Paddy Ashdown

Nein! Introduction

Introduction

This book is about those at the very top of Hitler’s Germany who tried to prevent the Second World War, made repeated attempts to kill him, did all they could to ensure his defeat, worked for an early peace with the Western Allies, planned a united Europe after the War and ultimately died terribly for their cause.

Most of my books have been about individual events, or people. The canvas of this one, by contrast, encompasses every sector of German society during the war; international statesmanship – or lack of it – in capitals from Berlin, to London, to Washington, to Moscow; battles fought from the shores of the Volga to the shadow of the Pyrenees; and spy rings plying their trade in Geneva, Zürich, Paris, Amsterdam, Istanbul and beyond.

Now that I have written it, I am a little surprised to find that a work I thought would tell the history of the Second World War through different eyes turns out also to be a story on the subject to which I return again and again: how human beings behave when we are faced with the challenges of war – and especially how, when confronted by great evil and personal jeopardy, we decide between submission and resistance: between loyalty and betrayal.

Is it ever possible to be both traitor and patriot? Is it treachery to betray your state if to do otherwise is to betray your humanity? Even if treachery changes nothing, must you still risk being a traitor in the face of great evil, if that is the only way to lighten the guilt that will fall on your children and your future countrymen? How do people make these choices? How do they behave after they have made them?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – himself a character here and one of those murdered for his role in the anti-Hitler resistance – said: ‘Responsible action takes place in the sphere of relativity, completely shrouded in the twilight that the historical situation casts upon good and evil. It takes place in the midst of the countless perspectives from which every phenomenon is seen. Responsible action must decide not just between right and wrong, but between right and right and wrong and wrong.’

So it is, exactly, here. There are no blacks and whites, just choices between blacker blacks and whiter whites. There are no triumphal personal qualities, and no triumphant outcomes. Just flawed individuals who, at a time of what Bonhoeffer referred to as ‘moral twilight’, felt compelled to do the right thing as they saw it. That is a lesser triumph than we might wish for in dangerous times, but it was then – and is now – probably the only triumph we can reasonably expect.

This story is, at its heart, a tragedy. Like all great tragedies it involves personal flaws, the misjudgements of the mighty, and a malevolent fate.

There is individual pity and suffering, and a deal of personal stupidity, here.

But – and herein lies the history – since these were human beings of consequence, their personal decisions affected lives and events far beyond their circle and their time.

The two central historical questions posed by this book are stark:

Did the Second World War have to happen?

And if it did, did it have to end with a peace which enslaved Eastern Europe?

My purpose is not to provide definitive answers, but rather to present some facts which are not generally known – or at least not taken account of – and place these against the conventional view of the origins, progress and outcomes of World War II.

In reading this book you may be struck, as I was in writing it, by the similarities between what happened in the build-up to World War II and the age in which we now live. Then as now, nationalism and protectionism were on the rise, and democracies were seen to have failed; people hungered for the government of strong men; those who suffered most from the pain of economic collapse felt alienated and turned towards simplistic solutions and strident voices; public institutions, conventional politics and the old establishments were everywhere mistrusted and disbelieved; compromise was out of fashion; the centre collapsed in favour of the extremes; the normal order of things didn’t function; change – even revolution – was more appealing than the status quo, and ‘fake news’ built around the convincing untruth carried more weight in the public discourse than rational arguments and provable facts.

Painting a lie on the side of a bus and driving it around the country would have seemed perfectly normal in those days.

Nevertheless, I have found myself inspired in writing this story. It has proved to me that, even in such terrible times, there were some who were prepared to stand up against the age, even when their cause was hopeless, and even at the cost of their lives.

I hope that you will find that inspiration here, too.

Kosovo/Serbia swap

Former High Representatives to Bosnia call on Mogherini to abandon plans to transfer territory between Serbia and Kosovo

Three former High Representative’s for Bosnia and Herzegovina: Carl Bildt, Paddy Ashdown, and Christian Schwarz-Schilling have written an open letter to Federica Mogherini and the Foreign Ministers of EU Member States on the Correction of Borders between Serbia and Kosovo.

The letter underlines “deep concern” about suggestions made by EU officials that they may be willing to support agreement between Presidents Vucic and Thaci that involves the transfer of territory between Serbia and Kosovo through “border corrections”.

The three experts fear that moving borders in the region like this “will not solve divisions, it will deepen them”.

In the letter Paddy Ashdown, Carl Bildt, and Christian Schwarz-Schilling state:

“We know Bosnia and Herzegovina well enough to know that this will give comfort and support to those who would break up the country, who are already calling for a return to the status quo ante in Dayton, unravelling all we and our Bosnian partners have worked for over more than two decades.

“We know the EU and Europe well enough to know that our principles and our bloody history teach us that sustainable peace can only come when we learn to live in multi-ethnic communities, rather than re-drawing borders to create mono-ethnic ones;

“We can in short, think of no policy more likely to lead us back to division and conflict in the Balkans than the one which some are apparently now supporting.”

