No-one to blame, nothing to see, move on, says the BBC

The Graun trotted out the usual BBC line on their latest foul-up:

The BBC has received tens of thousands of complaints relating to Emily Maitlis’ Newsnight monologue on Dominic Cummings, both from opponents and supporters of the presenter’s comments....Many of the first wave of complaints were from people criticising Maitlis for stating at the start of Tuesday night’s programme that “Dominic Cummings broke the rules – the country can see that and it’s shocked the government cannot”.. [Inevitably] a second wave of complaints came from individuals who feel the corporation has given in to the government and are angry at BBC managers who ruled that Maitlis overstepped the mark and broke impartiality guidelines.

The actual statement from the Beeb is also a classic, written in terse little bullet-pointy things:

[Maitlis's intro] said that ‘the country’ was ‘shocked the government cannot see’ Dominic Cummings broke lockdown rules; that he ‘made those who struggled to keep the rules feel like fools’....

But there are some who do not share this opinion, nor think that the issue is a ‘scandal’ or the Prime Minister has displayed ‘blind loyalty’. ...

By presenting a matter of public and political debate as if the country was unanimous in its view, we consider Newsnight risked giving the perception that the BBC was taking sides - or that the introduction constituted the presenter’s opinions, rather than a summary of the journalism which would follow, which explored these issues rigorously and fairly and, crucially, with the supporting evidence. ...

This is not a question of apportioning blame to anyone.

I am not in a position to say whether this summary of the Maitlis intro is accurate, or whether the BBC has selected bits to answer as before. None of the actual complaints are summarised, nor quantified.

The best bit is the last statement, though. Of course the BBC can see no actual person to blame, because newsreaders, reporters, programme staff and regulators share a npb ideological mind-set. They genuinely can't see a problem either, because that mind set has no such problem on its agenda. BBCfolk just know what is true, and Maitlis is obviously quite right (she must be -- they recruited her). But she might have committed a technical offence of not 'balancing' with alternative views, ridiculous as they might be, and so she has not followed the guidelines perhaps as rigorously as she might.

Normally, a lofty disregard of such trivial and vulgar complaints would follow, but this time, some of the complainants seem to have been influential. Some seem to have got to Ofcom immediately. Hence Maitlis 'risked (did not actually produce) a (wholly wrong) perception that the BBC takes sides'. Of course it doesn't: it has guidelines for that sort of thing; it tells the obvious truth as it appears to them and all the people they talk to.

Minor offence, issue a general statement of policy, and move on.

What Maitlis just knows to be true #94

The egregious E Maitlis apparently delivered one of her famed finger-wagging monologues on Newsnight, this time on L'Affaire Cummings. I didn't see it, but according to the Graun:

Summarising the state of the story [!] at the start of the programme, she said: “The longer ministers and the prime minister insist he worked within [the guidelines], the more likely the angry response to the scandal is likely to be … He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools, and has allowed many more to assume they can flout them.”

Talking of Johnson’s “blind loyalty” in the face of plummeting poll ratings, she expressed bafflement over his loyalty to Cummings in the face of enormous public anger. “The prime minister knows all this and has chosen to ignore it,” she said.

The BBC this time decided to act (very half-heartedly):

“The BBC must uphold the highest standards of due impartiality in its news output,” the corporation said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the entirety of last night’s Newsnight, including the opening section, and while we believe the programme contained fair, reasonable and rigorous journalism, we feel that we should have done more to make clear the introduction was a summary of the questions we would examine, [ie an agenda] with all the accompanying evidence [Maitlis-type evidence?] , in the rest of the programme...“As it was, we believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality. Our staff have been reminded of the guidelines.”

Controversy duly erupted. Some interventions commended 'serious investigative work on Cummings' or insisted Maitlis only 'told the truth'. What struck me was the confidence with which she seems to have announced:

• enormous public anger, people feeling like fools, people feeling allowed to flout the rules. All this is based on 'plummeting poll ratings'? How many 'people' does she know?  Are the specific reasons for the plummet as she says?

• Johnson's motives (blind loyalty), and what Johnson knows to the contrary, implying Johnson's irrationality. Where did that come from -- a no.10 leak? More like Maitlis's skilled reading of the portents and omens.

Struggling with French philosophy, as one does during lockdown when there's nothing on telly, I think this self-certainty might be an example of logocentrism. If I have understood this term (not guaranteed), it refers to that moment of conviction when something presents itself so vividly to one's consciousness and in a way that perfectly confirms what one is arguing, that it just seems undeniable, immediately correct, utterly convincing, requiring no further justification. Even serious philosophers do it.

Sociologists have a more pragmatic account though. The 'habitus' for Bourdieu is a stock of understandings and values held unconsciously and affected by one's social class upbringing. It provides a framework generating constant and immediate judgments about events. To cite aristo examples -- 'one instinctively knows' that a chap doesn't wear brown shoes in town, that using too many parentheses in writing means a poor character, that rugby forwards are all louts and rugby backs skilfull and intelligent -- or whatever.

