In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King. It is generally acknowledged that this is the least talented Cabinet in living memory. Rishi Sunak is the exception. Labour cannot attack him for what he is doing but they most certainly can for what he believes. From supporting Brexit in 2016 to his extreme free market personal ideology he was potentially the most economically Right Wing Chancellor of modern times. We are firmly in “Tax Payers Alliance” territory here.

Mr Sunak’s brief political career to date has been mainly about establishing his credentials in the Conservative Party. He did this at a time when the Party handed itself over to its Hard Right – and as it happens that’s where Sunak sits. I would not accuse him of opportunism. I don’t think that he has spouted a libertarian, free-market hard neoliberal position to secure a personal political advantage. I think he really believes it. But as Harold Wilson said “Campaign from the Left, govern from the Centre”.

I remember when Ted Heath came to power in 1970 on a very pro Business and economically non-interventionist manifesto. (That was ten years before Sunak’s birth so he won’t remember it !). Within a year he was knocked off that free market pedestal by what Harold McMillan called “events”. Suddenly Ted, like Harold before him, had to “govern from the centre”.

In February this year (pre Covid) Hard Right Tory economic veteran, and uber-Eurosceptic John Redwood advised Chancellor Sunak that “We need a bigger and more prosperous private sector, which requires lower tax rates and a holiday from yet more prescriptive regulation.” I doubt that at the time Sunak would have disagreed. You don’t have a successful career in Goldman Sachs if you’re a wishy-washy interventionist “Tax the rich” liberal.

Then came Rishi’s “events” which changed him from being a dedicated follower of the Redwood faction into the most interventionist and free-spending Chancellor of the Exchequer of modern times. Not his fault, of course, but it must have hurt. This wasn’t “Government from the Centre”. It was Government from the Praesidium.

Before the referendum Sunak endeared himself to the hard core Eurosceptics by saying “It can’t be right that unelected officials in Brussels have more say over who can come into our country than you.” This may seem a curiously anti immigration position for a British Asian to take, but it went down well in Yorkshire where he is an MP. And Sunak’s fellow British Asian Home Secretary Priti Patel, could have used the same words – and probably did.

If, as seems increasingly likely, Rishi Sunak becomes Prime Minister within a few months he will have to manage not just the calamitous economic and business challenges of the Pandemic but of Brexit as well. The combination of these events, and of dealing with them, will bring unprecedented social consequences. It is possible that the worst effects of Brexit on trade (etc) can be ameliorated by a “deal” with the EU27. The earlier Sunak takes over from the inadequate Boris Johnson the better in this regard – especially if he rapidly dispenses with Johnson’s puppeteer Dominic Cummings. But even a deal-brokered Brexit will not be a walk in the park with an ailing economy totally reliant on Government support and spending.

So will Prime Minister Sunak be forced to “govern from the Centre” – when the current alternative is to govern from the hard-interventionist Left he’d probably settle for that. The supreme irony of where we are is that the most committed anti EU Conservatives (of which Sunak was one) took this position from a hard non-interventionist and free enterprise perspective. For this Parliament not only is that not going to happen but Britain will not enjoy the benefits of membership of the most successful single market and customs union in the world either.

Rishi Sunak may morph into a pragmatist and cleverly find an accommodation with the EU. The ideologues won’t like that – they’d probably quite welcome the riots in the streets which could be a consequence of Britain’s self-evident ungovernability. Especially if they are viewing them from their tax exile home or from their Chateaux in Provence.

According to a piece in The Times today Royal Dutch Shell is considering moving it’s corporate HQ from The Hague to London and predictably the Brexiteers in The Times and also elsewhere are already beginning to celebrate this as a triumph. They shouldn’t. This decision, if taken, says virtually nothing about the management of the corporation and a lot about the respective tax regimes of Britain and The Netherlands. The tax benefits of the U.K. as they are at present, are made clear in the article. As is the perceived need to simplify the Capital Structure. These issues have nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit. It’s financially driven and pragmatic.

Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDS) has over the past few decades become a much more centralised corporation than it was in the four decades during which I worked for it. The direction of the business comes primarily from London and The Hague – with Houston being a sort of third central office for some activities. RDS has always been Anglo Dutch and this is unlikely to change.

The Hague as well as being the location of the HQ is also the location of the executives at the top of various key business streams such as Oil and Gas exploration and production – the “Upstream”. All the technical, engineering and associated activities of the Upstream take place in The Netherlands. The same applies to Manufacturing (the Refining sector). In theory all these Holland based activities could relocate to London and there would be some cost reduction benefits – but it’s very unlikely to happen.

