Noises From The Echo Chamber

Last night's vote on the Cooper-Letwin Bill, evaluated according to Remainer logic: 1. It's not valid, because the majority won 2. Oh all right, majorities can win but this was by only one person's vote so it's too close and is void for that reason 3. OK it's not void because of the margin, but because somebody probably told a LIE at some point so the vote would have been different if only everybody knew all the details of everything and only told the truth 4. Okay, okay, (3) above happens all the time but those who voted for the Bill are probably nasty people who support things good people don't like so their votes shouldn't count 5 Look, here are cartoons to prove I'm right - ships falling off the edge of the Earth, lemmings jumping off cliffs, effigies of populist politicians shooting themselves in the head 6 Oliver Letwin is posh, need I say more? 7 You're blocked, you troll.

BREXIT: Power To The People

Right then: things keep moving on, and in a bad direction. Only a couple of weeks ago, Angela Eagle was complaining of the Government’s bullying towards the Opposition; now Mrs May says goodbye to collective Cabinet responsibility (a majority havecome round to No-Deal) and reaches out to Mr Corbyn, prompting Welsh Minister Nigel Adams’ resignation (good man: his letter is worth reading.)

On and on goes the Prime Minister, despite one smashing defeat in the Commons after another. She clings to power like a limpet; or perhaps, more like a limpet mine, primed to sink the ship of State.

This is autocracy.

Perhaps, if all else fails, her last card, the one that loses the stately pile and rolling acres, will be the use somehow of an Order in Council (such a favoured tool of Blair, ACL.)

Fanciful? Is there anybody who predicted what we have seen so far?

When all this Brexit business is done one way or another, the work of reassessing the British Constitution must begin. Perhaps we could start with a motion similar to John Dunning’s in 1780, altered to say: ‘The power of the Prime Minister has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.’

What is the point of the 2002 High Court ruling that ‘The British Parliament .. being sovereign… cannot abandon its sovereignty’ if it simply delegates away most of its power, either to the EU under the 1972 ECA, or to Ministers via ‘Henry VIII’ clauses that allow them to issue secondary legislation, or to the Privy Council so that the occupant of No. 10 can govern by fiat?

What is the point of having extended the franchise to 47 million voters, under a First Past The Post system that regularly sees some two-thirds of MPs elected on a minority of votes cast? Of ‘safe seats’ that turn some MPs into complacent, negligent absentee landlords?

Or of a Fourth Estate that suppresses and twists the information the voter needs? – even (this is the one that for me exploded Jon Snow’s credibility, I can cope with his infantile remarks about white people) allowing Blair’s right-hand man to take over one’s currentaffairs TV show without warning, to spin the ‘Iraq WMD’ controversy and then shaking his hand in fraternal thanks at the end (oddly, not shown here, but I cannot forget.)

What is at stake here – what greater theme of history is there? - is overweening Power. We thought we’d settled that in the 1640s and 1680s and the political reforms in the 150 years after 1789. But the barrack-room grumblings of the people today could eventually become something worse, if democratic checks and balances fail to stop Power becoming once again arbitrary and absolute.

Is the EU prepared to reform? Oh yes – in exactly the wrong way. Only last November, the enthusiast Mr Verhofstadt was calling for the abolition of member nations’ individual veto: ‘You cannot manage a continent of that magnitude with such a system.’

Even as it is, AfD leader Alice Weidel’s much-circulated 21 March speech to the Bundestag worried that the UK’s departure threatens Germans’ ability to muster a blocking minority EU veto (min. 35% of EU population.) Already, she says, Merkel and Macron’s Aachen Treaty stands to jam open Germany’s wallet for the depredations of French profligacy and the free movement of eastern Europeans per Schengen rights have led to growing strains on the German economy under Hartz IV socialsecurity arrangements.

It’s not about us ‘crashing out’ of the EU; it’s about the EU crashing around like a bull in a china shop. If no-one will put a ring through its nose, we have to leave the premises. If we mess about, the Germans may get out ahead of us!

