Month: January 2021

The Union can only be saved by exhaustive localism, outing devolution as the centralism that it really is

When it came to the dark side of Blair’s devolution, the genie was out of the lamp as soon as the structures of the new devolved Scottish and Welsh administrations were defined.

The great irony is that the genuine consequences of Blair’s adoption of the EU strategy for breaking up the nation state didn’t register with him when he looked in the mirror and only saw what he wanted others to see. So myopic was his understanding of his own political class, he failed to see the existential threat that his actions would be to Scottish Labour and therefore how difficult a UK-wide Labour Parliamentary majority would soon start to become.

Today, Nicola Sturgeon is sabre rattling yet again, voicing her plans for another Scottish Independence Referendum. One that in a post-COVID-19 world where lip service to localism and communities is no longer enough, the outcome is increasingly likely to go her way – whether it has questionable legality or not.

What Sturgeon and the SNP’s way actually is or rather will be is something that her Party has yet to define. But for as long as the Scottish First Minister is able to speak with authority and give apparent truth to the suggestion that the Scottish Nationalists are providing the only legitimate local voice, the journey towards Scottish Independence is building up a level of momentum that no politician in Westminster will be able to stop by choice.

Whilst it may not yet be easy for many to see, the COVID-19 Pandemic is pushing localism back to the top of the political agenda.

Under the economic and political climate now evolving, we are likely to see a very different kind of governance in the UK unfold. The change that is coming is inevitable and those politicians who seek to ignore this are unlikely to find themselves on the ‘winning’ side.

Regrettably, what people need and what will work best for our communities in the post-Covid age does not sit well with the power-centric type of politics that exists in Westminster, Edinburgh and Cardiff. Its exponents do not see the need to devolve power as far as possible as the most democratic way to get things done.

What we have witnessed through the devolution process, whether it has been to the Welsh and Scottish administrations created by New Labour, or through the metropolitan and City Mayors that the Conservatives have established since, is the creation of alternative centralised power bases that have created new tiers of government at significant public cost. Their existence has made decisions over public policy ever more political whilst moving power further and further way from people as they do.

Whatever your opinion or view of Nicola Sturgeon, she is without doubt one of the most capable and successful politicians of this political class.

Sturgeon’s ability to outplay her political opponents in a game and debate that they continue to allow her to frame has completely hidden the incompetence and unsuitably of the SNP as a Party of representative government.

Sadly, with Westminster feted to continue in just the way that it is, it remains distinctly unlikely that Scottish Voters will be given a credible alternative view of the Sturgeon vision before the departure of Scotland from the UK has been confirmed and the factual evidence begins to stack up just as the Scots realise that it’s already too late.

Turning what is quickly becoming a very serious situation around would require the Westminster Government to stop ignoring the claims of the Nationalists and talk seriously about what another Referendum and the outcome of Scottish Independence would mean. They must begin to insist that the Scottish Nationalists publicly outline exactly how Scotland will function economically outside of the UK, operating with its own currency, tax regime and removal of any kind of subsidy from South of the Border when and if they do.

If Scotland can demonstrate that it can function independently and without the intervention of a foreign power or any other part of the UK, the Scots really should be given the chance on that specific basis to make their choice. But not before.

However, if the Government doesn’t feel able to give the SNP the opportunity to demonstrate how they would succeed at going alone, it cannot allow the destructive thinking that is now manifesting across communities right across the UK to continue unchecked.

Westminster must deal with the question of localism and bringing power to the lowest tiers or most direct forms of government possible – not just within Scotland, but throughout the UK.

Power and responsibility in decision making should rest as near to the people as it is possible for it to be.

The argument that decisions affecting or relevant to everyone should be made at the highest level is flawed by the lack of local knowledge that decision makers have about the lives and experiences of those they are making decisions for.

Whilst the reasoning underpinning Sturgeon’s campaign sounds unassailable to an increasing number when Westminster decision making appears to be so out of touch, the argument for Scottish Independence would evaporate if power were to be restored to the lowest tiers of Government possible.

Such steps would make the need for regional government of any kind redundant and show the existence of centralised and out-of-touch legislatures at this level for what it really is.

Did China give us COVID-19 knowing it was no worse than severe flu; confident of exactly what weak-minded Governments in the West would inevitably do?

