IT SUITED BREXITEERS NOT TO PROBE RUSSIA<

ON PUTIN’S SIDE.

Why the incredulity at Britain’s failure to tackle Russian interference in our democracy?

I’m not surprised. Please follow my logic. Russia wants to break up the European Union. David Cameron unleashes a referendum campaign which could lead to the second largest economy in the bloc leaving. The Russian state backs a disinformation campaign grossly exaggerating refugee flows, immigration into the UK and the role of MI5 and the CIA in backing the EU. Ten million tweets spread discord. Pro Leave bots outnumber Remain three to one. The National Bureau of Economic Research calculates it could have put 1.76% on the Leave share of the vote. We narrowly vote to get out of the EU.

The British government, negotiating to leave the bloc, is largely deaf to the clamour for an investigation. Over three years after the referendum, a report is finally ready last October. It is not published. The excuse given by Boris Johnson is that there is an election coming. Polling over, the next ruse was not to set up the Intelligence and Security Committee that could publish the report.

Then panic! Independently minded Julian Lewis wants to chair the committee. Against the rules the government interferes, and Chris Grayling is backed by the whips instead despite his appalling record as Transport and Justice Secretaries. Lewis wins and is kicked out of the Tory Party. Undeterred Lewis publishes the report which shows that the UK government didn’t try to find out about Russian interference in the EU campaign.

Of course they didn’t. After Cameron’s departure they wanted us out of the EU just like the Russians did. They certainly didn’t want to help the cause of those calling for a second vote by casting doubt on the validity of the 2016 Referendum.

USA ELECTION LIKE NO OTHER.

Covid19 is already having a dramatic effect on the race to the White House. Campaigning is restricted, the conventions drastically scaled back and there’s the prospect of increased postal voting to save people going to the polls.

The latter development has raised the possibility that President Trump might refuse to accept the result if he is defeated. Without evidence, he thinks postal voting will introduce fraud into the process and favour his opponent Democrat nominee Biden. Trump says he is a bad loser. Nothing can be ruled out from a man who has so demeaned his office, this week wishing Ghislaine Maxwell well when he should have stayed silent until the guilt or innocence of the friend of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is determined.

Meanwhile Biden has a very important choice to make, that of his Vice-Presidential running mate. It is important because, at 77, he would be the oldest person elected to the presidency. He has not enjoyed the best of health and so the person chosen could become President with the world never having heard of them. Remember Gerald Ford or further back Harry Truman.

To confirm how unusual this election is, it is highly likely that Joe Biden is going to choose the first black woman to be on any major party ticket for President.

THE NORTH AND CURBING THE CHINESE DRAGON.

THE COST OF PRINCIPLES

George Osborne saw the Chinese as vital partners in the Northern Powerhouse. Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of a golden age in our trade relations with the Far East giant.

Many will still argue that nothing must get in the way of trying to revive the economy of the North after the double whammy of Covid-19 and Brexit. If Chinese financial heft will make the difference, then bring it on.

I am afraid such views are not acceptable and the government is right to reset our relations with China. The most visible manifestation of this is the Huawei decision. The Prime Minister originally ignored unrest on his backbenches and embraced Huawei as a major investment partner in 5G, but the crackdown on protest in Hong Kong has led to a U turn, something this government is getting used to.

During the Cameron/Osborne “golden era”, China had the opportunity to use its economic power whilst respecting the fact that it was dealing with democratic governments who have always been uneasy about the devil’s bargain that the Communist Party of China has struck with its people. It goes along the following lines. We will give you economic prosperity, but we don’t want your opinions.

The West tolerated that position but now that the full crackdown on free speech has been extended to Hong Kong that was meant to operate on more democratic lines until 2047, it is right for us to reset our business relations.

China’s aggressive behaviour has also extended to the Indian border and South China Sea. It cannot be business as usual in the Northern Powerhouse or the nuclear power stations in the south.

Our cooling of business relations does not need to associate itself with the crude xenophobia of Donald Trump, but it probably means it will be a while before we see large Chinese delegations at Manchester Airport of Joe Anderson leading a trade delegation to Shanghai.

WRONG CALL ON BBC CUTS.

The BBC is under big financial pressure. Making the corporation pay for over 75 TV licences was a crude political stunt. But the answer isn’t to make cuts in regional TV and local radio.

One of the main justifications for the licence fee is that the BBC provides services that others won’t.

During this pandemic, BBC local radio has once again shown its unique value as it did during the floods. To cut reporters or niche evening programmes makes tiny savings in the grand scheme of things but undermines the BBC’s unique place in our national life.

Inside Out on Monday evenings has provided a rich mixture of investigative journalism and heritage films. The North West unit is being merged with Yorkshire.

For months during the pandemic Politics England has replaced the bespoke North West Sunday political programme. It has tried to bring a local flavour to national stories, but I’ll give you a glaring example of how it isn’t the same as before.

A few weeks ago, Salford’s Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer as Shadow Education Secretary and replaced by her neighbour in Stretford, Kate Green. A great story to get local reaction to but it doesn’t fit the brief of this all England programme.

Let’s hope the regional political programmes can return because the journalistic scrutiny of local affairs is disappearing at an alarming rate whether by local papers or the BBC.