It has been simply obvious and true (that is habitual) all along to the new petite bourgeoisie that Johnson is a cad, liar and elitist. Cummings is a Northerner and an expert who reads suspiciously widely, so we need say no more. Of course all 'people' will think them completely untrustworthy (except those mugs who voted for and support them, of course -- but they are not really 'people').

Blessed with such a grasp, who needs 'evidence' or 'journalistic values'?

Completely old news from the Brexit talks

Why do they still carry on as if public opinion was still obsessed with Operation Fear, the car crash, the catastrophe of  no-deal, the approaching cliff edge and all the other stuff? A Graun item takes up the old cudgels and tries to brush off the mould:

Brexit talks risk reaching a stalemate if there is no progress in the next round of negotiations between the European Union and the British government, EU sources have said.... if the EU did not see progress on its vital interests, including how to ensure fair competition, or a level play field, between British and EU companies under a free-trade deal.

Les barques de peche francais seems to be the major problem still:

“No fisheries agreement means no post-Brexit agreement,” said François-Xavier Bellamy, the French centre-right MEP – and member of Barnier’s Les Républicains party – who drew up a report that was adopted with near unanimity by the committee.

 Only 'near unanimity' though....

Frost argues the UK has set out a “comprehensive set of proposals” to prevent unfair competitive advantages, but multiple EU sources say the British ideas are inadequate....A UK government spokesperson said it was to be “expected at this stage in a very difficult negotiation that both sides are making their case robustly... our position hasn’t changed – we won’t agree to any EU demands for us to give up our rights as an independent state....“And we’ve never asked for anything special, bespoke or unique – we’re looking for a free-trade agreement, based on precedent and similar to those the EU has already got with other countries like Canada.”

An old friend, displayed prominently during the row with the Greeks (according to Varoufakis's account) reappears with this:

EU diplomats are tired of the repeated reminders from Frost’s team about the importance of UK sovereignty, pointing out that their governments are also sovereign.

Although they have also argued that individual countries must stick to the 'mandate' provided for the EC. This is how the EC deals with any popular votes against their interest in any individual country -- they argue that all the other sovereign countries outweigh the dissenter, and that the EC somehow represents all this devolved sovereignty against mere elected national governments or, above all, referenda.  It is a lethal combination of divide and rule and marshalling a permanent tyrranous majority.


Meanwhile, on the Cummings Front, a Times piece today adds a slightly different dimension to one major issue the cosmos are dramatising --  that the elitist Cummings is arrogantly denying that the rules apply to him. The Times piece suggests that Cummings had actually read the rules, maybe because he had helped draft them, and noticed that there were, inevitably (as argued below) exemption clauses. Blimey -- he might even have written them! Liberals and other vigilantes had not actually read the rules but had gone off half-cocked as ever and pursued an authoritarian interpretation by default. It's still elitism but of a 'meritocratic' kind, and the npb can hardly complain because it is a tactic they also deploy.

Cummings: entitled knob versus culture warriors

The media have been full of this stuff. I can't honestly be bothered to discuss it much, partly because it is impossible to choose sides. Cummings did indeed come over as entitled and phoney in his press conference, but the media reptiles are as awful as ever in their coverage.

I thought the Cummings press conference was really amateur for a bloke who is supposed to know how the media work. He gave obviously rationalised explanations for his actions -- far too detailed in some cases (eg he drove to a beauty spot not to get a breath of fresh air and calm his mind but because he wanted to test whether his eyes were good enough to drive). Shades of Prince Andrew's unlikely memory for detail or rigorous moral conduct towards friends. Cummings (Cummings!) thought the media would be interested in his reasons for his actions,but of course they weren't -- they wanted to see him grovel and emote. 

He should have emulated the wonderful performance of C Blair a few years ago, caught out in a dodgy property deal to benefit her kid -- she ended in tears saying she only did what any mother would have done. No-one dared go after her subsequently because she had 'acknowledged' and declared her 'vulnerability'. Cummings should have done the same, complete with stifled tears, saying his heart went out to all the victims, and he loved the NHS.

As it was,he just left the moral ground to the usual suspects. They had been building him up (still are) as some great opinion-former and role model, largely on the grounds that he thought up some slogans for the Brexit campaign (which we know is the only reason lots of people supported that campaign). He was/is the real prime minister, the grey eminence behind Johnson, the real driving force. This great figure was now particularly guilty of causing deaths because people all over the country would claim that he had permitted them to break the lockdown rules (some journos even claim to have known someone who said that). He failed to display what once would have been called 'emotional intelligence', or any sympathy, which means he is indifferent to the deaths of thousands.

Another component was the absurd bureaucrats who thought up the exclusion/lockdown rules in the first place. No rules could possibly appear as other than arbitrary and full of loopholes, yet they were solemnly offered with a ludicrous precision -- stay 2m away, do not drive more than 20 miles, admit some people into your home but not others. Who could possibly take them seriously -- they were jotted down on the back of a fag packet to placate media demands for detailed leadership. Sure enough a whole army of petty officials set out to enforce these rules, necessarily arbitrarily again, including the egregious policewoman who rebuked a couple for letting their kid play in the front garden

The absurd statistics were taken so solemnly by these latter day Puritans. They were only obeying (or relaying) 'the [sic] science'. There were graphs showing gross figures of deaths/deaths in hospital/deaths where the virus was associated/deaths where the virus had caused the death/excess deaths. No-one cared what they actually measured. The media forgot what they had learned about gross figures painted onto buses and took these as Holy Writ. Some outlets also published rates per million, but these are not discussed anywhere near as much -- the gross figures make a case for Britain being the 'worst' country,  and if we add gross figures for the USA we can generate stories about populism causing death llike those summarised on this blog).

