The British General Election: what now for our constitution?
December 14th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Two documents are never read by the overwhelmingly majority of people.
The first is our constitution, not least because it does not exist as a single codified document, but it is nevertheless something vital to our democracy and needs reform but the right reform.
The second is election manifestos because they are essentially only available online, they are long, and they are boring. But one part of the manifesto of the victorious Conservative Party – the notorious page 48 – deserves some attention because of the constitutional reforms that it proposes, not least the threat that in future voters will only be allowed to cast a ballot if they can prove their identity and the promise to change the Human Rights Act.
For your edification and illumination, I offer you the text of the relevant part of the Tory manifesto here:
As Conservatives, we stand for democracy and the rule of law. Our independent courts and legal system are respected throughout the world.
One of the strengths of the UK’s constitution is its ability to evolve – as times have changed, so have Parliament, government and the judiciary.
Today, that need is greater than ever. The failure of Parliament to deliver Brexit – the way so many MPs have devoted themselves to thwarting the democratic decision of the British people in the 2016 referendum – has opened up a destabilising and potentially extremely damaging rift between politicians and people. If the Brexit chaos continues, with a second referendum and a second Scottish referendum too, they will lose faith even further.
It is only by getting Brexit done that we can start the necessary task of restoring public trust in government and politics:
We will get rid of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act – it has led to paralysis at a time the country needed decisive action.
We will ensure we have updated and equal Parliamentary boundaries, making sure that every vote counts the same – a cornerstone of democracy.
We will continue to support the First Past the Post system of voting, as it allows voters to kick out politicians who don’t deliver, both locally and nationally.
We will protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.
We will make it easier for British expats to vote in Parliamentary elections, and get rid of the arbitrary 15-year limit on their voting rights.
We will maintain the voting age at 18 – the age at which one gains full citizenship rights.
We will ensure that no one is put off from engaging in politics or standing in an election by threats, harassment or abuse, whether in person or online.
We will champion freedom of expression and tolerance, both in the UK and overseas.
To support free speech, we will repeal section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2014, which seeks to coerce the press. We will not proceed with the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry.
We will ensure redundancy payments can be clawed back when high-paid public servants move between jobs.
We will improve the use of data, data science and evidence in the process of government.
Once we get Brexit done, Britain will take back control of its laws. As we end the supremacy of European law, we will be free to craft legislation and regulations that maintain high standards but which work best for the UK. We want a balance of rights, rules and entitlements that benefits all the people and all the parts of our United Kingdom.
After Brexit we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the Government, Parliament and the courts; the functioning of the Royal Prerogative; the role of the House of Lords; and access to justice for ordinary people. The ability of our security services to defend us against terrorism and organised crime is critical. We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law to ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government. We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays. In our first year we will set up a Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission that will examine these issues in depth, and come up with proposals to restore trust in our institutions and in how our democracy operates.
I will be watching out for the formation and operation of this Constitution, Democracy & Rights Commission.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
The British General Election: what just happened?
December 13th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
First, some basic facts:
- This was the first December election since 1923. In most parts of the UK, the weather was wet and windy and the nights were long and dark. But turnout was 67.3%, only slightly below the 2017 election held in June.
- The Conservatives won 365 seats (with 43.6% of the vote) – a gain of 47 seats and the party’s best result since 1987. This gives the party an overall majority of 80.
- Labour won 203 seats (with 32.2% of the votes) – a loss of 43 seats and the party’s worst result since 1935.
- The Liberal Democrats won 11 seats (with 11.5% of the votes) – one seat down on 2017 and with the loss of the seat of its leader Jo Swinson.
- The Scottish National Party won 48 seats (with 3.9% of the vote) – a gain of 13 seats out of a total contested of 59.
- There were no ‘Portillo moments’ with Conservative ‘big beasts’ losing their seats. Instead the stand-out results of the night were major breaches in Labour’s so-called ‘Red Wall’ of Northern strongholds with the Tories taking seats such as Sedgefield (which Tony Blair used to represent), Bolsover (where Dennis Skinner was the veteran MP), and my namesake of Darlington.
- The number of women MPs continues to rise – if far too slowly – and went up by 12 in this election to a total of 220. A majority of Labour and Lib Dem MPs are female for the first time in history.
