• Revenge

“Revenge does take time. I will say that,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News in June. “And sometimes revenge can be justified. When this election is over, based on what they’ve done, I would have every right to go after them.” Front and centre of this will be the Democrats and, as he would put it, their lackeys who have spent the last four years engaged in what has proved to be a singularly ineffectual campaign against him.

Yet it’s more than that. The whole apparatus of the US government is now in the control of someone who has nothing but distaste and distrust for many of its aims and outcomes.

This article in Reuters gives a quick overview of some of the statistics. 2.3 million civilian workers, a 7% growth in this number since 2019 and an annual $271 billion in salaries and benefits are three of the highlights that Trump and Musk will have firmly fixed in their sights. These people and the jobs they have, they would reason, held America back.

Perverse regulation, pointless red tape, a slow reactive rapidity, pathological woke groupthink, a sympathy for, or at last an awareness of, climate change and a general bureaucratic inertia have all combined to remove the USA from its long-held position of undisputed global top dog. The government is, it could be argued, unpatriotic, as are the Democrats. Here are the enemies, in plain sight.

Moreover, Trump will have an significant amount of power. He won by a handsome margin; the Republicans control both houses of Congress; and the Supreme Court (which is filled by a bizarre system of political appointments) is still unashamedly conservative.  He may not be able to do everything he’d like but he’ll be able to do a lot. Much might depend on how long he continues to remain loved-up to Elon Musk. When you have two angry, power-hungry, thin-skinned egomaniacs trying to drive the car, a high-speed crash is always a possibility.

• Governance

This team of people are even now planning their campaigns. Why did so many Americans vote for this level of disruption and possible damage to the edifice of government that, slim though it is by European standards, still provides a wide range of vital national functions?

The reality is that, in almost all countries including the USA, government is not that good. In what one might call western democracies, the apogee of governmental effectiveness was probably in the mid-20th century, in the decade or so either side of the Second World War; say, from the Wall Street Crash to the outbreak of the Vietnam War. Since then, a number of things have gone wrong.

The main one is that governments now have to deal with problems which are almost entirely beyond their competence, capacities or financial resources. Three of the main reasons are globalisation, the growth of big tech companies and the internet. All have conspired to create not only problems which no national government can solve on its own, but also sources of power and communication which no government can control.

There are also the promises, certainly in this country though less so in the USA, to fund services which have for a range of reasons become impossibly complex and expensive.

Nor have the systems adapted. Certainly in the UK, we have politicians who are selected and elected on the basis of charm rather than competence, a civil service which is obsessively wedded to the idea of the generalist rather than the specialist, a parliament which has become almost entirely the tool of the executive, a judiciary with a shameful backlog of cases of all kinds, and the whole thing largely powered by convention.

By some good opinions, the best-performing parts of the British constitution, with its fabled though incorrect separation of powers, are the monarchy and the House of Lords.

The country has a mania for legislation, including pernicious secondary legislation at the whim of ministers. Effective official scrutiny is with some notable exceptions almost non-existent. The media is in the hands of billionaire plutocrats of various kinds and persuasions. As for society at large, that has become progressively obsessed with immediate gratification which is amply catered for in a wide range of ways.

Moreover, society has also in the last 50 years undergone more change than has happened at any time since the contemporaneous and related development of printing and the Reformation.

Politicians have also become the product of party machines, shaped by the organisations that they felt they were themselves shaping until they were offered up to the electorate, generally as part of an uninspiring binary choice. “More of the same” has generally been the subliminal message.

• Disruptors

On the last 10 years, that’s changed. In their very different ways, Orban in Hungary and Macron in France have portrayed themselves as being outside the traditional political elite. Thatcher , for whom “more of the same” was never a mantra, was much the same in the 1980s.

However, again in their three different ways, there are three pre-eminent examples of this in the UK and the USA: Farage, Johnson and Trump.

Despite all having impeccable establishment credentials as regards education, occupation or wealth, all managed to portray themselves as different. All promised a new style, a new way and a new deal with the electorate. All were effective orators and surrounded by competitors who were not.

