for looting and a prodigious destruction of property. Protest soon spread to other countries and the word ‘woke’ travelled with them. ‘Left’ as a political identifier has been around a long time. Its meaning has had 250 years to change from signifying the choice of seats in the French National Assembly during the early days of the French Revolution to now naming a spectrum of political positions that share commitment to social justice, a fair economy, and internationalism. In short order, ‘Woke’ mutated to become an expletive directed at the ‘Left’ and at an ill-defined ‘elite’ accused of suppressing the common sense and language of ‘ordinary people’. Like a fish bone stuck in the throat, the UK had its Empire as well its slave trade, lodged in its national memory. It did not take long before accusations of woke were made against anyone challenging the normative story of Empire, bringing law and civilisation, or dwelling on the violence of imperial expansion and colonialism. In universities the noise of battle rolled over trimmed lawns and across seminar rooms. Even the National Trust came under fire for starting to provide information about slavery in properties where it was deemed relevant. The political landscape of the Left, of course, had also been changing. The supposed triumph of neo-liberalism after the ending of the Cold War reduced the ambition of the Left to achieving slow incremental change. A rightward slide gained pace as economies stagnated and inequality grew. Susan Neiman in Left Is Not Woke, Polity 2023, makes much of the Left swallowing whole the pessimistic writing of the French philosopher-historian Michel Foucault and its impact on woke thinking. Foucault’s critical writings about justice as a chimera and power as the determining reality became key university texts. Moving out beyond the universities, the take-away, Foucault for the masses, was that trying to make things better is most likely to make things worse, feeding into a general loss of hope in progress. Behind any Enlightenment objective truth lay concealed a subtle exercise of power rendering an impoverished majority powerless. There was, of course, a reaction. In the words of the celebrated French economist, Thomas Piketty: “When people are told there is no credible alternative to the socioeconomic organisation and class inequality that exist today, it is not surprising that they invest their hopes in defending their borders and identities instead”. According to Left Is Not Woke, what the Left and woke share is “empathy for the marginalised, indignation at the plight of the oppressed, determination that historical wrongs should be righted”. These are virtuous emotions. But emotions, as Hamlet’s replied when Polonius asked what he was reading, are expressed in “words, words, words”. Or, sometimes, in expressive acts like pulling down statues. And both the woke and their opponents certainly focus on words. In 2015, Benedict Cumberbatch had to make a grovelling public apology because, whilst supporting the cause of black actors, he had used the word ‘coloured’ not black. ‘Action not words’, as the Prime Minister said in his first press conference. As Neiman tartly points out, changing your pronouns in no substitute for changing your society. Virtuous emotions, like empathy, have proved no match for an - excluding - nationalist or ethnic consciousness. The Left absorbed a kind of exclusive collective identity that inadvertently magnified tribalism - Nieman’s word. But anyone’s identity is so much richer and broader than can be captured in a single word such as black, female, Jewish or even French. With the best of intentions, people are lumped together as the marginalized, as victims, rather than as individuals with a range of opinions, tastes, and sentiments. They have every reason to say – as I have once had said to me - “sometimes I just wish I could be me not the Muslim woman with a hijab”. And tragically, we have seen where victimhood as an integral part of Arab/Muslim and Jewish identity can take you in Israel/Palestine. Getting the right balance between the ‘we’ and the ‘I’ for the common good, is as important to the Left as to those neo-liberals who sometimes seem to share some of the Left’s values. Exclusive emphasis on national, ethnic, religious and gender identity, cherished components of diversity, risks forgetting the diversity of individuals’ character, integrity and skills which matter, not least in political life. For every diverse Obama government, not of course without its mistakes, there is an equally diverse Truss Cabinet promoting, in Neiman’s words, “the most extreme Tory policies in living memory”. Cancel culture is an unfortunate consequence of woke in action. Aiming to further the common good through sensitivity to people’s feelings and respect for their dignity, one result has been a damaging climate of self-censorship. But we all need a shared understanding of what and why certain language is offensive, and the difference between unintentional and intentional offense. And we all need to discuss matters that are contentious and sensitive, and not be blackmailed into silence for fear of offending. Each of us belongs to a tribe as well as to so much more. And whatever nationality or origins, whether Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu, male or female, we do, say and write things for many more reasons than being members of a tribe. With a new centre-Left government tackling the grave problems facing the UK - and found in both USA and Europe - what kind of society the Left stands for needs to be explored and discussed without fear. The analysis of Woke, that Neiman bravely attempts, is a good start. See TheArticle 06/07/2024 The word “Growth”, endlessly repeated by politicians during the present election campaign, is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Faith, Growth, but rarely Charity, are the cardinal virtues displayed for the mass media. When all the promises are ‘fully costed” but fall short of balancing, Growth is the shared panacea.
