Boris, Boris, Boris

Like the vast majority of the politically-minded British electorate I have been following the movements of Boris Johnson for years.

He first leapt to the fore of my conscience – and on to the pages of this blog – in early 2008, when he penned a scathing attack on Sudan for the Telegraph, without once making an effort to understand the situation on the ground. His gripe was over the apparently shoddy treatment of Gillian Gibbons (the British teacher that was accused of blasphemy because she named a teddy bear ‘Mohammed’ in her lesson) and lamenting that we could no longer muster enough testosterone to pull together an armada of ships to go rescue the poor lady (just as a belated aside, Mr J.: even in the hey-day of the British Empire, we never actually did that. Just look at what happened to that poor Charles Gordon chap. We dillied and we dallied, and then they cut his head off. And he was supposed to be one of our most beloved heroes).

Incidentally the story of Gillian Gibbons was completely different to the one that Boris Johnson told within the pages of The Telegraph – and indeed which many uninformed journalists repeated ad nauseum. Her arrest and subsequent detention was actually to do with a co-worker who didn’t like her, and happened to be related to the Minister for Justice. The Sudanese government was thoroughly embarrassed by the whole incident. But just you try running that story in our xenophobic press. You simply can’t.

But I digress.

The point I was trying to make at the time – and is now clearly borne out by recent events – is that Boris has built his entire career on fabrications and half-truths, and has only been able to get away with this for so long because he is quite simply a brilliant wordsmith.

Such literally brilliance combined with such a cavalier disregard for the truth is a highly dangerous concoction. It was why I didn’t – at least at first – support his candidacy for Mayor of London.

But then, four years later, after witnessing the energy and enthusiasm of the man, I changed my tune. I was happy that Boris was elected Mayor, but in no way thought that he should ever lead the country. It is one thing to promote cycling or introduce bendy buses in our capital city. It is quite another to shake hands with Olaf Scholz and tell her we are committed to our European partners without reaching for the punchline.

So, no, Boris Johnson should never have been prime minister – and I think that the events that have transpired over the past six months or so rather support this position. His leadership style made a mockery of British politics. It was at once incompetent, irreverent, divisive, arrogant and poisonous.

Boris Johnson, as he has done for most of his life, used his wit and charm to conceal the reality of what was going on behind the closed doors of Westminster – and indeed to conceal the fact that he really wasn’t suited to the job at all.

Very much like the article he wrote 15 years ago about Gillian Gibbons, of which he knew almost nothing.

The case against a second referendum

The past 18 months has seen a governmental balls-up of monumental proportions.

Over this period I have shifted from being a reluctant Brexiteer to being a reluctant Remainer. Full disclosure: I voted with a heavy heart to leave the European Union but now find myself regretting this decision.

All that this has taught me is that the decision of whether to leave the EU was a hugely complex matter best left to well-informed experts and not thrown out to the general public who cannot possibly be expected to comprehend all of what this might mean. Thank you for that Mr Cameron.

Other than that I’m still at a loss for what the best course of action would be.

I agonised for days about where to put that ‘X’. I have also so far resisted talking much about this decision, or trying to justify it, for the simple reason that the debate has become so heated and antagonistic that I didn’t feel like entering it. Call it cowardice if you will, but I feel that people have become so entrenched in their positions – on both sides of the divide – that they are unlikely to want to look fairly at another point of view if it doesn’t agree with theirs.

But here’s the reason, in brief, that I voted ‘Leave’.

For starters, I want to distance myself from the likes of Nigel Farrage and Boris Johnson. People like these were the populist voice of the eurosceptic movement, but never really represented – or even came close to – the much more sophisticated grassroots movement that I got to know during my Brussels days. In fact, none of the eurosceptics that I am on close terms with actually have much time for these people, believing that they detract from what are some very valid reasons for leaving the EU.

