Trump the usurper

American politics was supposed to continue to be a dynastic struggle between the Clintons and the Bushes. It was supposed to be this way as that would mean nothing would change. Trump is a usurper. It is for this reason above all that he is so hated by the liberal establishment.

We have got to the stage however where everything Trump does is met with fury. This is the case whether he does something stupid or something sensible. Trump only has to exist to cause liberal anger. I can think of no US President in history who has caused such anger from opponents apart perhaps from Lincoln and his election caused the Civil War.

 I think the main reasons for Trump causing such a degree of fury are these:

1. He boasted that he could grab women by the p*ssy.

2. He wants to ban people travelling to the US from certain Muslim countries.

3. He wants to build a wall between Mexico and the USA.

4. He beat Hilary Clinton.

5. The Russians interfered in the election.

Like everyone else I found Trump’s comments about grabbing women to be vulgar, but which of us has not in private said something outrageous? Have you ever said something along the lines of I could throttle him? Have you ever made a joke that you wouldn’t like to be repeated on national television? Have you ever said something insulting about a politician, an entertainer? Have you ever in private done something you are rather ashamed of? Go on then cast the first stone.

Did Trump actually grab women? Who knows? I would guess that he probably did. But how many rich and powerful older men have been able to touch young beautiful women where they please? Are we to convict all of them? It’s not as if they are doing anything illegal. Rich, powerful men don’t need to do anything illegal to sleep with young beautiful women. They just need to have lots of money. Do you really suppose that Melania married Trump because of his looks? So Trump may have in a vulgar way said something outrageous, but he also said something that is true. So long as women are attracted by wealth and power, ugly, fat, old men will be able to sleep with whomsoever they please. If women don’t like this, it is up to us to say “No I don’t want your riches, your power or whatever jobs you might offer.”

I have little doubt that Trump has had numerous affairs, but this is a private matter between him and his wife or wives between him and his God or gods if he has any. Trump has been convicted of precisely nothing and if we start convicting men because they boast about their sexual prowess in private we are frankly going to need to build a lot more jails.

Trump completely bungled his attempt to ban people from certain Muslim countries because he was too honest about it. But I strongly suspect a majority of Americans would like security to be a factor in the issuing of visas and in fulfilling US duties with regard to asylum. Such policies however ought not to be discriminatory. It should be harder for people from any country that hates America to travel to America.

People from safe, prosperous countries should be able to travel with ease to America for holiday and business purposes. It need not matter what they believe. But if people are unfortunate enough to come from countries that regularly produce terrorists it is only sensible if security checks are made before granting them visas. But this should equally apply to countries that terrorise by means of Novichok as those who terrorise by means of flying planes into towers.

Likewise there is little reason for America to fear that tourists from Japan will overstay their welcome, so it makes sense to make travel from Japan as easy as possible. But there are large numbers of people from certain countries who enter the US on a tourist visa and never go home. It therefore makes sense to make it considerably harder for these people to obtain visas.

With cleverness Trump could have limited the possibility for people from various countries to obtain visas without doing so in a discriminatory way. He could likewise have limited the possibilities of people entering the US illegally from Mexico and staying illegally without having to build a wall and without treating Mexicans in any way cruelly. Britain is surrounded by sea, but even this doesn’t prevent people from arriving illegally. So the issue isn’t fundamentally whether you have a moat a wall or whether you don't. What matters is whether those who arrive illegally believe that they have an excellent chance of staying. If Trump wishes to discourage illegal migration, the key is not to reward it.

We have borders for a reason. We treat citizens of our sovereign state differently from those from other sovereign states. We have a special duty to pay our taxes for the welfare of our fellow citizens, not to pay for the welfare of everyone in the world. We would be bankrupt very quickly if we tried to provide the same level of public service we get in Britain to absolutely everyone in the world. For this reason we have a border and limit who can enter that border. If we didn’t we rapidly would cease to have our sovereign state at all. If you really wish to have completely open borders and unlimited migration, you are saying that you wish to abolish sovereign states and simply have the world completely without states and borders. There is an argument for this, but if that is your argument then make it and put it to the electorate honestly. But I’m afraid you will get very few votes.

For this reason we simply cannot allow unlimited economic migration from anywhere. Not only would this make our system of paying taxes in order to gain various benefits, unworkable, but still more crucially it would damage the countries from which the economic migrants have come. If the best and brightest from Mexico understandably hope for a better life in the USA their talents won’t be used to help Mexico become a more developed and more prosperous country.

It is for this reason that it is in both the interests of the US and Mexico that migration between these places is managed and limited. The best way to do this however is to make it impossible for illegal migrants to function inside the USA, by for instance making simple everyday tasks require identification only available to US citizens, and to be strict with those who are caught living in the US illegally so that criminality is seen not to pay. At the same time the USA should be doing all it can to help Mexico develop into a place where people want to stay rather than a place they want to leave. The same goes for everywhere not just Mexico. We must not reward people smugglers, but instead use free trade rather than corrupt aid to encourage people to make their own countries more prosperous.

Trump is hated most because he beat Hilary Clinton. Liberal America was looking forward to feeling good about itself. Identity politics had given us a black president, next it had to give us a female president, after that it would be time for a black female president with a First Lady. Obama’s most important characteristic was something that he was born with. It didn’t much matter if he was good, bad or indifferent. It mattered only that he was black. So too Hilary Clinton was born with her most important characteristic. This is the problem with identity politics. It makes people cease to care whether an author is a good writer. What matters is that she’s not dead, white nor a man. We cease to judge according to talent or character, but instead by whether someone is female, gay, disabled, transgender or from an ethnic minority. It’s a sort of apartheid, only in reverse. Whatever is not white, not straight and not male has virtue. Those liberal Americans who are white, straight and male get to feel a wonderful frisson of guilt which can be overcome by voting first for Obama and then for Hilary Clinton. At this point they are cleansed and can feel virtuous again.

But Trump took this moment away from them. There was no moment of feeling warm and gooey because America had elected its first female president. Instead millions of Americans had demonstrated their contempt for identity politics. Identity politics lost. Just like the Remainers they have been fighting a rearguard battle ever since.

