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We, the people, deserve better

On Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn is right to call for a General Election.  Theresa May is right to refuse a People’s Vote.  In July last year I wrote that Theresa May would run out of time to negotiate a Brexit deal acceptable to parliament and that she would seek to extend Article 50.   Today she is almost at that point.   The leaders of all 28 states in the European Union are discussing the deadline of Article 50, because of the convulsive disruption that an unmanaged ‘no-deal’ Brexit on March 29th would cause.

The Prime Minister won’t change

The avalanche of parliamentary defeat that consumed May’s Withdrawal Deal bill last Tuesday evening has suddenly turned Mrs May into a mollifying seeker of consensus across the House.    Her dereliction of duty as Prime Minister is as colossal as her defeat.   She cannot change overnight; the time to reach out was the day after she became Prime Minister a few weeks after the Referendum, acknowledging a victory for Leave and only a four point difference between the huge Leave vote and the huge Remain vote.

Now, amidst the desperate, time-constrained scrabbling in Westminster and Whitehall, Jeremy Corbyn is right to call for a General Election.   Theresa May is also right to refuse the call for a People’s Vote.   A second referendum would be more bitter and divisive than the first.   The question is now more complex since so much more has been thought through since the Referendum.   The disentanglement of so many fundamental links between the member states of Europe cannot be reduced to an in/out question, a no-deal or remain question, which is where we are.

Parliament works

Parliament is working as it should, by holding this Government to account.   The Government has signally failed.   The people’s responsibility is to elect a new government which can do a better job – and if necessary go on doing so until we find one.   The first referendum advised parliament to Leave.   Parliament took this as an instruction and the Government has been trying to work out how to do it ever since.   This minority Conservative government has failed, gone down to defeat on its signature policy, so it should ask the people to elect a new parliament.

Revoke Article 50

It’s parliament’s job to agree the solution to the puzzle, it’s the government’s job to run the country and it’s the people’s responsibility to elect a government.   The only sensible way now to deal with the first referendum result is to revoke, not extend, Article 50 so that there is no compression of debate before another artificial deadline.    Revoke Article 50, continue the discussion about Brexit in less fevered terms, but also set it in the context of running the country as a whole – dealing with food banks, intolerable poverty, scrappy public services, struggling nurses and doctors, over-worked teachers, relations with partner states in Europe and unstable states around the world.   Let Brexit take its place down the list of issues of importance to the public where it was before the referendum was called.   Once there is an agreement on what sort of Brexit the country wants, and only when there is agreement, and the EU agrees that what the UK wants is feasible for the EU, then give notice to leave on terms that are clear in their detail as well as in principle.

Fintan O’Toole in The Guardian writes that Brexit is about Britain, not about Europe.   Only a General Election now will lead us on to a deeper examination of our society, rather than the displacement activity that is Brexit.   It is the people’s responsibility to demand it, because we are society and our society is under threat.

See also Theresa May seems to be playing a Brexit blinder; Untrigger Brexit .

Theresa May sees off her rebels

Theresa May seems to be playing a Brexit blinder.   Slowly, slowly, she is nudging the shambling Brexit process towards an ever-closer alignment with European Union regulatory and trading rules – the rules we currently work with, as a full member of the EU.   Time will run out to negotiate a clear UK government position satisfactory to the EU before March 31st 2019.    Theresa May will ask to extend the time allowed for Article 50 to operate.

Before time runs out people will say this Brexit, after which we will be worse off, looks very much like staying in the EU without the responsibilities we currently bear as EU members and the benefits we presently enjoy.    The alternative, staying as a full member of the EU and getting on with the job, is clearly more valuable both to the EU, of which we are a member, and to the UK, which seeks, it thinks, to leave.

Last week, Theresa May at last managed to lose two of the worst departmental ministers of recent decades.   Neither David Davis nor Boris Johnson will be missed.   No-one is able to point to any achievements of the Brexit ministry under Davis or the Foreign Office under Johnson.   Johnson has reduced the UK to a laughing stock intentionally and his great office of state to an ornate sideshow.   He is a disgrace to all the diplomats he purported to lead.    The Brexiteers, from whom no practical vision has ever emerged, are losing the wind, apart from their own huffing and puffing.

