We Albanians are just the latest scapegoats for Britain’s failing ideological project

When I was growing up in Albania in the 1990s, the father of one of my friends was a people smuggler. We used to call him B the Lame. B the Lame had not always been a smuggler. Before the country transitioned from a communist state to a liberal one, he worked shifts in the dockyard, where he would make fishing nets and repaint boats.

He did not look like a smuggler – he was tiny and anaemic and walked with a limp. He did not choose to be a smuggler – the privatisation reforms that accompanied the arrival of political pluralism forced dockyard managers to make redundancies, so B and his wife found themselves unemployed. Nor did he think of himself as a smuggler: it was a job like any other. He was paid to help people on dinghies reach Italy, and he needed the money to feed his children. He was a little afraid, but not ashamed of his activity. For decades, Albanians had been murdered by their state whenever they tried crossing the border. In the very rare cases in which people succeeded, relatives left behind were deported. Finally, Albanians were free, and B the Lame was helping them realise their dreams. He spoke of this with a touch of pride.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/04/albanians-scapegoats-britain-failing-ideological-project-invaders

 

The Brexit revolution devours its children

Can Liz Truss survive? The humiliating U-turn over the top rate tax cut has won her time in the party and in the markets. But within hours of the first U-turn, her premiership was unravelling further in almost every direction. In the crammed bars of the Birmingham Hyatt hotel, seasoned Tories were, during their party’s conference, discussing their future, using phrases such as “death spiral” and “doom loop”… as well as fruitier Anglo-Saxon terms unsuitable for family publications like this one.

Tory MPs, up to and including ministers, were making it clear they would not vote through real-terms benefit cuts; a weakening of environmental protection in enterprise zones; fracking; or a planning free-for-all. There is a growing move against any radical dilution by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, of employment rights.

Two obvious conclusions follow. First, never mind the disastrous mini-Budget: within two days of Liz Truss’s first conference as prime minister, there is not much left of her much-vaunted growth package. Second – since this is all about parliamentary numbers – it suggests that the Conservative Party’s system of imposing by vote of its ordinary members a leader its MPs haven’t elected is fundamentally flawed and needs to be scrapped.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/conservatives/2022/10/andrew-marr-brexit-revolution-devours-children

 

Queen Elizabeth embraced ‘our great imperial family’ but failed to reckon with the empire’s subjugation and plunder

When Elizabeth II descended from a treehouse in Kenya on February 6, 1952, to learn that her father had died and she would be queen, she at once became the face of a crumbling empire and of a country still recovering from the ruins of war.

It was also a nation that was reinventing itself, and Elizabeth and her family would be critical to that enterprise. What she lacked in power over the next 70 years of her reign, Queen Elizabeth — who died on Thursday at the age of 96 — more than made up for in international respectability and admiration.

But back in 1952, Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, had almost skipped the Kenya leg of their imperial tour. The colony was in the early stages of an armed rebellion. Since the beginning of the year, Dedan Kimathi’s Kenya Land and Freedom Army had been engaged in a campaign of sabotage and assassination. The situation had spooked the couple, and it was actually the fear of ridicule that kept the trip on track.

https://www.businessinsider.com/queen-elizabeth-and-the-empires-legacy-of-subjugation-and-plunder-2022-9?r=US&IR=T

 

With Queen Gone, Former Colonies Find a Moment to Rethink Lasting Ties

Millicent Barty has spent years trying to decolonize her country, recording oral histories across the Solomon Islands and promoting Melanesian culture. Her goal: to prioritize local knowledge, not just what arrived with the British Empire.

But on Friday morning, when asked about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Ms. Barty sighed and frowned. Her eyes seemed to hold a cold spring of complicated emotion as she recalled meeting the queen in 2018 with a Commonwealth young leaders’ program.

“I love Her Majesty,” she said, sipping coffee on the Solomon island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific, 9,300 miles from Buckingham Palace. “It’s really sad.”

Reconciling a seemingly benevolent queen with the often-cruel legacy of the British Empire is the conundrum at the heart of Britain’s post-imperial influence. The British royal family reigned over more territories and people than any other monarchy in history, and among the countries that have never quite let go of the crown, Queen Elizabeth’s death accelerates a push to address the past more fully and strip away the vestiges of colonialism.

“Does the monarchy die with the queen?” said Michele Lemonius, who grew up in Jamaica and recently completed a Ph.D in Canada with a focus on youth violence in former slave colonies. “It’s time for dialogue. It’s time for a conversation.”

 

We can respect popular affection for the Queen and question the idea of royalty

King Charles III. As soon as one monarch dies, another takes her place. It is a seamless transition that, for many, is both necessary and reassuring, helping sustain the myth of monarchy that, while kings and queens may pass on, the institution endures. It is also for that very reason that the seamlessness is troubling.

At moments such as these, republicans are faced with a dilemma. “We are saddened to hear the news of the Queen’s death and we wish to express our condolences to the royal family,” tweeted the campaign group Republic. “There will be plenty of time to debate the monarchy’s future. For now, we must respect the family’s personal loss and allow them and others to mourn the loss of a mother, grandmother and great grandmother.”