ENDS

For media contact:

Paddy Ashdown – HYPERLINK “mailto:paddyashdown1@me.com” paddyashdown1@me.com – 01935 882000 – 07946-272173

Carl Bildt – HYPERLINK “mailto:carlbildt@me.com” carlbildt@me.com

Christian Schwarz-Schilling – HYPERLINK “mailto:css@schwarz-schilling.de” css@schwarz-schilling.de –00496042964441 –
00493040006510

Notes to editor:

The letter was sent as defence ministers meet for an informal meeting to discuss the matter later today HYPERLINK “https://foreignbrief.com/daily-news/eu-defence-ministers-convene-to-discuss-west-balkan-security-and-accession/” here

Letter in full:

Her Excellency Federica Mogherini
High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy;
cc: Secretariat of the Foreign Affairs Council of the European Union

August 29, 2018

An Open Letter to Federica Mogherini and the Foreign Ministers of EU Member States on the Correction of Borders between Serbia and Kosovo.

As former High Representatives for Bosnia and Herzegovina, we are deeply concerned by announcements made recently by high level officials of the European Union, suggesting that the EU may be willing to support an agreement between Presidents Vucic and Thaci that involves the transfer of territory between Serbia and Kosovo through “border corrections”.

We know the region well enough to know that moving borders like this will not solve divisions, it will deepen them;

And although there can be no comparison between the case of Kosovo and the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we know the western Balkans well enough to know that such a policy would be misused by nationalist politicians to further challenge borders and destabilize other countries in the region.

We know Bosnia and Herzegovina well enough to know that this will give comfort and support to those who would break up the country, who are already calling for a return to the status quo ante in Dayton, unraveling all we and our Bosnian partners have worked for over more than two decades;

We know the EU and Europe well enough to know that our principles and our bloody history teach us that sustainable peace can only come when we learn to live in multi-ethnic communities, rather than re-drawing borders to create mono-ethnic ones;

We can in short, think of no policy more likely to lead us back to division and conflict in the Balkans than the one which some are apparently now supporting.

We have little doubt that this risks destabilising current agreements, such as in Macedonia, undermining the unity of states such as Bosnia, encouraging those who wish to see exchange of territory elsewhere, such as in Ukraine and is likely to lead to the exodus of minorities from their existing communities.

We therefore urge you to ensure that these proposals are dropped without delay.

Yours etc

Carl Bildt,
High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995-1997

Paddy Ashdown,
High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2002-2006

Christian Schwarz-Schilling,
High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2006-2007

Albion in the Unenchanted Forest

Albion in the Unenchanted Forest

So, what happens now?

The short answer is that from this broken, dysfunctional, dystopian fractured and fractious state of our politics, any outcome is possible. Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, no Brexit, no deal, crash out, break up of the Tories, break up of Labour, new centre Party, Lib Dem Government – no I go too far – but you get the point.

A number of things are certain and they’re all pretty strange, such is the measure of our bad fairy tale times.

Unless something really big happens, everything will stay the same.

The plague of Rumplestitskins which have overwhelmed us – Trump, Johnson, Farage – will continue to smash the crockery, because they can, because they enjoy it and because no-one is able to stop them.

Our Pushmi-Pullu Cabinet will continue going nowhere, because it knows of nowhere to go to. And our sad Cinderella PM, ashen, distraught, dutiful, close to tears and desperate to go to the ball, will continue to be stopped at every turn by one ugly sister or another.

In the history books of our times, a good number of pages will be written about what happens in the next few, febrile months.

Now that the quarter-century of hidden Tory revolt on Europe has broken into open warfare, it cannot be magicked back into the box. The whisper I hear about the Westminster tea rooms, betrays that old fatal symptom of a party in full-scale self-destruct: “We don’t mind if we lose, just so long as our faction wins control of the Party”

And indeed it might just come to that.

We are now close to the point – maybe at it – where no Brexit outcome, from the most extreme to the very softest, can find a majority in the Commons.

There is a reason for this stalemate.

Politics can only work if, on the great issues of the day, the Parties oppose each other on a united basis. Only then can the people have rational choice. Only then can we have meaningful debates across the floor of the House which arrive at meaningful conclusions.

But on the great issue of our time – Europe (and many of the others as well – but that is for another time), the Parties are catastrophically internally divided. And so the struggle is not between them, but within them. And so the national interest becomes submerged under the inner Party squabbles. This way madness lies and our entire political system is becoming infected by it.

The evident truth is that the current political division with which we are presented and through which we try to run our country, is no longer fit for purpose. It neither represents the true choices people want in a modern democracy, nor provides a sensible framework for running a democratic system of Government.

Consider for a moment the most likely course of events for what happens next.