But Anthony Barnett’s article How to Win the Brexit civil war kicks us up the backside and castigates all who voted to remain for not taking the battle to the streets.   We are, he says, too fond of convincing ourselves we are right.  We have to convince people who voted to Leave to change their minds.   The British parliament has passed the EU Withdrawal Bill, so leaving is now the law of the land.   There is some comforting movement on the streets in the number of people who have signed a petition demanding a People’s Vote on the final deal.   But a People’s Vote won’t change the law.

Only a general election will do.   Gaby Hinsliff agrees.  Theresa May will subtly creep towards Brexit in Name Only.   The raging Brexiteers may try to unseat her but she would win a vote of no confidence in the House.   Unless….

Jeremy Corbyn did a spot of open-goal thundering in Parliament.   It lies in his hands to raise the roof of the House of Commons and inspire all those who voted for him last year, plus some, to do so again.   No-one believes the Tories can deliver the Britain that would slowly reduce the ills and inequalities that drove the Brexit fury.   Labour and the Lib Dems don’t have the numbers on their own, but if they made common cause with Tory MPs who want to unseat May there would be such chaos that only an election would do.   And whilst all that was going on, Article 50 would have to be extended, since time would run out.

Once extended, a new government could rescind it – but it would have to be with the consent of the electorate – which means persuading enough people who voted leave to change their minds.

See also Dunkirk is a searing argument for defeating Brexit

After the Ball by Ian Grant

Through the stories of the characters in After the Ball I try to express some of my core beliefs – we are what we do; what we do can never be undone; our acts have ripple (or explosive) effects long after the act itself; women and men are entirely equal; individual and state violence to other human beings is unforgiveable.

In After the Ball we follow a south London family from 1914 to 1971.   A similar tale could be told about any European city family who suffered and persevered through the catastrophic wars of the 20^th century.   It’s a story of resilience in the face of personal trauma.   It’s a story of political and social bonds that get stretched beyond breaking point.   It’s story of female liberation and political emancipation and the triumphs and challenges these bring.   After the Ball comes to the stage in the centenary anniversary year of the end of the First World War; on the centenary of the first votes for women in British political history; and opens on International Women’s Day, March 8^th.

The play emphasises the role of the individual within a social and political context – we see women and men campaigning for the right to vote, for equality in society and for their ability to choose a way of life.   We see women and men falling in love, making good and bad decisions, working as best they can to survive in a society pummelled twice in 30 years by world war.   Within that framework is the key theme – that we are all individually responsible for our own actions.

The script tells the story of the characters through naturalistic scenes within a formal, poetic framework.   The play moves backwards and forwards in time from 1914 to 1971. The arc of the story is emotional, not chronological. The set is an open abstract space within which the actors create their stories through the immediacy of their voices and bodies in space and time.   The stage vision reflects the brightness of young hopes and the fierce bruising of experience.

I try to write rich new leading roles for older actors, and particularly older female actors.   The lack of new material for some of our greatest actors is both a flaw and a huge opportunity in theatre and film today.   In my work I stick to the principle that we have at least equal numbers of women and men in the cast.   In After the Ball, the actors have to be highly flexible and shift their sense of older and younger selves sometimes in instant transitions across time from scene to scene.   I hope the actors will find the roles meaty and satisfying.

I’m delighted to have met Nadia Papachronopoulou and to be working with her as she directs the play.   Nadia is a young Greek director who has already worked extensively in British theatre, and she brings to this British story her woman’s insight and her European sensibility.   In her reading of the script she has already found things I didn’t know were there, under the surface.   She is the conductor to my composer, and will enrich the script through rehearsal with her high energy and artistic skill.

Ashley Cook, General Manager on the show, and Nadia have gathered together an experienced creative team.   They had to assess more than 2,200 applications from actors to audition for roles in the play, which was an immense labour, but we have found a terrific cast of three women and three men to act the nine characters in the play.

I would love to see full houses during our tenancy Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate, London.   The production will be beautiful, engrossing and, I hope, moving.   I’m excited to bring as many people as possible to see the work of the very fine acting and creative team who will embody the characters who came to me as I wrote the script.