THE RISE OF RISHI.

THE NEXT PM?

It could all go wrong for the Chancellor. The virus recession could lead to long term mass unemployment, a stagnant economy and Britain with few friends in the world.

Even in those dire circumstances Rishi Sunak might escape political death by claiming he was overwhelmed by unprecedented circumstances.

More likely his massive efforts to avoid the full consequences of the virus recession will prove at least partially successful. People will conclude that at least he tried and begin to look at him as a very credible candidate for Prime Minister.

While Sunak made his statement in the Commons, the Prime Minister was beside him on an otherwise empty Treasury Bench. Earlier Johnson had Prime Minister’s Questions, giving us our weekly helping of bluster and evasion. Sunak is made of a different stripe. The statement was crisp, meaty, and well put together. He has had a baptism of fire and has taken to it like a duck to water (pardon the mixed metaphors).

He is comfortable in his own skin. He was challenged on the Today programme about the number of photo opportunities he has been doing, including serving meals at Wagamama. Instead of becoming defensive, he justified the stunt by saying it was just a way of showing his support for the hospitality industry. He reminded the interviewer that we lived in an age of visual communication. Everyone was doing it, so why not the government?

The Chancellor is prepared to fly in the face of Tory traditional thinking on public spending and the role of the state…for now. But Rishi Sunak still managed to flash his Conservative and Unionist credentials. The furlough scheme is to end in October, there are hints of balancing the books in the medium term and nationalists were reminded that UK resources had been deployed in massive quantities.

Johnson probably has a long tenure unfortunately, but Sunak already fits the bill as a potential Prime Minister of a more diverse Britain.

WHAT ABOUT THE MEASURES?

The key one is the Job Retention Bonus. Employers have a £1000 carrot dangling before them in the new year if they keep workers on. But before that they must face the ending of government furlough payments by October and a minimum £1500 wage bill. 9 million workers aren’t going to be lucky, are they? Where the balance settles will go a long way to determining this winter’s dole queues.

The young have paid a huge penalty to save many of us older people from dying, so the Chancellor’s kick-start scheme to pay the wages of newly hired employees and the £3.7bn for apprenticeships is to be welcome as is the VAT cut for the hospitality industry. The Stamp Duty relief is a surprise as my observation is that the property market was recovering well.

LABOURING ON.

These are difficult times for Labour. What do they say? A demand that the furlough scheme be prolonged is not realistic or costed. However, the Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds was right to point out that until the government got its act together on Track, Test and Trace; the danger of a second spike was very real and could derail Rishi Sunak’s recovery plan.

IF PM IS FDR, WHO NEEDS LABOUR?

JUST JIM 407

THATCHERISM CONSIGNED TO HISTORY.

The prospect of endless Tory governments stretching until the 2040s disturbed my sleep this week.

The government have decided to compare their attempts to drag the economy out of its Covid-19 slump with the measures taken by US President Franklin Roosevelt to end the American depression of the 1930s. This has caused alarm amongst Tory purists because it involves high levels of public spending, a big role for the state and increased taxation.

One can argue that the Johnson administration has been forced to demolish the three pillars of Thatcherism because of the lockdown, but there were signs that the Conservatives would do whatever it took to get a big majority last December, before the virus struck.

The northern red wall was broken down by promises to spend big in the north to level up the economy. It led to the election of a new breed of pragmatic Tory MPs who put fixing things ahead of ideology.

The promises that Johnson made in his “build, build, build” speech this week might fail. In four years’, time we could be looking at mass unemployment with higher taxation trying to fund collapsing public services. In those circumstances the people will probably turn to the Labour Party in desperation.

However if the Tories are successful where does that leave the basic Labour position whereby they, occasionally, win the hearts of voters by being the party that asks you to pay a bit more tax for a fairer Britain?

STARMER ACTS.

Sir Keir Starmer is doing what he can. Despite the problems discussed above, he can at least deal with internal party matters that made Labour unelectable last Christmas.

Full marks to him for sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey. I don’t think the link to anti-Semitism was that strong, but the Salford MP should have been more careful. Let’s be frank, Starmer needs a Shadow Cabinet that unambiguously repudiates Corbynism. Long-Bailey, and a few others, that remain, yearn for the Corbyn period when the ultra-left were tolerated, anti-Semitism was not dealt with and policies adopted that guaranteed defeat.

The hard left prefers Labour wallowing in impotent opposition with “pure” policies on everything compared to the messy compromises needed to build a party capable of convincing middle Britain to vote for them. In their tweets, some supporters of Long-Bailey call for the setting up of a socialist party. Quite right. Go and do that and get out of the Labour Party which only wins from the left of centre.

FOOTBALL SUCCESS, ECONOMIC SLUMP.

Congratulations to Liverpool on winning the Premiership, let’s hope that Everton, in their new stadium, will be challenging them soon for the title.

It is interesting to reflect how historically the clubs are generally successful when the city is on its knees! In the seventies and eighties when Liverpool and Everton were winning the old Division 1, the city experienced decline, riots and Militant. Liverpool won their last title in 1990 just as recovery was underway.

Let’s hope that a string of Liverpool Premiership titles will not be paralleled by economic decline again.