Above all, they managed to portray themselves as being human beings. Voting for them became personal. Once this bond is established, like that between a dog and its owner, it is hard to break.

They also promised a break with the past. For Trump and Johnson, this was presented to them in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the Brexit referendum in 2016. In such an idiotic binary choice, demagogues were always likely to shine, particularly as changing something is so much more exciting that keeping them the same. There were a sufficiency of people in the UK who had no reason to keep the status quo, and welcomed the chance to give all the main parties a collective kick in the backside into the bargain.

Others were swayed by the general promises of freedom: although freedom from exactly what, and realised exactly how, have yet to be revealed. The only example I’ve yet had suggested to me (thanks again to Simon Pike for pointing this out) is that you can now buy duty-free goods when visiting or returning from the EU. 

These three men were successful because they found their cause and used it to their advantage. Farage and Johnson were handed theirs by David Cameron. Trump, however, had to forge it himself.

• Two maxims

Enoch Powell observed that all political careers end in failure. Johnson’s certainly did: a deeply flawed man whose flaws – including indecision, lack of grip, poor judgement and inveterate mendacity – were ruthlessly exposed. He grabbed control of a rudderless party after a major divorce and then failed to navigate the far worse problems which fate dealt him.

Farage’s career seems to have succeeded. He spectacularly achieved what he wanted in 2016; then wanted more; and was finally rewarded with a seat in the Commons this year. His influence from now on is likely, hopefully, to be minimal.

As for Trump’s, his career so far hasn’t failed. Looked at objectively, his recovery from a global low-water mark of the Capitol riots in 2021 to his 2024 victory is nothing short of remarkable.

From the opposite side of the political spectrum, there’s the Marx/Engels assertion that in the face of socialism, the state will wither away. In fact, no socialist revolution has yet produced anything but the opposite result. The biggest threat to the notion of the conventional idea of the state has actually come from the three factors mentioned above: globalisation, big tech and the internet. None of these has their commercial or political roots in anything remotely resembling socialism.

They have, however, spread a vast amount of goods, technology and information across the world, though in a way which governments are increasingly unable to control. We still behave, and they still behave, as if they can manage it.

Putin, Xi, Kim III, Scholz, Macron, Starmer and the rest are all grappling with this insoluble paradox. None have managed to solve it. Trump’s America-first brand of repressive isolationism probably won’t either. None the less, it’s what Americans voted for and is what they’re likely to get.

• Church news

There’s a lovely article on p8 of Private Eye 1637 which describes a chance meeting between The Eye’s Editor Ian Hislop and the recently deposed (though still in office) Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at a function at the British Museum. Welby had sought Hislop out at the gathering – in his position, I’d have moved quickly to the other side of the room.

The exchange described Hislop referring to Welby’s lies concerning his alleged complicity in the John Smyth scandals. The AB of C asked if the Editor was referring to “lies before or after 2013”, “a reference to whether he was lying between 2013 [when he got the top job] and 2017 [when he apologised for Smyth’s crimes] or whether he was lying long before that”. The mere fact that Welby should have tried to draw the distinction suggests a very casuistical, legalistic and opportunistic approach to truth.

As I mentioned last week, this is, sadly, what religious leaders trade in. The books that they reference to support their faiths are pregnant with just such ambiguities, so providing a perfect training for sophistry and general slippery thinking.

If a medieval history degree has taught me nothing else, it’s that the desire for personal glory and the means we use to achieve it operate irrespective of the aspirations of the organisation we’re seeking to control. The more established and ingrained in our lives these organisations are, the more we’re prepared to accept what their leaders tell us.

• Remote meetings

Yet another reminder that the government is asking for our views on the subject of once again allowing councils to conduct meeting by Zoom or similar, as briefly prevailed during the pandemic. Many thanks to Graham Bridgman from Stratfield Mortimer PC for bringing this consultation (which closes on 19 December) to my attention.

The preamble says that it “seeks views on the detail and practical implications of allowing remote and hybrid attendance at local authority meetings. It also tests views on the possible introduction of proxy voting for those occasions when an elected member, due to personal circumstances, may be unable to attend even remotely.”