The R number --what a joke. Is it a national average (UK or England and Wales?) and if so, what are the regional variations? What exactly is it based upon? How can it be at all credible in these circumstances? At least someone last night pointed out that people assess risks in different ways and those include consideration of local and immediate risks (loads of research on this, of course),and that they have ways of managing risks,some of them quite reasonable (like denying that a national average will necessarily apply to a local area).

Of course,no-one takes any of it seriously. Is the R number accurate -- who cares, as long as it is a useful stick to brandish at sceptics. Do 'unneccesary ' journeys really threaten NHS workers or is this just more finger-wagging at the polluting masses?The point is it helps pursue moral condemnation. Do the journos think anyone is fooled by their hypocritical concern for rules and deaths among the poor?

Have people really been influenced by Cummings to break the rules? People 'must have been 'influenced, not so much by what he did but what it means symbolically, 'in effect'. Has anyone else ever taken advantage of the evident ambiguity of the rules? Have the journos? 

Irish Question again...

This one has been brewing under again recently, as plans have emerged for a border of some kind (well, regulatory checks enough to encourage the U-turn seeking journos anyway) in N Ireland. It seems that:

A new Brexit border in the Irish Sea will not be ready by Boris Johnson’s end-of-year deadline, according to a new analysis that warns more than 60 administrations, government departments and public bodies will be involved in overseeing the new system.... the influential thinktank Institute for Government (IfG) said the transition period must be extended or a longer implementation period agreed for the new border arrangements in the Irish Sea.

Life is too short to read the actual report, however. IfG was pretty clearly a Remain outfit and has floated a couple of recent pieces defending the Civil Service. Their recommendations are hardly a surprise:

“The UK and the EU should extend the transition period or agree to a separate longer implementation period for the withdrawal agreement,” the institute warns in a new report. 

Especially (and here comes the link to current news, giving legs to dripping on and on that M Kettle would admire):

Against the background of a global pandemic, it is very difficult to see how preparations to implement the protocol can be completed before the end of the year – given the scale of both the decisions and practical work still required.”

Rubbing their hands, gleefully:

the protocol arrangements will be voted on by the Northern Ireland assembly every four to eight years, making it a “potentially destabilising issue” for years to come

 Thank God for some fresh thinking in the Observer

Pragmatic politics and residual resentment

At least it's real politics without all this windy stuff about European values and the 4 Freedoms. Says the Graun:

According to EU sources, the UK government threatened to walk away from information sharing if it could not have an equivalent to the SIS II database, which is used by British police every day....“The UK basically said it was not interested in what the EU suggested and that if they can’t have it then they would rather have nothing. So they are playing hardball,” said one EU official.

There is a hint of lingering resentment:

During the EU referendum campaign experts warned Brexit imperilled access to the database and would damage the UK’s ability to fight terrorism and crime....The report fuelled complaints that the UK wants the benefits of EU systems without offering reciprocal aid – a charge strongly rejected by the government.

A UK government source described the EU account as “highly misleading” but did not deny rejecting the lesser offer...“What we are seeking is a future internal security agreement with the EU which provides capabilities similar to those delivered by SIS II, but I’m afraid the EU’s alternative proposals on data sharing are nowhere near reminiscent [sic] of this and are of limited operational value,” the source said.

EU hands are tied: it is really just a legal matter-- or is it?

case law from the European court of justice (ECJ) ... limits what can be offered to an outsider....European diplomats also cite political factors such the UK’s refusal to countenance a role for the ECJ and opposition to any reference to the European court of human rights (ECHR) in the EU-UK treaty.

 Meanwhile, back in the pragmatic world:

In 2018 the UK responded to 7,000 alerts put on the SIS II system by other countries, while it issued more than 22,500 alerts that led to responses around the EU.

Are they really going to risk that?

Willies waved across the Channel #45

More background on the latest breakdown of talks:

Britain’s chief negotiator, David Frost, has accused Brussels of treating the UK as an “unworthy” partner by offering a low-quality trade agreement that he says would force the country to “bend to EU norms”....He further accuses Barnier of demanding unprecedented oversight over British laws and institutions through “novel and unbalanced proposals”, in an intervention that will heighten fears that the talks are now destined to fail....Frost says the EU demands would tie the UK to Brussels’ labour, environmental and social standards while offering a trade deal that fails to match those signed with others in reducing barriers to trade in animal products, motor vehicles, medicinal products, organics and chemicals.

