Category Archives: politics

Some (more) thoughts on Brexit

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The June 2016 referendum resulted in a small but clear majority in favour of leaving the EU.

If this verdict is not implemented by our political class then the centre ground of British politics will be hollowed out. It will be the gravest political crisis that our nation has faced in peacetime.

That we are still contemplating the verdict not being implemented by our political class two years after the referendum is a terrible result.

I think Theresa May’s approach has been appalling. ‘Theresa the Appeaser’ indeed.

What would I do?

Assert the following, in order:

the UK, in accordance with the result of the referendum, will leave the EU;
it will therefore become a ‘third nation’ in EU terms;
the UK should seek:
i) to have healthy relations with the EU on the basis of being a third nation, covering such things as air transport and so on;
ii) seek mutual recognition for large parts of our industrial sector;
iii) be open to a mutually beneficial Free Trade Arrangement, at a point that the remainder EU shows that it is open to such a thing;
be prepared for the EU, for its own reasons, to resist the above;
be prepared to change the overall orientation of our country’s foreign policy in the light of such resistance (if the EU acts as a hostile state towards the UK then certain conclusions follow);
pursue CANZUK and similar arrangements with those states with whom we share close ties of history and family.

This craven, pusillanimous, faithless capitulation to the institutional inertia of the establishment elite is driving me mad. It has to stop.

It will stop, of course – and the UK will exit the EU, and in twenty years time we will look back on the summer of 2018 as the year the heat addled our brains.

Bad faith and failures of imagination

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Theresa May has been leading the Brexit negotiations from a position of bad faith. Which is a damning thing to write as an opening sentence, yet seems an inescapable conclusion in the light of the Chequers agreement and the consequent honourable resignations of David Davis and Steve Baker. After all, Davis has been formally responsible for our negotiations with the European Commission as we seek to leave the European Union. It is now clear that Davis’ department – the Department for Exiting the European Union – was deliberately sidelined by May as a team reporting to Downing Street, led by a civil servant, prepared an alternative plan to that which Davis and his team had been working on.

The plan that Davis and Baker were working on was one that was developed in good faith. It was based upon the Lancaster House speech that Theresa May gave in January 2017, in which she explicitly sought to regain control over our own laws as a result of the referendum – Brexit meant Brexit at that point. Yet at the same time as those with formal responsibilities for developing our position were working openly, May was fostering a clandestine document (well, clandestine to Davis and Baker, it was shared with Angela Merkel in advance of being shared with the Cabinet).

This is bad faith. Why did Theresa May follow such a path? I do not believe that she is an instinctively bad or dishonourable person, so where can we identify the causes of such underhand behaviour? I believe that the answer is found in a simple word ‘establishment’. There is, after all, an immense bureaucracy which is the ‘continuing state’ in our government. Most of these voted to Remain in the EU, for that is the environment in which they have been formed, and on which, in many cases, their careers depend. These establishment attitudes are buttressed from outside by all the other seemingly permanent fixtures of the British political landscape, from the Financial Times to the CBI. As Jacob Rees-Mogg has put it, the establishment considers the vote for Brexit to have been a terrible mistake, and has therefore put all of its efforts into seeking to minimise the consequence of the decision taken by the British people in the referendum.

This is a path to disaster.

There is no benefit to be found in seeking to split the difference between the referendum vote and the inertia of the establishment. That leads us to the worst of all worlds – even Peter Mandelson agrees with that! The Chequers agreement compromises in too many ways, leaving the UK as a ‘rule taker’ and implicitly under the suzerainty of the European Court of Justice. In this scenario, Brexit simply doesn’t mean Brexit.

Imagine an animal caught in a trap. The animal can stay caught, or the animal can seek to sever it’s own limb and escape. What makes no sense is to apply medical methods to minimise the direct impact of the trap upon its flesh, to pretend that nothing has happened, that the trap falling upon its limb was simply an illusion that can be wished away.

Our governing establishment was caught in a trap sprung by the referendum vote. The only coherent and rational responses to such a vote are either: to explicitly repudiate it and overthrow it through non-democratic means, accepting that this would irrevocably destroy British democracy – or, to sever the wounded limb and act with freedom, accepting the losses to establishment interests.

That the establishment has not done so, that it has chosen instead to meekly submit to the framing of all the issues in terms set by the European Commission, represents the most colossal failure of imagination in our governing class since the ill-advised venture into Suez in 1956. It is into this failure of imagination that Theresa May has been seduced, and it is this that will destroy her, unless she is somehow brought to a realisation of her peril.

After all, it is not that we are short of visions of how life in our country might proceed outside the European Union, visions that are realistic and joyful, that act in harmony with our deepest instincts and traditions. The referendum was an expression of the most profound animal spirits of our national life. Imagine a stallion that has been put to work in the fields, that then catches the scent of a mare in season. The farm-hand is desperately trying to keep the stallion tethered, and the stallion doesn’t quite know what it is that has filled his nostrils – but he has begun to recognise that there might be more to life than pulling a plough. We are the stallion, and the establishment is the farm hand – and the farm hand needs to be placed upon his backside sharpish.

