Many people who voted for Brexit did so in the belief that the Johnson government would negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the EU which would be beneficial to both sides economically and politically. In the event, the hard-liners supporting Johnson stuck out for the worst possible agreement economically and Johnson has now gone back on the political dispensation which was agreed. The sanctions against the war-monger Putin have been weakened as a reault.
The European Movement UK writes:
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Virtually all Western commentators are agreed, that Putin has for once miscalculated. Instead of using the threat ("the threat is stronger than the execution" - Nimzowitsch) of his overwhelming force to make incremental gains in Ukraine without rousing the West, he thought he could take the whole country in one act of Blitzkrieg. He reckoned without the determination of Ukrainians to defend their nation, nor of the readiness of Western countries to provide weaponry to Ukraine. Now he has a critical decision to make.
There is little doubt that Putin can conquer Ukraine by force. So far he has not involved the whole of the military, nor employed weapons of mass destruction, but he could do. He has put his nuclear offensive on stand-by. There is also the threat of thermobaric weapons which would have practically the same consequences as of nukes: wholesale slaughter of civilians which he has so far avoided. (Though one Putin apologist has posted elsewhere that once a citizen acquires a weapon he is no longer a civilian.)
Putin could - and should - withdraw his strike forces, but that would mean his losing face. My guess is that he will give up on Kyiv but concentrate on consolidating his gains in the south of Ukraine. There will be a stand-off which will be to no side's benefit economically.
Let us hope that at least humanity does prevail over megalomania.
Please do not abstain in the by-election poll this coming Thursday. With a popular local candidate and their voters wishing to show their regard for Jack Dromey, taken before his time, Labour is certain to retain the seat. You may be disgusted with the current leadership of your party, but cannot bring yourself to vote Labour. You can signal your concern at the depths to which your current rulers have sunk, and maybe even effect change at the top, by lending your vote to the non-socialist Liberal Democrats, if only for this one election.
Of course those still alive must receive full and fair compensation as the whole Commons, including the minister, agreed. But the Wyn Williams inquiry must also establish who knew about the flaw at the heart of the Horizon system, and when. It was not a case of a hidden software bug in an obscure sub-routine, it was a basic system design fault: not ensuring that the accounts at post offices and HQ were in sync. Independent IT management experts must be called. Against a background of a government machine wanting to run down the post office network, it seems to me that nobody wanted to correct the system while sub-postmasters and postmistresses were being driven out of business. The following question from that Commons debate raises suspicions:
We know that civil servants were non-executive directors on the board of the Post Office, and that they were principal accounting officers for UK Government Investments. We know that civil servants told Ministers to come to this place and to tell MPs that there was
“nothing to see here.” Those civil servants are not on the list of the core participants giving evidence to Sir Wyn Williams. How can those civil servants be held to account by Ministers for their failure to act in this case for so many years?
The bureau of Liberal International is outraged and condemns in the strongest possible terms Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this morning.
While liberal democracies across the Euro-Atlantic space have striven for peace in recent months, Putin has relentlessly prepared for war. We are distraught that Russia’s illegal assault on Ukraine earlier this morning has revealed that peace could be preserved no longer and the relationship between Russia and Europe is now inescapably redefined.
Driven by delusion we know that Putin has worked tirelessly, over numerous terms as the President of Russia, to destabilise liberal democracies and countries that would choose autonomy over clientelism. Ukraine is totemic: only by uniting and proving that our resolve to support Ukraine remains unshakable will Putin know that his bullying aggression will not win.
To the people of Ukraine we insist you are not alone. We reiterate our demand for a coordinated response of financial, military, and political assistance to Ukraine and remain gravely concerned about the safety of civilians throughout the country. We demand Russia’s unequivocal cessation of hostilities to avoid further devastating consequences for the continent on which Liberal International was founded, 75 years ago.
Today's invasion of Ukraine shows the contempt in which the Russian president holds the sanctions which were meant to deter him from military action. He is certainly not impressed by the powder-puff measures announced by prime minister Johnson this week. So far from being "out in front" as he claimed at PMQs yesterday, Johnson trails well behind the USA. Indeed, one suspects that it was only president Biden's pressure which produced any action from the UK government. We should be grateful that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House, The UK measures target a few minor banks and individuals, but not the three biggest Russian banks which do business in London. Nor do they touch five prominent oligarchs identified by the ICIJ: Alisher Usmanov, Gennady Timchenko, Arkady Rotenberg, Yury Kovalchuk and Oleg Deripaska. Usmanov and Timchenko have escaped personal sanctions, though the US has sanctioned a couple of Timchenko's businesses. The rest are, or have been, on US sanctions lists, but not touched by the UK. Deripaska is particularly interesting as he has socialised with both Tory George Osborne and Labour's Peter Mandelson. Another name which has come up again in the last few days is that of Roman Abramovich, whose ownership of English Premier League club Chelsea was called into question.