Starting this late in the curve and having wasted so much time, there is now no way that our Prime Minister (if indeed she survives as far as Thursday) can bring Parliament any deal in October worth the name. At most it will mix 20 percent firm detail with 80 percent fudge, backed by a solemn promise to fix the rest in the transitional period. If Parliament buys that, it buys a pig-in-a-poke.

Given what has happened over the relatively smaller matter of customs last week, it seems very rational to conclude that Parliament will say no and demand something better (leave a side what kind of better for the moment because that’s something they can’t decided on either). But who has the mandate to negotiate that, if the EU will allow us to? which I imagine they will. Mrs May would of course have to go. But who is to replace her? With everyone in the trenches there is no longer any candidate who can unite the Tory opposing forces. The Brexiteers will not permit a Remainer and the Remainers will not permit a Brexiteer.

So we are back to deadlock again.

And so a shame-faced Parliament will have to return to the people and beg for a solution, because they cannot find one.

A Referendum? That’s certainly one solution. But is a yes/no answer on such a complex question really enough to find our way out, if the Parties stay the same? Might we not then be hog-tied after it, almost as much as we were before it?

A General Election on the issue of Europe, then.

But how can we have a General Election which offers a clear choice, if both Parties are divided? That is merely to translate deadlock in the Commons into deadlock in the ballot box.

The truth that is staring us in the face is that we cannot find a way out of this miserable never ending nightmare, unless we can find our way to a new shape for our politics. The Rumpelstitskins have found theirs. They have not scrupled to invent new Parties or colonise old ones. They are united, powerful and deadly in the way they have changed our politics for the worse.

Do we have to cede the ground to them? Is it really an impossible dream to gather together those scattered amongst all parties who share the same liberal views. That’s what Macron has done and given a new future to France in the process.

In these unpredictable times anything is possible. If the hobgoblins can be so successful at making things worse for our time, could we not at least try to create a good fairy to make them better? It may not succeed. But I become more and more convinced that it is the only way to find a route out of this unholy mess.

The Government, Helicopters and the people of Yeovil and South Somerset

Speech on Westland/Leonardo

House of Lords

By Rt Hon Paddy Ashdown

Tuesday 10 July 2018

My Lords, for more than a hundred years the people of Yeovil and South Somerset have provided the nation and the nation’s allies with world-beating aircraft which have played an immense part in the defence of our shores and of our values.

Yeovil-built aircraft were amongst the first to fly in battle over the Western front and provide air support for the Royal Navy. Westland Lysanders flew our secret agents into every corner of occupied Europe in WWII. Westland helicopters dropped me on Jebel tops in Arabia, plucked me out of clearings in the Borneo jungle and gave us the mobility we needed in Northern Ireland. They did the same in Afghanistan, Iraq and every other conflict zone.

This is not just the past, My Lords. It is also the future.

As we rely more on special forces, they will rely more on helicopters for long range insertion. As the Royal Marines end assaults on defended beaches, helicopters will be the only means to land men in numbers where they enemy does not expect them. As the Russian submarine threat grows, rotary wing will arm our ships with the best means of detection and response.

But this debate is not just about our armed forces needs. It is also about an irreplaceable national aero-space asset. The rotary wing skills found in Yeovil, are found nowhere else in Britain.

So, Yeovil must surely feel pretty confident about what comes next? Our brilliant design and engineering teams must surely feel secure about their future?

No, My Lords, they do not.

They are beginning to leave in numbers. And there is a reason for that.

Despite many requests from me and, I am assured, from Yeovil’s MP, Marcus Fysh, the Government has made no clear commitment, as part of the National Industrial Strategy, that they wish to sustain this unique sovereign ability to design, engineer and manufacture our own rotary aircraft.

This doubt about the Government’s intentions began when the MoD abandoned the policy of the Coalition Government which insisted that an MOD order for Apache aircraft must be subject to a proper competitive tendering process – replacing this with a decision to buy off the shelf without competitive tender, from the US.

Since then, every procurement action of the Government has re-enforced the suspicion that the MOD prefers to buy new aircraft from abroad than make them ourselves, even if the consequence is that a vital national asset is lost and the Yeovil site degenerates into a repair and maintenance facility only.

Over the years, Yeovil-built aircraft have been sold to over 20 countries. We are one of the nation’s major exporters. But what export customers now say, is if the British Government will not buy helicopters made in Britain, why should they?

This is not a problem for today. The shop floor has plenty of work for the moment. What we are short of is the engineering work needed now to prepare for and build the new aircraft for the future. What we need is a commitment from the Government that it prefers to buy the next range of aircraft from UK production, rather than from abroad

I cannot believe that the Government wishes to preside over the disappearance of a key national capability and prefers to make our armed forces dependant on foreign skills when we have such an abundance of our own.

Post-Brexit, they cannot wish to destroy export opportunities.

Yet that is where we are heading.

If this is not what the Government wants, then it is time to make that clear – urgently.