Liberal America has been desperately trying to annul the result of the Presidential election since the moment it was announced. It has used the CIA and the FBI to attempt to thwart that result and hopefully annul it.

Trump’s sin is that the Russians wanted him to win and almost certainly interfered in the election. But the Russians have been interfering in all sorts of elections lately. They were probably involved in Brexit, in Macron’s election and the Scottish and Catalan independence votes. What are we to do? Shall we annul all elections where it can be shown that the Russians were probably interfering? The trouble is that lots of people from all around the world interfere. Obama advised British Brexit voters that we would go to the back of the queue. The head of the IMF told us that Brexit would be a disaster. Sometimes this interference works, more often the voters just ignore it. Did Russian interference in the US elections mean Trump won? Who knows? But do we really want to go down the route of saying that if it can be proved that the Russians helped one candidate, that candidate must lose? That too might allow the Russians to choose who they want to be president. They might for instance “support” the candidate they want least.

Did Trump’s team contact the Russians? Probably. Does it matter? No. I’m sure many previous US presidents elect and presidential candidates have informally contacted the Soviets. It’s sensible politics and benefits security to have such contacts. If someone showed that Kennedy had contacted Khrushchev prior to gaining power, I would consider this to have been quite sensible. Let them try to develop a relationship as soon as possible. Perhaps it might help in a crisis involving Cuban missiles.

The problem with the liberal rearguard action is that it is trying to prevent Trump doing his job. Whatever he does causes outrage, even above average economic growth figures. How dare he be successful.

I disagree with Trump on many issues. I especially dislike his protectionist tendencies, but we must give him a chance. It just might be that his threats to raise tariffs against China, the EU and Canada will make it necessary for these places to be less protectionist. It might on the other hand lead to a  trade war where everyone loses. Let's wait and see. Let's be open about the possibility of a Trump success rather than decide we have inevitable failure before anything has even been attempted. 

I think Trump’s unorthodox methods of diplomacy might bring about peace in the Korean peninsula, which might ultimately lead to reunification. This would massively benefit the people of North Korea and would make East Asia much more secure and prosperous.

It looks as Trump and Putin have come to some sort of an arrangement with regard to Syria which will put Syria in the Russian sphere of influence. The Israelis have been involved in the negotiations and clearly think this might improve Israel’s security situation. The main benefit is that Jihad will have been crushed in Syria. The price is that Assad will remain in power. Is it worth it? Yes. If we had backed Assad from the beginning we might have avoided war. We must start to think strategically and in terms of what is in our foreign policy interest rather than what makes our foreign policy look virtuous. This is how Great Power diplomacy keeps the peace. It always was this way. 

The price for peace in the Middle East will I strongly suspect be an eventual peace deal between the USA and Russia ending the Little Ice Age of Cold War II. This will mean that sanctions against Russia will cease and Russia and Ukraine will have to come to an agreement about their borders. Russia will keep what it has, but will have to promise not to play quite so rough in the future. Learn to live with this. The deal won't get any better.

If Trump achieves all of these things then he will deserve to win a second term. He might even go down in history as a second Ronald Reagan. It is all too early to judge. But it would be better for the whole world if liberal fury over Hilary Clinton not winning the election and Trump’s boast about being a cat lover didn’t spoil the best chance we have had for peace in some time.

Theresa May makes Sturgeon look petty and foolish

There is developing an extraordinary difference between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon. It is impossible to imagine Nicola Sturgeon going to Washington and charming everyone she meets. While May has dignity, character, politeness and obvious intellect, Sturgeon simply doesn’t. May puts her points with force, but not with anger. She is subtle while Sturgeon has the subtlety of a Glasgow handshake. I can’t recall hearing Theresa May make an overt threat. I can’t recall hearing Nicola Sturgeon have a conversation that doesn’t involve a threat. I can’t remember Theresa May ever saying something that could be described as a grievance. She suggests the motto “Never complain, never explain”. The force is in what she doesn’t say. I can’t remember Sturgeon saying anything that didn’t involve a grievance. It’s always someone else’s fault (this is why she is mocked as Elsie).  She is incapable of taking responsibility for anything.

It must be tough for Sturgeon to see how Theresa May is doing so well. I don’t remember particularly rating May prior to her becoming Prime Minister. She was just another Tory minister who had not achieved particularly much as Home Secretary. She set out to limit immigration to the tens of thousands and then didn’t campaign for the only method which she knew would achieve that goal. I found her decision to back Remain, but then hardly campaign for it to be lacking in conviction. I would have chosen someone else to be Prime Minister.

But May has done much better than expected. Her speech when she became Prime Minister set the tone. Her defence of the UK was most welcome. Her answer to Nicola Sturgeon that the question of Scottish independence has been settled was perfect. She didn’t get angry with Sturgeon. She went up to Edinburgh and didn’t complain when she was made to sit in front of two Scottish flags. It was a matter of indifference to May, something trivial, while the fact that it was so obviously crucial to Sturgeon showed that the SNP leader was trivial, concerned more with appearance than substance.

During the EU referendum the Tory party was at war with itself, but May brought peace in a way that perhaps no-one else could have. The Brexiteers were given high ranking positions, the Cameroons were driven into the wilderness and Remain supporters like Philip Hammond and indeed May herself worked hard to make Brexit a reality.

While some Remain supporters fought a rear-guard battle to prevent us leaving the EU, May didn’t throw a tantrum à la Sturgeon. Instead she gradually made it happen. Now the rear-guard looks like noise, the sort of thing that is forgotten by history. There was a Supreme Court judgement the other week, but it no longer mattered.

Theresa May has turned out to be a lucky Prime Minister. Who could have guessed in June that Winston Churchill’s bust would be back in the Oval office? Who could have guessed that the President of the United States would actually like Britain and would offer us a trade deal? It looks very much as if Theresa May is able to do business with Trump. Her quiet manner works. She doesn’t set out to offend him. Rather she quietly fulfils her diplomatic mission.

Trump thought NATO was obsolete, but after a short conversation with Mrs May he is 100% in favour once more. Some European leaders ought to be grateful that a British Prime Minister has been so helpful with their security concerns. It may be that the UK can take on the role of go-between.

