Today’s headlines have been grabbed by the Government’s announcement that the sale of petrol/diesel cars will be banned by 2030 and hybrids five years later. There is zero chance of this actually happening.

Approximately 2% of current passenger cars are electric. Over the ten years to 2030 this percentage will gradually increase as electric cars become more affordable and as technological changes give them a better range . But the breakthrough which makes them as practical and as affordable as petrol/diesel vehicles is yet to happen. Similarly the economies of scale of high volume petrol/diesel engine manufacture cannot be equalled for electric-powered engines at present. In short an electric car costs more and has a much more limited range than the alternative.

For new car sales all to be of electric cars in 2030 is an improbable stretch target. Even if it happens people will continue to make rational purchase decisions up to that date. Will we switch to buying more expensive less practical cars voluntarily? It seems highly unlikely. Government can offer financial incentives to persuade us of course but to do this would reduce government revenues. It will be a good few years before the Treasury will countenance that!

Electric vehicles pollute much less than petrol/diesel but the electricity has to come from somewhere. At present except in exceptional circumstances most of our daily Power comes from Natural Gas. So for the switch to electric cars to be genuinely “Green” there has to be a parallel switch to Renewables (principally wind). That is happening , but it takes time.

Energy policy is managed in a piecemeal way. The reality is that certain sectors are unlikely to have any significant switch from hydrocarbons in the foreseeable future (aircraft and shipping) and other sectors like Commercial Road Transport (trucks and buses) haven’t started to switch ( the odd demonstration vehicle aside). Again transport operators need to be offered affordable and practical alternatives to be encouraged to switch. There are few at present.

Announcing targets is all very well, but they need to be underpinned by reality. Headline grabbing is one thing, actually having a coherent action plan is something else. The devil is in the detail. And above all there needs to be international cooperation at a considerable level.

Major motor manufacturers across the world continue to predominantly make fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, tractors and construction vehicles, motor cycles and delivery vans. They do that in part because the alternatives are impractical or uneconomic. It’s a customer-driven sector. Changing today’s reality into something different will take time, investment and attitudinal change. Surely that will take much longer than ten years ?

There is a very good analysis by Clare Foges in “The Times” today about our current failures of government which rings true in every detail. We have teetered towards the cliff edge from time to time in my 74-year lifetime but nothing comes anywhere near the chaos of the past four plus years. There have been culpable military errors of judgment (Suez, Afghanistan…) and shameful betrayals (Hong Kong) . There have been abject failures to understand the divides in our society (Heath and Thatcher on the miners) and cowardly failures to reform our dysfunctionality (Wilson and Callaghan on the Unions). But nothing remotely compares with the “goatf***” of today.

Senior ex ministers and ex Prime Ministers seem united that the current Cabinet is the worst in living memory. Add in the extraordinary shallowness of the lobby fodder sitting on the benches behind our empty Prime Minister – fodder whose sole role seems to be to cheer when he bumbles inanities – and you have a recipe for chaos. And that’s what we’ve got.

Campaigning politicians with vision are rare in modern Britain. Thatcher perhaps the only one post war though Harold Wilson’s governments created genuine social change. But competence was generally to be relied upon. Economic crises happened all too frequently but from Healey to Jenkins, Major to Brown we had people at the top eventually to cope with them. Today Rishi Sunak is the only one who appears even marginally competent and when push comes to shove early in the New Year this may be sorely tested.

What is modern Britain ? Sadly a broken, divided nation doing the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. Is there nothing we can do well ? Sadly not. And part of that comes from appointing manifestly unsuitable people to important jobs. And then communicating in a way designed, it seems, to give offence. Is the Home Office really the cesspit it’s recent communications on our loss of Freedom of Movement suggest it is. Or is it just the malignancy of the Ministers running it ?

The Shakespearean inanities of the infighting in Johnson’s kitchen cabinet ought to be the source of a rip-roaring comedy or farce. But this isn’t a tale of the Emperor being entertained by his fool. No, the Emperor himself is the fool who cannot be taken seriously and his courtiers are sycophantic failures.

