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Archive for December, 2018

The Uncuts: 2018 political awards (part III)

31/12/2018, 07:35:29 PM

Best Demonstration of the Power of a Union: Leo Varadkar

2018 was the year that Tory and Labour Brexiteers alike saw the power of being in a union. Blowhards such as Andrew Bridgen or Kate Hoey might have dismissed Ireland’s interests when compared to the mighty United Kingdom, but the solidarity of the EU 27 behind Leo Varadkar and Ireland’s red lines on a hard border showed how collective action protects the sovereignty of the individual.

Of all the many flaws in Theresa May’s proposed deal with the EU, she has come to grief with her backbenchers over the backstop – the commitment to avoid a hard border between south and north by keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union and key parts of the single market, if needed. The backstop exists because the EU did not trade away Ireland’s priorities in negotiating with the UK.

There were ample opportunities – everything from extra financial contributions to preferential trade arrangements were reportedly offered by the UK – but the point of a union is unity. Leo Varadkar and his team made this case skilfully and persuasively in Brussels. The British, by all accounts, did not.

The result is that Leo Varadkar has what he wants while Theresa May continues to scramble about, ringing EU leaders ahead of January’s meaningful vote, hoping for something, anything, that might give her a way out of the backstop.

It won’t be forthcoming.

Most Indefatigable Labour MP: Luciana Berger

The Patchwork Foundation, a new organisation aiming to make politics more accessible to young people from disadvantaged and minority communities, named Luciana Berger as Labour People’s Choice MP of the Year. Berger, though, is less popular with anti-Semites, as she detailed in a speech to the Commons in April, drawing applause from fellow MPs. The abuse that Berger endures is as troubling as her stoicism is impressive. Appallingly, Berger is far from unique among MPs in receiving this kind of hateful treatment. We profoundly hope that a new year brings a new civility.

Most Shameless Political Honour: Sir John Redwood (more…)

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The Uncuts: 2018 political awards (part II)

31/12/2018, 03:11:28 PM

Most Dearly Departed: Tessa Jowell

Tessa Jowell, according to her obituary in the Guardian, “exuded cheerfulness and gave even those she had only just met the sense of being one of her old friends.” Uncut’s experience of Jowell chimed with this. In our age of division, Jowell’s relentless positivity and easy warmth is much missed.

The personal is political. The last time we felt like a country pulling together to reach for the stars was during 2012’s Olympic summer. An experience that we would not have known without Jowell’s personal qualities.

That Jowell persuaded an initially sceptical prime minister Tony Blair of the wisdom of an Olympic bid reminds us of the importance of leaders having confidants prepared to speak truth to power. Next to today’s shrivelled Downing Street bunker, the near past seems a distant universe.

Straight Talking, Honest Politics: Jeremy Corbyn and Wreathgate

In previous years, it has mostly been possible for observers and many party members to take Jeremy Corbyn’s words as misconstrued, misguided or mildly disingenuous. This year, however, the party’s own leader has been responsible for such blatant whoppers that he alone, astonishingly, bagged all nominations in this category.

Nominations came in for:

– Claiming not to have called the prime minister a “stupid woman”, when he is actually caught on video mouthing those exact words and a team of lip-reading experts disagreed.

– Claiming to be anti-Brexit, when in fact he has spent his entire political career being anti-EU. In particular, voting against Brexit in the September Commons vote, but only because he couldn’t get away with voting otherwise with the members, using the fig-leaf that the government’s resulting powers would be too strong. I mean, who could say that in Iran, Venezuela or Cuba the government’s powers are “too strong”, eh?

– In close contention for the top spot, there was the Marr interview where he actually told three untruths in the space of twenty seconds.

But the ultimate prize in this prestigious award was given for the culmination of the “Wreathgate” saga, where our Dear Leader claimed not to have put a wreath on a terrorist’s grave, even though all evidence pointed to the fact that he had done just that. To round things off, in a brilliantly disingenuous move, his office then reported to the press regulator that the coverage had been unfair, only to drop the complaint again a few months later, claiming the process had been “compromised”. A well-deserved win.

the possibility for socialists to lead a political transformation

Most Forensically Persistent: Robert Mueller

Liberal America remains in therapy. Pod Save America helps. Slow Burn, telling the story of Watergate, is another wildly successful podcast. The resignation of president Richard Nixon did not happen overnight. It was a glacial journey into an unknown territory.

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The Uncuts: 2018 political awards (part I)

30/12/2018, 09:37:17 PM

Politician of the Year: Vladimir Putin

Sometimes the bad guy wins. Vladimir Putin is Uncut’s 2018 politician of the year.

This was the year his primary strategic objective in Europe – to weaken and fracture the EU – came so much closer. Brexit chaos in Britain, yellow jackets in France and the political twilight of Angela Merkel mean Putin’s western border has rarely seemed so fissiparous or vulnerable.

In the US, Putin has continued to reap the benefits of Donald Trump’s election as the White House wrecking ball keeps crashing through the structure of American military and trading alliances, built up over many decades, that have underpinned the global world order.

Vladimir Putin is not an all-seeing, all-knowing puppeteer. Events have been kind to his agenda. But he has done what’s possible within and without the law to drive home his advantage. Sometimes this has been run through with incompetence as with the attempted Skripal assassination, but more often than not, Russia’s efforts have been effective, particularly in terms of cyber warfare.

