White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

The Future of Britain is on the Ballot

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By Llewellyn King

Long before our election in November, a much greater upheaval may hit Britain. Probably in late June, the country will vote on whether to stay in the European Union. Leaving is called “Brexit” in the British press.

While polls have consistently shown that voters favor Britain remaining a member of the 28-nation bloc, there are signs that things are changing. British business, which has until now seen its future as being in the EU, is beginning to rethink its support for British membership. A recent poll shows industry believing it could prosper out of the EU.

This is a big problem for British Prime Minister David Cameron. He has promised dramatic changes in Britain’s membership, which will be announced at the European summit next month.

Britain wants less-oppressive regulations and a change in immigration policy. It wants an end to what has been a fundamental part of the European structure: the freedom of movement between countries. In short: no more immigration to Britain from Europe.

It is a complex negotiation which Cameron believes he can win; particularly when Europe is in shaky shape after the economic crisis in Greece and from the surge of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Although Europe’s political elites may have to hold their refined noses, the chances are better today than ever that they would rather their unruly island neighbors stay in than further damage the European project by withdrawing.

Predictably some economists say that Britain will do just fine without Europe, while others see dire economic consequences.

When the referendum comes, it will be a free vote with about half of Cameron’s Conservative Party voting to withdraw. These are the rambunctious “Euroskeptics” that have bedeviled British elections for generations and have made the role of Conservative prime ministers particularly trying.

The opposition Labor Party is divided on a Brexit. But Labor has so imploded under the extreme leftist Jeremy Corbyn that it is likely to go along and lend its support — feeble though it is — to the forces wishing to stay in the EU.

The Scottish Nationalists will also support continued membership. They hope that if they break away from the United Kingdom, they will get succor from the EU.

But the forces for exiting the EU are powerful and articulate. They are emboldened by Europe’s problems and the fact that they will no longer be bound by the dictates of, as they say, “faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.”

The wild card in the referendum may be England’s wild man: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Now finishing his term as mayor of London, Boris Johnson is a lovable version of Donald Trump. He has gone from scrape to scrape and has come out ahead of the game. For instance, three years after having won a seat in Parliament in 2001, Johnson was sacked by the Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, for allegedly lying over an affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt. Johnson called newspaper stories about the affair “an inverted pyramid of piffle.” He was also sacked from his editorship of The Spectator, where the piffle took place.

But being elected to higher office is such a compensation, so Johnson, a bicycle-riding, tradition-loving maverick got himself elected mayor of London. In this office he saved the iconic double-decker buses, presided over the 2012 Summer Olympics, and endeared himself to an even wider audience.

The British revere Johnson’s eccentricity and voted him back into Parliament in the last election. Now people talk openly of him being Cameron’s successor after the referendum.

Johnson has hedged his bets on British membership in the EU. Just this week he declared that he will not lead the “Out” forces, but he does not totally endorse the “In” forces.

Here is the possible scenario: Cameron has to produce a deal that satisfies some of the Euroskeptics and set a date for referendum. Then the vote. Then the hangover, one way or another. Then Johnson makes his move – unless some schemer, like the current Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, has not outmaneuvered the charming and brilliant Boris.

Cleverly Johnson has written a long political treatise comparing London to Athens, and leaving room for people to believe he has the qualities of Pericles, without actually claiming the great Greek’s mantle. Then, just to be safe, he has knocked off a highly laudatory biography of Churchill, which invites the idea that Johnson shares some of his hero’s traits.

This kind of effrontery makes British politics a perpetual night in the pub. Cheers! — For Inside Sources

The Politics behind the Lockerbie-Libya Affair

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Some damned fool on one of the cable television channels opined that the special relationship between Britain and America notwithstanding, Britain should face sanctions for allowing the return to Libya of the only terrorist imprisoned for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988.

 

I did not get the name of the buffoon who suggested that we sanction our greatest ally and a top investor and trading partner. Maybe the British should sanction us for using their language without paying a royalty every time we open our mouths.

 

The broadly reviled decision to send Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi back to Libya because of his medical condition has more to do with surging Scottish nationalism than with British perfidy.

 

London may have interests in trade with Libya, but would not have moved to free the prisoner, knowing how deep survivor feeling runs on both sides of the Atlantic; and knowing how seriously the United States takes the prosecution and punishment of terrorists. There was an understanding between London and Washington that the perpetrators (only one was prosecuted) would serve their full sentences if convicted.

 

Enter the Scottish nationalists, who are particularly assertive at present, and are hoping one day to break up the United Kingdom. Scotland and England, after a long and bloody history were united in 1707 under the Acts of Union. The merger was voted by the Scottish and English parliaments.

 

But rather than a merger of equals, it was a coercive match. Scotland was desperately poor at the time, and hoped to prosper from the inclusion in British trading around the globe. Also, some members of the Scottish parliament were bribed but the larger reality was that Scotland was, as they say, between a rock and a hard place. So the union went ahead, and Queen Anne was the first monarch of the United Kingdom.

 

Over the 300 years of union, the relationship has ebbed and flowed. While Scotland benefited from the textile boom that set off the Industrial Revolution and from the production of wool, it lost its language and the Scots resented the Anglification of their country. Poet Robert Burns, writing in dialect railed against the English. And the Scots call the English “Sassenachs” (trans. Lowlanders), a term of abuse.

