The first responsibility
Jill Rutter’s review of how Brexit is going focuses, understandably, on economics and trade (“How is Brexit for you?” April). But there’s a security dimension too.
At the Munich Security Conference in 2018, Theresa May said “Europe’s security is our security,” and the latter was “best achieved” through co-operation “including with the EU.” Speaking at this year’s conference, Boris Johnson echoed the first part when he linked UK security to “the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area,” but not the second.
True, on so-called internal security, the government reached a better-than-expected deal with the EU. But the Johnson government abandoned any structured co-operation on foreign policy and defence, and sought a dialled-down relationship on tackling terrorism, serious crime and cyberattacks. Much now depends on the EU accepting that the UK will continue to protect personal data privacy, which is not yet a done deal. Gaps remain around sharing information on the movements of wanted individuals.
At the same time, European leaders like Merkel and Macron have reaffirmed their commitment to EU co-operation on a range of security challenges. And allies like the US, Canada and Norway have underlined their interest in co-operation with the EU, seeking participation in the project to improve military mobility in Europe.
The UK has struck a confident tone on foreign policy and defence recently, with a big uplift in defence spending and an Integrated Review of our global role that promises a strong focus on transatlantic relations as well as an Indo-Pacific tilt. But as the government knows, we also have a major stake in the security of our close neighbourhood. And questions remain about how that is going to work in practice.
Julian King was the final UK-appointed member of the EU Commission, holding the security brief
The end of the affair?
Boris Johnson and Brexit are toxic in Scotland, which confirms Andrew Marr’s assertion that nothing in politics—including Scottish independence—is “unthinkable” (“Break-up Britain,” April). But the clash of egos between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon has exposed the fault-lines in the separatist movement, so he is also right to say nothing is “inevitable.”
When the new devolution settlement was being planned in 1997, it was always thought there would be a chance to take stock after a couple of parliaments and make sure a truly democratic model was emerging. That didn’t happen, and now there are no checks or balances, civil servants are cowed and the Crown Office is being dragged into party politics. Many thought the electoral system would prevent an all-powerful figure seizing control; I wasn’t one of them. Now democracy is subsumed under control freakery.
Voters are waking up: the headlong dash for independence is turning the spotlight on the perils of going it alone. Frankly, do we not have enough to worry about just now? Should we not be looking to deliver more, better jobs, creating an environment where young people can reach their potential and business get back on its feet?
That is the kind of Scotland I want. I don’t want to start a fight with the next-door neighbour, which is what the whole separatist agenda is about. And I don’t want a parliament to be led by politicians who make the Handforth Parish Council look like outstanding civic leaders.
Helen Liddell is a former secretary of state for Scotland
Marr gives an excellent account of the current debate about Scottish independence. As he observes, an important cause of the recent rise in support for independence has been the divergence in voting patterns between Scotland and England since 2010, just as a similar divergence drove support for Scottish devolution between 1979 and 1997. It might therefore follow that were England to shift to the left and elect a Labour government in 2024, some of these tensions would ease, just as they did after 1997.
But there is an obvious difference between Scottish politics now and the 1980s (which Marr highlights in his article), namely the rise of the SNP rather than Labour as the dominant party in Scotland. Would a Labour government elected by English voters be perceived by the Scottish electorate as resolving the democratic deficit highlighted by nationalist rhetoric? Or would it, on the contrary, be as rich a target for the SNP as the Conservatives have been?
Any Starmer government would presumably also lack a Scottish mandate. Both English and Scottish voting patterns would probably need to change for the dynamics of the independence debate to alter. The unwelcome news for defenders of the Anglo-Scottish Union is that looks unlikely to happen in the near future.
Ben Jackson, University College, Oxford
Je défends
According to Louise Michel’s scathing piece (“J’accuse…!” April), the Macron presidency has failed on its promises, perverted our political system and left France in a shambles. Four years since his surprise election, the president, for all his intellectual acumen, apparently no longer deserves support from progressive liberals.
In politics as in life, disappointment can be a mark of love. True, Macron has not discovered the magic wand that would have been needed to transform French society and dispel the legacy of over-promising and under-delivering left by most of his predecessors. His management of Covid-19 has not been stellar (but has it really been much better across the Channel?); Islamist terrorism and insecurity have taken their toll.
Macron’s reactions are, however, in tune with the country’s mood—the French like to see themselves as revolutionary when they are in fact conservative and risk-averse. Would France be better off if “Macronism” crumbled and the old divide between left and right were restored? Only nostalgic politics addicts believe so—40 per cent of the French people, by contrast, tell pollsters they positively approve of the president.
The fragmentation of French society, tamed since Napoleon by a centralised, top-down bureaucracy, could not just be plastered over. French citizens believe that political leaders are mostly corrupt. Former president Sarkozy’s legal turmoil further divides the conservatives. The left is limp, and quarrels with the Greens.
Meanwhile, new to the French tradition, Macron has initiated some direct democratic practices, with citizens’ conventions to find answers to the gilets jaunes upheaval and climate change.
And his opponent now is Marine Le Pen. In 1871, Louise Michel, nicknamed the Red Virgin, was a fiery teacher, feminist and anarchist, who fought alongside the Commune in Paris against the central government. The insurrection ended in bloodshed and is still celebrated as a heroic episode. Who should your pseudonymous writer’s true enemy be today?
Christine Ockrent was editor of L'Express
Econ 101
Nicholas Macpherson writes a defence of austerity without defining what it is (“Upfront,” March). What he calls the new “cosy consensus” is not that government debt does not matter and that we can therefore borrow infinite amounts at all times. Instead, the consensus is that you should not worry about debt in a recession like the one we are in, and should continue not to worry until the recovery is complete.