He writes that the UK government’s proposed free trade deal is very close to that signed with Canada. The draft fisheries proposal is akin to that between the EU and Norway, he claims, and on aviation he says the UK is not seeking more than that given to other non-EU countries....In response to the EU argument that proximity and levels of trade require the UK to remain close to Brussels rules, Frost says Britain is less integrated than Switzerland, Norway or Ukraine and the argument on geography “amounts to saying that a country in Europe cannot expect to determine its own rules … and that it must bend to EU norms”.

On level-playing-field provisions, so central to the EU’s proposal, the UK text contains a cut-and-paste from the EU’s trade deal with Canada stating merely that it would be “inappropriate to encourage trade or investment by weakening or reducing the levels of protection” in current labour laws and standards....On state aid, a significant interest within the EU, the UK’s paper simply affords Brussels the right to “express its concerns” and request consultation. “The responding party shall afford full and sympathetic consideration to that request,” the document says.

The GUardian trots out a rather modest version of its usual scares:

Without a replacement deal, both sides will fall back on the World Trade Organization’s most favoured nation tariffs, which means duties on everyday food items from cheese to beef of more than 40%.

There is comfort at least in this:

Thread carefully: how the eyebrow industry is navigating lockdown

The lockdown must go on! Toby Young must die!*

There are definite signs of fatigue in Graun coverage. I think we can get the gist from the last bit on the URL for the story: 'lockdown-sceptics-coronavirus-brexit'  

And of course the headlines: 

The 'lockdown sceptics' want a culture war, with experts as the enemy 

The dismissal of coronavirus expertise, the pitting of ‘elites’ against ‘the people’ – it’s Brexit all over again for the high-profile contrarians

Perhaps the sub put in the bit about culture wars to give this piece legs? If so, the actual result might be a yawn of recognition.

As usual, journo dogs bark loudest at neighbouring dogs:

Toby Young – self-appointed general secretary of the Free Speech Union – had his own take on the government’s tripartite slogan. “Stay sceptical. End the lockdown. Save lives.”

Then a lovely bit of self-aggrandizement:

Scepticism has a long and venerable history...Journalists are inheritors of this fine intellectual tradition. It’s our job to call out the self-serving spin of the powerful; to hold them to account.

Above all though, their day jobs involve keeping up their end with social distancing and virtue signalling:

a new, virulent strain of Covid-19 scepticism has emerged that is the precise opposite of journalism [a binary opposite by any chance?]  Rather than holding power to account, it distorts and bends reality to serve elite interests – and to warp public debate.

There is the inevitable link appealing to the old constituencies:

Polls suggest that lockdown scepticism is very much a minority sport, but recent British history shows how quickly fringe views can become mainstream. When the former MEP and prominent Telegraph columnist [talk him up first] Daniel Hannan first got on board with Euroscepticism, it was a fringe concern...The echoes of Brexit in all this aren’t hard to spot. The disavowal of expertise. The pitting of “the elite” against “the people”. It is striking that while by no means all Brexiters are lockdown sceptics, almost all lockdown sceptics are Brexiters [based on?] . 

And alibis are already on hand, just as with Brexit, if there is no disaster after all:

the “lockdown sceptics” are hoping to win a narrative battle, to shape what comes next. Britain’s success – such as it is – in curtailing deaths will be adduced as proof that the lockdown restrictions were unnecessary. The experts cannot be trusted. The cure was worse than the disease.

The writers are leading lights in investigative journalism outfit openDemocracy, which has done some great work. Their site says  :

Each week we send an email reporting on how governments are suspending civil rights, ramping up surveillance and rolling back hard-won freedoms. We need to make sure that these measures are temporary and proportionate. And that starts with knowing what they are.

A commitment to 'calling out' their opponents seems to have exposed a bit of an ideological blockage here, as is so evident with Brexit.There is little analysis of Government policy, not even a tiny suspicion about UK suspension of civil rights. What happened to the venerable intellectual tradition of scepticism in this case? What happened to expertise for that matter? Toby Young is against so they must be for, whatever it is. 

They might even read other bits of the Graun for some doubts:

Young workers most likely to have lost jobs during Covid-19 crisis

Covid-19 strategy too nationally driven, warn UK's regional mayors 

Disabled people in UK threatened with sack unless they go back to work 

UK vacancies halve and pay falls as Covid-19 lockdown hits economy - business live

As was very noticeable with Brexit, journos develop such hissy fits when they are contradicted over matter like what counts as the national interest, or what the moral tone of politics should be that they display to all readers that they have simply lost their objectivity. So their past judgements must now come under question as well, and the useful condemnations of civil rights abuses elsewhere now could look only like pretty self-interested petty bourgeois moral campaigns after all, struggles over mere 'narrative battles'.

EC wants mountain of VAT money as Remain civil servants exonerated

Some familiar tactics have reappeared, as Brexit continues to frighten and annoy the GUardian. First:

[UK chief negotiator] Frost said there had been “very little progress” in the latest discussions between the two sides, adding that he found it “hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement”.

Good to see the UK playing a bit of hardball itself:

The British government has previously said it could be forced to refocus its attention away from the negotiations and towards preparing the country for a no-deal outcome if significant progress has not been made by 1 July.

