More on why everyone hates Keir (but this time we’ve got serious back up)

A few months ago(LSS 5 2 26) we offered a short piece called Everyone hates Keir-here’s why, in which we pondered the troubles of Sir Keir Starmer, Britain’s soon-to-be-former Prime Minister. And why this essentially dull, technocratic and overwhelmingly honest man seemed to inspire such depths of visceral hatred from so many of our fellow citizens. We tried to place it in the context of Britain’s economic decline. And our only conclusion was to liken poor Sir Keir to the sort of sensible family lawyer who tells a family of rakehell aristocrats that the family funds have finally run out. He’s not going to be welcome is he?

But today we are glad to bring you an explanation which we think goes far further, and has far more explanatory power than our own humble offering. For it comes from the sagacious Professor Ben Anderson of Durham University, in the Conversation, who places his own analysis in the context the post 2008 crash economic wasteland we all now inhabit. You should read the article for yourself; but to dare our own take, he argues that the politics of feeling have replaced the politics of coherent ideology. Poor Starmer offers reason, rationality and evidence in a world that longs for feelings of certainty, belonging and attachment.

And, we ask,what stronger feeling can there be than hatred? In some of the most memorable words we have read for some time, Professor Anderson tells us:

Hatred is intense, and that intensity is central to today’s politics of feeling. And so an apparent hatred of Starmer is about the experience of feeling something intensely – and the difference this makes to people’s everyday lives. Intense feeling interrupts boredom, loneliness and other kinds of ordinary malaise. And in uncertain and anxious times, hate offers the illusion of reassurance. It establishes an unequivocal position against something.

In such circumstances no rational centrist politician can thrive, nor even govern for long. Keynes noted that the whole world of Arts Sciences and Letters which he believed in were in mortal peril if the basic needs of ordinary people for security and food were not met. Thus he so accurately foresaw the raise of the dictators and the coming Second World War. Are we living through similar days again?

[1] https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-feeling-why-did-boring-prime-minister-keir-starmer-provoke-such-visceral-reactions-286491?utm_medium=email&utm_c

#sir keir starmer #politics #uk #economics #jm Keynes #labour party #psychology #emotion #reason #unreason

Brexit: how two Rights made a wrong

Photo by Duu0161an Cvetanoviu0107 on Pexels.com

Brexit could have worked. Read those words slowly, from an honest Remainer. Because as some of us always knew, there were pragmatic arguments from the other side, which we feared greatly, because they were exceedingly strong. So how is that most successful political project in recent British History now seems to have fallen so flat? Why, ten years on, do the memories of Brexit feel far from triumphant? We repeat, so that no one gets us wrong: Brexit could have worked. And this is why we think it didn’t.

The overarching problem was that the Leave coalition was built from two groups who wanted entirely different futures. Both were impeccably Right Wing. Both were possessed a vision of a future that could well have worked. But both pressed the same “Brexit “ button for opposite reasons. Because they belonged to two quite different right-wing tribes. One tribe, The Free‑marketeers dreamed of a Britain unshackled from Brussels, a nimble “Singapore‑on‑Thames”: low taxes, light regulation, capital flowing freely, goods moving frictionlessly, and a labour market kept competitive by high mobility. Their model required openness — to investment, to trade, and, crucially, to people. What can be more red tape than Immigration controls? But it might have been very, very prosperous.

The other half of the coalition wanted the exact reverse. The Nationalists imagined their Brexit as a chance to pull up the drawbridge: to instigate tighter immigration rules, more insulation from global competition, to achieve a more interventionist state protecting industries and communities. Some were driven by economic insecurity, some by cultural anxiety, and yes — some by outright hostility to outsiders, seeing Brexit as a way to begin a purge of “foreigners” from public life. Their model required barriers, buffers, and a powerful State willing to police identity as much as borders. It was a vision of national retreat, not global acceleration. But it might have been very, very stable.

These two projects could not coexist beyond Brexit day. You cannot believe in the free movement of capital and goods while fleeing, like a child at bathtime, from the free movement of labour. Markets do not work that way. Block labour and capital simply moves instead; block people and goods compensate; block both and you get the stagnation we now inhabit. Brexit tried to fuse two rights — the right to globalise and the right to barricade — and produced a wrong. A decade later, the contradiction still sits at the heart of British politics, unresolved and unresolvable, because the country cannot be both fortress and freeport at the same time. Deep, deep down, the question is not about Europe, nor taxes nor even immigration rules: all are details It is What do you want to be going forwards?

