Decades ago Tom Peters suggested that companies would be well advised to “stick to their knitting “ – to do what they had expertise and experience in. BP is an Oil and Gas corporation. Over the years it’s been pretty good at the task of finding, producing, refining and marketing hydrocarbons. That’s what it does. That’s its knitting. And the odd blip aside that’s what it does well.

The future for oil and gas is not as bleak as the pessimists argue. Let’s take gas first. Across the Northern hemisphere countries have a domestic gas usage for heating and cooking that cannot be unraveled for decades. And won’t be. Virtually every home in Northern Europe has central heating fired by a gas boiler. That is not going to change for a long time – if ever. The mix in power generation is changing and, yes, renewables are playing an increasing part. But we will still have gas fired plant turning out electricity for quite a while. In times of financial stress will countries really want to abandon efficient gas driven electricity generation and invest in wind turbines? Not as much as people think – at least not for quite a while.

And oil? The oil specific uses will remain so. Ships, whether they carry containers or cruise passengers, will continue to be driven by fuel oil. Aircraft will fly only on kerosene. There may be fewer flights – but the planes, like the ships, will run on oil. Personal transport mostly likewise. Despite the plethora of battery driven or partly battery driven cars available most of the car park runs on petrol and diesel. And will continue to do so. Unless and until an electric car has the range, the refuelling simplicity and the cost of a petrol driven car most of us will continue to choose the latter. The same applies with trucks and buses – these may not be oil specific but petrol and diesel powered vehicles will be in the majority for a very long time. And remember your electric car has to get its battery charged – and at the moment the electricity to do that comes substantially from gas-fired power stations!

Change in energy consumption comes from technological advance. Aircraft and ships and automobiles are far more efficient than once they were. The greatest contribution to reducing hydrocarbon consumption comes from the hidden renewable – efficiency improvements.

BP’s expertise is in hydrocarbons. The record they and other oil and gas corporations have with renewables is patchy at best. Twenty years on from saying they would be “Beyond Petroleum” they aren’t. Low production cost crude oil and gas will be attractive so long as the consumption infrastructure is there. It will be. Stick to the knitting !

“…a constitutional monarchy can be a source of stability and focus for national unity. But as Britain’s Queen has so often demonstrated, that stability stems not just from the constitutional arrangements but the character of the person occupying the throne.” The Times today.

There are many arguments against monarchical systems but this is one of the best. Royal families are like any other family – they have their “Good” their “Bad” and their “Oh My God” members. Britain’s last but one Monarch was certainly in the last category. Only lust and loucheness stopped us entering the war with a declared Nazi supporter as our King.

We can look at our political leaders today and see them as woeful. They are, but we chose them. To have a head of state who is only in the job because of who his or her father was is almost comically anachronistic. Queen Elizabeth has been good – if you must have a Monarch the old girl’s the type you want. But if she’d sadly not survived into adulthood then Margaret Windsor would have been the Queen. Not an appetising prospect. Similarly you would only have needed the fickle finger of fate simultaneously to Have removed Lillibet and her eldest son Charles from us to have given us King Andrew. See what I mean?

Constitutional monarchies are high risk choices as Juan Carlos and before him Edward VIII have showed. Time to choose our leaders surely ? A President of the people chosen by the people and for the people works well for Ireland and Germany and for many other democratic states. If the Spanish follow suit who could blame them. And so should we.

Brexit is , of course, the ultimate “we know best” policy. An irrational and profoundly damaging act of collective self-harm driven solely by the preposterous notion that our sovereignty as a nation was under threat and that, as Flanders and Swann put it, “The English, The English, the English are best”. As an Empire and a nation falls into irreversible decline notions of superiority , however delusional, come to the fore. Read Gibbon. This is more of the same.

