BRITAIN AND WAR FOR THE GREATER MIDDLE EAST

The Greater Middle East (Wikipedia)

Britain's Parliament will be recalled tomorrow during a week in which EdX launched its "War for the Greater Middle East" Mooc - https://www.edx.org/course/bux/bux-intl301x-war-greater-middle-east-1556#.VCQ063ZnBuM

The mooc is billed thus: "Military historian Andrew Bacevich recounts the failed U.S. military effort over several decades to "fix" the Islamic world, explaining what went wrong and why." Early reports of this online course are positive.

Parliament's recall to decide the extent of Britain's involvement in the ongoing conflict, which has recently entered a new phase, is one reason this blog supports the kind of federal government described in the following post, rather than a break-up of the UK.

ENGLISH PARLIAMENT: THE CASE FOR NATIONALISM

Public Entrance to the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh (opened in 2004)

One consequence of the Scottish Independence Referendum is a re-galvanising of the case for an English Parliament, as recently voiced by the veteran Conservative MP John Redwood - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29203693  However, whilst Mr Redwood suggests that the House of Commons could double up as an English Parliament, this post makes the case for a completely new institution based outside London, accompanied by a  "Great Cull" (humanely executed, naturally) of Westminster bureaucracy. The argument for this might best be summed up in the expression Democratic Sustainable Development.

The so-called United Kingdom has one of the most centralised state bureaucracies in the world. Whilst the previous New Labour administration adopted a policy of "Regionalism", this applied democratically only in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In England, "regionalisation" manifested in the creation of  Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) or Quangos. Indeed "Quangoisation" (see Note) of government was a salient feature of the New Labour state. The Regional Assemblies which gave the RDAs some small measure of public accountability were abolished by the administration between 2008-10 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_assembly_%28England%29

In 2010, a Conservative-led Liberal Coalition Government was elected and set about destroying all vestiges of "regionalisation" - which became a sort of Orwellian banned word - in England, with the stated aim of replacing this with "Localism". In effect, this has meant replacing regional quangos with local ones, including the state-funded Local Enterprise Partnerships. There has also been a re-centralisation of policy-making, notably in the area of spatial planning where English local authorities now have to adhere to a National Planning Policy Framework, which is just as top-down as the Regional Spatial Strategies which it replaced (after much legal wrangling).

Having experienced both discredited "Regionalism" and "Localism" in the past 15 years, the only real option left for England is "Nationalism". This seems to be working very well in Scotland, where record voter turnout in the Independence Referendum gave the birthplace of democracy what seems like a democratic second-coming. I am sure that the prospect of an English Parliament - let's say in Birmingham - in conjunction with down-sizing of the Westminster Elite would have a similar effect. This could leave London with a city state model of government, something that should help overcome the Capital's growing social inequalities.

If all this sounds like it could lead to "Federalism", so much the better. A federal United Kingdom might well be the best way to preserve the Union in the longer-term. It would also provide some justification for the retention of a solid rump of London-based national government. However, the strong likelihood that increased English Nationalism would empower the dreaded  F-word in British politics will ensure that people like are current prime minister and his political cronies (elected and unelected) will do everything in their power to ensure the talk is of a "family of nations" which is run by a parental union of Big Money and Big State (just as it was under the previous government).

Note
1. When I google "Quangoisation" one of the first entries to emerge is a Chinese translation - http://dict.cn/quangoisation - perhaps because it is also a key feature of the State Capitalism model of political economy: one towards which the so-called UK has increasingly moved.

BRITISH POLITICS IS NOT A FAMILY BUSINESS

"I would be heartbroken if this family of nations that we've put together - and we've done such amazing things together - if this family of nations was torn apart." David Cameron.

There is a long article in the lifestyle (Life&Arts) section of this weekend's FT by James Meek, based on his recently published book, "Private Island: Why Britain now belongs to someone else". Entitled "Power from the people", there is much to agree with in the article's description of the British malaise, although the diagnosis seems weak in places.

Meek maintains that Britain has undergone "some grand existential alteration" in the past 20 years ago, and I have to agree that the country is an increasingly peculiar place.

Take, for instance, the recent hounding of the Ashya King family across Europe by agents of the British state with the help of an EU arrest warrant. The family have now taken their child to Prague for medical treatment, a fitting conclusion to a particularly Kafkaesque narrative.

David Cameron and his colleagues appear to have intervened on behalf of the family, and rightly so. However, he is wrong to invoke mawkish comparisons of this and the modern nation state.

There is, quite frankly, a rather daft headline in today's Mail  newspaper about "Childless SNP chiefs 'who have no feel for UK family': Leaders of Scottish National Party 'want to break up Union because they do not understand families' which might have emanated from some Westminster spin-doctor, although the quote appears to come from a rugby player.

Modern politics is fundamentally about neither sport nor some ideal of family, and the sooner senior British politicians grow up and realise this, the better. As the Governor of the Bank of England said recently, Britain is a country with "deep, deep structural problems". Scotland and the rest of the country need a government capable of tackling these, separately or together.

DISUNITED KINGDOM: THE STATE OF THE NATION

"State of the Nation" is a 1997 novel by former royal spin-doctor Michael Shea that was serialised in the Herald newspaper - http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/obituaries/michael-shea-diplomat-1.926959 The plot is summarised thus: "Following Scottish independence, worldwide recession has brought mass unemployment leading to civil unrest. An American-based corporation offers the Scottish government aid..." In the event of a "Yes" vote next week, the more likely scenario is that Scotland will ultimately have to join the Euro and, like Ireland, succumb to German economic disciplines. There may be some historical justice here insofar as the closest living relation of the last king of Scotland is the Prince of Bavaria - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Luitpold_of_Bavaria_%28b.1951%29 - and not the British Royal Family. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond also likes to invoke European precedents, namely the disunification of the former Czechoslovakia, for his country's potential exit from the so-called United Kingdom - http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-break-up-of-czechoslovakia-and-scottish-independence

Meanwhile, in today's edition of The Times, Rachel Sylvester writes that "Alex Salmond and Nigel Farage are both benefiting from disillusion with the Westminster elite felt by the ‘left behinds’". This seems to me to be the crux of the matter, although "left behinds" covers a rather larger rump of voters than Ms Sylvester may have in mind, I would venture. Ed Miliband has certainly picked this up in his party's rebranding as "One Nation Labour", and one of his strategists is quoted by The Times as saying: "The reason Ukip has done well in the European elections and the reason why people in Scotland may vote "Yes" is because they're utterly alienated and sick of Westminster politics as normal..." However, the sense of alienation goes rather deeper. In giving precedence to the city state of London ahead of the state of the nation, recent successive governments, namely New Labour and the Lib-Con Coalition, have failed to recognise that all politics are local.