‘I feel entirely vindicated’: three Guardian columnists debate Brexit and its legacy | Aditya Chakrabortty, Polly Toynbee and Simon Jenkins | The Guardian The Economic Impact of Brexit | NBER

#brexit #united kingdom #european union #economics #history #nationalism #free markets

Vaccines: it’s a question of Anthropology not Biology: Gillian Tett knows why

Why doesn’t evidence cut through? Why do reason and learning so often fail? They’re themes that have haunted this blog since its inception way back in the COVID‑19 days of 2020. Aren’t we supposed to be the heirs of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and all that? Maybe part of the answer lies in this story about the UK and Japan, and their startlingly different experiences with their respective HPV vaccination programmes, as detailed in this excellent Conversation article by Professor Justin Stebbing of Anglia Ruskin University [1].

On the face of it, vaccines are a winner: the biology is clearly understood, they save lives, and they have eliminated numerous diseases [2]. Which explains the success of the UK rollout of the HPV vaccine: Justin has a barrage of juicy statistics, but in his words the NHS now feels able to publish a plan to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem in England by 2040. Compare that with Japan, where following a reasonable start, the HPV vaccine campaign collapsed into desuetude. There were media stories, the government lost its nerve: the result is” that among girls born in certain years, coverage fell from around 70% to below 1%, and it remained at that level for years“. And Justin explains the dreary consequences at some length.

So why can’t we understand the difference between the two countries? In the end, vaccine hesitancy has very little to do with the science and everything to do with the stories people swim in. The biology stays constant; what shifts is the cultural weather around it. A rumour here, a misframed headline there, a neighbour’s anecdote, a politician’s stumble — tiny changes in narrative that can tilt whole communities from confidence to doubt. Vaccination succeeds or fails not in the laboratory but in the social world: in trust networks, identity cues, and the fragile ways humans decide whom to believe. It is anthropology, not virology, that explains why one hospital bed stays empty and another does not.

In other words, public health is really about anthropology, not biology. One person who understands this well is Gillian Tett, whose formidable book Anthro‑Vision [3] argues that the real drivers of human behaviour are rarely the numbers on the page but the cultural currents beneath them — the stories people trust, the tribes they belong to, the risks they feel rather than calculate. Public health often talks in data, but people decide in narrative. A stray rumour, a clumsy headline, a shift in group mood can undo months of scientific clarity, while a well‑placed story or trusted voice can restore confidence just as fast. And suddenly this becomes true of many of the things that preoccupy us here — climate change, economics, even the long arc of female emancipation. For all our “LSS are the heirs‑of‑the‑Age‑of‑Reason,” for all our Whiggish rhetoric, we’ve missed one important truth. People are not how we would like them to be. And this book tells us a lot about why.

[1]https://theconversation.com/the-hpv-vaccine-works-but-only-if-we-keep-trusting-it-285618?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20fo

[2] Why vaccination is important and the safest way to protect yourself – NHS

[3]Tett, Gillian. Anthro‑Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. London: Random House Business, 2021.

#vaccination #public health # HPV #anthropology #biology #culture #history

So-why would anyone love a World Government anyway?

Recently we approached one of the sharpest minds in the UK with our thoughts on the nation state. To our immense honour they replied. Please understand that, although we must protect their confidentiality, these are their exact words:

….. the core paradox today is that countries have to be small to get a real sense of citizen accountability – but big to grapple with these problems of security and prosperity. Therein lies the size conundrum………….

And we hope that the following anecdote illustrates why they are right.

Yesterday, while wandering at leisure on England’s south coast, we came across a seafront meeting of locals who had convened to discuss ways of improving their town, which they held to be in Decline. Before anyone sneers, let us record how moved we were that they had turned out at all, and how assiduously they strived to avoid dragging in wider political allegiances. Their concerns were local indeed:-flower beds, and the colours of bus shelters, mainly. Their hostility common- a deep suspicion of their local council and all its works. Which is shortly to be replaced by a merger with certain neighbouring towns, a prospect greeted with general dismay.

