And karma is a load of rubbish?

Many reacted to last night's match where England was defeated by Iceland with horror and anger but I actually found it all quite funny.  It was arrogant English nationalism that took the UK out of the EU and there could be no greater symbol of English nationalism than that embodied by its national football team (apologies to the successful English rugby team, managed by a foreigner...).  For the national football team to fail was, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential but it would have been at least a rebuke to the delusional, vain, navel-gazing English nationalism that is so damaging to the country as a whole (e.g. green-lighting Scottish independence).
Even before the match, I had lost interest in the progress of the English football team, partially through their own faults but mostly because they were an avatar of that ugly English nationalism that had destroyed the country's destiny, whose most extreme element were the disgusting hooligans (who chanted how they were all voting out.  How?  Were they using a proxy?).  My disinterest manifested itself in going shopping while the match was being played.
Dean Acheson quipped that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role.  In my lifetime, that role seemed to be playing a part in helping shape Europe for the benefit of ourselves and future generations.  Now it seems the role will be to be Switzerland-with-nukes - an irrelevance in all but name.
So at the end of the game, I found myself cheering on Iceland, not ironically and helped by England's abysmal performance.  There were quite a few Remain supporters hurt by last night's result.England deserved to go out of Euros at the first opportunity - that it was accompanied by humiliation just sums up Brexit for me.  I don't believe in karma but there was a strong correlation for it with last night and last week.

Appealing to the divine

The opening lines of the opening hymn in church yesterday were, "Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways."  It was made more exquisite as it was chosen before the referendum vote.
Didn't get around to posting this blog (though I did tweet it) as I went to London in the afternoon to meet some friends in Hyde Park.  Getting off at Hyde Park Corner tube station, I was affronted by the Green Zone of Baghdad transported to the eastern end of the park and had to walk the long way around the forthcoming music festival ground to get to the Serpentine, after I thought, "Well, how far can this fence go?"  The Emerald City went quite far.  But it was relaxing by the Serpentine with the friends.

A new start?

In the end, it was a decisive rejection of wanting to remain in the European Union, no matter how wonky the ideas of many of the people voting for Leave.  I hope to be proved wrong, that the economy surges ahead, that the politics unleashes a positive reaction at home and throughout the EU but I doubt it.  Even the prospect of Scotland voting for independence doesn't fill me with sadness because if Brexit is to be a success then it won't be based on nation-states that many Brexiteers cherish - it will be a lot more decentralised, even beyond the city municipal level. 
Boris 'the Animal' Johnson said the EU was a noble idea whose time had come and gone.  I don't think that.  I believe the nation-state, a nineteenth century construct, was a noble idea whose time has come and gone and therefore the UK breaking apart isn't such a big deal in a post-Brexit world (though if we had remained in the EU, I would have wanted Scotland to stay part of the UK). I think the EU represents one version of a post-modern political entity.  Britain will have go the other way in post-modernism, although not to the extent of slashing wages and protections for British workers (the UK already had the second lowest regulatory burden in the developed world) in some crazy free market free-for-all.
But putting aside economics and politics, the loss I feel, the wound, is intangible.  Geographically we are still part of Europe but psychologically we have rejected to be European, to be part of something more than us and to be greater for that.  I am an internationalist and my support for peoples of different places working together to resolve their differences will not diminish.  But to call myself European seems hollow when I know my country is choosing a different path.

Brexit deck of cards

Though some might say they are knaves all and others Guilty Men (and women), yet more would say they pose a greater threat to peace and prosperity than Saddam and his crew, of whom in 2003 the USA issued a 'playing deck' of 52 most wanted Iraqi figures.