 

There was some softening of the Scottish attitude to England during the long rule of Queen Victoria, mainly because she spent long periods at the royal estate at Balmoral in Scotland. Some have speculated that the history of Ireland might have been different if Victoria had been one half so fond the Irish as she was of the Scots.

 

The Scots, traditionally a proud and independent people, began a long decline in the 20th century; a decline led in part by the loss of heavy industries like shipbuilding. The discovery of oil in the North Sea and along the Scottish coast helped financially, but it failed to revive Scottish spirits. More and more turned to the welfare state and supported the Labor Party. Conservatives totally lost their footing in Scotland.

 

But help was on the way in the unlikely person of Tony Blair, the Labor Party’s longest-serving prime minister, who favored devolution–or the creation of a self-governing Scotland and Wales with their own devolved national assemblies. The Conservatives, led by John Major, called this blow at the structure of the union “folly.” The Scottish nationalists, led by Alex Salmond, swept to power in Scotland, beating the Labor Party which had been so generous.

 

Nothing about devolution suggested that the government of Scotland would have a say in British foreign policy, but they would control the prisons. And, despite the awkwardness it has caused, freeing al-Megrahi gave the Scottish nationalists an opportunity to claim world recognition; embarrass the British government; and, for good measure, gratuitously stick it to America. Whereas Irish nationalists feel a strong affiliation with the United States, the Scots do not.The Scottish Nationalist Party seeks independence one day, and international recognition today. The Scots are on the march.

 

For their part, the English have reason to be vexed at the Scots. Not only do they take a certain amount of abuse, but England pours more money into Scotland than Scottish taxes yield. While the Scots vote for members of the House of Commons, the English do not vote for members of the Scottish Parliament. This imbalance is known as the “West Lothian Question.”

 

Even though the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, is a Scot, he has no influence north of the border. The breakup of the United Kingdom may be underway–unless the English come up with another bribe.  –For North Star Writers Group

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Republicans Need an English Lesson from Thatcher and Blair

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Before Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, Britain was in trouble and headed for worse. The story was told on radio news every morning. Along with the weather and the traffic reports, there was daily a list of trouble spots of a different sort: industrial action.

 

Industrial action was the euphemism of the time for strikes; most of them unofficial, all of them debilitating. The national mood was sour, the economy perilous, and Britain’s international competitiveness was slipping fast. Commentators around the world talked about “the English disease.”

 

Thatcher’s challenge was to curb the unions; but before she could do that, she had to convince a doubting nation that the unions could become, or be made, responsible. Over the years, the unions had amassed quite extraordinary power that reached into lives of people who had never thought they were affected by unions.

 

Union excess was everywhere but because the British believed in the importance of unions, their strengths and excesses were taken as the necessary price for the fundamental right of collective bargaining.

 

The Labor Party derived much of its support and financing from the union movement. They were structurally entwined: The unions represented the core, or the “base,” of the party. Unfortunately for Labor, the base was toxic and threatened the health of the economy and, as the election of 1979 showed, the electability of the party.

 

Thatcher, though hard to love, did three enormous things for Britain. She restored the primacy of the free market, curbed union excess and, ironically, saved the Labor Party. Thatcher’s changes made it possible for what was to be called New Labor to modify its relations with its trade union base. The politicians got back the politics, which had been progressively assumed by union bosses of the base.

 

The British experience is redolent with lessons for the Republican Party. The “base,” represented by the aggressive broadcasters like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, is goading the party in Congress to adopt positions that satisfy them, but not the electorate.

 

Building on the new reality created by Thatcher’s Conservatives, Tony Blair and his political brain, Peter Mandelson, were able to discipline or silence the trade unions in the Labor Party and present an alternative to the Conservatives that could plunder the best ideas of the right. When nobody was looking, Blair must have thanked God for Thatcher.

 

The agony of the Republicans is clearly on display with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court: To oppose her blindly is to kiss off millions of Hispanic voters, maybe for generations. The party clearly had no strategy to deal with a candidate like Sotamayor. None.

 

The far right came out with, well, with an old argument: She is a liberal activist. Not much evidence of that, but the conservative talk-show hosts were ready for war. The last war. Or the one before that.

 

More damaging to serious Republicans has been the conversion, almost entirely on Fox, of respected Republican philosophers into political Vaudevillians. Enter, center stage, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Karl Rove. Their collective TV antics are damaging to the movement they once led.

 

A lot of good thinking about the future of the Republican Party is taking place in the think tanks, particularly the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. But the solid work of restructuring the party for the new realities at home and abroad is drowned out by the eponymous broadcast wing of the party.

 

It is hard to believe that Newt Gingrich, broadcaster, is the same Newt Gingrich who masterminded the 1994 Republican midterm sweep. Or that Karl Rove was the genius who saw that George W. Bush could be presented as a convincing presidential candidate.

 

Absent any possibility of reform of the Republican base from the outside, in the Thatcher way, it has to come from the inside. Several astute conservative writers, like David Frum and Mickey Edwards, have lighted a path. A first step down that path could be a more even-handed examination of President Obama’s Supreme Court picks. He could have as many as four of them in his first term. Clearly he has an eye to the electorate, as much as to jurisprudence, if Sotomayor is a harbinger.

 

Thatcher built herself an entirely new base. Blair dismantled an old one. The Republicans need to examine both.