Mr Dolan and his fellow gold plated anarchists can afford the arrogant indulgence that they “know best”. Not many of the super rich have caught COVID-19. Whilst the rest of us need protection from common sense policies like mask-wearing Mr Dolan can pay for some little people to do his shopping. The idea that our Human Rights are endangered by having to wear a mask is comical but I suppose if Mr Dolan wants to throw some of his money at a losing cause that’s his affair. What a silly man.

David Aaronovitch, writing in “The Times” today, reveals the bizarre world of QAnon. I’d never heard of it but it seems to be a complex amalgam of conspiracy theories most of them utterly bizarre. Why has it appeared at this time ? Here’s a theory (all my own, there’s no conspiracy). The real world, particularly the real world of politics, has become so bizarre, so dysfunctional, so surreal that if you invent something bonkers by comparison with the disturbing realities it becomes credible.

Think about it for a moment. A game show panel participant, used to operating at the lowest common denominator of entertainment, becomes President. He has no qualifications for the job, is morally defective and revels in his egomania. He is a fool. But that’s not the most disturbing part. He is placed in office and survives in office because the political Party of Abraham Lincoln wants him there. Maybe they thought he was Ronald Reagan redux? He isn’t. He’s a maniac. No conspiracy theory here. Fact. And the suits of Wall Street support him because the Dow booms. Never mind the quality – look at your booming portfolio.

Lets cross the pond. Post Imperial Britain was paddling along quite happily in its respectable newish role as a big player on the European stage. It is highly praised for its hosting of perhaps the most successful Olympic Games of modern times. To say that London is the capital city of Europe is not hyperbole. It is rich, diverse, culturally outstanding and friendly and welcoming. The diversity of Britain spreads across the nation – young Europeans from 30 countries are everywhere working, especially, in the Health Service and the Service sectors – a hugely mutually beneficial arrangement for all.

Britain was hardly broken but they tried to fix it anyway – fix it by blowing it up. A kill or cure choice made at a time when there was nothing to cure. A movement strongly resembling QAnon and driven by an extreme variant of Conservative Nationalism decided that we would be better off going it alone. There was no reason and no rationale in play – just the rawest of grotesquely intellectually deficient flag-waving patriotism. And, of course, if you’re waving the Union Flag frenetically you won’t be waving any others. Or be able to do much else. The English, The English, The English are best.

Its seems that the madness virus is very infective spreading from the White House to 10 Downing Street and beyond. Ironically though at a time when we need unpartisan competence what we find we’ve got is lying ineptitude. When citizens are dying in their tens of thousands the last thing a nation needs is boastful bluff and bluster. But that’s what we’ve got. Now I won’t punt a conspiracy theory about this though there are some very shady characters in the West Wing and the Downing St basement. The thought that there is method in the madness of these apparent charlatans is a very scary thought indeed.

Right of Centre political commentator and academic at the University of Kent, Matthew Goodwin, has said this about the ‘“values” (his word) of Boris Johnson’s supporters:

“They prioritise the nation and the national community. They prefer stability over change. And they favour continuity over disruption and discontinuity. This is why they cherish Britain’s history, heritage and collective memory and are more sensitive to attempts to deconstruct them.”

My comments in response.

This is brave but I’m afraid doomed attempt to give an intellectual substance to prejudice. That prejudice prefers its comfort zone to the challenge of considering new ways of doing things. To “prioritise the nation” is nationalism by any other name. Because it’s obverse is to have to denigrate other nations. The “English, The English, The English are best” poppycock so brilliantly mocked by Flanders and Swann 50 years ago. The “English community” extends this xenophobia to race and culture. That “community” is white and if it has a religion it’s Christian. What it certainly isn’t is brown and Islamic.

“Stability” actually is retrospective and nostalgic. The change (e.g. to a multiracial society) has already happened and the status quo is now this. The “national community” is diverse – not just from immigration but also from freedom of movement from the EU27. So the days of the continuity of the “White, Anglo-Saxon, first language English are in the distant past (1950s Britain.