Shell Centre in Waterloo is the location of the central offices of Shell’s other businesses including Marketing, Supply Trading, Legal, Finance etc. This duality of location is long established and it would be complex to unravel it. Certainly any move of the registered office HQ from The Hague to London would have few implications for the daily operation of the business. Very few employees would be in any way affected. The only visible change of a move of HQ would be that RDS AGMs would in future be in London rather than The Hague – which would please The City.

Goodness me those people in the nineteenth century were racists weren’t they? Well yes when seen from today’s enlightened times they were. (I didn’t put quotes around “enlightened” – I genuinely believe that is a fair descriptor of how we approach race today). Some will say that to criticise Dickens, or Marx (or Enid Blyton of Agatha Christie for that matter) for their racist views or racist expressions is wrong because they were simply products of the mores of their times.

I cannot even write the original title of Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little…” book here because The Times automatic word checker would reject the whole post if I did. The use of the same word in Fawlty Towers has led to some rapid post hoc editing of the archive. Twenty-first century enlightened standards being applied retrospectively to the 1930s and the 1970s – let alone to the late 1800s.

The root cause of what some would see as a preposterous application of political correctness to the past is a contempt for the perceptiveness of the people today. It assumes that people aren’t smart enough to see what John Cleese and Connie Booth were doing when they put those words into the Major’s mouth. The Major was an old bigot not untypical of his age and times – I know this because there were a few similar in my own family. Surely most people can see and understand this – and learn from it?

When listening to David Starkey I wasn’t seeing archive footage of an old racist spouting offensive views. I was watching a old racist spout them today in real time. His pathetic little interviewer failed to challenge him which seemed to encourage the fool to be more outrageous. Why the hell he did it I’ve no idea – because he was allowed to I think.

If we remove all the statues and edit all the books (and maybe throw some on the fire) how will we learn about the past? If you throw some slaver’s statue in the Harbour it doesn’t make what he did not to have happened. It just means that fewer people will know about it. Are we likely to be able to know more about Cecil Rhodes if his statue is hidden away out of view or if it’s somewhere we can see it – with a suitable plaque explaining who he was and what he did and the times in which he did it? Do we really need to be protected from the past? Or might it not be preferable that that past was better explained to us?

Any student of politics will know that there is an almost unlimited range of political opinions and possible policies which can be assembled selectively into a Party manifesto. The underlying logic of a political Party should be that the chosen assemblage has a modicum of consistent logic to it. The last Prime Minister who came close to doing this was Margaret Thatcher – before her Clement Attlee.

Thatcher took her guidance from the free enterprise handbook of Friedrick Hayek and Attlee from the writings of John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge. They were of course opposed ideologies but you knew where you were. Opponents of Thatcher or Attlee pretty much opposed their full packages. There wasn’t much room for pick and mix.

Most politicians and governments in the post war period have not been ideologically pure and have put together programmes that were pragmatic in order to be electorally attractive. In office the appearance of competence and perceived electability has dictated actions. When the global economic crisis hit Britain in the late noughties Gordon Brown took charge and his outstanding understanding of the issues led to competent decision-making and common-sense – he was widely praised and indeed honoured globally for this. But he lost the 2010 General Election. It wasn’t enough to have been right and able. You had to be electable as well.

Margaret Thatcher ticked the boxes of the electorate even though most of them had little understanding of her underlying ideology except in the most uncomplicated terms. But the appeal of “freedom” was an attractive one and there was consistency. Selling council houses and giving consumers options among energy suppliers (for example) came out of the same core ideology called “freedom of choice”. Freeing The Falklands from the yoke of Argentinian rule was the ultimate and electorally decisive action. Link this to attacking the “enemy within” – militant Trades Unionism – and you have a coherent philosophy and one that can be and was made appealing.

Margaret Thatcher once said (in 1984) that “Politics is not an essay in public relations” it is about getting “decisions right.” I think Clement Attlee would have agreed with that. The problem is that other political leaders have and do see their role as to be primarily effective in their management of “public relations”. If this means being economical with the actualité so be it.

The driver of the current Government’s actions is arguably ideological – the problem is that unlike Attlee or Thatcher the ideology is not transparent and is rarely openly referred to. There are links with Thatcherism of course and Libertarianism and English nationalism can be characterised as variants of Thatcher’s “freedom”. The problem is that there is no credible committed and visible leadership from the top. Nobody knows what Boris Johnson (or his immediate predecessors) believes in. If anything.