We are not a people that sit comfortably with rule from a foreign power, and the original sin of Ted Heath’s referendum campaign in the 1970s has led us directly to the situation that we are in now. We will not be able to move forward unless we act honourably, in good faith, with a well-ordered imagination oriented towards our future.

Some Brexiters – Michael Gove the most notable – think that the Chequers agreement is the best that can be achieved at this point in time. His horizon of calculation is the current composition of the House of Commons, where there is no majority for the harder, or I would say cleaner, forms of Brexit. This is despite the fact that 80% of MPs campaigned on the basis that they would respect the result of the referendum and implement it; and, more significant, the fact that over 400 constituencies have a leave-voting majority. I believe that it is a profound mistake to act on the basis of what parliament may or may not approve – parliament needs to bend before the choice made by the British people.

If the Conservative party sticks with this approach – that is, if the parliamentary party preserves Theresa May in power and she clings to this establishment compromise – then it will split, and rightfully so. Then, within a few years, a government will be brought to power that fully embraces the spirit of Brexit. If the conservative party doesn’t do so, another party will replace it. The governance of Britain will be inherited by the first party to fully embrace the spirit of Brexit, the first party that keeps faith with the choice made by the British people, the first party that is willing to lead our imagining of a better future.

A little rant about Brexit and the Church of England

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Whilst I have been following much of the continuing conversation around Brexit fairly closely, I have tended to avoid writing too much due to the unfavourable ratio between heat and light that has shaped so much of the debate. I am moved to write now, however, due to a remarkably poor piece of writing that I have discovered in the Church Times, which ever so gently seems to suggest that those in favour of Brexit are not simply warmongers tossing aside a hard-earned peace, but also in the wrong with God. So herewith some comments follow, paragraph by paragraph (read Professor Chapman’s article first).

Paragraph 1: David Cameron was indeed an appalling Prime Minister, with a deeply anti-conservative world view, like most of the commentariat and those who live within that bubble of thought. I disagree that we are in a ‘fine mess’, but we’ll come on to why.

Paragraph 2: Chapman writes that the situation is complex and bleak – why? Because the EU is established upon four freedoms (he only mentions three) “and there are no solutions possible short of accepting these principles”. I wonder what the specific problem is that is being assumed that requires such purported solutions – it would seem that the problem is ‘how to participate in the European market on existing terms’, which is precisely what Brexiters have voted against. The economic part of the argument is that the long-run growth rate of the British economy is likely to be larger if the UK is outside of the EU than if it is inside. So a Brexiter doesn’t see this as a problem that needs a solution – and is certainly resistant to accepting the principles required, as they would prevent us from pursuing trade agreements with the more rapidly growing parts of the world economy.

Paragraph 3: participation in the EU “requires adjudication through mutually accepted standards and mediated by a court”. Indeed it does, which is why Brexiters would prefer trading on WTO terms – also through mutually accepted standards and mediated by a court. We do not particularly seek the Norwegian or Swiss models, unless as part of a temporary transition process. Linking the free movement of goods in Ireland to the continuation of the Good Friday peace process is mistaken both practically and morally – and the use (abuse!) of this issue by the European Commission is shameful.

Paragraph 4: I’m never sure whether Remainers like Chapman fully appreciate the implications of the arguments made in this paragraph. He writes, “there is no incentive to offer concessions that might mean other countries would start their own renegotiations with Brussels”. In other words, the Commission is not negotiating with a view to the best long-term interest of the population of the EU but with a view to preserving their existing power structure – which implies, therefore, that it is not sustained by widespread support. Rather than arguing for the principles at stake, this is about power. Chapman is speaking from a position of fear, which is not a particularly Christian stance. The last part of this paragraph, about nations finding it ‘much more effective to work as part of a massive economic bloc’ is pro-EU boiler-plate, without a great deal of empirical support. It is undoubtedly good for the major multinationals to work in a market in which local differences have been erased. I find it disturbing that an Anglican priest – and professor! – cannot see any tension between an Incarnational theology and support for companies like Monsanto.

Paragraph 5: “sovereign states have far more geopolitical power when they pool their sovereignty” – again, this reveals much about what is assumed to be important. This claim may or may not be true (I think not), but what seems unthinkable to Chapman is the notion that someone might prefer to have less power in order to have greater sovereignty. The EU largely runs according to German dictates, either explicit or implicit – see Varoufakis’ book for details on how the latter works. The construction of the UK economy over the last three decades can be seen as being shaped by German industrial interests. I’m not sure what the point of Chapman’s last sentence is, or how it is relevant.

Paragraphs 6-8: Conservative MPs, if assessed by their votes in the referendum, are indeed split – yet equally clearly the majority of MPs, and the overwhelming majority of party members, are now committed to implementing Brexit. There is an issue of principle here – the people of the UK voted by a clear majority to leave the European Union. It is perfectly in order to say ‘I think this was the wrong decision, but the people have decided and we now need to make the best of it’ (which I think is May’s position); it is a very different proposition to say ‘I think this was the wrong decision and I am now going to do everything I can to frustrate it’ – such an attitude places someone outside of the democratic process and is an unashamed bid for power. Again, in favour of large multi-national corporations – a bit of a theme in Remainer dialogue.

