Monthly Archives: September 2018

Britain, Europe, Government, Russia, Society

The prospect of an escalating global war is terrifyingly real

THE WEST AND RUSSIA

THERESA MAY made perhaps the most momentous statement of her political career at Westminster when, in a dramatic scene in the Commons, she effectively accused the Russian state of an act of war. She said the Kremlin had instructed its military intelligence agency, the GRU, to assassinate the defector Sergei Skripal in March.

Backed up by a wealth of irrefutable evidence about the two Russian intelligence agents who carried out the assignment, which ultimately resulted in the death of a British citizen and three other serious poisoning cases, Mrs May’s assertion has huge implications, not only for Britain’s relations with the rogue Russian regime, but also for European and Western foreign policy as a whole.

The Salisbury incident is truly shocking. It is the first time that a Briton has been killed on our home soil by a chemical weapon deployed by a foreign power. Yet until it happened, Britain seemed utterly indifferent to the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s government.

 

AFTER Putin sanctioned and authorised another well publicised assault on British soil in 2006, when ex-Russian secret policeman Alexander Litvinenko was murdered with a radioactive poison in London, the initial shock and anger soon ebbed away to apathy, thanks in large part to the feebleness of our Government’s response.

Whilst it is true that the British authorities were quick to name the Russian suspects, the speed of this early announcement was not matched by resolute action from the Government.

The huffing and puffing in Whitehall produced half-measures. That can only have reassured the Russian spymasters that they could get away with assassination.

Sine then we have all become aware of the litany of charges against Russia, like its seizure of Crimea, its blood-soaked intervention in Syria in aide of President Assad’s tyranny and its shooting down of the Malaysian airliner MH17 over rebel-held Ukraine in 2014.

But all those atrocities happened abroad, it was argued. They were nothing to do with us, so a proverbial slap on the wrists would surely do.

In contrast, from the start of the Skripal case, the Prime Minister has been far tougher, imposing sanctions, expelling Russian diplomats, galvanising NATO, and even winning the support of Donald Trump’s White House and the EU for her actions.

Admittedly, this was partly because the potential consequence of the Salisbury poisoning was even more serious than the Litvinenko case, given that Novichok put hundreds of lives at risk.

Nevertheless, the British Government has, despite all its problems with Brexit, displayed a commendable spirit of resolution that has been all too absent until now.

Through her clear-sighted resolution, Theresa May has mounted a direct challenge to Putin’s regime.

And although it has taken six months to name the alleged perpetrators, it has been worth the wait. Thanks to the thoroughness of the investigation, the sheer weight of incriminating material she was able to announce in the Commons means that the Russian state cannot slide away from its responsibility for this crime.

What her Commons statement also did was to blow apart the absurd conspiracy theories about the Salisbury assault that have been circulating, many of them promoted by Putin’s regime or by Kremlin sympathisers.

The evidence, gathered by 250 detectives from 11,000 hours of CCTV footage, shows incontestably where the blame lies. This raises the question as to why the Kremlin resorted to such an act. The answer lies in Putin’s security policy, which is so important to his macho political persona and the image of his regime’s invincibility.

As a former KGB officer himself, he has made ruthlessness a central part of his strongman reputation. It thereby enhances his appeal among the Russian people.

When he first came to power in 2000 on his election as Russian president, there were profound weaknesses in the country’s security apparatus, epitomised by the defections of agents like Litvinenko and Skripal.

 

SO much information was leaked after the fall of communism that Western intelligence thought they had crippled Russia’s GRU agency, giving MI6 and the CIA a window directly into Russian policymaking which helped them to predict the Kremlin’s actions.

But Putin changed all that through a pitiless crackdown. Internal security was vastly improved and leaks closed.

The CIA has privately admitted that many of its contacts in Moscow have gone silent. Some have disappeared. Others simply do not respond to efforts to contact them.

Dealing mercilessly with the defectors became an essential part of that security crackdown.