After the Ball is the second play from our new theatrical business, Time Productions.    My co-founder, Niall Bishop, and I set up the business in 2017, to create a platform for our work in the theatre and online content.   Time Productions is funded by patient and curious shareholders – and we are always happy to welcome expressions of interest in investing with us.

French destroyer Borrasque, loaded with 1,200 soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk

Dunkirk is a searing argument for defeating  Brexit.  Christopher Nolan’s new movie released yesterday shows the evacuation of British and French troops from the beaches of Dunkirk on May 26th 1940.   They were pursued by A German army and airforce.   This was just over 77 years ago.   It’s within the living memory of millions of people.   Since the end of the Second World War, five years later, no western European nation has invaded a neighbouring country – the longest period of peace in the Common Era history of the continent.

Dunkirk was a defeat, a retreat, an evacuation in the face of a military threat.   Brexit is a self-imposed defeat, a retreat, an evacuation following a massive shot in Britain’s foot by a grossly negligent, incompetent British Conservative party.   The structures of the European Union, slowly and painfully built (with considerable British contribution over many decades) out of the devastation of that conflict, hold the murderous forces of war at bay.   The European way of supporting the lives of citizens and solving problems is to discuss, negotiate, vote and discuss again.   It is laborious, frustrating, opaque and has no equal in the astonishing achievement of bringing lasting peace to a continent of 500 million citizens.

In the Financial Times of July 17th 2017, Gideon Rachman begins an article with ‘The campaign to stop Brexit is gathering pace’, noting increasing chatter about a second referendum.   He says that ‘The reasons that Remainer politicians are still so cautious about explicitly rejecting Brexit is that they are worried about sounding undemocratic’.   Many of the online responses to the article showed why this is so, but one correspondent replied, ‘In a democracy the people speak all the time.  Not just once.  Every day, every week, every month, anytime they want and in the UK, Parliament is, and always has been, the only sovereign authority and one perfectly entitled to change its mind every day of the week if it wants.’   David Davis, Brexit secretary, agrees.   He said, ‘If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy’ (quoted in the Independent).

Christopher Nolan’s film graphically showed men and women shot, blown up, drowning in sinking hospital ships, swimming through water ablaze with burning oil.    Other human beings did this to them.   No nation in the war had a monopoly of industrialized murder.   It is the wretched, tedious democratic processes of the European Union that have prevented this happening again.   The year after the end of the war, Winston Churchill envisaged this in a speech at the University of Zurich on September 19th 1946.   The supposed benefits of Brexit are steadily being shown to be an illusion.   Brexit is a displacement activity, to avoid the intensely difficult business of governing fairly a complex modern nation.   I urge us, the British people, to change our minds, not through another referendum but through the great democratic institution that underpins our liberty – the British Parliament.    Rational persuasion of our fellow citizens will avert another Dunkirk.

See also ‘U-turn to Europe‘, ‘Three Ways Forward’, ‘Brexit – waste of time’

Poetry Books Society summer 2017 selection

ACE – Arts Council England – has announced taxpayer support for the arts in England of £1.6 billion for the four-year period from 2018 to 2020.   Out of a total UK public expenditure of £800 billion a year, this is less than a rounding error.   But down at the sharp end – enabling arts businesses to support individual artists in expressing a view of the world – the money is life-blood.

In the UK, Maynard Keynes invented the Arts Council after the Second World War.   Art has always relied on patronage – royal, ducal, charitable, corporate.    In many European countries, taxpayers have taken their place alongside the great and the good in providing patronage for the arts.   In the UK, taxpayers have devolved decisions about disbursing their patronage to the arts councils of the constituent nations.    Maybe few people know that or feel it in any way.    For the recipients, it is a huge privilege.

I chair the board of Inpress, which supports independent literary publishers across the UK with sales, distribution and membership services.   To our delight, ACE has recognised the value of what we do by continuing to fund an element of the core costs of running the business for the next five years.  In return, we grow the sales of small, independent publishers and provide them with access to the major channels of retail and wholesale distribution which, on their own, they would find it very hard to access.

