Misha Glenny has an interesting article in the Observer this morning. He considers afresh his view of the Union, and to cut his narrative short, realises that England prevailed over its immediate neighbours because it was the economic powerhouse amongst them. Although he does not quite say it, he appreciates it never played a dominant social role, and the politics is always open to dispute. But on the economy it was not just size that made England the master: it out innovated in ways that delivered results that secured acquiescence to presence in a United Kingdom (and I am aware this ignores many individual cases).
From this premise he leaps, with little difficulty, to an obvious, if again understated, conclusion. If post-Brexit England will be not be just bruised but actually broken, and that is my view of what it will be which it appears that Glenny shares, then what remains of the reason for the Union? The obvious argument is that there is none.
Whether Northern Ireland or Scotland realise this first is open to debate: it may be one or other by no more than a length in my opinion. Wales may be a few more lengths behind, but it will come in, albeit third. Whatever the ordering the reason for leaving the Union will be the same. The economic justification, which has always overcome the political and social reasons for separation, will have gone. And on that basis division if the Union becomes inevitable.
March 29 is about much more than leaving the EU. It is the very obvious beginning of the end for the UK. The only question is how long it takes. But that England will shrink to having a sphere of influence it last knew in the 13th century, and maybe (if French possessions of that time are taken into account) the eleventh century, is inevitable.
This could be described as sobering.
In the light of the current political and chosen economic malaise of the UK it could also be described as appropriate.
And even this does not guarantee a future for the Conservative Party.
That is May's legacy.
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On 21/2/19, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg with other international ‘school-strike-for-climate’ leaders spoke to an EU gathering in Brussels https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/news-media/videos/speech-greta-thunberg-climate-activist?fbclid=IwAR1Xx-WyGfoIQEcNPD043U1RlKI0-ImMF8WIzOqKRfpgL53pT28CIvZzuvQ “by the year 2020 we need to have bent the emissions curve steeply downwards. That is next year. … The political system that you have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can because all that matters is to win – to get power. That must come to an end. … We need to cooperate and work together and to share the resources of the planet in a fair way. We need to start living within the planetary boundaries, focus on equity, and take a few steps back for the sake of all living species. … we don’t have any other choice. We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change, because if we fail to do so, then all of our progress and achievements have been for nothing. … There is still time. According to the IPCC report, we are at about 11 years away from being in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control. To avoid that, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have to taken place within the coming decade, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least if 50% by the year 2030. … If the EU is to make its fair contribution to staying within the carbon budget for the 2°C limit then it means a minimum of 80% reduction by 2030 … and that includes aviation and shipping – so, around twice as ambitious as the current proposal. The actions required are beyond manifestos or any party politics. ..”
Implications are:
1 MPs should permanently revoke Article 50 because it will take more than 11 years to recreate in the UK, institutions and functions that are currently operating for the UK within the EU.
2 An Emergency Coalition Government led, I suggest, by Caroline Lucas, with Molly Scott Cato, the Green MEP, as Chancellor and Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research as Minister for Energy.
See Anderson on https://urplay.se/program/206482-ur-samtiden-klimatriksdagen-2018-var-star-vi-idag (It’s in English with Swedish subtitles — but is up-to-date). Or read what he says at https://edition.independent.co.uk/editions/uk.co.independent.issue.220318/data/8266371/index.html
… which includes ‘Imagine then an enlightened “quantitative easing” transferring resources not to banks, but to mobilise a rapid transformation in energy infrastructure, retrofitting existing buildings, decarbonising transport and constructing zero-carbon power stations. A reformist political agenda could begin to emerge, facilitating secure, local and high-quality employment, eradicating fuel poverty, improving urban air quality, driving innovation and eliminating carbon emissions. Stretch the imagination a little further to embed a democratic media reporting on this transformation to an increasingly savvy and responsive audience. Under such conditions, an alternative progressive paradigm could be ushered in — and soon’
Molly does not understand money
She buys the Positive Money logic
That is seriously worrying
Maybe Molly Scott-Cato can be brought round, she is pretty good on other policies. She is a professor at Roehampton University so she should have a mind that can get round MMT etc in due course.
I hope so…
Agree 100%, and have done for a long time. Would be interested to see your take on Fintan O’Toole’s book “Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain”. Worth reading for the takedown of Boris Johnson alone.
