The Unsettled Settlement: the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement

As I began with a short piece just two days* after David Cameron's calamitously misjudged Brexit referendum of June 23 2016, it seems fitting to glance now at the proclaimed end of the crisis: the passing into law four and a half rancorous years later of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. 

First, Boris Johnson has done what he said he'd do, at least as far as he and his supporters are concerned, which is what counts: he can forever boast he took the UK out of the EU; second, he and the EU managed to avoid No Deal. That comes as a relief, though as Michael Heseltine has remarked, the kind of relief with which a condemned man hears his execution has been commuted to life.

For even for the layman, without studying the small print, it is hard to see this moment as the end of the issues or Britain's woes. Apart from obvious gaps - no finality on the status of Britain's services industry or the arbitration mechanism for disputes; disappointment for the fishermen on both sides; a return to red tape and border checks, disingenuously passed over by the Tory government as 'bumps in the road' - it is plain the strained, last minute accord is neither breach nor settlement. It envisages fresh negotiations if either party diverges from its terms, a procedure likely to become permanent, similar to Switzerland's ad hoc arrangements with the EU.

Will these negotiations be an easy and cheap exercise between friends, or a fraught and costly contest of rivals, a slow poison to Britain's international relations and domestic politics as Labour leader Keir Starmer moves on from his tactical approval of the deal this week? Or will the outcome be a series of treaty revisions that restores in all but name the status quo ante Brexit?

Four and a half years ago I wrote that 'Britain is in Europe whether it likes it or not; it's called History and Geography. There is no way out of either of them.'

Who is sure this morning anything has changed?

*June 25 2016: BREXIT: WHERE TO NOW? 

Christmas Greetings, 2020

It seems wholly inadequate to wish the usual 'Merry Christmas' after this awful year for everyone, so here are my authentic thoughts and wishes for what is going to be the historic Christmas, 2020. Better luck next year and in the years to come.

The Christmas Present To End All Christmas Presents, then, will be a Brexit deal that people said was certain to happen while being unable to say how. Boris Johnson's troubles, and I would imagine and hope political demise, will start now. 

The question with Trump is whether he is actually unhinged or just building his fascist legend of no-surrender - or, what some believe, collecting the dollars he's going to need for a remaining lifetime of litigation. Anyway he will go down in history in infamy as, we must hope, will the wing of the GOP that is supporting him to the end. Similar hopes too for the Tory cabal that misled our quaint country, too easily deceived, too insular to adapt to change, into the backward step of Brexit.

So, you see, I am both downcast and hopeful at the same time now. It is sad to live in these times after a lifetime of better ones, the Cold War notwithstanding, yet more depressing to see no end to Covid. 

I hope you and yours are all safe and well and wish you the best for this holiday season that, they say, is like no other holiday season. 

Donald Trump: is it a case of the f-word?

Is Donald Trump a fascist, plotting in his White House bunker? 

Disconcertingly, the answer to the question rests with us. Fascism lies on the right of the political spectrum, though precisely where right differs from centre right and hard right becomes far right is for many to say and no one to tell. 

Scanning a person's attitudes and beliefs goes so far, but sentiments and issues always overlap, boundaries blur and collide with one another, until we are at some wild outer extreme where there are no limits. Plainly President Trump is not there.*

Ask instead, then, whether Donald Trump is a democrat (the lower case 'd' in this context taken as read). Now our answer depends on what we understand by democracy. A typical dictionary definition reads: 'Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives'. 

But this falls a long way short. It omits any reference to typical democratic institutions, bicameral parliaments and the separation of the powers; to the customary coupling of the terms democracy and liberal in 'liberal democracy'; to the working of these and other norms and practices to enable peaceful change; to the foundations of such democracy in individualism, pluralism and human rights; to the character of a leader and leadership.

How far has Donald Trump met these values, worked to bolster them, stayed not just within the letter of the law and the US Constitution, but honoured their spirit? Though he is not a Democrat and entitled not to be, is he a democrat?