“We should not need the government to tell us when we can go to the pub or out for a meal.” Rod Liddle in the “Sunday Times”

But we do Rod, that’s exactly what we need. One of the roles of Government is to protect us from others, and from ourselves. As long as I can remember people have railed against “Health and Safety” as some sort of infringement of our personal liberty. Which of course it is. Our liberty to kill ourselves or others accidentally.

I remember my Dad back in the 1960s exploding against Barbara Castle over the breathalyser and seat belts. He and his golfing friends were outraged at this restriction of our freedom – our freedom to be arrogant tosspots actually.

As citizens we have to accept that government and the law curbs what we do.— that a civilised society has to have rules. We must hope that Government acts rationally – which means that it takes due regard of expert advice. A good test is to look at what others are doing. Across Europe countries, taking expert advice, are responding to the Second Wave with a Second Lockdown. It’s not just us.

A driver of populist politics is libertarianism. The idea that we, especially we English, must have the right to do what we like. Whatever the experts say. All of those who truly understood economics knew that Brexit was a very bad idea indeed. But Michael Gove told us that it was alright to stop listening to experts. The same with lockdown. We responded far too late to impose the first lockdown and lifted it too soon. Plus ça change.

Getting the balance between authoritarianism and freedom right isn’t easy. But when increasing numbers of our fellow citizens are dying horrible deaths caused by a virulent and hugely contagious disease to restrict freedoms to prevent its spread ought to be uncontentious. But then you know Rod – he knows best…

“Furthermore, Mr Cummings, although right wing, isn’t a Tory — that’s to say, a believer in the wisdom of institutions.” Paul Goodman in The Times today.

Well you could have fooled me. Not about Cummings – like his erstwhile biggest fan the Prime Minister he clearly believes only in himself and the devil can take the hindmost. No I refer to the idea that Tories believe in the “ wisdom of institutions”.

Let’s look at a few institutions where that alleged belief has been challenged or abandoned. Start with Europe’s most important institution the European Union. The Tory Right, which has now taken absolute charge of the Conservative Party, had contempt for the EU. Faced with some genuine concerns about the power of and direction being taken by the EU Conservatives decided to flee rather than fight. They could, alongside likeminded governments in France and Germany, have argued and campaigned for reform. Instead they picked up the ball and ran away. Some “belief” that was.

Then there’s the institution of the rule of law. Rather important in a democracy you’d think but now being openly flouted with extraordinary arrogance with international law being boastfully broken. The House of Lords, an “institution” if ever there was one, has told the Conservative government to think again, wisely you might think. But the government will deny that wisdom and overrule the Lords. Some “belief” again.

Another institution that this government has undermined has been medical science. Here we are in the world of the denigration of experts who were rejected so contemptuously a few years ago by the Tories’ Tory Michael Gove. It is clear that the advice of expert advisors have been almost arbitrarily accepted or rejected on COVID-19. Often on the same day. That “belief” was random – Conservative politics and expediency decided whether the institution of medical expertise would be listened to and acted upon. Or not.

The BBC, an institution universally admired at home and abroad but creaking a bit, is another example. The usual suspects have the BBC in their sights – here the subtle changes necessary might be a bit cerebral for the Tory haters. Where what is needed is to blow the bloody doors off they’d prefer to blow the whole institution up.

Finally the institution whose wisdom you’d think Conservatives would most want to protect – the Conservative Party itself – is a shadow of its former tolerant and pluralist self. The One Nation Tories have been hounded out as from top to bottom loyalty to the cause of Brexit is required, or else. Wisdom comes from tolerance and constructive debate. The wisdom of the Conservative Party has been replaced and the Party is now a nationalist cult which tolerates no dissent.

Dominic Raab and the other noisy but impotent critics of China exhibit a combination of ignorance and defective memory. Anyone in Hong Kong in the 1980s after the signing of the Joint Declaration knew it was a perfidious sell-out. The final meaningful jewel of Empire was given away and its people abandoned.