Paragraphs 9&10: here the fear comes fully into the open, a fear of Britain being ‘forced into a third-country status, which could have a disastrous impact upon the economy’. Trade with the EU represents something like 12% of the British economy, which is less than trade with the rest of the world and very much less than that of the internal economy itself. I have no doubt that there will be some disruption to business, especially the large multinational corporations mentioned earlier, yet there is nothing here of which to be especially afraid. The economy changes constantly and I rather suspect that the car industry in particular is facing major technology-driven changes in the next five to ten years that will have a much larger impact upon employment in the supply chain than anything which will be agreed or not between ourselves and the EU.

Paragraph 11: “The EU has preserved peace for the longest period…” This is incorrect. Peace in Europe has been preserved by NATO. Indeed, looking at the situation in Greece a compelling case could be made that it is now the EU itself which is the largest source of conflict within Europe! Chapman goes on, “that peace is fragile in the face of the simplistic populism and extremist nationalism” which he sees as dominating national politics. Clearly, Brexiters are simplistic populists – the very idea that there might be a coherent argument in favour of leaving the EU that doesn’t reduce to ‘simplistic populism’ is outside of Chapman’s experience. Which is an argument for him to read more widely. I recommend Roger Bootle, Andrew Lilico and Daniel Hannan as people whose arguments he needs to get acquainted with.

Paragraph 12: “our Church leaders might need to stand up for a vision of pan-European peace and a common humanity” – for clearly, those in favour of Brexit reject such things. In Chapman’s argument, the EU is cast in the role of ‘source of all good things’, certainly membership of it represents an extremely high political value – and I would simply ask the good Professor, how can we be certain that it is not functioning as an idol within your theology? Like all human institutions it is a fallen principality, which the British people have chosen to leave. Is there really no room for seeing positives about this? Again, the comment about “upsetting some churchgoers” is revealing – I rather suspect that there is much unexpressed anxiety amongst the great and the good of the Church of England that the people in the pew voted for Brexit at a much higher rate than average. Clearly the great unwashed must be re-educated and forced to repent of their intellectual failures.

Might it not just possibly be the case, however, that God was at work in the Brexit process? That the EU has become something deeply antagonistic to God’s preference for the poor? That an institution which prioritises the bailing out of French and German banks at the expense of impoverishing the Greek population simply no longer possesses any moral credibility whatsoever? And that the sight of an eminent theologian and teacher of the clergy defending such a fallen principality in these terms tells us all that we need to know about why the Church of England is in the state that it is in?

How do you defend a nation?

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Consider this statement from a leading US politician: “We’ve got to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border that doesn’t mean your child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws and encourages them to make the dangerous journey.” No, not Trump, that was Hillary Clinton when she was campaigning to be President. Personally I can’t fathom any moral justification for separating children from parents – and I’m glad the policy seems to be changing – but there is an issue here that needs to be addressed openly.

That issue is, simply, ‘how do you defend a nation?’

Some might say that there is no such thing as a ‘nation’ – just an agglomeration of individuals who happen to coincide by location. Such a viewpoint is useful to big business and bureaucracies for it makes their lives so much easier – there is less grit in the wheels of industry – and it is also why such perspectives tend towards support for the EU. There is an equal and opposite error which makes the nation the source of all value and meaning. One of the principal lessons of the twentieth century relates to the terror that can be unleashed when such a perspective is put into power – and the catastrophe consequent to this latter perspective goes a long way to explaining the attraction of the former.

I would want to argue against both these perspectives. I believe that there is such a thing as a healthy pride in national identity, one which avoids the Syclla of deracination and the Charybdis of fascism.

Nations are real things: there is such a thing as ‘England’ or ‘France, moreover, such things as nations can be born and thrive, they can also die. Which is why I think it does make sense to talk of ‘defending’ a nation. A nation is a group of people who (originally) share a particular territory, and in living upon that territory develop a cultural complex of language, law, morality and behaviour which is distinct from other such complexes in different parts of the world.

I believe that nations are not just real things, but that they are precious things. They are part of the glory of the human being – that we have the capacity to thrive in such diverse and multiform fashion. (This is, of course, on great display at the moment in Russia, not just in the teams playing football but even more so in the groups of fans who follow each team. This is why it makes sense to feel shame when we see England supporters behaving like Philistines in their journeys abroad – so far so good in this World Cup!)

It makes sense to identify with a nation – to say, for example, ‘I am English’ or ‘I am French’ – and to know what this means. Some, however – who tend to live in one of the major ‘world cities’ like London, and to have received at least a university level education – do not know what this sort of identification means, and they do not recognise any deficiency in their lives associated with it. The writer David Goodhart describes this contrast as being between the ‘somewheres’ and the ‘anywheres’. The somewheres know where they are from and they draw value and strength from that identification. The anywheres do not identify with a particular location and do not feel any particular need to do so. Much of the dispute in our present political culture can be traced to this division between the somewheres – who will be concerned about national identity and so more resistant to immigration – and the anywheres – who are relaxed about national identity and so more open to immigration.