Leonardo, I am assured, are waiting to make the investment necessary in R&D, infrastructure and skills to maintain the long term integrity of Yeovil’s design and engineering teams. But as Leonardo’s managing Director said at Farnborough “We need some clear commitment [to a new helicopter strategy if we are],…to maintain the design and development capability of our work force.”

I appeal to the Government to make this statement without delay. Today for preference. In the Modernising Defence paper, due by the end of the month, if they must. In the Budget as a last resort.

I have to warn that if this, or something along these lines does not come by the end of the year then the crucial decisions Leonardo needs to make, may not be made, the erosion of Yeovil’s skill base will accelerate and a national strategic industrial asset will be in grave jeopardy.

In his answer the Minister may stress the Government’s Strategic Partnership Agreements – so called SPAs – and maybe even announce a new one.

SPAs are useful and they are welcome. But they are not the answer.

In their present form SPAs have no impact on the procurement process. That is where we need the action.

As part of the Government’s policy to maintain a national capability in the design and production of warships and combat jets, it requires front line commanders to consider indigenous industrial capability in making procurement decisions. This is what is needed and what has been so significantly absent in relation to rotary wing.

My Lords, led me, in summing up, lay out what is at risk here.

It is always looks cheaper to buy off the shelf. But in this case that would be, in the long term, far more expensive as we lose high value jobs, export opportunities and a key national asset.

It is not just Yeovil who stands to suffer from this.

Thousands of jobs and substantial high value high-tech industrial production elsewhere in the country is also at jeopardy. Leonardo currently spends more than a third of a billion pounds with suppliers all across the UK, 30% of which is with SMEs.

In the south of England alone, the total value of sub-contract business dependent on Yeovil amounts, to £275 million pounds.

What I am asking is simple.

The Government has a strategy for preserving our sovereign capacity in the production of fast combat jets.

It has one to preserve our ability to build warships.

What we need now – and urgently – is a clear statement from the Government that it values and will preserve Britain’s sovereign capability to design, engineer and manufacture our future rotary wing aircraft.

A key national aero-space industrial asset, providing the best for our armed forces, a work force whose skills have served the defence of the nation for more than 100 years, export opportunities, and tens of thousands of high-tech jobs across the country depend on it.

https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/rotorhub/farnborough-2018-leonardos-helo-future-uncertain-w/

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Britain’s shameful legacy in Hong Kong

Britain’s shameful legacy

Financial Times

14 June 2018

Increasingly, one of the most effective tools in the armoury of authoritarian regimes and the enemies of democracy are colonial-era laws. You only need to look at Singapore’s efforts to clamp down on gay rights, or Pakistan’s blasphemy laws that now carry the death penalty. Both are little more than cut and paste jobs from British colonial rule.

Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in Hong Kong, where democrats and activists are facing a crackdown based on an assortment of outdated colonial legislation.

This week Edward Leung, one of Hong Kong’s most talented young activists, was sentenced to six years in jail for “rioting” for his involvement in the Mong Kok protests of February 2016. This was more than a Hong Kong police officer received for raping a woman in a hotel room. Aged 27, Mr Leung neither has a prior criminal record, nor did he in any way join those who threw stones. Yet the British-designed Public Order Ordinance allowed the Hong Kong government to lock-up and shut-up one of their most powerful opponents for six of the most formative years of his life.

His case is not isolated. Since the Occupy Central movement of 2014, which was one of the biggest peaceful mass movements for democracy this century, more than 100 protesters have faced prosecution based on the same old British law. One of the most controversial cases saw two former lawmakers sentenced to jail for supposedly committing “illegal assembly” inside the Legislative Council. Imagine the outcry if an MP in the UK was jailed for staging a protest inside parliament.

The Public Order Ordinance is one of Britain’s worst legacies in Hong Kong and has repeatedly been criticised by the UN for excessively curtailing freedom of expression. But it is not the only colonial era law that China is using to intimidate and silence the democracy movement. Benny Tai, the mild-mannered law professor who masterminded protests in 2014, is being charged with “public nuisance”.

In a bid to maximise his sentence, they have stacked absurd charges on him: not only accusing him of public nuisance, but also “incitement to public nuisance” and “incitement to incite public nuisance”. The punitive use of this outdated common law charge from the British colonial era does not reflect well on the Hong Kong government, which claims to be signed up to UN human rights standards. And it does not reflect well on the British government, which is largely silent about this.

I am not claiming that all of the figures who have been prosecuted are innocent, but the sentencing is disproportionate. It is possible that Mr Leung may have been guilty of a lesser crime. But he did not deserve such punitive sentencing. Sir Geoffrey Nice, who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic at the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, has commented that “sentencing politically troublesome young men to achieve collateral objective rarely works and often backfires — in the end”.

When I talk with young activists from Hong Kong, they are increasingly demoralised. They have taken to the streets to call for their democratic rights but have been met with repression; repression facilitated by colonial laws and by the near silence of Britain. We must recognise our responsibility. The last British governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten, attempted to reform the Public Order Ordinance in the 1990s because “the vague definitions in the legislation are open to abuse and do not conform with United Nations human rights standards”.