The trouble is growth post-BREXIT, Covid and Putin’s war looks feeble. No politician is reckless enough to explain exactly what they mean by Growth – though there are clues in the “Kick-start Economic Growth” section of the Labour Party Manifesto. Obviously, something organic and getting bigger - not to be mistaken for the magical money tree. Economists created a value they could express as a single figure or how would we all know if the economy, more precisely GDP, (Gross Domestic Product) was getting bigger, smaller or remaining unchanged? Not that there has ever been a clear consensus on what should be included in GDP. We still hang onto something of Margaret Thatcher’s homely simile that the national economy is like a huge domestic budget and managed in the same way. It isn’t. And, incidentally, domestic labour is one of the productive activities that economists leave out of GDP measurements. Were it to be included, the ILO, International Labour Organisation, estimate unpaid domestic work and caring to amount to be 9% of global GDP ($11 trillion) of which women’s domestic labour makes up more than two-thirds or 6.6%. Surprisingly, despite their prominence today, Growth and GDP are a relatively recent concern of economists. The history of Growth as a concept is set out in the opening chapters of Daniel Susskind’s brilliantly accessible Growth: The Reckoning Allen-Lane 2024. It was the economic crisis of the Great Depression (1929-1939) that triggered the search for some simple measurement of economies. During the Second World War the question of what proportion of the overall economy could safely be devoted to war production became pressing. “The American people have learned during the war the measure of their productive capacity’, President Roosevelt triumphantly declared to Congress in January 1945”. And it was not long before measures of Growth expressed as GDP were regarded as important indicators of who was winning the Cold War. Now, as the current election campaign nears the end, Growth has been established as the panacea for national decline. So today we have figures for GDP per capita over time telling us whether there is growth or ‘degrowth’. And because economics dominate our political thinking about what matters, while economists keep at arms’ length other things that matter, which they label as ‘externalities’, public political debate does not engage with questions about the price paid for Growth. Since the industrial revolution, whose origins lie at the end of the 18th century, what is now described as Growth brought unprecedented prosperity to much of the world, Africa is an exception, reducing poverty, dramatically improving education, enabling leaps forward in public health, feeding vastly increased numbers of people. But, looking at the UK – and not only the UK – nearly all these advances are now either stalled or going into reverse. The damage arising from blinkered, ungoverned Growth includes the fast-approaching climate catastrophe caused by carbon emissions, the degradation of our natural environment, the possibility of nuclear holocaust narrowly averted at least twice in the last century, ill-health caused by industrialised food, and growing inequality. The Growth dilemma is never “fully costed” nor raised in the barrage of interviewers’ questions about the economy on radio and TV. Growth as economic panacea remains a deceptive proposition unless its hidden trade-offs are acknowledged, shared with citizens for deliberation, and mitigated by government action. This is not the only message of Susskind’s revealing book, but it is certainly the most important one. Susskind sets Growth within the context of the common good, rather than in short-term party-political la-la-land. He poses fundamental questions about what kind of society in what kind of the world do, we, our children and grandchildren want to live in? Something you might have expected political leaders to talk about. And expected the electorate to want to hear about. Where Growth: The Reckoning is doubly helpful it is in resetting Growth within a discussion of trade-offs, rather than a simple binary argument, more growth or degrowth, and in proposing a direction of travel for social and economic development. Perhaps it is most insightful in its vision of Growth as meaning more than increasing the production of material things - and money- by adding ideas and innovation to the mix and proposing other ends to pursue. Susskind wants to redirect and redefine Growth not get rid of it. He distinguishes this approach from the temptation to insert socially desirable activities into the old, tired model which is yielding diminishing returns. What is considered socially desirable poses moral questions liable to be treated in a technocratic manner or left to market forces. This is not as theoretical as it sounds. As an example, Susskind uses