This debate tends to be reduced to one about racism, yet as I have argued before, the question here is not about race but about culture. After all, a significant element – possibly the overwhelming element – of national identity is the cultural expression of it. English culture, in common with other Western cultures, places a very great weight upon the notion of human rights, which is the modern term for a much more ancient notion emphasising the respect for the individual.

This respect is derived from Christianity and cannot properly be sustained without that religious foundation, the idea that all human beings are made in the image of God and are therefore inherently worthy of respect, irrespective of any achievements or wealth or family connections that might otherwise be considered relevant. No, Western culture is built around the idea that there is something sacred about the particular human being.

Our mistake, however, is to think that the glory of an individual human being can be understood apart from the culture in which they came to birth. It is rather like admiring a flower without paying any attention to the ground into which it has planted its roots. In other words, an insistence on the sacredness of the individual does not have to blend with a disregard for the community, the culture, the nation of which they are a part. That is the mistake which our modern West has made, with such terrible consequences.

So, to return to my original question, how do we defend the nation? We defend it by living out the values and virtues that animate that nation, by recognising that, to take our own nation as an example, some things simply ‘aren’t English’, some things simply wouldn’t be done by someone who shares our values and perspectives upon life. We take steps to ensure that people who live within the nation are taught how to operate appropriately within it, learning the language, the laws, the customs that enable a free and easy inter-relationship between all who are sharing the same space. It also means being very clear when actions are taken which ‘aren’t English’ – and ensuring appropriate, vivid and clarificatory punishments for such things.

We need to hold our leaders to the same standard. When English politicians act in such a way as to nurture a sense of Englishness, all well and good. When they do something to undermine it, they too need to be brought up short and rebuked. Most of all, when something is pursued by the nation that brings shame upon us, it needs to be seen as detrimental to the national interest and renounced. What might do such a thing? Something like separating children from their parents in service of some bureaucratic edict. I think that would qualify.

Freedom needs authority and accountability

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As a fairly classic introvert, when I have to go on a long train journey I like to book ahead and make use of the ‘quiet carriage’ – the one where people are asked not to use mobile phones (that is, not to have public conversations) or make any other excessive noise. Bliss for introverts!

On my most recent journey, coming back from Cornwall, I was sat opposite a mature couple, both of them teachers – and very quiet they were too. However, the same could not be said for many of the other occupants of the carriage. In particular there was a group of youths who were rather boisterous and a young mum whose progeny was well behaved, but who delighted in telling all and sundry about that progeny, and much else besides, on her mobile phone.

The teachers across from me became increasingly exasperated. When the ticket inspector came along, they asked him if he would be able to do anything. He demurred, clearly feeling rather awkward, and then commented ‘it’s alright, they’re getting off at the next stop’. Which they did, and the remainder of the journey was suitably restful.

However, am I alone in thinking that something has gone wrong with our society? This is in so many ways a trivial example, yet it is one that can give a clear insight into the issues. The train company had set up a carriage for the purpose of being quiet, and this was very clearly advertised within the carriage itself, and by announcements from the driver. That purpose was thwarted by two groups of people, either because they were unaware of the purpose of the carriage or because they didn’t care (I rather suspect the latter).

Those who had the responsibility for ensuring that the purpose of the quiet carriage was upheld were clearly uncomfortable at the thought of trying to ensure that this happened. I don’t blame the conductor for not wanting to make a scene. We are all too familiar with stories where someone tries to uphold civilised standards of behaviour and is then berated with a deluge of foul-mouthed invective (at best) from the transgressor. The teachers, I am sure, were also fully aware of the malign consequences that might have come their way from seeking to exercise any authority.

Our culture worships individual choice, and exalts it as one of the highest of human virtues. The notion that authority is something that is needed for human flourishing is not a comfortable one for us, we would much rather tell stories of heroic individualism, where the single will triumphs over the system.

In doing this we are rather like flowers that despise the soil in which they are nurtured, and on which they depend.

Where there is no recognised authority, those who are able to exercise their will the most clearly will be those who are strong in some way, either force of personality or simple physical strength. Physical intimidation has become a much more commonplace form of negotiation in our modern society, and this is not a sign of health. Without authority the weakest are pushed to the edge, for there is nothing to restrain the vicious.

Where there is a recognised authority, however, and where such authority is generally respected and followed, then a much safer general environment is established, and those fruits of civilisation that require a certain amount of gentility are enabled to flourish. Put differently, without a due regard for authority, we succumb to the dictatorship of morons.

Yet authority is not a single value that can be asserted on its own. How, after all, might we distinguish between competing claims for authority, between the different institutions of civic society, or between different individuals and groups within them? Any form of authority must eventually rest upon a social consensus around what has most authority – that which, when fully appealed to, is allowed to over-ride other claims. In other words, every form of social authority must ultimately rest on some form of religion.

This does not necessarily mean one particular religion – it need not even necessitate any general belief in a God or gods. What it means is that there is something which that society values and holds to be most important within its common life, and which acts as the keystone in the overall arch of shared values, and therefore the shared enforcement of those values.