Could Nicola Sturgeon have achieved so much? Obviously not. What May has demonstrated is that the UK is respected in the world. We have allies. We have a role. Scottish nationalists naturally will be fuming about this. They universally hate the UK or at the very least dislike it. Why would you want to destroy something that you like?

What they forget is that our allies in the rest of the world would very much prefer that the UK continued. People in the whole of the UK must realise that our place in the world depends on our remaining united. There will be no “special relationship” if the UK ceases to exist. At present we punch above our weight because we have been doing so for centuries. Who would listen to a country that couldn’t even keep itself together? With our armed forces split and no place to moor our nuclear submarines why would we continue to merit a place on the UN Security Council? What would the UK even be called if Scotland left? It could hardly be called United.

English nationalists who owing to Sturgeon’s threats and petulance have become indifferent to the fate of the UK should think again. Scotland’s departure would damage you as well. No sensible country looks on the loss of a third of its territory as something to be welcomed. The Spanish don’t think like that, nor indeed do the Americans. It’s not serious.

The power that we have internationally, which itself gives us the influence which will enable us to trade freely, depends on our unity. This is the lesson from the three hundred and more years in which the United Kingdom has existed. You’d throw all that away because you are annoyed at having to listen to Sturgeon? That’s what she wants by the way? We stuck by Northern Ireland when it was threatened by those who hated Britain. We didn’t give up on Northern Ireland because we became sick of listening to Gerry Adams and friends. The same British grit is needed now. Sturgeon does not speak for Scotland. She speaks for her supporters and they are a minority. The majority of Scots just like the majority of people from Northern Ireland wish to remain British. We need the support of all British people. So please never do Nicola Strugeon’s job for her.

Theresa May has shown that we have a bright future together. It is obvious that Brexit is going to work. If dreadful things were going to happen to the economy they would already have happened. They didn’t.

We will need to adjust to find our new role in the world. We will need a leader to guide us on that path. Luckily we have found one. It would have seemed impossible a year ago, but Theresa May has a chance to reach greatness. If she can successfully negotiate a beneficial exit from the EU, if she can keep our country united and if she can establish us as a free trade society that is open to the world, her place in history will be assured. If we unite behind her she will succeed and so indeed will we all.

How Donald Trump could limit migration more fairly

Most people in modern Britain have little or no experience of visas. Either we don’t need a visa or else it’s straightforward to obtain one by spending a few minutes on a computer.  Most people don’t want to go to the places, like Russia or China, which require visas you have to send away for, but with a little trouble, expense and form filling it’s not that difficult to go to Moscow, Beijing or even Minsk. There are some places that are genuinely tough to visit. Bhutan in the Himalayas makes you pay a $250 tax per day just to go there. They have only relatively recently opened their country to the world at all. They don’t want to be overwhelmed by the modern world and its people. Still with a few exceptions if we have enough money we can visit almost any country in the world. Money opens doors.

What we frequently forget in Britain is that huge numbers of people in the world cannot travel where they please for the simple reason that they don’t have enough money to do so. It’s difficult if not impossible for all but the wealthiest Russians to come to the UK. In order to obtain a tourist visa to visit the UK you have to demonstrate that you have enough money to take care of yourself and stay in hotels for the duration of your stay. You have to show that you have a job and property in Russia and that it is likely that you will return. It is easier if you have a UK resident who can sponsor your trip, but the process of obtaining a visa is still expensive, time consuming and far from guaranteed. For the most part it is practically speaking impossible for the average Russian citizen to come to live and work in the UK unless they marry a Brit.

Are we then discriminating against Russians? Yes we are. Someone who was born in a part of the Soviet Union that is now Latvia has the right to live and work in the UK by virtue of Latvia being in the EU. Another person who was born a Soviet citizen doesn’t have that right. This might seem unfair, but this is the nature of the world. We don’t allow everyone from the world even to visit the UK because we think that if we did a proportion would overstay or in some other way abuse their visas  

We make a distinction between people from some countries who find it easy to visit Britain and people from other countries who find it hard or even impossible to visit. On what basis do we do this? Well generally we favour people from friendly nations and allies. We also favour people from countries with standards of living which are similar to ours. Few Japanese people would want to work illegally in the UK, but lots of Russians would. This is because the standard of living in Japan is similar to the UK, while in Russia it is much lower. The likelihood of someone abusing the visa granted to them is a key part of the calculation of whether the visa is granted or not.

We are then already discriminating against the vast majority of citizens in the world. Every Western country does the same. Unless you favour a world without borders, which is very noble of you, but not very practical, then it is necessary to accept that we have to limit the right of most people in the world to travel to the UK.  

The Conservative Party for some years has wished to limit immigration to the tens of thousands per year. One of the reasons why the British people voted to leave the EU is that it became obvious that the only way to limit immigration was to leave. You might disagree with attempts to limit immigration, but this in effect is to get rid of borders. Campaign for that if you will, but you will find that the majority disagree with you, not least because our health and welfare systems would collapse.

It is practically speaking much easier for someone from the First World to visit countries like the UK, Canada and the USA. Every First World country discriminates against people from other parts of the world. We also have for many years made it more difficult for people from some countries that are considered to be dangerous to come to here. It may be difficult for a Russian to gain a visa to travel to the UK, but it is still more difficult for someone from Afghanistan. We discriminate against the citizens of certain countries still more than we discriminate against others. There comes a point when practically speaking it is almost impossible for the average citizen of some countries to come here legally.

The principle of preventing people from one or more country travelling is not new. There are a number of countries that have travel bans against citizens of other countries. People from parts of West Africa were banned from travelling during the Ebola epidemic. Israeli citizens are banned from going to many countries.

In times of war it has sometimes been felt necessary to arrest citizens of other countries and intern them. No doubt this was unjust to many innocent people. But the fear of allowing a few spies to live at large meant that both the innocent and the guilty were punished.

We must accept then that the process of allowing people to visit our country involves discrimination. Why then has the action of the United States President caused such uproar? The reason is that Trump implemented his policy in the worst possible way.  

It was unjust to detain visa holders and people with Green cards. If you apply for such a visa and it has been granted then you should be allowed to proceed about your business unless there is a good reason to prevent you doing so.