Much earlier in the Pandemic, I wrote about the stupidity of trying to pin the blame for Coronavirus on China. I said that chasing reparations of any kind would never do anyone any good, and that the best value that the West could take away from the experience would be to conclude that the Chinese Government could not be trusted and that we should not do or encourage business with them of any kind.

I have never bought into the establishment narrative of what Covid is and how it should have or now should be addressed. But I wrote this giving a nod to the possibility that the Virus could be different and significantly more severe than the ‘normal’ respiratory infections that we see each and every year.

What became clear very quickly is there is very little technical and statistical difference between the genuine impact of this respiratory infection and any severe seasonal flu, other than the classification and virus type itself. It is the way that it has and continues to be interpreted, translated and communicated that is key.

Uncomfortable though the truth may be, the only difference between Covid and a flu outbreak of the kind we would experience in any year, is the way it has been handled. COVID -19 has been publicised and pursued with the fears of weak-minded politicians and civil servants being dressed up and sold to us in a wholly indoctrinating, if not brain-washing way.

We live with threats that are much worse and much likelier to kill or even affect us in some way. We actively and willingly embrace many of them each and every day. But those threats are presented to us logically, without emotion and in ways that make sense of the level of risk in terms of what it takes for us to live and experience a ‘normal’ functioning life, accepting that there is an accompanying level of risk to us in virtually everything that we do.

We drive or ride in cars, travel on planes and undertake jobs that make us vulnerable. Because that’s the only way the we get things done.

Stand back and view the Government response and reaction to Coronavirus objectively and in the sense that it could have been framed differently and as something we would simply have to live with rather than than simply allowing it to dictate life.

You can perhaps then see how a real understanding of how the western mindset works could be weaponised against us or our political leadership, if it was played out and utilised against us and our leaders in precisely the right way.

This is where the real story of what China has done and why it has done it could begin.

It is difficult not to admire and have a very begrudging respect for the ruthless nature and strategic approach employed by the Chinese.

We have only recently been made very well aware of how they have embedded people who are friendly to their cause right across industry, academia and government, and the lessons that our Australian friends and cousins are now exposing through Chinese material interests in their Country point to a growing threat to western culture, business and freedom itself. All of it being levelled at us from the starting point of being an enemy already present within and amongst us as we sleepwalk with the belief that Chinese money has a different value and is created in a different way to our own.

The Chinese have historically valued knowledge and respect the power that it gives them. It is therefore no great stretch of the imagination to be able to see and understand that they have been carefully observing our culture and our behaviours for a very long time. The Chinese have become very well aware of our weaknesses.

Our cultural susceptibility to manipulation using mass propaganda has been exposed along with how inept, self-serving and out of touch our political and government leadership has become.

The Chinese have been aware of the opportunity to destroy the West from within, using the fat, entitled hierarchical structures that rule the entitled, take-everything-for-granted mentality of the West, for a very long time.

With confidence in the knowledge and understanding that the Chinese have, it is far from impossible that they would see the overreaction of Western political leadership to a viral epidemic as the best opportunity to overtake the West without going to the lengths of having to engage in military conflict or ‘hot war’.

Yes, it all sounds far fetched. But the interest the Chinese have in its relationship with the West is in control and gaining that control in whatever ways necessary to get the job done.

With their own people it’s easy for the Chinese Communist Government to inflict the authoritarian view. But without literally invading and taking over countries by using physical force, with consequences for their own Country that could easily destroy them, by far the most sensible route to destabilise the countries that stand against them, is to use the weaknesses of those countries to attack them from within.

In truth, we may never know the answer to the question of how or indeed why the COVID-19 pandemic began. It is not in the interests of the Chinese to provide Western Governments with any form of help that might prove to shine any spotlight on the truth of what really happened.

What we should keep in mind however, is that no country that has the inclination to use aggressive force against others for the purpose of gaining control is likely to weoponise anything that it couldn’t either control or understands to be harmless to the people it considers to be a beneficial use to its aims.

Wuhan in China is now back to operating as if the outbreak from within its boundaries simply didn’t exist.

Today we should be asking ourselves who has most to gain from the deference paid to neoliberalism and the global economy if weak minded Western leaders come out the other side of this Pandemic and behave like nothing has changed and everything remains the same?