Sunday Posts

Or, 20 days that shook Britain, one could say! With the Prime Minister moving out, and the most xenophobic and incompetent Minister of his Cabinet earning the job by an astonishing double-default - first failing to campaign for the side she was backing and then by a House-of-Cards show with her potential challengers killing each other off - this is surely an extra-ordinary time. If only this was all! Across the aisle, Labour MPs have set themselves up for a farce, as a befitting aftermath of the tragedy of Brexit. They first bring a 'no confidence' motion on their leader, ignoring one of the most crucial distinction - that Labour leader is chosen by the party members and not the MPs - between Labour and the Tory party. Then, they try to trigger a 'leadership challenge' and keep the current leader off the ballot, with an extra-ordinary excuse that this leader fails to connect with Labour voters and therefore, if he is on the ballot, he may win! In all, Brit...

So, it is out now: The Little England has spoken, decisively, clearly, xenophobicly. This morning is when the penny drops, the Islamophobia triumphs in undoing the post-war understanding that the so-called 'Western World' was made on. With the all-night commentary, political drama, uncertainties and expectations, this is indeed like a General Election, except that, it wasn't: It was a revolution that one lives through, hopefully, once in a lifetime. I am not trying to be analytical - the broader tensions between globalisation and nation state is explanation enough - or to try to envision the future, because it is too uncertain. Right now, in a hangover after a sleepless night, my world is being turned upside down. This is not because of the volatile markets - I am sure these risks were factored in and it will settle in a short time -  but because, I think, this event changes the way I think of politics. For example, I can not believe that I am already missing Davi...

Evocation of Hamlet is intended: The choice Britain faces on 23rd June needs deliberation of a solemn kind, involves an existential question and yet, not acting and letting evil carry the day will be a tragedy. Hence, despite my reluctance to add to what has been a nasty and misleading debate on both sides, I have to write this post. At the outset, perhaps it is best to show my hand and declare that I will be voting to remain. This is not because the calculations of the Remain side has convinced me: Rather, It is a matter of principle, as I see Britain as an open country engaged with the rest of the world, and not a xenophobic little island trying to hide behind the seas. This, for me, is a matter of British identity, and pride, that its strength came from engagement with the world and shaping, for good or worse, its affairs. At the core, Britain is also an European country, as it has always been, with all the Saxon enterprise and Norman heritage making the country what it is, always i...

The current crisis with migrants has one, and only one, casualty - the European moral high ground!  European governments feel uniquely entitled to lecture others about humanitarian issues. They project themselves as the keeper of morality in the world, often bombing or sanctioning against other nations when they think they are on the wrong side of the moral line. Once they faced the same test that some of the Asian and African nations face routinely, they failed though - and failed miserably. Imagine what would have happened if Iran barred refugees from coming in. Or, India left them stranded in the shores. Or, a Pakistani columnist suggested that they send gunboats to stop the infiltration. Or an African President called them swarms. If they died in a locked truck in Egypt. Or, if Sudan limited the number of people allowed to come in every year to 50.  There would be an international outrage, thousands of column inches of editorials, Hollywood stars descending o...

Election results are in. Tories have won, with a result better than their own dreams. They have got Vince Cable and possibly Ed Balls (who is getting a recount). Fear has triumphed over Hope. Nationalism is back - with UKIP and SNP, English and Scottish nationalists, triumphing in two different ways. Here are seven things that can happen now. 1. Scotland can leave the UK. UK Map looks like yellow top, blue bottom, more or less. The next Conservative government will have no MPs from Scotland. SNP must be smiling for more reasons than one, because it makes another referendum a possibility. 2. UK can leave Europe. David Cameron is tied to the pledge to have an In/Out referendum. The nationalism that sunk Labour this time will be alive and well. Without UK, EU will perhaps be stronger. But, for UK, as Gordon Brown wrote yesterday, that is possibly the North Korea option. 3. Immigrants can now leave the UK, as the xenophobia can now continue unabated and destroy British industries ...

