A sad day for British politics

 Hi,

I am very sad to see Keir Starmer resign, he did itb with some dignity but it depresses me. Starmer is a good man who has tried his best and not has not been rewarded for it. He never really had 100% support from all his MP's, perhaps less than he deserved for bringing back the Labour Party from the disaster of the Corbyn era.  He made mistakes but rather than the PM's congratulating him for his ability to recognise and correct errors they enjoyed attacking him and not helping.

There was no realisation that the situation the government found itself in was very difficult, much worse than they expected. This should have caused the MP's to gather round and support the cabinet 100% but did they. No of course not, they complained if their own particular concern was not addressed. The problem is that to correct all the failures of the previous fourteen years was not going to be easy. Especially those that go back as far as Thatcher's  regime. 

Things that need correcting that go back that far has been to sale of council housing which lead to a dramatic shortfall in affordable rented housing and a consequential transfer of public funds to private landlords. This government wants to build more council owned properties but has lost all the expertise that it used t have as well as the skilled builders needed to actually build the houses. Another issue which many feel needs sorting is the water industry which was nationalised by Thatcher which many want to take under state control. sadly millions have been wasted by transferring money out of the public purse to fund private equity and, to be fair, private pension funds. It is an interesting that the first thing that happened after privatisation was the directors doubly their income! But what is the best way to get the privatised companies back under public control. Their are various solutions proposed and it will need an act of courage to find the right way forward as well as convincing the public that it is the right way.

Another issue which I find concerning is what will now happen. Assuming Andy Burnham becomes the leader, I voted for him in earlier leadership elections though I don't know that I would this time, can he deliver, Many of those supporting him expect he will change the course of the government but how will he manage that. Being a mayor does not involve handling 400 so-called supporters with their own agendas let alone the issue of a vast agenda to control, many of which are not under your control. For example wars in Ukraine and a complete nut leading USA and the difficulties in the Middle East. The trouble is that if he does not deliver then the trust in politicians will drop even further. This tens to lead to a rise in totalitarian leaderships, a desire for the "strong man". In my life, which is probably passed its used by date, I have never seen a strong man whose rule has been good in the long run.  

To end this diatribe I would like to recommend Neil deGrasse Tyson a very interesting american astrophysicist who does some interesting popularising stuff. Tow comments which are relevant to the current situation. I am not sure the accuracy of the quotes but this is my memry of them which is probably what I want to convey.

Politicians lie because if they told the truth they would not get elected.

Simple slogans are easy to understand but take a lot of thinking about to counter.

Regards

Alan 

 

Houses of Parliament renew?

 We all know that this building is being neglected and will probably fall down soon without action. Some of you will know this is not a building I admire and if it were to fall down I would not feel particularly upset. However many people think it should be preserved and much discussion has taken place but no action has followed. The longer the the parliamentarians take to wake up the more expensive the process renovation will be and probably the longer it will take.

 

One of the causes of dispute is whether or not the Houses of Parliament shouls consider sitting whilst the renovation is being carried. It is obvious to any sensible person that closing the whole building down and renovating it whilst empty be the would be the best option. The question now is what would happen and how will parliament function if the Houses of Parliament are closed. It would be a great opportunity for a serious rethink of how they work.

 The first major step would be for the hoiuses to sit most of the time virtually. Anyone who watches parliament live will rea;lise that for most of the time most MP's and probably Lords do attend the chamber to listen to discussions. A bell rings and they all troop along to vote, I sometimes wonder if they even know what they are voting about, they certainly have not listened to the debate but have been told how to vote. Nost of this could be done online, some of this was done during the Covid emetgency. my poroposal would be that parliament should only meet in person one week per month, that shoud be sufficient to talk in perspn to other MP's. 

More controversially they should meet for differnt weeks in different places. There would be twelve weeks for paliament to meet, I suggest two each  in Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh and London, in alphabetical order and one each in Birmigham, Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle. I believe that in the past the sovereign would process around the country. Given a timescale of about 10 years this would give plenty of time for everone to get used to the idea. It would also move the focus away from London and England, note that parlimant would only meet in Enland half the time. 

This should be combined with some other reforms. One that is needed are the rules about doing work outside of parliamentary duties. It would be a mistake to ban this completely because some MP's do useful work and it keeps them in touch with their previous lives. However anything they earn would be put into the fund for the renovation of the Houses of Parliament.  It would then be clear how many are just doing it for the money rather than for helping them keep in touch. I am sure that being on TV programmes is good for their profile but that will happen whether the pocket the money or not.  