Since March, it has often been asked why Skripal, a former double agent, should still be a target, so many years after Putin let him out of the Gulag and allowed him to retire to Britain. It appears that Putin’s intelligence services have decided that letting defectors sleep soundly at night offers too much temptation for others to follow suit.

Kill one, frighten 10,000 is an old tactic, and one that the Russians seem to have adopted. Washington certainly believes that putting the fear of God into potential double-agents was the real reason for poisoning Sergei Skripal.

The Salisbury attack may also reflect Putin’s wider, geopolitical strategy, with its focus on dividing the West through surprise, propaganda and intimidation. Years ago he decided the West, particularly America and Britain, wanted to get rid of his regime.

Instead of asking what he could do to allay Western concerns, he adopted the opposite course by using Russian wealth from the country’s energy resources, plus the long experience of Soviet spycraft, to mount campaigns of disinformation and denial.

Until Salisbury, that strategy appeared to be working. The Novichok assault, however, led to an unprecedented act of unity – due in part to the British Government’s resolve.

The West hung together and backed Britain. The question now is whether this accord will last. The Prime Minister has said that she will be trying to mobilise the EU to harden sanctions on Russia and co-ordinate counter-measures against Russian intelligence operations in Europe.

That could be easier said than done. The wall of unity is already showing signs of cracking. Apart from the awkwardness created by Brexit, Putin’s policy of divide and conquer is also having an impact, for the Russian president has been soft-talking allies in the EU.

Last month, for instance, he was a guest at the Austrian foreign minister’s wedding, and Vienna’s Right-wing government is one of the loudest voices in the EU clamouring for improving relations with Moscow.

In Italy, the new government is led by a critic of sanctions against Russia, so imposing new ones is unlikely to win Rome’s support.

Yet, Britain cannot possibly let the Salisbury attack slide away into unpunished oblivion as it did the Litvinenko case.

The need for action is all the more important because, worryingly, the balance of global power is sliding away from the West. The U.S., Britain and the EU are still economically potent, of course, but the rise of China as both an economic and military superpower adds to the challenge posed by Russia and other states.

Even Turkey, a member of NATO, is moving away from the West under President Erdogan. The fact is that the Salisbury outrage is a graphic indicator that the world is becoming a less stable place. It was a rare but disturbing episode that exposed the nature of the escalating global war between spy agencies.

In its aftermath, that war is likely to intensify.

Which makes it all the more imperative that the Government is robust and vigilant. The West needs to be resolute and united in the face of Putin’s ruthlessness.

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Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

Brexit: The last chance to restore trust

BREXIT BRITAIN

HAROLD WILSON once said a week was a long time in politics. In the present political climate, weeks must feel like eternities. Brexit has changed people’s views as the debate has raged on. For some, who were once moderate party members, have turned into hardened rebels; others who initially supported the Government’s approach now have real concerns about its direction.

Yet, the key conversation we should be having – one that has really been absent for too long – is what the next 15 or 20 years will look like; what we should actually do now, beyond the platitudinous slush, to ensure that the children of today and tomorrow can have a better life than us.

Deep down, our politicians must know that there is something amiss in the body politic of today. Populations are restless. People feel left out and ignored. The traditional levers to improve the world are malfunctioning – there is slower growth, foreign policy chaos and domestic budget stricture. The status quo appears brittle and worn. Where is the clarity about what to replace it with? The world is turning, and, for many, it appears to be turning away from them.

Underneath that sense of foreboding are two existential issues. The first is technology. In the lifetime of those born in the 1960s have seen the advent of the home computer, the internet and the mobile phone. Millions of jobs have been created by a medium that was invisible a generation ago and which, most likely, will have changed beyond recognition by the next.

Yet, even in normal times, politicians’ answer to technology is to either ignore it or grandstand on it. Take the tech giants and their questionable data practices. The elite have gone to town on them in recent months. CEOs have been chastened. Companies run warm adverts saying things like ‘we’ve changed’ without proper public consideration of what, over the long-term, we all need to change to.