To be an informed and capable pragmatist – a John Major (to some extent) or a Gordon Brown is handy in times of trouble. We could do with one now. Competence trumps ideological purity when push comes to shove. But today we have the worst of all worlds. The Government is an “essay in public relations” and not very good at it. That aside it’s one raison d’être when elected was to “Get Brexit Done” .

The fact is that in the unexpectedly choppy waters of 2020 rushing into a post Brexit world has become the wrong thing to do, for the wrong reasons at emphatically the wrong time. The public clearly agrees with polls showing “Remain” with a clear advantage over “Leave” – this despite the fact that we have actually left the European Union! To have acknowledged this and bought time – extending transition for a year or two would have been the pragmatic thing to do. But no – we may not know what this Governments’s ideology is, but Brexit is its flagship (only) policy. Those choppy waters are going to turn into a tsunami next January.

The biggest cancer in British politics has been the takeover of once moderate major parties by extremists. The Corbynite triumph in Labour was open, bizarre, serendipitous and fatal. Overnight people you had never heard of (and were on the fringes of the Party) were on its front bench or, like the barely credible Seamus Milne, pulling strings. The consequences of this madness don’t need repeating here.

One consequence of handing Labour over to the fruitcakes was handing the governance of Britain over to the Hard Right and this, of course, led to Brexit. Corbyn did not campaign for “Remain” in 2016 with even a modicum of conviction despite the fact that in the 2015 General Election Labour’s Manifesto was unequivocally pro EU. This was a gift to the Tory Eurosceptics , Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and the rest of the gruesome “Leave” brigade.

The Referendum result, though it clobbered David Cameron, didn’t over bother the Hard Left – now firmly in charge of Labour. The Tory Right couldn’t believe it’s luck. All it needed to do, as it had long planned, was to get Boris Johnson into Number 10. But a breakout of internecine strife clobbered that. Johnson walked away from the leadership contest in 2016 and the Right, much to their discomfort, had to suffer Theresa May – very much not one of them.

Despite winning a General Election against Corbyn (no surprise there) May couldn’t hold on. She was too centrist , even rumoured still to be a closet Remainer, so she had to go. The “ERG” Tories treated her with disdain and plotted openly to displace her. This time Johnson didn’t blow it, got to Number 10, won an election and purged what remained of the One Nation Conservatives.

So over a number of years we’ve had the unelectable Corbyn leading Labour from the Hard Left and now the all too electable Johnson leading the Tories from the Hard Right. The Centre hasn’t held and, until recently, seemed to have been vanquished.

It is important to distinguish the extremism of Corbyn from the extremism of Johnson. Jeremy really believed in Socialism of the Bevanite kind. He hadn’t liked Blair’s removal of Clause 4 nor of what he saw as the Blair/Brown neoliberalism. Of course Labour had always had its red flag waving socialist purists but in the past Social Democratic Leaders, from Gaitskell to Blair/Brown, had managed to keep them on the noisy margins of the Party. Under Corbyn they took over.

Johnson is different because unlike Corbyn he has no personal political ideology at all. He is the archetypical Groucho Mark politician with instantly changeable principles. The Tory Right didn’t like him because he was “One of Us” – he was clearly one of nobody, except himself. They liked him because of his electability and because they could tell him what to pretend to believe.

If the Conservatives for the foreseeable future have been captured by the Hard Right Labour is quietly moving towards being the sensible Party, which means moving into the gaping void which is the centre ground. Keir Starmer is undeniably in the Social Democratic tradition of Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown. This is the only positive trend in British politics, and it a very important one.

With eyes mainly on the challenges of managing the COVID-19 pandemic other issues, even Brexit, have taken a lower priority. This has allowed Johnson, pushed of course by his Tory Right sponsors, to move towards what looks like a No Deal Brexit. It is possible that at the last minute some magic formula will be found to avert disaster. But this looks unlikely and there are only six months to go.

How Sir Keir Starmer positions Labour will be determined by what happens in early 2021. If it’s chaos (quite likely) then he has only to look mature and credible whilst Boris blunders around in the mess. Sir Keir can afford to be reactive in response to events and try to be constructive. The Government will blame everyone but themselves. Sir Keir will need to avoid a shouting match and position himself and Labour to take charge if the Government completely implodes. This is far from impossible.

On 1st July 1997 the people of Hong went from being the disenfranchised residents of a British colony to being the disenfranchised residents of a Chinese one. They had few if any governance rights before 1997 and few if any since. The “Joint Declaration” was a sell-out – a human rights abuse by an uncaring decolonising Britain.

A territory without self-governance can still have Passport rights for its residents – but Hong Kongers have never had this. Yes they had a nominally “British” passport with which they could travel – if countries chose to admit them. But this document did not give them British nationality nor, crucially, the right of residence in the U.K. As such it was largely worthless.