It follows that, if they were so suspicious of their local council- the very first and most immediate layer of their government- how much more suspicious might they be of a World Government? And not just them, but people everywhere, from the High Arctic to the projected colonies on the Moon? What makes people cling so jealously to the local and the tangible? We confidently tell them that Big offers Defence, Economies of scale, Energy grids, Supply chains, AI, biotech, cyber capacity and Climate resilience. Plus the World Cup. And quite rightly they counter that Small offers meaningful scrutiny, power where the scale is human, that corruption is easier to spot, that leaders are socially legible (you can imagine them in your local pub), not a distant man in a suit reading from an autocue. Policy feedback loops are brief too, meaning decisions have immediate consequences political pressure works-and you see where your money is going. That is a strong set of arguments, tuned to the way people are. Should we close down this whole LSS trope of World Government, and concentrate instead on flower beds and bus shelters?

Perhaps. And perhaps not. Even the most well-kept flower beds cannot escape the droughts of climate change for ever, nor the neatest town the effects of rising seas. The threats in the world will require collective action sooner or later. While the things they love like beer, cars and chocolate are supplied from the efficiencies of world markets, the very antithesis of the local and the particular. But so far all arguments on our side have been based on reason and evidence. Which can never win the emotional loyalty which those who tell stories about Tribe and Location currently scoop with ease. It is time for us to look for stories of our own. Which can offer so much more.

#world government #accountability #politics #economics #history #power

Chikungunya: another potential Climate Change epidemic?

News that we’re in for a record El Niño[1] this year brings a depressing thought is Climate Change going to deliver a whole new wave of tropical diseases alongside all those floods. fires and migrations? We’ve touched on this before (LSS 25 10 21,14 11 23, 2 10 25) but had rather hoped that it had all gone away. It hasn’t, as this excellent article by Shivali Best of the Mail [2] explains in forensic detail. And it’s her work we’ll be riffing on today, with a little help other sources.[3]

Shivali takes Chikungunya virus as her theme. It’s a nasty little disease caused by an alphavirus of the Togaviridae group. Discovered in Tanzania in 1952 it delivers a painful cocktail of symptoms including fever and severe joint pains: the latter may be extremely debilitating and long-lasting. But the real problem lies in its vectors, the famous yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti and the scarily named tiger mosquito (a. albopictus) Do they call it that because of its bite? Not only does climate change allow these insects to spread to lands where the cold had formerly precluded their presence. The same warming allows the virus to breed up to five times faster inside the mosquito. Before you ask: there are vaccines of sorts underway: but progress has been slowed because most of the money has been spent on wars and shopping malls.

And so Chikungunya joins the long sorry list of diseases spreading due to global warming. To which we could append Malaria, Dengue, Zika, Lyme, Tick Born Encephalitis, Vibrio group……..enough! LSS readers are a well-informed lot. They know what’s happening. They know why. The real task before us all is how to clear up the damage, and make those culpable pay for it

[1]Prepare for El Niño, UN warns – it could be the strongest in decades – BBC News

[2]Chikungunya virus is heading for Europe: Scientists warn mosquito-borne tropical disease could spread to major cities thanks to climate change | Daily Mail

[3]Chikungunya fact sheet

#chikungunya #malaria #climate change #disease #vector #epidemic #health #mosquito

Labour’s troubles are historic, not just economic

One thing we like about Larry Elliott of the Guardian: he always looks for deeper reasons behind the news stories flashing across our screens. For him, they’re often economic reasons. .[1] Today he examines the plight of UK Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the sea of troubles against which he has tried to take arms. Brexit,(“not done properly” Elliott asseverates ) globalisation (“has mainly benefitted the South East”), too much financial services ,and of course de-industrialisation. Especially in the old manufacturing areas like the Midlands, the North of England and the Scottish river valleys. Where Starmer and his party received such a kicking in the recent local elections. It was that last one that caught our eye, gentle readers.

For what was the Labour Party but a Party of the mass industrialised workers? From its foundation, in deep partnership with the Trades Unions and Co-Operative movement, but a Party of workers, who had been torn off their farms and thrown together into mass agglomerations in things like factories, mines and ports? Whose consciousness and very lives were collective, where sharing was a more certain way to survive hardship. But now those factories are gone. And the industrial unions with them. (for the benefit of foreign readers, Britain has an atrophied group of unions, but they now largely represent small groups of white collar workers and count for little in the balance of power).