This podcast of a talk he gave a few months ago is as good a summary of where we are and how we got here as I’ve heard:
http://www.politicalquarterly.org.uk/2018/07/the-nightmare-of-history-pq-lecture-at.html
Highly recommended.
I see the break-up of the union as inevitable and desirable. It could have been saved with political reform, neither Labour nor the Conservatives were willing to countenance it and so they must endure the consequences. I can’t see England retaining a UN Security Council seat, and that change may trigger a very different world order
[…] result is alienation at unprecedented scales, that cannot but have political, economic, social and further constitutional consequence in due course. The TIG just typifies […]
Glenny is onto something. Having witnessed the balkanisation of Yugoslavia and written a very good book about it, I’d trust his viewpoint.
It explains why Scotland in particular have found independence attractive:
“From the 18th Century, England was able to sustain its primacy because it encouraged Wales, Scotland and Ireland to benefit from the riches of empire”.
All we did with North Sea oil was – well – what exactly? It certainly helped the economy look better whilst Thatcher went about her ‘sado-monetarism’ as Bill Keegan calls it.
Our empire is long gone, but we have a little empire growing in the City of London. It seems to me the CoL is on its way to being a city-state with a few of the home counties chucked in for good measure – for the weekends of course. The Tories have for some time appeared totally disinterested in managing the country properly and meeting their obligations to the Union.
BREXIT will reduce our riches and so ends a long process – started by Thatcher – of economic destruction (and before anyone pipes up about her backing of the EU trade zone, please remember that she became very Eurosceptic herself towards the end of her rain (sic) and thus gave birth to what is now the ERG).
Ireland, Scotland and Wales will have to do something for themselves now, rather than being tied to and dragged down by the sea-anchor that is England under neo-lib orthodoxy. I do worry for Wales, and less about the other two. They really do have to get their house in order very quickly. Beating England at rugby is not enough – although it’s great to watch.
NI has a future in Ireland
Scotland is a wholly viable state
I am not so sure about Wales, and I do worry about that. I am not sure how a country without a viable communication link throughout it really works
If you go back to the 19th Century and much of the 18th you will find that London and The Empire had large numbers of incomers from the UK who more or less had a major role in Government and Empire. My old Army mate, Montgomery, is a case in point. Born in London maybe but to an Ulster Vicar. In WW2 there is Alanbrooke. In fact the Irish Ascendancy had a major role in the forces. Many of them originated in Scotland and Wales as well as Irish. I like to call India The Scottish Raj. The Census Returns of the 19th had cities in England with large numbers of incomers from all parts of Britain. Scratch a 21st Century Englishman and you will find DNA from across The Atlantic Isles.
“From the 18th century, England was able to sustain its primacy because it encouraged Wales, Scotland and Ireland to benefit from the riches of empire (with the catastrophic exclusion of Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland).”
Actually, with the exception of this scarcely penetrating sentence, I consider Misha Glenny’s article a rather hackneyed political travelogue made up of superficial and glib ideas.
For Scotland, setting religion and dynastic politics to one side, it was Empire that provided the compelling (and enduring) logic of Union. It was Empire, primarily that unlocked economic innovation in Scotland; notably, and from the 18th century through the ruthless but effective new economic methods used by the Glasgow Tobacco Lords quickly to corner the US tobacco trade and transform their city from a Cathedral and University town (which Defoe previously described as “a very fine city; the four principal streets are the fairest for breadth, and the finest built that I have ever seen in one city together”, into a hard, smoke-blackened industrial colossus that became ‘Second City of the Empire’, typically in cutting-edge engineering, and largely achieved through innovation). Access to Empire had trumped Navigation Acts.
I am not sure this trumps the argument….
It feels like it supports it to me
In spite of possessing the same monarch, the Westminster Parliament and East India Company were determined to block the Scots from accessing the Empire (and compete in trade – they were mercantilists); as an act of belligerence through the Navigation Acts. It is an interesting use of the word “encourage”. The effect, and probably the purpose was to eliminate the Scots Parliament.
I don’t know the implications of ‘MMT’ versus ‘Positive Money logic’. I do know that Molly is an economisst and experienced politician who cares about, and is highly knowledgeable of, the issues regarding a viable human ecosphere. Very few economists or politicians in the UK seem to have grasped the urgency which Greta Thunberg has voiced so admirably. What is important is the agenda proposed by Kevin Anderson (or something very like it). A start cound be made with Tradable Energy Quotas https://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/teqs/
which would rapidly focus minds on our energy profligacy which must must must be brought to an end.