Another beef I have had  for a long time is the provision for office and secretarial staff for MP's in their constituencies. These should be provided by the civil service and not used as slush funds. If the office is provided centrally it will stay in the same place and at least one or two wokers should be there permanently. It has never seemed to be good practice for work an MP has done for a constituent of business should be tied to that individual. I realise that sometimes a new MP may not feel that they wish to support somehtinga previous MP has been involved with but they should have the integrity to say so.

 

 

 

 

Who defends the antisemites?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/01/antisemitism-racism-jews-britain, this is one of the most depressing articles I have read for many years.

Like many jews, not religious, but clearly of jewish heritage, it had seemed to me that many of those who supported Palestinians and opposed their treatments by the Israeli state as being genuinely concerned about the Palestinian people. In discusions which I did manage to have with the supporters it seemed they could never answer the question of what about the Jewish population of Israel. There seemed a blank in their brains or their thinking when faced with this question. 

The population of Israel and Palestine combined, "the land between  the river and the sea", is about 15 million split roughly equally between Jews and Arabs. These figures are all disputed by various sources. Thje Jewish population is also split roughly equally between those whose me recent heritage is Europe/USA and the middle east, coumtries like Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey amongst others.

How to resolve the conflict between the two main groups of of the population is not easy. One solution which seems to be popular with extremist is simply "genocide", eliminate the other side, this is the stand of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian state on one side and of the present Israeli government and many of the settlers on the West Bank. Inevitably if someone chooses one side or the other they are forced down the difficult path of seeming to support genocide.Is this the reason that that those who join marches in support of the Palestinans have difficulty answering the quastion, what ahppens to the Jewish population. 

I had liked to think they were embarrassed  by this conclusion, perhaps they still are but more worryingly perhaps they support the genocide of jews. To put it differently may be they are just antisemitic. Jeremy Corbyn has expressed his horror on both Instagram and Twitter I am glad to say, just as he did over the attack on the synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Is there any action, perhaps a dem,and for a march in support of Jewish people in Britain. It is interesting to compare his reaction to the terrorist attack oin Finsbiry Park some yearts ago, His defence might be that he is the MP for the area but his comments on the recent antisemitic attacks are by his standards very mute and generalist, they can be found on Facebook and Instagram. The organisation "hope not hate" been vocal in supporting British jews, a statement on Instagram, again not exactly running to the barricades.

Before finishing this blog it seemed like a good idea to look at some other comments. One was from one f the organisers of "Stop the War Coalition". I had never looked at their website before and it horrified me. It doesn't seem to be against war, merely against Israel. The title seems innocent but the content is entirely aimed at Israel and is a platform for the more extreme plastinian causes. There seem,s to be no recognitioom that  Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran aand the Houthis have been waging war on Israel for the last twenty years or so. Israelis have been driven from their homes in the north of Israel by constant rocket attacks. Hamas have been firing rockets from Gaza into Israel for sometime and as we saw on October 7th would cheerfully murder Israeli civilians and burn them in their homes. What is also shows that if the Palestinian groups had the same fire power as the Israeli grovernment they would behave with the same diregard for human life. Not a very comforting thought. If "Stop the War Coalition". is not just a front for the war mongers on the Palestinian side where is the balance in their stand. It is difficult not to see them as AntiSemitic organisation. 

If peace is to be achieved in the the Middle East it will not be though one-sided marches or campaigns, it will have to come through dialogue and  a realisation that evryone who lives there jas a right to live in peace.The tragedy is that the actions of Hamas on October 7th has put thos ehope back by 50 years, that is an optomistic guess.

I do not see how anything that the groups supporting thge Palestinian cause will do anything in Britain except encourage antisemitism. Probably Netanyahu would like nothing better. Harass jews in Britain, attack the current government, and hope for more emigration to Israel. Perhaps the antisemites in these organisation would like to drive jews from Britain.

Starmer, McSweeney and Mandeson

 

My thinking, for what it is worth as I have no inside track, is that many people thought appointing Mandelson was very clever, that includes Kemi Bandenoch and Nigel Farage. Mandelson was just the slightly sleazy character with links to Trump who might be good at keeping in with Trump.

Almost certainly not true but it is not clear quite how nasty and vicious Trump is.

It is also true that Mandelson had been caught out in dodgy activities in the past but nothing suggested that he would sell government secrets to outsiders. Many politicians are influenced by friends and large donors but most do not sell secrets, they just make appropriate decisions.

Another important figure is Morgan McSweeney who was Starmer's chief of staff when he became PM but was also crucial to Starmer becoming leader of the Labour party. He his a protogee of Mandelson, definitely on the right of the Labour party . He help set up a faction within the Labour Party called Labour Together which campaigned against Jeremy Corbyn. It might be that McSweeney identified Starmer as the person to take on Corbyn and made himself an essential part of Starmer's team.