The UK is obliged to promote human rights in Hong Kong. Given that laws written by the UK are facilitating the repression of young democrats, we should be advocating change. Instead we are quiescent. With the spread of tyranny and our history, it is unwise and shameful.”

GDPR Policy

Paddy Ashdown

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Paddy Ashdown

Windrush and Hong Kong

Windrush highlights how the UK has failed Commonwealth citizens in her last colony – Hong Kong

Britain’s continued failure to her former colonial subjects, as exemplified by the Windrush scandal, is a national embarrassment. The last couple of weeks demonstrate that institutionalised racism is alive and kicking within government policy, and has been for decades. It reflects a history where citizens in the Commonwealth have been treated as second class citizens, to be used, not treated as equals.

The scandal initially focussed on the Windrush generation in the Caribbean, but it is increasingly clear that Britain has failed in its duty of care to Commonwealth citizens across the globe. Numerous cases involving non-Caribbean Commonwealth-born citizens from Kenya to Canada have now come into the open.

We are urgently in need of some soul-searching about our neglect of duty towards our former colonial subjects. A post-mortem is needed. These discussions should not only focus on the cases of sudden deportation or denial of rights which are only now coming to light, but must also consider the rights of British Nationals (Overseas) in Hong Kong.

Twenty one years ago Britain handed over her last colony, Hong Kong, to a burgeoning post-communist China. Although under British sovereignty for a century, the British and China decided that Hong Kongers would not be part of the Commonwealth or be given the right to self-determination, and therefore after 1997 Hong Kongers were given no special status in the eyes of the United Kingdom.

At that point, there were about 3 million British Dependent Territories Citizen (BDTC) passport holders (including people born before July 1, 1997 in Hong Kong, and naturalised British subjects) with right of abode in the UK. But against their wishes, Hong Kongers were stripped of their right of abode and many of the core rights which they desired and deserved, and given the option to apply for ‘British National (Overseas) Passports’ or the ‘BNO’ with their rights limited to holiday travel and the right to vote.

At the time, the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 was recent memory and many in Hong Kong felt their British citizenship was a vital lifeline in case China were not sincere in their handover commitment to give Hong Kong a ‘high degree of autonomy’ and uphold their ‘rights and freedoms’. I campaigned for Hong Kongers to be given the right to claim British citizenship, but the Conservative government decided it was not practicable. The BNO, sarcastically referred to by Hong Kongers as ‘Britain says no’, was viewed as a betrayal as the UK just cancelled the citizenship of her former colonial subjects.

In the immediate aftermath of the handover, those who thought this move was justified felt vindicated as Hong Kong’s autonomy was respected and ‘one-country, two-systems’ functioned well. But in recent years things have taken an ominous turn for the worse.

In November, I visited Hong Kong and met with people from across the political spectrum. They shared that over the past five years, the freedoms guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong in its mini-constitution, the Basic Law, have been increasingly eroded. Booksellers have been abducted, press freedom is under pressure and many political activists are being jailed. Judges are complaining that rule of law, although intact, is creaking as the objectivity of the Department for Justice is in doubt and the city appears no closer to democracy.

While on that trip, Emily Lau, the previous leader of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, asked me if Britain would throw a lifeline to Hong Kong and give them the right of abode, “so that they can feel they have a home to go to, if things go desperately wrong here.”

Like we’ve failed those who travelled to the UK on the Windrush, we failed Hong Kong during the handover negotiations by stripping British citizens of their citizenship. The Windrush saga highlights that we have consistently neglected our former colonial subjects who have been used, abused and dumped. The government must make that right, and if the situation in Hong Kong continues to worsen, we should offer Hong Kongers a lifeline by converting BNO passports into full British citizenship.

Lord Ashdown of Norton Sub-Hamdon is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and a patron of Hong Kong Watch

An Essay to my Party II

An Essay to my Party on the eve of Conference

Part II

So, here, as promised are three dangerous ideas for the future. Please be clear. I am not necessarily proposing these. Just asking why we are not even discussing them?

Dangerous idea 1.

We are guiltily obsessed with student fees. The fact that we don’t need to be, because the principle is right, does not make life easier (how I wish we had called them a Graduate tax!). But now with the student loan debt rising, do we not also have to consider how we get better value for what students pay? If we have a tertiary education system which cannot be paid for without loading more and more debt on our young, should we not be looking at the system, not just at how they pay? We persist in the medieval practice of taking students to medieval ivy covered buildings, to receive their education in the medieval manner from minds, too many of which, when it comes to delivering education, are stuck in the middle ages. Yet distance learning was pioneered in Britain at the Open University when communicating with your tutor meant stuffing your academic paper in an envelope, licking it, sticking a stamp on it and putting it in the local post-box. Today the whole planet is into distance learning. Many of our own Universities make tons of money providing distance learning degree courses to students all over the world. But none of them are in Britain! If we were to convert at least part of our tertiary education syllabus to distance learning we might reduce the cost of degrees without diminishing their quality, give students more flexibility, force lecturers into the modern age, widen access and create a superb platform for adult education all at the same time. Why, beloved Lib Dems, do we allow medieval vested interests to preserve our ivy covered tertiary education system exactly as it is, loading more and more debt on students and preventing us from doing what much of the rest of the world is doing already? Just asking.