There was no need whatsoever for Donald Trump to provide a blanket ban on travel for people from certain countries. All he needed to do was to advise the embassies in these countries that they should make it more difficult for people to obtain visas. We already accept the principle that it is more difficult for citizens of some countries to travel to the UK or the USA than certain other countries. The reason for this discrimination is based on the policies of the Government of each country. They don’t have to justify their reasons.

At various points in the past decades a US President has made it difficult if not impossible for citizens of Iran and Iraq to obtain visas to go the USA. The problem then with Trump is that we went about his attempt to limit the travel rights of people from various countries in a way that was arbitrary, unjust and contrary to the normal rules by which Western countries act.

The problem with Donald Trump is that he wants to shout from the roof tops something that would be far better to be implemented quietly and without fuss. He could have made it practically much more difficult for the vast majority of the citizens of the countries he wished to exclude simply by setting conditions for their visa applications that they would be unlikely to be able to fulfil. The United Kingdom already does this with regard to citizens of Russia and many other countries. The United States clearly would have the same right to do likewise. We are allowed to discriminate on the grounds of wealth. If this were not the case we could not even ask a visa applicant if they had enough money for their trip. All President Trump then needed to do was to set the financial requirement for obtaining a visa high enough that it would achieve the limitation he was looking for. This need not only have applied to countries from one region of the world, such as the Middle East but could have applied to a number of others. In this way there would be no question of discrimination apart from financial discrimination.

Trump’s blanket ban was foolish also because it did not take into account other circumstances. There ought to have been exceptions for people who were highly skilled and had job offers or university places. People with family members in the United States ought also to have been given preferential treatment.

It is not wrong to wish to limit immigration. It is also not wrong to wish to limit immigration from certain countries. If this were not the case it would be wrong for us to have visas at all. We are after all limiting the rights of Russians to come to Britain, while not limiting the rights of people from the Republic of Ireland. We accepted that it was right to limit the freedom of Germans in the UK in 1939, because we could not tell who was dangerous and who was not. For the same reason it is not unreasonable to limit the rights to travel of people who come from countries which at present are full of violence and terrorism. We cannot tell who is innocent and who is guilty.

But in trying to protect ourselves we ought not to behave in a way that is arbitrary and unjust. We should be open and we should also welcome people from all countries, cultures and faiths. But we do have the right to limit who can come. By setting the requirement for obtaining a visa high enough such that we favour those who can invest in the UK, have family members here, or are highly skilled we will be not be discriminating against anyone. The reason someone cannot obtain a visa will be objective. It will be because they do not meet the conditions we have chosen to set. In this way we will succeed in limiting immigration, while minimising the risks of allowing people to arrive here who may pose a threat to our security.

Donald Trump has a right to do what he thinks is necessary to protect the United States. We have the same right here in the UK. But the way in which this is done must not be perceived to be grounded in prejudice. A heightened level of security can be obtained without causing resentment and anger simply by quietly changing the rules by which visas are granted. Trump could have achieved exactly the same result without any demonstrations if he had just acted in a way that was more subtle and if he had thought through his actions more carefully. This unfortunately is not his nature.

It would be wrong to discriminate against people who follow the Russian Orthodox faith, but in practice we do make it very difficult for them to visit the UK. We do this because the UK doesn’t have very friendly relations with Russia and because Russians are poor. If a large number of Russian citizens came to Britain and poisoned our tea with polonium or carried out other terrorist acts we might make it still harder for Russians to travel here. We would be doing so however not because they were Orthodox, but because a proportion of Russian citizens were dangerous and we couldn’t tell who was innocent and who was guilty. There would be nothing unjust about making it much more difficult for Russians to obtain visas. Indeed it would be prudent.

The front of the queue

One of the best bits from Tim Shipman’s book “All out War” is when he describes David Cameron’s attempt to negotiate some sort of deal with the other EU leaders. The account feels already like another country as if we could look back on those days from a perspective of centuries. But then “the past is foreign country. They do things differently there.” How transient are the political events of a year ago. I had forgotten many of the things that the papers thought at the time were momentous. But then the papers have forgotten them too. Can it really be less than a year ago that Cameron went to Brussels looking for a deal? He might as well have been wearing the clothes of his great grandfather. That world has gone. It is but a dream remembered.

The problem that David Cameron had is that he wanted something and others had to decide whether to give it to him or not. He carefully toured round all the various EU countries. But none of this actually mattered. At every point he had to ask the Germans.  There is an appearance [schein] about the EU, but there is also a reality [sein]. When you have to ask for something, what matters is whether the lady from Berlin says Ja oder nein [yes or no]. The Germans calculated that Britain would not vote to leave the EU and most importantly David Cameron would accept whatever they gave him. So they gave him more or less nothing.

This is the key lesson for our future relations with the EU. Don’t ask for anything. Luckily it looks as if Theresa May has learned it.

The world is different from how it was a year ago in other ways too. There is a long section in Shipman’s book describing how if Britain dared to leave the EU Mr Obama would put us at the back of the queue. Oddly huge numbers of British citizens cheered him on. Thank you Mr Obama. You are too kind. We want to be at the back of the queue.

No doubt some people at the time realised that Mr Obama himself would be gone by the time the issue arose, but then everyone must have calculated that the president spoke for all future presidents. It was after all long standing US policy to support the EU. Who could have guessed at the time that we would now have a president who likes Britain, who thinks of himself as in part British and Scottish, and who wants to put Britain at the front of the queue? But still some British citizens are complaining and are desperate that we should go to the back. Is this some sort of masochism or is it an inferiority complex? If you suffer from it I suggest you do what you can to get over it.

We all eventually revert to our historical roles. It is for this reason that you should read history. Not to learn from it. No one ever learns from history, but rather to understand where we all are now. Far from being an aberration, Trump is taking the United States back to its natural position. He is reasserting the Monroe Doctrine.

Both Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and Woodrow Wilson in 1916 promised to keep the USA out of European wars. Wilson even used the slogan “America first”. Of course we all know that it didn’t work out that way. But this just expresses the tension in American history. Do we stick to our own continent or do we get involved? After a long period of interventionism the US is going to go back to its natural position. No doubt it will intervene again, but not yet.