Crucially, what it means is that those who are in a position to exercise authority are themselves able to be held accountable for what they do. Just as respect for authority would have enabled my train conductor to uphold the purpose of the quiet carriage, so too does a proper system of authority allow those who might be abused by a corrupt conductor (give me money to keep talking loudly) recourse to something higher.

Without this ‘something higher’ – what religious people call the transcendent – human relationships resolve down to something less than fully human, something far more fully explicable by biological processes or comparisons with the animal kingdom. Such a flawed civilisation cannot last, and will be replaced by one that is still able to draw upon spiritual nourishment.

If we wish to live in a society that has recognisable continuity with the very best that our civilisation has enabled in previous centuries – if we wish to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors and build sustainably upon their achievements – I rather think we need to pay due care and attention to the role that religion played in their culture. It is as if our forebears had paid in regular amounts of capital into a bank account, which we have now been drawing upon for quite some time – indeed, I would say we are now overdrawn.

To preserve what is excellent requires some account of what is excellent that is independent of our personal choices or whims. It needs an understanding of the transcendent; it needs a religion.

The only question that matters for us in this country is which religion shall be followed.

Let’s stay the hell out of Syria

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It would seem that things in Syria are coming closer to the boil. There are several different conflicts taking place in that benighted country, and it would be worth teasing out the different levels in order to try and seek more understanding (and even so, in a short article like this, I’m going to have to oversimplify).

On one level this is a civil war between the Assad government and insurgents seeking to overthrow him. We think of the insurgents as being ISIS, the extremist Islamists well known for their horrific torture videos shared on YouTube. Anyone who is opposed to them must be on the side of right, right? Complicating this Syrian civil war, however, are the other elements that are also seeking to gain freedom from the Assad government, such as the Kurdish groups that seek to be affiliated with the autonomous region in Northern Iraq. Some of the principal supporters for the Assad regime in this conflict are the Christian groups fleeing ISIS persecution.

On the next level there is a great-power conflict being conducted through the Syrian civil war by proxy. This has mostly been the responsibility of the United States, that has interfered in Syrian territory, normally from bases in Iraq, in order to contend against ISIS – although the US has also been seeking to overthrow the Assad government in addition to this. In order to maintain this seemingly incoherent position, the US and its allies talk a lot about ‘moderate rebels’ who are the ones who are resisting Assad but are not ISIS. It is debatable whether such moderate rebels do in fact exist. However, what has changed the dynamic of this situation out of all recognition – and what has rendered the US mostly impotent as well as incompetent in Syria – has been the significant intervention by Russia, which has installed its own military forces on behalf of Assad. There is now no possibility of the Assad government being overthrown without a military defeat of Russian forces on the ground. The prospect of that even being attempted – let alone the desirability of aiming for that in the first place – is remote.

The third level of this conflict is about the regional struggle for supremacy between Iran (Shia Muslim) and Saudi Arabia (Sunni Muslim). Assad is allied to Iran and is largely a proxy for it. Saudi Arabia, by far the most powerful ideological and financial supporter of Islamist terrorism, is sponsoring the anti-Assad factions on the ground as a means to oppose the spreading influence of Iran. It is worth saying that Iran was one of the major strategic winners from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein as southern Iraq is Shia dominated, and sympathetic to Iranian leadership. The conflict in Yemen, similarly, is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran – a war which Britain is helping to support. Iran, in addition, has been hugely helped by the lifting of sanctions as a result of the Obama-led agreement

There are two very significant neighbouring powers in this conflict. The first is Israel, which is alarmed by the indications of Iranian hegemony, not least as expressed through the sponsorship of Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation that is dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel, and which is now the effectively dominant authority in southern Lebanon. Israel will not sit idly by if implacable enemies are enabled to strengthen themselves on her border. The other neighbouring power is Turkey which, despite nominal NATO membership, would appear to be another nation which is falling for the charms of President Putin. Turkey’s own principal concern would seem to be ensuring that the Kurds of their south-eastern corner are not enabled to gain their own independence.

So the situation in Syria is complex. Into this complexity strides the delicate statesmanship that we associate with the current US president, indulging in some headline-friendly air strikes that seem to have no discernible impact upon any actor in this conflict, forming something much closer to a puppet theatre than a coherent military strategy.

I would simply want to ask: why are we involved?

The nominal reason advanced for supporting the US strikes was that President Assad had been using chemical weapons upon his own population. Clearly reprehensible, if that was indeed the truth. It would seem rather odd, however, for Assad to be doing this, raising the risk of an attack, at just the point when he is on the point of winning the civil war. Dictators are not known for being scrupulously rational, it is true, but they are generally known for acting in their own self-interest.

In any case, let us assume that he did indeed order a chemical attack on his own population. It is still legitimate to ask: why are we involved? There are, after all, many awful things happening in the world. China is oppressing Tibet. North Korea is oppressing its own population terribly. The ongoing wars in and around the Congo have been a bleeding wound for decades. Why do we want to be involved in this particular conflict at this particular time?

Even if we decide that there are very good reasons for wanting to be involved in Syria right now – what prospect is there that our intervention will make the eventual outcome better rather than worse? There is little that is more obnoxious in this world than a vain and self-righteous posturing that preens itself whilst causing greater distress.