My reason for deciding to vote ‘Leave’ – and for agonising so much over the decision – is simply because it wasn’t a fair question to ask. It wasn’t a question about whether to leave the EU or to stay within it. It was a vote between leaving or supporting ever-closer federalism.

Had we voted to remain, that would not have been the end of the matter. The EU would have used this vote to crush any eurosceptic dissent, not just in the UK but throughout Europe – and, to be fair, eurosceptism in the UK is the only eurosceptisim that has ever really mattered. Eurosceptisim in other countries has either been too weak or too pragmatic; Denmark has a very strong eurosceptic flare but were they ever going to consider leaving? Not really.

So the EU would have used any vote to remain to push through some rather unpalatable reforms, portraying British eurosceptics as fringe nutcases that are significantly out-of-step with mainstream opinion. Westminster, needing to be seen to back the outcome of a successful referendum, would then have had no choice but to acquiesce to Brussels’ demands or to be seen to be destabilising the result of the referendum that it had fought so hard to win. In good conscience, I could not vote towards such an outcome.

That is the first point.

The second reason for voting ‘Leave’ comes from the five years I spent in Brussels seeing how the EU is run. Everyone comes away from the European capital with a different view of their time spent there. A well-known eurosceptic MEP that I was briefly fairly close to had the view that, in order to foster eurosceptism throughout the continent, he simply had to bring as many people to the halls of European power as possible, just to see how things worked. He had a point.

Saying that the EU is an undemocratic institution is an argument easily put down. European citizens elect the MEPs that serve in the European Parliament and, although they don’t have a say about everything, their power has been increasing. European Commissioners – which head of various departments of the EU’s executive body – are appointed by national governments. And then the EU’s Council, which has to sign off on just about every bit of new legislation, is made up of national governments.

So labelling the EU as undemocratic is of course easy to counter. But there is clearly some kind of democratic deficit here, if only because most people don’t really understand how the EU works, what powers it has or exactly what MEPs are responsible for.

What I will say is that the unaccountability of the EU is dangerous – and that is the other chief reason that I was not comfortable supporting our membership of the institution. I have seen from close quarters how corrupt the EU is, and how vested interests have lured the bloc into making unconscionable decisions that hav been bad for the whole of the continent.

If people within a national government make the wrong decision in order to further their own ends – and this comes to light – then the laws of modern democracy hold them to account. Not so with the EU and, though journalists have tried to shine a light on various misdeameanours, little has changed within the cozy little club. This is not good for Europe as a continent.

So those are the reasons, as concisely as I can put them, for why I chose to vote ‘Leave’.

So what of the talk of this second referendum?

Having seen what a mess Theresa May’s government has now made of Brexit – largely because of the sharp divisions within the Conservative Party but also because so many people in power seem to display a fundamental misunderstanding of how Europe works (‘negotiate’ does not mean ‘dictate’ – and, no, I agree, you can’t cherry pick) – I now regret my previous decision and wish I’d voted the other way, or the outcome had been different.

Which might suggest that I’d be in favour of a second referendum. After all, I’m well aware of all those cartoons that point out that, one way or another, once you shoot yourself in the foot and end up with a big hole there, and realise that shooting one’s foot is actually not the wisest course of action, then it actually might not be a bad idea to stop shooting.

But no.

And here’s why, in three words.

Maastricht. Nice. Lisbon.

The Treaty of Maastricht, which set up the European single currency, was rejected in 1992 by the Danish. Ireland rejected both the treaties of Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2008). In all cases, the electorate, who were clearly ill-informed and thick as pig shit, were told they got things wrong and to vote again.

I do not want that for my country.

Okay, there were some superficial tweaks before the second votes took place, but they were nothing substantial and in no way justified going to the polls again. In the rerun of the Nice vote – which is the one I reported on and therefore know most about – the Irish government managed to secure a ‘Yes’ by disingenuously and somewhat bizarrely lumping the vote in with three other issues, one of which was a move to strike the death penalty – widely regarded in Europe as a bad thing – from the statute books. How can an electorate, unfamiliar with the machinations of Brussels, really reach any sensible conclusion amid such dishonesty?