And if we do finally manage it, we then have to face the other systemic wreckers closer to home: the ones at the top of our country.

BREXIT: French Leave

Our schools are now required to teach British values. But what are they? Certainly not Empire, the White Man’s Burden and so on. My researches indicate that there are only two:

1. Animism – not just pagan ritual leftovers like the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance but our deep empathy with pets and farm animals
2. A deep distrust of the French (remember Hartlepool’s monkey-hangers)

The second is re-justified by the intransigence of M. Barnier, whose task under Article 50 (2) it is  to secure a satisfactory divorce agreement but who has dug in his heels since last Autumn.

And now we discover – by a leaked secret memo, of course, G-d forbid we be told anything openly – that there are three EU preconditions for even beginning to discuss alterations to the draft Withdrawal Agreement; conditions that are for us a surrender in advance of the battle.

But though we are divided at home, the EU itself is not united:

After chiding Ms Merkel for her many expensive policy errors, German AfD leader Alice Weidel’s speech to the Bundestag on 21 March went on to accuse her of “blind loyalty” (3:01) to the French, who want to deny Britain access to the single market. January’s Aachen Treaty on Franco-Germancooperation “had France’s fingerprints all over it” (3:40), benefitting the latter’s inefficient economy but sending much of the bill to the German taxpayer who, once Britain has left, will not be able to command a blocking minority in the Council to prevent fresh fiscal assaults on the biggest remaining economy.

Weidel quoted M. Barnier (5:26) as confiding to a colleague, “My mission will have been a success when the terms are so brutal for the British that they prefer to stay in the Union.”

We are not the only ones with national traits. The Germans love tribal unity and have a lethal penchant for abstract theorising (from Luther to Karl Marx to the Frankfurt School), but the French combine theatricality with sharp dealing and calculating selfishness. Think of William the Conqueror, turning his pratfall on the shore into symbolic seizure of the land, then ordering the Domesday Book to count exactly how much he’d grabbed; the 1789 windy Tennis Court Oath that blew off so many of the Revolutionaries’ heads in the factious struggles that ensued; and Clemenceau’s vindictive 1919 Versailles Treaty that ruined Germany and so set Europe ablaze a generation later.

Don’t expect anything but gaseous difficulties from a French lawyer. Frankly, anything that our hapless Government tries to agree now can be negotiated separately afterwards, when the costs of M. Barnier’s failure begin to bite the Continent. Let’s go now, without permission – let’s take “French leave.”

For all we wanted – what we were sold in the 1970s – was honest dealing and fair trading. What we have had ever since has been money-twisting and empire-building.

And that’s not new. It was a Frenchman who said it best, 670 years ago: 

"Un Po Apres Le Temps d'Autonne"

From “Le Jugement du roy de Navarre” by Guillaume de Machaut (1349)

Translation by "Sackerson"

A little after autumn time

When those who cultivate the vine

Pick their grapes and fill the tun

And with work that’s lightly done

Each man offers to his fellow

Pears and grapes and peaches mellow

When in the soil the corn-seeds grow

And the leaf falls from the bough

By Nature’s or the wind’s design

In thirteen hundred forty-nine

On the ninth day of November

I was closed up in my chamber.

Had the sky been bright and clear

I should have gone to take the air

But the mountains and the meadows

Were hid in fog and deepest shadows

So I was taken by the gloom

Thinking in my lonely room

How all men everywhere are governed

By cronies meeting in the tavern

How truth and justice in the land

Are dead, slain by the hand

Of greed, who over them holds reign

As if she were a sovereign queen

How the rulers rob the ruled

Sack, plunder and assault the world

Crushing them in their distress

Merciless and pitiless

Great mischief seems it to my mind

When vice and power are combined

BREXIT: The Machine Stops

344 to 286: for the third time, and for many differing reasons, Parliament has rejected the velvet-clad handcuffs of the Prime Minister’s draft Withdrawal Agreement. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/29/mps-reject-theresa-mays-brexit-deal-third-time

‘But Kuno, is it true? Are there still men on the surface of the earth? Is this — this tunnel, this poisoned darkness — really not the end?’

