Will I be celebrating the Jubilee? With a heavy heart, "No".

 

 

As a young married man living then in Yorkshire, I took satisfaction in celebrating The Queen's Silver Jubilee - the epitome of what it meant to be British.

 

On the evening of 5 February 1977 Kathleen and I excitedly climbed Pen Hill, near Leyburn, to join a throng of a few dozen folk to participate in the lighting at midnight of a huge bonfire, one of a series of interlinked beacons across the whole of the UK, to mark the jubilee.  “God save The Queen” rang out, albeit a little discordantly, through the chill Yorkshire night, and we retired to bed happy and content.

 

There was a palpable sense of pride in being British, a pride shared throughout the whole of UK, and It was a joy to publicly share in the happy celebration.

 

Now I can no longer muster enthusiasm. Older, certainly, and I do believe wiser (although that’s ultimately for others to judge) I now see Britishness in a very different light.  We have declined so hugely during my lifetime and continue to do so at an alarming pace. I now know of dark episodes in Britain’s colonial history which were never referred to in my history lessons at school.  If I recall correctly, those tended to paint a picture of a benevolent people educating and civilising “the heathen nations of the world” in an act of selfless magnanimity. The surge of pride experienced on hearing Elgar's stirring anthem "Land of Hope and Glory" at The Proms is now faded.

 

I hold The Queen in high regard. Seven decades is no mean feat - decades which have brought unimaginable change to the world and the balance of power within it – and I applaud her for that.  I don’t buy into all the criticism of royal wealth and of The Queen's vast estate.  She is merely guardian of all of that for posterity.  Until very recently she has stoically and selflessly carried out her duties. I admire her for that. She has no ability whatsoever to enjoy the invaluable freedom of venturing out informally in public to do as she might wish. Just try to image that. She is ensnared in a role not of her choosing yet fulfils it with grace and fortitude. I don’t envy her lot.

 

But it seems to me that the monarchy is being used by the British state (I dislike that overly sinister phrase but can’t think of another to succinctly encompass the Whitehall establishment and the security agencies acting together) as a cover for pernicious strategies.  Johnson, who I increasingly suspect is being used as a useful stooge, steadily chips away at the structure of our fragile democracy apparently, it seems, with the acquiescence of the majority of the electorate (in England at least, and only England has the electoral mass to change UK politics at the ballot box).  In this, he’s enabled primarily by his band of mostly supine and incompetent MPs concerned more with their individual future political prospects than with the interests of their constituents and the wellbeing of the state, and backed by the mainstream press, whose owners' commitment to Britain and the British electorate seems tenuous at best.  Once democracy is ousted in favour of a self-serving and controlling elite, it will be very difficult indeed to restore it.  This is not the Britain I want to be part of.

 

While the majority of European nations enjoy integrated efficient transport systems and public services which are fit-for-purpose, Britain is left with a constant sense of things about to fail – overcrowded and dirty trains prone to breakdown and lateness, bus and train timetables out of kilter, NHS under pressure, perilously long waiting times for ambulances, errors and lack of attention to detail by employees whose role is to deliver services, and so on. There's no need for it to be like this.  We are one of the wealthiest states in the world.  

 

We have an obese population, addicted to fast food and gorging their way to a state of ill-health as potential clients of the private health practitioners and insurance providers waiting in the wings to “help out” the failing NHS.    

 

The privatisation programme championed in the 1980s, and sold to the electorate on the rationale that private investment would refurbish and modernise failing systems with no drain on the public purse, has led to a disjointed and expensive transport network suffering from under-investment, and to a sewage system in England which is literally bursting at the seams because investment in infrastructure hasn’t kept pace with a burgeoning population and rapid urban growth.

 

Unlike France, where 85% of the national electricity supplier is publicly owned enabling fuel price increases to be limited to 4%, we in Britain have little means of controlling gas and electricity prices.  The energy price cap calculated by Ofgem brings no effective protection.  In an earlier blog I referred to it being artificially high because it was based on a surge in wholesale prices as suppliers bid for forward purchases at the start of the Ukraine war, a surge which proved to be temporary and which has now lapsed.  (The chart opened by that link also illustrates how low the UK’s gas storage capacity is compared to other European nations.  See here for the background to this.)  The amount of the cap is dependent on historic prices and the October increase is derived from the average wholesale price during the period January - August 2022.  It’s not at all clear to me how Ofgem’s Regulator can ascertain that average price now, but he has already announced a further 32% increase.  Hopefully, given the apparent levelling out again of  wholesale prices the cap will reduce again, but that of course will depend on future market trends.

