I sometimes have reflective moments when I wonder whether I’m too critical of politicians: after all, I wouldn’t want to be one, so it seems a bit petulant to be critical of those who do step forward.

It’s in that spirit that I’m choosing to assume that Grant Shapps is genuinely the best person in the country to have held no fewer than five Cabinet positions in the last twelve months:

• Secretary of State for Transport
• Home Secretary
• Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
• Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
• Secretary of State for Defence

There may be those who say he is the ‘Minister for the Today Programme’, a useful mouthpiece who will repeat whatever lines he is given while in front of a microphone. He is, they say, being promoted in a ‘jobs for friends’ culture of rewarding loyalty.

I’m choosing not to believe that. I’m choosing to believe that he is a multi-talented superstar politician able to turn his hand to anything from boats to power stations to aircraft carriers as the moment demands.

Our nation is lucky to have him.

Le Monde had a great editorial on Friday about the UK government’s attitude to asylum seekers. Its conclusion:

In the UK, as in other countries such as France, debates on immigration are in urgent need of candor, especially in light of labor shortages. The UK, far from being “overrun,” as Braverman claims, registers far fewer asylum seekers than France or Germany. London suffers from a lack of efficiency in processing applications, 166,000 of which are pending. Brexit has led the British to deprive themselves of European coordination tools, and to a policy that favors migrants from distant countries over Europeans.

As for the real ways of managing migration, they mainly involve improving European cooperation policies and our relations with the countries of origin. Unless they have the courage to speak the truth, the leaders of developed countries risk continuing to put on, like Sunak, a pernicious show of powerlessness.

I find it hard to disagree with a word of that. The government’s profound lack of seriousness is hard to fathom at the best of times, but becomes uniquely distressing when applied to the treatment of vulnerable people literally fleeing for their lives.

It’s also hard to imagine any of the editorials of the British press focusing on the substantive issue, as Le Monde has done, if the ‘fuck off to France’ shoe had been on the French foot.

Yesterday, I felt sad as I read Tom Nichols’s response to the indictment of Donald Trump in The Atlantic Daily, particularly the following parts.

The rest of us, as a nation but also as individuals, can no longer indulge the pretense that Trump is just another Republican candidate, that supporting Donald Trump is just another political choice, and that agreeing with Trump’s attacks on our democracy is just a difference of opinion.

We can no longer merely roll our eyes when an annoying uncle rhapsodizes about stolen elections. We should not gently ask our parents if perhaps we might change the channel from Fox during dinner. We are not obligated to gingerly change the subject when an old friend goes on about “Demonrats” or the dire national-security implications around Hunter Biden’s genitalia. Enough of all this; we can love our friends and our family and our neighbors without accepting their terms of debate. To support Trump is to support sedition and violence, and we must be willing to speak this truth not only to power but to our fellow citizens.

Every American citizen who cares about the Constitution should affirm, without hesitation, that any form of association with Trump is reprehensible, that each of us will draw moral conclusions about anyone who continues to support him, and that these conclusions will guide both our political and our personal choices.

This is painful advice to give and to follow. No one, including me, wants to lose friends or chill valued relationships over so small a man as Trump. But our democracy is about to go into legal and electoral battle for its own survival. If we don’t speak up—to one another, as well as to the media and to our elected officials—and Trump defeats us all by regaining power and making a mockery of American democracy, then we’ll all have lost a lot more than a few friendships.

Firstly, how can it possibly be that one of the tied favourites to win the next US Presidential election can be someone involved in a conspiracy which contemplated deploying the American military against its own people? How the hell did we end up here? How did the US elect someone like that in the first place? Why isn’t the idea of re-electing that person unthinkable? What does this mean for the future of the USA? What does this mean for the future of democracy?

Secondly, should we really be worried? Democracy and the constitution passed the stiff test posed by Donald Trump the last time; ought we not to be confident that the same tactics will fail a second time? Should we really be that threatened by someone contemplating something awful, but deciding not to do it? Isn’t the outcome more important than the contemplation? Is Trump really a threat to democracy, or is he just a very naughty boy?

Thirdly, isn’t it depressing that the ‘threat to democracy’ that Nichols cites has become such a common refrain? Not from Nichols, not even really from The Atlantic, but from—well—everywhere? The New York Times has used the phrase 590 times. The Times of London has used it 155 times. Even the bloody Financial Times has used it 216 times. Some of these uses are legitimate references others are not. Even as long ago as 2006, the transfer of ownership of ITV was called a “threat to democracy”—it wasn’t one. There’s no space left to amp up the rhetoric. Rage sells, and anger drives online engagement. The media hit peak rage too soon. The papers have cried ‘wolf’ once too often. And it means that if and when there’s a real threat to democracy, the rage and anger and language is just the same as when the threat was little more than tepid air. We need the reasonable voices, the ones willing to say “there’s nothing to see here”, “this isn’t a crisis”, and “it’s more complicated than that”—but they’re drowned out, because calm rationality is boring.