Even if the most swingeing sanctions had been applied immediately, to the extent of beggaring his fellow-citizens (it is reported that the rouble has virtually halved in value in the last few days and fuel prices in Russia have soared), it is clear that Putin would still have gone ahead with his long-prepared plans. Recent descriptions of Ukraine as a non-state* and a creation of the West, echoed by his loyal followers, show that his ambition has always been more than supporting the Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the nation. Naval and military attacks on Mariupol and Odessa, cities outside the areas claimed by the separatists have confirmed that.
In his long televised address to the Russian people on the occasion of recognising the breakaway statelets, he invoked the memory of Catherine the Great. (There was a mention of Lenin, but of no other Communist icon. Neither was there an invocation of the brotherhood of man, of workers across the world uniting, with which Stalin used to dress Soviet expansionism. It was a naked appeal to Russian nationalism.) Putin, now in his 70th year, clearly wants to go down in history as the man who restored the empire of 1796. Ominously, that includes the Baltic states and a slice of present-day Poland.
Economics is not going to deter him, even protests from his oligarch cronies. Only massive casualties on the scale of Afghanistan seem likely to turn the Russian people against him.
*China must be reluctant to support publicly Putin's recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk, because that would weaken her case against Taiwan's right to exist. However, if Putin establishes the concept that "the" Ukraine was always really a part of Russia, then China might come on board.
Following on from my post of two days ago, yet another example of why we need Good Law Project to survive:
Good Law Project has seen documents showing the Government misled Parliament, the National Audit Office and the High Court about the size of the illegal VIP lane it adopted, which advantaged associates of Government Ministers.President Putin, in his attempt to go down in history as the man who recreated the Russian empire of Catherine the Great, has been following the methods of Tigran Petrosian. (Catherine was from Germany and Petrosian from Armenia, by the way.) Petrosian was the chess grandmaster who became world champion through the accumulation of advantages, gradually restricting his opponents' freedom of movement and building pressure on their weak spots. His contemporary, the Latvian Mikhail Tal, was the opposite, going for all-out attack, sacrificing pawns and pieces with gay abandon in the process.
If Putin had attempted an immediate Anschluss with Ukraine as soon as he became commander-in-chief of Russian forces, the response by Western powers would surely have been more vigorous. Instead, he has reached an advantageous end-game step by step. First, the insurgency in the Donbas by his proxies followed by testing the resolve of the West by shooting down MH17 - perhaps the only move which would have deserved a !? in a commentary. Then military exercises (shades of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968) with the participation of a willing partner, the bordering state of Byelorussia, ensuring that there was enough military force to prevent a counter to the next move which he carried out yesterday. Russia recognised the independence of two statelets comprising the Donbas region and at the same time moved massive "peacekeeping" forces their, presumably responding to a "plea for assistance" from the leaders of Luhansk and Donetsk under the friendship and cooperation pact also signed yesterday.
The West is handicapped by not having a single controlling presence with the strategic abilities to match Putin. Instead, we are in something like a consultation match. In theory, the more players who are part of a consultation, the more likely they are to produce brilliant moves to counter the grandmaster. In practice, what usually emerges from such a committee is the "safest" move. In the present situation, that is the threat of sanctions. Whether this will be enough in the face of overwhelming military force in eastern Ukraine remains to be seen.
I believe I may have complained on this blog about the way that well-financed commercial operators are able to bully local authority planning departments and protestors. Now it seems that government, too, is racking up costs which it can afford to pay but voluntary organisations cannot.