This changes everything. It also provides Britain with an opportunity. Crucially when Theresa May goes to get her deal with the EU she is willing to walk away. We don’t particularly need anything from the EU. Imagine if we were asking for something. We’d then be in the same position as Mr Cameron. Oh please Angela let us stay in the Single Market. Oh please Angela we just won’t be able to get along without your help. Up against 27 other EU states, all of whom would want their pound of flesh, but most of all up against the Kaiserin [empress] or is that Kanzlerin [chancellor], we would once more get nothing. The price of leaving the EU under those circumstances would be to remain in the EU. This of course is what the opponents of Brexit have been hoping for. They wanted it to appear as if the UK left the EU, otherwise the peasants might revolt, but in reality we were to remain.

What we want from the EU is no more than we give. If you give us free trade we will give it back. We will let some of your citizens live and work here if you do the same. This is a prize worth having. But it is not worth being ruled by the Kaiserin.

The UK pays more into the EU than we take out, much more. But more than this, we pay more into the EU than we would pay even if we were to pay tariffs on everything we sell to them. It is this which makes our hand so strong as compared to the hand that most EU countries have. Even if, for example, Poland wanted to leave the EU it couldn’t afford to because it gets a subsidy from the EU.  

The same of course goes for Scotland. Even those Scots who dislike the UK have to calculate that leaving would mean giving up the subsidy that the UK gives to Scotland. It is this above all that makes Nicola Sturgeon’s hand so weak. Moreover, if the SNP ever won independence, which would destroy the UK, an SNP leader would still expect to go to London asking for this and that. Please let us keep the pound. Please keep the border open. Please let us have a social union and by the way we want to be best friends. How would you react to someone destroying your country? By contrast the UK doesn’t want to destroy the EU.  We are more than willing to help them achieve whatever goal they seek so long as it doesn’t involve us.

Even in a worst case scenario where the UK walks away from negotiations with the EU and gets nothing, we’d be absolutely fine. We would be no worse off than we are now with regard to our trade with Australia, New Zealand and the USA. We still buy Anchor butter and have done for years. It would be better if we had a trade deal with the EU than not, but then again it would be better if we had a trade deal with New Zealand. This is the prize that we can now get. We can get free trade both with the EU and with those countries that we at present can’t trade freely with because the EU won’t let us.

Why would the EU give us a trade deal? They may not. If they don’t it’s their loss. This again is crucial to the negotiations. Some of them want to punish Britain for leaving the EU. Good luck with that? The British people didn’t react terribly favourably to Mr Obama telling us we’d go to the back of the queue. We likewise have a long tradition of telling Europeans that we still have our two fingers.

Unfortunately for the EU, if they really tried to punish Britain they would end up punishing themselves. Many EU economies are not doing so well at the moment. Do they really want to sell less to Britain than they do at present? But it is beyond trade where the EU may find that it is in their self-interest to keep Britain as a friend.

Mr Trump is retreating into American isolationism. It’s not clear how much money he is willing to spend on European security. How many serious armed forces are there in Europe? I count three. The French, the British and the Russian. This was ably demonstrated during the war in Yugoslavia. Given the task of defending the population of Srebrenica the Dutch army preferred to surrender without firing a shot. This is not serious. My guess is that a regiment of French legionnaires or British paratroops would have done rather better. By making a stand they might have prevented a massacre occurring at all. 

The UK also has the best intelligence service in Europe and we have nuclear weapons. No-one else apart from the French has them. EU security looks like it depends rather crucially on Britain. Implicitly we bring this to the table of negotiations. Why would we be interested in the security of those who do not treat us as friends?

It is perfectly possible to imagine that within a few years we will have more or less free trade with the EU and with countries like Australia and New Zealand. Imagine if we could come up with a trade deal with Australia that meant we could live and work in each other’s countries. My guess is that quite a number of Brits would be attracted to this prospect.

It is this positive story about Britain that we have to tell in order to see off Scottish nationalism. But there is something else as well. Tim Shipman tells a story of a UK Government department getting various edicts from the EU. One of the ministers objects to what he is reading and wants to reject what he thinks is a bad idea. He is firmly told that he can’t. In the end his only task and his only choice is to just sign it. 

But what goes for a department in Westminster equally goes for a department in Holyrood. Scottish ministers will find that in areas that are devolved they will have much more power than they did before. No-one in Westminster will tell them what they can or can’t do with regard to any devolved issue, but no-one in Brussels will be able to tell them either. The Scottish Parliament will be more independent than it was before. Also it will be more powerful than it would be if it left the UK and chose to join the EU. Nicola Sturgeon is blind to this. She only wants to complain and threaten. But the prize that awaits Scotland if we all embrace leaving the EU is not only improved trade with the rest of the world, but also more power over our own affairs. It is perhaps for this reason that so many SNP supporters voted for Brexit.

The Turning Point

Certain people I know and certain people I read have been describing the past year as something horrible. You only have to go back one hundred years to see how foolish this assessment is. Imagine you had just celebrated Christmas in 1916. There is every chance you would have lost someone during the previous years fighting. What would you have to look forward to in 1917? Well there would be further stalemate on the Western Front. The French Army would reach the limit of what it could take on the Aisne and come quite close to revolution. The Russian people would overthrow autocracy only to have it reimposed in a worse form than before. The British Army would spend all summer and autumn trying to capture a little Flemish village called Passendale and in doing so perhaps reach its lowest point in history. So no, let’s have a little perspective, 2016 was not such a bad year after all.

I don’t follow the day to day events at the Scottish Parliament with any real closeness. If I see Nicola Sturgeon on television I have the immediate urge to either turn it off or throw a brick at it. Given that it would be wasteful to destroy televisions, I opt for the former alternative. There was an election last May. The SNP did worse than before. They no longer have a majority. No-one expected this result. We have a long way to go before Scottish politics gets back to normal. But this is the starting point.