Fourthly, does the failure of journalism explain the failure of democracy? Can democracy survive without reliable information? Or in an environment where reliable information is drowned out by hysterics? And is there any route to improving any of this in the current environment? Or are we in a complete spiral of doom?

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.

It was Luke O’Neil’s Hell World that first drew my attention to a particular section of a speech recently given by Donald Trump in Las Vegas:

And remember, Florida’s easier than other places. You have the ocean and you have the sun. There’s something about that that works. But, you have the sun, too, but you don’t have the ocean. I can tell. You definitely don’t have the ocean. Maybe someday you’ll have the ocean, you never know.

I haven’t heard how Trump delivered the line, but like O’Neil, I think there’s something appallingly poetic about “maybe someday you’ll have the ocean”.

The phrase carries a sense of wistfulness and longing, offering the promise of something near-impossible. It feels hopeful and oddly aspirational, almost like a rallying cry issued by a general facing impossible odds.

Yet, beneath the surface, this line alludes to climate change—a scenario entailing incalculable human suffering, inevitable societal collapse, and the almost certain demise of the majority of the people he’s addressing.

In its dreadful, chilling brevity, the phrase encapsulates so much about our times. It is a horrifyingly poignant—yet perhaps entirely unintentional—reflection of the modern world.

It is one for the ages.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.

Imagine that your bank has made an error and erased all records of your assets. Your life is—at least temporarily—devastated. You complain, trying to unravel exactly what’s happened. However, you hit a brick wall when the bank’s senior leaders reveal that they’re not entirely sure what transpired because the issue was discussed via WhatsApp with ‘disappearing messages’ turned on. No permanent records of the conversation were kept.

Imagine that your relative dies in hospital due to a rumoured policy that patients in their condition will not receive treatment. An investigation is launched. It reaches no firm conclusions: the discussions about your relative occurred via WhatsApp, intermingled with messages about children’s piano lessons, and it is deemed in appropriate to disclose those private conversations.

Imagine that you were arrested by the police and detained for 72 hours, without ever truly knowing why. You complain. You are informed that no-one is precisely clear why you were detained: the officers in charge raised concerns with their superiors via WhatsApp, but nobody can recall the specifics, and the phone with the messages on it has broken.

In all of these cases, I imagine you would be outraged. Your outrage would probably be directed at the lack of permanent, contemporaneous records of both the decisions and the processes through which they were made. You’d likely consider the fact that WhatsApp was used to make the decisions as strange and inappropriate, but perhaps a second-order issue.

In the context of the covid inquiry, there is a lot in the press about WhatsApp messages. Their use in Government is frequently defended based on ‘efficiency’. I am concerned that they are only really more efficient because they circumvent processes seen as bureaucratic but which are fundamental to good Government, like contemporaneous record-keeping.

I think the press underplays this issue because they don’t see it: WhatsApp is commonly used within journalism, and for communications between politicians and journalists, so journalists are hindered in being able to take a step back and see the bigger picture of how inappropriate this is.

Take a step even further back and there’s a failure that underlies scores of recent Government scandals, from Partygate, to Richard Sharp, to Matt Hancock’s resignation, to Suella Braverman’s speeding course: the pathological inability of senior politicians to separate their professional roles from their personal lives. I have some sympathy with this, given how all-consuming some senior roles can be, but this ought to lead to particular effort to impose professional boundaries: I see no evidence of this.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.

It has been asserted that we live in a ‘Post Truth’ society, where political debate is hampered by an inability to agree on basic facets of reality. This assertion holds true in many instances.

There are those who struggle to grasp the many meanings of the word ‘true:’ the moment someone uses a phrase like ‘my truth,’ they implausibly claim that veracity—‘the truth’—is the only sense in which they understand the word. It’s disheartening that they must go through life without any true friends.

So, I was delighted by the last section of the most recent episode of Politico’s podcast, ‘Westminster Insider.’ In the episode, Ailbhe Rea discusses the art of the political interview. In the final section, she addresses the disastrous interview which prompted Andrea Leadsom to withdraw from the Conservative leadership election in 2016—the infamous ‘motherhood’ interview.

Rea conducts interviews with both Leadsom and Rachel Sylvester, the journalist who interviewed Leadsom. The two have markedly different recollections of the crucial part of their interview which, on first hearing, seem entirely irreconcilable.

The genius of this episode lies in the fact that Rae then plays the dictaphone recording of the original interview for the listener, without comment. It immediately becomes apparent that the seemingly irreconcilable accounts are, in reality, both accurate.

Naturally, Sylvester and Leadsom’s recollections differ because they are viewing the same encounter from different perspectives, focusing on different aspects of it. Neither is recalling the complete picture: and with only their own perspective to work from, how could they?

The episode serves as a poignant reminder that disagreement on basic facts is not always born of deceit: sometimes, recollections can differ in ways that are entirely honest. Despite appearing contradictory, neither Leadsom nor Sylvester’s account was inaccurate. ‘Facts’ that appear mutually exclusive aren’t always so.

