We are worried about sovereignty

A couple of months ago I was certain where I stood on the EU Referendum. Since then I have read the arguments, I have heard the reasons for staying or leaving. Most revealing of all, though, I have listened to people’s arguments on Lincoln High Street as I have been out leafletting. 

There is one concern that seems to swamp the others. This is about sovereignty, about having power to direct our destiny. 

I was told by one person that unelected people in Brussels make 60% of our laws. This made me scratch my head. I accept that it is over forty years since I studied European Law; it is twenty years since I was advising clients doing business in other European countries, but I had never heard this one before.

I looked at the EU Commission website and read about how proposed laws must be put before either The Council of Ministers, who represent each member state, or the directly elected European Parliament. So, in theory, OK. I then had visions of ‘Yes, Minister’ and was brought back to the reality that systems are only as good as the people who work them.

This really brings me to my first point. If we don’t like what comes out of Brussels, we have only ourselves to blame. What we need to do is to encourage our best people to engage in European politics. We need women and men of ability, energy, vision and above all stamina.

This still begs questions. Why have an EU at all? Well, at the beginning it was, I am sure, a strong desire of the part of European nations not to go to war again. In this it has been mercifully successful. 

There was then an ambition to make trade between European countries easier; that too has worked. As part of this, standards have been standardised. This might have been annoying, but it made sense. There is then employee protection which benefits all working people. The list grows and governments have been rightly worried about this growth. We said No to the Euro. This was right and many other countries should have done the same.

The EU becomes useful on those issues that are better faced together, including those that are too big to face alone, like migration. Arguably Winston Churchill’s most important act in WW2 was to bring together Allies strong enough together to defeat the Nazis; he knew we could not do it alone. National governments should do those things better done nationally and local governments those things better done locally. Wherever it is done there must be democratic control.

If, by the vote on 23 June, the Electorate allows the United Kingdom to remain in the EU, it will be incumbent on Government and Members of the European Parliament to listen to their Electorate and to be active in exercising the democratic control entrusted to them.

So where have I come to with a month to go before I vote?

Not to Exit (I won’t call it brexit because I am as passionately British as anyone); neither is it passively to vote Remain; it is to to Stay in the EU BUT to exercise democratic control and get stuck in to change those things that need changing so that the EU truly serves its peoples.

The text of this article was published in the Lincolnshire Echo on 26 May 2016

Sovereignty without power

I was talking to a taxi driver today about the referendum and he told me that his customers were overwhelmingly in favour of brexit, actually passionately in favour.

He said that 'the trouble with you lot is that there is no passion for remain'. What is more with 25% of voters likely not to vote, brexit could win on a 36% vote.

That got me started.

His argument was all about sovereignty, how wrong it is for 60% of our laws to be imposed by the European Commission. I explained about the democratic control in the hands of the Council of Minsters and European Parliament. This is clearly being hidden in brexit arguments.

But what of it, if England left and had sovereignty? I say England, since it would not be long before Scotland left the Union and rejoined the EU. England would be a tiny country that no one would listen to. It would not be immune from the world's problems, just powerless to do anything about them. It would have sovereignty without power.

My argument, my passion is that the United Kingdom as part of the EU would have a significant voice in a powerblock that could match that of the US, Russia and China, and in due course India and an increasingly united Africa. Together we could actually tackle the huge issues of migration, of global warming, of the abuse of power by the super rich and those others that will surely emerge: problems too big for any nation state.

This is the United Kingdom of Wellington, Nelson and Churchill, a big nation with a voice that deserves to be and is listened to.

"We won two world wars and you say we couldn't survive outside the EU"

It would be tragic if bad history won the day. This is a slogan posted in Facebook by part of the out campaign.

I, of all people, would never dishonour those who fought for the Allies in the two world wars, but it was the Allies - USA brought vast quantities of equipment and men; Russia sacrificed untold millions of lives.

The European Union came about to end European wars - and has succeeded.

I for one would not relish a future in the company of Mr Putin and Mr Trump.

For me our natural partners are the countries closest to us with whom we share the same cultural inheritance.

Those tax returns and what really matters

One of the first things I was ever taught was to come clean. It is painful, but it is the best policy overall. Yet we all fail to do it from time to time; we are human and so are politicians.

The tax return revelations are not about this. They are not about how much a Prime Minister gets paid (this is decided by Parliament) nor about whether parents may give money to their children. The chilling figure is the rental income for just a quite a nice house in London. This rental is set by the market by reference to the sorts of prices people are willing to pay for houses in London. This figure is set by the super rich who are happy to pay ever increasing amounts for the very expensive properties whose values will go on rising so long as the super rich believe they will.  Where have we heard that before?

It is the amount of wealth held by the super rich which they put into real estate and which therefore has no benefit whatsoever to the economy - that is the issue that politicians should be shouting about and that newspapers and the other media should be probing. It is that issue that is causing hardship to the worse off in society and preventing ordinary people from owning their own home. Adair Turner has written with great brilliance on this. The fact that the super rich make their investments via tax havens only compounds the problems.

So, stop hounding middle rich politicians and go for the real culprits.

Get the EU vision

The origins of the EU were in the passionate wish of leaders and the people they led not to fight another war in Europe. The carnage had been too dreadful. It has worked; we have had peace for seventy years. We must do nothing to endanger that.

That is the biggest picture; what about the smallest: me. I am first and foremost British, but then I rejoice in being part of something bigger with my closest neighbours. We share the same history, the same culture; we are all products of a renaissance which spread throughout the continent of Europe and gave us so much in common to treasure.