And an appeal to heads of government over the EC and Barnier might work this time, if Barnier's 'European values' over fishing turn out to be mostly French:

“In order to facilitate those discussions, we intend to make public all the UK draft legal texts during next week so that the EU’s member states and interested observers can see our approach in detail.

Elsewhere, in a brazen bit of arse-covering:

Theresa May and Boris Johnson let the former chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins and other civil servants hang out to dry after they became “targets for political attacks”, an investigation into Whitehall’s role in the Brexit drama of the past four years has found.

It is the Instuitute for Government, a Remain outfit to its boots, that offer the 'investigation':

Maddy Thimont Jack, [crazy name,crazy person!]  senior researcher at the Institute for Government, said: “Brexit demonstrated the very best of the civil service. It managed to unpick a 47-year relationship with the EU in less than three years, working under immense pressure and to extremely tight timelines

How's this for a gloss on Robbins' 'Kit Kat deal' to bamboozle the British public with a BRINO:

...the near breakdown of May’s government and lack of clarity left civil servants trying to build consensus [!] through “tried and tested methods of ambiguous wording and ingenious drafting”

There is also some technical veiling:

Officials had to rely on super-secure Rosa terminals, put in place by the National Cyber Security Centre, rather than their own computers....“Secrecy caused a lot of unnecessary stress in the run-up to 29 March 2019, with far too few people having access to vital documents ^...Vast improvements were made under Michael Gove when he was appointed as head of exit operations (XO) and no-deal planning, the authors conclude. With a dashboard involving 350 milestones [wha?] and secrecy levels dropped, the new body is said to have moved swiftly

We can rest assured that all is well now though:

Ultimately the pace was unsustainable and its focus was narrow: to avert the immediate chaos of crashing out of the EU [by not leaving after lots of prevarication] rather than the longer term consequence for the country....But for its flaws, it proved a model that was easily adjusted and used to effect in the coronavirus response, mixing officials and ministers on a cross-departmental basis, the study found.

The most gripping weekend reading came from the indispensable Briefings for Britain, however.

This Thursday, the European Court of Justice delivers its verdict in the European Commission’s infraction proceedings against the United Kingdom for failing to impose VAT on transactions in the City’s multi-trillion-dollar derivatives markets. Launched during the murky days of the Brexit withdrawal negotiations in 2018...The timing of this notice of infringement, for a supposed infraction dating back four decades (i.e. giving the Commission plenty of time to request that the UK amend its legislation), and coming after we had voted to leave the EU, could not be more political

Had the UK left the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement, as it should have done, on 29 March 2019, the matter would have ended there. But pusillanimous Remainers ensured that we remained locked in servitude to the EU to the tune of £1 billion per month..... in the torrid days of multiple lost votes on the draft Withdrawal Agreement and with Remainers overturning every democratic and parliamentary principle in the book, the Commission decided to make sure it could still claim its pound of flesh 

Apart from anything else, the article brings back into the light the matter of payment of VAT receipts, almost completely ignored during the whole debate, except when J Wetherspoon insisted that we pay a hefty proportion of our VAT receipts to the EC as part of our 'contribution' . It was never discussed anywhere in the Remainer press as far as I know:

we pay the highest amount of VAT as own resources into the EU budget out of all member states, at €3.3 billion in 2018.  we contribute the second highest amount of customs duties to the EU (significantly more than France, at €2 billion). 

The amount is estimated (by another factchecking organisation) at 'nearly a fifth' (gross) of all VAT payments to the EU -- maybe dropping to a tenth after a 'rebate'

It would therefore seem very probable that an adverse judgment on Thursday would see the immediate launch by the Commission of a claim for underpaid UK contributions to the EU budget, money it will claim should have been owed had we charged VAT on our derivatives markets. The UK VAT base, already the largest in terms of own resources contributions, would increase to an enormous level.

BforB's correpondent thinks the reverse will happen and we will finally leave without an agreement. I certainly cannot see even the Remainers accepting a further multi-billion payment, so maybe this was meant to take place after we finally remained?

End all the UK's woes -- extend the transtion*

More evidence, if we needed it, that Brexit is regarded as an epic disaster, and its advent heralds if not provokes an apocalypse. W Hutton in the Observer:

The worst recession for 300 years? A worst-case budget deficit this year of £516bn? The greater shock, of course, is that we are living through a pandemic that has already claimed such a vast number of deaths. [And, to giveit a 'newsy' twist]  People must trust that where they work, shop, teach, study, eat and drink is safe....Everything from social distancing rules, regular temperature checks, access to testing, and availability of PPE should be discussed and rules co-created

But the main theme is not at all invisible:

a government led by second-rate free-market Brexiters. Their ideological mindset – that government and public borrowing are bad, that Britain is an exceptional country for which normal rules do not apply, that robust individualism and free markets are the best default position – is obviously wrong and out of time.  ...the state also has to design and adjust the capitalist craft continually so it is as seaworthy, resilient and high performing as possible. It is the opposite perspective to free-market Brexitism....e were readier to accept the constraints of lockdown for the greater good and for our own safety than the Brexiter cabinet ever thought....And, although it is beyond the Brexiter ken, we are readier to pay taxes for the public good.