The image at the top of this post was generated by Midjourney.

I try not to rant about politics. It achieves nothing and it’s not great for my blood pressure. As I’m not willing to become a politician myself, what right do I have to throw mud from the sidelines?

But occasionally, the hypocrisy becomes too much.

The Conservative Party pushed voter ID laws through Parliament. One of the effects of this legislation was to disenfranchise millions of British citizens. The final number who were turned away from polling stations in the recent local elections hasn’t yet been collated.

Yet, yesterday’s right-leaning newspapers were inexplicably keen to celebrate that a Conservative MP who championed voter ID has written to ask the Leader of the Opposition—a man with no ability to change the law on voting before the next general election—

Why do you think it’s right to downgrade the ultimate privilege of British citizenship—the right to vote in a general election?

Huh?

The image is an unmodified version of an official Government portrait used under this licence.

Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to Scottish politics, especially given how much closer I live to the Scottish parliament than to the UK parliament. Humza Yousaf seemed to me to come from nowhere to be installed as Scotland’s First Minister.

I was therefore pleased to come across a decent profile of him in, of all publications, Le Monde. I enjoyed his line about his culture being ‘bagpipes and bhangra’ and his combination of a kilt with a sherwani. It also, perhaps, took an international paper’s perspective to note that we have a Hindu Prime Minister and a Sikh First Minister, which only underlines the unsustainability of our lack of separation between church and state.

I was also delighted to learn that he’s exactly two weeks older than me, so I haven’t yet reached the age where the country’s senior leaders are younger than me.

Yesterday saw the World Health Organization declare the end of the global health emergency attributable to COVID-19. Today, for the UK at least, the focus shifts from a virus with a corona to, well, just the corōna.

Later, we’ll see the first United Kingdom Coronation of the century; of the millennium; of my lifetime. Or, as The Economist has it, ‘a man in London is about to be given a hat.’

Inevitably, this has made me reflect on my feelings about monarchy, which are not as straightforward as one might suppose.

Firstly—obviously—no-one would support the creation of a monarchy today. It’s absurdly anachronistic. It grants power and responsibility through birthright, it is the definition of antidemocratic, and symbolises limits on social mobility that hold us all back. Even with some elements of primogeniture having been removed, it is a system fundamentally rooted in gender inequality, perhaps never more obviously underlined than on a day when the wife of a son of a Prince Regent is crowned Queen.

Yet, I wouldn’t support an alternative. As long as the family are willing to continue to deliver the function, then having a head of state that none of us can choose, trapped in an endless stalemate of not being able to do anything meaningful without risking abolition, seems like a suitably British fudge. The system is obviously absurd and indefensible, and those—perversely—are its virtues. Instead of abolishing a symbol of inequality and suppression, let’s spend our effort on tackling inequality and suppression.

And yet, I do support disestablishment. It is absurd that monarchy gives us a state religion. It is profoundly wrong and demonstrably divisive that we have 26 English Bishops as automatic representatives of that religion in our legislature. This is the bit of monarchy that has a practical effect on all our lives, and if we’re going to abolish something, abolish that.

And this is the moment to do it. The 2021 census showed Christianity to be a minority religion in this country. Today, we anoint a King as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, alongside a Queen with whom he did not share the sacrament of marriage. Let him be the last. Let him call himself the ‘defender of faith’ rather than ‘the faith’ if it pleases him. Let’s finally separate church and state.

In 2022, more people resigned from the Government than were accused of voter fraud. More people resigned as Prime Minister than were convicted of voter fraud.

You may therefore conclude that voter fraud isn’t the biggest current threat to our democracy. Of course, though, looking only at current threats is foolhardy: we must always be looking ahead and preparing for threats that are on the horizon.

Perhaps, therefore, the Government’s decision to introduce a requirement to show photo identification when voting is a smart move.

Perhaps, too, there is a good reason why a long-expired over-60 photographic Oyster card is valid for this purpose, while a just-issued over-18 photographic Oyster card is not. It would be cynical to lazily assume that this is reflective of the typical voting patterns among card carriers in each age bracket.

Approximately two million eligible voters don’t possess photo identification, and something like 1.9 million of them have been disenfranchised from today’s election, as they didn’t apply for a voter ID card nor a postal ballot. Still more will not know the rules and be turned away when they attend a polling station, and many won’t return.

But, the Government argues, this is essential for keeping our democracy safe. And, as is little mentioned by critics, the Electoral Commission agrees.

So let’s not give into cynicism: let’s assume that there are indeed good reasons to carefully protect the process for voting for local councillors.

Let’s assume that the Government is acting in all our best interests, not the narrow electoral interests of the governing party.

Let’s agree to blithely ignore the fact that just months ago, the governing party’s internal election to select a Prime Minister was held mostly online, with no attempt to check photographic identification at any point in the voting process.

Let’s agree to see the logic that electing a Prime Minister requires less security and rigour than electing a local councillor. After all, the turnover of the former these days is much greater than the latter.

The picture at the top of this post is an AI-generated image created by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2.