I have lived and worked in continental Europe: Brussels. I loved it. I used a different language for work: French. I worked side by side native Belgians, but also Dutch and French. More recently volunteering with refugees on Lesvos, I was again working alongside Belgians, Dutch, French, Spanish and Germans in Greece. It was natural; we were fulfilling a common destiny.

The European Economic Community was about free trade and that has worked. It has grown into allowing free movement, so in Lincoln, for example, our biggest manufacturing employer offering most apprenticeships and supporting both University and UTC is German. There are also big investments from Spanish and Dutch. It works.

An EU budget allows what we used to call regional aid to operate across Europe to support the poorest areas and to enable them to grow vibrant economies. It is working, the gap between rich and poor countries is narrowing. This benefit everyone; the wider wealth is spread the stronger the economy. Poor areas of the UK benefit alongside everyone else, and that includes Lincolnshire.

BUT the EU has a bureaucracy that is adrift from the member states it should be serving and is not properly controlled by the leaders of those states. This is no reason to leave; it is reason to get stuck in and produce the Europe we want; it is our servant not our master.

This is something I feel passionately; come on politicians man up. Unless you want to be beaten by tabloid newspapers pandering to mean minded readers. Get the vision.

Post script

Friends remind me of other reasons for staying in: workers rights, employment protection, but then the benefits of scientific collaboration. We stand to lose so much if we fail to win the argument.

George Boole and public art

I am a huge fan of George Boole and totally agree that he should be celebrated in Lincoln.

Is public art the way to do it?

I am filled with admiration at the inventors of the tank and the Lincoln women who built them. I love the commemoration on Tritton Road.

Is public art though about more than this? This what I wrote for the Lincolnshire Echo.

Mention the words ‘public art’ in some circles and the groan will, if not audible, most emphatically be there. Why? Because we don’t understand it; there again, why should we? So, if not that then perhaps because some public art just doesn’t work. Is it the word ‘art’, yet again? I admit it, for years the very word ‘art’ was for me a ‘no entry’ sign. So, surely, ‘art’ in a public place, where I can’t escape it, must be a nightmare scenario.

I then began to ponder as I walked around our city. Public art at its most visible and permanent is of course architecture and, in Lincoln, we are blessed by great examples. I see from the new cathedral website that my favourite quote from John Ruskin, whom I am writing about at the moment, has been superseded:

“I have always held and proposed against all comers to maintain that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles”

I still like it, and, more importantly, the point remains that we do have a massive example of great public art. Yet it is art that speaks of the past. What of the present?

I was one who said that the Barons would never catch on. I thought that the idea of a bunch of medieval toffs was so far removed from how I read the legacy of Magna Carta. I was wrong. They worked, not perhaps because they were ‘great art’, whatever that is, but because they were playful and engaged people of all ages. It was wonderful to see them being painted, and, yes, there were some great designs beautifully executed.

Another piece of public art from last year was the sand sculpture in the castle. I went with grandchildren to see it taking shape. We knew all about sand castles and so wondered at the skill of the makers and the huge risk of creating something from such material: a little too sunny or a little too rainy and a shapeless pile would be the result. Why did it work? Because it spoke of a subject that echoed elsewhere in the city? Actually it really worked for me because the artist was being creative in a public place.

Is this what we mean by public art in Lincoln?

A few years ago some of us explored the possibility of having Henry Moore sculptures in various places around the city centre. For various reasons it didn’t happen then, but perhaps it could in future. Is that was we mean?

For me there are perhaps two or three key points, and this is very much a personal view.

One of the big problems is that public art is often there for too long; it was a good idea at the time. How often do we see a piece of art that has been neglected and has deteriorated because the  artist used the wrong material or because the commissioning body forgot that it would need to be maintained. Again a big plus point for the Barons was that they didn’t stay. The sand sculpture didn’t stay long enough. The poppies in the castle will probably be there for the right amount of time. A piece created for a long stay needs a great deal of care.

Public art must be in reach of us all. That means that it shouldn't be in a privileged place. The Barons were accessible; they were all round the city centre.

Public art in progress has a great potential to engage; so rather than a ‘thing’, an object, how about a space or spaces where things can be created? I would love it if the spaces were not just the ‘usual’ suspects: Cathedral, Castle, the Brayford and Cornhill. Why not St Giles, the Ermine or Birchwood? There is a precedent: St Giles has the wonderful 18th century church with it amazing story; the Ermine has Sam Scorer’s wonderful parabolic roofed church.

Art is not just an object; it can be performance. I love the immersive theatre I have experienced at the Drill Hall. Why not perform it in the open? Watch this space for this coming July.

These are my thoughts for what they are worth. If art is to be public we should all have our say. What do you think?

As published in the Lincolnshire Echo 24 March 2016

I was concerned that I was exaggerating the plight of the refugees

I compared the plight of the refugees with the of experience of British PoWs on the Long March in the harsh winter of 1945. I was worried that I may have overstepped the mark. It has gone from worse to even worse.

The very next week a senior Greek politician compared the Idomeni refugee camp on the Macedonian border to a Nazi concentration camp. There were stories about Pakistanis being handcuffed and herded into trucks. News is coming out of refugees being forcibly returned to the country from which they were fleeing.

MSF and the UNHCR have both withdrawn since they can no longer be part of what is going on. Of course it is the refugees who suffer, but the point must be made.

We now have the dreadful Brussels attacks which receive wide coverage. All the time atrocities go on elsewhere and get nowhere near the same exposure.

John Simpson sees part of the problem as the lack of foreign correspondents.

Many ordinary people are reporting on social media. Perhaps this needs more air time on the major channels and Fleet Street.

This latest message from a volunteer tells it all. At least the FT reports it as it is. Were it war, this would be a war crime.