In next week's General Election, I intend to vote Labour. I am not a traditional Labour voter. I am first generation Asian migrant, with a professional background and generally belong to Asian professional circles and neighbourhood. Most of the people I socialise with are likely to vote conservatives, and some of them, in time, will perhaps join the Tory party. I have not voted Labour in the last election, and have not agreed with many of its policies while it was in Government. I pay my taxes, and never taken any benefits nor thought of doing it. I don't know the local Labour candidate, nor has she campaigned too ardently in the locality I live in. On the other hand, I know the incumbent Conservative MP, a very likable one, and several of my friends are actively campaigning for him. And, yet, I made up my mind now to vote Labour. Indeed, I would have never voted for the Tories in the first place. There are several reasons for this, but essentially, I see the Conserva...

With elections seven weeks away, the UK Higher Ed community is presumably anxious. Last election marked a decisive turning point for the UK Higher Ed sector - the Cameron Government pursued twin strategies of an inadequately thought through funding reform and a plainly disastrous clampdown on student immigration - which would have long term consequences for the sector as a whole. With the UK political debate becoming more vicious and backward-looking, the UK universities, many of whom are among the best among the world, can be understandably worried. In the last five years, Higher Education has become more global, except in the UK. Now that the major parties are all united in an UKIP-inspired fear of Europe, this may turn out to be proverbial nail - and start the eventual long term decline. One could reasonably expect some lengthier, weightier reviews of the impact of David Camerons five years in office on the UK Higher Education sector coming out in the next few weeks. However, ...

Speechwriters never get the credit they deserve, but they have changed the course of history more than once. The metaphor of an 'iron curtain' or the uncertain promise of a 'tryst with destiny' etched in people's minds a concept that would become permanent by the power of imagery, even if the reality may have suggested otherwise. Fast forward to the society of ours where sound bites and TRP points trump any real experience, the speech writers are enjoying unprecedented powers to change destinies of nations: This comes with a huge responsibility that most are not even aware of.  So, for the future speechwriters, following the case of the person who would have made the Leader of the Conservative Party in Britain, David Cameron, promise to bring down immigration to 'tens of thousands' might be beneficial. Exploiting the resentment about immigration when an open-door policy had resulted in a surge of migration to Britain and the economy had just turned sou...

Immigration is not what it used to be. Or, to put it correctly, it is what it used to be, plus something else. Boatloads of people still turn up at the doors of rich countries; but, to snatch a share of global pie, countries also actively pursue immigrants. The political rhetoric around them has changed too: Once the usual, comfortable issues like colour of skin and religion became politically incorrect, politicians who lack courage but seek votes have made immigration their proxy issue. It is not a subject you can easily discuss in a pub, or a coffee shop or gym. If you do, everyone will look at you as if all issues around the subject have already been settled. As if, immigration is BAD, everyone knows! One needs to only look at how crowded the buses are, no parking spaces, getting into school is a hassle and a lottery, no jobs, house prices are well beyond middle class salaries - the ill effects of immigration are just too obvious. Conveniently, all the things that could be blam...

David Cameron is now enjoying a bit of a popularity wave at home because of his veto on an EU-wide agreement on deeper fiscal union between the Euro countries. English press is trying to project this as a Cameron versus Sarkozy game, and quite explicitly equating Sarkozy, who isn't a very tall man, with Napoleon, the other French who had a poor opinion about the Brits. The British public feels good about staring down the French, and sees this as cheap politicking by nasty Sarkozy, which has put our dear David into a corner. In a sense, Cameron's articulation skills may have saved him one more time. However, while it is easy to mistake articulation for achievement, the drift away from Europe, which is now manifesting itself into cross-channel rivalry yet again, is a disaster for Britain. For a start, we don't live in the age of Napoleon, and a global financial crisis is indeed gathering momentum. Once this happens, it will indeed spare no one. What Cameron has effectively ...