We need to have a much more hard-headed assessment of what is genuinely in the national interest – for ourselves first and foremost. Once that has been done we might be able to weigh in the balance how far it makes sense for us to support other nations in their endeavours.

For my part, can I respectfully suggest that supporting air strikes or more against the Assad regime achieves nothing except escalating the temperature of a volatile mixture of ingredients, directly contributing to the immiseration of more and more innocent civilians, and aligning ourselves against the bad guys by choosing to support the even worse guys.

Put simply, please can we stay out of this unholy mess?

We need to sift the sixties

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We are so caught up in the arguments following from our cultural fragmentation that we miss opportunities to step back and ask ‘how did we get here?’ Most historical explanations can go back as far as patience can take us, certainly I think the agricultural revolution is an oft-overlooked factor in our contemporary gender politics, yet it is surely the 1960s that are worth pondering as the background to our present malaise.

After all it was in the 1960s that ‘everything changed’. Traditional defence was pushed aside (as with the Lady Chatterley trial and the consequences of the Profumo affair); progressive laws were introduced with regard to abortion, sexual rights, divorce law and the abolition of capital punishment; popular (youth) culture transformed itself with new musical styles and the consequences of the ready availability of the contraceptive pill; changing patterns of work and home life leading to the equal pay act and so on.

So much of this seems unarguably good, yet I do believe that certain social currents were established in the 1960s that we now need to pay much closer attention to, and these seem to be coming into a focus around gender relations.

All right thinking people believe in equality of treatment for the sexes before the law. That, perhaps, is a weaselly phrase (who counts as ‘right thinking’, and who decides who counts?) yet it is only in the darkest corners of the internet that arguments against a full equality of treatment for one sex – or another – can be found.

Yet what this insistence upon equality of treatment seems to have set in train is the notion that men and women are functionally equivalent. This leads to some absurdities, as when a military force lowers the standards for entry (the US Marine Corps) in order to enable more women to enter. The ideal of an elite fighting force is being sacrificed upon the altar of political correctness. This is an ultimately self-destructive path.

We need to learn once again that an acknowledgement of differences in the aggregate between different groups – as between men and women – does not necessitate the unequal treatment of any one individual man or woman. If there is a particular standard that needs to be reached in order to be a marine, let that standard be maintained. Some women will be able to achieve it. Of what worth is the achievement if it is known that the standards were lowered? Isn’t that in itself a deeply patronising and insulting stance to adopt?

There is now so much research indicating the profound differences between the typical man and the typical woman, in terms not simply of obvious biological externals but internal brain architecture and hormonal equilibriums. Remarkably, some of the most eloquent testimony comes from women who are transitioning to a male identity, and taking testosterone supplementation for that purpose – and who are profoundly shocked and chastened to discover the different ways in which male sexuality informs the psychology as a result of that extra testosterone.

What has often seemed to happen as a result of the liberation let loose by the 1960s is that women have been encouraged to be men, that women can do anything that a man can do. This seems to me to be such a profoundly mistaken approach; not only is it the case that making women into not-quite-good-enough men doesn’t help either sex, it also radically underestimates and undervalues the distinctively feminine strengths that women have always been able to bring to bear. The culture of feminism that so denounces patriarchy seems to have no conception of just how strongly men wish to please the women in their lives, and the impact that this has upon the power balance between the sexes.

What is worse, this mistaken evaluation of female strength has gone hand in hand with a vilification of male strength, and this has a current form in discussions of ‘toxic masculinity’. In a culture that has claimed that men are superfluous, and that has pushed that notion to its logical conclusion through the divorce courts, we have ended up with generations of young men that have been deprived, not just of contact with their fathers, but of contact with any truly virile examples of what a noble man might look like. Men need competition; boys need proper ‘rough and tumble’ if they are to learn both their own power and the importance of boundaries. What we now have are so many examples of rootless and hollow men causing chaos in ways large and small. The natural counter to this is not to continue taking away responsibility and authority from all men but rather to ensure that those men who bear authority are well equipped to do so. Which means we need to talk about virility and virtue – both words with distinctly masculine (vir) roots.

What seems to have happened is that an embrace of radical individualism has been allowed to undermine all the blessings that come from community cohesion. We need to strike a new balance between those two necessary elements of a healthy common life: not a return to some mythical bygone era in which everyone knew their place and stuck to it, nor an environment in which every single solitary person is allowed to follow their own desires irrespective of the harms that might follow from their choices, but rather a place in which the community can serve the individual and the individual in turn can serve the community. The truth is that neither can flourish without the other – the present emphasis on individual freedom and personal choice seems to have as its most salient feature a radical rise in personal misery and depression.

These things are all connected. As we see the consequences of choices made fifty years ago we need to sift them to work out what was good and what was bad, restoring a healthy discrimination and judgement that will enable all of us to flourish.

A church for England

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So here is the trailer for a new series on Netflix that I am planning to watch and hoping to enjoy:

One of the key elements in the story is that a person can ‘upload’ their identity so that it can be stored and then be ‘downloaded’ into another body, thus granting a certain sort of immortality.