The problem is that Starmer is not a natural politician and does not come across as a man of the people. He is very much the lawyer who argues his cases very carefully. There is a feeling that his knighthood makes him more of a toff. He got it for being head of the DPP, and goes with the job. It might be his difficulty with the civil service goes back to having been head of a big government service and possibly being used to his orders just being obeyed and trusting those below him just to getting on with things. Perhaps he trusted McSweeney too much, others assumed that when he spoke it was always with the support of the PM but he might not have been  consulted, not clear how much McSweeney always cleared with Starmer.

The other issue appears to be the claim that the Foreign Office does not have to worry about vetting of their staff. There might be some truth especially if they were using double agents in some of their posting:) 

It could be messy but I think it unlikely that Starmer was aware of all that was going on, and jst assumed that things would happen. Starmer does not appaer to make friends abd be very clubable. Once this may not have mattered but with television and modern media polticians are much more exposed as people. It is not competence does not a valuable talent anymore but Starmer seems to have shown both a level

Do not trust simple solutions and things are complicated?

 

 It is relevant to explain that I am a mathematician. One of the things about mathematics is that you sometimes get things wrong. This seems to be a problem in the world of politics and even when you know you're wrong and admit it, you get criticised for being wrong, not praised for being honest.

The other important lesson it is possible to learn from mathematics is that often the soution to a problem is complicated. Therev are two differnt ways this can happen. One is to show that the answer is right but also sometimes the answer is complicated. To illustrate with an example from an area that I have worked in. There are some objects which are called "Finite simple groups". In this context it does not  matter what they are but what does matter is that nearly all of them have nice coeherent descriptions except for 26 examples. This is fact. The descriptions are complicated and, when using the descriptions, these 26 exceptions have to be considered. It is irritating but illustrates the point: life is not simple.

This is why I never trust anyone who tells me that have a simple solution to a problem. Or even that they have a solution. It would be comforting if there were people who were so talented we could trust them to solve all our problems. I am sure there are some people who can solve some problems some of the time; doctors can cure some illnesses but not always. Plumbers can mend some plumbing problems but we would not expect them to cure cancer. Which leads me to wonder why people follow individuals who claim that they have solutions and everything will magically get better. 

There are too many examples today, from Trump and Farage on the right to Corbyn and Polanski who are more on the left. It is not just the individuals but those who put so much hope into them. The problem is that there are those who put their faith into "simple" solutions, whether it be religious or political beliefs. Tax the rich, let the market decide, be a christian/hindu/islamic country and all our problems will be solved.

Surely it must be clear that this is nonsense, is it just that we want to believe there are simple solutions! 

 

 

 

 

Andy Burnham amd Suella Braverman

 You might wonder what the connexion between these two politicians is? Fundamentally they have both shown that they're more interested in themselves than anything else.

A brief comment about whether Suella Braverman who has always shown herself to be more interested in Suella Braverman than anyone else. Her behaviour as a Tory minister clearly illustrated this phenomenon. As with most Tories leaving the Tory party and joining Reform a big argument seems to be that Britain is broken. This is not true, it might be having some difficulties, but if you're trying to claim that the current government is failing this is a good line to push. However many of the faults that we now see were caused by the 14 years of the Tory Government. Suella Braverman seemed to be a major part of that government holding various cabinet positions so is she responsible for the problems. It seems odd that she now thinks that as a member of the Reformal Party  she is somehow going tosolve the problems that she helped create in the first place.

Let us now turn to Andy Burnham. I voted for him as leader when he stood on a previous occasion. From that you can deduce that I was a supporter of Andy Burnham and would have liked him to have been the leader of the Labour Party. You can also deduce that I was and still am a member of the Labour Party, something I am still proud to be Despite some errors they have been making.

it is worth thinking about why he chose to put his name forward for the coming by-election. There seems to me no reason that one would want to give up being a mayor with real power to becoming a backbench MP a role he has already played. The only reason for wishing to resign as Mayor to stand for parliament was to challenge Keir Starmer as the leader. It was an act not to help the Labour Party or the country but to pursue his own personal interest. The mayorship only has two years to last and almost certainly there will be by-election pretty soon after that or just before it if you really want to be an MP. The trouble is I don't think he wants to be an MP, he wants to be Prime Minister. If he got elected in the by-election he would further destabilise the existing government which is despite many people's beliefs trying to do a good job. It is being destabilised partly by the House of Lords which is determined to frustrate some of the more useful left of centre policies, as with the employment bill and with the leasehold reform bill, the latter still being held up by the right wing House of Lords. The reform of the House of Lords is  amajor issue which I hope to write a blog about soon.