Spades:
Ace: Vladimir Putin
King: Donald Trump
Queen: Marine Le Pen
Jack: John Howard
10: Richard Dearlove
9: Geert Wilders
8: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
7: Matteo Salvini
6: Tom Van Grieken
5: Vojislav Seselj
4: David Owen
3: Winston Peters
2: David Trimble

Clubs
Ace: Rupert Murdoch
King: Paul Dacre
Queen: Allison Pearson
Jack: Richard Desmond
10: Barclay brothers
9: Tony Gallagher
8: Victoria Newton
7: Hugh Whittow
6: Martin Ivens
5: Kelvin Mackenzie
4: Katy Hopkins
3: Tom Newton Dunn
2: Dawn Neesom

Diamonds:
Ace: Arron Banks
King: Nigel Farage
Queen: Priti Patel
Jack: Norman Lamont
10: Stuart Wheeler
9: Tim Martin
8: Anthony Bamford
7: James Dyson
6: Douglas Carswell
5: Daniel Hannan
4: Douglas Rees-Mogg
3: Peter Bone
2: Bill Cash

Hearts:
Ace: Michael Gove
King: Boris Johnson
Queen: Gisela Stuart
Jack: Iain Duncan Smith
10: Andrea Leadsom
9: Bernard Jenkin
8: Kate Hoey
7: Nigel Lawson
6: Matthew Elliott
5: Michael Howard
4: Frank Field
3: Suzanne Evans
2: Zac Goldsmith

Plus in a standard playing deck, there are two Jokers
Joker 1: The Queen - because who knows?
Joker 2: David Icke - if we're to be ruled by alien lizards, we'll be ruled by our own alien lizards.

Another memory blackened but justifiably so

I suppose Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is glad that the party vetoed his window-dressing idea to rename the Lib Dems as the Liberals (as they used to be before their merger with the Labour-breakaway Social Democrats).  To have one paedophile in your former ranks when called the Liberals is disastrous, two is complete blacklisting.
Yet another star of light entertainment, the former Liberal MP, Clement Freud, has escaped justice by dying before allegations were accepted.  Gary Glitter, Stuart Hall and Rolf Harris did not and were sent to prison like aged Nazis but Jimmy Savile got away.  Politicians like Labour's Lord Janner and Labour defector Liberal MP Cyril Smith also perished before they could be sent down for serial padeophilia.  It's tragic for the victims to have suffered such abuse to make one's own sadness irrelevant by comparison.  But all the fond memories of Freud and (also Hall) must now be banished to a zone of condemnation in the mind where it is unacceptable to enjoy.  All support must be offered the surviving victims

Setting the agenda

I once had a positive disagreement with Sir Malcolm Rifkind (or someone purporting to be him) on the question of nuclear weapons.  Now I no longer receive comments as I think many people believe my blog to be worthless ephemera!  And I don't blame them.  I was never much good at keeping diaries and what is a blog other than an online diary (albeit one that is public rather than private)?
But of course we all want to change the world, have an impact on it, make our mark.  For many people that be having and raising children, as it is for me.  Yet I thought I could contribute to the EU referendum debate and how best to do that than go straight to the top.  I tweeted to David Cameron's personal Twitter account (rather than the No. 10 one) that pensioners are the most likely to vote Brexit but those with pension plans invested in the stock market could be in for a nasty shock when the stock market will suffer a 'correction' in the event of Britain choosing to leave.  I concluded it by saying, "Turkeys voting for Christmas."
Now, after a couple of days while he completed his pre-arranged schedule, Cameron has now started to talk about the hit to pensions following a British decision to leave the EU.  He has used more felicitous language than I, has focused on the state pension rather than those linked to the stock market and has made no mention of turkey, given the endless problems that word has caused in misleading people.  Yet for the first time in the campaign he has talked about the potential hit to pensions a couple of days after I tweeted him.
It could be complete coincidence and I have no proof to state otherwise.  But it is tantalising that I may have had some input into a decision that will affect everyone's lives for decades.
Sadly, it seems most people, especially older people, have already made up their minds and if they are a little poorer so be it if it limits immigration in some unspecific, undetermined way.  I still remember the old lady holidaying in Benidorm, saying, "All these foreigners coming here; ruining my country."  The internet polls are now firmly pointing towards Brexit beyond the margin of error and I have become resigned the country making a 'historic mistake'.  It proves that you can fool most of the people enough of the time.  We are about to embark on a collective act of national hubris and from hubris springs nemesis.