This is one manifestation of the ancient gnostic heresy, which sees bodies as barriers to enlightenment.

Christianity, in contrast, proclaims the Word made flesh – and thus sees flesh as inherently capable of bearing divinity, thus, worthy of respect and affirmation. If you really want to protect the bodies of human beings in the world today it doesn’t help to consider them metaphysically dispensable…

Interestingly, contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroscience would concur that the idea (of disembodied intellects being the essence of who we are) is inadequate to describe our shared humanity. We do not exist apart from our bodies, and cannot exclude our bodies from our sense of self, not even of our concept of mind. No, the Biblical witness that we are embodied souls (to be resurrected one day in the body DV!) is proving remarkably robust.

So far, so uncontroversial to an informed theologian. Now for my radical turn.

Jesus was the Word made flesh, and the scandal of the incarnation is about particularity – how odd that God should choose the Jews. Jesus was a particular man who lived in a particular time and place; so far as we can tell he was very typical of a man of his time, for all of his untypical aspects are otherwise remarked upon – his teaching, his demeanour, his morally and religiously radical behaviour.

In other words, all those aspects of humanity that are tied in with a particular time and space – to be a Jew in the first century in Palestine – these also become bearers of the divine.

Which means that all our own particularities share in that potentiality; and they can only do so if they are real.

By which I mean: ontologically real. Most especially, a nation, or national identity, is a real thing. It meant something for Jesus to be a Judean. The nation is a principality, a creation of God, fallen and in need of redemption, yet also granted a place in God’s economy.

Which brings me to the Church of England, which is dying if not yet quite dead. I rather wonder whether part of the affliction from which it suffers has its root in a metaphysical blindness about the true spiritual nature of the nation which it claims to serve. That is, it would appear that, unlike the laity, almost all of the leadership has no interest or care in the salvation of England as a nation, as opposed to the individuals who live within that nation.

Might it not be the case that, if the Church of England is not to die out from lack of use, a part of the solution would be a recognition that the Church has to be for England as such?

At the moment this is just a seed of an idea. Yet it ties together so much.

The nature of our Brexit

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The quirks of editorial deadlines mean that I write this article just two days after Theresa May has forged enough of an consensus with the EU to enable talks about an eventual trade agreement.

I’m mostly extremely happy about what Theresa May has agreed. The financial settlement is the first element, which might end up being around £40bn spread over several years. Given the scale of our contributions to the EU, and the amount that will actually be reimbursed back to us (our rebate is going to continue) this amounts to a net transfer of around two years worth of our prior EU member state contributions. So not a lot in the overall scheme of things. This will then end, at which point we are free of all financial obligations and in a position to enjoy something of a windfall. Excellent.

The second element is about citizenship. It always seemed to me transparently obvious that both sides have an interest in a civilised settlement that preserves all the accrued rights enjoyed by our respective citizens, and that seems to have been accomplished. Again, ongoing recourse to the ECJ is time-limited and will cease after eight years. So: also excellent.

The third element, which has risen in both prominence and political temperature, relates to the Irish border. Any eventual solution will have to be integrated into whatever trading agreement is eventually adopted – there is no way of answering the border question separately. I’m glad that the talks were not fully derailed by this issue but I also have a strong suspicion that the Irish Taoiseach has overreached himself.

Although it was Arlene Foster’s phone call that disrupted Mrs May’s planned announcement of a deal – leading to a week of frantic diplomacy – the essential Unionist point, that there can be no internal barrier between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, is widely accepted. This simply had to be spelled out in extremely clear terms, hence the reiteration in the text of the agreement that the UK as a whole is leaving the EU’s internal market (‘single market’) and the customs union, and that there will be no .

However, in order to get this agreed, there was also inserted into the agreement a text that will continue to cause problems between now and March 2019. The crucial paragraph in the text is this one: “The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom’s intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement.”

In essence, Mrs May’s strategy with respect to Ireland is to aim for a wider EU-UK trade agreement that solves the border problem itself. If that isn’t possible then she has agreed to seek ‘specific solutions’ to the border problem, which will be some form of technological and pragmatic compromise.

The kicker comes with the third option, which is what Mrs May has agreed to (in principle – nothing is agreed until everything is agreed). In the absence of a wider EU-UK deal which solves things, or a technological solution, then the UK as a whole is committing itself to ‘full alignment’ with the regulatory system of the EU.

This is a potential disaster, and not something that any Leaver could willingly countenance. Full alignment for the UK would mean that we would track the EU’s internal market regulations without having any say in how they are developed. This is a worse situation than we are in at the moment. Tactically, for the negotiations, it gives the EU an incentive to be uncompromising on the question of the border, as they would benefit from the UK remaining aligned. Strategically it compromises all the most exciting elements of Brexit, involving the pursuit of free trade deals with other countries around the world.

So I see this element as the most problematic. However, I recognise that giving this concession was pragmatically necessary, as it has allowed the movement through to trade discussions. I would see two priorities for the UK negotiators over the coming year. The first is that any trade agreement has to include services, which maintains the existing recognition of UK institutions by the EU. I am hopeful that this will be included as it is in the EU’s interest as a whole, even if not in the interests of all members of the EU, such as those cities like Frankfurt and Paris which seek to take some business away from the city. The second is that the UK needs to be set free to negotiate trade deals for itself from March 2019, even if such deals cannot take effect until the end of the transition period.