For us the clue is in the name: the party of Keir Hardie grew from an organised, industrial membership. The Party of Keir Starmer exists in a very different nation. The politics of the 20th century were all about economics Those of the 21^st about Identity. No wonder Labour got such a kicking. No wonder the Conservatives did too. A very different road now lies ahead. In every country.

[1] Labour is being destroyed by dithering: it should either do Brexit properly or rejoin the EU | Larry Elliott | The Guardian

[2] Labour Party (UK) – Wikipedia

#Keir Starmer #Keir Hardie #Labour Party #economics #politics #history #society #britain

No Pandemic this time: but what happens next?

While we sympathise with the unfortunate passengers and crew of the MV Hondius who may have been exposed to the hantavirus, our first response was rather selfish; “is this a new pandemic, and if so, how bad will it be?” We were not alone: and fortunately, as this excellent summary article from Julia Musto of the Independent, via MSN, explains: humanity seems to have dodged the bullet this time [1] Although utterly dangerous the virus just doesn’t seem to spread with the same facility as others such as SARS-CoV-2, or the influenza group. So that’s alright then.

Or is it? Because as certain as the House always winning, another pandemic will come along. Bringing the same economic, social and physical disruptions as COVID 19 did back in 2020. Or worse maybe. Surely humanity has learned some lessons from that catastrophe? Taken steps, you might think, to mitigate the worst effects and learn to pool our resources so that next time round everything will be different? Not according to Kat Lay of the Guardian [2] whose indefatigable investigations have unearthed another avoidable catastrophe in the making.

Because although a Pandemic Treaty has been signed , it cannot go into effect until a special clause called a Pabs (Pathogen access and benefits sharing) has been ratified. It hasn’t, as regular readers will be unsurprised to learn. The result is:

“If a new pathogen emerged today, the world remains largely unprepared for it. A lack of action to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic threat is a disservice to humanity,”

Kat cites the usual litany of petty squabbles, mutual jealousies and general misinformations which have led us all into this sorry plight and ends her article there.

But we, gentle readers, cannot quite leave you without adding our own thought. Natural Selection tells us that species go extinct when their key survival features are no longer adequate to their environment (what use are flippers to a whale out of water, for example?) Humanity’s key advantage was its intelligence and relatively large brain. Is this clear example of the failure to use this clear cognitive advantage a sign of even worse things to come?

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/general/could-cruise-boat-hantavirus-be-the-next-global-pandemic/ar-AA22CAGh?

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/05/talks-stall-on-who-pandemic-treaty-global-response-disease-outbreaks?CM

[3] MV Hondius hantavirus outbreak – Wikipedia

#hantavirus #pandemic #covid 19 #WHO #health #medicine #virus

Beyond the Nation State #6: The Cost of Nations

Identity, it is said, is the most important thing a People can have. So what better way to guarantee that identity than by taking back control and assuring it inside a sovereign nation state.? It’s a very popular policy at the moment, so there must be advantages. But it’s worth at least noting the counterfactual argument, because it has consequences for what we try do here.

If you’re going to have a sovereignty worthy of the name, you must have the following: Defence, Intelligence, Borders, Customs, Taxes, Tariffs, Executive, Legislature, Judiciary, Foreign ministry ,Legal system, Central bank, Currency, Police and Regulators. To say nothing of the fixed obligations such as pensions you inherited from the larger state you have left. You could opt for health education, culture, policy, tourism and transport as well; but these are discretionary. So could smaller entities bear all these costs if they went it alone? Could California? (large-ish) Wales?(medium) Or Jersey? (rather small, with due respect). Take Wales as a hypothesis : let’s say the UK spends £50 billion on Defence and Wales is 3.1% of its population. That ratio would entitle an independent Wales to £1.5 billion. Would they be as well defended? The answer is no. For one thing they would have to set up entirely new structures of command, procurement, intelligence and all the other essentials of a modern force. Secondly, there is the brute fact that larger purchases always generate cheaper prices for anything Defensive-aeroplanes, tanks, guns, even the dusting cloths you need to keep them clean. Bulk purchase means cheaper unit cost. And it works the other way. Even a superb Welsh manufacturer of tanks would only enjoy tiny assured domestic markets, making its borrowing and production costs prohibitive in a world market. That is why American giants like Ford and General Motors thrived in the twentieth century: they had fixed access to the largest Single Market then available. That is why nations which have tried to downsize, like the UK after Brexit, have struggled so badly ever since.