Last year Inpress rescued the Poetry Book Society from going out of business after 65 years.   The PBS is a child of ACE, having been set up with a £2,000 grant in 1953.   Now, under Inpress ownership, it is a stand-alone business and does not rely on the taxpayer for the funding of its daily activity.   Exceptionally, however, ACE has granted an annual sum of money to fund the recruitment of new members through online marketing.   Each member of the PBS receives a copy of a selected new collection of poetry every quarter.   This sales bonus to the selected poet and publisher significantly increases the number of copies of that title in circulation.    This helps the flow of royalties to the poet and the publisher stay in business.   The PBS is a vital element in the British poetry ecosystem.

A vibrant independent publishing industry is an essential element of a civilised society.   In return for the privilege of receiving taxpayers’ money, we engage to demonstrate the value of every penny spent, to sustain independent literary publishers in their work, and to broaden the reach of the insightful, passionate and humane voices of our contemporary poets.

U-turn to Europe

Theresa May – please make a U-turn to Europe.   I urge the Prime Minister to withdraw the Article 50 letter, untrigger Brexit, and get on with the true business of government – resolving health, education, housing, foreign policy.  This would save enormous amounts of time and money both in the UK and throughout the European Union.   Dealing with the world as it is, rather than the broken world inside the heads of Tory politicians, would be a service to the nation.

The British electorate delivered an intelligent, nuanced election result.   Top of people’s concerns were health, education and jobs.   Just three in 20 voters put relations with Europe above domestic political matters.    Theresa May asked the public for a strong personal mandate to negotiate Brexit.   We said, No, there are more important things to attend to.   Think again.   U-turn.

The British economy is slowing down, while the rest of Europe is beginning to recover.   The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts a steady decline in tax revenues over the next five years.   One of the main reasons is the reduction in taxes from lower immigration.   Despite the confusion over the ‘dementia tax’ in the Tory manifesto, welfare will cost more than it does now.   The NHS needs constant fresh investment to match the changing populations’s needs.   Many more young people came out to vote lat week.   Any government has to respond to their needs – primarily better funding for education.   All these matters are much more important than Brexit.

The election result puts the brakes on Brexit.   A U-turn is essential.   As David Davis, Brexit secretary, said, ‘If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy’ (quoted in the Independent).   Tory politicians have found the real business of government too hard.    Brexit is simply political displacement activity, internal Tory politicking instead of taking responsibility for government.   The Conservative party is utterly at fault in allowing Brexit to take the stage at all.      Cameron thought politics could all be made up on the hoof; Osborne played one tune, austerity, a cracked record of continuous failure to deliver a healthy economy; foreign secretaries came and went, descending to Boris Johnson.

The attempt to cobble together a government with the DUP of Northern Ireland is risible.   N.Ireland voted to remain in the EU.   The DUP opposes this although it wants no border with the Republic of Ireland.  The best way to achieve this is to halt Brexit.   Make a U-turn to Europe.

See also ‘Three Ways Forward’, ‘Brexit – waste of time’

Jonathan Steele

Antonio Tajani

Dame Helena Kennedy

Three ways forward to change our Brexit minds – suggested by Helena Kennedy, Antonio Tajani, and Jonathan Steele, in recent days, from very different viewpoints:

Helena Kennedy on understanding the protections of international law

Helena Kennedy, leading lawyer on social justice and human rights, questions the legality of Theresa May’s approach to Brexit – in particular her attempt to wrestle to the ground the European Court of Justice (ECJ).   May tries to apply the simplistic ‘Take Back Control’ to the complexities of the continuing relations we have with our European partners, Brexit or no.   In an article in The Guardian, Kennedy points out that ‘if you have cross-border rights and contracts you have to have cross-border law and regulations. And if you have cross-border law you have to have supranational courts to deal with disputes’.   The ECJ was largely constructed by British lawyers and protects British citizens’ rights and benefits in many daily ways.   Kennedy describes ‘everything from financial services, trade, farming, fishing, security, environment, employment and maternity rights to industry standards and consumer rights. Intellectual property law, for instance, covers a huge array of research, entrepreneurship, invention and creativity’  The European patent court  was due to be opened in London shortly. What happens to it now?