Far too many Scots at present vote because of identity issues and because they think it is patriotic and Scottish to vote for the SNP. So long as this continues we will have permanent SNP rule. Along with it we will also have corruption and incompetence. Good governance depends on kicking out your rulers from time to time. It also depends on voters choosing one party as opposed to another because of ordinary political issues. So long as the Scottish electorate votes for a party that is only concerned with independence, Scotland will be run poorly. It is becoming ever more obvious that many SNP MPs and MSPs are simply not up to the job. They would never have got near a Parliament if it hadn’t been for their involvement with the independence campaign. Well what do you expect when an electorate elects poorly qualified nobodies?

What Scotland desperately needs is an ordinary political debate that is balanced between the moderate centre left and the moderate centre right. At that point we can debate about the economy and how best to make that economy work to the advantage of all of us. We are a long way from this. But the path towards it does not go through continually talking about independence. In time as SNP incompetence becomes ever more apparent we can hope that the Scottish electorate may realise this. Until then we have reached stalemate. Each side faces the other across no-man’s land and there is no end in sight. But just as 1916 was the turning point, so too 2016 may turn out to be the year that in the long run defeated Scottish nationalism.

The thing that disappointed me most about 2016 was that we have reached the stage where it is routine for politicians and voters to not accept the result of elections. I thought this was a purely Scottish phenomenon. The SNP were bad losers right from the moment they lost the independence referendum. They campaigned to overturn the result immediately. I thought this was an aberration. But no. Exactly the same thing happened after we voted to leave the EU. Suddenly people who didn’t like the result were trying to find ever new ways to overturn it. Some wanted a second referendum. Some wanted courts to get involved. Some wanted Parliament to say No. This was exactly the same sort of response to a referendum result as that of the SNP. This is dangerous folks. If you give the people the chance to vote in a referendum and then ignore what they say, the people are justified morally in treating Parliament as an autocracy. This is a lesson that must be learned in 2017 when we approach the anniversary of the most dreadful revolution in human history bringing with it terror that the French could not even imagine.

The disease of not accepting election results is not even confined to Britain. I can’t imagine that it is spreading because of the SNP. They are too obscure and unimportant to even be known about in the USA. But somehow we have reached the stage where large numbers of Americans somehow think that the correct response to an election is to refuse to accept the result.

2016 looks like the year that changed everything. We don’t know where this will lead. The future is undetermined. A hopeful positive attitude has the best chance of bringing us benefits, pessimism guarantees failure. It is necessary to recognise and accept that electorates in Britain and the United States voted for change. Given the chance I suspect many more voters elsewhere will vote for change in the coming year. Far from being stupid, the American electorate knew that voting for Hilary Clinton meant voting for more of the same. It was this that they didn’t want.

Much of where we are at present in the world has happened because of the shared assumptions of most western politicians. David Cameron, Hilary Clinton, Angela Merkel all have basically the same ideas about everything. They are unwilling to change their assumptions, but their assumptions are leading the West into an ever more dangerous position.

The world economy has not properly recovered since 2008. It is no longer on life support, but interest rates have hardly risen for years, central banks still pump in money created from nothing into the veins. Meanwhile debt keeps rising beyond the point that it can be repaid.  Who can say what will set off the next crisis in the markets. Perhaps the Euro will blow up again. Perhaps the French or the Italians will call time on the whole project. Monetary union without political union looks like one of the worst ideas in modern history. Is this still what the SNP wants? I’ve rather lost track of what money the SNP expects us to spend in their Brave new Scotland.  

Beyond economics the two main dangers to the West remain Russia and Islamic fundamentalism. The assumptions of most of the West’s politicians are that we must confront Russia and deny that terrorism has anything to do with Islam. Because terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, Angela Merkel assumed that it was perfectly safe to allow millions of people from Islamic countries to come to Germany. Her assumption was that this would in no way make Germany more dangerous. How’s that working out for you Angela?

Donald Trump does not share the assumption of Hilary Clinton, David Cameron or Angela Merkel. Some of his ideas may turn out to be stupid, but it’s not as if the assumptions of the establishment politicians have been doing all that well.

The West needs to make peace with Russia. It is too dangerous for us to be enemies, not least because we have a common enemy who we can only defeat together. 

There is just a chance that Donald Trump might be able to do what Ronald Reagan did with Gorbachev. At least he is willing to try. Give him that chance at least.  The mockers of Reagan ended up looking rather foolish when he won the Cold War, but then if those on the Left were any good at learning the lessons from history, they wouldn't be on the Left.

We need to prevent the spread of Islamic terrorism. This means defeating it in Syria and Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. We are closer to this than we were a year ago, because of what Russia has been doing.  Russia has been winning a war, because it chose not to fight in the western way that guarantees defeat. For this they have been condemned by a western media whose assumptions and coverage would prevent any troops from defeating any enemy. This is to forget the lesson that we could only defeat German and Japanese militarism by making a war that was so terrible that the people of those countries wanted never to experience it again. 

We face a similar threat today, but the BBC will not even call it what it is. It is a so called threat from a so called state. In fact Islamic fundamentalism is if anything a more dangerous threat than the ones we defeated in the Twentieth Century. It has reached such levels of depravity that it is hard to find comparable examples in history books. Worse than this it is irrational, suicidal and spreading. There is a chance soon that this ideology will be defeated in Syria, but for some odd reason the BBC is unhappy.

Syria used to be a perfectly safe country. It wasn’t a democracy, but then the only democracy in the Middle East is Israel. There is a chance that if all terrorists and rebels are defeated in Syria and Iraq then these countries can go back to being what they once were. Their rulers will not be ideal, but it is better than the alternative.

I refuse to accept that it is normal that in western cities there should be the continual expectation of terrorism. I think we should do whatever is necessary to prevent such attacks. Why should we all have to live in fear that in European cities someone will blow himself up or drive a truck into a crowd? The establishment assumption is that nothing can be done. We can’t possibly prevent ISIS fighters coming home to the UK. After all they have rights. There is nothing that we can do to prevent mass migration even though we know that a proportion of those who arrive hate us and would like to kill us. These are the assumptions of the establishment. No wonder voters rejected these assumptions. It is the rejection of the establishment that gives us hope for 2017.