I am extremely keen that we move quickly to have an effective CANZUK agreement; that is, a open trading system between Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. We have so much in common already – a shared head of state, a shared language, a shared common law tradition, alongside all of our shared history and familial connections. I would give this the highest priority – certainly higher than an agreement with the United States, attractive though that would be.

On the whole, I think that Mrs May has done rather a good job, certainly enough to ensure that she stays in post until this process is complete. There is still a very long way to go, but I am now much more confident than I was that there will be an eventual free trade agreement with the EU, and that our exit from that structure will be well managed.

On hoping that the Conservatives might become more conservative

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I recently watched, and greatly enjoyed, the Ken Loach film ‘I, Daniel Blake’. This is a deeply moving portrait of a good man crushed by an inhumane and incomprehensible system. It might seem strange that a conservative is so sympathetic to such a classically socialist visionary as Loach – but that is because conservatism is generally greatly misunderstood, not least by the Conservative party itself!

To be a conservative is to be concerned above all with the husbanding of resources. I prefer that phrase to one that means something very similar – ‘the preservation of capital’ – because it is not only a more traditional expression, it is also one that is less likely to trigger premature associations with the word capitalism, with all the things that go with it.

The resources that need to be husbanded fall into four principal areas.

The first is economic, that is, all the various forms of financial wealth and property that our society values. This form is most easily associated with a conservative point of view, and runs alongside a respect for the rule of law and a high regard for private property and the rights associated with it. This approach, when taken to an extreme, shades into forms of libertarianism, whereby the state is only deployed in order to ensure the rule of law and such other elements as are essential to the continuity of the rule of law (such as the police and the armed forces). Libertarianism and conservatism are not the same, principally because conservatism also values three more forms of resource.

The second resource which conservatives seek to husband is ecological. Under this heading would come all the shared physical goods that a community enjoys that aren’t owned privately (or that only have private consequences). Much that comes under the heading of ‘green concerns’ has a natural connection with this area of conservatism, that is, everything which seeks to conserve our natural environment and preserve it in good repair. So a bias against pollution, a recognition of the need to preserve clean air and water, the preservation of species and biodiversity, all of this and more is conservative.

A third resource is social, and my favourite way to think of this form of resource is to think of Edmund Burke’s ‘little platoons’. These are all the ways in which human beings gather in order to seek mutual enrichment, and together these make up the very real and important human good which is called society. Under this heading would come things like the MICA centre, or the Lions, or Blindspot – activities and organisations and institutions which bind people together with mutual support. Much of what makes human life worth living falls into this section.

The last resource is human; that is, individual human beings, in all their glory and potential. Things like health care and education are important not principally because it keeps the economic wheels turning but rather because they enable individual human beings to thrive.

In the conservative vision, all of these forms of resource can be husbanded harmoniously together – so the preservation of our natural environment enables human beings to thrive and contribute to the social organisations which strengthen mutual trust and thereby ease the commercial endeavours that enable our prosperity – which then helps to pay for better care of the natural environment and so on. In a healthy society these things all work together in a virtuous circle, each one reinforcing the other.

Given this, how has Conservatism come to be seen as ‘nasty’ and uncaring? In many ways – as portrayed in the Loach film – the consequences of Conservative policies have indeed been despicable, but that is because they have been deeply anti-conservative, and have manifestly failed to husband the sorts of resources that I have described above.

I understand this through the use of my estate agent metaphor. I mean no offence to estate agents in using this (the estate agents I have had to deal with have always been very civilised people) but merely to bring home a clear distinction. If you sell your home then you are also letting go of a place which contains all sorts of sentimental attachments, memories and meanings. None of these are relevant to the price that an estate agent will place upon the property, for they are not relevant to the person who will be purchasing it.

In the same way, the problem with so much Conservative policy in the last few decades has been an over-emphasis upon the first form of resource described – financial – at the expense of all the others. The Conservative party was taken over by cynics who knew the price of everything but the value of nothing – or at least, not the value of the other three forms of resource described above. One tragedy of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership was that ‘One nation’ conservatism became identified with a ‘wet’ economic perspective. I rather suspect that if the Conservative party is to regain its strength and morale that it will need a strong voice that is both deeply ‘dry’ and strongly ‘one nation’.

At the heart of a properly conservative outlook, then, is a particular vision of what it means for human beings to flourish – human beings that are situated in a particular place at a particular time within a particular society – and a recognition that such flourishing can only take place when all the resources that enable that flourishing are husbanded properly.

The tragedy of Daniel Blake was that he was caught up in a system that did not recognise the human and social resource that he was; he was not valued and the rejection killed him. A naturally conservative response to such a situation would be to call for a universal basic income – in order to properly value, nurture and affirm all the human beings in our society. To not do so is to conduct our common life in the manner of a transactional estate agent – such an approach might be Conservative, but it is a long way from being conservative. It doesn’t simply fail, it deserves to fail.