- The new parliament will be the most diverse in our history with 65 MPs from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. The majority of them – 41 – are Labour MPs.
Now a few observations:
At the beginning of the General Election, I was asked for a forecast and suggested an overall Conservative majority of between 15-25. Up until 10 pm on Thursday night, I was sticking to that forecast – but I substantially underestimated the scale of the Tory victory. I suspect it even came as a surprise to Boris Johnson himself.
This was a triumph for the Conservatives and specifically for Johnson. Although he avoided the toughest interviews, made a number of gaffs, and repeatedly was spare with the truth, his “Get Brexit Done” mantra clearly won through, not just to traditional Conservative voters but to many traditional Labour voters in constituencies which voted leave in the EU referendum,
Clearly, Brexit is now going to happen in the sense that the Johnson deal will be approved by Parliament before 31 January 2020. But is is not certain that he will be able to negotiate with the EU a mutually acceptable trade deal by 31 December 2020 and, even if does, it will take years to negotiate trade deals with non-EU nations. Outside of the Brexit issue, we have to see whether Johnson’s declaration that he will rule as a ‘One Nation Conservative’ is true or just a catchphrase.
This was a disaster for Labour and especially Jeremy Corbyn. Although the Corbyn faction of the party is already blaming the result on Brexit, Corbyn was responsible for the party’s opaque position on Brexit and on the doorsteps Corbyn was clearly very unpopular, even with many of those who normally vote Labour. According to a BBC analysis, in strong Leave areas, Labour lost 10.4% vote share while, in strong Remain areas, they dropped 6.4% vote share.
So Brexit was only part of Labour’s problem and presumably will not be the same issue at the next General Election – although the experience of Brexit, especially if economically damaging, could work to Labour’s advantage next time. But the leadership issue – and the overreaching of the party’s manifesto – will be fiercely debated in the days, weeks and months to come. As a Labour Party member of 50 years, I did not vote for Corbyn in either of the leadership elections and I believe that he was a major factor in our defeat.
The United Kingdom is still a very divided country with a triple split. London remains a Labour bastion and, in my constituency of Bermonsey & Old Southwark, Labour’s vote share actually rose 1% (the sitting Labour MP Neil Coyle has been pro-Remain and anti-Corbyn). Scotland is more of an SNP stronghold than ever and the Nationalists will demand a second referendum on independence. The rest of Great Britain is now very much Conservative territory.
I have excluded Northern Ireland from this triple division because it has its own political parties, but it is notable that Sinn Fein’s share of the NI vote exceeded that of the Democratic Unionist Party: 47% vs 43%.
Boris Johnson may not last five years as Prime Minister – he has a lot of skeletons in the cupboard and is notoriously gaffe-prone. But, almost certainly, the Conservatives will be in office for another decade – no Opposition has ever recovered from this scale of defeat in one election cycle. So, depending on my mortality, I may never see a Labour Government again (at least I worked for the Wilson/Callaghan Government and my son worked for the Blair/Brown one).
Meanwhile the case for a proportional representation electoral system is more powerful than ever. But I can’t see how this can happen unless it is part of some new constitutional settlement which I don’t expect.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (10)
King William III and “the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat”
December 10th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Today I was passing through St James’s Square in central London and took the opportunity to check out a statute in the middle of the square’s gardens. It is an equestrian statute with some kind of lump underneath one of the horse’s hoofs.
What’s it all about? You’ll find the explanation here.
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A review of the new, award-winning film “Marriage Story”
December 8th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This is the fifth film that I have seen written and directed by Noah Baumbach, so I know to expect something different in terms of both subject and style, and “Marriage Story” is his best work to date. In spite of the title, it is essentially a story of divorce but it cleverly interweaves the story of the marriage so that, in the end, it is a kind of love story.
The couple in question are brilliant theatre director Charlie and talented actress Nicole and Adam Driver – who has now worked with Baumbach four times – and Scarlett Johansson are simply brilliant in these leading roles. One particularly heart-breaking scene has them tearing into each other in a laceration reminiscent of “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?”
What makes the divorce so difficult is the custody battle over their eight year old son Henry and one cannot help recalling the film “Kramer vs Kramer” of 40 years ago. What makes the divorce so bitter is the combative role of the lawyers: Alan Alda and Ray Liotta are impressive as the good cop/bad cop pair battling for Charlie, while Laura Dern is superb as counsel for Nicole with a wonderful mini-speech about the Virgin Mary.