Responses are invited “from local authority elected members, all types and tiers of authorities and local authority sector representative organisations. We are also particularly keen to hear from those members of the public who have a point of view based on their interest in accessing local democracy in their area, or standing as a candidate for local government at any tier to represent their local community at some future point.”

• Starmer’s farmers

Budgets always produce winners and losers. This time round, the most vocal losers seems to be the UK’s farmers as a results of changes made to inheritance tax.

I’m neither a farmer, nor an accountant, nor a tax expert, all three of which qualifications seem to be needed to understand this. The fact that estimates of the number of farms that might be affected range from 500 to 70,000 show how polarised the issue has become. A demonstration in London on 19 November, which would not have seemed out of place in Paris, provided further evidence of the depth of feeling.

There seem to be three main strands to the argument, which I’ll lay before you without undue and ill-informed comment.

• The first is that it’s an example of an attack on this particular section of the landowning class, motivated perhaps by malice or purely political considerations, and designed to make a quick return to the Treasury. It is also an attack on a group which has enjoyed preferential inheritance-tax status for a long time. This is, the opponents claim, despite the fact that farmers tend to be asset-rich but cash poor. This article provides one take on this point of view, as does this one. Readers local to us can also see Councillor Chris Read’s letter in this week’s Newbury Weekly News, a copy of which was also sent to us.
• The second is the fact that this is merely the latest in a long series of betrayals of the farming community by the UK government. Following Brexit, a new deal was promised with environmental land management prioritised at the expense of crude production or acreage subsidies. The new schemes would, they were assured, be introduced before the old ones were ditched and international trade deals would support the local industries. All these promises have been broken. This point of view is expressed eloquently by James Rebanks.
• The third is that the farmers are misguided in their opposition. Yes, inheritance has been protected by legal changes since the 1980s, but this is helping to shield a number of people who are acquiring agricultural land to minimise tax burdens. This has inflated agricultural land prices, not only making more people fall into the new threshold, but also reducing the number of people who want to enter the market for genuine reasons. Regarding the taxation, they argue that with preparation the burden can be significantly mitigated. Two examples of these arguments can be found here and here.

I offer no opinion as to the merits or otherwise of these points of view. I offer them to show that it’s complex and emotive, as so many issues are. It’s also likely that, whatever the true motives of the government in the matter, the actual results will be more the result of the law of unintended consequences than of any policy, however beneficially intended.

Another general law seems to be that most changes will, often despite their intentions, produce more benefit for those who already have more than for those who have less. I don’t suggest that this will be the case here, or is the intention: merely that this might be the result.

 • And finally…

• No one can have failed to notice that the USA and the UK have recently allowed the weapons they ship to Ukraine now to be used in attacking Russian territory. This is, obviously, an escalation that carries massive political and military risks. Biden has said that he wants to make “every day count” before he has to hand over power. They may well count: but count down to what?

• Cop29 got off to an inauspicious start recently with Kier Starmer being the only G7 leader to attend. The future of such initiatives now looks bleak given the US election and the other preoccupations of major countries such as China and Russia. Climate change moves slowly and claims its victims by stealth. All of these can be ascribed to other causes. Short-term local emergencies like wars or economic revival will always trump global existential threats.

• The scale of Mohamed Al Fayed’s sexual abuse could be similar to that of Jimmy Savile’s, Harrods’ newly appointed survivors’ advocate has told the BBC. That’s a pretty high bar. I hope that those who were affected by this will get some result to help them come to terms with what happened. I was on the edge of a paedophile ring at a school called Caldicott near Slough and was propositioned, but rejected the advances, or was rejected by those asking them.

I saw things aged 10 or so that I should never have done, though others actually experienced them. Decades later, some were brave enough to tell their story. Hopefully in future cases it won’t take as long. The younger you were, the longer it seems it takes for you to accept that what happened was not your fault. That can mean a ruined life, which is the real tragedy.