When I lived in the territory in the 1980s, after the Joint Declaration was signed, those among my Hong Konger friends who could afford to do so acquired foreign passports – particularly Australian and Canadian – as insurance against the sort of situation they now face. Cities like Melbourne and Vancouver have hugely benefited from this immigration. But many who got these passports stayed in Hong Kong knowing that if things got nasty then they could then leave. It’s surely only a matter of time before many of them choose to do so.

Britain abandoned the people of Hong Kong in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher handed them over to a hostile foreign power without nationality or travel documents of any value. Nobody should misunderstand the legacy of anti-British feeling this act of negligence created. The mainly young people waving the Union Flag or the colonial HK flag are not being pro British. They are simply using these flags as provocative symbols of protest.

I very much doubt that many of the newly threatened people of the territory will be interested in the hugely belated and patronising “offer” now apparently to be made by Britain. Australia, Canada and New Zealand offer a more congenial welcome and these countries know what a valuable contribution Hong Kongers can make. Why would you want the vague prospect of passport of xenophobic, nationalist isolationist Little England when you can have one of a welcoming, open state where many of your friends, family and compatriots already live happily?

In “The Times” today Roger Boyes seeks to sell the idea of “Global Britain” with a new “Great Exhibition” like those we had in 1851 and 1951. It’s a laughable idea !

In 1851 Britain was an Imperial power and much of the world in the school atlases was painted pink. Our navy, and our economy, was bigger than that of the United States. How we got to this position of power is not a story to dwell on in too much detail and certainly nothing to boast about, but there it was.

By 1951 we had got rid of the Jewel in the Crown of Empire (with deadly incompetence) and we were into the process of divesting ourselves of the rest. That wasn’t a walk in the park either.

By 1962 we hadn’t quite become post colonial – there was still the 5 Million people of Hong Kong to let down by handing them over to a hostile power. In that year former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously told us that Britain “had lost an empire and had not found a role.” He added:

“Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role – that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being the head of a Commonwealth which has no political structure or unity or strength and enjoys a fragile and precarious economic relationship – this role is about played out.” And, crucially, he also said that Britain’s application for membership of the Common Market was a “decisive turning point.” Should Britain join the Six, “another step forward of vast importance will have been taken.”

So as long ago as 1962 “Global Britain” was a chimera though a fair number of ageing Imperialists denied it. And as long ago as 1962 it was clear that active participation in the accelerating moves towards integration in Europe was “vastly important” and a “step forward”.

Since 1962 the world has seen immense change, and these changes have strengthened the logic of Mr Acheson’s then analysis. The “Global” powers are now The United States, China and the European Union with Japan and a rather diminished Russia in the second rank. The most optimistic assessment of Britain’s chances in this new world order post Brexit places us somewhere in a middle rank – though without the size of others like Brazil or India or the the entrepreneurship of the likes of Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea etc.

Britain decoupled from the EU is a country which has lost the raison d’être that Dean Acheson described for us and is floundering without a role. Our strength in Financial Services is under threat from the Eurozone and the City’s dominant role is already declining, hardly surprisingly. We manufacture little and decoupled from tariff free Europe a major market becomes difficult for what we do still make. To be a niche producer is the best we can hope for.

The drivers of Brexit included flag-waving nationalism which struck a chord with those unable to understand the realities of the post-Imperial world order. When AC Benson wrote “Land of Hope and Glory” in 1901 “Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set” could still be sung without irony. The nineteenth Century, just finished, was certainly the British Century. But the twentieth was to be American and the twenty-first Chinese (if the first two decades are anything to go by). For a middling country like Britain to go it alone is a silly conceit – and to suggest that we can be “Global” a preposterous delusion.

If we look at the key determinants of social advantage and disadvantage we can see why the inhabitants of towns like Burnley struggle. These are:

▪️Class

▪️Race

▪️Wealth

▪️Education

When Disraeli described Britain. In his novel “Sybil” in 1845 he said this:

“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

As David Aaronovitch says in today’s “The Times” poverty is the problem because it leads to institutionalised disadvantage. Race also plays a part with young Asians in many cases achieving better academic results than poor whites. Perhaps this leads to scapegoating and racism – a blame culture in which the disadvantaged whites’ target is those in parts of the more educationally successful Asian community.