Comings and goings

John Nott was always a rather highly strung character in the public imagination, but maybe that is not surprising when as Defence Secretary, you are emasculated by a woman (Margaret Thatcher) at the moment of your greatest glory (taking back the Falklands).  In an interview subsequently, Sir Robin Day memorably quipped that Nott was a "here-today-gone-tomorrow politician," following that up with a further hit to the solar plexus asking why anyone should believe what he says, something that prompted Nott to storm out of the studio live on air, the camera panning after him.  And Sir Robin was right, Nott being relieved of his duties within three months (although that was also because Nott was not seeking re-election).
Nott called his autobiography Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, not out of humility per se but to avoid it being instantly remaindered.  Now he has come out and suspended his Tory membership because of David Cameron's "poisonous" levels of debate.  Actually the prime minister is playing within himself, studiously avoiding attacking Brexit Tories directly (a 'self-denying ordinance', the PM has called it).  Given that the majority of the Conservative party is pro-Brexit and Cameron's days as leader (if not prime minister) are numbered, Nott's action seems decidedly quixotic on the face of it.  Rather I think Nott, being pro-Brexit himself, is trying to his bit to get the UK to leave the EU and it did get onto the front pages of the right-wing press, happy to bury the bad news of a high-profile defection to Remain.  Once again, the prime minister's integrity is called into question by his own side.
The Mirror went with a splash about how a Nigel Farage aide was convicted of paedophilia, the implication being that all Brexit campaigners are kiddy-fiddlers or enablers of kiddy-fiddlers.  It's a little desperate.
What was big news was Dr Sarah Wollaston, an independent-minded Tory who (according to The Guardian) is an 'influential backbencher', switching sides, leaving Leave to go with Remain.  She fired a salvo in departure, accusing (rightly) the Leave side of wilfully using lies to advance their cause - 'post-truth politics' in her words - and that the NHS was safer if Britain remained an EU member.  It may have been the case that Dr Wollaston - a self-confessed Europhile - had been a double agent all along, timing her exit from Leave to try and cause maximum damage.  Whether it will swing undecideds is another question but it may be indicative of doubts Leave leaners might have as they enter the polling booth on 23rd June.

The Euro as political football

One of the points hammered home hardest by Vote Leave campaigners is how the same ‘experts’ who recommend staying in the European Union, also supported the UK joining the European Single Currency. It is clearly a fallacious argument (but that is to be expected) to state that just because an organisation got one piece of advice wrong at some time in the past means that from then on they would be wrong on every subject forever and a day.
When the Bank of England and the Treasury are attacked, there is a complete departure from facts. The late Eddie George, then Governor of the Bank of England at the time of the adoption of the Euro, said that it would take 300 years before the Euro could be judged and George’s successor, Mervyn King, has been a true 'Euro'-sceptic. Meanwhile, the man who compiled the Treasury dossier on remaining in the EU was the same who provided the spadework for Gordon Brown’s five tests for entry which ultimately blocked Britain’s entry to the Euro.
Sadly, few, if any, Remain campaigners have skewered the abuse of facts or semantics as maybe they too agree silently on the Euro being a failure. When you see Greece being held over a barrel, Germany and Finland demanding a pound of flesh while agreeing repeated bailouts, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Cyprus and Italy struggling, how could one judge it otherwise? But possibly, just possibly, would it have been bad for Britain to join?
The Euro itself was created in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and French president François Mitterand demanded that if West Germany was to absorb East Germany, the price of unification would be the Germans giving up the Deutschmark and becoming ever more embedded in European integration, to stop Germany being over-mighty. The law of unintended consequences meant that exact scenario played out because of the single currency. The membership criteria was very flexible, allowing Greece to join (although even then Athens had to ‘cook the books’ to achieve it) but the European Central Bank being located in Frankfurt was indicative of which country would have the greatest clout. The UK was not a part to ameliorate a distinctly German-model application, that lasted until Mario Draghi took over.
Joining the Euro project in June 2003, when Brown definitively ruled out membership, would have been too late, having to agree to rules that had been composed without British input. After rejecting the offer of being a founder member in 1957, the UK soon realised its folly but had to wait until 1973 to gain entry, working within an existing framework that was not Anglo-Saxon (no bad thing?). With the Euro, that again would have seen Britain late to the party.
Though John Major’s government was not in a position to follow through, being neither ideologically inclined or with a sufficient majority, the real time to engage with our European partners in the project was after the Maastrict Treaty in 1993. Denmark’s referendum rejection of it allowed Major’s unruly backbenchers to gain the upper hand and achieve major opt-outs, including of moves to a single currency.
With the UK helping to build the rules that incorporated its own interests, the Euro may have been more robust and Greece may have been made to wait a lot longer before joining. Arguably, had Britain been more committed to European integration, that project may have been more of a success, to the UK’s benefit as well as wider but the insular political nature of this island country would always have militated against that.
Critics of both left and right might say this exegesis is hypothetical Panglossian rhetoric, but it’s no more of a counter-factual than saying Britain avoided a fate worse than death in not joining the Euro. One might criticise a one-size-fits-all monetary policy between such divergent economies as London and Scotland/the north of England – how far must one atomise? The Euro in its current form is in a mess, yes but the contrarian should never close themselves off to possible optimistic lines of enquiry as guides to the future, if not laments to the past.