the pool of networked ideas existing at the time of the COVID outbreak in early 2020 in the world of medical research which, with government funding, created COVID vaccines in an extraordinarily short time. And here the moral dimension of this innovation was evident in the failure to supply the global South adequately. Susskind delves more deeply into this terrain with an interesting discussion of intellectual property – the ownership of ideas - “the most important toolbox that societies have to shape the creation and distribution of ideas”. Balancing the costs of Growth, sacrificing one benefit for another, requires the widest possible deliberation and consultation. To achieve Growth Government must provide incentives the necessary means - such as a healthy educated workforce - and an enabling atmosphere. Yes, the other most repetitious campaign word “a plan”. It must include investment in research and development, and in public-private partnerships – which has some positive references in the Labour Manifesto and in James Naughtie’s exceptional exploration of Growth and innovation in The World at One on 23 June. Susskind also calls for citizen involvement in the form of civic assemblies to generate and evaluate new ideas but also to nurture comprehension of what is at stake, as well as support for progressive forms of government intervention. Susskind’s believes in “the innovative genius of humankind”. His book sustains a refreshing balance of ideas, academic analysis and down-to-earth realism drawn from his work in the policy unit at No. 10. The gulf between his book’s clarity, understanding, and vision and the mind-numbing repetition of the word Growth that political leaders, right now, feel obliged to utter under questioning is shocking. Have these six weeks locked in party-political-media inanity been democracy at work? If you don’t think so send this book to whoever gets elected in your constituency. See TheArticle 27/06/2024 I will never forget witnessing the determination and joy in the queues waiting outside South African polling stations on 29 May 1994. I had accompanied former President Kaunda of Zambia to Kwazulu-Natal only days before as an election observer. We feared serious violence between the Zulu nationalist party of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, Inkatha, and Mandela’s ANC. Buthelezi, originally tasked to build up the ANC in the Zulu heartland, pulled back at the last minute.
In the triumphant election that ended apartheid the ANC won nationally with 62% of the vote. In this year’s elections, after thirty years’ unbroken rule, the ANC took only 40 per cent, losing their majority in Parliament. It was a humiliation, inflicted by a disappointed, angry electorate, but also a vindication of South Africa’s democracy. This was a clear verdict on the ANC’s performance in government over the last 15 years, during which corruption has become endemic. Meeting on June 7 to discuss the way forward, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC decided neither to seek a coalition partner or partners to form a majority government, nor to risk a minority government with a “confidence and supply” arrangement, but instead to propose a Government of National Unity (GNU). In a statesmanlike speech, President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke of the – legislated – 1994 transitional coalition which followed the ANC victory, bringing together under Mandela’s direction future President Thabo Mbeki and former President F.W. De Klerk, to govern until an interim Constitution requiring the allegiance of all political parties was finalised in 1996. The context, easing the transition from apartheid, was radically different from that of today. Though once again the province of KwaZulu-Natal — now led by Jacob Zuma, the corrupt former President, and his new Spear of the Nation Party (uMkhonto weSizwe or MKP), cleverly appropriating the name of the ANC’s former armed wing — is a threat to stability and to any unity government. Ramaphosa described the unity proposal as in the best interests of the people of South Africa, in accordance with the vision of the preamble to the Constitution: to realise the full potential of all citizens and bring material benefits to an unequal and unjust society. It might indeed be best for South Africa, but a GNU is also in the ANC’s interests. All the potential coalition partnerships were highly problematic. The Democratic Alliance (DA), led by Durban-born John Steenhuisen, which took 21% of the vote, is viewed by many as a right-wing party promoting white interests. Then there was Zuma’s MKP, with 14.5% of the vote, promising both to expropriate white-owned land without compensation and to change the Constitution. Thirdly, there was the former ANC youth leader Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), with 9.5%, calling for