He replied: ‘I have seen them, spoken to them, loved them. They are hiding in the mist and the ferns until our civilization stops. To-day they are the Homeless — to-morrow—’

‘Oh, to-morrow — some fool will start the Machine again, to-morrow.’

‘Never,’ said Kuno, ‘never. Humanity has learnt its lesson.’

-          E. M Forster, ‘The Machine Stops’ (1928) https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf

The EU Parliament’s Mr Verhofstadt is willing to show flexibility now - unlike with the Irish Backstop, yet just as the Community did with its supposedly unalterable rule on Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio at the time of her entry into the EU. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4JPj4Vjm90)

 ‘The only way to avoid a no deal now is for MPs to finally act next week & define a cross-party way forward. If they do, we are ready to change the Political Declaration.’ https://www.teletrader.com/verhofstadt-cross-party-deal-only-way-to-avoid-no-deal-brexit/news/details/47332332?ts=1553886451707

Mrs May threatens a General Election. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2019/mar/29/brexit-debate-latest-developments-live-news-may-at-risk-of-fresh-defeat-as-mps-debate-withdrawal-agreement-for-third-time-live-news Bring it on, say not just Labour but disaffected Tory members across the country. If she wishes to bring the Party down with her, like blind Samson, so be it. What would be in its manifesto this time?

And what has the modern Conservative Party conserved?

As we began our Common Market membership in January 1973, the then PM Edward Heath told the nation on TV:

‘There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.’ https://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/britain-europe-bruges-group/

17 years later, he said the opposite on BBC TV’s Question Time: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Heath

Peter Sissons: The single currency, a United States of Europe, was all that in your mind when you took Britain in?

Edward Heath: Of course, yes.

For by then, with Mrs Thatcher about to fall from officehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_Conservative_Party_(UK)_leadership_election, Heath must have felt the double satisfaction of seeing ‘that woman’ defeated and his dream of a Britain permanently locked into the EU coming true at last.

He was not to know that Lord Justice Laws would rule, in 2002, that Parliament had retained her sovereignty throughout and in fact did not have the power to give it away (see para 58 here.) https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff76f60d03e7f57eac6d5

How was it possible for Conservative Prime Ministers Macmillan and subsequently Heath, to plan and carry out their Constitutional Gunpowder Plot? For it was clear that they knew exactly what they were about, since the Lord Privy Seal had told them (December 1960): https://campaignforanindependentbritain.org.uk/research-paper-1079-letter-edward-heath-lord-kilmuir-december-1960/

‘It would in theory be possible for Parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons.’

Yet that is exactly and precisely what happened. And a later Conservative PM, David Cameron, spent millions of public money in a pamphlet, to convince us in 2016 that we should stay in; and even got the leader of a foreign country, President Obama, to fly in and say the same.

All Conservatives!

And today, whatever its motives, Labour has saved us, for now – only 5 voted with the Government.

There is still grinding and crashing going on, but the Machine. Must. Stop.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Golden Hour Of Brexit, by JD

In the Film "The Wild One" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047677/ Marlon Brando plays Johnny, the leader of a motor cycle gang. One of the most telling scenes in the film is this exchange between a girl and Johnny -

"Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"
"What've you got?"

It felt a bit like that in the House of Commons on wednesday night when every single amendment was voted down. They were rebelling against everything because, like Johnny, they do not know what they want, only what they don't want.

Naturally, the cartoonists and gag writers have been having fun. Take your pick from this selection -

https://www.bing.com/search?q=brexit+jokes+images&qs=HS&pq=brexit&sc=8-6&cvid=EC91324BF3354765B4EFEC64183485A0&FORM=QBLH&sp=1

- but I think we should have a bit of music in these difficult times  to provide some tranquility(?)
Or maybe not!


















Purcell's Cold Genius (fifth clip from the top) seemed appropriate given that they are all frozen with fear they might lose their seats at the next election.

You might prefer this 'fairest isle' which is from a French production of the opera and is very good:



Yes, this fairest isle or as Shakespeare described it -

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. 