“Disruption and discontinuity” is a further euphemism for the perceived threat of the culturally challenging. Race and nationality are at its heart. When the policemen, the doctors, the teachers and the rest of the service sector employees are more likely to go to the Mosque than the Church and the plumber is Polish that shakes up the status quo and is perceived as disruptive.

“Britain’s history, heritage and collective memory” is the reason to believe that it once was better. And as we say that we begin not to recognise our nation any more so we rerun the newsreels of the times when it was “better”. The spirit of the Blitz which hardly any alive today remember and the blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover. The poppy police around Remembrance Day are a modern phenomenon – we don’t just want to Virtue Signal our own patriotism with at least a fortnight of poppy wearing we want to condemn those who opt out.

Whether what Mr Goodwin identifies here are truly “values” I would strongly challenge. A prejudice is an uniformed attitude not a value and most of this is the narrowest form of prejudice. And you don’t have to have more than a passing understanding of 20th Century nationalism and the horrors that ensued from its dominance to want to avoid it ever happening again. But, as I say, the “value” of “prioritising the nation” is profoundly nationalistic.

In our binary world there is little room for nuance. The “Black Lives Matter” slogan is a pretty straightforward one but it won’t appeal to those who have the pseudo “values” Mr Goodwin identifies. And the problem is that real values are more complex, not binary and require a generosity of spirit and a social intelligence which Boris Johnson does not stand for. Those who vote for him even less. You can’t disguise raw prejudice as a value set.

Trevor Phillips has an interesting piece about colour, race and tribe in The Times today. I have been thinking about sport and the Arts in the context of what he says.

The very good South African fast bowler Alan Donald’s nickname was “White Lightning”. This was at a time when most of the world’s top fast bowlers were black so Donald’s skin colour was then considered to be noteworthy. Earlier in cricket history the fine Jamaican batsman George Headley was called the “Black Bradman” signifying the seemingly unusual fact that a black man could bat with the best. But it wasn’t until 1960 that the West Indies had a black captain – Frank Worrell – it was a job previously the preserve, on racial grounds, of the white man.

Institutionalised racism scarred the United States of America, and still does albeit that theatres no longer have a “Coloreds” entrance and seating area. In sport and The Arts everywhere there have always been race driven divisions and assumptions perhaps reaching its gruesome apogee with Laurence Olivier blacking up to play Othello. The “Black and White Minstrels” were a downmarket version on this absurdity.

What influences talent and its exploitation? We are firmly in the nature/nurture squally waters on this one. Can white men genetically not play the trumpet as well as black men (nature) or is it that the jazz trumpet can best be played by those from the African-American cultural tradition (nurture)? It is surely true that it helps if our talents can be nurtured by having sympathetic people around us – look at the extraordinary Kanneh-Mason family whose individual achievements have nothing to do with their skin colour and everything to do with the sympathetic family in which they grew up.

Elvis Presley grew up on the border between the White and the Black areas of Tupelo Mississippi and his music and style was influenced by both cultures. Elvis heard the music that influenced him played live at the black nightclubs he frequented as a teenager and young adult. Some in the black community accused him of cultural appropriation but most just admired him whatever the roots of his music.

In modern day Britain we are nominally and legally integrated but in fact there are considerable racial, cultural and social divides and tensions. And huge differences of opportunity. Where seventy years Fred Trueman could grow up in a working-class Yorkshire mining family and play cricket for England today at the highest level the teams are overwhelmingly middle class, and white. The odd Asian-heritage spin bowler aside there are few non-whites in the English game. Jofra Archer and Chris Jordan are more than of Caribbean heritage – they both grew up in Barbados and it is on that island that their relatives still live. They are welcome in the England team of course, but their presence emphasises the fact that our own Caribbean-heritage communities have produced few top cricketers. It can’t be nature can it ? Must be nurture – as with the missing working-class cricketers there has been lack of opportunity.

When Apartheid ended the South African Government and sporting authorities systematically introduced quotas to increase the opportunities for non whites. It was, and is, controversial, but it works. If you are serious about improving the chances of those discriminated against – in sport, the Arts and in any other sector – you have proactively to do something about it.

