If a week is a long time in politics, this week could be one of the most extraordinary you’ll ever know
September 2nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Former Prime Minister Harold Wilson once noted that a week is a long time in politics. But even he never experienced the kind of week that lies ahead of us in the British parliamentary scene. It is going to be constitutionally fascinating and politically turbulent and historically seismic.
As the “Guardian” summary puts it:
Monday:
A meeting due to take place between Boris Johnson and former Conservative cabinet ministers including Philip Hammond and David Gauke, was cancelled on Sunday night. Hammond declined a one-to-one meeting, calling it “discourteous” to cancel on the group. Parliament still in recess.
Tuesday:
MPs officially return to Westminster, though in practice many are likely to arrive on Monday.
It will be the first opportunity for the Speaker, John Bercow, to give his response from the chair on the decision to prorogue parliament, a move he has described as a constitutional outrage.
The first step for rebel MPs in trying to stop a no-deal Brexit is likely to be a request for an emergency debate under standing order 24, which Bercow is likely to grant. In order for MPs to seize control of the Commons order paper – the parliamentary timetable for the week ahead – they will need to use the time to table a business motion and be permitted to do so by the Speaker.
If rebels can win the vote on the business motion, they can use the time to table a new short bill which will order the prime minister to seek an extension to article 50 to prevent no deal. It is still unclear how long that extension will be and how MPs can ensure Johnson will actually request a meaningful extension.
Legal efforts to stop the prorogation of parliament will also get under way in Edinburgh, where the court will consider one of three legal challenges.
Wednesday:
The chancellor, Sajid Javid, is set to present his spending review to parliament – though this will very much depend on how radically MPs have changed the order paper. It will also be Johnson’s first prime minister’s questions.
The day is likely to be used to clear all the Commons stages for a bill mandating an extension of Article 50.
Thursday:
The high court in London is due to consider another judicial review of Johnson’s plans to prorogue parliament, led by the anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller with other litigants including the former prime minister John Major and the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson.
It is unclear if the rebels’ bill will have cleared the Commons by Thursday but there is a belief that it would be better to ensure it has reached the House of Lords as soon as possible because unlike in the House of Commons, peers can attempt to filibuster the bill with a huge number of wrecking amendments which must all be heard.
Friday-Monday:
Parliament is not due to sit on Friday or at the weekend but peers could table a motion to sit through the weekend and get through all of the potentially disruptive amendments.
Johnson has reserved the right to prorogue parliament as early as Monday and if the bill fails to pass before parliament is suspended, the bill will fall. If the bill passes, rebels believe that the government cannot obstruct the Queen from giving royal assent so it becomes law.
The situation if the bill passes is then highly volatile – it is possible Johnson could opt to call an early general election.
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Mamma mia! How can one understand Italian politics?
August 31st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
The General Election of 4 March 2018 produced a complex result and negotiations to form a new government – Italy’s 66th government since the Second World War – eventually took almost three months.
The new governing alliance was an unlikely combination of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S), which has most of its support in the south, and the far-Right League, which has most of its support in the north. Once they agreed to form a government together, they nominated as President of the Council (or Prime Minister) a virtually unknown law professor Giuseppe Conte who is a member of the Five Star Movement but had no experience whatsoever of political office.
However, in a matter of days, he resigned because the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella refused to accept his nomination as Finance Minister of a critic of Italy’s membership of the Eurozone. Mattarella then appoined Carlo Cottarelli, a former official at the International Monetary Fund, as interim Prime Minister pending another general election. However, a few days later the coalition parties backed down on the nomination of Finance Minister and Mattarella accepted a government led by Conte.
Then, this month, the League pulled out of the coalition and planned a vote of no confidence in Giuseppe Conte which it expected to lead to a general election. Instead, Conte resigned, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) managed to agree a new coalition with the centre-left Democratic Party, and Conte was reappointed head of the new government. So now there is a 67th Italian government since the Second World War; its composition is as unlikely as the previous government; and it remains to be seen whether it lasts any longer and achieves any more.
For more information, read my short guide to the Italian political system.