An important feature of the storytelling is that Baumbach does not take sides as regards either the couple or their advisers but presents both perspectives in this tragedy.
I saw “Marriage Story” at London’s British Film Institute where it was followed by a question and answer with director Noah Baumbach and producer David Heyman. Baumbach underlined how his movie represents diverse genres since, at different points, it is a court procedural, a rom-com, a musical, and a screball comedy. Heyman explained that the funding of the film by Netflix had enabled such an independent work to be made with a theatrical release as well as availability through streaming.
What Baumbach did not volunteer and nobody asked him was just how autobiographical is this work. In 2013, he concluded three years of divorce proceedings with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, the mother of his (first) son. Johansson was actually going through a divorce when she was offered the role and Dern has her own experience of divorce.
They are not the only ones. Up to half of marriages in the developed world end in divorce. Sadly I have had experience of three divorces – that of my parents and two of my own – and I myself was the subject of a custody battle at the same age as Henry, so I found the film especially resonant. But, whether you have or have not been through a divorce yourself, you will not fail to be moved by Baumbach’s powerful and poignant storytelling.
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The crisis in the older democracies
December 6th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Democracy is not so much a stable political system as a work in permanent progress. It takes decades, even centuries, to embed in a society – but, even then, it is never settled and never totally secure.
Indeed the distinction between democratic countries and non-democratic countries is a blurred one and it is better to see nations on a spectrum from fully democratic to outright authoritarian. Positions on that spectrum can and do change, sometimes – for good or bad – very rapidly.
This is very obvious with nations that have only recently attempted democratic forms, such as Russia, South Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq.
What is much less well understood is that even the older democracies are facing serious challenges which, in some cases, amount to a crisis. Sadly this is the case in many of the nations of Europe and much of the remainder of the developed world including the United States.
These are the opening paragraphs of my website essay on “The crisis in the older democracies”.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
Please don’t confuse the Jacobites with the Jacobins
December 5th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just finished a six-week evening course at London’s City Literary Institute on the subject of “The Making Of The United Kingdom 1603-1801”.
There was frequent reference to the Jacobites. These were people who remained loyal to the Stuart dynasty in exile, headed by the Catholic James, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 which brought the Protestant William and Mary of the House of Hanover to the throne of England and Scotland. The word comes from the Latin word for James which is Jacobus.
Then there are the Jacobins. This is the name given to the political radicals from the 1790s and it was derived from the Jacobin Club of 1790-1794. This club was the best known and the most influential of the political clubs which appeared in France during the French Revolution and British radicals were commonly sympathetic to some of the French revolutionaries.
So now you know.
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A review of the new bio-pic “Harriet”
November 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Araminta “Minty” Ross was born a slave in the American state of Maryland probably in 1822 but, when she escaped to Philadelphia in 1849, she took the ‘free name’ of Harriet Tubman. As if her own escape was not remarkable enough, she subsequently made some 13 missions back south to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.
For some years, there has been an agreement that Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson – an architect of the forced removal and slaughter of native peoples and a slave owner – on the $20 bill. The plan was that this would happen in 2020, the centenary of the right of women to vote, but the Trump administration has found reason to delay this.
It is entirely appropriate and timely, therefore, that Tubman’s story – hardly known outside the United States – should be told in a movie directed and co-written by a American black woman Kasi Lemmons. In fact, the eponymous role is filled by an actress Cynthia Erivo, who is British and black and known for her recent work in “Widows”, and she gives an accomplished performance.
Beautifully shot with some stirring gospel singing, this is an immensely worthy and rather reverential production, but sadly the presentation of the narrative as almost a series of adventures, the odd emphasis on Tubman’s visions, some unfortunate speechifyng, and the stereotypical depiction of all the characters make this a less than wholly cinematic satisfactory experience.
Link: Wikipedia page on Harriet Tubman click here
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
A review of the British stage production of “My Brilliant Friend”
November 28th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Three years ago, it took me almost three months, but I completed my summer/autumn reading project: to read the four works and 1700 pages that make up the ‘Neapolitan Novels’, an acclaimed series by the Italian author Elena Ferrante.
This is a saga of the 60-year friendship between two girls from a poor neighbourhood of Naples after the Second World War: the narrator Elena Greco, known as Lenu, who becomes an accomplished writer and Raffaella Cerullo, known as Lila, whose never leaves Naples.