The Good Law Project reports:
If you have a bottomless pit of money, you can break the law with impunity by making it too expensive for people to go to Court. We increasingly see conduct with that flavour from this Government - but nothing quite like this: Government has estimated it will spend a staggering £1.2 million defending a challenge from Good Law Project. We only expect the hearing to take one day and the facts are simple. When the case was stayed, the costs were about £30,000. They repeatedly refused to give us the estimates of their costs so we could apply for a cap. Then, they told us they had spent over £600,000 and were continuing to spend.This may seem rather remote, but it is only by concerned experts like the Good Law Project that cover-ups of dubious contract practices, such as this government has been too fond of, can be exposed. The case referred to concerned a lobbyist, who just happens to be a former Conservative parliamentarian, brought into government as an advisor who touted one of his company's clients for a PPE contract. A clear need for transparency, supported by the law, one would have thought.
http://aberavonneathlibdems.blogspot.com/2022/02/prison-expansions-cost-of-conservatives.html refers.
No doubt this prison expansion will help the beleaguered construction industry, traditionally supporters of the Conservative party, though the expansion will be achieved through refurbishment of, or addition of wings to, existing prisons.
However, there is no mention in the government's media release of the recruitment of additional prison staff, already under strength, or the improvement of their conditions. Clearly no thought has been given to the rehabilitation of prisoners, of reducing the risk of reoffending.
There has rightly been condemnation of Boris Johnson's accusation that Sir Keir personally allowed Jimmy Savile to continue his paedophile activities, but so far the broadcast media at least have paid little attention to the first part of the PM's slur, that as DPP, Sir Keir spent all his time prosecuting journalists. Was this perhaps a Putin-like attempt in the dying days of the Brown government to silence political critics and whistle-blowers?
It turns out not to be so. The "journalists" the DPP went after, and not before time, were the phone-hackers who scraped confidential data on celebs and ordinary folk alike. Wikipedia quotes a Commons committee as estimating that over 12,000 people were affected.
Of course, most of the journals implicated were anti-Labour at the time.
Prime minister Johnson was on TV news yesterday calling for global expansion of gas production as a way out of our current predicament. It is of a piece with his carbon-friendly attitude. Perhaps he could start by coming to the aid of Mozambique, a Commonwealth country, where the oil company Total has had to withdraw because of an Islamist insurgency. Some measure of peace has been restored to Cabo Delgado province thanks to troops supplied by Rwanda and South Africa, but more military assistance is required, not to mention a commission to resolve local grievances.
If Johnson is not moved by humanitarian motives to aid Mozambique, he might at least take a pragmatic view and restore one source of gas for the beleaguered economies of the West.
It seems that while the UK government has not lifted a finger to spread the manufacture of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (let alone a more generalised facility), US companies have been more proactive. Moderna is looking for sites in Africa for a factory and Pfizer is shipping the drug substance of the BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to South Africa's Biovac. South Africans themselves have taken a vaccine initiative with a manufacturing campus opened last month.
The most promising development is in Rwanda.
The BioNTech plan involves the construction in Germany of a containerized manufacturing unit that will then be installed in Rwanda, shortening the construction period for a vaccine facility by at least a year and lowering the risk of delays. Initially, the facility will be managed and operated by BioNTech staff. But the ownership and expertise will be transferred over time to local operations. At present, such expertise does not exist in Rwanda and, based on the experience of Biovac in South Africa, could take a decade to develop.The significant part of the deal is that
for the first time, the drug substance, or active ingredient for a COVID-19 vaccine – in this case mRNA – will be manufactured on the continent. mRNA for the COVID-19 vaccine is currently being manufactured only in the US and Europe.
Rwanda may not be a liberal democracy but does have a sound economy and less financial corruption than most on the continent. One expects their facility to be built expeditiously and run efficiently.
Setting aside the legal and moral implications of taking control of money which was deposited by the Afghan Bank, there are questions about the destination of the "humanitarian aid" and how much of it will stick to the fingers of those whom the US administration chooses to deliver it. The US has a poor record of turning a blind eye to corruption in client states and in particular in Afghanistan.
Moreover, why should starving Afghans be punished for the September 11 attacks? These were carried out by Saudis with citizens of the UAE, Egypt and Lebanon, and organised by the scion of a Saudi family. The former Taliban regime may have in its time given hospitality to Osama bin Laden, but for the last nine years he lived in Pakistan. It is unlikely that this was a total secret to the Pakistan secret service. Perhaps the President should rather take the compensation money from US aid to Pakistan and from Saudi bank accounts.
With both the leader of the Conservative party and one of the main rivals (Liz Truss) out of the country, the time seems ripe for a pretender to the throne to make his move. Local elections are looming. There must be pressure from local Conservative associations to have a new leader in place before the campaign starts in earnest. Otherwise, hundreds of Conservative councillors tainted by association with a discredited leader will be losing their seats - or will defect to other parties, as Nick Ramsay, a former Conservative member of the Senedd, has done.