Elvis “borrowed” from Little Richard and Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra from Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Junior, The Beatles from the Isley Brothers (and many other Black musicians). Historically musicians and artists did not “stay in their lane” but in other walks of life, especially sport, the lanes have had walls alongside them that were difficult to climb over. In Britain we are not doing enough in some sports, especially cricket, to break down class and colour barriers. It’s time we started.

In the 1980s I worked in Hong Kong for a multinational corporation intent on benefitting from the opening up of China. We were one of the bees buzzing excitedly around a rapidly growing honeypot. In 1989 the events of Tiananmen Square caused only a brief pause in business. There was a little bid of hand wringing but we soon buzzed back and were doing deals. Coincidentally in the same year the Berlin Wall fell. In Russia as well as China money talked and in both big countries we in the West salivated at the commercial opportunities – we didn’t ask too many awkward questions.

The threats posed by present day China and Russia are of the West’s making. Both changing great powers could see that capitalism works – not least for the fat cats at the top. And they could see that the muted cries in the West that economic change should be accompanied by democratic change could safely be ignored. The Chinese, as ever, could see that time was on their size, as was scale. “China is Very Big” said my Hong Kong Chief Executive back in 1989 – never mind the quality of the regime feels its width, it’s breadth, it’s size and its prospects. Let’s get some of the action.

MultinatIonals like the one I worked for sourced people and money globally and our partners in Peking or Moscow welcomed the global benefits that doing deals with us brought. Two nations traditionally closed became open if there was a buck to be made, which there was. As bridges were built the Chinese and Russians crossed them bringing their newly acquired bucks with them. From football clubs to telecoms it was Russian and, especially, Chinese money that swept up western assets. Apple as well as Huawei rely on an alliance of western demand and Chinese business acumen and labour.

The Chinese and the Russians knew that they needed to protect what they were creating – information is power and they weren’t too bothered about how they obtained it. Were there spies in our business operation in Hong King back in the late 1980s ? Anecdotal evidence suggested that there were. And now? Do you really think the People’s Republic would have moved against Hong Kong recently without insider information that they could get away with it ? The political, commercial and military intelligence operations of the Chinese and Russians are substantial and designed to focus on keeping what they have and building on it.

Hand in hand with the spooks are the greeks bearing gifts. If the Chinese, and more so the Russians, believe that their relative strength is enhanced by weakening the solidarity of the West they’ll happily throw money at the challenge. The Russia Report doesn’t confirm the extent to which Russian money helped achieve Brexit but the evidence is more than anecdotal. A united Europe , especially one with plans for a Defence Force (EDF) , presents a threat to an increasingly militaristic and totalitarian Russia. An EDF without British participation would be weaker. A European Union without British membership weaker then one with us. Go figure.

One of the oldest messages in the political strategy textbook is “Divide and Rule” . And nothing is more divisive than flag-waving nationalism. Trump’s nationalism and that of Britain’s Conservatives were just what the Russians and Chinese ordered – and paid for. In a world where there are just four great powers, and with two of them (China and Russia) a threat to the West, the events of the last four years will have put smiles on the faces in Moscow and Peking. The madman in the White House throwing insults every day at the Chinese won’t worry them one bit. The Great Power that is the United States shooting itself clumsily in the foot every day won’t worry the Russians either. And the fourth undisputed great power – a uniting Europe pursuing ever closer union – has been hugely damaged by Britain petulantly picking up its ball and running away.

When a patient suffers a mental breakdown gradualism is often a key part of the treatment. You don’t overnight make a mad person sane, you work gradually building their confidence and step by sometimes painful step normality returns. And so it is with Britain. On one baleful day in 2016 the English Patient committed a near fatal act of self harm. The consequences of this horror are very much with us, but so are the signs of cure – albeit shining dimly for now.

