Month: December 2023

That was the year that was…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

Personally, it has been a challenging year with my lovely rescue black Labrador, Norm, nearly crippling me. As I contemplated the importance of quadriceps being attached to kneecaps during four months of immobility and ongoing physio eight months later, it has at least allowed me to put some things in perspective…

Meet Norm; he would say it’s a dog’s life…

The terrible backdrop of events in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the potential resurrection of Trump (it won’t happen by the way but more of that next year…) make you despair about the drivers of human nature. So, as we relax into the festive season, I have reminded myself of some positive news with a little help from http://www.positive.news. It is worth a read on dark days.

2023 saw some major breakthroughs in health. mRNA technology, crucial in combatting Covid, is now driving advances in treatment for a host of illnesses, including eradicating certain types of cancer. 3D printing and the power of AI will hugely speed up drug discoveries with development times falling from decades to just c 3 years. There is now a clear pathway for ending Aids transmission by 2030, and the approval of a new malaria drug could save thousands of lives annually, many of them children. Finally, there is now real optimism for a new generation of treatments for Alzheimer’s.

On climate change, each COP gathering shows some teeth in combatting global warming, this year even when held in the oil rich United Arab Emirates. An explicit statement about transitioning away from fossil fuels was agreed, and climate reparations became a reality with the launch of a loss and damage fund. Even China’s emissions are forecast to start falling in 2024. Nobody benefits from climate change, even the most competitive of global superpowers.

In Brazil, there has been a huge turnaround in reducing deforestation now the vile President Bolsonaro has gone, and whilst the list of endangered species continued to grow, several species stepped back from extinction. The golden lion tamarin in Brazil, the scimitar-horned oryx in Chad, tigers on the rise in India and Nepal, golden eagles soaring in Scotland and blue whales returning to the waters off Seychelles. Finally, under the auspices of the UN, after 20 years of negotiation, 200 nations signed a legally binding agreement in September to protect 30% of oceans outside national boundaries.

Lastly on basic human rights, as some parts of the world go crazy, notably Russia, barriers were broken down to same-sex partnerships in Nepal, Latvia, Peru and South Korea. More work needed in Africa though…

So, 2023 was not all bad and let’s hope that continues into 2024 with three quarters of the democratic world facing elections. Norm and I will be watching events closely with predictions shared in January. Obviously, the correct ones will come from me and the bad calls from Norm. It’s a dog’s life…

Merry Christmas!

The politics of Julius Caesar…

~ Julian Samways ~ 4 Comments

There is a brilliant documentary on BBC iPlayer currently; ‘Julius Caesar, The Making of a Dictator’. Thoroughly recommended. It charts the path of Caesar to power and then absolute power. Firebrand populism to whip up the mob, tenacity, charisma, a brilliant propagandist, skillful at building unholy political alliances, hidden and not so hidden thuggery, a disrespect for institutions and their constraints on power, and then, finally, tyranny. Of course, it all ends in tears five years later in mid-March 44 BC… but the damage was done. The Roman Empire was ruled by dictators for hundreds of years with most vestiges of democracy withering on the vine.

The rise of Julius Caesar could teach us a thing or two…

Remind you of anything?

Western democracy is starting to feel under threat again. Complacent voters disillusioned with the democratic norms of over-promising politicians who under-deliver, are in revolt. There is the incredible but highly possible resurrection of Trump in the US and the rise of the far-right across much of Europe, already running governments in Hungary and Italy but not in Poland thank goodness. The broader Republican Party in the US is tempted to abandon Ukraine and Putin is banking more generally on the West giving up. Looking further afield, Modi in India, (still trading with Russia), is starting to dismantle checks and balances in their democracy.

A commentator on Sky News rather depressingly summed it up this week. Paraphrasing him, he spoke of many power brokers in the US as well as elsewhere who would like the world run by the three Caesars of Trump, Xi and Putin. Democratic norms would continue to disappear as voters were bought off with manipulated expectations. Corrupt elites would rule uninterrupted.

The optimist says that the above will not happen. That voters will wake up in time. That populists in Western democracies to date have largely been grossly incompetent; Trump and Johnson for example… But what happens if they are not incompetent or, in Trump’s case, had powerful allies who would use him as the proverbial Trojan Horse. Think of the damage that could be done with democratic institutions permanently undermined, climate change initiatives reversed, Putin winning a partial victory in Ukraine and further Chinese hegemony.

2024 will be a pivotal year. It may be a good one or not, but like politics in ancient Rome, we had better be on our guard…

Tories head towards the abyss…

~ Julian Samways ~ Leave a comment

Sunak seemed such a breath of fresh air. Polite, diligent, hard-working, technically skilled, good at PMQs. It seemed as if he would rescue the Tories, at least to the extent of minimising their defeat.

No longer. Weighed down by a fundamentally divided party, attacked at every turn by the angry Right, it seems as though he has lost his way. Sunak no longer resonates with the public as his strategic policy choices become increasingly confusing. He was the ‘change candidate’, always a struggle after 13 years of Tory rule, but brought back Cameron. He cancelled HS2 to Manchester whilst in… Manchester. And although it might not resonate very widely, as leader of a party that is meant to be in favour of a smaller, non-intrusive State, he announced he would make it an offence for anyone born after 2009 to be sold tobacco. A little populist spat with Greece over the Elgin marbles recently just made Sunak look small and added to questions about his political judgement.

Things are going from bad to worse…

A solid Autumn statement was too little too late. The tax burden is still rising, public services are still failing, and no one is really listening anymore because few believe the Tories will be around in the next few months to implement any longer-term tax and spend plans.

And then the obsession with illegal (and legal) migration. Sunak has refused to face down the Right on this issue, managing to seem weak, incompetent and illiberal all at the same time. Surely, he has nothing to lose. Whatever treaty amendments are made with Rwanda, the policy is now in tatters. Costing £165 million and rising, one doubts a single plane will take off to this destination before the next General Election. He has ignored or is ignoring sensible, practical solutions advocated by his party’s Left, such as constructive cooperation with the EU, because he feels he needs higher profile, more definitively ‘red meat solutions’. The problem with this approach is that he upsets moderate Tory voters and fails to appease his right-wing who are watching the rise of Reform in the polls with increasing alarm.

Net legal migration figures have soared, illegal migration still feels out of control. The new Home Secretary, James Cleverly, has had his past moderate comments on the topic thrown back at him, consequently plummeting down the popularity league table amongst Tory Party members. Crazy.

Sunak appears harried and who could blame him if he has had enough. The Tories need to leave office, move to the Right in private and look forward to many years in the wilderness, before regaining commonsense with an expanded, more representative grassroots base, frankly without the need of a fair proportion of their current membership at all.

Starmer has become a lucky politician and is being treated as the next Prime Minister, which in itself, allows him to gain stature. In the face of all the uneasy compromises Starmer made to become leader, just this week he embraced Thatcher and fiscal conservatism, straight out of the Tony Blair playbook. He can afford to because brutally, suddenly, his Tory opponents have collapsed.