The consensus is not new. It has been understood since Keynes, and is set out everywhere from undergraduate textbooks to state-of-the-art macroeconomic papers. In truth, 2010 austerity broke the academic consensus, which is why most academics opposed it.
At the heart of Macpherson’s argument is that financial markets will punish you if you focus on recovery rather than debt, as he suggests it did after 2008. But events showed the opposite. Among advanced economies, the debt crisis was restricted to the eurozone and ended the moment the European Central Bank promised to do “whatever it takes” in terms of buying government debt. There was no crisis among advanced economies with their own currency, and for very good reason. In the highly unlikely event that the markets stopped buying their debt, the central bank would always buy it through quantitative easing, to keep interest rates low.
Austerity did terrible damage to the UK economy. Besides specific hardships caused by unemployment and spending cuts, I have estimated, based on numbers from the Office for Budget Responsibility, that the average household lost at least £10,000 worth of resources. Spending cuts (unjustly) fuelled anger against immigration, which was a key factor behind the Brexit vote. Countries have turned their backs on austerity because it was always a terrible idea.
Simon Wren-Lewis, University of Oxford
Road to peace
Macintyre’s claim that Israel is burying hope for negotiated peace (“The facts on the ground,” April) is disappointing. For more than 20 years, Israeli leaders have gone to great political lengths to compromise but the Palestinians rejected proposals without suggesting alternatives. Too often this led to cycles of violence on the roads of Israel and the West Bank.
After the 2000 Camp David summit, President Clinton lamented the Palestinians missing a “golden opportunity.” From the Annapolis Conference in 2007 to then-US secretary of state John Kerry’s 2013 initiative, offers were rejected. Israel’s withdrawal to 1967 borders in Gaza, instead of creating a foundation for negotiation, was followed by the rise of Hamas, a terror group that still targets Israeli civilians.
According to an annual survey by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, most Israelis want peace—and being a democracy, the political will of the people influences decision-makers. The Abraham Accords are a prime example of this, with Israelis and Arabs alike welcoming the historic agreements to normalise relations. We hope the Palestinians return to the table so that together we can build a lasting peace that serves both our peoples.
Ohad Zemet, spokesperson, Embassy of Israel
The Conservative disposition
Herbert Morrison famously said that “socialism is what a Labour government does.” Isn’t the simplest solution to David Willetts’s problem in defining conservatism (“Back to basics,” April) just to say that it is what a Conservative government does?
If that definition is rejected, then is the way forward to regard conservatism and the Conservative Party like circles in a Venn diagram: two different things that overlap, sometimes more than others? Perhaps Willetts could draw us his Venn diagram, providing his definition of the -ism, his assessment of the post-Brexit party, and showing the extent to which the two overlap.
But even this still doesn’t solve the problem completely, for it leaves room to debate whether conservatism is, or should be, fundamentally about respect for the authority of tradition or instead the pursuit of a specific ideology. So perhaps we’d do better in defining conservatism, and the essence of a shape-shifting party, by ignoring the problem altogether and accepting Humpty Dumpty’s view of slippery language: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean… the question is, which to be master—that’s all”?
Peter Kellner, former president of YouGov
Forms of faith
After a trying 2020, many are tempted to force complex realities into a simple framework. Thus you debate whether the religious stock market is up or down (“The duel,” April).
Charles Taylor, in his ambitious account of secularisation, warns against a simple “subtraction” story of secularisation. The secular world isn’t what is left over when you have gradually shred various superstitions, but something constructed in historical contingency through the emergence of new ideas.
One simplistic story is that in times of crisis people turn to God. Another is that they turn away from God. Should we be surprised neither of these things has happened en masse? The decline or growth of faith does not just occur at the level of the individual but in the world of ideas.
There is no escaping the fact that, in the western mind, the world is largely desacralised. What happens then, Taylor argues, is not that faith simply evaporates, but that it becomes one option among many routes to meaning. But there is also no escaping the ongoing desire for transcendence. Strict materialism, the philosophical equivalent of lockdown, will not stop us from wanting to get out of the house.
Paul Bickley, Theos
In fact:
When asked to choose an elected head of state in a poll, Britons picked Prince William (12 per cent of votes), followed by David Attenborough (9 per cent).
Independent, 17th March 2021
Over the last 10 years, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago have spent a combined $2.5bn on settling claims of police misconduct.
The Marshall Project, 22nd February 2021
Football was first televised on 16th September 1937, when the BBC showed part of a specially arranged friendly between Arsenal and Arsenal Reserves at Highbury.
LiveFootballOnTV.com
Since 1970, the global population of sharks has declined by 71 per cent.
Nature, 27th January 2021
More than 6,500 South Asian migrant workers have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, about 12 a week.
Guardian, 23rd February 2021
Nasa’s latest Mars rover has the same 233MHz processor as an iMac from 1998.
The Verge, 2nd March 2021
The world’s most expensive toll road is the Pennsylvania Turnpike—a car driving the whole 360 miles would pay $112.90; second is Austria’s Grossglockner High Alpine Road, a mountain pass that costs €37.50 ($45.43).
Road and Track, 24th February 2021
In 2020, the average number of writers of a No 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart was 5.5—up from 2.1 in 1990.
Wall Street Journal, 24th February 2021
The age of consent is 12 in the Philippines and 21 in Bahrain; France has no official limit.
Complex, 10th February 2021
Over 1,200 words have been coined in German due to Covid, including Impfneid (envy of those who have been vaccinated) and Abstandsbier (a socially distanced beer with friends).
IAmExpat, 26th February 2021