We have been here before, we are at it again. Edmund Burke should stand corrected: However much one reads history, one is doomed to repeat it. The Great Depression was caused by financial excesses followed by protectionism and government inaction: The next one, which is looming around the corner, will be exactly the same.  David Cameron saved his job, for the moment. He, who wanted to be the hero, walked out of an Europe-wide deal to save the Euro. By doing so, he showed not just the 'bulldog spirit' that he was to show, but 'bulldog brain', but then bulldogs may be offended. He sunk into protectionism, a sort of desperate politics to keep some of his loony backbenchers and out-of-touch colleagues pleased. And, by doing so, he risked two things: First, if the Euro ends up collapsing, a long and potentially bloody depression all over the world; and, second, if the Eurozone countries manage to pull together, a final setting of sun of any British influence over the wo...

The Economist explores the two sides of David Cameron's leadership: He is self-assured and confident in the matters of High Politics (read, making speeches), but radar-less and weak when faced with the raw politics of mass fury and indignation. Examples abound: His approach to the crisis in Libya and war in Afghanistan is markedly dissimilar to his handling of NHS reform and now, the News of The World saga. It is possibly easy to see why. David Cameron is a showman rather than a politician. His skills of communication, something akin to Tony Blair and far ahead of Gordon Brown, hides an important weakness: He is indeed out of touch. His government has so far done a good job painting a grim picture of economic crisis and unveiling the Welfare State under the cover, but the success of this depended more on 'selling' the story to gullible public than taking thoughtful action. The great flaw in Cameron's governance style is that his publicist instincts make him follow th...

So, shutters down at the News of The World, and welcome, probably, to Sun on Sunday. It is not just the saddest moment of British journalism, a trade that sustained the world's oldest surviving democracy and helped, I shall argue, to make the case for free speech all over the world. It is an epiphany about what happens when a trade, a profession loses its purpose, and becomes a tool of production of profit and power. Lessons have to be learned, not just by the Murdoch mafia and their cronies, but by the man on the street perhaps: That the freedoms we take for granted are hard-earned and must be protected every day, and such. But, first the bad news. News of the World paints an astonishing picture of a business at its worst, when responsibility was thrown out of the window in pursuit of profit and power, and little people, sadly and cynically engaged in keeping their jobs, carried out heinous crimes, no less serious and offensive than sex abuses and murders they reported, at the be...

David Cameron is one of the more 'impressive' Prime Ministers Britain has had in the recent years. Young, handsome, articulate, someone with 'clear' views and a bias for action, who wins almost every PMQ and who has so far effectively dangled the debt question to transform almost all aspects of British life: What a contrast this makes from the unloved Gordon Brown who could get nothing done. Cameron's twelve months already make the preceding Labour years feel like ancient history, the charmed life of the boom years as well as the time of massive expansion of the 'collectivist' credo, and he seems destined, like Tony Blair, to leave a legacy, however long his coalition manages to cling together. But, like Tony Blair, this legacy may not be a positive one for Britain. Because, David Cameron, for all his posturing, is a hopeless populist, who succumb to every opportunity to please his home crowd. He has not stopped being a publicist and start becoming a Prime M...

David Cameron made a speech on immigration. This was not a policy speech - there was no new announcements made - but rather a politics speech. This speech did indicate where the government stands on immigration. Everyone should have known where the government stands on immigration, but we forget that this is a coalition government. We know where the Tories stand, but Prime Minister, who is not just leading the Tories but the Government, needs to carry the coalition's vision. Indeed, his speech was far too xenophobic to be accepted by the more liberal elements of his own party, let alone his coalition partners. Interestingly, David Cameron's objection to immigration was social, rather than economic. This is rather strange as his other policies seem to echo Thatcher's dictum: There is no such thing as society. This is also an interesting shift from Gordon Brown's 'British Jobs For British Workers' politics, almost an acknowledgement that there is a strong economic...