The People’s Republic move to tighten its control was delayed only by a pragmatic decision to wait until the West could do nothing about it. So between the mid 1980s and today the Chinese have built their international economic power to such an extent that we are all totally reliant on it. There is an unbreakable integration between China as manufacturer and as customer and the West that no amount of hand-wringing and huffing and puffing can change.

Britain was willing to fight a war and surrender lives in considerable numbers to support a couple of thousand British citizens occupying a few fields with sheep and rocks with penguins in the South Atlantic. But around the same time we meekly handed over five million of Hong Kong’s people, no less deserving of our protection, to one of the world’s most authoritarian and illiberal regimes. Perfidious Albion at its most venal.

So when we listen to Raab and Tugendhart and co. whining on about Beijing’s perfidy we should remind them that it was the inadequacy and lack of care, and principle, of Britain’s 1980s government that led us to where we are.

Give or take a few months I am the same age as Max Hastings whose excellent article in The Times today about the failings of Trump and Johnson I commend to you. I have seen many of the same things over sixty plus years as Sir Max has. In politics, along the way, there have been a few crooks and charlatans and a few with the morals of a polecat. But never can I recall such an absence of talent as today.

Take Richard Nixon. He was an able man, streets ahead potentially of any current politician in the US. Unfortunately when he was made along with giving him the talent God made him a shit (as Denis Healey once said of David Owen). Trump is like Nixon – only without the ability.

Its not just about character. Johnson is less disqualified from being Prime Minister by his abhorrent character than he is by his incompetence. He actually gets nothing right and manages nothing well. If he was a brilliant leader but with personal flaws (Lloyd George or JFK) you’d shrug and say fair enough. But he isn’t.

In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King. Joe Biden and Keir Starmer are , I think, better than that. Certainly Starmer has the potential to be a good leader and seems a principled and decent man. Biden and Harris can clear the Augean stables – a task which will dominate the presidency. What a mess his predecessor leaves behind him.

My dream of a summit between Starmer and Kamala Harris in 2024 is on track! There’s talent enough there and an absence of the fatal flaws of Trump or Johnson. Come that blessed dawn we can draw a line under the Age of Incompetence and Venality in which we now live. Live the dream.

When democracy gives us a result we approve of we embrace it, when it doesn’t we worry about it. However at the heart of the debate is the detail not the principle. In 2016 democracy delivered Trump the White House and the British people Brexit. In both cases there were huge flaws in the processes and, to some extent, the principle of the votes.

Hillary Clinton won the Presidential ballot by two million votes. But the serendipity of the electoral system denied her the Presidency. In Britain the winning side in the referendum lied to the electorate and there were dirty tricks. And the people didn’t know what we were voting for because nobody knew what we were voting for. At the very least there should have been a confirmatory plebiscite once the terms were known and the irregularities of the vote had been investigated.

“Democracy” is not a simple concept except at the most abstract level – “Citizens should choose their Government “ – that sort of thing. But how they make that choice is what really matters.

Too many votes in Britain don’t count because of FPTP. Because of the Electoral College in America a Republican vote in California or a Democrat vote in Wyoming doesn’t count. It doesn’t have to be like this. The Electoral College is actually anti-democratic and in 21st Century America wholly unnecessary.

There are well-tried voting systems that if applied at a British General Election would give an outcome that more accurately reflect the electorate’s collective wishes. And simplistic Yes/No referendums on highly complex issues wouldn’t happen because they would be unnecessary if we had a Parliament which more accurately reflected the people in its composition.

When Alan Turing was pardoned a few years ago there was a sense that justice had been done. But there was also a sense that legal and intellectual logic had been broken. Turing had been convicted according to the laws and mores of his times. He was pardoned by those of ours.

What is done is done. We can look back on history and regret it, but we cannot disown it. Turing’s pardon gave us a warm feeling, perhaps. It also brought his case and those of hundreds like him to our attention – a good thing. Those who are ignorant of history are more likely to repeat its mistakes. The more we know the better we can have a chance to be.