Our Scottish president

The left lost the economic battle when the Berlin wall came down. No-one after that could take socialism seriously as a way of running an economy. Given the chance people living in a socialist society will vote with their feet. Of course there are those who are either too young or too stuck in their ways to learn this lesson. But there are not enough of them. Hard line socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and friends exist, but unless something odd happens they are not going to be running anything any time soon. Of course odd things are happening in politics at the moment, but let us at least hope that Europe has seen the end of Marxist economics.

The left however has been fighting a different battle for the past fifty years or so. They have stepped up this battle since communism ceased to be a serious option. Moderate people on the left realised that capitalism was the only game in town and so they tried to modify it and make it fairer. But capitalism works precisely because it is not socialism. Adding socialistic ideas to capitalism doesn’t improve it, because the driving force of capitalism is the incentive provided by inequality. Take away the incentive and you take away the growth. This is why in the end voting for Labour always makes people poorer. Free markets are the way to bring people out of poverty. They have brought more people out of poverty than all the socialists put together. I think some people on the Left began to realise this too. So they put their energy into other causes. The Left in this way ceased to be about economics at all.

The real battle hasn’t been going on in parliaments, it’s been going on in universities and in newspapers and on television. There has been an attempt by the Left over the past fifty years to change how people think and then to enforce that change. The left always depends on changing human nature, but this can only be done by force and re-education. This is the case with all cultural revolutions, not just those that occur in China.

Sometime in the 1990s I was at a conference reading a paper. I used standard English grammar and used the word “He” to stand for non-gender specific persons. Suddenly I found some American vehemently objecting not to the subject of my paper but to my using the word “He”. I told him that I found the alternatives ungrammatical and he walked out of the room muttering something about prejudice.

At this point the way I studied and wrote was quite traditional. The subjects that I was interested in, philosophy, theology and Russian literature were still studied more or less how they had been fifty years previously. Politics didn’t really enter into the discussion. But gradually, year by year, more and more this began to change.

Soon new ways of looking at the subjects that I studied became obligatory. Some people thought we should write from the perspective of feminism. Others considered that a post-colonial perspective was more essential. Others still used queer theory. It might have been interesting to read one or two books from such perspectives, but soon nearly everything had to be written from a political perspective. The trouble was that this perspective was always from the Left and you were not allowed to disagree with it. Anyone who questioned the central tenets of feminism, queer theory, post-colonialism and any of the other ideas that came to us from the United States, rapidly found themselves in difficulty.

This has been the method that the Left has used culturally in the past decades. If you disagree with them you end up finding it difficult to get published. You may find yourself out of a job too. If you are a student, you may find yourself failing a course unless you stick to the party line.  Try writing a paper that questions any of the central dogmas of feminism in your women’s studies course and you will find out what it felt like to be Galileo when he questioned Catholic astronomy. Try writing about sociology from a Conservative, Christian existentialist point of view and you will find that this is not a subject but rather a branch of agitprop.

The whole point of saying that something is politically correct is to say that something else is incorrect. There is no debate. To argue is to be denounced. This is the essence of totalitarianism.  The Komsomol also found some things politically correct and other things incorrect. If it was incorrect enough you might find yourself in the Gulag. Here we have a different sort of Labour camp, but it still involves denunciation and nudges to retrain the masses how to think and feel.

It all started out harmlessly enough. Let’s try to get people to stop saying “Fireman” and use “Firefighter” instead. Where’s the harm? But gradually and with each battle won the Left moved on. It has always been about controlling what people can say and what they can do. Human nature is flawed for it is naturally competitive. People require to be rewarded. They want to be successful rather than equal. The Left’s battle always was with human nature, but it is possible to win this battle very gradually with simply making people feel guilty about ordinary words that they use. If you can change the way people talk you can change the way they think and you can do it without them even realising.

I remember reading about an academic in Yale who said that she believed in free speech and that therefore everyone should be allowed to wear whatever Halloween costume they pleased. Someone wore a costume that someone else objected too. I don’t remember what sort, perhaps someone dressed up as a Mexican while he was not from Mexico. The whole thing escalated and the poor academic lost her job. It began to be less harmless.

Now we have students demanding that they be given trigger warnings about something that might be upsetting in a lecture. I imagine at some point an academic will lose their job because they didn’t warn the class that a discussion about Jesus involves a crucifixion.

Some students have been demanding safe spaces. What this means is that ideas they disagree with cannot be spoken. Somehow it is unsafe for them to hear any but their own ideas. Even clapping is deemed to be oppressive and approval must be shown by something called “jazz hands”. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what that means. I obviously require re-education.

Whole areas of life have been regulated by the Left. Ideas that would have been considered ludicrous in 1960 are now obligatory. If I had said in 1960 that a man could marry a man it would have been assumed that I simply didn’t understand the word “marry”. Likewise, if I said that a man could become a woman simply by choosing to become one, this too would have been met with incredulity. These and other ideas that were contrary to the common sense of our grandparents have been proscribed. I hardly dare write what I have just written. I have transgressed, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
  

Will the common sense of 2016 be forbidden in twenty or thirty years’ time? You can get people to agree to almost anything if the alternative is that they will be called prejudiced. It’s quite a powerful way to control thought. It’s far easier to keep your mouth shut than risk being called some sort of bigot. It’s a wonder George Orwell didn’t come up with it. It’s much more effective that “Room 101”.

There is an unforgivable sin in Britain. I can break most of the commandments with impunity. I can commit adultery. I can take the Lord’s name in vain. I can swear and use the foulest language imaginable. But until recently if I questioned the wisdom of unrestricted immigration I was a racist. The debate was simply shut down.

This has led to the dullest universities imaginable. I find almost nothing worth reading that has been published recently. It’s all just following the crowd and finding ways to signal that I too am virtuous. It amounts to chimpanzees grooming each other in a spirit of solidarity, sharing each other’s ticks. It’s all so convoluted. Everyone uses long words that simply hide the emptiness of their sophistry.

Romeo and Juliet were really gay, but Romeo was oppressing her because that is what all men do to all women. That’s why the story ended up as it did. But both of them were oppressing Tybalt because he in fact was black and from a colony that wouldn’t become a colony for another four hundred years. With a little effort I could turn this into a very trendy paper. But why would I want to? It’s would be dull, pointless and lacking in intellect.