Especially:

Britain soon confronts a potential sovereign debt crisis given the scale of its deficits, made worse, although officials are too politic to acknowledge this truth even in confidential papers, by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit....[the Government] has to exclude a no-deal Brexit, signalling a readiness to extend talks if necessary, to get life-giving access to EU markets....In short, our free-market Brexit government has to abandon its beliefs if Britain is to get to the other side in relatively good order.

The tactic is obvious --to label all Brexiteers as the worst kind of neo-libs (quite unlike the EU, of course), and to see the appeal to sentimental nationalism, as in British exceptionalism,as the main driver for wider support. There can be no rational case for Brexit as usual.

There is a hint of petty bourgeois politics too. The petty bourgeois know they require working class support for any campaign. The sop offered here is:

active involvement of workers and citizens in decision-making to ensure the right calls are made and are widely owned....a new and permanently enshrined role for workplace engagement, workers now obviously as much key stakeholders as those who provide capital. Nor can the noxious societal inequalities be allowed to persist

All these things are found in the binary opposite of exceptionalist free-market Britain -- the EU

Active involvement seems to mean little more than getting data and ideas from participants about safety. Worker engagement is obviously going to be limited since 'the state also has to design and adjust the capitalist craft continually so it is as seaworthy, resilient and high performing as possible' -- some sort of German corporatist model is in mind? As for the 'noxious societal inequalities', we might paraphrase Marx again -- journalists have always sought to describe the world: the point, however,is to change it, Of course, extending the transition is definitely one thing-- the only thing -- that we might change if we campaign

Technical veil masks [sic] ideological binaries*

The Graun has evidently had to decide what to cover first, post-virus, and has toyed with both Brexit and climate change to display virtue and rebuke neighbouring social classes.

Today it seems to be Brexit again:

The British government has said there is “a serious risk” that the European Union will fail to meet its duties to protect the rights of UK nationals living in the bloc, in the latest sign of tensions over Brexit....the government was “already seeing several instances of misapplication of the withdrawal agreement”, which, although “localised incidents”, made it harder for British nationals to exercise their rights.

It all seems bit tit-for-tat willy-waving, if you'll pardon the mixed biological metaphors:

[There is] the lack of official campaigns in EU member states to raise awareness about new requirements for UK nationals – a stipulation under the treaty...France and Spain, home to large numbers of UK migrant workers and retired people, are deemed not to have done anything proactive to raise awareness among British residents...The Czech Republic and Hungary have published information that is thought to be confusing or out-of-date, without translation into English. In contrast – the government says – information on the settlement scheme for EU nationals in the UK is available in other EU languages...In Austria and Slovenia the government is concerned British nationals have only six or seven months to secure their rights, whereas EU nationals in the UK have 27 months...Other EU member states, such as Malta, Cyprus and Slovakia, are faulted for relying on face-to-face meetings with local officials, rather than offering people the option to secure their status online...Gove complains that some countries have still not provided detail on what their application processes will entail.

EU retaliation in the form of 'news' items and useful idiocy might have come in first, as is often the case. The Graun has a huge graphic illustrating different volumes of trade with different countries. I should think GRaunistas are weary of graphs they don't understand, but still, the copy explains it all for them:

So Britain – at least on current trade terms [ie while still in the EU] – has more to lose from the failure of the EU talks than it has to gain from the success of the US talks [assuming volumes of trade remain the same as they are now].

And there's the return of the JIT tomato, or, in this case lettuce:

Increased customs procedures and tariffs would make [current European]  trade more difficult, and getting fresh lettuces across the Atlantic [!] has its own challenges...The biggest component of EU-UK trade is imports of goods, including fresh food and parts for manufacturing,

The data is impressive, and all sorts of old dogs are whistled again -- 17 mile queues at Dover, lettuces quadrupling in price during Wimbledon season. Readers might not intitally spot the textual shifters to polarise if not binarise the issue, such as:

[The UK has] more to lose from the [complete] failure of the EU talks [the only option if we leave]

it would also be wrong to imagine that Britain could just turn its back on Europe [!] and conduct all [!] its business with the US instead.

Populist ideology causes coronavirus #94*

The new petty bourgeoisie (Journalist Tendency) is still working on its major ideological themes, but they are looking tired already. The familiar broad link is established early on in this article by N Malik: 

There’s something profound about the irony. The world’s highest coronavirus death tolls [so far] belong to two countries whose leaders came to power promising the restoration of greatness and control – the United States and Great Britain...The similarities are striking, the conclusions unavoidable

Two nations that prided themselves on their extraordinary economic, historical and political status have been brought to their knees. Their fall from grace [!] is the outcome of a damaged political culture and distinct form of Anglo-American capitalism....

In an inevitable focussing of the theme:

reckless political decisions were justified by subordinating reality to rhetoric. The cost of leaving the EU would be “virtually nil”, with a free trade agreement that would be one of the “easiest in human history”. Imaginary enemies were erected and fake fights confected as both countries pugnaciously went about severing their ties with other nations and international institutions.... All the Tory government needed to do was Get Brexit Done, no matter how slapdash the job. In the US, all Trump needed to do to maintain his supporters’ loyalty was bark about a wall with Mexico ...Hollow triumphalism about making America great again and Britain taking back control becomes more and more likely in such a system.