 

The chancellor’s broadly welcomed move last week will in effect collect tax from energy producers only to give much of it back to suppliers in part payment of consumer’s bills.  What we are seeing is a broad transfer of value from consumers to energy suppliers, supported by government. The effect of high energy prices on financially pressed households will be crushing and has implications for health and wellbeing, and of course high energy costs also feed straight through to production and transportation costs. 

 

UK's departure from The European Union, while throwing a lifeline to high-end tax avoiders, has brought in its wake staff shortages across many sectors and has been disastrous for our international trade, with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stating "the long-term impact of Brexit will be worse for the UK economy than Covid-19".  Meanwhile there are fears over reduced food and animal welfare standards and over the safety implications of allowing lorry drivers to work longer hours.

I see parallels between -

1- the influence on British popular opinion, across the whole political spectrum, and on political direction, of the mainstream newspapers whose owners, you will recall from the link above, are mostly resident abroad and paying no tax to the Treasury;

2 - the under-investment in below-par public systems and services in a wealthy country as referred to above;

3 - the degree of high-end tax avoidance by proprietors of businessess making their profits in Britain but registered abroad.  This, in effect, is syphoning cash - significant sums of cash - out of the UK tax system and is depriving us of investment finance.

All of these get in the way of us being the Britain we could, and should, be.

So, as I stated above, I can’t muster enthusiasm to celebrate the jubilee. The Britain I grew up in - a Britain which was valued and respected throughout the world - is being systematically undermined and devalued and its citizens taken for fools.  The electorate is fed a diet of superficial news and diversions while the freedoms and privileges which are key to democracy are steadily erased.  

The Jubilee, in my view, is being hijacked as just another such diversion, and we're all expected to play along with it as if everything in the garden is just fine. The popular press will really go to town for the occasion and the BBC will seek to bathe us in a week of sentimental sycophantic nostalgia.

 

Well, I'm not playing that game.  I despair for the direction we're set on and feel I have no ability to influence it. In marked contrast to the 1977 event, the Platinum Jubilee seems like a sham - a flamboyant but essentially hollow facade for a Britain that used to be great and united but is now disintegrating before our very eyes. 

 

I mean no discourtesy to the Queen, who I value and respect.  I would value her even more were she to speak out against what her wrecking government is doing to Britain.

 

 

 

Brexit and the English Angst.

One of the key lessons I latched on to at school was that the rights and freedoms of the British people, given the lack of a formal written constitution, were guaranteed by the Separation of Powers, and thankfully the Supreme Court upheld that principle today.  The Government's role is to execute decisions taken by Parliament, after due process, not to take those decisions on Parliament's behalf.

So Parliament will now debate whether or not the UK leaves the European Union.  In doing so it must surely bear in mind and be guided by the result of last year's Brexit referendum.  I don't see that Parliament can legitimately overturn that result, but there should be an opportunity for reasoned debate and scrutiny, which is clearly necessary for such a significant decision.  If our elected representatives are wise, they will also weigh up the stark variations in the referendum result between the English part of UK on the one hand, and the Scottish and Northern Irish parts on the other, served as they are by devolved assemblies.  Wales, as we know, like England voted to leave.

Analysis of the referendum result vividly exposed a UK divided by age, education and class.  The outcome was essentially decided by folks who felt neglected and disenfranchised - folks who felt isolated and detached from the political process - and not by any sustainable reasoned case for the claimed advantages.  So many of the assertions of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnston don't stand up to scrutiny. (See Professor Michael Dougan here.)  Should we really let our destiny be decided by mistruth and opprobrium?

I remain open to the possibility that Brexit might serve Britain well, but I need to be convinced by reason.  I want to hear reasoned debate and cross-examination, not bold assertion and shouting down of contrary views.  Scant regard seems to be paid to the non-economic consequences.  Quite possibly a disintegration of the European block will be triggered at a time when USA seems intent on becoming increasingly isolationist, Russian imperialism is vigorous, and unrest and instability are rife thorough most of the Middle East.

But let's consider again those folks in England who felt detached from any ability to influence their destiny. Would they have voted differently if, like Scotland and Northern Ireland, they had been represented by a national assembly or parliament?  Would we be where we are now with Brexit had there been an English Parliament?  Isn't there a clear and pressing need to separate Westminster's role in governing the UK and its international relations on the one hand from its role in the governance of England on the other?  The establishment, in my view, of an English Parliament would at a stroke restore a measure of badly needed balance to UK politics, oblige the centre-right in Scotland to engage meaningfully at Holyrood rather than looking to Westminster to foster their interests (thus restoring that same badly needed balance to a Scottish politics currently dominated by the left) and give England some sense of the identity it is struggling to embrace - an identity which values England for its own undoubted intrinsic virtues, while acknowledging and respecting the differences, for they are fundamental differences, prevalent in the other British nations.