▪️Be sure you’re willing & able to leave. Your integrity & contributions you can make elsewhere outweigh any ability to ‘improve things from the inside’ in a govt going beyond the pale. /1.
… uncomfortable questions, defending unfashionable views, and deflating intellectual pretensions in a way that somehow managed to be both disarmingly straightforward and subtly ironical. At the same time, he was a paragon of moderation … /3.
… and tolerance. His philosophical endeavours had taught him that what is obvious to oneself may be far from obvious to others”. /4. End
P.S. If you prefer screenshots from @profserious’s blog, rather than logging in, here you go (as shared by @Dannythefink)👇
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“The unwritten British constitution […] is a dangerously unreliable foundation […]. Lord Neuberger, the former President of the Supreme Court, even sees Great Britain on a dangerous course towards dictatorship under the Johnson administration”. /2.
“Great Britain is still a long way from the situation in Hungary or Poland, but a lot still reminds of the beginnings of an Orbán or a Kaczyński”. /3.
The difficulty with this vein of commentary by @jamesrwebber is it boils down to “the govt forced through an unsustainable Brexit deal, fracturing the UK, without NI majority consent, & lied. But we should now pretend the inevitable consequences … aren’t, … because”. /1.
The NI Protocol isn’t the problem, although it’s certainly problematic. The NIP’s a (necessary), temporary compromise. It’s a sticking plaster over the gaping wound consciously created by @BorisJohnson & @DavidGHFrost with their legally binding, ‘oven ready Brexit deal’, …/2.
… the purpose of which was to get the keys to Downing Street, regardless of entirely foreseeable & foreseen consequences. There’s no sustainable outcome which doesn’t involve UK membership of the single market & customs union, or substantially identical arrangements. /3.
“We will of course have to consider all our options” is some of the most threatening diplomatic language ever used by governments.
For it to appear in such an article, by two UK cabinet ministers, is both disturbing & a disgrace. /2.
To get to grips what’s going on, we need to recall the centrality of Ireland/NI to Brexit, Mr Johnson’s political survival & geopolitical interests orders of magnitude more significant than the GB-NI sausage trade.
The country can well afford to continue, for many more months if necessary, to use large scale, government deficit spending to support all sectors of the economy & workers unable to go out to earn a living. /2.
That’s because there’s no inflation risk to the direct creation & spending of the many hundreds of billions of £ needed to pay for that.
But heavy govt deficit spending (in the right areas) is entirely appropriate & beneficial for an economy operating below the capacity of its real resources to produce.
The problem is, Brexit’s shredding that capacity. /1.
For example: Brexit-induced labour & skills shortages, friction & barriers to productive economic activity, increased costs through the above & £ weakness … all at the same time as very high deficit spending. That’s where Weimar or Zimbabwe comparisons become real. /2.
The Covid (temporary) part of the deficit spending is vital. So is a major, longer term govt deficit funded investment in the economy. Unless the UK is to sink further into relative impoverishment. /3.