Basically, do not hold a referendum if it is not going to be binding.

Now I’m not saying that I would never support a second referendum, but I am saying that for me to support a second referendum it has to be demonstrably different from the referendum held last one.

So Theresa May has a difficult task ahead of her.

Either she has to lay out a clear course of action for leaving the EU that can be acceptable to our European partners – and since she loves to have her cherries, right now she seems as far away from ever from being able to do that.

Or she needs to come to the British electorate with promises that extend way beyond what the conditions of the first referendum. And of course she can’t do that because, it order to make the terms of the second referendum sufficiently different from those of the first, she would have to promise things that she doesn’t have the power to promise.

Rock.

Hard place.

May.

Wrong reasons

17.4 million people – a little more than a third of the voting-age population – are not bigoted racists who think Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson are gods. This is perhaps the single most important thing to understand about the referendum, because if we fail to understand this salient fact then this country will remain hopelessly divided.

I in no way tried to campaign for one result or the other because for me it was just too difficult to call. There were too many complexities to the debate that I simply could not decide which side to come down on.

What frustrated me about the whole affair, and continues to frustrate me, is this constant barrage of misinformation and a lack of any real debate about the issues that matter. Some people have said that, with such an important issue as EU membership, perhaps it should not have been left up to the people to decide. If I’d have known that the whole campaign was going to be boiled down into such simplistic arguments that started to become meaningless, I would probably have agreed.

There is a very good argument to be made that the whole referendum should be run again, or declared null and void and let our politicians make this decision. After all, we do pay them to take decision on complex matters that we, the humble public, don’t really understand.

Perhaps.

But I don’t want to dwell here on democracy or whether the referendum was democratic or not. Countless others are already making that point.

I want to emphasise something much more fundamental. That, whatever happens to our standing with the EU, the result of this referendum must not be ignored.

Okay, two thirds of the voting-age population did not vote to leave the EU. But one third did. And they are important.

I understand that passions are running high, but it is perilous to ignore those in the Leave camp or to simply dismiss them as bigoted racists. This is what the EU’s political establishment has always sought to do and look where it has got them. The EU is lurching – or, rather, hobbling – from crisis to crisis.

That is not an EU I think we should be part of.

Now it is perfectly valid to think that we should remain a member of the EU. There are exceedingly good reasons to remain, and many people can see them much more clearly than the reasons to leave.

But there are also good reasons to leave. And failing to recognise and understand them, and to engage in a sober debate that doesn’t deride either side, is imperative.

But in amongst all the frustration and hot tempers, I am seeing precious little of this. And this is not a good path to go down. Hostility towards the EU will not go away if the referendum is voided. It must be understood for it to be corrected.

And above all, those that voted to leave the EU must have their voice heard – and not simply dismissed as stupid or daft or insane every time they tentatively suggested that leaving the EU might not be a bad idea. Otherwise all anyone will here are the Nigel Farrages and Boris Johnsons of this world, or those that have made anti-European rhetoric their career path.

(As an addendum to this entry, I am in the process of compiling a list of reasons why people might have voted to withdraw from the EU – besides the anti-immigration argument. But this is a hard list to compile, and needs careful thought, so it is not done yet. I am trying very hard not to demonise either side and to move things forward in a spirit of constructive debate. And incidentally, whilst the next couple of years of withdrawal from the EU might be painful, in the long-run things could turn out for the better; but that slightly contentious point doesn’t seem to ever be properly debated.)

Why the Leave camp will fail

The other week, during my time in London, I had the privilege to listen to MP and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn make the case for staying in the EU. Rarely have I heard such a masterful orator and, whilst I might not have agreed with everything he said, it was actually quite thrilling to listen to him make his case. Like hearing a well-read bit of poetry.