For Britain to be the only country in Europe without a trade deal in Europe and via this with the rest of the world is clearly preposterous. The modern world is interdependent and relationships have to be covered by rules. Even some of the most strident Brexiteers didn’t want to leave the single market or the customs union – let’s not do it. We should be able to cobble together an arrangement based on those of Norway or Iceland or Switzerland that does this. It would be a start and the Patient would start to show signs of recovery. The eyes dulled by confusion would brighten and recognition would return.

The next step might be to remove the annoyances of petty Apartheid – we can have separate development but that does not mean we shouldn’t be able to take our dog with us when we travel. Or not be covered by reciprocal healthcare arrangements. That’s negotiable as well. Freedom of Movement might be more difficult but it can be covered by some new (also reciprocal) “right of work and residence” concession which nominally falls short of a Migration Free-for-all but means that our fruit and vegetables get picked and our young people could continue to live, study, travel and work across thirty countries. Now the Patient is sitting up and taking sustenance. Cure is in sight.

The headbangers will complain that this is “BRINO” – Brexit in Name Only , and they will be right. But, frankly, to coin another acronym TINA. Unless all of us in Britain want to head for the funny farm there is no alternative.

“…the EU is on its way to becoming something akin to a state, with a flag, a parliament, a currency and, now, common debt. While one wishes our friends and neighbours the very best with this questionable continent-wide enterprise, it is terrific not to be involved.” Iain Martin in The Times today.

Well it’s taken a while for Winston Churchill’s “United States of Europe” to come close to reality and despite Mr Martin’s optimism and sarcastic good wishes I’m not sure that they are there yet. Nor that it’s “terrific” for Britain not to be involved. WSC didn’t see us being involved either, but the times have rather changed since 1948 haven’t they? The main change is that unlike immediately after WW2 Britain cannot remotely be considered to be a great power.

Not that all this would matter a fig of course if we had followed Dean Aitchison’s later advice that in our post imperial world we should turn to Europe. Actually of course we did and for forty years we played a not insignificant part in Europe’s economic and political union. The blindingly obvious fact that in the modern world Britain is a European nation or it is nothing became ever clearer. Then in 2016 we chose “nothing”. Odd thing to do!

Until Boris Johnson’s 2019 Election victory there was still a chance that we would see sense – perhaps by the mechanism of a second Referendum. (We would not have been the first Nation to back away from constitutional disaster given a second chance to do so.). But the 2019 election scuppered that.

It was a curious alliance that gave us the Johnson Government. Hard Right Neo-Conservative Eurosceptics had taken over the Tory Party but there were still a few good men and women of the “One Nation” persuasion to frustrate the Headbangers. They had to be got rid of, and were. Johnson’s forces In Parliament were reinforced by political novices from some very odd places. The red wall was breached.

Boris Johnson was not elected by Conservatives but by the same motley crew that gave us “Leave” in 2016. Suffice to say this alliance was not driven by reason – to this day no reasoned argument for Brexit has been put forward. It was and is a combination of motivations of which xenophobia, islamophobia and in some cases outright racism were significant drivers. Not for the likes of Iain Martin of course. They invented the utterly spurious issue of “Sovereignty” to rationalise their anti-Europe choice.

The quote at the head of this response shows that Sovereignty it is still the Brexiteers only (and weak and wrong) argument. That membership of the EU marginally affects a member nation’s sovereignty is true. That the positive benefits of being in the Union are immense is true as well. To argue that as an EU member a country significantly and damagingly surrenders independence is frankly nonsense. I don’t like what the current governments of Poland and Hungary are doing one bit. But despite being EU members they are sufficiently independent and sovereign to do it.

Mr Martin is a flag-waver of the “intellectual” wing of the Brexiteer Movement. I read him every day and he is thoughtful and articulate on most things even if I disagree with him his logic is usually impressive. Except on Brexit, where logic doesn’t feature. Quite why he wandered into the dark and dim World of Euroscepticism I’ve often wondered. Most of his equally bright fellow Times columnists keep well away from those unpleasant and intellectually impoverished shores.