Dangerous idea 2.

We have long understood that property owning rights are one of the foundation stones of democracy. Yet each of us, gives away our most intimate of property free and daily to the most powerful corporations, who make millions and millions from it.I am talking of course, about our personal data. Why do we Lib Dems not assert the citizens right to own their own data and to have control over how it is used? Why about proposing a law – perhaps a European one – which says to Messrs Amazon, Google, Starbucks etc, that they can use our personal data for their commercial purposes, but only with our permission and if they give us a share of the profits. Can you think of anything which would more alter the relationship between these masters of the commercial universe and the customers whose information they exploit for such enormous profit? Can you think of anything which would more empower the citizen in the market pace? Isn’t that what we Lib Dems are supposed to be about? So?

Dangerous idea 3.

The political parties or movements that are thriving at the moment (e.g. En Marche, Italy’s 5 star movement and Momentum to name a few) are those who have adopted an internet based model which enables mass younger membership, flat low cost management, modest entry fees, direct democracy, constant engagement, high participation and the opportunity to take part in politics as just one of the multi-transactional things we do in our busy lives. The older conventional political parties are stuck in the model of the1870s; vertical hierarchies, festoons of committees which claim democracy, but end up with management by those who can spare the time; low and ageing membership; high cost of entry; limited engagement; even less real participation and a dependency on political obsessives (like me). And they are dying. The number of people in political parties has dropped from 10.5% of the electorate 20 years ago, to 1.5% today. Should we be worried about this? Apparently not. I know this, because I sent a paper to our Party Board suggesting that we might take a look at these revolutionary new ideas being followed by those who are succeeding, where we are not. I did not suggest anything as radical as actually doing this. Just that we should look at it. I know it was discussed (and rejected with some muscularity) as I read about it, not always in the most admiring terms, in these and other pages where the Party, usually with delicious irreverence, exchanges its views. Fine. It probably was a dotty idea. But here’s the thought. Imagine if this was one of our new members suggesting an idea for us to consider and they heard nothing more except rumours of its death, without even an acknowledgement, let alone an explanation or reply. Would they consider us, a Party open to new ideas? Or one defensively closed against them?

Dangerous idea 4. In Estonia and Lithuania they are thinking ambitiously about the application of blockchain and bitcoin to public services, and what these innovations can do to deliver greater efficiency, transparency and citizen power. Why aren’t we?

I have concluded that all this is so, not because we have really lost our intellectual curiosity, but because of the dead hand of Brexit. I admit second place to no-one when it comes to fighting for the best Brexit we can, and preferably no Brexit at all. I am proud of our Party’s clear position on this defining issue. But is our obsession with Brexit in danger of distracting us from what kind of country we want Britain to be, whether in the EU or out of it? For me the heart of liberalism is our crusade for the empowered citizen, not the powerful state. This is a radical disruptive and insurgent idea. But where is it? When did you last – at Conference or outside it – hear us arguing that case, debating new ideas to make it happen or proselytising it before the court of public opinion?

Look, for instance at this week’s resolution on the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The answer to the abuse of tenants in places like at Grenfell, is to give them the power and support to manage themselves through tenant’s co-operatives. I thought this was our policy. So where is it?

Answers on a post card please – preferably post marked Bournemouth and dated next week.

See you there.

UK Foreign Policy after Trump

House of Lords debate on Foreign Affairs after President Trump

18 January 2017

I have been spending a lot of time recently researching the 1930s.

I am struck by the similarities between this suddenly turbulent and unpredictable age and those years.

Then as now, nationalism and protectionism were on the rise, democracy seemed to have failed;
people hungered for the government of strong men;
those who suffered most from economic pain felt alienated and turned towards simplistic solutions and strident voices;
public institutions, conventional politics, the old establishments were everywhere mistrusted and disbelieved;
compromise was out of fashion;
the centre collapsed in favour of the extremes;
the normal order of things didn’t function;
change – even revolution – was more appealing than the status quo
and “fake news” built around the effective lie, carried more weight in the public discourse than rational arguments and provable facts.
Painting a lie on the side of a bus and driving it round the country, would have seemed very normal in those days.

Perhaps the last time we stood as close to war as we stand now was at the height of the cold war.

But then, we had a comfort we do not have today.

Then, the Western liberal democracies stood together in defence of our interests and our shared values.