At prime minister's questions today, Boris Johnson waxed lyrical about the UK's increased dash for gas as well as boasting about freezing the fuel price escalator for the last decade. One wonders if he had made the same reply if COP26 had still been in session.
BBC health editor Fergus Walsh's programme on BBC-2 tonight was enlightening and thought-provoking. His article on the Web is even more so. The message was that nationalist politics prevented a fair distribution of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which had been designed to be available at cost, in a form not needing any special storage requirements. There was also a hint that US pharmaceutical companies were not happy about an alternative product to their own undercutting them on price, even though it was quickly apparent that demand would exceed supply.
It may be significant that the US has still not approved the Oxford vaccine, alone as far as one can see among leading nations. Its initial hesitancy was caused by a rare reaction to the adenoviral vector method used by the Oxford vaccine. The same method is used by the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine which has, however, been give emergency approval by the FDA.
There were some omissions from the TV programme. It was not made clear that the Oxford team started work on their vaccine back in January 2020, as soon as they received the genetic sequence of the virus from China. The naïve viewer may have got the impression that it was Health secretary Hancock's first order for the vaccine in April 2020 which got the ball rolling. That would have lent credence to the Johnson government's line that they acted as soon as they were aware of the dangers of the virus, in March 2020. The programme could also have named the other vaccines which became available during the year, the Russian Sputnik V (taken by some South American countries) and several from China, the most effective of which, Sinovac, was sold to Hungary as well as being used internally and donated to the Covax scheme . and several from China, including the most effective, Sinopharm, the third most widely-distributed Covid-19 vaccine. Sputnik V has been exported mainly to the global south, though Hungary in the EU has taken it, as well as some Sinopharm.
I am unrepentant in my view that it was the duty of the government to ensure that all UK citizens had access to at least an initial dose of an approved vaccine as soon as practicable. What I do find unforgivable is our leaning on India to divert Oxford vaccine from her Serum Institute, which should have been put into Indian arms and thereafter donated to Covax, when AstraZeneca's facilities in Europe fell behind schedule. Even worse was the stockpiling of vaccine in England for six weeks before passing it on to Covax when it was close to its expiration date.
The answer is, as Dr Sarah Gilbert of the Oxford team demanded, that vaccine manufacturing facilities should be provided in developing nations. This should start now, in readiness for the next pandemic, which cannot be far away. The UK's assistance to Commonwealth countries, which seems hitherto to have been confined to advising their rulers on the use of tax havens, should major on that as well as ensuring that the logistics of delivering vaccine in good time are right.
[updated/corrected 2022-2-9]
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In a BBC News report this morning, John Simpson said that he was witnessing the death of the Afghan nation. Already dependent on outside aid, which has been frozen, drought in an agricultural province of Afghanistan has made its inhabitants survive only on handouts.
Now Sir David Richards, the former commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, has called for the Taliban government in Kabul to be recognised in order for funds to be released and a humanitarian tragedy to be averted. The trouble is that the Taliban, although a creation of the security services of US-aided Pakistan, is still regarded as a terrorist organisation by the US which dominates the world of international banking. One cannot escape the feeling that the States' attitude is coloured by resentment that the government in Kabul which she supported was so easily swept aside. But surely the test of recognition should be whether a government has the support of the people? The Taliban clearly has recognition - albeit grudging in some cases - of the majority of provincial governors. It is also unlikely that the majority of Afghans would want to go back to the corruption, affecting every level of society, of the previous administration.
The Taliban does not pose an international threat. Da'esh/ISIS, which does, is active in Afghanistan and it would surely help the West if it were put down in that country.
The West needs further proof that the Taliban government means its warm words, that it is not the Taliban of old. In particular, allowing the female judges now in hiding in fear of their lives to emigrate to a safe nation would be a start. But surely the US must swallow her pride and recognise the facts on the ground rather than be responsible for what would effectively be a genocide by starvation.
It is gratifying that those clever people at Radio 4's More or less have confirmed my amateur's suspicion that how good our economic performance appears depends on what period a government chooses for its comparisons.
She stood by his side and advised him at County Hall when he blew council-taxpayers' money on useless water cannon and the aborted "garden bridge". She followed him into government and remained loyal when he committed gaffes as foreign secretary and fouled up Brexit as prime minister. But even for Munira Mirza, Boris Johnson's despicable personal attack on Sir Keir Starmer went too far, and she has resigned along with three other Downing Street staffers.