In that book I referenced the other day, All Done With Mirrors, part of it includes the speculation/theory that these islands and especially the Orkneys is the centre of the world and the origin of European civilisation. The standing stones all over these islands and as far south as carnac in France are all distributed in geometric proportion with the Ring of Brodgar being the centre. The Greeks referred to Hyperboria in the far north which could have been these islands.

Blake wrote " All things Begin and End in Albion's Ancient Druid Rocky Shore":
https://viewfromthebighills.blogspot.com/2010/01/albion-excerpts-from-william-blakes.html

He illustrates why we are apart from and above the EU!

Europe will eventually come together just as Wessex, Mercia, Hibernia etc gradually merged into England then the UK, and Europe will be governed by Albion.

An Email To Quentin Letts

Dear Mr Letts

I am sorry you have left the Daily Mail, but quite understand why. Under the egregious Greig it has become a crossword with garbage attached. You are one of the few people that made it worth reading (I wonder how much longer Littlejohn will stick it out?)

But judging by today's column in the Sun (re Letwin), you seem to have swapped your epee for a bludgeon. Are Sun readers really not up to appreciating your usual - natural - wit and subtlety? I think not. In fact if you were to continue writing as you did in the Mail I would consider making the Sun my regular, despite its being owned by a saltwater crocodile. But perhaps the house style is necessary - I guess I have to leave it to your professional discretion.

Btw I think we have discovered a new political principle: no-one called Oliver should be allowed anywhere near the levers of power; whether Letwin, Robbins or Cromwell.

Brexit: There, And Back Again

After the usual argy-bargy, we had agreed that the trip would be to the seaside. Not that the decision stopped the sulking and door-slamming, of course.

But the real trouble started when Fi insisted that the children had to decide beforehand what flavour ice-cream we were going to have – it had to be the same for all. Yurt, ever the reborn Labrador, insisted on a double scoop of chocolate; Pashmina, despite her teenage body dysmorphia, dug her heels in for strawberry.

Of course we hadn’t told them that the beach kiosk didn’t offer either and when we broke the news there were tears and shouting.

So this morning Fi kept phoning the vendor who now only stocked a mint and quinoa mix – we suspect that’s because the first was all that grew in his garden and the second was leftovers from his cereal cupboard, but he claimed that all his customers wanted it and in any case that’s all they were going to get.

Then the children started to call her a bad mother and Fi said, fine, you work it out between you. The train was due to leave at ten and if they hadn’t sorted out their differences by then there’d be no ice cream at all, so there.

Well naturally, the inevitable happened and there’s an ongoing thumping and hair pulling situation in the lounge. Fi has been online and tried to change the tickets, but the only option is a later departure and much pricier fares, so now we’re over budget before we’ve even started.

I’m the shed and I suspect Fi is eyeing the organic Molina a Vento Grillo Siciliano in the fridge.

************

Aaaaand that’s democracy, folks.

At least, the Parliamentary version.

Like John Major and David Cameron, Mrs May has spent a long time trying to ride two horses; as in Ben-Hur, except in this Circus Maximus the steeds are galloping away from the finishing post and heading for a fork in the road, determined to take both tracks at the same time.

There is a difference, though: Major, who reportedly prided himself on “knowing how to talk to the man in the four-ale bar” must have been surprised that the latter agreed with the “bastards” in his party; Cameron’s misunderstanding about oddballs who could be sectioned with a visit from Doctor Democracy, turned out a right Eton mess.

At least May knows the score. Now it’s the Commons that is full of “fruitcakes and loonies.”

It’s no use her telling them that the Referendum was on a binding official promise to respect the result; that there was a nationwide majority for Leave that was larger than in many Commons divisions; that most MPs were re-elected on the promise of implementing Leave. For they are the People Who Think They Know Better – the ones that have being making a rowlocks of the country for decades.

And now they’ve thrown out the coach driver and taken charge of the Magical Mystery Tour. They’re all going to sit in the driver’s seat and agree the destination.

What could possibly go wrong?

It’s going to be an interesting few days.