@Joe Burlington:
I don’t disagree at all with what you are saying about the urgency to make a radical change in the way we conduct ourselves, both at home or internationally, but I have no expectation that we’re going to see any of this because the political will to address the issues of sustainability is minuscule. You list the people who are currently paying attention….they are somewhat outnumbered. 🙁
Just last week we saw disaffected politicians defecting from their party structures to form a new and utterly pathetic coalition of orthodox soft(ish) neoliberal centrism. So the only ones making a move are moving entirely in the wrong direction.
Comments last week from somebody who thinks the solution to Climate disaster will come from the neoliberals figuring out a way to make yet more obscene profits (carbon capture schemes and carbon trading scams) seem to be much likely to what we should expect from our benighted and purblind polity.
Democracy doesn’t even influence local government priorities. And as you know the bulk of the populus can’t even be bothered with national scale politics let alone local governance. Nearly all local authorities are controlled by a small coterie of technocratic financial administrators – conservatively orthodox to the very core of their being. Most are totally impervious to criticism and the councillors who should be providing policy objectives are a well-heeled complacent cabal of the comfortably smug and self-righteous.
I can foresee no possibility of change until chaos has to be dealt with. Brexit could be just what is required to set off the sort of self-destructive cycle that will force a change of attitude……. that is the only thing to be said for it. Combined with the almost inevitable financial sector collapse which can’t be far away and will inevitably be on a global scale, our best hope is that we can find some sensible representatives capable of understanding real economic issues and make political choices which maybe will enable us to rebuild some sort of social consensus and begin a process of reconstruction.
I can’t envisage this happening without there being a colossal upheaval in the short to medium term.
Politicians are pretending to pay heed to the ‘will of the people’ and the will of the people seems to be self-destruction.
So it goes.
That’s a bit harsh on Glenny in my opinion.
All he is saying is the England wanted to lead from the front but also share some of their spoils of empire as a means as to keep Scotland, Wales and Ireland quiet. Just a little mind.
You cannot deny John that keeping things quiet at home in order to pursue international goals is a deep part of English historical development and policy – especially in terms of extending its power from beyond its own shores.
I await the cold bath of your response with interest.
I think it would be more accurate to say that the Crown and Parliament wanted to eliminate all competition. This is pre-Adam Smith, but David Hume identified the underlying issue that would produce the motivation of such State activities: in the title of a famous essay of 1758 (long after the events to which I refer): “Of the Jealousy of Trade”. Istvan Hont wrote a brilliant book on Hume with precisly the same title. The Scots were squeezed out of Empire, by their own King. The Crown, and the East India Company blocked a London fund raising for the ‘Company of Scotland Trading to Africa’, only begun because the Scots had nowhere to go to exploit trading opportunities, especially in America; because the Crown, using the threat of the Royal Navy, would not allow them access.
In one of the most brilliantly-daft projects in history the Scots targeted the Darian isthmus (they had a trading concept of exploiting the Atlantic-Pacific link, without the Panama canal, about two centuries too early: – don’t ask); an “IPO” led by William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, and funded in Scotland. Darien was particularly rich, in disease. This, however was an insufficiently promising destructive prospect for the bad outcome the Crown sought. They had to do more to finish it. The Crown approached the Spanish (the Spanish! The new Union-UK took Gibraltar from the Spanish in 1713, less than 20 years later); asking the Spanish to provide help to the Crown (in the interests of Westminster and the East India Company) to ensure that Darien settlement failed catastrophically. Darien would have failed anyway, but “share the spoils”, to use your cheery phrase, came with a very, very big price ticket. It doesn’t quite ‘cut it’. It is worth remembering that contemporaries did not view the Union as a success in the early years; the Patronage Act (1712) and Malt Tax led to a vote in Parliament to end the Union. It was defeated narrowly, almost by accident.
This is realpolitik, and Scotland – for good or ill – once reconciled to the very early recognition that a commercial society changes everything, and one way or another it was worth a Parliament; exploited the Empire, probably beyond the imagination of either Westminster or the East India Company. Nevertheless, let us examine what this was in a cold, revealing light; and give up the vapid, anodyne, simpering tosh to describe it.