Congratulations to Rishi Sunak for dissociating himself from the Savile slur. One wishes that Jacob Rees-Mogg had demonstrated similar integrity as Leader of the House yesterday. Instead, at Business Questions yesterday, he sought to use the Crichel Down affair, in which a Conservative minister took responsibility for malfeasance by officials in his Department and resigned, as justification for the attack on Sir Keir as DPP. Perhaps he should have followed his own logic. Sue Gray's official report on "partygate" highlighted breaches of procedure by staff. On that basis, the prime minister as their ultimate boss should have resigned.
Banksy has long been known for his anti-capitalist stance and for providing art in the streets for those who cannot afford to accommodate it in their own homes. It is ironic therefore that among the art objects used by the rich to store wealth are Banksys, as revealed by the ICIJ's Scilla Alecci.
There were already signs of sections of the Establishment being prepared to put up with SARS-Cov-2 rather than continue to fight it. It was enough to stir memories of my young years and the dismissal of measles, mumps, chicken-pox and German measles (now rubella) as minor childhood diseases, almost a rite of passage. Gradually it was realised that they were not so benign - effects on the lungs in the case of measles, sterility in young males caused by mumps and the effects on pregnancy by rubella. This increasing knowledge drove the development of vaccines for the diseases culminating in the combined MMR.
Now it seems that the general public is sleep-walking into another measles epidemic and will be rudely reminded that measles can be a killer or lead to long-term damage at least as serious as "long Covid". One does not even have to rely on the memories of my generation. The stupid anti-vax campaign by the then Evening Post editor made a major contribution to a measles outbreak in the Swansea area less than thirty years ago.
I would like to see advances in vaccine technology applied to other illnesses, particularly respiratory infections, which we have hitherto taken for granted. There must be a way of tackling the variability of influenza virus. There are also adenoviruses, rhinoviruses and other coronaviruses which cause economic losses every year. Maybe mine is an extreme position, but at least we should not be going backwards.
It is only a little contribution in terms of manpower, because that is all our depleted services can manage, but it is not too little to show that the UK is serious about defending a free democracy from the encroachment of an elected dictator. It is late - showing resolve against Putin a lot earlier would surely have prevented the shooting down of MH17 and may even have deterred the annexation of Crimea - but it is not too late to signal that Russian tanks will face not only Ukrainian resistance if they cross the border but also UK weaponry.
Even now, though, the preoccupation with "saving his own skin", as Sir Keir puts it, dominates the prime minister's thinking to the extent of cancelling a scheduled telephone conversation with the Russian leader. One is also reminded that foreign secretary Truss found time for an expensive PR visit to Australia as the tension in eastern Europe was mounting. So it is essential that the ruling Conservatives find a replacement PM with resolve - and clean hands - expeditiously.
There are similarities between the Johnson and Putin regimes. Both have put personal power ahead of the interests of the people they were elected to serve. Putin sees ultra-nationalism as the means to secure popularity. The virtual annexation of eastern Ukraine and the capture of Crimea are part of that. The threat to the rest of Ukraine is a continuation. But in following this path he has brought international economic sanctions down upon his nation, hobbling her ability to reach her economic potential and visiting a lower standard of living on the people who elected him. Johnson has not had the benefit of being able to throw critical journalists into gaol or worse, but seeing what the power of money has on the UK media, has had no need to. So far, he has been able to persuade the majority of the people in England and Wales that we are all better off as a result of Brexit when all the boring statistics point the other way. However, confirmation this week that a big national insurance increase is necessary merely to save the NHS, when the promise before Brexit was that the former contributions to the EU budget would pay for it and more, may well bring home to even the most avid Daily Mail reader that they have been deceived.
It may be questioned whether we owe the Ukraine anything. Well, at the very least the democratic West needs to uphold the right of freely-elected governments to govern. If Putin is allowed to con his way into Kyiv, then our former fellows in the EU come under threat. President Xi in China will be given the green light to take Taiwan by force. Smaller dictators around the world will be encouraged. But I also have a recollection that in the period of economic privation after the last world war, the workforce in the mines was augmented by workers from eastern Europe, in particular Hungary and the Ukraine. They were numerous enough to support Ukrainian and Hungarian clubs in some industrial towns in England and Wales. They helped us survive those dark days. We owe it to their descendants to save their nations, having survived Hitler and Stalin, from a new wave of dictatorship.