• It’s been announced that former Deputy PM John Prescott has died. He provided the all-important contrast with Blair’s metropolitan glitz during the so-called New Labour period. He will perhaps best be remembered for hitting back at a protestor who threw an egg at him during the 2001 campaign. This provoked a few days of public soul-searching by the Labour top team before Blair found the perfect explanation: “John is John.”

That seemed to work; unlike “Boris is Boris”, which might have been said but was certainly implied as a justification for his behaviour 20 years later. There are worse legacies for a politician than a bit of street-fighting after a provocation.

• The Week reports that two German slackliners strung a line between two hot-air balloons and walked across it at an altitude of 2,500 meters. I can hardly type this without feeling sick, as I do when stepping off something much steeper than a kerbstone. Such feats remind me of Charles Blondin who crossed the Niagara Falls on a tightrope several times: once pushing a wheelbarrow, once with a man on his back and once pausing to cook and eat an omelette en route. It was probably quite a good omelette – he was French after all…

Across the area

• Lightning strikes again: West Berkshire Council’s response

Last week I wrote about the recent eventful but ultimately inconclusive meeting of WBC’s District Planning Committee (DPC). This failed to make a decision on the Eagle Quarter application, as the Western Area Planning Committee had also failed to do last month, so placing WBC in a potentially awkward, and expensive, position.

I wrote to the Council to ask whether it had considered increasing the sitting time or have it run over to a second day, why the livestream had cut out before the meeting ended, what guidance had been given to the Chair as to how the timing should work to ensure a conclusion before the deadline of 10.30pm, and whether the officers at the meeting had a sufficient understanding of how WBC’s constitution worked.

Very promptly, I received a response via the Communications department which largely addressed these points.

“The meeting started earlier than normal to provide additional time for a decision to be reached,” I was told. “The application was debated, but no proposal received a passing vote before 10.30pm. The meeting could have been adjourned until the next day, however this would only be possible if councillors were available. It was not possible, in the time available on the night, to make this decision.”

I’ve asked if any request had been made in advance that members keep the following evening free (and nominate a substitute if they couldn’t make both). Clearly, asking them on the night was leaving it far too late. This would have solved everything.

It was accepted that the livestream should not have stopped before the meeting did. “In future, it will be for the Chair to confirm the meeting has ended and the livestream be stopped rather than those supporting the meeting.” Fair enough.

Regarding the expertise, “The Council does not agree that there was no-one available with sufficient knowledge of the constitution. There were a number of options being mooted within the last 10 minutes which needed to be considered and a view taken that was in accordance with the Council’s constitution and case law.” I can only say that this wasn’t how it looked; also that matters should never have been allowed to get to such a nail-biting conclusion.

“Imposing specific milestones to reach at certain times throughout the committee is not possible given the complexities of the information that needed to be digested. Doing so could have led to an unsound decision on the basis that members did not have sufficient information and/or debate was restricted.”

I accept the point. However, I wasn’t suggesting that anything be imposed, merely that guidance could have been offered as to by when certain stages should have been reached and what methods or forms of words were appropriate to help accomplish this. 

I also suggested that, if the DPC needs to meet again, the members from last week couldn’t take part as, having voted on the matter, they were obviously pre-determined. However, WBC asserts that “we consider that it will be possible for members to sit on a further committee and consider the matter afresh”. I only hope that the matter isn’t refused and pre-determination used as a grounds for appeal.

The impasse might, I suggested, lead to the developer seeking an appeal now on the grounds of non-determination. The Council wasn’t interested in speculating on this one: “It is up to the developer how they wish to proceed and the Council cannot comment on the decisions they may take,” the statement said. 

Finally, I asked what was likely to happen next. “We are continuing to look at how best to move this application forward,” the statement said. So I would imagine. Assuming the lines of communication between the two parties are still open, as I understand they are, I would imagine that there are some serious conversations taking place with, once again, a ticking clock in the background. What each one decides will at least be partly informed by the actions of the other.

The big nightmare for WBC will be an appeal with costs which it loses. I don’t think either party wants to go down the legal route if it can be avoided. However, if WBC can’t decide the matter, there wouldn’t appear to be too many other options.