Antonio Tajani – we would welcome you back

Antonio Tajani is President of the European Parliament.   He visited Theresa May in London with a clear message – we would prefer you not to leave – you can revoke Article 50 whenever you like.   Come back.    Last weekend the European Parliament agreed firm positions to underpin the EU negotiators’ work in discussing the terms of Brexit.   Tajani’s velvet glove encloses an iron fist – the European Parliament has to approve the final terms the negotiators reach.   The grumpy opening exchanges this week still demonstrate that David Davis and his colleagues think they have a strong hand – it is, as Angela Merkel says, ‘an illusion’.

Jonathan Steele – ‘abandon this ruinous Brexit’

Jonathan Steele has been a highly-respected foreign correspondent for more than 40 years.   His opinion couldn’t be more clear – the UK is heading for worse relations with our neighbours and main trading partners.   Pursuing Brexit inflicts terrible wounds on ourselves and our society.   He calls for the Labour party to campaign unambiguously to stop the Brexit process now.

Three ways forward

Jonathan Steele’s comments apply to all the parties.   David Davis, British Minister for Brexit, said ‘If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy’ (see my previous article) .   We must change our minds from the ‘we have to put up ith Brexit’ mode and the minds of our fellow-citizens.   Three ways forward in this election: vote LibDem – the clearest Pro-European proposition; vote Green in any constituency where they have a chance of winning;  and vote Labour if all else fails, since an effective pro-European coalition – for such it must be – will need as many MPs as possible.

See also Brexit- a colossal waste of time

David Davis Brexit Minister (BBC)

David Davis, British Minister for Brexit, said ‘If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy’ (quoted in the Independent).   I suggest we change our minds about the colossal waste of time, money and valuable expertise that is the Brexit process.    In Money Week this weekend, Merryn Somerset Webb described a negotiation process that when it’s over will leave us much as we are now: with EU market access, with most of EU law unrepealed, and a relatively inconsequential sum of money smoothing things in both directions.     So what’s the point?

What’s the cost?

Moreover, what’s the cost?    Thousands of civil servants across the EU are about to embark on creating spreadsheets and briefing papers for years to come ‘to reach a compromise plan that leaves as much as possible as it is now, just inside a different legal framework’ as Somerset Webb puts it.   This cost will be immense – lay all those hours and salaries in a line and it stretches beyond doomsday and costs a fortune in civil servants’ wages and taxpayer-supported consultants’ fees.   Brains and money and years of endeavour that should be spent solving real problems are wasted on this huge exercise getting us simply to where we are now.

Except for the huge damage to the UK – Scotland shuddering, Ireland anxious about its toxic internal border again – and the major geopolitical risk of a desperately weakened EU in the face of Trump/Putin.   The driver of peace in Europe for the past 70 years has been the decision of the European nations to solve our differences through talking to each other and compromise rather than going to war.   Our job as citizens is to make things, not break things; to do better, not to push off.

It’s just process, not substance

Brexit is a colossal displacement activity.   It is a circular process that gets us back to more or less where we started; it is not a matter of substance, for all the cry about sovereignty and ‘taking back control’.   We default to process when we can’t face the hard dealing with the substance – how to make society better, how to help people resolve difficulties caused by change, how to defend our society in the face of criminal or political aggression and how to bring up our children to discern what is or isn’t fake news.

In the same speech in November 2012, (Conservative Home) David Davis made two very clear pronouncements:

1. ‘In democratic nations we hold regular meaningful elections where voters can stick with what they have got or wipe the slate clean. Crucial to this principle of people power is the rule that a government cannot bind its successors’ and
2. ‘Democracy is not just about casting a vote. Democracy is about being willing to make sacrifices for each other, to allow taxes to be used to support those who cannot support themselves. Democracy means letting our sons and daughters put their lives on the line to defend us.’

Well said.

Take back democratic control

So let us persuade Mr Davis and his colleagues to change their minds, call an election for a proper mandate for the whole United Kingdom, take back the Article 50 letter, save the colossal waste of time and money, and get on with the real work.