But let’s not ignore the determinant of “Class” either. Disraeli’s “Two Nations” were, and still are, created by class differences. Disraeli was writing long before the 20th century’s growth of the middle class. The classes he identified were on the one hand the rich ruling class , often (but not exclusively) aristocrats. These were being augmented in the “Haves” category by Victorian entrepreneurs – the beneficiaries through their own efforts of the Industrial Revolution. On the other hand, the “Have Nots”, were the dirt poor working classes exploited after they had been lured to the Manufacturing towns of which Burnley was typical.

The shocking, but true, thing in my previous paragraph is my statement that class creates the “Two Nations” today as much as it did in 1845. Today the division is between the middle classes, with their better education, better healthcare and significantly better opportunities, and the rest. Class and wealth are, of course, firmly correlated. The postcodes with the more expensive houses have the better schools – it’s as simple as that. And race and class are correlated as well. The discrimination against blacks that is driving the “Black Lives Matter” movement is in part because the overwhelmingly white middle classes are in charge. And they tend to hire in their own image.

When Tony Blair said that his three priorities were “Education, Education, Education” he was no doubt as sincere as he was right. The Asians of Burnley know this and many work the system and encourage the children. The poor white children of poor white parents do this rather less. And the system struggles to intervene.

The Welfare State is sometimes accused of creating an entitlement society which can lead to the passive idea that it is somebody else’s (usually the state’s) role to solve problems. If this is perceived not to happen the blame culture cuts in. Where wealth or class actively seeks to pursue advantage those who remain passive get left behind. And stay poor. It is then that they seek someone to blame. “Immigrants”. “Muslims”. “Foreigners”. The “European SuperState”. “Centrists”. “Neo-Liberals”. “Remainers” .

For over a decade MCC has had the opportunity to create a financial basis of such strength that even the unprecedented loss of revenues of 2020 and probably 2021 could comfortably have been coped with.

The freehold of the strip of land along the Wellington Road that the Club’s incompetence back in 1995 let fall into the hands of a third party has been in play for ten years or more. An ambitious development plan for this land was approved and then precipitately cancelled by a previous leadership cabal at the top of the Club. This led to the resignation of Sir John Major in protest. Sir John had been involved in the process of the development and approval of this now withdrawn “Masterplan”.

The “Masterplan” (and subsequent refinements of it) would not only have enhanced the aspect of the Lord’s Estate at its perimeter and improved the facilities of the ground but generated a one off inflow of funds of at least £100m and probably more. It would also have solved once and for all the the anomaly that a part of the Lord’s Estate is not owned by the Club. There are no downsides – all the activities which take place at the ground and the Nursery ground could have continued.

The challenges of 2020 and the financial problems consequent on them did not require the Club to take the “nuclear option” of offering life memberships. There is a vulgarity to this surrender to Mammon and I am not the only Member to deplore it. The members’ areas of the ground, including the Pavilion, are crowded enough on major match days at present. To add significantly to this by offering membership to people whose only qualification is that they are rich and can afford it is an affront.

In countries with more democratic voting systems the problem of the ongoing presence of the Corbynista cohort in Labour would be easy to solve. They’d break away from Starmer’s Labour, form their own Socialist Party and put their policy propositions to the electorate. In a strictly PR system if they got (say) 5% of the votes they’d get 5% of the seats – a respectable 30 or so MPs.

As a once member of the SDP I speak from experience. In the early 1980s the Gang of Four’s Party, in alliance with the Liberals, gained 25.4% of the vote but 4.5% of the seats. It was a scandalous under-representation – something that under First Past The Post (FPTP) has continued for smaller parties ever since.

The Hard Core Socialist position of Corbyn and Long Bailey and co. is a credible and respectable political position but one that Sir Keir has not chosen for Labour which he is remoulding in the Social Democratic tradition of Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. If we had FPTP then Corbyn and Co. could leave and try their luck with the electorate. They might do better than 5% – who knows?

The problem with Broad Church political Parties is that there will always be those who grump and plot in the aisles. That was certainly true of the Conservatives before the 2019 Election. Boris Johnson ruthlessly stopped all that and there seem few if any dissidents on the Tory benches these days. But as with Labour there have traditionally been two broad streams. In Labour it was Socialists versus the Social Democrats. In the Conservatives it was “One Nation” versus the more authoritarian and libertarian Right. The latter group has now taken over under Boris Johnson but there are still One Nation Tories around. To break away and form their own Party under FPTP is doomed – ask Anna Soubry or Sarah Wollaston.

Labour tried painting itself the brightest red under Jeremy Corbyn and the electorate spoke. Sir Keir Starmer is taking the Party in a different direction. Ms Long Bailey and her supporters will no doubt snipe at their party leader from the sidelines – the electoral system gives them little choice. But as with the SDP in 1980 they should really be in a different Party.