I came to dread where we would go next. What would be the next fad? I couldn’t imagine trigger warnings five years ago. It seems so unlikely, so silly. How could anyone be taken in by such nonsense? But where American leads we follow.

But not now. In Scotland everyone still toes the party line. The newspapers and the televisions programmes all still have the same Leftish tinge. Everyone is horrified by our new Scottish President.

There are things I dislike about Donald Trump. Above all else I dislike his protectionism. This is a way to make people in the Mid-West still poorer. I couldn’t care less that he had a private conversation with someone more than ten years ago where he made some vulgar remarks. I too in private conversations have said stupid things. I imagine you have too. Men boast to other men about their sexual conquests. Men find women’s bodies attractive. Sorry folks this is basic evolution. But what got the whole of Scotland all hot and bothered was what Donald Trump said about immigration. “You can’t say that” they all said. He did.

In my view a country has a right to defend its borders. I don’t think building a wall is the best way to do this, but any country has the right to prevent people entering illegally. It also has the right to deport those who are there illegally. Unless you think there should be no countries and no borders, in which case campaigning for Scottish independence is perverse, you believe the same. The only difference is whether you are honest about your beliefs or dishonest.

The one thing that got Donald Trump into the most terrible trouble in Britain, however, the reason why he was condemned by all commentators is he committed the unforgivable sin. He was a racist. Why was he a racist? Because he wanted to temporarily prevent Muslims from coming to the United States.

Imagine if Trump had not committed the unforgivable sin. Imagine if he had conformed to the demands of the Scottish media.  Well my guess is we would now be hearing nothing else from the SNP than that the new president was half Scottish. But no, he is forever to be cast into outer darkness because of his sin. No one must dare associate with this heretic, nor give him shelter. If you do you too will be excommunicated.

What is the worst thing you can do in Britain? It is to say or do anything that is deemed to be racist. I can say any swear word I like with impunity. These words are no longer taboo. The least hint of prejudice however is liable to lead to ostracism, losing your job and a Twitter storm. Everyone but everyone must show that they have not sinned and beware there is no escape for be “sure your sin will find you out.” When someone does sin they count themselves fortunate if they get off with a penance like the gymnast Louis Smith. They must condemn themselves or forever remain condemned.

Trump’s sin though was that he did not apologise. He meant what he said. He didn’t think it was a sin to voice his opinion. This was the worst of it. It is for this reason that there was a special debate in Parliament where everyone got to show everyone else how virtuous they were and how awful Trump was. It was his lack of penitence above all that meant Trump lost his coveted title of “Business Ambassador for Scotland”.

No doubt Trump misspoke. It is his nature to exaggerate. Much of what he says is unrealistic, impossible to enforce. Was he going to prevent the leader of Iran coming to the United Nations? What about a Muslim from Britain called Smith? How was Mr Trump going to prevent such a person visiting the United States? Are you or have you ever been a Muslim?

So we can all slap each other on the back. Not only was Mr Trump a bigot he was also stupid. He was a joke candidate, can you imagine someone wanting to control illegal immigration, or protect his country from terrorism, how hilarious. How sinful. But do you know what? It wasn’t because of his virtues that Trump won the presidency. He has no virtues. It was because of his sins.

Voters around the world have been looking at leaders with virtues and especially those who want to signal to everyone else that they have virtues and they are no longer finding such leaders to be virtuous.

Being virtuous apparently means having open borders and allowing anyone who pleases to come. This is virtuous even if it makes your country more crowded and more dangerous. No-one dares say anything against this open border policy, for this would be to commit the unforgivable sin. But one person dared.  They threw everything they had at him for that reason. But it wasn’t enough. The spell had been broken.

The Left is very good at insulting those with whom it disagrees. We are post-truth voters apparently. But post-truth just means that you disagree with us. We had our arguments and they were convincing to us. But keep on insulting, no-one is listening anymore and your insults make us more determined than ever to continue on the path we have chosen.

The whole of the establishment was up against us last spring and early summer. Every major British Party campaigned for Remain, so did Obama, the BBC, most newspapers, Mark Carney, Christine Lagarde and the EU. They all threatened us and they called us names. We were racists who were sinning against the rules of the establishment. But there is privacy in the ballot box and anyway we had reached a point where we were not scared anymore of your political correctness. Call us what you want, we don’t care. Finally ordinary people were saying what they hadn’t quite dared to say for years.

It is common sense to worry about the threats that our country faces. We ought to be careful that we don’t allow anyone into our country who threatens our security. We have a right to live safely. We have a right not be constantly threatened. We have duties to other people, but fulfilling these duties ought not to undermine our own safety.

The genie is out of the bottle. The Left’s threats no longer work. We may not admit it to colleagues, nor tell pollsters, but we will vote for Brexit if it makes our lives safer and better even if you call us racists.

Trump of course said the stupidest thing imaginable about Brexit. When he was asked about it he said “They got their country back”. Can you imagine the stupidity of a man who thinks he can sum up such a complex matter in one sentence when it requires months and months of squealing Guardian articles to describe the full horror of Britain voting to leave the EU?

There is a majority who want to limit immigration, who especially are concerned about immigration from dangerous places. The Left will call us racists. But has it sunk in yet? No-one cares any more what you call us. The whole totalitarian edifice of political correctness depended on everyone being scared. So long as we were scared to say what we thought you could control us. You could tell us what was correct and what was incorrect and we would go along with you for we were scared of what you would call us. But not anymore.  

We are just ordinary people with ordinary concerns about our country. We are going to say what we think from now on, even if the Left doesn’t like it. The Left lost the economic battle when the Berlin Wall came down, but they are losing the cultural battle now. We may still keep our opinions to ourselves, we may even pretend to agree with you, but you will never be sure of another opinion poll, because we are thinking for ourselves for a change and when we vote we vote privately.

I’m not anti-anyone, I treat each individual as an individual, but I will tell the truth as I see it and will not be limited by ideas of political correctness. Feel free to call names. It's been a wonderfully effective strategy these past months hasn't it? You used to have such power. A word from you and we would cower and then you could give us absolution. But those days are gone. You lost. Did you realise that yet?