 

In conclusion I do not see either of these politicians behaving in the best interests of the country at this point in time. This does not surprise me when it comes to Suella Braverman but disappoints me enormously when it comes to Andy Burnham who has allowed his popularity to get in the way of his better judgement. 

Is Donald Trump just a typical american?

In this I wish to discuss how we perhaps misinterpret Donald Trump. Americans jave a great belief in the "Excepionalism of the USA", perhaps than most people have about the place they live. I frequently watch on Youtube various postings about Americans misunderstanding Europe, not just Europe, really the whole world. Many Americans do not seem to realise that outside America is not the same as America. This might seem an odd statement at first  but the first time Americans visit other countries they always seem surprised that things do not work the same. One rather trivial example is that ice is not poured into glasses and water automatically. This may be because we live in countries which aren't quite as hot but the use of ice is not a universal activity. Also though the dollar, that is the US dollar, is a very powerful currency it is not universally accepted as cash in most parts of the world. Even years ago when I worked at chemist shop in Aldgate, especially on a Sunday when most other shops were closed, Americans would just pass me a handful of cash and say "can't sort out your money, just take what you need". I think Donald Trump is just like these Americans who seem not to understand at all that the rest of the world is not America and when he says things he expects other countries to behave exactly as he thinks USA would. This comes as a surprise. That is not to say he is not a very dangerous man The reason for his danger is the  ridiculous position of authority he has achieved in the United States of America as well as the leeway given to him by their legislative branch which is meant to hold the executive under some sort of control.

Of course it's also the issue of his clearly failing mental state but this is combined with those around him pretending it isn't happening. Just listen to his press secretary pretending he didn't say Iceland when he meant Greenland Of course it might be that he really does think Iceland and Greenland are the same place. When I was in America, many years ago now, in a university town where you might have assumed a reasonable level of education people had no idea where New Zealand was and thought somehow it was part of Australia. (It is actually  separated by a large sea 1000 miles away.) Another example of the American ignorance of the rest of the world concerns a friend who had taken a degree in English from an English university but had been born and brought up in the West Indies where her father was Scottish and a consultant surgeon and her mother was Canadian. The university was trying to insist that she should take an exam to prove she was fluent in English Not seeming to realise that most of the West Indies speak English as their first language and that she had a degree in English from an English university. They eventually relented when they realised that her mother was Canadian and they were aware that Canadians spoke English. A similar example from the same place was of a Swede who spoke very fluent and good English but she pronounced hot as hot and not as they tend to say in the midwest hat. They kept correcting her, not accepting that there is more than one way of pronouncing English words and and not everyone speaks with an American accent.  Talking to an American in the UK who had spent some time here, she explained to me that one thing that worried her was that when she was listening to someone on the radio she could not discern whether the person was coloured or not. This obviously surprised me because I could not understand why you would expect this. Obviously in America there is a coloured accent which seems to cover the whole country. These are all examples I personally have had which shows the failure of many Americans to understand that the rest of the world is not America.

I do not know how much Donald Trump has travelled outside of the United States of America But I do wonder whether many of his attitudes are coloured by his lack of experience of the rest of the world and, when he does travel as president, he is surrounded all the time by the trappings of America. One of the problems is also that Americans seem to have very little understanding of either their own history or that of the rest of the world. I'm not sure if Trump is aware of the War between the United States of America and Canada in 1812. (It isn't clear that Canada was at this point defined as Canada so the war was actually between the United States of America and the UK. This war lasted for two years and ended up exactly where it began, that is the border between Canada and the USA were defined after that war and were  exactly where they were before the USA invaded. Trump has often claimed that the USA has defended Canada though I'm not sure what evidence he has to justify this claim. It is worth noting that the USA did not enter the Second World War until the USA was invaded by Japan at Pearl Harbour. The Second World War between the UK Canada etc started on September the first 1939.  This is approximately two years before the USA entered the war. I'm not sure one could argue that the USA rushed in to help Canada in that war. Another thing which has surprised me has been the Americans do not seem to realise how much support they have given to the IRA over the years. When the twin towers came down  in 2001, I was working with a group of Americans in the UK. Obviosly we were appalled but what surprised me was their horror that anyone could blow up a civilian target as an act of terror.  When I pointed out that IRA had done this for some years in both Northern Ireland and mainland UK they seemed completely suprised, especially when I pointed out the the famous St Patrick's Day parades always raised money to support organisations which helped the IRA.

As Mencken said "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."  Despite his other faults he seems to have been right about that.