As David Cameron oversees a rapid dismantling of the Welfare State, that bastard child of Capitalism which won the Cold War but never got any credit for it, he must be hoping that something else will fill the void. Something else must, as Welfare State held the western societies together and its absence may mean a world full of despair, breakdown of social life and crimes and drugs and all the things noir. Cameron's big idea was to fill the void with 'Big Society', a sort of third sector utopia where the voluntary citizen organizations and social enterprises step in to fill the void, create opportunities and spread the word for self-reliance and creative thinking. The problem is - it is not working. The reason it is not working, and it may not work in future, is because it is so utopian. There may be a lot of lament about the disappearance of community, but this is one thing that capitalism does: Removes the social markets. We would love to see things in pretty boxes: Socie...

I claim I can talk about what Britishness means with some sort of authority. It is always easier to talk about something seen from outside - I was not born British and only settled in Britain later in life - as, from that perspective, only the really distinguishable characteristics can be seen. For a nation, if Britain can be said to be one, it is a collection of people with individual characteristics from inside; from outside, the common eccentricities stand out and define the collective. All this is very relevant after David Cameron let the penny drop now and said that Muslims in Britain must learn Britishness . Now, it will be his responsibility to explain what it is, and he should get cracking possibly after he finished explaining his last big concept - great society - to the public. One can indeed make light of his recent statement and say that he was only trying to please Angela Merkel , the German Chancellor, who recently said Multi- culturalism has failed in Germany. David Ca...

Policies need to be made of dream stuff, particularly in these difficult times. Reality is always hard to believe and good words are usually handy to keep away wrong statistic: Like the drop in real incomes for middle classes for a decade or the very current drop in employment numbers. But this is the way of the world - or, as Stephen Covey puts it, an area of concern - and the decent thing for plain folks is to get on with it. What makes the Old Street roundabout Britain's answer to silicon valley? The place is indeed run-down, ideal for new property development. It is rumoured that Russians are now moving in and buying the Bangladeshis out. Commercial Road is becoming, well, commercial. Indeed, there are so many other creative hot spots in Britain, and as a friend rhetorically put it, why not Brighton, that one wonders whether the vision of a silicon valley in Hoxton has anything to do with creative enterprises, or is it a clarion call to beleaguered property developers. I must ...

Last night, I did spend all those 90 minutes watching Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron doing an American style debate on TV. I must admit that I do not admire any of these men much, and I in fact thought such debate is inappropriate because the United Kingdom has a parliamentary system and all this was too presidential. But, since this is an event of interest, and may have an impact over the future of this country, I thought it worthwhile to watch and make a mental note of the strategies that the leaders were pursuing. Here is what I thought: Gordon Brown His big plus is that he sounded in control, knowing his staff and having clear answers. He sounded convincing. He wanted to project competence, and he somehow managed to do it. Though this is no surprise - all questions were carefully screened, answers prepared and the chosen questions were non-confrontational - but it is still the 'being in control' thing matters. Brown's performance did not give the impression...

In a few hours, David Cameron will deliver a make-or-break speech in Brighton to the Conservative Party faithfuls. It is ironic to note how political cycles run: Only a few months ago, we talked about Gordon Brown fighting for his political life in the run up to his speech to labour party faithfuls in Brighton. The world seems to be coming a full circle. If opinion polls are any indication, this election seems to be slipping away from Cameron's grips. Oddly, the news from Downing Street has only got worse, but still, it seems, the British public is steadily started giving Mr Brown the benefit of doubt. Conservatives are already sounding defeatist, and talk of a hung parliament and the dangers of indecision that brings is the best they can talk about. If such an eventuality does happen, or as Sunday Times is predicting, Gordon Brown can manage to form a minority government, it will certainly destroy the conservative party with some finality. One can account for such shifting of alle...