By comparison, the Eurosceptics on the panel often sounded shrill and desperate and occasionally a little bit crazy. At one point, one of the panellists – Gerald McGregor, a Chiswick town councillor – brandished a piece of paper in his hand, and suggested that David Cameron’s return from Europe before the referendum was a little like Neville Chamberlain returning from Nazi Germany before World War II broke out. Comparing the European project to Nazism isn’t really what folk want to hear.

And that is why the Leave camp will fail.

Not just because their standard-bearers seem to constantly be making obscure references to fascism or tyranny or to a world that now no longer exists (although that probably doesn’t help). But because arguing about leaving the European Union is a lot harder than arguing about remaining. And the Leave camp just don’t seem to have put in the effort to make this case clearly, passionately and rationally enough.

Of course, this isn’t all their fault. Rational Eurosceptics do have the very real problem of having to make their voices heard above those of charismatic and politically-ambitious spokespeople of the Eurosceptic cause, such as Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Both likeable enough fellows, but they have managed to boil the arguments of why we might want to leave the EU into such crass shades of grey that they are easily put down by any Remainer with half a brain.

Maybe that is what people want to hear – the simplistic – because it is just too difficult to understand all the nuances behind what it would mean to leave a community that we have been wedded to for longer than I have been alive.

It is extremely difficult to make a rational argument for why we might want to leave the EU without sounding a little crazy, which is why I never try to enter this mine field. But I have some very good Eurosceptic friends who do make such a case very convincingly. The problem is that such convincing arguments never seem to enter the mainstream.

It is precisely because the Eurosceptic case is so much harder to put than the pro-European one that those in the Leave camp should have worked harder at making it. They should have made an effort to understand and explain the more complex areas of the debate, not simply glassed over this and repeated ad-nauseam the rather right-wing snub to immigrants or the subdued left-wing doff to the NHS.

Like what benefit does leaving the EU actually bring to people living in the UK? As with the Scottish referendum, people will be voting with their wallet in mind.

Like exactly why there is such a democratic deficit in the EU, and whether that really matters? Because many people don’t seem to quite get this.

Like exactly what comes afterwards? Okay, perhaps this is a difficult one to answer, since this is a great unknown, but at least they could have tried. At least they could have given us some plan as to what comes once we have taken this leap in the dark.

None of this to say that we shouldn’t leave the EU; I am still split 50-50 on this. Rather, the point of this blog entry is to reassure those committed Remainers out there that they don’t have anything to fear. The Brexiters had a far harder task of persuading people why they should hand back their membership card. And because their job was so much more daunting they should have tried twice as hard to do so.

At least.

And then, even without Hilary Benn in their arsenal, they might just have succeeded in winning enough of the electorate round to make a difference.

Yay – Boris!

Ok, I guess I should blog about this.

Four years ago, pretty much to the day, I wrote about how tragic it was that Londoners couldn’t think of anyone better to elect than Boris Johnson.

My immediate gripe with the man, brilliant writer as he is, was that he seemed totally ignorant about Sudan. But, I guess, only a small fault for a man destined to lead our fair nation’s capital.

Now that he has been re-elected, I find that I have completely reformed my opinion of him and think that he probably is the best man for the job. He is dynamic, enthusiastic, charismatic and above all sincere.

Let us not under-estimate this final point, in these days of the public’s disconnect with politicians, for I feel that the ‘genuineness’ of Boris is one of the reasons that he got re-elected. His grilling on Newsnight a few weeks back, along with labour candidate Ken Livingstone, is a case-in-point. Jeremy Paxman got them both to agree to disclose their salary. The following day, Johnson disclosed that he earns £240,000, not all of which comes from his Mayorship. Livingstone’s response was inherently confusing, and I still have not the foggiest idea what he earns, through the murky corporate structure that he seems to have established.

It is this directness of the Boris brands that so appealed to Londoners, and one that I am increasingly warming to.