Now, under President Trump, the most powerful of our number thinks standing together,

is less important than going it alone;

abdication is preferable to international leadership;

collective action takes second place to America First.

Today we have to face the wrenching reality that this US President does not share our values – as his recent racist comments have so shockingly illustrated.

The liberal principles that have underpinned every civilised society, every peaceful age and every prosperous society are under attack as never before.

But President Trump appears more aligned with those forces ranged against liberal values than those seeking to defend them.

Throughout the long years of the American century we have taken comfort in the fact that the “Leader of the Western world”, while flawed like the rest of us, was well informed, judicious and cautious about going to war.

Now we have an American President who is ignorant, unpredictable, foolhardy and reckless.

(Bang goes my invitation to the Sate Dinner…)

This is frightening stuff for those who, like me, place their faith in the Atlantic Alliance.

So what do we do about it?

The answer is, grin and bear it in the hope that the US will find its way back to sanity.

After all, we in Britain are not entirely free of this kind of lurch into stupidity, just at the moment.

When the battle between the America we know and Donald Trump ends, only one side will remain standing. Either Donald Trump will destroy American democracy, as we know it. Or American democracy will destroy Donald Trump.

Personally my money is still on the American democracy.

But even if, on both sides of the Atlantic, we can find our way back to saner and safer ground, is there something deeper going on here?

The slow divergence of interest between Europe and the US does not date from President Trump’s election, although this has accelerated the process.

Even under President Obama the US gaze was looking more west across the Pacific than east across the Atlantic.

NATO and the Atlantic axis will remain Europe’s most important alliance for as far ahead as we can see.

But it will not be the same Alliance as it has been for the last 50 years. To remain strong the Atlantic relationship will have to look far more like J.F. Kennedy’s 1962 vision of a twin pillar NATO, than the present conjunction of a giant on one side and 21 pygmies on the other.

We will need a NATO which is mature enough to cope with areas where our interests do not elide –we should not be shy for example of calling out Israel for its illegal occupations, just because Washington doesn’t. Or of strenuously supporting the Iran nuclear deal, just because Mr Trump wants to pull the plug.

The United Sates will remain the world’s most powerful nation for the next decade or more.

But the context in which she holds her power has changed. The American century was one of the few periods in history when the world was mono-polar and dominated by a single colossus.

When all compasses had to point to Washington to define their positions, for or against.

Now we are moving into a multi-polar world – more like Europe in the nineteenth century than the last decades of the twentieth.

A foreign policy for the next fifty years based on what we have done for the last fifty, will be a foreign policy clumsily out of tune with the times. Which is exactly where we currently are. Everything has changed in the world, except Britain’s policies towards it.

British foreign policy in the post Trump era will need to be much more flexible, much more subtle, much more capable of building relationships on shared interests – even with those outside the Atlantic club – and even with whom we do not share values – than the simplicities of the last decades where we only needed to snuggle close to our friendly neighbourhood super power to be safe.

In a world dominated by a single superpower, might is the determiner of outcomes, not diplomacy. Our present foreign policy is dominated, not by diplomacy, but by high explosive. See a problem in the world, drop a bomb on it. The string of Western defeats; Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and most humiliating of all Syria should tell us that this age is over.

We have lost contact with the truth of Clausewitz, that war is an extension of diplomacy by other means. We have remembered the war but forgotten the diplomacy – and so we have failed.

In an age where building alliances, will protect and enhance Britain’s interests, better than using military capacity alone, high explosive will be less useful to us than diplomacy.

To be diminishing our diplomatic capacity, as we are currently doing, is folly of a very high order.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the current slide towards isolationism, is that, in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the only solutions to our problems are multinational ones.

Climate change, trade imbalance, resource depletion, population growth, nuclear proliferation, over-population, poverty, migration, suppressing conflict – these are the greatest problems we face – and not one can be solved by nations acting alone.

As a medium sized nation with global reach but diminishing weight, it is in our interests to see a rule based world order, rather than one shaped by might. So actively pursuing the strengthening of multilateral institutions, should be a cardinal principle of a sensible British foreign policy,

Lastly we have to deal with the consequences of our own folly.

I make no secret of it.

We Lib Dems seek to reverse Brexit, which has already resulted in a catastrophic shrinkage of our ability to protect our interests abroad.

I reject the notion that, in seeking to reverse Brexit we are acting either undemocratically or unpatriotically. Any more than, for instance, the noble Lord Lord Forsyth, who I know to be both a democrat and a patriot, was offending either principle by seeking to change the country’s mind after the 1975 referendum.

But one thing is certain – in the EU or out, our foreign policy must continue to place its first emphasis on working intimately with our European neighbours. Because that is the best – indeed the only way – to pursue our nation’s interests in a dangerous, volatile and turbulent age.

It is too little recognised just how much the terms of our existence as Europeans have changed these last two decades.