nationalisation of mines and land expropriation. Both Zuma and Malema are stridently populist, potentially violent, and determined to get rid of Ramaphosa. Any of these partners would have exacerbated divisions within the ANC. Only a Government of National Unity looked feasible. At 82, Zuma has a score to settle with Ramaphosa. He connects with many of the poor and has ten years’ prison on Robben Island with Mandela to his credit. In the 1980s, Zuma was the ruthless head of ANC Intelligence. He took the presidency in a non-violent internal coup against President Thabo Mbeki in 2009. As President, he accumulated power and money through a form of systemic corruption known as “state capture”. Ramaphosa led internal opposition to Zuma, forcing him to resign after a vote of no confidence in February 2018, allowing criminal charges for corruption and contempt of court to go ahead. But Zuma has only served three months in jail. His formation of the MKP in December 2023 heralded a political comeback with overwhelming support from his Zulu political base in Kwazulu-Natal. But just before the 26 May elections, he was banned from standing for Parliament. I have seen Zuma up-close. It was in Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s, when, in the garden of the Rev. Michael Lapsley – who later lost both hands and an eye in a South African letter-bomb, Zuma suddenly emerged from behind a bush. There was something brutal and sinister about him. Frankly, I felt frightened by him — as well Ramaphosa might be. Zuma is a clear and present danger for stability and democracy in South Africa. The ANC has until 18 June to pull together a government. Some 53 political parties contested the 2024 elections; only 6 of them won more than 300,000 votes. Of the three big Parties, only the DA has joined alongside Inkatha and the Patriotic Alliance. The MKP are refusing to join unless Ramaphosa steps down; the EFF is currently saying “we will not share power with the enemy”, though a few months back Malema did say he was open to a coalition with the ANC; and the DA wants to know more about how a Government of National Unity would function. A political minefield. But the wider question is: could a Government of National Unity tackle South Africa’s problems? These include chronic corruption; over 45% youth unemployment; wretched health and educational provision for the poor; serious crime and insecurity. And after 30 years of the ANC, South Africa is top of the world league for inequality. Systemic corruption has crippled the South African economy. André de Ruyter, the honest and competent CEO of the country’s energy provider, ESCOM, was forced out for trying to eliminate the corruption that was causing persistent and prolonged power cuts. After having cyanide slipped into his morning coffee, De Ruyter’s advice to any incoming CEO was not to have a personalised coffee cup. Is Ramaphosa up to it? He is undoubtedly tough and talented — but “squeaky clean” are not the first words that come to mind. In 2020 a mysterious $4 million dollars were stolen from his Phala-Phala farmhouse, a surprising sum to be stuffed inside the sofa. Head of the Student Christian Movement in his Venda High School, frequently detained while a law student, respected leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, brilliant negotiator, successful entrepreneur, skilled navigator of the dangerous shoals within the ANC, Ramaphosa’s biography suggests he has the capacity. But he needs the support of determined, competent and honest ministers to bring about change. Today the 400 members of the National Assembly will be sworn in, pledging to uphold the Constitution. As the ANC now knows, the people of South Africa will punish severely at the ballot-box failure to improve their lives, to provide jobs, and clean the Augean stables. A culture of accountability must be created, and prosecutions made. In a promising appointment, Rev. Frank Chikane, a courageous opponent of the apartheid regime, former General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and chef de cabinet for President Mbeki, is now the head of the Integrity Commission to achieve this end. But support from the ANC parliamentary party will be essential. Despite multiple obstacles ahead, Ramaphosa with his considerable skills may be able to steer a GNU in the direction of integrity. South Africa’s future government should remember the warning of Amilcar Cabral, poet and pan-Africanist: “Always bear in mind that people are not fighting for ideas.... They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children”. As Trevor Manuel, the – honest and successful — ANC Minister of Finance, 1996-2009, pointedly asked on Radio South Africa’s Midday Report: “Who will hold the feet of the GNU to the fire?” See TheArticle 14/06/2024 |
Archives
October 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed