Broadcasting Limitation

 Channel 4 in the UK is hiding nothing. One documentary is about Aldi, a single retailer, known for being cheap, commissioning some sort of dessert, basically something when I bothered to look  that appears like a female breast fake style. Well done Penny Lane bakery and what publicity, and then other hopefuls include Wigston Deli, who pitch Pigs in Blankets Samosas; a festive themed steamed pudding from Worcestershire based The Pudding Shop, and Pigs in Blankets Ice Cream from Yorkshire dairy farm Yorvale. It's all about Aldi, of course, cheap and yet sophisticated.

Another documentary is about McVities biscuits. They're producing a not quite so new white chocolate digestive. In the past ITV would have banned these documentaries as too close to commercial products. Too close?

Once upon a time cameras came with limitations and directors moved them about. Lights or strong reflected sun were needed. Nowadays you get saturated colour and pinpoint accuracy, and so cameras stay still. The focus is on individuals and what they wear, where they are placed, as they drone on. They can be in an office or go dogging - it doesn't matter.

Basic Liberal Religious Position

 

I came into religion through the liberal route, starting with sociology of religion research that showed the unawareness of theology by churchgoers, and that this was deliberate. Those intending for ministry learnt liberal Christian theology and then in general went on to ignore it as they went into pastoral ministry.

I was told by one Methodist minister that Honest to God from 1962 by Bishop J A T Robinson was "old hat" but then too dangerous to introduce. He was minister of one of the groups I studied using participant observation. I found a liberal Methodist minister to interview. He recommended I read Hans Kùng's 1973 brick called On Being a Christian and indeed I acquired my own copy. Kùng is an ecumenically-minded marginalised Roman Catholic theologian.

My background was as an agnostic encountering the University of Essex chaplaincy in 1982. It's chaplain went on to be known for his Animal Theology and less so for his interesting treatment of Karl Barth - had he focussed on The Spirit as he had on Christ. His daughter Clair grew up to be a chip off the block as she promotes Animal Theology on liberation, ecological, and contextual theologies and her theologian of choice (comparative disappointment) was liberationist Leonardo Boff. Both father and daughter assume a trinitarian theology but run the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics concerning sentient animals on a multi-faiths basis.

Today's theological language has narrowed, so that people like the Linzeys, Colin Coward and even myself are counted as 'Progressive' despite huge differences between us. I would not count as Christian despite sharing many concerns and some methods of Christian progressives. I'm looking for a religious humanist theology, one that does extend to sentient animals.

Too much of revisionism is based on opposing literalists of the Bible. I don't really care about them. They are easy targets. So many American Deconstructionists come from one-time fundamentalists who've become secular and saddled with personal burdens of history. This has never been true for me. I'm more interested in why so few take on the likes of Rowan Williams and their sophisticated mythology. I recall Rowan Williams telling disc jockey Simon Mayo that the advent and Christian narratives are indeed historical, when Williams knew perfectly well that they are not. As Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury, the Virgin Birth increased in importance, whatever that meant. Williams gets so stuck in the detail that he forgets the detail of tradition is not the same as historical; it has historical expression but does not have an historical basis. In other words, he deals in lies rather than truths. I bought Williams's recent Looking East in Winter and read his methodology of getting stuck into comparative obscurity, as if being obscure passes a test of credibility. Well, it does not. Rules of communicating still apply and a purpose of writing and speaking is to be understood.

I'm as capable of doing Christian theology as anyone else. My preferred route is the more historical. The whole nativity matter is about when Jesus is apparently God acquiring humanity or a human becoming God. Some said or say it is at his resurrection, others that it was at his baptism by John, others at his birth, and then they are supposed to maintain that Christ was eternally divine (although John's Gospel refers to the beginning - this is not quite the same thing).

John's Gospel is most explicit that Jesus had divinity, with all of the 'I Am' statements, although there are also God the Father only type statements. As for the other Synoptic Gospels, the most 'divine' is arguably Mark where others failed to understand Jesus's mission. However, Mark's possible divinity and Jesus as Messiah is in the context of a coming new reality that would eject Roman rule in place of the Son of Man, the King of the Jews, establishing the twelve tribes of Israel and the Kingdom of God within which even Gentiles would experience the benefits.

This is the important part: Jesus is not simply some ethical teacher and healer, even if this is all that can be extracted from him by today's sociology of knowledge: he was a supernaturalist and holder of eschatological beliefs we would find strange to hear.

Thus I do not follow Jesus, and see no reason to extract ethical beliefs from him in particular. I see the point of a life lived, and Jesus does it well, but the result here is a kind of league table without the necessary evidence. Where does Gandhi go, and what about Baha'u'llah of the Baha'is (as one digs down into a group that likes to control its own history inside its own vaults and rules of publishing). Where is the evidence of the dharma result of the Buddha's Middle Way?

Like Colin Coward I revise the ontological essence of God, God as ultimate being. I'm aware that this God my way is so high and so thin it barely exists at all. Much are signals of transcendence rather than transcendence itself - the quality of art, the beauty of equations. I can also use the language of Holy Spirit in the sense of this thin God doing things. I'm not a deist, not really, but I beware of anything beyond evolution's own cruel processes of adding complexity to life on earth.

I ally with those Christians wanting equality and justice. It's a better life. It's fairly simple stuff, this.

In a serious behavioural way (attending, getting involved less or more) I have mixed with Methodists, Anglicans, Quakers, Western Buddhists and Baha'is. However, the main group has been Unitarians.

Let us be clear. The Unitarians are at a point of history where they are pretty much defunct. This means there are some congregations where they are actually doing well. There are paid  ministers. There is still, just about, a General Assembly structure. But its numbers are so low (two and a half thousand in Great Britain) that it has had it. Locally, and like many, I fell out with the minister here, and the local congregation was wrecked by 'the man with a plan' and a bureaucrat with documents. It has hobbled on since with a handful, if that, with much more money  than people, but the Methodists would have closed it down decades back. It went downwards when I was in it, and I observed no agreement over definitions local or national. There was no point or purpose, other than a choice of existence, for a creedless gathering for doing religion. Yes, there was a Puritan-Presbyterian communal memory, a long shadow, and all its developments institutionally embedded, and my experienced minister-led example showed a pathetic lack of substance in the New Age material.

Thus I remain fairly central in how I draw in material for being religious. Oddly, I'm less likely to be Buddhist, less likely to be purely secularist, but I am very marginal in religion. I give more attention to the left wing of the Reformation and East Europe as a place of early toleration. i am more religious than spiritual, still.

I am interested in the effects of Romanticism over rationality: rationality alone cannot exist in religion. Some tradition is invented but others are tramlines so far. Some confined theology, teaching and practice that enshrine prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia and racism put me off associating with institutions of religion. Evangelical theology is pointless; radical Orthodoxy is an exercise in being uncommunicative. Creating a postmodern space for premodern content is another form of indulgence, a religious masturbation.

I'm inactive. Resting is preferable. I'd still join with those who are part of today's sociology of knowledge. We think today along the lines of expecting technology to solve problems. Maths is pure thought but crucial as applied, followed by experimental physics, chemistry and biology, by deductive social science in Economics, politics and sociology, and inductive social anthropology, and then inductive but evidence-rules history, and on to the subjective arts like painting and creative writing. Religion should be less supernatural and slot into these ways of thinking and behaving.

Rare Blogging

 

I used to write blogs regularly. I had plenty to put in writing, so this is what I did. I recommend that, when there is nothing particularly to say, then don't state it. Someone will; let them.

I did get into video editing to add to my story-making skills. One was a criticism of Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, especially the first four (of nine, a tenth to come) books and the first four television series, although I have watched five through. She's a highly imaginative, very popular author, but there is much in the novel construction open to negative criticism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_UKQqT_ol0&pp=ygUPQWRyaWFuIFdvcnNmb2xk

Then I did an analysis of trams (on to trolleybuses), cars and trains all to do with optimistic travel claims of private transport back in 1963 between and into towns. We are still living with this rejection of the rationality of public transport provision.

I happen to be opposed to HS 2, the high speed rail line, but only because it's yesterday's solution today. We should be thinking of Maglev motion with rare regional stops and a basic extended letter H. Very expensive but of the highest speed. Then we should be having replacement rail and some out of town railway stops. If we can build bypass roads we can build bypass rails - or even use what is available, such as shortening and speeding up rail links going past (using Park and Ride) Swansea/ Abertawe. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfhZQm4sLYs&pp=ygUPQWRyaWFuIFdvcnNmb2xk

The blog was once about liberal religion, a real passion, but later was motivated by politics; and its collapse was my defence of staying in the European Union. All I wrote has been vindicated since but a defeat is simply that and its life again depends on new circumstances still to arise to bring back the relevance of its arguments.

Meanwhile I read the blogs of others, and one is by Colin Coward a campaigning Anglican of the progressive side. I largely agree with him except his view of evolution that reflects optimistic process theology - whereas I think evolution works via comparative death and is a cruel process. Evolution is a local chaotic series of comparative benefits, that then goes on to interact as a system in and across a locality. Improvements and complexity overall are at a cost of suffering.

I'm more likely to blog when the Tory party at last disintegrates, as it seems to be doing over its own policy and structural contradictions. We need a General Election. I remain a member but hardly an enthusiast for the Liberal Democrats.

Next along then is a statement of my current religious position.

The Hindu to See the King

 So the Conservatives have not made the same mistake twice. (See the previous entry.)

Sunak has won among the MPs and that was good enough. He will present a more substantial leader for Keir Starmer and Ed Davey to tackle electorally, though at first glance Sunak lacks communication skills in front of a television camera.

He could be - we'll have to see - at the Social Democratic end of the Conservative Party - a bit like Johnson, but Johnson also threw red meat tit bits to his right wingers and was a Nationalist with it.

He'll be a Hindu charged with deciding between two Church of England bishops for appointments.

He is untested, of course, with the broad-brush management of ministers who are to do the specific delivery. Many Liz Truss 'yes people' will now be bundled out from the Cabinet.

Thus, regardless of public statements of best intentions, right wingers will add to those disgruntled. We remain at the end of a political cycle where the body politic is desperate for renewal that comes with a sea-change General Election. Pity that the opposition leaders lack charisma. Capable and tested ones are in devolved government. Unless Truss, who ignored them, Sunak would do well to call upon them in a positive manner.

Same Again?

Johnson has gone. Whatever his reason, it's sensible from a Tory Party point of view. He became divisive. His 'time' will probably be to head up the opposition, if the Tories lose the next General Election.

However, imagine the scenario now. Penny Mordaunt gets over a hundred MPs, many from Johnson, many anti-Sunak.

Two go to the membership. Sunak with the overwhelming backing of MPs again loses to the other one.

It would be just like how Truss won, the Tories' own Jeremy Corbyn, the ideologue who lacked the support of most MPs. (The difference is: he was genuine and she was fake, a recreation several times.)

The Tory Party in the House of Commons would explode. They might even hold their own vote afterwards and have Sunak (almost) command a majority in the House of Commons.

Or, more likely, the Mordaunt faction would make Sunak unable to get legislation through.

So, unless she backs down, the risk is that the Tory Party self-destructs.

Stupid Politics (Continued)

 The Tory calculation is that Boris Johnson will prevent an electoral wipeout. The problem is that he will now divide opinion.

Yes, some electors will vote for him, but equally those anti-Johnson who are not attracted positively to 'Soporific Starmer' or 'Disappointing Davey' will be motivated to vote for who can remove their constituency Tory MP.

But, before we ever get there, imagine Sunak getting the vast majority of Conservative MPs only for it to go to the membership and find that they select Johnson. It'll be back to the same issue again, as with Truss.

Plus, if Johnson wins, several Conservative MPs will go independent or even join an opposition party.

Rely on the Conservatives to get it wrong again!

If Johnson Stands

 If Boris Johnson wants to stand for Conservative Party leader, the Conservative Party will descend into chaos like the present chaos has been a little difficulty.

He commands support and wishes to restore what was lost, but too many have learnt the lesson of his unsuitability as Prime Minister.

So, far from there being a unity candidate, there'd be (with a week?) sharp division with massive infighting. A placed-in Prime Minister would not be able to command the House of Commons.

I'm not very good at predictions but I can see the trends and movements. My predictions sort of work their way through perhaps in a different way. I was right that Truss had lost authority, but she (for a while) decided to dig in. However, nothing she said had lasting power and so she has gone.

Some want Johnson in as the only charismatic leader to face a General Election. The price is huge.

The problem for others is that they would be a leader up to defeat at the polls and then would be replaced, especially after a bloodbath. If I was a Tory MP with leadership ambitions, I'd become leader in a period of coming opposition to have a manifesto and policy aims and identity. What's the point of a short period in office, when defeat is almost guaranteed?

The Tories cannot do a leadership stitch-up within a week if Boris Johnson stands.

She's Going (Or Not)

Update: Read below and I'm wrong. Prime Minister Liz Truss told Chris Mason, the BBC Political editor and part-time Comedian Correspondent, that she was leading the Conservatives into the next General Election. They will, of course, be delighted. What it means is rather than stand down and make things easy and organised, they will have to prise her out.

So what was the very important business that kept Liz Truss from the House of Commons this afternoon? Why did Penny Maudant take her place.

Had Putin nuked Ukraine? No, she was talking to Sir Graham Brady. Surely the House of Commons and accountability takes priority? He's a party manager.

Then we hear she will have drinks with the cabinet this evening.

Journalists haven't said it, because they haven't been told. But let's speculate. They've discussed her succession and she will slip away quietly.

She turned up to hear Jeremy Hunt wipe away her policies and join her to the 'anti-growth coalition' - presumably her meeting with Sir Graham Brady had a satisfactory conclusion.

Jeremy Hunt? He Won't Last

 Jeremy Hunt is apparently the new Chancellor of the Exchequer before it's even been announced.

He has no connection with Liz Truss, and the question has to be who would serve under her. Her authority is completely battered. Kwasi Kwarteng was her ideological soulmate and he did what they wanted to do. They lacked legitimacy to do it - who voted for them to suddenly do the other thing? - but Jeremy Hunt is no more than a safe pair of hands. He will be a short term chancellor only because when she falls he will fall. She's finished and her colleagues may as well get on with it.

She's On Her Way

Update: Truss has sacked her ideological running mate, the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. Astonishing after all of 38 days. The chaos wasn't his doing, it was theirs. I don't see this is changing what I wrote below only yesterday. (Today is14th Ocotober 2022.)

It's amazing how it works out. The Truss government never had legitimacy. The tiny selectorate could not be behind such a change of policy from centre-right Johnson to economic liberal (and reconstructed) right wing Truss.

She's crap at her job and so is Kwarteng. You wouldn't think he was a hedge fund manager because he comes across as someone without experience. You wouldn't think she had been in the cabinet so long, but then as Foreign Secretary her legacy is having opportune photographs taken.

You get that moment when suddenly authority drains away. After just a month in the job it's happening again, as it did with Johnson. This time, if there is no General Election, the Tory Party has to obey the rules of Parliamentary democracy and the Members of Parliament approve the people put in power.

Truss will not only not win a General Election; she will sink the Tory party ship. Maybe the Tories just have to accept that they are going to lose. The reason Patel did not stand for the leadership was because she knew the next leader would lose and be sacked. Better to be chosen as opposition leader, set out your stall and make the appeal to the voters.

The non-Budget that was a Budget can be reversed in part or whole, but the damage is done. The idea that taxes should be cut when the NHS is flat on its back, the court system is disintegrating, and there is no improvement in productivity, and when so many people are sick, is madness. Growth comes from investment, not from fiscal measures that cause stricter and contradictory monetary measures. Johnson at least knew that money had to be spent.

This has been a lesson in Jeremy Corbyn too: he did not have the support of MPs for his far-reaching radical project. It was sourced in the swollen Labour Party membership of that time. Liz Truss is a Jeremy Corbyn, and she is the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong ideology.

Authority is slipping away and so goodbye. Bizarrely, the constitution is working.

Why So Nervous, Tories?

We can see that the Tory Party is ever so nervous about a Liz Truss win to become Prime Minister on Monday 5th September.

This is what Ryan Shorthouse said, Chief Executive of the Bright Blue think tank:

“If she just surrounds herself with the Boris fan club, puts in place a continuity cabinet with the same old faces and uses the same arguments, policies and tactics as Johnson, she will lose the confidence of the parliamentary party rapidly. The public will feel nothing has changed.”

But it will also because only a third of Tory MPs supported her, and she wasn't that all important second in the race until the last minute. She started in front among Tory supporters - so male, so elderly, so well off comparatively - and, if anything, she has lost ground in front. She has projected herself as this deliberately well-photographed 'Poundshop Thatcher' to appeal to that selectorate, but it's been utterly inappropriate to the concerns of the public.

During Covid, Johnson acted like a Social Democrat because there was no other option. The State acted and redistributed cash, and it preserved jobs while paying people to do nothing. The energy price crisis and cost of living increases are such that Truss will have to do something similar; her 'solutions' have been condemned by her opponent Sunak as inflationary and inadequate.

Polls suggest that people expect her to do a bad job, before she has even started. The timing of the General Election and a temptation to go early for legitimacy could mean she is one of the shortest-serving Prime Ministers.

Her gaffes and her wooden performances suggest she has all the political vacancies of Boris Johnson but none of the communication skills to get around her limitations.

But Johnson had so little in the way of political philosophy that he could be centrist and write cheques.

Truss appears to have a political philosophy - a clone of Thatcher - but she is actually several reconstructions. She wasn't just a Liberal Democrat but the President of them at Oxford. She was pro-European Union - kept her in with Cameron as Prime Minister - and then was Brexit reborn, keeping her in with Johnson.

I don't know if she'll be continuity Johnson or apply an irrelevant dogma: rather, I think she will be overwhelmed and make allies and supporters very irritated.

She is yet another third-rate politician come to the top via some peculiar route.

Priti Patel didn't stand for the leadership because she surely calculated that the next Tory leader will be overwhelmed and short-lived. Better to do a bit of opposition and make an appeal, for people to elect their MPs when she stands as leader.

Truss begins her time in office after the government has been asleep at the wheel, as anxious worrying has increased among the public. She and Sunak have indulged in something that should have been sorted out quickly. So there'll be no 'honeymoon period' but a disgust with the delay. What she does early on will matter, but so far she has suggested policies in the realm of fantasy.

She may offer Sunak a role in government but, after all he has said, he couldn't stand up for policies he has said are reckless. She then has many favours to reward. Her government will likely be narrow in personnel. But if she does the other thing, as in what is necessary, she will look quickly like a liar.

But then Sir Keir Starmer was elected by a membership with many left wing promises, and has pretty much dropped the lot of them. The result - with support of his MPs even as 96,000 ended their Labour Party membership - is likely to be he wins the next General Election even with a minority government. He'll take many seats back and some, the Liberal Democrats will take others, and the Scottish Nationalists more or less keep theirs. Hello Liz Truss and, with good fortune, it will be goodbye soon.

Unless Self-Inflicted She Wins

 

So the MPs put Sunak first but will have to accept the membership's verdict should they, as expected, put Truss first. That is a core source of instability for the future, a lack of authority in the parliamentary system in which the Prime Minister exists on the basis of the approval of the House of Commons.

The Tory system among MPs was always to come at least second. The winner in terms of MPs support had to 'lend' votes to have a satisfactory second place person to then beat using the party membership. Sunak's people thought they had a better chance of beating Truss over Maudant. but now, as they seek future cabinet jobs, even Maudant (and indeed Tugendhat) has now approved of Truss over Sunak.

What's wrong is that the Prime Minister created this way picks up privileged monarchial powers. The Monarch has none of these powers any more, as they go to the Prime Minister, but Parliament is unable to remove these powers unless the Prime Minister allows it. This is why a final decision by the membership is wrong.

Truss wanted regional pay boards. She says she was misrepresented, in her U turn of the policy. I'm not surprised she can U turn, because she has done it all the way along to such an extent that when in power and with these monarchial powers she can become anything she likes. Her policy is a fantasy of Tory-appealing tax cuts when there is a crying need for public services and dealing with poverty. She may well ignore all that she has said to them, rather as the Labour leader Keir Starmer has been doing to his own  selectorate. He is currently dumping policy commitments as fast as he can.

The tragedy is that Starmer is so uncharismatic and so unable to score into an open goal that she might even win in a General Election. She is the attention seeker, in her disrespect for Nicola Sturgeon and Scottish democracy. Starmer is no attention seeker as he seems to be politically shy. Ed Davey has done his own policy disappearing act, meanwhile, when he could make a unique appeal to have a Single Market and Customs Union with the European Union to solve, rapidly, many of the cost-raising backlogs we face. Unique policy may well not attract everyone, but it will attract with enthusiasm and in a wish to reverse recent political stupidity a numerous block of voters and in key constituencies. We don't need two UK opposition parties where the public are clueless about their policies. Everyone knows what the SNP stands for, both regarding Scotland and the European Union.

Crick in the Political Neck

 

I have a lot of time for Michael Crick, whom John Prescott once called, "Biggles from Newsnight." He was speaking from Talk TV as a guest, the channel with one viewer at that point - me - only because Crick was already on.

 

He says the Tory leadership is over already, Truss being the winner. She has positioned herself on the right but expects she'll govern nearer the centre. I hope he's right. Certainly someone who has reconstructed herself over and again can do it again.

Someone else who did that, positioned on the left to win the party vote, is Sir Keir Starmer. He's been chucking all his winning commitments out of the pram.

 

Crick said he has no charisma and no one knows what Labour stands for. They should be twenty points in front of the Conservatives after all that has happened, so it is quite possible that Truss will win the next General Election. Blair, Smith, Kinnock all were well ahead of the Tories at this stage, and Labour is not there.

'Beergate' was never anything, and Starmer survived the police enquiry fully intact. But it perhaps would have been better for Labour had he gone, for someone else with some charisma to take over. I'd favour someone like Wes Streeting. (Has to be from the right of the party, I'm afraid.)

He didn't mention Sir Ed Davey, leading the Liberal Democrats, and why would he? To my mind Davey has to be distinctive, and the one way he can do it is by promising to make moves to join the EU single market and customs union. We should be like Norway. Even Blair has abandoned this position, because we'd be rule-takers only. But he knows this is not true: the European Economic Area involves lobbying the EU and Norway makes its representations. Davey can offer solutions to our movement and travel,  ending our trade disadvantages, and most of all secure Northern Ireland's peace inclusion in the UK and closeness to Ireland in the EU. Charles Kennedy made his stance on the Iraq war and was rewarded for it in terms of recognition. It's time that Ed Davey did the same, and (as a Lib Dem member, if largely inactive) it's about time he got on with it.

Institutional Church Trickery

(See the update)

On religion (this blog was once all about religion): I no longer attend anywhere. When I lived in New Holland, North Lincolnshire, as from 1994, I first went to Hull Unitarians, and left at a time of (I alleged) mistreatment of a minister, and then I went to Barton Anglicans, a broad (at the time) Anglo-Catholic parish church. Despite my best efforts and even presenting to a theology group, in a liberal corner, I ran out of doctrinal steam and also could not justify the ethic of the wider institution. The Unitarians took me back, so to speak, and then it chose a new minister with disastrous results. After a few years people voted with their feet and left, one by one. I did too, after far too long. I went to the Quakers for over two years and realised they had a commitment to something special which I did not share. So I stopped, and that was it.

So if I comment on anything, it is from the outside. I have no relationship with the Church of England, but boy is it suddenly in a desperate condition of institutional duplicity? After 14 years the Anglican Communion worldwide is to return to Lambeth (so to speak) for a get together of its hierarchy of bishops.

It seems to have forgotten that the attempt to have an Anglican Covenant worldwide failed; the Church of England synod itself said no and that finished it. Rowan Williams from Wales was very annoyed, reminding the Church of England that it was led by bishops like him.

And now there aren't even resolutions for this Anglican get together. No Covenant, no institutional unity. Except there are, by way of Calls, and these Calls can't be voted against - only 'yes' or 'yes but more work needed'. It's like there was a Covenant agreed after all.

Now I thought Christianity was at least about honesty. Seeing as I don't believe it (all that credal stuff suggesting an alternative universe of divine-intervening events), the honest thing was to withdraw. Now I know people view these creeds an doctrines with elasticity, as I did myself, and theology rather demands it at times. So we expect some duplicity and nothing is perfect. But here we have something else - the Calls were introduced when not discussed quite as they appear, and the real brute is the one that wants to reaffirm the 1998 resolution excluding gay sexual relations as permissible and denying gay marriage as normal.

It's a bit late in the day for that! The north Americans in two provinces, the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Church in Wales have become rather more inclusive institutionally since then. So how can this resolution, in a 'Yes - Affirm' or 'Yes - Needs More Discernment' voting system be the 'Mind of the Communion as a whole'?

Well, one way we know it isn't is the dishonest way it was all shoved forward at the last minute. Already same sex partners were excluded whilst the opposite sex spouses were invited along. This is evidence enough of being 'institutionally homophobic'. However, trying to resolve something as the Mind of the Communion when clearly it isn't could only be shoehorned in as a form of skullduggery that convinces no one - no one bar the Archbishops, presumably, who have driven this dishonesty.

And what this shows is that, after the Unitarians, Quakers and Liberal Jews led the way, and after the United Reformed Church and Methodist Church have become inclusive, plus many tiny Churches of the trinitarian kind opened themselves to sexual partner diversity, the Church of England is not going to follow its Scottish and Welsh neighbours on the road of inclusivity.

The small SEC and tiny CiW may well be motivated by being desperate for members and reach, but the C of E still deludes itself that evangelicals can bring in the numbers and money, and so cannot go the same way. And then there are the overseas Anglicans in parts of the world where these institutions encourage frightening bigotry within and without. The C of E is mother Church, fearful of being colonialist again, and so goes along with the bigotry via sleight of hand and institutional tricks.

Not exactly ethical is it? I wouldn't touch the C of E with a bargepole. I don't know why some people still do.

Update

There has been a change. Yes, they've been found out pulling a fast one. (As if no one would notice!) Now the options are:

'This Call speaks for me. I add my voice to it and commit myself to take the action I can to implement it.'

'This Call requires further discernment. I commit my voice to the ongoing process.'

'This Call does not speak for me. I do not add my voice to this Call.'

Of course the Calls are still biased, the assumptions built into their presentations. They might tinker with the odd text. Do majority votes mean the 'Call' is made?

Relaunch Fakery

We've seen the end of Boris Johnson and by 5th September this year he'll be gone as Prime Minister. He's certainly a supporter of the Conservative Party as an institution, but principle-free to such an extent that he could be a centrist and encourage his own right wing at the same time. As a Covid Prime Minister he was a Social Democrat, but then was forced to chuck red meat at his right wing. He promoted the incapable on the basis of loyalty. A Chancellor of the Exchequer came from nowhere, and the Foreign Secretary was promoted after Johnson's predecessor demoted her. Sunak and Truss respectively turned out to be a smoothie in presentation and a reconstructor of political personality.

Sunak was fined for being present at a party, like Johnson. Sunak also had a Green Card, allowing him to bolthole to the United States along with his international wife even when Chancellor.

But Truss is the one who gets me hiding behind the sofa, like a child watching (or hiding from) Dr. Who. She has staggering form for political fakery.

She trashes Roundhay School, Leeds, in public, but it got her to Oxford. Thus she started as a Liberal Democrat and anti-monarchy too (I am both), becoming its local President no less when at Oxford. This should reassure me. Of course it doesn't, not with the number of zig zag changes she's made.

She had an affair and then became a Tory candidate, her marriage surviving but not the bloke's. She became a Cameroon, a moderniser of the Tory Party (that was vicious to those on benefits - and why I still criticise the Liberal Democrats for propping up the Tories for far too long). Part of this political climb was her robust defence of the European Union and our influence at the central table of its decision taking. She became Lord Chancellor, and was apparently no good at it, and was demoted by Theresa May. But she saw the direction of the political wind, and hitched herself to the Johnson wagon. She suddenly became a convinced Leaver of the EU, rather like Johnson himself had his two newspaper articles - one for in and one for out - and opted to come out. He promoted her from Chief Secretary to the Treasury (and crap at that too) to Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade and then, even, Foreign Secretary. Her incredible trade deals were, basically, EU deals we already had and now needed repeating bilaterally.

As Foreign Secretary she did two connected things. One was have her photo taken wherever she went, and then in iconic Thatcher-appearing style. When she appeared in television debates, she was wooden, robotic and tried to look like Thatcher. She was appealing to the Tory Party demographic.

Don't look for the real Elizabeth Truss, because there isn't one. She is whatever suits at the time. She is no leader for a crisis, and her economic policy is crackers - borrowing when interest rates rise. For a long time money has been 'printed' on the basis of trying to tickle along more economic activity, in the risk that economic activity could release financial assets into price and wage inflation. This, along with war in Europe, has now happened. Monetary policy has to try and make the excess disappear, but her policy would create more and more money swilling around and, presumably, spent by consumers to stoke up demand. Capitalism has been in intensive care since 2008, and now it's about to fly off into contradictions every which way.

She is not the woman to lead the country. Go back to the 1970s when things were bad, too, and at least we had leaders of depth - people who read history, people who argued worked-out positions. We have had decades now of third rate politicians. She is one of them, and for that matter so is Sunak.

Johnson says, "I'll be back," because he knows that his party's "herd instinct" gets fed up with under-performing leaders. He is sure of his greatness, and of appointing people well below him. They are all low level.

None of the above. Mordaunt ran out of steam during her vacuous campaign, but in a system where the first task was to come second or above, it seems that Sunak's firepower was aimed at keeping the apparently popular Mordaunt out. Remember how little his vote went up before the final stage? Clever, but not clever enough, because it seems the Tory faithful rather like fakery and reconstruction, so just as Johnson (and Sunak) can communicate, Truss can turn herself into whatever she wants. Some people can be fooled all of the time.

He's Finished

I was thinking of blogging again. The defeat - for this is what it was - by leaving the European Union - ended me having anything to say. It was up to those least divided and so taking a majority to carry out the will of the voting system.

The Northern Ireland Protocol is a kind of figleaf for the exit, to keep a borderless Ireland that has meant a border of sorts in the Irish Sea. The government now does not like its own handiwork. Lord Frost, negotiating it, hoped it would allow the UK to become a Singapore off Europe, being an economic liberal Tory.

But economic liberalism has had nothing for the Covid pandemic, and why we have had a centrist and even social democratic government under Johnson. Johnson's centralism doesn't mean he doesn't care about the Conservative Party - his one big plan was to bring UKIP deserters back to the fold. But he cares little about anything else. Indeed a lot of what he does is about what Carrie Johnson wants, his highly political wife.

He's a good communicator. Even charlatans have to be good communicators, otherwise they get nowhere to practise their craft.

What does if for Johnson this time is that hiding behind the Sue Gray inquiry into parties won't work. It's too binary. Either he (and his wife) were there, or they were not, and being there in that manner was illegal. The inviting email is the gun that went off. This happened when people were suffering.

The replacements aren't too hopeful, right wingers again on the newer Cameron school, whereas Johnson is (I suggest) more of the Peter Walker school of Tory history. He's just so shabby, so without honour.

Carrie Johnson will want him to continue, and that's his personal motive to continue, otherwise he might just give up for more lucrative work. If he goes, she's got nothing, and will have to redesign her life to find political influence.

Back Again as the Nations Divide

Time to resume the blog after a long gap when the political opposition to leaving the European Union was divided. The progressive left is still divided, but it is (after the devolution elections and local elections) more effective in the nations beyond England and some mayoral settings.

The Conservatives, forced to be centrist as a result of the pandemic, continue to stomp all over the political space. A terrible Brexit deal, although exposed over Ireland, and between Ireland and Britain, is yet to unravel in significant areas. (We're not going to go to war over Jersey, are we?) The divorce is a bureaucratic mess.

But where it will go wrong is with the British nations. The West Lothian question has never quite gone away - in fact it has intensified. Mark Drakeford is able to save Labour in Wales because he had a practical and deliverable manifesto assisted by the recognition given to him with the Coronavirus pandemic. The Scottish National Party and not Alba, but definitely the Green Party, was able to continue to define politics and government in Scotland. Northern Ireland wants it both ways: different from Britain when it suits, but like Britain economically as it suits.

If Ireland can produce the equivalent of the National Health Service, many northerners would vote for taking Northern Ireland into Ireland itself, and back into the European Union. Unionism is already different from the Democratic Unionist Party and its agenda: based on consent, the Alliance Party can be a place for parking Unionism and considering the future.

It is Scotland where the big change is coming. There seems to be a misunderstanding in the United Kingdom government (that increasingly legislates for England only in the details of life) that it decides the path to independence or otherwise. Previously, Cameron said yes to a Scottish Independence referendum, won it, and on the basis of that gambled again regarding the European Union in-out referendum, and thanks to Osbornes austerity and ignoring ordinary folk the government lost. Had the government lost the Scottish referendum, we would never have had an EU referendum.

However, 'just saying no' this time won't work. The reason is this. The Union of Scotland with England, Ireland and Wales was based on a consent of equal nations. Scotland remains a nation - its own legal structure and religious settlement - and the union comes from the sovereignty of the people of that nation and the nations it joined (principally England). The Supreme Court of the UK has already shown that it is both the top of the tree of the Scottish system as well as the English plus system, and if it has to decide about the legitimacy of a referendum it is likely to delve into some very ancient bases indeed about how the Union is formed.

Johnson then is in danger of making a huge error. He stayed away from Scotland in these elections to give the Scottish Conservatives a better outcome; his reach politically - his ability to win - has limitations.

The irony is that the West Lothian Question could well be sorted out via an EU style confederation. We could have a British Isles of independent nations coming together with a limited Parliament (like the EU Parliament) and a Council with national vetoes to decide matters of common interest. We could be a confederation, just like the EU, with some in it and some (one or two) not. The House of Commons ends up being English.

As for the English Labour Party (if we can call it that), it is in a hell of a mess. It probably does have to change its leader - why sack the deputy when the boss has said he carries full responsibility? But there is no party ready to take over from it. The Liberal Democrats looked diminished after these 2021 elections, still damaged from the Coalition and destroyed immediately after by its partner party the Conservatives. It propped up the Conservatives so that they could take us out of the EU, precisely the opposite of Liberal Democrat political culture, and for a while the Conservatives alone in power attacked the poor again, until Johnson started winning 'poor' population seats and became centrist. Let's see how long this lasts, and when ordinary folk with short memories wake up and smell the Tory coffee.

The point is that if Labour are failing as the Liberals once did a hundred plus years ago, where is the political party to replace Labour? Once Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy built up the Liberal Democrats and they would have been ready - but Nick Clegg destroyed all their good work and the Liberal Democrats have gone into reverse to where they were.

And look at the Liberal Democrats in Scotland. They are at some islands (Scotland's further reaches) and a few fragments. They are a fragment in Wales. They are in retreat in Cornwall. If you are pro-EU in Scotland, you must support the SNP or the Greens because the leadership of the Lib Dems have gone into retreat on the EU and because it is a Unionist party by its own intention.

My own view is we'll have to join the European Free Trade Area to have a simple and straightforward trading relationship with Europe, but to do this will need political change and I can't see it - except that the nations of the British Isles are likely to divide first and define politics. Scotland did offer this compromise and was, once again, ignored. So now Scotland is withdrawing its sovereign consent from the Union and this affects everything.

Sad Day

Today is a very sad day. The United Kingdom withdraws from the European peace project based on sharing economic and political institutions.

What was working to bind us together, particularly free movement of people within the European Union, will no longer be available to us. Younger and aspirational people have been undermined by the UK moving out.

In the 1970s a realisation came about that government had capacity, and to be good and effective needed to be at different levels. So much government has been good, recently, because it has had a European level (including the principle of subsidiarity). Now, all those matters that were decided and organised there must come back here. Devolution also seems threatened in regards of returned and no longer shared powers.

This is why we must let them, the victors of focusing the 'no' vote, get on with government. They wanted it and they've got it, and already we wonder if the government has the numbers and time to do the job. So much must go in place in order to function. The Scots need to be canny in going for a pro-European independence, a start to making the UK more like the EU - a family of nations with consultative sharing political institutions.

The idea that removing from the EU will solve the Conservative Party's problem with Prime Ministers falling from the Europe question is for the birds. The closeness or otherwise to Europe will be the issue that torments them: they have the obsession in their blood supply.

Pro-Europeans have not gone away. But we were defeated by the voting system and now our task is to hand over the reins and watch. I don't care about their promises: I would not hold them to their promises. If they succeed - good. If they don't, well, moments come to hand back power.

Liberal Democrats need strategies to turn their votes into seats. Simple as that. Labour may or may not fail, but Lib Dems generally do not succeed when Labour fails. What I think will likely fail is left-Labour, and Labour may then wipe out, given its condition and make-up. Then the Lib Dems must do more. The aim has to be for the Lib Dems achieving government, and ready from when the Johnson success becomes the moment of failure - when the smile goes off the joke. We will need a new political landscape, in the end: one to take us back into Europe. That will take more than a decade.

In the meantime, the Europeans can organise their confederation. I wish it the best. The Europeans will be less chained by Anglo-Saxon triumphalism and liberal economism, and see that politics and people matter most. The European Dream continues to organise.

The Unsaid: Final Thoughts

As reflection time takes place among some, I do have some final thoughts.

The General Election was conceded by the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats, as no one then could get through a second referendum.

The Liberal Democrats assumed they would be a focus for remain, but failed on two counts: one was they had a lack of publicity, including thanks to Prince Andrew's legacy when they launched their manifesto. It wasn't particularly the revoke policy at fault - they simply failed to explain it properly, as they were forced to do when more realism kicked in and the second referendum was emphasised again. But it is usually fatal to make policy adjustments in an election campaign. We also discovered the inadequacy of the Jo Swinson leadership, with far too much emphasis on her face, her image and her performance instead of on a team. Imagine if Ed Davey had won (I supported him) - there would not have been that attempted cult of personality. She was an unknown entity and this was too much of a gamble.

We forget, too, that Jeremy Corbyn was a block to the Liberal Democrats as he was to Labour. The difference was Labour MPs suppressed their criticism, but the Liberal Democrats expressed it. So two parties that would have had a referendum could not get together, because of the man that the Labour electorate so roundly rejected. It doesn't matter if the press did it, or the Marxism did it, or the antisemisism did it. Labour and he knew very many months back that he was no good, but his belief in his own necessity - to give socialism just one more push - had support and simply backfired. But it backfired for the Liberal Democrats too. Swinson was forced to be anti-Corbyn, and rule out Labour, and this was all a distraction to the emphasis that should have been on policy.

(I was opposed to a second referendum as I was opposed to the first. The argument for revoke needed explanation regarding parliamentary democracy but it failed to be explained, as it should have been long before the actual campaign. Parliament - the House of Commons - was not at fault: it did its job. But we saw that the opposition was easily dispersed, and this came into the campaign, and the personality of Corbyn was large in the actuality of the public response.)

The slight majority remain position was dispersed, and First Past the Post gives victory to those that are coherent. Farage let his own tyres down, and had further consequence to support voting Conservative from a leave perspective. Even then, although it told leaver people to vote Conservative, Farage cost Conservative not Labour seats.

Take Hull East. Had Farage's company not stood, a portion of his votes would have gone Conservative. The Conservatives would have won here too. The Conservatives nationally could have had a majority of 180 rather than 80, had Farage stood down completely - and that was with Labour getting more votes! (The quoted figure I've seen is 188.)

Labour must get rid of Corbyn and that whole approach he revived. It must find an alternative to State Socialism. Sometimes nationalisation is good, for some natural monopolies and services, but it must be managed at a more local and aspirational level. The Labour manifesto was a back to the seventies approach. It was a cluttered and gathering collection of State Socialist freebies. It did not appeal. The Liberal Democrats, as historically Liberals, identify themselves in relationship to the left (e.g. trade union based non-socialist Labour Liberal MPs) - even though they have, historically, lost people off to the right (think Joseph Chamberlain). Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy built a Liberal Democrat identity just to the left of New Labour, with the expected Liberal philosophical twist. But this cannot be done if Labour has an antagonistic leadership. This is partly why Jo Swinson, receiving ex-Labour anti-Corby people, became 'tribal' according to friendly critics. She went with the Scottish Nationalists for a General Election, but lost coherence as Labour tried to neutralise its own remain and leaver dilemma, and so the Liberal Democrats suffered as well.

That's my point, to remember in years to come: for Labour to get rid of State Socialism and its trapping membership, and for the Liberal Democrats to remember its more open, less tribal, left-ecumenism.

The Liberal Democrats also suffered because of the Coalition and their self-discipline to keep it going to the very end, after which the appreciative Conservatives turned on them with their electoral machine. The argument the Liberal Democrats could have used in defence against facilitating austerity was that at least government then was competent - proper cabinet government. They failed to make even this case for the defence. Jo Swinson simply did not do it, and so much rested on her shoulders.

As for active policies now, the opposition MPs are there to turn up and vote, but that's about it. The real opposition to policies will come from the Conservatives to the Conservatives. Let them get on with it. If they harm us, we will protest. Johnson will want to hang on to as many convert constituencies as possible, to go for a further five years and into a future quite possibly beyond my lifespan! Johnson went to captured Sedgefield, Tony Blair's constituency, to stamp his feet there, to reach out beyond, and to be the Tory Blair. Let's see if this is what happens, domestically. The Scottish and Irish have more immediate and strategic oppositional and future creating strategies, to be watched with interest. The European Union will become more co-ordinated and likely more powerful, and the UK will feel it from the outside. We will likely end up taking, and not contributing, but it will be decades before our opportunity to contribute may come about again. This is tragedy of the moment: a future of isolation for a diminished England and Wales, and even Wales itself considering its future identity as a political unit.

The future of Britain in the European Union really did matter. This is defeat. Let the victors take the spoils. We'll be back later, but much later, when the wheels come off the wagon, and when there are an alternative set of wheels and indeed a repair to be made to the wagon itself. All political careers end in failure, after all. We pro-Europeans know this for sure.

Defeat on Europe and the end of the UK Union

It is time for me to move on from politics in this blog. It used to be a religion blog but became exclusively political as the Remain-Leave battle took place.

The remain voters were dispersed and the leave voters cohered (mainly). I voted Liberal Democrat but Hull East was nearly lost from Labour to Conservative. The Brexit Party may have taken Labour votes, but had it not stood many voting for it would have voted Conservative and Karl Turner MP would have lost. Those were conditions for me to vote Labour! The campaign was Leave versus other issues, not Leave versus Remain. In the past few years Jeremy Corbyn should have stood down as his mismanagement was obvious; I'd also say the Liberal Democrats voted for the wrong leader. Ed Davey would have been more nuanced and had a broader resource for thinking strategy.

But the remain side has been defeated by First Past the Post, and that's it. We lost.

The Conservatives could well be disastrous. Leaving the European Union is not straightforward and I agree with Jo Swinson's attack against nationalism today (though I have sympathy for civic nationalism as demonstrated by the Scottish Nationalist Party). Beyond this, his vague promises and his constituencies and MPs will make Johnson a kind of Tory Blair. He also wants to be liked, as Blair did. Johnson is a conman who needs to keep convincing people as he sells his dodgy motors. Let's see what happens.

But it is his and theirs now, to see what they do. As the issues tighten, people will start to respond. The European Union will become more co-ordinated without what is left of the United Kingdom, and I will have my support from it from afar. As for Ireland, I hope it reunites peacefully and in an orderly fashion, and Scotland will surely now become its own nation. Wales needs to think about its future. As for England, well, we reap what we sow, and we have sown Tory seeds.