A bit more promising here, maybe, but a ridiculous final sentence

By the time Covid-19 hit their shores, the UK and US were lacking not just the politicians but the bureaucracies required to respond effectively. Prior to the crisis, Trump repeatedly attempted to defund the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the UK, the pandemic inconvenienced a Tory cabinet embroiled in a feud with its own civil service. The intellectual and practical infrastructure to deal with facts had been vandalised.

The Cameron Cabinet and the Remainer Civil Service good at 'facts'! Longer term:

 After the 2008 financial crisis, when this system came within “48 hours” of the “apocalypse”, two centre-left leaders, [not populists then?]  Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, chose to shore up the infrastructure that had brought their economies to the brink, recapitalising the banks and revitalising the markets, opting for more regulation rather than fundamental reform....Just as the financial crash was treated as the malfunctioning of a particular unsupervised bug[ danger! metaphor ahead!]  in the system rather than as a feature of it, so is the failure to grapple with the pandemic being cast as an unforeseen, exogenous event, rather than a result of an ideology that enables the state to scramble unprecedented resources to save banks but not lives.

We  have already deconstructed (to coin a phrase) the claims implict in the term 'highest death tolls', but that might complicate the blossoming of the theme: ideology causes virus:

J Harris takes a differnet tack, still a familiar one, attacking the outmoded ruling class by citing working class interests, but with the peculiar skilled attack on words, characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie:

 Last week was the first time I felt my anxiety about the crisis being superseded by anger. Johnson’s latest bursts of triteness – suggesting that Covid-19 is like a “mugger”, and then comparing the crisis to an “alpine tunnel” – were still rippling through social media. Then, on Wednesday, the front page of the Times carried a story about a “senior government source” suggesting that workers who had been furloughed were in danger of becoming “addicted” to the scheme, and Matt Hancock’s striking use of the verb “wean” as an expression of how people might be removed from it...Here was a familiar Tory voice of impatience and condescension, once again breaking through the patina of solidarity with the public... after a decade of austerity we went into this crisis in a state of disastrous social fragility; and the innate Tory distrust of collectivism and state intervention – which Johnson shares, whatever his rhetoric – has surely been a big part of the reason it has been so badly handled.

A bit of class hatred of inherited privilege:

So too has been the classic officer-class trait of inattention to detail. As George Orwell put it back in 1941: “Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”

Then the inevitable:

Britain was led into the disaster of Brexit by people successfully sowing the ludicrous idea that subjecting ourselves to self-harm would somehow awaken the Blitz spirit and revive past glories. Amid Friday’s juxtaposition of the 75th anniversary of VE day and a deepening sense of national crisis, as well as solemn remembrance, there was inevitably some of the same stuff. These things play into deep elements of the English psyche, shot through with the lingering traces of deference and always ready to be manipulated by Tory politicians....For the last week or so, I have been rereading England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage’s history of both punk rock and the social malaise of Britain in the mid-to-late 1970s. 

We cannot go on like this, with deep inequalities of race and class constantly exploding before our eyes, the need for food banks extending into the distance, and voices at the top willing us back towards the very social and political dead end that ensured the virus has had such a disastrous impact.

Broad brush stuff about the national psyche, as exposed by -- Jon Savage's book. That could be depressing for liberals if it is  so 'deep' (and a basis for their hatred of working class deferentials as well). Nevertheless, somehow, there is still a culture war to be won, cultural leadership to assert

In the great surge of spontaneous collective action that has greeted Covid-19, there are the seeds of something better, but we should not underestimate the obstacles in the way: nostalgia, mythology and the banalities of politicians desperate to manipulate such things in their own interests as their failures become inescapable.

Culture wars now worry npb journos #25

This really is getting a bit tired, but journos have to make a living and they are probably locking down as much as anyone in London. Even so, N Cohen's piece today is poor. The headline alone makes it readily skippable (but I persisted):

The right cannot resist a culture war against the 'liberal elite', even now 

Poor old liberals, helpless victims of culture wars as ever.

It begins with a kind of look back to the analytic journalism he once practised:

conservatives are warning of the dangers of jumping to hasty conclusions. Before I go any further, I must therefore say our newly scrupulous masters have a point. The league tables of national Covid-19 death figures are not the last word on the crisis, and may look different in a few weeks. 

But that might get in the way of a good rant so:

That’s that done, then. Everybody happy? Good. Let’s get on with it.

 Ooh --cynical! There are certainties after all:

In the world as it is, rather than as it may be [positivism even] , a shameful fact [a fact with a value] is undeniable. The highest Covid-19 casualties are in the US and the UK, where the mendacities of the populist right have deformed society. It turns out that being governed by Anglo-Saxon conservatives is a threat to the health of nations. Their rule kills the old and blights the futures of the young

When he says 'highest Covid-10 casualties' he means the gross figure, no doubt, not the rate per million, where the USA lies near the bottom of the table with Italy and Spain currently above the UK too. He clearly thinks there are no problems with the 'factual 'status of these measures. Once, he thought citing gross figures was misleading, of course, especially if they appeared on the side of buses during a campaign.The Covid death rate gross figures have become sacred for Newsnight and C4 News too.