I agree with the broad tenor of the sentiment. Yet I also think that, even now, we need to reflect in a way that is probing and questioning as well as respectful of the occasion. One of the problems in simply maintaining a dignified silence is that the monarchy itself does not stand still. A new King has already been installed.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/10/we-can-respect-popular-affection-for-the-queen-and-question-the-idea-of-royalty

 

Liz Truss will make Johnson seem a political genius, May a mistress of empathy, Cameron a beacon of sincerity

The ageing WB Yeats complained in Sailing to Byzantium that his soul, stuck in his increasingly decrepit body, was “fastened to a dying animal”. With the absurd accession of Liz Truss to 10 Downing Street, it increasingly feels like Ireland too is tethered to a moribund creature.

In a healthy or happy democracy, Truss doesn’t get to be prime minister, even in her own fantasies. She is Theresa May without the seriousness and Boris Johnson without the charisma — a combination of ingredients scraped by a mad chef from the bottom of a very deep barrel.

With her, the Tory Party has chosen, not to wake up to the increasingly grim realities of contemporary Britain, but to double down on the game of “let’s pretend”.

With Johnson, it was “let’s pretend it’s 1940 and he’s Winston Churchill”. With Truss, it’s “let’s pretend it’s 1980 and she’s Margaret Thatcher”. With both, it is let’s pretend that Britain’s problems were caused by the EU and that the British bulldog has now been let off the leash, ready to romp through the sunlit uplands of a new golden age.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2022/09/05/liz-truss-will-make-johnson-seem-a-political-genius-may-a-mistress-of-empathy-cameron-a-beacon-of-sincerity/

 

The nuclear threat is now at the centre of the Ukraine crisis

At the height of the Cold War in 1955, a top secret assessment produced by Sir William Strath for the British government concluded that a Soviet nuclear attack would kill or injure sixteen million people.

The Strath report, considered so sensitive that it was not declassified until 2002, said that ten 10-megaton bombs on the main British population centres would kill twelve million and injure four million people. “This would mean the loss of one third of the population,” it stated. “Blast and heat would be the dominant hazard, accounting for nine million fatal casualties, against less than three million from radiation. Four of the sixteen million casualties would be caused by a single bomb on London.”

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/ukraine-nuclear-conflict-threat-russia-nato-1805490

 

Johnson’s Resignation and the Consequences for Europe: We Can’t Do Without Britain

The United Kingdom has had some turbulent years. The bad news: The future doesn’t look particularly rosy, either. The economic forecasts are gloomy, the health care system is facing overload, inflation is expected to rise to more than 10 percent in the autumn, and no one knows exactly what “Brexit” actually means.

For Germans and other Europeans, the question is whether the UK is a suitable partner in the medium term. Is the island, shaken by domestic crises and an eternal debate about Europe, finally becoming unpredictable to the outside world?

Boris Johnson, who announced he would resign on Thursday, is personally responsible for the fact that trust in the British government is at close to zero in many European capitals. Relations between Berlin and London are pretty much on ice. For Britain, though, a country that has been governed for almost three years by a clown together with ideologues and crackpots, this is more than an image problem. At the latest, the country’s reputation as a pragmatic middle power had been destroyed by the point he took office. It’s quite possible that sighs of relief could be heard within the president’s office in the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Chancellery in Berlin when Johnson announced his resignation.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/johnsons-resignation-and-the-consequences-for-europe-we-cant-do-without-britain-a-590a7ec1-8e75-4bab-a638-e29a11022ee8

 

Boris Johnson should go immediately

Boris johnson’s government has collapsed at last. For months Britain’s prime minister wriggled out of one scandal after another. Now, irretrievably rejected by his own mps, he has accepted that his premiership is over. He has asked to stay until the autumn, but he should go immediately.

Mr Johnson was brought down by his own dishonesty, so some may conclude that a simple change of leadership will be enough to get Britain back on course. If only. Although Mr Johnson’s fingerprints are all over today’s mess, the problems run deeper than one man. Unless the ruling Conservative Party musters the fortitude to face that fact, Britain’s many social and economic difficulties will only worsen.

Right up until the end Mr Johnson clung desperately to power, arguing that he had a direct mandate from the people. That was always nonsense: his legitimacy derived from Parliament. Like America’s former president, Donald Trump, the more he hung on the more he disqualified himself from office. In his departure, as in government, Mr Johnson demonstrated a wanton disregard for the interests of his party and the nation.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/07/07/boris-johnson-should-go-immediately

 

Why was Boris Johnson so influential at such a momentous moment?

What happens to the boy in the bubble when the bubble bursts? He falls from a great height.

The vehicle in which Boris Johnson floated to power was Brexit. It took him to an astonishing place, one where, in any sane world, he did not belong.

But bubbles are wildly erratic in their movements, and they don’t last. The same was always going to be true of Johnson’s premiership.

There is, in much of the British media and within the Conservative Party, a story about this week’s surreal events: they are all to do with character. They have nothing to do with policy.

This is self-delusion. For Johnson’s character is itself inextricable from the biggest policy decision Britain has made in the last 50 years: leaving the European Union.

His great strength, indeed, was his uncanny ability to embody an entire, and epic, political project. Others cared about Brexit and fought for years to make it happen. But Johnson, who did not care about it, gave it an ample physical form, a voice, an attitude.

The old Eurosceptic cranks wrote a script — Johnson performed it. Without his brilliant ability to enact Brexit as a persona, it would simply not have happened.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2022/07/09/why-was-a-man-like-boris-johnson-so-extraordinarily-influential-at-such-a-momentous-moment/