The country’s focus on Brexit has meant we’ve missed the underlying, hard questions. Are they platforms or publishers? Are they monopolists or innovators? How do individual nation states regulate cross-border activity? The amount of time that politicians spend in legislatures debating the philosophical, economic and social impacts of artificial intelligence, big data and the loss of privacy is inversely proportional to their coming impacts.

There are many in parliament who are evangelical about technology and its ability to change lives. But surely, we have to ready citizens to take advantage of those opportunities through skills, flexibility and attitude. It is inevitable that there are huge potential changes coming, ones which will reshape our economy and our labour market. If these issues are not properly talked about, by preparing people to deal with them, we will be storing up tremendous problems for the future. We have to do much better.

This can all be reasonably predicted because it has happened before. The European Economic Community that Britain joined in 1973 was a very different beast to the EU we have part of since its expansion. Few people expected then that an economic union would also become a political one. Nor were most people aware or able to predict how fundamentally globalisation would reshape our economy and our communities. A lack of public consultation that forced through such massive changes had achieved a bipartisan consensus in Westminster. And it is this which brings us to the second existential issue for British politics: trust.

Those citizens who have borne the brunt of these radical changes feel ignored and patronised. Their security has been undermined and their way of life transformed. The years since the financial crash have been especially hard for many – to say nothing of the toxic cacophony of expenses scandals, dodgy dossiers, spin and the obscuring of hard choices. It seems to many that the system is now not only untrustworthy but also fundamentally rotten.

Against that backdrop, Brexit was an opportunity to restore that trust with a large section of society. By granting the referendum, our political class seemed to have recognised the need for a new democratic input – for some kind of check from the people of Britain on the consensus MPs had established. “The Government will implement what you decide,” said the booklet that dropped through every household letterbox, and many millions of voters believed it. Their decision was close but clear: Britain must leave the EU. The definition of that result was politically distilled, and the departure from the single market and the customs union has been cemented. In the general election of 2017, 85 per cent of people agreed.

Distrust and disengagement have now been replaced by curiosity. People hesitantly dared to hope that the political class was actually going to do something they requested.

Then along came Chequers. At a stroke, that emerging engagement with politics was dashed. Government spin proclaims that we are taking back control. The reality is that we are ceding it, at least on trade, in perpetuity. The document is a clever, legalistic, splitting-the-difference tome; the product of a process driven by a civil service never fully reconciled to leaving and, ultimately, not wanting to grasp the nettle.

Whatever we may think about the referendum, and whatever our own personal views on Chequers are, the key measure is one of trust. Does this proposal properly embody the decision of the British people in 2016? How is it sold to the disengaged or the exasperated? And, when this offer is salami-sliced away into irrelevance by the EU, what should the British people be told? That we gave it our best effort but came up short? That Brussels was right? That our political masters know best?

If Brexit directly leads to the jobs of truck drivers and call-centre workers being automated away without consultation or compensation, politicians here will not be forgiven. And if, after years of globalisation and European integration, MPs do not honour the pledge on which they hung their entire credibility, and implement the orders they had been given, politicians will lose the trust of the electorate for a generation.

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Britain, European Union, Government, Ireland, Politics

Johnson says No 10 hasn’t even tried to solve Irish issue

BREXIT: IRISH BORDER

BORIS JOHNSON has ignited a fresh Brexit row after claiming Theresa May has “not even tried” to solve the Irish border problem.

The former Foreign Secretary said elements in the Government had “ingeniously manipulated” the issue to keep Britain locked closely to the EU and “stop a proper Brexit”.

But supporters of the prime minister said there were “no new ideas” in Mr Johnson’s latest intervention.

Earlier this week, Mr Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that the Irish border problem was “fixable”, adding: “The scandal is not that we have failed, but that we have not even tried.”

In a scathing attack on Mrs May’s Chequers plan, he branded it a “fix” that will lead to victory for the EU and said that in the negotiations the UK was “lying flat on the canvas”.