Back to the 2019 General Election. Here is a genuine Twitter exchange from yesterday between Mr Martin and me that suggests he might then have been celebrating a bit:

Iain Martin: Everyone needs a holiday. #PMQs

Paddy Briggs: Everyone needs a Government.

Iain Martin: Got one, 80 seat majority. What a night that was…

Well it certainly was a “night” and if you believe that the ends justified the means (the ends were to destroy the anti-Brexit forces as much as they were to defeat Jeremy Corbyn) then you shrug about the means – the banality and dishonesty of Johnson’s vulgar campaign.

Whether you shrug about the aftermath is another matter. The “80 Seat majority” Government has been, and is, the least competent and most venal of modern times. Their main virtue is consistency – they mismanage everything with the same reliable predictability.

I look forward to Iain Martin chronicling the upcoming political events of the rest of 2020 and I’m sure that he’ll bring appropriate intellectual rigour to the task. This includes the final phase of Brexit and what happens in the new year as well as the surely certain second and third phases of COVID-19. If they don’t already seem a long time ago those celebratory “what a night” moments soon will. I’m sure it was a “marvellous party”. For some.

“It is the UK that leads the way”. Says Boris Johnson again with the classic simplistic, mendacious, faux-patriotism that characterises him and his sordid Government. David Aaronovitch summarises well in The Times today why we can’t and mustn’t ever trust this shower.

Personally I’ve never been flag-wavingly patriotic except for British and English sporting teams. My earliest memories include the shameful debacle of Suez and of human rights abuses in the declining Empire from Kenya to Malaya and others. We weren’t very good then – but we are a hell of a sight worse now.

There is much still to admire – our creative arts are of high quality and the BBC is second to none anywhere in the world. Some of the consumables we make we can be proud of – Whisky, Gin, some Cheese, organic Meat. But we don’t make much else and we have long since been overtaken in manufacturing consumer goods of all types.

Our obsession with the past , always a factor in my baby boomer lifetime, is even more present today. I like the White Cliffs as much as anyone but I don’t need a Spitfire flying over them to appreciate them. I admire Tom Moore, a splendid eccentric of a very English type, but his canonisation reeks of opportunism and his knighthood was cringemaking Virtue Signalling by the establishment.

Britain, especially England, is a very divided nation. Disraeli’s “Two Nations” still exist. Look at the incidence of COVID-19. If you’re white, southern, wealthy and well-educated you are much less likely to have been affected than if you’re black, Northern, poor and with limited education. Class mobility is better than it was but we are still one of the most class-ridden societies in the world. I have no doubt that this comes in part from our acceptance of institutionalised privilege. The monarchy and the Royal Family predicates that we ordinary citizens should know our place. The House of Lords that we should accept governance by unelected patronage receivers.

The British “We know best” is indicative of a belief system that leads to boastfulness even when there is little to boast about. The Government that never misses an opportunity to claim that something British is “world-leading” eschews transnational cooperation as if contact with foreigners will pollute us. As it stands at the end of this year we will be the only nation in Europe with no Free Trade arrangements and with the freedoms enjoyed by all thirty of our once partner nations removed. We are being told by Government to “prepare” for this calamity without being told how to do this. To emigrate looks the only rational choice.

As far as the Russia Report is concerned it’s worth repeating what I said yesterday:

“The “intelligence agencies” are an arm of government – they do what the Government of the day tells them to do. In a democracy it couldn’t be otherwise. So if these agencies didn’t investigate this matter it was because government hasn’t asked them and/or authorised them to do so. The buck doesn’t stop on the desks of the top spooks – it stops on the desk in Number 10.”

Our blame culture is another classic component of present day Britishness of which the Government is the leading exponent. It’s never them is it, always someone else? When we fail, and we nearly always fail, we look around for someone to blame. Fool Brittania for putting up with all this.