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A review of the Spanish film “Pain And Glory”
August 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Described as the third part of an “unplanned trilogy” which began with “Law Of Desire” (1987) and continued through “Bad Education” (2004), it is not necessary to have seen the earlier films (I haven’t) to enjoy the final part of this triptych written and directed by the Spanish Pedro Almodóvar, but it helps if you’re comfortable with subtitles (there is a lot of dialogue) and, if you’ve savoured any of his previous movies (I have), you’ll be ready for his wonderful use of colour (starting this time with the opening credits) and recurrent themes of his homosexuality and his relation to his mother.
In this semi-autobiographical work, film-maker Salvador Mallo, brilliantly represented by Antonio Banderas at his best, faces a whole variety of physical and psychological challenges which are preventing him from writing or directing again and his recourse to heroin (rarely has a mainstream movie showed so much chasing of the dragon) is not helping, although it is facilitating a series of flash-backs to his childhood when his mother – played by the delightful Penélope Cruz – is a powerful influence.
In this accomplished and engaging story, there is a lot of pain – both of body and mind – before the glory of reunion and redemption with a clever reveal in the final scene.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the novel “Fear Of Dying” by Erica Jong
August 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
American author Erica Jong wrote the mega best-selling novel “Fear Of Flying” in 1973 and the non-fiction “Fear Of Fifty” in 1994 and now she comes up with her 11th novel “Fear Of Dying” which was published in 2015. Although a novel, it is clearly inspired by the author’s loss of her two aged parents and the experience of her fourth marriage.
The narrator – like Jong, a New Yorker and Jewish – is Vanessa Wonderman, a television actor who is now aged 60 and married to a rich man of 80 for 15 years. In the course of the year described in the story, there is much going on in her life: both her elderly parents are close to death, even her dog has a terminal condition, her husband is about to suffer a near-death experience, and her daughter is pregnant. This elegantly written and witty work explains how she navigates such challenges, in doing so addressing some major issues of life and death.
In spite of everything else that is going on in her life, Vanessa signs up to a sex site on the Internet. Why? “I was too edgy, too curious, too afraid of dying” and “I am in a rage against age”.
On life, she insists: “There is no substitute for touch. To be alive is to crave it.” On illness, she observes: “You can go from the country of the well to the country of the sick in a split second.” On death, she opines: “We all secretly believe in our own immortality. Since we cannot imagine the loss of individual consciousness, we cannot possibly imagine death.”
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of the new Tarantino movie “Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood”
August 28th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Quentin Tarrantino’s ninth movie – while much lauded – is not my favourite (I think that would be “Kill Bill”), but it is classic material from the idiosyncratic director with all his usual quirks and playfulness that so delight us fans of his. A recurrent theme of his work is his wish to revisist and even rewrite history and here we are in Los Angeles in 1969 when in the real world members of the Charles Manson cult murdered actress Sharon Tate but in Tarantino’s reel world anything is possible.
We are introduced to television actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo di Caprio) and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and one of the many delights of the film is the brilliant acting by both, most especially di Caprio, in a wonderful portrayal of male friendship. Of course, both have worked with Tarantino before: di Caprio in “Django Unchained” and Pitt in “Inglourious Basterds”.
Only at the end do these characters meet the under-written Stone (Margot Robbie). The movie has righly been described as a homage to American television and cinema of the late 1960s and there are numerous allusions to actual screen works of the time or versions of them, most notably a TV series called “Bounty Law” which could be seen as representing “Rawhide”. Perhaps the best sequences of the film are Rick’s conversation with and then acting opposite a female child actor.
As so often with Tarantino’s work, this is a long film (161 minutes) and, for much of it, a slow (at times too languid) build-up of character and situation before the pace quickens and the finale is explosive and deadly.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What is the capital of Indonesia?
August 27th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Top of my bucket list is the aspiration – so long as I have the health and wealth – to have visited as many countries as my age. I have now been to 73 countries and I am 71, so I’m currently managlng to hit the target.
The most populous nation is the world that I have not visited is Indonesia which is only outranked in population terms by China, India and the United States, each of which I have experienced.
So I yearn to visit Indonesia, a country of some 70,000 islands, and I try to follow news from this under-reported nation. The latest news is that, since the capital Jakarata is sinking, it is proposed to relocate the political capital about 1,000 km to Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
You can read more about the plan here.
Posted in My life & thoughts, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Who will challenge Trump for the Republican candidacy and will it make any difference?