Yes, I hate the principles that Boris stands for. It is patently wrong to slash the top-rate of tax (from 50% to 45%), a move that Boris supported, when the rest the country is having to tighten its belt. And it is a load of baloney such a move was good for the economy. A high tax rate does not mean richies would take their money elsewhere. And, even if they do, so what? The backbone of the economy is small and medium sized enterprises, and not the millionaires, as the Tories might have you believe. So give them more money (the SMEs, of course, not the Tories).

But one cannot help but admire Boris’s candour, and his tireless energy, which is why I am glad he has been re-elected.

Of course, another reason he has been re-elected, which is worth mentioning here, is that most of the media is his old buddies. I have yet to read a truly anti-Boris article – the worst seems to be calling him a “lovable buffoon” or a ”tousle-haired clown”, both of which could be construed as compliments – whereas the Oxbridge media are awash with slights against Livingstone, even the Labour rags.

So, I’m glad that Boris has been elected mayor, as long as he has no dealings whatsoever with Sudan and keeps his somewhat dubious views on tax policy to a minimum. But should he be prime minister? Hell no.

Oh, Boris

I have been wanting to write this blog entry for many months now, but at the time of relevance things were a little crazy over here and there simply wasn’t the time.

Well, by dint of fate, relevance has returned and there now is the time.

I refer, of course, to the tragic election of Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, proving that it is not just the good people of America that lack a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to deciding who should hold the power and who should not.

The election of London is slightly beyond my remit, although I do note here that a) he has mastered Classical Greek and therefore should be capable of anything (paraphrased quote from his father); and b) that he has certain reservations about the million or so Poles now working in London and wants to kick them out (for someone who writes so often on economics, he really should read one or two good economics text books).

No, my gripe is with the commentry he wrote about Gillian Gibbons, the teacher that was accused of blasphemy before Christmas.

Like so many other commentators on Sudanese affairs, he is not actually all that well-connected here and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been to the country. Spluttering outrage about the way Gillian Gibbons was treated, and accusing the Sudanese government of being nutballs that should be brought to bare by the British colonial empire, may look good on the page – but has nothing to do with reality. He had no idea why Gibbons was imprisoned, nor any idea of the slight that she made to Islam. I fully agree that she should not have been imprisoned, and that the whole thing was blown out of proportion – but at least I understand why. At least I am here, living and breathing Sudan and Islam. Not touring the golfcourses of England.

(Shouldn’t surprise me, of course. Boris was famously sacked as a journalist in his first job, on the Times, for making up a quote. He also gained something of a reputation for creativity when he was the Telegraph’s Brussels Bureau Chief. But everybody loved him for his white hair and his wit. The same reason, I guess, that Londoners love him.)

To recap, for those that do not know the story, Gibbons was arrested because some secretary at the school had a grudge against the principal. The thing was blown out of a proportion because of a few loose cannons in the government. Bashir was quite surprised to hear that the issue had got as far as it did, and summarily sacked the Minister of Justice. It was all very embarrasing for him.

But that’s the problem with media coverage of Sudan. Too many people arrogantly pronouncing upon Sudan from afar, without any real insight into what is going on here. Well-known commentators in London and New York write prolifically on the country, as though their word is God, whilst only a handful of hacks in the country really understand what’s going on. Then you have the press pack in Nairobi, based there because visas are easy and booze is cheap. Many of them flit over the border from time to time, head for the Juba bars, scribble down a few lines and scoot back again. Most do not speak Arabic.

I have so far found one person who is a Boris fan here, and it surprised me as to who it was. A teacher, whom I had thought had a strong socialist streak running through him. Now I am not so sure. Yesterday, though, I happed upon someone who shuddered as much as me at the thought of Boris Johnson running London-town. And the strange thing was that he is one of Khartoum’s many foreign richies. Which just goes to show.

Well, it just goes to show something anyway.

Boris Johnson. Brilliant man. Brilliant writer. Lousy politician.