Slavery and its principal facilitator – Empire – were grotesque and shameful. But the scale of what happened and the impact of it was permanent. The countries of the Caribbean are how they are today because of the slave trade and the colonial exploitation of natural and human resources . The southern United States were built on slavery and the racial demographics of modern day America were formed by it.

We need to balance the need to record and understand the past with a genuine need to condemn it if it offends modern day standards. But removing a statue or a memorial does not change the past. Indeed it may mean that we less understand what happened. Out of sight out of mind.

The memorials and statues should stay where they are. Alongside them should be placed clear statements which tell the stories warts and all. The inextricably linked subjects of Imperialism and Slavery need to be better understood – the creation of a “Museum of the British Empire” telling the complete story of imperialism and colonialism is long overdue. Hiding away events from the past so that we do not offend today’s sensitivities is adding delusion and denial to past offences. Let’s seek out and tell the truth.

Preposterous delusions in “The Times” today . “Mr Johnson has an opportunity to deepen the transatlantic alliance by working with Mr Biden” Real Politik will dictate that Britain will be way down President Biden’s list of priorities despite past sentimental attachments. The only “transatlantic alliance” that will matter will be America’s with Europe of which Britain will, to all intents and purposes, no longer be part.

It’s now sixty years since Britain was told by an American Secretary of State that the “Special Relationship” was bunkum (I paraphrase) and that the only option for our future was as active participants in a uniting Europe. The developing idea that our genuine emotional and cultural ties with the United States could help us as a member of the EU be a bridge between Washington and Brussels had some validity, but that of course has been torpedoed by Brexit.

Biden will thankfully have a more rational approach to international relations that his nationalist predecessor. He will know that Europe, Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, India, Brazil, Israel, the Middle East etc. etc. are America’s priorities. Little England will be way down the list. When Angela Merkel is the first of Mr Biden’s meetings it will be to a backdrop which will include the European flag as well as that of Germany.

The whole Brexit disaster was based on the premise that a Britain disconnected from Europe could return to the Great Power status it once enjoyed. It was faux-patriotic bombast – actually laughable and quite sad. Even Donald Trump didn’t buy that nonsense and Joe Biden certainly won’t. Time to get real.

The United Kingdom does not matter much to the United States of America these days – indeed it has not for a very long time. President Biden will be polite and perhaps a bit sentimental. But at a personal level he probably cares more about Ireland than he does about the UK as befits a man from County Louth (albeit a while back!). I suspect that his views of Britain would be the same as those of Dean Acheson nearly sixty years ago:

“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.”

I would like to think that Biden won the Presidency because the American electorate rejected the petty nationalism of Trump – perhaps there was a bit of that. But in truth it was simpler. The demographics of the US are changing, and this was a watershed election. A very different America is emerging – one that will be characterised not by Biden’s presidency but by Kamala Harris’s which will surely follow it. Neither Biden nor his “president is waiting” alongside him will want much to do with a Britain breaking itself asunder and drifting offshore from the great economic, cultural and political entity that is Europe. As Acheson presciently put it there is no “Role apart from Europe” for Britain.

The nationalism of Trump had resonance with the nationalism of Brexiting Britain. The first foolishness will now, and quickly, disappear. Britain alone among America’s allies has nationalist great power delusions. When Joe Biden has his first summit with Angela Merkel the European Flag will be as prominent as the German one – maybe more so. That’s the twenty-first century reality for us as well, if only we could see it, not anachronistic memories of Roosevelt and Churchill’s special relationship which was short, pragmatic and successful. Those days are long since gone.

America’s future looks bright now it is no longer polluted with Orange. The move from Vulgarity to Decency and from Disarray to Competence starts today. It would be excellent if these moves could be matched in Britain. But sadly, they won’t be for a very long time. As America returns to global respectability Britain lurches towards irrelevance Losing an Empire may be regarded as a misfortune; also losing Europe looks like carelessness.