That said, Uncut’s is not entirely a counsel of despair. Russia’s fundamental weakness is becoming more acute – Putin’s economy is stagnating. Russia’s wealth per capita places it behind countries like Romania, Oman and Costa Rica. The economy remains one third smaller in 2018 than 2013 and just as with the Soviet Union, a weak economy and expansive military are not compatible in the medium term.

But as we stand at the end of 2018, Vladimir Putin was the judges’ unanimous choice for politician of the year.

It’s worth pausing for a moment to consider why he won the award, and not a name closer to home.

Traditionally, Uncut politician of the year is an award that goes to a UK party leader (last year Putin won the Uncut’s version of the overseas category). But this year has been remarkable, without comparison in recent memory in that all of the UK’s party leaders have had a dreadful year.

Earlier this month, nearly two-thirds of Theresa May’s backbenchers declared no-confidence in her. Her pitch to stay on as leader involved promising she’d step down before the next election and daily life in the Conservative party is now defined by the tumbling race for the succession.

Jeremy Corbyn (Uncut’s 2017 politician of the year) did not make it into Downing Street as he was predicting last year, nor has he made any breakthrough in polling. Even though pollsters have updated their methodology following the 2017 general election, Labour remains locked in a tie with possibly the most ineffective government in a century. Worse still, Jeremy Corbyn frequently comes third in a three-way choice for Prime Minister involving him, Theresa May and Don’t Know.

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As the country contemplates “to leave or not to leave”, Corbyn’s position may just become an irrelevance

27/12/2018, 10:38:38 PM

by Rob Marchant

December has been a mad, rollercoaster month for British politics. The first half brought a good couple of weeks for Remainers. There were the three Commons defeats for May; and then the government’s own legal advice was finally published, which said that the Irish border question is essentially insoluble within any kind of Brexit. I mean, who knew?

And then there was the European Court of Justice ruling, saying that Article 50 was unilaterally cancellable by Britain. This means, as John Rentoul noted, a referendum is now more likely.

Then the vote on May’s deal was postponed and the PM herself survived a no-confidence vote from her Tory party colleagues. Though it was painted as bad news for her by the media, it also weakened the Moggite fringe on the right of her party, who underestimated her support and were made to look silly. It also still means she is not leaving No. 10 any time soon, not at least without a general election – which now looks unlikely after Corbyn’s crying off from a parliamentary no-confidence vote, an altogether different level of bad.

It is hard not to see all this as something of a victory for Remainers and moderate Leavers. But where does it leave us?

If there is a People’s Vote, the key thing, as always with referenda, is the question.

May has made it clear that there are three options: Remain, Chequers and No Deal. But Many commentators seem to miss the fact that a three-way referendum would be highly unlikely to be practical: it would both lack legitimacy and further run the risk that the public didn’t actually get what it wanted – and everyone would be unhappy. No, a referendum must surely have two clear options and so one must be taken off the table. But which?

Remain vs Chequers: Remain wins, as YouGov’s polling shows.
No Deal vs Chequers: unlikely to happen. A People’s Vote can only really become a reality if the pendulum has swung towards Remain – that is, if the government suffers public pressure to do so.
Remain vs No Deal: if a parliamentary vote happens first, Chequers loses and there is a last-minute swing to Remain, it could be that this becomes the vote. In the end, no-one knows what would happen, because it is not the same as the hypothetical vote polled for here in a three-way poll. Removal of one option would probably affect the other two. Even then, Leave vs. Remain is still roughly 50-50, as it was back in 2016. One can’t help feeling that, if No Deal were the only option, some Leavers would back away and it only takes a few per cent to swing things for Remain.

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Put your legs away Jeremy and come up with a convincing Brexit policy

09/12/2018, 08:00:03 AM

by Kevin Meagher

I shudder to imagine what Jeremy Corbyn’s pins look like – pale and scrawny, if I’m pushed to conjure up a mental picture.

He must think they look alright though. Patrick Maguire over at the New Statesman quotes a DUP source saying the Labour Leader is “showing a bit of leg” in a bid to woo the DUP and its ten MPs, ahead of a make-or-break week for Theresa May.

Yesterday Corbyn told Sky News the DUP opposed the Northern Ireland backstop for “very good and sensible reasons.” He said Labour was ready to “step in and negotiate seriously with the EU to put up a serious alternative which is a proper customs union – a customs union – with the EU in which we have a say in what goes on”.

Things are clearly getting weird in Westminster, but this is off the charts strange.

Corbyn is, we are frequently reminded by his detractors, a lifelong Irish republican. Suddenly, however, the political troglodytes of the DUP are people of honour whose barmpot politics are “good” and “sensible.”

So what’s he playing at?

It seems this courtship ritual is a crude attempt to drive a wedge between Theresa May and her erstwhile unionist allies. Fair enough, opposition parties are meant to oppose and all that.

But there’s no pathway to Number Ten that involves him courting the DUP. Neither are they crazy enough to assume ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ in the frenetic calculus of who wants what over Brexit.

They’re on the rebound, granted, but they’re not desperate enough to put Sinn Fein allies like Corbyn and McDonnell in government. No, Nigel Dodds, the DUP’s Westminster leader, is still trying to catch Theresa’s eye.

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