Warming to his own class war:

The British new right, “alt-right”, populist right, call it what you will, sees itself as sceptical and independent, even if its supporters’ reactions to all events are as predictable as speaking clocks. Class plays its part, as it always does in England. We are witnessing the Oxbridge arts graduate’s fear of expertise, particularly the expertise of scientists who cannot cut a good figure or turn a catchy phrase. In Johnson’s days at Oxford, they were dismissed as “northern chemists” ...Confronted with an emergency they do not understand, modern rightwingers reduce complexity to culture war, and dismiss advice they cannot take with the only reason their limited minds can comprehend: the political bias of the “liberal elite”....

The accompanying photo for the story does show just how diverse modern Oxbridge arts graduates must be:

 
Cohen would need separate analysis for the leading right wingers in the USA, of course, who are not Oxbridge arts graduates on the whole, but, apparently ideologies are not that closely connected to class differences after all:

differences with the US are more of tone than substance....

 It's enjoyable stuff,and there is much with which to agree, although I would add that new petty bourgeois groups are also unable to cope with complexity and opt equally enthusiastically for simple virtues and culture war. But then we get to pretty obscure stuff

Neil Ferguson’s [ace stats modeller and chief pessimist] liaison [highly publicised for breaking social distancing rules] with his lover [moves] from a personal failing to abide by his own guidelines into evidence of a leftwing plot... [Evidence for this?...] Toby Young, Johnson’s friend and I would say his greatest admirer on Fleet Street, said that, because the lover had campaigned for leftish causes, he was “99% sure” that the majority of scientific advisers everywhere in the world were leftists with an ideology that was pushing governments into panic measures.

Odd to give so much weight to desperate controversialist Toby Young.  Also odd to finally ally yourself with scientists and experts against arts graduates [he did PPE at Oxford]  but needs must. All that remains now is to rebuke the lower orders too. It is rather attenuated this time though:

As faith melts away [that's all it ever was], people will be less inclined to believe ministers when they say it is safe to end lockdown, and less inclined to trust the government’s tracking apps

Corona is not the WW2 Luftwaffe, explains Guardina columnist

A few more attempts to draw solemn lessons for Brexit from corona: P Wintour in the GRaun writes:

The coronavirus pandemic underlines the need for greater international solidarity, including more cooperation between Britain and the rest of Europe, all 27 European Union ambassadors and high commissioners to the UK have asserted in an unprecedented joint statement....The statement celebrating Europe Day [borrowed clothes?] also represents a reassertion of EU unity and the continuing relevance of European values within the UK.

Going for gravitas:

One ambassador said of the statement: “This is not about getting British people to change the referendum decision, [heaven forfend!] but just to say we are not ashamed of what we represent, and have much in common with the British people.”...The statement said the ambassadors regretted but fully respected the UK’s decision to leave the EU, though it also reasserted their belief that European nation states, proud of their individual histories, are “stronger together”.

Meanwhile,J Freedland is more obvious in this, although it starts with an old favourite of mine:

As Churchill’s grandson, the former MP Nicholas Soames, reflected in a BBC interview on Thursday, seven decades ago people had had to get by on one egg a week, but “these days there’s practically a riot if you can’t get strawberries in November”.

Freedland soon hits his stride though:

war and disease are not the same [fancy!]. Covid-19 reduces no buildings to rubble; it drops no bombs from the sky [who was it that did that again?] ....Victory in Europe was a victory of an alliance, won at a high cost in British, Commonwealth, American and especially Russian blood. Not for nothing did Churchill’s VE day speech spill over with “gratitude to our splendid allies”.

Which segues into the entirely predictable narrowing and shaping:

Not long after VE Day, Churchill was pressing the case for what needed to happen next. “We must recreate the European family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe,”  ...He hoped Britain would join the European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor of the Common Market. Close ties to our European neighbours were precious, Churchill argued, even if that sometimes meant “the abrogation of national sovereignty”....In today’s Downing Street there’s a Churchill tribute act who led the campaign to wrench Britain away from its allies in the European Union, who has made Brexit into a defining credo and who has presided over a government that passed up three chances to protect its doctors and nurses from a deadly virus, lest joining an EU procurement scheme be seen as engaging in treacherous European cooperation.

OK, a few points: Churchill probably did not mean we should join anything like the actual current EU, of course, and post-War Europe was not what it is today. People will cheerfully abrogate national sovereignty if necessary -- say to form a wartime alliance -- but not necessarily to meet the goals of the modern German economy. Of all the wartime allies, only 'our European neighbours' seem to remain in Freedman's vision of international cooperation. There is no evidence that joining any EU procurement scheme would have helped protect our doctors and nurses, and I would like to see the case for ideological anti-Europeanism being responsible. Apart from that ...