Europe now faces an isolationist US President to our west, the most aggressive Russian President of recent times to our east and all around us, economic powers growing up, some already stronger than any single European nation.

The right reaction to this new context, is not to allow ourselves to broken up and scattered, but to deepen European co-operation and co-ordination.

So, inside the single market and customs union, or out – inside the EU or separated from it – our only sensible foreign policy is to proceed in lock step with our European neighbours.

I can put it no better than the Government’s own paper on post-Brexit foreign policy. Britain’s future relationship with the EU should be – and I quote – : “unprecedented in its breadth, taking in cooperation on foreign policy, defence and security, and development.”

Precisely My Lords.

The question we debate today is, does the Government mean it, or will the country’s interests once again be hi-jacked by the anti-European prejudices of the Tory Party?

My Lords, I beg to move.

UK Foreign Policy after Trump

Indy

18 January 2018

I have been spending a lot of time recently researching the 1930s. I am forcefully struck with the similarities between our current turbulent and unpredictable age and those bygone years.

Then as now, nationalism and protectionism were on the rise and democracy seemed to have failed. People hungered for a government of strong men. Those who suffered most from economic pain felt alienated and turned towards simplistic solutions and strident voices. Public institutions, conventional politics and the old establishments were everywhere mistrusted and disbelieved, and compromise was out of fashion. The centre collapsed in favour of the extremes and the normal order of things didn’t function. Change – even revolution – was more appealing than the status quo and “fake news”, built around the effective lie, carried more weight in the public discourse than rational arguments and provable facts.

Perhaps the last time when we stood as close to war as we stand now was at the height of the Cold War. But then, we had a comfort which we do not have today. Then, the Western liberal democracies stood together in defence of our interests and our shared values.

Now, under President Trump, the most powerful of our number thinks standing together is less important than going it alone – abdication is preferable to international leadership and collective action should take second place to “America First”.

Throughout the long years of the American century, we have taken great comfort in the fact that our alliance with the United States and its Presidents has been built not just on shared interests, but also on shared values. Today we have to face the wrenching reality that this US President does not share our values – his description of a good percentage of the world’s nations as “sh**holes” bluntly reveals just how far from our own ideals he is.

The liberal principles that have underpinned every civilised society, every peaceful age and every prosperous society are under attack as never before. President Trump appears more aligned with those forces that are raging against liberal values than those seeking to defend them.

We have, in the past, taken comfort too in the fact that the famous “leader of the Western world”, while flawed like the rest of us, was well informed, judicious and cautious about going to war. Now we have an American President who is ignorant, unpredictable, foolhardy and reckless.

We are witnessing a historic Gunfight at the O.K. Corral standoff in Washington right now – and only one side will remain standing. Either Donald Trump will destroy American democracy, or American democracy will destroy Donald Trump. Personally, my money is still on the latter.

But even if, on both sides of the Atlantic, we can find our way back to saner and safer ground, is there something deeper going on here?

The slow divergence of interest between Europe and the US does not date from President Trump’s election, although he may have accelerated the process. Even under President Obama the US gaze was looking more west across the Pacific than east across the Atlantic.

The United States will remain the world’s most powerful nation for the next decade or more. But the context in which she holds her power has changed. The American century was one of the few periods in history when the world was mono-polar, dominated by a single colossus. All compasses pointed to Washington to define their positions, for or against.

Now we are moving into a multi-polar world – more like Europe in the nineteenth century than the last decades of the twentieth.

A foreign policy for the next 50 years based on what we have done for the previous 50 years will be clumsily out of tune with the times. This is where we are right now. Everything has changed in the world, except Britain’s view of it.

British foreign policy in the post-Trump era will need to be much more flexible, much more subtle and much more capable of building relationships on shared interests even with those outside the Atlantic club – and even with whom we do not share values – than the simplicities of the mono-polar world where we only needed to snuggle to our friendly neighbourhood superpower to be safe.

To continue to diminish our diplomatic capacity, as we are currently doing, is folly of a very high order.

The most dangerous aspect of the current slide towards isolationism is that, in an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world, the only solutions to our problems are multinational ones. Climate change, trade imbalance, resource depletion, population growth, nuclear proliferation, over-population, poverty, migration, suppressing conflict – these are the greatest problems we face – and not one can be solved by nations who stand alone.

Lastly, we have to deal with the consequences of our own folly. I make no secret of it. We Liberal Democrats seek to reverse Brexit, which has already resulted in a serious shrinkage of our ability to protect our interests abroad.

In the EU or out, Liberal Democrat foreign policy will remain the same. To work as closely as we can with our European neighbours. Because that is the best – indeed the only way – to pursue our nation’s interests in this dangerous, volatile and turbulent age.

Europe is now facing an isolationist US President to our west, the most aggressive Russian President of recent times to the east and all around us economic powers are growing up – and some are already stronger than any single European nation. The right reaction to this new context is not to allow ourselves to broken up and scattered, but to deepen European co-operation and co-ordination.