Donald Trump challenges us personally on this: he has seventy million voters behind him saying that he is and he won.

But he too is challenged. It is not only the vote count that makes millions more know Donald Trump lost and democracy has won.

*Note of January 8 2021: I considered ending this sentence with 'yet' and finally decided against it as Donald Trump was not out of hand at the time of writing.

What is true in this post-truth age?

Can you believe a word of it?

All those questions that occupied us before Covid-19 arrived to scoop the lot - the ones that were not a matter of life and death: remember them?
 

Is Donald Trump making America Great Again? Will the British be better off for Brexit? Was colonialism all bad? Is government by the ANC any better? Was apartheid a crime against humanity? Oscar Pistorius - guilty or innocent?

Did Americans really land on the moon? Does homeopathy work? Is butter good for you? What exactly do you mean by 'good'?

In an already crowded and noisy world, the internet has finally done for answers. Today there is no opinion, no belief, intuition, revelation, faith, concept, hypothesis, theory, statistic, authority, logic, reasoning - no right, wrong, common sense or well known fact that someone somewhere cannot declare is not true. To Flat Earthers, the world is not round. To an economist, Covid-19 is not a simple matter of life and death.
 

Yet how does that make sense? If what we hear is false, something else must be true or how do we tell the difference? What is this something called the truth? Who has it and speaks for it? To convince everyone, it must be more than a contrary or contrasting opinion. Is the truth available in every case, can it settle all arguments?

Religion makes its claim here and insists the source is God. But while that is true for the faithful, the problem has always been too many have insufficient faith, or the wrong faith, or no faith. That religion holds the truth is probably the oldest and most disputed truth of all.

Science is more circumspect. Science speaks of what it reveals or establishes as 'regularities' rather than truth. A scientific theory - not, note, a scientific hypothesis - is the surest form of knowledge homo sapiens has because it is tested and observed, observed and tested, to a point where the outcome is predictable. But the word is predictable rather than certain. Scientists see their theories, however tried and trusted, as provisional, not as a metaphor for another world altogether. That remains the inference of non-scientists.
 

How then to proceed in what is acknowledged as our post-truth, counter-factual age with its debilitating arguments and potential for violence?
 

One view is to accept that logical argument or facts cannot make us agree with people we disagree with. Disagreements stem from a cognitive or cultural bias, or both. We disagree not because the 'facts' are in dispute or missing, least of all because one or other side is right and wrong, but because we think differently as people.
 

This is persuasive. We are often told nowadays the difference between left and right has disappeared. But differences are as marked as ever whether people are polled on traditional issues like capital punishment and rape, or on pressing contemporary issues, domestic violence, global warming, same-sex marriage.

When social conservatives disparagingly call liberals 'libtards' and liberals return the compliment by labelling social conservatives 'far  right', the difference appears to be fundamental: not one between people, but in people. If that is so, is the difference nature or nurture - in today's parlance, hard-wired or learned? Does that explain why so many insist multiculturalism does not and cannot work while millions of others pin their hopes on it?

We seem trapped in an ever-revolving door with these questions. Yet there is a way out, so wide open it is considered absurd, if not profane, to point it out: there is no such thing as the truth - that is merely the way we use words. If you stop speaking of the truth and claiming you possess it, the problems disappear.

After thousands of years of knowing otherwise, people find this idea preposterous. How could anyone do that? How would we know right from wrong, good from bad, sense from nonsense? If there's no truth, what would replace it?

Oddly enough, you have just said it: knowing would replace it. Knowledge is the word we should use, not truth. Try it ...

Some readers know President Trump is the greatest US President ever; some know he is the worst. They both know it for sure, but neither is true ...

Helen Zille definitely knows colonialism wasn't all bad, but a million EFF supporters in South Africa know it was. Insiders know the US moon landing was faked, except those who know for a fact Apollo 11 landed on the moon ...

And so on. You see, we know what we know and it works perfectly for everyone; no more arguments, no more fights.

"Nah! None of this BS's true."