The argument to grow polities into larger units is the same as that for growing companies. Economy of scale and stripping out fixed costs. A World Government would only need one of each the exhaustive list above. Imagine the procurement advantages in any number of things-medicines, schoolbooks, computers or even those wretched dusters again. What a saving for taxpayers! A single world Ministry of Defence would enjoy the highest possible bargaining power against its suppliers, cutting the cost of the $2.7 trillion we spend as a planet on defence by whole orders of magnitude. Of course, if there were a World Government most defence spending would become unnecessary anyway, as most nations’ armies exist sole to defend against other nations’ armies. But that’s something for another day

#nation state #history #politics #economics #world government

Things Beyond the Nation State #1 Introduction

Identity, belonging and how this species organises itself in groups has been a recurrent theme on this blog since we started back in the pandemic days of 2020. We’ve surveyed the work of theorists like Amy Chua: pondered sports affiliation, tribe and nation, and the several ways of belonging to each. Considered experiments in psychology and behaviour. Even speculated if there might be a World Government waiting in the decades to come. Yet up to now nothing has superseded the Nation State as the only successful and enduring method of organising our multifarious hostile tribes into larger confederations. By which they obtain common benefits of defence and low mutual trading barriers, the two sine qua nones of all statecraft. (everything else is method)

The trouble with this comforting settlement is size. Each little kingdoms of Anglo Saxon England-Wessex, Mercia and the rest-was perfectly able to provide its residents needs for hundreds of years. Until a bunch of pesky Vikings came along and nearly drove them all to utter destruction. Only by forming a larger unit, England, were the Anglo Saxons able to survive and prevail: And England became their nation in turn. A lesson repeated across many lands and times. So powerful that it begs the question: are our current polities, even the largest, now too small too indebted, to mutually jealous, to cope with the existential questions now born into the world? We repeat: this is not a call to abolish nation states which can and should continue to exist, But it may be a call for a next tier or organisation to act on those problems, and only those problems, which only it has the competence to address.

We think those problems are Global Warming, Pollution, Migration, sudden Catastrophes like pandemics, economic Inequality and Security risks from things like AI and nuclear weapons All are pressing and all interconnected at some level or other. You may suggest more, gentle readers. But in the next few weeks we will do our best to list them into some sort of order and try to consider some of the problems they pose, for you to think about. For we know of few hard and fast answers. We hope you will join us on this journey and will welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas. Keep ‘em coming.

#global warming #nuclear war #pandemic #volcano #AI #pollution #economics #history

R+D=GDP A maths lesson the Swiss can teach the world

Sit quietly in any pub or cafe and you will soon learn why the economy is performing so badly. Most of the diagnoses centre round a few simple tropes: wages are too high, holidays too long, taxes are too heavy, hours worked are too short…….Now, we would not dare to cross the opinions of the towering intellects you find in the bar of the Dog and Duck (it’s physically unsafe anyway ) But we dare to offer an alternative explanation for why economic growth works so well for some countries, just for your consideration, gentle readers. And the answer is: the amount that each country spends on Research and Development,

Let’s take Switzerland as our shiny example. It’s a tiny country constituting only 0.1% of the world’s population. But its R and D spend (3.4% of GDP) puts at 6th place in the global ranking of R&D. The result is a highly diverse export orientated economy, a well embedded public-private sector ecosystem of research institutes, universities schools and so on. All of which puts it almost at the top of the GDP per head league. . There are local advantages: it has strong stable institutions, membership of the EU single market and a low defence spend. Other countries share all or some of these advantages to a greater or lesser extent. We could argue for paragraphs about the pull and tug of these various factors. But we think one lesson is unavoidable, writ both large and small

Writ large, technology is the true game changer for economies. The advent of steam power in the industrial revolution utterly transformed both the out put and wealth of the nations which adopted it. However many hours humans and their animals laboured, they could never match the colossal output capabilities of powered engines. And technology only grows from a huge ecosystem of more general research and scholarship. Current debates aside, Industrial Revolutions are rare. But they can be mimicked by a pipeline of small steady innovations in many fields, which achieve the same things. This is the lesson writ small, which the Swiss have learned par excellence. Tap room philosophers may be excellent at the book keeping needs of their various small enterprises. But they are blind to the bigger lessons: on this matter and many others.

[1]https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/research-and-development

[2]https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1023591/niesr-report.pdf

#R&D #science #technology #universities #investment #GDP growth