The first novel in the series is called “My Brilliant Friend” and I reviewed it here. The second novel is titled “The Story Of A New Name” and you can read my review here. The third novel is “Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay” and I reviewed it here. The fourth and final novel in the chronicle is called “The Story Of The Lost Child” and you’ll find my review here.
Now that I live on London’s South Bank, the National Theatre is only a 10 minute walk away and this week, for the first time, I was at the theatre at 9.30 am to obtain cheap same-day tickets. Parts One and Two of “My Brilliant Friend” – starting at 1.30 pm and 7 pm respectively – cost me only £15 each.
The two plays take over five hours in total to cover all four Neapolitan Novels. Niamh Cusack plays Lenu, while Catherine McCormack is Lila, for the six decades of the narrative. The work is adapted by playwright April de Angelis and directed by Melly Still.
It is a hugely ambitious set of plays both in scope and style. Critics have loved it and the Canadian theatre graduate sitting by me really admired it. Even allowing for the fact that I much prefer the cinema to the theatre, I was disappointed by the work, primarily because it seemed to me to lose the essentially Italian nature of the story.
The actors use a range of accents from around the British Isles and both the music and video material are far too generic for a tale that is all about post-war impoverished Naples and the complicated relationship between two Neapolitan women.
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A review of “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood
November 26th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
“The Handmaid’s Tale” was published in 1985 and the sequel “The Testaments” came out a full 34 years later in 2019 when it was that year’s joint winner of the Booker Prize. I reread the original novel before I went on immediately to read the sequel – such a wonderful pair of well-written and cleverly-constructed works.
“The Testaments” is set principally around a decade after “The Handmaid’s Tale” and, as well as the totalitarian and deeply misogynist state of Gilead in which all the events of the first novel occur, there are scenes in neighbouring Canada where, thanks to the Mayday organisation, some Handmaids manage to escape and a famous offspring of one of the Handmaids – Baby Nicole – is living.
There are three interesting differences between the two novels.
First, instead of one voice – the eponymous Handmaid of the “Tale” – there are three testaments: the writings of Aunt Lydia who was a stern instructress in the first novel and is now the 53 year old head of Ardua Hall, the headquarters of the powerful Aunts in Gilead; the recollections from Agnes of her life in Gilead from aged 13 to 23 during which time she leaves the home of a Commander to become an Aunt and missionary Pearl Girl; and the memories of Daisy, a 16 year old Canadian whose parents are murdered in a car explosion leading to a succession of revelations which turn her world upside down.
Second, whereas “Tale” was largely expository with little actual plot, “Testaments is full of action as the stories of the three voices converge in ways which are crucial to the future of Gilead. Third, whereas the first novel had a sudden and inconclusive ending, the sequel works its way to a clear and satisfying conclusion.
Atwood has written that an axiom of both the novels – and indeed the television adaptation of the first – is that no event in them does not have a precedent in human history and clearly the timing of publication of “The Testaments” owes something to the hostility towards women of current President Donald Trump and his administration. The novels are not a forecast but they are indubitably a warning.
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Ever heard of the Darien Scheme? Maybe if you’re Scottish …
November 25th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I’m doing a six-week evening class at London’s City Literary Institute entitled: “The Making Of The United Kingdom 1603-1801: Restoration, Revolution, and Political Unions”. Last week’s session – the fourth – included reference to something that I’d never heard of before: the Darien Scheme.
This was a plan for the formation of a Scottish colony – New Caledonia – on the Central American isthmus of Darien (now Panama). The colony was to be managed by the Company of Scotland which was founded in 1695 to trade with Africa and the Indies. The plan was to secure part of England’s warehousing trade and to provide a market for Scottish goods.
The scheme was an utter failure, thanks to Spanish opposition, underfunding, and mismanagement, and it seriously damaged the Scottish economy.. The scandal was a key factor in Scotland deciding to unite with England in 1707.
If you’d like to know more about the ill-fated Darien Scheme, you’ll find a short essay on the BBC’s web site here.
There might be some contemporary lessons in this historic episode. In the same way that there is no economic case for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, there is no economic case for Scotland to leave the UK. The union of Scotland and England made economic sense in 1707 and it still does today.
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