He added the Irish government had initially offered pragmatic solutions to the issue, only to withdraw them when the British Government showed no interest. Those in favour of the Chequers plan say that a simple trade deal could not resolve the problems around the Irish border.

A source close to No. 10, said: “The basic premise of the Brexiteers is that there is a free trade deal on the table we can just pick up.

“There is, but it is a Great Britain only deal – we would be walking off the pitch in Northern Ireland. It would mean Northern Ireland staying in the customs union, a customs border down the Irish Sea and a step towards the break-up of the UK. It is not acceptable.”

Brexiteers argue that a Canada-style free trade deal is achievable and that with the right pressure, the EU would accept a technological solution on the Irish border.

Responding to the row, the source insists the country needs “serious leadership with a serious plan” which the prime minister is providing.

The spokesperson added: “The Government’s Brexit White Paper was ‘the only credible and negotiable plan which has been put forward’.”

Boris Johnson resigned from the Government following the Chequers agreement.

ANALYSIS

The 310-mile border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has been one of the most intractable issues in the Brexit negotiations. There are more than 300 crossing points across which goods and people can move freely. But one of the crunch and unresolved issues is what will happen after Brexit, when Northern Ireland – along with the rest of the UK – leaves the EU.

Relatively, there is little trade that exchanges between the north and south of Ireland. Brexiteers point out that trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic makes up 5 per cent of the province’s economy. The figure the other way is just 1.6 per cent.

However, Northern Ireland and the Republic’s trading relationship with Great Britain is much more significant. Trade with Great Britain is some 21 per cent of Northern Irish GDP, and around 12 per cent of all Irish exports go to the UK mainland.

In short, the problem to resolve is how to preserve an open border with different customs regimes and regulations for goods either side of the line. All sides appear to agree there must be no “hard” border – meaning physical barriers and border guards. These were dismantled as part of the peace process and secured by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Northern Ireland’s chief constable has said that any “significant physical infrastructure” would become a target for dissident Republicans.

 

THE EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier says Northern Ireland must stay in the customs union and single market to preserve the open border with the Republic and remove the need for any customs or regulatory checks. The EU has also said that there should be a customs and regulatory border at sea ports on either side of the Irish Sea.

Theresa May finds such a “sea border” unacceptable and this would be a symbolic sign of division between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The prime minister has also been adamant this would be a threat to the “constitutional integrity” of the UK and says, “no UK prime minister could ever agree to it”. Northern Ireland would become – to a large extent – an annexe of the EU, following EU rules. To Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party – on which Mrs May relies for her Commons majority – this is a non-starter.

Mrs May’s answer to the impasse is Chequers. This proposes to keep the whole of the UK in the single market for goods, which deals directly with the problem of different regulatory standards. On customs, she proposes a “facilitated customs arrangement”, with a common customs border. Importers would pay different tariffs demanding on where goods were destined, and that the UK would collect tariffs for the EU. In theory, this would allow the UK to negotiate trade deals with third countries and by cutting tariffs.

 

BORIS JOHNSON insists that the Northern Ireland issue has been “ingeniously manipulated” both by Brussels and No 10 “so as to keep Britain effectively in the customs union and single market”. The Irish border problem is “flexible”, he argues.

Mr Johnson also believes there is a technological solution and that no hard border is necessary. Checks would take place in warehouses or away from the border. There are only 50 large companies that trade across the border, and small traders would be exempted entirely. Other Brexiteers point to highly automated ports such as Felixstowe as providing the likely solutions. The former Foreign Secretary said the Irish government began working on these answers, but the UK Government was “not really interested”.

 

SOME in Ireland have argued a technological solution is possible, including former Irish prime ministers Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny. The tone, though, has changed under Leo Varadkar, who took office in June last year. Since then the Irish have been in lock step with Mr Barnie, and the border has become the central issue of the Brexit talks.

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