August 26th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There are still over 20 politicians seeking to become the Democratic candidate in the US presidential election of 2020. I’ve seen most of them interviewed on “The Daily Show” with Trevor Noah and any of them would be a dramatic improvement on the current occupant of the White House. Most are very fluent and many are quite liberal in American terms.
But who will dare to challenge Donald Trump for the Republican candidacy? The one challenger so far Bill Weld has made no impact, but, this “Guardian” article records the arrival of a second challenger Joe Walsh who might make a bit more of an impression:
Joe Walsh, a talk radio host and former congressman, said on Sunday he would challenge Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.
“We have someone in the White House who we all know is unfit,” Walsh said in a video announcing his candidacy. Walsh said Trump “lies virtually every time he opens his mouth” and places his own interests over those of the country.
Walsh, 57, served one term as a Republican representative from Illinois between 2011 and 2013 before losing his bid for re-election. Initially an enthusiastic supporter of Trump, he has latterly been one of the president’s most vocal conservative critics.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the 1941 Hitchcock movie “Suspicion”
August 25th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There is a sense in which any film directed by Alfred Hitchcock is a classic but this is one of his lesser-known works. Set in upper-class, rural England, it stars the beautiful Joan Fontaine as Lina, an unworldly young woman who falls immediately and madly in love with a known scoundrel and manipulator called Johnny, played against type by the charming Cary Grant.
The stage sets are utterly obvious, much of the dialogue is very stilted, and the occasions of suspicion are highlighted with no subtlety, but Hitchcock manages to create a dramatic sense of anxiety, not least from repeated use of shadow lines on white floors and ceilings, evoking a spider’s web of deceit and entrapment.
The problem with this film is the ambiguous and unsatisfactory ending which is much less dark than that in the original novel and Hitchcock’s plans for the work, but the studio RKO could not tolerate its star actor Grant being portrayed too far outside the usual moral range of his roles.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
Today is International Slavery Day …
August 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
… or, to give it the full official name, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition.
For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic trans-Atlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history.
23 August of each year is the day designated by UNESCO to memorialise the transatlantic slave trade. This date was chosen because, during the night of 22/23 August 1791, on the island of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti), an uprising began which set forth events which were a major factor in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
So UNESCO Member States organise events every year on this date, inviting participation from young people, educators, artists and intellectuals. As part of the goals of the intercultural UNESCO project, “The Slave Route“, it is an opportunity for collective recognition and focus on the “historic causes, the methods and the consequences” of slavery.
Here in the UK, three cities are especially associated with the trans-Atlantic slave trade: Liverpool, Bristol and London. It was in Liverpool last week that I first visited the International Slavery Museum and first learned of International Slavery Day.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How Netanyahu could lose; how Boris could be beaten; and why voting matters
August 19th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
There’s an election going on in Israel right now and incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is widely expected to retain power, but my friend Eric Lee has written an interesting column for the “Times of Israel” explaining how Netanyahu could lose. The argument rests on the supposition that Israeli Arabs – who comprise a fifth of the nation’s population and have the vote – actually use that vote in similar proportions to Jewish voters.
This column brought to mind the situation in the UK where Boris Johnson is a Prime Minister willing to take the country out of the European Union in a no-deal Brexit although there is no majority for this option in Parliament. There is currently lots of speculation about how he could be blocked and even deposed, but the easiest option would be for the seven Sinn Fein MPs elected in Northern Ireland to take their seats and vote against a Brexit which threatens the Good Friday Agreement, yet this article explains why it won’t happen..
Last Friday, I was in a very wet and windy Manchester to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre of 16 August 1819. That demonstration was a demand for the vote at a time when the suffrage was tiny and Manchester did not have a single seat in Parliament.
While I was in Manchester, I went on a two-hour guided tour of sites associated with Peterloo and an explanation of the historical context. To my astonishment and annoyance, our guide seemed deeply cynical about the capacity of representative democracy to affect meaningful change and, when I engaged him at the end of the tour, it became clear that he was an anarchist.
I have spent my life believing that voting matters and can change things – in Israel, in Britain, in the United States, wherever democracy, however flawed, is available – and I have never missed an opportunity to vote.
Posted in British current affairs, World current affairs | Comments (0)