Drowning, not waving?

Michael Gove, leader of the official Vote Leave campaign group, was grilled in turn last night after the previous night was that for the prime minister.  Sky News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, was commendably even-handed in roasting both of its guests and impressively selecting audiences instinctively critical of the respective debaters (debaters with host Faisal Islam).
Many have focused on the absence of facts in Vote Leave - essentially The Jungle Book's Ka singing 'Trust in me" - but I would like to laser in on something which few have tackled - Gove's epiphany about the demerits of European integration, when his Aberdeenshire father fisherman "was driven to the wall" by the strictures of the Common Fisheries Policy (a board which has MEP Nigel Farage on it, yet he never attends a single meeting to put the British case, 'out of principle').
The Grand Banks Collapse of the early 1990s was when over-fishing drove the cod-rich seas (known to mariners for at least 500 years) to extinction.  Now all fishing is banned there, driving all fisheries in the region into bankruptcy.  There is a slim hope that the Grand Banks may one day recover but not within the working lives of the fishermen who once harvested the sea.  Billy Joel's Downeaster Alexa references the lack of fish before the final collapse.
The Commons Fisheries Policy was designed to prevent such a disaster in European waters.  Like a lemming population, there were too many fishermen operating too big trawler nets for all to survive.  In previous days, the technology (and demand) hadn't been there, so sustainable fishing was possible.  So in essence, Gove would like to take us out of the EU because that would take us outside the remit of the Common Fisheries Policy.  For his Aberdeenshire father (and others who sadly lost their business) to continue to fish, Gove would have sold subsequent generations of fishermen down the river so to speak, for with a North Sea collapse, all would suffer.  Like Vote Leave wish to do with subsequent generations of British citizens overall.

Garden(ing) leave

The first super-group The Traveling Wilburys [American spelling of Travelling] with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne are often maligned, usually on the back of a fairly awful second album (called Vol. 3) - Orbison had died almost immediately after the first album and his influence was missed.  But that first album was musicality distilled.
One of the non-singles was 'Tweeter and the Monkey Man', a near psychadelic story of New Jersey low-lifes and gangsters.  It was the complete opposite of the 'filler' cliché and written largely by Dylan, in Bruce Springsteen-baiting mode.  One of the last verse lines has it, with Tweeter being held as a hostage on a bridge by the Monkey Man, "Jan said up to the Monkey Man, I'm not fooled by Tweeter's cool, I knew him long before he ever became a Jersey Girl."  This seems a distinct reference to the mafia in the Garden State, rather than a stubborn, if good-time girl.
So when Hillary Clinton, campaigning in New Jersey for the Democratic nomination that is all but hers, says she wants to be a Jersey Girl, it seems a little incongruous (unless you sign up to Trump's 'Crooked Clinton' mantra).  Maybe she's thinking of the hit musical Jersey Boys and trying to transpose herself into that popularity, by hook or by crook (actually, let's not go there, Trump needs to lose).